Marshmallows

It was an unstable system. It had always been an unstable system. The only constant was inconsistancy, and it burned through all the ropes and bridges I made until I was, once again, falling toward the water.


Carlie was coming home, or at least she said she was. I had re-read every letter she had ever sent me, because she didn't talk to anyone if my family but me. I think she pretended she could trust me just because I was her little naïve sister who didn't understand anything about anything.


Her letters were written hastily, her scrawling handwriting leaving me with only bits and pieces to collect. Sometimes I thought she really did open her mind onto the paper and that's why everything was so disconnected and fragmented ― sort of like our relationship, but that was an analogy I didn't care to explore. 


I had recieved roughly one a month for the past three years, with the occasional missed month. She never gave a return address and often vaguely said she'd be coming to visit, "in a while." Assuring me she missed me more than anything, she would sign the letter with a scribble in an attempt to look like she didn't altogether wish to neglect me.


More often that not, she wouldn't come. Even if she promised me she would. The days would go by and I'd get another letter that went on with her stream of consciousness as if she had never broken another vow to me. I kept every one of her letters, and I could have shown them to her if I wanted to make her angry at me, but I forgave and didn't forget quietly, just like we all do.


I got one from her in March, and she said she was coming home. She might bring her unnamed husband, but maybe not, because she was often "out and about," as she so eloquently put it. Carlie never admitted when people she thought she cared about were doing things behind her back. When she didn't care about them, however, all hell was loose and the tears shed were enough to make a lake of anger.


"I miss you, of course," she wrote, in a sentence that took me five whole minutes to decifer. "Try to butter Mom up so she doesn't throw me out, and tell Dad that I'm still his daughter and he can't tell me any differently."


I said nothing to either my mother or my father, and hid the letter away quietly with all the rest.


She showed up on our doorstep at two in the morning, alone and with only one bag, and I was the only one awake. I don't sleep for weeks after she hints that she might visit. I don't want to miss her.


"Hey, baby," she said with her trademark half-smile. "Waiting for me?"


We made popcorn and sat on the couch drinking Mountain Dew and Kool-Aid. She showed me her drawings, telling me why she drew them and what she was feeling and how the feelings related to the picture. They were usually dark and sometimes disturbing, but I found them intruiging and I didn't even mind when the nightmares came, many months later.


"Mom wouldn't like them," Carlie muttered, sliding the pictures back into her bag. We were silent for awhile, and the clock told us that it was five in the morning and soon we'd have to face our parents who would only pretend to be glad to see their eldest daughter.


I fell asleep against Carlie's shoulder and dreamed of lights and pencils and a great blackness that pebbles kept falling into.


Carlie was gone in three days. She left in the middle of the night, after seeing that I was safely in bed and whispering promises of a day together tomorrow. I woke to an empty driveway and empty eyes and a picture of a man drowning in letters.


She had told me that one was her best.


Her letters got more and more sparse, never apologizing for missing my inward calendar or explaining her own demented schedule. From her brief one-sided conversations, I gathered that school was taking over her life and giving her a reason to get away from "him." She pretended she liked it, she pretended she liked to be busy. Sometimes I wondered how lonely she really was.


Thanksgiving came and went by, and it had been three months since my last letter from Carlie. It hardly counted as a letter, it was a postcard with three lines ("Hey baby. I'm gonna drop by next week. Miss you."), and she didn't come. I kept her postcard anyway. The picture on the front was completely black with the word "light" in the low left corner. I started sleeping again.


The phone rang, for me, for the first time since Carlie went away. Carlie used to call me when she stayed the night at her friends' houses, but the phone had been silent for years. My parents didn't use the phone; they viewed it as an impractical and untrustworthy form of communication.


"Hello?"


My voice tipped toward the sky on the second syllable. I was afraid it would be Carlie, Carlie to drag another thing to hope and wait for into my life.


It wasn't Carlie, it was her husband. My stomach spun with unease. I didn't want anything more to change.


He wanted to know if I knew where she was. She was missing from that morning and all her pictures were gone. She didn't leave any notes. I didn't ask how he got my number, but I said I didn't know where she was and hung up before he heard me cry.


I got a letter from Carlie the next week. She explained nothing. It was an actual letter, filled with shattered thoughts and scratched out words. She was complaining about something, and she was angry, but she left the ending the same. "Miss you, baby. See you soon."


Four days later, I woke up to Carlie shaking my shoulder. "Wake up, baby. Carlie's here."


It was three in the morning, but we sat on the floor of my room and talked about pictures and new music and bad music and how high you could stack marshmallows until they tumbled onto the ground, just like a visual representation of my life. I didn't voice that last part, but Carlie said it instead, and we were both quiet for a very, very long time.


"How long will you be here, Carlie?"


"I'm not sure, baby."


Breakfast was uneventful, as my parents weren't up yet. Carlie and I crawled under the blankets and watched stupid shows on the television to plaster our thoughts in an illegible mess on the back of our heads.


"Did he call, baby?"


The lights and images flickered their sad song, the voices blending together into a steady ― consistent ― stream of color. The pile of candy wrappers on the floor breathed and shifted with each turn of the fan, and the warmth of the blanket on my back was one of those fake comforts you wish to banish from your life.


"He called."


Carlie and I shared a look closer to understanding than ever before, and I knew why she sent me letters.


Footsteps sounded on the stairs and we went back to gazing at the mind-numbing form of distraction.


"Carlie's here?"


She glanced up and nodded once. My mother's face darkened and she went into the kitchen without a word. And again the television took over.


It was 31 hours later when someone said something wrong and knocked the tower of marshmallows over. I sat with my knees pulled to my chin, just around the corner, too petrified to go try to collect them and build another tower. 


My mother's voice scraped the ceiling.


"Why did you come back? Your man not good enough for you? Finally figured that out, did you?"


"I don't need you telling me how I've ruined my life, Mom."


"I warned you." She swore. "Didn't think I had the experience?"


"I don't want to hear about your mistakes."


Their voices rose, swirling in bloody ribbons through that horrible black river of silence. My mother's voice had tears in it, slipping down her face to join the rest that were on the floor, best friends with the broken glass and alcohol. Carlie never cried. Carlie never drank. Carlie was the perfect imperfect and my mother didn't stand a chance.


I don't know how long they shouted. I crawled away from the door and vomitted nothing into the toilet. My lip was bleeding from where I bit it open and my mouth tasted like every word my mother and Carlie exchanged.


"Baby."


There were too many marshmallows on the floor... no way it was every going to be my beautiful tower again.


"Hey. Look at me."


It would be nice if everything was dark. Just dark. And quiet. So I wouldn't have to think about anything ever again.


"You okay?"


No more marshmallows. No more bridges, no more ropes, nothing to fall and crash to pieces.


"I'm leaving."


"Please don't."


The silence between us stretched out and I wondered if it would snap back at me and sting. A thousand hands in my stomach pressed burning coals into my throat, but I wouldn't open my mouth again for fear I'd lose more than what's in there.


"Come on, baby."


Her car was waiting, and my mother was readily comforted by those darkened bottles of false consolation. Carlie grabbed the chocolate and I sat in the front seat. Maybe we would make a new marshmallow tower.