Sweetwater Creek by Anne Rivers Siddons

telephone table and chair sat. It was seldom used for telephoning, since you could not read the numbers in the murky gloom there, but it had long been Emily’s special place. It was the cave from which, in safety, she eavesdropped on the grown-ups of Sweetwater, trying to assess the precise tenor of her world at the moment. She was alone. She knew, as you do in that sort of dream, that there was a dog named Elvis who was half of her heart, but had not yet been born.
    She did not often look out into the foyer to spy on the adults. Things came to her more clearly when they were only heard. Emily could read voices even before she could read faces. She thought perhaps she had been born knowing how.
    She heard her mother and father’s voices, but they were too low for her to make out the words. They were angry, though. Emily’s heart pounded sickly. She had never heard her mother’s voice raised in anger. She had only heard her father’s anger in connection with mismanagement of the dogs, and then it was a flat, level tone that chilled rather than burned. For a long moment she was afraid to look out into the foyer, and then she did.
    Her mother and father stood beneath the big chandelier that had always hung there, fine but chipped and clouded now. Its light was foggy and pale, but it was sufficient to set her mother’s tumbled curls blazing, and to sit shallowly on the sharp planes of her father’s face. His narrow blue eyes sparked in a way Emily had never seen, and incredibly, his face was streaked with tears. This frightened Emily far more than the anger. That her father could weep was simply not a part of her small universe.
    Her mother was wearing a drifting silk dress the color of candlelight; Emily had seen it before, and loved it. It was a dress for a princess. Even though her mother’s back was to her, Emily knew how she looked in it from the front. It had a shallow scooped neck that showed her mother’s luminous skin, and pearls the same color as the dress would swing down as she leaned over Emily in her small bed to kiss her good night. Emily sniffed instinctively, wanting the scents of tuberoses and lemons that were her mother’s. She craned her neck around the stair, to see her mother’s face. She knew that there would be a soft, slightly mischievous smile on it, and coppery lipstick. Her mother would brush her cheek with her glossy lips, and sometimes leave a soft, tawny imprint there. Emily never wiped it off. It was a part of her mother that stayed with her when her mother went out into the night.
    “Sleep tight, my little bedbug,” her mother would say softly. “I’ll bring you something fancy from the party.”
    And Emily would slide into sleep on a warm wave of perfect safety. Usually in the morning there would be, on her pillow, a bit of cake, or a tart, or a scrolled and swirled canape tasting of creek shrimp.
    In the dream, though, Emily did not want her mother to turn toward her. She knew instinctively that the face would not be one that she knew. It would be a face whitened with anger, and the mouth would be slitted with the hissing of it. Emily tried desperately to wake herself up, knowing in some small part of her heart that this was a dream. But in the way of truly terrible dreams, she could not move, no matter how hard she tried.
    And then her mother said clearly, “There is absolutely nothing in this place for me anymore,” and picked up her small crocodile overnight bag from where it sat on the rug beside her, and walked past Walter Parmenter through the open door—for it was high summer in the dream—and banged the screened door behind her. The last Emily saw of her was a flare of the ivory silk skirt as she went down the steps into the darkness. After that the dream went abruptly and totally dark, and Emily stood in a black, featureless place where no living being was, or would be again.
    She woke herself with her strangled scream. Even sleep-stunned, she could tell that it was