You Can Fly

Although snow wasn't yet blanketing the streets and sidewalks, London in December was still frigid and taken by a blistery wind that chilled straight to the bone. Elina Deveaux had lived in England all her life and was therefore accustomed to the bitter months of winter, and as she hurried towards her apartment building, she was cursing herself for neglecting her scarf and gloves. Her hands were red and felt stiff as she pressed the button that would guide the elevator to her floor.

At almost the same time as the ding of the elevator sounded, Elina's phone chimed and her stiff fingers clumsily collected it from her jacket pocket. "Hello?" she answered as she pushed her house key into the lock.

"It's Dan," her boyfriend responded. While she was quite taken by Dan most of the time, he had a silly American accent that constantly amused her. "Just called to see if you wanted to get coffee or something."

She turned the key but paused instead of opening the door. "I just saw you for supper," she reminded him, chuckling so that her decline sounded less harsh.

"I'm really tired tonight, love, and it's late. We'll have coffee tomorrow though, yes?" She pushed the door open and her stomach sank when she noticed the light coming from the living room.

"Sounds good. Love you, Lina."

Elina had tried to shut the door as quietly as possible, but her voice attracted the attention of the apartment's other inhabitant. When Peter walked into the kitchen, he looked tired and as though he had just been roused from bed, although he was still wearing the clothes that he had gone to work in. "You too," Elina responded before she hung up.

Almost immediately, Elina was overcome by the intense feelings of guilt that always awaited her at home. She shifted her weight nervously between her feet a few times before she tried to make herself busy with taking off her coat so that she didn't have to look Peter in the eye. "It's freezing out there," she commented in a nonchalant tone.

"You forgot your gloves," Peter noted as he nodded to the warm leather gloves that should have been stuffed in the pockets of Elina's coat.

"Yes." Elina picked up the gloves and shoved them into the pockets, mostly to placate Peter. "That was Beth on the phone," she added as she pushed some stray strands of brown hair behind her ears.

Peter nodded, although it was obvious that he wasn't sold by Elina's story. "It's late. Did you go get drinks with her?" he asked.

Although there was no suspicion in his voice, Elina felt the need to fabricate a more precise and intricate story. "We were supposed to, but then Beth remembered this invitation that she had received to this party," she explained. "So instead we caught a late dinner and then headed over to the party. A lot of publishers and editors were there."

"How's Dan tonight?" Peter inquired softly.

A silence fell upon them. Elina's eyes grew watery once she realized how pained Peter's expression was. Nonetheless, she tried to put on a brave face and brushed his inquiry off. "Who, dear?" she replied as she crossed to the fridge and began looking for something to drink.

"The American," Peter specified. "You know, the one that sees more of my wife nowadays than I do."

Her brave facade faltered slightly, and Elina began toying with a magnet on the refrigerator. She silently pulled a bottle of water from the ice box and rubbed her eyes as she still tried her hardest not to look at Peter. "It's late," she noted. "You should get to bed."

Although she had resolved to leave the conversation and go work in her study, Elina heard Peter murmur, "You should've been an actress instead of an author, Ellie." The combination of the hurt in his voice and the special nickname that only he used with her slowed Elina's pace, and she let her shoulders slump in a defeated fashion as she turned to face him.

"I'm so sorry, Peter." Her eyes finally failed to contain her tears, and Elina quickly brushed the droplets off her cheek. "This is ridiculous. I don't know what I'm doing." She abandoned her water bottle and any intention she had of working and retreated into her bedroom, feeling like the most enormous failure in the world.

"Ellie," Peter sighed as he walked into the room.

Her crocodile tears were freely streaming down Elina's cheeks by the time Peter joined her on their bed. "I went to a meeting with Beth this morning," she finally admitted, "and every time someone asks me what I'm working on, I don't know what to say! I can't explain to them that it will be my best, and the concepts are so underdeveloped that I don't blame them for being doubtful."

"You're wonderful, El," Peter countered. "Darling, you've already published so many fantastic ideas. You don't need to top any of them, let alone all of them in one novel."

Her sorrow was beginning to recede, leaving in its wake a combination of feelings that Elina was much too familiar with: inadequacy and desperation. "I don't understand," she frowned, "Lewis had Narnia, Carroll had Wonderland, Barrie had Neverland. Why is it so difficult for me to create a place as wonderful as those?"

She felt Peter's hand on her back and relaxed for a moment under the comforting knowledge that despite numerous ways that she had disappointed and betrayed him, he was still there. He was still her Peter. But then he spoke: "Ellie, you're using it as an escape."

"So what if I am?" she snapped. "It's none of your business what I use it for. I'm just tired of looking at all of these brilliant places and not being able to fabricate one of my own. I need one, Peter. If I can't be happy here, then the only logical solution is for me to create one somewhere else. Some place that, despite everything that may happen, will always be mine."

She squeezed her pillow more tightly, almost recoiling from the hand that was still resting on her back. "How do they do it, Peter?" she asked, her eyes shut tightly and a paintbrush waiting in her mind.

The sound of his deep exhale broke the silence that had filtered into the room. "You just think of a wonderful thought," he whispered.

A bitter chuckle forced it's way out of Elina's throat. "A wonderful thought." He used to be her wonderful thought. They used to be it. And it wasn't that Dan was part of her wonderful thought now; he most certainly wasn't. Sometimes Elina wondered why she was even with Dan. But the problem was that she couldn't enjoy being Elina or even Ellie anymore; and Peter just wasn't the same without her, something they both seemed to subconsciously know.

It was time for Peter to leave. Elina sat up and collected her laptop from it's place on her nightstand before she glanced at her husband. "You're chasing the phenomena," Peter told her.

"I'm trying to think of a wonderful thought," she countered with an entirely fake and forced smile. "You can shut the door on your way out."

He resisted the urge to sigh until he was standing alone in the hall. Through the thin door, Peter could hear Elina pull open the draw of her nightstand, and he knew what would happen next.

Elina had always been brilliant, and it was one of the things that Peter loved the most about her. But the more successful and well-known she became as a writer, the more difficult it was for her to produce anything that fit the enormous new standards that she developed for herself. This world that she wanted to create wasn't for her fans; it was much more personal and supposed to be a place for her to escape to, for them.

She had convinced herself that she needed help to get there, and like the Neverland created by Barrie, the only way Elina could get to her magical world was by flight. It took Peter a month to realize that she was using drugs, and another few weeks to determine exactly what kinds. He wasn't sure whether she was addicted to any specific formula at all, because every so often, she would change. She needed something to get her to this land of her creation, and in order for that to happen, she needed to be barely conscious of the reality going on around her. When she became too accustomed to one substance, she moved on.

Then she met Dan, and she kept him so that she could have a real life villain to run away from: herself. She hadn't published anything in months after the success of her last book, which had been a best-seller in the United Kingdom as well as France and the United States, where a movie adaptation was being written. She either lived in a fog, dreaming about a place that didn't exist, or she was gone, exploring the depths of her enchanted world that only the two of them knew lived in the confines of her mind.

Peter had been aware of Dan from the beginning. He had known about the drugs from very early on. Yet neither of these things topped the list of things that he regretted. The biggest thing that Peter couldn't forgive himself for was his inability to make Elina happy. Although he tried to offer her the most soothing pep talks and the best suggestions that he could think of, he couldn't stop her from trying to top the fantastic fame that her books had already achieved. He couldn't save her from the feelings of inadequacy.

Peter sighed and rubbed his eyes. He had spent an hour in the living room, flipping mindlessly through the television and half heartedly reading the paper when he found nothing of any interest on TV. After about an hour, he figured that Ellie should be done attempting to write. Usually, she was asleep when he finally went to bed.

Due to the usual events of their evenings, Peter wasn't shocked when he walked into their room to find Ellie slumped over in bed. He collected her laptop, saved the paragraph that she had typed out, and turned it off before he pulled her shoes off and tried to situate her on her half of the bed.

After he shut the light off and dropped into bed, Elina stirred. "Peter?" she asked sleepy.

"Yes, Ellie?"

Her speech was slow, sleepy and slurred. "Help me think of a wonderful thought," she requested in a light whisper that Peter had to strain to here.

He closed his eyes tightly and clenched his jaw. He knew what she wanted to hear, and although he hated uttering the words, he also knew that he'd rather choke on one terrible sentence than make her unhappy. So he swallowed the lump that had developed in his throat before he declared, "You can fly, Ellie."

He turned to glance at her half asleep expression. It melted into a slight smile, and Elina's eyes fluttered completely shut. They carried her to sleep almost every night, those three words. They were easily the most wonderful thought that Elina could possibly possess, for they meant that other places were reachable.

Every night when Peter saved her document, Elina would open it in the following morning to find the phrase she vaguely remembered typing. It was always the same words and hardly counted as progression on her next story, but Elina treasured these documents because they got her through the day to the nighttime when she would enter her drug induced euphoria and escape to the place where she didn't disappoint Peter, her editor, publisher, or anyone else for that matter and where her own villainy didn't seem to matter as much.

You can fly, you can fly, you can fly.