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Tlv:w~ rJtrFdtw13e:':hiLi~ KrM EDWARDS Kim Edwards grew up in Skaneateles, New York, and earned degrees from Colgate University and the University of Iowa. She taught for five years in Asia, including stints in Malaysia, Japan, and Cambodia. Her short stories have appeared in, among many other journals, Ploughshares, Story, The Paris Review, Redbook, and Antaeus. Many of them are collected in The Secrets ofa Fire King and have earned awards, including a Pushcart Prize, a Nelson Algren Award, and inclusions in Best American Short Stories. Since 1996 she has lived in Lexington with her husband, Thomas Clayton. In an interview with Kentucky Educational Television, Edwards commented on her connection with Kentucky: "I have noticed it in the teaching that I do, and the writings of other Kentucky writers that I have read-that there is an enormous sense of 'place' in their writing, this enormous love of the land, and deeply rooted sense ofbeing in a place, and ofa place, which I find interesting. I don't feel like I'm quite 'of this place' yet; but I'm hoping it will happen. I'm sure, after time, it will." Originally published in The Three-Penny Review and reprinted in PushcartPrizeXIX and The Secrets ofa A Fire King, "The Way It Felt to Be Falling" was written while Edwards was an undergraduate at Colgate University. Her first serious attempt at short fiction, it was revised, she has said, seventy-five times before its publication in 1993. It is a story of risk and ascension, ofa girl's need to climb out ofa world that seems to be falling apart around her. • The summer I turned nineteen I used to lie in the backyard and watch the planes fly overhead, leaving their clean plumes ofjet-stream in a pattern against the sky. It was July, yet the grass had a brown fringe and leaves were already falling, borne on the wind like discarded paper wings. The only thing that flourished that summer was the recession; businesses, lured by lower tax rates, moved south in a steady progression . My father had left too, but in a more subtle and insidious way-after his consulting firm failed, he had simply retreated into some silent and inaccessible world. Now, when I went with my mother to the hospital, we found him sitting quietly in a chair by the window. His hands were limp against the armrests and his THE WAY IT FELT TO BE FALLING 329 hair was long, a rough dark fringe across his ears. He was never glad to see us, or sorry. He just looked calmly around the room, at my mother's strained smile and my eyes, which skittered nervously away, and he did not give a single word ofgreeting or acknowledgment or farewell. My mother had a job as a secretary and decorated cakes on the side. In the pressing heat she juggled bowls between the refrigerator and the counter, struggling to keep the frosting at the right consistency so she could make the delicate roses, chrysanthemums, and daisies that balanced against fields ofsugary white. The worst ones were the wedding cakes, intricate and bulky. That summer, brides and their mothers called us on a regular basis, their voices laced with panic. My mother spoke to them as she worked, trailing the extension cord along the tiled floor, her voice soothing and efficient. Usually my mother is a calm person, levelheaded in the face ofstress, but one day the bottom layer ofa finished cake collapsed and she wept, her face cradled in her hands as she sat at the kitchen table. I hadn't seen her cry since the day my father left, and I watched her from the kitchen door, a basket of laundry in my arms, uneasiness rising around me like slow, numbing light. After a few minutes she dried her eyes and salvaged the cake, removing the broken layer and dispensing with the plastic fountain which spouted champagne, and which was supposed to rest in a precarious arrangement between two cake layers held apart by plastic pillars. "There." She stepped back to survey her work. The cake was smaller but still beautiful, delicate and precise. "It looks better without that tacky fountain, anyway," she said. "Now let's get it out ofhere before something else goes wrong." I helped her box it up and carry it to the car, where it rested on the floor, surrounded by bags of ice. My mother backed out...

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