So Much for Dreams

by Vanessa Grant

  He shifted, looked at a painting that had been done by one of her girls. He frowned and she wanted to tell him she was keeping it because she loved Sally, not because she had weird taste in art.

  "I brought your car back." He slid his right hand out of that pocket and the keys were in his hand. He held them out.

  Her fingers closed on them, her heart sinking. The car. "Of course. You said you'd get it back to me. I—I didn't know you meant you'd bring it." She swallowed. "Where's the boat?"

  "Mexico." He looked so temporary, uncomfortable in the suit, uneasy as if he were leaving as soon as he could. "San Carlos," he added.

  "I thought you were going to—Where's San Carlos?"

  "There's more than one San Carlos, but this one is across the Sea of Cortez, on the mainland side. Further north." She nodded. He was going back, of course. His boat was there and he had come north to bring the car, not to see Dinah. If he asked, she would go with him, but he was not going to ask. Just as well, she supposed, because loving would be mixed with the old terrors of being homeless, never knowing where tomorrow would leave her. And anyway, how could she abandon Leo's kids?

  He was explaining about some marina where his boat could be left in bond while he left the country.

  "Interview?" she asked again. "What interview?" She swallowed, said, "Coffee? Do you want some coffee? I was just going to make some. Or a drink? Or—"

  He shook his head. She bit her lip. So he was not going to stay long enough even for a drink.

  He shifted his balance from one foot to the other, half leaned against the wall, then straightened. He wasn't comfortable, probably wanted to be gone. He asked, "How's Cathy? And the baby?"

  "I—Cathy's out. With Barry." She found herself chattering on, her voice sounding almost as nervous as she felt. "They've gone to Stanley Park. Barry has this theory that the baby should have sun, and that Cathy can study better outside. Cathy's doing upgrading courses at the Community College. Then she's going to take a computer course."

  "Good," he said absently. Was he listening?

  "Barry's got a job. With the City. He's starting next week." She added desperately, "If you'd like to see them, they'll be back in an hour or two." She rubbed her hands along the denim fabric over her thighs. "You could stay, wait." She was probably crazy. Two hours of this awkward non-communication and she'd be up the wall.

  His shoulders shifted in the jacket, his hands dug deeper in the slacks. "I—Ah—" He broke off and walked past her, to the window, prowling his way across the living room as if he needed to be free.

  "Where are you staying?" she asked his back.

  "My brother." He picked up a big seashell that was not particularly pretty, turned it in his hand. "I got in yesterday."

  "Oh." So he hadn't been in a hurry to see her. Obviously, because he didn't even want to be here. It was a duty. He'd wanted to see the baby, of course. He'd delivered it, and must have a special interest in it for that. She remembered how moved he had been by the birth. "I—How long are you here for?" Maybe it was only the car. A promise to be kept, delivering it. "Couldn't you find anyone to drive the car up?"

  "I didn't look." He swung around and she winced as his shoulder just missed a glass pitcher standing on the bookcase. "You said you could get by without it."

  He was watching her hands try to rub a hole in the fabric of her jeans. She said desperately, "Are you sure you won't have a cup of coffee? I'll make some." She dashed away to make it, not waiting for an answer.

  Coward, escaping to the kitchen. She'd dreamed that he would come, not believed it. Now she was spilling coffee grounds all over the counter, afraid to go back out there because if she said what she really wanted he would look uncomfortable, trapped, and he'd be gone.

  It was a relief to hear the laughter out front, the door and sounds of Cathy and Barry. When she brought the coffee out, Cathy was describing the horrors of learning algebra to Joe, while Joe sat on the footstool, holding the baby and rocking it gently as he listened.

  "She'll learn," Barry said to Joe, and Cathy complained that Barry was terrorizing her into being a mathematician.

  "We were just going to make dinner," said Barry. Recently, he had taken over teaching Cathy to cook. "Dinah, what do you think about liver and onions?"

  Cathy groaned and Joe said, "I’m taking Dinah out for dinner."

  "Smart," said Cathy. "Can I come? I hate liver."

  "It's good for you," said Barry, and that seemed to settle Cathy's ambitions for a night out.

  That left Joe looking at Dinah, and she realized he must be expecting an answer, although he hadn't actually asked her to go out. Probably it was just a way of getting out of the liver.

  "I'll just wash up," she said quickly, before he could change his mind. "Should I change?"

  "It doesn't matter."

  Oh, lord! This was going to hurt. "I'll change," she decided, because it would give her time to get herself together. "I'm not a match for your suit."

  "Wear the black dress," suggested Cathy. "It's super!"

  She had a shower, tried three dresses on and discarded them all. The black was too slinky, as if she was inviting him to want her. Would he? There was no desire in his eyes, and she was afraid to make a bid for his interest in her as a woman. Surely he remembered, though. Hadn't that explosion of their loving shaken him, too? Just once, and she was never going to forget it. If he took her again, held out his arms and opened his lips, she would be clinging, begging, when he was fighting to be free of her.

  No, not the white dress either. It was too young, too vulnerable, and if her hand trembled it would show where she spilled her food on it. Somehow she had to get through this evening, keep her cool and not make him feel that she was someone he would run halfway around the world to avoid. If he wanted to go out, he wanted a pleasant evening. Not a clinging limpet.

  If he wanted loving, wouldn't there be something in his eyes besides that hard blue? So she mustn't tell him again, must not say the words of love that welled up inside her when she met his eyes.

  She jumped, hearing a sound like a door closing. Panicked, she called out, "Joe? I'll be just a second! I'm almost ready!"

  The blue. It was light and swirly, but modest with a high neck and a very plain bodice over the full skirt. It had to be the blue. There was no more time to fiddle around with deciding. And he liked her in blue, didn't he? She had worn blue the day they made love.

  ***

  Joe almost left when she went to change. What was the point? A rotten evening, fighting his desire to take her in his arms, to touch her face and see her eyes take fire ... to tell her his dream of the future and see her eyes go cold. Ever since she had opened the door to him, it had been obvious. Whatever had happened on the deck of a boat, whatever impulsive words of love she had declared rashly in a far-off foreign country, back here at home it was different.

  After Cathy and Barry took the baby downstairs, Joe had gone to the front door, opened it softly, but it was no use. She was in his heart, and it would not change for walking away. He closed the door, heard her call out something about being almost ready. While he waited, he prowled the house. It was filled with signs of the girls she spent so much of her time with, young girls like Cathy, who needed someone and were afraid to reach out.

  As Dinah had been.

  But she had been his, in his arms, closer in his heart than anyone had ever been. Even Julie. Julie was so far back, so sweet and painful both at once. He had loved her, but there had never been this wild meeting of souls, as if he and Dinah had been together forever in some other time, some other dimension, as if when they touched there was nothing that could part them, not heart or soul or flesh.

  It must have frightened Dinah, being that close, that vulnerable, so wide open to another person. It had scared hell out of him, he knew, had turned his world upside down.

  In the end, it had made sense out of life again. That's what she had done for him, but maybe it wasn't so simple for her. S
he needed time. All right. He could give her that. If a kid like Barry could take time to be patient with Cathy, then surely he could. He was a man, more mature and ...

  And he wanted her, needed her in his life with an ache that threatened to turn him into a helpless fool. He had to do better than that. It might take time. Weeks. Months. But where the hell did he start? It might take years. He swallowed and tried to believe he could be patient enough not to mess it up, not to rush her. Dinner dates first. Talk. There must be something they could talk about, some way to relax this explosive tension he felt without frightening her into slamming that door and shutting him out of her home and her life.

  Not for touching, he thought wryly when she came out in the blue dress with that bright smile on her face. All right. He could wait, could court her again, slowly. So he started with talking, spending the drive to the restaurant asking her about her work, about her paintings. She didn't want to talk about her hopes for an exhibition of her paintings, it seemed, so over dinner he talked about the interview he had been to that day.

  She listened, trying to know what it was in his eyes, why he was so uncomfortable with her.

  He spread his hands on the table, seemed to change his words as they started coming out. "It's not—Well, the job's not that much money, but it's something I've been interested in. Dr. Muldern was one of my professors when I was in medical school, and later we saw each other and—Then Hank was telling me a couple of months ago that Dr. Muldern had been talking to him. They'd run into each other at one of these Medical Association things." She nodded as if she knew what he meant and he said, "Somehow they got onto me as a topic, I guess because Hank is Dr. Mitchell too, and so am I. Dr. Muldern told Hank that if I ever contemplated going back into medicine, he'd like to talk to me about research."

  "So you did? I mean, talk to him?" Joe was being surprisingly unclear. It wasn't like him to ramble on and not get to the point. "And you're going to?" she prodded him. "You'll be working with this doctor? That's good, isn't it? I mean, you're happy about it, aren't you?" He didn't look happy.

  "Yeah. It's OK. I—Well, I can't see getting into general practice again. And it's not as if I'm needed there. Canada's not short of doctors, and—Well, I don't know if I'll ever be ready to go back to practicing. You've got to keep a distance from the patients, got to be able to roll with it when you lose them. Of course, a good doctor cares, but—Well, it shouldn't take him apart. The research—It's important, I think, and I believe I can do a good job. Dr. Muldern thinks so, or he wouldn't have made the proposal. But—Well, Dinah, it's not the same thing as an economic proposition."

  "Why not?" What the devil was he talking about?

  "The pay isn't good. I'll be half a student and half a worker for quite a while. I've got a lot to learn. Some day I might get tenure at the university, but if that doesn't happen there might never be that much security in it. It's just a job I want to do."

  "The security doesn't matter that much to you, does it?" She frowned. Was she missing something, or was he simply not making sense? "I mean, if you could roam around on a boat, living on a shoestring. Well, it—Is it here? In Vancouver? At the university here?" He nodded and her voice rushed on, saying, "Then, why don't you move in with me? There's lots of room and it would be cheaper for you and—"

  Her words were echoing around the table. Something had happened to his face, his eyes, and she was scared when she heard her own words coming back to her. "Oh, God!" she whispered. "Joe, I—I don't believe I said that. I—" Of course he didn't want that. Dinner, he'd said, and she'd begun to hope he might dance with her later when that band got their notes smoothed out a bit. "Your brother, you said, didn't you? Of course, you're going to live with your brother."

  "I don't think so." His voice sounded so odd. "He's way out in Surrey, and—Dinah—"

  "I know," she said hurriedly, her hand fluttering towards his, then drawing back sharply. "I—I didn't really mean …"

  Living together. Waking him up in the morning if he slept in, going to sleep knowing he was close by. She would put him in the next room, and if he turned in the bed she would hear. Making dinner, knowing he was coming, perhaps even coming home and finding him there before her, the smell of dinner on the air. Loving. Making love. Talking. Watching television together, laughing about the bad acting in a movie. She gulped back tears, said desperately, "You'll get your own place, of course. I—I just meant if …"

  She closed her eyes. It wasn't going to get better. She wasn't going to be able to talk her way out of it, not with his eyes watching, seeing too much. She wailed, "Joe, I have to get out of here. Please. I—I don't think I can handle any more of this evening. I—I thought I could do it and pretend—I'm sorry, but I just can't." Oh, God! She was going to cry, really cry. She pushed her chair back and heard it make a loud noise. "I—Excuse me!"

  She ran, stumbling around a woman at the next table, running headlong past the waiter and through the door. She pushed the door shut behind herself, leaned back against it and felt the tears coming. With the door shut it didn't matter if she cried. She had the whole shiny washroom to herself.

  She had never been a coward. She'd been reckless, running away when staying would be better, striking out at that boy on the beach when it might have made things worse, going off to the Baja without stopping to think and prepare enough. But she'd always faced things when there was no way out.

  So how did she end up here? Mopping up tears in the washroom and wondering how long she would have to stay in here for him to be gone when she came out. She loved him. Maybe she'd loved him from that moment when he talked English to her up on a mountain in Mexico, certainly from the time he'd first kissed her. Of course she wasn't very good at loving, didn't have a lot of practice, and she sure didn't know how you went about a dinner date with a man you loved when he didn't really seem to want the loving. After all, she had told him she loved him once already, back there in Mexico, and if he wanted it ...

  Fool! Blurting out an invitation for him to move in with her. What a position for a man to be in, having to say no, thanks, but I don't want to live with you.

  With cold water and a paper towel she managed to get her face looking reasonable. She'd left her purse back at the table, so she couldn't do anything about the lipstick that was gone, the mascara that had run and was washed away now. If she went back out there, he probably wouldn't eat her. If he laughed, she would die, but he wasn't going to do that. He might feel sorry for her. She hoped not.

  She gnawed on her lips. OK, so it would be awful. She'd just have to manage it. If she got out a bunch of bright conversation quickly, he'd probably help her make it seem normal. The alternative was to stay in here forever. She took a deep breath, checked that she didn't look too bad in the mirror. Pale. Well, there was no way she could pretend she didn't care now. If it showed on her face, that was too bad. She'd get through this evening somehow, and then it wouldn't matter. She'd never see him again.

  He was waiting for her just outside the washroom door. He took her arm and handed her purse to her. She didn't look at his eyes, and thank heaven he didn't say anything about the scene she'd been making.

  "What about the boat?" she asked brightly as he walked her past the cashier and out the door. No one was shouting at him, so he must already have paid the bill. "What about Alice?" she added nervously. "If you're going research, you're not going to the South Pacific, are you?"

  He was making it hard work for her, his face stiff and angry. Surely he could cooperate with this small talk business? "What about Alice? Did you just leave her there on the beach?" She had a horrible thought and gulped out, "She's not here with you, is she?"

  His fingers bit into her arm as he leaned to put the key into the passenger door of her car. "Alice is on a Fisher thirty," he ground out, jerking the door open.

  "A what? Fishing what?" She stared at the seat. He was waiting for her to get in but she wasn't ready to be shut up in her car with him. She had been wrong. She
simply couldn't handle this.

  "A Fisher thirty. It's a sailboat. Couple on it going to Australia." His voice was fast and angry. "Alice is crewing to Tahiti with them. That's where she wanted to get and—Damn it, Dinah! I don't want to talk about Alice. Will you get in the bloody car?"

  She got in. Then he got in, sat there with the keys in his hand and just stared through the window. She pleated her skirt with her fingers, decided it was time she stopped being a bloody coward.

  "Look, Joe, I—"

  "Dinah, I wish I knew what the hell you want." He turned to glare at her and she found herself drawing back because he seemed to fill the space all around.

  "What I want?" She couldn't breathe. Coward, she thought. Tell him.

  But didn't he know?

  "Conversation?" He sounded bitter. He raked his hand through his hair and it stopped looking tidy. "I'm having a hell of a time with conversation, but I'll try." He faced the windshield again, jammed the key into the ignition.

  She said brightly, "What would you like to talk about?" This was terrible, the worst evening of her whole life.

  "The boat," he suggested tightly, getting the car out into the traffic without hitting anyone, although someone was angrily blaring away on a horn. "I left it there. I told you. I put it in bond, and it's there at the marina. It can stay there for as long as I pay the moorage and the bond charge every six months." He shrugged, said harshly, "All right. Yes. I'd like to move into your house."

  She heard the noise she made, a cross between a gasp and a squeak. "Why do you—I—All right."

  She tried to tell her heart to slow down, be calm. There would be time. He wasn't running away. He didn't hate her, and maybe there would be a day when he could love her.

  "There's the second bedroom," she offered, "and a kind of study I don't use. I was cleaning it out today. Actually, it—You could have it." She could breathe, she found, and maybe she could even talk. She knew he had not meant that he wanted her, his voice had told her that. The world he'd been living in, taking on crew was a casual thing, and didn't seem to mean the same thing as living with someone. Maybe he thought her rash offer to share the house was a business deal. He must think that. Oh, lord! Was he expecting to pay rent? She said steadily, "When do you want to move in?"