In Between Dreams

by Iman Verjee

  ‘It’s hectic,’ she finally admitted. She had gone too far and seeing him angry had caused her face to relax. ‘Actually, Marienne, I’m glad I ran into you.’

  Marienne, who up until then had been listening to their conversation with a polite indifference, wrinkled her eyebrows. ‘Really? Why’s that?’

  ‘I was wondering if you would be interested in working at the hospital for a few weeks.’ The words fell into the open air, hanging, waiting to be received. They watched Marienne together, their breaths caught up in each other’s, each with something different at stake.

  ‘Me?’ she asked and when Gina nodded, she said, ‘But I don’t have any qualifications.’

  Gina shrugged, waved her ringed fingers in the air. ‘Oh, it’s a reception job. Really easy, really straightforward,’ she assured Marienne. ‘One of our night receptionists had a family emergency and it’s impossible to find someone at such short notice.’ Marienne began rearranging items in their cart and he knew she was getting ready to say no.

  ‘I can imagine how busy it gets there,’ he interjected before Marienne could speak. The words were stiff and unnatural on his tongue and he spoke slowly, afraid of making a mistake. The fact of his affair with Gina hovered over them, ready at any moment to slide into the practiced conversation in the form of a slipped-up word or an unconscious gesture.

  ‘It sure does,’ Gina replied.

  ‘I’ll think about it.’ Marienne pushed her hair behind her ears and tightened her hands around the handle of the shopping cart. ‘Would that be alright? Like I said, I don’t have any experience.’

  ‘I’ll be there to show you how everything works.’

  ‘I’ll call you next week,’ said Marienne, hinting that she wanted the conversation to be over, and when Gina looked at him, he gave her a small nod.

  ‘Of course.’ Gina leaned in to kiss Marienne’s cheek, and as she did, she gave him a slow wink. He pretended not to see it. ‘Give me a call and we can discuss it.’

  ‘Okay,’ Marienne said, and James wrapped his arm protectively around her shoulder, saying goodbye to Gina. She was gone in a tinkling of jewelry, the space she occupied smelling strongly of perfume, leaving her empty basket on the ground and he was angry at her carelessness. Marienne didn’t seem to notice as she straightened out the items in their cart, arranging them in clean, neat categories; food-stuff on the left and everything else packed to the right.

  ‘I think it might be a good idea,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. It’ll only be for a little while, in any case.’ The words sped into the air, spurred on by how close he was to getting what he wanted. ‘I think it’ll be good for you to get out of the house.’

  She stopped moving the shopping around. ‘I’ll think about it, okay?’

  He knew not to push her anymore and they began walking, their heads bent close together. He pressed his face into her hair and the smell and feel of it was so familiar that the extent to which he had missed her hit him hard.

  ‘I’m sorry I’ve been distant lately.’ The words burst from his mouth. He had to say it because when he did, it soothed the soreness of all the lies he had told.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she smiled up at him, pressing his hand. ‘Let’s talk about all that later.’ Like him, she was hesitant to ruin the moment; they had avoided each other for so long and it felt good to be close again. She pushed the cart away from her and leaned into him. He recognized the look in her eyes; the dark, swirling need that had nothing to do with children, but only the two of them. ‘Forget about shopping,’ she murmured. ‘Let’s go home.’

  After a few days of thinking it over, of James nudging her toward the decision he needed her to make, Marienne took the job and James thought he was in the clear. She would come home, her mind soaked in the tragedies and joys of other people, too preoccupied with their problems to be worried about her own.

  ‘It puts everything into perspective, doesn’t it?’ she said to him. ‘We have each other, we’re still trying. Nothing’s been lost yet.’

  After five weeks at the hospital, she hadn’t wanted to leave and no one asked her to. So she continued and each day, their relationship began to mend itself and although Marienne’s desire to have a child didn’t go away, it began to fall asleep in her mind. She could go for several days, sometimes weeks without mentioning it. He treasured each smile over the dining table, the slight brushing of her fingers here, a quick goodnight kiss there, taking them to be light, tentative steps back into their old life.

  James spent a few last weeks with Gina, waiting for Marienne to leave for her night-shift before cutting through the neighbors’ gardens and moving invisibly through the darkness, meeting Gina at the back door of her house. She would be waiting for him; a slim figure lit up by the small, green light coming from the lamp on her dining table, leaning against the wide open doorway. As the nights went on, she started playing nervously with the blue curtains or sometimes stepping out of the house when he was late. That was how he knew she had fallen in love with him and although he no longer needed her, and wanted to end it, it was difficult to find the moment to tell her.

  Despite it all, he had come to appreciate her feelings. She watched him with an intensity and a passion that he recognized as the same emotion he felt when he looked at Marienne, with the kind of need only someone who was lost and looking for something could feel. She often spoke of him leaving Marienne, as if in a trance, imagining them leaving town and settling down somewhere far away.

  ‘My brother lives in Montreal,’ she told him once, taking his arm and holding it around her waist. ‘That’s miles from here and no one would know where we went.’

  ‘And what would we do there?’ he humored her.

  ‘Live together. We wouldn’t have to hide it—we could grocery shop every Sunday. We could go dancing.’ She had never sounded so excited or vulnerable before. He kissed her cheek and didn’t say anything. ‘We could get married,’ she mused. ‘We wouldn’t tell anyone who we were or about our lives before.’

  For a moment, he let himself consider the possibility of running away—not with Gina but alone. The temptation was always there, no matter how much he loved Marienne, to escape from everything holding him down. To stop fighting. He could rewrite his story, bury his old life in the vast country and never have to worry about it coming back. ‘Promise me you’ll think about it,’ Gina said, moving on top of him. ‘Promise me quickly.’ He kissed her, goaded on by her enthusiasm. The idea was so tantalizing that he forgot about everything else and was certain he could do it. Marienne would eventually forgive him. She might be better off without him.

  ‘I promise,’ he said.

  He wasn’t sure how long he would have let his affair with Gina continue if he hadn’t come home the next night to find Marienne back early from work. She was sitting on their bed reading, and when he came into the room, she turned over the corner of the page, running her finger along its fold, before closing it slowly.

  ‘You’re back.’ The room shook with his silence and she had no choice but to fill it. ‘The hospital was over-staffed tonight so I came home early.’ He stayed near the door, the scent of Gina’s perfume rooting him to the spot, making him unable to think of what to say. He took his time, undoing his shirt buttons slowly, playing out different stories in his mind.

  ‘I went for a short walk,’ trying to grin at her. ‘I get bored when you’re not around.’ The lie came easily to him. It helped that she trusted him completely.

  ‘You never said.’ She patted the space beside her. ‘I was worried.’

  He pulled his shirt off, twisting it in his nervous hands and then throwing it into the farthest corner it would reach, sitting down next to her. When she leaned her head on him, he stiffened and stopped breathing but she didn’t notice.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Growing bolder by her obliviousness, he leaned back on the headboard and let her slip further into him. She was wonderfully hot against his hands. ‘I
thought I would be home before you got back.’

  ‘Nice to get some fresh air?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’ It took all of his breath to say that one word. ‘But I’d much rather have been here with you.’ She kissed his chest and then sat back up and opened her book.

  ‘Me too, honey. Just let me know what you’re doing next time, okay?’

  ‘I will.’ He got out of the bed, throwing his clothes off on the way to the shower.

  He stayed for a long time under the steamy umbrella of water, enjoying the way it reached under his skin and burned him. He took his toothbrush with him into the shower, feeling the sharp sting of toothpaste that fell onto his chin. He moved the hairs of the brush slowly, in a strong, thoughtful motion against his teeth and when he finished, he turned his head up and opened his mouth, letting the water run into it; hot on his tongue and gums before he expelled his breath noisily and let out the minty stream. When he finished, he draped his towel loosely around his waist and leaned against the bathroom door.

  He watched Marienne; the way her eyes flicked over the words of her book, fully settled now that he was home. Seeing her waiting for him had jerked him uncomfortably back into awareness; had made him remember how easy it could be to get caught. He climbed into bed, kissing her fast before moving as far away as possible from her, turning on his side so she wouldn’t feel him shaking. She stroked his neck slowly with one hand, the other holding up her book, the glow of her light casting warm, red streaks behind his eyes. That was when he knew he would never leave her.

  He told Gina the next day that the guilt was killing him. ‘All this sneaking around and this fear—I can’t do it anymore.’ She lay, stone-faced beside him, staring up at her ceiling and he continued, trying to ease the blow. ‘I don’t want to end up hating you. You mean too much to me.’

  She threw her silk dressing gown around her naked shoulders, wrapping it around her waist and sat up silently in bed, not facing him.

  ‘This is about what I said the other day, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, no. It’s not that.’ He was glad she wasn’t looking at him.

  ‘Did you even consider leaving her?’

  He shook his head. ‘It wasn’t an option, Gina. She’s my wife.’

  She stood up, pacing the small space at the foot of the bed, a nervous panic widening her eyes. She looked ready to claw through the wall.

  ‘And that’s why you’ve been coming here most nights a week, is it?’

  ‘It’s complicated, Ginny.’ He couldn’t tell her that he had never been attracted to her; that the reason this had started was because he had been drunk and out of control. That it had continued because she had given him something Marienne had stopped providing and now he no longer needed her. ‘I care about you,’ he said, choosing his words carefully, anxious that she might, at any moment, pick up the shiny black receiver of her bedside telephone, call the hospital and ask to talk to his wife.

  ‘That’s not the same thing.’

  He tried to reach out for her but she was standing too far away.

  ‘I think you should leave.’

  ‘Ginny—’

  She grabbed his arm with one hand and his jacket with the other. ‘Get changed and leave.’

  Once he was dressed, he came out slowly from the bedroom and found her sitting at her dining table. She had a glass of whiskey in her hands and it made him strangely reminiscent, remembering that night at the bar, surrounded by a whirlwind of snow and music. He watched the golden liquid glitter as it hovered above her lips before disappearing in one go into her quivering throat. He walked by her and opened the back door but turned around at the last minute. Watching her with her head down, slivers of moonlight falling onto her hair and creating strange shapes at her cheeks, he felt a sudden rush of empathy and wished he didn’t have to hurt her.

  ‘I know I have no right to ask this—’ he paused and waited until she looked up. ‘But please don’t tell Marienne about us.’ She laughed loudly and he was sure the whole neighborhood could hear it. She stood up quickly and the whiskey tumbler fell to the floor and bounced but didn’t break.

  ‘Just get out,’ she said, pushing him onto the step before closing the door loudly in his face.

  He saw the black shadow of her figure bend down to pick up the glass and she went to the kitchen sink to pour herself another drink. He watched the blue curtain swing back and forth and he wondered if he would miss her.

  He spent the next couple of days watching the phone; rushing home with skipping breath and a stomach packed with nerves, sure that Marienne knew everything and was getting ready to leave him. Yet he was happily surprised every time to be greeted by his wife’s smiling face; her fast kisses as she put on her earrings and pulled her hair back into a tight ponytail, her happy voice promising to let him know when she got back from work. When she was gone, he would sit on his porch, watching Gina’s house and wondering why she had let him go so easily and quietly. He thought that maybe she found it romantic not to be able to have him. Maybe she had convinced herself that she had grown tired of him and thought of him as rarely as he thought of her. Or perhaps, just as he sat in the balmy night on the wicker swing outside his house, his feet dragging slowly beneath him, she might be at her dinner table under the green-black pattern of her lamp. She might have that same glass, choked tightly between her hands, which he was sure must have a small, sharp chip somewhere along its previously smooth rim, pricking her finger against it and thinking he would eventually come back to her.

  And then she left suddenly, in the middle of the night, unaware that he was watching as she loaded her bags into the taxi before turning to look back at her house. She watched it for a moment and slid into a car, slamming the door behind her.

  Once she disappeared, he stopped caring about her. He wanted her out of his life and she slipped unexpectedly easily from it, for a while becoming another shadowy secret to store away with all the others. There followed a few months of ease, temporary relief, before life took matters into its own hands, brought Frances into this world and everything changed.

  ‌23

  ‌Whitehorse, Yukon. December 1992

  I am still shivering, wrapped in my blanket; the sting of the icy water still swimming within me. I blacked out at the river bank and when I wake up, I am in the infirmary, tucked tightly into white blankets. Sister Margret is hovering over me and I try to move my arms, try to explain to her that I’m sorry, that I’ll never do it again and that it was a mistake. I am afraid she is going to expel me, that I won’t have anywhere else to go because he won’t let me come home.

  Instead, to my surprise, her smile is as sympathetic as it can be and she asks if I’m alright. ‘You gave us quite a fright, but the doctors said you’re going to be okay. You were very lucky Joseph happened to be there.’

  ‘Where is he?’ I ask.

  ‘He went home. It’s late.’ The clock reads almost ten o’clock.

  ‘So I’m going to be okay?’

  ‘Yes.’ She pats my knee formally. ‘They said you weren’t in there long enough to get hypothermia or do any permanent damage. So just rest tonight and drink lots of hot liquid.’

  An hour later, I’m in my bed, bunched up in the corner with whatever covers I can find piled on top of me. But no matter what I drink or how many blankets I use, I can’t get warm. Something colder and more terrifying than the water has tightened over my heart. Judy is sitting at her desk and every time I move, or grimace, she looks like she wants to say something, offer help, but when Victoria bursts through the door, she rolls her eyes and turns away.

  ‘I should have known you were involved,’ she says pointedly, but Victoria ignores her, pulling a face at me which I don’t respond to. She jumps on my bed.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she asks, grabbing my hands. ‘I was so worried about you.’

  ‘Where were you?’ I hissed. ‘I was screaming for you guys,’ lowering my voice, ‘you weren’t that far off. You must have heard me.’<
br />
  She blushes. ‘I’m so sorry,’ flashing her eyes to the side to see if Judy is looking at us. She leans in closer and her breath stings my neck. ‘He took me back to his car,’ she bites her lip, and her apologetic look takes on a coquettish edge. ‘I didn’t realize—I didn’t know you had gone.’

  ‘Just forget it,’ I say. ‘I could have died, you know.’

  I shouldn’t be angry with her. It’s not her fault but I hate how radiant her smile is; the gleam in her eye. She doesn’t have to explain further; I know what happened in the car. I can feel the energy running through her, it snaps and burns me and shines too bright.

  ‘I know.’ She looks ready to cry. ‘I feel awful. I’m so glad you’re okay.’

  ‘I’m going to get something to drink.’ Judy leaves as if she can’t stand being around us and once she is down the corridor, Victoria scoops up close to me, bringing her knees to her chest.

  ‘I have something for you,’ she says.

  ‘What is it?’

  She holds out a bracelet that is similar to hers; made of several colors of braided string. She takes my wrist without asking and puts it on. ‘Just so you know how much you mean to me.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I take my hand back and let it lie in my lap.

  ‘Forgive me?’ she asks, and because I want to know what has happened with her and Leo, I nod.

  ‘I’m just tired.’ I wrap my sweater tighter around me and sink further into the blanket. ‘What happened with you two?’

  ‘He told me he loves me.’ Her words are so excited they fight each other to come out first. ‘I can hardly believe it.’ She laughs, her cheeks stained pink. ‘And then in his car—’

  ‘I can guess,’ I say, holding up my hand, but the image of the two of them stirs something in me and I push my knees together and close my eyes.

  ‘Have you?’ she hesitates and my look goads her on. ‘Have you and Tom, you know,’ she fumbles, unsure of whether she should say it.