In Between Dreams

by Iman Verjee

  My heart pumps in small, aching beats. ‘Yes.’ Even that small confession, no matter what she believes, makes me feel guilty and creates a deep knot at the back of my neck, holding me down.

  ‘It’s great, isn’t it?’ she throws her body back on my bed. ‘It just makes you feel,’ she waves her hand in the air, gesturing for me to finish her sentence but I don’t know what to say. ‘So full. Like everything is fixed—complete. Am I making any sense?’

  I close my eyes. ‘I want to go to sleep now.’

  ‘Okay.’ I know she wants to talk some more, but she hugs me again. ‘I’m so glad you’re alright.’ She stands up and then turns back to look at me, lost in all the blue cotton. ‘I’m leaving early tomorrow for Christmas break,’ she says. ‘I’m going to miss you.’

  Tears sting my eyes. ‘Me too.’ I curl into a ball, facing away from her. ‘Bye, Victoria.’

  ‘Bye, Cee.’

  As soon as the door is closed, I open my mouth and let it out; a ripping, choking sound. I’m crying because he hasn’t called and I’m afraid. Because everything Victoria feels, I feel the exact opposite—I am broken and still waiting to be put together. Because her boyfriend loves her and no one loves me. I think of him but also of Joseph, who didn’t bother waiting until I woke up to make sure I was okay, and I close my eyes and cry again and no matter how hard I try, nothing makes it stop.

  ‌24

  ‌Whitehorse, Yukon. December 1992

  The black horse looks different up close; smaller and poorly drawn and I can see its teeth protruding from its reared mouth. The pub itself is empty and shut for the day and I continue down the empty street, hearing the crunch of untouched snow beneath my boots.

  The Academy was empty when I left it this morning. Most of the girls have gone home for Christmas, as have most of the teachers. He never called me to ask if I wanted to come back, and although my mother did, I refused. Now, I make my way up the road and the shops fall away into rows of houses. They all look the same but I am prepared to wait outside each one until I find what I have come for. But I don’t have to do that because I spot him in his white garden, building a snowman with his son. I stand apart from them for a couple of minutes, crouched behind a car and watch as Nova comes out onto the step. She shouts something at them but I can’t make it out. Joseph stops his son by pulling him toward his knees. The three of them look at each other and seem perfect. I have come to thank him but something stops me from going forward.

  He whispers something into his son’s ear and the boy goes running clumsily through the snow and up the stairs. Joseph blows a kiss to his wife and she catches it in her fist before turning back into the house. He finishes off the snowman alone, flecking away extra bits of snow impatiently, sculpting it under his speedy hands. He is wearing nothing but a long-sleeved shirt and jeans and he doesn’t seem to notice the cold. I tiptoe against the car, straining to see him. I will not speak to him today; I am happy just to watch him. In the three days since he saved me from the frozen river, he has been the only thing I can think about. The way his body moved down through the trees, in long and big gestures, the way only a man’s can. I want to catch the curve-shape of his lips and steal away his smile and stash it under my pillow.

  ‘Can I help you, young lady?’ I gasp and turn slightly, bumping into a man standing right in my path, his arms crossed over his fat chest. His breath comes out strained, as if he has just climbed a flight of stairs after months of avoiding them. I quickly turn to check if Joseph has seen us. His back is to me and he is clearing the mounds of snow from beneath the snowman, flattening the area with the soles of his boots.

  ‘No. I’m just a little lost but I’ll find my way, thank you.’ I try to get past him but he is blocking my way.

  ‘Where are you going? Maybe I can point you in the right direction.’

  ‘No, really.’ I’m panicking. I don’t want Joseph to see me—I’m not sure yet what I will say and I need time to prepare myself. ‘I think I can figure it out.’

  ‘Only if you’re sure,’ he pauses and I squeeze past him, through the space of his stomach and the car.

  ‘Yes, thank you.’ It’s difficult to move quickly along the icy pavement and as the man slowly gets into his car, I can hear Joseph calling my name. I consider keeping on walking but that would only make me look suspicious. He jogs the last few meters toward me, his face crinkling in the sunlight.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m just out for a walk,’ I say. ‘The house is empty and school is out for the holidays so there isn’t much else to do.’ His eyes regard me kindly. ‘I also came to say thank you.’

  ‘You know you didn’t have to do that.’

  ‘You saved my life.’

  ‘It was lucky I happened to be walking Benson at that time.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Oh, he doesn’t belong to me. I was walking him for a friend of mine.’ He leans down to look at me closer. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘I’m better. They said I wasn’t in there long enough to get hypothermia or anything.’ I move my fingers and legs and grin. ‘See? All working.’

  He laughs. ‘I’m glad,’ and then he asks, ‘Did you tell your parents what happened?’

  ‘Yes, they were worried but I told them I was fine. They say thank you.’ This is a lie. Sister Margret insisted on calling my parents the next day, but I told her I would do it myself. Instead, I sat in her office for half an hour, staring at the phone and willing it to ring, for him to call. Of course, he didn’t so I picked it up, pretended to talk in case she was listening, and then left. No matter how much I missed him, I couldn’t bring myself to dial the number.

  ‘You’re not going home for the holidays?’ Joseph asks.

  I shake my head and I’m glad when he doesn’t ask me why. He turns to look back at his house and then asks if I want to join them. ‘Nova is making a great spread,’ he winks. ‘Come on, we always have space for one more.’

  She watches me over the table, bouncing Alex on her knees.

  ‘Does someone know you’re over here?’ she asks.

  ‘Nova.’

  She presses the side of her fork to her egg, moving it back and forth, breaking it open and letting the center flow free. Then she pushes the egg through the yellow mess, covering it completely before putting it in her mouth. ‘I just wanted to make sure,’ she says. I smile a little at her uneasiness behind the piece of toast I am eating.

  ‘Yes, I told them I was coming here to thank Joseph for what he did.’

  She looks guilty when I say this. ‘I hope you’re feeling better.’

  ‘I am, thank you.’

  There is an earthy, natural spice that comes through in every bite of food and it punctures my tongue. It sits low in my ears and burns across my lips, instantly warming me. The high, whistling wind rattles the frame of the house, occasionally interrupting the comfortable silence around us. A door slams somewhere upstairs. Then the sudden ring of the phone gets Joseph out of his chair.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ he says and is quickly gone. Nova straightens up in her chair, cleaning the crumbs off the table around her. Her body is tensed, as if it’s getting ready to leap across the table and counteract anything I might do.

  She asks, ‘So, how are you finding the Academy?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I answer.

  ‘Joseph was telling me you were having trouble fitting in.’

  I bristle. I feel as if I am being reprimanded or judged. I wonder how much he has told her. If he has mentioned that night at the gate when my arms seemed glued to him and wouldn’t let go.

  ‘I was. But it’s always like that in a new place, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ She wipes away some of the mess from Alex’s face and he tries to pull away. She holds him firmly with one arm around his chest. ‘I suppose so. And you didn’t want to go home for Christmas?’

  ‘My parents have gone on holiday,’ I lie. ‘To visit my grandparents in Ki
ngston, so it was just easier that I stay here.’

  ‘Of course.’

  She doesn’t get a chance to say anything more because Joseph has come back and his mouth is turned down in a little frown.

  ‘That was Janine,’ he says, slipping back into his seat. Nova watches him with anxious eyes.

  ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘She won’t be able to make it today.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She didn’t really say,’ he answers. ‘Some sort of emergency…’

  ‘What are we going to do now?’

  I try to figure out what they are saying. My heart races a little with hope and I have to stop myself from interrupting. Not until I know for sure.

  ‘I don’t know. We could go tomorrow.’

  ‘I can’t do that. We promised and you know how important this is.’

  ‘I can stay at home then.’

  ‘I need you there with me.’

  He puffs his cheeks out thoughtfully. ‘Maybe I’ll call Janine and ask her if she has a friend who can babysit.’

  This is the moment to jump in. ‘If you need someone to babysit, I can do it.’

  Nova turns to me with a forced smile. ‘No, that’s okay. I’m sure we’ll find someone.’

  ‘I used to do it all the time back home.’ My second lie. ‘Alex would be in good hands.’

  ‘I’m not sure the Academy would allow it,’ she starts but Joseph interrupts her.

  ‘I could ask,’ he says. ‘I’m sure they wouldn’t mind.’

  She stops side-stepping the real issue, impatient to find a solution that she wants. ‘Just call Janine back and ask her if she has a friend that can do it.’

  My face burns from the obvious rejection and I swallow down the urge to stay there and persuade her. I finish the last of my beans and stand up.

  ‘Thank you so much for the breakfast,’ I say, putting on my coat. ‘But I really have to go now. I told them I would be back soon.’

  Joseph glances at his wife but she is busy with her son. She looks up briefly and nods at me.

  ‘You’re very welcome.’

  ‘Do you know how to find your way back?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes. I’ll be fine.’ I wrap my scarf around my neck and let him walk me to the door. He opens it and leans against the doorframe, watching as I step out into the quietness.

  ‘Nice to see you’re feeling better,’ he says. ‘Take care, Frances.’

  ‘You too.’ And I walk away from him and see that the last of my hope sits at his feet, near his potted plant, and it waves and sneers and chases me down the street.

  I don’t go straight back to the Academy. Instead, I wander down the main street which is long and deserted, piles of dirty snow pushed up against the curb. I pass a bank, a couple of cafes, and several hardware stores, all of them dark and empty. I imagine what the dead town would look like full of people; what it would be like to walk with them, to belong to them. I pass a theater with a gaudy sign arched on top. I pull the sleeve of my jacket over my hand and rub the window so I can look inside. The foyer is empty but if I look really hard and listen very closely, I can almost see the people crowded in it; families, lovers, friends, all gathered together, huddling in from the cold outside. They are laughing and talking, trying to be heard over all the other voices. Easy with the popcorn, Ben, you don’t want to finish it before the movie has even started. Did you hear what she said about me in school? I wonder if he’s here—I asked him to come. Where are the tickets—honey, do you have the tickets? I wish I could go in and try the door but it’s locked. I keep on walking, the voices following, turning into images of people holding hands down the street, gossiping against car doors with their hats low over the ears and the collars of their jackets turned up against the winter chill. They turn and smile at me and say hello. They know me; receive me warmly into their daily lives and ask me how I am doing. They invite me home for dinner, their daughters beg me to sleep over. Their sons ask me out on dates and I say yes without hesitation, knowing that afterward, they will kiss me in their cars and fog up the windows. Here I am asked to babysit their children. I am trustworthy Janine.

  No one is weary of me, always wondering about my secrets. In this life, I have none. I hurry on; accepted everywhere, I can go wherever I like. I wave and laugh, feel the giddy bubbles of it come out easily. I push my hair back and expose my face, straightening up and walking with squared shoulders. I want everyone to see me.

  My father is absent; he doesn’t fit in here. He hides in the shadows, always one step outside of my perimeter and I don’t want to catch up. For the first time, I want to be without him. I want to know what it would feel like to be somebody else.

  ‌25

  ‌St Albert. April 1978

  Frances. Elizabeth. McDermott. She was six pounds and an ounce of soft beauty with hard red hair, screaming up at him with closed fists and a blank mouth. He had been sitting on the small, floral printed chair in the corner of the hospital room when the nurse brought her in. They hovered near him but when he didn’t reach out, the nurse placed the baby in the crib near the bed.

  ‘She should be in very soon.’ The nurse smiled at him, reminding him that if he were anyone else, if this were a different situation, it might have been the happiest day of his life. A new father, waiting eagerly for the mother of his child, having begun the satisfying process of completing his family.

  ‘Thank you.’

  She left them alone; him and his new daughter and he pushed himself to the edge of the couch, watching the slight movements of the baby through the spaces of the white bars of the cradle. Her soft sounds rose toward the ceiling, collecting in the corners and expanding across to him; rivers of milky, gentle sounds but he was in too much of a daze to hear them. He stood up and walked to her, hovering above the small body, struggling in its tight, pink blanket. He wasn’t prepared for what she would look like and when she turned her face up toward him, her mouth opening and closing silently, he was taken aback. She was so different from how he had imagined and the sharp contrast between the baby lying in front of him and the one he had dreamed up forever in his mind made him feel as if he were sleepwalking; stuck and pushing through an oily dream. She wasn’t smooth or white or perfect. She didn’t have rosy cheeks or an even rosier mouth. Instead, her skin folded into itself; small crinkles along her unusually large forehead and her skin was chalky—covered in a thin, uneven layer of sticky white residue. The bottom of her full mouth curled downward, as if the muscles in it found it too heavy to support. She was new but she looked so old and yet, seeing her lying there on the clean hospital sheet, he recognized her almost instantly as his own. Perhaps it was the wide, half-open blue eyes that stared up at him and blinked in a flurry of dark-gold lashes. Or maybe it was that, when she started crying and refused to stop, he had to pick her up and discovered that she was perfectly suited to the shape of his hands; that despite her wrinkles, she was still crisp and clean and new. Most likely, it was because when he leaned down to inhale her vanilla scent, the dropping sensation in his stomach at the thought of what might happen when she was a little older, was lost; overwhelmed by a different, much stronger feeling mounting in his chest. His sense of responsibility as a parent, as a new father who now had a crying daughter to care for, outweighed the pull of those black cravings and caused his anxiety to drop away, replaced instead by a surge of delight. I promise never to do anything to hurt you, a silent promise he felt sure he would keep because just by looking at her, feeling her small hand grip his thumb, he was transformed into something bigger and stronger. So he folded away his secrets for the time being, safe in the knowledge that they belonged only to him and that he was better than them and he said it again, this time out loud. ‘I promise never to do anything to hurt you.’

  ‘Not like you did to me, you mean.’

  Gina’s tired eyes were staring up at him from a wheelchair at the door. The nurse started to push her further in but Gina held up her hand to
stop her. ‘Don’t worry. My husband will help me from here,’ she said, smiling up at the nurse who nodded and said, ‘You have a beautiful baby. Congratulations,’ before leaving.

  James stood in the middle of the room, his baby cradled against his chest and he noted the resemblance of the pumpkin hair between Gina and the child in his arms. It had been the one thing he had truly liked about Gina and he was glad it had been passed onto their daughter.

  ‘Well, are you going to help me or not?’

  ‘Of course.’ He put the now quiet baby back in the crib, tucking the loose edges of the blanket around her and then moving over to Gina. He pushed her toward the bed, pulling the sheets aside. He bent down to offer his neck to her eager arms. When he put her in the bed, her arms tightened briefly around his neck and he worried that she might try to kiss him, but then she let go and dropped her head onto the pillow. She hadn’t yet looked at the baby, instead keeping her eyes trained on him.

  ‘I’m not your husband,’ he said finally.

  ‘I know that.’ Her head flopped lazily to the side and she watched him from the corner of her eye. ‘But I’ve found that it’s much easier to say that you are. Keeps people from asking too many questions.’

  He was repulsed, watching her lying there on the stained pillow with stained skin. He had hardly thought about her since the day she had rudely pushed him out of her house and now he couldn’t remember her. Their affair seemed like a distant, dream-like thing—a memory that didn’t fit in with the rest of his life. She saw the way he looked at her and sighed.

  ‘Try being in labor for the whole day and see how you feel at the end of it.’

  He turned his eyes away. ‘I’m sorry.’ He didn’t know what exactly he was apologizing for when she was the one who had ruined his marriage with an early morning phone call.

  ‘Gave you quite a surprise, didn’t I?’ She grinned up at him and then looked over at the crib, her face falling. ‘Well it was a pretty big shock to me too when I found out.’