Dorothea Dreams (Heirloom Books)

by Suzy McKee Charnas

  Bobbie crossed the darkened room as quietly as he could and pressed himself, rifle at the ready, to the wall beside the open door to the patio.

  The man lay on a reclining chair in his pajamas, a pillow behind his head. Blanca sat on the edge of a little stone fountain, her back against the central pillar of it, her feet hanging in mid-air.

  “— in the South Valley,” she was saying, “and he’s a real radical. I think he used to be a member of the Brown Berets, so he’s pretty militant for a priest.” She opened her blanket and spread it, settling it higher on her shoulders. There was something bat-like in the gesture that made Bobbie’s skin crawl.

  Maybe he even made a sound, because suddenly she looked right at him and said, “Bobbie, what are you doing?”

  The man turned to look at him too. It was just like having a skull look at you, with big hollows under the cheekbones. The two faces like two skulls, the blanket lifting like bat-wings, Blanca’s cast sticking up like a thick white bone —

  “Looking for you,” Bobbie said. His voice squeaked, damn it.

  “We were just talking,” Blanca said.

  “In the middle of the night, out here? Beto wouldn’t like it.”

  “I’m afraid my coughing woke your cousin up,” the man said.

  Was he mocking Bobbie, looking at him like that with those black caves of eyes?

  “Blanca, you’re not supposed to be out here,” Bobbie said. “Not with him. He’s a prisoner, like the others. He’s not allowed out of his room unless one of us is with him.”

  “I am one of us,” she said. She had always been such a smart-mouth.

  “You’re a girl,” he retorted, “and you’re sick, and you’ve got a broken arm. I don’t want you alone with this guy.” Because why, exactly? He couldn’t say. “Get inside,” he told her.

  “We are inside,” she answered, pointing to the adobe wall that surrounded the little patio. She looked exasperated, like he was just a bothersome little kid. “Nobody’s going anywhere.”

  He had to do something, he couldn’t just let her brush him off like that. Roberto would say he was a pussy, letting her boss him. Not that you could do anything to Blanca herself. Roberto would beat the shit out of you for trying, like those guys he hurt once for calling her “Tattoo” after the dwarf on Fantasy Island.

  Bobbie turned the muzzle of the shotgun on the sick man. “All right,” he said, managing not to let his voice crack this time. “You tell her to come back inside with me or I’ll shoot you.”

  If he looks in my eyes he’ll know I can’t, Bobbie thought, nearly sick with nerves. He knew he could never have killed the dog, for instance, like Roberto had. Except he felt light and almost dreamy-headed right now, and he had the spooky feeling that if the man didn’t obey him, his trigger finger would tighten all by itself and fire off the rifle.

  The man said, “Blanca, I think you’d better go in.” To Bobbie he said, “Young man, may I ask you to go and see what you might bring me from the liquor cabinet?”

  Oh shit, Bobbie thought, it must be hurting him. The cancer must be chewing on him. “Sure,” he said, and he herded Blanca hurriedly into the house ahead of him.

  “There’s no booze,” she said in a funny, worried voice. “I looked.”

  Bobbie went and sat with her in her room because he didn’t know how to go out there again and tell the guy there was nothing to drink. Blanca wouldn’t talk to him, but he didn’t care. As long as he didn’t have to stay up all by himself.

  I don’t want to, Dorothea thought, waking unwillingly.

  Ellie was right, of course, damn the girl. Roberto would take a hostage when he left, he had said so. And it ought to be me.

  She groaned and buried her face in the quilt she lay rolled up in on the studio floor.

  Mercilessly, methodically, her mind plotted it out: if they take one of the kids from the class, the chances are increased that something will happen to that kid, either because Roberto panics, or because the kid tries to get away. Ellie Stern is little more than a kid herself, Ricky is too much of a problem and doomed anyway so they won’t consider him, and that leaves me. I know the country. I have some self-control, at least, no matter how thinly worn at this point. I would have a chance at survival.

  I should have said it already: take me, I know a quick, secret, back way. He’d be out of here by now, these kids would be safe. I could have saved the situation, but I didn’t.

  She imagined herself trudging along a roadside somewhere in the wilderness or across a desert, failing for want of water. There was a lot of empty country out here. Or hurt, maimed, raped, dying in some culvert with the trash and the ants because Roberto got angry or maybe just bored.

  They’re always finding murdered bodies on the mesa. There’s so much territory that people just dump their victims and trust that no one will find them until identification is nearly impossible. And it often happens that way. How long before they would find me?

  I could still do it. Tomorrow, first thing. I could try. But it’s nonsense; I’m no youngster, to take on such a role. This is not the Scarlet Pimpernel vs. the dreaded M’sieu Robert.

  She smothered a weak giggle with her hand.

  No no , murmured someone, very close, a voice she did not know — a male voice, unknown but shockingly familiar. He is Monsieur No One, he is a ruffian .

  She opened her eyes.

  In the corner where the north wall of windows met the solid wall at the end of the room, a dim figure stood: a man, a person of shadow standing in shadow, with a face she could not discern. No image of his features produced itself in her mind, familiar as he was — not very tall, rather stiff in posture with the feet braced apart, and how well she seemed to know the worried hunch of his shoulders, the way he held his hands hooked together in front of him over the curve of what she knew would be an incipient pot-belly.

  Oh, she thought calmly, it must be a dream.

  One of the children sighed and kicked the wall in sleep.

  Dorothea sat up slowly, gathering the quilt about her to keep in the warmth of her body. The air in this corner of the room seemed suddenly arctic and as still as if frozen solid.

  Take no chances , came the visitor’s voice, insistent and hissing, with such a person!

  Who are you? her mind replied. She didn’t want to speak aloud and wake the others. They might see or not; it didn’t matter. This visitor was for her alone, and she knew it; after all this time.

  That you should ask that, child!

  Child? She smiled slightly. If he took her for his own son, they must be pretty myopic over there on The Other Side. How can I smile when I am so frightened? she thought. But of course it was only a generalized fear: no ghost that belonged to Ricky would wish to do her harm, she was sure, and now she faced the real threat of the Cantus. That did tend to put a mere phantom in the shade.

  He stood so that she could not see his face. Good, she thought; it would be like Ricky’s face.

  Why have you come? she asked.

  He cocked his shadowed head, just out of range of the moonlight, and she was suddenly filled with the old terror that he might misjudge and show her his face, if he had one. She slitted her eyelids, ready to blink him out if that happened. I wrote to you, he replied without sound in the breathless spaces of her mind. You never answered.

  I didn’t know how, she offered, abashed.

  No? At a loss for an argument? How unlike you, my child! How refreshing! He must have laughed. She didn’t hear anything like laughter, but she saw his shoulders move and a glint from where light touched something on his hand — a ring? He leaned toward her. She heard a shifting of clothing and she shrank back, clutching the edge of the quilt.

  Don’t be silly, she lectured her terror. You’ve no fear to spare for him. But why does he appear to me, not to Ricky directly? He should go to Ricky.

  Did you speak? the visitor inquired.

  She shook her head, a great muscular effort which produced a minisc
ule motion.

  Good. You are in great danger here, and so it is appropriate that you listen. I have been here before you and I know. You are considering some romantic and perilous gesture, some heroic action, against the wild beasts who have invaded your life. But I tell you, there is nothing to gain by such efforts, not against the rabble when they become great. Romance and heroics are nothing, phantoms, illusions of youth. Power is real, in a king’s hands or a peasant’s, and it can crush you in the wink of an eye. I have seen strong men, great orators and movers of men’s souls, borne down inexorably by the Juggernaut of political passion. All my life I have seen it. My child, I do not wish to see you destroyed .

  A message, she thought, staring at the wink of jewelry on his hands, his unreal hands. He’s come to tell me what he knows, the distillation of his life’s experience, to help me save myself and Ricky. Can that be it?

  Slowly she formed an answer: You were not destroyed.

  Exactly!

  She heard as if from a distance her own whimper of fear. He gave no sign that he had noticed anything. If this doesn’t get itself over soon, she thought, I’m going to break down and scream, and if I start I won’t be able to stop. None of them will see him, they won’t feel the chill he brings. They’ll just think the old lady has cracked up.

  I was not destroyed , the shadow continued, because I acted on what I learned. I withdrew. I found a corner for myself in which I could live my life productively, quietly, with a modicum of happiness even. Not troubling my neighbors, not mixing in great and dangerous affairs any longer, none of that. I set to work to offer to the world whatever modest achievements lay within my power. This humility is what heroes lack, and the lack of it is what destroys them. Do not try to be a hero, my child. I have known many of them in my lifetime. I have even shared their wine and their hopes. But they are dead .

  Don’t worry, she thought dully. I had my chance at heroics, and I didn’t have the guts. The best I could do was to insult Roberto until he broke a few things. This is me, the great creative artist as she really is: a coward. Ricky was right about that. I’m not the one who’s dying, and I’m not about to risk my life. That’s what I’ve been learning from Ricky; how I don’t want what he’s got, which is death. So don’t worry about me. I’ve already found my safe corner, and I’m not about to give it up.

  Bitterly she stared at the shadowy visitor, thinking, am I like you? Is that why you come to me instead of to Ricky?

  When the moment comes, remember the virtues of reticence, modesty, practicality. Deny your foolish impulses, avoid the heroic gesture. When the moment comes, my child, think of me and stay your hand .

  He reached toward her across the intervening fall of moonlight. She was caught in an icy rush of terror that prevented her from crying out, but her own hand flew up to ward off his touch. She saw with straining eyes the brightness of his shirt-cuff beneath the sleeve of the black gown and the inner round of the ring gleaming on his finger.

  His fingers, shockingly warm and plump and slightly damp, caught her own — she was the cold one, a woman of ice — and she gasped at the contact. The pressure of his ring bit slightly into her skin as he tightened his grip and gave her hand a shake as if for emphasis. The unmistakable sensual reality of that vigorous hand taking hold of her lifeless one overwhelmed her consciousness and sank her into a well of roaring darkness.

  10

  Dorothea woke feeling stiff and chilled. She groaned and turned on her side, tugging her ragged quilt free from where it had bunched under her hip. Her joints ached from the pressure of the hard floorboards.

  It was light. Someone was crying, soft, puppy-like sounds: that girl Joyce, the one who looked like a battered child but without any visible bruises. Everybody else seemed to be still sleeping.

  Dorothea sighed and got up to go sit beside the girl. “Hey,” she said softly, “you’re going to scare me if you keep that up. That would please Roberto, and it will also make your face red and sore.”

  Blub-blub .

  “It can’t go on forever, you know.” God, how lame. But she couldn’t say, They’ll leave soon, because then someone would say, who will they take with them? And it could so easily be this girl, an unbearable thought.

  “I hate being afraid,” Joyce muttered fiercely. “I’d rather have them hurt me, I’d rather be hurt and get it over with, than just sit here being so scared!”

  Dorothea wanted to pat the girl’s hair, but she felt she didn’t have the right. She owed the child something, though; something instead of the protection a grown-up should be able to provide. “Listen,” she said, “did you notice anything odd in here last night?”

  Joyce shook her head.

  “Well, I did. You talk about being scared! I woke up and saw a ghost in here.”

  That did it. “A ghost?” Joyce gaped at her with red-rimmed eyes.

  “Yup.” This is what a cowardly old woman is good for — telling stories. “It’s the ghost of a man who lived in France during the time of the French Revolution. He was a lawyer, like so many of the men who made the revolution, and at first he was all for it. But later, when it turned into a bloodbath with the revolutionaries chopping each other down right and left for being not revolutionary enough, or too revolutionary, he ran away and hid in the country.

  “I think he became a provincial magistrate of some kind, a local judge, and all through the crazy times afterward — Napoleon, constant warfare with the rest of Europe, and then the restoration of the monarchy — he went along doing his judgely job and getting rich off shrewd investments. He was probably dabbling in army supplies and confiscated real estate, like many comfortable bourgeois of the time, a regular pillar of the community, a staunch supporter of law and order.”

  Joyce sniffled. “Sounds like all those Sixties people, those hippies and all that my dad says are working on Wall Street now.”

  “Yup,” Dorothea said.

  “I bet you were too scared to say anything. You know, tell him he shouldn’t have sold out like that.”

  Say anything? Dorothea thought caustically. Honey, I agreed with him, but it didn’t make me like him any better. She sighed. She felt really old this morning, and very depressed.

  “What would a ghost come here for?” Cindy said. She and her friend Sarah had edged nearer and were listening too.

  “Because he’s sorry,” Sarah answered quickly. “It’s always because they’re sorry about something.”

  “Why does he come?” Joyce said.

  Dorothea looked from one vivid young face to another. “I think my friend Mr. Maulders brought him along, to tell me something I needed to hear for this situation right now. The ghost told me to be careful, be prudent, be circumspect, be safe.”

  Sarah said, “What’s ‘circumspect?’”

  The door opened. Bobbie stood there, rifle slowly swinging to cover the whole room. Now Dorothea heard the phone ringing, and her breathing quickened. When the moment comes, stay your hand — was this the moment? She remembered the pressure of the judge’s ring. If she looked at her hand now, would she see an imprint, a sign of that warm, moist grip of his, that seal of his fearfulness to hers?

  “Ma’am?” Bobbie said. “Beto says come answer the phone please.”

  Everybody sat up, blurry with sleep. She could sense the muzzy echo of her own panic in them.

  Dorothea got up, her knees wobbly, and forced herself to go with Bobbie. Just keep your head, stay calm, be careful.

  In the hallway Bobbie said, “I’m sorry about your dog.”

  He held himself straighter today and spoke more firmly. She decided she’d liked him better the other way.

  Roberto was sitting on the tall kitchen stool with his back to the corner. He looked tired, scruffy, and tough.

  “Answer it,” he said, “and watch out what you say.”

  Stay your hand — for God’s sake, what else could she do? Roberto’s shotgun — her shotgun in Roberto’s hands — lay across his knees. The judge k
nows nothing I don’t know, I knew before he ever arrived — I’m an artist, not a member of a SWAT team.

  The voice was Frank Sanford’s, calling to find out whether Ricky would be coming in to the hospice today to pick up more of his medication. Frank said he was surprised to see from his records that Ricky must be nearly out by now.

  She had not once thought of Ricky’s exposed situation during all that long night. Blinking back tears of anger with herself, she said, “He drove up into the mountains, but I think he plans to stop by later on today or maybe tomorrow.”

  Frank sounded worried. “He’s not cutting back on his dosage, is he?”

  She said she didn’t think so.

  Frank wanted to talk; was she doing all right, would she like him to come out and discuss anything with her while Ricky was away?

  “No, thanks, Frank, I’m fine. I’ll come see you soon at your office, though, all right? I do have some things to talk about with you, but not now.” Not now, not now, go away and don’t endanger me, Ricky, all of us any further. But he was talking again.

  “Got to go now, Frank,” she interrupted. “I have some guests, and they want their breakfast. Goodbye, thanks for calling.”

  She hung up.

  Bobbie cried, “She told! Beto, she told!”

  “I said I had visitors,” Dorothea said. “Not what kind of visitors they were. Having guests is normal around here this time of year.”

  Roberto scowled at her, biting his lip. “Well, we’ll find out, won’t we? If a bunch of cop cars come whooping up the drive, that’ll tell us something.”

  “We can’t sit around and wait anyhow,” Bobbie said miserably. “Beto, we’ve got to go, we’ve got to get moving!”

  “Not on an empty stomach,” Roberto said. “I want breakfast.”

  You’ll have to take someone; take me. The words formed themselves in Dorothea’s mind. She contemplated them helplessly, no more able to speak them aloud than she was able to fly.