Dreaming In Color

by Charlotte Vale-Allen

  Dennis lay in bed in the dark with his arms folded behind his head and asked himself what he thought he was proving. Inviting Bobby out had been a spur-of-the-moment impulse prompted primarily by curiosity. He'd never encountered a woman quite like her; certainly he'd never met a woman who'd been beaten, and something about her aroused his sympathy as well as a surprising, fairly primal, instinct to protect her. Which was, to a degree, not only sort of presumptuous of him but maybe kind of arrogant, too. After all, he didn't know a thing about her, so how was he going to protect her? She probably didn't want some gangling dope offering to look out for her.

  But maybe she didn't know what she wanted or needed. Everything seemed to scare her; she treated the simplest question like a possible land mine, visibly worrying about what it was or wasn't safe to say. In a way, though, that added to her appeal. She was pretty and really had no idea, and that made her more appealing, too. She was the only pretty woman he'd ever encountered who didn't, privately, know she was good-looking and use it, in some way, to her advantage. He found that fascinating.

  Then there was the progress she was making with Alma. That was really something. Half a busload of women of all shapes and sizes had come and gone in that household and the only one of them who'd done Alma any good at all was the last one on earth he'd have picked to do the job. Which went to prove what a gigantic mistake it was to go judging people strictly on appearances.

  Thinking back to their dinner, he wondered if he hadn't been pushing maybe a bit too hard. But on reconsideration he decided he'd been reasonable. If you didn't ask questions, you didn't get answers. Without the answers you didn't have a hope of getting to know the other person. And the thing of it was, he wanted to get to know Bobby and there was nothing logical about that. He could analyze it all he liked, but no amount of analysis would alter the simple fact that he was drawn to the woman and couldn't give any single, specific reason why. Every time he'd managed to get a smile out of her, he'd felt as if he'd really accomplished something.

  Maybe it was a kind of a challenge, but he tended not to see people in those terms. He wasn't interested in conquests. Oh, sure, maybe at seventeen or eighteen, he'd gone through a phase when, like every other guy he'd known, he'd been looking to score. But it hadn't made him especially happy at the time, and he'd grown out of it in a pretty big hurry. Locker room conversations had always bothered the hell out of him, made him feel a raging need to defend the girls being talked about. Naturally, he'd stayed quiet. He'd never seen the sense of making waves. But it had turned him off, and for a while there he'd wondered if maybe there was something wrong with him for feeling so out of it. There were all these guys smirking about their prowess and it'd made him feel embarrassed for them and ashamed of himself for even listening. It was a tremendous relief to leave high school and go off to college where he didn't feel obligated to hang out with guys he basically didn't like but couldn't brush off because he'd known them most of his life.

  The headlights of a passing car arced across the ceiling as he wondered if he should cool it, just leave Bobby alone. The woman had a lot of problems and he certainly didn't want to be the one to add to them. But he couldn't get past the idea that he could help. He really wanted to. He liked her. He liked the fact that she hadn't been everywhere and done everything, liked her husky voice and the way she talked about her little girl. He liked what she'd said about carrying her daughter's photographs around so she could look at them when she wasn't with her. That had touched him. Altogether, she touched him. The bottom line was, he'd go ahead and ask her out again. The worst that could happen was she'd say no.

  Eva was sitting by her bedroom window in the dark, looking out at the moonlit Sound thinking about the night in Montaverde after that first time she'd seen Ian with the gun.

  Dinner on the veranda with Deborah and Ian had been particularly strained. Ian had been drinking since late afternoon and consumed the better part of a bottle of wine with his meal. Although she didn't say a word about it, Deborah was plainly bothered by his drinking. Eva wanted to say something to lighten the atmosphere but couldn't think of a thing. At a loss, she praised the stew Deborah had prepared.

  "Thank you, darling," Deborah said from her perch on the railing without looking up. As if inspired by Eva's compliment to remember his manners, Ian said, "Yes, very good actually." Deborah didn't acknowledge him and the silence again closed around them. Finally, determined to have a few minutes alone with Deborah, Eva said, "I'll do the dishes tonight."

  "That's good of you, darling," Deborah said. And then, instead of coming out to the kitchen, as Eva had hoped she would, Deborah announced, "I'll go to bed now, if you don't mind."

  Eva had wanted to scream that she did mind, that the two of them had to talk; she wanted some sort of explanation for what was going on, needed some clue how to handle it.

  "Good of you," Ian echoed, and then he'd strolled off after his wife to the master suite, leaving Eva to clean up.

  Frustrated, isolated, defeated, she washed the dishes, then went to check on the children. Mellie and Derek were asleep side by side on their cots in the third bedroom. She stood for a time watching them and finally tiptoed out. In her own room, she read for half an hour, then turned out the light and lay in bed listening to the strange rustlings and stirrings in the underbrush. All four of the bedrooms had louvered windows on the front and rear walls, to provide cross-ventilation, and, being so high up the mountainside, there was always a breeze at night. The palm fronds clattered dryly, animals and lizards scurried about, and Ian lurched drunkenly past her window, muttering to himself, startling her so that she was instantly, completely alert. From the sound of his irregular footsteps, she guessed he went to the end of the walkway, turned, and came back. But this time he stopped to look in Eva's uncurtained window. She closed her eyes to slits and remained very still, fear like a hand at her throat. A few moments and his shambling footsteps indicated he'd moved on. She opened her eyes and drew a tremulous breath, suddenly perspiring despite the breeze.

  A minute or two later the light went on in the kitchen and she watched Ian stagger into the middle of the room, then stop and look around. It was like a film. She sat up to watch, filled with antipathy and fear of this hatefully pretentious man Deborah had married. His view of himself as an aristocratic colonizer was so firmly entrenched that the Montaverdeans clearly disliked him on sight. Eva had seen their eyes narrow when Ian spoke to them, had seen their bodies straighten as if in preparation for attack. He had no idea. He called them "old chap" and "my good fellow" and the natives despised him. It was one of the primary reasons why, Eva now knew, construction on the house was proceeding so slowly. No one wanted to work for Ian. He was insufferably arrogant. They were willing to work for Deborah—she was a Montaverdean, after all—but Ian's interference irritated them, and so they invented problems that caused delays. And Deborah's outrage was building daily, visibly, pervasively, like a slow, steady leak of some potentially lethal gas.

  Eva couldn't tell what Ian was doing in the kitchen, but she guessed he was getting himself another drink. A few minutes later the light went out, and a minute or so after that she heard the door to the master suite close. Exhaling shakily she lay back and tried to sleep.

  The next morning Deborah was so angry Eva didn't dare speak to her. She fed the children breakfast, then tried to keep them out of the way while it was determined whether or not they'd be going to the site. Deborah sat on the veranda railing and sipped a cup of tea, waiting for Ian to get out of bed, all the while berating him under her breath. Tea in one hand, a cigarette in the other, she frowned at the mountainside, muttering, "Useless bloody bastard. Drinks half the night, then sleeps half the day. No wonder they're laughing at us. Pissing all our bloody money away."

  "Why did you come back?" Eva ventured to ask, the children busy for the moment with some game of Derek's devising.

  Deborah shrugged, then looked over, saw Derek doing something of which she didn't approve an
d went flying through the room to grab him by the upper arm, saying, "Play properly or you'll spend the day locked in your room, alone!"

  Horrified, Eva approached, automatically taking a frightened Melissa's hand, saying, "It's all right. He didn't mean anything." She actually had no idea what he'd done to anger his mother, but she didn't care for Deborah's threat to lock him up.

  Deborah regarded her coolly for a moment, as if on the verge of telling Eva to mind her own business, then abruptly she swung about and went marching toward the master bedroom, shouting as she neared the door, "Get out of that bloody bed! There's work to be done. Get up!"

  Once satisfied that Ian was awake, she came marching back through the empty rooms, her strong, beautifully shaped bare feet shaking the floor boards, on her way to the kitchen to fix him a cup of tea.

  "Will we be going to the site today?" Eva asked.

  Deborah paused and looked at her with an expression at once infinitely sad and utterly livid. "I'm sorry, darling. This is a complete cock-up." A pause, a sigh, then, "Yes, I expect we will."

  "I'll make some lunch for the children," Eva said, knowing Deborah did-n't eat at all in the middle of the day; she herself had lost her appetite; and Ian each day brought along a large English cucumber which he ate in slices throughout their time at the bay. The native workers caught fish and cooked them in buckets of boiling water over small brush fires. So Eva daily fixed sandwiches and brought fruit along for the children.

  Deborah stood gazing at her. "I'm sorry," she said again. "I know none of this is quite what you had in mind when you agreed to come."

  Here was the opening she'd been seeking, and Eva wanted to ask her friend dozens of questions: Why had she married Ian, why had she agreed to sell her lovely home in London to return to a place she hadn't known since childhood, why were they fighting impossible odds to build a house that, in the end, would cost them everything they had? She wanted to ask what Deborah imagined she'd live on, since Ian had been granted only a visitor's visa that prohibited him from working on the island; wanted to know why she didn't leave the man, take her son and start her life again somewhere else. Did she know that her husband kept a gun hidden in the car? And most of all, she wanted to know why Deborah had asked her to come. Was Deborah expecting something Eva was failing to provide? She longed to say, "Tell me what you want and I'll help you. Just, please, tell me what you want." She had so many questions that she couldn't speak at all. Helplessly, she simply gave her friend a sympathetic smile, and for a few seconds Deborah laid her hand on Eva's arm. Then Ian came reeling out of the bedroom, complaining under his breath, and Deborah was off, ranting at him as she stormed up to the kitchen to get his tea.

  It was one of the few times during her stay on the island that Deborah expressed any sort of fondness for or awareness of Eva. From that point on, Deborah's anger spread to include Eva and Mellie, too. It began to appear as if Deborah wanted them gone as badly as Eva herself did. But she could-n't leave. She was convinced she'd be letting Deborah down, abandoning her. They were friends. Friends were understanding, they helped each other. Yet Deborah didn't want her help. Or did she? Eva felt, finally, like a child, unable to take decisive action in any direction.

  Studying the way the moonlight dappled the relatively calm waters of the Sound, Eva pulled her thoughts back to the present, asking herself if there was anything she might have done to alter the course of events on the island. She didn't think so. But that didn't ease her deep-seated feeling that she'd somehow failed her friend. There had to have been something she could have done. The problem was that even now, years after the fact, she simply could not see what.

  She yawned, then got up and made her way down to the kitchen for a cup of tea.

  It was raining hard Tuesday morning. Bobby got Penny into her rubber boots and slicker, made sure she had her lunch, then, with an umbrella shielding them both from the downpour, went to the top of the driveway to await the school bus.

  When she returned, Eva was sitting at the kitchen table with her checkbook. "Come sit down for a minute," she said without looking up, and Bobby was terrified that the moment had come when Eva was going to pay her off and tell her she'd have to go. Her apprehension was made even deeper by the set of Eva's features, by her very businesslike manner.

  Mouth dry, her stomach jumpy, Bobby sat down and waited while Eva finished writing a check, then tore it from the book and pushed it across the table. "The two weeks are up today. Alma's very happy with you," she said, "so we'd like you to stay on."

  Bobby's relief was so immense it made her dizzy. Her eyes filling with tears she quickly blinked away, she said, "Thank you," and looked down at the check on the table.

  Eva watched Bobby's eyes alter, growing liquid before she lowered her gaze, and wondered what the tiny woman was thinking. There was something almost childlike about Bobby, something vulnerable and maddeningly defenseless. It showed in the slight inward curve of her narrow shoulders and in the habit she had of ducking her head, dropping her eyes when unsure of a situation. "At some point soon you really should go over to Motor Vehicles and reregister your car, get a Connecticut driver's license. And you'll have to notify your insurance company, too."

  "Yes," Bobby said. "I'll do it this week."

  "It's Thanksgiving the end of next week," Eva said. "My daughter will be home from school for a few days. There'll be six of us for Thanksgiving dinner, counting you and Penny."

  "We wouldn't want to intrude … " Bobby began, never able to anticipate the things Eva might say or do. Suddenly, she missed her friend Lor, and her uncomplicated ways; she reminded herself to phone first chance she got, let her know she and Pen were all right. Lor would be worried.

  "Nonsense," Eva cut her off. "You'll join us. You and Penny are part of the household."

  "That'd be real … really nice," Bobby said, thinking of the wonderful party dress she'd seen in the children's store. A pity it was so much money, but maybe she could find something less expensive. "I could help out with the cooking, if you like."

  "I'll probably take you up on that," Eva said, then on a whim inspired partly by curiosity and partly by generosity, added, "If you like, we could invite Dennis to join us."

  "That's up to you," Bobby said, wondering if they thought she and this man had a romance going after one meal together. "You know him better than I do." She hoped she wasn't coming across rude, but she really had no idea how to handle this.

  "I'll check with him Thursday, see what his plans are. Unless, of course, you'd prefer I didn't."

  "I hardly know him," Bobby said, not sure one way or the other how she felt about the possibility of Dennis spending Thanksgiving with them. He seemed nice enough. But Eva and Alma knew him way better than she did. It almost felt as if Eva was pushing him at her.

  "Do you think you'll go out with him again?" Eva asked, thinking it might do Bobby a world of good to spend time with someone as open and patently gentle as Dennis.

  "I don't know," Bobby said. For all she knew, after last night, Dennis might not want to be bothered with her. And she wasn't sure if she was relieved by that prospect, or saddened.

  "But you had a good time, didn't you?" Eva persisted, despite Bobby's obvious discomfort.

  "It was nice," Bobby told her, wanting Eva to get off the topic. "I'm not looking to get involved with anybody, though." She looked over at the clock on the stove, then said, "I guess maybe I'd better go on up now."

  Eva smiled and said, "I'm naturally curious. Don't get upset."

  "I'm not upset," Bobby lied, getting up from the table. "I'm just no good at ... this kind of thing." What kind of thing? she wondered—making friends with another woman, or socializing, as Dennis called it, with a man?

  "Don't forget your check," Eva said, wishing she hadn't mentioned Dennis. Obviously the date hadn't been a great success.

  "Thanks." Bobby took the check and folded it into her pocket, moved to go, then turned back, anxious that they be on good terms. "I make
real good pastry. I could make some pies."

  "That'd be great," Eva said, smiling again. "My pastry always sticks to the board and the rolling pin. I usually wind up buying pies."

  "Okay, then. I'll make 'em," Bobby said, trying for a smile that didn't quite come off. "I, uhm, just wanted to say I really liked your book."

  "Which one?" Eva asked expressionlessly.

  "The Summer House," Bobby said. "I liked it a whole lot."

  Eva looked neither pleased nor displeased. "I'm glad," she said, tapping the checkbook with her pen.

  "Yeah," Bobby said. "It was really good." She took a breath, waiting to see if Eva would say anything more, then decided maybe Eva didn't care one way or another whether or not Bobby—who was nobody after all— liked her book or not. She turned and went on her way.

  Annoyed by her inability to respond appropriately to Bobby's praise of her work, Eva went to her office. Sitting down at the desk, she stared at the computer, fatigued in advance at the prospect of writing another chapter. She was coming to despise these category novels, and wished she'd never contracted to do them. Between this work and her obsessive reliving of the events that had taken place on the island, she was beginning to feel beleaguered. Maybe Alma was right, maybe she was betraying her gifts by taking the easy money, and when in the future she attempted to write something that really mattered to her she might find the ability gone. The idea of spending the rest of her professional life writing commercial fiction depressed her. She was writing strictly for money, and the reasons she'd had at the outset no longer seemed valid.

  Taking a deep breath, she switched on the machine.

  "How was it really?" Alma asked as Bobby drew the brush through her hair.

  "I was so nervous I couldn't hardly speak," Bobby admitted, finding it easier every day to talk to this woman. Alma was critical, all right, but she didn't seem to sit in judgment the way Eva did.