Dreaming In Color

by Charlotte Vale-Allen

  "I suppose that's to be expected," Alma said, looking out at the driving rain. "I hope you're not discouraged."

  "How about if I do you a French braid?" Bobby suggested.

  "Do whatever you like," Alma said. "It's not as if anyone's going to see or care."

  "Don't be like that. Sure they do. I see and I care. I think you'll look real … really nice," she said, separating the top layer of Alma's hair into three parts, then beginning the braid.

  Lulled by the motions, Alma looked at the sodden garden, the grass bent flat under the rain. "Sometimes," she said, "you have to take the chance, Bobby, even if it doesn't work out."

  "What chance? Why?"

  "We need to confront the things that scare us," Alma said, wondering how she could say this to Bobby when she couldn't manage it herself. Her own present reality confounded and alarmed her, but rather than meet it head on she merely glared at it angrily, from a distance. Still, it was the truth. "By confronting them we defuse them of their ability to scare us."

  Bobby pictured Joe racing across the rain-soaked lawn with a shotgun under his arm, and thought Alma couldn't possibly mean what she was saying. The woman simply had no idea. She threaded another strand of hair into the braid, considering the things that scared her, and decided that no matter what anyone said she had good cause to be afraid. As long as Joe was alive in the world, she'd keep on being afraid, maybe not so much as she had been living in the house with him, but afraid all the same. "When you've been scared for a long time," she said, "you don't just suddenly stop."

  "No," Alma agreed thoughtfully, "you don't." Fear was a damned insidious thing, the ultimate human common denominator. "Still," she said, "you should give Dennis a chance."

  To do what? Bobby wondered. To find some new and different way to hurt her? "Why?" she asked, gathering in another strand.

  "To prove to yourself that there are some men worthy of your trust."

  "Maybe," Bobby said cautiously. "We'll see." It was only talk, she thought. Dennis probably wouldn't even ask her out again.

  Sixteen

  Tuesday evening after getting Alma settled for the night, Bobby asked if she could use the telephone.

  "It's long distance but I'll pay you when the bill comes in."

  "Don't be silly. Go ahead and use the telephone."

  Bobby thanked her, said good night, then went downstairs to use the extension in her apartment.

  Lor said, "I was starting to get real worried about you, so I finally called your aunt the other night and she told me you got yourself some kind of live-in job there."

  "That's right," Bobby said, reassured by the sound of her old friend's familiar voice. "It's a really good job and we've even got our own apartment downstairs here. How's everything with you and the kids?"

  "Oh, same as ever, you know. Nothing ever changes around here. So where the heck are you, anyhow? Your aunt was all mysterious, wouldn't tell me a thing except that the two of you're all right."

  "It'd be better if you don't know where we are, Lor, in case Joe comes around and starts making trouble. But I'll give you the phone number, in case you feel like calling me sometime."

  "Better than nothing," Lor said. "Hang on a sec while I find something to write with. Okay, what is it?"

  Bobby told her and Lor got the number written down.

  "Hide it somewhere. Okay, Lor?"

  "Listen, hon. I don't take crap from any guy, including my ex. Even if Joe stuck one of his goddamned guns in my face I wouldn't give him the time of day, and you know it. I'm just glad as can be you're finally away from that man. You should've taken Penny and gone a long time ago."

  "I know that. Well, I'd better go. I don't want to run up the bill."

  "I'm glad you called. Like I said, I was getting real worried. You stay in touch, okay?"

  "I will," Bobby promised. "Take care, Lor."

  "You too, hon."

  Feeling better now that she'd talked both to her aunt and to Lor, Bobby curled up on the sofa with the first of Eva's paperbacks. Thirty pages into the book she'd already lost interest, and couldn't figure out how the woman who'd written The Summer House could've written this one. She could understand now why Alma was so anxious to get Eva to quit writing them.

  Carrying the pair of paperbacks, she went upstairs to the living room, returned the books to the shelf, selected an Evangeline Chaney novel, and hurried back downstairs.

  Lighting a Marlboro, she positioned an ashtray on the coffee table, and opened the book. Two paragraphs and she was engrossed. This was more like it. Sinking deeper into the sofa, the cigarette forgotten in the ashtray, she read on.

  In the course of the next two days Bobby was able to change the car registration, obtain a new license, and, through Eva's insurance agent, get the appropriate coverage for the Honda. She also took the car into a Midas shop where in no time flat they put on a new muffler and changed the front brake pads. The nearest gas station did an oil change and a lube job in under an hour while Bobby sat in the office and waited. The car ran like a dream and, pleased with herself, she returned to the house on Soundview Drive to assist Alma downstairs after her nap. She knew it was foolish to feel so good about accomplishing such mundane tasks, but she was, for the first time, beginning to feel in charge of her life and Pen's.

  Joe had never allowed her to do a thing, accusing her of being too dumb to deal with matters concerning the house and the cars. He'd refused to drive with her, claiming she was the worst driver in the world and saying he didn't know how in hell she'd ever passed the driving test. The truth was, she was a far better driver than he, more careful and more considerate of the other drivers on the road. Joe got in the Firebird every time like he was going off to a war, and drove as if the streets were a battleground. He laughed at her for buckling herself and Pen into the seat belts.

  "Think that's gonna save your asses if we're in an accident? It'll probably wind up getting you killed," he'd scoff, and then cite statistics he said he'd read in some magazine about how seat belts cost more lives than they saved. She'd tune him out while pretending to listen, convinced the only reason she and Pen were still alive after countless near-misses was because of the belts. He was forever stomping on the brake to avoid a car that had suddenly stopped, or flooring the accelerator to shoot around vehicles that were moving too slowly to suit him. "Fucking asshole!" he'd shout, giving people the finger as he shot past.

  With each day spent away from him, she seemed able to see him more clearly, and to see, as well, that she had been stupid. She'd put up with his many forms of abuse because he'd convinced her that without him she wouldn't be able to manage on her own. That had been stupid. She didn't need him, or anyone, to support her. She was capable of managing by herself. And that was a stunning revelation, as was the fact that now, from a safe distance, she could admit—if only to herself—how much she hated him. The two of them had played a kind of game, and in a lot of ways she was guilty of encouraging his terrible behavior. Instead of standing up for herself and saying she wouldn't take any more, she'd kept trying to figure out what she'd done wrong and how not to repeat her mistakes. The truth, she was beginning to understand, was that she'd played her part in the marriage as the victim. He'd scared her into it. And she was still scared, with good reason. She might have left him, but Joe wouldn't just let her get away. Not for the first time, she wished he were dead.

  When she thought about her evening with Dennis, and compared him to Joe, Dennis came off as a real gentleman. He hadn't pushed at her when she'd said she didn't want to talk about something, and he hadn't tried to make her feel like a moron because she'd never had Indian food and did-n't understand the menu. He seemed to enjoy introducing her to something new, and said he wanted to introduce her to even more new things.

  Maybe Alma was right. She probably should give Dennis a chance. It would, if nothing else, help her learn more about herself. If he asked her again, she'd go out with him. She couldn't spend the rest of her life being
afraid of all men because of Joe. And thinking this, she finally understood what Alma had meant about confronting the things that scared you. It wasn't actually Dennis who scared her, but her own past experiences. This amazed her. She considered it at random hours, marveling at Alma's wisdom. She felt as if she were back in school again, studying a fascinating new subject: her own life.

  On Thursday afternoon Dennis came to the front door, smiled, and held out a long-stemmed yellow rose. "This is for you."

  Bobby accepted the rose shyly. No one had ever given her flowers. She smiled back and said, "It's beautiful. Thank you."

  "I thought maybe you'd think it was kind of corny but I decided to go for it anyway," he said hanging up his coat.

  "It isn't corny," she said softly, breathing in the flower's scent and wanting to cry. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for her.

  "So how goes it?" he asked, rubbing the chill from his hands, still smiling at her.

  "I'm going to be staying on," she said, thinking she sounded like a child, but so pleased she had to share it.

  "I figured you would. That's great." He looked up the stairs, then said, "We'll talk when I finish up. Okay?"

  "Sure. I'll make some coffee."

  "Good deal. Did you get her to do the exercises?"

  "Uh-hunh. She complains the whole way through, but she does them."

  "Good, good," Dennis approved, and went off, taking the stairs two at a time.

  She found a tall water glass in the apartment cupboard and sat down at the kitchen table to admire the rose and have a cigarette before going up to make a fresh pot of coffee. She had plenty of time, so she fixed a cup for Eva and took it to the office above the garage, knocking quietly, then carrying the cup over to the desk when Eva called, "Come in."

  "Here's some coffee," Bobby said, prepared to back right off.

  "You're sweet," Eva said. "I could use a cup." She turned away from the screen, asking, "Is Dennis with my aunt?"

  "Uh-hunh."

  "You want to ask him about Thanksgiving, or do you want me to do it?"

  "I don't want to interrupt your work," Bobby said. "I guess I can ask him."

  Eva studied her appraisingly. "Changed your mind, have you?" she said with a half smile.

  "I don't mind asking him, if you want," Bobby equivocated, afraid to confide in this woman the way she did in her aunt. Like Joe, Eva had the ability to make Bobby feel stupid, but in different ways.

  "Well, if you're sure you don't mind," Eva said, turning back to the screen. "Let me know what he says."

  "Do you write about real people?" Bobby asked impulsively. "I mean, like the people in The Summer House. They seemed so real to me, I thought maybe you wrote about people you know."

  Eva actually looked pleased by the question. "They're entirely fictional," she said. "But I'm glad they seemed so real to you. I try very hard to make my characters come alive.

  "Oh, they do," Bobby assured her. "I hated for it to end."

  "That was my first book," Eva said, feeling an ache in her midriff thinking about all the rewriting she'd done after Ken's death. "I think the others are better, but some people, my aunt for one, don't agree."

  "I'm going to read them all. I just started Family Friends," Bobby said, and moved toward the door. "You're a really good writer."

  "Thank you," Eva said, then sat listening to the small woman go quietly on her way. "Damn!" she said, staring blankly at the screen. Now she very definitely wasn't in the mood to work. Why didn't she call it quits and get back to writing what she really wanted? There was nothing stopping her. Nothing at all.

  "Come out with me on Sunday afternoon," Dennis was saying.

  "I'll take you and Penny to the Maritime Center in Norwalk."

  "I'll have to ask Alma," Bobby replied, both gratified and slightly unnerved by this second invitation.

  "I already did," he told her. "She said it was fine with her."

  "She did?"

  "Yes, ma'am, she did. So, are we on?"

  "Okay. I guess that'Il be all right."

  "Great," he said, and gulped down the last of his coffee. "I've got to run."

  "Your client up in Norwalk," she said with a smile.

  "Right. I'll pick you and Penny up at, say, one-thirty. That way you'll be back in time to get Alma squared away for her nap."

  "Okay," Bobby said, impressed by his consideration. She walked with him to the front hall and waited while he got his coat on. "Oh!" she said, remembering, "I'm supposed to ask if you want to come to Thanksgiving dinner next week."

  He paused with his hand on the doorknob and looked at her.

  "It was Eva's idea," she added, to keep things clear.

  "That's really nice of her," he said. "I wish I could, but I've promised my folks I'd spend the day with them."

  "Sure," she said, disappointed but relieved, too. She'd have enough to cope with meeting Eva's daughter and her friend Charlie. "I told her I'd ask."

  "Thank her for me," he said. "I'd have liked that. Too bad." He got the door open, said, "See you Sunday," then hurried to his car. He tooted the horn before driving off.

  "Who's Dennis and where're we goin'?" Penny wanted to know.

  "I told you. He's Alma's physical therapist," Bobby said. "He comes every week to give her exercises. He's a nice man, Pen."

  "You gonna marry him?"

  Bobby laughed and gave Pen's ponytail a tug. "Don't be silly. I'm already married to your dad."

  "I thought that was all over now."

  "It is, but legally we're still married."

  "Do you want to marry Dennis?"

  "He's a friend, that's all. He's taking us to the Maritime Center."

  "What's that?"

  "I think it's a place where they've got fish, stuff like that."

  "Big fish?"

  "Maybe."

  "I wanna see a whale," Penny said. "A great big whale."

  "Maybe you'll see one. D'you need to go to the bathroom?"

  "I already went."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yup."

  "Are you positive?"

  "Yup."

  Bobby admired the way Dennis handled Penny. He didn't try to charm her, and he didn't talk down to her. He shook her hand and said, "Hi, I'm Dennis. Would you like to go see all kinds of fish?"

  "Uh-hunh." Penny looked up at him assessingly. "They got any whales?"

  "I doubt it," he said. "But there are sharks and blues, and lots of other fish. And we can see a movie on a great big screen."

  "Yeah? What kind of movie?"

  "One that takes you up in the air in a plane called a glider that doesn't have any engine but just floats on the air."

  "Way high up?"

  "Pretty high," Dennis said. "Think you'll like that?"

  "Uh-hunh."

  He stood aside to let Bobby buckle Pen into the back of the Beetle. He didn't act impatient, didn't mock her for making a fuss. He just went along with what she wanted. And when they got to the Maritime Center, he was willing to look at whatever Penny wanted to see and answered her questions as if he actually liked talking to a small child.

  Bobby watched him, fascinated. He liked Penny, didn't get impatient with her, and talked to her the same way he talked to everybody. Within half an hour, Penny was reaching to hold his hand as they moved through the place. Bobby saw this and was moved. Joe had never touched Penny, except in anger, and had always referred to her as "your kid."

  In the Imax theater, they sat with Penny between them, but Penny complained she couldn't see, so Dennis lifted her onto his lap. He appeared to be perfectly at ease with the situation, and Bobby scarcely noticed the film, so taken was she with the sight of Penny with this man. Something so ordinary, but Penny had never had a father's lap to climb into. Bobby had had that. Her grandpa had cuddled her before bedtime; he'd mussed her hair and tickled her behind her ears and called her "dearie." Her grandfather and her aunt had loved her; she'd had a happy childhood. But all Penny
had experienced was rejection and, at the end, abuse, with Joe saying, "Get out of my face," any time Pen approached him.

  Who was this tall muscular man with the carroty hair and warm brown eyes, and why was he being so nice to them? Maybe he was simply a nice person, someone who liked small children and not very smart women. She could see how he'd like Pen. But she really couldn't figure out why he was wasting his time on her.

  "You're awfully quiet," he observed as they were on the way out of the theater, with Pen holding his hand and skipping along at his side. "Did you enjoy the film?"

  "It was very good," Bobby said, recalling only a sinking sensation in her stomach as the glider swooped low over a river, then soared again.

  "I liked it a whole whole lot," Penny sang, extending her free arm like an airplane wing, ducking her body, pretending to be a glider. "I wish I could fly."

  "When I was a kid," Dennis told her, "I used to dream all the time that I could fly. I flew over my school and the kids would look up in the air and point. I flew over the treetops and houses, way up in the air."

  "Yeah?" Penny was entranced. "I never dreamed that. You're really lucky."

  "Sometimes I still dream of flying," he said, "but not as much as I used to. How about some ice cream?" he asked, looking at Bobby. "We've got time."

  "You want some ice cream, Pen?"

  "Yeah! Chocolate chocolate chip in a sugar cone."

  "That's her favorite," Bobby said with a somewhat abashed smile.

  "Mine's French vanilla," Dennis said. "What's yours, Bobby?"

  "Mom loves jamocha almond fudge," Penny said. "That's what she always has."

  "Is that right?" He grinned at Bobby.

  She was able to smile back at him, but her face felt stiff.