Dreaming In Color

by Charlotte Vale-Allen

  "Okay. I love you, Mel."

  "Love you too, Mom. See you Thursday."

  Alma was waiting.

  "She can't come until Thursday morning, and she has to go back on

  Saturday. She sends you her love." "Too bad," Alma said, reading the disappointment all over her niece's face. "We scarcely see her anymore."

  Eva sighed and rubbed her forehead. When Melissa graduated from high school, Eva had all at once realized that the life they'd had together was ending. And even though she'd been preparing herself for the separation for years, the reality had been hard to take. Not that she didn't enjoy the time to herself, and not that Melissa hadn't the right to her own life, but it was hard to stop being a full-time parent. Even with her child three hundred-odd miles away, she was still a mother and would be one forever. A segment of her brain was permanently directed toward Melissa. She could go for days without consciously thinking of her, but Melissa was always inside her head, the stages of her life playing endlessly on a mental loop. And there were moments when Eva got lost in time and felt the small girl's arms wound tightly around her neck, in the same way Penny had enclosed Eva with her limbs. It was a mild shock every time she was confronted by Melissa's reality, by the woman her daughter had grown to be. Melissa represented twenty years of Eva's life, and that hardly seemed possible. But of course it was. Time was such an odd concept, so elastic a dimension in so many ways. It carried your body forward, changing and distorting it, while it layered itself over your brain like sheets of gauze.

  "I'm going to have a drink," Eva announced. "Would you like anything?"

  "Are you going to marry Charlie?" Alma asked, out of the blue.

  Taken aback, Eva said, "What makes you think he'd want to marry me?"

  "Men are marrying creatures," Alma said sagaciously.

  Eva had to laugh. "Why on earth do you say that?"

  "Personal experience," Alma said somewhat airily. "The majority of men I've known wanted to be married. They think life'll be easier if they have someone to do their laundry."

  "That's a riot," Eva said laughing. "Charlie certainly doesn't need me, or anyone, to do his laundry."

  "A euphemism," Alma said patiently. "Cooking, cleaning, general maintenance. You know what I'm saying."

  Sobering, Eva considered it. "You might be right," she allowed. "But the issue for me, since Ken died, has always been: What do I need a man for? And the answer every time has been: entertainment. I don't have to be married to have that. And as far as Charlie's concerned, I think he feels the same way."

  "So you entertain each other," Alma said. "Wouldn't you like to have that full-time?"

  "I'd never get anything done," Eva argued. "Besides, I like things the way they are."

  "I think you dislike intensely the way things are. You're fed up and it's plain as day. I hate to be contentious, but at the risk of setting you off again, I'll say it one more time: You need to get back to work that matters to you, Eva." She sat prepared for an argument but, to her surprise, Eva sank back onto the sofa and again rubbed her forehead.

  "Could I get anybody anything?" Bobby asked from the doorway.

  Both somewhat irritated by the interruption, the women said no thank you.

  Sensing her timing was all wrong, Bobby said, "I'll be doing the laundry if you want me," and hastily removed herself.

  When she was gone, Alma asked, "What were you going to say?" her eyes boring into Eva's.

  "Nothing," Eva answered, asking herself if she wanted to marry Charlie. She didn't know. It certainly wasn't an unappealing idea.

  "Yes, you were. Are you going to deny you're unhappy with the way things are?"

  "No," Eva said quietly. "But I'm not ready to discuss it, either. Let me get to this in my own time, please. I need to think things through."

  Feeling a small satisfaction in having moved Eva to this point, Alma opted to let the matter drop for the time being and fell silent.

  Eva continued to sit rubbing her forehead, thinking that Melissa had inherited her stubbornness. Neither one of them could admit to being wrong without first putting up a good fight. In this case, though, it was ridiculous. She hadn't done any real work on the latest manuscript in days, and it was unlikely she'd do any in the near future. Yet somehow she couldn't cope with the loss of face the admission of defeat would cost her at this point. Sighing again, she got up to fix herself a drink. Maybe tomorrow she'd talk matters over with her agent. Carrying her glass of neat Glenlivet back to the sofa, she wondered again if she wanted to marry Charlie. When she looked up, it was to find her aunt smiling at her. "What?"

  "Oh, nothing," Alma said wryly, and busied herself with the newspaper, placing a mental wager on how long it would take Eva to own up to everything Alma could see so plainly. Not long, she thought. Not long at all.

  Eighteen

  Tuesday afternoon while Alma was having her nap, Bobby drove to the children's clothing store in the shopping center and, after careful deliberation, picked out a royal blue pinafore dress and a long-sleeved white blouse with red and blue embroidered trim on the collar and cuffs.

  The snotty saleswoman who'd refused to take her check the last time was at the counter as Bobby, suddenly nervous, approached to pay for Penny's new outfit. She dreaded having another scene with this woman but she was determined to pay by check and to use her new Connecticut license as ID.

  "How would you like to pay for this?" the woman asked.

  "A check," Bobby answered, her throat tight.

  "Fine. I'll need a driver's license and a credit card."

  "I don't have a credit card," Bobby said, her stomach knotting. The woman looked at her, her eyes narrowing slightly, then said, "Everybody's got a credit card."

  "Not in my family," Bobby said, prepared to do battle but somewhat sickened by the idea nonetheless. "We don't buy what we can't pay for."

  To her surprise, the woman nodded and said, "That's damned sensible.”

  "I've got a Connecticut license," Bobby told her.

  "Okay. That'll be fine. You want this gift-wrapped?"

  "No, thanks.”

  Her hand a little shaky, Bobby wrote out the check, tore it from the book and gave it and her license to the woman, who copied the number onto the back of the check and returned the license, saying, "Decided to stay in the area, huh?"

  Bobby said, "We like it here."

  "Good. Come again. We'll be having a sale after Thanksgiving."

  "Okay, I will," Bobby said, feeling as if she'd just passed some crucial test. "Thanks a lot."

  Reassured of her own competence, she went next door and bought herself a smart pair of black slacks.

  At the shoe store she got Penny new loafers like the ones she herself had worn in high school. In the handicrafts shop she purchased a pattern and some pale blue wool to knit Pen a sweater. Finally, at the supermarket she collected the ingredients for pumpkin and mincemeat pies.

  Penny was very excited about her new clothes and insisted on trying everything on, then raced upstairs to show Alma.

  "I got brand-new clothes for the turkey party," she said, whirling in a circle in her slippery new shoes.

  "You look very fetching," Alma told her.

  "What's fetchin'?"

  "It means attractive, pretty."

  Penny grinned and came closer, saying, "Know what, Granny? I've got a loose tooth." She put two fingers in her mouth and wiggled one of her front teeth. "See!" "That's splendid," Alma said. "You'll be having a visit soon from the tooth fairy. Won't that be exciting?"

  "Yeah. That's what Mom said."

  "Why don't you go change out of your new clothes," Alma said, "then come back and read to me." "Okay. I got a new book. It's called Stuart Little. I'll go get it. Okay?" "Okay," Alma said. Her shoes were so slippery Penny had to hold on to the banister going

  down the stairs. "I gotta change," she told Bobby. "I'm goin' up to read to Granny."

  "Take your time, Pen," Bobby told her. "She'll wait for y
ou."

  After Penny had gone back upstairs, Bobby got out the knitting pattern and sat down to read it through, wanting to be sure she understood all the directions before she started.

  "I'm having trouble," Eva told Beverly Bloom, her agent. "I don't know if I'm going to be able to finish this one."

  "Then don't," Beverly said. "Throw it out and do something else. The third book's in production. You've satisfied the contract. You're tired of doing them, quit."

  "You make it sound awfully simple." She'd been expecting Beverly to give her an argument, and had geared herself up to state her case.

  "It is simple, Eva. Don't do the book if you don't want to. Junk it and get to work on one of your own. Give me an outline and six chapters and we'll start offering it."

  "I haven't an idea to my name."

  "You'll come up with something," Beverly said confidently. "You always do." "What if nobody wants it?" "Look, you're acting as if this is the end of the world. I can assure you it

  isn't. You've got a decent track record. Get something down I can show around and we'll worry about it then."

  "I'll have to think about it."

  "Fine. Let me know what you decide."

  The call concluded. Eva got up from the desk and went over to the window. More flurries but no real snow yet. It was as if winter were holding its breath, preparing itself for one good blow. The water was choppy and gray, the sky heavily overcast. All she had to do was erase the disks and the whole thing would be over; she'd be free to start something that mattered to her. Except that there was nothing she wanted to write. It had been almost two years since she'd completed the last Evangeline Chaney novel, a year since its publication. Even if she started writing tomorrow and managed to finish in six months, it could take up to another year after that before it was published. Maybe people would have forgotten her by then. Or maybe they'd be primed for a new book. It was pointless speculating. She walked over to the desk and tapped out Charlie's office number.

  Luckily he was between patients and came on the line right away.

  "Have you got plans for this evening?" she asked him.

  "Leftover meat loaf and The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour," he said, his voice amused. "I take it I can anticipate a visit from you?" "Around eight?" "Fine," he said. "I'll break out something strong but not incapacitating." She laughed and said, "See you later." "Looking forward, cupcake." She put the receiver down and looked at the computer screen, her heart

  racing. All she had to do was depress a couple of keys and it would be gone. So why couldn't she do it? She stored the partial chapter, then went down to the kitchen to start a pot roast, needing to lose herself in the relatively mindless process of cooking. Maybe it would quell some measure of the low-level anxiety churning away inside her.

  Eva watched as Bobby first cut Penny's meat, then Alma's, her small hands working quickly and efficiently. She scarcely resembled the creature who'd appeared at her front door a few weeks earlier. Her face was completely healed, and her hair now shone with health. She'd lost a substantial measure of the haunted look she'd had at the outset. She ate and between bites spoke softly in her husky voice to Pen, telling the child to sit up properly and stop playing with her green beans. Then she took the napkin from her lap and, with a smile, blotted Alma's chin. Alma rasped out a thank you then took another bite of her food.

  What was it about this woman? Eva wondered. There was something in this routine domestic scene that was unique, and Eva watched the interchange between her aunt and the child and Bobby, trying to pin it down. It wasn't until after Penny had been put to bed and the three of them

  were in the living-room—Eva killing time until she could leave to see Charlie, Alma occupied with a book, and Bobby with her knitting—that it came to her. Mendelssohn's violin concerto in E minor was playing on the stereo. Eva jabbed at the logs in the fireplace, then looked over at Bobby, small hands busy with her knitting, head bent over her work, and she understood all at once that Bobby was a species of woman Eva hadn't encountered since her own childhood. The mothers of her friends had been like Bobby—nurturing, domesticated women for whom the duties of home and family had represented complete satisfaction. Bobby actually liked fixing people cups of coffee and doing the laundry; she liked care-taking, tending to Alma and to Penny. It gave her visible pleasure; she didn't consider it work. Which was why, Eva concluded, she accepted her weekly check with such delight and surprise. She was doing things that pleased her, and being paid for it.

  Eva was momentarily filled with envy. She was doing work that held no meaning for her, and felt guilty at being paid for it. Before the commercial fiction, she'd daily approached her writing with anticipation, looking forward to being reunited with her characters. It had been like an ongoing party with her dearest friends. What she'd been doing for the past nine months or so felt like the world's worst cocktail party, attended by numskulls and ninnies with whom she was obliged to make small talk while her legs ached from standing too long in high heels.

  Returning to the sofa, she looked at her aunt. Alma was completely engrossed in the latest P. D. James novel. She loved complex plots and finely delineated characters, books that had, as she liked to say, plenty of meat on their bones. And she loved rich lyrical music that had intricately woven counterthemes. Alma loved the Evangeline Chaney novels. She defended them as if they were high-spirited but gifted students for whom she had a special affection. She'd read the first paperback, then tossed it across the room and looked at Eva as if she'd committed a crime. "You've made a mistake," she'd said. "You've debased your talent. Please don't do this for my sake, Eva, because it makes me very unhappy.”

  "I'm going out for a couple of hours," Eva announced finally, having checked the time.

  Both Bobby and Alma looked up at her. She felt guilty and obvious, then angry. What a mess. She went over to kiss her aunt's cheek, saying, "I won't be late."

  Alma read her eyes, deciphered her mood as only she had ever been able to do, and said knowingly, "Take all the time you need. We'll be here."

  Eva went for her coat, and climbed into the Volvo feeling as if she were fleeing from a pack of wolves. Alma alone had the ability to make her feel guilty simply with a look. It was a mother's talent. Well, she'd been Eva's mother, after all.

  Cora Ogilvie had married Willard Chaney and they'd had a daughter, Evangeline. But her mother was Alma. And Alma could see into her as if she were made of glass. She couldn't hide successfully from her aunt. They could argue; they could lob words at one another, but Alma had parental radar, and it hadn't been affected in any way by the stroke. She could peer into Eva's eyes and point with precision to what was wrong, or out of alignment. Until the stroke, when Eva came back to live with her aunt, she'd forgotten Alma's ability to penetrate her mind. But for the past year she'd been presented regularly with Alma's perceptions. And it was like living with the personification of one's conscience, being made to feel in too many ways like a child again. She could only hide out from it for brief periods when in Charlie's company.

  He came to the door in his old gray sweat suit, wearing socks but no shoes, cupped her chin to give her a kiss and said, "I've got a nice new bottle of Heaven Hill that'Il mellow you out in two swallows."

  He hung away her coat, then took her hand and led her to the living room. Two glasses with ice sat on the coffee table next to the bourbon and a bowl of cashews. He poured a measure into each glass, gave one to her, then sat back propping his feet on the coffee table. "So tell me all about it," he invited, extending an arm across her shoulders.

  She let her head fall back on his arm and said, "Do you ever think about getting married again, Charlie?"

  "Are you proposing?"

  "No, I am not. It's merely a question. Do you?"

  "Now and again, now that I'm over the worst of my guilt. Why?"

  "How do you think of it?" she asked. "I mean, why would you want to?"

  "Oh, for the companionship primarily, I think."
<
br />   "Not for the sake of being looked after?"

  "I look after myself quite nicely. I'm a grown-up fellow. I can manage the appliances without the manuals. Why?"

  "Just wondering," she said. "Alma and I were discussing it. She's of the opinion that men want to be married in order to be looked after.”

  "Depends on your interpretation, I suppose."

  "I suppose," she said, and took a swallow of the bourbon. It burned going down, then created a radiant heat in her stomach. "I don't think I'm going to be able to finish this latest book. I can't get myself to work on it."

  "Then chuck it," he said, in a near echo of Beverly's advice.

  "I'm afraid to. What if it's all I'm able to write anymore?"

  "I doubt that, cupcake."

  "For a year before I started these things I was completely dry. Maybe there's nothing left."

  "You'll have to try and find out."

  "It's not that easy."

  "Sure it is," he disagreed. "You get an idea, then you sit down and start writing. I guarantee you'll come up with something."

  "You guarantee it?" She shifted to look at him. "You guarantee it?" She was smiling.

  "I don't happen to think the well's gone dry," he said. "If all else fails, what about reliving ancient history? Why not write about that?"

  She stared at him, jolted. Was her preoccupation with Deborah merely a prelude to writing about her? Did she dare novelize an incident from her past? She'd never raided her own life for material; she'd never had to. Ideas had simply come to her, like gifts from a benevolent, unknown relative. But maybe writing about Deborah was something she had to do; maybe that was why she couldn't stop thinking about her. Could she? Should she? God, it was a tantalizing idea. She'd have an opportunity, within the framework of a novel, to examine why she'd acted as she had, to list the many fears that had prevented her from taking any action. She'd had good reasons; they still seemed valid even now: She'd sought to protect the children and she'd done it by remaining an observer rather than a participant. It wasn't what she'd have imagined herself doing in some hypothetical situation, but reality had a way of tempering one's acts. She was now, and had been back then, more than capable of confronting head-on all kinds of things, but she'd discovered the truth of the old adage that one never knew how one would behave until the situation presented itself.