Dreaming In Color

by Charlotte Vale-Allen

  "Somehow I doubt that," he said.

  "But I didn't thank her," she explained, shifting to look into his calm hazel eyes. "So you'll thank her when you get home." "You don't understand," she said, running her thumb over his knuckles.

  The skin on his hands was always silken, supple, while her own hands were often rough, ignored. She invariably intended to use the hand cream that sat on the bedside table but rarely got around to it.

  "Enlighten me," he invited with a slight smile.

  "We keep colliding, Bobby and I," she said. "We come to terms; then, an hour or a day later, we're smashing into each other. I say or do something. She misinterprets it. Then I turn myself inside out trying to correct it."

  "You'll thank her when you get home," he repeated.

  "She didn't seem hurt," she said, reviewing their dinner. Bobby had actually laughed at one point, she recalled. Had she ever heard Bobby laugh before? She didn't think so. During those weeks on the island Deborah had never laughed, not once.

  Charlie watched her eyes lose their focus. She was off again, mind-traveling. He waited, wondering if all artists were similarly distracted, and wishing it were possible to follow along after her. She seemed to go to astonishing places, visiting briefly, then moving on. He knew himself to be firmly rooted in the present, with only occasional trips into the past, and admired her mental flexibility. He'd never known anyone remotely like her, and was never bored in her company as he was with so many others, both male and female. And it seemed to him altogether fortuitous that she was physically appealing, too.

  "Why are you looking at me that way?" she asked, fixing her gaze on him.

  "What way?"

  "With intense interest," she said, laughing, "as if I were a tissue sample."

  "Well, you are," he said, "in a certain sense."

  "What did you think of Bobby, anyway?"

  "What did I think?" He looked away, fine-tuning his perspective. "First of all," he said, "I didn't expect her to be quite so pretty. She is, don't you agree?"

  "Very," she said.

  "And secondly," he went on, "I got the impression that, despite her size, she's very strong. Not just physically," he added. "She has a certain … I guess I'd call it stoicism. Of course, she's almost pathologically shy. But I found that touching."

  "Yes," Eva said thoughtfully, "so did I."

  "All in all," he said, "I liked her. I was very impressed with the way she handles Alma. No nonsense, no looking to curry favor. She just gets on with it. She doesn't do things in order to be thanked. She simply does what needs to be done. There aren't a lot of people like that."

  "I'm impressed," she said, looking at him squarely.

  "Why, because I'm such a fine judge of human nature?" He grinned.

  "You're pretty damned good, Charlie. I'm better at understanding the characters I create than I am at dealing with the real people in my life."

  "I wouldn't say that," he disagreed. "You probably just spend more time on your characters."

  "I've spent a lot of time on Bobby," she said, her eyes drifting away from him. "I want to understand her. I need to, for the new book." Looking at him again, she said, "I erased the disks, trashed the manuscript. It was one of the scariest things I've ever done."

  "But you did it. Which means you're going to start something of your own, I take it."

  "It was your idea," she said. "I mean, you gave me the idea of writing about Deborah."

  "Deborah?" He looked puzzled.

  "Reliving ancient history," she elaborated.

  "Oh! And who is Deborah?"

  "She was my friend. We met in England when I was twenty-one. Remember I told you I spent a semester in London?" He nodded, and she went on. "We were very close. Then Ken was transferred back to New York and we didn't see each other for four and a half years. In the meanwhile, she and her husband sold everything and moved back to Montaverde where she was born. I took Melissa and spent three weeks with her on the island. It was roughly eight months after Ken died. Anyway, she and her husband were fighting horribly, almost from the moment we got there. I wanted to go but I also wanted to stay and help. I felt incredibly stupid, sitting there waiting day after day for an opening that never came. In a way, I've always blamed myself for what happened. I was convinced there had to have been something I could've done to stop it."

  "I had no idea," he said, "that you were so anal retentive."

  She stared at him for a few seconds, laughed loudly, leaned over and kissed him hard on the mouth, then sat back and laughed some more. "Was it that funny?" he asked, half-smiling. "Hilarious," she said, brimming with fondness for him. "I do love you," she told him. "You're so good at keeping me grounded."

  "Is that what I do?" he said. "And here I thought I was an inspiration."

  "Everything inspires me," she said, giving the matter some thought. "Not that I want to play fast and loose with your male pride or anything, but it's the truth. I get ideas from everyone I know, from every conversation, even from things I notice through the car window when I'm driving somewhere. Sooner or later, it all gets used." As she spoke she returned gradually to her introspection, thinking that she'd always known she'd one day write about Deborah. She'd just never dreamed it would be more than fifteen years before she got to it.

  He moved, his hand slipping out of hers, and she asked, "Where are you going?"

  "To put on another CD," he said. "Don't worry. I'll be back."

  "I thought perhaps you were offended."

  "Nope," he said cheerfully. "I'm not wounded that easily."

  "Thank God for that," she said fervently, thinking how easily Bobby was wounded. Did that come as a result of anticipating pain? If that was the case, it invalidated all her theories about Deborah. Because Deborah had become coarsened, tougher in her anticipation. She'd evolved into Ian's counterpart in almost every way, so that at the end she'd been as demented in her own way as Ian in his.

  A Beethoven symphony began emerging from the speakers as Charlie returned and sat back down beside her. "So tell me," he said, "what happened on the island."

  Reaching for his hand, she said. "I really do love you, you know, Charlie."

  "I know you do, and I really love you too. Tell me what happened."

  With a sigh, she began to tell him.

  Bobby set her book aside and went to the bedroom, intending to get ready for bed, but instead she found herself watching Penny sleep, admiring the spill of her hair over the pillow, her dainty sleeping features. Bobby was permanently awed by her daughter's passionate nature and the ready attachments she was able to form to other people—to Melissa, for example.

  She'd felt so sad for Penny that morning when she'd sobbed so brokenheartedly over Melissa's leaving. She understood that to Penny Melissa appeared magical, like a princess in one of her storybooks. With her long flowing hair and long flowing skirts, Melissa had taken Penny into her beauty, had cuddled and bathed her and tucked her into bed. Bobby had known exactly how Penny felt; she'd felt some of it herself. There was something about Melissa, a goodness that was tremendously compelling. And Bobby knew that from now until the Christmas break began, Penny would be talking about Melissa, asking regularly when she'd be coming home, and planning fantasy adventures the two of them would have.

  She knew what it was like because once upon a time she'd been a little girl very like Penny, spinning tales around the visitors who'd come to their home, imagining her own fairy-princess mother one day appearing to claim her and take her away to live in a magical castle. Those things never happened, of course; they never could. But little girls did dream of the possibilities, especially ones like Penny and the child Bobby herself once had been, with their eyes and minds gobbling up words on the pages of books, being transported to splendid, far-off places by the stories they read.

  She respected Penny's attachments, and waited on the sidelines to comfort her when her fairy-tale-inspired imaginings failed to become real. It was right that Penny should dream, t
hat she should care immediately and deeply for people like Dennis and Melissa, like Alma and Eva, too. Penny went around adopting people, and most of the people wanted to be adopted. Look at Dennis, for example, she thought, adjusting the bedclothes over her sleeping child. She'd turned Dennis into a father, climbing willingly into his lap, placing her self and her trust in his hands with fairly unerring instinct.

  She thought of Dennis's mouth touching hers, and of his hug, and wished she still had the ability to trust, to place herself in a man's hands, secure in the belief that no harm would come to her.

  But she could no longer be sure, even when everything seemed all right. It was dangerous to trust her own reactions, let alone someone else's actions. Dennis didn't behave or talk like a man who secretly longed to inflict pain, but it would take time for her to stop watching his every move, expecting him to throw off his outer skin like a snake to reveal the dangerous impulses underneath.

  Yet when she lay down, and as she hovered on the edge of sleep, she imagined herself naked with Dennis and there was no pain. He touched her with respectful hands and her flesh responded in ways she hadn't known it could, with a tingling and a gladness and a yielding openness. Her body knew about sensations she'd never experienced, and she didn't understand how that was possible. She wondered if everyone was born into the world equipped with a set of responses that lived hidden inside until someone came along or something happened to draw them out. And if that was true, if everything was still intact inside her, then maybe she could experience pleasure after all; maybe all contact didn't have to be brutal, painful, something merely to be endured.

  It was an intriguing concept, she thought, turning onto her side as she slid down into sleep. Maybe there was a part of her that had never been touched, never been violated. And maybe Dennis would introduce her to that unsuspected region of her own self. If she could learn to trust him.

  Eva was going back over that final evening on the island, filling in all the details she'd omitted telling Charlie. She lay curled into herself, hands fisted against her chest, knees drawn up tightly, prepared to confront the complete picture.

  It was the evening of that same day Eva had found and told Deborah about the passports. By dinnertime Derek had developed sniffles and insisted on being allowed to sleep with his mother and father. Deborah impatiently took him off to get ready for bed and Eva told Melissa, "You'll sleep with me tonight. We'll move your cot into my room. Okay?"

  "Okay," Melissa said, then asked again, "When're we goin' home?"

  "Tomorrow afternoon," Eva told her, having telephoned BWIA before dinner and booked seats. "We'll spend a couple of nights in Antigua, then we'll go home."

  "I wanna go see Auntie Alma," Melissa said, as if expecting an argument. "So do I," Eva agreed, longing for the sanity and security her aunt represented.

  She set up the cot in her bedroom, then got Melissa undressed and into the shower. By eight o'clock both children were asleep, and Eva was sitting out on the verandah, watching the mountainside go gray as the light waned. Ian had gone off somewhere in the car—off yet again on another of his mysterious errands—and Deborah was in the kitchen fixing herself a cup of tea. Eva hadn't yet told her they were leaving. In a way she felt like a dreadful coward, going off and abandoning her old friend. But things had deteriorated to such an extent that the air seemed electric with hostility. Certainly the children felt it; they'd fought off and on ever since returning from Crescent Bay. At one point Derek had lashed out and hit Melissa hard, squarely in the chest. Eva had longed to take the boy on her knee and try to explain things to him—it was what he needed badly—but she didn't dare. All she'd been able to do was reprimand him quietly while he stood blinking at her—exquisitely beautiful even in his defiance—then he turned and went to ride the tricycle.

  Deborah came out and perched on the verandah railing with her tea and a cigarette and Eva knew the time had finally come for them to talk.

  "We'll be leaving tomorrow morning," she said. "I'm sorry but I really think it's better that we go."

  Deborah sighed and, without looking at her, said, "I expect it is. I'll tell Ian so he can drive you to the airport."

  "That's all right," Eva said. "I've arranged for a taxi."

  At this, Deborah turned to look at her. "I don't blame you," she said. "He's a shocking driver, frightful. Remember your first day when he nearly sent us over the cliff?" She spoke of the event as if fondly recalling the exploits of a naughty but lovable child.

  Unable to fathom this odd fondness, Eva said, "I remember."

  Deborah turned away again, her eyes on the horizon. "It hasn't been a very pleasant time for you, I'm afraid. All in all, it's a fucking disaster." She spoke without inflection, as if too tired to put any emphasis in her words. "We've wasted thousands of pounds, and all we have to show for it is a foundation. I can't think how we'll finish it."

  "Deborah," Eva said, leaning forward over her knees, "why don't you take Derek and leave, go back to London?"

  "I can't. I've no access to whatever money's left."

  "But it's your money. How did that happen?"

  "It's too complicated." Deborah sighed and drank some of the tea, then took a drag on her cigarette. "I wasn't aware, actually, that it was happening. And by the time I was, it was too late. It was Ian's idea, you know, to come back here. I was quite content to stay as we were. But he fancied himself a plantation owner or somesuch. I don't know." She put her cigarette out in the large, chipped, glass ashtray, then set the ashtray on the floor.

  "I'll lend you the money to go," Eva said.

  "That's very good of you, darling," Deborah said, "but where would we go? Everything's gone."

  "You could go back, stay with friends until you started working."

  "Afraid not," Deborah said dully, reaching into her shirt pocket for her pack of cigarettes. "But thank you for offering. You've always been very generous."

  "I could lend you enough to get the two of you back to England and see you through for a few weeks. Surely you can't want to stay here, not with the way things are."

  Looking slightly surprised, Deborah said, "Things are the way they've always been. I'm sorry if it's been unpleasant for you." She presented Eva with her profile. "I'd expected the house to be further along. I hadn't imagined we'd be so … so on top of each other."

  "It's not just that … It's Ian, and the fights … "

  "It's really none of your business, darling," Deborah cut her off crisply.

  Stung, Eva said, "I'd like to help you."

  "Actually, to be perfectly truthful, it'll be a help that you're going." Deborah took a fierce drag on her cigarette, her eyes on the darkening sky.

  Hurt, Eva didn't know what to say.

  Ian returned a minute or two later and, defeated, Eva said she was going to bed. Feeling shut out and wounded, she left the two of them sitting on the verandah.

  Melissa was deeply asleep. Eva washed and got into the shorts and T-shirt in which she slept, then settled on the bed to read. Deborah's and Ian's voices drifted through the house like the low drone of insects. She tried to ignore them, to ignore the tension that knotted her neck and shoulder muscles. Tomorrow, she and Melissa would be gone from this desolate place. There'd be no more treacherous boat trips through barracuda-infested waters, no more waiting for a heart-to-heart conversation that wasn't ever going to take place. She and Melissa would spend two nights at Half Moon Bay in Antigua, eating food that was prepared for them, sightseeing, enjoying the amenities of the island, while she tried to put these three dreadful weeks behind her.

  It was Derek's howling screams that awakened her. She shot into wakefulness with her heart drumming and knew something terrible was happening. In the dark, she flew barefoot down the walkway to listen for a moment outside the door of the master bedroom. Inside, Ian was saying, "I want you to stay in the bathroom until Daddy says you can come out. No arguing now. Don't you move one bloody muscle!" This last was obviously directed to Debora
h who, with a sob, cried, "Leave us be!"

  What to do? Panting, Eva raised her hand to knock at the door just as Ian's voice rose to a shout. Now she could hear that the two inside the room were physically grappling. There was nothing she could do, and if she tried to intervene she might wind up one of Ian's victims. In a panic, she tore back to her room convinced that she and Melissa had to get out of there. With Deborah's and Ian's shouting voices intercut with Derek's muted howls from the bathroom, she began pulling the louvers from the window at the back of the room.

  Melissa woke up, asking, "What's happening?" and Eva shushed her, whispering, "Get dressed as fast as you can! Hurry!"

  "Whatcha doin'?"

  "Get dressed!" Eva got the last of the louvers out, put it on the floor, then pushed at the screen. It fell backward out of the window, toppling into the brush as the gunshots came. One. Two. She stood rigid for a moment, hearing the echoing waves of the shots riding on the current of the night breezes, certain Ian was about to come for them. He couldn't leave any witnesses. She looked at the deep closet, then at the window. In an instant, she'd decided. Snatching Melissa into her arms, grabbing her purse with their passports and money, she climbed into the deepest corner of the closet, leaving the sliding door open. Warning Melissa not to make a sound, she piled their luggage into a concealing barricade and squatted on the floor with Melissa in her arms, one hand over her daughter's mouth.

  Not two minutes later, Ian's footsteps came pounding along the cement walkway. The door was flung open. Then a few moments of silence as he took in the empty room. The overhead light went on. Eva hunched lower, her hand tightly clamped over Melissa's mouth. His footsteps moved to the window. "Bloody hell!" he muttered, and bolted from the room. Eva heard him running along the walkway, then he was tearing his way through the brush at the rear of the house, going first this way, then that. Another few minutes and his footsteps returned. And Derek started howling again. Ian ran toward the master suite. Derek's cries subsided instantly.