Dreaming In Color

by Charlotte Vale-Allen

  Penny sat on Dennis's lap and exclaimed aloud, distraught over E.T.'s misadventures and wildly elated by the ending. "That's the best movie I ever saw!" she declared when it was over, flushed in the face, eyelids reddened, cheeks tear-stained. "It's one of my favorites," Dennis said, hugging her. "I knew you'd like it. How about you, Bobby?"

  Bobby was afraid to speak for fear she'd start crying again. Convinced by Joe that it was a sign of weakness, she disliked having people see her cry. All she could do was nod and give him a wobbly smile.

  He smiled back at her, saying, "I know. It gets me the same way." "I wish Granny could've seed it too," Penny said, looking toward the door. "Perhaps another time," Eva said, checking her watch before getting up. "I have a couple of things to do before I start dinner." She paused, taking in the trio on the sofa. "Would you care to stay to dinner, Dennis?" "Oh, that's really nice of you," he said, "but I'm going down to my folks' place."

  "Well," Eva said, "I'll be in the office," and left them.

  In the office she looked at the row of her books on the shelf, feeling both proud of her accomplishments and daunted by them. Her ambition was to make each book better than the last, and every time she was about to embark upon something new, she went through a period of worrying that she no longer had anything worthwhile to say. Going to the armchair by the window, she sat and looked out at the Sound, fearful that she didn't know enough to write about Montaverde and Deborah. Yes, she had the facts. But did she have the understanding? She would have, she thought, if she could only convince Bobby to confide in her, if she could hear firsthand what it was like to be abused.

  Penny kissed Dennis good-bye, then ran upstairs to tell Alma about the movie. Bobby walked him to the door, finally able to say how much she'd liked the movie and to thank him for bringing it. "How about Friday?" he asked, while he pulled on his jacket. "We could

  grab something to eat, take in a movie."

  "All right," she said. "But this time it's my treat."

  "Okay. You're on," he said. He kissed her lightly, quickly on the lips, then went out to his car, saying, "See you Thursday."

  The air was cold and sharp; the sky was already beginning to go dark. She stood in the doorway with her arms wrapped around herself and watched him get into his car. After he'd gone, she turned and looked up the stairs, hearing Penny excitedly telling Alma all about E.T. She felt oddly full, as if she'd just consumed a delicious meal. Smiling to herself, she started up the stairs.

  Twenty-Six

  Eva was remembering a particular afternoon early in her stay on the island. She was sitting on the sand at the very apex of Crescent Bay with the children beside her. The sun shone blinding white overhead as the three of them watched about fifteen Montaverdeans at the water's edge prepare to haul in the immense seine net they'd cast by boat over the water. The natives stood in two lines, each grasping one end of the net, and slowly, hand over hand, brought it in to shore.

  Inside the net hundreds of fish surged, silvering the water. The air was heavy with the reek of the roiling fish as they were pushed closer and closer together by the tightening net. On the sand, the Montaverdeans chanted, counting or singing—Eva couldn't quite interpret their patois—as they drew in the net and it fell in wet folds to the sand.

  The closer to shore the net came, the stronger the stink grew, of fish and blood. The fish thrashed, trying to free themselves, but the net continued to shrink in size, cutting off their escape. Above the chanting of the natives was the ungodly sound of the fish as they churned up the water, their fins cutting the surface like knives.

  Eva put her arms around the children, finding the scene alarming. Melissa and Derek sat openmouthed, scarcely blinking.

  As the net closed tighter and tighter, blood darkened the surface of the water, and half a dozen more natives materialized, waded in, and began flinging fish onto the shore, where they leaped and quivered, their scales catching the sunlight, the noise growing louder, an unearthly din. Eva had never witnessed anything remotely like this. The scene was primitive and frightening. The fish flopped about on the sand. People with mallets swung at them, killing them, spilling more blood; scales littered the beach like hundreds of mirror fragments.

  At last the net was a bulging, pulsing mass that was being slowly dragged up onto the sand. And once the fish were beached and bludgeoned, the natives began apportioning them, carrying them off in buckets or with their fingers looped through the gills; several filled their boats. Very quickly, all that remained was the massive net and a wide area of churned-up, bloodied sand. The pungent fishy blood-smell continued to hang in the air. Eva's stomach churned. She breathed through her mouth, concentrating on not being sick. The children appeared dazed. They both sat very still, as if in a state of shock.

  Returning to the present, she lifted the damp hair from the back of her neck and let her head rest on her bent knees. After a time, cooler, she got up and went downstairs.

  *

  Bobby went to the closet in the living room, opened the door, and there was Joe. Smiling, with a shotgun in his hands. He lifted the shotgun, aimed it straight at her. Terrified, her heart in a seizure, she turned to run, but he reached out and grabbed a handful of her nightgown. She wanted to scream, opened her mouth, but all that came out was a whisper, "No."

  His smile scared her almost as much as the gun. If she could only scream, Eva and Alma would hear, they'd get help. But if she screamed, Penny would wake up, and she didn't want to remind him of Penny.

  Why couldn't she make any sound? Frustration had her fighting, even though she knew perfectly well it was always worse when she struggled. It seemed to incite him to greater acts of sadism and bestiality.

  She began telling herself this was a dream, she could wake up. But her eyes felt glued shut on the sleeping level, gaping wide on the dream level. With a massive effort, she clawed her way to the surface, lungs heaving, body wet with perspiration, eyes and nose streaming. She sat up, hoping she hadn't made any noises in her sleep, hadn't done anything to frighten Penny. She turned to look over at the other bed. Penny slept peacefully.

  After a minute or two she got out of bed and pulled on the cardigan she used in lieu of a bathrobe. Her robe, so far as she knew, was still hanging on the back of the bathroom door of the house in Jamestown.

  She got her pack of cigarettes, then turned to look up the stairs at the slightly open door to the kitchen. She always left the door open a few inches, couldn't stand to close it, let alone lock it. That would've made her feel too trapped somehow. There was no light on upstairs, but she knew Eva never bothered turning it on.

  Without stopping to think about it, she started up the stairs. She could see Eva sitting at the table. Mopping her eyes on the sleeve of her sweater, Bobby stepped barefoot into the room.

  Eva said, "I got an ashtray for you, in case you decided to come up."

  Bobby slid into the chair across from her and lit a Marlboro with trembling hands. In the murky light she felt for the ashtray and pulled it toward herself, feeling eight years' worth of experiences compressed into a chestful of words that suddenly had to be spoken. All she needed was the least little encouragement and she'd be off and running.

  "What did you dream?" Eva asked.

  "I dream most every night he's hurting me again," Bobby whispered.

  "It must be awful."

  "Yeah. He had so many ways of hurting me. Toward the end there, I'd kind of wait for him to get it over with, go ahead and finally kill me. And that's when I got really scared, 'cause I knew if I didn't get away I'd wind up dead. It was like he was working up to it all those years, practicing, sort of." She glanced at Eva but couldn't make out her expression. It didn't matter. That was the one good thing about night: You didn't care about things the way you did in daylight because so much got hidden by the dark.

  Eva was very still. Bobby could feel her listening. It was an extraordinary moment, one unparalleled in her experience, this opportunity to talk openly while safe
ly concealed by the darkness. Eva was merely a presence that would absorb the details.

  "You must have been very frightened," Eva said, encouraging her to go on.

  "At the beginning," Bobby said, "he'd always be sorry. He'd slap me around some, then the next day he'd be nice as pie. But that was only at the very beginning, maybe the first six months. After that he didn't bother pretending anymore he was sorry. Because he wasn't. He liked it. He was happy when he was hurting me. He'd always smile. And every time I saw that smile I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach because I knew how good it made him feel to break my bones, to draw blood. And the whole time it was happening, there was a part of me standing back watching, asking how did I come to be married to this man. I never knew exactly what it was I said or did that sent him crazy, but I was forever waiting, nervous about every word that came out of my mouth, every step I took."

  Eva listened, feeling faintly nauseated. She'd instigated this. Now she was beginning to regret it. She hadn't expected Bobby to be quite so forthcoming, or so graphic; she'd imagined herself dragging the information out of her in slow degrees.

  Bobby took a last drag on the Marlboro, put it out, then went on, the words coming fast now. "When I got pregnant, he wanted me to get rid of the baby. I wouldn't, and he pretty much left me alone until after Pen was born. But I was home three days from the hospital with the baby when he started in. And that's when things turned really bad, when he got really serious about the beatings. The stuff that had happened before, that was nothing compared to the things he did after I had Pen. I wanted to get away, but now I had a baby and there was nowhere to go. My friend Lor and my aunt, they were sorry but they couldn't take me in because Joe would make so much trouble for them. So I kept real quiet and cooked nice meals every day and pretended I liked the way he jumped on me in bed. I made the kind of moans he wanted to hear and didn't let on he was hurting me, even though he knew he was."

  Eva wanted to shut her eyes, to close this out. She was being told far more than she'd ever wanted to know, and there was no way now to stem the flow. Her damned curiosity had opened the floodgates.

  "He always said I was the stupidest person in the world," Bobby went on, "and he was right because if I'd been one bit smart, I'd never have married him. He was right. I was stupid, and I deserved to get my nose broken and my ribs broken; I deserved to have my breasts burned with cigarettes, or have him rip out whole handfuls of my hair; I deserved to have my little finger twisted back until the bone broke, and get raped with a curling iron that was still hot, or with the shotgun while he held a knife to my throat telling me not to make one sound or he'd cut my throat. I deserved every last thing he ever did to me. Because I was so stupid." She was crying again. It affected her breathing and her ability to get the words out. She fumbled with the pack of cigarettes, got another one lit, steadied her breathing.

  Eva remained silent, embarrassed for this woman and appalled by the form of vampirism that had prompted her to encourage Bobby to reveal so much. She was in no way qualified to deal with what she was being told, hadn't a single thing to say that might alleviate Bobby's suffering. All she'd been thinking of was the new book, of being sufficiently informed to write it accurately. Having to hear this horror story was making her dislike herself.

  "He convinced me that everything that happened to me was my own fault," Bobby hurried on. "I couldn't do anything right, even when I pretended. In bed I was supposed to move certain ways, make certain sounds, but all I could do was try to copy the things he did because I didn't know what he wanted. There were all these things that made him feel good and made me feel like filth ... pulling my hair and forcing me to open my mouth, then laughing when I gagged; making my backside bleed … "

  God! Eva thought. Don't tell me any more! I don't want to know. She wished she could cover her ears with her hands. But she couldn't do a thing. She had to sit there and absorb the information she'd thought she'd wanted.

  "The whole time he was doing it to me I'd think about going away somewhere and living alone with Pen, someplace where nobody ever made me feel scummy because I was female. And along with hating him I hated me too, hated being female because men did disgusting things to females, made them get down on their hands and knees and pretend to like being hurt, pretend to like it when they made your backside bleed." Impatiently, she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, seeing the scenes brightly lit in her mind, one after another. "I kept on taking my birth control pills because I knew if I got pregnant again he'd kick me and burn me and pound me until I died." She gave a gasping, rueful laugh, took another puff on the cigarette, then said, "When I went for my checkup six months ago, I asked the doctor for another prescription and he said what for. There was no point to taking the pills because I couldn't have any more babies. There was too much internal damage, he said. I'm twenty-seven years old and I'm ruined inside. I don't feel sorry for myself, though. It was my own fault."

  "No, it wasn't," Eva finally spoke, knowing she had to, knowing this was the price to be paid for soliciting the ugly intimate details of Bobby's life. "It wasn't your fault."

  "Yeah, it was," Bobby said, feeling sleepy now after releasing so much that had been pent up inside for so long. "It's funny." She sighed, fatigue making her eyelids heavy. "I thought when and if I ever got away from Joe, it'd all be over. But it isn't. It keeps happening over and over inside my head and in my dreams."

  "It'll get better in time."

  "How do you know that?" Bobby challenged.

  "Because it will," Eva said, with absolutely no grounds upon which to base this declaration. She simply wanted to put an end to this encounter she'd so foolishly instigated. Her head was filled with ugly images, pornographic pictures. She hated feeling as she did, even felt angry with Bobby for her capitulation.

  "How do you know that?" Bobby asked again.

  "Because for months after Deborah was killed, every night when I lay down to sleep, I saw her body and the blood everywhere and I was terrified all over again."

  "This was your friend?"

  "That's right," Eva said. "I was in the house when her husband killed her."

  "God! That's awful!"

  "Now it's fifteen years later and it's still horrible, but it's not the same. It's of the past. You understand?" Was it possible she could exert some positive influence here? She hoped so. It would go a long way toward tempering the harrowing guilt she now felt.

  "Sort of. Yeah, I guess I do. But I'm never going to forget any of what Joe did."

  "No," Eva agreed. "You never will. But it'll get better. And nobody will ever hurt you that way again." What an absurd thing to say! She couldn't guarantee that. This conversation had become more hateful than any of her worst nightmares. She was spouting platitudes, saying whatever she could think of in order to bring this to an end.

  "You shouldn't ever say never," Bobby said, superstitiously believing that if you put your thoughts into words you might make them come true.

  "You're through playing out your role as a victim," Eva said, trying desperately to be upbeat. "You've started a new life with Pen. And there's Dennis."

  "I'm scared to death of what Dennis might want," Bobby confessed. "I don't know why he keeps on wanting to see me. I told him a little bit of what I told you and he was really good about it. I mean, he acted like he wanted to understand. But that doesn't stop me from being scared."

  "I know," Eva said, striving to sound sympathetic. "But try not to be. He's not a dangerous man."

  "They're all dangerous," Bobby said.

  "Not all of them," Eva corrected her. "Charlie isn't, and neither is Dennis."

  "They're dangerous," Bobby explained, "because they hope for things some of us can't give them."

  "I'm sorry," Eva said, feeling lost and promising herself she'd never again as long as she lived invite anyone to confide to her in this fashion.

  "Why're you sorry?" Bobby asked, perplexed.

  "I'm sorry such dreadful things have ha
ppened to you. You didn't deserve any of it. No one deserves to be treated the way you've been treated." That much was true, and she could state it with conviction. But, God, she felt like an appalling hypocrite.

  Bobby's eyes flooded again, the tears scalding her cheeks. She couldn't speak for a time, and took another puff of her cigarette, working at regaining her self-control. At last her throat eased some and she said, "You're a nice person."

  "I'm a lot of things," Eva said, anxious to keep the record straight, "but nice isn't one of them. I'm intolerant and impatient. I'm temperamental and sometimes very judgmental. But I do try to be fair," she said critically. "I know it's very difficult for you to talk about … the things that happened." She wished she could admit how dreadful it had been to have to hear it. And she didn't know what she'd do if Bobby decided to reveal anything more.

  "Are you going to use it in a book?" Bobby asked.

  Eva was stopped cold. It wasn't an illegitimate question, or even a naive one. Bobby had managed to glean a fundamental truth about her: that in one way or another everything she saw or heard was source material. There were times, like now, when Eva strongly disliked that part of herself that hungered for information. Her curiosity was a greedy, powerful entity that often dominated her instincts with its rapacious appetite. "No, not specifically," she answered truthfully, "but I'll use the understanding you've helped me gain. That I will use."

  "Give it a happy ending," Bobby said strongly.