Overheard in a Dream

by Torey Hayden

  Coming in through the glass double-doors of Toys ’R’ Us, James stomped the snow off his boots and then pulled a shopping cart out of the rack. Mikey jumped on the end to ride. Becky skipped alongside.

  “You know what thing gives me the best feeling in the world?” she said cheerfully.

  “What’s that?” James asked.

  “When we come in through the door at Toys ’R’ Us and I see you get a shopping cart instead of just walk on in!” She beamed.

  “Yes, you know we’re going to buy stuff then, don’t you?” James said with a smile.

  “Yeah, I love coming here with you,” she replied and locked her arms around his right wrist as he pushed the cart.

  A trip to Toys ’R’ Us with Becky had always involved a long, slow meander down the Barbie aisle. Often it was just to browse. Indeed James could make a good outing for Becky by doing nothing more than coming to Toys ’R’ Us to admire the fancy Barbies in their special glassed in case, all way too expensive to buy as toys. Equally fun for Becky was browsing through the endless assortment of tiny accessories for a doll who seemed to perennially waver between being a vet or a Playboy Bunny.

  “Look,” said James. “That’s a new kind of Barbie horse, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Becky said.

  “Wow, that’s good,” James said. “I like that black colour. And see, it’s the kind that goes with the carriage.”

  “Yeah,” Becky said. She had moved down the aisle

  “Would you like that?” James asked.

  “What I’d like is a Bratz doll. They’re in a different aisle. The one I’m dying for has got really long, blonde hair and these cool black boots. Let’s go look at those.”

  “When did this happen?” James asked, catching up with her. “Last I heard, you couldn’t stop going on about that Barbie carriage Uncle Joey got you.”

  “I don’t like it any more,” she said.

  “Any reason?” James asked.

  Becky reached for a Bratz doll and took it down from the shelf to look at it. “Well, ’cause Uncle Joey got it for me, for one thing. I hate Uncle Joey.”

  Surprised, James regarded her. “Why’s that?”

  “I hate him being around all the time. I wish he’d go away.”

  “Yes,” Mikey piped up from the end of the shopping cart, “but he isn’t going to. He and Mum are maybe gonna get married.”

  “I hate him,” Becky muttered. “I only want you,” she said and put her arms around James.

  The New Year’s Eve picnic in front of the fireplace was a great success. Glutted on hot dogs and corn-on-the-cob, their mouths haloed in chocolate and sticky crumbs from S’mores made with marshmallows toasted on the fire, the children snuggled up on either side of James to watch Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. Mikey fell asleep only about a half an hour in, but Becky saw it through, cuddling up close, wrapping James’s arm tight around her.

  When the film was over, James carried Mikey into the bedroom, gently undressed him and tucked him in. Becky slid under the covers in her bed.

  “Nighty-night, sweetheart,” James said and bent to kiss her.

  “Daddy? Can I ask you something?”

  “What’s that, lovey?”

  “Can me and Mikey come to live with you?”

  He smoothed back the hair from Becky’s forehead. “Is something not working out for you at home?”

  “I don’t want to live with Uncle Joey. I don’t like him.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Becky shrugged. “I just don’t. I don’t want him moving in with us. I want to come live with you.”

  “I’d love to have you live with me, sweetheart. But your mum and I would have to talk about it, because that’s a big decision. Besides, you’ve got all your friends back there. And Grandma and Grandpa. And the cousins.”

  “I know. I wouldn’t mind. I’ve got Morgana here. Her and me have been writing e-mails and really, we’re pretty good friends already, even if she’s littler than me. And if Mikey and me lived here, we could have a dog. I really, really, really want a dog, Daddy. That’s what I want so bad for my birthday. So, please?”

  “It’s a big decision. But I’ll think about it, all right?”

  “Daddy?”

  Sleepily James rolled over. “What is it, Becky? What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t sleep.” Her small form was indistinct in the deep night-time darkness of James’s bedroom. “Can I get in bed with you?”

  James lifted up the covers. Becky crawled in and snuggled into the curve of his body.

  “Brrr, you’re cold,” James said. “Did that wake you up? Maybe we need to get another blanket for your bed.”

  “No, I just can’t sleep.”

  He stroked her head. “Why’s that?”

  “I’m worried about tomorrow.”

  “What? About going home.”

  James could feel her nodding against him. “I don’t want to leave you. I want to be with you.”

  A sudden, terrible thought occurred to him. Perhaps there was a much darker reason for Becky’s behaviour.

  “Becks,” he said urgently, “what’s happening at home?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, it’s something, Becks. I can tell.”

  “Couldn’t you come back to New York?”

  “To keep you safe?”

  “No, to be my daddy. Because I don’t want Uncle Joey.”

  “What’s Uncle Joey doing, sweetheart? It’s okay to tell me.”

  “Nothing.”

  “But you said you hated him. If he’s hurting you, if he’s doing something, Becky, I need to know. You can tell me.”

  “He isn’t doing anything, Daddy,” Becky murmured, snuggling close. “The reason I hate him is just because he isn’t you.”

  Children in therapy typically experience small regressions during breaks and holidays, but when Conor arrived for his first session in January, he bounced in enthusiastically and went immediately to the shelves to pick out the box of cardboard animals and brought it to the table.

  “Here is the man’s cat.” He set it on the table between them and pushed the little glob of clay against the tabletop to “plug it in”.

  “Here is the boy’s cat.” He set his stuffed toy alongside, then briefly glanced up at James.

  “Yes, there are our two cats,” James reflected back.

  “I can’t have that cat,” Conor murmured. “The mechanical cat stays here.”

  James picked up his pen and opened the notebook.

  “Is my song still there?” Conor asked, pointing to the notebook. “My cat song?”

  “Yes.”

  “Read it. Let me hear it.”

  James flipped back through the pages until he came to the notes from the last session in December. He read out the words to the song.

  When James had finished, Conor gave no response. He just stood there.

  At last he turned from the table and walked away, leaving his stuffed toy cat on the table.

  “I don’t know what I want to do today,” he said. He meandered over to the windows, then back again to the shelves. Taking one hand from his pocket, he poked a finger at the plastic road sheet, folded up on the first shelf.

  Then he went to the dolls’ house. Kneeling down, he opened the back of it to expose the rooms. He reached in and took out the dolls, first the man, then the woman, the boy, the girl and the baby. “There are no animals in here,” he said. “They have no cats.”

  He set the boy doll in the uppermost bedroom. “Go to bed. Stay in bed. Don’t get out. You’re always out.”

  There were stairs going down through the middle of the house, dividing it into two equal sides. Conor tried to balance the woman doll on the stairs but it would not stand. “I could get clay,” he said. “I could put it on her feet to make her stand up.”

  “Yes, that would work. You’ve thought of another good use for the clay,” James replied.

  “Look, the bad boy has got out of bed.
‘Get back in bed!’ she said. The mother said that. ‘I can’t stand you like this! Stop your crying. I must take care of the baby.’ Conor moved the mother doll down the stairs and put the baby in her arms.

  Taking the girl doll, he placed her in the other uppermost bedroom on the opposite side of the staircase. “Here’s where the girl sleeps. She’s good. She doesn’t get out of bed. But look. Here is the bad boy and he’s getting out of bed again.” He put the boy doll on the floor of the bedroom and then moved the mother doll back up the stairs.

  “Oh, You’re a bad boy. You are a bad, bad boy. Why don’t you do as I say? I have other things to do. I can’t worry about you. Why can’t you be good?” Conor picked up the girl doll. “She’s a good girl. Better than the boy.”

  “You think the girl is better than the boy?” James asked.

  “Yeah. She doesn’t go away to school. She stays in her bed. And now, see, she’s here. She says, ‘How come you don’t stay in bed?’ The bad boy says, ‘I am a machine. Don’t talk to me. Machines don’t talk.’ The good girl leaves. See? She goes down the stairs to where Mummy and Daddy are. That’s okay. Because she doesn’t see any ghosts.”

  “Are there ghosts in this house?” James asked.

  “Yeah,” Conor replied. Then he rose. “Where are the rugs?”

  James raised a querying eyebrow.

  “Over here.” Conor crossed to the table and picked up the box of tissues. He yanked one out and went back to the dolls’ house. He lay it on the floor of one of the rooms on the ground floor. “There’s a ghost under the rug. In the downstairs room. The bad boy knows. The cat knows. The cat says … The bad boy …”

  Suddenly the play had become too powerful. Conor leaped to his feet and backed away from the dolls’ house. James could hear his breathing grow shallower. The skin along his jawline began to mottle as he stood, mesmerized by the toy figures, and James half-expected him to scream. He didn’t. Turning, he ran to clutch up his cat. Pressing it to his chest, clinging to it, he stood a few moments, panting. Briefly he glanced at James, meeting his eyes. Then he looked down at the table, at the small cardboard cat standing there.

  “Zap, zap,” he whispered. Reaching down, he loosened the clay plug on the string and picked the cat up. He walked back to the dolls’ house. Kneeling, he very carefully stood the cat in the middle of the dolls’ house kitchen. He pressed the clay plug onto its printed linoleum floor.

  Sitting back, Conor studied his work. Kitty was still tight against his chest. “Zap, zap. Metal cat. Metal fur. Mechanical cat.” His voice was almost inaudible.

  Silence.

  “Zap, zap.”

  Conor reached in and took the boy doll from the upstairs bedroom and put him down beside the cardboard cat in the kitchen. “There’s a ghost here. Under the rug. Nobody can see it. The man can’t see it. The mummy can’t see it. The baby can’t see it. The good girl can’t see it. But the boy can. And so can the mechanical cat.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  James gestured towards the conversation centre as Laura came in. “You were telling me about Fergus when we left off before the holidays. Why don’t we go back to where we were? So what happened next?”

  “In order to be with Fergus, I stayed in Boston over that summer and worked at the hospital, rather than go back to South Dakota as I had in previous summers. During September, I was invited to accompany Dr Betjeman to a medical conference in Miami where he was giving a presentation.

  “Fergus was uncomfortable with this separation. It was the first time we’d been apart since we’d been seeing each other and he voiced strong reservations. There wasn’t much to be done about it, however. He couldn’t come to Florida with me and I didn’t want to miss this opportunity; so despite his vociferous protests, I went.

  “The experience didn’t turn out to be quite as fun as I’d thought it would be. I felt adrift in the world of ordinary people, which seemed so bland without Fergus. I was short of money and unable to do much except sit in the conference hall and listen to medical researchers droning on. My heart just wasn’t in it. So once Dr Betjeman gave his presentation, I decided to return to Boston two days earlier than planned and surprise Fergus.

  “It was about 9 pm when I got home, so I was startled to hear the doorbell ring soon after.

  “‘Who’s there?’ I asked cautiously, as my old-fashioned door didn’t have a peephole.

  “‘May I come in?’ said a familiar voice.

  “‘Fergus!’ I cried in surprise and opened the door.

  “‘Welcome back. Here. I’ve brought you a present,’ he said. To my utter surprise, he held out a bottle of burgundy.

  “‘Thank you,’ I said and took it from him.

  “He leaned forward to kiss me and I could smell he had already been drinking. ‘I hope it’s a kind you like. I’m not very good at this sort of thing. But as you grew up on South Dakota beef, I reasoned you must be a red wine drinker.’ He laughed.

  “I felt unsettled. While I had come home especially for him, I had expected to be the one doing the surprising. It was unnerving to find him at my door so quickly. Moreover, I wasn’t accustomed to his drinking, or drinking with him. It all seemed out-of-character from a man who had so often made me feel a full night’s sleep was self-indulgent.

  “‘Well, aren’t you going to invite me in?’ he asked and took the wine from my hands. He slipped on by and went into the kitchen. ‘Where do you keep your corkscrew?’

  “I followed him in and fished around in a kitchen drawer. ‘How did you know I was back?’ I asked.

  “‘How could I not know you were back, Laura?’ he replied simply. Reaching into the cupboard, he took down wine glasses.

  “Leading the way into the living room, he flopped into an armchair. ‘God, I’ve missed you.’

  “I looked at him. Familiarity had stolen some of the intensity from his dark eyes and made him less startlingly handsome to me. I tried to look at him as a stranger would, to see what one would see who did not know him.

  “‘I have been so depressed since you left,’ he said. He drained the wine from his glass and reached for the bottle to refill it.

  “We drank in silence for several moments. The wine bottle was soon empty. It had tasted very good to me, as it clearly had to Fergus as well, and I was toying with the idea of going to see what I had in the house. Would Fergus want me to suggest another bottle? It still seemed peculiar to drink so casually with him.

  “‘I’m going to get us something more,’ I said and rose. I went into the hallway, because once Fergus had begun reforming my dietary habits, I’d moved what little wine I owned to the floor of the hall closet so that he wouldn’t know I still had it. My wine cellar now consisted of four bottles in a wooden rack pushed beneath the winter bedding. Most had been laid down before Fergus had come into my life, and as my income had never extended to any seriously good wine, the majority was probably now vinegar. Opening the door fully, I knelt down and started to pull them out. I hadn’t bothered to put the hall light on. The hallway itself was minuscule and there was enough light cast from the kitchen to read the labels.

  “Fergus materialized in the gloom behind me. Putting his hand on my shoulder, he leaned over to look at the bottles. As always, the heat of his touch caught my attention.

  “‘There isn’t much good in here, I’m afraid. All cheap stuff,’ I said.

  “He knelt behind me. Leaning forward over my left shoulder to read the labels, or so I thought, he instead gently slipped a hand into my blouse and cupped my breast. I paused but didn’t pull away. Fergus continued to fondle my breast, his fingertips massaging the nipple into erectness. He pressed his body tightly to my back and I could feel his penis hard against my spine.

  “‘Fergus, not right now,’ I said. ‘It was a lot of travelling today. I’m really very tired.’

  “He began undoing the buttons of my blouse.

  “‘Fergus, please. I don’t want to.’

  “‘Yes, yo
u do,’ he said.”

  “Once he had his arms around me, I forgot my protests. We made love right there on the floor in the half-light provided by the kitchen doorway, the bottles of merlot and burgundy rolling around us, clinking softly against each other. A little fierce-looking in the gloom of the hallway with his thick, unruly hair and his dark, dark eyes, Fergus pressed me to the carpet and mounted me with such forcefulness that it would have been frightening, had I not anticipated it. He was a dynamic lover, and my body responded as if foreordained. With no time to prepare for it, I climaxed very quickly. My body was wracked with it, more consumed than satisfied, as wave after wave of sensation overtook me with no interlude to recover. Indeed, there was such an uninhibited ferocity to Fergus’s love-making that I was left doubting whether or not love actually came into it. It was in its way more like a battle between us.

  “Finally Fergus climaxed himself and as he did, he kissed me. It was a hungry, devouring kiss, as invasive as his penis, or perhaps more so, because I hadn’t been antici-pating it. With his coming, however, some of his energy seemed to dissipate. He kissed me further, still deeply but less forcefully. Finally, he relaxed onto the carpet beside me.

  “We lay together on the floor for several minutes and did not speak. As so often happens, it was the tiny things that began to make an impression on my consciousness first – the feel of the shaggy carpet on my back, the faint, faint smell of carpet shampoo, the irritated skin of my elbows, rubbed sore from friction.

  “‘This is how it should be between us,’ Fergus murmured in a soft, satisfied way. ‘Just like it always was.’

  “‘Mmm?’

  “‘Don’t you remember?’

  “I looked over to make out his features in the darkness. ‘Remember what?’

  “‘Atlantis.’

  “‘Atlantis?’

  “‘Yes, don’t you remember? When you were queen and I was your lover. Your secret lover. Remember how I came to you at night? How I came in my little boat and moored it up alongside that stone wall? Surely you must remember that. Cast your mind back.’