Little Nightmares, Little Dreams

by Rachel Simon

  I did, but in those days I was wrapped around doin’ right like a crust around a pie — because doin’ right had made me stop lookin’ for the whole idea of meaning. And since doin’ right at Mrs. Winterborne’s meant respectin’ what she WOULD NOT TOLERATE — no men, no slackin’ off, no hanky-panky, no askin’ too much — I said, “That’s okay, Mrs. Winterborne. You don’t got to tell me.”

  “Well, it is complicated,” she said, reachin’ for the remote, and like a dope I turned back to my dusting.

  Next morning the den was spic and span, which I didn’t expect since Master You had come again the afternoon before. I checked every corner, just in case some dream detail got lodged back there. Looked over the dining room, the living room, even up the master staircase. Nothing. Well, praise the gods of neatness, I pictured Verl sayin’ as I headed toward the kitchen.

  But then I took a peek out to the patio.

  A tiny tin soldier stood pointin’ his tin rifle at the French doors. I stepped outside, and saw four, five, ten more right on down the terrace. I followed the trail, and the further into the yard I got, the more I found. Tin parachutists on the hedges. Tin cowboys in the tennis court. Tin Redcoats in the gazebo. By the number of them linin’ the slate path to the pool I guessed I was nearin’ ground-zero, so I unlatched the wooden gate — and found the trail had just been comin’ attractions. Tin knights, tin Indians, tin tanks, tin horses — you name it — blanketed every deck chair, the tops of the concrete wall, every inch of cement. And a whole army was sinkin’ under water.

  Thank you very much, gods of neatness.

  At lunch, like a factory whistle’d gone off, Mrs. Winterborne shuffled downstairs. On the patio sat sixteen double-bagged bags and me, loopin’ on the twisties. And I wasn’t done. “You found them,” she said. “I didn’t mean to make such a — I’m sorry. It’s those dreams again.”

  “It’s my job, Mrs. Winterborne.” But as I’d been pickin’ them up, I’d remembered her tellin’ me once about the tin soldiers her papa had owned. He was a collector, too, that’s how she met her bad-ass husband. And I figured maybe these little solders might feel like souvenirs of her daddy, so she might not want to see them heaved into some stinky landfill, so I added, “What would you like me to do with them?”

  “I don’t know.” Her voice was weary. “I’m through with that session.”

  “You want to save them?”

  “No. Just get rid of them.”

  Get rid of them?! My mental Verl snapped. Lady, throwing out roses is one thing. Tossing out toys is another altogether.

  Which is what made me think — my grands never got enough toys, with their parents runnin’ off for days at a time, quittin’ jobs, lookin’ for sugar daddies and big scores, havin’ — as they told me when they stopped by to visit — their own lives to live. And here I had at my feet a Toys R Us bonanza. So why not? Long as Mrs. Winterborne said okay. Which, sure enough, she did.

  That afternoon I packed two of each kind of soldier in a box, huffed it to the bus and train, puffed it onto the El, staggered it off the stop and up to my apartment. I hid it behind the always overflowin’ Laundromat bags while my grands went on with their schoolwork, sayin’ nothing till my son got home, he bein’ the only kid of mine carin’ about a roof right then — just got out the chop meat and began cookin’. But soon as he dragged his three hundred pounds inside I called everyone to the kitchen and said, “I got a surprise,” and set the box on the table. And bingo. All five grands screamed like they’d gotten a CARE package from Santa.

  “Where’d you get these soldier mens, Gramma?” they asked.

  “The lady I work for.”

  “Decent!” they squealed, rootin’ through the haul.

  “Cool!”

  Then my first-born spoke up. Mr. TV-brain. “Big deal,” he grunted. “What else did she give you?”

  “Nothing else!” I said, and he ambled on out to The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

  But was I wrong. Because next morning at work I found shoes. Pretty stilettos, like what Mrs. Winterborne’s Mummy’d worn when she threw her famous cocktail parties for the tycoons and the socialites. Every color in the rainbow, size 7-1/2. Ferragamo too, though I didn’t know that till my older daughter’s kids tracked her down in a club. She ran home, saw the labels, almost bust her dress right off her body. “You been going to Neiman’s, Mama?”

  “No, the lady I work for has more than she can handle.”

  “Well, with these,” she said, “a girl’d look like quality.” She slipped one on, and it fit with Cinderella perfectness.

  Every day after that, something new: teddy bears, music boxes, gold bracelets, snow globes, porcelain horses, Elvis forty-fives (nobody wanted ’em), a tiara and tutu, an easel, mink coats, a hi-fi, a three-carat engagement ring in an emerald setting, a pearl-embroidered wedding gown, a case of Dom Perignon, a hope chest of you-name-it. All the goods was spankin’ new, and with Mrs. Winterborne’s approval I’d cart a box of each home for my family. That’s right, family, because all three kids moved back home.

  I didn’t know about Mrs. Winterborne’s healing — ’cept for excavatin’ those Yves St. Laurent dresses from the back of her closet, a different one every day, and doin’ up her eyes with enough Estee Lauder to paint a billboard, and battin’ her baby blues more and more every time Master You came in the front hall, and, can’t forget this, relocatin’ the Cadillac of Cads to the garage — ’cept for all that, she didn’t do much different. But her dreams did wonders for my family’s healing. Over that summer, my kids stopped boosting, swore off married men, and joined Weight Watchers. They sold the dream stuff we didn’t like and — here’s the real miracle — turned most all the funds back to me. “You know what to do, Mama, you make the decisions.” So I moved us to a bigger apartment where the sink don’t drip, bought Pokemon cards, a bed for each grand, a washer and dryer, and an extra freezer. My daughters squirted on the Chanel No. 5 I brought home, my son pawned the Winslow Homer and Andy Warhol I brought home, my grands played with the Lionel train set I brought home, and I bucked everyone around town in the Thunderbird I brought home. “Gramma, we living large,” they told me, and I got to say, it felt good.

  At night I’d look at the photo of Verl I kept by my bed. It was a queen-sized bed now, with my Serta mattress and box spring and a plump down quilt, and I’d imagine him there, a big-boned twenty-six and happy as a king. Then one night I remembered what he said once when we’d been on a corner downtown, and I’d looked in a store window and saw this clingy, glittery $400 dress. Oh, how I’d wanted that dress, and I stopped right there and told him so. And he’d just looked at me. “Woman,” he’d said, “ all I want is a good dancer, not a showboat from Beverly Hills.” And he’d smiled his best smile and took my hand, and that was it, we’d just walked off, swingin’ arms, and I’d never given that dress a second thought. But there, in my sprawlin’ new bed, it occurred to me, and I thought, Maybe all this fine linen, all this milk and honey, it wouldn’t make him happy. Then I started wonderin’ if it really made me happy. I tried to talk it out with him, his voice tellin’ it straight to me in the darkness. But the grands liked their American Girls dolls, the kids liked their sirloin for dinner, and so eventually I rolled over, away from his voice, away from makin’ any conclusions.

  Then one night my kids sat me down. That day I’d brought home a bag of broken Waterford crystal. For about a week now, Mrs. Winterborne had been dreamin’ ruined things — Cadillacs without engines, tuxes with the sleeves torn off, fax machines full of bullet holes. “I’m getting somewhere,” she’d say, when I’d bring her the new drink of choice: tomato juice, hold the vodka. “Getting closer to releasing my anger.” Her wrinkles seemed to be easin’ up, and I’d say, “That’s a good thing, Mrs. Winterborne,” and I meant it. But them new dreams wasn’t nothing anyone could use. That night, all three kids shoved away my box of smushed Mickey Mouseketeer ears, and then after we put the grands to bed, my three bundles of joy ca
lled me back into the kitchen. I sat down, my son stood up.

  “Mama,” he said, “we know this stuff comes from the lady’s dreams and you don’t have any control over her. But we’ve been thinking. We would like to start getting more.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, stuff we want.”

  “BMWs,” one daughter said.

  “Six carat diamonds,” added the other.

  “Cash,” my son said. “You know, ching, ching?”

  “You mean, you want to place orders?” I asked.

  “Well,” my son said. “Sure.”

  Lord knows, I tried to raise them well. But with TV and window displays and catalogs and the way the world works, they think dreams can be dialed direct. I said, “I can’t ask her what to dream about.”

  “We don’t mean you should ask her,” he said. “We mean you should dream them for us.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re there every afternoon when that guy comes. Why can’t you just listen in?”

  “That’s snoopin’.”

  “It’s not snooping. It’s sharing the wealth.”

  “Mrs. Winterborne would fire me for snoopin’. Besides, I don’t know what I’d dream about. I never remember my dreams anyhow.”

  “We know that. So we made you a list.” He handed me four pages of brand names and model numbers. “And a new house, too.”

  “We forgot to add that,” one daughter said.

  I said, “Why don’t you do it? Sell the pinball machines from last week and start savin’ to pay for Master You yourselves.”

  “But why should we save, when you’ll do it for us now?”

  And they folded their arms and glared at me.

  That night, when I looked at Verl’s photo, I tried to conjure up a conversation. But no matter what I did, I couldn’t make his voice come in my head. I lay in my new bed all night, starin’ at my new wardrobe and new draperies. I didn’t know what to do, and I couldn’t hear the voice that would tell me.

  But then —

  The next afternoon, Mrs. Winterborne said, “It’s almost September, which means the Morgans’ party, and the Alexanders’, and, goodness, the whole social season. And Lilly, I think it’s finally time for me to begin going out again. I do, I think I might actually be ready. I’ve made an appointment for Gerard to stop in and do my nails, my color, and I can get out that scrumptious Valentino gown that hasn’t been right until now — and, oh dear — Lilly, would you mind taking back in those seams?” My head still in a worry, I hustled up to the sewing room, licked some thread through the needle, and started makin’ that fat dress go the way she’d been goin’, and get thin. But soon my needle got to driftin’ this way and that with a mind of its own, and I figured out that my night of no sleep had caught up with me. So I opened the window to get some air — and guess who were already settled down on the patio right below me. She must have been waiting at the door for him, ’cause he hadn’t even rung the bell.

  All of which meant I was in the right place at the right time and in a primed condition.

  “Look across the room,” Master You said as I was sittin’ back, floatin’ toward some Z’s. “Focus on one place, then turn the focus into a hole. A door to your dreams.” I followed his directions, turned the mantle into a spot of dark. Made the dark bigger. Made the dark a door. “Touch it with your mind,” he said. “Touch it with your heart. Touch it with your spirit. Now — go to sleep.”

  There was no clues. No fuzzy pictures of my own Mama and Daddy, no jump rope songs from my older sister, no sparkling rivers runnin’ through no turquoise mountains. What I mean is, I did no dreamin’ at all. Mrs. Winterborne had been quiet out back and then I was hearin’ her snorin’. That’s how I knew I’d been asleep.

  I sat up and rubbed my eyes. Not a single rose petal greeted me. Not even the puniest diamond. Well. So much for that. Guess you had to be with Master You for it to work, I shrugged, and reached back for my sewing.

  And then a throat cleared behind me. I whipped around.

  He was standin’ right there. Wearin’ his driver suit just like in the photo. Size extra large, but filled out in all the right places, just like he used to be.

  “How you doing?” Verl asked.

  “You can’t be here,” I said. “You’re dead.”

  “Not in your dreams, I’m not. Never have been.” He held out his arms. “Come over here, baby, and give this dead man a kiss.”

  I stood slow, my knees rattlin’. He looked as young as I remembered him, and when he fit his arms around my sides, those same muscles came up next to my body, that same Verl-y Verl smell. Oh, and it was good. I looked up at him.

  “Are you a dream,” I asked, “or a ghost?”

  “When you dream deep enough, makes no difference,” he said.

  I didn’t understand but as I gazed into his shiny brown eyes, with their long lashes and starburst inside the color, I didn’t care. This man was better than any dream.

  Then he took me by the hand and as he mumbled, “So this is what her place looks like. I always wondered,” he drew me on, peerin’ around, steppin’ ahead into the hall, till he slipped down the back stairs, gigglin’. I followed, couldn’t help myself, and at end of the stairs, in the kitchen, he scooted through and put his hand on the doorknob and opened it up and we snuck outside.

  Hedges hiding us from the patio, Verl cartwheeled on the grass. Then he came over and took me in his arms. We two-stepped past the garage, did a slow strand down to the tennis courts, cha-cha-ed across the lawn. There I was, Miss Follow-The-Rules — and I wasn’t even thinkin’ about it. I was just laughin’, same as I had on the street corner — same as I had in our home long ago, our babies watchin’ as their mama and papa danced to a made-up song of love. On the slate path near the pool he unzipped my dress. I stepped out of it, slapping his wrist away from my slip. He held that dress up two-handed like an Olympic winner holding a flag, and then he unlatched the pool gate.

  A blow-up raft floated in the water. Verl flung my dress to a chair, waltzed onto the raft, reached for me — and suddenly I wondered what the hell I was doin’.

  “Your boss is up the hill, woman,” he said. “And she is out cold. You’ve been a doormat too long. Live a little.”

  “What about when she wake — ”

  But then he touched my fingers, and I just went down the steps to the water and let him lift me up and place me on the raft beside him. Because there it was again. Not only that warm feeling, his big hands around my hips. But something I hadn’t felt for as long, something way down inside me. My spit, I thought. “Your spirit,” he called it.

  Above us the sky was the color of rubies, the sun hung round and low, and even though we was in the middle of a chlorinated pool, when I inhaled all I could smell was us. We lay on the raft, he flicked his foot, and we pushed off into the deep.

  The scream of a fire truck brought us to. That and the light from some flames in the distance. “Your boss must’ve dreamt fire,” Verl observed.

  Quick, I paddled to poolside, jumped on a chair, and peered over the fence. Sure enough, the garage was on fire — which meant the Cadillac was at that very moment undergoing complete incineration. “Damn right,” I said, “should of done it years ago,” but then I glanced to the tennis courts and spied two firemen, runnin’ over the lawn, and leadin’ the way, scare streakin’ over her face: Mrs. Winterborne.

  And there I was in my slip with an uninvited young man.

  “I’m goin’ to lose my job!” I said, grabbin’ my dress.

  Verl climbed off the raft. “She wouldn’t do that.”

  “She might.” I threw my clothes on.

  “So? You got me.”

  I looked at him. “I know, but I got our kids, too.”

  “But with me here, I could straighten them out.”

  I paused, and looked at him. “What are you sayin’?” I asked.

  “I am their daddy.”

  “You mean you
want to come home with me?”

  He nodded, big-eyed and sweet.

  I saw it for a minute — him walkin’ in the door, a big wonderful miracle, our kids risin’ from our new sofa, makin’ out his voice, recognizin’ his face, touchin’ each other in amazement, runnin’, runnin’, their arms out, screamin’ with joy, smiles on their faces just like I used to see.

  And boom, reality smacked me upside the head. “Yeah,” I said. “I can see it now. Here they order Pierre Cardin and I bring home a dead bus driver.”

  Verl shrugged. “So they’re gluttons. But we’d be together, baby, and that’s what counts.”

  I looked at him, that handsome face, his eyes bright. He was right, and I knew it. “Come on,” he said, flickin’ his head in the direction of the back entrance to the estate. He held out his fingers for me. I wanted to lift my hand toward his. I wanted it more than my own breath. But when you got a world where folks look to toys and shopping lists to give them meaning — where good raising can barely compete with the I wants and the Gimmes — where it never even crosses anyone’s mind to look for something deeper in life — you hesitate to invite a body to move himself back in.

  “Lilly? Lilly!” It was Mrs. Winterborne’s voice, calling out still, but getting closer.

  “She’s goin’ to find you!” I whispered.

  “So hide me.”

  I looked around fast. Not under a beach chair, that wouldn’t do. Not in the water. And then I thought, No, not even behind a bush till I can sneak him out and back home. I want him, I want him so bad, but I don’t want him nowhere inside this nasty world.

  “I got to send you back to the dream,” I said.

  We could hear Mrs. Winterborne near the gazebo — “Then look in the pool!” I had to act now. Quick, I remembered what Master You had said, and fast followed the instructions, and in an eyeblink a shadow the shape of a doorway opened before us. “Get in,” I whispered.

  “Aw, baby.”

  “Lilly!” Mrs. Winterborne called. “Say something, if you’re okay, if you’re out there — ”

  “Just for now,” I said.