Yes, Alma. I’m sure we have.
I press my lips together. The whiskey is starting to mellow me. I take a deep breath. “I tried to touch him,” I say, still looking out. “He hit me.”
Alma nods, but does not reply.
I face her. “He won’t run away, will he?”
“So far he has not. ?No?”
“No.” I take the last swallow of my drink. “Well,” I say. “I’m all out of answers. Time to call my husband.”
Chapter 16
But I don’t get the opportunity to call Lars, because the dream does end at last.
“Well, that one was a doozy,” I tell Aslan, who yawns, showing off his cracked, yellowed teeth. He stands, executes a full-on kitty stretch, and then resettles himself on my bed. You’re long and lean, I always tell him—a yellow-striped fighting machine. It’s a joke between us, because he is anything but a long, lean fighting machine. My aging, chunky Aslan couldn’t so much as catch a fly.
So here I am, where it’s nice and quiet and I have private jokes with my cat. Back in the genuine, real world.
I smile to myself, thinking that it doesn’t seem bad here at all.
You’re in a good mood,” Frieda observes, a few hours later. I am humming as I dust the back upper shelves at the shop. She’s at the counter, working on inventory.
“I haven’t been sleeping well—but I guess I finally got enough sleep last night.” The idea amuses me; in truth, I am sure I did not sleep well at all. Anyone who dreams the kind of madness that I do is clearly not sleeping well. This train of thought causes me to break into peals of laughter. Frieda smiles, shakes her head, and returns to her books.
We have, at my suggestion, installed a phonograph, one that I purchased in a pawnshop on South Broadway. We both brought stacks of records from home, and now we have soft background music playing every day. At the moment, it’s an old Ella Fitzgerald tune, about how nice it would be if falling in love was one’s sole occupation.
I cock my head as I dust, listening to the lyrics. Sounds good in a song, Ella, I think—but honestly, in real life, it all depends on the circumstances, doesn’t it?
I turn my gaze to Frieda. Next to her on the counter, propped on a wooden display rack, is the copy of Ship of Fools that I wanted to sell to the woman who came in the shop the other day. The one with the autistic daughter. In careful letters, I’ve printed a small sign and placed it in front of the book: RECOMMENDED! BEST SELLER!
Katherine Anne Porter, the short story writer and journalist, wrote that book. I read it earlier this year. In my view, the narration, like the ship itself, seemed rather adrift at times—but I think that was intentional, and it certainly didn’t dilute the impact of the characters’ struggles. Rather, Porter did an excellent job of exploring how people in a confined space can come to know more about each other than they might wish.
There’s a scene in Ship of Fools in which one of the characters says something like, “Please do not tell me about yourself; I will not listen. I do not want to know you; I will not know you.” Those aren’t the exact words, but it was something like that. It makes me think of my imaginary family. The family who, in my dream life, I’m getting to know, whether I want to or not.
From what I have heard, at some point in the 1930s Katherine Anne Porter was on a ship similar to the one she portrays in the novel; apparently she spoke little to the other passengers, but took copious notes. She let the notes lie dormant for years before writing Ship of Fools. I have long admired Porter’s work. Perhaps I feel a kinship with her because she lived in Denver for a time. In fact, I’ve heard that she almost died here in 1918, the year of the Spanish flu pandemic.
I consider this. If Porter had died in 1918—why then, she would not have written Ship of Fools. In that case, the woman would not have come into my shop, seeking it. I would not have had the rather embarrassing opportunity to ask her what ailed her child. And thus I would not have learned—at least not in this way—what clearly ails my own child in my dream life.
How odd—events turn so easily on a dime, don’t they? In much the same way, if Lars and I had stayed on the telephone a few moments longer that night—if I had heard him having his heart attack, if I had been his savior—why then, none of this right now would be happening. Nothing in this life would be real. Instead, the life I have with him and the children would be my reality.
I shake my head and climb down the stepladder. I walk over to the counter and pick up the newspaper, turning to the sports section. I need to find out what happened last night in the final game of the World Series. “Darn it—they lost!” I exclaim.
Frieda looks up. “Who lost?”
“The Giants. They lost the series in game seven. Now what am I going to write for Greg?”
She shakes her head. “What are you talking about?”
“Never mind.” I give her a scowl and turn toward the door. I need some fresh air.
I go outside to sweep the front steps. It’s a beautiful fall day, and I’m glad to be enjoying it, back here in the real world. I don’t know why the dreams take place in the future; now that Michael has been so accommodating as to give me dates, I can see that it’s just a few months from now. It doesn’t make any sense. But then again, it’s not real, so why should it make sense?
“Want to go out to dinner tonight?” I ask Frieda when I come back inside.
“What for?”
I shrug. “No reason. We just haven’t had a ‘date’ in a long time, sister.”
Frieda and I have been calling each other “sister” for most of our lives. That is where the name of our store comes from, of course—it was a natural choice for the store name, something we came up with simultaneously when we first discussed opening a bookstore together. Our use of the expression started in high school, when we wished we were real sisters. She was the oldest of four and the only girl in her family; I was an only child who, but for my mother’s loss of those three baby boys, would have grown up with the same family structure. What each of us wanted most in her childhood was a sister.