Dreamland
Chapter 9
Dec. 13 What's been happening is so strange, like it isn't even Dec. 14 Last night something happened with Rogerson. He got so angry at me, and he Dec. 14 I don't even know where to start but This wasn't working. I closed my dream journal, sitting back across my pillows in the slant of streetlight coming through the window. Since the night of the winter banquet I'd tried again and again to put down in words or even say aloud just to myself what had happened with Rogerson. The excuses had come easily: to my parents,
Corinna, and Rina, I'd gotten bumped by a stray elbow as I made my way through the banquet crowd. The truth was harder. I was afraid of forgetting. It seemed too easy. Already life was back to normalI was lost in midterms and cheering practice and long, gray winter afternoons at Corinna's. But when Rogerson and I were at the pool house, inching ever closer to the inevitable, I'd feel his fingers slide up my arm, or curve around my neck and be lost in it, only to feel a sudden jolt as I remembered. His face, so angry, glaring at me. That split second as his hand moved toward me, too quickly for me to even comprehend what was about to happen. But then he'd kiss me harder, and I'd go under again. My mother, meanwhile, was almost giddy after her one conversation with Cass, who had still made it clear that she wanted to take things slowly: In two weeks she hadn't yet called back. My mother was hoping she would for Christmas Eve. This, alone, just the possibility, was making the holidays more bearable for all of us. Before Cass broke down under endless pleading letters and phone messages, my mother hadn't even begun to prepare for her favorite of holidays: no eggnog, no tinsel, not even a tree. The day after Cass called, I came home to find her baking snowman cookies and wrapping gifts, with Barbra Streisand singing “Silent Night” in the background. From what I could make of it, Cass hadn't explained much when she called. She said she missed us, and that she was happy. That she liked her job. That she hoped we could understand that this was what she wanted. Yale was not mentioned, and she didn't give my mother her phone number. “She needs time,” my father kept saying, each time the phone rang and my mother ran to it, her face falling the instant she didn't hear Cass's voice on the other end of the line. “She'll come around.”
“I just don't understand why she doesn't want to be in contact with us,” my mother kept saying. “She didn't even talk to Caitlin.” But the truth was, I wasn't ready to talk to Cass yet. I had a secret now, one I could keep from everyone else. But I worried that Cass, even over the phone, would recognize something different in my voice. She knew me too well. Life was going on. I didn't even have a scar, this time, to remind me of what happened. But sometimes,
when I glanced sideways at Rogerson in the car, or right before I fell asleep at night, I would have a sudden flash of his face again, how it had literally changed right before my eyes. And even as life settled back to normal, and we never discussed it, there was a part of me waiting, always braced and ready for him to do it again.
My mother, Boo, and I had our final photography class before the holidays the last Saturday before Christmas. We'd just finished developing what our instructor, Matthew, called our “people series,” in which we were supposed to use a portrait to convey our relationship to someone else. My mother had posed my father in front of the window in his study, with all his diplomas and various certificates behind him. He looked uncomfortable, his smiled forced, hands uneasily stuffed in his pockets, like an executive posing for the company newsletter. My mother, however, was just proud to have gotten his whole head in. Boo's picture was of her and Stewart. They'd put the camera on a table, set the timer, and then bent over, heads down, for a full minute, yanking themselves up just before the shutter clicked. The result was striking: the two of them, hair wildly sticking up, eyes sparkling and smiling hugely while the blood rushed out of their faces. It captured the closeness and eccentricity about them that I loved two people, so alike, caught in a crazy moment of their own making.
My picture was of Rogerson. He hadn't wanted me to shoot him, but since the winter banquet he'd been sweet and gentle with me, on his best behavior. I'd carried my camera around with me for over a week,
trying to catch him at the perfect time, and taken a few shots here and there, none of them outstanding. Then, one day, we were walking down the steps of Corinna's when I called out his name and he turned around. In the picture, Rogerson is not smiling. He is looking steadily at the camera, a trace of irritation on his face, his car keys dangling from one hand under his jacket sleeve. Behind him you can see all the bare winter trees against the light gray sky. The sun is barely bright, and farther down the driveway, at the very end, you can see Dave's yellow Lab, Mingus, sitting by the mailbox, looking out at the road. Roger-?son takes up most of the picture, the landscape behind him stark and cold as if there is some part of him that belongs there. Matthew, wearing a red wool sweater and now sporting sideburns, called my mother's picture “promising” (knowing to appreciate a subject with a full head) and Boo's “startling and emotional.” When he got to mine, he just stood there, looking down at it for a long time. Then he said, “It's clear you know this subject very well.” “Oh, yeah,” I said. For some reason, I always blushed like crazy when Matthew talked to me. He wasn't that much older than me maybe four yearsand had such a sweet, gentle disposition, always placing a hand on your shoulder or back to make a point. Boo said he was full of positive aura. “Well, he's my boyfriend.” Matthew nodded, his eyes still on the photograph. “It looks,” he said in a lower voice, just to me, “like you know him a little better than he'd like you to.” I looked back down at the picture, at Rogerson's eyes, remembering again how dark, almost black, they'd seemed the night he hit me.
“Yeah,” I said, keeping my eye on the picture. “I guess I do.” When class was over, I walked outside with my mother and Boo, who were headed off to do some final Christmas shopping. Rogerson was picking me up, but it was so cold in the parking lot, and sleeting, that I went back into the lobby of the Arts Center to wait. There was an Irish dancing class going on down the hallway, with music all jaunty and fast, and I stood listening and watching the Christmas lights strung over the front windows as they blinked on and off. Outside, the traffic was thick with last-?minute shoppers, angrily beeping at each other at the stoplight. I wondered what Cass was doing for Christmas: if she had put up lights, bought a tree, hung stockings over a mantel. “Caitlin?” I turned around to see Matthew, standing there in a lime-?green windbreaker, a backpack slung over his shoulder. “Hi,” I said. “You miss your ride or something?” he asked, glancing around the small lobby. Down the hall the Irish music stopped, suddenly, and there was a smattering of applause and laughter. “Nah,” I said. “He's just late.” He nodded, pulling up his windbreaker hood. “I can wait with you, if you want.” “Oh, no,” I said quickly, as the Irish music began again, followed by the sound of feet clomping across a hard floor. “I'm fine.” “Okay,” he said, putting one hand on the door and beginning to push it open. Then he stopped and said, “You have a real talent for faces, Caitlin. I've been very impressed with your work.” “Oh, thanks,” I said, embarrassed. “I just mess around, mostly.” “You're very good. That one we looked at today, of your boyfriend ... it's very moving. There's something striking there, and you caught it. Very well done.” He stood there, as if he knew something and was just waiting for me to confirm it. Instead, I realized I was blushing, clutching my folder with the picture in it so tightly I was bending the edges. “Thanks,” I said again. “Really.” He nodded, smiling, and reached into his windbreaker pocket to pull out a pair of red knit mittens.
“Have a good holiday.” “You, too,” I said, as Rogerson pulled in to the far side of the parking lot. “Merry Christmas, Matthew.” He smiled, then reached forward and took my hand, squeezing it tightly between the warm wool of his mittens. They felt scratchy yet comfortable, like the kind Cass and I both had as kids, clipped to our jackets so we wouldn't lose them. “Merry Christmas,” he said. There was something so nice about standing there with him, under all those blinking lights, his mittens closed tightly over my fingers. I felt safe with him, strangely, with this person I hardly knewsafer than I'd felt in a long time, as if some part of me that had been churned up and crazy had finally come to a stop. We couldn't have stood there like that for more than five seconds before Rogerson pulled up in front of the window and beeped the horn. “Well,” I said, and he dropped my hand. “There's my ride.” “Right,” Matthew said. “See you later.” We walked out the door together, and Rogerson leaned over to unlock my door, keeping his eyes on Matthew as I climbed inside. “Who's that?” he asked as I put my seat belt on. “He teaches my class,” I said. “Where've you been?” He just shook his head as he put the car in gear, gunning across the parking lot. “Dave said he could get us a good deal on this ounce, but the guy never showed. Waited for an hour.” “Oh, man,” I said. “You must have been really mad.” He didn't say anything, instead looking past me out my window to the sidewalk beside us. When I turned my head, I saw Matthew walking, his backpack over both shoulders and hands in his pockets, head ducked against the falling sleet. I was about to change the subject, but something felt strange to me, an unsteady feeling like before lightning strikes. Rogerson still had his eyes on Matthew, even as he disappeared around a corner, and I thought again of the picture I held in my lap, the irritation in his eyes, the stark trees, with barely a sun at all in the sky behind him. He didn't say a word the whole way home. But when we pulled up in front of my mailbox, he cut the engine and just sat there, looking straight ahead. I slid my fingers down to my door handle, telling myself he was just in a bad mood, not my fault. Dave had made him wait, and then he'd seenor had he?Matthew holding my hand. I could slip out, he'd go burn off steam, and then later everything would be okay. It would. If I could just “So,” he said suddenly, and I felt that crackling electricity again, a whooshing in my ears, “what's going on with you and that guy, Caitlin?” “Nothing,” I said, and my own voice sounded strange to me, like it was weightless, drifting up, up, and away. “I saw you.” The words were clipped and low. “Don't lie to me.” “I'm not lying,” I said quickly, and I hated the way I sounded, so weak and pleading. “I just wished him a Merry Christmas and he shook my hand...” “Don't lie to me!” he yelled, and in the small space of the car it was so loud, hurting my ears. “I'm not,” I whispered. “Rogerson, please. It's nothing.” And then I reached out and touched his arm. He was coiled and taut, a mousetrap set to spring at the slightest touch. As soon as my fingers brushed his sleeve, his fist was in motion, springing out at me and catching my jaw, knocking me backward so hard the door handle dug into my right side, twisting the skin. I felt like I couldn't shut my mouth, but even so I was still trying to explain. “Rogerson,” I said. “I” “Shut up, Caitlin,” he said. “But” He slapped me hard, across the other cheek, and it felt like part of my face was shattering into tiny pieces. I covered my face with my hands, stretching my fingers to cover the span from my forehead to my chin, as if without them I would fall apart altogether. “This isn't my fault,” he said in a low voice, as I tasted blood in my mouth. “It isn't, Caitlin. You know what you did.“ I didn't say anything. I didn't think I could take another blow. Instead, I closed my eyes and thought of trivia, again: questions and answers, the solidness and safety of facts. When the biggest secret about Rogerson was the limitless stretch of what he knew. What instrument do sailors use to measure time? I told myself to breathe. A chronometer. Where in Italy did pizza originate? My cheek was still burning, all the way up to my temple. Naples. I turned my head, resting my sore cheek against the cold glass of the window, and looked at my house. We had a fat plastic Santa standing by the front steps, white lights strung in the tree by the walk, and a row of tiny reindeer mounted on the roof of the garage. Upstairs, I could see my father sitting in his chair in the square of one window, reading the paper, just like he had in a million nights of my childhood. I closed my eyes, willing him somehow to look through the dark car windows and rush out and save me from Rogerson, and from myself. But he didn't. Instead, my father did what he always did: He folded the paper, picked up the remote, moving across channel after channel, waiting for me and Cassto come home. When I came inside twenty minutes later my mother was taking a casserole out of the oven. ”Oh, my goodness!“ she said, her eyes widening. She plunked it down on the counter and started across the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel decorated with tiny Christmas trees. ”What happened to you, Caitlin?“ ”I fell,“ I said quickly, even as she leaned in close, brushing my hair off my forehead. In Rogerson's rearview mirror, after we'd smoked a bowl, it hadn't looked that bad: just a bit red, puffy in places. ”Fell?“ she said. ”Jack, come in here!“ ”Mom, I'm fine.” My father appeared in the kitchen doorway, the line in his forehead already creased and deep. “There was just some ice by the mailbox and I slipped.” “Oh, I just knew it!” she said, pushing me down into a chair: The sore spot on my side hit against the armrest and I cringed, sucking in a breath. She didn't notice. “Jack, didn't I tell you walking back from Boo's I slipped there? Didn't I? Caitlin, was Rogerson with you?” “No,” I said, shaking my head. “He dropped me off and then when I started up the walk my feet just flew out from under me.” “Well,” my father said, his gaze steady on my face, “it looks like you hit right there on your jaw. Get that ice pack out of the freezer, Margaret, before the swelling gets any worse.” “I'm fine,” I said again. “It doesn't even hurt anymore.” It was strange that I didn't even consider telling the truth. I was just stoned and bleary, so cried out that all I could think of was curling up on my bed and going to sleep. Rogerson had lit the bowl without even a word, even as I sat there beside him, my ears ringing, and after a few hits everything just seemed to fade out. Increasingly, that was the way the pot worked with me lately. After a couple of hits, whatever had been bothering me drifted to arm's length, like the end of a song on the radio you can just barely hear, just fading away. And then he pulled me close to him, told me he loved me and kissed me hard and urgently, his hand curling around the back of my neck, the way he knew I liked it. As if somehow, that way, he could give back what he'd taken from me. And I let him. Now, I closed my eyes as my father pressed the ice pack against my face, making it sting as the coolness seeped in slowly. I told myself i had too many secrets already: the drugs, cigarettes, my downward cheerleading spiral. If I let one out, the rest would tumble behind it, out of my control, like wild horses let loose to stampede. It was funny. What I'd loved most about Rogerson was that he took me to a place so far from anywhere Cass had been. And now, him hitting me was the same thing. Cass wouldn't have taken up with Rogerson, just like she never would have stayed with anyone who hurt her. But I wasn't Cass, not even close. I was weaker. And I'd keep this secret before I'd prove that again. “You need to keep this there until the swelling goes down,” my father said now, taking my hand and pressing it against the ice pack. “Okay?” “It's just so red,” my mother said in a worried voice. “You must have hit so hard.” “Yeah,” I told her, averting my eyes. “I did.” My father was putting on his jacket. “I'm going to go put some salt on the walk,” he said to my mother. “I think we've got some left over from last year out in the shed.” “Yes, yes, it's behind the potting soil,” she said, following him down the stairs. “And Jack, make sure you check the whole spot, won't you? I'd hate to see anyone else get hurt.” I moved the ice pack to my cheek. I could still taste blood in my mouth. “Now, Caitlin,” my mother said as she came back up the stairs, the door clicking shut behind my father. “I'm going to run a hot bath for you. Won't that be nice? And when you're done, I'll bring dinner to your room so you can eat in bed, and rest. Okay?” “Mom, you don't have to” “Hush. Go get undressed and I'll let you know when it's ready.” She started out of the kitchen, then stopped and put her hand on my shoulder, bending down to kiss me gently on the forehead. She smelled like vanilla and Joy perfume, and suddenly I felt like I might start crying again. “You really scared me, Caitlin,” she said, smiling as she brushed her fingers through my hair. “I don't know what I would do if something happened to you.” I could tell her, I told myself. I could tell her right now and fix this. I could say that he hits me and I hate cheerleading and I miss Cass but I know why she left and I wish I could make everything better but I can't, I can't, I can't even tell you where it hurts, not now. “Don't worry,” I said instead, as she ruffled my hair and walked away, my mother, to do what she did best, to take care of me. “I'm fine.” When I went to my room to change into my bathrobe, my father was still outside, scattering salt by hand down the length of our walk. When he reached the front steps he went back, across the grass, to the spot by the mailbox where I'd told him I'd fallen, and scattered another handful there. Then, as I watched, he spent a good five minutes scraping his foot back and forth across the pavement, searching for slick spots, as if that was all it would take to keep us safe.
When my mother tucked me in that night, I was half asleep, my face sore, my belly full of chicken-?broccoli casserole. She kissed my cheek carefully, not wanting to hurt me, then walked to my doorway and stood there in silhouette, her hand curled over the doorknob. “Good night, honey,” she said. “I'll see you in dreamland.” I was too tired to answer her. That night, I didn't find my mother in my dreams. But for the first time since she'd left, I saw Cass.
The dream itself was long and complicated. Eliza Drake was there, and Corinna, and Mrs. Garver, my fourth grade teacher. We were in the Lakeview Mall, searching for something having to do with aluminum, running to the far end, near the Sears store. I was passing an empty storefront, just glass and empty inside, when I saw Cass. She was standing a few feet away, on the other side, but when I stopped she came closer. “Cass?” I said, and Mrs. Garver was yelling at me to come on, hurry up, now, now. She smiled at me, cocking her head to the side. She was wearing this bright red sweater and I remember wondering if she was stuck in there, trapped somehow. “Good luck,” she said to me, raising one hand and pressing her palm against the glass separating us. As if she could see the future, hers and mine, everything. “Wait,” I said, “Cass” “Go,” she said, as Mrs. Garver grabbed my arm, yanking me away. “Go ahead, Caitlin. Go.” “Cass” I said again, but I was already running, looking back to find her, but now all the storefronts were empty glass, and I knew I could never find her, even if I tried. When I woke up I was sweating and my jaw ached, a throbbing pain that seemed to match my heartbeat. I sat up in bed and turned on the light: It was only 10:30. I could hear the TV on in the living room as my father watched the early news, and next door Boo's kitchen light was on and she was sitting at the table, reading a book. I lay back against my pillows, still seeing Cass in that red sweater, her hand pressed against the glass. It was just a dream, I told myself. That's all. When I pulled my dream journal from under the bed and flipped to a blank page, I didn't know yet what I would write. I put a hand on my aching cheek and just began: Dec. 20 Dear Cass, I don't know if you'll ever read this. Maybe I won't want you to. But something's happening to me and you're the only one I can tell. I had this dream about you tonight and it scared me into doing this: In the dream, I lost you for good. Lately I've been feeling like I'm losing myself, too. This is why. My boyfriend, Rogerson, hit me tonight. It wasn't the first time. I know you can't believe I'd let this happen: I can't either. But it's more confusing than you'd think. I love him. That sounds so weak and pitiful, but lately, it's been enough for me to forgive anything. But after tonight, I'm not so sure. He really hurt me, Cass. It still hurts now....