Awake and Dreaming (14 page)

S
HARON CALLED HER
at four. They went for a walk to Theo's school, along pretty streets lined with small wooden houses. Down every street was a glimpse of the sea.

The school was only six blocks away. It was called St. Bridget's. “Your mother and I both went here,” said Sharon. “When I registered you, I asked about my old teachers, but they've all retired. I loved this school. The nuns were so patient with us, and I always felt so secure.”

“Did Rae like it?” asked Theo.

Sharon looked uncomfortable. “Mary Rae never liked any school. She was always getting into trouble and the kids were always talking about her. It was embarrassing to be her sister.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Oh, skipping classes and cheeking the teachers and smoking in the washrooms.”

Theo almost smiled; that sounded like Rae.

“I'll show you our old house now,” said Sharon. They walked a few blocks in the other direction until Sharon stopped in front of a blue cottage with forsythia blooming beside its front door.

“It looks much nicer now than when we rented it. It was brown then. A couple owns it—they've done a great job of renovating it.” She gazed at the little house sadly. “What a lot happened here! You were born, and Dad and Ma both died. I remember the awful night Rae told them she was pregnant. She …” But then she looked at Theo and blushed.

“What?” prompted Theo.

“Nothing,” sighed Sharon. “There's no point wishing the past was different. It's all water under the bridge, as Ma used to say.”

Theo stared at the house, trying to remember living here and playing in its tiny yard. It was all a blank. This house seemed much more like a dream than the Kaldors' house.

“S
EVEN-THIRTY
, time to get up!” called Sharon. Theo put on the red sweater and jeans Ms. Sunter had given her and sat down for breakfast.

Sharon looked worried. “I think you should wear a skirt, Theo. The other girls will be wearing tunics. You'll have a uniform too, but I can't get it until Saturday.”

Theo went back to her room. The only skirt she could find was a thin cotton one stained with ketchup down one side. It was too long and its bright orange pattern clashed with the red sweater.

“Haven't you got anything nicer than that?” asked Sharon.

“This is my only skirt.”

“Really? Mary Rae didn't dress you very well. Oh, I'm sorry, Theo, I didn't mean to criticize your mother. But why don't you have more clothes?”

“Because we were always broke,” said Theo through a mouthful of cereal.

“Broke? But Mary Rae told me she had a good job!”

“She's a waitress. Before that she worked in a factory
and a car wash. And sometimes we lived on welfare, especially when I was little.”

“Welfare!” Sharon looked horrified. “But why didn't she tell us? We could have helped her, or she could have come home and lived with us.”

“I don't know why,” said Theo.

“If only she'd gone back to school. You can't get much of a job when you only have grade ten. I thought she was doing all right, though. She said on the phone she'd send money for you every week!”

Sharon looked dismayed. Then she sighed and put on the resigned, everything-will-be-all-right look Theo was getting used to. “Well, there's nothing we can do about it. At least
I'm
not broke. I don't make much money, but I can afford to get you some decent clothes. I'll nip out to Eaton's at noon and pick you up a skirt you can wear for the rest of the week. And when we buy your uniform on Saturday we'll get you some other clothes too.”

“Thank you,” said Theo wearily. She was tired of adults fussing about her clothes.

S
HARON TOOK THEO
to the school office, kissed her goodbye, and left her. Theo once again followed a principal down the hall to a classroom. Counting the dream, this was the third time this year she'd started a new school.

She tried to armour herself with the warmth of the dream school to push out the chilly memories of the real ones. To her surprise, it worked. When the friendly kids smiled at her, she smiled back, pretending they were Elise
and Jasmin. When some of the girls gave sneering looks at the orange skirt, she pretended it was one of the new skirts Mum had bought for her. She met their eyes steadily until they turned away.

The teacher was a tired-looking woman called Mrs. Corelli. She smiled at Theo the way teachers always smiled at new kids and suggested she sit beside a girl called Skye.

Skye immediately began asking questions. When she found out where Theo lived, she clapped her hands. “That's only a few blocks away from
my
house!”

Skye told Theo she and her mother had moved to Victoria last fall. “We used to live up island, in the country near Duncan. I really miss it. We had a donkey and chickens and it was near a lake. But then my mum left my dad to live with Carol.”

Skye's narrow face was dominated by thick glasses held together on one side with a Band-aid. “Will you be my best friend, Theo?” she asked at recess. “I had a best friend in Duncan, but I don't have one here yet.”

Theo didn't answer. Skye was boring—all she talked about was her former home. She wasn't special, like Anna and Lisbeth. But when she pressed Theo for an answer, Theo shrugged and said, “I don't care.” Skye's face filled with delight and she gave Theo her favourite eraser to keep.

The two of them ate their lunch together, but Theo had to go to after-school day care by herself. She walked to the classroom Mrs. Corelli had directed her to. “Day care” sounded like something for little kids.

An enthusiastic pair of young people greeted her—Meran and Jordan. They introduced Theo to a group of about fifteen children of various ages. The room was filled with books, magazines, games, paints and toys. There was even a television set. “You can do whatever you want,” said Meran. “If the weather's nice we go outside and play soccer or something, but one of us is always inside, too.”

Theo sank into a bean-bag chair in front of the TV. Another first day of school was over. It hadn't been that bad this time—just dull. Tears pricked her eyelids as she remembered her joyful first day at the dream school, where she'd had two sisters and a brother. But the puppet Theo, the one who was going through all the motions of living with Sharon, forced the tears back.

T
HAT EVENING
in bed her real self won and let out her tears. She sobbed more and more loudly, hoping the TV noise would keep Sharon from hearing.

But then Sharon was at her side. “Theo! Oh, honey, don't cry! Do you miss your mother?”

She pulled Theo into her arms. “It's all right. I'll take good care of you, and Mary Rae will come and visit soon, I'm sure.”

Theo sank into Sharon's soft front and cried even more, pretending she was in Laura's—
Mum's
—arms instead.

14

L
ife with Sharon was predictable and safe. Each weekday clicked by in slots as neat as the ones on the schedule. On Saturday mornings the puppet Theo went to the supermarket with Sharon and helped carry in bags of food when they got back. On Saturday afternoons Sharon dropped her off at Skye's house, or sometimes she took both of them to a movie.

Sharon often went out with her best friend, Mandy, on Friday or Saturday night; then she got Tara, the teenaged girl down the hall, to look after Theo. Tara was sulky because she didn't have a boyfriend. “If I did, I wouldn't be stuck here babysitting,” she complained. She slumped in front of the TV eating chips while Theo washed the dishes and put herself to bed.

Sharon took Theo to the Catholic cathedral every Sunday. Theo sat quietly, gazing at the green and gold and white ceiling and the jewel-like windows. A group with a flute and a guitar led the congregation in lively songs. “I Will Sing!” bellowed Sharon with the rest.

Theo wouldn't sing and she stayed in her pew when the priest invited all the children up to the altar. “I just want to watch,” she said when Sharon tried to encourage her to take part. It was peaceful to sit passively and
not have to do anything.

“Wait until you're used to it, then,” was her aunt's comfortable reply.

Often Sharon took her bowling on Sunday afternoons. She let Theo try it, but she didn't like the heavy ball and the cracking sound it made when she dropped it too hard. She would sit with a soft drink and try to pay enough attention to cheer for Sharon's team when they won.

Sometimes she would lean against her aunt as they watched TV. Her body was soft and smelled of soap. Theo became as addicted to TV as Sharon. They talked about their favourite characters as if they were real people.

“I hope I'm not a bad influence on you,” said Sharon. “Mary Rae told me that you read all the time, but I haven't seen you open up a book.”

“I don't like reading any more,” said Theo. It was true. Reading was dangerous; it made her yearn for things she couldn't have. The stories that unfolded on the screen were not real, like the ones in books; they didn't draw her in but were at a safe distance in their flickering world.

She didn't pretend any more, either; the puppet self that went through the motions of each day was too dull to make things up. She was simply
here,
doing what she was told in school, responding to other people when they talked to her. She noticed numbly that the kids in school accepted her and that Mrs. Corelli praised her for her work, but she didn't care. “You're a quiet one, aren't you?” Sharon told her. “Never mind. I was shy, too, when I was young. I make up for it now!”

Sharon told Theo how she longed to travel, to go to the places depicted in the posters on the walls. “I've never even been out of B.C., but Mandy and I are saving up to go to Europe.” She bought lottery tickets every week, even though she'd never won anything.

Rae called twice. Theo held the phone a little away from her ear as her mother went on and on about Cal—the parties they'd been to, the trip they'd taken to Cultus Lake. She complained as usual about her boss and customers. She never said anything about coming to visit. At the end her voice became strained as she asked Theo how she was. “Good,” said the puppet Theo.

Then Sharon talked to her for a few minutes. The second time, she asked Rae about sending money and Theo could hear her mother's angry excuses. After Rae hung up, Theo and Sharon paced the apartment separately for a few minutes. Then they gathered together on the couch, as if in mutual agreement to forget about Rae.

The puppet Theo didn't mind that her aunt treated her like a much younger child. Sharon even washed her hair and reminded her to brush her teeth every night. She never let Theo go anywhere alone—not even to Skye's house, or to school, or to play with Skye in Beacon Hill Park. “A little boy disappeared in Victoria a few years ago,” she shuddered. “You can't be too careful.”

She was like a nanny in an English book—but not a magic nanny like Mary Poppins. The puppet Theo tried not to think about magic; nothing would ever be magical again.

E
VERY NIGHT
, however, the real Theo dreamt about the Kaldors. Now she didn't want to dream about them, because these dreams weren't the same. They were like ordinary dreams—fragmented and patchy, sliding in and out of details; not like the long, marvellous dream she'd had on the ferry which had seemed so real and consistent. Her dreams still brought back the Kaldors, however—she could hear Lisbeth's giggle or Bingo's bark. They made her so unbearably homesick for the family, she tried to think of boring things before she went to sleep to keep the dreams away. It didn't work. Every night the real Theo woke up in tears that she was living with Sharon and not with the family she had once belonged to.

After a month with Sharon the real Theo began to come back in the daytime, too. The pleasant but dull sameness of her new life started to irk her. “This program is boring,” she said one evening, as she and Sharon watched their usual Tuesday night sitcom.

Sharon looked surprised. “Do you think so? Go and do something else, then, if you're bored.”

But there was nothing else to do. Theo strode around the small apartment and looked out the window. The trees across the street were a froth of pink blossoms and the ground beneath them blazed with crocuses. Spring was here—again!

Two boys bicycled towards the water. Theo remembered riding a bike with the family—puffing at the tops of hills, then coasting down with the wind in her face.

She turned around to Sharon. “Can I have a bike?”

“A bike?” Sharon looked apologetic. “Oh, hon, bikes are expensive.”

“You could get me a secondhand one,” said Theo. “Skye's mum got her one at the police sale.”

“I'm sorry, Theo, but I'd worry too much about you if you had a bike. There's a lot of traffic around here and it gets much worse in the summer with all the tourists. What if you had an accident?”

“Could you borrow Skye's mum's bike and come with me?” Theo tried.

Sharon laughed. “Me on a bike? No, thanks—I'd rather drive. What's got into you tonight? Spring fever? Are you feeling okay?”

“Uh huh,” muttered Theo. She went back to the window and Sharon went back to her program.

If only she could even go out for a walk! She couldn't help thinking of the walks the Kaldors took on Sundays along Dallas Road. The cemetery wasn't very far from here. She could walk there easily …

Seeing the cemetery would make her miss the family even more. But all at once Theo gave up trying not to think of them. Her puppet self went away for good. A surge of excitement filled the real Theo as she sat down beside Sharon again. She ignored the program and began to make a plan.

A
FEW DAYS LATER
Sharon got a terrible cold. Theo felt sorry for her as she lay on the couch on Saturday morning, surrounded by glasses of juice and wadded-up
tissues. Sharon being sick, however, made Theo's plan much easier.