Dorothea Dreams (Heirloom Books) (37 page)

He did not want to die; far from it. But with his heightened sense of the nearness of death he found himself always on the alert for its approach. He had come too close to Dorothea to settle now for that distraction between them.

Too bad, though, that he would miss the unveiling in the desert. He wondered what Claire’s art-people would see, feel, and say when they stood before the wall. They would not stand unmoved, he was certain of that. Whatever they saw, it would not be exactly what he had seen, that original magnificence shared only by himself, angry Roberto who had changed it, and Dorothea. He took a degree of satisfaction from this, and was glad Dorothea could not read his mind and see it there. Her absorption in what she was doing now gave her sun-browned, fine-boned face a stillness and focus that intrigued him. She had taken out a felt-tipped pen and was doodling on her napkin.

He said, “What have you drawn? It looks like a figure from some Renaissance fresco.”

She turned the napkin and showed him a sketch of a woman, draped in the style of classical artistic convention, bent under a vessel she carried on her shoulder.

“She’s a statuette,” Dorothea said. “A bronze figure, perhaps eight inches high, with ink in that bowl she’s shouldering. This is the inkwell I used in my dream, when I wrote the judge’s letter.”

Something about the drawing bothered Ricky. “Well-used, by the look of it. Did you mean for this bit of her robe to be broken off like that?”

“That’s how it was in the dream,” she said, leaning closer and twisting her neck to see better. “Lord, when I think of the detail work I put into those dreams! Anything for verisimilitude.”

“May I keep this?” he said.

“Of course,” she answered, low-voiced. “I wish I had something better to give you.”

He folded the napkin carefully and tucked it into his pocket.

“Poor ghost,” she murmured. “Who was haunting who, anyway? If he actually made the connection at all — that I am a later version of him — it must have been absolutely terrifying for him. Not that I was particularly flattered, myself. He was short, did I tell you that? And a little scruffy-looking, too, with a five o’clock shadow. I was confirmed in my long-held opinion that the last thing I’d ever want to be is a man. No offense.”

“None taken,” he said. “For my part, I can’t say I’ve ever been attracted by the thought of being a woman. But I can see the point of having to be each sex, in various lifetimes, so that nothing vital to the species’ experience is omitted from one’s curriculum.”

“What about animals? Coming back as members of other species?”

“No,” he said gravely. “Can’t see you as a llama. There wouldn’t be enough to learn, I should think, not for the kinds of situations we human beings get into. What would the experience of even the wisest Andean llama have had to offer you on the subject of Roberto and his conflict with the law? Precious little, don’t you think?”

“Assuming,” she said, “that the major purpose of coming back —”

“If we do come back.”

“— and of remembering —”

“If we do remember.”

“— is educational.”

“Can’t think of any other point to it, off-hand.”

“No, that makes sense to me too. Although I still have moments,” she said, leaning nearer so that the booted and sprawling lunchers in the next booth couldn’t hear, “when I think we must both be crazy.”

And I still have moments when I know it’s all a drama we dreamed up between us to give me an excuse to stay with you, and to try to ease my fear, he thought. Steam dawdled over the cup in front of him. He forced himself to speak lightly.

“No, no, my dear; crazy would have been you recognizing me as Danton himself, or beastly little Robespierre, and maybe as Lancelot to your Guinevere — a whole convoy of exalted lives lived together from the Stone Age onward.”

“Don’t be greedy. We’ve done all right here. Shhh.” She reached over to take his hand. He saw that on the back of hers, under the skin, were a few of the age marks that sprinkled his own hands.

“We did,” he said. “Better than all right, actually. So don’t cry, Dorothea.” He dug in his pockets for a clean handkerchief to offer.

“Oh, shut up, will you,” she grumbled, dabbing quickly at her eyes with her shirt cuff. “People are allowed to cry in airports.” But she accepted the handkerchief, and gave her nose an emphatic blow. One of the men in the next booth was staring at them.

Ricky said, “Was that my plane they just announced? I never can hear what they say over those damned bleating speakers.”

“I’ll go find out,” she said, rising. “You get the bill, all right?”

Paying the bill, he watched her from the register desk. She leaned into her forearm beside the wall phone outside on the concourse, her face hidden from him.

Can’t stand much more of this, he thought.

“That was the first gate announcement,” she said, meeting him outside the coffee shop door. “B-Eight.”

“Let’s go, then,” he said. “I hate hanging about.”

She walked close enough to brush against him, and he kept the nylon bag slung on that side, between them, warding her off. His medicine was only effective against certain kinds of pain.

At the security counter he had to give up the bag for inspection. He turned toward her, unable to speak. She could go on with him to the gate if she wished to. He hoped she would, he prayed she wouldn’t.

She stepped against him, her arms lightly encircling, and he stooped to embrace her. He smelled a fragrance in her hair, something floral — not a sweet perfume but a green and tangy scent like cut stems.

This brought a flash of memory: his sister Margaret, small and solemn, snipping roses, as she had often seen her mother do, for a play party. Oh, she had caught it later on when the poultry shears was missed from the kitchen and the rosebush found butchered. Lord, how many years ago? More memories pressed, a deep stream patiently crowding for entry. Why, yes, he thought, his heart oddly lightened, but not just yet.

Dorothea’s lips brushed a kiss onto the corner of his mouth and she stepped away and said intensely, “Next time, if there is a next time, I’ll know you right away, damn it. We’ll do a whole set together, how’s that?”

We just have, he thought, but I’m game for another if you are. He said, “That’s the nicest
folie-à-deux
anyone’s ever proposed to me. You’re on.”

And then they parted and he watched her walk quickly away.

Later, on the plane, he grew tired of the book he had bought for the journey, and hunting about his pockets for something to use for a bookmark he found the napkin Dorothea had drawn on. He flattened the paper out and studied the drawing, struck again by that peculiar detail of the broken bit of projecting drapery. Imagine conceiving of the object complete with damage like that! What a mind! She should be writing novels, she’d do better than the poor sod whose book lay neglected in his lap.

The figurine is damaged, he thought with a blinding flash of memory, just as it was when I saw it myself, years ago now, in the museum of a French town somewhere near St. Vallien.

Dorothea has never laid eyes on that inkwell. She’s never been to France, and that tiny place didn’t even have a catalog of its collection, let alone photographic postcards. She can’t have seen it.

Except in her dreams. Except through the eyes of the judge, scratching away with pen and paper a century and a half ago.

“Her dreams,” he whispered.

The stewardess was heading his way, all smiling concern. Hastily he folded the napkin and slid it into the nylon flight bag at his feet. He pretended to be reading his book, and after hovering a moment above his stubbornly lowered head the stewardess passed on to a tanned gangster in sunglasses behind him.

“Christ Jesus,” Ricky breathed, seeing nothing on the page in front of him. His eyes watered and his hands shook, but beneath his agitation he felt calm and
amused
— as if he had always known that the ghost had been real.

“But it’s so early,” Claire said blearily.

Dorothea gulped her coffee. “I know. I just want a last, quiet look at it before the locusts descend.” Today the photographers and reporters, lined up with alarming efficiency by Claire, were coming to see the wall. Something — the secrecy — was going to be officially over. Dorothea had wakened with a taut, dark feeling in her chest, like dread.

“They’re not locusts,” Claire said. “They’re some of the best art photographers and journalists in the business. If you’ve changed your mind, you should have told me before.”

Snappy; oh dear. Poor Claire. She had always hated early rising, and here she had pulled out all the stops professionally to round up these people. Her reputation was on the line.

“I haven’t changed my mind,” Dorothea said. “I’m just a bit sensitive, I guess. Put it down to leftover irritation with that Ellie Stern person and her plan to write a book about it all. God almighty! I have a feeling George put her up to it. Did you know he’s been seeing her? Looking for another way to glom onto me, I think. Well, they deserve each other. Anyway, you can blame her if I’m a little edgy, all right? It doesn’t mean I’m going to mess up this — event.”

“I’d like to come with you,” Claire said. “The others can find their way without me.”

“But you’re not even dressed!”

“Give me five minutes. Please, Mom. I’d like to.”

Dorothea had wanted to see the wall by herself, but what the hell. She let Brillo out of the back room. He frisked in the arroyo, waiting with her. The sun was just up, and the air was crisp.

Claire came. They walked.

“This must be the first time I’ve ever come down here without tools or anything in my hands,” Dorothea said.

Claire, hunching along with her hands jammed in the pockets of her windbreaker, said, “It’s funny to think of you trotting out here almost every day, all by yourself, making that thing, and nobody knowing. So much of women’s art is like that — nobody knows, nobody notices. That’s why it’s so crucial to have these people come today. A couple of them are really important in the women’s press.”

“I know,” Dorothea said, not wanting to go into all that again.

“Have you thought some more about those foundation women?”

Several calls had come, once the word was out, from a feminist culture foundation. They were all excited about building a museum of women’s monumental art around the wall.

Something of the sort was bound to happen, she supposed. One way or another people would come and stare and talk nonsense about the wall and expect her to talk nonsense too, but more artistically. Someone would want a soft-drink concession, and there’d be toilets set up and white stones laid to mark the trail to the wall for those mad or devoted enough to want to walk. The wall would acquire its satellite sculptures of human use: the drinking fountain, the curved plastic sun-shelter for viewers by the busload, the garbage cans, the guardhouse.

This is my land, she thought. I could prevent all that, at least until I myself was dead — and maybe after, too.

“I am thinking about it,” she said.

“It’s a great idea. The work needs to be seen by lots and lots of people. I think it’s a masterpiece.”

“You do?” Dorothea glowed with pleasure, feeling foolish for being so easily flattered. But what the hell, her own daughter.

“Didn’t I tell you that?” Claire, wiry and taller than her mother, bounced along on the balls of her feet, speaking eagerly. “I do. I think it’s wonderful, and important, and you could do such fantastic things with it — think what it would mean if you let the foundation build here. They could have exhibition space and maybe someday studios and living quarters for artists, and courses to help women artists get along in the world, and you could funnel through all kinds of programming for poor women and women of color and their kids to get them involved. After all, you have these big Spanish and Indian populations here. If you left the land to the foundation, they’d never have to worry about getting kicked off —”

“Thanks,” Dorothea said dryly, “for planning the rest of my life. It sounds a little super-public for my tastes.”

“You still won’t accept it, will you?” Claire said with exasperation. “Even while you use your influence on behalf of those grubby Mexican kids, you deny that you have any and —”