Overheard in a Dream (14 page)

Conor looked up, looked right at James. “Here is terria.” There was a certainty to his speech that James hadn’t heard before and with it a slight urgency, as if he could perceive that James didn’t understand what the word meant and that this worried him. It also gave Conor’s words a definite sense of communication.

“Here is terria,” Conor said again. He patted the upsidedown road sheet. “
Terria
. Yes, that’s terria. Where’s the man?”

“Do you mean the toy man? That you were playing with last time?” James asked. “He will be in with the other Lego toys. There. In the basket.”

Conor’s shoulders sagged in such a clear gesture of defeat that James knew he hadn’t made the right guess. He felt a bit defeated himself because despite Conor’s so obviously wanting to tell him something, he just couldn’t get it.

Giving up, Conor rose and left the white plastic mat on the floor. The cat clutched to his chest, he wandered towards the large windows. Until this point, he’d always ignored them. Now he stopped and looked out. Several moments elapsed in silence.

“Where’s the man in the moon?” Conor asked.

“We can’t see him at the moment, because the moon hasn’t risen yet.”

Alarm spread over Conor’s features. He lifted the stuffed cat up and pressed it against his face. “Eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh.”

“I hear your worried noise,” James said. “You don’t like not being able to see the moon?”

“Where is the moon man gone?”

“You mean the men who landed on the moon? They’re not there anymore. They landed on the moon a long time ago, but now they are back home on earth.”

“The man in the moon can see us, but we can’t see him. He can see us. Eh-eh-eh-eh-eh.”

“Do you feel afraid of the man in the moon?” James said gently. “He isn’t real, Conor. There isn’t a real man there. It’s just patterns on the surface of the moon and when we look at them from earth, it looks like a person’s face to us. But there isn’t really a man in the moon.”

“The Taurus-Littrow landing site. 1971,” Conor cried out.

“It’s confusing, isn’t it?” James said in an effort to interpret Conor’s fear. “We say ‘man in the moon’ to talk about how the moon looks to us from earth, but that isn’t talking about a real man. It’s just an expression. But then there have also been astronauts who have walked on the moon and they are real men. But they didn’t stay on the moon. It’s too barren. No one could live there. So now they’ve all come back home to earth.”

The boy started to cry. “No! Don’t want the man in the moon to come home!” Pressing the stuffed cat over his face, he crumpled, sobbing, to the ground.

Unlike the boisterous, self-assured child James had seen chasing Becky through his apartment, Morgana stood in the waiting room, clutching her father’s hand tightly and regarding James with a suspicious gaze.

“Hello,” James said. “How nice to see you again.”

She pressed herself against Alan’s leg.

James offered his hand. “The playroom is this way. Why don’t you come with me and I’ll show you.”

Reluctantly Morgana kissed her father goodbye and took James’s hand. He walked with her down the short hallway from the waiting room and opened the door to the playroom.
She hung back a moment and peered in, then stepped cautiously through the door. No matter how much he coaxed her, James couldn’t talk her into coming further. Closing the door gently, he crossed to the small table and sat down.

“I’ve never seen a doctor’s office that looks like this,” Morgana said dubiously as she surveyed the playroom. “Dr Wilson’s is lots different.”

“Dr Wilson and I are different kinds of doctors. He’s the kind who helps us keep our bodies well. I’m the kind who helps us keep our feelings well.”

She glanced over. “Does your kind of doctor give shots?”

“No, not usually.”

A look of enormous relief crossed her face. “Oh
good.
”

“Were you worried that I might give you a shot?” James asked.

Nodding fervently, she said, “
Yeah
, ’cause I thought
all
doctors gave shots.” She smiled sheepishly. “So I didn’t like coming in here by myself. If I was going to have a shot, I wanted my daddy here too.”

She looked around the room with more confidence. “There’s sure lots of toys here. Do all these belong to Becky and Mikey?”

“No. Their toys are at my house. The toys in this room are for the boys and girls who come here to see me.”

“Like my brother, huh?”

“Yes,” said James, “and today, like you too. So, while you’re here, you can play with anything that interests you. It’s up to you. In here, children choose what they want to do.”

“
That
sounds nice.” She gave him a cheerful grin. “What’s that?”

“My notebook. I like to write notes to help me remember what we’ve been talking about.”

“How come?”

“Because perhaps we’ve been working on solving a problem and I wouldn’t want to forget anything important a child has told me,” James said.

Placing her hands flat on the table, Morgana leaned forward on them and looked at James closely. Her eyes twinkled. “Know what my brother does?” Her tone was conspiratorial. “He piddles in the garbage can in the kitchen because he thinks it’s a toilet.” She laughed heartily. “But that’s a secret. Don’t say to my mum I told you.”

“Why not?”

“Because my mum would say it isn’t nice to tell you.” She laughed again.

James laughed too.

“I told Becky. She said Mikey piddled in the bath once. She said he even did a Number Two once and it floated.”

“Yes, I’m afraid she’s right.”

“Boys can be
really
disgusting.”

James nodded.

“How come Becky doesn’t live with you all the time?”

“Because Becky’s mum and I are divorced. Mostly Becky lives in New York with her mum, because that’s where her school is and her grandma and grandpa and her cousins. But even though things didn’t work out between Becky’s mum and me, I still love Becky – and Mikey too – just as much as always, so we want to spend time together too. That’s why she and Mikey come out here.”

Morgana’s smile had faded. “My folks are doing that too. Getting divorced, I mean.”

“How do you feel about that?” James asked.

“I don’t want them to.”

“Can you tell me more about it?”

“At school I know this girl named Kayla, and when we were in kindergarten, her folks got divorced. Now she only gets to see her dad two days a month and sometimes he forgets. I don’t want that to happen to me. I really love my daddy a lot.”

“Of course,” James said.

“You don’t ever forget Becky, do you?”

“No. Dads never forget their children, even if they can’t always see them.”

“There’s something else too about why I don’t want them to get divorced,” Morgana said.

“What’s that?”

“Our ranch. ’Cause I love our ranch. I really, really, really love our ranch and I want to live there forever. Even when I’m grown up. I’m going to be a rancher like my dad. But my mum says when she and Daddy are divorced, then me and Conor can’t live at the ranch anymore because we’ll live somewhere else. But I don’t want to. But then I want to be with my mum too.”

“You have some big worries.”

“Yeah,” Morgana replied, her brow wrinkling, “I do.”

She watched James’s pen as he wrote. “Except, know what?” she said. “Kayla says she’s gets two Christmases now. First she gets one with her mum and then she gets another with her dad and his girlfriend. And know what else? Santa Claus comes to
both
places!” Morgana gave an impish smile. “I wouldn’t mind
that
part.”

James smiled back.

Turning from the table, Morgana looked around the room. “You sure got a lot of toys in here. It’s like a toy store, practically.” She wandered away to see what she could find.

After exploring the variety of toys and materials in the room, Morgana settled on nothing more exotic than a piece of paper and a box of crayons. These she brought over to the table and then sat down opposite James. Selecting a blue crayon, she painstakingly wrote her name in large, rounded letters.

“There. I’ve done that well, haven’t I?” she said in a pleased tone and showed it to James. Then she selected a green crayon. She appeared about to draw but then instead went around the letters of her name again with the second colour.

“Guess what?” she said. “I can read.”

“That’s very good.”

“I’m in the best reading group at school. Even though I’m just in first grade, I get to read real books. Not the baby books they teach you with.”

“Yes, real books are more interesting, aren’t they?”

“I knew how to read when I was only three.”

“Obviously, reading is a strength for you,” James said.

“Know something else though?” Morgana said brightly. “My best friend doesn’t know how to read at all.”

“When you’re six and just beginning, sometimes reading can be very hard,” James said.

“Oh, he isn’t six. He’s eight.”

“Some children find reading much harder than others.”

Morgana selected a third colour and went around the letters of her name again. “No, it’s not ’cause he finds it hard. It’s ’cause him and his cousin are homeschooled but they don’t get taught reading. He says no one at his house knows how to read.”

“That’s very unusual,” James remarked.

“Well, I thought so too. I didn’t believe him at first. ’Cause I thought, there aren’t any grown-ups who don’t know how to read. But he’s right. He really doesn’t know how to read. He doesn’t even know the alphabet. So guess what?”

“What’s that?” James asked.

“I said I’d teach him. I’m going to bring him one of the books from school.”

“You’re a very thoughtful friend.”

“It’s ’cause him and me are best friends. We play together all the time. Every day almost.”

“What kinds of things do you like to play together?” James asked.

“Kings and queens, mostly. That’s our favorite game.” She burst into unexpected laughter. “He’s
so
silly. Know what he says? He says when he grows up, for his job, he’s going to be a king. For real. He really thinks that! I told him he couldn’t be, because there aren’t any for-real kings anymore, ’cause they only happen in fairy stories. But he said I’m wrong. And you know what? I asked my mum and she said that’s true. There
are
for-real kings still, although she said she didn’t think anybody in South Dakota could get to be a king.” Morgana laughed merrily. “So now I tease him. I call him the Lion King.”

“Why do you call him that?”

“’Cause I just told you. ’Cause he wants to be a king when he grows up.”

“I mean the ‘lion’ part,” James said.

“Well, two reasons. One reason: because he’s got long hair like a lion’s got. His hair comes clear down to his shoulders
like this.” She demonstrated. “Really, it looks just like girl’s hair, but I don’t want to make him feel bad, so I call it lion hair. And reason two: because he’s always being a cat.”

“A cat?” James said, intrigued. “How does he do that?”

“Well,
pretending
, of course,” she said with a laugh. “We always meet down by the creek. That’s where we play. If he gets there first, then he hides in the rocks and jumps out at me and tries to scare me. He goes ‘Rowrrr! Beware of me! I’m the Great Cat!’ He means a mountain lion. But I don’t get scared. I just chase him around!” She laughed again merrily and gestured with her hands.

A pause followed. Morgana looked down at her paper. Throughout her conversation, she’d continued to embellish her name with different colours. “Look. I made it like a rainbow.” She lifted the paper up to show James. “See, I know the colours of the rainbow. I know the colours in the right order. Want me to say them? Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.”

“That’s very clever of you,” James replied.

“Yeah, I’m smart. I can tell you my IQ. It’s 146. I know, ’cause my folks got it tested.” She pursed her lips. “I’m not supposed to tell people though, ’cause my mum says it makes my head swell up. But you’re a doctor, so I thought you might be interested.”

James smiled at her. “Do you know what an IQ is?”

Morgana sucked her lips in between her teeth and rolled her eyes around, then a shrug and a grin. “Not really.” Then her brow furrowed in a pensive expression. “But I do know you got to have one if you’re smart. And that it’s what makes you do good at school.”

“Yes, I suppose you could say that,” James replied.

A small pause.

“So can I ask you something?” Morgana tipped her head questioningly.

“Yes, of course,” James said.

“I don’t know what Conor’s IQ is, but I know he’s got one too, ’cause you know what? He knew how to read even younger than me. He was only
two
. My dad told me.”

“That’s pretty amazing,” James said.

“But this boy who rides the school bus with me says Conor’s retarded.”