Читать книгу Overheard in a Dream - Torey Hayden, Torey Hayden - Страница 10

“Hi Becks!”

“Daddy! Hi ya! Guess what? When the phone rang, I said it was going to be you! I told Mum. She and Uncle Joey were going to take us ice skating tonight, but I told her I wanted to stay in because I thought you might phone. And you did! I got psychic powers, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, probably so, Becks,” James said and chuckled. He didn’t remind her he phoned most Friday evenings.

“Thanks for sending me that Ramona Quimby book, Daddy. I didn’t have that one. And it’s really good! I’m almost clear through it already and I only started it last night. I was so happy when I opened up your package and saw that’s what it was.”

“Well, thank you for your nice long newsy letter,” James said. “I got it on Monday. What a nice surprise in my mail box.”

“It was so long, it was practically like a Ramona Quimby book too, wasn’t it?” Becky replied gleefully. “My teacher says I’m probably going to be a writer when I grow up, because I’m so good with details.”

“Yes, you certainly are. I like your details. And I’m glad to hear you’re enjoying gymnastics so much.”

James’s words were interrupted by noises of a muffled struggle on the other end of the line. “Get off!” Becky was muttering. “I’m still talking!”

“Daddy! Daddy!” Mikey’s voice broke through.

“Hi, Mike, how’s it going?”

“Becky won’t let me have the phone and it’s my turn.”

More muffled struggling and the sound of Becky muttering, “Pushy little pig. You give it back to me afterwards.”

“Did you get the postcard I sent, Daddy?” Mikey asked. “It’s got a lighthouse on it.”

“Yes, I did. Thank you very much.”

“I did all the writing on it myself. I even wrote your address.”

“And a Superman job you did too,” James said. “It was very easy to read. The mailman got it right to my door with no trouble at all.”

“Dad?”

“Yes, Mike?”

“When can we come to your door again? I miss you. I want to see you.”

“Yes, I miss you too, Mikey. Big lots. And that’s one of the reasons I’m phoning. To make arrangements with Mum for you two to come out over Thanksgiving.”

“I don’t want to wait that long. I miss you now.”

“Yeah, I know. Me too,” James said. “Every night I say, ‘Goodnight, Mikey. Goodnight, Becky’ to that picture beside my bed.”

“Yeah, every night I say ‘Goodnight, Daddy’, to your picture,” Mikey replied. “But I wish it was really you.”

“So why don’t you put your mum on the phone so we can make some plans.”

“Okay, Daddy. Kiss you,” he smacked into the phone. “Love you forever.”

“Love you forever too, Mikey.”

A moment’s pause as Mikey dropped the phone noisily on the table. Then Sandy’s voice, deep for a woman’s voice but soft and darkly fluid, like molasses over gravel.

“Well, yes, I got your email,” she said. “And I want to know exactly what you’re playing at.”

“It should have been quite plain, Sandy. I’m not paying the kind of mortgage I’m shelling out on that place to have Joey living there and I know he is, because the kids have told me. Let Joey pay the damned mortgage.”

“The mortgage was part of the settlement, James.”

“Not if he’s living there.”

“The mortgage was part of the settlement,” she repeated in short, clipped words that emphasized their meaning. “Because our kids are living in this house. That’s still happening. So why are you even bothering with this shit?”

“Because I’m earning a South Dakota wage and paying for a West Side brownstone. Joey’s a fucking corporate lawyer. In Manhattan, for Christ’s sake. He can afford to pay his own way.”

“Well, if you think you can have the kids any time you want and then turn around and say you aren’t going to pay the mortgage …”

“This has nothing to do with when I get the kids. We agreed those dates in mediation, Sandy.”

“Yeah, well, we agreed the mortgage in mediation too.”

“Sandy.”

She slammed the phone down.

“You got to ignore her, Jim,” Lars said. “It’s like in playing football. If you want to complete a good pass, well, then you just got to think of nothing but that pass. You got to totally ignore the other team because they’re doing nothing but trying to put you off your concentration. Same with Sandy. She doesn’t want you to complete any passes, whether it’s getting the kids out here at Thanksgiving or telling the shifty lawyer guy to move the hell out of your house.”

“I know it,” James said in frustration and sank back into the chair. “It’s just when she starts in with that patronizing tone …”

“It’s interference, Jim. Nothing else. She’s just running interference. You got to take your mind off her and put it on the positive. On what you want to accomplish.”

“She so knows how to twist the knife,” James muttered. “She knows she can hurt me through the kids.”

“Jim, don’t let her get to you.”

“She makes me feel pathetic. That’s what I hate. She acts like in coming out here, I’ve run away when in fact, I’ve done just the opposite. I’ve faced up to myself, to where I went wrong. I made some bad choices and took some wrong turnings but when I realized that, I took action to create a better life. It just wasn’t the one she thought she was signing up for.”

Very slowly, Conor began to talk more. It was difficult to tell if it was meaningful speech or simply echolalia because it was made up largely of phrases James himself had used first, but it became increasingly clear that Conor wanted to interact.

One morning when he arrived, Conor said, “In here, you decide,” at the doorway of the playroom, almost as if it were a greeting.

“Good morning, Conor. Won’t you come in?” James replied.

“Ehhh-ehhh-ehhh-ehhh.”

For a long moment Conor remained in the doorway. He pressed the cat against his face, over his eyes, then lowered it and pointed it around the room.

“In here, you decide,” he said again. “In here, you go around the room.” He began his usual counter-clockwise perambulation. Once, twice, three times he went around the room.

“Where’s the boy’s auroch?” he said suddenly. “In here, you decide.”

“Yes,” James said. “In this room you can decide for yourself if you want to play with the toy animals.”

“Where’s the boy’s auroch? You decide.”

“Would you like me to help you find the basket?” James asked.

“Find the basket with the animals,” Conor replied, although James couldn’t discern if it was a genuine response or simply an incomplete echo.

Rising from his chair, James crossed over to the shelves. “Here are the animals,” he said, and lifted the red wire basket out. “Shall I take it to the table for you?”

“In here, you decide.”

“That’s right. You decide if you want me to take it to the table.”

“Take it to the table.”

Conor followed. Lifting the cat up, he scanned the basket, then reached in and lifted an animal out. “Here is a dog,” he said and set it on the table. This seemed to please him. There was almost the hint of a smile on his lips. “Here is a duck.” He set that up too.

James watched him as he progressed through the basket of animals. While the boy’s actions were slow and obsessive, they were not quite the same as the rote repetitions of an autistic child. They were nuanced in a way that made James quite certain they had meaning, although he couldn’t even speculate at this point what it might be.

“Here is the boy’s auroch,” Conor said with emphasis. “The auroch will stand with the others.” He surveyed them. “There are many animals. How many? How many is many?” Then he started to count them. This was new. James hadn’t heard him count before. “Forty-six. Forty-six is many. Forty-six in all,” Conor said.

“You like seeing many animals,” James said. “I hear a pleased voice counting.”

“There is no cat.”

“No, there’s no cat among them.”

“Many animals. Forty-six animals. But no cat,” Conor said.

“No. All of those animals, but none of them is a cat,” James reflected back to indicate he was listening carefully.

“Now they will die,” Conor said matter-of-factly. “The dog will die.” He pushed the dog on its side. “The duck will die. The elephant will die.” One by one he went through the plastic animals, pushing them over on to their sides. There was no distress in his voice. The animals all died with the same equanimity as they had lined up.

“Died. Many animals have died,” Conor said. “No more in-and-out. No more steam.” He pulled his toy cat out from under his arm where it had been stashed. He scanned it over the fallen animals, pushing the cat’s nose up against each individually. “The cat knows.”

The cat knows? James thought. The cat knows what? Or perhaps he had been misunderstanding all this time. Perhaps it was “the cat nose”. Perhaps Conor believed the cat was capable of scenting something.

“Where’s the rug?” Conor said suddenly and looked at James.

James looked up blankly.

Conor turned his head and glanced around the room. Abruptly his face lit up and he crossed over behind James to get the box of tissues.

Coming back to the table, Conor pulled tissues out of the box and laid them one by one over the plastic animals. This took up most of the space on the table. And most of the tissues too.

When he was finished, Conor surveyed his work. “Where is the dog?” he asked. Then he lifted one tissue. “The dog is here. Where is the duck? The duck is here.” Repetitively he went through all the animals, asking where an animal was and then lifting the tissue to say that here it was. There was a repetitive, sing-song quality to his questions and answers. This reminded James of a baby’s game of peek-a-boo. However, there was also a stuck-record quality to it, as though once started he couldn’t stop himself.

“You are concerned that the dog won’t be there, that the dog might not be under the tissue, if you can’t see him,” James ventured to interpret. “You want to look again and again to make sure.”

For a brief moment, Conor looked up, looked directly at James, his eyes a cloudy, indistinct blue. He had registered James’s comment and by his reaction James guessed his interpretation must have been correct.

“You are worried about what you will find under the tissue, so you must look,” James reiterated.

“The dog is dead,” Conor replied.

“You think the dog is dead and so that’s why you’ve put a tissue over it.”

“A rug.”

“So you’ve put a rug over it.”

“The cat knows.”

“The cat knows the dog is dead?” James asked.

“Ehhh-ehhh-ehhh-ehhh.”

“You are making your worried sound,” James said.

“The dog is dead,” Conor said very softly. “The duck is dead. The auroch is dead.” He looked down at the toy cat in his hands. “Someday the cat will die too.” And as he stood, a single tear fell, wending a wet path down over his cheek.