The Language of Dreamers

            by Liza Veale

 

We were walking down halls with light reflecting off every surface.  My mother would call it ‘making haste.’

“Anyway, I hope you can be home tomorrow between 4 and 5, I’m having the tile guy come and take a look at the master bathroom and I need somebody there to let him in. I suppose I could have left him a key or something but, well, I guess it serves an occupational purpose but I just don’t trust men who drive white vans. I know it’s a complete prejudice but well, we all have our things and Oh! This must be her room. Here give me your cheek you’ve got some shmark. Ok sweetie, good to go! Give grandma kisses for me, tell her I’m sorry I had to run!”

            The beeps of the hospital room made me almost miss my mother’s clicking heels and blathering. It smelled sour like jello and chalky like a hundred decaying old people. Or maybe just this old person. She was small and her face was thin and worn with stubborn wrinkles.

            “Richard! You’re late! I’ve already wet my bed twice!” Richard died in 1994.

            “Nana, Richard is still in Santa Fe. I’m Elliot.”

            “Santa Fe?! What the hell is he doing there? And who the hell is Elliot!”

            “He’s touring with his blues band. But Grandma, you’re supposed to call the nurses when you have to go.”

            “Call the nurses? What do I look like? A goddamn golden retriever?”

 

            I forgot the way back to my house. It was like 50 blocks but I didn’t feel like calling my mom’s work because the secretary is an idiot. I took the street called Jefferson because it sounded familiar and walked like everyone else for a few blocks; the sun on the backs of our necks, following our shadows. Then I realized Jefferson was only familiar because he’s a founding father or whatever.

            I took wrong streets and back tracked and came around in circles, imagining I was a gigantic Pacman. Only with out any of the monsters that eat you. So it was pretty boring, obviously.

 

            I finally turned the corner to my block just as the street lamps clicked on, saturating the pavement in burnt orange light. I climbed the stairs to my house and wiped my feet on the HOME SWEET HOME mat; it was one of the days it felt ironic. My dad was training one of his new employees in the living room. The trainee moved to say hi or something but my dad ignored us both.

            “No, no listen to my voice. The best way you can contribute to our mission—“

            “The best way you can contribute to our mission—“

            “You’re not listening, listen to the inflection—“

            I went down the hallway to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of orange juice. “Son can you keep it down in there, we’re working!”

            “I’m just getting-“

            “Thanks a bunch!” Because I couldn’t think of a less disruptive activity than pouring orange juice, I sat at the kitchen table and practiced silent swallowing.

            “The best way you can contribute to our mission is by donating every month.”

            “Listen to me. The best way you can contribute to our mission (upwards inflection-you hear that?)  Is by making a small donation on a monthly basis.”

            “Uh.”

            “Ok?”

            “Yeah-“

            “I mean how great does that sound, right?!”

           

            In bed that night I folded my hands under my pillow, under my head, and thought about a book I’m reading that reveals September 11^th to be an inside job perpetrated by the government. It sounded just about right, so I considered making some kind of news leaflet or something to hand out at school. I knew this would be weird, so I pushed the idea out of my mind. My stomach hurt and I rolled over.

           

            My mother woke me up the way she always does.

            “MOVE IT OR LOSE IT SWEETHEART!!!” Consciousness stained the inside of my eyelids, I rolled over. She clacked around in her heels, parting curtains with whirs and playing Frank Sinatra on the hallway stereo, the volume all the way up.

 

            “Oh Honey.” She said as I made my way into the kitchen after an hour of conjuring the valiance to part with my blankets. “You’re wearing those jeans? They’re barely in one piece.” I looked down at my bare knees. “Well…That’s fine dear. If you’d like we could take a trip to the mall. I’d be more than happy to buy a couple of nice pairs from the men’s department.” Our terrier, Winston, was whining from the back door.  “Is that what it is? Are you out of nice pants? I’m just not sure why any one would prefer to—“

But she was already outside picking prickles our of Winston’s fur.

 

            I missed my bus. When the later one came I made my way to the back, but not before spilling the contents of my “BUS MONEY ENVELOPE – Don’t Lose This, Sweetheart!” when I went to pay. The grumbles behind me made me nervous. I was picking up microscopic slivers of copper with huge paper mache puppet hands. A few of the nickels and pennies rolled off into the shadows underneath the bus drivers balloon legs, by his feet. He didn’t make a move to collect them, though, and I figured that territory was out of bounds.

            I took a seat behind an old Indian woman with a Bindi and a pile of stuffed plastic bags beside her. I practiced fogging up the window and writing things backwards, so that they could be read from the outside.

 

!!!DEKCAJIH ER’EW

            I got off the bus and watched it blur in front of me, filling every space of my vision and leaving so suddenly I felt like falling into the depth revealed in its place. There was a girl walking by me. I recognized her, but knew we’d never met, which made her my distant acquaintance – which is all I have mainly. She had bright orange hair but I could tell it had always been that way. She kept looking back at me, looking away and flushing. But that may have just been her hair.

            “Do you think we’re really late?” It was most certainly a trick question. I hesitated; it wasn’t every day someone made small talk with me. She flushed. I think. “Oh, I…” And we went back to not talking.

            I felt bad then. I didn’t want her to think I didn’t like her talking to me, because I did. I watched her feet in socks with flowers in shoes with buckles, (her heels never touched the ground) and wished she would try to say something again.

            “September 11^th was an inside job perpetrated by the Government.” It was the only thing I could think to say. “I mean. Some people think that.” She was a little startled but smiled with her teeth showing and slowed into step with me.

            “I’d believe it.” She said. Her voice was even and round, despite how she blushed. I was becoming convinced it was a trick of the eye, reflective properties of cheek skin, hair that glows, you know. “Some people think that the government is trailing stupid powder into the atmosphere also.” I checked her eyes to see if she was mocking me but she was very serious. “People have noticed that jet contrails are thicker and last longer in the sky than normal exhaust. The stupid powder, or gas or whatever diffuses, we inhale it, we become robots.” We made eye contact again, and laughed a little.

            “But then wouldn’t the government have to breathe it too?”

            “Maybe they wear gas masks whenever they’re not in public.”

            “Maybe they’re already robots and the people who control them have an underground lair so they don’t need to wear gas masks.”

            “You know, that’s probably it.”

 

            I learned her name was Bailey and every class taught the same subject that day. Bells rang and I was shepherded through doorways, only to sit down and study the same thing for another hour. After I had exhausted our one memory I invented her past (she had taken up and given up 6 instruments in 5 years but never wavered in devotion to the garden she had built out of the section of the back yard her step-father cleared off to be just hers.) and then I invented our future. We would climb rocks and yell things off the side and scrape our palms coming down and kiss each other’s wounds.

 

           

            At dinner my mother explained why we were eating tuna and macaroni. Not that anyone had asked.

            “…so I figured, what the heck! The soup will taste better after it’s been simmering for a day, no need to try to get it on the table tonight! And we had all those tuna cans- George I don’t know why you insist on the Costco packs, I think when it comes to fish, well…- so I thought I’d just whip this up for tonight, and you know I’ve had macaroni on my mind since the Rosekrans’ Barbeque, when was that? Must have been at least three weeks ago…”

            I listened and even nodded and “mhmm”-ed because, well because I had something. Kind of like a secret.

 

            It had been two days and even though I looked- I took the long way to my classes to cover more ground- I hadn’t seen Bailey. But now as I navigated the courtyard her orange hair blazed like an S.O.S fire. She stood in a clump with faceless girls. Of the hundreds of kids huddled around, she was the only one moving. I made my way over because we were it. I could tell and she could tell and some other realm or dimension or something was waiting for the moment we took off. Memories of her hands surfaced. Then of her laugh and the way she eats. I realized I had never seen her eat so I tried to sift out all of the fake memories from the real ones and I couldn’t, and now I was tapping her on the shoulder.

            “Oh, Hi, um, Elliot! What’s up?” What’s up? I hadn’t planned for that question. What had I planned for? I hadn’t planned for speaking. I had planned for silently knowing, for taking one step together and our feet landing on grass that stood straight up because it had never been trampled.

            “Are you…” I asked. Her smile was suspended while her eyes hurried over my face.

            “Am I…?” she whispered after a long moment, trying to help. She glanced back at her friends who wore pinched faces and raised eyebrows. Time froze while I waited for her to turn back, legs were paralyzed before releasing into another step, lemonade hovered above glasses, a life was spared one more millisecond before being demolished by a bullet. And then time began. She looked at the ground and, for the very first time, she flushed. With her eyes she asked me to find something to say, but I couldn’t. “Oh. Well, we have to grab some lunch, so. I’ll see you around, k?”

            With my hands in my pockets I dug my nails into the inside of my palms and watched her walk away.

 

            I walked home to avoid running into Bailey on the bus, even though I knew I wouldn’t; I never had, other than that one time. It was cold and the wind whipped through the holes in my knees coaxing goose bumps out from their graves. I replayed my interaction with her until my mind was raw with the motion and still, I hated her. I knew we would never climb rocks together or write secrets on each other’s backs or prank call people pretending to be college admissions offices. I knew this because these things only happen if they are sure from the beginning. And when people are sure they don’t force each other to answer questions like what’s up.

 

            A couple days later it was time for my weekly visit with grandma. Opening the door to her hospital room I was greeted by unabashed snores. I took a seat by the window and watched her sleep for a while, letting my mind wander. I was thinking about insects eating psychedelic mushrooms and then, without meaning to, I was thinking about me and Bailey on an arctic excursion. Our feet sink so far into the snow we have to yank them out with our hands every step. Finally we give in to laughing and fall on our backs, taking turns warming each other’s hands with our breath.

            My grandma wakes up with a grunt and a “Who’sat?!”

            “It’s Elliot, not Richard, grandma.” I say absentmindedly, my brain still clinging to my day dream.

            “Richard?! What would I want with Richard? He’s been dead since ’94!”

            “I-. What? I thought you didn’t remember, I...” But there in her paper hospital gown, she was smiling a little to herself.

            “Well, I suppose sometimes it’s just, a little easier to delude yourself.” As Bailey walked away her legs didn’t sink into the snow. In my mind I grappled with the white quick sand, trying to get to my feet and realized she didn’t sink because she wasn’t walking on the same ground as I was. She wasn’t even in the same dream.