“What am I supposed to say?”
“Anything that comes to mind.”
“You think I didn’t have the dream? You think I’m lying, or that maybe the dream was…” I hunched my shoulders and felt silly. “I don’t know…”
“You want me to suggest it wasn’t a dream? That it was real?” She gave a sudden, small frown. “Yes, you do, don’t you? Well, I can understand that—if it seemed real to you.” Underlying her frown was a slight and slightly sad smile. “But it was a dream, Kid. Because…” She paused; and I wondered what moons and suns returned to devil her memory. “Well, let’s assume it wasn’t. Would you like to discuss it further? What’s the first thing that comes to mind?”
“I’m frightened, all of a sudden,” I said. “Again.”
“Of what?”
“Of you.” I tried a smile and felt it abort deep in the muscles of my face.
“What about me frightens you?”
I looked at her scarred leg. I looked at the bead she rubbed against her chin. (I remembered what she had said, when I first met her, about them; I remembered what Nightmare had said. What Nightmare had said made more sense. But I want to believe her. Doesn’t that count for something?) “I don’t…I can’t…” I began to cry again. And I couldn’t stop this time. At all. “It’s got to be a dream! It’s got to…” Could she hear it for my sobbing? “If it isn’t a dream, then I…I’m crazy!” And I cried about all the things people can not understand when other people say them. I cried over the miracle that they could understand anything at all. I cried for all the things I had said to other people that had been misunderstood because I, not knowing, had said them wrong. I cried with joy about those times when someone and I had nodded together, grinning over an understanding, real or wished for. A couple of times I managed to choke out; “I’m so frightened…I’m so frightened! I’m so alone!” I pushed my fingers into my mouth to stop the sound, rocking forward and back, bit on them, and couldn’t stop.
Madame Brown brought me Kleenex. I blubbered, “Thank you,” too inarticulate to be understood, and cried in despair that I could not even make that clear. I wandered back far enough in the cave to think, “This has got to be good for something,” but climbed up the rocks where she told me to go, in the orange flicker, and didn’t find anything there, so got scared again and cried and rocked in my seat, the pits above my kneecaps hurting, which is the place that hurts when I want to fuck bad, and kept crying and biting the sides of my hands for what seemed hours but was probably only fifteen, twenty minutes.
Denny’s circumcised; I’m not. After we all made it this afternoon, he sat wedged in the loft corner and kept asking Lanya which kind of dick she liked more: “…one that’s still got curtains or one that’s been cut?”
“It doesn’t make any difference to me.” She sat cross-legged with my feet in her lap, playing with my toes.
“But which do you think is sexier?”
“I don’t think it matters. They both feel the same.”
“But don’t you think one looks better?”
“No. I don’t.”
“But they are different; so you have to feel different about them. Which one…?” and on and on till I got bored lying there listening.
To stop it, I asked him: “Look, which one do you like more?”
“Oh. Well, I guess…” He leaned forward, hunching his shoulders. “The one that’s still got it all there…like yours, is better.”
“Oh,” Lanya said, with a puzzled look as though she’d suddenly understood something. About him.
“Yeah.” Denny grinned, came out of his corner, and lay down with his head on my lap.
Lanya nodded, swung out from under my legs, and lay down with her head on Denny’s lap. I put my feet in hers.
And it lessened; I felt weaker, better, and when I quieted, Madame Brown said: “You know, you asked me what I think of you? On the strength of the amnesia, the anxiety attacks, yes, that alone would make me suggest, if we were someplace else, that you go into a hospital. But as you say, there aren’t any mental hospitals in Bellona any-more. And, frankly, I don’t know quite what they’d do for you if you went. It might take some of the pressure off you of being ‘the Kid.’ Perhaps that would allow some things to heal that are wounded, some things to settle in place that are swollen.”
I nodded as though I was considering what she said—which wasn’t what I was doing at all. “Do you…” I asked. “Do you believe…in my dream?”
“Pardon me?”
“Do you believe I had that dream?”
She looked confused. “I’m not sure what you mean. But…don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “Oh, Jesus Christ I do! I…I believe it was a…I had that dream.” And realized there was a whole well of anguish from which only a single cup had been dipped. She hadn’t understood. But that was all right.
Over her face was a mask of compassion: “Kid, there was nothing in the study to say that it couldn’t happen the way you said. You remember it very clearly, and told all the details. Yes, I believe it was a dream. I don’t know whether or not you do, but it’s probably not a bad idea for you to keep trying.”
Over mine was a mask of relief: “Madame Brown,” I said, “I am not going back into a mental hospital. The place I was in, for a leprosarium, was pretty nice. But I think I’d have to be crazy to go into one again. And you can read that any way you want!”
That made her laugh. “Though, in Bellona, the problem would be if you wanted to go in a hospital.” Suddenly she cocked her head the other way. “Do you know why I offered you that job with the Richards, the morning I met you in the park?”
“You said it had something to do with—” I put two fingers on the optic chain across my chest—“these.”
“Did I…?” Her smile turned inward, became preoccupied. “Yes, I suppose I did.” She blinked, looked at me. “I told you the story of what happened at the hospital, with my friend, that night—I mean the night it all…”
“Yeah.” I nodded.
“There was one point when I was coming down the third floor corridor and my friend was at the other end, trying to open one of the doors. A young, male patient was helping her, who…what shall I say? Looked very much like you. I mean I was only with him for perhaps a minute. He was working very hard, trying to pry back this locked door with a piece of wood or metal—he had done something terrible to his hands. His hands were much smaller than yours; and the bandages had come loose from two of his fingers.” She grimaced. “But then some people needed help at the other end of the hall and he went off with them. I’d never seen him before—well, I was usually in the office. More sadly, I never saw him again. But when—how much later?—I saw you, in Teddy’s, that night with your face cut, then again, wandering around the park the next morning, barefoot, with your shirt hanging open, the resemblance struck me immediately. For a moment I thought you were the same person. And you’d helped us; so I wanted to help you—” She laughed. “So you see these—” she touched her own beads—“these really meant…nothing.”
I frowned. “You think maybe I’m…I was in the hospital here? That I never came here, from somewhere else? That I’ve been here all die—”
“Of course not.” Madame Brown looked surprised. “I said the young man looked something like you; he had something of your carriage, especially at a distance. He was about your size and coloring—maybe even a little smaller. And I’m sure his hair was dark brown, not black—though this was at night, by lights coming in the windows. I think, when he went away, someone—one of the other patients—called to him by name: I don’t remember what it was, now.” Her hands fell to her lap. “But that, anyway, is the real reason I offered you the job. I don’t know why, but I thought it might be a good time to clear that up.”
“I haven’t always been here,” I said. “I came here, over the bridge, over the river. And soon I’m going to leave. With Lanya and Denny…” It had felt very important to say.
“Of course,” Madame Brown said; but looked puzzled. “We all have to go on from where we are. And of course we’ve all come from where we’ve been. Certainly, at some point, you must have come here. More important, though, is not to get trapped in some circle of your own, habitual—” Outside, the dog barked. “Oh, that must be my next patient,” Madame Brown interrupted herself. The dog barked, kept barking.