Was It A Dream
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That was why I didn’t want to go?
“No, no, of course not,” I told him. “I’m sorry.” And I had said it before he had a chance to say anything about my family or the way I had behaved. And that’s when I felt his eyes on me and remembered how close we were to standing together.
He gave a slight nod as if in acknowledgment that there must have been some reason for him to be looking at me as he did now—and he seemed to understand how hard it had been for me to stand still without running away from him. So we walked side by side along the street with his arm around my shoulder.
But then his hand fell off me and I felt my chest swell with relief. I glanced down the sidewalk toward home and tried to smile.
And then suddenly, all at once, the sky darkened and clouds rolled over the moonlight and the world grew dark around us. My father stood on the corner watching me like he always does after he has spoken to me—and he seemed to be wondering whether I would turn and run or keep walking forward. As soon as he saw how much it pained me to stay, he began again.
But this time, there was nothing funny about it. He had never spoken about what he was going to tell me until the last moment. I felt as if someone had put my thoughts into words so precisely that I could see the whole thing written across my face.
I wanted to ask him to stop, but I knew better than to try. And even though he had already said everything he needed to say, he continued anyway: “I know how you’re feeling right now, because your mother died when she was your age too. And you’ll feel better tomorrow…or maybe next week…”
“It will make me happy?”
He looked up at the sky for a long moment, trying to read the answer in my eyes. Then he took another deep breath, and when he turned back to me, his face wore an expression of sympathy and concern which made it very clear that he really believed he would feel better.
“You’ll get married someday,” he added, just as I expected him to. “You have a lot of work ahead of you,” he said, and although his voice trembled slightly, I could tell that he meant every word. When he spoke, we were standing under a streetlight, and my shadow fell against the pavement.
He held my arm tightly to help me walk home, while the shadows danced over our feet. I thought my heart would burst if I tried to breathe. I couldn’t let go of the hand he had taken. I wanted him to take both of them and hold them tight.
The wind was blowing coldly, making the leaves rustle and rattle. The air smelled damp and earthy and smelled of the rain that had fallen earlier in the evening. I stared at my hand in his and felt as if I were being watched.
He looked away for only an instant and looked straight ahead at my face as if he couldn’t bear to look at me anymore—but I knew that was wrong. His gaze was directed somewhere else—toward the darkness behind me.
I wanted to hear him say something more. I didn’t want to leave. But when my father said good night and left, I realized that he had never asked for my name.
He had never even heard my real name.
“It wasn’t a dream,” he said, “because there is nothing to fear at the end of a dream.”
My father was looking straight ahead, but I could feel the way his shoulders were hunched up and the way his lips moved as he said this. He sounded so sad when he whispered this that I almost cried out. But then he stopped talking and smiled at me, and then finally we went our separate ways.
And as I stepped into my house, I could see the window above the front door. My mother’s room was on the third floor, and as I approached, I caught a glimpse of her silhouette as she sat in bed and wrote in a book. She must have been working late at her desk. Her hair was disheveled and tangled, and her hands rested on the table next to her.
We had not known each other very well when she had lived with us. We had never talked about the past, and neither had he, and I wondered if she had ever imagined that someday I would come to live here.
When we parted, he turned away from me and went upstairs to her room, where I knew she still slept. I thought that perhaps my mother might be sitting by the window, looking down onto our garden and waiting for me.
But I could hardly move when I reached my bedroom. I closed the curtains and opened the window and lit a candle. I wanted to talk to my mother. I wanted to ask her so many things.
“Mother,” I murmured to myself, “what happened? Why do I feel so strange?”
The next day, however, I awoke with a fever. The next few days passed in a blur—all I remember is the smell of sweat and urine and my mother crying. It wasn’t as if I was sleeping and she was crying; she was weeping, and I was awake.
And as I lay in bed and waited for the doctor, my thoughts were filled with him.
What should I ask him? What kind of questions did one ask of a man like that?
“How many times have I told you never to talk to strangers?”
The doctor came and said, “Your mother has pneumonia, but she’ll recover. If you don’t mind, could you wait until she wakes up before telling her anything?”
And then the nurse entered and handed me some medicine.
“Take this three times a day,” the doctor said as he looked at my mother lying in bed beside me.
***
I was afraid I would miss something if I left the house. And as I waited, I tried to think how best to approach the subject with her. There was so much I needed to know.
I couldn’t stop thinking about those words:
’It’s been a while since I last saw you.’
’It’s been a while…since we parted,’ he continued.
’Since you’ve seen me, I mean. You were never really far from my mind.’
’So many things have changed since the last time I saw you.’
His words echoed inside my head.
“Mother?”
I tried to call her again, but she wouldn’t hear me.
As it happened, he did not return home that morning after all. As my mother slept, he had gone off somewhere without saying a word to anyone.
In the midst of the storm, I found myself standing at the front gate. My hands were trembling as I held the key and tried to keep it in my palm. I didn’t want to leave her side.
“I’ll come back,” I whispered to myself. “You won’t be alone when I get back.”
I couldn’t go out of the house. I wanted to stay in my mother’s room, but I could not help feeling drawn toward the front porch, where I could see the garden from outside.
I thought I had already said everything that needed to be said. But I had no way of knowing how many times she had repeated them to herself, over and over and over.
And suddenly it came to me—I remembered his voice.
“Don’t you think I’m good-looking?”
I hadn’t meant to answer him, but now they were the only words ringing in my ears, and even though I wanted to run away, I stayed rooted to the spot.
I couldn’t understand what the doctor had been trying to say. When I looked at him, he looked down and smiled at me.
“Good,” he said quietly. “Now go back to your mother.”
And then he added something else.
“Go to the kitchen and tell Mrs. Lee to give you tea. Drink it slowly; you’re going to need lots of rest. Don’t go anywhere, especially into the hallway. Do you hear me? Now get up. Go downstairs.”
And then he turned away and walked away.
The words he had muttered were so simple, but they felt as if I’d heard them for the first time.
“I’ll be here when you return. Good-bye.”
And then I heard him leave. That’s how I knew what he was talking about—and that there was something wrong with me, too.
I thought he was right—that I shouldn’t go to the doctor. After all, it had always been my mother who had been ill. How could I imagine that she might be ill again?
“Mother,” I whispered into the dark, “I can’t take it any longer…”
***
That night when I went down to the kitchen and told Mrs. Lee that I was feeling weak and dizzy, she said, “You’ve got a cold,” and I felt such relief that I almost cried. She gave me hot tea, made me lie on a sofa in the parlor, and called someone to bring a wet towel and blankets.
When the doctor came in a few hours later, he listened to my chest with a stethoscope, and said, “No sign of pneumonia.” Then he took my pulse, examined me from toe to head, and said, “I’m sure you have a mild case of the flu.”
He was right. It was only the beginning of November, and the weather was still warm. The doctor asked if I had a fever. But I told him that I hadn’t yet. He nodded and put away his instruments.
“There’s nothing to worry about.”
But my mother was not in bed. She was sitting alone by the window, holding a letter. Her expression was strange: her face was flushed and bright red as if she were suffering from fever. At the same time, she seemed somehow frozen.
“What is it, Mother?” I asked as she watched the streetlights flicker.
Her lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. And then her voice broke into a faint whisper.
“Oh…oh, I forgot something…”
She stood up and ran into the kitchen. When I followed her, she opened one of the cupboards and brought out an old tin. She took out a small silver box wrapped in paper, tied with string. I could barely make out its shape. But it was too dark to see the contents inside. She carefully placed it in my hands.
I couldn’t believe it was mine. I stared at it, wondering what it might contain.
It was just like the one that my mother had given me.
And then something caught my eye on the floor—something that lay beside the wall. I bent down and picked it up, turning it over in my hand, and feeling the soft fur of the mouse’s tail, which was still damp from the rain. It smelled faintly sweet as if it were made of some kind of perfume.
“Why is this here?” My mother was looking at me strangely again. There was something different about her. She glanced down at the mouse in my hands. I saw that she recognized it as well, but instead of being surprised by it, she merely nodded as if it were something ordinary.
I had never seen anything so familiar to me. But I didn’t know why it seemed so strange or frightening to me. I didn’t feel frightened, exactly, but I felt like I was standing in a room filled with ghosts, and I had lost my way. I was so tired—exhausted beyond measure.
“How long has he been here?” she whispered. “Has he been lying here since last night?”
“Since when?” I asked.
She shook her head, but I could tell that she hadn’t the slightest idea. As if we were both searching for words, she began to speak again.
“It must be…since before dawn this morning. He has been waiting all day to meet you.”
“Me?” I asked. “Did someone send me a present?”
My mother shook her head and laughed quietly.
“No,” she said, gazing at me as if she wanted to say more, but couldn’t find the words. “Yes. You. This mouse came for you because you’re his only friend in this world. Because no one knows him except you.”
She smiled sadly, looking at me with sad eyes. “Do you remember that night when you woke up screaming? He was there.”
I nodded.
She nodded back. She reached out and stroked my cheek with her fingers. And then I suddenly remembered—I hadn’t felt the presence of anyone near us while we sat together in the darkness, talking about the same thing. No, even if someone had come into our home, they would never have noticed this old mouse. We wouldn’t have noticed it ourselves, had we been sleeping.
I tried to think of a question I wanted to ask.
“Where is he now?”
“This is where he belongs.” My mother nodded and closed her eyes as if to reassure me. “Now, go on to sleep.”
“What did she mean?” I asked my sister. “About him belonging here?”
She looked puzzled. “You’ll see tomorrow.”
The End