I can’t explain what, or why I feel that way. I just do.
Wendy says it looks funky, god bless her.
We’re living in the professor’s house now—Sophie and me. I tried to talk her out of it, but she just looked at me and said, “And you’re going to stop me, how?”
At least she’s still getting some work done. She’s using the old studio that Isabelle and I once shared in the refurbished greenhouse out back. We called it the Grumbling Greenhouse Studio in honor of the professor’s grumpy housekeeper, Olaf Goonasekara. Sophie and I are still calling it that now, but not when Goon’s around. He’s cranky enough as it is without our giving him something to really complain about.
It’s because of Goon that I’m grateful Sophie’s staying here with me. It’s not like he’s mean to me or anything, and we have lots of visitors coming by, but if it was just me and Goon and his unrelenting gloominess, I think I’d go mad. The professor is usually so wrapped up in one project or another that sometimes we don’t see him for the whole day, so without Sophie, it would have been just Goon and me most of the time.
When I asked the professor once how he’s put up with Goon’s bad temper for all these years, he just gave me a blank look. Either he really doesn’t see it, or they’ve been together for so long it simply doesn’t register anymore.
It’s not that far from the professor’s rambling Tudor-styled house in the old quarter of Lower Crowsea to the rehab center, so most mornings during the week Sophie just pushes me there in my wheelchair. Evenings I spend with friends and often Sophie will go out—especially if Daniel comes by. In the afternoons, I watch Sophie paint.
When I first asked Sophie to bring me back to the studio with her while she was working she was reluctant, thinking it would hurt too much for me to see her painting and not be able to do anything myself. But I love simply being in that environment, listening to her charcoal scratch on the canvas, the smell of the paints and turps when she’s got the oils out. And though it’s hard to explain, I get a real creative rush just being there.
See, sometimes when we’re in there, I paint in my head. I don’t mean that I imagine a painting. Rather I go through the whole process, sketches and value paintings, setting up my palette and brushes, the work on the piece itself. Or I might just work with ink washes and linework. I’ve nothing to show for the time I spend doing this, but that isn’t the point. It’s the doing of it. It feels so real and I can call these paintings and drawings back up in my head anytime I want to.
Sophie thinks I’m slightly mad, but then Sophie’s always thought me slightly mad. She doesn’t say anything, though. I guess she figures that she’s not going to stomp on any bright spots I might be able to find in my life, no matter how preposterous they might seem.
Another bright spot in my life is Daniel, though because of his schedule, I don’t get to see him nearly as much as either of us would like. That first date of ours was such a total disaster I’m surprised he ever wanted to see me again. I was already so depressed because of what happened with Raylene and losing the dreamlands and all that I was going to cancel, but Sophie and Wendy wouldn’t let me. So I went ahead, but then the movie he brought over for us to watch in the rehab’s common room—The Spitfire Grill, which normally I would have loved—just had me sobbing at the end.
“Bad choice, I guess,” Daniel said when I was finally able to stop crying. “Now that I think of it, you asked for something light and silly.”
I gave a little shake of my head. “No, it was a perfect movie. It was beautiful.”
“Beautiful, break your heart?”
“That, too.”
“I understand.”
I remember thinking, no, you don’t, how can you? Except maybe he does. Maybe everybody recovering from a serious illness or accident goes away to places in their head that seem as real to them as the dreamlands did to me. Maybe they have experiences there that are just as traumatic as mine were. And maybe they still, nevertheless, miss being able to go back there.
But if I was less than enchanting company that first night, I guess he saw something he liked in me because he gave me this long soulful kiss after he’d wheeled me back to my room and got me into my bed, and we’re still seeing each other, aren’t we?
But I still don’t know what it is that he does see in me and I don’t want to ask.
I don’t think I’m nearly as brave and cheerful as the crow girls made me out to be that night in May when I dreamed/saw them in my room back at the rehab. The one thing that’s really come home to me with my recovering from this accident is just how angry and self-pitying and depressed I can get.
My emotional nerve ends seem to be a lot closer to the surface of my skin than they ever were before. Too often everything and anything is a big deal. It can be from the way my coffee tastes in the morning to the way Goon might look at me; everything’s a major emotional experience.
It drives me crazy.
And talking about crazy, for a while I found myself wondering if all those experiences I had in the dreamlands were even real. If Sophie had been like she used to be, denying anything remotely magic, I’d probably have stopped believing that I ever went over into that otherworld. But she’s changed. I get her to tell me about the doings in Mabon every morning when we’re having our coffee and if I start to sound even a little bit doubtful about my own experiences over there, she’s quick to set me straight. Now when I tease her about her faerie blood she just smiles.
And then there’s Joe, who just is the dreamlands so far as I’m concerned. It doesn’t matter on what side of the borders you see him. Those crazy-wise eyes of his don’t let you forget. And with even Wendy having been to that otherworld now, the dreamlands remain a big part of my life, even if I can’t visit them anymore. Or at least I won’t be able to for a long, long time.
I hold on to the promise that the crow girls made me. Sometimes I take out the feathers they gave me and think about calling their names, but I know I’m not ready. I wouldn’t be able to get very far in the dreamlands in my wheelchair.
But I think about those cathedral woods and Mabon all the time. I guess the best proof of how I couldn’t escape them even if I wanted to was the night Toby came to visit me.
Sophie and I were in the greenhouse studio, talking while she cleaned her brushes, when we heard a tap-tap on the glass door and there he was. He doesn’t like it in the World As It Is—“Everything’s too scary,” he tells me—but he still visits from time to time. That first evening he brought me my sketchbook which he’d found in the Greatwood. When I flip through its pages, I know I was really there. I know I drew all those sketches from life, not from my imagination.
And it’s not just me that knows it.
“That’s Bo,” Wendy says the first time she looks through the sketchbook. She’s pointing at a drawing I did of Nanabozho in the Greatwood.
“He was the other canid I met with Whiskey Jack on that mesa I told you about.”
I think it’s so cool that she finally got a taste of the magic that Sophie’s had for so long, and I had for a short time. And she didn’t even have to dream herself over. She got to go there in her own body.
Sophie told me about what had been bothering Wendy, just before my sister and Pinky kidnapped me, and we’ve settled all that business now. The promise is, whichever one of us finally learns how to cross over on their own, she’ll teach the others. We’ll always be this little tribe of three small, fierce women.
Wendy might even be the one to go over first. She’s been working on Joe, but he wants to wait until I’m better so that he can teach the three of us together. I’ve tried to convince him to go ahead and show the others—why should they have to wait for me?—but he stays firm.
I think he’s nervous about the kind of trouble the three of us could get into over there so he’s holding off as long as he can. He knows that if I become completely mobile again, there’ll be no keeping us back.
I try talking to Daniel abo
ut all of this one night, late in the summer.
Sophie, Wendy, and Mona are in the house, playing some mad card game with the professor—one of those games he makes up and changes the rules of every few hands. Daniel and I opt for some time alone outside.
He wheels me out along the cobblestoned path behind the professor’s house, which makes for a bumpy ride, but it’s worth it for the little arbor it leads us to. The air is thick with the smell of flowers and cut grass—Goon was out with the lawn mower all afternoon, grumbling as he walked back and forth with it across the backyard. The sky is clear, full of stars that seem far brighter than they should in the middle of the city like this. But even the sounds of the city are muted tonight.
Daniel adjusts the wheelchair so that he can sit on the little iron bench but we can still hold hands.
“What if I told you that there really is a fairyland?” I say.
“I know you believe there is.”
“No, I’m not talking about my believing it or not. What if I told you I’ve been there? That one day, when I get well enough, I could maybe even take you there to see for yourself?”
He surprises me by not even batting an eye.
“If the chance comes up for me to see that Greatwood of yours,” he says, “I’m there.”
“You believe me—just like that?”
“Why would you lie to me?” he asks.
I don’t know where he was hiding all of my life, but I’m glad to have him in it now.
I pull him forward with my good arm until he’s close enough to kiss. He’s the first guy in forever that I can be close to and not feel myself shrinking away inside.
SEPTEMBER
By the official end of the summer, I can shuffle across a room with the aid of a walker. If my right arm wasn’t so weak, I’d be using a pair of canes by now, but it can’t support my weight on its own any more than my leg can.
On a Friday, the last one of the month, I’m doing my usual physical therapy at the rehab and Sophie’s off running some errands and collecting my mail. I still find it odd to be keeping the loft on Yoors Street. It makes no sense to me, but the professor insists on covering the rent, and arguing with him is like arguing with a wall. Once he makes up his mind about something like this, he simply doesn’t listen to you.
But it’ll be ages before I can manage those stairs again—if ever. The best-case scenario seems to be that I’ll regain a lot of use from both my arm and leg, but they’ll never be strong again. I’ll walk with a limp and probably won’t be able to dance, or run, or go for my long rambling walks ever again.
I refuse to accept that, of course, but on my bad days, it weighs heavily on me. This turns into a bad day—though not because of my physical limitations.
“You got a letter from Geordie,” Sophie says when she picks me up at the rehab.
Geordie’s good about writing, but it’s been about three weeks since I last heard from him and that letter was uncharacteristically downbeat, though he never really came out and talked about anything specific that was bothering him.
I tried calling him that night, but there was no answer and he had his machine turned off, so I dictated a cheerful response to Sophie, hoping to jolly him out of the mood he seemed to be in. I’m usually pretty good at that.
I’d be writing my own letters, but while I’ve been practicing printing and drawing with my left hand, my script is still pretty much illegible and my drawing skills seem to lie in the other hand, because nothing I draw looks remotely like what it’s supposed to.
“Want me to open it for you?” Sophie asks.
“Sure.”
She runs a finger under the flap and tears it open across the top, then hands it to me so that I can read it while she pushes me down the sidewalk. I know she’s not reading over my shoulder—Sophie would never do that—but I guess something in my body language tells her. She stops pushing and comes around to the front of the wheelchair, hunches down on her ankles with her hands resting on the chair’s arms.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“Geordie broke up with Tanya,” I say.
“Oh, no.”
I nod. “He says while he’s tried and tried, he just can’t fit into the life they have there. But every day Tanya fits in better. He’s coming back to Newford at the end of the month.”
“What are you going to do?”
What she means is, what are you going to do about Daniel? But I don’t believe that’s even a question.
“Nothing,” I say. “Be supportive. Be his friend.”
“But you and Geordie … I know how you feel about him. And no matter what you think, he loves you as more than a friend.”
I shake my head. “He loves glamour girls. I mean look at Tanya. She’s a movie star, for god’s sake. And remember how gorgeous Sam was?”
She comes back with her old argument.
“That’s only because he didn’t think he could have you,” she says.
I shake my head again. “I don’t think so. And anyway, it doesn’t matter. My relationship with Daniel’s the best I’ve ever had, bar none. I’m not going to throw it away because I still have feelings for Geordie.”
“But—”
“And besides,” I say. “I’m in love with Daniel.”
At least I think I am.
“Does he love you?” Sophie asks.
“I think so.”
Though he’s never said so.
Sophie gets up and gives me a hug.
“Then I’m happy for you,” she says. “For both of you.”
I nod, schooling my face to stay calm because all I want to do is cry. I’m not even sure why. Everything I told Sophie is true. I really do care about Daniel and I don’t see any future beyond friendship with Geordie. If it was going to happen, it would’ve happened a long time ago. And I’m happy with Daniel.
But there’s this great well of sorrow inside me all the same, just pressing against my chest and making it hard to breathe.
“But poor Geordie,” Sophie says as she starts to push the wheelchair back down the sidewalk again.
I nod. He’s as much the Onion Boy as I’m an Onion Girl and now he’s got another layer of pain and disappointment to add to the ones that are already there, messing up his life as surely as they’ve always messed up mine.
“Poor Geordie,” I agree.
And maybe I mean poor me as well. Because nothing’s guaranteed. Daniel and I are doing great right now, but I’m still the Onion Girl. Maybe he’s willing to believe in faerie and the dreamlands. Maybe he likes who he sees me to be. But there are still all those other layers lying in wait to trip him up that he doesn’t know anything about. The hurt kid. The junkie. The hooker. What was done to me and what I did to others, especially my sister.
But then I guess we all have a mess of one kind or another lying somewhere deep inside us. There’s no such thing as a perfect life. The trick is to accept each other’s weaknesses and lend our strengths when we can.
Walk large, as Joe would say.
I smile. Right now, I’d settle for just being able to walk.
But I’ll aim for large. One step at a time.
2
It wasn’t Indian summer, because it wasn’t officially autumn yet and surely you couldn’t have the one without the other, but it was one of the balmiest evenings the city had experienced in weeks. Like large numbers of other office workers, when Wendy left her desk at the end of the day and stepped outside the paper’s offices, she simply wasn’t ready to go home yet. Instead she mingled with the crowds on Lee Street and finally snagged herself a small table on the patio of The Rusty Lion from which she could sip a glass of wine and people-watch to her heart’s content.
There’d been a time in her life when she would have felt awkward, sitting at a table by herself like this, but years spent in the company of avowed individualists such as Jilly had managed to cure her of the misconception that a woman out alone for a drink or dinner was somehow to be pitied. Sh
e certainly enjoyed going out with friends, but there could also be something inexplicably exhilarating about such a moment on one’s own. Freed of any conversational or other companionable responsibilities, you were able to watch the parade of the world go by without worrying that you might, however inadvertently, slight someone.
It was at times such as this that Wendy loved living in the city. Like Sophie, she’d grown up in Newford, and while she enjoyed visiting the countryside, she only really felt comfortable downtown, surrounded by people and buildings and traffic. The energy of the city seemed to twin the way the blood moved in her veins, the way air was drawn in and out of her lungs, although that brief visit she’d had to the red rock canyons of the dreamlands had left an enormous impression on her as well.
It was the first time she could remember that she yearned to go away to some primal place, unrelated to the city, and she wasn’t sure if it had been those canyons themselves or the dreamlands as a whole that had woken such a longing in her. Probably both.
She was thinking of that when she spotted the striking couple coming down the sidewalk toward where she was sitting with her glass of wine. There were both dark-complexioned and exotic in a city that already had a wonderful ethnic mix, particularly in this area of town. The man was tall and handsome, like a riverboat gambler or a Mexican senor, in black cowboy boots, jeans and jacket, with a white shirt and bolo tie, wearing a black flat-brimmed hat decorated with a hatband of turquoise and silver. His companion was almost as tall and even more attractive. Her cowboy boots were red with faded blue jeans tucked into them. She had a white shirt as well, with a short deerskin jacket overtop. She wore no hat, maybe to show off her gorgeous blue-black hair with the two white streaks running back from her temples.
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