Queen of Dreams

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  I roll my eyes. “Is it so impossible to believe the board reviewed my work and decided I’m a good painter?” But inside, I have my own doubts.

  I call my mother to tell her the news, and listen carefully as she says how delighted she is. She sounds surprised and excited and a little teary, just like any normal mother would—or is she a better actress than I suspect? I ask her to keep the evening of the reception free. Not that I expect my parents to be busy with another event. I can’t remember when they last had a night out, or invited friends over. Do they even have friends? But this is too significant for me to take any chances.

  “Of course, dear,” my mother says. “I wouldn’t miss it for life or death.” There’s the slightest hesitation. Then she adds, “Nor would your father.”

  But I’ve picked up the tension in her voice. “What is it, Mom?”

  “I wish it weren’t a Friday, that’s all.”

  I know what she means. My father’s binges always begin on Friday evenings, and he hasn’t had one in a while.

  “He’s been laid off again,” she adds. “The company’s downsizing. He’s been going to the agency every day, but no one seems to be hiring—especially older people. He’s taking it hard.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I say, but I don’t give it too much thought. My father—a hazy presence in my life at the best of times—has been laid off before this, and he’s always managed to find something. Right now, selfishly—I admit it—I’m more concerned with my own problems. “You’ll just have to keep him from drinking,” I tell her. Anxiety makes me sharp. “Just for this one night. It’s really important. Can’t you do this much for me?”

  “I’ll do my best,” she says, but her voice wavers. I know we’re both thinking the same thing: so far, in almost three decades of marriage, she hasn’t been successful yet.

  The week passes in a blur. I agonize over which paintings to choose for the show. Half a dozen times I begin dialing my mother’s number, then hang up. She’d be glad to give her opinion, and so would Belle, but they wouldn’t know what’s right. Only I can know that. And so I pick and reject, pick and reject, lining up paintings along the wall and staring at them until they all look flawed and hideous. In between, I worry about Jona.

  I haven’t heard from her—or Sonny—since he left me that message a week ago saying he was taking off for the wilds of Mendocino. I imagine them lost in the forest, starving. I picture boats capsizing. Grizzlies. Hypothermia. Cobras. (Half of my mind insists that cobras do not live in Northern California, but the other half will have none of it.) Finally, I break down and call Sonny’s number. I’m ready with a scathing message, but his machine informs me that his phone mailbox is full. I’m left to seethe and wonder who’s been calling him so many times.

  Things are not going well at the Chai House. There’s been a sharp drop in customers, especially after the new café put up a sign advertising student discounts. Sometimes an entire hour goes by with no one coming in—something that has never happened before this. I spend a lot of my store time at the plate-glass window, watching the hordes jostling under the awning of Java. Masochism pure and simple, but I can’t seem to stop myself. Two of the philodendrons in our window box died recently, no doubt as a result of the jealous poison-air I was breathing on them. The only person who is benefiting from all this is Marco. We have so many Danishes left at the end of the day that he’s able to pick up enough for all his homeless friends.

  Once I asked if he’d been inside the new place.

  He tugged at his scruffy beard. “Um—yeah, I went in last week—just to check out the place, you know.”

  “Was it pretty?” I asked against my will.

  “Pretty?” He wrinkled his forehead. “Tell the truth, I can’t exactly remember. There was lots of shiny stuff. But I sure remember the manager. I wanted some coffee—I had money, even—but that manager, she was one cold bitch. She has these pale blue eyes, almost white, that never blink. Like a robot’s. Her mouth’s like a robot’s too, looks like it’s made of metal. She told me, I don’t want you coming in here again. Then she said, like she was doing me a favor, I don’t mind if you go to the Dumpster in the back and pick stuff out of there, as long as it’s after hours. Serves me right, I guess, for going there instead of coming to nice young ladies like you two. But don’t you fret about them. They ain’t gonna last long on this street with that kinda attitude.”

  I smiled and put an extra muffin in his sack. “That would be good, wouldn’t it,” I said. But I didn’t really believe it would happen. Nor did I quite believe Marco’s description of the manager-as-robot-woman. But I appreciated the fact that he had lied in an attempt to make me feel better.

  T he only thing that takes me out of my miserable self is the painting I’m doing of the eucalyptus grove. It’s still not completed, but I’m determined to have it ready for the show. I stay up late, working on it until my eyes turn bleary and the colors get muddied from reworking the strokes. I’ve sketched in the man I saw at the grove practicing Tai Chi. I’m pleased with my decision, though so far he’s only a blur of white against the greens. When I glance at the painting edgewise, craftily, he seems to be moving. But something’s still out of balance—only I can’t figure out what. The not-knowing lodges inside me, irritating as a mango fiber caught between two teeth.

  Sunday night, when I’ve given up hope, the bell rings. A long peal, then two short ones—Jona’s signature. I rush to the door, ready to tell Sonny exactly what I think of his behavior. But Jona’s the only one standing there, gap-toothed and grinning and grimy with dirt. Even as I stare, Sonny’s Viper disappears around the corner with a roar loud enough to wake the entire neighborhood.

  “How could he just leave you on the doorstep!” I fume. “What if I hadn’t been home?”

  “Sonny and me saw your shadow against the curtains,” Jona says, her tangled hair spilling out around her face. “You were painting, we could tell.” She wrinkles her nose and gives me a crooked smile that’s so like Sonny’s that for a moment it leaves me speechless. “Are you angry?”

  I manage to shake my head as I reach for her. She suffers a hug, then squirms away. “What’s there to eat? I’m starving.”

  I knew you wouldn’t feed her right, I say triumphantly in my head to Sonny-the-irresponsible as I carry armloads of food to the dining table.

  “Mmmm,” she says, “peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, tortilla chips with hot salsa, oranges, cookie-dough ice cream! Mom, you’re the best.”

  “Just this once,” I say in my strict-mother voice, but I can’t suppress my smile. You’re the best! I like that! “Didn’t your dad give you any dinner?”

  “Actually, he did. We stopped at this really neat Italian restaurant just before we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. Sonny said it was one of his favorite places to eat. They have foot-long French-bread pizzas with so much cheese that it just drips over the side. I ate four pieces. Really, Mom, it was the best!”

  So much for my unique bestness. Trying not to feel let down, I ask, “What’s this Sonny business? What happened to Dad?”

  “Sonny says I’m all grown up now, and we’re friends more than father and daughter, so I can call him by his name,” she says, maneuvering a dangerously wobbly spoonful of ice cream into her mouth.

  I want to tell her to wash her hands, take off her muddy shoes, take smaller mouthfuls, and not listen to her father’s subversive ideas. Using supreme self-control I manage to stay silent.

  She goes through an entire box of Cheez-Its in record time, inhales two glasses of milk, and then turns to the easel. “Mom! You’ve started a new painting.”

  “What do you think?” My heart speeds up absurdly as she cocks her head and stares at it. Jona has a surprisingly acute eye for a six-year-old, and she’s often given me good advice.

  “I like it,” she says, finally, and then, “It’s different from all your other stuff.”

  “How?” I ask, intrigued. “Is it because it’s
set here in Berkeley?”

  Jona shakes her head. “Nope, that’s not it.” She gives a huge yawn. “Tell you tomorrow. Hey, Mom, can I sleep with you tonight?”

  “Not until you take a shower,” I say, attempting sternness. “You’ve probably got ticks.” But she’s already curled up in my bed, her eyelashes dark against mud-streaked cheeks. And I didn’t even get a chance to ask her about her trip.

  T he morning, as always, is a mad rush of brushing-teeth, getting-into-clean-clothes, finding-matching-socks, and eating-breakfast-without-spilling-it-on-above-mentioned-clean-clothes. Things are complicated further by the fact that I have to bathe Jona (grime comes off her in black streams) and wash her hair (I don’t even consider detangling it). Finally we’re in the car, speeding to Mariposa Montessori. Not that one can actually speed through the nine A.M. Berkeley streets, filled as they are with students who believe it’s their God-given right to cross when and where they wish.

  “So, what did you mean when you said my painting was different?” I ask Jona.

  “What? Oh, I don’t remember,” she says, leaning out the window to watch a young man with impossibly spiky hair whizzing by on a skateboard.

  So much for wisdom from the mouths of babes. I decide to follow another track. “What did you do all week?” I’m afraid she’ll say she’s forgotten this, too, but suddenly she’s full of animation.

  “We drove up to Uncle Paul’s, then we went boating on the ocean, then we ate pizza, then we slept in the cabin in our sleeping bags, then we saw whales with their babies, then the whales went away and we went hiking in the forest, then we cooked hot dogs on a fire, then we slept in two tents for two nights, then we didn’t see bears though we looked, then we came back to Uncle Paul’s cabin where the toilet wouldn’t flush, then we went to a music place where people played trumpets, then we ate more pizza—”

  It sounds pretty much like I’d expected. “Two tents?” I ask as we pull into the Mariposa’s parking lot, which is milling with harried parents as usual. “Did Paul go hiking with you?” In my mind I cast about for discreet ways to ask Jona if Paul and Sonny had been smoking marijuana. They’d better not have, if they value their lives.

  “Yup,” Jona says as she unbuckles herself and opens the back door of the car. “Uncle Paul came with us and told stories at night. I didn’t understand them, but Sonny and Eliana thought they were funny—”

  “Eliana?” Paul must have a new girlfriend.

  “She’s my friend, except she’s a grown-up lady. She’s very pretty, with long brown hair and blue eyes like the flowers on that plant you used to keep on the windowsill until it died. She stayed in the tent with us and sang songs for me to sleep—”

  I take a deep breath and try to keep my voice calm. “She stayed in the same tent as Sonny and you?”

  “Uh-huh. She wore a dress with flowers and sang in a different language. Oh, there’s Keysha waving at me. I gotta go. Bye, Mom!”

  “Wait! Did this Eliana drive up from the Bay Area with you?”

  But my daughter is gone in a flurry of pigtails and backpack, leaving me to realize that one can be shocked and seething at the same time.

  I drive around for an entire hour in an attempt to cool down before I call Sonny. But whatever control I’ve gained evaporates as soon as I hear him growling a sleepy hello in what certain people (Eliana, perhaps?) would describe as his sexy bedroom voice.

  “How could you?” I scream into the mouthpiece. “How could you be so crass and irresponsible as to expose my daughter to your perversions?”

  There’s a moment’s silence, then a deep-throated laugh. At one time (I’m ashamed to remember) that laugh used to make me go weak at the knees. Now it only infuriates me. I take a lungful of air and hold it in, hoping to calm myself. Sonny likes nothing better than making me lose my temper.

  “I should have known it was you, Riks!” he says. “You missed me, didn’t you? No one to call up and yell at for a whole week, no one to blame for all your—”

  “Yelling at you is not my activity of choice—”

  “Could have fooled me—”

  “—but in this case, even you have to admit, I have good cause.”

  “Because we didn’t call you from Mendocino? Sorry—Paul’s phone was down.”

  “There were other phones in town, were there not?” Then I realize what Sonny-the-master-tactician is doing. “Don’t try to sidetrack me,” I say acidly. “Irresponsible as that was, that’s not what I called about. God knows I’m used to your irresponsibilities—”

  “Ah yes, you called about my—how did you put it—crass perversions! Well, I’d like you to know that Paul and I only smoked after Jona fell asleep.” Sonny’s voice drips virtue. “And we went outside to do it—even when it was raining.”

  “And Eliana? Did Eliana go outside to smoke with you, too?”

  “Who?”

  “Sonny, please don’t insult my intelligence by pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  “I’d never dare to insult you, Riks! You’d probably sic Belle on me! Besides, wasn’t it I who once told you that you were too intelligent for your own good?”

  “Quit joking. Who’s Eliana?”

  “I don’t know anyone by that name. Honest!”

  He sounds so sincere, so not guilty, that I’m taken aback— but only for a moment. Sonny-the-sincere-sounding—I’ve heard him before.

  “Let me give your memory a little nudge. She’s the woman you took up to Mendocino with you. She stayed in your tent. Your tent—with my daughter! Eliana—long brown hair, flowery dress, foreign accent. Is it coming back to you now?”

  A silence. Then: “And just how did you get to know about uh—Eliana?”

  “Jona told me!” I say in triumph.

  There’s a moment of silence. “Jo told you that?” Sonny asks. From his tone I can tell he’s shaking his head in that disbelieving way he has, as though the world has just pulled the rug from under his feet again. “Amazing!”

  “Why should it amaze you that she confided in her own mother? Unless you asked her to keep it a secret? You did, didn’t you? Sonny, how could you do such a low-down—”

  But he’s laughing, great roars of laughter, so unfeigned that I get confused.

  He pauses long enough to say, “She’ll go far, our daughter! What was that name again? Eliana—with flowers in her hair? Wow! What an imagination that kid has!”

  He’s still laughing when I hang up.

  It’s evening, the blue hour of gathering shadows. It used to be our busiest time, when even with Marcia and Ping helping us, we could hardly keep up with orders. Today the only person in the place—other than Belle and myself—is my daughter, sprawled across a table at the other end of the store, drawing.

  I practiced various sentences in my head as I picked Jona up from school. Did you just imagine that woman? Your dad said there wasn’t anyone there except the three of you. You’ve got to learn to separatemake-believe from real life! But they all sounded accusing or prissy, so finally I didn’t say anything.

  “Don’t worry so much,” Belle says when I describe the morning to her. “We all used to imagine things when we were kids. It’s a part of growing up.”

  “The problem is, I’m not sure she imagined it. Sonny’s lied to me before—”

  “Come on, Rikki! Sonny would never take a woman along when Jona was around.”

  “I can’t believe you’re defending Sonny! Didn’t you once name him Public Enemy Number One?”

  Belle grins. “Actually, it was Private Enemy Number One— as in your very own private enemy.” She shakes her head. “I can’t believe I’m defending him either. But you’ve got to give him credit—he’s a good dad.”

  “I’m not sure about that either. Believe me, I wish I could be. It would give me one less thing to worry about.”

  Not true, jeers my whisper voice. You know that what you really want is for Sonny to prove himself completely and criminally irrespo
nsibleso you can gain full custody of Jona and never let her see him again.

  I can’t deny it.

  “You could always call Paul and ask him.”

  “Paul and I are not on speaking terms. Also, his phone is out of order. And even if I broke down and called him, you think he’d tell me the truth? Especially if it incriminates his buddy?”

  “Well, then, I suggest you save your worries for what you know for sure,” Belle says. “Namely, this shop is done for. Another couple of weeks of business like this, and we’ll have to close down. We’ve tried everything—slashing prices, putting up promotional posters outside, having Marco distribute coupons at the street corner. And that horrendously expensive ad we put in the Berkeley Voice. No results. Even our Book Club members didn’t come in this week. And look at them!”

  We gaze dispiritedly across the street. From what little we can see, past their huge GRAND OPENING banner, Java is chock-full of customers, and every few minutes their door swings open to admit more people.

  “We’ve got to figure out their secret—there’s got to be something!” Belle says, pacing restlessly, running her fingers through her disheveled hair. She looks like she’s lost weight. She opens up in the mornings (we’ve let Marcia and Ping go) but usually stays on with me until closing time in spite of my protests.

  “It’s like they have a giant invisible people magnet!” she bursts out. “I’ve been watching all afternoon. Even folks who are striding along as though they’re in a hurry to get someplace come to a stop once they see that sign—and then they go in there, like they’re sleepwalking.”

  “You’d better go home and catch some sleep yourself,” I say. “You’re beginning to sound like a voice-over from Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” But I can’t help peering out suspiciously. The way my world is tilting, people magnets don’t sound so impossible. All I see, however, is a gaggle of executive types, power-tied and leather-briefcased, coming out of the café, laughing uproariously as though they’ve been drinking something far more potent than coffee. Their laughter brings back the memory of my morning’s call to Sonny.