So Much for Dreams

by Vanessa Grant

  Joe must have read her mind. He said, "I thought of taking her over to our boat where there's more room, but getting her there would be an ordeal—Barry, come and sit with Cathy while Dinah and I get things ready."

  Our boat. Of course it was a slip of the tongue, but it made her heart race, her mind fill with the rush of dreams.

  There wasn't really much to get ready, but it seemed to Dinah that Joe worked as hard at keeping Barry busy as he did at keeping Cathy calm. When Barry started hovering restlessly, and Joe seemed to have run out of things to send him for, Dinah asked, "Have you figured out what to put the baby in?"

  Barry shook his head worriedly and Joe suggested, "Why don't you and Dinah go over to my boat and look through the lazarette. I think you might find a plastic tub there that would do."

  Dinah thought Barry was relieved to be out doing something. They crossed to Joe's boat without talking, then had to look for a lantern to help them see into the lazarette. Barry lit the lantern and held it while Dinah started hauling things out.

  "This lazarette hatch is a real hole," she muttered good-naturedly. "Ropes and cans of paint and who knows what."

  Barry was taking things as she handed them out, his mind not on what he was doing. Finally he said, "I don't know what you must think of me. It's not—Cathy's not—" He took a deep breath, then said, "It's not my baby."

  "I know it isn't, Barry." She leaned back on her haunches, reaching up to touch his arm fleetingly. "Cathy needed friends. I'm glad you were here to help her."

  He nodded, then said uneasily. "She was living on the beach. That bastard she came down here with—he just took off and left her. Donno where he went, but she couldn't look after herself. She had nothing."

  His voice dropped and he said uneasily, "If I could have, I'd have—I don't have a job, you see, and—This trip is something my dad gave me. I graduated last year, and he said why didn't I come down and spend a year on the boat, kind of a graduation present. My parents keep the boat down here. They come for a holiday every winter. It's not that much of a boat, but it's a cheap holiday. And I didn't need much to live down here for a year. Dinah, I—When I realized Cathy had nowhere, that there was no one, just this Leo and he hadn't answered her letter—I know she needed to go to doctors and all that, and I would have if I could, would have taken her home to Canada, but honest to God, I don't think my mother would have—She just wouldn't have understood. And I didn't have the money to get her back. I'm going back next month myself, though, taking my old car back. I've got enough to eat until then, and about enough for gas money. I was gonna drive her back then, her and the baby if it came. Then—I don't know. I was going to try to help her get something worked out. I haven't got a job lined up, yet, though, and—"

  Dinah pulled out a plastic mass that turned out to be a big dishpan or a small laundry tub. She held it up. "Do you think this is it?"

  He frowned. "Is it big enough for a baby?"

  "I think so. They come pretty small, you know."

  He pondered. "Yeah," he agreed.

  Dinah started putting the rope back into the locker. "I hope Joe doesn't mind if this stuff isn't packed the same as it was. What I really think, Barry, is that Cathy's lucky to have you for a friend."

  He made a noise like swallowing, put the plastic aside and said, "I don't really think she should drive back, all that way with a new baby. If something goes wrong with the car I might have a problem. I don't have extra money. With just me it didn't matter. If the car packed it in I could hitchhike, but with a baby, a new baby—"

  "It's all right. I'll take her back with me." Would it be better to send Cathy by air? But then she would arrive in Vancouver alone, and it was very important that Cathy not feel abandoned now.

  Barry seemed to be following her thoughts. "I don't want you to think I'll just shove her off an you and—I'm gonna be in Vancouver. She'll be in Vancouver, won't she? You said she could stay at Leo's house and—Yeah, well, when I get there I'll—I'll look her up. I'll get a job. I'll be stayin' at my parents, but then I'll get a job. I'll find something." He took in a deep breath, said in a rush, "She's pretty young, and—Well, I think she should do the school thing, get herself together, but I wouldn't want her to think I walked out. I mean, she and I weren't—Well, we didn't—But I'd like to come see her, and maybe take her and the baby out. To the park and stuff." He glowered, added, "The school thing, too. I could help her with it, maybe."

  Dinah stood up, silencing his rush of uncomfortable words with her hand on his shoulder. "Barry, I think she'd like that, but you should tell her yourself. Cathy hasn't had a lot of people in her life that have stuck around for her."

  He gulped, said, "Yeah, I know. She told me."

  If she had, then he was a closer friend than he realized. From Dinah's memories of last summer, Cathy hadn't opened up to Leo at all. Whatever was in her past had been thoroughly and painfully locked up. Dinah said simply, "I'm glad you're her friend." From the looks of Barry's face, it was going to be more than friendship. Dinah hoped Cathy would be mature enough to realize what a good young man this was, but she said only, "Cathy's going to need a lot of encouragement."

  "Yeah." He took the plastic pan from her. "Do you think we could find some soap. Soap and salt water and a cloth or something, and we could clean this thing up. I figure I could help with the school thing a lot. It's gonna be a drag for her, going back when she's been out for a couple of years. But she's smart, you know. She'll do it. And maybe—" He shrugged uncomfortably. "Well, I just think I could help out a lot."

  They cleaned and dried the pan, then Dinah lined it with a big colorful towel of Joe's. Barry smiled at it in the darkness of the boat deck and Dinah agreed that it was a pretty bassinet. They headed back to the other boat.

  "Just in time," said Joe as they came in. He looked up from Cathy, his eyes narrowing on Barry. The boy was pale. "Barry, why don't you take a walk on the beach while—"

  "No!" Cathy gasped, said, "Barry, please don't leave me!"

  "I won't," said the boy, glaring at Joe who shrugged with a faint grin.

  "All right, then. Sit there, hold her hand and if you're going to faint, fall the other way." Then Cathy cried out, and things started happening quickly. "You're doing great," Joe assured her, and a few moments later he was laying the tiny newborn on Cathy's stomach. "You win," he told the young mother. "It’s a girl."

  "Leonie," whispered Cathy. "I'm calling her Leonie, for Leo."

  After Joe had tied the cord, Cathy held the baby in her arms for a moment before she slept, then Barry took Leonie from her as if he had done this before. He flushed when his eyes met Dinah's. "I'm from a big family," he mumbled, rocking the newborn gently.

  Joe didn't seem to need her help, nor did Cathy for that matter. Dinah went outside where only the moon would see that she was crying. Joe found her there a few moments later.

  "Hi," he said softly.

  "Hi." She sniffled a little as she turned to look at him. He touched her cheek and his fingers came away damp. She smiled tremulously, whispered, "I'm being silly, aren't I?"

  "No." He sat beside her in the cockpit, took her hand in his, turned it over and stared at her palm in the moonlight. "I'd forgotten myself what a spectacular experience that is. Having a baby is a pretty emotional thing. We just had our first baby together, Dinah."

  She licked her lips, stared at her palm as if she could see what he was reading there. His lips were turned down, his face very serious. When his eyes met hers they didn't have any of the bright blue in them, only deep black questions.

  "Dinah, would you like to make a baby with me?"

  She gasped, said painfully, "Joe—Joe, please don't—"

  Then he took her other hand, too, said, "I didn't really mean to say that, but in there I kept having this fantasy thing, that it was you, that it was my baby." He laughed shortly, said, "I never could keep any distance from this doctoring thing."

  "Joe?" It was Barry's voice. "Joe, can you come h
ere?"

  "Yeah." He stared down at Dinah, and she thought he was going to say something that would change her life forever. Then he shook his head, turned away, and she felt a tearing as he hurried back into the boat. Just for a moment, there had been a vision of the future, warm and wonderful. Joe and Dinah together, forever. A home. A family, his babies and hers. He had seen it too, but he was walking away and it was not going to happen.

  That night she slept on the settee across from Cathy, to be near the girl and the baby, although Barry seemed to know far more than Dinah did about caring for newborn infants. But sometime in the middle of the night Dinah held little Leonie when she woke, and she was silly enough to dream that it was her baby, hers and Joe's.

  The next morning they breakfasted together, Cathy eating very lightly on Joe's instructions, Joe announcing, "I was talking on the radio to a boat out to the east of us, in the Gulf. The water's smooth. It looks like an easy day. I think we can head back to La Paz without disturbing Cathy or the baby too much."

  "I've been thinking about it," said Dinah as she pushed her eggs around on the plate. "And I've decided that I should try to get a flight home for Cathy and me, and the baby of course. The car—" She shrugged, knowing she had to get away quickly if she was going, before she got crazy and started begging a man who didn't want her. Remembering the airline strike that had complicated her journey south, she added, "If we can get a flight, that is."

  Everybody seemed to think that was a good idea, and Joe said, "Don't worry about the car. If you can do without it for a while, I can see it gets back to you in Vancouver."

  "Thanks," she said shortly. He had helped her into the country, now he seemed eager to help her out.

  ***

  Booking a flight turned out to be easy as long as they were willing to drive south to Los Cabos, then fly by a circuitous route to the Mexican mainland, then north to Seattle. From Seattle they would be able to book a short flight to Vancouver. The only problem was the existence of a baby that had not entered the country. Joe managed to smooth their way through the paperwork of registering the baby's birth in Mexico, and within forty-eight hours he was driving them to the Los Cabos airport in Dinah's car.

  Throughout, Joe avoided being alone with her. Their passionate union on the deck of his boat might have been a dream for all there was in his eyes when he looked at her. All right. She had practice enough at pretending that good-byes did not matter. She even managed to smile as he said goodbye to Cathy and Leonie at the airport. Then Barry took Cathy carefully into his arms, holding her and the baby together.

  Dinah found herself staring into Joe's eyes. "Thanks, Joe. For ... for everything." She managed to smile, but he did not smile back. He nodded, but he didn't hold out his hand to her, and he made no move to come closer, to take her in his arms.

  His voice was husky, though, when he said, "De nada, señorita. I'll get your car back to you."

  "No hurry. I've got Leo's old car, too, so I can use it for any camping trips with the girls. So any time—If anyone's going north and could drive it, or—" She swallowed and couldn't stop herself from saying, "Maybe I could even come back sometime or—" She stopped before the rest of the crazy words came out.

  "No. I'll look after it." His voice was strained. Maybe it was hurting him, too, but he wasn't going to say anything but goodbye to her.

  "Goodbye," she said again, then there was the plane, and Cathy looking nervous as she settled in the seat.

  Dinah had lots of time that day to prowl through her little phrase book and translate the Spanish words Joe had said when she thanked him. De nada translated as "it's nothing." Nothing. He had given her almost exactly the two weeks he had promised her, and it was nothing in his life.

  Chapter Ten

  She supposed she should worry about the car, but it seemed irrelevant and it wasn't that big a deal to dig out the ownership papers for Leo's old car and go down to an Autoplan office and reactivate the insurance.

  It would be more inconvenient for Joe, trying to arrange her car's delivery before he left for the South Pacific on his boat. She knew that he would keep his promise, that some day her car would turn up on her doorstep, probably delivered in some unconventional manner. When it came, she thought that her tears would come with it. As long as the car was still in Mexico, she could keep having crazy fantasies that he would be the one to bring it back to her.

  Jake welcomed her back to work with a stack of assignments that had her staying late, taking work home weekends. It seemed that Austin Media swallowed her whole for a while, with only moments to show Cathy how to cook an omelet and how not to burn steaks, to make sure the girl got to the college for testing and to the public health unit for a long talk with the nurse. Sally, one of the girls Dinah regularly took out camping, turned out to have a passion for babies and quite a bit of practical knowledge about their care.

  Then Barry turned up, and he had no idea where Joe might be or what had happened to Dinah's car. Barry was still dark from the sun, but within days he started looking more Canadian, even turned up one day in a suit, on his way to a job interview. Dinah watched the slow growth of the relationship between Cathy and Barry. Both youngsters seemed cautious, which seemed to Dinah a good thing. They were so terribly young.

  Dinah's dreams became less optimistic, more filled with a yearning she tried to bury in busy days. She started watching her mailbox, hoping for a letter from Joe about the car, or at least a postcard. She knew that if a letter came, he would not sign it with love, would not be begging her to join him in some crazy corner of the world.

  She would go. If he asked, she would go, and if he was there, loving her, she thought that she could make a home anywhere, that a house would not matter.

  Perhaps he had written, but it was buried somewhere in the mail system that had tried to digest Cathy's letter to Leo. Perhaps. But if there was a letter somewhere, it was not a message of love. She knew better. Darn it, wasn't she a practical girl, a realist? Not a dreamer, for goodness sakes. Dreamers just got slapped in the face.

  She tried to finish a painting of Cathy's baby, but somehow painting seemed impossible. Nothing looked good. The commercial drawings she did at work were easier. Thank goodness she hadn't lost that skill, or she'd have to worry about going hungry! Especially after all the travelling, airline tickets, and most recently the furniture bill for a baby crib and washstand.

  In late July she decided to clean out Leo's storeroom. It was a job she had been avoiding for months. Leo had filled the room with a pile of old junk he hadn't wanted to get rid of over the years. None of it was of any value, and there didn't seem to be much of sentimental value as far as she could see. Leo hadn't been a man for photo albums or mementos from the kids he helped. He'd just been there, helping them.

  If he had had family of his own, there was no sign in this room. She'd wondered if getting into this storeroom would uncover some hidden life of Leo's. Once he had told her that his only relative was a third cousin he hadn't seen in over twenty years, and his act of leaving everything to Dinah seemed to confirm that.

  Certainly there were no family mementos in the junk room, but by noon she had discovered there was a lot of dirt. There were also five pairs of ice skates in assorted sizes, two sleeping bags, and three boxes of parts for an electric train set. Maybe she wouldn't use the room as a studio after all. The sunroom at the back of the house was working well enough, and perhaps it would be fun to try to reconstruct this massive electric train thing. The girls might get a kick out of that. She'd save it far a rainy weekend when the camping trip looked a dismal prospect, then bring them all over here. They could build trains, or try to, and laugh over their childish pursuits.

  She was thinking of stopping for a cup of coffee when the doorbell rang. Earlier Cathy had come upstairs with Barry and the baby, but they had left quickly, before she could involve them in what looked like a dirty, hard-working task. Now, sitting back on her heels with a little train engine in her hands, she
realized that she was a bit dizzy. She must have forgotten to have breakfast again.

  She pushed at a stray clump of hair with the back of her hand. The doorbell rang again. "Coming!" she shouted. "Just hold on!" If it was Cathy, she'd just walk in. Jake and his wife Jenny might come for a Saturday visit, but they'd open the door and shout in when she didn't answer. So it was probably that fellow next door who kept complaining she was feeding his cat. Darn! She'd meant to stop feeding the furry thing, but it kept coming, meowing, and not understanding why Dinah wouldn't give it milk any more.

  "How the devil does he know I'm feeding it," she muttered as she went down the corridor. She felt another clump of hair working its way out of the knot she'd tried to restrain it with. Impatiently, she reached up and pulled out a couple of pins, letting it free. Maybe she'd go to the hairdresser's and get it cut, short. When would she stop remembering the feel of Joe's hands in it, his breath stirring the soft hair against her cheek?

  "OK!" she shouted. He was impatient, angry probably. She jerked the door open. "Look, I'm sorry about your cat, but—"

  His fair hair was brushed smooth, glistening and tidy. He was clean-shaven except for the mustache which seemed to have been trimmed since she'd last seen it. She swallowed, realized her mouth was open and got it closed.

  "I don't have a cat," he said, not smiling. "Hello, señorita."

  "You're—You're wearing a suit." It was a silly thing to say, but all the other things, the questions and the heart-stopping joy, were unspeakable until she knew why he was here, at her door, not looking like the Joe she knew.

  He nodded, shifted from one foot to the other and slipped his hands into his pockets. "Can't go to an interview in jeans. Not if you care about the result."

  "Interview?" Was it possible that he was nervous? Joe? "Are you going to come in?" She stepped back and he didn't answer, but he came through the door. Inside, standing there, the silence was no more comfortable. "What—Joe, why are you here?"