Thief of Dreams

by John Yount

  Her chin crinkled, and through blurred vision she saw that, indeed, other people in the dining room were looking at her and still others seemed arrested with forks halfway to their mouths or coffee cups poised before their lips as though they were listening. She was, she realized, behaving badly, but she couldn’t seem to help it. It seemed absolutely predictable, somehow, that her unhappiness counted for nothing in the eyes of the law. But something, she was sure, could be made to serve, whether real or imagined. “Well, then what grounds are there?” she asked in a small, ragged voice.

  “Maidy …” he said, using the nickname only her family and the oldest of her friends from high school ever used; he patted her thigh secretly beneath the table to comfort her. “Maidy, now’s not the best time.…”

  It was too much and she bent her head and wept, but after a few moments, she dried her eyes on her napkin and sat up straight, determined to get control of herself. “I need to know,” she said.

  He looked off across the restaurant and sighed unhappily. “Desertion,” he said.

  “He’s in Pittsburgh.”

  “But he sends money and he wants you with him.”

  “What about infidelity?” she said. “I can’t prove it, but I know it. Somehow I know it.”

  “Adultery, yes,” he said and nodded. “But it really wouldn’t matter if you could prove it, and prove it a dozen times over with a dozen different women, not if he wanted to fight it. Not unless he’d actually set up housekeeping with another woman and refused to give her up. No judge I know would grant you a divorce because he’s sowed some wild oats.”

  “That’s outrageous,” she said. “I don’t believe you!”

  Leslie shrugged and tried to smile at her. “I’m a lawyer, darling, it’s what I do. I know the laws in this state.”

  “What other grounds are there?” she said, feeling her chin start to tremble again but fighting to stop it and stop the tears she could feel rising.

  “Cruelty,” he said. “But not showing up for dinner on time, coming home drunk or not coming home at all, buying a house without asking your opinion, or quitting his job and taking another one somewhere else—those things wouldn’t count for much.” He shrugged again, helplessly. “He would have to do physical violence to you, and frankly, he’d have to do it repeatedly. A broken nose, black eyes, a broken jaw, the sort of injuries a doctor could verify.”

  “Go on,” she said.

  “If he were insane and in an institution, or a convicted felon in prison, you might be able to get a divorce, and you might not. Women have been denied divorces in such cases. Sometimes the court seemed to feel there was reasonable hope the husbands would get well, or be released. Sometimes it seemed to hold that marriages are ‘for better or for worse,’ and this sort of thing falls under …” he made a helpless gesture with his hands, “ ‘worse.’ Sometimes the court, I guess, pitied the insane husband or the felon more than it pitied the wife.”

  He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Look,” he said, “in most cases, maybe not all, but in most cases it’s just as hard for a man to divorce his wife. It’s just that, well, it’s the end of the week and you’re tired and I’m tired, and you’ve got that call coming tomorrow, and we’d do better to talk about all this another time.” He looked at her, smiled hopefully, and even laughed a little. “If he disappeared for seven years, and no one saw him or heard from him, we could have him declared legally dead,” he told her and cocked his head to one side as though he were inviting her to laugh with him. “You wouldn’t have your divorce, but you’d be a widow in the eyes of the law.”

  But she didn’t feel like laughing. “You’re saying it’s impossible to end this marriage? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Jesus, Maidy, no, not exactly,” he said. “What I’m telling you is that, in this state, you just don’t have any legal grounds for divorce, not a one, not if Edward wants to fight it.” Leslie raised his eyebrows and cocked his head, letting his eyes slide away from her face. “If he decides he doesn’t want to be married either, and you’re both willing to perjure yourselves, then, sure, I can get you free. At least after you’ve been here long enough to establish this as your legal domicile.”

  “I think I want to go home now,” she said.

  “Look,” Leslie said, “this should have been a nice evening.” He caught one of her hands and held it, even though for a second she tried to tug it free. “I know how difficult all this must be for you, but I promise there’s a solution. It’s just that, no matter how much you mean to me, I just can’t snap my fingers and get you out of your marriage. I swear, Maidy, the best solutions happen outside the courtroom, and if you can make Edward realize that, this won’t …”

  She pulled her hand away, rose, and left him at the table. She didn’t look into any of the faces of the other diners, but she felt some of them searching her own, and she meant for her expression to give them nothing whatever.

  Once inside the ladies’ room, she thought she’d cry, had even planned on it, but she didn’t. She felt so drained there didn’t seem enough left of her to cry; instead, she found herself staring at her reflection in a long makeup mirror, staring into her own eyes as though for some understanding, but they seemed as blank and depthless as the eyes of a doll. If Edward wanted a divorce, she was thinking, then she could get one; if not, then not. So. The end of her marriage, if it came, would be just like the rest of it. What Edward wanted to happen would happen, and that, as they say, was that.

  Many moments later she found herself still standing before the mirror. Strangely numb and almost tranquil, she set her purse on the marble counter and turned to a sink where she ran cool water into her hands and bathed her face, which felt feverish. She took her time with her makeup, and when she had finished, she entered the dining room where Leslie was drinking coffee and looking worried and unhappy. He rose to greet her.

  “I’ve taken care of the bill,” he said, “so we can leave this minute if you want, or we can stay, and you can have some coffee and dessert.”

  “I’m sorry,” she told him. “I was upset. I know I’ve ruined our time together, and you didn’t deserve that.”

  He waved away her apology. “Lots of people expect the law to fix things, but it seldom does.” He smiled weakly. “It’s just that I’m not usually in love with them.”

  She nodded soberly, distantly, as though she hadn’t even heard him. “But I think I would like to go home,” she said. “I’m very tired.”

  Leslie helped her into her coat, and outside under the stars, he helped her into his car, but she was aware of these things only in the most remote and abstract sort of way. For most of the ride from Blowing Rock to Cedar Hill it was this way, as though she were too exhausted even to think; but after a while she found herself looking at Leslie’s profile and wondering—in a strangely dispassionate sort of way—what it would be like to be married to such a gentle, reasonable, and successful man, to have the nice things he could give her simply as a matter of course, to be treated with consideration. She’d had such thoughts before, but never with so little emotion.

  Before she quite realized where they were, he had slipped into the parking space beside her small gray coupe and given her hand a squeeze and her forehead a chaste, gentle kiss. She watched him pass in front of his car to help her out as if she’d never quite seen him before. Why he’d never really even made a pass at her, she realized, not really. Only once had he even kissed her on the lips, and although she hadn’t resisted exactly, she hadn’t responded either. She hadn’t quite had time to gauge her feelings, as she recalled, before he’d begun to dissemble and apologize.

  “Let me know how it goes tomorrow,” he said when he’d guided her to her little coupe, “just don’t—”

  She put her arms about his neck, kissed him, and slowly, deliberately, tilted her pelvis into his body. If he was surprised, and she knew he must be, he couldn’t have been more surprised than she was. She couldn’t believe she’d
done such a thing, and what she was thinking, she didn’t know herself. When, at last, she withdrew, she laid her palm against his cheek, searched his eyes for a moment, and then she was in her car and the motor was running and she was backing up. Leslie was standing just where she’d left him, apparently struck dumb and unable to speak; and she was almost out of town before she realized her vagina was wet.

  She was not quite sane, she knew that much. From the moment she’d left Leslie at the table back at the restaurant, she had not been herself and seemed to look at whoever she had become from a great distance and with cool disinterest, as though she were watching a sleepwalker. But no, she’d felt a kind of wonder and sadness too, as though her life were over, say, and she were only a spirit, a ghost, looking back on it with nothing more than washed-out and ghostly emotion.

  Strangely calm, as though she couldn’t be held in the least responsible for her behavior, she drove down the mountain, oddly bemused, surprised, and perplexed by turns. It wasn’t until she pulled into the driveway behind her sister’s car that she seemed to reach a deeper understanding. Well no wonder she didn’t feel responsible, she thought, since she’d just been given to understand that she had no power, no control whatever, which was just about the same thing as having no will, since there wasn’t any way to express it. Except …

  She sat staring at the dark, hulking shape of her sister’s car in front of her, the dark shape of the house and post office, the surrounding trees and shrubs looming darkly in the faint light of the new moon and distant stars. Such a small arena for choice and will…. It seemed so new to her. Was she a stupid woman? Did other women always know? Had they made peace? Had her mother always … It was sobering, but in some way she did not quite understand, both sad and freeing.

  A little at a time she seemed to come to herself as though descending stairs from her thoughts into her physical body. She was bitterly cold, and she got out of her car, crossed the lawn, climbed the stile, and shaking head to foot, let herself into the trailer, which was mercifully warm. James had the little gas furnace going, and, rolled into his blanket on the couch, he scarcely stirred when she came in. He had left on the small, dim lamp beside her bed, and she went into her bedroom and got undressed, feeling strangely fascinated with herself, as if she hadn’t yet got all the way back inside Madeline Tally and maybe never would. When she came out again in her gown and robe to brush her teeth and run a basin of water to wash her face, even James was new and different to her. Sunk into sleep on his uncomfortable couch, he seemed more than merely her son, but himself too, whoever in the world that might be. She supposed she’d always known that, but never quite so clearly as she saw it now. And in the next moment she seemed to understand that she had never been merely a wife, or before that, merely a daughter. Funny, but she hadn’t seemed quite able to understand that before. She wasn’t just Edward’s wife, whom he could disappoint and make angry and sad; she was herself. Whoever in God’s world that might be.

  What a strange, lonely sort of dignity there was in this knowledge, comforting when she thought of Edward, or any man, since it kept some part of her separate and intact. But looking at James asleep on the couch, she knew that what was true for her was also true for him. She had never before understood how modest a claim motherhood really was. He wasn’t, after all, an extension of her, anymore than she was an extension of Edward Tally or Bertha Marshall. Somehow, from this day forward, she would have to earn motherhood, and her claim on her son seemed all the more precious for being so tenuous. In another mood she might have gathered him in her arms to tell him she loved him, waking him in the process, confusing him. But this night she would let him sleep.

  She felt tender and wise. Looking back on what she had been, she was surprised that losing her virginity, say, hadn’t taught her more. Or bearing a child. But those things seemed only to have happened to her; and, if not altogether without her consent, then as though she had been mindlessly following some blueprint laid down long ages before she was born. It was as though, at the restaurant, she’d watched herself all but cease to exist. Still, what little of her remained had acted shamelessly and on a whim and brought her wisdom. Oh it had looked like a humble package at first, but nature abhorred a vacuum, and it had filled her up. It had opened her eyes and brought her comfort. Just now it was a gentle thing, and if she could hang on to it, she could keep herself inviolate. And maybe she could not rule the world, but she knew, at last, that she could rule herself, and if she did not wish to be gentle, she could rule a man or two. Yes she could, she thought, and blushed.

  Once again she came back to herself. She brushed her teeth and washed her face, and exhausted as she was, she realized she did not wish to yield up her consciousness to sleep for fear these new feelings, so hard won, would vanish. But she gave James one last, fond look and took herself off to bed. She didn’t think she’d be able to sleep in any case, but the very next thing she knew, it was daylight, and James, dressed for Sunday school, was standing in the doorway saying, “Momma? Momma? Everybody’s ready for church. They said I should get you up, so you can stay by the phone.”

  “All right,” she told him. Still half-asleep, she heard him go out of the trailer, and in the next moment she began to realize how sick she was.

  Forty-five minutes later, having vomited in the trailer sink and again by the fence—hanging on to the stile until her stomach was empty even if the retching went on and on and on—she sat in the empty kitchen of the farmhouse, rocking herself gently back and forth in the straight-backed kitchen chair. The telephone had been ringing as she’d come up the flagstones to the back door, but she’d been unable to get to it before it stopped. It was their ring all right, two longs and three shorts, but since she’d gotten inside, the phone had rung only once, and that had not been their ring. Her eyes hot and alien in their sockets and her joints aching with fever, she waited for it to ring again.

  How damned ironic it was to wake up sick. She’d thought she was being so profound last night, but maybe she’d just been feverish. And maybe she’d just gotten sick to punish herself for thinking the way she had. Even though she knew there was nothing left in her stomach, the powerful urge to throw up remained, and even the smallest joints of her toes ached. She hugged herself and rocked. Her new wisdom had lost some of its sparkle, and she was no longer sure exactly how she was supposed to put it into practice. In fact, it didn’t even seem new, but rather silly and old and obvious. Maybe the only thing new was her way of seeing it, her attitude. She could have seduced Leslie if she’d wanted to, and she might have wanted to if she’d only caught up to herself in time. And who was to say she wouldn’t?

  She moaned and rocked. The clock over her momma’s cook stove told her they would be out of Sunday school and filing into church now for the regular service. She did not want her family around when she talked to Edward. She didn’t want them to hear what she had to say. She wasn’t even sure she wanted Edward to hear it, as though it were too personal even for his ears.

  Please let him call before they come home, she thought, but a second later when the phone began to ring, sick as she was, the sound of it went through her like electricity.

  Before it started through its ringing sequence a second time, she’d shouted “Hello” into a confabulation of static, buzzing, and the faint, tinny conversation of two strangers.

  “Hey, sugar? Is that you?” Edward’s voice asked, broken but understandable and riding over the Lilliputian voices on the line.

  She did not wish to answer to “sugar.” It started the whole conversation off on the wrong foot, but there was nothing for it, and she shouted “Yes” into the mouthpiece. He wanted to know how she was, and she told him she was just fine. He wanted to know how James was, and she told him James was happy. In the interstice between Edward’s remarks and hers, a tiny conversation, clear as rain, declared that Millie had had a car wreck and broken some ribs and her wrist.

  “I’ve had a lot of time to think things over, su
gar,” Edward told her, and even though static blotted out some of what he said, she understood him perfectly. “This is just a piss-poor way to live,” he told her. “It don’t make sense. It’s unnatural. I love you, honey, and I miss you.”

  How could he sound so cheerful, as though he’d just untangled a terrible snarl by pulling on an obvious thread? She was certain she’d heard him laugh.

  “I want my family back. Working like a dog don’t make any sense otherwise,” he said.

  It was awful what the sound of his voice did to her. It was so familiar, like home, but a barren home with a cold hearth. It was like getting the Christmas spirit in February after a season that had been all wrong and false and perfunctory. Still, his voice sounded like home.

  He was waiting for her to say something, she knew. But she was so sick she ached all over. He had talked so much. Been so pleased with himself. But she couldn’t say anything. Instead, through the buzz and crackle of long distance, she heard the Lilliputian conversation going on and on: Tobacco wasn’t so good, but they Lord have mercy, you should have seen the crop of apples, never seen such an awful mess of apples, split that big tree out by the barn clean to the roots. As though it had a sound as well, she could hear Edward’s need to hear her speak, his anticipation of her forgiveness, her joy at what he had decided. And she could hear it turn into something else, bitterness maybe, even before he spoke again. “Dammit, Madeline, this is nonsense. What the hell do you want me to say? You can’t be happy either. …”

  “I am!” she shouted. “I am happy!”

  Edward didn’t say anything, and neither did the tiny voices that had spoken of Millie’s accident and tobacco and apple crops, as though she had shouted them down also.

  “I want a divorce,” she told him, and for a long time all she heard was a long sigh of static.