by Rachel Simon
Nanna kept talking, but the soap was in Beth’s eyes so she dunked her head beneath the water. There, surrounded by the muffled sounds of bath and Nanna, Beth wondered for the first time how her father’s girlfriends got into the floor. Maybe it was by way of the tub, the same tub she was in now. Maybe they lay in the water and when the plug came out they slid through the drain, into the walls of the house, and downstairs to a lake under the kitchen floor. Beth almost asked Nanna to help her try this, but they were in such a hurry. Instead she figured she’d ask when they got back home. Nanna could pull the plug and watch over Beth. Nanna would make sure everything was OK.
Richard drove. Marie sat beside him, and Nanna sat behind him, and Beth sat next to Nanna. Nanna bought a box of funny newspaper articles she had collected over the years, but when she pulled them out to look at, she felt too queasy — Richard was driving like a demon, she said, and the roads were so very bumpy. She held her hand over her stomach and belched. Beth laughed. Richard said, “Please, Mother.” Marie held her head in her hands.
Then it was highway and an occasional traffic light, but mostly it was nothing else. No windowless buildings, no trains clattering beside them, no billboards even. Just trees. “And green is a pretty boring color,” Nanna pointed out to Beth, “if you’re honest about it.” Beth stopped looking outside after the first half hour, and she and Nanna tried to get something interesting going, but there wasn’t much they could latch onto. “You poor thing,” Nanna whispered as they passed a lake. “When we went on trips I always had them singing. Well, Martin, anyway. Your father could not carry a tune, or at least said he couldn’t.”
At that, Nanna glanced up, to the back of Richard’s bald head. She started, then said softly, “Take a peek up there.” They were sitting low in the seat and Nanna was pointing. “Your father has a face on the back of his head. See? There’s the mouth and the nose and the eyes.” She traced the face in the air with her finger, mouth being where the spine hit the neck, nose a fat fold above that, eyes two slitted dimples that made the face look Asian.
“Hey,” Beth said, “that’s neat.”
“What’s neat?” Richard called out from the front.
Nanna said, “The little house I just made with my hands.”
Beth giggled and watched the face with Nanna as they drove. If her father turned right, the face turned left. He glanced up, and the face squished into a frown. Nanna played along with it. When a car cut in front of them and Richard swore, the face looked to be smiling, and Nanna whispered, “Have a nice day.” When Richard smoked a cigarette — “Daddy, I thought you quit,” Beth said, to which he replied, “I need something to unwind” — and tossed the butt out the window, the face scrunched up on one side, and Nanna said, “Tsk, tsk.” Every time, she and Beth got a good laugh going.
Then Richard pulled into a rest stop. “You two go take a break,” he said, “I’ve got to give Charles a call. I’m worried about him.”
In the bathroom, Nanna waited while Beth used the toilet all by herself. When she came out, and Nanna was combing her crew cut, Beth said, “How’d Daddy get that face?”
“He was born with it,” Nanna said.
“Are we all born with two faces?”
Nanna paused to slip the comb into her purse. “Yes,” she said. “Your father’s is just more obvious.”
Back in the car, out on the road, Nanna found a pack of cards and she and Beth began a game of Go Fish. Richard and Marie talked adult talk — Marie spoke of “poor Charles,” and Richard said “Wally’s threats are idle,” and then they began with big words like “he’s defending through offensive,” and Beth stopped listening. Fortunately, Nanna had overcome her motion sickness, so she and Beth had no trouble playing cards. The sun shone through the window, and Beth could barely see out, but at some point she glanced up, squinting, and noticed a yellow light changing to red, and heard her father muttering, “Oh well, too late,” as they coasted through an intersection. A minute passed, and her parents continued with their talk. Soon the road opened out to fields, and Beth grew bored with the game. “Do you know where the king, queen, and jack come from?” Nanna said, gathering up the cards, and as she was explaining that cards were once used for money by rival kingdoms, a police car with flashing lights sped up behind them on the highway and pulled them over.
“It was yellow when I started going through, wasn’t it?” Richard mumbled in the front seat while the officer sidled up to their car.
From where Beth sat she couldn’t see the man’s face but she could see his creaseless uniform and shiny boots and she could hear his voice, asking for her father’s license. “This is so embarrassing,” Richard said, glancing at the cars passing by as the officer walked ahead to his car and spoke into his car radio. “And now the insurance will go up …” He tilted his head back and took a deep breath, and the second face squeezed together as if puckering from the sourness of the situation.
It seemed like a whole day passed before the officer set his radio back in his car. “I don’t see a ticket. Maybe he let you off,” Marie said as the man approached. But he didn’t let Richard off. Instead, he walked up to Richard’s window and said, “I’d like you to step out of the car, sir.”
“Excuse me?” Richard said.
“Speeding,” Nanna whispered to Beth, but then the officer said, “We have a warrant out for you.”
Marie rustled suddenly, as if she had just dropped something.
“Is this about my office?” Richard said. “I haven’t done anything. All I’ve done is uncover stuff.”
He talked on, and as he did the face on the back of his head grinned, and the eyes squinted with glee. To Beth, it seemed to be saying, I stole the cookies and I’m getting away with it, and after she watched for a minute she couldn’t help herself. “He did it!” she squealed.
Richard reeled around. “What are you doing?” he said, looking paler and more scared than she had ever seen.
“Please step out of the car,” the officer said. Richard opened the door slowly. The face winked at Nanna and Beth as Richard’s feet touched down on the road and when he stood up beside the car, he was saying, “He’s framing me, and now no one will believe me.”
The policeman slammed the door then, and Marie spun around, facing Beth, and her eyes were wide and wet and seemed to bulge out of her head. “Why did you say that?” Marie screamed. “Beth! What has gotten into you?”
Beth almost felt herself begin to cry, but instead she swallowed hard, and the cry went away, and she answered with the only thought that came to mind. “I didn’t say anything. My other face said it.”
“What?” Marie glanced at Nanna.
Nanna looked down, grinning, knitting her hands together.
“What is going on?” Marie yelled. She brushed a sheet of tears and sweat off her cheeks. Her brow was furrowed and she looked sick. “What is Beth talking about?”
Nanna opened her mouth as if to speak and then she stopped and peered up, through the front windshield. Beth rose on her knees to see. Beside the police car, the officer was snapping handcuffs on Richard’s wrists. Beth could see nothing but her father’s profile; she could not see either face. “Look,” she said, and her mother whirled around. “It’s a lie!” her mother shrieked, wrenching open the door and bolting toward the police car. Beth turned to Nanna as her mother ran across the gravel. For the first time, the old woman’s face was neither Comedy nor Tragedy. She was simply watching calmly, not saying anything, so Beth knew that it had to be true.
Better Than a Box of Dreams
The lady I cleaned house for, she dreamed so messy! Damn shame in that fancy mansion of hers. Least she could do was tidy up after all them — what’d she call it? — oh yeah, them dream therapy sessions. Did I say tidy up? My foot she would. Mrs. Winterborne’s hands never touched a Hefty bag, much less a broom. Every day, it was up to her housekeeper — that’s me, faithful Lilly, with my gone-gray hair and pinched-shut mouth and play-by-the-rules at
titude — to haul off the leftovers from what she called her “cutting edge of spiritual healing.” Right. Cuttin’ edge of carpet cleanin’ is more like it. But who else would do it, if not me?
Nobody, that’s who. That was the story of my life, once my husband Verl moved on from the breathing. Mama, I can’t pay my heating bill and Gramma, please tie my shoe and of course Mrs. Winterborne, my bread and butter, interruptin’ me more than I care to admit with a call from the big screen TV in the den: Lilly, before you empty the dishwasher, would you be so kind as to bring me a Bloody Mary? All eyes always turnin’ to me, and fool that I was I took care of their whatevers. Never once made a fuss.
So you can surmise how I swallowed her first adventure in dream therapy. It was a day like every I’d had for twenty-nine years: catchin’ the El and then my train and then that bus, sittin’ quiet on the ride out to the burbs — knittin’ needles clickin’ in my hands, my kids’ screw-ups bangin’ around in my head — then makin’ my way along the twirly, lush streets to the seven-acre Winterborne estate. But that June morning, after I let myself through the back gate and passed the never-used pool and gazebo and terrace garden, and unlocked the back door and stepped into the kitchen, I glanced into the den and was greeted not by Mrs. Winterborne, or yesterday’s drunk glasses, but instead by a smell of something sweet, and then the sight of — roses.
Not just a dozen snug in no vase, either. What I saw, roundin’ the corner, was an FTD bomb. Red rose petals ankle-deep over the Elvis-in-a-pompadour carpet, clingin’ like wet leaves to the Coca Cola posters and soda fountain machines, heapin’ like snowdrifts over the swivel bar stools, practically buryin’ the neon jukebox so only the blue lights could show. And in the pink Cadillac in the corner, Mr. Winterborne’s favorite collectible — the exact location where, three years before, Mrs. Winterborne came upon him and his new PR director in the white upholstered back seat, carryin’ on like there was no tomorrow — a forest of prickery rose stems.
Well. I just stood there, fixin’ to make sense of this. Then I glanced out to the patio and spied even more petals, and I remembered the afternoon before. A little, chunky, pony-tailed man — “Toast of the town,” she’d told me — had come by, all buttered up in yellow silk pants and kimono and slicked-back hair like he was tryin’ to be some wise old Chinese, only he was as white as her and no older than my own kids and had the face of a burnt-out rock star on round two of a second career. But he had this hocus pocus name — Master You. “That’s Y-O-U,” Mrs. Winterborne had told me when she asked me to set the patio table before he came. “Isn’t that just so clever?” All I knew beyond that I’d learned when the doorbell rang. “It’s likely he’ll still be here when you leave,” she’d told me, brushin’ cat hair off her sweats as I went to let him in. “Mrs. Garrett said he sometimes takes hours, because he has to put you to sleep. So don’t worry if you see me nodding off out there. Master You,” she’d said, makin’ her voice low with respect, “is a certified and licensed dream therapist.”
Dream therapist, my ass, I could imagine my Verl pipin’ up, as I shook my head at the rose petal shambles and went to dig out the trash bags and scoop up the flowers, all the while picturin’ Verl’s commentary in my head: He’s a professional mess-maker, that’s what he is. No better than Mrs. Winterborne’s son Bentley, who couldn’t even keep from upchucking his beer till he’d got all the way to the toilet. No better than our own deadbeat offspring either, who made as big a wreck of their lives as that Bentley boy made of his house.
I shoveled the roses in, stuffed the bags to overflow, and hauled them out back, Verl yakety-yakkin’ in my head every step of the way, me laughin’ quiet at how he’s goin’ on. I imagined Verl talkin’ to me a lot. That fine, silky-smooth voice playin’ itself between my ears. It was the best I could do, with him gone twenty-four years now and me moppin’ my way through middle age without a new man in his place. I’ll tell you: Love a dress, you can buy it. Lose a shoe, you can get a new pair. But when a man goes into the great hereafter, your closet just always stays empty.
At noon, when I got done leaving Bag Number Fourteen out back, I found Mrs. Winterborne sittin’ by the soda fountain in the den, her daytime stories on, combin’ her Persian cat. “Sorry about the roses, Lilly,” she said, lookin’ sheepish.
I said, “It’s my job, Mrs. Winterborne.”
She gave me a little smile, and I fished a dust cloth from my apron and started in on the jukebox. Once she’d been skinny as me, and dressed in Yves St. Laurent, but lately she’d gotten heavy. She’d asked me to let out all her seams — safer for me to do it than that busybody tailor all them ladies use with his big mouth letting on to the whole town who’d up and gone to pot — but no matter, she’d taken to wearin’ nothing but sweats. I saw it as cavin’ into the blues, though she did have her reasons, with the divorce all over the papers and then Bentley buyin’ a one-way ticket from Budweiser University to D.U.I. to Holly Hill Cemetery. Every day since — the sweats and the booze and letting her god-given hair color show its gray face to the world and lately even wakin’ up at noon. Kicked the spit right out of her, same as happened to me, so I understood. So even though her rule was that hired help keep their distance, I usually kept myself just inside the corner of her eye, dishwashing, silver polishing, you name it, so’s I’d be in earshot in case she wanted to talk. The few times she took her Bloody Marys out on the patio, I even set to do my ironing in the sewing room upstairs, with its window looking out right above, so’s she’d know all she had to do was call out and I’d hear her. Only, for a long time, she hadn’t sat on the patio, just petted that cat and stared at that wide screen. But this day, she took a big sigh and spoke up.
“Lilly,” she gushed, “it’s so cathartic to actualize one’s dreams.”
“Is it now,” I said, circlin’ the dust cloth a little slower.
“Oh, in just one session, I’ve received such an education! Did you know that many of us lock emotions into our unconscious, unaware that suppression leads us to behave in unhealthy ways?”
“Well, I don’t know that I’d have thought to put it that way.”
“And since dreams are the one reliable door between the conscious and unconscious, it stands to reason that if you can send the symbols of the unconscious through that door into broad daylight, you can actually see what you’re feeling — assuming you analyze correctly — therefore expediting the therapeutic process!”
Honey, I featured Verl sayin’, just speak English.
“Yesterday I dreamt about roses,” she went on, her voice all wispy. “I don’t remember the dream, but when I woke up, there they were, all over the room, as beautiful as the ones Father once told me he gave Mummy when I was born, as a sign of his eternal devotion. As beautiful as the ones he gave me at my coming out party.” She laughed a bit. “Master You wants to see me every afternoon. He says soon I’ll be able to comprehend my symbols, and as they grow more complex, I’ll understand myself better. And then, Lilly, you know what he promised? Then” — she sighed — “I’ll be cured.”
“Won’t that be nice,” I said. But hold on to your hat, dear — cured? It takes more than seein’ feelings. Though what more, well, I couldn’t say I know. Verl would have known. He was the philosopher. We’d be walkin’ down the sidewalk to the store, me addin’ up what a bus driver and maid earn and subtractin’ three little mouths, him cogitatin’ on the meaning of life. He thought a person had to feel meaning to feel alive. I’d ask, “How can you think about that when we got that leak in the sink and holes in the socks and we just got so much to do?” And he’d fit his big arm around me. “You still need something for your spirit,” he’d say in that royal baritone voice. “Something deeper. Something that puts a spark in your heart.” I’d say, “Oh yeah? So what gives you meaning?” “Simple,” he’d say. “Dancing with my baby.” And then he’d wrap our fingers together and do a slow two-step with me right there, right on the street corner, payin’ no one a mind ’cept us, hummin�
�� some Nat King Cole in my ear and makin’ up new words till I started laughin’ and he started laughin’ and then I would know what gave me meaning, too.
It got harder, so much harder, after he died, chokin’ in the terminal on a July afternoon, with his usual philosophy book on his lap, half-eaten hoagie in his hand. Still in his twenties. Tell ya, that man was good-looking, smart, and so strong. Damn. I lost track of meaning then, especially once my three kids got won over by the world and its Gimme that habits — the oldest with his cable TV and Hostess Cupcakes, the middle with her parade of married men and taste for Tiffany’s (god only knows where that came from), the youngest with her sticky fingers in five star stores — and all, with no shame, neglectin’ their own kids. My days turned from two-steppin’ with my honey to pickin’ up after a generation that kept shootin’ itself in the foot. Which is to say there was just duty. No meaning, ’cept for the night-night hugs I got from my grands. They wasn’t nothing like a man’s touch, but let’s face it, they was more than poor Mrs. Winterborne got. She got no hugs. Just a papa that disowned her when she didn’t like his new wife, and a husband that dumped her for his mistress, and a house of too-cool junk that he’d collected over the years, and her only baby six feet under the ground. Nothing else. Not even a good man in her head to sustain her.
She looked up at me. Her eyes had hope in them. “So,” she asked, “do you want to know how Master You does it?”
