Dreamland (19 page)

When I walked inside I had no idea of what my face looked like: I still hadn't seen a mirror. But when the bartender nodded at me and Corinna turned around, her mouth dropped open, her eyes widening.

“Oh, my God,” she said, standing up and coming over to me. She reached out and touched my eye and I flinched, my own hand rising to push her away. “What happened to you, Caitlin?”

But I couldn't tell her. Instead, I just let her walk me to the bar and sit me down before she wrapped her arms around me, drawing my face to her shoulder. She smelled like fried food and grilled peppers as she drew her fingers through my hair, telling me it was all right, all right now.

This wasn't working.

I closed my dream journal, sitting back across my pillows in the slant of streetlight coming through the window. Since the night of the winter banquet I'd tried again and again to put down in words or even say aloud just to myself what had happened with Rogerson. The excuses had come easily: to my parents, Corinna, and Rina, I'd gotten bumped by a stray elbow as I made my way through the banquet crowd. The truth was harder.

I was afraid of forgetting. It seemed too easy. Already life was back to normal—I was lost in midterms and cheering practice and long, gray winter afternoons at Corinna's. But when Rogerson and I were at the pool house, inching ever closer to the inevitable, I'd feel his fingers slide up my arm, or curve around my neck and be lost in it, only to feel a sudden jolt as I remembered. His face, so angry, glaring at me. That split second as his hand moved toward me, too quickly for me to even comprehend what was about to happen.

But then he'd kiss me harder, and I'd go under again.

My mother, meanwhile, was almost giddy after her one conversation with Cass, who had still made it clear that she wanted to take things
slowly:
In two weeks she hadn't yet called back.

My mother was hoping she would for Christmas Eve. This, alone, just the possibility, was making the holidays more bearable for all of us. Before Cass broke down under endless pleading letters and phone messages, my mother hadn't even begun to prepare for her favorite of holidays: no eggnog, no tinsel, not even a tree. The day after Cass called, I came home to find her baking snowman cookies and wrapping gifts, with Barbra Streisand singing “Silent Night” in the background.

From what I could make of it, Cass hadn't explained much when she called. She said she missed us, and that she was happy. That she liked her job. That she hoped we could understand that this was what she wanted. Yale was not mentioned, and she didn't give my mother her phone number.

“She needs time,” my father kept saying, each time the phone rang and my mother ran to it, her face falling the instant she didn't hear Cass's voice on the other end of the line. “She'll come around.”

“I just don't understand why she doesn't want to be in contact with us,” my mother kept saying. “She didn't even
talk
to Caitlin.”

But the truth was, I wasn't ready to talk to Cass yet. I had a secret now, one I could keep from everyone else. But I worried that Cass, even over the phone, would recognize something different in my voice. She knew me too well.

Life was going on. I didn't even have a scar, this time, to remind me of what happened. But sometimes, when I glanced sideways at Rogerson in the car, or right before I fell asleep at night, I would have a sudden flash of his face again, how it had literally
changed
right before my eyes. And even as life settled back to normal, and we never discussed it, there was a part of me waiting, always braced and ready for him to do it again.

 

My mother, Boo, and I had our final photography class before the holidays the last Saturday before Christmas. We'd just finished developing what our instructor, Matthew, called our “people series,” in which we were supposed to use a portrait to convey our relationship to someone else. My mother had posed my father in front of the window in his study, with all his diplomas and various certificates behind him. He looked uncomfortable, his smiled forced, hands uneasily stuffed in his pockets, like an executive posing for the company newsletter. My mother, however, was just proud to have gotten his whole head in.

Boo's picture was of her and Stewart. They'd put the camera on a table, set the timer, and then bent over, heads down, for a full minute, yanking themselves up just before the shutter clicked. The result was striking: the two of them, hair wildly sticking up, eyes sparkling and smiling hugely while the blood rushed out of their faces. It captured the closeness and eccentricity about them that I loved—two people, so alike, caught in a crazy moment of their own making.

My picture was of Rogerson. He hadn't wanted me to shoot him, but since the winter banquet he'd been sweet and gentle with me, on his best behavior. I'd carried my camera around with me for over a week, trying to catch him at the perfect time, and taken a few shots here and there, none of them outstanding. Then, one day, we were walking down the steps of Corinna's when I called out his name and he turned around.

In the picture, Rogerson is not smiling. He is looking steadily at the camera, a trace of irritation on his face, his car keys dangling from one hand under his jacket sleeve. Behind him you can see all the bare winter trees against the light gray sky. The sun is barely bright, and farther down the driveway, at the very end, you can see Dave's yellow Lab, Mingus, sitting by the mailbox, looking out at the road. Rogerson takes up most of the picture, the landscape behind him stark and cold as if there is some part of him that belongs there.

Matthew, wearing a red wool sweater and now sporting sideburns, called my mother's picture “promising” (knowing to appreciate a subject with a full head) and Boo's “startling and emotional.” When he got to mine, he just stood there, looking down at it for a long time. Then he said, “It's clear you know this subject very well.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. For some reason, I always blushed like crazy when Matthew talked to me. He wasn't that much older than me—maybe four years—and had such a sweet, gentle disposition, always placing a hand on your shoulder or back to make a point. Boo said he was full of positive aura. “Well, he's my boyfriend.”

Matthew nodded, his eyes still on the photograph. “It looks,” he said in a lower voice, just to me, “like you know him a little better than he'd like you to.”

I looked back down at the picture, at Rogerson's eyes, remembering again how dark, almost black, they'd seemed the night he hit me.

“Yeah,” I said, keeping my eye on the picture. “I guess I do.”

When class was over, I walked outside with my mother and Boo, who were headed off to do some final Christmas shopping. Rogerson was picking me up, but it was so cold in the parking lot, and sleeting, that I went back into the lobby of the Arts Center to wait. There was an Irish dancing class going on down the hallway, with music all jaunty and fast, and I stood listening and watching the Christmas lights strung over the front windows as they blinked on and off. Outside, the traffic was thick with last-minute shoppers, angrily beeping at each other at the stoplight. I wondered what Cass was doing for Christmas: if she had put up lights, bought a tree, hung stockings over a mantel.

“Caitlin?”

I turned around to see Matthew, standing there in a lime-green windbreaker, a backpack slung over his shoulder. “Hi,” I said.

“You miss your ride or something?” he asked, glancing around the small lobby. Down the hall the Irish music stopped, suddenly, and there was a smattering of applause and laughter.

“Nah,” I said. “He's just late.”

He nodded, pulling up his windbreaker hood. “I can wait with you, if you want.”

“Oh, no,” I said quickly, as the Irish music began again, followed by the sound of feet clomping across a hard floor. “I'm fine.”

“Okay,” he said, putting one hand on the door and beginning to push it open. Then he stopped and said, “You have a real talent for faces, Caitlin. I've been very impressed with your work.”

“Oh, thanks,” I said, embarrassed. “I just mess around, mostly.”

“You're very good. That one we looked at today, of your boyfriend ... it's very moving. There's something striking there, and you caught it. Very well done.”

He stood there, as if he knew something and was just waiting for me to confirm it. Instead, I realized I was blushing, clutching my folder with the picture in it so tightly I was bending the edges. “Thanks,” I said again. “Really.”

He nodded, smiling, and reached into his windbreaker pocket to pull out a pair of red knit mittens. “Have a good holiday.”

“You, too,” I said, as Rogerson pulled in to the far side of the parking lot. “Merry Christmas, Matthew.”

He smiled, then reached forward and took my hand, squeezing it tightly between the warm wool of his mittens. They felt scratchy yet comfortable, like the kind Cass and I both had as kids, clipped to our jackets so we wouldn't lose them. “Merry Christmas,” he said.

There was something so nice about standing there with him, under all those blinking lights, his mittens closed tightly over my fingers. I felt safe with him, strangely, with this person I hardly knew—safer than I'd felt in a long time, as if some part of me that had been churned up and crazy had finally come to a stop.

We couldn't have stood there like that for more than five seconds before Rogerson pulled up in front of the window and beeped the horn.

“Well,” I said, and he dropped my hand. “There's my ride.”

“Right,” Matthew said. “See you later.”

We walked out the door together, and Rogerson leaned over to unlock my door, keeping his eyes on Matthew as I climbed inside.

“Who's that?” he asked as I put my seat belt on.

“He teaches my class,” I said. “Where've you been?”

He just shook his head as he put the car in gear, gunning across the parking lot. “Dave said he could get us a good deal on this ounce, but the guy never showed. Waited for an hour.”

“Oh, man,” I said. “You must have been really mad.”

He didn't say anything, instead looking past me out my window to the sidewalk beside us. When I turned my head, I saw Matthew walking, his backpack over both shoulders and hands in his pockets, head ducked against the falling sleet.

I was about to change the subject, but something felt strange to me, an unsteady feeling like before lightning strikes. Rogerson still had his eyes on Matthew, even as he disappeared around a corner, and I thought again of the picture I held in my lap, the irritation in his eyes, the stark trees, with barely a sun at all in the sky behind him.

He didn't say a word the whole way home. But when we pulled up in front of my mailbox, he cut the engine and just sat there, looking straight ahead. I slid my fingers down to my door handle, telling myself he was just in a bad mood, not my fault. Dave had made him wait, and then he'd seen—or had he?—Matthew holding my hand. I could slip out, he'd go burn off steam, and then later everything would be okay. It would. If I could just—

“So,” he said suddenly, and I felt that crackling electricity again, a whooshing in my ears, “what's going on with you and that guy, Caitlin?”

“Nothing,” I said, and my own voice sounded strange to me, like it was weightless, drifting up, up, and away.

“I saw you.” The words were clipped and low. “Don't lie to me.”

“I'm not lying,” I said quickly, and I hated the way I sounded, so weak and pleading. “I just wished him a Merry Christmas and he shook my hand ...”

“Don't lie to me!” he yelled, and in the small space of the car it was so loud, hurting my ears.

“I'm not,” I whispered. “Rogerson, please. It's nothing.” And then I reached out and touched his arm.

He was coiled and taut, a mousetrap set to spring at the slightest touch. As soon as my fingers brushed his sleeve, his fist was in motion, springing out at me and catching my jaw, knocking me backward so hard the door handle dug into my right side, twisting the skin.

I felt like I couldn't shut my mouth, but even so I was still trying to explain. “Rogerson,” I said. “I—”

“Shut up, Caitlin,” he said.

“But—”

He slapped me hard, across the other cheek, and it felt like part of my face was shattering into tiny pieces. I covered my face with my hands, stretching my fingers to cover the span from my forehead to my chin, as if without them I would fall apart altogether.

“This isn't my fault,” he said in a low voice, as I tasted blood in my mouth. “It isn't, Caitlin. You know what you did.”

I didn't say anything. I didn't think I could take another blow. Instead, I closed my eyes and thought of trivia, again: questions and answers, the solidness and safety of facts. When the biggest secret about Rogerson was the limitless stretch of what he knew.

I told myself to breathe.
A chronometer.

My cheek was still burning, all the way up to my temple.
Naples.

I turned my head, resting my sore cheek against the cold glass of the window, and looked at my house. We had a fat plastic Santa standing by the front steps, white lights strung in the tree by the walk, and a row of tiny reindeer mounted on the roof of the garage. Upstairs, I could see my father sitting in his chair in the square of one window, reading the paper, just like he had in a million nights of my childhood.