Impossible Dreams (5 page)

“Maya, can I have new sneakers?” Matty asked
through a mouth full of burger.

She didn’t bother to correct his grammar.
“Can” was actually the operative word here. Considering their
budget, new sneakers weren’t within the realm of possibility.
“What’s wrong with the old ones?” she asked absently, running
the numbers through her old college hand calculator again. Maybe she
hadn’t hit the right keys.

“They got holes in the bottom. Miss Kidd says I need
new ones. Dick got some with
lights
on them.”

Maya heard the plea and resisted the usual lecture on how
poor people couldn’t buy what other kids had. She’d heard those
lectures from countless foster parents growing up. The speech might be logical
but it didn’t fulfill a child’s need to belong. Besides, they
weren’t poor. She refused to adopt that mentality. Maybe the wolf was at
the door, but she had an education, doggone it. She’d made certain of
that. Nobody could take away those degrees. She could make a living and put
food on the table. And sneakers on Matty’s feet.

Ashamed she hadn’t noticed the condition of his shoes,
Maya ruffled his straight dark hair. “We’ll go to the store after
kindergarten tomorrow. Want me to paint smiley faces on your old ones? I bet
Dick doesn’t have smiley faces.”

Matty gave her one of his rare shy smiles. “Can I have
dragons instead? Shelly has smiley faces.”

“Fire-breathing dragons coming up,” she agreed.
She might not be good with numbers, but she could wield a mean paint brush.

She tucked the memory of Matty’s smile into her aching
heart as she watched him toddle off to bed. Once upon a time, her practical
older sister had been the only buffer between an imaginative little girl and a
harsh, cold world of strangers. How could the sister she’d known turn to
the escape of drugs and leave her beautiful little boy behind?

Worse yet, what would happen when the system spewed Cleo
into the world again, still damaged and helpless and incapable of taking care
of herself, much less a child?

The mantle of responsibility didn’t fit well on
Maya’s shoulders, but she wrapped it firmly around her now as she glared
at the damning numbers on the sheet of paper in front of her. They blamed well
had to turn the Impossible Dream into reality.

The alternative was starvation and living on the street.

***

Beneath a beautiful Carolina-blue sky, Maya stared at the
double wooden doors marking the entrance to the restaurant known only as
“Holm’s.” She had no choice. She’d called the Axell
Holm listed in the book and hadn’t even reached voice mail. She’d
walked Matty to school at eight and had to open the shop at ten. This was the
only time she had available.

The restaurant was only a few blocks from the shop. The
whole damned town was only a few blocks from the shop. Their mother had
apparently grown up in this place but escaped after she married. One of these
days she’d try to remember why Cleo had chosen to return, other than that
she could use foot power for transportation.

Knocking on a restaurant door at nine o’clock in the
morning didn’t seem reasonable. Figuring she had nothing to lose, Maya
shoved at the door, nearly stumbling as it swung open on well-oiled hinges. She
should have known Axell Holm would keep his place impeccably maintained, even
if it was just a country steak house.

A man in a cleaning service uniform buffing the floor looked
up and stared at her as she entered. Maya supposed that was better than having
a whole barroom full of people staring at her. She’d never been very
comfortable in barrooms, even respectable ones attached to small-town restaurants.

Donning the vague persona she used to shield herself from
the world, Maya sauntered through the room, waving a greeting at the worker.
“Is Axell in this morning?” she called carelessly.

It was a trifle difficult pulling off the carefree bit while
pushing a two-ton belly in front of her, Maya thought wryly as the man’s
eyes widened with interest. He gulped something she took for agreement and
pointed toward a door on the far wall. Obviously, she wasn’t the suave,
urbane Mr. Holm’s usual type.

The door in the back wall led to a corridor with a series of
doors. She thought she saw one hurriedly close and wondered who else was in
here at this hour. She pondered calling out and asking for directions, but the
kitchen, restrooms, and storeroom doors were easily identifiable. That left
only the back stairs, and she could find her way from there. Of course, over a
month ago, her doctor had told her to avoid stairs. Since she lived in an
upstairs apartment, she didn’t have the option of obeying, so she didn’t
hesitate now.

Polished hardwood floors, a discreet silver wool carpet
matching a sedate striped wallpaper, and a closed paneled door greeted her at
the top of the stairs. The narrow reception area had no inviting furniture, no
furniture at all. Maya shook her head at the blandness of the decor, pitied
poor Mr. Holm his lifeless life in this nowhere town, and tapped at the closed
door.

No response.

Frowning, she tapped louder, then deciding she wasn’t
a supplicant to beg for crumbs, she pushed the door open.

Morning sunlight streaked through bare windows across a
glossy black desk where a stylishly shorn head of golden hair bent over a stack
of papers. The head barely lifted as she walked in before its owner returned to
marking notes in the margins of what appeared to be an invoice. Maya recognized
invoices. Cleo had left them, yellowed and stained with tea rings, scattered
all over the storeroom.

“Have a seat, Miss Alyssum, I’ll be with you in
a minute.”

Back to the “Miss” business. His cold tone
didn’t hold much promise for her quest. Raising her eyebrows at the
pieces of a clock scattered on one corner of his desk, she decided to stay and
take her chances.

Daunted by the stiffly upright leather wing chairs in front
of the desk, she ignored his command and drifted to the bank of windows
overlooking the town’s main street. If one counted the old service
station converted to a fruit market, Wadeville’s business district
extended three blocks from the railroad. Cleo’s shop was near the tracks
and fruit market, difficult to see from this angle.

Most of the town buildings between here and Cleo’s had
been built in the late 1800’s or early 1900’s when cotton was still
king. Their practical brick facades were now adorned with a century’s
worth of awnings, painted and aluminum signs, and other atrocities.
Holm’s Restaurant was of the same brick, but the huge expanse of windows
spoke of a later era conceived in air conditioning. Apparently, Mr. Holm
believed in discarding the past in favor of the new and convenient.

A pen clicked as it hit the desk. “How may I help you,
Miss Alyssum?”

She swung around, but the sun behind his head prevented her
from seeing his expression. Axell Holm exuded the impression of a dangerously
successful businessman with no time or patience for sentimentality. Maybe
she’d imagined that Aquarian streak. “Perhaps I was a little hasty
in dismissing your offer of help the other day,” she said as winningly as
she knew how. “I’ve been a trifle overwhelmed by events lately.”

He leaned back in the chair and crossed his fingers over his
chest. He’d removed his suit jacket, and she noticed he had a very
impressive chest and shoulders inside that fitted white shirt. Pity he hid them
behind the fussiness of ties and jackets and whatnot. He looked as if he belonged
in tight ski clothes. Or in a jungle with nothing on at all.

Distracted at that wayward thought, she settled her gaze on
the business end of a small screwdriver protruding from his shirt pocket. As he
talked at her, she studied the little pile of clock innards on the corner of
his desk.

“I’m not certain the fate of the school is
relevant to me any longer, Miss Alyssum. I’m considering sending
Constance to live with her grandmother.”

A squeak at the door warned Maya of an eavesdropper even
before the door burst open and a miniature whirlwind flew in, wrapping itself
around her legs and nearly toppling her.

“Don’t make me go, Miss Alyssum! I can go home
with you, can’t I?”

For one fleeting moment, as she met Axell’s gaze, Maya
caught a glimpse of the window to his soul and saw despair before he slammed
the window shut and glared at her as if this were all her fault.

And so it was. Kneeling, Maya wrapped her arms around the
weeping fairy child. “Of course, you can, sugar baby. Give me a
hug.” And she meant it. Defiantly, she knew she’d take this
beautiful little girl home with her right now if she could.

As the child wrapped her arms around her throat and
practically strangled her, Maya glared at the indifferent man in the desk
chair. This was the reason she dreamed of success for her school. All her life,
she’d searched for a place that would accept her and offer her love. She
was too old to expect it for herself now, but she could offer it to other
children, give them the love and acceptance she and Cleo never had.

She’d just never dreamed it would start with a child
who had everything she’d never had.

***

October, 1945

I met a woman last night, Helen Arnold, the banker’s
niece. I heard she owned a moonshine joint outside town and wondered what
she’d be like, but I never imagined... It would be a sin to go back
there. I’ve worked long and hard and survived a war to get where I am. I
can’t let a fascination with the Arnold’s black sheep ruin my
chances — although, with all that red hair, maybe she should be called a red
sheep? No, there’s nothing sheep-like about Helen. She’s a
challenge.

Give me ambiguity or give me something else.

Stunned into silence, Axell absorbed the tableau kneeling on
his office floor. Had it been a painting, the scene would have been labeled
Madonna
and Child
. There was something almost pre-Raphaelite about the glorious
spill of fiery red curls down the woman’s back, the pure ivory expanse of
her curved brow, and the multicolored flow of her gauzy, pleated gown. The
striking contrast to Katherine in her tailored red miniskirts struck him
vividly.

Constance in her short flowered skirt and padded running
shoes demolished the artisttic image.

What the hell was Constance doing here? He’d taken her
to school well over an hour ago.

Tortured by his daughter’s sobs, helpless to cope with
them, Axell removed the screwdriver from his pocket and twisted it between his
fingers as he groped for some logical means of dealing with this unanticipated
problem. The teacher’s glare told him it was not the right reaction.

Awkwardly, he emerged from behind the shield of his desk and
towered over them. He wasn’t the kind of man who sat on floors, but his
daughter’s brokenhearted cries offered him no choice. Tugging up his
trouser leg, he got down on one knee and tried to peel her away from her
teacher. “Constance, come here and let me talk with you.”

“No!” Angrily, she jerked her little arm away
from him. Constance was never angry.

Frightened by his helplessness, Axell threw the woman a
beseeching look. What had she done to his daughter that Constance felt freer to
go to her rather than to him?

The teacher’s glare relented somewhat as she stroked
Constance’s long fine hair, gathering the dark strands in her hands and
tugging gently. “Hey, sugar baby, look at me a minute, okay? You’ll
have me crying if you don’t stop soon.”

Amazingly, Axell heard a smile in her voice. How could the
woman sound happy with a weeping, hysterical child in her arms? She
didn’t reveal any of the desperation he felt. Angela would have been
throwing fits and screaming at him by now. This woman looked as serene as the
Madonna he’d pictured earlier.

Constance shook her head, but Maya held her so firmly that
there was no ferocity to the movement. A grubby hand wiped at a wet eye as his
daughter peeked upward.

Frozen in the spell of the moment, Axell continued kneeling,
watching. He suddenly understood how women had been cast as witches through the
ages. Their spells were inexplicable by any other means but magic.

“Have you told your daddy you don’t want to go
away?” she asked, still stroking Constance’s hair as if gentling a
pony.

The little head shook back and forth again, and tear-filled
eyes disappeared into Maya’s shoulder. Axell wanted to reach out and draw
his daughter into his own arms, but he didn’t dare. He’d not been
able to get a word out of Constance since last night, not that he got much out
of her at any other time either.

“Constance, you don’t have to go if you
don’t want,” he heard himself say. He’d lain awake all night,
agonizing over his decision, unable to avoid the conclusion that Constance
needed the guidance of an experienced parent, a mother.

He’d tortured himself with the realization that he was
a lousy excuse for a father, that he couldn’t balance work with his
daughter’s needs, and that Constance had to come first, that his hollow
life in her absence would be a small price to pay to see her smiling again. He
threw all those logical conclusions out the window with the fall of a few
tears.

The sobs lessened, but his daughter’s beautiful
innocent face remained hidden. Axell glanced hopefully at Maya. She caught his
look and shrugged, apparently not impressed with his concession.

“Constance, honey, I think your daddy would like to
talk with you, and I really need to sit in a chair before I fall over. Why
don’t you let me get up and let your daddy hold you for a little while?
He’s got big strong shoulders for crying on. That’s what daddies
are for.”

Appalled at his selfishness in not seeing she must be in
some pain from her position on the floor, Axell stood and tugged gently at
Maya’s elbow to help her rise. She shook her head in refusal, nodding at
Constance instead. With reluctance, Axell put his large hands around his elfin
daughter and lifted her away. To his astonishment, Constance flung her skinny
arms around his neck without protest.