Lost in Dreams (7 page)

Aleesha glanced at me as if asking permission to explain. I mouthed
okay
.

“Bad nightmare,” she told him. “Horrible nightmare.” That was the last thing I heard.

I
don’t know what happened to me, but when I came to, Dad was hovering over me like a mother robin that sees a predator coming too close to her little ones.

“Are you okay, Kim?” Dad said. He kissed me on the forehead. “You—what’s the current word?—you zoned out for about ten minutes.”

No matter what I’d experienced, I felt slightly more awake than before. I didn’t hurt anywhere, and I didn’t feel faint, dizzy, or nauseated. Concluding that I must be all right, I nodded at Dad’s question.

“I thought you might have fainted, but Aleesha said you must have just fallen asleep again. She told me a bad nightmare kept you from sleeping well last night. You looked pretty lifeless just to be asleep, though.”

I wrinkled my eyebrows in a questioning look. “Aleesha checked your temperature. It was normal. So was your pulse. We couldn’t determine any other symptoms. But I was so worried I told her I was going to hand-carry you to the ER if you didn’t come out of it soon.”

Worried? If your quick breathing, trembling hands, and the ghostly look on your face are any indication, I think ‘scared to death’ is a more accurate description. Even though I hate seeing you this concerned over nothing, it makes me feel good
.

He looked past me at the sweaty, crumpled sheets. “How did your linens get pulled out like this?”

He started urging one very uncooperative corner of the fitted sheet back into place, but it kept slipping off. Since

Aleesha didn’t have any trouble with the side she was working on, she came around and fixed his side, too. She gave me her
“Men!”
smile.

Dad’s question had just been another way of expressing his concern. He probably remembered from my early childhood that I usually woke up in the same position I’d gone to sleep in. Restlessness and crumpled bed linens weren’t the norm for me.

“How …?” I said, fishing for an explanation, “Uh, I had a bad dream.”

After he nodded two or three times, I remembered he already knew that. “So you wrestled your covers off while you were dreaming? Don’t feel you have to hold back. Aleesha explained that your dream was … serious.”

I sighed. I didn’t want to discuss this with my father. Especially now that I knew he was wrestling with his own guilt—we were flip sides of the same coin.

“Uh, it was a terrible nightmare,” I said. “Worst one I’ve ever had.” I hoped I wasn’t sounding defensive or elusive, although I was probably both. I quit talking. I’d said all I could safely say.

“Aleesha wouldn’t tell me what you dreamed about. She said it was personal, and I don’t want to pry. I wish you felt comfortable telling me, though. I’m here to help.”

“Dad. Daddy …” I threw my arms around his neck and clung to him the way I probably hadn’t felt comfortable doing in years. “I know you want to help, but I … I’m not sure I ought to explain why I can’t say any more.”

“Please. If it’s that important, you need to share it.”

Hmm. Sounds like somebody’s been talking to Aleesha. Or the other way around
.

“But I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Dad.”

How could I soften the blow? What I said had probably

hurt his feelings. At the end of the longest and most painful five minutes of trying to figure out how to explain diplomatically, I was no closer to a safe, satisfactory answer than when I started.

In the meantime, Dad stared at me as if I were the fuse on a stick of dynamite, burning and ready to explode any second. How could I assure him it wasn’t like that?

I had to say something, though. Increasing his anxiety level by delaying any longer wouldn’t be right.

“Daddy, I love you so much.” Safe beginning. “I love being with you … and talking with you. Last night was the greatest.”
I’m sorry, Daddy, but you asked
. “But it hasn’t always been that way. Until Mom’s death, you were always so … preoccupied. Teaching … church activities … reading and studying. I’m proud of you, your career, and your responsibilities at church, but”—
do I have to tell
you?—”you haven’t always seemed sufficiently accessible.”

At least I’d said, “haven’t seemed” and not “haven’t been.”

But that hadn’t helped. If the stricken look on his face was any indication, I’d punched him hard in the stomach of his conscience. I’d so wanted to avoid that. I couldn’t have felt like a worse daughter if I’d slapped him in the face. So I skip-skipped to what I hoped would make him feel better.

“You’re not like that anymore, though. You’ve changed so much. I like—I love—this new you.” Although he wasn’t quite smiling, I could see his facial muscles starting to relax. “But the changes have come so quickly. Almost overnight. I don’t know how to react to them yet. Not completely. That’s why I can’t tell you the specifics of my nightmare.”

Dad’s breathing was almost back to normal, and his face had regained most of its normal color. “I hope that makes sense to you, Daddy.”

“I’m probably saying this all wrong, Kim. A doctorate

in medieval literature isn’t apt to make a man an expert at expressing his feelings. What I’m trying to say, though … we still have the rest of a lifetime for correcting past mistakes.”

A statement like that from some other middle-aged man might have sounded a tad cheesy, but the tears in his eyes supplemented the message he’d attempted to express in words. I just hoped
his
lifetime would be longer than Mom’s.

Dad kissed me and walked to the door. He turned back.

“Kim, I never realized how much I loved you until you got on that plane for San Diego. I prayed for you many times daily. Then when you called about the broken arm …”

I could barely speak. “You sounded like you were glad to hear from me when I called. And those messages you left …”

“I love you, Kim.”

He nearly sprinted back to the bed, and we threw our arms around each other. In my failure to be more responsible, I knocked him in the head with my cast—how I looked forward to getting rid of that thing in another month or so—but that didn’t appear to faze him.

“I love you, too, Daddy.”

Once we heard him reach the bottom of the steps, Aleesha closed the door again and sat down beside me on the bed. I’d fiddled with the fitted sheet during the tensest part of my talk with Dad, and one side had pulled loose again. She looked at it and shook her head.

“Miss Kim,” she said in the kind of quiet, formal voice that sometimes made me uneasy, “you know I’m not always diplomatic.”

Although I giggled at her understatement, she continued in a serious tone. “I’ve never seen anyone sleep as soundly as you did a few minutes ago. Mr. Scott didn’t tell you that both of us tried to wake you. You groaned without responding. At first I thought you might be having that nightmare again.”

Her eyes began twinkling. Was she about to transition from serious to silly?

“You were obviously still alive, though, and that was a good thing. I only brought enough dress clothes for one funeral, and I didn’t think I’d fit into one of those preppy outfits of yours. I’m too tall.”

Too tall and too well filled out
.

She paused. The twinkle was still there, although she hadn’t smiled yet. I kept staring at her. Surely she didn’t expect me to laugh at such a horribly tasteless joke. She wouldn’t have intentionally hurt my feelings for anything. Yet Mom’s funeral was barely over, and she didn’t seem to take it seriously anymore. What was with her?

Then she added, “Besides that, only one funeral per visit is permitted.”

That comment might have been equally tasteless, but it broke the tension. I cracked up. In my mind’s eye, I saw Aleesha driving home to Baltimore after Mom’s funeral, pulling into the driveway, and then backing out again without going inside. Just so she could return for my funeral in strict adherence to some silly rule about only one funeral per visit.

She winked at me. Something about the way she’d told those two jokes made me realize she’d probably been testing my emotional reflexes rather than trying to be funny. I doubted that she’d found them anywhere close to normal.

“As Mr. Scott pointed out, your only detectable symptom was sleep far too deep to be normal. You obviously heard us shouting at you. But it’s like you were fighting to remain asleep. I don’t know what’s normal for you at home, but you never slept that way in Santa María. So we left you alone and waited for you to wake up on your own.”

I crooked one eyebrow as I searched her face for further clues. What was she trying to say?

“I wish you could talk to my papa,” she said. “I’ll bet he could figure this out.”

Your papa the psychiatrist? So now you think I’m nuts?

She must have seen my grimace. “No, Kim, you’re as sane as I am.”

I really cracked up then—I’d never known anyone who acted crazier than Aleesha—but she couldn’t have remained more completely straight-faced.
Okay, girl, so that wasn’t supposed to be a joke
.

“Kim, I’m no psychologist, but I wonder if your strange little nap was purely physical.”

Maybe her statement should have shocked me. Maybe it should have made me resentful or angry.

But it didn’t.

I’d just started wondering the same thing myself.

A
leesha, didn’t you say west-to-east jet lag is worse than east-to-west?”

She squinted at me as if trying to figure out the reason for my question. “Uh-huh.”

“And didn’t you say jet lag doesn’t necessarily hit the hardest the day after travel?”

She nodded ever so slightly without releasing her squint.

I hoped my desperation wasn’t showing. “And it can last for days?”

“Go ahead, girl. Spill it.”

“I’m so tired today I can barely wiggle. I don’t feel like getting out of bed. Truth be told, I just want to go back to sleep.” “Mmm.”

“Mmm, what? Is that jet lag or not?”

“Could be. Or the aftershock of Miss Terri’s death. You haven’t had much of a chance to unwind, and things won’t be normal for a while—”

The tears started spilling out. “They’re never going to be normal.”

“You’re right,” she said as she put her hand on my shoulder. “Not like before, anyhow.” She paused and gave me a once-over. “Girl, you’re zoning out again now. Go on back to sleep. I’m going downstairs to do some cleaning, but I’ll be quiet.”

“But I’d planned on doing that. I wanted to show Dad I can do just as good a job as Mom at taking care of him.”

Aleesha looked at me with an expression that said,
“Your intentions are good, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. “

That made me even more determined to prove myself to Dad.

“Kim, baby, if you’re suffering jet lag—or any kind of lag—you may not feel much like housecleaning for a few more days. You go back to sleep and let me do it this time. I’ll gladly give the job back to you when you feel better.”

I fell asleep so quickly I thought I was dreaming when she said, “I’m going to keep my eye on you, girlfriend. Whatever this is, it
isn’t j
et lag.”

I
refused to acknowledge my fears the next time Aleesha talked to me about my constant fatigue, but I couldn’t ignore Dad. “Kim, more than two weeks have passed since your mom died. Jet lag doesn’t last this long.”

I looked at him through half-closed eyes. He’d waited until early afternoon to come upstairs to talk with me, hoping I’d be awake and alert by then.

But I wasn’t, and the lack of energy was bugging the daylights out of me. I couldn’t keep pretending nothing was wrong.

“Aleesha explained that you’ve wanted to take care of me … to do the housework, the cooking, the laundry.”

“I do, Daddy.” If I sounded as feeble as I felt, I didn’t sound very confident.

“That’s a wonderful, responsible attitude. I didn’t expect you to provide that kind of help, and I’m proud of you. Hopefully you’ll feel up to taking on some of those chores soon. Not all of them, though. A man should help out around the house, too—be he husband or father—and I’ve been irresponsible that way until now.”

Wow! Even middle-aged adults were capable of making major changes.

“But you’re not up to it now. That’s why Aleesha has stayed longer than she originally intended. She didn’t want to desert us when we needed her help.”

Unable to sort out or verbalize my jumble of emotions, I smiled to acknowledge my appreciation.

Dad looked uncertain about how to proceed.

“She’s enrolling at Dogwood University here instead of carrying through with her plans to attend Howard University. She’ll stay here for at least this semester. I pulled a few strings to get her in at this late date.”

No matter how dragged out I felt, my heart sparkled at that news. I hoped my face did, too.

“You’re probably wondering why she changed her plans at the last minute …”

“You said … she didn’t want … to desert us.”

“That’s just part of it,” he said. “I asked her to stay. She’ll earn room and board and a little spending money doing chores around here. We needed someone to help, and she was available. You understand, don’t you?”

How could I fail to understand that my new best friend would be living with us for a while? Despite the fact she’d be doing the very things I wanted to do for Dad, why wouldn’t I be thrilled to have her around? Still, a teeny-weeny part of me was jealous that he’d already grown so dependent on Aleesha.

But I didn’t have the energy to dwell on negative feelings.

Or on prayer, either. Maybe I didn’t feel up to talking with God the way I had in Santa María, but I bathed in the belief that He loved me and would take care of me. Even so, on those rare occasions I could pray without falling asleep again, I kept asking Him if this fatigue problem was just another part of that Season of Pebbles Aleesha’s father had told her about—one that had started with Mom’s accident.

“Kim?”

“Huh? Yes, Daddy?”