Overheard in a Dream (15 page)

“How does that make you feel?”

“I don’t care that he says that, ’cause it isn’t true. ’Cause Conor could read when he was two. So it can’t be true and you can’t make something true just by saying it.”

“Yes, you’re right.”

“But what I want to know is then how come Conor doesn’t go to school like I do and get good grades? If he’s got an IQ, how come he’s like he is?” she asked.

“That’s a hard question to answer,” James replied. “We’re made up of lots of different things and our IQ is just one of them. So sometimes even if our IQ is good, something else needs help.”

“I wish he could be more like a real brother,” Morgana said wistfully.

“You would like a real brother,” James reflected.

She nodded. “I wish he’d take care of me. He’s nine. That’s three whole years older than me, but you know what? Most of the time
I
take care of
him
.”

“I can see why that would be hard,” James said.

“And he scares me.”

“How does he do that?”

“At night in his bedroom. He talks to himself and I can hear him through the wall.”

“And that frightens you?” James asked.

She nodded. “Yes, because he always talks about the ghost man. That’s how come Conor’s got to adjust his wires all the time, because his cat sees the ghost man coming. So Conor stays up all the time. Talking and adjusting. Sometimes I go in and try to get him to go back to sleep, but then he wants me to sit inside his wires with him. He says if we sit in the wires, his cat will save us from the ghost man.”

“It sounds like you and Conor talk quite a bit,” James said.

Morgana nodded. “That’s ’cause I listen.”

“And does Conor say who this ghost man is?” James asked.

“It’s the man who lives under the rug.”

“I see. And have you noticed anyone living under any of the rugs at your house?”

“No,” Morgana said. “They’re just ordinary rugs.”

“Yes, I think that’s right. Conor gets confused about things,” James said gently. “It’s probably best not to pay too much attention.”

“Yeah. That’s what my dad tells me too. He says that these are just Conor’s words for his feelings in his head. But still it makes me scared. I’m little and he’s big and so, really, he should be brave to me, but instead I got to be brave to him. And it doesn’t matter what I tell him. Conor keeps waking up in the night, worrying. He keeps saying the cat’s seen the ghost man in the hallway and if we aren’t careful the man will come and get us.”

“E
verything changed the year I was twelve,” Laura said at the beginning of the next session. “I started junior high. The new school was in the opposite direction from the primary school, so when Dena and I walked home together, we reached her house first and I had to go the last two blocks alone.

“My foster brother Steven started to lay in wait for me in the alley between Kenally and Arnott Street. We’d always had problems getting on. He was a year older than me and the only one of my foster brothers I had any trouble with, but he could be really mean. My dad said I should just ignore it, that it was probably just jealousy, since he was the fourth of four boys and then I came along and stole all the attention; but fact was, Steven had problems with a lot of people. He was always getting into trouble at school.

“When I was younger things between Steven and me were tolerable, mainly because I was as strong as he was and a lot more coordinated, so I could give as well as I got, if I had to. But by junior high he had beefed up to where he had a real size advantage.

“Anyway, he started ambushing me those last two blocks home from school. If other boys were with him, they usually didn’t do much more than push me down and then run away. Once this one kid, Bruce, kicked my lunch box and broke my thermos, but mostly it was just scrapes and bruises.

“If Steven was on his own though, it was worse. All he could think of was sex. So if he pushed me down, then he’d sit on me and try to pull my panties off. I could usually escape by wiggling out of them, but then he’d run after me, waving them and throwing them down wherever he wanted.

“One afternoon, I saw Steven waiting with these two other boys named Jimmy Hill and Loring Bardon. I knew they meant trouble, so I tried to evade them by going down by the lake. I was a really fast runner in those days, lots faster than Steven, and I knew way more shortcuts, so I was normally pretty successful at getting home safely. I thought I was going to manage it this time, because I’d used a secret path along the lake that hardly anyone knew about. Then just as I was coming up to our fence by the back alley, I heard Steven shout ‘Charge of the Light Brigade!’ I threw down my school books and ran back down the slope towards the lake, which was a big mistake, because I tripped in the long grass and fell.

“They were immediately all over me. Loring held down my arms and Steven climbed on top of me. Jimmy was standing up above us, laughing and kicking dirt at my face. Then Steven said, ‘
Let’s do it.
’

“Jimmy said no right away, but Steven was already starting to unbuckle his belt.

“I began to cry. Steven was a big boy by then. He was thirteen already and built like a Mack truck, so there was no way I could push him off. Besides, there were three of them. But
Jimmy held out. He said, ‘I don’t think we ought to do this, Steve.’

“Steven said, ‘What’s the matter with you? Can’t get a hard-on?’ And he wasted no time. He had my panties down and his dick out and he did do it to the best of his ability.

“I screamed when he tried. This scared Loring into letting go of my arms, but it didn’t make any difference to Steven. He put a hand over my mouth and came down really close and said, ‘You’re not going to tell anybody, are you?’ and the way he said it, it was a threat. He smiled at me then, just a little bit, and said, ‘’Cause you’re Nobody. And nothing’s happened, if it happened to nobody.’”

“How awful for you,” James said sympathetically. “It must have been very frightening. Did you tell anyone?”

“Two Sundays later my dad came for his usual visit. He was alone, like he usually was by then. My brother Russell had already graduated from college and was working in Sioux Falls. Grant was a junior at Stanford. So I hardly ever saw them anymore. It was just Dad and me. But nothing had changed. Dad still took me down to the same diner for the same roast beef dinner. On that Sunday I can remember us sitting across from each other in one of the green vinyl booths. The expanse of Formica tabletop between us felt enormous to me.

“‘You seem very quiet today,’ Dad said after we’d ordered our meal. I didn’t reply, so he asked if I was feeling all right. I just sat there. All during the previous two weeks I’d been planning to tell him about what Steven had done that day. I’d played the scene over and over again in my head, figuring out just what I was going to say, just how and when, but once Dad was actually there, I didn’t know how to start.

“Finally, I said, ‘Dad? Am I ever really going to get to come and live with you?’

“He said, ‘Yeah, sure. Of course, Laurie. I’m working on it right now.’

‘When?’

“‘Well, where I’m at now isn’t really very big. You’re used to this nice house and this enormous amount of ground to play in and the lake …’

“I said, ‘I don’t really care about that. I’d be okay in something smaller.’

“‘Plus, we need to get a nice mum for you,’ he added.

“‘I’m old enough to not need a mum to look after me anymore,’ I replied. ‘Grant and Russell were my age when they lived with you and they did okay without a mum. I wouldn’t be a lot of trouble, Dad, I promise. Please, can I come live with you now?’

“‘Why? I thought you were happy here with the Meckses.’

“‘I hate Steven,’ I said. ‘Steven Mecks. I call him Steven Sex.’

“My dad didn’t ask why.

“The waitress came then with our roast beef dinners. Dad put ketchup on his meat and started eating. I wasn’t hungry. I thought maybe I had a bug, because all of a sudden I felt like I was going to throw up. But I didn’t. I just sat, staring at the food.

“My dad suddenly smiled and leaned across the table. In a very conspiratorial tone of voice, he said, ‘Well, I do have special news. There
is
someone I’m close to, Laurie. Her name is Marilyn and I know you’re going to like her. She has nice black hair and is very pretty.’

“At the mention of black hair, I saw Torgon instantly. The thought of Torgon coming to rescue me felt good. It cheered
me up. My dad said, ‘But you’ve got to give me a little more time, Laurie. Another six months. Maybe then you can come.’

“Less than two weeks after that Sunday with my dad, I was upstairs in my bedroom. It was a Friday night and quite late. I’d been reading in bed and then I turned off the light to go to sleep. That was still my best time for going to the Forest, that period between lights out and falling asleep, because I was relaxed and would often drift off from Torgon’s world right into dreams.

“Then ever so softly, my door creaked open. Steven’s form appeared indistinctly out of the darkness. I sat up and told him outright he couldn’t come up into my bedroom. That was my private space and I had the right to tell him to get out. He ignored me completely and crawled onto my bed.

“I said I was going to scream for Ma and Pa. He reached out and grabbed my hair with one hand and put the other over my mouth. He said, ‘You yell and you’re going to be in big trouble.’

“I broke free and tried to leap out of the bed but he caught hold of my pajama top. ‘Listen, Laurie,’ he said, ‘you do as I say. If you don’t, I’ll kill Felix. I mean it. If you don’t do as I say, you’ll find his bloody little body right here on your bed waiting for you tomorrow night.’

“Felix was my kitten. He was the runt of the litter, a little black-and-white ball of fur I’d lavished hours and hours on over the summer, nursing him back to health. I absolutely worshipped him. He was so sweet-natured. And so trusting. He would never realize he shouldn’t let Steven pick him up.

“So, when Steven pushed me down on the bed that night, I let him because of Felix. He pulled down his pajama
bottoms. His dick stuck out from his body like a coat hook. A dinky coat hook. It’d hardly grown yet. He was this great big boy and he had this dinky little dick. But he didn’t care and certainly the size didn’t matter to me. It was just as awful, being small.

“When he’d finished, he left and I just lay there in the darkness. The worst part for me actually wasn’t that Steven had raped me, because he’d already done that to me before. It was that he had threatened Felix. Felix would never be safe again. Nor would I. I was now trapped into doing whatever Steven wanted. In that one stark moment I realized things on Kenally Street had changed forever. I knew then I could no longer stay.

“I waited breathless in the darkness until I heard absolutely no sounds in the house below. Then I ventured out and tiptoed downstairs. It was almost two o’clock in the morning by that time. Going into the kitchen, I took the telephone receiver down from the hook. I dialled my dad’s number.

“A woman’s sleepy voice answered.

“Thinking I’d made a mistake, I hung up right away and dialed the number more carefully. Again the same woman answered, her voice still sleepy but now also annoyed-sounding. ‘What do you want?’ she asked. I said, ‘Is my dad there?’ She said, ‘You’ve got the wrong number. Please don’t phone here again,’ and hung up.

“I put the kitchen light on to see what I was doing and then dialled again, very carefully.

“And again she answered. So before she could hang up, I said, ‘My dad’s name is Ronald Deighton. Is he there?’

“There was a pause. I could hear the woman saying, ‘Ron? Ron? Wake up. It’s for you.’

“Then ‘Hello?’ and it was my dad’s voice. I started to cry with relief. I said, ‘Dad, you’ve got to come get me. Right away.’

“All hell broke loose when I told my dad what had happened. I’d phoned him at 2:15 in the morning and by eight a.m. he was at the Meckses’ front door. This absolutely horrible scene followed with Ma crying and my dad shouting at Pa about getting the police. Steven was sitting on a chair at the kitchen table and looking so scared that I actually felt sort of sorry for him.

“‘Get your things, Laura. You’re coming with me,’ my dad said at the end of it.

“How I’d
longed
to hear him say those words.
You’re coming with me.
” She shook her head sadly. “I dashed upstairs with a suitcase and started pitching clothes in. I put in some of my plastic horses. Not many of them would fit, but I wasn’t very concerned. No matter. We’d get them later.

“The importance of what was happening only started to register when I went to take down a mobile that was hanging over the little gable-end window. I saw the lake through the window, the sun skittering over the ripples near the shore. Suddenly I wondered what it was going to be like not living on the lake anymore. A terrible sense of loss washed over me in that instant. Then Dad shouted up the stairs and the feeling passed. I was soon lugging my suitcase to the car.

“My dad said to hurry up, that he had to be back in Rapid City by lunchtime, so I put my suitcase in the car. Then I said, ‘Wait a minute. I’ve got to get Felix.’

“My dad said, ‘Who’s Felix?’