Overheard in a Dream (37 page)

Bringing the cat to him, James then went to get paper towels to clean up the paint. Conor helped to soak up the dirty water on the carpet with a paper towel. His mood was more subdued, but he still didn’t lose control. In fact, he went ahead and dampened another sheet of paper to continue finger-painting.

Back at the table, Conor laid the new paper out. He picked up the blue jar of paint but then hesitated just before it actually poured from the jar. He set it down again. Locating the lid, he screwed it back on and returned the blue paint to its place. He did the same with the yellow. Taking the red finger-paint from the shelf, he brought it over to the table, took off the lid and scooped out a large amount.

Laying his hand flat in the paint, Conor moved it around with an almost rhythmic slowness. Lifting it, he looked at his red fingers. Then he put both hands in and moved them around. Again, he brought them up and looked at them carefully.

“Is it paint?” he asked softly. “Is it paint? Is that it?”

Back into the paint he went, around and around, again he lifted his hands up. “Hasn’t Mummy been messy with her paints? Mummy, what a mess. You’ve used up my whole jar.”

He continued to spread the paint around, his mood slowly changing as the activity drew him deeper into it. The buoyancy was gone. His concentration grew more and more intense as he studied the motion of his hands.

A pause in the activity.

Conor lifted up one hand and very carefully laid it on the bare skin of his forearm to leave a clear print of his palm and fingers. “Maybe it’s blood.” He glanced up quickly at James, his expression worried.

“No, it isn’t blood,” James said quietly. “It’s only red paint.”

“Only red paint. The man says only red paint. Strong cats live here. Only red paint.”

He put his hand back into the paint and pushed it around. He paused again and from it grew a deep silence. His brow furrowed in concentration as he scrutinized the handprint on his forearm.

James sat in silence, watching the boy. What role had blood played in the events that had traumatized Conor?

Abruptly, Conor looked up with an expression of undiluted horror. Lifting his dripping red hands from the paper, he screamed.

Jerked from his thoughts, James rose quickly. “What’s happened? What’s wrong?”

Rigid with fear, Conor just screamed.

“Shall I help you wash it off? Here, come back to the sink,” James said and put a hand on the boy’s shoulder to guide him. Conor held the paint-streaked arm out stiff in front of him. “It’s just red paint,” James reassured again.

Turning on the faucet, James cupped up water in his hand and ran it over Conor’s skin. The finger-paint began to dissolve, turning the water sloshing down the plughole a pale red. James was standing directly behind the boy, his body keeping Conor close enough to the sink to allow the paint to be washed off, and he felt the easing of rigid muscles.

Taking paper towels, James dried Conor’s arm. “That was a little too much all at once, wasn’t it?”

“A little too much for today,” Conor murmured. He turned. “Where’s Daddy?”

James knelt and put his arms around the boy. “You’re feeling frightened, and you would like your dad here with you.”

Conor nodded.

“He’ll be here soon. When the hand on the clock reaches ten, he will be waiting for you in the other room and it’ll be time to go home then.”

“Read me the poem.”

James didn’t need to read it. He knew it off by heart.

Conor let out a long, relieved sigh at the sound of the familiar words. “The mechanical cat is strong,” he murmured. “We’re safe. The mechanical cat can never die.”

When Alan arrived, James left Conor with Dulcie for a few minutes and invited him into the office for a quick chat.

“Actually, if you hadn’t asked me, I was going to ask you,” Alan said, following him in. “Because I’ve got to say, he’s become a different boy in the last few weeks.”

James smiled. “Yes, he’s been showing some good progress in here.”

“He still talks in circles most of the time, but, you know, the two of us are actually starting to have conversations,” Alan said. “He can make his wants known now, if you keep him calm.”

“I think your involvement has been critical to his success,” James said. “I’m seeing important signs of bonding with you. Today, for example, when he became upset in the session, he asked for you, not just his cat. That’s a huge step forward.”

Alan smiled with pleasure. “I’m trying to live up to being that guy he thinks I am.” Then a more wistful expression. “It makes me feel bad when I think back on when things started going wrong for him. I feel like we let him down.”

“Please don’t judge yourself with hindsight,” James said. “Normally people do try their best. Especially with kids. If we make mistakes it’s usually because we really couldn’t see any other way to do things at the time. How is Laura getting on with him?”

Alan shook his head glumly. “Not well. They’ve got a whole different dynamic going between them. Conor still won’t talk for her, you know. He’s talking quite a lot with me, but with Laura he’s as incoherent as ever. As crazy as ever. That makes it very difficult to convince her he’s making any kind of significant progress.”

“Why do you suppose that is?” James asked.

Alan was pensive. “I don’t know. There’s just all this tension between them. He’s uptight. She’s uptight. They feed into each other. Anyway, I’ve agreed to take Conor more. I’ve still got hope that Laura and I are eventually going to be able to resolve things between us. I don’t want to push her into moving out of the house. So I’ve put a second bed in the cabin so he can be my bunk buddy. He seems very happy with it.”

“One thing I wanted to ask you more about,” James said, “and that’s about the miscarriage of Morgana’s twin. Conor seems to have some serious fears regarding blood. Could he have witnessed her miscarriage?”

Alan considered for a moment. “He was at home with her when it happened, but I don’t know. His problems had begun before that. His clinginess started well before Laura could even have been pregnant, because I remember it coinciding with just about the time I got the TB diagnosis on my cattle and that was more than a year before Morgana was born. But … because Conor had become so clingy and never wanted Laura out of his sight, I suppose it’s possible he did witness blood.”

“Did you ever talk to him at all about it?” James asked.

“No. He wasn’t even three. It’s not the sort of thing you talk over with a child that age, is it?”

“I’m just thinking that if he witnessed the blood or Laura’s distress …” James said. “Especially as he was clearly a very bright, perceptive little boy. Because I think Morgana was saying Conor could actually read by two, yes?”

“Not read properly. He knew his letters. Maybe could read a couple words, but that’s all.”

“Nonetheless, that’s still very advanced. So he’s a very, very bright boy. But with a two-year-old’s experience of life, it
would have been hard for him to interpret what was happening.”

Alan gave a faint shrug. “I dunno. I’m not aware of him witnessing anything and if so, Laura never said.”

“Okay,” James said.

There was a small pause.

“One other thing I wanted to ask,” James added. “I’d like to do a couple of sessions with Conor and Morgana together. Would that be all right?”

“Yes, that’s fine,” Alan said. “I’ll arrange for it.”

“T
iffany arrived in Boston the final Saturday in March,” Laura said. “Fifteen months had passed since I’d last been home, so I was surprised by how much she’d grown. She’d always had Marilyn’s body type, but what had been willowy on Marilyn was lanky on Tiffany. She was twelve now and nearly as tall as I was.

“We enjoyed a splendid first day together. I took her to the shopping mall near my apartment and Tiffany was awed by the size and number of stores. I threw off all Fergus’s teachings about healthy food and treated us to drinks at the Orange Julius stand and doughnuts and caramel corn. We spent ages in the pet store watching the puppies and the tropical fish and pondering who would want a tarantula for a pet. Tiff said she might, but she’d rather have a chameleon. Or a grass snake. In the toy store we fondled the stuffed animals and admired the expensive, imported dolls. In the bookstore, we browsed languidly.

“I didn’t want to go home. I was worried Fergus would be there, waiting, because I knew he’d stop our fun. So, instead
I took Tiffany to a pizza place for dinner and afterwards we went to the drive-in to see
Star Wars
. We’d both seen it already, but we both loved it. I bought us a gigantic container of popcorn and quart-sized drinks, cranked back the car seats, and we sat through both the early and late showing. Tiffany was dazed with tiredness by the time we returned to my apartment.

“I lay on the bed, watching her as she unpacked items from her suitcase. In the normal course of things, she always wore her long hair pulled back in a ponytail, but as she changed into her nightgown, she pulled her T-shirt off and the band holding her ponytail came off too. Her hair tumbled down over her shoulders. Like her mother, Tiff’s hair was black, but unlike her mother, she’d never bothered to curl it, so it was utterly straight. Seeing her there in the soft light of the bedside lamp as she removed the last of her clothes, her dark hair falling forward, I was abruptly drawn into Torgon’s world. I was thinking how Torgon must have looked like this at twelve and for the first time in months the shadowy world of the Forest laid itself down almost instantly over the world of my bedroom like a fallen transparency.

“We were both still in bed the next morning when I heard the snick of the front door lock. Hurriedly I clambered over Tiffany still asleep on the floor in her sleeping bag and grabbed my robe, because I knew who it was: Fergus.

“‘What’s this?’ he asked, lifting the empty popcorn container out of the kitchen garbage. ‘There are animal products in this. What else did you eat? Sugar? Animal fat? I can’t believe you’re doing this.’ Angrily he smashed the empty container between his hands and threw it back into the bin.

“Tiffany appeared in the doorway of the bedroom.

“Fergus looked at her, his eyes going dark, like a frightened cat’s.

“‘Hi,’ she said tentatively and looked from him to me and back again. She smiled timidly.

“‘Fergus, this is my sister Tiffany. And this is my friend Fergus, honey. Fergus and I are, well, sort of together.’

“‘Oh?’ Tiffany said with surprise. ‘Are you coming to Salem too?’

“‘Salem?’ Fergus said sharply. ‘You can’t go anywhere today, Laura. You and I need to work. You’re channelling on Tuesday night.’

“Tiffany looked confused.

“‘I promised Tiff I’d take her up to the Salem museums. She’s only here for five days.’

“Fergus dug deep into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out a money clip. Peeling off a five dollar bill, he held it out to Tiffany. ‘Here. Go get lost for a couple of hours.’

“‘
Fergus
,’ I said in dismay.

“He turned back to me. ‘Two hours, okay? That’s all I ask. We’ll work on your channelling for two hours and then you and she can have the rest of the day off.’

“Reluctantly I nodded. ‘Okay.’

“Tiffany, who was still in her pajamas, looked at the five dollars in her hand and then up at me, her expression perplexed.

“‘Would you mind, Tiff? I’ve got some stuff I need to do before we can go out.’

“‘But what am I supposed to do with this?’ she asked, confused. ‘I haven’t even had breakfast.’

“‘Yeah, well, that’s the point of it,’ Fergus replied. ‘Take it and go have breakfast.’

“‘There’s a doughnut place just two blocks down the street. You like doughnuts, don’t you? Just think. You can pig out to your heart’s content.’ I grinned. ‘And here. I’ll give you another five dollars. You go down there and have breakfast and then by the time you’re done, the stores’ll be open and you can look around.’

“‘By myself?’ Tiffany asked in a bewildered voice.

“‘Just for a couple of hours, Tiff. You’re big enough to do that on your own, aren’t you? Just think, you can tell your mum when you get home. That’ll freak her,’ I said and grinned evilly.

“With a confused sigh, she turned and went back into the bedroom to change. I followed her in and closed the door. ‘Look, I’m really, really sorry about this, Tiff. I didn’t know Fergus was going to come over. But be a good egg, would you? For me? Just go out and amuse yourself for two hours. Then we’ll go to Salem just like we planned.’

“‘Yeah, like we
planned
,’ she said. ‘How come you’ve got to stop now and do whatever he says just because he’s here?’

“‘Because that’s less trouble in the long run.’”

“Fergus refused to leave Tiffany and me alone. While he wanted to work on my channelling, this wasn’t a realistic option with Tiffany around. Since he couldn’t do that, Fergus decided to accompany us on the outings we’d planned together.

“Tuesday came, which was Tiffany’s last full day in Boston before going home. I would have preferred to skip the Tuesday night group, if I could have, but Fergus wouldn’t consider it. I was uncomfortable leaving Tiffany alone in my apartment at night, so I ended up having to bring her along too.