Overheard in a Dream (6 page)

Laura materialized beside him. “Let me help you.” She pulled napkins out of the holder on one of the small tables. “Morgana, you and Becky go in the restroom and bring us some paper towels.”

Becky hadn’t been exaggerating. Mikey had vomited over his clothes, across the console, the gear shift and onto the adjacent seat.

“Hey, fella, you okay?” James asked, reaching in to ruffle his son’s hair, which was just about the only part of him free from vomit.

“Sorry, Daddy,” Mikey whimpered.

“Accidents happen. As long as you’re okay.” Standing in the brisk October dusk, James felt bleak at the prospect of trying to clean up Mikey and the car with a handful of deli napkins.

Laura put a hand on his arm. “Why don’t we just mop things up enough for you to take Mikey home? Becky can come in my car and I’ll follow you. That would be easiest.”

James knew it was a bad idea. As he drove home, he tried to reassure himself that letting Laura do this was not breaking the rules. It was so important that he not make any mistakes this time around. Good boundaries with clients did not include any kind of personal relationships with them. But then he was in a genuinely bad situation. She was simply helping him, like any decent person would. Besides … if he was honest with himself, James had to admit she intrigued him. She wore her fame, her accomplishments so lightly they were almost illusory, as if they were nothing more than stories themselves, and yet there was something also illusory about Laura, the way she could be so friendly, so concerned and willing to help with Mikey and yet eluded James’s efforts to get her in to talk about her own son.

W
hen they arrived at the apartment, the two girls bounded off together, Becky chattering excitedly about a toy horse she wanted to show Morgana. Laura lifted Mikey out of the car and took him inside while James went in search of cleaning supplies and a rag out of the box at the back of the garage. By the time he came into the apartment, Laura had run a bath and was washing Mikey, as if it were the most natural thing to enter a strange house and bathe a child she’d never met before.

James took over from there. With Mikey finally clean and tucked into bed, he came back into the living room to find Laura, hands sunk deep into the pockets of her jeans, scanning the bookshelves. Embarrassment shot through him. While he owned most of her books, they were all in his office, because the only point of buying them had been so people at work could see he owned them. The novels on these shelves were the sort he actually read – Terry Pratchett, Tom Clancy, Stephen King – relaxing, unpretentious storytelling that you could leave on the back of the toilet or risk dropping in the bath.

“That’s my fun reading,” he said sheepishly.

She smiled enigmatically.

“I do
have
yours,” he added quickly. “But they’re at the office at the moment. I’m always switching back and forth.”

Her smile eased into a grin and she glanced over. “So does that mean you’ve actually read any of them?”

James felt his cheeks redden. There was an uncomfortable pause and then he admitted, “I wish I could say yes. I
intend
to. It’s just been very busy since moving out here.”

“At least you’re honest.”

Desperate to move the conversation away from his embarrassing lack of intellectual reading, James said, “Would you like a cup of coffee? Then we can try to pull the girls apart.”

Laura followed him into the kitchen. Hands still deep in her pockets she strolled around the room, studying the kitchen with the same care as she had his bookshelf. The way she circled the room, inspecting everything, reminded James of Conor.

That brought to mind the fact that Laura had not yet mentioned her son. Normally parents he met outside the office pounced on him, anxious to ask how things were going, to tell of their child’s progress or get some free advice. James was grateful, of course, that she hadn’t done any of these things, since it would have been inappropriate to discuss a case outside the privacy of the office, but it was still curious that she never mentioned Conor at all, even casually.

Taking the coffee to the table, James sat down. “I’ve been hoping to see you in the office,” he said.

Laura ignored his comment. She lifted the coffee and sipped it. “Mmmm. Good coffee. Tastes like New York coffee.”

“Can I get Dulcie to give you a call this week and make an appointment?” James asked.

Laura’s brow drew down as she looked into the mug of steaming liquid. A silence developed and several moments slipped by with no response. “I’ve got to admit, I’m not really into that concept,” she said at last.

“Which concept is this?”

“Therapy.”

“Why?” James asked.

Setting the mug down on the table, Laura leaned forward on her forearms and stared into it as if some answer were in there. Finally she smiled at him. “Because everyone’s reality is different.”

That was an unexpected answer. James cocked an eyebrow.

“Therapy, the way I see it, trades on the assumption that ‘normal’ exists and that my perceptions, whatever they might be, should be brought into line with it,” she said. “Whereas I think there
is
no ‘real world’ out there. No absolute reality. Everything is subjective. So why should I accept what you tell me is reality?”

“That’s an interesting take,” James said. “I get the impression you’re worried your perspective will be overridden or judged as not as good or acceptable as other perspectives. Perhaps you think that a therapist might get in there and try to change perceptions you don’t feel are wrong.” He smiled at her. “But that’s not quite what therapy is. It’s simply about fixing things that don’t work. Just as if your car stopped working. You’d take it to a garage and let a mechanic repair it. You wouldn’t expect him to do stuff you hadn’t wanted done or to customize the car to his liking and not give it back to you. You’d expect him simply to find out what’s wrong and repair it so that you can enjoy your car again. Same here, except that I work with people, not cars. Your relationship with Conor
has stopped working. So you’ve brought Conor to see if I can fix that. And because relationships always involve more than one person, I need to see everyone involved to do my job properly. I’m not going to make anyone think or do anything they don’t want to. I’m just going to try and fix what’s broken.”

Her cheeks flushed. She ducked her head and James saw tears come to the corners of her eyes. He sat back in a casual manner to lessen the intensity of the moment, because this wasn’t the time or the place. Indeed, he was deeply relieved that the girls had remained occupied playing in Becky’s room.

“Sorry,” Laura murmured. “I hadn’t meant it to get this far.”

“Not to worry.”

“I think it was the ‘relationships stopped working’ comment.” She was tearful again. “Sorry.”

“Not to worry.”

“It’s just … well … ‘relationships not working’ is a bit of an understatement,” she said wearily. “Because it’s not just Conor …”

James knew he ought to stop her right there. The appropriate place for this conversation was the office. Here at his own kitchen table, with the girls chattering in the next room and apt to burst in at any moment, was most definitely not the place to encourage the conversation in the direction it was going. But James sensed a rare chink in Laura’s armour, and if he had learned anything from that whole tragedy in New York, it was to recognize that sometimes you had to break the rules. So he said, “What’s happened?”

“Alan left me.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s given me such a shock,” she said and tears thickened her voice.

“So how did this come about?” James asked.

“We had the stupidest argument. Over a lawnmower, would you believe?”

James smiled sympathetically. “That must have been upsetting.”

“It was so stupid. Al had been in town and found this lawn-mower on sale. It was a good price, but it was this huge, heavy thing and wasn’t self-propelled. I’m the one who cares for the yard, so any lawn-mower we get, I’m the one who’ll be using it. I wouldn’t even be able to push that beast. So I said he needed to take it back.

“Al flatly refused. We’ve got this weird relationship regarding money. We always have. And that’s what this was about. He’d paid for it, so he wasn’t going to take it back, because then it was as if I’d said he made a bad choice with his money. It escalated from there, because I didn’t want to get stuck with this crap machine and he didn’t want to take it back. So in the end I just said, okay,
I’m
going to take it back. I went out and got in the pickup, because the lawn-mower was still in the back of it and I took off for town.

“This isn’t like me,” she said and looked over. “I’m normally not at all confrontational. Before I even got into town, I was regretting I’d made a big deal out of it. I almost turned around then …” Her voice caught. “But I didn’t. I’d gone all that way, so I thought I might as well make use of it. So I went to the grocery store. When I got back to the ranch, he was gone. And, of course, he’d taken the kids.”

Laura’s shoulders dropped. She let out a long, slow breath. “That was the very worst moment I’ve ever had.” The tears
glistened yet again. “Coming into the house, finding it empty, realizing they were gone.”

“When did this happen?” James asked.

“Last Friday. Alan’s come back since. He was only gone over the weekend. Took the kids to his mum’s. But it made me realize I’ve got to do something. We’re in serious trouble.” She paused and looked over at James. “I’m thinking, okay, maybe I’ll do this with you. Maybe I’ll come in.”

“Lawnmower?” Alan said in disbelief. “Laura thinks this was all about a lawnmower? She thinks I moved out of my house because I was upset over a fucking
lawnmower
?” Leaning back into the sofa, he shook his head. “Well, there’s a beautiful example of just why we’re going to hell: Laura lives in another world. She completely misses what’s happening in this one.”

“You’re saying Laura commonly misinterprets things?” James asked, curious. Surely a good writer would be skilled at insight and interpretation.

“Not ‘misinterprets’. Laura’s not misinterpreting. It’s more that she’s got her own version of the world. Things aren’t true and untrue to Laura. Not the way they are for most of us.” Alan paused and lowered his head, thinking. “How exactly do I explain it? I don’t want it to come off sounding like I think she’s a pathological liar or something, because it’s not that clear cut. Lying means there must be a truth somewhere and you know you’re not saying it. With Laura, it’s all much more fluid than that. Almost as if no truth exists and so you create it as you go along.”

Like a storyteller does, James thought.

“In the early years that’s why I loved her so,” Alan said. “I mean, you’re around Laura for a while and you realize she
isn’t quite like other people. She’s got this weird, wonderful way of thinking, not the sort of thing you can get at with just intellect. There’s a passion about creative people, don’t you think? Growing up in a family of bankers and accountants, I admired that. Maybe even identified with it a little, because I think what gave me trouble as a kid was that I was just that bit more free-thinking. Nothing like Laura, of course, but enough to know there was something better to be had than just making money. And I got off on the idea that
she
wanted to be with
me
. In a way, that’s what attracted her in reverse. She wanted ordinary. That’s actually what she told me once. That I was ‘real’ to her. I was her anchor …

“But this fey quality, it isn’t special anymore. It’s just frigging hard work. These days I feel like one of those game show contestants who has to guess what’s behind the curtain. You know? Guess between this one and that one and you win the prize. But when the curtain opens, there’s another curtain behind it. Or a box to be opened. And inside is another box. Nothing is like it looks. Everything just hides something else. I’ve never found the real Laura. To the point that I’m not sure she even exists.

“I’m fed up with it. With all the lies and evasions. You ask her something and she’ll tell you whatever story is in her head at that moment. And she’s so good at it. You never know if it’s the truth or not.”

Finally Alan looked over at James. “You want to know the real reason I left. It had nothing to do with lawnmowers whatsoever. Shall I tell you what happened?”

“Yes, of course,” James said.

“Our daughter, Morgana, is six. She was supposed to go to this kid’s birthday party right after school last Friday. She was
so excited about it, because she doesn’t get invited to a lot of birthday parties. Morgana seems to get on with kids okay, but she plays by herself a lot. Mostly just because we live so far out. Anyway, so this was special. Morgana kept chattering on about what she wanted to wear and what she wanted to get this little girl for a present and all that. It’s all she talked about.

“The day of the party happened to be the same day Laura threw her tantrum over the lawnmower. I was pretty fed up and didn’t want to be around when she came back. Since we’d already arranged that I was going to pick Morgana up from the party, I decided to go into town early. I popped Conor in the car and thought I’d take him to the car wash with me. He likes that.

“Anyway, there were roadworks on the main street, so I took a different way that goes down around the park. As I’m driving by the park, who should I see there but Morgana, playing there all on her own.