This Shared Dream (47 page)

Cool air-conditioning. Above her, a digital sign silently changed a track number. The soldiers had vanished; the gorgeously renovated station was a great contrast to the shabby World War II station she’d just—what, imagined?—being in.

She walked over to an old bench. It had been kept, as had any salvageable element of the original station had been kept. Sitting down, she carefully looked over the scene in front of her, wondering what had happened.

A memory? No, she hadn’t been alive during World War II. Her ideas about it had been formed by movies, photographs, oral stories. She realized that she hadn’t eaten since her breakfast of stale Danish. Maybe that was it.

Who was that woman?

And then it came to her.

She dug her phone from her purse and pressed a button. Jill answered.

“Can you pick me up at the train station?”

“Sure. Are you okay? You sound kind of funny.”

“I just saw Mom.”

Jill, Brian, and Megan

AN EVENING OF FUN AND GAMES

July 13

J
ILL RAN OUT
the front door, climbed into Brian’s truck, and fished out the keys from under the seat. She tore through the streets and got to the station in five minutes flat.

Megan stood out front. She looked curiously small; uncharacteristically bedraggled. Her lovely black hair, usually precisely combed, flew every which way, and her frown was ferocious. You wanted to give Megan plenty of room when she was mad.

She was carrying not only her briefcase, but another bag. The jacket of her gray pantsuit hung from her hand and dragged on the pavement as she hurried forward and yanked open the truck door.

“God, I’m glad to see you!” She heaved her stuff inside and climbed in.

“What’s going on?” Jill did not start the truck. “You saw Mom? Where? Let’s go back and look for her!”

“I tried. I didn’t recognize her at first, because she was younger, in her WAC uniform. She hugged me tight. Right there! Right on that spot on the sidewalk! She certainly knew me. She said something about the war going on for much longer than they thought it would, then she hurried into the station. I guess I was just in shock and couldn’t move, for a minute, but then I ran inside and everything was old. Like the forties. The people, everything. And I think I saw her, but I’m not sure, she walked out through a gate and the train there was pulling out. Then it all changed back to … now. She’s gone, Jill. Can we go home? To your house?”

A WAC. Right. Jill put the truck in gear and sped off.

Megan continued to chatter. “I was followed this morning. By a short man in a hat. But I think he got off the train early and came back in this direction.”

“I was followed at the market today. By a short man in a hat.”

“If it’s the same one, he’s very busy.”

“And not particularly interested in anonymity.” Jill pulled up to the front of the house. Megan opened the truck door, slid down to the curb, and grabbed her jacket and briefcase. Jill picked up the other bag. “Inhancex? More memory stuff?”

“It’s that Game Board I got when we were little.”

Jill stared at Megan across the truck seat. “What?”

“Oh, you might not remember. It was a long time ago. Vodka. Straight. On the rocks. Immediately.” She slammed the door and headed toward the house.

Jill tossed the keys under the seat, grabbed the bag, got out, and leaned against the truck door, which closed with a reluctant
clunk
.
My life is ringed with fear,
she thought, angry and struggling against a wave of resignation. She pulled open the zipper of the bag.

Inside was another Infinite Game Board.

God! Not only did they promise infinity; perhaps the damned things were, actually infinite. Jill had a vision of them marching along like the animated mops in an old Disney cartoon about the sorcerer’s apprentice …

But wait. Daniel had said something. About … Estrella, the Spacie. The old ones replicated.

Okay. Another clue. Apparently, so did Game Boards. But from what? What was the
source
?

She quickly rezipped the bag and forced herself to breathe slowly and deliberately, to cycle the image of air through her lungs, up through her head, out the top.

It didn’t help. Her heart raced. She pushed off from the truck and was dizzy, so she waited until the spinning stopped, and then walked steadily up the front walk, feeling as if she was battling hurricane-force winds as she carried the bag containing the Game Board. The green, flat lawn seemed fragile and ephemeral, as if it might wink from existence at any time, taking everything else with it. Washington’s famous summer haze hovered over the creek that they considered theirs. Her freshly watered hydrangeas weighed down their branches, their purple blooms huge ostentatious jewels. The freshly painted gingerbread proclaimed her home a sparkling specimen of High Victorian. Her little Whens, although he claimed to see ghosts, was her perfect boy. She even had money, a job, and a bookstore where she would now stock comics. All was well, except that it frigging well wasn’t.

She wanted to fling the Game Board far away, back to whatever abominable place had spawned it, but she knew:

Their parents had built it.

It was here.

It would not go away.

Stubbornly, it—no,
they!
the prolific, ever-multiplying Game Boards, would surf onto the beach en masse, wherever the Dances happened to rent a beach house, guided by their heavy burden of histories, and glitter and wink on the sand, happy to have reinvaded their lives. They would escape the center-of-the-earth cave where they’d been dumped by gliding down a subterranean river, and pile up just below Sam and Bette’s little grotto, and sing entreaties to children to play with them. They would craftily lodge themselves into a single meteor-lump after being shot into space and return in a triumphant streak of light, signal Brian and Megan and tell them not to worry, they would be home soon, and land in a smoking crater in the woods out back, perfect and undamaged, ready to wreak havoc. The Game Boards would arise from the deeps of time, pursuing them with their siren call.

The three of them had to learn how to use the Game Board. Then she paused as she realized: They had to
remember
how to use it. And then they had to decide what to use it
for
.

She stomped up the front stairs and strode into the library.

Brian sprawled on the couch, holding a sweating beer. Megan lay on the floor, on her back, a throw pillow under her head, staring at the ceiling, a glass of vodka on her chest, the bottle ready at hand on the coffee table.

Jill said, “Megan, I’m so sorry that I don’t have any San Pellegrino, but—”

“Shut up,” said Megan.

Someone had thoughtfully provided Jill with a bottle of pinot grigio and a wineglass, and she poured herself a nice cold half-glass of straw-colored wine. A plate of cheese and crackers rested atop the papers piled on the coffee table, and Brian had his own giant-sized bag of barbecue potato chips.

Jill considered closing the blinds, but decided that if she left them open they could see anyone who might try to listen in.

She sat on the floor next to the coffee table and pulled the Game Board out of Megan’s bag.

“I thought you said you put that upstairs,” said Brian.

“I did. Megan has another one.”

“You have one too?” asked Megan. “My, my, my. I came home yesterday, and Abbie was playing with it.” Megan sat up and glared at Brian and Jill in turn. “PLAYING with it!” She lay down again, held her glass on her chest, and resumed staring at the ceiling.

Jill said, “I have something to tell you.”

“Yes, Jill, TELL us,” said Megan. “We are all ears.”

Jill could tell that Megan was just a wee bit tired and on edge. She turned to Brian. “Have you finished reading Dad’s papers?”

“What is this,” asked Megan, “an exam?” She lifted her head at an angle that looked quite strenuous, but which enabled her to take a sip of the vodka before she let her head fall back onto the pillow. “Why don’t you ANSWER some questions?”

“I’ve read some of them,” said Brian.

“What do you think?”

“I gather that Eliani Hadntz gave Dad the plans—”

Megan was roused enough to sit up while simultaneously holding her vodka so that she did not spill a drop. Jill thought Megan might even jump to her feet, but no, she was too tired and settled for a ramrod-straight back. “You said that last week. I want more.”

“Here’s more. Gypsy Myra.” She ruffled through some papers on the coffee table and pulled out an old mimeographed comic book. “Remember this?”

Megan paged through it. “No. I mean, kind of, I do know that you wrote comics for a while. I never read them. But you’re right. I do know Eliani Hadntz, and she looks pretty much like this woman. I’ve only seen her once. But I’m pretty sure this is her.”

“Where did you meet her?”

“She’s a colleague. I met her at the Cuba conference. And, in fact, she has helped me complete my memory project. I have ninety pills of her memory drug right here in my purse.”

“Finally!” asked Brian. “Let’s take some.”

“I already have,” said Megan. “Then the Game Board showed up. Do you think there’s a relationship?” She rummaged in her bag and got out the bottle of capsules. “Feel free, my little guinea pigs. What the fucking hell. Good for the mice, good for us, that’s my credo.”

Brian immediately took two, looked up, then took another one. “HD-50?”

“That’s what her literature calls it. All the info is on my Q, if you want it.”

Brian got up, left the room, and came back holding a bottle. “Here they are.”

Megan said, “What?”

“Yeah. The new supplements that came in the mail. They say ‘HD-50’ right here on the label.”

Megan grabbed the bottle and shook some of them out. “I’d have to analyze it, but my guess is that they’re the same. They came with this month’s vitamins? I’ve been too busy to open my box. I’ll check these out.”

“Cindy’s been taking it too. And the kids.”

“Do you think—no,” said Jill.

“No.” Megan shook her head. “She couldn’t, she wouldn’t.”

“She could and I think she would,” said Jill.

“Couldn’t or wouldn’t what?” asked Brian.

“Get this stuff into everyone in the world, somehow.” Megan dropped several capsules into a pillbox from her purse and handed Brian the bottle.

Jill said, “You know that she’s the one that got us into this mess?”

“No, Jill.” Megan lay down on her back again. “Another fact you have neglected to share with us.”

“I didn’t even know her name until a few weeks ago. I mean, I must have known it, briefly, but I’d forgotten it.”

“I’m trying really hard not to act as pissed with you as I really am,” said Megan, once again addressing the ceiling fan. “Since you seem to know so much fucking more about everything than we do and haven’t had the decency to tell us.”

Jill didn’t say what immediately came to mind, which was that she was grateful for Megan’s restraint, because she did not like standing outside when lightning was shooting to the ground and exploding nearby trees, which was what Megan’s anger used to resemble, before she’d gotten so much—Jill sighed—control over it.

“It’s no good to sit there and sigh,” said Megan. “I am not well-versed in the language of sighs.”

Jill noticed that Brian was carefully not opening his own mouth.

“I’m sorry.” Jill stood up and paced from the rocking chair in front of one end of the fireplace wall to the edge of the desk and back again as she plunged in. “Okay. It’s my fault that you lost Mom when you were so young. I did too, but I was older, and I knew what had happened.” She tried her breathing exercise again. This time it seemed to work. Her voice shook only a little, though her lungs felt squeezed; tight.

Brian said, “How—”

Jill held up her hand. “Let me talk. Look at those
Gypsy Myra
comics. Hand Megan a few.”

While paging through them, Megan abandoned her prone position. “This is weird stuff, Jill. John F. Kennedy assassinated? In—”

“Wait, Megan,” Brian interrupted. “This is even weirder. Martin Luther King assassinated. In—1968? The inner cities of the whole country torn by riots? Fires? Megan—”

“That’s right. Jill, Brian and I have dreams about this. But both of these men are alive.” Megan turned her pale, puzzled face toward her sister.

“Robert Kennedy killed too?” asked Brian, in total disbelief. “In ’68 too? Damn! That would have been awful. What is this all about?”

Jill grabbed her glass of wine and dropped into the rocking chair and crossed her legs. “It really happened. To me. And to—that other world, that other timestream. It wasn’t a dream.” She lowered her voice a notch, and fixed her gaze on a handy, neutral windowsill across the room.

“I was working for the Poor People’s Campaign that King started, before he was murdered on April fourth, in Memphis.” Brian opened his mouth and she said, “Stop interrupting. I’ll get off track and I have a lot to say. You’ll just have to believe me. Or at least listen.

“In that world, life, timestream, whatever—in which you two, by the way, were definitely present—FDR did
not
sign the Civil Rights Act in the late forties. It was enacted by President Johnson after JFK was assassinated; it had already been proposed by JFK.”

Brian watched her face intently. Megan was lying down again, eyes shut, her face as placid as if she were hearing a favorite bedtime story. Jill hoped she hadn’t passed out, but she seemed to have a tight grip on her glass. She continued to tell them the history that had never happened. They had to know why she had done what she had done, and without that history, they would never understand.

“The 1964 Civil Rights Act was groundbreaking. It outlawed discrimination by hotels, restaurants, public places, and in employment. It said that schools had to be desegregated, which reinforced a 1954 Supreme Court ruling. It ensured voting rights. It was not well accepted, in the South particularly, but that applied to other locales as well. Federal funding was denied to schools that refused to desegregate, which gave the act some teeth. Some places in the South simply stopped having public schools.
Negroes with my kids? No way.
Hard to imagine, I know, but that is the way it really was. Before, and after, there was horrible violence. Federal marshals had to escort some little black girls to school in New Orleans in 1960, and after that a lot of whites withdrew their kids. A lot more happened than I have time to go into right now.”