Jay had been sound asleep for hours and the questioning voice drove him from his dreams. He opened his eyes to see Sarah standing over him looking at the wall above their bed. It took him a second to understand what she was taking about; when he did comprehend, he closed his eyes again to dive back into the dream he’d been having, but Sarah must have seen him stir, because she nudged him until he opened his eyes once more.
“What?”
“Why did you nail that thing to the wall? You know there’s a camera and crew coming out here tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I know; so what?”
“They’re going to want to film in here and you’ve got that thing all crooked on the wall.” She made to reach for it only to have Jay’s hand shoot up and stop her.
“Don’t frickin’ move it,” he said. There must have been something in his voice, or perhaps some look in his eyes, for Sarah backed down and lowered her hand. “Leave it where it is. This is the first decent sleep I’ve had in a damn long time, and if having that dream thing over my head works, I don’t want you to touch it.”
“All right,” she said, but he knew from the way she said it, from the cock of her hip and the way her arms folded over her chest as she stood there that she wasn’t happy about it at all, and that the dream catcher wasn’t necessarily safe from her idea of what constituted form and style.
“Lemme go back to sleep,” Jay told her, and he closed his eyes while his mind worked to will her away. If his eyes had truly been closed he would have had to rely on his senses to tell him if she’d gone, but he had a trick of looking at people through the cover of his eyelashes. They were thick lashes that made a perfect tool for just that purpose, and at the moment he was able to clearly see Sarah sneering. Jay wasn’t exactly sure if she was sneering at him or at the dream catcher, and he didn’t particularly care. He was happy to see her turn on her heel and leave the room, even if she closed the bedroom door with a little more vigor than was called for.
Jay rolled onto his back and looked up at the wall behind him. The dream catcher, the large one, was hanging directly over his side of the bed, making an incongruous blot on the pristine white walls. Several leather clad stones dangled from the oblong frame, and he touched them, one after the other, making them tick-a-tap on the plaster. Sarah was probably right, he probably shouldn’t have nailed the damn thing to the wall, and he probably should have taken the time to center it or something, but he didn’t care; he was too grateful for the sleep. As soon as he had gotten home he’d fished a nail out of a drawer in the kitchen, found a hammer in the garage, and hung the thing up. The hammer was still on the bedside table where he had left it.
He turned to his head to the left and looked at the space there. His clothes lay on the floor at the side of the bed, right where he’d left them, and the bag from the shop was still sitting near the sliding doors that led to one of the terraced patios. There was nothing else to impede his view, and if those few items hadn’t been there it would have simply been a vast expanse to the drapes that hid the door. He turned his head to the right and was greeted with another stretch of clean space that was broken up by a hulking, black lacquer dresser and a free standing mirror. The mirror was another black affair, never allowed to deviate from the cockeyed angle it was sitting at. Sarah said it had something to do with what she called ‘fang shwee’, and that moving the mirror would drain all the luck out of the room. Jay thought she was fairly demented when she babbled on about it, but he had indulged her need to have things in just such a way, and had happily signed a check for a ridiculous amount of money to have some stranger come into his house and put mirrors in places that didn’t need them. The rest of the furniture, artwork and knickknacks galore that Sarah collected had been scattered around the house to places that always seemed off kilter as well.
Jay sighed and closed his eyes again. If Sarah was happy, then he was happy. That was something that he had clung to over the past months, some train of thought that he could count on. Life worked easier when Sarah was content with things, so Jay had made it his mission to make sure that she was content, ergo the house, the cars, the ‘fang shwee’, and any number of other things she could think of. At the moment, though, he was reluctant to give in to her with regards to the dream catcher. As he thought about it he realized that he was reluctant to give in to much of anything these days, therefore life was becoming difficult.
He grabbed one of the large pillows and hugged it. Not a thinking person, he had been making the adjustment to being in a thinking mode of behavior for over a year. Thinking had never really gotten him anywhere in life; life had been in the doing of things. When he was doing, he wasn’t thinking, and it had been a very lucrative way to live, serving him well for most of his life; serving him well until not thinking had turned into thoughtlessness. There was a large difference between the two, and the self-realization that had come with the knowledge of that difference had been an ugly thing, because his thoughtlessness had turned him into a rather ugly thing that had been attractive to no one but Sarah. Since rehab he had pushed that bit of wonderment aside, the wonderment of how Sarah, whom he found to be attractive and desirable, could be attracted and desire him, who had been ugly inside and out. It was a niggling thought that he had pushed away time and time again until the moment came when he was willing to face that he had been as ugly a person as he had always imagined himself to be. With acceptance came knowledge, and with the knowledge came the question.
Why did she stay with him when he was drunk and addicted?
The question rolled in his head now. Why? At the time he had felt she was supportive; at the time, so had the other people in his life. Now it seemed as if that theory was fraught with necessity. The people he worked with and for had needed a ‘keeper’ for him, someone who he would toe the line for, and for a brief time that had worked, although it soon became apparent that instead of policing his activities, Sarah was more of a participant in them. When he partied, she partied. When he passed out, she would pass out beside him, and that cycle continued until she had become fearful of him, until he had begun to show physical anger on inanimate objects and she was afraid that he might escalate his anger to include her. His mother, to whom he was inordinately close, had been grateful to Sarah’s being in his life, seeing Sarah as another sort of ‘keeper’, as someone who might keep him on an emotional even keel. His mother’s opinions had been the most enduring of anyone else’s. She had, up until the beginning of the year, been very grateful of Sarah’s participation in his life. Recently, though, it had soured. Not suddenly, but in a gradual way, and in a subtle manner that was very unlike his brash, outspoken parent. She was withholding in some way, but Jay was loathe to figure out in what way. She had yet to visit them again in California, claiming that she wasn’t up to the flight from Florida, that she was busy with her father, his grandfather, and settling him into the newly built wing on his uncle’s house, that she was simply too tired. Jay, never one to pick up on life’s subtleties, felt these gentle rebuffs like hammer blows.
He needed his mother. He had always needed his mother. An only child raised in a single parent household, he had always had needs that were never being met. One of them was the need to be in the company of another person, but that was often not possible, because his childlike idea of company at the time meant a playmate, and his mother worked two jobs, making his only companions his maternal grandparents, who, while being a tremendous help and influence in his upbringing, were far from the peers he desired. His imagination grew in that environment, something for which he was grateful now, but at the time he could clearly recall his resentment building like a house of cards; resentment that was built on no foundation and with flimsy material, that couldn’t hold the weight of his needs when the burden of them became adult and overwhelming.
There was a chasm there, now, between him and his mother; a chasm that had never been there, or that may have always been there but was spanned with a bridge of good and sincere intentions that he had taken for granted. The bridge was gone, and Jay could see that the bridge had been flimsy, too, unable to sustain the burden of his thoughtlessness and selfishness. It needed to be repaired, and he had thought that the reconstruction of that edifice had begun in rehab, where both he and his mother had put all their feelings and hurts out in the open. So this new distance that he was feeling he first passed off as being something of his own overactive and oversensitive imagination. Lying in the muted light of his bedroom, looking once again at the dream catcher, he began to see differently. Perhaps it was the way his head felt cleared from the deep sleep he’d just had, or from the dreams he knew he had dreamed but were sliding away from him now, but he felt that something was amiss and that he’d better do something to make it right before life escalated into the realm of unbearable once again, and he ended up returning to the cycle of abuse he was so familiar with.
He checked the clock on the bedside table.
It was only late in the afternoon. He had hours to get through before it would be time to go to his Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Part of him felt that he should get out of bed and go pay some attention to his angry fiancée. Another part of him felt that he should continue to indulge himself in more, and much needed, sleep. Still another part of him wanted to go back down to “The Rising Phoenix” and see if Annie was still there, to be in that still, fragrant environment and just soak it up.
Jay turned to his side once more and slipped his hand beneath the pillow that cradled his head. The other dream catcher was there. He’d been so intent on getting the bigger one hung, and so utterly tired when he had, that he’d had no energy to go back down the stairs to the kitchen and dig up another nail to hang the small companion catcher up. He fondled it, feeling the stones and feathers, smoothing them with his fingers, indulging himself in an idle contentment he hadn’t felt in a long, long time. The urge to sleep won out, and he closed his eyes, his fingers still stroking the dream catcher, and easily slid back into slumber.
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Sarah sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and a pack of cigarettes. She wasn’t much of a smoker, having abandoned the habit many years ago, but Jay was a smoker and there were times when she still indulged herself, even though she knew it was something not good for her. Lately, though, what had become an indulgence had escalated to a full grown need. She found herself smoking more and more, and she found herself hiding the evidence of it. Here, at home, there was no problem with keeping this a secret; Jay filled ashtrays to overflowing in just about every room of the house, so a few more crushed filters wasn’t going to make a difference. Outside the house, though, she was under scrutiny. She sat and smoked and wondered why the scrutiny she had always aspired to wasn’t at all as she thought it would be.
Noticed; Sarah had always wanted to be noticed. She came from a family of women who were all like her, from her mother to her sister, to the half-siblings that dotted the California coast. All of them had, at one time or another, aspired to, or been in, ‘the business’ that was Hollywood. Acting, singing, dancing, they had, each and every one of them, pursued their collective and individual dreams of becoming famous and well known and noticed. None of them had gotten more than the passing nod of recognition. One of them had lost their life to the rigors that such pursuits can press on a person; a victim of her desires and inability to feed them, dead at a tender age from an overdose of prescription medications that was intentional, or not, no one was sure to this day.
Sarah had shown promise at an early age, involving herself in school productions and local theater until she had actually toured a bit of the world with a production of no consequence that had led no further than to having a passport filled with stamped pages and a working knowledge of one star hotels throughout Europe. From there she had done the usual rounds of classes and auditions, picking up the occasional television role on this situation comedy and that. When the pursuit of an acting career had panned out to nothing, she had switched gears with the ease of switching mascaras and turned her attentions to singing. Her voice was nothing special, but her presentation could have impact when she dressed in revealing ways, and she soon caught the eye of one up and coming group that took her on as a protégée. This constituted a move across country, and several years of time wasted in a dungeon of a recording studio singing back up vocals and writing songs for people who soon left with their own fame and fortune on the rise, while her career was put on hold again, and again, and again. Two affairs ensued at that time between the two brothers who were mentoring her, leaving her credibility in shreds and the siblings at war.
She had moved back to California, back home with her mother, and taken up waiting tables, leaving the singing to others until she could repair the tatters of her life and gather the strength to seek new opportunities. She wasn’t old, but she was no longer young, and a slow panic inside of her had begun to build, so when the slight individual with bleary brown eyes had approached her in a karaoke bar one evening, spouting the usual come on lines with his eyes firmly planted on her well endowed bosom, she had only been a little reluctant to let him buy her a drink. It had been a game, to push him away and see if he would keep coming back, and he had; he had been as tenacious as a dog with a meaty bone.
Sarah crushed out the butt of the cigarette she had been smoking and lit another one right away. She watched the flame of the lighter, watched the smoke curl up to the ceiling. A year ago she had imagined that she had everything she ever dreamed of: the potential to forward her ambitions, a high profile boyfriend who lavished her with anything she wanted, and the attention and limelight that came with being with said boyfriend. She like having his fans come up to her and ask for autographs. She thrived on the attention and played it up for all it was worth. It didn’t matter that Jay had problems, there were few people in her life that didn’t. Her one sister was already dead from emotional problems and the inability to cope with them. Another sister had taken refuge in a variety of mystical pursuits, veritably shunning her family, but finding her own coping mechanisms. A half-brother was long gone, and no one knew where he was. Previous relationships had been of the same ilk, bringing with them nothing more exotic than what Jay brought to this one, so she thought nothing of the outcome of those problems, much less how they might escalate, so it was worth it to her. The travel, the photo opportunities, the fans, the adulation and admiration, they were worth it to her. Plus the fact that Jay was generous, very generous; sometimes generous to a fault.
She blew out a long stream of smoke and took a sip of her tea, which had grown cold and bitter. It tasted awful, but she swallowed it anyway. Habit. Like many other things in her life, it was habit, and bitterness was something she had long grown accustomed to.
Sarah stamped out the cigarette and got up from the table. Jay wouldn’t be getting up any time soon, if at all. She had nothing to do and no desire to do anything anyway. Maybe she would wash the dogs, because she had ignored Jay’s earlier jibe and left them home, going out to have lunch with her mother and discuss the upcoming events of the next few days. Her mother was ecstatic, perhaps even more excited than she was, about the impending wedding and the press coverage it was getting. That was becoming as irritating as Jay’s foot dragging, which was grating on her nerves more than she had expected.
It was May. She looked at the calendar that hung on the wall, ticking off the months until the following February. Nine months. Enough time to have a baby in. That thought made her shudder. No, she wasn’t about to go that route, although she had considered it just before Jay had asked her to marry him. A baby would be more of an impediment in her life rather than a source of commonality between her and Jay; a year of living with him had made it abundantly clear that a baby would be her full responsibility and hers alone. No. This wedding was her baby. Getting Jay to the altar was her baby, and that was more than enough responsibility for anyone. Maybe even her.
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© 2004 Chandrah, Inc.
© 2004 (*> Baby Bird Productions, Inc.
