Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

Sitting across the table from him, she fingered the small, flat key in the pocket of her jeans and remembered what Kathy had written in her letter about the contents of the locker it would open.

This is what I’m leaving for you. For you and Alan, if you want to share it with him.

She wanted to show him the key, to tell him about the letter, but something held her back. She felt comfortable with him, certainly, but there was still a surreal edge to the afternoon that left her feeling oddly distracted and more than a little confused. Parting on such bad terms as they had, she was hard put to understand why she was so happy to see him. And then there was the presence of Kathy’s ghost—all those memories that seeing him called up in her mind. It made for a strange and eerie brew that stirred and churned inside her, with the source of much of its disquiet, she knew, being due to the strange coincidence of Alan’s having called her after all these years—less than twenty-four hours after she’d received Kathy’s long-lost letter. It seemed too pat. It seemed almost .. arranged.

So she said nothing. Instead, she waited to hear the proposition that had brought him all the way out here to see her. When she realized what he wanted from her, all it did was further muddy the waters and leave her feeling more confused than ever.

“I couldn’t do it,” she said. “I just couldn’t.”

“But—”

“You know how much I love Kathy’s stories,” she added, “but I don’t paint in an illustrative style anymore. I’m really the wrong person for this book—

though I think it’s a wonderful idea. I can’t believe that those stories have been out of print for as long as they have.”

“But the money—”

“You couldn’t offer me enough to do it. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t understand. It’s not about making money for us,” Alan said.

Isabelle studied him for a long moment. “Of course,” she said. “I should have known that. It never has been about money for you, has it? Maybe that’s why you’ve had so much success.”

The three slim volumes of Kathy’s shortstory collections had put Alan’s East Street Press on the literary map. Specializing as it had on illustrated shortstory and poetry collections by local writers and artists, the press had been considered to be nothing more than one more regional publisher until the New York Times review of Kathy’s first collection started a bidding war among paperback publishers and the final mass-market rights had gone for two hundred thousand dollars—an astonishing sum for a collection of literary fairy tales.

They were new stories, her own stories, set in Newford’s streets. But there was magic in them. And faerie. Which hardly made them bestseller material.

But surprisingly, the book had surpassed all of the paperback publishers’ expectations; as had the two subsequent volumes—still published first by the East Street Press in handsome illustrated volumes, but distributed nationally by one of the major houses who had also taken an interest in the other books that Alan had produced. Kathy’s collections had spawned two plays, a ballet, a film and innumerable works of art. Kathy hadn’t exactly become a household name, but her literary posterity had certainly been assured.

Interest in the fourth collection had been high, but then Kathy died, throwing her estate into the legal wrangle that had now lasted five years. And for five years Kathy’s books had only been available in libraries and secondhand stores.

“So what is it about?” she asked. “Besides getting the stories back into print and raising some money for the Foundation?”

“Remember how Kathy was always talking about establishing an arts court for street kids? A house made up of studio space where any kid could come to write or draw or paint or sculpt or make music, all supplies furnished for them?”

Isabelle nodded. “I’d forgotten about that. She used to talk about it long before she became famous and started making all that money.”

And then, Isabelle remembered, when Kathy did have the money, she’d been instrumental in establishing the Newford Children’s Foundation, because she’d realized that first it was necessary to deal with the primary concerns of shelter and food and safety. She hadn’t forgotten her plans for the children’s Art Court, but she’d died before she could put them into practice.

“That’s what this money is going to do,” Alan said.

You don’t understand what you’re asking of me, Isabelle wanted to tell him, but all she could say was, “I still can’t do it.”

“Your depictions of her characters were always Kathy’s favorites.”

“I only ever did the two.”

Two that survived, at least. They hung in the Foundation’s offices—in the waiting room that was half library, half toy room.

“And they were perfect,” Alan said. “Kathy always wanted you to illustrate one of her books.”

“I know.”

And Kathy had never asked her to, not until just a few weeks before she died. “Promise me,” she’d said when Isabelle had come to see her at the Gracie Street apartment, the last time Isabelle had seen Kathy alive. “Promise me that one day you’ll illustrate one of my books.”

Isabelle had promised, but it was a promise she hadn’t kept. Fear prevented her from fulfilling it. Not the fear of failure. Rather, it was the fear of success. She would never again render a realistic subject.

Kathy had always seemed to understand—until right there at the end, when she’d chosen to forget. Or maybe, Isabelle sometimes thought, Kathy had remembered too well and the promise had been her way of telling Isabelle that she had nude a mistake in turning her back on what had once been so important to her.

“Why does it have to be me?” she asked, speaking to her memories of Kathy as much as to Alan.

“Because your art has the same ambiguity as Kathy’s prose,” Alan replied. “I’ve never seen another artist who could capture it half as well. You were always my first choice for every one of Kathy’s books.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Kathy didn’t want you to. She said you’d come around in your own time, but we don’t have that kind of time anymore. Who knows what’s going to happen when the Mullys take me back to court? We have to do this now, as soon as we can, or we might never have the opportunity again.”

“It’s been so long since I’ve done that kind of work ....”

“It’ll just be a cover,” Alan assured her, “and a few interior illustrations. I’d take as many as you’ll do—even one per story—but I’ll settle on a minimum of five. We can combine whatever new pieces you do with the two hanging in the Foundation’s offices. That should be enough.”

Just a cover. Just a few interiors. Except art was never “just” anything. When it was rendered from the heart, with true conviction, it opened doors. There were some doors that Isabelle preferred to keep closed.

“Couldn’t you just use the two I’ve already done?” she asked.

Alan shook his head. “It wouldn’t be much of an illustrated edition, then, would it?”

“Well, couldn’t you get somebody else to do the rest you need?”

“No. I want the continuity. One author, one artist. I’ve never liked books that mix various artists’

work to go with one style of writing.”

Isabelle didn’t either.

She toyed with the handle of her tea mug and stared out the window. A wind had sprung up and the flowers were bobbing and swaying in its breath. Out over the lake, dark clouds were gathering, rolling up against each other into a long smudge, shadowing the horizon. A storm was on its way, but the fact didn’t register for her immediately. She was thinking, instead, of Kathy’s stories, of how easily working with their imagery would lead her back into that bewildering tangle where dream mingled with memory.