Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

“Were you so bad?” Izzy asked. “Is that it? I wouldn’t think the less of you, you know, because you’re so good now. I could only admire the turnaround you’d made in your life.”

“I wasn’t bad or good,” John said finally. “Before I met you, I was nothing, Izzy.’

“Nobody’s nothing.”

“That depends upon your perspective. Let’s just say I was in a different story from the one I’m in now.”

“And how does this story end?”

John shrugged. “That’s not something we can know. We have to live it through and find out, just the way everybody else does.”

Only everybody else has a past, Izzy thought, but she knew there was no point in trying to take this particular conversation any further. There never was. Sighing, she snuggled against him and tried to put the questions out of her mind and be happy with what she had.

IV

Newford, March 1975

“Did you read those new stories yet?” Kathy asked when she got home.

Izzy looked up from the art-history book she was studying and felt a twinge of guilt. Even with her show over, she still never seemed to have enough time to do half the things she wanted to do. She had two papers due at the end of next week; she was behind in her studying, which was not good considering she had finals coming up in less than a month; John was beginning to complain about how little time she had for him; her other friends were starting to tell her that they were feeling neglected; and then there was Rushkin. He was working her so hard that she could barely keep her eyes open in class after leaving his studio. She hadn’t been to the greenhouse studio in weeks.

“I feel so bad,” she said. “I just haven’t had the time.”

“That’s okay.” Kathy hung up her coat and then settled into the pile of cushions by the window. “I understand.”

“No, really. I feel like my life went insane last December and it’s never recovered.”

Kathy nodded. “We should get a cat,” she said. “A big scruffly tomcat with a chewed ear and an attitude.”

Izzy blinked. For all that she was used to the way both Jilly and Kathy switched topics almost in the middle of a sentence, it could still catch her off guard sometimes.

“Whatever for?” she asked.

“I think we need some male energy in here.”

“You could get a boyfriend.”

“I don’t think so. They’re too much responsibility.”

“Oh, and a cat isn’t?”

“Not in the same way,” Kathy said. “I mean, look at you, juggling a million things in your life, and then having to worry about what John’ll think if you can’t get together with him this night or that. A cat’s not like that. They’re much more easygoing.”

Izzy laughed. “You’ve obviously never owned a cat.”

“But am I that wrong? I think men are like dogs, always in your face about something or other, while women are like cats, just content to take things as they come.”

“I think a man would say just the opposite.”

“But it wouldn’t be true. Or at least,” Kathy added, “it would only be true on the surface. The stronger a woman gets, the more insecure the men in her life feel. It doesn’t work that way for a woman.

We celebrate strength—in our partners as well as in ourselves. Do you want some tea?”

Izzy shook her head. “I just made myself a cup.”

“Yes, well. I’m parched.”

Izzy watched her roommate make her way into the kitchen. A few moments later she emerged with a beer. She gave Izzy a vague wave before going into her bedroom, closing the door behind her. Izzy looked down at her book, then sighed. Time enough to study tomorrow. She got up and collected the loose sheaf of manuscript that consisted of Kathy’s latest stories and settled back in her reading spot. An hour later she was tapping on Kathy’s door. She opened it wide enough to poke her head in before Kathy had a chance to respond.

“Are you awake?” Izzy asked.

Kathy was sitting crosslegged on her mattress, doing nothing so far as Izzy could tell, merely sitting there, the empty beer bottle lying beside her on the blanket.

“You didn’t have to read them right away,” Kathy said when she saw the manuscripts in Izzy’s hands.

“Have you been rAlking to Jilly about what I’ve been working on at the Grumbling Greenhouse Studio?” Izzy asked.

“Are you kidding? Sometimes I think she’s busier than you are.”

“I haven’t been around much, have I?”

“Try not at all. Sometimes I think I should file missing persons reports on the both of you.”

“And you haven’t been to the studio either?”

“What’s this all about, Izzy?”

Izzy left the doorway to sit on the end of Kathy’s bed. “It’s this story,” she said, tapping the top manuscript, which was the last of the three Kathy had left for her to read. “Where did you get the idea for the character you call Paddyjack?”

Kathy looked embarrassed. “What makes you think I had to get the idea from somewhere? Maybe I just made it up.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I suppose.”

“C’mon, Kathy. This is important.”

“Why’s it so important?”

“You tell me first,” Izzy said.

“But you’re going to think I’m crazy.”

Izzy shook her head. “If what I think is true, that’s the last thing I’ll think. Trust me on this.”

Kathy gave her a look full of curiosity.

“Where did he come from?” Izzy asked.

“It’s ...” Kathy began; then she started over. “I was coming home from Perry’s Diner one night. You were at the studio and I didn’t feel like cooking just for myself, so I went out. It was kind oflatc going on to eleven—and I was just walking along, thinking about this new story I’d been working on ....”

“And?” Izzy prompted her when she fell silent.

“And I saw him. I just happened to glance down the driveway of number twelve and there he was, sitting on the steps that lead down to Bernie’s apartment. I saw him as plain as day. All skinny and weird looking, in his ragged scarecrow clothing and that funny hair poking out from under his hat that looks like a bomb exploded in a bird’s nest.”

“It’s not hair,” Izzy said.

“I know.” Kathy paused. “How do you know? Have you seen him, too?” Izzy shook her head. “I called him over.”

“Say what?”

Now it was Izzy’s turn to feel embarrassed. She knew just how Kathy had felt relating her story, because what she had to tell Kathy was even more preposterous. But she went ahead and told her all the same, from Rushkin’s theories to how she’d gone to paint at the Grumbling Greenhouse Studio with the express purpose of putting them to the test.

“What a neat idea,” Kathy said when she was done.

“But don’t you see?” Izzy said. “It’s not just an idea. It actually worked!”

“But—”

“Wait a sec and I’ll prove it.”

She dropped the manuscripts onto the mattress beside the empty beer bottle and went back into her own room, where she fetched a couple of the preliminary sketches for her painting from out of her knapsack. When she came back into the room, she handed them to Kathy.

“Is that your Paddyjack?” she asked.

Kathy nodded slowly, her eyes widening. “This is totally amazing. What do you call him?”

“I didn’t give him a name. I haven’t named any of the pieces I’ve done there yet.

“This is exactly like what I saw. I mean, I know it could have been just some weird junkie, dressed up funny, but he was too skinny. And that face—there’s nothing really human about that face.”

“I know. I did it on purpose. I didn’t want to do another person, because that wouldn’t prove anything.”