Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

“You still miss him, don’t you?” Kathy said.

There was no need to name names, not for either of them.

“I don’t know who you could possibly be talking about,” Izzy said.

Kathy sighed again. “God, I feel like a parent. I’m just going to shut up, okay?”

“Okay.”

“But I hope you’re being careful.”

Izzy slipped her foot out from under the afghan and hooked the strap of her shoulder bag so that she could pull it toward her. Rummaging around in it, she came up with a handful of condoms that she gravely showed to Kathy.

“I’m being ever so careful, Mom,” she said.

Kathy just threw a pillow at her.

V

March 1976

Izzy was working late at the studio the night she met Annie Nin. She had a new painting-in-progress on her easel, but it wasn’t going well, and hadn’t been for the past two days now. With the new show due to be hung in less than a few weeks’ time, she knew she had at least two more paintings to finish, but she couldn’t seem to concentrate on the work at hand. All she wanted to do was paint numena, which was fine except that painting numena wouldn’t get her any further ahead in terms of being prepared for the show, since she still refused to part with any of the numena paintings. But the cityscape she was working on bored her, and it showed in the painting. Finally she dropped her brush into a jar of turpentine and went to slouch in the window seat.

It had started snowing earlier in the evening; now it was a regular blizzard, one of March’s last roars.

A blustery wind was busy sculpting drifts that had grown progressively taller throughout the evening. The plows would be out on the main thoroughfares, but they wouldn’t get to the lane that ran alongside the coach house until sometime tomorrow, so here the drifts were free to expand into graceful sweeps of snow that blocked the entire width of the lane in places.

The snow depressed her. Winter depressed her. March especially depressed her. It was a full year now since she’d broken up with John, and this week everything seemed to exist not in its own right, but as part of a conspiracy to remind her of how stupid she’d been that night. Correction, she thought. How stupid she’d been since that night. Throwing herself at whoever happened to come along. Drinking too much. Partying too much. Feeling sorry for herself way too much.

Her art was the only thing that kept her sane—in particular, her numena paintings, but she felt guilty every time she did one. She had two voices arguing constantly in her head: John’s telling her to be responsible, to be careful, to not play god; and Kathy’s assuring her that the numena were in no more danger when they were brought into the world than was anybody else who lived here, life itself was a risk, and besides that, it was their own choice, whether or not they crossed over, Izzy wasn’t making them inhabit the shapes she painted.

Both arguments made sense and she didn’t know which of them was right. She wished sometimes that she’d never learned the process of bringing numena across, but those paintings brought her closer to the soul of her art than anything else she painted and it was a hard thing to consider giving it up. With everything else seeming to have gone askew in her life, the numena paintings were the only things she felt that still connected her to herself.

She guarded the numena paintings carefully—almost to the point of paranoia. She’d changed the lock on the coach house’s second-story door so that only she had access to the studio. Every morning when she arrived, she took inventory and then studied each of the paintings to make sure that nothing had happened to any of them. She constantly monitored her dreams, faithfully scrutinizing them for any hint of the horrors that had visited her before.

Her vigilance appeared to have paid off. The paintings remained safe. The numena they brought across were free to make their own lives in the city without fear of attack. But she still felt a constant guilt that wouldn’t ease. It was no use talking to Kathy about it; she already knew everything Kathy had to say on the matter. As for John, the fact that his views hadn’t changed was made very clear simply through his continued absence in her life.

Sighing, she got up from the window seat and went to stand in front of the wall on which the numena paintings hung.

“Why won’t any of you talk to me?” she cried. “Why won’t you tell me how you feel?”

There was no reply, but then she wasn’t expecting one. She heard only the wind, whistling outside the studio’s windows. The shift and creak of the building as it stoically bore the fury of the storm.

Shaking her head, Izzy walked back to the window seat. What she should do, she thought, was go home and get a good night’s sleep, but she didn’t want to leave. That would be too much like giving up. And she knew as well that if she did leave, the temptation to drown her troubles by making a round of the bars and clubs would more than likely win out over a night’s sleep.

Because drunk, her problems would temporarily fade and for a few hours, she wouldn’t remember them.

She scraped a new buildup of frost from the window and stared out at the storm. Reflected movement on the darkened glass caught her eye, and she turned to find herself no longer alone in the studio. A slender red-haired figure stood by the wall holding the numena pictures—a gamine in jeans, her body overwhelmed by the large sweater she wore.

Izzy’s gaze went from the young woman’s angular features to settle on one of the paintings that hung on the wall behind her. The painting had been rendered in oil pastels and was called Annie Nin. Its subject and the young woman standing under it were identical.

“Maybe it’s because you make us nervous,” Annie said, replying to Izzy’s earlier question.

Though Izzy had long since accepted that her paintings could bring beings across from some otherworld, the reality of this numena’s presence was still a new enough enchantment to fill her heart with awe and set her pulse drumming.

“I make you nervous?” she finally managed.

Annie gave a wry shrug that she might have learned from John, it was so immediately expressive.

“Well, think about it,” she said. “It’s kind of like meeting God, don’t you think?”

“Oh, please!”

Annie laughed. “All right. So you didn’t create us, you just offered us shapes to wear. But we still wouldn’t be here without you and you’ve got to admit that meeting you would be sort of intimidating for one of us.”

“If you’re trying to make me feel even more guilty, it’s working.”

“Why do you feel guilty?” Annie asked.

She crossed the room, walking toward the window seat. Izzy made room for her and she hopped on the broad sill, leaning her back on the window frame opposite from where Izzy was sitting.

“It’s dangerous for you in this world,” Izzy said.

Annie cocked her head, then gave it a slow shake. “You’ve been talking to John,” she said.

“Not lately, I haven’t.”

“Yes, well, he is stubborn.”

“Why does he hate me so much?” Izzy asked.

“He doesn’t hate you, he’s just too full up with pride. Give him time and he’ll come around.”

“It’s been a year now,” Izzy said. “Is it because I haven’t stopped, you know, painting? Bringing you across?”

Annie frowned. “If it is, he has no right to make you feel that way. We chose to come across on our own, just as he did.” Her features brightened. “And I don’t regret it for a moment. I love your world. We all do. There’s so much to see and do; so many people to meet and places to go. I’d take just a day in your world against never having the chance to be here at all.”