Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

“We’ll be friends forever,” she assured Kathy.

Kathy gave her a quick smile. “That’s good, because, you know, you’re the only good thing I ever had in my life that didn’t turn around and hurt me.”

“Look around you,” Izzy said. “All these people are your friends, Kathy. None of them would be here if it wasn’t for you.”

“I know. But the way I feel about them isn’t the same as I feel about you.”

Izzy put down her wineglass to give Kathy a hug. “That’s because a person can only ever have one real best friend,” she said, “and we’re stuck with each other.”

Kathy hugged her back. “Stuck together. Like salt and pepper.”

“Crackers and cheese.”

“Bacon and eggs.”

“Now I’m getting hungry,” Izzy said.

“Me, too.”

Izzy plucked her wineglass from the windowsill where she’d set it down earlier; then, arm in arm, they aimed their way through the crowd to see what was left of the potluck dinner.

XVII

August 1978

A few weeks after the open house at the Newford Children’s Foundation, Izzy came back from sharing a picnic lunch with Tom Downs to find her studio looking as though it had been vandalized. There were sketchbooks, loose papers and art books scattered everywhere. The floor was a jumble of paint tubes, brushes, pencils, sticks of pastel and the like. The easel lay on its side, her current work-in-progress beside it on the floor—faceup, she realized, thanking whatever gods there were for small mercies.

She walked numbly through the mess. Straightening the easel, she replaced her canvas on it, then slowly took stock. Her first thought was that the place had been burglarized, but nothing appeared to be missing. A quick inventory of her numena’s gateway paintings told her that all were still present and hadn’t been harmed. But who could have done this?

She bent down to start putting pastel sticks back into their box when some sixth sense made her look under her worktable. There she saw a familiar red-haired figure leaning against the wall, knees drawn up to her chest, arms wrapped around her legs.

“Cosette,” she said, the shock plain in her voice.

The wild girl turned a tear-streaked face toward her. “I ... I knew it was wrong ... even while I was doing it,” she said in a small broken voice, “but I ... I just couldn’t stop myself “

Izzy knew she should be angry, but the hurt and confusion she saw in Cosette’s features wouldn’t allow the emotion to take hold. She regarded the wild girl for a long moment, then crawled under the table to join her. She gathered Cosette in her arms and stroked the bird’s nest of her hair, gently working at the tangles with her fingers.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I was ... I was trying to draw a picture, but it wouldn’t come out right. No matter how hard I tried, it just wouldn’t come out right at all, at all. But still I tried and I kept trying, but then everything ...

everything started to feel ... I felt like I was choking ... and I just pushed all the papers off the table and it didn’t ... the choking feeling wasn’t so bad then ... and the more I kicked things around, the more it went away. I knew it was bad. I knew it was wrong. I I ... I didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t stop myself “

“I used to get just as frustrated when I was learning how to draw,” Izzy told her.

Cosette gave her a grateful look. “I have to be able to do it,” she said. “I just have to.”

“Nobody’s good right away,” Izzy said. “It takes a lot of hard work to get anywhere with it.”

“But I’ll never get it because I don’t have anything inside me. I thought doing it would put something inside, but you have to be someone first. Like you. You are someone. I want to be just like you.”

“You don’t have to be like me to be able to do art,” Izzy told her. “Every artist is different.”

But Cosette shook her head. “No, I have to be like you.”

“Whatever for?”

“I want to be real.”

“You are real,” Izzy told her.

“No, I’m not. I’m like Solemn John.”

“John’s real, too.”

Cosette shook her head again. “He says you don’t really believe that. And if you don’t believe it, then it must be true, because you’re the one who made us.”

“I didn’t make you,” Izzy said. “All I did was open a door for you to step through.”

“Then why does John say what he does?”

Izzy sighed. “John and I have a problem communicating with each other.” Which was an understatement if she’d ever heard one, considering they hadn’t spoken to each other in years, but Izzy put that firmly out of her mind. That wasn’t the issue here. Cosette was.

“Not everything he says means exactly what it seems to mean,” Izzy went on.

“Like what he says about the dark man?” Cosette asked.

It took Izzy a moment to understand what Cosette was asking. “You mean Rushkin?” When Cosette nodded, Izzy said, “John just doesn’t much like him, so he suspects the worst about him.”

“So he doesn’t ... eat us?”

“I ..... Izzy hesitated. Her head filled with images of that old dream, the snowstorm, Rushkin with a crossbow, her winged cat dying, Paddyjack rescued by John. But then she heard Annie Nin’s voice in her mind. People dream the oddest things, don’t they, and then when they wake up they realize none of it was real.

“I don’t think he does,” she said.

“I still wish I was real.”

“You are real. Honestly. Look me in the eye, Cosette. Can’t you see that I believe what I’m saying?”

“I suppose.”

They sat quietly under the table for a while longer, neither of them speaking until Cosette finally sighed.

“Are you very mad at me?” she asked.

Izzy shook her head. “No. I understand what happened. Will you help me tidy up?”

Cosette gave her a shy nod.

“Well, come on then. Let’s see how quickly we can get it done.”

It only took a half hour before the studio was back to normal—or at least as normal as it ever got. It was still a mess, but an organized mess, as Izzy always liked to put it.

“I should get back to the island,” Cosette said when they were done. “Rosalind will be worrying about me. I didn’t tell her where I was going.”

“How will you get back?”

Some of Cosette’s normal bravado had returned. “Oh, don’t worry about me. I’m in and out of the city all the time.”

“Well,” Izzy said dubiously. “If you promise to be careful ...”

“I’m always careful,” Cosette began; then she looked around the now-tidied studio. “Well, almost always.”

Izzy couldn’t help but laugh. She walked over to her worktable and picked up an empty sketchbook and a couple of pencils.

“Here,” she said. “Take these.”

“Really?”

“Really. I want you to practice your drawing. If you need any help, just come and see me.”

“I’d rather be able to just do it,” Cosette said.

“Wouldn’t we all. Do you want some paints as well?”

“Oh no,” Cosette told her, clutching the sketchbook to her chest. “This is wonderful.” She hesitated for a moment, then added, “You won’t tell Rosalind, will you? She’d be so disappointed in me.”

“I won’t tell her,” Izzy said.

“Oh thank you!” She gave Izzy a quick kiss on the cheek. “You know, you’re not at all like John says you are.” And with that she seemed to spin like a dervish and whirl out of the door.

Izzy stood in the middle of the studio, regarding the door that Cosette had left open. It swung back and forth before it finally settled in a half-ajar position. “I wish John realized that,” she said softly.