Steve Erickson - These Dreams of You

“We could all travel with you to London,” she urges, and now it’s clear this indeed has been going around in her head awhile, “for your lecture, or residency, or whatever it is. . the kids can stay with you and I can go onto Addis and you’ll wait for me in London.” She says, “I know it’s a lot to ask but we talked about it anyway.”

“Talked about what?”

“Going to London with you.”

More harshly than he intends, he says, “We never talked about that,” then, “sometimes you think about telling me something and once you’ve thought it, then you think you’ve done it.”

“Sometimes,” she answers, “maybe you just don’t remember me telling you,” and bursts into tears.

She cries in bed while Zan holds her, until both hear the creak of the bedroom floor. They look up to see Sheba in her Avengers underpants, thumb in mouth, watching, frightened. “Mama?” she says, “Poppy?” and Zan and Viv know the girl believes every drama is a signal that life is about to leave her behind or hand her off to someone else.

“It’s O.K.,” Viv says, “Mama’s O.K.,” and opens her arms and the child falls into them. No one speaks for a while and after a minute Zan says, “We’ll do what you want.”

Over the coming days Viv rides a roller coast of highs and lows. Every new twenty-four-hour cycle brings a new email resolving nothing, and adamantly she won’t be dissuaded by circumstance or Zan that she is directly responsible for what’s transpired and setting in motion a chain of events, even as it’s unclear what that chain is or what’s the consequence of the motion that is its result. With this, Zan realizes that, whatever the risk, Viv’s trip to Ethiopia is inevitable. No one will be able to live with Viv otherwise, least of all Viv herself.

Lying in bed in the dark, she says, “What if the bank takes the house while we’re gone?” It’s the night before they leave for London. Zan is encouraged by the question not because he believes Viv will abandon her plan to go — at this point he’s no longer sure she should — but because, in what quickly has become the all-consuming Ethiopian drama, she hasn’t forgotten other realities.

“Well?” she says.

“I guess whether we’re here when they take it isn’t going to matter.”

“When?”

“If.”

“You said when.”

The flight for London departs at seven the next evening. Leaving for the airport that afternoon, Zan and Viv gaze around at the house before locking the door behind them.

As they wait at their gate for the flight, Zan watches a news cable channel on the television. Parker listens to the fluorescent-green music player around his neck and Sheba climbs over all the furniture in the terminal.

Watching her, Viv says to Zan, “In London you’ll need to find a salon for her. Some place where they can do her hair.”

“All right,” Zan says absently, watching the news.

“Are you listening?”

“Yes. Sheba’s hair.” Ever since the girl came to live with them, Viv has been confounded by Sheba’s hair. Once in a shopping mall, a black woman approached Viv and pointed out that the hair was different and couldn’t be neglected and demanded constant attention.

“You never should have started calling her Sheba,” says Viv.

After this has sunk in a moment, Zan turns his attention from the television. “What?”

“You shouldn’t have called her Sheba. It sounds like a B-movie,” she protests. “ Queen of the Jungle .”

Zan says, “That’s Sheena.” Coming almost two years after the fact, this is an unforeseen point of contention. “What should we call her?”

“Not so loud.” Viv glances the girl’s way. “Her real name, maybe?”

“Do we know that ‘Zema’ is her real name?”

“Well, we know it’s no less real than Sheba,” says Viv.

“We have no idea what it means. ‘Zema.’ It sounds like a power drink.”

“It means ‘hymn’.”

“That’s kind of what it means.”

“It’s close enough.”

“People have been as vague about her name as they have about everything else,” including, he wants to point out but doesn’t, her mother. “It means different things depending on how the stars are aligned that day, or the given meteorology. A fog happens to roll in, and for all we know suddenly it means ‘Death to the Great Satan’ or something.”

“Sheba sounds silly.”

“Won’t it seriously mess with her sense of self if now we go back to calling her something else?”

“Her sense of self is going to be O.K.,” Viv answers firmly.

“Yeah, if we don’t start calling her Death to the Great Satan.”

Zan would like to note that Viv has been calling the girl Sheba too but decides it’s best to accept the full brunt of the accusation. “It’s a cool name,” he says. “She can be a rocker with that name.”

“Or a stripper,” Viv retorts. For a while they don’t say anything. Zan gets up and crosses the lobby to the television. On the cable news, a black man argues against the new president’s foreign policy; he looks unhappy, sour, and Zan isn’t sure he would have recognized him — certainly given the political viewpoint he now expresses — if he weren’t identified at the bottom of the screen where it reads RONALD J. FLOWERS and, beneath that, “Los Angeles Director, Civic Organizers Network.” Zan listens for a while and returns to his seat next to Viv. “Ever tell you my Ronnie Jack Flowers story?” he says.

“Yes. It’s why you don’t write novels anymore — I’ve heard it.” She says, “Sorry. That came out crabbier than I intended.”

After a moment Zan says, “You can’t hold yourself responsible for everything.” He means to offer it as, in part, a rapprochement.

“That story’s about you,” she answers, “not me.”

The mother, father, son and daughter checker coach, only two of the assigned seats together, which means that Zan and Viv take turns with Sheba while Parker has his own seat across the aisle. On Zan’s shift, scruples waver and soon he has the four-year-old swilling Benadryl; as the plane flies into darkness, Sheba sleeps on her father’s lap with Parker slumped two rows ahead.

Viv says to Zan, “While you’re in London, you need to have the Talk with Parker.” Trying not to look as glum about it as he feels, Zan nods. “He’s twelve,” Viv insists, and Zan says, “All right,” realizing it sounds snappish. “I know he’s twelve.”

“He’s going to start wondering,” says Viv.

“He’s beyond wondering. He’s already figured stuff out.”

“He doesn’t know anything.”

“He knows all of it.”

“Did you? At twelve?”

“I don’t remember how much I knew or exactly what, but I had gotten the gist of it.”

“The gist ?”

“Yes, the gist.”

“Shhh,” she says, looking at everyone around them sleeping.

He repeats emphatically, “The gist.”

“Did you have the Talk with your father?” says Viv.

“My father was appalled by the whole subject. He gave me a book that I barely looked at. Everything I know about sex I learned from James Bond movies.”

She rolls her eyes. “Yes, that explains a few things.” After a while she falls asleep and Zan turns on his laptop and reads the news on the airplane WiFi that he had to pay for. Soon a woman in the seat next to him strikes up a conversation that Zan immediately realizes is intended to be political.