Steve Erickson - These Dreams of You

Zan feels a prisoner of mysteries he can’t name let alone solve, and implications of secrets so secret he barely knows they’re secrets. Calls to the bank about the mortgage, difficult enough back home, are impossible, particularly within constant earshot of the children; money dwindles. The £3,500 wired to his bank account by the university has been consumed by the cost of three extra round-trip tickets to London and Viv’s flight onto Addis Ababa. At the moment there isn’t enough available credit on the single remaining card to cover the hotel bill. Zan envisions a three-in-the-morning escape, involving suitcases hurled from the window to the street below, and shushed children as they creep downstairs past the front desk.

He takes the kids and Molly to Hampton Court outside London where the Thames turns south and west. It’s twenty minutes beyond the university on the same train out of Waterloo that they took to and from Zan’s lecture; on the way the nanny’s transistor plays yet another song by the girl’s favorite singer: Jasmine, I saw you peeping , and Parker rises from his seat and moves to the other end of the train.

Disembarking at Hampton Court, the four have lunch at a pub down the road. Parker listens to headphones plugged into the little green music player hanging around his neck; Sheba plays with Molly’s old camera. The group follows a small red bridge that leads to the palace. On this day the rare fine weather they’ve had in London finally succumbs to the norm, the palace’s bright sunlight-hued red and verdant rolling grounds clashing with the dark billows of gray rolling cross the sky.

Fully as Zan expected, the children’s fascination with the palace is minimal. Tales of wayward clergy and various kingly wives drugged or beheaded, or dying in childbirth, whose ghosts still reside only make Parker and Sheba uneasy or give rise to questions that Zan can’t answer. If he’s being honest, Zan’s interest in the palace isn’t so keen either, or maybe he’s just distracted; in any case the father, son, daughter and nanny move beyond the house onto the grounds where the court’s famous three-hundred-year-old maze rises against the blue and black sky in passages of brilliant foliage. Also fully as Zan expected, Parker and Sheba find the maze more interesting. The skies continue to threaten. “It’s starting to rain,” Zan says, as though the kids possibly would find this relevant; the boy and girl dash into the maze with the nanny behind. “Don’t get lost,” the father advises absurdly.

Nobody really gets lost in there, Zan is assuring himself at the maze’s mouth when, twenty minutes later, first Parker re-appears and then Molly, without Sheba.

Molly looks at Parker, Parker looks back at her. Molly looks at Zan, shaken. “I thought she was with you!” she says to the boy.

“She was with you,” says Parker.

“You lost her on purpose!” says Molly.

“Hey,” says Zan.

“I did not!” the boy cries. “She was with you!”

From far off near the middle of the maze, they all hear the rise of a small and distant voice singing. Jasmine, I saw you peeping . Zan is furious but there’s no time for that; as calmly as he can, he says to Parker and Molly, “All right, let’s go back in and get her. Keep one hand on the same wall of the maze as you go in — that way you can follow it back out and not get lost.” He can hear it now, for years to come: You left me in the maze! As he follows the other two, Sheba’s song continues to drift back to them through the hedge.

The three dart back and forth within the maze when there comes “HEY, WHERE IS EVERYBODY ANYWAY!” rattling the foliage like she’s just around every corner. Then, much less certain, “Hey?”

“Sheba!” calls Zan.

“Molly!” the girl calls back.

“Sheba!” Zan says.

“Molly!” Sheba’s voice sounds on the move but in the maze Zan can’t be sure, since he’s on the move too. “Sheba,” says Zan, “just stay in one place! We’ll come to you!”

“Molly!” She’s beginning to cry now.

“Just stay in one place, Sheba!” Zan adds, “It’s Poppy.”

“Molly!” the girl keeps answering, crying now. It seems to Zan that the hedges grow higher and closer together. “Zema!” he hears Molly call.

Zan stops. He hasn’t heard Molly call the girl this before; he tries to think if he ever used that name in front of her. “Sheba,” he calls again, “please answer! Please answer Poppy!”

“Molly!” the girl cries. “Molly, Molly, Molly!”

He turns a final corner to find Sheba mid-passage just as, at the passage’s other end, the nanny turns her corner as well — and Sheba runs to her. Did the girl see the father before she saw Molly? Was a choice actually made, or would she have run to him had he turned his corner a split second sooner? Sheba runs into Molly’s arms and, catching the girl, the woman looks up at Zan; she’s terrified. “I’m sorry!” she blurts. “I. . she just saw me first! She’s scared! I didn’t mean to lose her, I thought she was with the boy and I shouldn’t have said that to Parker, please don’t. . ” and behind him, Zan hears Parker’s footsteps as the boy stumbles onto the scene.

Please don’t. .? Is it merely the prospect of losing a job that has so riveted her? or something more. “She’s all right,” Zan says hollowly, “that’s all that matters,” and the girl says to Molly, “Chillax, sweet cheeks.” Watching the two of them, Zan backs away and turns to the passage out, trusting they’ll follow.

On the train from Hampton back to London, Molly sits staring out the window stricken, some private prophecy having been fulfilled, and almost unconsciously grabs the girl close to her so hard that Sheba, who usually presses herself into others as if to meld her body to theirs, pulls away.

Five days after his lecture at the university, Zan meets J. Willkie Brown at the pub off Leicester Square. “Well,” Brown says, arriving after Zan, “the kids?”

“With Molly,” Zan says. “Thanks for coming.”

“Right. African lady with the English name.”

“James. . ”

“Anything from the bar?”

“No, thank you.”

“I’ll have a pint,” Brown says, signaling to the bar.

“James, listen,” says Zan. “You had nothing to do with setting it up, right?”

“Setting up what?”

“The nanny.”

“Sorry about that,” he allows, “I know I told you I would—”

“Forget that,” Zan says, “but then where did she come from?”

“Must have heard. . ” Brown thinks, scratches behind his ear, then shrugs. “Don’t know,” not finding it that interesting or understanding why Zan does.

Zan points out the window of the pub. “Our second day in London,” he says, “or maybe it was the third, I forget. . before I met you, before Viv vanished, the kids and I sat here at this same table and Sheba was watching someone right out that window, there across the street — and it was Molly, staring back. A day or so later, she shows up at the hotel and says, Here I am, the nanny.”

“That is peculiar, isn’t it?” says Brown.

Jesus, you think so? Zan wants to reach across the table and grab Brown by the lapels; the British diffidence is driving him nuts. “Now,” he says, “Molly claims she heard we needed a nanny from Viv — who I haven’t heard from at all. Nothing. No email, no phone call, I can’t reach anyone in Ethiopia. . ”