Collected Stories. Carol Shields
you played the Danse du Feu, I had tears in my eyes,” Stanley said. “Even now, two hours later, just thinking about it brings tears.”
Ross said, “But you always cry at concerts.”
“And at art galleries,” said Elke. “I remember taking you to the Picasso retrospective at the Art Gallery when you were fifteen, and you got weepy and had to go to the men’s room.”
“Papa cried when he heard Callas,” Ross said. “You could hear him sniffling all over the balcony.”
Elke turned to Stanley and touched the top of his wrist. “Promise me you won’t cry at the concert. I don’t know what I’d do if I heard someone blowing into a handkerchief from the third row. I’d lose my place. I’d lose my sense of balance.”
“I can’t promise,” Stanley said, his eyes filling with tears.
Elke found it hard to breathe. She was overwhelmed the way she had been with Papa before the accident. There was Ross, so brusque and demanding. And Stanley, too sweet, too sweet. The two were inseparable and, it seemed lately, inescapable. She would have to invent strategies to keep them out.
“Do you believe,” she asked them, “do you believe that there is hidden meaning in what we dream?”
“Oh, yes,” said Stanley at once.
Ross poured himself another glass of his chilled, ivory-colored wine.
“Well,” Elke began, “I’ll tell you my dream then, and you must interpret it for me.” The only question in her mind was which dream to describe. She chose the one they might be most likely to understand.
“Papa gave me, in this dream, a set of heavy, leather-bound books. They were encyclopedias, very old and very valuable. They filled the long shelf above my desk. One day, as I sat looking through volume R to S, I noticed that the binding, under the leather, was made of old sheet music. I was certain that this was one of Schiffmann’s lost symphonies, although I don’t know why I was so sure of this. So, of course, I ripped apart every book and peeled away the pages of the symphony. And just as I became aware that I was mistaken, that the music was only a series of piano exercises, I also became aware that you and Papa had come into the room and were looking at me with expressions of enormous reproach.”
“She made it up,” Ross said later, when he and Stanley had turned out the light and were about to go to sleep. “She made up the whole dream.”
From the other side of the room Stanley’s voice was muffled. He liked to pull the blanket up so that it reached his lips. “How do you know it wasn’t a real dream?”
“Woods don’t dream, at least not dreams as vivid or as detailed as that. Besides, I talked to her psychiatrist after the last episode, and he told me she made up dreams all the time.”
“I have dreams,” said Stanley.
“She makes up dreams in order to reinforce her image of herself as a victim. In her made-up dreams there is always someone shouting at her or scolding her or pointing out her faults. In one of the dreams Papa was telling her she’d ruined her career because she’d cut her hair. It took all the creative force out of her.”
“Like Sampson,” Stanley said.
“There was another dream, more extreme, when Papa was accusing her of causing his accident. She invited him to supper, and then she phoned and told him not to come after all; she was too tired even to make him an omelet. That was how he happened to be wandering down Sherbrooke on his way to the delicatessen when the motorbike knocked him down. Of course, it was all invented. She prefers to think she’s the guilty cause of disaster. You might say she’s greedy for guilt. But she didn’t fool the psychiatrist at all. Real dreams have a different texture, and he’s convinced Elke never really dreamed these dreams.”
“I have dreams,” Stanley said.
Elke started awake so suddenly her left leg cramped beneath her. Gently she kneaded at the hard knot in her calf. The window was open, and the moon floated full and fat as though for her inspection. Last summer she’d been sent to study in Paris, and in the bank where she’d gone to change her grant checks there had been a sign: DEMANDEZ-VOUS DE LA LUNE. Of course she never did. Instead, she’d spent the tissuey franc notes and the long August afternoons in the café nearest her hotel.
She was seized, as always, in the middle of the night by regrets. She’d been so close to something original; it had flickered at the edge of her vision, in one of the darker corners of the café.
She must try to sleep. She would have to focus her energy and try to concentrate, if only for their sake. At least they found her worth their trouble. That was something.
“Too much, too much.” She whispered these words out loud.
Then she slept, and her head again filled with dreams.
Despite being a Wood, Stanley had at least one vivid little dream every night. In the morning, as soon as he woke, he wrote a summary in a spiral-bound notebook. Sometimes he dreamed of food, chiefly artichokes, which he loved immoderately; sometimes he dreamed of music; and very frequently he dreamed of wandering down corridors with labyrinthine rooms going off to the left and right. He never dreamed about Papa. In fact, he seldom thought about him for weeks at a time, and he was naturally a little ashamed of this.
But he excused himself; he was busy. He woke early every day, drank a glass of hot tea and was in his workroom by eight-thirty. He had a great many orders—everyone seemed suddenly to want a handmade guitar. A student from a technical school helped him in the afternoons. They talked as they worked, which Stanley found charming. At 4:45, he locked the door and walked the mile and a half to the concert hall in order to catch the end of Elke’s rehearsal. Usually, Ross was there when he arrived, sitting with a copy of the score on his lap and holding a little penlight so he could see in the dark.
One day after the rehearsal, a week before the performance, Stanley slipped Elke a note. “Dear Elke,” it read. “The night before Papa’s accident I forgot to remind him to take his heart pill. You remember how forgetful he was. I am certain that he had a heart attack on the way to the delicatessen and collapsed just as the motorbike came around the corner. Love, Stanley.”
Elke was too tired to read yet another of Stanley’s little notes. She accepted it with a small smile, then slipped it between the sheets of music on her stand. She never saw it again and assumed that it had fallen during the night and been swept up and thrown away—which was what she would have done with it herself.
In any case, the note wouldn’t have comforted her. She worried less about the actual cause of Papa’s death than everyone thought. It was what he’d meant to her that she fretted about, and his expectations. Her psychiatrist had assured her that the death would release her, but she knew she was going through with the concert for Papa’s sake. For Papa, everything must be flawless.
Stanley told her her playing was perfect. It was impossible for her to improve. “Don’t change a thing,” he begged.
Ross told her he would select her clothes for the concert. He had examined her wardrobe. Only the red blouse would, perhaps, do. She needed a skirt, shoes, a scarf—everything. She was not to worry about it. He would look for the clothes and would buy her what she needed.
Elke found herself thanking him.
Ross was happy. Stanley had not seen him so happy since before Papa died. He smiled; he pranced; he showed Stanley the new clothes that he’d spread out on his bed. (Once this had been Papa’s bed.)
There was a long black skirt made of some silky material, a pair of black shoes that consisted of thin little straps, and a printed scarf with red fleurs-de-lis on a black background.
That night, however, Stanley dreamed that the scarf became wound around Elke’s neck during the performance and strangled her. He said to Ross in the morning, “I like everything but the scarf. Elke should wear the gold necklace instead of a scarf.”
“It’s