Irene Tweeted me about a possible Shelter-verse prompt last week, so this one’s for her! Thanks,
Irene.
9/30/16 – In Dreams
Before the wedding,
before they were officially moved in together, Alma launched a major home
makeover. Family photos stayed, but everything else went: bedding, drapes,
paint colors, knickknacks. Writing couldn’t afford her a palace, but she could
afford to redo the home she’d made with Sam…turn it into the home she would
share with Carlos. It helped, in so many ways. She was ready to look ahead to
the future, and the house felt like a reflection of their fresh start.
She was not, she
reasoned, trying to tuck Sam away on a shelf somewhere. She was choosing not to
dwell. He was gone; he would want her to be happy, to pass through a room
without feeling the cool shiver of his ghost. It wasn’t forgetting; it was
celebrating a new love, a new marriage.
These were the things
she told herself.
But logic had no
footing in dreams.
The first time she
forgot was three months after the wedding. In a dreamscape of tilted Gothic
rooflines and storm-gray skies, she called out to Sam and slid her hand into
his. But when she turned, it wasn’t Sam beside her; it was Carlos, and her mind
wouldn’t supply a rendering of Sam no matter how desperately she wished for it.
She couldn’t remember his face.
She couldn’t remember his face.
She woke with tears
drying on her cheeks, shivering deep beneath the duvet.
“Wha…?” Carlos asked,
rolling toward her.
“Nothing. Bad dream.”
He slipped his arm
around her waist and started to snore against the back of her head.
It continued to
happen, off and on, sometimes a soft reminder that her dead husband was
slipping out of her mind; at others, visceral nightmares that jolted her awake
with the taste of bile on the back of her tongue.
One night, in the
deep clutch of a cold spell, Alma woke drenched with sweat beneath the covers,
phantom screams still echoing inside her head, scenes of blood and bullets
dancing behind her eyelids. She was shaking, sick to her stomach.
Quietly as possible,
she slid out of bed and into the bathroom. Changed her sleep shirt for clean
pajamas and splashed her face with cold water. She stared at her ashen,
hollow-eyed reflection and she couldn’t
remember.
The floorboards were
cold under her bare feet as she went down the hall into the living room. In the
dark, the new couch caught her in the hip and she muffled a curse behind her
hand. Her destination was the entertainment center, and the little inset light
switch above it. There were old photos of Sam in silver frames there, and she
had to see, just had to force herself to remember…
Little Sam’s sudden
wail from the nursery almost gave her a heart attack. But she shook off the
burst of fear and changed courses, backtracking down the hall to the baby’s
room. She flicked on the lights and in the warm glow of lamplight found Sam
standing at the rail of his crib, little face screwed up, but dry and clean.
She’d caught it early, this crying jag, and he calmed the second he saw her.
“What’s the matter,
baby, huh?” She scooped him up with a little grunt of effort; the kid was
getting heavy. “What? Did you have a bad dream too?” He was dry, and the second
she started to bounce him against her hip, his head tipped forward and he
relaxed, boneless in her grasp.
His weight and warmth
was a comfort, so she settled into the rocker and shifted him around so he was
across her lap, already nodding off again, his long baby lashes fluttering.
It had always struck
her as funny. She knew she was supposed to feel the stress and pressure of
motherhood – and she did, in all the practical ways – but mostly, Sam calmed
her. He was her world. Her little piece of her first Sam.
Shuffling footfalls
announced Carlos’s approach before he propped a shoulder in the doorway. He
stifled a yawn behind his fist and it swallowed whatever he’d been about to
say.
“I’m sorry,” Alma
said, wincing. “I tried not to wake you up.”
“You didn’t. I heard
him.” He nodded toward Sam, smile curving his mouth. It slipped, though. “You
were already awake, though, huh?”
She glanced down at
Sam’s peaceful face, shrugging. “Kinda.”
“It’s been happening
a lot.” Not an accusation, but an observation, tinged with worry.
“I guess so.” Like an
admission.
“Buyer’s remorse?”
When she lifted her
head, she saw the wry twist of his smile, the way his eyes shone with worry,
and hurt, fully-awake now.
Oh.
Oh.
“No. Carlos, baby,
no, no, no. Not at all.” She could have kicked herself. “It’s just…” She heaved
a deep sigh. “Okay, this is gonna sound stupid. And I promise it has nothing to
do with you, or us, or whether I’m happy or not. Because I am. So happy.” She was babbling. “But I’ve…I’ve
been having trouble remembering…remembering Sam’s face.”
His brows drew
together.
“Okay, well…” As best
she could, trying not to sound like an idiot, she told him about her dreams,
about her inability to recall her dead husband’s face in them. “It happens, I
know it does. People…slip. You start forgetting. I just…didn’t think it would
happen so soon.”
Carlos glanced down
at his bare feet, the tanned toes and little raised tracks of veins across the
bony tops of them. Then he came to sit on the floor beside her legs, one hand
on her knee. “Do me a favor,” he said, expression soft. “Look at him.”
At Little Sam, his
round cherubic face. His…Sam’s face. His father’s face.
“Oh,” she said,
softly.
Carlos squeezed her
knee. “He looks just like him, baby. You won’t ever forget his face; you’re
gonna be looking at it forever.”
Alma put her hand
over his, laced their fingers together. “We
will, you mean.”
“Yeah. We.”
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