Twenty-Four
Rilee
“I thought you were having a girl?” I asked Mia as she fingered a blue striped infant suit with feet.
“That’s what they say.” Mia said. Her fingers drifted off the outfit and held up a yellow jammie with a duck floating in a white life preserver.
“Cute,” I agreed.
Handing me the outfit for the bag Mia drifted toward the end of the aisle. It had been so long since I’d been in a mall department store, the rows and racks and shelves of stuff were disorienting, everything coming at me all at once.
“Do you ever wake up from a dream and feel like the dream was real life and your life was the dream?” Mia said softly, her hands resting on a pair of tiny Toms.
Her words glued me in place. I hadn’t mentioned my dreams to anyone. In the back of my head lived a danger that if I revealed the dreams, something would change. They would stop or dissolve into the jumble of incoherent drivel that were my usual dreams. Craig wouldn’t call and it would be over.
“Sometimes,” I ventured, unsure where Mia was going.
Sighing, Mia turned to me and grabbed my hands, closing the space between us like we were two sophomores stealing a moment of privacy in a crowded hallway. “I dream about a little boy. A boy with dark black hair like Silas’s.”
I bit off my laugh at the normality of her concern. “That is totally understandable, Mia. It’s your first baby. You’re nervous. You’re on the outs with your mom, and are worried about having a daughter. It’s entirely understandable.”
Our hands dropped as Mia folded her arms over her belly. “It’s true I’m worried about raising a girl, but there is more to it. They feel so real. I can see Silas holding him. I saw his first step, letting go from a kitchen chair and reaching toward the dog. I hear Silas calling him Roger.”
Hugging a pregnant woman is awkward, there is no place for the baby to go but between you. The baby, boy or girl, wasn’t liking it and I felt a soft thump against my stomach. “Oh,” Mia grunted, “Feisty today.”
I took Mia’s hand and we began walking out of the baby section. “Mia, this is just first baby jitters. Boy or girl, doesn’t matter. It is your baby and you’re going to be a great mom.”
“I dream we are drowning.” This stopped me.
“Drowning?”
“My water breaks and it rushes over me, like huge ocean waves and I can’t breathe.” A tiny sob rippled through her.
“Oh, honey,” I wrapped my arms around her, letting Mia lay her head against my chest. “It’s not like on TV.” Not that I knew what giving birth was like, but I knew gallons of amniotic fluid weren’t involved. I’m a high school biology teacher after all.
Shaking to hold her sniffling tears in, Mia nodded. “I know. It’s stupid. Just a horrible nightmare, but it’s as real as the other dreams. I’m covered in water, it’s in my nose, and my mouth, and Roger is in danger, and we’re dying. I know it.”
“Oh baby.” I just held her looking for comfort to share.
I wanted to say, it’s just a dream. It’s your mind playing tricks with your fears, I wanted to say all the deceptive things to her that I’d said to myself about Craig.
But I couldn’t. Something at the corner of my mind pulled my attention, pulled it away from the comfort I wanted to give to Mia.
“You see Roger take his first step, right?”
Mia sniffled, managing a nod.
“Then your drowning nightmare is just a nightmare. Both dreams can’t be real.
” I didn’t utter the unspeakable logic. If you and Roger died, if you drowned in childbirth, however crazy that was, there would be no first step to take.
He wouldn’t be there to do it, and you wouldn’t be there to see it.
Mia seemed to understand my logic because she looked up at me.
“The other dreams are so clear.”
“And the bad one?” I ventured, trying to find and purge the distraction that wouldn’t let me give Mia my full attention.
“It’s just as real, but- but-” she repeated herself looking for a life line, “-all jumbled and rough.”
“That’s what I am talking about. They both can’t be real,” I patted her shoulder. The touch was meant to convey comfort and connection, but I felt neither. Instead, my gaze focused on a mannequin a few yards away.
The pale idealized male mannequin structure wore dark button fly jeans, a blue and green plaid shirt, and covering it all was the sheepskin jacket right from the first dream.
The caramel‐colored leather paired with a white inner fleece and adorned with tarnished brass push–through buttons.
It hung just to the upper thighs of the forgettable mannequin.
“Rilee?” The fourth time Mia said my name it pulled half my attention back to her.
“I dreamed this jacket.”
Turning to look behind her Mia lurched in the display’s direction. “This thing?” She reached out to touch the sleeve and for a moment I thought she would knock the whole thing over. Recovering, Mia’s brow furrowed. “You dreamed it?” she asked slowly.
“Yea,” I exhaled. “Lots.”
Some retail worker had left a stool at the end of the row, and Mia lowered herself onto it, keeping her gaze on me. “Dish,” Mia demanded.
My tongue felt the front of my teeth while I pondered where to start, or what to say, or whether to start at all. “Remember the coffee guy?”
“From the gym?” Mia gasped.
“From the gym.” I licked my lips, unsure if I was going to actually say the words. “I dreamed him, and he was in this exact jacket.” While I spoke, I let myself drift from the display to the rack where the sheepskin jackets hung.
Mia raised her eyebrow, “He’s cute right? Dreaming of cute guys is a welcomed thing, even for a married woman like me.”
The leather was a perfect balance of rough and smooth.
Your palm knew it was interacting with something, but not overwhelmed by it.
Running my hand over it made me think about how Craig’s jaw felt, the soft but present bristle of old whiskers.
“I dreamed of him before I met him.” I didn’t mention the basketball game.
“Before I saw him at the gym. That’s why I said yes to coffee. ”
Mia was fully engaged now. Forgotten were the baby clothes in the shopping bag, or the other strolling shoppers. “Maybe you dreamed of someone like him, but when you saw him your brain put him in the place of this dream guy.” Mia said the thought I’d played with repeatedly.
Shaking my head I ran my hand inside the jacket, feeling where Craig’s pecs would fill it.
The fleece was soft, warm, and substantial.
It carried a weight, like a good hug. “I dreamed the dream a lot, every night for weeks before I met him the first time.” I described it in detail.
The sun on his face, the cool breeze, the chill of the metal table and chairs, the crinkles around his eyes, his smile, the warm touch of his hand as he reached out to me, and the jacket.
“He doesn’t own a jacket like this,” I finished.
“And you know this why?”
The heat of the blush betrayed me. “I’ve seen him a few times since.” Then adding, because it was important, “each time I see him the dream changes.”
“Have any of them come true?”
“One. Not the first one. But this very surreal one turned out to be exactly real.” The story of the play, the dancing cow, dinner, it all spilled out. Including the car wreck, Craig towing me out, and the mess the mud made of his clothes.
“He just has this old cloth jacket, and it’s hashed now.” My fingers absently found their way to the price tag. The coat cost a car payment!
“You like the guy. He saved you. Sounds like a knight who needs his leather armor. Are you going to see him again?” Mia asked.
The memory of his whiskers against my lips and the aching regret in not touching his lips while feeling his warmth in the cold night air rose up from inside me. My mind slipped from that to the dreamy image of his naked wet chest. “I think I’m going to see him again,” I admitted.
“You think?”
“I’m still having the dreams. So, I guess I’m going to see him again.”
“But do you want to see him again?” Mia asked. “I think we established that dreams don’t mean much.” I heard the slight plea in her tone, asking for confirmation that her nightmare wasn’t prophecy. “What is this current dream?”
I must have looked as red as I felt because Mia giggled, instantly changing the mood. “Oh. One of those. Well then buy the jacket and give it to him. A thank you gift. Maybe ask him over. You like to cook?”
How did she know the dream was in my own house? Before Mia suggested it, I was browsing the rack. There were two smalls, a medium, four XXL, and at the back one XL. Craig was tall, and fit, but not fat. “No larges left. Just an XL.”
“I don’t know the guy, but Silas wears coats a size larger than his shirts. If he’s a large, get the XL.”
Craig wasn’t a medium. This was crazy. He hadn’t called when he said he would. Had my driving a car off the side of the road scared him off? With the jacket folded over one arm and the bag of baby clothes in the other we checked out and skipped dinner.
“Let me know how it goes,” Mia said as she dropped me off at my car. “And bring him around when Silas is back. We could double.”
Not likely, I thought. It would definitely come up that Craig was living with Jackie Mace.
Jackie was in Mia’s sixth period. Mia would have to report something, and I had no interest in putting her in that situation.
Even if I was ready to put myself in that situation.
Maybe I should talk to Craig about the district paperwork.
After all, it’s possible this could go somewhere.
My dreams certainly think they will. I guess, subconsciously, I must think so too then.
I left the jacket in its paper shopping bag on my coffee table. It was too nice and expensive to leave in the kitchen, and I had a compelling desire to curl up in it, so I didn’t want it in the bedroom. But I kept glancing out at the bag as I went through my evening routine.