The Dream Peddler Read online

  She had never noticed so many buttons down the front of her black dress before. It was almost impossible to focus on them and fasten them. Her fingers fumbled as if they were nervous, and that was crazy because there was nothing left in this life for her to fear. There was nothing but the black dress and the dark, fancy buttons, too fancy, with the carved edges of roses digging into the pads of her fingers as she tried to force them through their holes. While she struggled, she thought about how she had made this dress herself, and she made perfect buttonholes, never too small. So why wouldn’t the darn buttons go through?

  Ben’s she used to make a little looser for him, when he was three years old and learning to dress himself. She remembered the working of his chubby apricot fingers, so patient for such a young boy. When he grasped a big button and pulled it through and glanced up at her in triumph, there was the prize for her of the flash of a smile before he bent his head to the next one.

  On the brown sweater she had knit for him, the neckhole had come out a bit snug. Talk about popping a button through a hole. Sometimes his head, which was golden blond back then, would get stuck in there, and like a brown bear he would shuffle across the room at her growling, wool sleeves flapping down at his sides while his real arms rose up clawing, and she would scream and laugh and run from him. That was the challenge, how long he could be this bear before the game collapsed, before the giggles came up through the growls and gave him away.

  Afterward she remembered the funeral, but then only days in bed. Day days and night days, George coming and going and pretending to ignore her, George unsure what to do. She tried to imagine it hurting if she lost him, too, but she didn’t think it would. That hole from Ben was big enough for everything else to pass through easily now, and she would feel nothing because nothing else could ever graze its sides.

  The funeral itself was night. All attended in their darkest clothes. Even the church clothes of the younger people were inked in the pot just for this, little bud flowers and pinstripes of once-cheerful fabric still ghosting through. Hands touched her, and she hated it. To be grasped in sympathy by people who were suddenly strangers, as they were strangers to her grief. She moved through what was required of her, and then at the end came that moment when she was lifted out for one instant. It felt like a reward, the peppermint she was given as a little girl whenever she’d been still and silent long enough. She didn’t know what had compelled her to turn around and see him there, the one true stranger beyond the crowd, but to look at his new, unfamiliar eyes as he stood against that tree was a shock that woke her. It shook her loose from the darkness, briefly, before she lost her hold and slipped back. He must have been the dream peddler.

  Chapter 9

  In the rooms of Violet’s boardinghouse, Robert passed the waiting time. He waited in his bedroom, checking vials and polishing flasks, holding them up to the light and jiggling them into sparkle for his own amusement. He waited in Violet’s doily-and-velvet parlor, tapping his foot. He waited in the dining room while they spooned hot foods into themselves, searching for talk. She knew he was waiting but did not know how long it would last, and she wished if all he would do was wait that he would go and do it somewhere else. She might remark on the sudden warm turn the weather had taken. Then he would suggest after a pause that he could help her put in her garden when the time came.

  The funeral of Benjamin Dawson had brought everything to a halt, but that did not necessarily mean the dream peddler would have to move on. Some things had stopped for despair, not the daily needs of eating and sleeping and work, but the wants, the wants had quit. It did not seem fair, Robert knew, in the aftermath of loss, to want anything. Pleasure disappeared, went underground, bided its time. Sometimes, though, the waiting only gave the wanting time to grow, until it broke from its cage a bigger monster. What people tried to ignore at night would bubble over into their days anyway. If this was one of those times, he might have a good run here. Perhaps an exceptional one.

  Robert sat with the volumes of Vi’s modest library, leafing through books and wondering who would come to him next. He took it for granted he would one day soon be greeted by the teetering embarrassment of another teenage boy, most likely one of Toby Jenkins’s friends, looking for the same kind of dream. He was caught off guard, then, when a young woman appeared at Violet’s door one day, shifting her shyness from one foot to the other. While his surprise ebbed away he smiled at her.

  “Are you here for Violet?”

  She seemed so nervous that he tried to smile wider, as if that might settle her down. It didn’t appear to, so he stood there feeling foolish behind his lavish smile, like the canny smile the wolf would have made at Little Red Riding Hood.

  “She’s just in the kitchen. I can get her for you.”

  There was the slightest shake of her head. She was a tiny thing, with dark hair swept back into a felt hat, a high white forehead.

  “Would you like to come in?”

  He leaned, trying to let the smile fall slowly and naturally and finding it tricky to do. Then the girl stepped in through the doorway so quickly that her head touched his chest and she bobbled back, mortified, her gloved hand flying up to her temple. Robert backed away from her so fast he stumbled as well, on the rag carpet, and then began to laugh low at the ridiculousness of it. To his surprise, the girl smiled a little, too, as if she got the joke, and she pulled her hat off, since her hand was already up there.

  “Please tell me your name, miss. I’m Robert Owens, and I’m boarding here with Miss Burnley, as you can see.” He drew her into the parlor by retreating slowly while he spoke. “I’m the dream peddler.”

  She nodded and sat down without being invited.

  “I’ve heard of you, sir,” she said finally. She balled her hands together in her lap.

  “May I take your coat, Miss . . . ?”

  “Blackwell. Christina.” She seemed to be getting by on as few words as possible, and they all came out hushed, like secrets.

  “Miss Blackwell. If you don’t mind my leaving you for a moment, I can just pop into the kitchen and let Violet know you’re here.”

  “No thank you,” she said quickly. They looked at each other. “I came to see you.”

  “Me?” He sat down across from her, and one rogue eyebrow went up before he could stop it. “I must say I’m delighted. And what can I do for you?”

  “They say you sell dreams. That’s what I’ve heard from . . . from some of my friends.”

  She looked up over his head as though telling the ceiling.

  “Well, yes, miss, yes I do. I’ll tell you how it works. If you describe what you would like to dream about, I will mix a special elixir just for you that should bring about your dream. Once in a while, of course, it doesn’t work as I intended. But I stand by my product, and I issue a full refund or replacement to anyone who’s dissatisfied.”

  She stared at him. “So you’d have to trust people, then, wouldn’t you? To be honest about their satisfaction?”

  He smiled. “That’s true. But then they also have to trust me.”

  Miss Blackwell swallowed and thought for a moment. “Are you a magician, then? Or some kind of a . . . wizard?”

  Robert smiled again. “I don’t think so. It’s hard to explain exactly how it works. A little bit of magic and a little bit of medicine, I suppose. I feel a strong connection to the people who come to me. . . . Perhaps that helps.”

  Miss Blackwell looked embarrassed. “I will tell you what I want,” she began. She tugged the ends of her glove fingers one at a time, as if she were planning to take them off, then pulled at the wrists until her fingers wriggled into their tips again. She continued to do this the entire time she was speaking.

  “I’ve always wondered about . . . well, who I am going to marry,” she told him. “It’s really the most important question in life for any girl, I think. And there is this particular boy. . . . Well
, you know, I’ve been to the field to pull petals off daisies, and I threw an apple peel over my shoulder last Halloween, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of it, and I know those are just silly games. I think it might be possible to marry the boy I like, though he’s never really paid much attention to me—” She halted here, swallowed again, and forced her hands to clasp. “I just wondered, would it be possible to have a dream about the future? Could I dream of my future husband?”

  Robert’s face became grave, and he tapped his fingers together thoughtfully.

  “Well,” he said, “I always feel it’s only fair to warn anyone who wants that kind of a dream. It’s a little bit tricky to arrange. Dreaming of the future, you see, can be done, but the future is not set in stone. I will give you a dream of your future husband as he is right now, let’s say, but when you are ready to marry in real life, the dream may not come true. Do you understand what that means?”

  Miss Blackwell concentrated on him. “I’m not sure I do.”

  Robert considered her for a minute. “I guess what I’m saying is, all we can do is try. Are you willing?” She nodded yes. “That’s settled, then. Let me mix a dream of a husband for you and we’ll see how we do, shall we?”

  She smiled, glad the transaction was almost over.

  “I’ll just go upstairs real quick to create your product, my dear, and then we can discuss the matter of my fee.”

  The sound of his feet thumping the old wooden stairs rose upward, and for a while the young girl heard only the faint clinking of Miss Burnley washing dishes in the kitchen. She wondered if she might be so lucky as to escape without being seen. If it worked, she would tell all her friends about it, but if not . . . well, she did not want to seem a fool for trying such a far-fetched thing. There was the matter of Toby Jenkins, of course, but still . . . A boy was not a boy if he was not stupid from time to time. Her mother and father expected better of her.

  She did not have to wait long before Mr. Owens returned, and she let out her breath as he held up a pale pink liquid glowing in a vial. From her pocket she pulled a knotted handkerchief and fought to work it loose while he watched her. As the white cloth fell open, he saw the coins she had saved, and he put out his free hand to exact his price from the pile. She stuffed away what was left while he offered the potion to her between his thumb and forefinger and gave her instructions for taking it. Between them his mind let out this pleasant image like a cobweb, of Christina Blackwell standing in her nightgown pondering the mysteries of the vial before swallowing its contents. When she tipped her head back, that whiter, barely creased skin of her neck would expose itself and his creation would slip down and pool within her. He hoped she would dream of her heart’s desire.

  She stood up, and Robert held the door open for her.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, reaching into his vest and pulling out a small paper bag. He unfolded the crinkled mouth of it and held it out to her. “Please take a sweet. A sugar heart comes free with every purchase, for the ladies.”

  Christina popped the candy into her mouth. “Thank you,” she said around it as she turned away. Violet came out from the kitchen just in time to see him pat Miss Blackwell’s shoulder lightly in farewell and both of them breathe in the smell of distant spring, chests uplifting to it.

  * * *

  * * *

  Christina Blackwell had never known anything beyond the edges of her town, and she did not care to. She did well at her school lessons, because she had little else to do with her time but devote it to them. Her childhood had been spent in school and learning from her mother the ways of their women’s world—she could darn stockings with fine stitching like a spider, and her bread rose puffed and golden from the pan. She worked white lace on a little row of pins and used it to trim nightgowns and tablecloths for her hope chest. Her piecrust fell apart in your mouth and dissolved like snowflakes, and her knitting needles quivered like a hummingbird’s wings. All she needed now was the man to please with her skills. There was really nothing left for her to learn.

  Her only ambition was to fall in love with a choice boy who also knew nothing outside their town and to live her life on a farm and populate the land with more hearty children. She would care for her husband so expertly he’d be known as the happiest man in town, with his stomach full of her good cooking, his Sunday-shirt collar perfectly starched, the back of his neck just barely wet with her kiss when he stepped out their door. What else in life could there be?

  For all her growing years, she had imagined this, living her life as her mother did, while the man in her father’s spot was only a blurred, faceless man. However, for some months now Christina had had her eye on a particular boy for the role. She thought it strange that he could not feel her covering him over with admiration, casting her vision of their future over him like a silver net, but he didn’t seem to. The boy of her dreams was Jackson Banks, and he was boisterous and funny and liked to wink at the girls when he spoke to them. Christina had been on the receiving end of these winks. She found they did something to her, as though when he closed one eye, he snapped a lid on her breath, then released it again. Her parents didn’t like him because he was so lighthearted; there didn’t seem to be anything solid to him at all. Her father said he was a “smart aleck,” and that was the end of the discussion.

  Christina carried her pink potion rolling in her coat pocket as she walked home. She stopped just outside her own door and lifted the hem of her skirt, working a small hole into the even stitching she’d made. When it was big enough, she poked the tiny vial into it, concealing it inside her dress. She entered the house and hung up her things and smoothed her bodice, then helped her mother prepare and serve the supper, all with her secret close around her ankles like a hungry cat.

  The family ate in near-perfect silence together. Christina was an only child, whose mother had given birth to her later in life, after several miscarriages had led her to believe she might never have children. Christina was such a blessing that she was tightly wrapped and overwarmed and carried her whole life like a piece of glass.

  At the end of the day, Robert Owens’s vision did come to pass in her bedroom, except she was not wearing her nightgown when she took his potion. She sat on her bed and pulled her skirt up over her knees to retrieve the vial, then cupped it awhile in her palms. She rolled it back and forth, letting it warm to her. A foolish waste of money, her parents would have said. But she found she did not care that it was a waste, or foolish. It was the first thing she had ever done that would have caused their disapproval, and she found herself both ashamed and thrilled by it. This thing, this little liquid, was hers in a way the lace and nightgowns would never be.

  She uncorked her vial carefully and drank quickly. She found it tasted of sweetness and not much else. She had expected it to be bitter like medicine, as though having what she wanted must be paid for with unpleasantness. Sitting still for a moment, she tried to discover if she felt any different, but she didn’t; she felt only full from supper. So she stood and began to undress in the chilly room and shrugged herself into an old nightgown, untrimmed. She had brought a jar of hot water for her bed, and she tucked it into the foot and slid in after, pulling the covers over her chest and staring at the ceiling. She should have blown out her candle then, but she let it burn on. The flame wobbled and sent beckoning, cloudlike shadows across the plaster above, and they drew her into a trance. She did not feel sleepy. She was so anxious to discover what would happen when she fell asleep that she could not conjure it. Dreamland, they called it. But it had nothing to do with land; it was only air.

  Chapter 10

  Once Evie made up her mind to rise, she could not go down again, could not sit still. All she could do was clean and bake and mend and straighten and scrub. How familiar it seemed, just like before, when Ben was missing and she did not know what to do so she did everything she knew. Just like, but without fear, a feeling that had abandoned her.


  She must decide about Ben’s belongings, which had been lying unused and seeming to thicken with stillness—she would put them in a trunk. There was one upstairs where they kept extra blankets for cold nights, and she took those out and began layering in some of his things. There were balls, and jacks to go with them, and puzzles and ice skates, a few extra sweaters and a few tin toys he would have considered himself too old for, trains and cars, which he kept on a high shelf anyway. They had watched him while he did the things of an older boy. Evie wasn’t ready yet to throw or give them away, these castoffs that had been with him so long and had witnessed even his solitude. She placed them in the trunk, where they could remember in darkness, and she would not have to see them.

  One afternoon she was finally sitting in front of the fire drinking a cup of tea, at George’s insistence. His worried look had pressed down on her as hard as if he’d put his big hands on her shoulders, so she took the offered cup from him and sat. It was a bright day, that aching brightness possible only when there are no leaves on the trees to temper it. The sun flashed in through the windows and showed all her work and all the dust she had just chased off already finding its way back to the polished furniture. In a flash it made visible something she had missed. There on one of the windowpanes behind their good chesterfield was the print of a hand. Not quite a hand, but the four perfect fingers and then an arced streaking downward, as Ben had pressed it grimy to the glass and turned quickly away. What had he seen? A bird outside to follow, maybe, or a squirrel to feed. Or perhaps she herself had called him away, to his dinner or to help his father, something more important than daydreaming out the window. If he were here now, she would be scolding him for forgetting and touching the window when she’d asked him not to, for not keeping his hands cleaner in the first place.

  The tea had scalded her tongue, which she held thick and furry in her mouth like a wet mouse. She blew, dimpling its surface. Her rag was nearby in the kitchen, but she found she could not make herself move to fetch it. The rag would wipe away that ghost of his hand, and though she had put all his things aside today, she still could not do it. He had been there, had left this pale, greasy wave, streaked his boyhood there for her, clear as a photograph. If she left it suspended for the sun to find with its searing cyclops eye, then just once a day she would have that, and only on very bright days.