Engel Williams
GARDEN DREAMS
by Engel M Williams
His mother spread the blanket under the shade of one of the elm trees. A white swan was slowly paddling in lazy circles, the water beneath her appearing mirror-like under the afternoon sun. He watched it with some curiosity as his mother put out tupperware containers of lemon cake, oatmeal cookies, slices of watermelon and mango, and poured two glasses of orange juice.
They were a healthy distance from the groups gathered at intervals throughout the garden who Perry watched intently between bites of cake. Summer had properly dawned just weeks before and not a single day of it had been wasted. They went to beaches and fairs, museums, concerts in the park, doing something until they had tired themselves out and Perry only had to rest his head on his pillow and close his eyes to fall asleep. Once, they had both fallen asleep in the backyard, and had both woken to find their skin stinging and red.
Perry kicked his shoes off and ran his bare toes through the blades of glass. His mother flipped through a magazine, hardly seeming to even glance at the pages as she nibbled on a piece of fruit.
“You’ve almost eaten all the cake,” she complained. It was clear she didn’t really care, so he just flashed her a grin and ducked his head. “Eat some of the melon.”
They ate until all the food was gone, then Perry took out his favorite comic, wiping off some frosting that had smeared on the cover. Crane and his band of friends stared out at him, faces proud and shining. There was nothing Perry wanted more than to be a member of Crane’s party, adventuring across the land, a hero to all. His mother had gifted the comic to him for his ninth birthday. He had built up a ritual since: he read it at least once during breakfast, then again at lunch and revisited it twice before he went to bed. Sometimes, instead of reading he’d close his eyes and picture himself standing right there with Crane. Crane would treat him like a younger brother, but Perry would see him as more of a father. With the two of them together, no evil was successful, and no stone was left unturned.
Very rarely, and he didn’t like to admit this even to himself, he pictured the world if he were Crane. If he were Crane he wouldn’t make any mistakes. The damsels in the castles would be saved before they had to suffer at all, and he’d immediately know when a trap had been set, easily avoiding it and triumphing before any friends could be put in danger.
Right then, he looked up over the garden, resting his head on his hand and thought about it. Why couldn’t he be Crane? He wouldn’t just be better, he’d be perfect. He wondered what it would be like if Crane landed in the garden. He pictured Crane noticing him immediately, coming over to him and proclaiming that he was the long lost Chosen One, destined to fight alongside him and save the world. Perry would say goodbye to his mom, and the two of them would disappear into the city ready to fix the world.
He realized with a start that his mother was staring at him, the magazine forgotten in her lap. Her eyes were dark, the sun creating a golden crown around her hair.
“My baby boy.” Her voice was soft, as were her fingers playing in his hair. “Always reading.”
He put his head in her lap. With the sun in his eyes, her face took on an almost skeletal shape. Her eyes appeared sunken, the bones in her face more pronounced. She almost looked like one of the creatures in his comic book. He closed his eyes.
“You’re always reading too,” he pointed out.
“I didn’t mean I want you to stop. Your little mind is always in the clouds.”
Almost like an afterthought, she murmured, “Like your father.”
Perry sat up immediately. They never spoke about his father. It always made her sad to talk about him. Perry had decided a long time ago that they were better off without him. His mother filled all the gaps in his life, and there was no reason to wish for anything when he had everything he needed right at home.
For perhaps the first time, he wanted to ask her about him. What else did Perry have in common with his father? Was it a good thing that he reminded her of him? She was distracted already, looking off at some distant point he couldn’t see. Perry opened his mouth to ask, but she suddenly gestured for him to get up.
“We’re going.”
The tupperware was tossed unceremoniously into a basket, the blanket rolled under an arm. His mother grabbed his arm and started dragging him towards the park gates. They were almost onto the sidewalk when someone darted in front of them. It was a man, tall and slender, with dark skin and close cropped hair. He looked at them with wide eyes, scanning his mother’s face as though there was an emergency.
“Alice?”
His mother’s face was hard, and her hand tightened on Perry's. “Oz. How are you?”
“Oz” laughed. His smile disappeared when he noticed Perry half hiding behind his mother. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that? God, I haven’t seen you in months. No one has. Are you… alright?”
His mother looked around. Her hand in Perry’s was sweaty, and he could feel it as her fingers shook.
“Yes, I-I just needed a break.”
“God, Alice. When you want a break you tell your friends and your family! You don’t just take off! And you look… I mean are you alright? You look like you’re going to fall over any minute.”
She lowered her head.
“We have to go. It was nice seeing you, Oz.”
She led them off at a renewed speed. Oz tried to stop her as she went, but a group of people walked between them, and his mother used the opportunity to put as much distance between them as possible. It wasn’t until they were in the car that Perry dared to say something.
“Who was that?”
She gave him a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “No one to worry about. Everything’s alright.”
Her brow was furrowed and her hands grasped the steering wheel tightly. He tried again.
“He looked scared. How come I’ve never met him before?”
“Peregrine, please.” It was the resignation and exhaustion on her face that made him turn away and open his comic book.
Lately, his mother had been having awful migraines. They hit her suddenly, with no warning. Once, they had been playing a video game together, about two levels from a checkpoint when she doubled over her controller, hand pressed against her temple as though she were trying to keep something from escaping. No amount of cookies he’d baked himself or water or staying by her side helped them. He was forced to watch, helpless, in a corner, as she rode each one out. Noise made it a billion times worse, as did light of any sort. So Peregrine tried to make himself as invisible as possible, not wanting to add to her pain.
The summer sped by, the temperature cooling more and more by the day. They didn’t go out anymore. His mother tried to entertain him in the house or the backyard. Mostly they sat in the garden together, her teaching him about the vegetables and flowers she’d planted earlier in the year. On the days where she couldn’t even do that, he went alone, his knees stained with grass and dirt as he tried to remember what she’d taught him.
Perry found himself struggling to fall asleep. The house was too silent. It felt like the silence was screaming at him, roaring into his ears to fill the space with some kind of noise. He couldn’t quite explain it. He was scared to make noise, to even allow the quiet rustle of his blankets as he shifted in his bed. She’d put him to bed an hour ago. The shadows in her face scared him so bad that he laid immobile as she tucked him in, then pressed chilly lips to his forehead. She had been quiet for a few moments, before slowly shuffling off, the door closing with the softest hiss behind her.
He thought about reading his comic. Crane peered at him from the shadows only a hand’s reach from his bed. But it was dark. He didn’t want to turn on the light for fear that it would bother his mother. And the thought of the noise of flipping each page was too much to bear.
So he lay there, staring at his ceiling, and began imagining that Crane’s adventures were playing out in his bedroom. Crane would leap nimbly and silently through his window. He’d tell him that his mother was under an enemy spell of some sort, that in order to help her they’d need to journey across the land, slay a monster or two and get a crystal. His mother would cry with joy to be healed at last, and she and Perry would play as many games as they wanted.
Content, he rolled over and fell asleep.
The house was quiet a lot now. The more his mother hid away in her bedroom, the more Peregrine felt the need to escape into the garden. He spent most of the day there. He tried to read, but found that he preferred making up his own fantasies than experiencing Crane’s over and over again. He’d lie under the shade of their oak tree and dream the day away. He was the hero of his own world. It was always summer. Cake and cookies were always to be found. There was never any silence and his mother, when she joined him, was never in pain. She laughed as she used to and they played as many video games as they could bear.
Once, Perry had been lying in the garden, eyes closed. He could hear his mother singing to him, a lullaby that she’d stopped singing once he proclaimed he was too old for bedtime stories and lullabies. He had opened his eyes to her standing over him, the sun a crown on her shoulders, eyes bright and smiling. But when he reached for her, her hands were cold. Perry looked down to see them pale and trembling slightly as she failed to pick him up. The lullaby turned dark and foreboding and when he looked up again, the sun now out of his eyes, the shadows had returned to her face. Her cheeks were hollow, her lips wan.
He’d been unable to compose himself. He sprang away from her, breathing heavily as she stared in bewilderment.
“Peregrine?”
“This isn’t real,” he swore. “You aren’t my mother.”
She’d blinked at that. The expression on her face was worse than any silence he’d been forced to bear or the migraines he had come to dread.
“Peregrine.” Her voice, though soft, was commanding. “Come inside.”
That night, while he lay dreaming, she baked him extra cookies.
She was laying in the backyard, sun shining down around her in golden beams. A book lay cracked open by her head, her dark hair spilling like shadow around her. Perry called out, “Mom?”
She was asleep. She’d been so tired lately, hardly managing to keep her eyes open last night at dinner. He’d had to tuck himself in.
He went outside. Her skin was pale and with a shock he realized how different she looked. She really did look like one of the monsters in his comic now, and no shifting of the angle he looked at her at changed that. He reached down and shook her shoulder.
“Mom.”
He wanted her to wake up. He wanted her to smile at him and apologize for being so tired all the time. He wanted to read to her and play games with him until they were both too tired to even look at the t.v.
Perry curled up by her side and began to dream.
In his dream, his mother woke him up. She carried him inside and made him popsicles. She ordered pizza from the place he liked, asked them to make one half with pineapples and ham the way he liked, the other purely cheese. While they waited for it to be delivered, she read him a chapter of his comic and they talked about how brave Crane was until it arrived.
Perry woke to a scream. His neighbor was standing over him, phone in hand, and she was yelling into it. He blinked blearily at her, suddenly annoyed. Didn’t she know his mother was tired? Didn’t she know not to make any noise so it wouldn’t bother her?
He tried to tell her, but she only grabbed him, moving him away from her. In a few minutes, red and blue lights appeared. Parademics loaded his mother onto a stretcher and his neighbor bent to speak to him.
“Is there anyone I can call?” she said, softly. “I don’t know your mother well, I… I don’t know who to call.”
He blinked at her. “Where are they taking her?”
She smiled at him grimly. “She isn’t feeling well. They're taking her so she can feel better. Please, who can I call?”
For as long as he could remember, it had just been the two of them. Where the other kids in his class told stories of seeing grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles on holidays, he and his mother spent them alone.
He remembered one Christmas, a long time ago, where the two of them had gotten on a bus and stayed by the sea. His mother had taught him how to skip rocks, and they each picked the prettiest shells they could find. They’d looped strings through them and hung them on their makeshift tree.
His mother never talked about his father. The most she’d ever said was that they were better off without them. “You and me,” she would say, “are the only thing we need in the world.” And as far as Perry knew he had no grandparents. No gifts arrived in the mail around Christmas or his birthday, nor were their family reunions of any sort. The two of them were wholly independent.
His neighbor was speaking to him still. Perry couldn’t hear a word out of her mouth. He stared and stared at the closed ambulance doors where his mother had been taken. All those lights. All the noise of the sirens as the ambulance pulled out of the driveway. It had to be killing her.
They took him to see her the next afternoon. Peregrine had been dreaming when they came and woke him. In his dream, he’d gone and found Crane. He’d presented himself as a hero, one without an Achilles heel. He gave Crane all the answers before he needed them. In his dream, there were no sick mothers, no absent fathers. Perry was the unquestioned hero and he was perfect. Everything was perfect.
The hospital was anything but. It smelled clean, and it was so silent but for the occasional announcement. His mother was propped up in bed. Her hair was a dark pool around her and she could only look at him weakly as he approached her. She held out limp arms to him. He stayed a few steps away.
“My love. Peregrine.” Her voice was a scratchy whisper. “Peregrine, why won’t you come to me?”
He could only see how bad she looked. She hardly looked like his mother. She looked as though some dark creature had replaced her. Perry was afraid to touch her.
She seemed to realize what he was thinking and tears sprang to her eyes. She struggled to say something, only managing a, “please.”
He went to her then. Her hands were cold on his skin, but he let her cradle him to her, her tears soaking into his hair.
They went home a few days after that. Perry knew the doctors didn’t want her to, but she had taken on a grim determination that he had never seen in her. The house was the quietest it had ever been. Perry spent as much time as he could outdoors. He fell asleep often and when he woke, his mother would be right there. Sometimes, the shadows and hollows of her face would be filled in, until she almost looked normal. Other times, no matter what he did or said, she’d look like a living skeleton.
Sometimes, she’d sit outside with him and eat cake and cookies. Those days life almost felt like normal. He’d read scenes out of his comic to her and she would laugh, entertaining his fantasies in a way she hadn’t done in a long time.
Sometimes, though, she would roam the halls of the house like a ghost. She barely spoke, only held him until he got uncomfortable and couldn’t help but squirm away. The phone rang endlessly until they left it off the hook.
Peregrine woke to an impenetrable silence. He lay in his bed for longer than usual, suddenly terrified to leave the safety of his room. He felt weak, like it’d be better for him to sleep the day way. He listened with baited breath. There was only deep, deep silence.
He got up slowly. The kitchen was dark. She hadn’t woken yet it seemed. But it was so late…
He went to her bedroom. The doorknob was freezing under his hand as he twisted it. Her form was small and frail in the sheets. She didn’t move even when he called her name.
Perry went to her at once. He longed for her to call his name, to reach out for him to hold her. He shook her.
“Mom.” She didn’t respond. Her skin looked gray in the light, her lips pale. “Mom. Mommy.”
The silence screamed at him. Peregrine started to cry.
He knew what death was. He had found a bird in the garden once. He’d been upset when it lay unmoving under his prodding figure, until his mother explained. Once something died, it couldn’t be brought back. He supposed he didn’t really understand it. But he did know it was permanent.
The idea of his mother laying like this, permanently… Peregrine shook her again. He was sobbing, tears streaming down his face while he shook her again and again. She didn’t move. He backed away from the bed, away from that dark room.
He slid to his knees in the hallway. And he began to dream.
His mother put her arms around him. She was warm and smelled like raspberries and cream. Her hair, though dark, held a shine to it that caught the light at any angle. She wiped the tears from his eyes.
“Why are you crying, Peregrine?”
He didn’t answer. Just tucked his head into the nook of her shoulder and hid his face. She led him to his room, tucked him into bed, and for the last time brushed his hair out of his face.
“My little boy, always dreaming,” she looked a little sad. She had never been sad before in his dreams. “Head always in the clouds. I think it’s time to wake up now.”
He frowned. “But I want to stay with you.”
She smiled at him, and curled alongside him protectively. “Just a little while longer.”