Fresh Dreams: Stories

By Jill Stephenson

In these fifteen stories, Jill Stephenson explores the many moods and shades of the current American landscape. From every strata, every social location, we find in these pages a unique array of voices, the everyday man and woman still struggling to maintain their individuality against the mass pressure to conform. Everyone is here: the blue-collar man, the office-executive woman, the rock star, the adolescent, college students, immigrants, the homeless and the moneyed establishment. A masterpiece of genre and subject, Fresh Dreams offers a vibrant vision of ourselves, a people still strong enough to endure, still capable of discovering their humanity against overwhelming odds.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 2, 2001
• ISBN: 9781465319180

Jill Stephenson

Jill Stephenson grew up in Rochester, NY. She attended The State University of New York at New Paltz and has an MA in English from Columbia University. She is the author of six works of fiction and lives in Central Florida.

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Copyright © 2001 by Jill Stephenson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

A Moral Compass

Record Collection

The Stardust Twins

Jenny’s Fatal Flaw

Jeremy’s Turn

Waking in Warsaw

Christina in Shambles

First Rising

Legend of a Thin Girl

Brush With Fame

Rock Heroic

Water, Mark, and Faith

Postcards

Corporate Challenge

Fresh Dreams

Acknowledgments

To Gerry Spence

A Moral Compass

Harry Jeavons was a man accustomed to reprieve. All his life he had gotten through on his looks and his family’s reputation. He was groomed to believe it acceptable for someone of his class and standing to be granted any number of passes on behavior a man of common background would find incomprehensible. Handsome in a gentlemen’s quarterly sort of way with his height, broad shoulders, the resolute chin he inherited from a long line of resolute Jeavons men, Harry gave an impression of assured dignity. Though as he aged, the looks grew jowls, the chin developed a second, and the demeanor showed signs of wear.

On Saturdays, for instance, the dry cleaner closed at five thirty. Harry rarely made it there before five twenty nine. On several occasions he’d reached the door just after, the Closed sign flagrant. In a panic Harry banged on the plate glass until Mr. Chen reluctantly came forward. As Harry was given entry the bell above the door, in loyal service to its owner, angrily chimed.

Lately Harry spent most of his Saturday readying himself for the trip to Chen’s. He sat in a chair by the window, fifteen stories above the street, and watched the people below accomplishing their errands. Still in his silk robe, Harry pictured himself at the cocktail parties, past conquests, the moments his sense of humor and impeccable bearing had made memorable to those who’d once adored him. It seemed long ago, or quite current despite the vague details. Much of his past was a blur and blurring. A swirl of appropriate lighting, properly dressed men, women, buffets, formal dinners, weddings, occasions for the firm, ran through his mind, a rough choreography of spangles and taps.

Harry envied the people on the street, easy in their comings and goings. For him, the quart of scotch beckoned. Already half empty, he decided he could have another finger’s worth before dressing. patient with him this time of day, mid-morning, the grandfather clock pledged plenty of time to face his obligations.

Along the avenue the trees were thin damsels. Autumn setting in, their small leaves scattered like frightened mice, colliding with storefronts and curbs. Determination pressed Harry’s face to a mold of fleshy plaster. Coatless and clad in short cotton sleeves, he sped the sidewalk fast as his legs could carry him. He was sweating despite the cool air, he could feel the alcohol sloshing through his veins. Blood pumping in desperate rhythm against the sudden exertion, his feet threatened slippage as he pounded along. Destination dry cleaner, he held last week’s clothes in his arms.

It was five twenty eight with a block to go. Harry wished he’d had one more drink before leaving the apartment.

Three stores from Chen’s Harry remembered the ticket. Without it there would be an argument: Harry pleading, Chen refusing, the scenario a replay. His left pocket was empty but for three dimes and a wadded tissue. Right pocket, paper. Harry pulled at the pocket and the slip drifted to the sidewalk. As he bent to retrieve it, Harry lost his balance. Careening above the cracked cement, the clothes tumbled forward. He stumbled, knuckles scraping as he tried to right himself. Coming to his aid a woman efficiently gathered his suits and balled up the silk ties with the shirts. Here, she said, handing him the cleaning receipt and a piece of white paper. As he straightened Harry saw only the back of her as she disappeared into the milling crowds of the avenue.

Notebook paper, torn from a sheet a high school kid might use for a homework assignment, Harry shoved the torn piece into his shirt pocket. Just as Chen was turning the sign to Closed, Harry breathlessly arrived.

He carried the hangers over his shoulders though the slender metal cut his fingers. The plastic wrapping rippled as the breeze struck, a pitch of rubber bands stretched between two points. Faint as the sound was, it irritated Harry to distraction. Mouth dry, he was overrun with the desire for a drink.

He had been warned about his drinking. His friends, colleagues. He hated to be nagged. And what was worse, every time they brought up the subject they spoke in such superior tones, from some position high above him, a moral pedestal, while poking at his lapel with a cocktail firmly clasped in their own hands. Everyone drank, everyone he knew. But they were so persistent Harry succumbed to one concession: he contacted a therapist, Martin Shoreman. First thing Shoreman wanted was for Harry to attend an AA meeting on a regular basis. if Harry did not stop drinking, Shoreman said, he would not see him. Which would have been perfectly okay with Harry except Shoreman was his alibi. Whenever the topic was broached, Harry could say he was seeing Shoreman. It quieted people. The outcome of the alibi, however, was how careful Harry had become after the pronouncement. Now he drank alone. Avoiding the club, he passed on dinner invitations and other such public appearances. Claiming they could not bear to see him destroy himself that way, Harry steered clear of their haunts. Hypocrites and liars, they were no different than he except that in their apprehension of middle age they obviously needed a project of the moral sort, something to prop up their own fragile sense of what they’d done with their lives. Harry was the project. He hoped they felt downright holy about saving him, though salvation was not what he was in need of. A little understanding perhaps, some consideration … He had worked damned hard at that firm and didn’t care what anyone said. Accusing him … Wasn’t Harry the one to bring in the business all those years? Weren’t they always pushing him forward to wine and dine the clients? He remembered a time his sociability was valued. Now they wanted sobriety, a bottom line, working lunches. It was a puritan revival in which good clean living was considered kin to market share and profit. Righteousness was all the rage. They expected Harry to change, just like that. Presto! One day the life of the party, the next a choir boy in a three-piece suit.

The scotch went down like love in a tunnel. His mind flashed, then skidded into the usual refrains. Before him Harry had the white piece of paper the woman had handed him in his rush to Chen’s. He poured another shot and the roof of his mouth burned with the blaze of a match stick.

HELP ME, it said.

Harry smoothed the fragment. In the corner of the note a coffee stain. The script was shaky, written under duress. Maybe a woman. That’s what he believed for no other reason than the ink was a blue nearing aqua and he thought only a woman would have such a pen. Through the center of the words the gray circles of sneaker or boot tread cut diagonally. HELP ME

He tried to remember the woman who’d handed it to him. Hard to organize his thoughts, her voice was like anyone’s. Harry kneaded his forehead to conjure some trace of it. Her back as she walked into the crowd, brown hair or black, older … no, young, twentyish or thirty five, he could not fix on it.

A vision of the office surfaced, the men with whom he worked. Their smiles had dulled over the years, an erosion from genuine to inconsequential as the office itself, the walls and fixtures, were weathered and worn from solemn brown to an antiseptic pale.

New times, new era. Maybe she was a market analyst or a doctor, the young woman. The note could not have belonged to her, the way she handed it over, the nonchalance of nonpossession. Here, she said, quite plainly.

Harry knew they were withholding work from him, those sons of bitches. The nerve to suspect him as if he needed funds all of a sudden. For drinking, they thought. All those years they’d wanted a party guy, a clown to amuse the clients. Now they were over it, an etiquette change like a harlot strutting a new dress.

Harry poured another round, one for the bastards that brought him here, another round for the ladies, the barmen, the crooners and climbers. He smoothed the note again just to feel it in his hands, make sure it was there.

Who would write such a thing? A message in a bottle from some stranded soul. HELP ME

Like fire penetrating the surface of a sea, the scotch seared the lining of his throat. Here’s to the hopeless, he thought, the writers of notes, lost saints, the forgotten, accused and those left behind.

My name is Thomas and I’m an alcoholic.

Harry sat at the back of the dingy room. His head was a high voltage cable sending shocks to his temples every inch he moved. The meeting was fifteen minutes in when he arrived stiff-legged and perspiring. His stomach was a sour of scotch and breath mints.

Thomas had the face of a cherub. Plump and cherry-cheeked, his hair was a frizz of blonde that looked glued, wiggish, atop his head. He could be my son, Harry thought, if I’d married. But everything had been sacrificed to the firm, everything, Harry believed, he’d ever had to offer. As Thomas spoke from the podium at the head of the hall, Harry watched his teeth grind out the words he uttered. They were barbed, still capable of drawing blood though all Thomas described had happened to him in some indeterminate past.

I moved into a room above the bar, Thomas said. There were these stairs, I had to go out of the bar and enter the apartment through an outside door. So many times I woke up on the stairs. I just didn’t make it up to the room. Then I’d go back to the bar. My world got very small.

Harry thought of the note and imagined Thomas writing it. In a shaky hand from the stairwell he was no longer able to climb. Before he’d been pulled back, somehow, from that hole.

Harry wanted to figure a way to find the writer. Canvas the neighborhood or ask the police, he knew neither a solution. Harry closed his eyes to bring back the avenue. When he walked to Chen’s had he overlooked someone? Huddled in a doorway. Someone living above the street being held, prisoner, hostage. A battered woman. An afflicted man. A child perhaps.

Above all, Harry needed a drink. Sitting in a metal fold-up chair in a YMCA basement, the musty room exuding rank air. Desperation chased hope within these walls. Around him people prayed for redemption, a little mercy, while struggling to purge their sins. Immortal wounds, self-inflicted. Though they all had their reasons. Even Harry had his reasons.

Thomas summed up his story with the day he gave up the booze for good. Everyone clapped. Harry felt ill.

Before the circle was formed for the serenity prayer, Harry went out the first door he could find. Led to an alley. A putrid smell of garbage hit him like a dam. His insides heaved. The scotch, the mints, the small bit of sandwich, came up. Shivering now, Harry barely made it to the street and into a cab.

HELP ME

Sunday Harry watched the drizzle on the window panes. Angel’s tears, his mother used to say.

Alcohol has a whole parade of personalities it can march out one by one. one day it’s a friend, the next a demon. In his robe, with the open bottle before him, Harry was weaving through its moods, unsure which company he was keeping, ally or turncoat. Note on the table, he stared as if a miracle would materialize, any moment, from its smudgy surface. A Madonna in the lettering, the shadow of Christ, a sudden levitation from its creases that would tell him, once and for all, what it was about and how to proceed.

Thoroughly mesmerized, Harry did not hear the bell till it was so insistent he bolted to find the emergency.

At the door Ned Hollis stood with an expression that quickly turned from affability to alarm. Good god, Harry, you look awful.

Top of the morning to you, too.

It’s after noon.

Harry shrugged. His robe slipped open and he made no motion to tidy it.

Tie yourself up there, Ned said. Walking past Harry, a newspaper and a bag of bakery goods in his hands, Ned looked round the room with the air of a governess, nose poked upwards in disapproval. You really should open a window in here.

Harry was not in the least inclined to be civil. He resented Ned’s effrontery in showing up here. After he and some of Harry’s other peers in the firm had accused him of the embezzlement. As much as accused. The way they’d probed, the glances shared between them like a panel of judges, minds made up, waiting only for the defendant to break down and plead guilty.

He wanted a drink and was hesitant to get it. Last thing he could bear was a moralizing speech. For a second Harry blanched: was it Monday? Had the office sent Ned to fetch him? More humiliation in store? But no, it was Sunday, he was sure. The same gray drizzle still clung to the panes.

Ned surveyed the room, assuming permission to do so. Harry knew him from Yale. Fraternity. Rowing team. Years measured by accolades and entitlements. Neither one of them ever doubted the other’s place in the world or their rights to it. Yet as Ned stood there, sizing Harry’s condition, Harry felt a diminishment crawling up his skin. A snake-like slinking along his arms, crossing his shoulders. He shuddered, his flesh jellied, the betrayal settling in.

I want you to know, Harry, whatever happens in the firm will not change the way I feel about you personally. It’s just business, you know. i’m sure it’ll all get straightened out. No one doubts your commitment.

Harry crossed the room to the table. You’ve got a lot of nerve coming here.

Simultaneously, both eyed the note. Harry snatched it up before Ned could get a good look. But Ned read the panic.

What are you doing? Holed up in here. We’ll get it straight, Harry. No one really believes you’d steal from the firm.

No one hesitated to point the finger.

Ned lifted the scotch. It was down by a quarter.

Seeing the golden liquid lap the sides of the bottle, Harry could taste the medicinal salve. Knowing his hands were quivering, Ned’s hawkish eyes upon him, Harry moved with all the casual he could muster. Taking the glass he reached for the scotch.

Ned hesitated, then handed it over. Harry poured, drinking greedily as Ned watched. Want one?

Ned shook his head. I have to be at a reception for my niece today. She’s getting married. priscilla. You remember her.

Remember when I was the life of the party? Good ol’ Harry, everyone’s favorite. They used to laugh with me. You used to. Everybody loved me. Everyone wanted Harry around. ‘Invite Harry,’ they’d say. All the important parties, firm lunches and all.

You really should see someone, Harry. I’m sure we’ll get everything right again. They’re going through the books again this week …

I am seeing someone. Harry sipped from the bottle. Why do you give a damn? He sat down, his legs suddenly weighing hundreds of pounds. You don’t care what happens to me.

Ned circled the room looking for his responsibility in the matter. The grandfather clock solidly clicking off the time, the thick carpeting, the sedate furniture, nothing gave Ned the clues, the solace that he needed.

Look at you, Harry said. Edging for the door.

I’m not, Harry.

"You don’t want me now. Say what you will, whatever’s proper to say. Not if you have to put yourself out."

Ned stood dumbly. He could no longer look at Harry.

The suggestion of pity about to emerge shown in Ned’s awkward slump. Harry wanted none of it.

I have an appointment also, Ned. I really must get ready.

A polite second’s pause and Ned was heading to the door. Feeble though it was, he was grateful Harry had offered him an acceptable out.

Elation swiftly vanished. At Ned’s departure Harry gave a celebratory toast to old friends and strong alibis. Two drinks, three, and the brooding descended like a sorcerer’s curse. He sat at the window, smoothing the note before him on the table. He’d done nothing about it. There he was, heavy, lacking energy, lacking backbone. If he had one ounce of decency, Harry reasoned, he’d have combed the neighborhood till he found the poor soul who’d inadvertently found him, sought him out, was relying on him to come to the rescue. By now the writer could well be destroyed: murdered, dead of pneumonia, beaten senseless, locked up with all traces lost. Harry had been the last chance.

The drizzle gone, the gray had turned a brutal blue. Harry paced. His hands shook as he brought scotch, more scotch, to his lips. He drank voraciously. Sought the key that would bring sense to all of this. It was just a stupid piece of paper after all. A child could have dropped it. Children playing some silly game, cops and robbers, spies. He knew his head awash with the alcohol, he’d been there before, confused and groping for order. Yet he wanted meaning, something to fall neatly into place. All a muddle, he instead felt himself slipping farther. The possibility of hurtling, the nag of the note, clarity sliding further from his reach. There was no leaping back to the morning prior and no way of racing ahead to Monday or next weekend or a month from now when he could pretend the curse expelled or forgotten. Harry clutched his glass. The scotch tasted just like nothing, going down a black hole on a starless night.

From his desk he took a blank sheet of vellum paper. With a Mont Blanc he wrote: HELP ME!

and threw it out the window.

Harry came to in the subway. Scared the hell out of him. He had no recollection how he got there. Wheels ground below the car. Lights flashed as the train sped the line. His mouth was dry as a flannel shirt, his head aflame. As they pulled into a station, Harry squinted to see where they were. The sign said 14th Street. Except he did not know if they were traveling uptown or down.

Few passengers. In the corner near the conductor’s spot, a young man in a suit. Salesman type, a bulging briefcase in his lap. Beside him a man in a shabby jacket needing a shave. Harry thought he could be a night shifter on his way home, some kind of blue collar job. Though Harry did not know the time. His wrist was bare and he hoped he’d simply left the watch on his nightstand. A woman with painfully swollen legs that hung off the seat like water-filled balloons sat another bench down. Then a couple looking crisply showered, pressed jeans, golf shirts, holding hands and whispering back and forth. At the other end of the car a teenager’s head bobbed with a headset blasting music everyone was forced to share.

A woman got on at the next stop with two children. Bending to catch the station, Harry did not notice the woman’s unsteady entrance. But as the doors shut and the train tugged forward, everyone’s eyes were riveted on the woman and the kids.

A black woman, thirties, plain dressed in a skirt, sweater, bare legs with sandals. The children, a boy maybe 10, girl about 4, were vigilantly attentive to her. We ‘re going to 57th Street, Momma, the boy said. The girl rubbed her small hands over her mother’s, the mother squeezed back weakly. Head to the window frame, limbs dangling from her body, the woman appeared drugged. The crisply clean couple smirked, exchanging a glance that read, typical of those people. The working man stared judgmentally, a disgusted hauteur to his grizzly mug as if he’d never seen such a display of recklessness.

The boy kept up the report. Now we’re on 34th Street, Momma, to keep her connected, if only by a thread, to the conscious world.

Harry’s head hammered in the roar of the subway. The scene surreal, he could not help but watch, vicarious fascination, as the woman retreated into herself. Mouth falling open, head rolling side to side with the impact of the acceleration, the little girl, obviously terrified, the big brother trying to take charge, stay calm, retain some control.

With each stop the woman slumped further. The boy pulled at his mother to get her back firmly in the seat. His sister took all his instructions, pushing her tiny fingers into the listless muscle of her mother’s arm. Everyone watched. The passengers were enthralled, increasingly disapproving, deciding the woman unfit, a heroin or crack addict, worse than a drunk. Harry winced, knowing himself vulnerable. Perhaps just several stops before he’d been the unwitting recipient of their silent condemnations. HELP ME

He thought of the found note, recalling his own foolish script.

Her pocketbook fell from her shoulder and the little girl immediately stooped to get it. Wide eyes grazing the car, she hurriedly climbed back beside her mother keen to anticipate any danger from the strangers surrounding them.

At 57th Street the boy tried desperately to rouse his mother. The children pulled and pushed to get her to her feet. Her head lolled, unattached and seeking alternative gravity. Her legs wobbled. The sandals shifted on her feet, forcing her toes to the dirty subway floor. Come on, Momma, the boy pled. The girl’s eyes welled.

Everyone watched, no one moved. One more unfit mother, two more children destined to endure the miseries of addiction.

Harry’s heart pounded in his chest. He was short of breath, struggling with himself. Get up, a side of him said. Stay out of it, the other ordered.

The children managed to shove their mother to the door. They banged the center pole and the rubber sides of the exit.

Get up, Harry told himself.

No one moved.

The car stalled in the station. Harry thought, the conductor will see them on the platform and call for help. The police will come. The kids will be placed in foster care.

On the platform the boy’s voice filled with pure fear. Come on, he said, tears cracking his responsible veneer. The little girl broke down, her wail recoiling to the train from the cold platform wall.

The mother fell. Face forward. The children cried with a howl that tore Harry apart.

Harry jumped from the car. Taking the boy by the arms, he said, We’ll get help. Hold onto your sister and wait here. I’ll get help.

In the waiting room of the hospital Harry was met by the woman’s thankful husband. An allergic reaction to a prescription had caused her to pass out. The boy had taken the situation into his own hands, best he could, the husband said.

Exchanging names (Eleanor and Robert Campbell, boy Colby, girl Carla), Harry walked from the emergency to the first pay phone and called Ned.

On the first visitor’s day Ned came to the clinic with flowers from the firm and a novel from himself to help Harry pass his remaining time in the program. Ned apologized for thinking him capable of stealing. The whole business was cleared up, he said. One of the young associates had taken the money and falsified the paperwork to make it appear Harry was involved.

Blame the drunk, Harry said.

Yes, Ned reluctantly agreed, I suppose that’s what it was.

Harry had not spoken to anyone since he’d entered treatment. In his own ears his voice sounded foreign, for so long he’d had to work with great strain to make himself appear sober, or at least in control. He felt himself more timid now, a softer line to his answers. Relieved of the task to anticipate the questions he did not want, certain to arise, Harry was at ease. Only one question he knew Ned would ask for sure: the curiosity over the timing. Why that day to surrender.

He told Ned about Eleanor and the children. For several days Harry had considered the note, whether to tell about that, and decided against it. The state he’d been in Harry could not swear there had ever been a note, though surely it must have happened, having brought him here.

I hated my vacillation, Harry said as they shared tea in the clinic’s solarium. Winter coming now, the sky was shaded with clouds vowing snow. Here’s this woman, her children bravely trying to handle the situation, but they’re children. You know, not one person made a move to help them.

Ned’s brows were furrowed to envision the scenario.

Soon as they were okay, I called. I knew I had to come in. It was almost easy to turn my head and walk away. Who could have helped me then?

Record Collection

Though the din of the machinery overran any normal sound, Peter was sure he could hear the supervisor coming down the production line. Separate from the mechanical grind, Heckley’s sinewy whine punctuated the stale with the static charge of authority. It sounded like he was leading a tour around. What anyone expected to show off in this no man’s land, Peter wanted to know. The developing room was hardly a glamorous place. A coal mine made of concrete, the smell of noxious chemicals vying with grease and oil. In the dark abyss of the factory’s processing area, the scene was seamless black. No lights, nothing visible. If not for the navigational strip on the floor and the sad wall clock illuminating the passing of their lives, no one would ever suspect a dimension to the room.

Straining to hear anything was a pastime. Peter’s ears buzzed as if a swarm of wind-up bees had been set loose in a capsule. Trying to keep up his pace, he fumbled with the canister. Supposed to crack off the cap to get the film roll out, Peter’s fingers clenched too tight around the small cylinder. The thing popped off into the blackness.

This is Peter Phillips. His supervisor, Heckley, was upon him. The man’s nauseating cologne crawled up his nose, lime and antiseptic like an aerosol used to hide the smell of a bathroom. Heckley the Heckler introduced some guy named Nocera. Attempting a handshake in the pitch black was senseless but Peter pressed a weak smile. Visible or no, gestures were not easily suppressed. Peter’s been with us sixteen years. Isn’t that right, Peter? Heckley did not say what Nocera was doing there.

Yeah.

Working in developing the whole time? Nocera asked, his voice aggressively panning for