Awake and Dreaming - Kit Pearson [61]
“What was it?”
“It was about being a lonely child. Being an outcast and yearning for a different kind of life. All the children in my books were so happy, so confident. They hadn’t much inner life. I wanted to write about a child who was true to the child I once was.”
Cecily began pacing again. “I couldn’t flesh it out, though. I wanted the story to be a fantasy and set in the present time, since I’d written so much about the past. I needed to find a real, modern child to trigger it—someone to inspire me to turn my glimmerings of an idea into a solid story with a beginning, a middle and an end. I looked for that child for years. Every once in a while I’d travel on the ferry and look there. And it gave me something to do. I’d simply go back and forth on the ferry from Victoria to Vancouver, sometimes for months. The last time I did that I saw—”
“You saw me,” breathed Theo.
“Yes!” Cecily looked excited. “I saw you and your mother and I moved closer to listen.”
Theo remembered that terrible argument. Some of the anger she’d felt when she’d first noticed Cecily returned. “I don’t think it’s polite to listen to other people’s conversations,” she said. Then she shrank at her boldness.
But Cecily laughed. “You’re absolutely right. It’s very rude—but I’ve always done it. I’m incurably nosy. And as soon as I started listening I knew I finally had my story.”
“What was it?” whispered Theo.
“I noticed how unhappy and lost you seemed, and I knew from your conversation that you were going to Victoria to live with your aunt—and that you didn’t want to.”
“No,” whispered Theo.
“You also looked so dreamy—as if you were off in another world. You were making something up, weren’t you? Fantasizing.”
“Yes,” said Theo. “I always did, then.”
Cecily clapped her hands. “I knew it! I did exactly the same when I was a child. My parents were very correct and cold. I was lonely but I led a vivid fantasy life inside. When I grew up I turned my fantasies into stories. You’re supposed to stop pretending when you’re an adult—but some of us never do.”
Theo wished she’d go back to her—to Cecily’s idea about her.
“I’m digressing, aren’t I? As I was saying, watching you gave me the clue to my story. I thought that you needed a proper family. There’s a family that I’ve watched a lot. You know them. They live in my house.”
“The Kaldors!”
“Yes. John and Anna and Lisbeth and Ben. I’ve enjoyed observing their antics and listening to their conversations over the years—they often play in here. I’ve always been drawn to large, happy families, since my own was neither. So I decided you were probably fantasizing about being in such a family—and then you found one!”
Theo couldn’t speak. She listened tensely, half-guessing what Cecily would say next.
“In my story you would meet the Kaldors on the ferry and play with them. I knew the sorts of things they did, since they were once on the ferry when I was. Then you’d make a wish on the new moon and be in the family. While you were there you’d be healed. It was going to be a very satisfying story. And I’d set it here—in my childhood home and neighbourhood.”
The excitement left Cecily’s face. “The trouble is, I couldn’t work out the dynamics in my head. It was easy to imagine all the things you’d do while you lived with them—how they’d buy you clothes, how secure and loved you would become. But there were so many flaws. The transition to the family was too easy. It wasn’t believable that you’d just wish for something and get it. Your time there was too happy. There wasn’t enough conflict, although I tried to create some in an incident when you got into trouble for going downtown. And I couldn’t figure out what happened to your mother, or how—or if—you’d go back to her.”
Cecily gazed at the sea. “It was the story I’d wanted to write all my life. You seemed so much like me as a child. I recognized your yearning so much.”
When she turned around, her expression was despairing.