Board a ship that travels between real time where
lives are buffeted by political conflict, tragedy and loss
and another mysterious time where pain is healed, and
love is eternal.
Dreams of Drowning
by Patricia Averbach
Genre
Literary Fiction, Magical Realism
Dreams of Drowning is a work of magical realism that
moves between real time where lives are buffeted by
political conflict, tragedy and loss and another
mysterious time where pain is healed, and love is
eternal.
Prologue
"Help!" Joanie's shouts are barely audible above the wind and the roar of the outboard motor as she struggles to keep her head above the waves. I put my hands over my ears and close my eyes, but she's still there, still struggling to stay above the water, the panic in her eyes a mirror of my own, her pale, freckled skin, her green eyes fraught with horror, identical to mine. I watch helpless, my heart pounding, until she disappears, as she always does, beneath the roiling waters of Lake Ontario.
“Amy, wake up.” Mrs. Klein was shaking my shoulder. “You can’t sleep here. If you need to sleep, go home.”
How had I fallen asleep with the clatter and bang of the old linotype reverberating through the shop? I picked my head up from the drafting table and struggled to bring Mrs. Klein into focus. She was as solid and gray as the presses she ran. I felt a chill as her steely eyes took in my tousled hair and bloodshot eyes then moved to the floor where a chaotic mess of colored markers, X-Acto knives and technical pens lay scattered.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t sleep again last night, but I’m okay now. I’ll get back to work.” I was already on my knees gathering up the fallen art supplies as quickly as I could.
“When was the last time you had a proper night’s sleep?”
I took a moment to consider. “Nineteen seventy-one.”
Esther Klein was my mother’s best friend, more like my aunt than my employer, but she wasn’t amused. My literally falling asleep on the job had pushed her too far.
“That’s not funny. You need to see a doctor.”
“Now that is funny. How am I supposed to do that?” Legal Ontario residents had magic OHIP cards that entitled them to almost unlimited medical care, but she knew I’d slipped into the country illegally and had no papers.
“You can pay him in cash, the same way we pay you, so there’s no record. I’ll explain the situation to my doctor.”
“Sorry, can’t risk it. I’ve got to stay under the radar, but thanks anyway.”
Mrs. Klein’s face darkened, and a deep crease appeared between her eyes. “Go home, drink some tea, take a hot bath and think about whether you want a future here or not.”
My heart skipped a beat. Was she threatening to fire me? She knew I’d be on the street or worse without this job. I could hear a slight quaver in my voice as I responded. “What about this poster?” I pointed to the design job I’d been working on. “They need it by tomorrow.”
She examined the work on my design table and nodded her approval. I’d hand drawn shadows beneath stenciled letters making the company name, Revolution Records, appear to float over a background of brightly colored discs. “You can finish in the morning. Now go home and get some sleep.”
What was the point of going home? It was easier to sleep in a noisy print shop than back in my apartment where Joanie’s ghost followed me from room to room. It had happened two
years ago, yet her desperate calls for help still woke me from panicked dreams of drowning. I gathered up my coat and purse wondering if I’d just ruined my last chance for a new life.
I was half-way out the door when Mrs. Klein called me back. “And don’t forget the party tonight. We’re expecting you at seven.”
I thought of rushing out the door, pretending I hadn’t heard, but Mrs. Klein was standing right beside me. I paused and took a breath. “Thank you, I really appreciate the invitation, but like I said, I don’t do parties.”
She stepped between me and the door, blocking my only means of escape. “This has gone on long enough. You’re not the one who died.”
Mr. Klein and Eddie, our pressman, were watching from the back room. I didn’t want to make a scene, but - a party? “I’m sorry, I know you want to help, but I’m just not ready.” Me, the good-time girl of Fairport High, turning down another party. Joanie wouldn’t have believed it.
Mrs. Klein took an umbrella off the coat rack and handed it to me. “You’ll need this, and you’re coming to the party. There will be people your age from the sailing club.”
Was she kidding? Sailors were the last people I’d want to meet. The very thought gave me the willies. I started to say no again, but she wouldn’t listen.
“Consider it a condition of your employment, and I mean it. Oh, and bring a box of baklava from that Greek bakery near your apartment. No excuses.”
Then she shoved me out into the rain and shut the door.
Rain exaggerates my tendency to see double. It's difficult to distinguish the reflection of images on water, through glass, or on wet pavement from the blurred images resulting from my weakened ocular muscles. I turn away from the window where rivulets of water are playing tricks with my eyes, melting the pane, and leaving me suspended between worlds. It's been like this for eight years now, ever since Bessie died. On clear days I can tilt my head twenty degrees to the left and bring faces, signs, and scenery into focus, but on rainy days I confuse reflections with diplopia, my double vision, and become perplexed. My thick corrective glasses and cocked head make me look like a myopic spaniel, but they allow me to look people in the face and see just one nose, just two eyes. I can look at my son, Michael, and see a busy man with graying hair and sagging jowls, and not someone who wobbles back and forth between adolescence and middle age every time I blink.
Most people aren’t aware of my disability. Sometimes even I forget because there are days, even weeks, when things come into focus. The past and present don’t seem so blurred and muddled. Before Bessie died there'd been another kind of doubleness. There'd been two of us, a pair, coupled for nearly fifty years. Double meant increase, abundance, joy. Afterwards it meant distorted vision, ocular fatigue, and cold dinners in front of a television with an oscillating horizontal.
There's a brochure on my desk from Bayside Manor Retirement Home. Michael left it for me even though he knows I can no longer read small print on shiny paper. No matter, I know what it says. It says, old man, you've had it. You're done. Pack up and move along, you've outlived your welcome in the world.
A small incident set him off, a minor mishap he’s blown out of proportion. I was out walking after dinner a few weeks ago and, preoccupied, I missed my turn. Nothing odd about that, but by the time I realized what I’d done the sun had set and I was wandering around in the dark. With better eyes I could have managed, but well, I got lost. Whichever way I turned I only got further afield until I was exhausted. I must have been stumbling about because a policeman stopped to ask if I needed help. “I’m fine, just fine,” I told him. “But I seem to have misplaced my apartment.” It was a joke. I thought he’d laugh and point me in the right direction. Instead, he drove me home then notified my son. Ever since then, all Michael talks about is, wouldn’t I be happier living with other people who’d cook my meals and see that I was safe?
Patricia Averbach began her writing career at sixteen as the entirely unqualified literary assistant to Anzia Yeszierska, Jewish-American author of the immigrant experience. A native Clevelander, she’s a former director of The Chautauqua Writers Center in Chautauqua, New York.
Her newest novel, Dreams of Drowning… (Bedazzled Ink, 2024), was a finalist for the Tucson Festival of Books and Chanticleer’s Somerset Award for Literary Fiction.
Previous novels include Painting Bridges (Bottom Dog Press, 2013) and Resurrecting Rain (Golden Antelope Press, 2020.)
Her poetry chapbook, Missing Persons, (Ward Wood Publishing, 2013) was cited by Times of London Literary Supplement (November 2014) as one of the best small collections of the year.
She lives with her husband in a suburb of Cleveland when she’s not visiting her daughters in Toronto, Maui and Peru or hanging out in a virtual world called Second Life. To learn more go to
http://www.patriciaaverbach.com.
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It seems like it is a time travel or parallel universe? Good luck with the success of the book.
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