Dreamland

Back in the kitchen, she tries in vain to scrub her hands clean, but the dirt has stained them brown. She greets Tommie at the bus, noticing that he waves goodbye to someone as he climbs down. She is overjoyed that he has made a friend. Her awareness that she must run again recedes as a wave of exhaustion rolls in. Her desire to rest battles her fear of the man in the pickup truck returning. Back at the house, Tommie notices the disorder in the living room, and Beverly realizes she should have warned him. She puts on cartoons and lies down on the couch for “a quick nap” then falls into a deep sleep (233).

When she wakes up, it is dark. Tommie had tried to wake her but been unable to, and he is hungry. Dragging herself to her feet, she feels a momentary wave of dizziness, then goes to the kitchen. On autopilot, she prepares dinner for Tommie, trying to summon a sense of urgency about the need to move on from this house but unable to. Her exhaustion drains her appetite, and she gives Tommie most of her food. After dinner, she sends him to take a bath while she briefly checks the front porch. Returning inside, she drags herself upstairs, knowing that she needs to get ready but unable to summon the energy. She lies down on the couch, imagines “a pirate falling from the Empire State Building,” then falls asleep (237).

She wakes up the next morning to Tommie coming down the stairs. As memories of the last few days rush in, she feels an urge to cry, then remembers her own mother’s long bouts of weeping. Tommie is anxious to make the bus, not wanting to be late for Field Day. Looking at her son and knowing that they will have to run again fills Beverly with self-recriminating thoughts of the normal life she “should have provided him” (239). Remembering a happy vacation they spent at the seaside, she asks if he would like to live at the beach, but he misses the hint and instead mentions his new friend Amelia. After bringing him to the bus, she returns to the house “[d]welling on the unfairness of it all and the mistakes she’d made” (241). She falls onto the couch weeping.

Beverly weeps herself into exhaustion, only then noticing the dirt smudges on her shirt. She wonders why Tommie did not mention it, then recognizes that he is reacting the way she did toward her own mother’s erratic behavior: by trying “to pretend that everything [is] fine” though she knows he was probably frightened of and for her (242). The realization devastates her, and she adds it to her list of mistakes as a mother.

Only sleep can bring her relief from her erratic thoughts and worries, but she must prepare them to run. She tackles the food, but in her trembling hands, the knife slips, slicing deeply into her forefinger. The blood flows thick and fast, and she struggles to get a band-aid to cover it. Finally, with the house a wreck and the thought of cleaning it and preparing them to flee “simply too much,” she shuts down and lies on the couch, falling into sleep (244).

Beverly wakes up still groggy and is greeted by the mess all around her. Her finger has bled through her band-aids, but she cannot summon the energy to try to change them or to clean the house. She retreats to the front porch, assessing whether the breeze means rain is coming. She recalls her mother’s “[b]lue days,” when she would weep with a haunted look (247, italics in original). She tries to convince herself that she is not her mother.

Returning back inside, she checks her money stash, knows that it is not enough, and imagines having to beg for money. She wonders what the point of trying anymore is and why she ended up at a house with sinister secrets. After briefly dissociating, she turns her attention to the food in the kitchen, carefully cutting the rest of the vegetables and putting the meat in the cast-iron skillet. While it cooks, she wanders up to Tommie’s room and reminds herself to pack the book and action figure he brought from home. Lost in her thoughts, she forgets the food on the stove until she smells it burning. Rushing down to the kitchen, she grabs the skillet by the handle and burns her hand. The chicken is ruined, cutting into their food supply, and blisters erupt on her hand. She imagines trying to escape with Tommie in a rainstorm, trying to pack with two injured hands, then wonders how she “ever allowed herself to believe she was fit to be a mother” (252).

Numb to everything but the throbbing in her hand and a compulsive need to see Tommie, Beverly can do nothing but wait for him to return, but the bus does not arrive. She is not sure how late it is, but she must get to Tommie. Limping up to her bedroom, she is shocked to see it in complete disarray, clothes scattered everywhere. She cannot recall whether she had done this while searching the house. Panic grips her as she wonders whether the man from the pickup truck did it while she was digging at the creek. Turning toward the empty closet, she is horrified to see a pair of Christian Louboutin pumps, a birthday gift from Gary that she had left behind when she and Tommie ran.

Recognizing the shoes, she knows that Gary has found her. He must have known all along everything that she would do and had been following her moves all this time. He must have planted the drugs in the house. He must have gone to the elementary school to get Tommie. She would be arrested. She would never see Tommie again. The pain is unbearable, but she feels that she deserves it for having failed Tommie as a mother. With her hope gone, Beverly finds the prescription drugs she had gathered from the bathroom and picks out the Ambien. Taking the pills to Tommie’s room, she lies down in his bed and washes down the pills feeling first relief then “nothing at all” (260).