Dreams Are Not Enough by Jacqueline Briskin

tramp in the celery field, May Sue’s sudden red death gush on the old plank table. She described Juanita’s nurturing and her dark, beautiful, but weak eyes. She told of the endless hot work in the fields where no toilets were provided so that little girls wet their pants and women workers felt as if their bladders would surely burst. She told about her sporadic schooling and often sleeping with only cardboard protecting her from the bare earth.
    She mentioned the dingy movie houses that had filled her with dreams.
    She described Henry’s aggressive forays and why she had come to Los Angeles, and how Juanita had been lost to her. She even told him her true age. Incapable of looking at him as she talked, she faced the overgrown court, watching dusk fall.
    When she was finally silent Hap said nothing—he hadn’t spoken during her entire narrative. In another apartment somebody kept playing “Adeste Fideles” over and over. 0 come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant. Finally she turned to look at Hap. It was too dark to make out his expression.
    “I’m ashamed,” she sighed.
    “So ashamed.”
    “Why?”
    “Why? You heard. We lived like animals.”
    “It’s everybody else in this country who ought to be ashamed.” He blew his nose.
    “What does Barry say?”
    “I’ve done a terrible thing … I … He thinks I’m Alicia Lopez from El Paso.”
    The confession that she had told him what she feared telling her husband hung between them in the dimness.
    0 come ye, 0 come ye to Be-ethle-hem.
    Hap came over to the window. His eyes glittered with moisture and she realized he’d been crying.
    “The reason I stopped driving you home,” he said in a low voice, “is I was getting in too deep. Way too deep.”
    The recorded carolers exalted during the long minute that Hap and Alicia gazed at each other. Then the blinking Christmas lights strung in the pittosporum came on. Hap shook his head as if arousing himself.
    Neither of them spoke as he opened the door and went out.
    The luminous green hands of their alarm clock showed twelve forty three when Alicia heard uneven footsteps and the fumbling of the key.
    As the door opened then closed, the heavy smell of beer reached her, an odor disturbingly reminiscent of Henry Lopez. In the darkness a chair toppled.
    She switched on the lamp.
    In the sudden light, Barry blinked.
    “Sorry, hon,” he muttered. ” ” Pologize for deserting you on Christmas. ” He stood with his hands dangling at his sides, his head bent penitently like an overgrown, guilty first grader.
    “It’s okay, Barry. Uhh, Hap dropped by with our presents.”
    “Just as rotten as Dad.”
    “It’s not the crime of the century to have a few.”
    “Rotten, rotten….” He fell on the bed, clutching her.
    “Need you so much, hon.” He fell asleep, still wearing his windbreaker and loafers, his beery breath gusting about her.
    She stroked his crinkly, reddish hair. Why should he feel guilty? She was the one who’d been indulging in adulterous reveries. She slipped off his loafers and spent the remainder of the night planning kind ways to explain to Hap that his original impulses to avoid her had been wise.
    As January moved forward Alicia worked steadily in Magnum’s television department. Hap did not call Barry—or her. Once she saw him walking on the studio street, his breeze-tossed fair hair visible above the other heads. A few days later she spotted him driving out the gate with LouLou Rodier, the gorgeous French dancer. Both times she waved.
    He didn’t wave back although she was positive he’d seen her. With a profound sense of desolation she decided that he had needed no further warnings to stay away from her: Alice Hoi-lister’s life story had repelled him.
    Days of Repose went on location in Guatemala without a word of goodbye to the Barry Cordiners from the second assistant cameraman.
    “Okay that I’ve asked Beth, Maxim and PD over for dinner Sunday?”
    Barry’s freckles