This Shared Dream by Kathleen Ann Goonan Read Free Book Online Page B

territorial, cultural, and religious disputes, healing the injustices and exploitation caused by colonialism, and increasing health care and education. But that legacy was so strong that much of Africa was still mired in deadly civil wars, large-scale ethnic murders (the term “ethnic cleansing ” disgusted Jill), disease, and subjugation of women and children.
    Germany had not been divided, post-war, and the Soviet Union had not sucked the life out of countries around its border in rough approximation of Hitler’s original plan for Germany’s use of those same countries.
    In the United States, in the wake of victory, Roosevelt had been able to pass a strong civil rights bill in 1946.
    But—why? How had this happened?
    How was it that she could remember a far different world? Why did she think that she had had a hand in creating this world?
    It was easy to take their point of view: She was crazy.
    The problem was that she knew she was not.
    The roots of this timestream lay in whatever her mother, Bette Elegante, and her father, Sam Dance, had done during the 1940s, and she did not know what it was.
    She only knew that whatever they had done had birthed, somehow, this slightly different, slightly better world, which slid a new history into her past. Had this world existed parallel with that other world, in which Roosevelt died in his fourth term, Truman had ordered the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Germany was divided, and John F. Kennedy was murdered? Or had she, with one, decisive, wild action, wrenched that old history onto a new track, one that neatly provided a past for everyone, except her, that was perfectly consistent?
    Or was she, really, delusional? Maybe her mother had been a perfectly normal WAC, rather than a spy; her father a perfectly ordinary ordnance engineer, rather than someone who knew more than he could say.
    If so, why did that old past insist on itself, cling to her, aggravate her, heap upon her such real sorrow and such real responsibility?
    If her parents really were alive, somewhere or somewhen, why did they not help her?
    It had something to do with the war. She knew nothing of her mother’s life during the war.
    She returned to her journal. From the top, now.
    I was born in 1950  …
    Jill
    WELCOME TO THE FUN HOUSE
    April 5, St. Elizabeth’s Hospital
    “Y OU’RE ALWAYS ANGRY,” said Jill to Elmore.
    She had been in St. Elizabeth’s for a couple of weeks. She and Elmore were eating lunch in the cafeteria.
    “That’s right.” He was sitting, right now, but sideways to the table, as if poised to jump and run. Elmore hardly ever sat down when he came, no matter where they were. He even stood in their joint therapy sessions, leading Jill to note that he seemed crazy too. She hoped that the therapist noticed.
    Elmore shoveled potato salad into his mouth. His thin, pale face was set off by the perfect, expensive cut of his thin, pale hair. He took a bite of his hot dog. “Everything is falling apart.”
    “And it’s my fault.” Jill said this not as an accusation, but as if it were a fact. She believed it to be true.
    “You got it.” He wiped his hands on his napkin and threw it on the table. “I can’t handle all of this. Taking care of Stevie. Running the house. Scheduling employees at the bookshop, which we don’t need to keep. A lot of extra work for nothing. I paid the store’s insurance—it was almost overdue—and the utility bills, but I didn’t order anything. There are already too many books there. And God only knows how much the employees are stealing.”
    “Right. Naturally, I hired a bunch of thieves.”
    “You’re such a bleeding heart. Jane is a slacker—always late—”
    “She’s taking care of her father.”
    “Doesn’t matter. If we’re not open on time, we lose customers. I fired her.”
    “What?”
    He shrugged.
    “You used to be a bleeding heart.”
    He glared at her. His glasses were gray, like his eyes. His shirt and suit were immaculate, as usual,