Ellery Queen. The Best of Suspense

Barbara Callahan The Pinwheel Dream

Sometimes I wish I could trade my recurring dream with someone. My dream is like a kaleidoscope, very colorful, almost pretty. I would be glad to accept a black and white dream in return for my living-color one. I would even accept a horror dream, a terrible one in which the sleeper is chased up and down cliffs, by a mad dog. Any dream would be better than mine. My dream focuses on a pinwheel, a child’s toy, a stick on which bits of plastic are pinned to be set into motion by the wind.

My pinwheel is red, white, and blue. In my dream I spin it with my finger. As soon as my finger touches it, the colors change into black and white polka dots. Then the polka dots dissolve into a solid purple. Then the purple turns to red. After redness floods the dream I wake up.

It’s such an innocent-looking dream but after I’ve dreamed it a few nights, I make those awful phone calls. I don’t pick names randomly from the phone book. I call the relatives or friends of people who work in the same office I do.

When Ellen, the stenographer, stopped after work at the bar on the first floor of our building with John, the engineer, I was compelled to call her husband. I had overheard Ellen telling her husband on the phone that she had to work late. I knew she was lying. After John and Ellen left the office, I took the next elevator downstairs and saw them through the open door of the bar. They were sitting close together in a booth.

I hurried to a pay phone in the drug store, pulled out my address book, and called Ellen’s husband.

“I think you should know,” I told him, “that your wife is having a drink in Richard’s Bar with a man she works with. They’re there right now.”

I hung up before he could say anything.

Ellen’s eyes looked terribly red the following morning. She told everyone that her allergies were acting up. I knew differently. I knew she must have spent the entire evening in tears because after my call to her husband I went back to the lobby of our building and sat in a chair with a newspaper opened out to conceal my face. I lowered it to see Ellen pulled roughly out of the bar by her husband.

She looked so pathetic that I felt a little guilty. I brought coffee to her desk. She thanked me before pouring out the story of her humiliating exit from the bar.

“I have to tell someone, Lorna,” she sobbed, “and you’re so good, such a good person, I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all, Ellen,” I replied.

“I don’t know how he found out. He must have been suspicious about all the overtime that didn’t appear on my paycheck.”

“You won’t do it again, dear? Promise Lorna.”

“I promise,” she said like a repentant child.

I went back to my desk and opened my ledgers. I’m a bookkeeper and my books are a work of art. They are neat and orderly, just as life should be but isn’t, unless a person steps in at the right moment to see that life balances out properly. I smiled down at the figures in the books. Ellen’s life was balanced. She had erred and been punished for it.

A simple phone call from Lorna, good old Lorna, the office’s maiden aunt, everybody’s friend and confidante, had straightened her out. And good old Lorna could continue her behind-the-scenes accounting like an invisible but efficient guardian angel. Ellen’s husband had not mentioned the phone call to her. Telling her would have destroyed the image of omniscience he needed to keep Ellen in line in the future.

After the incident with Ellen, I looked forward to my pinwheel dream. I seemed to derive courage from it, the courage to do the necessary calling. So much time and energy in our office seemed to be devoted to perpetrating deceptions that I felt our business motto should be “Deception is our most important product.”

After dreaming the pinwheel dream for five nights, I called Harry’s wife to tell her that Harry had gone to the race track one afternoon. Harry belongs to Gamblers Anonymous and he shouldn’t go to the track. I had heard Harry telling his wife on the phone that he had to meet a client in the afternoon, but I saw the racing forms on his desk when I brought him a doughnut and coffee. Deception, deception!

Harry was red-faced when he asked Payroll to mail his check home each week instead of giving it to him. Like Ellen’s husband, his wife must not have told him about the anonymous call.

The pinwheel dream receded from the proscenium of my sleep for nearly a month after my call to Harry’s wife. I was grateful. The forces set into motion by the dream caused me elation, I do admit that, but they also caused me some anxiety. If I were discovered, I would no longer be “good old Lorna” to my associates. Stripped of that title, I would have lost access to the deceptions that proliferated in our office like fruit flies.

The new employee, Paul Mason, forced me to summon the dream from the wings where it always lurked. At first Paul puzzled me; then he angered me. He not only refused to confide in me but he refused to make self-incriminating phone calls in my hearing. Yet I knew his poker face and formal mannerisms masked a deception more evil than anyone’s. Paul became my greatest challenge. I brought coffee and discussed the weather more times with him than I had ever done with a new employee. My efforts at conversations yielded only polite responses.

After dreaming the dream, I knew what I had to do. Under the pretext of working late I stole through the empty offices to Personnel. In the filing cabinet I found his personnel folder. It revealed a deception more vile than I had expected. True, he had not deceived Personnel but he had deceived me and the others in the office who had a right to know about him. After all, sharing deceptions was part of our office mystique. Even I had contributed a deception to the office gossip — a false deception if that’s not a redundancy. I had invented an affair I supposedly had years ago with a married man. I shared this imaginary escapade with everyone so I’d appear more human.

My excitement at the discovery in Paul’s folder left me breathless. I slipped the folder back into the cabinet and sank into the Personnel Director’s chair. If I might resort to a bit of humor, Paul Mason’s case was to be my greatest balancing act.

But excitement, such a fickle sensation, ebbed almost immediately. Whom could I call? His wife? Hardly. She had to know the contents of his folder. My co-workers? Impossible. If I passed Paul’s data along, Sue Nelson, the Personnel Director, would know someone had peeked into the files, and she might remember I had worked late. I could not afford to lose my job. At fifty it’s not easy to get another one.

Then whom to call? I picked up a small flag that stood on Sue’s desk. I twirled it around and around like the pinwheel in my dream. Invoking the power of the dream, I sat back and waited. In minutes I knew whom to call.

But first I had to take a short ride. I drove to Paul’s street. Pretending the car had stalled, I glanced at the house next to his. In the middle of the grille-work on the storm door I read the name Barrett. My excitement returned. I drove home, sailing through yellow lights which I don’t ordinarily do. My hands shook as I picked up the telephone directory. Yes, yes, it was there — Paul’s neighbor’s listing: J. B. Barrett, 45 Dover Drive, 867-4259.

A child answered the phone. “Get your mother,” I ordered. After his mother said hello, I said, “Your next-door neighbor, Paul Mason, is a child molester who spent five years in Rutherford Prison.”

I hung up in the middle of a gasp at the other end.

A week after the phone call I met Paul’s wife. She came into the office to pick up his belongings, the photographs and other things from his desk that were of no value to anyone else. With the usual solicitude of good old Lorna, I helped her put them into a cardboard box. Collecting his office mementos proved to be too much for her. She slumped into his chair and cried, “Why did he have to slash his wrists? Things were going so well for us until the neighbors refused to let their children play with ours. They told their kids Paul was a bad man. And that he was cured.”

I gave her two aspirins and helped her to the elevator. I winced when she smiled through quivering lips to tell me what a good person I was. That night I stayed late at the office, but not to prowl through filing cabinets. I stayed to do some prowling through my mind.

The exultation I usually experienced for weeks after a phone call had disappeared. I realized I had gone too far. Rather than balancing Paul’s accounts, I had placed his liabilities on the first page of the ledger where they had overwhelmed him. That wasn’t good bookkeeping. And the anxiety that I might someday be caught had almost overwhelmed me. I had to stop making those calls.

From the office I called Dr. Kevin Adams, the first psychologist listed in the Phonebook. I hoped he could help me to stop. But on my first visit I detested him and sustained the emotion throughout all my visits. He sat behind a desk, puffing on a pipe, a thirtyish sandy-haired man with a studied poker face that reminded me of Paul Mason.

“Just tell me who you are,” he said on the first visit. “That’s always good for starters.”

“I’m Lorna Tyson,” I answered.

He puffed on his pipe for fifteen minutes, saying nothing. The clock on his desk ticked away my time and my money.

Finally he said, “Just who is Lorna Tyson?”

Unable to decide if he wanted a philosophical discourse on the concept of “person,” or if he simply wanted some background information on me, I sat silently for almost fifteen minutes. I finally settled on: “She’s a bookkeeper.”

“A bookkeeper.” He scribbled some words on a pad before telling me my time was up. I had spent $30.00 for the privilege of telling him my name and occupation.

During the next three sessions I told him about good old Lorna, everybody’s friend and confidante. He nodded once or twice before saying “umph” and telling me my time was up. Seething, I left his office. I was so upset I forgot my gloves. When I went back to get them, I saw Dr. Adams locked in a passionate embrace with his receptionist. I quickly closed the door. The next morning I called the Psychological Association and reported his unprofessional behavior. For the first time since Paul committed suicide, I felt relaxed.

Dr. Adams shattered that good feeling on my next visit.

“Tell me, Lorna,” he said, “about your compulsion to report people’s transgressions.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I stammered.

“Oh, come now, Lorna, let’s not play any more games. We’ve had four sessions together and not once have you indicated what’s bothering you. I saw your gloves on the table in the waiting room and knew you’d come back. I deliberately kissed my receptionist to see what your reaction would be. You called the Psychological Association to report me. That didn’t upset me or the Association. The receptionist is my wife. As a new patient, you wouldn’t have known that.”

Along with some other epithets that I didn’t know spiced my vocabulary, I called him Dr. God.

“You’re quite unprincipled, Dr. God,” I shouted. “You manipulate behind the scenes like some superior being so you can make lesser creatures squirm!”

“Then we’re very much alike, aren’t we, Lorna?” he said.

I was too stunned to answer. I dropped into the leather armchair across from his desk and watched as he emptied the ashes from his pipe into a large ashtray. He was waiting for me to speak. All my defenses had toppled, so I told him about the phone calls to Ellen’s husband and to Harry’s wife. He said nothing, but he knocked his pipe against his desk as if it were a judge’s gavel. On the following visit I told him about my call to Paul’s neighbor. The pipe hit the desk with metronomic frequency.

“Stop that, Dr. God,” I said.

“Stop what?” he asked.

“Stop passing judgment on me with your pipe.”

“Sorry, I didn’t realize what I was doing. You’re quite astute.”

“Quite,” I answered.

When I returned to my office, I doodled the number seven all over a memo pad. The next visit with Dr. God would be my last. I had seen him six times and poured all my deceptions into his gossip-pot. He had a great racket going. He sat on his chair, a dead-pan Father Confessor, consuming all the meat from the patient’s pitiful emotional stew as well as chomping on all the money in the patient’s pitiful wallet, and he offered nothing in return. My bookkeeper’s mind rebelled against the imbalance of it.

On the seventh visit, before I could say a word, he opened with, “Tell me about your dreams.”

I almost slipped off my chair. I had said nothing to him about my dream. Dr. God could read minds!

“How did you know about my dream?” I choked.

“Ah,” he said, “now we’re getting somewhere. I didn’t say, ‘Tell me about your dream!’ I said, ‘Tell me about your dreams.’ You heard the singular of the word, therefore I must conclude you have a recurring dream.”

Trapped, I told him the dream.

“I dream I have a red, white, and blue pinwheel. Since there is no wind to move it, I must turn it with my finger. After I touch the pinwheel it disintegrates into spinning black and white polka dots. The polka dots stop moving and are replaced by purple. Then the purple dissolves into red and the red fills up the dream.”

Dr. God put his pipe down because he had no verdict to tap out on the dream. He looked baffled. I rejoiced. He stood up and began to pace behind his desk. For five beautiful minutes I reveled in his bewilderment.

“I admit the dream puzzles me, but I do see one clue. Since the pinwheel is a child’s toy, I assume the dream relates to an incident in your childhood.”

“Bravo, Dr. God. You’ve hit on the old psychological standby childhood. I was wondering when you’d get to that.”

He ignored my jibe and sat down. He led me into a game. Free association, he called it. I had to sit like an obedient child and tell him all the words that came to my mind when I thought of a pinwheel.

“Flag,” I told him because of the pinwheel’s red, white, and blue colors. Windmill, bicycle wheel, I told him — spinning wheel, roulette wheel, wagon wheel.

He eyed me like a teacher about to fail a student. “Think harder,” he urged, “harder! What else is round like a pinwheel and needs an outside force to move it?”

I glanced around the room. Nothing came to my mind until I looked at the phone on his desk. “A telephone dial,” I said softly.

“Eureka!” he shouted. “As a child, the pinwheel reminded you of a telephone dial, something else that you had to turn with your finger. And the black and white polka dots spinning in your dream are the letters and numbers on a black instrument. When you were a child, telephones were only black with white letters and numbers. We are decoding the dream, Lorna,” he said.

I ignored his use of the word “we.” I was decoding the dream. I began to cry. He came to me and patted me on the shoulder, a gesture that made me cry-harder. It reminded me of the day the policeman patted eight-year-old Lorna on the shoulder as she sat on the front steps watching the three stretchers being lifted into ambulances.

“One of the stretchers,” I heard myself telling him, “held my mother, the other, her lover, and the other, my father. My father came home from work and found my mother upstairs with another man. My father shot both of them, and then himself.”

He handed me his handkerchief. “And all that happened on a day when you were playing happily with a pinwheel. Then you heard shots, ran into the house, and dialed the police. They probably told you to wait outside, but you went upstairs — were you wearing a purple dress? — and saw all the redness from the blood of the three bodies.

“Now we understand the meanings of the pinwheel, the polka dots, the purple, and the red. And now we understand why you made those calls to damn your co-workers. You wanted to punish them. You transferred your rage at being deceived by your mother to your co-workers who, in your mind, were deceiving others.”

“Yes, Dr. God,” I admitted. I said yes to his interpretation so I could leave. I had to think. I had to plan.

“May I use your phone, Doctor, my car is in the shop. I must call a cab.”

“Of course.”

He watched me dial the phone. I put through my request for a cab in a shaky voice. Then I hung up.

“Do you always do that?” he asked.

“Do what?”

“Hang up the phone by tapping the listening end of the receiver on the table before putting the receiver back in its cradle.”

“I guess so. Why?”

“Because tapping the phone on the table reminds me of a judge tapping his gavel at a trial.”

“Then we have something in common, Doctor,” I said casually. “You tap your pipe when you deliver a verdict. I tap the phone.”

His face became dead-pan again. “Now that you understand your dream you’ve probably delivered your last verdict via the telephone.”

“But you have more verdicts to tap out, don’t you, Dr. God?”

“If you say so,” he responded.

He was wrong about my delivering my last verdict on the phone. I had another one to deliver. He was correct about some of my dream, but not all of it. In his egotism he missed the more complex points. I had to see to it that he never discovered the truth when he had a chance to think it over.

The truth was mine alone. The dream did unravel its meaning to me in Dr. God’s office. On that summer day when I was eight years old, I walked two blocks to wait for the bus that was to take me on a day trip with my Brownie troop. My mother waved to me from the door. She seemed happy that I would be gone all day.

But the bus didn’t come. It had broken down. Our Scout Leader knew we were disappointed so she gave us each a pinwheel to take home. The pinwheel didn’t move because there was no wind. I took it in the house so that the fan in the living room would make it spin. I heard them, my mother and him, laughing upstairs. I turned the pinwheel round and round with my finger.

The spinning pinwheel made me think of the telephone dial. I called my father at work and told him about my mother and the man upstairs. As I waited for him to come home, I colored a picture of a queen in my fairy-tale coloring book. I used purple for her dress. My father had told me that purple was a royal color, the color of kings and queens. I felt like a queen sitting there. I felt powerful. I felt royal. I felt purple. And purple was exciting. I always felt purple when I made the calls about my co-workers.

Dr. God was right about the red in the dream. It was blood, the blood all over my mother and that man. I didn’t look at my father. Red is a good color too. It’s the color of satisfaction, of a verdict delivered, of sentencing received. Harry — his gambler’s face was red from embarrassment when he asked to have his paycheck mailed home. Ellen’s eyes were red after a night’s crying. Paul’s wrists were red after he slashed them.

And Dr. God’s pipe will glow red when he puffs and puffs on it as he desperately tries to extricate himself from the situation I am planning for him. I feel no pity for him. He too was feeling purple in that office when he thought he had interpreted my dream. I can’t have that — purple belongs to me. And so does red.

I looked at my mussed hair and my scratched face and my ripped dress in the mirror of my apartment. I had had time to do those things to myself in the ladies room before the cab came. The cab driver noticed and asked if I was all right. I acted too distraught to answer him. I smiled at my cleverness. My car isn’t in the shop. I just needed a witness to my disheveled state. And luckily Dr. God’s wife hadn’t come to work today.

I dialed my beige phone, regretting that it wasn’t an old black one. When a voice said, “Jones. Twenty-second Precinct,” I began to sob. I was quite good at it. “Dr. Adams of the Baker Building tried to attack me in his office this afternoon. Please come, please!”

It was the best acting job of my life. It’s hard to feign tears when one is feeling so purple. The police promised to come at once. Before I hung up the phone, I carefully tapped the listening part of the receiver on the table.