Dream Enough For The Both Of Us
Everyone who so much as looked at Nikki Fictel knew right away that she was in love with Rusty Venture. When she was a girl she used to sit slack-jawed in front of her mother's small black and white tv set, clutching her stuffed Venture Family figures to her chest, her eyes glazed and wide-open with brilliant delight, her mouth filled with Honey Smacks and her mary jane-covered feet kicking absently in the air while Rusty's miraculous, magical adventures played out before her eyes.
Her mother sat by, watching Nikki watch Rusty, smoking her Marlboros and eating French toast, hearing horns honk out in the trailer park and the sound of her neighbors arguing in their nearby double wide. She had to get to the motel soon for a double-shift. But it seemed cruel to interrupt Nikki's daydreams.
It was a rare weekly moment of joy in her child's life, and she would do whatever she could to preserve it.
****
The day Nikki got a letter from Rusty was the greatest day of her young life. There had been a lot of squealing and hugging, babbled plans and whispered dreams. The letter had been lengthy and informative, and included a signed picture.
That night, Nikki and her mother huddled together in bed, watching Who's The Boss reruns - their usual bedtime ritual. "Mama," Nikki said, rolling onto her back as she squirmed out of the warm huddle of her mother's arms, "do you think Rusty would let me make an official fanclub for him?"
"Can you do that and keep up with your work?"
"Uh huh!" Nikki bobbed her head.
Her mother patted her head. "Oh, Nikki - this is your dream, isn't it?"
"Not just my dream - the only thing that would make my life really happy would be this club!" She squealed. "Rusty is SO totally cute and sweet and awesome."
Such an oddly passionate statement, but she was only fourteen. Who didn't go through that teeny-bopper phase, where you dreamed about taking a musician to the prom, or marrying an Oscar Winning actor? "Baby girl, you live that dream," her mother requested.
Nikki squealed and threw her arms around her mother's neck.
****
She should have seen it coming - the long nights alone working on 'club business' with Venture. The unexplained rips in her daughter's stockings and the sudden appearance of turtlenecks in her daughter's wardrobe. The way her eyes would avoid her mother's in conversation, and the sudden surliness of her new rebellion.
Her mother went absolutely ballistic on Venture. The money demand was only their fair due, but when he refused to pay she refused to take money from him, not even one single cent; the baby would be raised between them, and damn him if he'd try to interfere.
He ran like the coward he was, as Mama had predicted.
Nikki spent the duration of her pregnancy bawling, clutching her autographed picture of Venture to her chest. There were no more cuddling session with her mother, no further dreams shared by the glow of Tony Micelli's smile - Nikki alternated between sullen moodiness and wild demands, and kept insisting that Rusty would come to rescue her someday. She spent her time at auctions, buying Rusty Venture merchandise, lining the walls of her little trailer with it.
When the baby was born (a hearty boy with the stubby, rounded head that resembled an infected thumb), Nikki had turned her head away, pale with the remnants of pain shooting through her body.
"I gave him a boy. He'll be so happy..."
Mama had prayed for a girl, but a boy was good enough, she supposed. "Why don't we call him Dermott, after grandpa?"
Nikki had no response - she'd fallen asleep just minutes after declaring Rusty would be 'so happy' with her. Shrugging, Mama turned back toward the nurse.
"We're calling him Dermott," she declared, and the nurse wrote it all down.
***
"Is that thing still crying?"
Nikki had come in late from a party smelling of booze and cologne, her features a hard, flat line as she glared into the nursery.
"It's four the damn morning," her mother replied, tilting back the baby's bottle so he could finish suckling. "They don't live on good intentions."
Nikki turned on her heel and stomped off to her room, and her mother exhaled in relief. "Whatever I did to her," whispered his grandmother, "I won't do to you."
Dermott stared up at her with hard, mean little eyes - Rusty Venture eyes, she realized with a shudder. He was never as cuddly as her daughter had been - there would be no gentle coddling with him, no snuggling together watching reruns. He was a strangely independent boy, forever off on his own doing independent things.
Her daughter's wild behavior didn't settle down until she was in her mid-twenties, when she went to college and got a job. As Dermott grew old enough to bring friends home, Nikki became the 'bad sister', the embarrassment with too many tattoos and a wild past. But instead of shunning her behavior, Dermott grew to emulate it.
They never moved out of the trailer park. All of Nikki's money went to her Rusty Venture collection, and by the time Mama retired Dermott was old enough to earn his own keep.
***
Time had crawled by like a parade float on morphine for Mama Fictel. Soon Dermott was seventeen, and hanging around with a blond haired boy that he referred to with a shrug as "Hank. He's cool," ruffling his hair, biting a banana, shrugging and staring out the window.
The boy had grown up rough and ill humored, a little too in love with his bass guitar and the notion that he was all-powerful. She couldn't snuggle with him, this Dermott who wore all of his dreams on his skin.
But she could see them in his eyes - shining just like her daughter's had. She could only hope they wouldn't lead him as badly astray as her daughter.