Chloe Benjamin - The Anatomy of Dreams

“What is it?” I asked.

“ The Poetical Works of John Keats. Original edition, 1884. I thought I’d read the rest of the poem you liked. ‘Endymion,’ it’s called. The Greeks believed he was a shepherd or an astronomer who fell in love with the goddess of the moon — some say the moon itself. But Endymion was just a man; unlike the moon, he could age and weaken and die. So the goddess cast a spell on Endymion — one that made him sleep forever, immortal. That way, they could always be together.”

“That’s incredibly depressing.”

“It’s not.” Thom tucked his chin and pulled away, as though I’d insulted him.

“It is,” I said, laughing. “The guy gives up his humanity, just to sleep for all time? I mean, granted, I haven’t met her, but I don’t get the sense that the moon makes a very good girlfriend.”

“She certainly does,” said Thom. “First of all, she’s ridiculously prompt.”

“She knows how to keep her distance,” I added.

“She’s like, four billion years old, so she’s got a shit-ton of life experience.”

“Her face is a little scarred, but hey, whose isn’t?”

“According to the myth, they also had about fifty daughters.”

“Good lord,” I said. “That’s nightmarish.”

We were both laughing now, the book almost forgotten. When we became quiet again, Thom smiled, looking down at it, before putting it inside the open basement door.

“Well,” he said. “Maybe another time.”

I left through the porch, pulling the screen shut behind me. Wet grass squealed under my feet as I crossed to our house. When I stepped inside, Gabe was eating a peanut-butter sandwich over the sink.

“Hey,” he said. “What were you doing at Thom’s?”

I wondered how long he had been standing there. From the window above the sink, it was possible to see straight into Thom’s living room.

“He invited me for lunch,” I said. “You were still asleep.”

“No, I left hours ago. Keller called — said they were understaffed at the clinic and he needed me to take the place of one of the receptionists. I was going to tell you, but then I saw you on the porch, out like a light. So I left a note.”

He gestured to the counter, where there was a small slip of yellow paper.

“You should have woken me,” I said. “I could have helped.”

“But you had such a rough night. I wanted to let you sleep. Besides, I was only answering phones. I thought I was doing you a favor by letting you nap.”

It was true — there was nothing very exciting about answering phones at the sleep clinic. So why did I feel betrayed?

“Thom told me that Janna came by a few days ago,” I said. “He said she wanted to be a participant in one of our experiments.”

Gabe blinked.

“Right,” he said. “It was over the weekend. You had gone to the bank, I think. Janna knocked on the door. We sat on the porch. We made small talk for a few minutes, mostly about gardening, and then she asked what she would have to do to qualify for one of our studies.”

“But why? Why would she even want to qualify?”

“I think she liked the concept. Said she’s been keeping a dream journal since her teens — one of those types.” Gabe grinned easily. “She wanted to talk about this recurring dream where her teeth fall out. She said sometimes they rot or grow in crooked, and other times they fall out one by one with a light tap.”

He took his index finger and tapped his two front teeth in demonstration.

“Did you give her Freud’s interpretation?” I asked.

“What?” asked Gabe, amused. “That the loss of teeth is a symbol of castration? A punishment for masturbation? No, Sylve, I didn’t tell her that.”

“Regardless,” I said, “we couldn’t use her. We know her. It wouldn’t be ethical.”

“But what’s more ethical than helping the people you know? Why should the process be so quarantined, so sterilized? Science should be applicable to real life — so why should we divorce it from love?”

I stared at him. He washed his plate and dried it, then shook his hands of water. Little droplets sprayed my chest.

“Love?”

“Oh, come on,” he said. “I meant on principle.”

So Janna wanted to do exactly what Thom had warned against — to answer her questions, to crawl down her own rabbit hole. Thom believed it was wrong, and yet he hadn’t tried to dissuade her. Did he respect her freedom to do as she chose, or didn’t he care? Perhaps it was that he didn’t think our research would work, dangerous as it was in theory. I thought about our patients. Was it true that their dreams felt more real than anything tangible, whether or not they were lucid? That the people they dreamed of — partners, children, even people they’d created — were more vivid to them than those who were alive?

But I quickly shook off the idea. If these dream characters were more vivid to our patients, it was because they were disturbed. That was why they’d come to us. And it was exactly why I was so angry that Janna had gone to Gabe. She didn’t have a sleep disorder. She only wanted attention, and it seemed she wanted it from him.

•••

That evening, Gabe left to work in the university library. He wasn’t home by dinner, so I made cream of mushroom soup from the can and ate while I worked in the office. But soon I became restless, and I climbed the stairs to the attic.

I hadn’t been there since we first moved in. It was a small, slanted space, the floors splintered and covered in a soft down of dust. There was one window, cracked open; each draft shook the pane. We’d thrown our boxes up here haphazardly in August, glad to be done with them, and they covered most of the floor. An extra pair of eclipse curtains was crumpled darkly in one corner. Foam peanuts were strewn across the ground, shining like plastic snow. My canvases leaned against the back wall, and my paint boxes were piled beneath an old exercise ball.

Maybe I was only looking for something to do with my hands, but I started to clean. Before long, I sank into a state that felt as close as I’d ever come to meditation. I began by nesting the smaller boxes inside each other and stacking them in towers. With the ground partially cleared, the room doubled in size. I mopped the floors and wiped the molding, cobwebs tangling around my hands like hair. I found an area rug in one of Gabe’s boxes and set it in front of the window. I took a brass standing lamp from the living room — we never used it — and put it next to the rug. I collected the foam and bubble wrap in a trash bag. Then I brought a rag up from the kitchen and scrubbed the windowpane until it gleamed.

As dusk fell, I leaned against the window frame. I could see the fence that separated our yard from Thomas and Janna’s. The maple trees, scarlet with fall, quivered like flame. A rabbit scampered over our porch and disappeared under the fence. I had not felt so peaceful, so hidden, in years.

Before I left, I tidied my paint supplies. It pleased me to see the canvases in neat rows, the paints organized and boxed by color. Ringing with accomplishment, I returned to the office, where I worked more efficiently than I had in months.

In June of 2002, I boarded a plane in San Francisco bound for Martha’s Vineyard. This was where Keller had a research and training compound, and it was where Gabe and I would spend the summer so I could be brought up to speed before we left for Fort Bragg that fall. I had yet to learn about Keller’s simultaneous potentialities theory of the subconscious mind, but Gabe told me it was mainstream enough to have earned him a tenured professorship at the University of San Francisco in the mideighties. Its fringier elements, though, had also attracted a cultish following of experimental academics, conspiracy theorists, and members of the artistic and political avant-garde.