Chloe Benjamin - The Anatomy of Dreams

“She was very much like you, in fact.” He waters the soil around a ficus, dirt splattering his hands. “Very inquisitive, especially when it came to her own mind. A touch of obsessiveness — later, of course, more than a touch of it. And the capacity for self-destruction.”

“Everyone has that capacity.”

“You’re right. But in some of us it goes unfulfilled.” He stands the watering can upright and wipes its nozzle on his apron. “Still, I wasn’t referring to your disorder. More, I would say, your inability to let go.”

“And you don’t think that’s what Meredith did?”

“My wife didn’t kill herself to let go. She did it to hold on — to life as she knew it, to herself as she was.”

The surprise is wearing off, and now I’m eager. He has given me license; I’ve wanted a fight.

“Is that why you left San Francisco? Holed up in a small town in Northern California and began to teach high school students? Or was it that they were easier to control?”

“It’s true that I left the university when my wife died.” His voice is clipped, and I can tell I’ve prodded him. “I thought I could live a quieter life at a place like Mills. But it began to feel cowardly, such an obvious lie. So I returned to my research. I tried to do it in her honor. Moving forward, all while respecting the past — it’s a delicate balance, Sylvie, and I don’t claim to have mastered it.”

“In her honor,” I say. “Or was it that you got inspired again? At Mills, you had a whole new group of subjects. Stu Cappleman. Me. You’d be nothing without your patients, but the saddest part is that you haven’t helped any of us. You want to know what Meredith and I have in common, Adrian? You. You wrenched us open and used your tools to rummage around in our minds until everything inside got squiggly and confused. It’s just like what happened to Anne March. You left us worse off than we started.”

“Oh, Sylvie.” Keller frowns in disappointment, as though I’ve failed an easy test. “That’s very simplistic. I thought I’d at least taught you that life is never so black and white. Besides, look at you now. You’re, what — thirty years old? You went back to school. You seem to be thriving.”

“Which has nothing to do with you. Those were my accomplishments.” I pause. “And how did you know?”

“I’ve followed your success. You spoke at the ceremony, didn’t you?”

The year I finished my undergraduate degree, I was asked, along with two other nontraditional students, to give a speech at the commencement ceremony. The university wanted us to paint them as a progressive institution, embracing of difference and alternative paths. The fact that Keller can still follow me, however benignly, triggers the paranoia that sits under my skin like an implant.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “No bugs. I saw an article in the Chronicle . I meant to write to Mills, in fact. I thought your story might be of interest to the alumni quarterly.”

“I’m glad you didn’t. My story isn’t yours to hand out.”

Keller opens his mouth as if to speak, then closes it again. He looks at his lap, his lips pursed in what is either a gesture of contemplation or a small smile. I wonder, suddenly, if he’s slipping, his mind fraying with age. In that case, it could be difficult to get much from this visit at all.

“Sylvie,” he says quietly. Then he stands, wipes his hands on his apron, and walks toward the kitchen. “Can I get you anything else? Something to eat? A piece of fruit?”

“I won’t be staying long.”

He waits in the doorway to the kitchen.

“Fine. A piece of fruit.”

He returns with an apple and places it on the table in front of me. Then he settles back into the recliner again.

“I’ve been afraid of this,” he says. “Afraid you’d come to me. Not for my sake — you can ask me whatever you like, and I’ll answer you. But I doubt there’s anything I could say to give you the closure you want.”

“You can let me be the judge of that,” I say. But already I feel the wind stilling inside me, sails beginning to fold in defeat.

A faint ticking noise comes from the kitchen. Through the open archway, I see an octagonal wooden clock. The hands point to the place where five o’clock should be, but the numbers are heaped in a jumble at the bottom of the clock’s face. At the top, in block letters, are the words WHO CARES?

“I want to understand how it happened,” I say. “I want to know how I did what I did.”

“I doubt I can tell you anything that you don’t already know.” He takes off his glasses and rubs his nose — that old, familiar gesture. “During the day, your subconscious mind was muffled. But at night, when it took over, your consciousness was no longer fully accessible, and your subconscious reigned. Your subconscious had, so to speak, outrun your consciousness — outsmarted it.”

“I tried to figure out whether I was dreaming. I thought I must have been, because I kept seeing Meredith. How was that possible?”

Keller raised his eyebrows.

“Sleepwalkers can interact with the real world, but visual hallucinations aren’t uncommon. You were dexterous and agile, clearly able to communicate, but you were still asleep. It stands to reason that your mind would incorporate some things that were real and some that were not. That’s part of the reason why the disorder can be so dangerous.” He sighed. “But you were on the brink of lucidity. If you had only stayed with us until the end of the semester — even another month — I think you would have achieved it.”

“Yeah? And what would have happened then?”

Keller’s eyes were far away. He stroked the skin beneath his chin.

“My guess is that an opportunity would have been created — space for your conscious and subconscious minds to reconcile. Once you became consciously aware of your subconscious activity, your sleep disorder could have resolved — and, aired in the aboveground arena of the consciousness, your repressed urges might have followed suit. But if I knew with any certainty, I doubt we’d be sitting here now.”

“No. You’d be the head of the neuroscience department at a cushy university, wouldn’t you? Sitting in a choice office with a spectacular campus view? And where would I be?”

Keller doesn’t blink. “In the office down the hall.”

“That’s absurd. You really think you would have gone to the university, put out a press release, told them your most successful experiment revolved around your assistant? The scientific community would have laughed in your face. And there’s something else I don’t understand.”

Keller is quiet. He watches with interest as I inhale and begin again.

“There were too many clues. That’s what I keep thinking about — how I didn’t figure it out sooner. You knew I was assigned to the file reorganization project, but you didn’t hide Meredith’s file. You asked me about my nightmares, and you had Gabe drop hints, ask me whether I was lucid or if I saw my hand.”

The hall falls into shadow as a cloud passes over the sun. Keller settles farther back in his chair.

“So I have this theory,” I say. “I think you wanted me to know about it. I think your time was running out, and you were getting impatient. So you nudged me. Dropped a hint here and there. Tried to get me to realize something I wouldn’t on my own.”

“We were experimenting,” says Keller, “with methodology.”

“Methodology. You should be jailed.”

His face still doesn’t change. But he crosses one leg over the other and clasps his hands, pulling his elbows toward the chair, as if retracting into himself.

“You’re lucky,” I say. “You’re lucky I still have a shred of loyalty to you. I can’t say why.”