Хлоя Бенджамин - The Anatomy of Dreams

We walked down a strip of land beside the Yahara River and set up camp near a clump of picnic tables. It was the first day in the forties we’d had all year. Small, slushy puddles pooled in the grass.

“I don’t know anything about bocce,” I said, holding a hand over my eyes as Janna opened the large bag. I was keeping close to Gabe, my fingers wound with his; I felt desperate as a schoolgirl with a first boyfriend.

“It belongs to the boules sports family,” she said. “Closely related to pétanque and bowls, with a common ancestry that dates back to ancient games played during the Roman Empire.”

She turned the bag upside down and a group of heavy-­looking, brightly colored balls fell out in a heap. I stared at her dumbly.

“All you really need to know,” said Thom, picking one of them up, “is how to throw a ball.”

Thom suggested ladies and gents teams, not couples, so I found myself standing with Janna as Gabe threw the jack across the field. I was relieved I hadn’t been paired with Thom, but I was nervous around Janna, the way some people are with big dogs; if she were in a toothy mood, it seemed, she could drag me around by the hair. The boys were blue and we red. We took turns heaving our bocce balls toward the jack. I thought I’d struggle to throw mine more than a few feet, but as it turned out, Janna and I were evenly matched. By noon, each team had bowled five times, and we were one point ahead of the boys. If they’d been more focused, they might have played better, but Thom and Gabe were horsing around in a way that reminded me of the boys at Mills. It was part play, part viciousness: Gabe cutting Thom off with a swift kick to the shins or racing him to the farthest tree, their pants splattering with sludge.

Janna leaned against one hip as we waited for them to return. Her thin legs were encased in thick brown tights and dwarfed by a pair of quilted snow boots.

“Sometimes,” she said, “I think Thomas has homosexual tendencies.”

Thom and Gabe careened toward us. They seemed to be racing, but then Gabe dropped behind Thom. In a swift, subtle movement that only I saw, he hooked his ankle beneath Thom’s right leg. Thom skidded forward, his legs splayed, before tumbling to the ground like a calf.

“Fucking hell,” said Thom, unharmed but irritated. He clambered up to a standing position, a clump of mud on his chin, as Gabe ran ahead. “What was that for?”

“Well,” said Janna. “Not so much anymore.”

Why was it impossible for me to see her as she was? Whenever I came close to Janna, she seemed to change form with the ease of an optical illusion. Even now, I see her in the girls who attend the private school near my apartment—in the Cheshire flash of their smiles or the legs that begin at their waists. Janna had once been a girl, and what kind of girl had she been? I assumed she’d been the kind I’d always feared: slippery, shrewd, one who would tie your shoelaces together if you weren’t looking or poke you with tweezers and hairpins. But what if she had been a girl who sat pressed up against the whir of the laundry machine in her parents’ basement reading books about plants? If I’d known her as that girl, perhaps I wouldn’t have been able to do what I did. The more I made Janna a hologram, the more she seemed to haunt me, and the less it seemed possible that things could be the other way around.

As we walked home, Janna asked Gabe about the state of the dogwood trees they’d planted. The trunks had become withered and stunted, and neither of us knew whether they would survive the winter. Thom slowed, falling in step with me. There were ten feet or so between us and the others.

“Good game,” he said, looking ahead.

I nodded. Something fluttered in my chest with the crazed helplessness of a brochure caught under a windshield wiper. He swayed closer to me, and our arms brushed. I wondered if he had been drinking: his breath had the metallic tang of alcohol.

“I finished the next section of my dissertation,” said Thom. “The second chapter. I’ll tell you, it feels good to be getting some traction. Like I’m wearing cleats now, and not slippers. The big questions start to quiet down, and the difficulties are more procedural. Where to insert this piece of evidence, that citation. What will convince you. Though perhaps I shouldn’t be so confident. I’m only halfway there.”

He chuckled, a tinny sound. His little monologue had taken up most of the block, and I was both grateful and flabbergasted. The abrupt lead-in, his assumption of my interest, seemed to suggest we had talked about this before.

“So we aren’t speaking?” he asked.

I froze. What he said had jogged my memory of our phone conversation on Christmas. How he had rung late in the night, and I had told him not to call again.

Janna and Gabe had reached the driveway between our houses. They turned and waited—Janna leaning on the skinny pole of one leg, Gabe watching us with feigned disinterest.

“Fine,” said Thom. He edged ahead of me, limping slightly from his fall. I was panicked, lockjawed. Thom’s face was injured, but his back was bent with a weary, almost feminine nobility, like that of an old horse.

That night, I startled awake after another dream of him. This time, though, I hadn’t been able to catch it; I remembered only Thom’s face, golden and disembodied, his forehead drawn with the same wounded uncertainty I’d seen that morning. I swung my legs around the side of the bed and walked to the bathroom. The light above the sink wavered as I splashed cold water on my chest and dried off with a towel. When I went back to bed, Gabe was propped up on one side, waiting for me.

“What was that?” he asked.

“What do you think?” I was overheated and irritable. “Bad dream. Why? Did I wake you?”

Gabe didn’t answer. He was staring at me with a queer expression, his head cocked to one side.

“Did you see your hand?” he asked.

“What?”

“You know. Did you see your hand?” He adopted Keller’s throaty baritone. “ When I see my hand in my dream, I will know— ”

“Stop, Gabe. I’m not a patient.”

“Might make ’em feel less real, is all.”

He was smiling, but his eyes were cool and evaluative. It was a look I’d seen many times in Keller. I rolled over, away from him. For minutes, there was no movement from his side of the bed. Finally, he sighed and shifted, the old bedsprings squealing beneath him, and I was able to close my eyes.

The next morning, I woke to the sound of low voices downstairs, dulled by the bedroom door. When I walked into the kitchen, I saw Keller and Gabe at our round breakfast table, their heads bent toward each other.

“Sylve,” said Gabe. He sat up.

I crossed to the coffeemaker. There was a fresh cup waiting for me.

“Run out of cereal?” I asked Keller.

He laughed, a surprise. Usually he would have tried to tell me off. He wore a ragged sweater, tattered around the wrists, and a pair of jeans. I had never seen him in jeans before.

“I made you coffee,” said Gabe.

“Thank you. I saw.”

“How’d you sleep?” Keller asked.

“Fine. Why?”

“Gabriel mentioned you’ve been having nightmares.”

Keller’s face was pleasant, but his body was still: his back stiff, his coffee cup in a firm grip.

“I’m fine.” I poured my coffee and put the pot back on the burner, where it hissed. “Thanks for your concern.”

As I reached for the sugar bowl, the phone began to ring.

“That goddamn phone,” I said. “It rings and rings and there’s never anyone there.”

“Is that so?” asked Keller, frowning.

I strode to the phone and picked up the receiver. No noise. I hung it up again. It had happened three times in the past week.