Хлоя Бенджамин: The Anatomy of Dreams

Jesse: a cherub’s curly, close-cropped hair, a small space between his two front teeth. When he smiled, the skin around his eyes crinkled like cellophane. He grew up in the Hudson Valley, the only child of parents who owned an outdoor theater company, and ran as far away as he could: all the way to law school in California, where he’d never have to sweep another stage or play Mustardseed—“Five lines, yellow tights”—when there weren’t any child actors available. I worried that he was too normal for me, but when I told him I’d spent most of my twenties doing experimental dream research, he looked up from his mussels and grinned.

“Few weeks ago?” he said. “I had this dream that I lived on a sex farm run by Carol Burnett.”

“A sex farm?”

“And here I thought you were going to give me shit about Carol Burnett.”

“We’ll get there,” I said, my laughter a release; I hadn’t realized how nervous I was. “But really—what is a sex farm?”

“Not a clue. In the dream, of course, it was clear as day—sorry, couldn’t resist—but when I woke up? Damned if I could tell you.”

He rode home with me on BART, even though I told him I wouldn’t let him stay over. (“I gave you the wrong impression, that night at the club,” I said as we hurtled through the pitch-black underground, our hands in our own laps. “I usually don’t step on a guy’s feet until at least the third date.”) But when we climbed into bed, our bodies tenting the sheets, it was he who buttoned the top of Hannah’s dress back up and suggested we just sleep.

Gabe has a child , I said to myself. Gabe has a son. Beside me, Jesse’s breath was deep and slow, his body exquisitely unfamiliar. I pictured Gabe’s bulldog jaw, his broad palms, in miniature—pictured a baby with someone else’s nose and a troll tuft of hair on Gabe’s shoulders, reaching for the ceiling as they walked. The two of them building a house of Lincoln Logs or splashing in the tub, surrounded by rubber creatures and soap scum. I knew he would tend to the kid with the same dedication he did our research. He would stay up late reading parenting books; he would teach the boy to spot poison ivy, to catch bugs in jars, to turn over stones. He would point to the busy, roiling worlds beneath them: the ants seaming the mud, the dogged wildflowers, here a newt. He would take the tender, green body in both hands and hold it up to the light, for however long it would stay there.

To the east of Martha’s Vineyard lies the small incorporated island of Chappaquiddick, accessible only by way of a three-car ferry. Technically a part of Edgartown, Chappaquiddick feels separate, wilder and less traveled than its mainland counterpart. The roads are mostly unpaved, and the houses are farther apart. Dune grass and poison ivy braid along its coast. In the relative absence of human life, the beaches have flourished: they crawl with hermit crabs and ticks, the water full of foot-long, iridescent bluefish. Perhaps people were scared off by the Chappaquiddick incident of July 18, 1969, when Senator Ted Kennedy drove off Dike Bridge into the rocky water below—where his only passenger, a teacher named Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned.

Digital modes of tracking and detection have made it more difficult for someone like Keller to live off the map. I found him on Instant Checkmate, a website that gives paid subscribers access to the phone number and address of anyone in the United States. With Keller’s equal appetites for intrigue and solitude, I was not surprised to find him on this island. His house is in the northwest corner of a large, grassy knoll. A woman bicycles down the road as I sit in the car, the engine idle. When she passes, the street is empty.

I put the car into park and turn off the ignition. It is four thirty in the afternoon, the sun hazy and diffuse. I’ve checked out of the motel in Edgartown. After this, I’ll turn around again and begin the long journey back west. Just as I’m about to unlock the door, a wave of heat rolls through my body, and my vision goes starry. It only lasts a second, but it’s enough to knock the air out of me. I count to ten, inhaling slowly, and then I take out my cell phone. Hannah picks up on the first ring.

“I can’t do it,” I say. “I’m terrified. I just had a fucking hot flash.”

“Jesus, Sylve, what is it with the hot flashes? You better not be going menopausal on me.” But there is warmth in her voice, and I can practically see the dimples in her cheeks, distinct as fingers pressed in dough. “You can do it. I’m positive. You wouldn’t have made it all the way to his freaking house if there was a shred of doubt in your mind. Remember why you’re there.”

“Why am I here?”

“To get closure,” she says. “To show him that you’re different now, that you’re strong. That you’re not hiding or ashamed.”

I nod, though I know she can’t see me, and look at the house. It’s smaller than many of the others in this area, beach mansions made New England–modest by their lack of distinction, but it has the same white trim and cedar shingles. They haven’t yet turned to silver, which means the house can’t be very old. I wonder how recently he moved here. Did he build the house himself? To calm myself, I picture Hannah sitting on the paisley couch we found at a church rummage sale with a bowl of cherry tomatoes in her lap, looking out at the used bookstore on Shattuck. Hannah with a leg tucked underneath her and a red bandana holding her hair back. A brush of flour on her nose, her old cut-off jean shorts.

“Sylvie?”

“I’m here.”

“Good. Was worried you might have fallen asleep on me.”

“Screw you,” I say, laughing, and something in my chest is gratefully dislodged. I think of quarters shaken out of a vending machine, their palmable brilliance. Something to keep with me. “Okay. I’m going in.”

“That’s my girl,” says Hannah. “Oh, and one more thing. If it’s appropriate? Give Keller a kick in the balls from me.”

“I can pretty much assure you that won’t be appropriate.”

I pop the lock on the door and step out, smelling the salt in the air, the sweetness of the warm grass.

“Stranger things have happened,” Hannah says.

When we hang up, I don’t let myself hesitate. With the sun hot against my arms, I walk along the wooden fence that separates the hill from the road. Though I could easily climb over it, I decide to go through a low gate, latched but unlocked. The grass on the knoll is uncut, swaying knee-high with the breeze, and there is no path to the house. Does Keller want to deter people from coming here? Or does he rarely leave the house himself? There is a small gray door with a lion’s head for a knocker. But before I can reach for it, noises of movement come from inside the house: slow and creaking at first, then faster and deeper in pitch, as if the building is waking after a long hibernation. The doorknob begins to shake, coughing rust, and then the edge of the door is pulled back into the house.

And there he is. I calculated on the ferry that he must be fifty-seven. He has changed, I see now, in ways that only someone close to him would notice: a thinning of the face, a slight droop in the skin around his eyes.

“Ah,” he says. He takes off his glasses and squints; his irises, a clear and watery blue, seem to widen as the lids contract. “Sylvia.”

He smiles. At once I feel a rush of affection for him. He wears a pair of scrub pants and a collared shirt, a canvas apron wrapped around his waist. This is, in part, what I have come for—proof that he has aged, that he is no longer almighty.

Then he puts his glasses back on, and the old feelings return: the resentment, the terror—the sense that he has visited me, and not the other way around. All feelings I’ve come here to do away with.