Lydia Millet - How the Dead Dream

She would have loved you, he thought. Would she have loved you?

First she was here, then it could never be known.

At the office a well-dressed young man with wavy hair stood in front of him. He considered turning away again, but even that was too hard. Susan was out of sight. He walked past the young man at the front desk without speaking.

"Excuse me," said the man. "Excuse me. You can't go in there!"

"My office."

"What? Sir, you can't just go in there."

The young man got up and hovered beside him. He wore a strong aftershave.

"Mine. My office."

"Oh. Oh, I-sorry."

He could not wait; he passed by. He opened his door and closed it in the young man's face. The young man was doglike. For some reason neither people nor dogs expected you to close doors in their faces.

He did not intend rudeness, but it was crucial to raise the barrier speedily. With utmost speed.

"I'm very sorry for your loss," said the young man from the other side. The muffled voice trailed off.

Blinds were down on the windows. He walked over and raised one. Ocean in front, desk behind. Sturdy. The last time he had sat in the chair, behind the flat expanse of wood, she was living. He had not known the future; now he did. He was different in the full knowledge. He was different but the desk was the same.

Susan was there. She stood looking at him, her eyes filling.

"T.," she said, and came and put her arms around him.

He stood woodenly.

"I'm sorry," she said. "It must make it worse when people do this," and she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Are you actually here to work? Or are you just checking in?"

"In," he said, and nodded.

"OK. Everything's fine. I needed help, so I hired Robert for Julie's position."

"OK," he said, nodding again.

He went toward the door again.

"You already leaving? You want me to walk with you?"

He shrugged but she took his arm anyway and gently led him.

He went back to work, faded and listless but with the rudiments of function. His mother's psychiatrist had prescribed him antidepressants, which he was directed not to combine with alcohol. The pills took effect slowly and as a result the days stayed thick for too long, his limbs hard to move.

But he worked in order to keep up the pace and the focus, worked hard and steadily, and gradually the usual texture of rooms crept back-rooms, buildings, streets and the sky. In the office he watched as elements of the lobby lost their alien particularity. Turning to background again were the file cabinet, the phone, the television with ticker tape running across the bottom. In his own office was a relief map of the Mojave project; he put his hands on the hollow ridges of the mountains and felt the plastic peaks digging into his palms. He closed his eyes and pretended he had a bird's-eye view. There was no longer excitement in it, it was a dull extension of the already dull routine, but of course he would continue.

A few weeks later her mother left a message. There were still some of his possessions in her daughter's apartment and the lease would run out at the end of the month. He did not wish to go-whatever remained there of his he would gladly forget-but he had to, because the mother asked.

He went over at nighttime, because though night was more difficult than daytime it was also, if he could fall asleep early, more quickly done. In the dark the hardwood floor shone from a streetlamp outside the window; standing in the doorway he flipped a switch and saw there was nothing there but a pile of white cardboard boxes, neatly stacked.

He was flattened; he did not want to do anything. He stood waiting for the inertia to pass. He waited to be changed but nothing arrived to change him. He felt only restlessness, increasing. Finally he went inside, because time was slow without movement. There was nothing else to be done.

At the back of an empty closet shelf in her bedroom, his fingers scrabbling in the film of dust over the cracked wood, he found something. He pulled it out to look at it: a white tennis sock, half-tucked into itself. It had the shape of being peeled off in haste, tossed aside. He sniffed it-a very slight smell, maybe worn for a single hour, for one run on the beach. She ran beside the water, where the sand was damp. He breathed in the scent. This was what he had left.

He held it close to his chest as he left the bedroom. He placed his key with deliberate care on the kitchen counter; he laid the sock gently atop a box and lifted them up.

His mother liked to walk the narrow residential streets to her new church, the streets with their small overgrown gardens. Sometimes when it was late she asked him to go with her. Once she asked on a mild night; as soon as he stepped out his door he could smell the ocean.

Both of them were silent as they walked. His mother let her hands trail along the trumpet-shaped flowers that grew on vines along so many picket fences, so many gates. She said in a low voice how she loved the flowers here, the flowers and the trees. Los Angeles was a paradise of exotics, wild with succulents and shrubs and flowers, cornucopias. She gazed down into a bed of twisted aloe and it occurred to him that she had been close to Beth too, yet he had never acknowledged this.

"You took care of me," he said. "But no one took care of you."

"Of course they did, dear," said his mother, and reached up to touch the cross at her neck.

He slung his arm around her shoulders as they walked.

"But T., when I'm gone you'll be all alone," she said, and looked up at him from the crook of his arm.

"What are you talking about?"

"When I'm gone."

"You think I'll never meet another woman, huh?" he asked lightly, and jerked his arm minutely as though threatening a headlock. "Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"It's not that, honey. You're very good-looking. The girls have always run after you, even if you didn't notice. I'm talking about your soul, T. I'm afraid you'll always be lonely in your soul. In the core of your being."

"Isn't everyone?"

"T.! Of course not. That's why we have Our Lady."

"I'm glad you have the Lady."

"But I want to know, T., when I go, that you're under her protection too. That you're not outside. In the cold."

"You don't need to worry."

"I don't think it's enough to be confirmed. I think you have to stay close to the Lady. You have to love her, T."

"You want me to go to confession?"

"I'm not talking about tonight. I'm talking about eternity."

"You worried about the IHOP again?"

She stopped and looked at him, her face very small. Behind her was a window into a brightly lit kitchen, ducks and chicks in a porcelain row.

"I want you to be with the angels, T. I want you to be with the saints."

He studied her face, the furrowed brow. Without him, he thought-the thought hurt-she had nothing.

"When I can't be here anymore, honey… it worries me. I mean I lie awake about this. I want you to be with the Holy Family."

"OK. OK. I'll do my best. You don't need to worry about me. Please, OK?"

She consented to turn and resume walking. They moved out of the window light.

At the church he released her as they went in; she genuflected and he followed suit. He could see no one else save a teenager seated at the far end of a rear pew reading something. His mother lit a votive candle and prayed; T. sat down near the front and leaned forward, his arms on the back of the pew in front of him, resting his forehead. He was tired; he almost dozed, and when he raised his head again another woman had come out of the confessional and walked past him and was speaking sharply to the teenage boy. They left with him gazing idly at them, the boy trailing behind sulkily.