Breakdown Lane, The (35 page)

Some nights, when I’ve had a frustrating day, a day of garbled words and knocked-over chairs, and a creamer that overflows the coffee cup while I watch my disembodied hand go right on pouring it, when I’ve sent Lang to her room because I deserved it, or had to miss Rory’s soccer game, I dream that I’m dancing. I dream the lights have come on, and I’m Odette, the swan princess. I fly onto that stage, and raise my arms, my ankle level with my forehead in grand battement. My fluttering leaps are effortlessness, in a way that they never really were in my waking life. My crossed hands, in the swan position, are poignancy in human form. I look out into the audience, and there is Leo, shaking his head in disgust when I can’t unfurl myself from my bowed pose, shrugging on his jacket, leaving the hall without looking back. I wake, and my hands are fluttering, but it’s because I tremor in the night, sometimes so much that I can’t sleep.

Then I reach for Matt, and wake him, even if I know he has surgery in the morning. I shake him awake and ask him, “Are we still married?”

And he mumbles, “Yes, Julieanne. We’re married. Go to sleep. We’re still married. I’m here.” If I’m lucky, I fall back into a kind of slumber, a sweaty and shuddering simulation of rest. I hold Matt’s leg, to make sure he hasn’t gone somewhere I can’t go.

But when I wake, in the morning, I can smell the coffee brewing. He’s still there. I’m still there. One more morning.

July 4, 2004
Cape Cod, Massachusetts

JACQUELYN MITCHARD is the author of
Twelve Times Blessed
,
A Theory of Relativity
, and
The Deep End of the Ocean
. She lives in Oregon, Wisconsin, with her family.

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Jacket design by Patti Ratchford

Jacket photograph © Lisa Spindler/Graphistock

Author photograph by James Schnepf