Dreamology (21 page)

ONCE, WHEN WE
were living in New York, my school took a field trip to Mystic Seaport, three hours away in Connecticut. The bus left at six a.m., so I woke at five, let myself out, and headed for the subway. As I walked, the sun barely rising above the city streets, I thought to myself how lovely it was. The whole city was dreaming. All was quiet on the street, but up there in people's beds, the possibilities were endless. Maybe there was even someone else out there like me, lucky enough to dream of their soul mate.

“It's over,” Margaret Yang says gently when we open our eyes, the room as quiet as the city streets that morning in New York, and the memory of it makes me want to burst into tears. “But you put up a good fight.” She looks from me to Max,
who has dropped my hand and is just staring at the ceiling, motionless. “You both did.”

One of the nice things about having people like Sophie and Oliver as friends is that when you don't feel like talking, they do it for you. It turns out that Max and I had missed quite a lot of action at Bartholomew Burns's dorm party the night before. Apparently some guy got so amped about his Monopoly win that he chugged a wine cooler, ripped off all his clothing, and went running through the campus naked . . . to be followed enthusiastically by everyone else. And upon returning to the house, one of those naked people walked back in and chose to profess his adoration for a girl, and got punched in the face by some drunk art major who was trying to impress her. That naked guy was also the guy who won Monopoly and started the whole naked run, and, yup, that guy who won Monopoly was Oliver, the drunk art major was Wallace, and the damsel in distress was, of all people, Sophie.

“I saved you,” Oliver says with a big stupid smile as he wraps an arm around Sophie's shoulders in the back of the car. Campus security was kind enough to jump-start us, free of charge, and it turns out that was all Max's station wagon needed, because she's a tough old lady. We're headed back to Boston, cows and sheep speeding by in a blur outside the windows. Then Oliver pulls Sophie's head to his chest. “Shh, my child,” he says. “Everything is all right. I'm here now.”

“My hero,” Sophie mutters, rolling her eyes. But since we've been friends as long as we have, I know something Sophie doesn't know yet. I know that she likes it, and she likes Oliver, too.

They try to ask us about Margaret and about what happened. I think they can tell something is off. We answer their questions to the best of our ability, but I mostly tune out. The whole world just seems so flat. So gray. The coffee we drink is less delicious, the leaves less electric, even though I know nothing should have changed. I sleep a lot, letting my eyes flutter closed, my consciousness drifting in and out, but I don't dream, and have trouble figuring out if I've slept at all. The only thing that helps me tell I did is waking up to see how many more miles we've traveled, and all the while Max is just sitting there silently staring at the road, turning the Motown up full blast.

I can't put my finger on it, but as we pull into town, despite there not being a cloud in the sky, it feels like there's no sun either. Over the past couple weeks the air has smelled like flowers, like every tree was sprinkling me with fragrance as I walked beneath it, but it doesn't smell that way anymore. Even the bricks of the houses seem less red. At a stoplight I stare hopelessly at an outdoor café, waiting for something strange to happen—for the waiter to start singing or the little dog in the sweater to start reading a book, or for someone to begin an incredible food fight. But nobody does. It's not that such a
thing definitely would've happened before; it's just that now there is no possibility it ever will again. I feel as if I've lost one of my senses altogether.

We drop Sophie and Oliver off at the Taj, because Sophie has a few hours to kill before her train and Oliver wants to give her a tour of the city. I know this is something I should be doing with her. She's my best friend. But I can't muster the energy, and she seems to understand.

“I'm still not sure I get what happened,” she says, standing on the sidewalk as I pull her scarf out of the backseat of the car and wrap it carefully around her neck. “But I know it's going to be okay. Whatever you are going through right now, I'm happy you have friends here. And you have Max. He'd never let anything bad happen to you.”

“I know,” I say, nodding. I want to give her a smile of reassurance. Sometimes you do that for the people you love. But I can't seem to find any smiles inside my mouth at the moment. “Hey, Soph?” I ask.

“Yes, Al?” she says, zipping my coat up a bit tighter.

“Thank you for coming. I miss you already,” I say.

“I miss you, too,” she says. “But I think we've proven we aren't going to let a little distance get between us. Besides . . . maybe I'll be back sooner than we think?”

She glances in the direction of the street, and I turn back to where Oliver and Max are standing by the car, shifting their feet and absently checking their cell phones.

“The new Helix 300 just came out today,” Max says, shoving his phone back into his pocket and not looking at Oliver.

“I saw,” Oliver says with a nod, looking at the windows of the Taj like they're HD television screens. “I'm still on the email distro, too.”

“Well, I'm dying to play . . .” Max says.

Oliver's face lights up, almost despite himself, and then he takes a wary glance at Max.

“If you . . . might wanna join sometimes . . . I dunno,” Max finishes, unsure.

Oliver shuffles his feet. “I'm not sure . . .” he says dismissively. But then he smirks. “I've picked up some new techniques since the ninth grade. You think you can take it?”

Then Max throws his head back a little and laughs. “Try me,” he says. And they shake hands as Sophie and I share a knowing look.

“So, are you guys gonna make out now?” Sophie asks, and Oliver chases her around the car, squealing.

Max tries to make conversation as we drive to my house. I can tell he's happy. He and Oliver are going to be friends again. Max and I aren't going to go insane. All the drama is over. Why can't I be happy, too? Why can't I shake this hopeless feeling inside of me?

“Do you feel it?” I ask him, when we're standing outside my house. He leans up against the car's side door, his arms
crossed. A few schoolgirls walk by, turn back to glance at him, and start giggling. Max is oblivious to the fact that they are even there or that he looks like an LL Bean boyfriend.

“Feel what?” Max asks, but he sounds wary.

“I know this sounds stupid, but it's just . . . not the same,” I try to explain.

“What's not the same, Alice?” Max asks. There's a warning in his voice. “We should be happy about this . . . We've fixed it like we wanted to, and you and I are going to be okay.”

“But it's not the same,” I insist, unintentionally tapping my fingers against my leg.

“
What's
not the same?” Max asks again, sounding a little impatient.

“Everything!” I practically yell, throwing my hands in the air. I feel like I'm going to start crying.

At this, Max clenches his teeth, and looks away from me. “I'm the same.”

I sigh, not sure of what to say.

“Alice,” Max tries again, slower this time, trying to calm me down. “I know we lost the dreams. But we were afraid of that because we didn't want to lose each other. And I know we won't. Nothing's going back to normal, because nothing was ever normal to start with. This is our new beginning, Alice, and it's going to be better than it was.” He reaches to pull me to him, but I step away, clutching my hands inside my coat pockets.

“But that's just it,” I say. “Nothing was ever normal. It was magic, Max. Don't you remember? Before the dream bleeding, before everything went off track. And now the magic is gone. There's no going to bed anymore knowing that something amazing is going to happen.”

“But, Alice, it wasn't real,” Max says.

“It was real for me.”

“And what about me?” Max says. “Things may have changed, but I'm still here, and you being like this, you're basically telling me that's not good enough. That the real me isn't good enough.”

I don't know how to tell him that he's wrong. That I love him. But I also loved the boy who thought everything was an adventure. Who pushed me down a staircase on a foam boogie board and chased me through the hallways of the Met throwing Oreo cake at my face. “I know, you're here now,” I say instead. “But for how long?”

Max shakes his head, blinking. “What does that mean?”

“You've done it before!” I say. “One day you're my dream boyfriend, the next day you're with Celeste. One day you're my friend, the next you're not. One day you're kissing me at the Gardner, and the next you're saying it didn't mean anything. What about the next time that happens? Except this time, I won't have a dream to go back to. I'll be alone.”

Max stares at me in shock. “I love you, Alice,” he says. “I can't believe that's how you feel about me, after everything
we've just been through.” Then he walks back around to the driver's side. “I don't want to fight about this anymore. Let me know when you're ready to live in the real world. With me.”

Max slams the door and drives off.

“SO, TELL ME,
how are you?” Delilah Weatherbee says to me as she exhales some hookah smoke into the middle of her office.

“Are you sure we should be doing this?” I say skeptically. “You are technically an authority figure.”

“It's all natural and non-addictive,” she states. Then she adds, “Besides, you look like you could use it, and nobody comes up here anyway.” On the second point, she might be right. In all the times I have come to visit her, I have never noticed a single other person around. And on the first point, she is definitely right. It's almost a week after my fight with Max and I am in a “whatever gets you through the day” kind of place. Sometimes it's frozen yogurt, other times it's punk music, and
sometimes it's just lying hopelessly on the sofa spooning Jerry as I stare into the fireplace. And on this occasion it is smoking hookah with my college counselor. Anything to provide temporary relief from the unimaginable agony coursing through my heart.

He still isn't speaking to me. No snide remarks in psych or looks in the hallway. He carries on for the most part like I'm not even there, except to pick up a pencil I dropped in class one time, and set my phone gently next to my tray in the dining hall two days ago, when I'd left it in the food line. But in each instance, he turned away without a word, all proud shoulders and head slightly upturned. To the majority of the school, nothing has changed. Nobody else knows about Maine. But they know he broke up with Celeste, and they know he isn't talking to me.

It's on me. He put himself out there, and I still can't wrap my head around it. The idea of this new beginning, as he said. The uncertainty of what it means for us. It's one thing to withstand this new, dreamless world alone, but it's another thing entirely to try and do it with Max. It hurts too much.

Celeste, meanwhile, is fine. Better than fine. She's already started dating some architecture major at one of the local colleges and is hardly around anymore. But when she is, we are starting to talk again. Still, I would be all alone were it not for Oliver, who is my eternal savior, eating with me in the dining hall, Segwaying next to me as I walk to class. And now that
he's fallen for Sophie, our friendship can proceed without any more complications.

I sigh and put the metal mouthpiece to my lips and inhale. At least one thing in my life isn't complicated.

“I can't help but feel you're dodging my question,” Delilah observes as she watches my long, drawn-out exhalation. And she's right again.

“I'm fine,” I say.

“You don't seem fine,” she says. “Have you given any more thought to the questions I asked you at your last visit? How you are choosing to define yourself at this time in your life?”

“I guess I just don't understand why everyone is so desperate for me to know everything. Who I am, what I want to do. I'm only sixteen. Why should I?” I say. “Since when is a sixteen-year-old supposed to hold the keys to the future?”

“Nobody is asking you to know that,” Delilah says. “All anyone is asking is for you to start trying to figure it out. And there's nothing very scary about that, is there?” she asks.

“No.” I shake my head. “That actually doesn't sound very scary at all.” I understand what she means now. We have to try to move forward. Otherwise, how do we expect to get anywhere?

When Max drove off that day, I just stood on the empty sidewalk, watching the lights flash from green to yellow to red and back again, wondering what had happened. How did it all go from wrong to right to worse than it had ever been? How
could Max accuse me of not actually loving him, when he's the only one I ever wanted?

What he doesn't seem to understand is that it's not about him. It's about the dreams. The dreams were what I could count on. Where I could go when nothing else was going right. Back in New York I wasn't allowed to paint my bedroom a color other than ugly eggshell white, so I hung up twinkle lights. That's what the dreams did for my life. I covered it in patio lights so none of it seemed as bad. The dreams were where I could always count on being happy . . . where I could always count on
him
.

Max said I don't know how to live in reality, and maybe he's right. Maybe I need to take down the lights and stare the eggshell in the face.

When I walk into the house after school that day, the first thing I see are my father's legs sticking out from beneath the sofa, as Jerry looks on with a concerned expression. Things keep getting weirder and weirder around this place. Last week when I came home he was rigging a giant basket to a rope that extended all the way to the top of the staircase, so he could hoist Jerry up and down.

“For his knees,” he explained, as though it was perfectly normal, as Jerry stood off to the side, eyeing the contraption warily. “He's not getting any younger. This way he can go where we go with ease.”

The man needs friends.

“Dad?” I call out now. “Are you okay?”

At the sound of my voice my father wiggles his body backward and pops his head out, clutching Jerry's tennis ball in one hand.

“He lost it again,” he explains, before handing the ball to a patiently waiting Jerry, who takes it and drops it, bouncing it to himself for a moment before losing it under the sofa again. My father's shoulders slump. I start tapping my fingers against the side of my leg to a made-up rhythm as I psych myself up for the question I need to ask.

“Hey, Dad, did you happen to hear back from Madeleine as to whether we'll be seeing her on this trip?”

“Great question,” my dad says, getting back down on the floor and searching under the sofa again. “Not entirely sure on that yet.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“I'm just not sure if she's going to have time between the conference and all the travel,” he starts to ramble, but the end of it gets cut off, muffled by the sofa.

My father, a grown man, is actually hiding from me. I tap my fingers faster. This is harder than I thought it would be.

Let me know when you're ready to live in the real world
, I hear Max say.

Screw it
, I think, and I lie down on the ground, too, so both
my father and I are on our stomachs with our heads stuck under the sofa. Behind us I hear Jerry make an anxious whinnying noise.

“Alice, what are you doing?” my father asks.

“Dad,” I say. “Look at me. The conference is in five days. Have you heard from Madeleine at all?” I ask. “Did you even reach out to her?”

“I wish you would call her
Mom
,” he tells me again.

“I would be able to do that if she'd been one,” I say. And he closes his eyes for a moment, as if I have pained him. “Dad,” I say, “Mom left us. She left us for monkeys, and she's not coming back. We have to accept it, and we have to talk about it.” As I peer at my father in the dim light under the sofa, I consider that perhaps, for us, this is our womb. The place we feel covered enough to share how we really feel. Like a person going into a fetal position, or Jerry taking his treats under the dining room table to eat them in peace.

Eventually, my father nods. “That sounds like an excellent idea, Alice. How about we do it over some cake?”

“That depends,” I say. “Is it edible?”

“I always knew she wasn't coming back,” my dad says as he digs his fork into a surprisingly moist piece of red velvet. “But it was so much easier to deny it than to come to terms with the kind of person she truly was. The kind who could desert her
family, her husband, and most of all, her daughter.” He pauses. “It was easier to ignore that fact than to confront the idea that I never really knew her at all.”

“That must have been hard,” I say, taking a sip of coffee.

“It must have been hard for
you
,” he says, placing a hand on mine, and this time he's not so quick to remove it. “You were so young. I know I failed you in this, Alice. I know she caused the nightmares, but I should've been able to stop them. I should've been able to make you feel safe. But I didn't want to talk about it, and you were alone. And I'm sorry.”

I tell him it's okay and take another bite of cake, chewing slowly. He managed to get the texture right this time, but he also seems to have added twice the salt and half the sugar. This conversation makes me feel so much better, but it still doesn't make me feel totally right. There's still one apology I'm missing.

“It means a lot to hear this from you, Dad. I just wish I could hear it from her,” I admit.

“Well, maybe
you
should email her,” he suggests. “At this point, what's stopping you?”

I get up and start clearing our plates without thinking. No way was I going to email Madeleine. She was the mother. That was her job. But then, for what must be the fortieth time today, I think about Max.

Slowly I set the plates down in the sink, grab my bag, and head for the kitchen door.

“Where are you going?” my dad asks. “Was the cake that bad?”

“It was the opposite of bad,” I lie. “It was delicious. But now I have an email to write.” I pause in the doorway, then walk back to give him a kiss on the cheek. “That was a good talk, Dad. We should have them more often.”

In response, my father smiles widely, adjusting his glasses a little bit. “I'd like that very much,” he says.

It's time to take down the patio lights.