Escaping Dreamland

by Charlie Lovett

  Oh God, thought Robert. Here we go. He had been deflecting this conversation like an Olympic fencer for months now. “I have work to do,” he said.

  “What work? You don’t do any work. You’re thirty-four years old and all you do is sit in your office watching YouTube. I would think you were having an affair, but you never leave the apartment.”

  “We went out to lunch yesterday.”

  “We went out to lunch last week,” said Rebecca. “And you barely spoke to me. You just sat there poking at your Reuben. It feels like you’re hiding from me.”

  “I’m not hiding,” said Robert.

  “You are. You’re just like your mother. You always say she’s been hiding in Florida ever since your father died. You may be on the West Side instead of in Boca Raton, but you’re still absent.”

  In fact, Robert’s mother had called him on his cell just last week, but he wasn’t about to tell Rebecca that. He had let it go to voicemail and hadn’t returned the call. He never did. For so long his mother had not wanted to talk to him that when she had started calling after his book came out, he found the thought of reconciliation frightening.

  After Robert got the advance on his novel and Rebecca landed a particularly lucrative client, they had moved into the top floor of a brownstone on Seventy-Fourth Street between Columbus and Amsterdam. The room the real estate agent had described, a year ago, as “great for a nursery” had become Robert’s writing studio—though Rebecca was right, there had been precious little writing going on in it lately. And now . . . well, why shouldn’t he talk to Rebecca? Why should he feel so alone and yet so unwilling to reach out to the one person who might break into his solitude? He thought he knew the answer, but he couldn’t say it aloud. “I’m just . . . dealing with some . . . issues,” he said at last.

  “Okay, fine,” said Rebecca. “You have some issues. We all do. But aren’t we a partnership? Don’t we love each other? That means we help each other with those issues. You can talk to me, Robert. I’m here for you.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “And yet you still say nothing.”

  “What do you want from me?” said Robert in a tone of resignation. He knew the answer and he felt a stab of pain accompany the knowledge that he could not give it to her. He had been here before—never in a relationship as promising as the one he had with Rebecca, but, in some way or other, with every girl he had ever dated. He always pushed them away.

  “I want you from you,” she said, laying a hand on his arm. “I just want you. I miss you.”

  “I’m right here.”

  “Somebody’s here, but it’s not Robert Parrish, at least not the Robert Parrish I fell in love with. He was a man who told me stories. When was the last time you told me a story?”

  Robert didn’t answer, not only because the question made him uncomfortable, but because he honestly could not remember.

  “I remember lying in bed the first night we moved in together,” said Rebecca, “and you told me a story about your freshman roommate getting up to go running every morning at six. It was almost the end of the semester when you discovered he was just sitting in a coffee shop for two hours and making you feel lazy.”

  “Not much of a story.”

  “That’s not the point. You once said telling stories is what makes us human. And you used to tell me stories every night in bed. I’ve fallen asleep to your voice a thousand times. And then a few months ago you just stopped. And now I fall asleep alone to the sound of our favorite movies in my earbuds. What happened, Robert?”

  He should have told her right then. She had asked a simple question, and he should have answered. He could have been brave but instead he had been a coward. It was the carousel all over again.

  Even before the official publication of Looking Forward, the interviews began. First small newspapers and magazines, then, as it became clear the book would make a splash, more and more prestigious outlets. And every one of those journalists asked some version of that question: What books inspired you? And even while he lied and said that A Farewell to Arms or The Sound and the Fury had changed his life, the real story, the story he had spent two decades trying to suppress bubbled up inside him. That story began with the answer to the ubiquitous question. He certainly wasn’t going to tell it to some book reviewer he had never met; he couldn’t imagine telling it to Rebecca. Even the idea of confessing it to a therapist turned his stomach. He had tried therapy twice—once during graduate school and once just before he met Rebecca, but it had only proven how good he was at hiding the truth. When Rebecca came into his life, he felt so happy that he figured he didn’t need a shrink anymore, that he could just forget the story of his past and embrace the future. This time, he told himself, the relationship would work. But now, all those journalists poking at his past and waking up the story he had tried so hard to leave slumbering had left him unable to tell any other story, unable to move forward.

  “Maybe I ran out of stories,” he said at last.

  “I doubt that,” said Rebecca. “You know, I watched The Princess Bride last night.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “It’s the first time since we met that I’ve watched it without you.”

  “Did you do the voices?” said Robert. One of their favorite activities was to put on a much-loved movie—Princess Bride or Casablanca or North by Northwest—and mute certain scenes, reciting the dialogue from memory.

  “I wasn’t going to do Inigo without you doing Westley,” she said.

  The first time Robert told Rebecca he loved her he hadn’t used the traditional words. They had been dating about six months and were walking back to his apartment after seeing a film when Rebecca suggested they stop off for a bowl of clam chowder. He knew she loved The Princess Bride—they had already watched it together twice. So, he took a deep breath, took her hand in his, looked her in the eyes, and said, “As you wish.” She knew exactly what he meant and answered simply, “Me too.”

  “It wasn’t much fun watching it without you,” said Rebecca.

  “I was working,” said Robert. He felt his face flush red with the guilt of the lie. He had been up until two solving crossword puzzles—something they had always done together. She dropped her hand from his arm and turned away. Robert knew that she knew he was lying, that something had shifted in the room.

  “Remember the last time we watched that movie together?” she said. “It was right before your book came out and afterward we talked into the night about all the ways we might end up riding into the sunset. We might get married or not. We might have children or not. We had the excitement of possibilities.”

  “We still might get married,” said Robert. “We might have kids.” At the moment little terrified him more than these two prospects, but perhaps he wouldn’t always feel this way. Perhaps someday he would be ready to share with his own children the stories of his childhood—those books that had once meant so much to him. If he could do it without waking the monster.

  He had read so many of those books, and it had been so long ago, that he couldn’t remember specific details of all the stories, but he did remember the old-fashioned language, especially the almost obsessive need by the writers never to use the word said. The Hardy Boys and Tom Swift never said anything. They shouted, ordered, cried, exclaimed (they cried and exclaimed with astonishing frequency), whispered, muttered, announced, stammered, retorted, demanded, sneered, declared, and (his favorite once he discovered its double meaning) ejaculated. By the time Robert reached twelve, he would have to stifle a laugh every time a character “ejaculated loudly.”

  The habitual crying and exclaiming arose from the dangerous situations in which the heroes found themselves in nearly every chapter. Tied up by bandits, balanced on runaway vehicles, attacked by wild animals, swept away by floods, thrown off cliffs, trapped in fires—the teenage heroes of his favori
te books always had plenty of reason to cry and exclaim.

  “. . . and that’s one of the reasons I thought you would make a great father—because you’re such a good storyteller. Besides . . . are you even listening to me?” said Rebecca.

  Cried Rebecca, he thought, but he did not answer because he could not bear to say, “No.”

  “Maybe I should just go to Bradley’s for a while,” said Rebecca. “He at least pays attention when I talk to him.”

  “You’re always going to Bradley’s,” said Robert. “Maybe I’m the one who should worry about your having an affair.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” said Rebecca. “You know Bradley is gay.”

  “Yes, and I know you’ve never gotten over that fact. That was practically the first story you told me. ‘I was in love and then he told me he was gay and broke my heart.’ ” Robert knew he should apologize before the words were even out of his mouth. So why didn’t he? Why didn’t he tell her why he was acting so distant? He felt as if he were observing himself from across the room. He had seen this movie before, had watched himself ruin a relationship because of his stupid fear of opening up, of admitting his own faults and weaknesses and history. He had regretted those train wrecks, but nothing like the way he would regret losing Rebecca. Yet still the idiot across the room kept driving toward the cliff.

  “Why should you care, anyway?” she said. “You and I haven’t had sex in three months.” The gloves were off now, and Robert ached to rewind the conversation, to find the spot where it had gone off the rails. But he knew the problem was deeper than one conversation. And it was true—the first aspect of their intimacy to drop by the wayside as he became more and more troubled by his secrets had been their sex life. Somehow, he didn’t feel right reaching for her in that way when he was holding back so much. He had missed it to begin with, had caught furtive glances of Rebecca stepping out of the shower or gazed at the curve of her shoulder as she slept. But as he slipped deeper into solitude, he no longer replayed those images in his mind. He forgot about sex as he forgot about so much else.

  “We could . . .” said Robert, not even able to muster the enthusiasm to finish the sentence.

  “Could what? Do it right here on the floor?”

  “Well, not right now,” he said, “but maybe sometime.”

  “You really don’t get it, do you?” she said. “It’s not about the sex—that’s just a symptom. It’s that you’re not connected to me anymore, and I don’t understand why. I don’t understand what I did.” She began to cry, and her pain cut into him like a knife. The last thing he wanted was to hurt Rebecca. She was his true love, for God’s sake. Yet even as she stood there weeping and he knew he should go to her and enfold her in his arms he felt rooted to the spot. The secrets he held weighed him down. She waited for a minute, and then for another, but he knew she would not wait forever.

  “I want to love you, Robert,” she said at last, drawing a sleeve across her face, “but I can’t if you won’t let me in.” She picked up her purse off the table and walked past him to the short hallway that led to the front door. Robert felt his pulse would burst his heart out of his chest as she passed him and he caught a whiff of her shampoo.

  “When will you be back?” he said, as she opened the door.

  “What makes you assume I’m coming back?” she said coldly.

  “Jesus, Rebecca,” he said, feeling sweat break out on his forehead and a lump churn in his stomach, “it’s just a fight.”

  “It’s not just a fight,” said Rebecca. “I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

  Her exit line hit him like a punch to the gut. She was right—he had stopped telling her stories and watching movies with her and reading books together. They had become roommates. And now he might lose even that. He could feel her in every detail of the apartment—not just the décor, but the neatly arranged food in the refrigerator, the copy of Architectural Digest that lay on the coffee table, the note in her handwriting on the message board by the front door: Pick up dry cleaning Tuesday after 4. He loved the way she drew her y’s, with the tail curled back under the previous letter. Would this ordinary note be the last place he ever saw her handwriting? Even as he stared at those words, he felt her presence receding from the apartment, from his life, as if her spirit had waited a few minutes after her departure to pass through the door. And that was when he knew. He had to tell her the only story that really mattered. It might not work; it might be too late, but it was his only chance to get her back. He had to tell her. But how?

  IV

  New York City, Trinity Churchyard,

  The Night the Horns Blew

  Magda, Tom, and Eugene might have met on that Sunday night in lower Manhattan, but then so might tens of thousands of other New Yorkers if it hadn’t been for that infernal racket.

  Thomas De Peyster had not enjoyed his previous visit to lower Broadway, surrounded by the financial institutions that pumped wealth into the families of Fifth Avenue. A few weeks ago, his father had dragged him through the frenzied streets at midday to a bank that Mr. De Peyster hoped his son would one day inherit. But the noise of that outing could not compare to what now surrounded him—a raucous din such as he had never heard in this neighborhood or any other. He crossed Cedar Street, passed the eight-story Boreel Building, and found himself at the corner of Trinity Churchyard, assaulted on every side by the rattling of ratchets, the bang of blank cartridges, the shouting of voices, and especially the roar of thousands of tin horns of every size. Tiny toy horns buzzed like mosquitoes while some as long as four feet honked like foghorns. Despite the cold weather, the crowd had thickened north of Cortlandt Street, and Tom had muscled his way through to the churchyard in order to hear the chimes of Trinity Church that would welcome in 1900 with the ringing of airs ranging from “Old Hundredth” to “America” and “Yankee Doodle.” He needn’t have bothered, for no matter how close he came to the old church he could hear nothing but the sound of those celebrating around him. Tom didn’t care. He loved the crowd, loved the noise, loved the energy and excitement with which New York was ready to greet the 1900s when they arrived in an hour or so. For five cents, he purchased his own tin horn from a street vendor and joined in the cacophony.

  Though Tom had frequented the nighttime streets of lower Manhattan for years, he had never come dressed in formal evening wear before. But tonight was not about blending in; tonight all strata of New York society mixed as equals, and so Tom had come directly from the concert at Carnegie Hall without bothering to change out of his tailcoat. His parents and his last remaining unmarried sister, Alice, had attended the Grand Sunday Night Concert at the Metropolitan Opera House at Thirty-Ninth Street and Broadway. His father never missed a chance to attend the opera, claiming that regular attendance at the Metropolitan was an important part of being what he called “in society.” Since Tom had distinctly mixed feelings about being in society, and since, to his father, he was currently a “grave disappointment,” Tom had begged off the family excursion in favor of Paderewski’s only New York appearance with an orchestra this season. The great pianist’s solo performances of Chopin had been lovely, but Tom liked the Beethoven concerto best of all. He had slipped out before the second encore, while the audience still cheered for more, in order to make his way to Trinity Church. He loved living in a city where he could hear, in the space of two hours, a sublime performance of some of the greatest music ever composed and the roaring dissonance of ten thousand tin horns.

  Every few minutes a cable car would ooze its way down Broadway, parting the crowd with the help of the Metropolitan Police, who would good-naturedly shoo away young men delighting in dodging the oncoming vehicles. Often, in the wake of the cable car, Tom would see carriages—almost certainly on excursions from his own neighborhood—with liveried coachmen and footmen picking their way through the crowd. As one of these passed him, he saw the nose of some gent flattened against the carria
ge window. Tom suddenly remembered his final trip home from Mr. Sargent’s studio, and how he had glimpsed boys playing in an alley through the window of his family’s carriage. How happy he was to be on the other side of that window now, no longer gawking at people in the street, but here among them, a part of their celebrations.

  There had been some debate in the press about whether the twentieth century would arrive in a few minutes or not until 1901. Germany had welcomed that century a few hours ago; France would wait another year. Tom’s father was of the opinion that, considering the amount of money he had spent to print new banking forms replacing the number 18 with 19, it had better be a new century.

  Few in the crowd seemed to realize when midnight arrived, being focused on their noisemaking and associated revelry, but Tom had positioned himself to see not just the clock on the church tower but also the doors to old Trinity herself. As 1900 came into being, a bright glow burst from the church windows, the bronze doors were flung open, and a shaft of light crossed the threshold. Tom saw the altar and the pulpit bathed in light for only a moment and then the doors swung shut and the church returned to darkness.

  The revelers were not quick to disperse, but, satisfied that the new year, and perhaps even a new century, had arrived, Tom began to make his way uptown and managed to hop on a crowded cable car and ride up Broadway and Seventh Avenue to the terminus at Fifty-Ninth Street. From there he walked around the south end of the park and to the De Peyster home on Fifth Avenue. This would be the century, he thought, in which he would finally break free from it.

  Magda Hertzenberger had never been in a crowd bigger than the congregation of St. Mark’s Lutheran Church or the Monday-morning shoppers of Avenue B. It had taken some convincing to get her parents to allow her to join this throng. At seventeen, she didn’t think she should need permission to do anything, but her father insisted that so long as she remained unmarried, she would live by their rules. Ridiculous, she thought. But when Mr. and Mrs. Fischler had invited her to join them, Mr. Hertzenberger relented, and at an hour when she would normally be fast asleep, Magda had found herself on a cable car headed downtown. They met several other members of the congregation at the cable car stop, and when they disembarked a few blocks from Trinity Church, Mr. Fischler spent fifty cents on tin horns for everyone.