Dream Girl

by Laura Lippman

  “What’s going on with you, Claude?”

  “Not much.”

  As an adult, Gerry has had basically two male friends: Thiru and his college roommate Luke, who didn’t survive his thirties. The other men he knows are acquaintances, peers, rivals. Gerry likes to think himself above the fray, a true novitiate, dedicated only to the higher cause of literature, but who is he kidding? He keeps score like all the writers of his generation. Like every writer of every generation. Who got there first, who has had the most staying power, who’s going up, who’s going down, who has a Pulitzer, who has a National Book Award, who’s on the long list for the Nobel. Over the past few years, many of these men have taken to grumbling privately about political correctness, or what they prefer to call the “overcorrection” of the literary world. “If I weren’t a white man,” Gerry has heard more than one white man say. In their view, every prize given to a non–white man is an act of tokenism. Gerry’s not one of those judgy begrudgers.

  Or is he? In the firm, racially indistinct grasp of Claude, he feels he should apologize. First and foremost for wondering about Claude’s ethnic origins, which he knows is wrong, but he can’t help pondering if there’s a story there. Isn’t that a good thing, having this kind of curiosity about someone who’s obviously not like you? Claude is built like the Indian in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. You wouldn’t call him an Indian now, of course, but that was what he called himself; okay, it was what Ken Kesey had him call himself. Did that text now need to be changed? Did Nurse Ratched deserve a sympathetic portrayal similar to the one Jean Rhys provided for Rochester’s first wife? Actually, that’s not a bad idea; Gerry has no reverence for Kesey, nor for the Beats. Someone should retell the events of Cuckoo’s Nest from the POV of the nurse, surrounded by insane, subversive men, probably fearful every moment of the day. When he saw the film adaptation of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as a teenager, there was a rumor that many of the institution’s patients were played by men who were, in fact, patients in a mental hospital, and it became a guessing game of sorts. Then it turned out that, no, they were all actors.

  “What’s new with you, Claude?” he asks. Even if he weren’t in this fragile state, Claude would make him feel very old, very weak, and very pale.

  “They say a storm’s coming.”

  “Ah, Baltimore in the grip of a winter storm. It’s a kind of lunacy. Did you grow up here, Claude?”

  “No.”

  “Where, then?”

  “Eastern Shore. Down near Salisbury. Try again.”

  Gerry does not want to say It hurts, but—it hurts. It hurts and feels ridiculous, doing exercises with these small dumbbells, which happen to be pink. It’s important, however, that his upper body not lose muscle tone while he’s lying here, that his good leg be worked. He has avoided bedsores so far, but he lives in dread of them, having Googled the images.

  “Do you live far from here? Are you worried about getting home if the storm actually comes?”

  Claude doesn’t answer and Gerry feels ridiculous. Nothing worries Claude.

  “Are you married, Claude?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Dating, living with someone?”

  “I’m okay.”

  Gerry is about to introduce the topic of Phylloh, then stops himself just in time. What could be more racist than suggesting that his racially mysterious physical therapist ask out the racially mysterious front-desk receptionist? It’s exhausting, meaning well in a world that assumes you’re a pig because of the body you’re born into, but then—it’s so much worse for people born into other bodies, he has to concede that. If only the culture weren’t moving so fast. Jokes that were fine five years ago are offensive now. Words are being outlawed and weaponized. Is it so wrong to think that overweight people could take better care of themselves? What’s objectionable about words like blind and deaf? Disabled, sure, he gets why that’s offensive, but some terms are simply factual descriptions.

  Claude never asks him questions beyond “Can you do this?” or “Did you exercise on your own this week?” But it makes sense to be impersonal when one’s job is so very personal. If he had to choose, Gerry would vote for Claude’s stoic silence over Aileen’s inane chatter, which seems designed to push his buttons. She chats, chats, chats about famous people as if they were known to her, repeatedly asks him about television shows he does not follow. And, oh God, her interest in the weather is exhausting. Or, more correctly, she never exhausts the topic of the weather and that exhausts him. He should get ready for an especially tedious day today.

  Sure enough, Aileen arrives at seven, complaining of the roads, her commute, the slippery sidewalks of Locust Point. (She has to park on the street, as does Victoria, but only Aileen complains repeatedly about the lack of a space in the building’s garage for her.) She serves him his dinner, a can of low-sodium chicken soup, a salad, tea. Aileen’s salads are a thing of wonder, by which Gerry means they are so awful he can only wonder at the effort it requires. He has encouraged Victoria to buy those salad “kits,” yet somehow iceberg lettuce keeps showing up on his plate at night, soggy and sad, loaded down with bottled dressings. Even Gerry can make a simple vinaigrette. He has tried to dissuade Aileen from serving him these salads, but she makes a big deal of “sharing” her food with him, as if she is conveying a favor. Her nightly meal is usually this salad alongside a Dinty Moore stew or a microwaved entree. Food may not be important to Gerry, but he does prefer it to be edible.

  He finishes his dinner, texts for Aileen to take his tray away. Strangely, she would prefer for him to shout for her, but he doesn’t like screaming. He grew up in a household where there was almost never any screaming, not even during the most vicious fights. His parents were hissers. Maybe it would have been healthier to scream every now and then, but he never got the knack of it, although if he had stayed with Margot much longer he might have been forced to master the art. His three wives were essentially passive women, as conflict-averse as he is. Margot, however, loves drama. She likes big fights followed by sex that feels like an extension of the fight, which can be at once exhilarating and a little frightening. On more than one occasion, she had dropped to her knees almost midsentence and begun clawing at his fly, yanking at him, as if to prove how much power she had over him. And she did have that particular power; when Margot got going, she was hard to beat on that score. She was, after all, a professional courtesan, a woman who had put in her ten thousand hours. It was the only reason, he supposed, so many men had put up with her, although none had ever married her. Margot told him she had never wanted to marry before she met him and maybe that was true, or maybe it was what she said to each man, hoping to make him feel special. Thank God he had gotten away from her.

  He drifts off. Sleepiness is a side effect of oxycodone, but it could be boredom as well. He should be writing. Then again, what better reason not to write than recovery from a major accident? No one, not even Thiru, can blame him for not being productive right now. As a young man, he disliked sleep, tried to get by on five hours. There was so much to do, so much to write, to read. Maybe it’s all the television he’s watching now. As jumpy and jittery as the news is, it also seems designed to be soporific, the way it repeats itself over and over. The text running along the bottom of the screen, the anchors’ voices. The president today. The president today. It’s like a nursery rhyme. Which, come to think of it, was the source for the title of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Do people still read Kesey? Probably, because the book is sentimental. Will people read Dream Girl fifty years after its publication date? A good movie version could ensure its legacy, but, oh, how Gerry dislikes the irony of that.

  The snowstorm, which has been gentle and pretty, begins to pick up steam. The winds are howling around the building. He remembers his mother screaming in the night. The only time she ever screamed, as far as he knows. But she moaned, during snowstorms such as this, knowing it would be on her, and later Gerry, to shovel the driveway and sid
ewalks, to try to get to work. Their street had a downhill slope and she learned how to park so she could roll carefully down to Bellona Avenue, which had a shot of being plowed early, whereas their side street was never cleared. It was a good sledding hill, too, he remembers—

  The phone is ringing. Where is Aileen, why won’t she answer it? He picks up, assuming he will hear a warning from Baltimore Gas and Electric.

  “Hi, Gerry. It’s Aubrey. I wanted to check on you, make sure you’re okay in this storm.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Aubrey, Gerry. Are you okay in the storm? Do you need anything?”

  “I have your number on caller ID and I am going to report you. This is harassment. This is—”

  She laughs and, damn, if the laugh doesn’t sound like Aubrey’s as he described it in the book, a laugh that was never laughed in ridicule or unkindness.

  “Anyway, I’ll be coming to see you soon. So if you do need anything, let me know.”

  “How could I—” But she has hung up.

  He bellows for Aileen. She lumbers up the stairs, full of apologies. “I don’t know what happened, but my dinner hit me hard, I had to—”

  “The caller ID,” he says. “Check the caller ID.”

  She has yet to reach the kitchen phone when the power goes out.

  1966

  “IS IT SAFE?”

  “Don’t be a scaredy-cat. Everyone else has done it.”

  But everyone else has a sled. And sleds, even in this deep, hard-packed snow, didn’t go as quickly as Gerry’s toboggan. He wasn’t quite eight, one of the smallest kids out here, and his toboggan was taller than he was. Why did he have a toboggan anyway? Why were his parents so bad at even the smallest normal things?

  It was the third day of a historic blizzard, the second day that school had been canceled. The children in Gerry’s neighborhood had set up sentries so they could sled down Berwick, which meant crossing what would normally be an unthinkably busy Bellona Avenue. But the world was still, quiet except for their shouts. No one was driving anywhere and if they were, they crept along so slowly that there was time to bail should a car approach. The adults, dull creatures, were inside, their enthusiasm for snow used up by the second day. Yesterday, a Monday, the fathers and even some of the mothers had joined the children. Not Gerry’s mother, because she was not that kind of a mother. And not Gerry’s father, because he was out of town for business. But he would have been out here if he hadn’t been stranded in Iowa. Gerry was sure of that. Pretty sure. His father was the one who had given him the toboggan, after all.

  Resigned, Gerry dragged his toboggan about midway up Berwick. Some sidewalks had been cleared, but not his own, not with his father gone. A neighbor had offered, but his mother had refused. “Gerald will do it when he returns.” She had managed to shovel out a small path to the back door, so Gerry could come and go without tracking snow into the front rooms. Even in the early part of the storm, when the falling flakes had been so pretty and no one had a sense of how severe it would be, Gerry’s mother had wanted no part of it. She had shut herself up in her room, blinds drawn, as if her refusal to acknowledge the snow would cow it. But the silent treatment worked no better on the storm than it did on his father.

  Gerry had to go to the bathroom, but no one would believe him. Even if they did, he would have to come back or suffer the consequences at school, assuming there was ever school again. Wallace Wright, on the noon news today, had suggested there would be no school at all this week. His mother had turned off the set and started to cry. But they had everything they needed as far as Gerry could tell. Food, toilet paper, coffee, the amber liquid his mother poured into her coffee at night. He didn’t give his mother any trouble. That was the phrase instilled in him by his father, who traveled so much. “Don’t give your mother any trouble.” When he was younger, a nursery school baby, he had imagined a box with a bow. But what, exactly, would be inside a box of trouble? He didn’t know and he didn’t want to find out. Gerry didn’t give his mother any trouble.

  She missed his dad, he guessed. He had been supposed to fly home Sunday and now he kept calling and saying his flight was canceled. Every day so far.

  The trick to riding a toboggan was getting it to stay still long enough to get on it. Gerry had learned to lay it perpendicular to the path, but one still had to move quickly. He liked the fact that one rode sitting up, wind in the face. It slowed one down. He tucked his booted feet beneath its curve. There was a steering mechanism of sorts, but how one used one’s weight was more important. His father had taught him that last winter.

  The toboggan almost got away from him, so eager was it to head down the hill. So Gerry jumped on, even as the sentry began to yell the word no one had yelled all day.

  “Car. CAR.”

  Then: “No.”

  Oh thank God, Gerry thought, not that he would ever say such a thing out loud.

  “TRUCK!”

  It was a postal truck. A red, white, and blue mail truck, although the white part was almost invisible against the backdrop of snow. And while it was not going that fast, it was going fast enough. In fact, it seemed, from where Gerry was on his flight down Berwick, as if the truck, should it fail to stop, was moving at the exact right speed to crush him. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night—THANKS U.S. POSTAL SERVICE.

  All the boys were screaming now and Gerry realized there must be some girls, too, for there were shrill, high-pitched squeals among the screams and shouts. Some of the boys seemed merely excited at the prospect of carnage, but all the girls were genuinely terrified. Girls were nicer than boys, except when they weren’t, like when that big girl from the third grade, bigger than anyone in the second grade, asked Gerry what his father really did. The girls did not want Gerry to die, or maybe they just didn’t want to see his blood and guts.

  He was approaching Bellona now, the postal truck bearing down on him, and he understood that the truck could try to put on its brakes, but it would only become more unreliable and there were kids everywhere. The truck had no choice but to keep going. So he leaned hard, as hard as he could to the left, and the toboggan miraculously took the tight turn without spilling him, perhaps because his boots were, in fact, stuck under its curved hood. It felt almost as if the toboggan rode along on one side, in a ninety-degree angle to the street, but surely that wasn’t possible.

  At any rate, the truck didn’t hit him and everyone cheered and it was the best moment of his life. He had wet himself inside his snowsuit, but no one could see that. Not even his mother seemed to notice when he came home an hour later and peeled out of his clothes, reveling in that strange sensation of feeling, with that first exposure to heat, as if he were colder than ever. He tried to figure out a way to tell his mother the story without upsetting her—Don’t give your mother any trouble—but he couldn’t find the words.

  February 21

  GERRY STARES into the swirling snow outside his window. While his corner of Baltimore is dark, he can see that other sections still have power. Maybe that means his power will be restored sooner. But it also could mean there is less urgency about responding to an outage confined to Locust Point. For as long as Gerry can remember, Baltimore has had complicated conspiracy theories about city services—whose streets get plowed first, whose 911 calls receive priority. Despite the few glamorous high-rises that nestle here, the new town houses clustered around them like little chicks, Locust Point is not a place with clout. Would it matter if the Olympic swimmer actually occupied his expensive apartment?

  Aileen sits nearby, in a low-slung easy chair, her plain face big and bright as a full moon thanks to the light from her tablet, where she appears to be playing some game that involves stabbing the screen with her index finger over and over again. The lower floor of the apartment made her uneasy in the dark, so she asked if she could stay up here with him after she groped her way downstairs to retrieve the tablet. Actually, she didn’t even ask, come to think of it, just asserted that she wou
ld sit up here and keep him company. Gerry didn’t want the “company” she offered, but now that she’s here, he’s miffed that she’s making no effort to engage him. Normally he would be asleep by now, but it’s almost too quiet to sleep. He feels more alert than he has in weeks. Did he miss his medication in the aftermath of the power going out? His pain doesn’t seem to be affected, which is to say it’s not good, but it’s no worse than usual.

  “It’s getting cold,” Aileen says, looking up at last. “Without electricity, the heat doesn’t work. We’ll have to leave if this goes on much longer.”

  “Leave how?” It would require a gurney to get him out of the apartment, a sobering thought. What would happen to him if there were a fire or some other catastrophic event? “Go where?”

  “A hotel?” She sounds almost hopeful, as if a hotel is something she would like to experience. Must Gerry end up caring for all the women in his life, even the ones paid to care for him?

  “Do the elevators work? It’s hard to imagine me walking down twenty-four flights of stairs.”

  “I think the big things in the building are on some kind of backup system,” she says.

  But what if they’re not? What if he is stuck here and something happens? What then?

  The phone rings, but only the Swedish one by his bed. Unlike the fancy extensions in the kitchen and his office and his bedroom proper, this one can still operate without electricity.

  “Would you get that?” he says to Aileen.

  “You can reach it.”

  “It’s not a question of reach. I want you to hear—I want to know—just answer it.”

  Watching Aileen get out of the chair is almost like watching a Buster Keaton film, except it’s anything but silent. The comedy of her movements is accompanied by a startling symphony of grunts, groans, coughs. The phone continues to peal. It must be on the ninth or tenth ring when she finally picks it up.