“Few weeks ago?” he said. “I had this dream that I lived on a sex farm run by Carol Burnett.”
“A sex farm?”
“And here I thought you were going to give me shit about Carol Burnett.”
“We’ll get there,” I said, my laughter a release; I hadn’t realized how nervous I was. “But really—what is a sex farm?”
“Not a clue. In the dream, of course, it was clear as day—sorry, couldn’t resist—but when I woke up? Damned if I could tell you.”
He rode home with me on BART, even though I told him I wouldn’t let him stay over. (“I gave you the wrong impression, that night at the club,” I said as we hurtled through the pitch-black underground, our hands in our own laps. “I usually don’t step on a guy’s feet until at least the third date.”) But when we climbed into bed, our bodies tenting the sheets, it was he who buttoned the top of Hannah’s dress back up and suggested we just sleep.
Gabe has a child, I said to myself. Gabe has a son. Beside me, Jesse’s breath was deep and slow, his body exquisitely unfamiliar. I pictured Gabe’s bulldog jaw, his broad palms, in miniature—pictured a baby with someone else’s nose and a troll tuft of hair on Gabe’s shoulders, reaching for the ceiling as they walked. The two of them building a house of Lincoln Logs or splashing in the tub, surrounded by rubber creatures and soap scum. I knew he would tend to the kid with the same dedication he did our research. He would stay up late reading parenting books; he would teach the boy to spot poison ivy, to catch bugs in jars, to turn over stones. He would point to the busy, roiling worlds beneath them: the ants seaming the mud, the dogged wildflowers, here a newt. He would take the tender, green body in both hands and hold it up to the light, for however long it would stay there.
21
MARTHA’S VINEYARD, MASSACHUSETTS, 2010
To the east of Martha’s Vineyard lies the small incorporated island of Chappaquiddick, accessible only by way of a three-car ferry. Technically a part of Edgartown, Chappaquiddick feels separate, wilder and less traveled than its mainland counterpart. The roads are mostly unpaved, and the houses are farther apart. Dune grass and poison ivy braid along its coast. In the relative absence of human life, the beaches have flourished: they crawl with hermit crabs and ticks, the water full of foot-long, iridescent bluefish. Perhaps people were scared off by the Chappaquiddick incident of July 18, 1969, when Senator Ted Kennedy drove off Dike Bridge into the rocky water below—where his only passenger, a teacher named Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned.
Digital modes of tracking and detection have made it more difficult for someone like Keller to live off the map. I found him on Instant Checkmate, a website that gives paid subscribers access to the phone number and address of anyone in the United States. With Keller’s equal appetites for intrigue and solitude, I was not surprised to find him on this island. His house is in the northwest corner of a large, grassy knoll. A woman bicycles down the road as I sit in the car, the engine idle. When she passes, the street is empty.
I put the car into park and turn off the ignition. It is four thirty in the afternoon, the sun hazy and diffuse. I’ve checked out of the motel in Edgartown. After this, I’ll turn around again and begin the long journey back west. Just as I’m about to unlock the door, a wave of heat rolls through my body, and my vision goes starry. It only lasts a second, but it’s enough to knock the air out of me. I count to ten, inhaling slowly, and then I take out my cell phone. Hannah picks up on the first ring.
“I can’t do it,” I say. “I’m terrified. I just had a fucking hot flash.”
“Jesus, Sylve, what is it with the hot flashes? You better not be going menopausal on me.” But there is warmth in her voice, and I can practically see the dimples in her cheeks, distinct as fingers pressed in dough. “You can do it. I’m positive. You wouldn’t have made it all the way to his freaking house if there was a shred of doubt in your mind. Remember why you’re there.”
“Why am I here?”
“To get closure,” she says. “To show him that you’re different now, that you’re strong. That you’re not hiding or ashamed.”
I nod, though I know she can’t see me, and look at the house. It’s smaller than many of the others in this area, beach mansions made New England–modest by their lack of distinction, but it has the same white trim and cedar shingles. They haven’t yet turned to silver, which means the house can’t be very old. I wonder how recently he moved here. Did he build the house himself? To calm myself, I picture Hannah sitting on the paisley couch we found at a church rummage sale with a bowl of cherry tomatoes in her lap, looking out at the used bookstore on Shattuck. Hannah with a leg tucked underneath her and a red bandana holding her hair back. A brush of flour on her nose, her old cut-off jean shorts.
“Sylvie?”
“I’m here.”
“Good. Was worried you might have fallen asleep on me.”
“Screw you,” I say, laughing, and something in my chest is gratefully dislodged. I think of quarters shaken out of a vending machine, their palmable brilliance. Something to keep with me. “Okay. I’m going in.”
“That’s my girl,” says Hannah. “Oh, and one more thing. If it’s appropriate? Give Keller a kick in the balls from me.”
“I can pretty much assure you that won’t be appropriate.”
I pop the lock on the door and step out, smelling the salt in the air, the sweetness of the warm grass.
“Stranger things have happened,” Hannah says.
When we hang up, I don’t let myself hesitate. With the sun hot against my arms, I walk along the wooden fence that separates the hill from the road. Though I could easily climb over it, I decide to go through a low gate, latched but unlocked. The grass on the knoll is uncut, swaying knee-high with the breeze, and there is no path to the house. Does Keller want to deter people from coming here? Or does he rarely leave the house himself? There is a small gray door with a lion’s head for a knocker. But before I can reach for it, noises of movement come from inside the house: slow and creaking at first, then faster and deeper in pitch, as if the building is waking after a long hibernation. The doorknob begins to shake, coughing rust, and then the edge of the door is pulled back into the house.
And there he is. I calculated on the ferry that he must be fifty-seven. He has changed, I see now, in ways that only someone close to him would notice: a thinning of the face, a slight droop in the skin around his eyes.
“Ah,” he says. He takes off his glasses and squints; his irises, a clear and watery blue, seem to widen as the lids contract. “Sylvia.”
He smiles. At once I feel a rush of affection for him. He wears a pair of scrub pants and a collared shirt, a canvas apron wrapped around his waist. This is, in part, what I have come for—proof that he has aged, that he is no longer almighty.
Then he puts his glasses back on, and the old feelings return: the resentment, the terror—the sense that he has visited me, and not the other way around. All feelings I’ve come here to do away with.
“You’ve found me,” he says, “how sly of you”—and now he is opening the door all the way, ushering me into a front hall filled with the fading natural light of afternoon and the dank smell of soil.
“I should have given you warning.”
“No, no, that’s all right. You’ve every right to surprise me.”
But he doesn’t look surprised. He is, I can tell, in one of his lighthearted moods. I expected him to be caught off guard, to ask me why I’ve come. Instead, he is playing host, as though I’m simply an old friend who has stopped by on the way elsewhere.
“Sylvia,” he says again, leading me into the living room. “What a pleasure. Can I get you a drink? Water? Or something else?”
“Water is fine.”
This side of the house is mostly in shadow. He walks through a low entryway into the kitchen, and from there he flicks on a light that brings the living roo
m into view. There is a small brown couch, a reclining chair, and an old table piled with books. Everywhere else, though, are plants: trees potted in the corners, succulents hanging from the ceiling, flowers climbing the walls. Their leaves are pungent and fleshy, grotesquely ripe. All over is the close, moist smell of growth. I can’t help it; I cover my nose with my sleeve.
Keller returns to the room and hands me a glass of water.
“So you’ve found my perennials. Gorgeous, aren’t they? They get just enough sun. I’ve never had a green thumb. But the terrific thing about succulents”—he takes a seat in the reclining chair, gesturing toward the ceiling—“is that they prefer neglect. Truly: they thrive on it.”
His affect is still one of ease. But he’s talking too much, too quickly. I see now that what I thought were the contours of the chair is actually the imprint of his body. He fits perfectly inside it, like rubber in a mold.
“I can’t stay for long,” I say. “But there are a few things I want to say first.”
Am I imagining it, or does a sudden blankness come over his face—an instinctive absence, the chalkboard wiped clean?
“First,” I say, “I don’t want to talk about Gabe.”
“Very well. He told me he tried to reach you—years ago, it must be now.”
“He wrote a note.”
“And you didn’t reply.”
It isn’t an accusation, but it’s not a question, either—just a scientist’s habit of blank-filling and estimation.
“No. I didn’t.”
He waits for me to continue. I shift on the couch, warm. Despite the weather, I’ve worn pants.
“I drove past Snake Hollow yesterday,” I say.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” He smiles. “It’s hideously changed, of course. I’d rather you be able to remember it as it was.”
“I’m sorry you sold it. It was Meredith’s, wasn’t it? Your wife’s?”
“It belonged to her family, then to her. And when she died, it belonged to me.”
“They didn’t mind when you gave it up?”
He raises an eyebrow.
“It was their suggestion, I’m afraid. Too many bad memories associated with that house—and worse, perhaps, too many good ones. They were in favor of selling it right after she died. I held on a little longer. But everything, good and bad, must come to an end.”
Keller cocks his head. His lenses flash with light.
“Does that make it less alluring to you?” he asks. “No family drama, no bitter struggle?”
Again, the clinical voice—the weighed curiosity of a professor, imbued with just the right amount of mildness. Still, I’m startled into silence. He stands and walks to the kitchen. When he returns, he holds a green watering can with a bulging belly and a thin, long spout.
“She was very much like you, in fact.” He waters the soil around a ficus, dirt splattering his hands. “Very inquisitive, especially when it came to her own mind. A touch of obsessiveness—later, of course, more than a touch of it. And the capacity for self-destruction.”
“Everyone has that capacity.”
“You’re right. But in some of us it goes unfulfilled.” He stands the watering can upright and wipes its nozzle on his apron. “Still, I wasn’t referring to your disorder. More, I would say, your inability to let go.”
“And you don’t think that’s what Meredith did?”
“My wife didn’t kill herself to let go. She did it to hold on—to life as she knew it, to herself as she was.”
The surprise is wearing off, and now I’m eager. He has given me license; I’ve wanted a fight.
“Is that why you left San Francisco? Holed up in a small town in Northern California and began to teach high school students? Or was it that they were easier to control?”
“It’s true that I left the university when my wife died.” His voice is clipped, and I can tell I’ve prodded him. “I thought I could live a quieter life at a place like Mills. But it began to feel cowardly, such an obvious lie. So I returned to my research. I tried to do it in her honor. Moving forward, all while respecting the past—it’s a delicate balance, Sylvie, and I don’t claim to have mastered it.”
“In her honor,” I say. “Or was it that you got inspired again? At Mills, you had a whole new group of subjects. Stu Cappleman. Me. You’d be nothing without your patients, but the saddest part is that you haven’t helped any of us. You want to know what Meredith and I have in common, Adrian? You. You wrenched us open and used your tools to rummage around in our minds until everything inside got squiggly and confused. It’s just like what happened to Anne March. You left us worse off than we started.”
“Oh, Sylvie.” Keller frowns in disappointment, as though I’ve failed an easy test. “That’s very simplistic. I thought I’d at least taught you that life is never so black and white. Besides, look at you now. You’re, what—thirty years old? You went back to school. You seem to be thriving.”
“Which has nothing to do with you. Those were my accomplishments.” I pause. “And how did you know?”
“I’ve followed your success. You spoke at the ceremony, didn’t you?”
The year I finished my undergraduate degree, I was asked, along with two other nontraditional students, to give a speech at the commencement ceremony. The university wanted us to paint them as a progressive institution, embracing of difference and alternative paths. The fact that Keller can still follow me, however benignly, triggers the paranoia that sits under my skin like an implant.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “No bugs. I saw an article in the Chronicle. I meant to write to Mills, in fact. I thought your story might be of interest to the alumni quarterly.”
“I’m glad you didn’t. My story isn’t yours to hand out.”
Keller opens his mouth as if to speak, then closes it again. He looks at his lap, his lips pursed in what is either a gesture of contemplation or a small smile. I wonder, suddenly, if he’s slipping, his mind fraying with age. In that case, it could be difficult to get much from this visit at all.
“Sylvie,” he says quietly. Then he stands, wipes his hands on his apron, and walks toward the kitchen. “Can I get you anything else? Something to eat? A piece of fruit?”
“I won’t be staying long.”
He waits in the doorway to the kitchen.
“Fine. A piece of fruit.”
He returns with an apple and places it on the table in front of me. Then he settles back into the recliner again.
“I’ve been afraid of this,” he says. “Afraid you’d come to me. Not for my sake—you can ask me whatever you like, and I’ll answer you. But I doubt there’s anything I could say to give you the closure you want.”
“You can let me be the judge of that,” I say. But already I feel the wind stilling inside me, sails beginning to fold in defeat.
A faint ticking noise comes from the kitchen. Through the open archway, I see an octagonal wooden clock. The hands point to the place where five o’clock should be, but the numbers are heaped in a jumble at the bottom of the clock’s face. At the top, in block letters, are the words WHO CARES?
“I want to understand how it happened,” I say. “I want to know how I did what I did.”
“I doubt I can tell you anything that you don’t already know.” He takes off his glasses and rubs his nose—that old, familiar gesture. “You were unusual; you had both the fine motor skills of a sleepwalker and the vivid dreams of an RBD patient.”
“Parasomnia overlap disorder,” I said.
Keller nodded. “A fascinating case. As a sleepwalker, you were remarkably skilled: your mobility and speech as advanced as I’ve ever seen. An observer—uninformed, of course—might have thought you were awake.”
“I tried to figure out whether I was dreaming. I thought I must have been, because I kept seeing Meredith. How was that possibl
e?”
Keller raised his eyebrows.
“Sleepwalkers can interact with the real world, but visual hallucinations aren’t uncommon. You were dexterous and agile, clearly able to communicate, but you were still asleep. It stands to reason that your mind would incorporate some things that were real and some that were not. That’s part of the reason why the disorder can be so dangerous.” He sighed. “But you were on the brink of lucidity. If you had only stayed with us until the end of the semester—even another month—I think you would have achieved it.”
“Yeah? And what would have happened then?”
Keller’s eyes were far away. He stroked the skin beneath his chin.
“My guess is that an opportunity would have been created—space for your conscious and subconscious minds to reconcile. Once you became consciously aware of your subconscious activity, your sleep disorder could have resolved—and, aired in the aboveground arena of the consciousness, your repressed urges might have followed suit. Lucidity could have made you aware of the moment when you left your bed for the neighbor’s house, for example; ideally, you would have been able to stop yourself. But if I knew with any certainty, I doubt we’d be sitting here now.”
“No. You’d be the head of the neuroscience department at a cushy university, wouldn’t you? Sitting in a choice office with a spectacular campus view? And where would I be?”
Keller doesn’t blink. “In the office down the hall.”
“That’s absurd. You really think you would have gone to the university, put out a press release, told them your most successful experiment revolved around your assistant? The scientific community would have laughed in your face. And there’s something else I don’t understand.”
The Anatomy of Dreams Page 27