He looked at her shapely, still mysteriously youthful body and didn’t know what to say or do. Old age really is like a second kind of childhood, he thought. It had been so long since he’d done it, would he still know how?
“You’re not ready yet,” she said. “I just want you to know we can do this if you ever want to.”
“I’ve grown very fond of you,” he said in spite of himself. “But I still want my freedom.”
“You’re as free as you ever were. Freedom is an illusion—it doesn’t grow in nature—nature isn’t free. It grows in our minds like the idea of heaven or perfection, but it’s all an illusion that we generate inside ourselves, really.”
“Did Greta teach you that?”
“Yes, she did. We may have misled you about the magazine, but not about our philosophical society.”
She turned to leave but just before she opened his door (outside it he knew George and some other guards were waiting) he blurted, “I want to see my daughter.”
“I want you to also. You will.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“But don’t bring her here.”
“Don’t worry. She’ll never be a guest here. I promise.”
“Thank you,” he said, “for everything.”
The door opened and closed. He felt something melt in his mind or heart, he couldn’t be sure which. Could it be he was falling in love with a cult member, a slave of the house? He felt his eyes and discovered they were wet.
He remembered little of that night and later imagined he must have fallen asleep early. It was a strange sleep, deep but full of bizarre dreams and visions. Just before morning he entered a net of mists. He was running toward the water that he couldn’t see to catch up with his little daughter, who had gotten loose. “Melissa, Melissa! Come back,” he called out as he ran. Finally the mist disappeared. In front of him the sun was shining on a dazzling, emerald blue lake. Melissa was walking beside him holding his hand, first as a little girl, than as an adult, as she’d looked just before she left for California. They were talking easily about nothing in particular, and he was filled with an intense sense of joy.
He didn’t wake up from this dream right away as he would have in the past, but managed to luxuriate in it for a long time, as if it were a movie he was directing. When he woke up he thought immediately of Serena. Like a miracle, she’d made the dream happen. She kept her promise, he said to himself with a smile. Then he thought of his dream again. It was like a glimpse into paradise.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to the editors of the following publications, in which these stories first appeared:
Antioch Review
“The Dealer”
Confrontation
“Memo and Oblivion”
The Hopkins Review
“Caesar”
“Memorial Day”
“The Group”
Notre Dame Review
“The House”
Per Contra
“The Dolphin”
Pleiades
“Single Occupant House”
River Styx
“Mission Beach”
“The Justice Society”
Story Quarterly
“The Interview”
TriQuarterly
“‘Do You Like This Room?’”
My special thanks to Chris Cefalu, Edmund de Chasca, Doreen Harrison, Kimberly F. Johnson, Delia King, Barbara Lamb, Kelly Leavitt, and Greg Nicholl for their invaluable help.
FICTION TITLES IN THE SERIES
Guy Davenport, Da Vinci’s Bicycle
Stephen Dixon, 14 Stories
Jack Matthews, Dubious Persuasions
Guy Davenport, Tatlin!
Joe Ashby Porter, The Kentucky Stories
Stephen Dixon, Time to Go
Jack Matthews, Crazy Women
Jean McGarry, Airs of Providence
Jack Matthews, Ghostly Populations
Jack Matthews, Booking in the Heartland
Jean McGarry, The Very Rich Hours
Steve Barthelme, And He Tells the Little Horse the Whole Story
Michael Martone, Safety Patrol
Jerry Klinkowitz, Short Season and Other Stories
James Boylan, Remind Me to Murder You Later
Frances Sherwood, Everything You’ve Heard Is True
Stephen Dixon, All Gone: 18 Short Stories
Jack Matthews, Dirty Tricks
Joe Ashby Porter, Lithuania
Robert Nichols, In the Air
Ellen Akins, World Like a Knife
Greg Johnson, A Friendly Deceit
Guy Davenport, The Jules Verne Steam Balloon
Guy Davenport, Eclogues
Jack Matthews, Storyhood as We Know It and Other Tales
Stephen Dixon, Long Made Short
Jean McGarry, Home at Last
Jerry Klinkowitz, Basepaths
Greg Johnson, I Am Dangerous
Josephine Jacobsen, What Goes without Saying: Collected Stories
Jean McGarry, Gallagher’s Travels
Richard Burgin, Fear of Blue Skies
Avery Chenoweth, Wingtips
Judith Grossman, How Aliens Think
Glenn Blake, Drowned Moon
Robley Wilson, The Book of Lost Fathers
Richard Burgin, The Spirit Returns
Jean McGarry, Dream Date
Tristan Davies, Cake
Greg Johnson, Last Encounter with the Enemy
John T. Irwin and Jean McGarry, eds., So the Story Goes: Twenty-five Years of the Johns Hopkins Short Fiction Series
Richard Burgin, The Conference on Beautiful Moments
Max Apple, The Jew of Home Depot and Other Stories
Glenn Blake, Return Fire
Jean McGarry, Ocean State
Richard Burgin, Shadow Traffic
Shadow Traffic Page 24