The Dream of Doctor Bantam

by Jeanne Thornton

  Okay, she said. Is there anything else?

  Patrice exhaled.

  May I show you something? she asked.

  What kind of something? Julie said slowly.

  Something that I would like you to see, said Patrice. I think it may help you understand me better.

  Is it some kind of recruitment propaganda or something? asked Julie. I don’t want to see it, if it is, okay?

  I don’t know if it’s recruitment propaganda or not, said Patrice.

  Julie looked at her; she was looking at her feet, biting her lip, considering.

  I guess it could be considered recruitment propaganda, she said finally, and here she looked up, straight into Julie’s eyes, like a spark: if you’re convinced by it. Otherwise, it’s just something that’s interesting to me.

  Julie felt her cheeks flush. For some reason she kept trying to remember what color underwear she had worn that day, if she’d gone with boxers or classed it up a bit. But that was a stupid thing to think; nothing was going to happen. The cult girl was just baring her depressing soul or something; that was all that was happening.

  Okay, she said, and her voice came out quieter than she wanted it to.

  She followed Patrice back to the bedroom.

  I thought I wasn’t allowed in here, she couldn’t resist saying.

  You’re allowed in here now, said Patrice.

  She pretended to be surprised at how Patrice’s bedroom looked, and quickly went over to sit on the bed to get rid of any telltale wrinkles or anything irregular on the sheets. She tried not to look at the pillow where Patrice’s diary was hidden. Patrice pulled out the wooden chair under the desk, where the Machine was, and gestured to Julie to sit down.

  What? It looks like a Singer sewing machine, Julie said. Does the Institute have you do a lot of sewing?

  Do you have any serious problems in your life? Patrice asked.

  Chronic fatigue, said Julie, crossing her arms.

  Okay, said Patrice. Chronic fatigue. Sit down, here.

  What are we doing? asked Julie.

  I’m showing you something that’s important to me, said Patrice.

  She put her vellum hand on Julie’s wrist. Something fizzed up in Julie, like a bottle of soda, shaken up. She let Patrice move her hand to her elbow and guide her to a seat on the kitchen chair in front of the Machine.

  Do I have to close my eyes? she asked. Are you going to blindfold me?

  No, of course not, said Patrice, and she flipped the switch to turn on the two headlights flanking the iron sides of the Machine.

  Instantly Julie’s view inverted: what was dark was suddenly white; the lights were suddenly green and cool against the cones of light. She closed her eyes.

  No, no, keep them open, begged Patrice.

  She slowly let her eyes open; the light pried its way in.

  Couldn’t you just blindfold me? she asked.

  This is better than blindfolding, said Patrice. Julie jumped; she couldn’t tell where Patrice’s voice was coming from. Maybe that was what gave Patrice’s voice its sudden authority: this mysterious lack of placement, this lack of Patrice’s eyes and weak, dark mouth. This allows you to better perceive the simultaneity of things.

  What does that mean, said Julie; her own voice had suddenly become so loud.

  Relax, said Patrice.

  I’m not going to relax, said Julie. I’m pretty freaked out about this, to tell you the truth. Are you trying to brainwash me or something?

  You can’t brainwash someone who doesn’t want to be brainwashed, said Patrice. Look, it can be hard, the first time. Tell me a moment.

  Tell you a what? asked Julie. Should I be blinking, or what?

  Of course you should, said Patrice, it doesn’t work if you don’t blink. Tell me a moment.

  Tell me what that even means, said Julie.

  A dial turned; the intensity of the light increased.

  Jesus, said Julie, forcing her eyes shut.

  Relax, said Patrice. Relax and look into the light and trust me. Tell me a moment. Just—just, you know, describe something to me. A memory.

  She blinked, and found it easier, somehow, to blink against the stronger, brighter light.

  Tabitha and I, she said. In her bedroom.

  Who’s Tabitha, asked Patrice sharply.

  Julie laughed. Patrice turned the dial up further.

  Owwww, whined Julie.

  You have to describe the moment more, explained Patrice.

  This is stupid, said Julie.

  Describe the moment more, explained Patrice, and Julie shook a little, in the chair, because it was the voice of the stronger Patrice. The lightning was coming out of the headlamps now, filling up Julie’s eyes.

  She felt a knot of tension bubble up her spine and pop into wet nothingness in her shoulders.

  Okay, she said. Tabitha, my sister, and I, in her bedroom. We’re sitting on the bed. No … it’s my mother’s bed.

  Go deeper on mother’s bed, said Patrice. Then: I mean … describe it further.

  Her blankets are on it, said Julie. They’re pink and she doesn’t wash them often. There are ashes in them. And Tabitha’s telling me about my … genitals.

  Go deeper on genitals, said Patrice.

  She snickered.

  Sorry. Go deeper on Tabitha.

  The light was burning up everything. She felt like she was sleeping.

  She’s dead. No. I mean.

  Doesn’t matter. Go with what you say first. Go deeper on dead.

  She’s not dead. Not during this memory, I mean during this moment.

  Doesn’t matter. Go deeper on dead.

  She doesn’t move anymore.

  Deeper. More details.

  Her body’s in the morgue drawer. My mother’s there. She’s dead. I want to do something else.

  Go deeper on the morgue drawer.

  She’s naked. And she has blue veins under her hips. And you can see through her skin. Let’s stop.

  Go deeper on her skin.

  Let’s stop, she said, very loud.

  Go—

  Stop, shouted Julie.

  Patrice turned off the machine and the coils of the lights flared for a moment, then slowly went red before they went dark. She was surrounded by darkness and red spots that fluttered in front of her like curtains; they rose; one by one the house lights glowed on. Patrice was standing by the desk with one hand perched nervously on the corner of the wood, fingers drumming fast.

  You’re not usually supposed to stop until you understand something better, she said.

  Julie let her head drop between her knees.

  Gee, look at the time, she said. I should really get going.

  Time isn’t real, said Patrice. Please stay.

  Julie sat up and looked at her. Her hands were closed into fists, shivering at her side.

  Why? she asked. Why should I stay?

  I don’t know, said Patrice. I’m sorry that happened to your sister. I don’t know what else to say.

  Julie felt something in her chest close up.

  Don’t be sorry about my sister, she said. My sister had it coming to her. All right?

  All right, said Patrice.

  Julie blinked.

  She was a bitch, she said. She was weak-willed. She didn’t have what it took to survive in this world. She had it coming. All right? So don’t tell me you’re sorry for her. She felt sorry for herself enough.

  Okay, said Patrice.

  Okay, mimicked Julie. Then she hung her head between her shoulders and pressed her palms into her eyes. If you pressed hard enough on your eyelids you could see patterns, gold and black bumblebee bands, much nicer colors than the colors burning up her cheeks. She pressed until she felt the headache she hadn’t even known she had relax a little, then opened her eyes and looked up. Patrice was sitting on the edge of the desk, watching her. Her face was blank, slack as a sail waiting for wind.

  I’m sorry, said Julie. I didn’t mean to make fun of your
voice.

  It’s okay, said Patrice. It’s fine. If you want to go back on the Machine to process more of it, that’s fine. If you don’t, that’s fine too.

  It’s really late, said Julie. I need to call my mom.

  You should do only what you need to do, said Patrice.

  The landline phone she’d rigged up was still in the hallway. She picked up the receiver and dialed her house. This time Michael answered.

  Thatch residence, he said.

  Michael, said Julie.

  Julie, said Michael. Hey, kid. Where’ve you been?

  Why’d you answer with Thatch residence? asked Julie. You’re not married to my mom. You’re not a member of the illustrious Thatch family.

  It’s not really my house, I know, said Michael.

  It makes it sound like you’re ten, she said. What are you, ten?

  Michael chuckled.

  Are you coming home tonight? he asked. Or is it just your mom and me again?

  Let me call you back, said Julie.

  She put the phone down and rubbed her eyes again; the colors from the light were slow in disappearing. She got up and went back into the bedroom. Patrice had put the Machine away and was sitting on the bed, smoking a cigarette. One hand was underneath the pillow, touching the diary. She pulled it away as soon as she noticed Julie watching her.

  Um, said Julie. Can I maybe stay here tonight?

  Of course, said Patrice. You can stay whenever you’d like.

  Julie snickered.

  Better be careful, or I’ll take you up on that, she said. You don’t want your house turning into like, a free mental hospital or something.

  You’re not mentally ill, said Patrice. You just need to process things.

  For some reason this was the saddest thing, someone from the Institute of Temporal Illusions telling her that she was mentally okay.

  I’ll stay on the couch, she said. Is that all right?

  That seems best, said Patrice.

  All right, said Julie. Thank you. See you in the morning.

  She started digging through one of the dirty piles of laundry.

  What are you doing? asked Patrice.

  Julie looked up; Patrice had gotten down from the bed. That aura of calm she’d had—Jesus, is that what being on the Machine gave you? That kind of calm, even for people who were basically born to be emotional wrecks?—it had disappeared, and she was wringing her hands, watching Julie dig through her dirty skirts and underwear.

  God, I’m just getting a sheet or something, Julie said. You’re such a baby.

  She got a sheet and made sure to knock over the rest of the pile of laundry in the process.

  She spread the sheet out over the couch and lay down, fully clothed, then folded half of it over herself like a human pita. She looked up at the ceiling and she watched the spots from the headlights on the Machine run over the stucco and Christmas lights, dull blue now and quickly disappearing.

  She was still awake when Patrice came in.

  I’m just getting my cigarettes, Patrice said, standing in the hallway with just her hand reaching around the corner.

  So get them, said Julie. This is your apartment.

  Patrice danced into the room across Julie’s peripheral vision. She grabbed the cigarettes and danced back into the hallway; she lit one and stood there, watching Julie on the couch and smoked it. Julie kept looking at the ceiling. She breathed in the smoke, secondhand, fresh from Patrice’s mouth. She tried, thoughts moving through strange pre-sleep alpha waves, to isolate the taste of Patrice’s mouth from the taste of the smoke.

  I’m not going on that Machine again, she said.

  I think it would help you, said Patrice.

  I don’t care what you think, she said quickly. You’re in a cult.

  The smoke circled over her head.

  Then maybe we can help each other, said Patrice. Who knows?

  Julie turned on her side and wriggled around, adjusting the blanket over herself.

  I’m sleeping, she said.

  Good night, said Patrice. Keep smiling.

  When she opened her eyes the overhead lights had been turned off and the apartment was dark, except for the Christmas lights, glowing like neon candles. She rolled to the left and remembered that she was sleeping on a couch at just the moment when she tumbled over the side and landed on the floor. A pile of covers moaned from the carpet nearby.

  Awake now, she crawled on her hands and knees. Patrice was wrapped in the covers from the bed, asleep on the carpet just under the left arm of the couch, just under the place where Julie’s head had been resting. Her lips were moving.

  Je ne veux pas travailler, she chanted. Je ne veux pas déjeuner.

  Julie looked down at her, hovering over her on all fours.

  She lost the ability to count time; she had no idea how long she remained there.

  She resisted for as long as possible the urge to shrug the covers off of Patrice’s shoulder. The summer night was warm; Patrice was wearing a long T-shirt, midthigh. Somehow Julie was sure that she was not wearing anything else.

  She resisted for as long as possible the urge to put her hand on Patrice’s knee, and she resisted for as long as possible the urge to slide her finger, slowly, like peeling tape off of skin, up Patrice’s thigh to the hem of the long T-shirt. She let her finger rest against the edge of it, let her finger slip under the edge of it. She bounced its light weight, let it flip up and fall back down, until she accidentally bounced it too hard and it flipped too far, stuck via the laws of static against her hip, and no, she was not wearing anything else; her boss’s vast bare hip glowed orange in the blue night.

  Julie quickly scrabbled backwards on all fours and got to her feet once she was a safe distance away. She didn’t look at Patrice lying there, still asleep, and she tiptoed into the bathroom, took the knob, and didn’t turn on the light until she was sure that the door was shut completely.

  She was in the mirror with her back flat to the door. Her short hair was stuck up in the back from the couch and her clothes were rumpled. She had always wondered if you could tell a sexual deviant by her facial expression, and now she knew.

  If she was a sexual deviant anyway, she decided, it didn’t matter how far she went with it.

  That was how she justified taking off all her clothes and drawing the hot bath for herself. The tub was still full of scum and old cinnamon oils from this afternoon. She filled the bathtub slowly, so that the water would make as little sound as possible, and she crouched on the linoleum to the side of the bathtub and kept her right hand on the knob to regulate the water’s temperature and pressure and she kept her left hand stroking gently between her legs.

  This is what she was doing when Patrice walked in without knocking, the T-shirt hanging to her knees and eyes blinking away sleep. Julie quickly dropped to the floor and crossed her legs and bent over herself as far as she could.

  What are you doing? mumbled Patrice, sleepily.

  Oh you know taking a night bath ha ha, said Julie.

  Patrice nodded, strolled in, and looked at herself in the mirror.

  I had the strangest dreams, she said. I was caught in a spider’s web, but there was only one strand in the web, wrapped around my ribs, and when I touched the strand it was sticky. And I kept undoing the strands of web from around my waist, but then another spider would come along and quickly put another strand of web around me. It kept happening all night.

  What a crazy dream, said Julie, cheeks completely red and face buried in her bare knees. I wonder how it ends!

  Yes, agreed Patrice, and she turned around and walked back to the door. Good night, she mumbled as she turned out the light.

  Julie let her eyes adjust to the darkness and she turned off the water. In silence she stood up and let herself get in, inch by inch.

  She tried not to move or make a single ripple as she lay in the warm water in the dark bathroom and told herself how disgusting she was being—a six-year-old, eating bowls of w
hipped cream uninterrupted by pie—and she bit her lips and lusted for a cigarette, and she was seventeen and her entire life would stretch before her like this, full like this, and every inch of her skin was warm in the darkness. She lay in the water and she allowed herself, with the memory of the light against her retinas, to think about the cult girl who frowned like Tabitha.

  5

  Her hair was still wet and reeked of bath oils when she crept downstairs and picked up the bike from the porch. She had ridden it halfway up Guadalupe before she realized that she hadn’t come on Tabitha’s bike the previous day; this wasn’t her bike. She began to pedal faster.

  Michael’s swing was creaking on the branch of the tree in her yard; Michael’s car was in her mother’s garage. She leaned the bike up against his paint, unlocked the back door, and stepped into her kitchen.

  When you step into a room you drop skin cells: some of your color and some of your weight. Eventually they stain all the walls, hang like stalactites from the ceiling. The kitchen was seething around her—the same dead plants in the window, the same glasses in the cupboard, the same scorch marks Tabitha had made on the potholders that hung under the stove. Jungle vapors of Tabitha against her skin. She hadn’t felt like this for weeks—her eyes stung; the Machine had cracked something open in her. She stepped back into the garage and closed the door and squeezed her eyes shut against the blue hour before morning.

  In the yard she sat on the swing Michael had made for her and she kicked herself back and forth over the lawn as the dew collected and the sun came up. She was still there, passed out in the grass, when Michael came out to his car, work papers gathered in a binder-clipped heap at his side.

  I worry about you, he said after he’d woken her up.

  I worry about fire ants, said Julie.

  He drove away and she saw that he’d lifted the bike, gently, and rested it against Tabitha’s old bike, where it looked like it belonged. She pulled it free, threw it down on the grass, and went upstairs to bed holding her arms tight around herself. She slept until Linda got home and the tobacco smoke had worked its way down the hall.