The Dream of Doctor Bantam

by Jeanne Thornton

  She got up and looked out the window—rain clouds inkwashed over the sky—then cleaned all of the dishes, humming along with the French song as the water came down and thunder began to rumble beyond the roof. Then she went to knock on Patrice’s door. Patrice came out, sweatpants tight around her legs, circles around her eyes.

  Time for work, said Julie. Or for breakfast, if you want.

  Patrice stumbled out and sat on the couch while Julie took the dishes she’d washed and started dirtying them again with a batch of eggs and toast and the thunder kept rumbling in.

  I am so sleepy, Patrice said.

  So quit working for the Institute, Julie said. Do you want cheese with your eggs?

  Yes, said Patrice, petulantly. I was up all night, studying. I’m going to be the youngest Unbound person in the history of the Institute. Did you know that?

  No, said Julie. What kind of cheese?

  She looked over at Patrice; the back of Patrice’s head was slumped forward, her red hair cascading into the crack between the cushion and her fallen shoulders. The hair shimmered as she breathed.

  Aren’t you proud of me? she asked.

  Julie watched her and listened to the wind and the first drops of rain on the shingles of the roof.

  Of course I am, she lied, and she grated cheddar cheese into the eggs; some fell on the pan and sputtered and burned to black.

  Patrice went to the Institute while Julie washed the dishes again. It was raining hard; she didn’t want to go back home. She filled the bath, then sat on the rug of the bathroom smoking a cigarette.

  She remembered the time she had been in here, naked, when Patrice had walked in, still half-asleep from a dream. She knew there had been some kernel of sex in that memory, dug through the folds of it to try to pry the kernel out, to look into it like a pearl. But the memory seemed flat, lifeless. She should go on the Machine or something, have Patrice question her about it until she could remember what it had felt like, to have Patrice see her naked for the first time.

  She went into the bedroom while the tub was still filling and lay down on Patrice’s bed again. She flopped her head back on the pillow and felt the dent. The notebook was back under the pillow. It hadn’t been there for a long time.

  She took it out and started to turn the pages from the back. It didn’t take her very long to finish going through the blank pages; in maybe two, three months of summer Patrice had managed to fill most of the quadrille sheets. At the bottom of a blank page, beneath a sharp-lined pen illustration of a blob or a circle or something, she wrote:

  I am sorry but I can no longer be your employee, Patrice, because

  She stopped to think about how to continue, and then she put the pen down. The drawing was of a girl, short-haired and lying on the couch, the sleeve of the same T-shirt Julie was wearing a second day in a row bunched up around her fatty arm, and her ass, on its side, was monstrous, a horrible parabola in denim jeans. The girl’s eyes were closed like Jughead Jones’s, little sleepy slits; her mouth was open and her cheek smeared against the cushions. Her feet were tiny; the lines that made them up were thin, broken. The couch was made up of ten thousand neurotic cross-hatch lines that swarmed around the girl, unshaded, like squiggles of iron drawn to a magnet. The caption:

  She is so good at being alive

  Julie looked at the drawing for a long time. Then she tore it out, folded it, and pasted it into her Funky Winkerbean notebook, on a page of its own.

  She was lying in the bathtub smoking and thinking of nothing when the telephone in the hall rang.

  Gregory told her over the phone she should come over there right away—everyone believed in time when it came down to it, didn’t they; fuck these people, fuck these people! She combed her hair first for some reason; combed her hair and looked at her face in the mirror. It was still her, everywhere except the eyes; she didn’t want to look at herself in the eyes. She didn’t want to look at herself in the eyes so badly that she forced herself to stare herself down. A dark streak beneath the socket, a new line between the hazel brows.

  She biked to the Retrograde; the gawky barista was on duty, rocking to shoegaze. Gregory had said he’d be on the second floor, on the golden recliner couch. He’d said that he needed to talk to Julie right away, that there was some kind of serious situation with Patrice that he needed to discuss with her. He hadn’t said that Patrice would be there too.

  He hadn’t prepared Julie for the sight of Patrice on the couch. At first Julie thought Patrice was sleeping; then she saw her shoulders shaking fast and her hair clumped, crazy. The white blouse unbuttoned at the top. The stockings shredded by chewed-down nails. The face buried in her hands. Gregory resting his hand on her shoulder. He was holding her down.

  I don’t know how we’re going to get her downstairs, he said. I had a really difficult time getting her up here.

  Get your hand off of her, Julie said quickly.

  He did, and she sat down on the table and put her hand on Patrice’s cheek. It was cold, the skin felt different from her usual skin, like normally it was outlined, today stippled.

  Hey, she said, tired. Hey, wake me up, before you go-go—

  Patrice took one hand away from her face and grabbed Julie’s wrist, tight. Julie stopped smiling. If she grabbed Patrice’s wrist, tightened her fingers, she could get her hand free. She made herself put her other hand on top of Patrice’s hand instead.

  What happened to you? asked Julie.

  Two o’clock, Patrice said, under her breath. She said other things that Julie couldn’t hear.

  We let her go, said Gregory.

  Patrice started clutching Julie’s hand tighter. Julie squeezed her wrist a little bit to release the pressure, then looked back at Gregory.

  What did you say you did, now? she asked. And she almost regretted how harshly she’d said it: Gregory had never looked more nineteen, twenty, however young he really was. He looked like he was crying; his Adam’s apple moved up and down in his throat.

  We let her go, he said. We had to.

  Julie stared at him. Patrice shook in her lap.

  It was an issue of security, he said quickly. This wasn’t my call. I tried to convince them not to do it.

  Who’s them? asked Julie, forcing her voice to stay calm. And maybe we shouldn’t be, you know, talking about this while she’s freaking out right here? Do you think?

  Them is the New York branch, said Gregory. They were reviewing her files and decided that she was a security risk. So they sent the directive down that she had to be returned to an earlier ranking, to entry-level. Because of the risk. She couldn’t reach Unbound anymore. You understand.

  I don’t know what the fuck you’re babbling about, said Julie. Why was she a security risk?

  Because of you, said Gregory.

  Patrice clenched in her lap and sobbed. Julie’s wrist was stinging, turning red; she could feel it. She didn’t stop Patrice; she stared at Gregory.

  You piece of shit, she said.

  Gregory’s eyes flashed, started to steel over into that Institute stare, but he wasn’t as good at it as Patrice was, and the wall he was building over his pupils collapsed; he’d forgotten to put in any kind of foundation.

  I’m sorry, he said. I really am! I know that you told me all those things, about you and Patrice and your neighbor in confidence, and how he’d written the things you told him about you and, and … But I didn’t intend to tell anyone! I knew that something like this could happen, and—

  And you told them anyway, said Julie, because you’re a piece of shit. Right?

  It just came out, said Gregory. It came out when I was on the Machine. And it got back up to the New York people. And they told me what I had to do, as her dismantler. And I thought, I didn’t think she’d react this way. She was almost Unbound. She should have been fine!

  I know, how crazy, said Julie. It’s as if your whole fucking religion isn’t true.

  Patrice was chanting about the clock, the words disappearin
g into Julie’s stomach.

  I’m sorry, said Gregory.

  No you aren’t, said Julie. Or you wouldn’t have done it, actually.

  But you’re the one who talked about her to, to that neighbor, said Gregory. The one who, you know, raped someone.

  Julie squeezed her eyelids shut and let her fingers run over Patrice’s cheek.

  Oh, who hasn’t raped someone these days, she said quietly.

  Patrice shifted and buried her head in Julie’s lap. Her hand in Julie’s hand. Her weight crushing the nerves in Julie’s leg.

  I have to go to the bathroom, she whispered.

  So go, said Julie, rubbing her cheek.

  Patrice sat there.

  I don’t want to go alone, she said.

  Julie glared at Gregory.

  Fucking wait here, she said. So I can kill you when I get back. Okay?

  She made it to the bathroom and sat Patrice on the toilet. Then she locked the bathroom door, sat on the sink, and lit a cigarette again. The walls were corkboard, painted an ugly lavender-gray, covered in ten thousand permanent marker phone numbers, addresses, pleas for love and affection. A gigantic drawing of a naked girl on the rear of one stall door; Patrice on the toilet, her legs splayed wide. Julie rested her cigarette arm on the tampon dispenser, invariably broken and empty, just beside the sink.

  It had been nearly two months now, she realized. Since before the canoe trip; since she’d gone to see Robbie that night. Since they’d watched fucking Labyrinth together.

  She felt like throwing up again, and she set her cigarette to burn on the wet countertop, and she dropped her head between her knees and hyperventilated until the mold smell from the baseboards and the sound of Patrice’s clock chanting—when had she started that shit again?—calmed her down and made her sit up. Her cigarette had been put out by a puddle of old soap-scum water. She hesitated before she lit another one—everything you put into your blood; you put into theirs—and then she lit two and smoked them both at once, furiously.

  She watched Patrice as she smoked. Her hair was pulled back from her forehead, still, from the rain; her eyes bulged and her hair hung in crazy hanks along her cheeks. She was reciting poems about the clock to keep her mind focused on something that wasn’t real at all. She was insane.

  She stroked Patrice’s insane forehead with her fingers, and she took one of her cigarettes and set it against Patrice’s lip. Her mouth closed around it, like some primal instinct everyone had; the puffing impulse.

  It’s okay, she said. Calm down. It’s okay.

  I should never have talked to you, Patrice hiccupped. The first time I saw you on the street I h-hated you … I should never have talked to you—

  Her shoulders were shaking; she was sucking down smoke. Julie took the cigarette away and put her arms around Patrice’s neck. She could leave her here in this bathroom, slumped over the toilet, and never come back here again. Patrice would never be able to find her. She could disappear. She stroked her forehead and thought about the thing in her stomach that maybe the smoke was killing and she thought about how she could disappear.

  She had to think of it: the first time she’d seen Patrice, walking toward her on the street, this crazy girl with lightning eyes who’d said something to her that Tabitha had said to her once a long time ago. She looked like the receptionist at a museum then, the first thing you saw before you saw all of the treasures piled up inside.

  You’re safe, she said again. You’re safe with me.

  Four o’clock is after two o’clock, said Patrice. F-five is after six.

  Shh, Julie said. Shhhh. Je ne vuhpah da dada. Je ne vuhpah la da da.

  Patrice squirmed in her grip. Julie let go of her neck. Patrice brushed the hair back from her forehead and looked at Julie. Julie offered her the cigarette again; she took it.

  I’m sorry, said Patrice, her voice hoarse. I’m so sorry. These are all timebound reactions.

  Julie stared at her, watched her smoking in the bathroom. Patrice drew her knees together.

  I’m so sorry, Patrice said, and started crying again, and Julie sat on the countertop and watched her and didn’t come closer.

  She waited until Patrice had calmed down some, then went back upstairs where Gregory was waiting.

  Is everything okay? said Gregory.

  The plumbing’s fine, said Julie. So why, exactly, did you bring her to me? If I was the whole reason this happened.

  Gregory cleared his throat and took out a form in triplicate from the Nike bag by his sneakers.

  Do you have a pen? he asked. I need you to initial some places and sign some other places.

  What? Julie asked.

  I need you to get her to sign something, he said.

  Julie stared at him, the comb-sharp part in his blond hair.

  She can’t sign anything, she said. She’s under duress. It’s illegal or something.

  Then you need to sign it, said Gregory. As her, her guardian.

  Julie cackled; heads turned. She lit a cigarette and ashed in her water glass.

  You’re the person she’s chosen to link her identity with, said Gregory.

  Fuck you, said Julie. I wish I was more articulate at times like this. Fuck you.

  She doesn’t have anyone else to sign for her, said Gregory. She broke off her identity with her mother three years ago.

  What did you say? Julie asked.

  He quickly went for his coffee—he’d gotten a fucking refill while she was in the bathroom; she hoped that the gawky barista had remembered to spit in it, as planned—and took a swallow.

  It’s something we ask students to do, he said. If their family identities are considered toxic to their growth away from timebound thinking. Students can start over.

  She remembered Tabitha’s room: the sourness of the sheets, the tree outside the window. The cigarette butts by the cold iron burner on the kitchen stove of Linda’s house, stacked on a plate, waiting for her to throw them away.

  Julie took the pen Gregory was offering.

  This looks so boring to read, she said, looking at the triplicate form. What does it say?

  Gregory squirmed.

  Basically it says that the Institute wasn’t responsible for any of this, he said, his voice cracking. And that no one is allowed to sue anyone. You need to sign it in three places.

  Julie paged through the form and signed. Gregory handed her another form.

  This one says that she has no legal claim to the property you two were managing, he says. Also you need to sign that in three places.

  Julie signed it again. Gregory started to pull out another form.

  Jesus, said Julie. Just forge my signature or something.

  Okay, said Gregory, and he put the form away. Then he sat where he was, squeezing his fingers tight together, woven knuckles turning white. He was hyperventilating, nearly about to cry.

  Quit breathing heavy, said Julie. Man up, okay? If you’re going to kick someone out on the street, you should at least have a little dignity.

  It’s for the best, Gregory said. She needs to rest. And she can come back if she wants then, maybe. If she feels ready.

  You’re going to go to hell, said Julie. Do you know that?

  Gregory looked into her eyes, swallowed, stood up. He looked at her again.

  Goodbye, he said. Thank you for answering my call.

  He started down the stairs.

  So where am I supposed to take her, said Julie. If we don’t have any claim to the apartment where, you know, she lives. Can we rent it from you or anything?

  Gregory looked back at them.

  Take her with you, he said. You’re the one who takes care of her now.

  And he disappeared down the stairs, his wet-look hair still plastered neatly to his shaking head.

  Julie sat on the couch and looked at the brown puddle of Gregory’s spat-in coffee and at the rain coming down hard now over the trees on the campus across the street, bright green against a gray-washed sky, and alm
ost directly below her now, in the bathroom, she swore she could hear it: Patrice’s heart, beating in perfect, inescapable time.

  9

  There were two lights on in the Thatch family kitchen: the incandescent under the vent hood and the thin circle of blue fire underneath the teapot. The hot chocolate Julie was making was taking a long time. She shouldn’t have added the powder to the water first.

  And how long do you want this girl to be staying with us? Michael asked.

  I don’t know, said Julie. Would it be maybe possible to talk about this with Mom?

  Your Mom wanted me to handle it, said Michael. She says you like me more than you like her.

  Julie smirked. Then she stopped and added more sugar to her coffee.

  I’m sorry, she said.

  It’s fine, said Michael. I got it from your sister all the time.

  I expect it from you, too.

  Julie closed her eyes and swallowed a bitter mouthful of coffee, black. She lit a cigarette.

  Don’t smoke while I’m talking to you, Michael said.

  She looked at him. Then she set her cigarette on the edge of the plate and put her head down in the crook of her folded arms.

  So talk, she said. Quickly.

  You’ll need to get a job, Michael said. And you’ll take the GED. So you don’t want to go back to school. Fine; I can’t make you. But you can’t just let your life stall out.

  Oh God. Okay, she said. Okay, yes, fine. I wouldn’t let my life stall out.

  People don’t plan to, he said. You’ll need to kick in some money from the job for utilities.

  You can’t pay your own utilities? she asked. On this house?

  I can, said Michael. I want you to pay them, though. I want you to get used to it.

  She opened her mouth to protest, then nodded.