All I Ever Dreamed

by Michael Blumlein

  “This is embarrassing.”

  “You’ve got to be bold, Marty. Nothing’s going to work if you don’t believe in yourself.”

  My big brother. Giving me a pep talk. I was touched.

  “So what do you suggest?”

  “I suggest you kiss her. On the lips. Like you mean it. Like you care. Like it matters what happens next.”

  “She’s asleep,” I said.

  “So?”

  “It seems wrong.”

  He threw up his hands. “She’s your wife, for chrissake. Kiss the woman, before I do it myself.”

  So I did. I kissed her.

  “Thataboy,” said Frank. “Breathe some life into the old girl.”

  I tried. First tentatively, then with more gusto. More passion, you could say. Life, heart, soul—whatever I had I tried to breathe into my Vexing.

  Nothing happened.

  Frank was undaunted. “Now kiss her tittie.”

  I looked at him.

  “Her tittie,” he repeated. “Trust me on this, Marty.”

  With trembling fingers I undid the first button of her nightgown. And the second. Then I stopped.

  “I don’t think so, Frank. Maybe later.”

  For a moment I thought he was going to ridicule me. But he didn’t.

  “Sure,” he said. “In private. No problem.”

  I led him out of the cottage.

  “You did good,” he told me. “Keep it up. Every day. Don’t just tell her, show her you love her. Show her what she’s worth. What she’s missing. You do like that, no girl in her right mind is going to stay asleep.”

  So that was Frank. Carol was next. In honor of my birthday, she flew in from New York. She had put on weight, which was a relief to me. All her life she tended to run thin, due, I suspected, to the same chemistry that made her such an indefatigable go-getter, but thinness at fifty, or even sixty, is not the same as thinness at seventy, which was when I’d last seen her. At seventy thinness becomes frailty, or worse, the specter of some horrible wasting disease. But now her face was fleshed out, and her cheeks had the blush of health. Business was prospering, as was her marriage, her third. She asked after mine, and in reply I took her to the cottage. Upon entering, she had a quick look around, puzzled, it seemed, by the sight of the gowns on the walls, then approached the love of my life.

  “So,” she said, “she refuses to wake up. She insists on remaining asleep.”

  “Insist? I’m not sure I’d put it like that. It’s been twenty years, Carol. This isn’t exactly news.”

  “I mean, since your renewed efforts. Your re-dedication toward raising her from wherever she is.”

  I felt the beginnings of embarrassment. “You talked to Frank.”

  She acknowledged this.

  “And?”

  “He thought you were acting a little strange. A little desperate maybe.”

  “What made him say that?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe because you took his advice.”

  This was meant as a joke, but I wasn’t in a laughing mood. “I am desperate.”

  “Why, Martin? Why all of a sudden now?”

  “I’m going to die soon,” I told her. “I can feel it. I want to talk to her again. I want another chance to make it work.”

  “So talk to her,” said Carol, ever the champion of free speech. “Maybe she hears everything you say. Maybe she gets it.”

  “I want her awake. I want her to move. To smile. To speak.” My voice caught. “I want her to love me, Carol. I want to know that she cares.”

  “That’s a lot of wants, Marty.”

  “Just one really. I want another chance. I want to show her I can be a better person.”

  She sighed and took my hand. “Don’t we all.”

  She spent the night, and the next morning said she’d been thinking about our conversation. On a purely practical note—and my sister was nothing if not practical—she advised me to get a lawyer. If I was so sure I was going to die, I needed to update my will.

  This, of course, was the crux. My will.

  We were sitting on the cottage porch having coffee. Carol was reading the business section of the paper, while I was leisurely making my way through the obituaries.

  “You want to know what I really think?” she said.

  I was on McLamb, Yvette, beloved wife of Charles, devoted mother of Irene, Frederick and Diane, adored grandmother of Adam, James, Portia, Kiki and Maurice, cherished great-grandmother of Laura, Gregory, Thomas . . .

  I glanced up. “Sure. What do you really think?”

  “Put her in a nursing home.”

  It took a moment for me to shift gears. “You’re talking about Vexing?”

  “Of course Vexing.”

  “I don’t have the money.”

  “I’ll lend you the money. Do it, Martin. The sooner the better. Especially if you’re going to die. Which I doubt. And what makes you say so?”

  “I’m seventy-five, Carol.”

  “Are you sick?”

  “No.”

  “Are you thinking of killing yourself?”

  “Not that I know of. On the other hand, I don’t see the sense in needless prolongation. Life at this point is what? C+? B–? That’s about an even shot that death is going to be better.”

  She didn’t like that. “I thought you wanted another chance.”

  “Barring that.”

  “You know what, Martin? You’re not desperate. You’re depressed. You should see a doctor.”

  I folded the paper. “So, I should put her in a nursing home. Tell me something, Carol. How does a person do that to someone he loves?”

  “We put away Mother.”

  “That was different. Mother was senile. She needed round-the-clock attention and care. She was like a baby that way.”

  “Exactly,” said Carol, as if I’d finally seen the light. “A big baby.”

  She had never liked Vexing, had thought her spoiled and self-centered and generally unsuitable as a mate. The current situation did nothing to alter her opinion, and I felt pressed to my wife’s defense.

  “She’s a victim, Carol.”

  “Victim schmictim. She’s had everything a person could want.”

  “She lost what she had.”

  “What did she lose? Her looks? Her fame? What?”

  “Both. Among other things.”

  “Then give her to posterity, Martin. She’ll be famous again.”

  “What does that mean, ‘posterity’?”

  “I don’t know. A research foundation. A medical facility. Hell, give her to an art museum. They can put her on display, make her the center of attention, just like she always wanted. Design some new outfits for her, maybe work up a whole new line. She’d love it. You think she was famous before. How famous do you think she’ll be when the world sees her like that?”

  “It sounds awful.”

  “She’d be taken care of, Martin. That’s what you want. Make the plans now, and you’ll have that peace of mind. You’ll have that security. And you know something else? I bet you’ll be a happier man. She’s a burden, Martin. When burdens are gone, life has a way of taking a turn for the better.” She gave a self-deprecating little laugh. “I’ve been through two divorces. Trust me on this.”

  In the End

  I took her advice. Or part of it. And Frank’s, I took part of his, too.

  I kissed Vexing all over. With each kiss I gave her my love. I said it aloud: I love you. It flowed from my lips and my heart. Then, with the same shovel I had used to dig her out, I dug a hole to put her back where I had found her.

  I did it at night, when no one was looking. During the day I covered the hole with a tarp. At my age the job wasn’t easy and took a full week. When I was done, I lined the hole with her gowns. I made sure that the mirrors and sequins faced inward, so that if she did happen to wake up and open her eyes, and if those eyes could pierce darkness and dirt, what she’d see was herself. It was three in the morning when I f
inished this final part. The moon was high in the sky. The gowns glittered softly in its pale light.

  Not a hole, I thought, a nest.

  I went into the cottage, hoisted her over my shoulder and carried her outside. Gently, I laid her in the ground. The effort left me breathless. Her face was white as snow.

  She was no longer Vexing to me, if ever she truly had been. She was the woman of my dreams, and I wished her well. Some day, I hoped, a new and better prince would come along. That was my parting prayer as I lifted the shovel and covered her with dirt.

  HYMENOPTERA

  The wasp appeared in the salon that morning. It was early Spring and unusually cold. The windows were laced with ice, and there was frost on the ground outside. Linderstadt shifted uneasily on the sofa, fighting both chill and dream. He had quarreled the night before, first with Madame Broussard, his head seamstress and lifelong friend, and then with Camille, his favorite model, accusing her of petty treacheries for which she was blameless. After they left, he drank himself into a stupor, stumbling from one workshop to another, knocking down mannequins, pulling dresses from their hangers, sweeping hats to the floor. The Spring Show, the most important of the year, was scarcely a week away, and the Spring Collection was complete. Normally, this was a time of excitement in the salon. Normally, the Linderstadt creations were worthy of excitement. Just the month before, Linderstadt had been dubbed, for the umpteenth time, the Earl of Elegance, the King of Couturier. He was a Genius. A Master. His attention to detail, to sleeve, waist and line were legendary. His transcendent gowns were slavishly copied and praised. He was at the peak of his powers, it was said, yet he felt, with this collection, just the opposite. It was bland, it was dull, it was uninspired. It wreaked of old ideas and tired themes. It was the product of a man, not at the height of his creativity but at the nadir and possibly the end. He had lost his way with this new line. He had lost his touch. He felt stagnant, bankrupt, pinched of vision and insecure. Had he been cinched up in one of his own breath-defying corsets, he couldn’t have felt more in need of fresh ideas and air.

  Nothing had prepared him for this, and in his despair he came unglued, quarreling and drinking and cursing his empire of taffeta, satin and silk. He raged against the poverty of his newest collection. He raged against himself and the poverty of his own spirit. It was a dark day in his life, and he drowned himself in the bottle, until, at last, he fell into a fitful sleep. There was a couch at one end of the room, where he lay in a disshelved, quasi-morbid state, half-draped in the train of a bridal gown he had appropriated from one of the ateliers for warmth. With dawn, sunlight appeared along the edges of the heavily-curtained windows, penetrating the salon with a wan, peach-colored light.

  The wasp was at the other end of the room, broadside to him and motionless. Its wings were folded back against its body, and its long belly was curled under itself like a comma. Its two antennae were curved delicately forward but otherwise as rigid as bamboo.

  An hour passed and then another. When sleep became impossible, Linderstadt staggered off the couch to relieve himself. He returned to the salon with a pounding headache and a tall glass of water, at which point he noticed the wasp. From his father, who had been an amateur entomologist before dying of yellow fever, Linderstadt knew something of insects. This one he located somewhere in the family Sphecidae, which included wasps of primarily solitary habit. Most nested in burrows or natural cavities of hollow wood, and he was a little surprised to find the animal in his salon. Then again, he was surprised to have remembered anything at all about the creatures. He had scarcely thought of insects since his entry forty years before into the world of high fashion. He had scarcely thought of his father, preferring the memory of his mother Anna, his mother the caregiver, the seamstress, for whom he had named his first shop and his most famous dress. But his mother was not here, and the wasp most unmistakably was. Linderstadt downed his glass of water in a single gulp, wiped his lips and pulled the bridal train over his shoulders like a shawl. Then he crossed the room to take a closer look.

  The wasp stood chest high and about eight feet long. Linderstadt recognized the short hairs on its legs that used to remind him of the stubble on his father’s chin, and he remembered, too, the forward palps by which the insect centered its jaws to tear off food. Its waist was pencil-thin, its wings translucent. Its exoskeleton, what Linderstadt thought of as its coat, was blacker than his blackest faille, blacker than coal. It seemed to absorb light, creating a small pocket of cold night right where it stood. Nigricans. He remembered the wasp’s name. Ammophila nigricans. He was tempted to touch it, and instinctively, his eyes drifted down its belly to the pointed stinger that extruded like a rapier from its rear. He recalled that this was a actually a hollow tube through which the female deposited eggs into her prey, where they would hatch into larvae and eat their way out. Males possessed the same tube but did not sting. As a boy he had always had trouble telling the sexes apart, and examining the creature now in the pale light, he wondered which it was. He felt a little feverish, which he attributed to the after-effects of the alcohol. His mouth was parched, but he was reluctant to leave the salon for more water for fear the wasp would be gone when he returned. So he stayed, shivering and thirsty.

  An hour passed. The temperature hovered near freezing. The wasp did not move. It was stiller than Martine, his stillest and most patient model. Stiller in the windless salon than the jewel-encrusted chandelier and the heavy damask curtains that hung like pillars and led to the dressing rooms. Linderstadt himself was the only moving thing in that cold, cold room. He paced to stay warm. He swallowed his own saliva to slake his thirst, but ultimately the need for water drove him out. He returned as quickly as possible, wearing shoes and sweater, carrying pencils, a pad of paper and a large pitcher of water. The wasp was exactly as he had left it, statuesque and immobile, as though carved in stone.

  He began to draw, quickly, deftly, using broad, determined strokes. He worked from different angles, sketching the wasp’s neck, its shoulders and waist. He imagined the creature in flight, its wings stiff and finely veined. He drew it feeding, resting, poised to sting. He clothed it in a variety of garments, experimenting with different designs, some stately and elegant, others pure whimsy. He found that he had already assumed the wasp was female. His subjects had never been anything but. He remembered Anouk, his very first model, the scoliotic girl his mother had brought home to test her adolescent son’s fledgling talent. He felt as supple as he had then, his mind unlocked, as inventive and free-spirited as ever.

  He worked all day and into the night, hardly daring to stop, resting only for a few brief hours in the early morning. He was woken at first light by the sound of church bells. It was Sunday, and near and far the call went out for prayer. In his youth he had been devout, and religious allusions were common in his early collections. But piety had given way to secularity. It had been years since he’d set foot in a church, and he felt both pleasure and guilt at the sound of the bells.

  The morning brought no visitors, and he had the salon to himself. It was as cold as the day before, and the wasp remained inert. When the temperature hadn’t climbed by noon, Linderstadt felt secure in leaving. His drawings were done, and his next task was to locate a suitable form on which to realize them. This was how gowns and dresses were made, and he owned hundreds of mannequins and torsos, of every conceivable shape, some bearing the name of a specific patron, others simply marked with an identifying number. He had other shapes as well, baskets, cylinders, mushrooms, triangles, all of which had found their way at one time or another into a collection. As long as an object had dimension, Linderstadt could imagine it on a woman. Or rather, he could imagine a woman in the object, in residence, giving it her own distinctive form and substance, imbuing each tangent and intersect with female spirit, joie de vivre and soul. He was wide-ranging and broad-minded in his tastes, and he expected to have no trouble in finding something suitable to the wasp, to serve as a model. Yet nothing caught
his eye, not a single object or geometric form in his vast collection seemed remotely appropriate to the creature. It was odd but tantalizing. No simulation would do. He would have to work directly on the animal itself.

  He returned to the salon and approached his subject. To a man accustomed to the divine plasticity of flesh, the armor-like hardness and inflexibility of the wasp’s exoskeleton presented challenges. Each cut would have to be perfect, each seam precise. There was no bosom to softly fill a swale of fabric, no hip to give shape to a gentle waist. It would be like working with bone itself, like clothing a skeleton.

  Intrigued, he stepped up and touched the wasp’s body. It was cool and hard as metal. He ran a finger along one of its wings, half-expecting that his own nervous energy would bring it to life. Touch for him had always evoked the strongest emotions, which is why he used a pointing stick with his models, in order to distance himself. He might have done well to use the same stick with the wasp, for his skin tingled from the contact. For a moment he lost focus. His hand drifted, then brushed against one of the wasp’s legs.

  He felt a brief shock. It was not so different from a human leg. The hairs were soft like human hairs (hairs that his models assiduously bleached, waxed and shaved). The knee and ankle were jointed like their human counterparts, the claw as pointed and bony as a foot. His attention shifted to the animal’s waist, in a human the pivot point between leg and torso. In the wasp it was lower and far narrower than anything human. It was as thin as a pipestem, a marvel of invention he was easily able to encircle in the tiny loop formed by his thumb and forefinger.

  From a pocket he took out a tape and began to make his measurements: elbow to shoulder, shoulder to wing-tip, hip to claw, jotting each down in a notebook. From time to time he paused and stepped back to imagine a detail, a particular look . . . a melon sleeve, a fringed collar, a flounce. Sometimes he made a notation; occasionally, a quick sketch. He worked swiftly and confidently. All doubt and despair were gone.