All I Ever Dreamed

by Michael Blumlein

  The conference is in every way a success for her. By week’s end, after being wined, dined, and courted by no fewer than three eminent deans, followed by a hastily arranged meeting with her own departmental chair, who had not failed to notice the vultures circling what he considers his own personal ace-in-the-hole, she feels high as the moon, confident that her dream of tenure is all but assured. Her thoughts turn homeward, to her husband. After a week of separation, her feelings toward him have softened. She can live with their intellectual disagreements. The question is, can she live with him?

  She recalls what attracted her to him in the beginning, the very eccentricity, self-absorption, and independence of thought that feels so petty and selfish to her now. But she doesn’t have to feel this way. As far as self-absorption goes, he’s no worse than she is. Or not much worse. He’s only being himself, just himself, and when all is said and done, who else could he be?

  He’s a man, and men are meant to build . . . how many times has she heard this said? How many times has she written it off as myth, nonsense, bromide, self-aggrandizing, self-perpetuating, male chauvinist, testosterone-induced, delusional crap? But why? There are lines of distinction. She can personally attest to this. Women are meant to bear children, tell stories and, if all goes according to plan, get tenure. (Although the child-bearing part, she’s been told, appears to be changing. This, according to a fellow ethnobiologist she met at the conference. There seems to be an uptick in the number of women worldwide who no longer have an interest in bearing young, or whose interest is muted by other, stronger desires and plans. This, in response to environmental pressures, demographic changes, and a rising tide of prosperity and feminism. From Europe to Japan to Singapore to Taiwan, the birthrate has fallen below the death rate for the first time in a century. Not a bad thing, necessarily, and certainly not bad for her thesis.)

  She decides she can live with his precious perigene. More precisely, she decides she would rather live with it than not live with him. The decision relieves her of a great weight, and she returns home on a wave of optimism, eager to see him, only to find that his creation has grown substantially in her absence and is now visible a block away.

  Not only has it grown in size, there are now pieces of paper attached to it in a variety of shapes, colors and sizes, some of them quite large. There must be thirty in all, and he’s attached them in such a way that they move freely in the breeze, fluttering like flags. But ridiculous-looking flags, stiff and slapdash, like something coughed up by a demented Betsy Ross, making the whole thing, which once had a certain integrity, if not beauty, look ludicrous.

  She pulls into the driveway, climbs out, and as she nears the front door, she gets her first hint, not of the meaning of this new addition of his, which would be too much to expect, but of its effect. Nailed to the door is a rather large piece of butcher paper with a rather explicit message to her and her husband signed by a neighbor.

  The idea that someone, without her permission, would drive a nail into her house is offensive. The idea that the message is directed at both her and husband, i.e., that there’s no distinction made between the two of them, is embarrassing. The idea that her husband is provoking such an attack is a test.

  She tears the paper from the nail and enters the house. The place is a mess, which only reinforces what she already knows, that her husband is besieged by the forces of chaos and needs help. Order needs to be restored, and who better to restore it than herself?

  From Dr. Jim’s Diary:

  Sunday, January 15th. He’s standing when I enter, head up, shoulders thrown back, a steady light of intelligence in his eyes. The cage door is open, but he’s making no attempt to escape.

  “Going somewhere?” I ask.

  He smiles, then opens his arms as if to invite me in and embrace what we both know comes next.

  Trying to disarm me, the little shit. And for a second he does. Then I get a grip on myself, and we fight, although to call it that is a joke. I punch and he receives, not bothering to punch back or defend himself. Afterwards, though, I feel like I’ve gone twenty rounds. My legs and arms are heavy, as if I’ve been leeched of my vital fluids. It’s all I can do to drag my sorry ass upstairs.

  Carol’s in the kitchen. The shock of seeing her revives me. “Where did you come from?”

  “I live here.”

  “You left.”

  “That’s right. For my conference.” She frowns. “You didn’t think I’d walked out on you, did you?”

  The truth—that I haven’t thought about her at all—would doubtlessly upset her. To tell the truth, she already looks upset.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” I tell her honestly.

  “I’m glad, too.”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “So I see. Too busy to shower. Too busy to shave. Too busy to change your clothes. Too busy to clean up after yourself.”

  “I’ve been working.”

  “I see that, too.” She glances out the window. “It’s getting bigger.”

  “Bigger and better.”

  “No. Not better. Not even close to better. It’s an eyesore. This has to stop.”

  Her voice is like a cage; her expression, the day of judgment.

  “Take it down,” she says. “Do what you intended to do. Write the damn book. Or don’t. Just stop.”

  “What book?”

  “We had an agreement. Nothing above the fence.”

  “I’ll raise the fence. I’ll levitate it.”

  “You’re offending people.” She thrusts a ragged piece of paper in my face. It’s from the guy next door.

  What he has to say makes me laugh. “He’s a moron.”

  “He’s our neighbor.”

  “Fuck him.”

  “That’s one way to handle it.”

  “It’s none of his business.”

  “I disagree.”

  “It’s none of your business, either.”

  She gives me a long look, then nods, as if this settles something. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  * * * * * * * * *

  They start the night in the same bed, but once Carol’s asleep, Dr. Jim slips out and heads to the patch of grass in the yard beside the ladder at the center of his creation. This has been his bed for several days. It’s where he feels most himself, which is not to say most at ease, because he’s far from that. He’s too driven and excited to be at ease, as if someone has a foot on the gas, and not only that, they’re doing the steering. It’s a high-octane, exhilarating ride, and even though there’s a cliff ahead, and after the cliff a field of razor-sharp rocks, and after the rocks a team of horses just dying to tear him limb from limb, he wouldn’t trade it for anything. A few more days, a few more visits to the basement, and the mighty perigene will be his. Besides, cliffs and rocks are for mortals, and horses, especially wild ones, are kin.

  Needless to say, this is no time for sleep. All systems are on full alert, antennae tuned to maximum reception, and he spends the night conversing with the moon and stars, absorbing all he can and channeling what he learns to the task at hand. When not in conversation, he’s pacing the yard like an expectant father. Carol’s reappearance couldn’t have come at a better time: she has stuck with him for the long gestation and now she’ll be present for the birth. He faces east, exhorting the night to end so that he can get to work.

  Daylight comes at last and he rushes inside, only to find a lock on the door to the basement. A shiny new hasp, mocking him like a smiley face with its rictus of false goodwill. He’s sickened, wounded even, but hardly deterred. The only real question is how to remove it: slowly and carefully with a screwdriver, sparing the door and the trim, or instantly, with a hammer and crowbar, using brute force? It’s another one of those questions that answers itself.

  Carol’s waiting when he emerges from his lair. It’s no time to talk. His business is outside. But when he attempts to brush past her, she blocks his way.

  “You going to clean that up?”


  Islands and splinters of wood litter the floor. He could care less, but to avoid a quarrel he kicks them downstairs.

  “That’s not cleaning,” she says.

  He locates the lock on the floor, hanging limply from its hasp, picks it up, and thrusts it in her face. “Since when did the Nazis arrive?”

  Her face curdles.

  “The Enemy is here,” he spits.

  “No. The Enemy is not here. Reason, however, is.”

  It’s sad almost. How little she understands and how out of touch she is. With him and with reality.

  “Reason? You want reason?” He hurls the lock at the window, somehow missing it and hitting the wall instead.

  She won’t be intimidated. “Having a tantrum, are we?”

  “I won’t be squelched.”

  “And I won’t live like this. I can’t. Enough is enough.”

  This, he feels, couldn’t be less true. Enough is never enough.

  “I’ll leave,” she adds.

  “You did leave.”

  “For good.”

  For good? What could this possibly mean? he wonders. His good? Hers? Fleetingly, he feels as if he can breathe freely again. The next moment, though, he’s consumed with rage at being dictated to. He wants to grab her, shake her, teach her, make her one with him and his just fury, until she understands and retracts what she said. He so wants her to understand. He loves her that much, he aches with love, and she loves him, and lovers don’t leave each other, they don’t, lovers are inseparable.

  The rising sun catches his eye, interrupting his train of thought. A shaft of light shatters the pale morning sky like a bell ending the round. He hears a call, and instantly, the quarrel is forgotten. He’s being summoned, and his terrible rage at his wife becomes an ecstatic rage to get outside. He can no more resist it than the flimsy lock could resist him. He has no reason to resist and every reason to consent, every possible reason to surrender and embrace the promise that lies ahead.

  * * * * * * * * *

  The sun circles.

  The sun sets.

  The sun rises.

  The sun sets.

  The slippery moon appears.

  From his grassy bed, Dr. Jim gazes upward through the lattice of his creation. Beyond the winking eyes and eye stalks, the spiraling tubes and strands of metal, the phalanxes of pipes, and the knobby, nodal block and tackle, he spies a tufted, popcorn cloud, drifting past the moon like an exploded ribosome. The speed of its drift is a fraction of the speed of his minnow mind, which darts about restlessly. He senses the approach of something vast, not a predator but a storm of some sort, and leaping to his feet, he races to his ladder. He climbs quickly, through the forest of copper Golgi tubes and their caps of cyclopic screens, swiveling like searchlights on their mounts. As he passes, one points at him, seemingly at random, then another points, and another, until all ten are fixed on his face, ten eyes trained on him, ten adoring, hungry, acolytic eyes, urging him higher. He hurries upward, until he’s standing on the topmost rung, which coincides with the topmost addition, the sum and crown of his creation. Another burnished coil of pipe, shoulder-wide, speaking for all three elements of the grand design: the spiraling gene, the resilient, spring-like epigene, and the angelic perigene, rising and expanding like a whorling halo.

  He thrusts his head and shoulders through it. The nighttime sky is dazzling and takes his breath away. The air is charged. The stars feel it and chatter in excitement. The moon feels it and grins. Ribbons of energy burst and sizzle across the sky.

  He raises his arms in delight. Laughing, he welcomes the storm, invites it to channel itself through him. As he fills with it and as the force of it grows, he realizes something new. He’s not merely channeling, he’s the channel, too. The linker and the link. There is no distinction between creator and creation, between do and is.

  From nowhere and from everywhere he hears a crack, then a splintering sound. The air above him quivers, then rips in half. A slit appears, like the pupil of a cat’s eye, but a cosmic cat. He has a glimpse of what lies beyond, and his mind soars.

  The glimpse lasts a mere fraction of a second. But a fraction of a second, a fraction of a fraction, is more than enough time to know the perigene in all its splendor. More than enough time to feel the glory and perceive the universal web connecting all things. More than enough for absolute and total bliss.

  For one life-affirming fraction of a second, Dr. Jim is fully informed, and then reality sets in. The force sustaining him, suspending him, as it were, on a cloud, cannot, it seems, overcome an insistent downward pull. This, he dimly understands, is the pull of gravity, to which, had he been asked just moments before, he would have said he was immune. As he accelerates past the broken rung of the ladder on which he was standing, he has no time to be disappointed in its failure to do its job. If he’s going down, which he certainly appears to be—down, as in free-falling—he should make the most of the time he has left. Why fear the ground that’s hurtling like a rocket towards him? Why fear injury, pain, death, the unknown? He’s just had a glimpse of the unknown, and with the speed of light he has another, and suddenly he’s in hysterics. His throat and mouth are like brass. He could be a trumpeter, splitting the air with raucous sound, braying and shrieking the final, wild, delirious notes of his last and greatest song.

  From Dr. Jim’s Diary:

  Thursday, January 19th. Sleep, or something like it. Wake to gray light, shivering and wet. Head pounds like a drum. Stumble through maze of pillar, pipe, and post to a door. Door leads to another door, which leads downstairs. Gate of bars at the bottom, open as a trap. A man inside, waiting. We face each other. No fight left.

  He helps me sit.

  “You’ve had a tumble,” he says gently. “I’m Dr. Jim. You are . . .” He hesitates. “My guest.”

  He strokes my head, then retreats beyond the swinging gate, shutting it behind him. The clang and clank of the bolt are like a wake-up call, a helping hand of a sort.

  He gazes at me through the bars. His eyes are misty. His expression is raw with pity, gratitude, and relief.

  If I could speak, I would, but I’m hollow inside. Depleted. Dark days ahead. But not forever. Voiceless now. Defeated now. Nearly invisible. But not dead.

  * * * * * * * * *

  The first order of business is to get his feet back under him; next, to survey and explore. Damage has been done, but then there’s always damage. The question is what to do about it.

  This depends, principally, on how bad it is and whether or not it can be fixed. Some things are too broken to be fixed. Some broken things, once fixed, are as good as new. Or nearly as good. Some, depending on what material you started with, are better.

  Dr. Jim has never been what anyone would call a fixer. He’s more a slash and burn, leave the past behind, the best is yet to come kind of guy. So it’s no surprise, as he stands beside his midden heap of a masterpiece, his tour de force of bric-à-brac and dream, that he decides, with scarcely a moment’s hesitation, to tear it down. The surprise is why. He misses Carol, and when something is broken—a plate, say—and one half not only needs the other half for completion but fits it perfectly, it’s senseless not to glue them together, a disservice to both halves not to recreate the whole.

  The decision made, he throws himself into the task like a man possessed. In a week the thing is lying in a pile on the ground. The last bolt is barely out of its socket when he calls Carol with the good news.

  Her reply to him is short and sweet. She meant what she said. She’s not coming back. She wishes him the best. Case closed.

  He waits a few days, then calls again. And again in a month. In so many of life’s pursuits—from research to weight loss to treasure hunts—doggedness is rewarded, but in this—his pursuit of Carol—it is not. She doesn’t answer his calls and doesn’t reply to his messages. Undiscouraged, he continues to reach out, if for no other reason than to hear her voice. It’s a beautiful voice, and while the recording never ch
anges, each time he calls he hears something new and special in it. Up until the day there’s a different voice, informing him with cold proficiency that the number has been disconnected.

  So much for fixing.

  Time plods on. At length he has the debris in the yard hauled away. Then he brings a chair outside and sits. It’s early spring, and then, seemingly overnight, it’s summer. The outline of his sculpture has disappeared: the grass that was crushed by it has regrown and filled in, joined by the stalks and heads of dandelions and other weeds. Ants troop along the ground. He identifies two species, as well as several kinds of beetles, including old friends Polyphylla decemlineata, Stictotarsus eximius, and Loricaster rotundus. He remembers his collection, idly wonders if it has survived, and if so, if its spirit has survived with it, the spirit of observing and collecting, and by doing so, honoring the greatness and the miracle of life’s diversity on Earth.

  He sits and he sits, watching, listening, observing himself as the emptiness slowly but surely fills, until the day finally comes when he’s sat long enough, and that’s day one, the day that he begins, or more precisely, begins to finish what he started so long before.

  * * * * * * * * *

  A year later he puts the final touches on his opus, the crowning achievement of his career. On a whim he googles Carol, thinking what the hell, she might want to know. He finds her at a nearby university, a place known far and wide for its hallowed halls, distinguished faculty, and otherworldly endowment, and shoots her an e-mail with a tracer attached.

  She deletes it within the hour, probably the minute she saw it. At noon a week later he sends her another, which she deletes at 4 p.m. Probably after coming back from an afternoon lecture. Probably—once again—as soon as she laid eyes on it.