The Anatomy of Dreams: A Novel

by Chloe Benjamin

  “I have to put these away,” I said.

  “But it’s so glorious out.” Janna stretched her arms, slender but packed with stringy little muscles. “You don’t want to join us?”

  “Maybe afterward.”

  “Suit yourself,” said Gabe.

  I was irritated by the Labrador look of his face, his smile hanging open.

  “You’ll be ready to leave in a half hour?” I asked.

  “Course,” he said. “I’m never late.”

  It was true: Gabe was a stickler when it came to timing. That night, he was in the car fifteen minutes early, his bag packed with lab work and the dinner he carried in separate Tupperware containers—one for cooked pasta, one for cold sauce, one for salad leaves, one for dressing. His packing process was by now so rote, so obsessively standardized, that it almost seemed like an act of resistance rather than submission.

  The sky became dusky as we drove to the lab. We were quiet on these rides: while Gabe stared at the road, I read through the notes Keller had sent about tonight’s participant.

  “Who do we have tonight?” asked Gabe, parking.

  We stepped out of the car and walked down the sidewalk beneath a line of trees. Their leaves were dark cutouts in the royal-blue sky.

  “The kid,” I said.

  Gabe’s jaw set the way it always did when he was thinking more than he wanted to say. We both felt conflicted about Keller’s use of children. Still, Gabe was near-paranoid about criticizing Keller; he certainly wouldn’t do it when we were within spitting distance. Gabe and I had worked with patients as young as fifteen, but we knew that children had been part of Keller’s early tests in Fort Bragg. Tonight’s participant was seven.

  At the heavy metal doors, we fell into a single-file line and took out our ID cards. Gabe held his to the square reader next to the doors, which emitted a short, high-pitched beep. The doors opened automatically to allow him inside before closing again. When they shut behind me, clapping together with a rubbery noise of suction, we started down the left corridor.

  “Evening,” said Gabe to the Hungarian researcher, who was pushing a young man in a wheelchair across the hallway.

  “And to you,” said the researcher. He paused and nodded at us; the man in the wheelchair stirred, his head rolling from one shoulder to the other.

  We took the staircase to the basement level of the building and passed three of Keller’s rooms, the doors locked, before we came to his office. It was a windowless bunker at the end of the hall. Inside, there were meticulously organized metal cabinets, a closed door that led to a small closet, and a bulletin board with pinned notes and schedules. Keller sat at a large metal desk, facing away from us.

  “Just a moment,” he said.

  He was hunched over, taking longhand notes on a yellow pad of paper—he preferred this to the laptops Gabe and I used, claiming it helped him to write more intuitively. He held the cap of his pen in his teeth.

  We waited. After a moment, he capped the pen and turned to face us. His eyes went immediately to Gabe’s shirt.

  “You’re dirty.”

  Gabe set down the cooler with his dinner and leaned against the door frame.

  “I was planting a tree.”

  “Planting a tree,” said Keller, glancing at me.

  I shook my head. “This was his venture.”

  “Our neighbor’s a gardener,” said Gabe.

  “Well, you can tell him,” said Keller, mildly, “that if Rosemarie Sillman complains that my assistants look like they’ve just buried someone, I’ll be holding him accountable.”

  “Her,” said Gabe. “The neighbor’s a woman. You do know it’s the twenty-first century, don’t you? Next thing you know, you’ll be assuming all scientists are men, and Sylvie will have to put you in line.”

  Gabe was able to rib this way with Keller; in their relationship, there was always a line being narrowly walked. Over the years, it had become almost familial—something that made me vaguely jealous, even though I knew Gabe had always needed a father more than I did.

  “Noted,” said Keller shortly, though he was smiling. “Go on and set up. Room seventy-six.”

  It was seven o’clock now; we had half an hour until Jamie arrived. We walked to Room 76—the only one with a window, though it was a small square close to the ceiling and barred. Gabe rolled the bed to the center of the room. It was similar to a hospital bed, with white sheets and a remote that allowed us to raise or lower it. Gabe left the room for the closet in Keller’s office, then returned with straps that he affixed to hooks down the length of each side of the bed. I walked into Room 74, raised the blinds on the large window that allowed me to see through to Room 76, and powered on the polysomnograph machine and telemetry equipment. I made sure that the amplifiers and the CPAP machines were working properly. I set up the montage, the configuration of all the channels we’d be using, and I did the amplifier calibrations.

  Finally, I rolled the cart out of the closet, making sure the wheels were working smoothly—it was a finicky old cart; we needed a new one—and began to arrange the tray. From a small cabinet I took out the EEG paste and sleep mask, the tape and black marker. I arranged the electrodes, sensors, and lead wires at the back of the tray, and beside them the cotton swabs, alcohol pads, prepping gels and pastes, and my gloves. The hair clips I placed in a pocket at the front of the tray; sometimes ten or twelve were necessary if the patient had long hair, but I didn’t think we’d need more than four for a little boy. In Room 76, Gabe rolled in the camera and turned on the audio system.

  We kept an eye on each other through the window, making sure the other person was getting along okay and didn’t need help. Every so often, one of us offered a smile, and the other one returned it before getting back to work.

  By seven thirty, we knew Keller had retrieved Jamie from the waiting room and brought him to Room 72, his public office, which had a leather couch and a basket full of toys for children. Keller had been working independently with Jamie for eight weeks now, teaching him the same things he had taught Gabe and me in Snake Hollow. “Lucid dreaming can be learned,” Keller had told us, standing in the library. The first step was to improve dream recall—patients who developed this skill were almost always able to remember their lucid dreams after waking. Keller also showed us how to recognize dream signs: ill-defined light sources, repetitive symbols, bizarre text or numbers, and flashing lights, which in our study took the form of LEDs. Some researchers used mild electric shocks to indicate a dream state to their subjects, but Keller eschewed this method. He preferred that our patients be able to recognize their dream states cognitively, not physically.

  At eight o’clock, I walked down the hall to the water fountain and filled my bottle. The door to Room 72 was cracked, and I could hear Keller talking in the playful voice he used with younger patients.

  “Haven’t been drinking any alcohol, I presume?”

  There was a woman’s laugh, though I couldn’t hear the child.

  “No,” said the woman, an older voice, gravelly. “Hasn’t been any of that.”

  He was getting close to the end of the questionnaire. Gabe popped his head out of Room 76, where the bed was stationed, and I nodded, holding up five fingers.

  After several minutes, Keller came out of the office, holding a clipboard with the finished questionnaire. Behind him was a woman who looked to be in her seventies: she had a bushel of wiry, shoulder-length gray hair and quick, sweeping eyes.

  Gabe and I stood in the doorways to Rooms 74 and 76 like butlers guarding the entrances of a fancy party. The woman held the hand of a small boy, who was partially obscured behind the wide swath of her hips. He wore loose pants printed with brightly colored sea creatures and red socks; Keller must have collected his shoes.

  “You must be Jamie,” said Gabe. He stepped forward and squatted down in front of the older wom
an, peering through her legs at the boy.

  “That’s Jamie-boy,” the woman said. “Don’t be shy, sweet.”

  But I could tell she was hesitant. Keller’s research was experimental, still in its early stages. Most of our patients had exhausted the range of traditional treatment options, but it still wasn’t unusual for them to be skeptical of our methodology.

  “My research assistants,” said Keller. “Gabriel and Sylvia. This is Jamie’s grandmother, Rosemarie.”

  “Sylvia,” said Rosemarie. “A pretty name.”

  “Thank you,” I said, though it didn’t feel like mine. Keller only used it when introducing me to patients.

  “Spectacular pants you’ve got there,” said Gabe as Jamie moved slightly into the open. “What’s that scary thing with the big old fangs? A piranha? No—a blowfish?”

  “A blowfish,” said the boy solemnly. He was leaning against the side of his grandmother’s leg.

  “Ah,” said Gabe. “A blowfish. Just as I suspected. Also known as a puffer. Or a toadfish.”

  He filled his cheeks with air and flared his nostrils. The boy tipped his head and released a short, breathy noise, more a wheeze than a laugh. I didn’t know how Gabe knew about blowfish, but I wasn’t surprised. He was always picking up bits of odd knowledge, coming back from the library with books about metallurgy or obscure British prime ministers or the First Transcontinental Railroad, as if building a base of knowledge that would help him if his work with Keller ever ended.

  “They’re kind of freaky looking, aren’t they?” Gabe asked, still squatting.

  “No,” said the boy, but he was smiling.

  “A fair point,” said Gabe. “Freaky looking—that’s not the right way to put it. This fellow here”—he pointed to the blowfish on the ankle of Jamie’s pant leg—“this fellow is downright handsome. A nice monster—that’s what he is.”

  “A nice monster,” said the boy.

  One year ago, we’d learned, he was riding with his family in a miniature steam train at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago when the train made a sharp turn toward the bachelor monkeys. A sudden leak in the firebox forced a blast of flame out of the door, and though the train was evacuated as soon as it came to a halt, those who sat closest to the engine—a father from southern Illinois, along with Jamie’s parents and half sister, a college student at the University of Chicago—were already dead. It was a freak accident: later, investigators found that a new zoo employee had accidentally packed the firebox with three times the normal amount of liquid fuel.

  Bystanders ran to the train to help. One woman, an off-duty firefighter, retrieved Jamie. He had been sitting behind his sister, sheltered from the worst of the blaze, and only his left hand had burned. Doctors at Northwestern Memorial Hospital were able to preserve the use of his fingers, but his skin was waxy and scarred.

  Now Jamie lived with Rosemarie at her apartment in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. For ten months, he had been suffering from night terrors that made him scream in his sleep and bolt out of bed. In the morning, he remembered nothing. For the past two months, Keller had tried to improve Jamie’s dream recall—when he woke up each morning, Rosemarie was to gently ask what he remembered, then record his reply on a notepad—but the boy was inconsistent and difficult to read. Still, he seemed to understand the concept of dream signals and knew how to respond to our LEDs, so Keller believed it was worth attempting an overnight study. If we could get him to start dreaming lucidly, his recall ability would likely improve.

  The boy yawned, his shoulders quivering.

  “It’s past your bedtime, isn’t it?” said Rosemarie, putting a hand on his head. “Usually he’s in bed by eight. But tonight is a special night.”

  “How late do you get to stay up tonight, Jamie?” asked Gabe.

  “Till nine,” the boy said.

  “That’s right,” said Gabe. “Till nine. And it’s already eight fifteen. I think it’s about time we showed you your bed. Bigger than your bed at home, I’d expect.”

  “How much bigger?” asked Jamie. He hadn’t moved from beneath his grandmother’s hand, but his eyes were focused on Gabe.

  “Well, that depends on the one you’ve got back home,” said Gabe. “I think you’ll have to tell me how much bigger it is. How does that sound?”

  He held out his large, worn hand.

  “Okay,” said Jamie, though he kept both hands behind his back.

  “Just a minute now,” said Rosemarie. She looked from Keller to Gabe, and back to Keller. “Now, this is where I—say good night?”

  “It all does seem to happen a bit fast,” said Gabe.

  Rosemarie’s wrists were knobby and her ankles soft and tubular, encased in nude pantyhose that stuck out from beneath her pants. But her hand on the boy’s head was firm.

  “I’m afraid so,” said Keller.

  “He’s in good hands,” I said.

  “Sylvia will see you down the hall,” said Keller.

  Rosemarie squatted down to take the boy in her arms. Her knees landed on the linoleum floor with the tired grace of aging animals, the brittle memory of old bone.

  “Be a good boy,” she said, and he leaned into the soft pillow of her chest. “You remember what we practiced.”

  Gabe guided Jamie to Room 76 and gently closed the door. I walked with Rosemarie to the stairs. As we climbed, her shoulders began to quiver.

  “It’s been terribly frightening,” she said. She paused on the landing, her back against the wall. “I’ve been so afraid.”

  When I returned to the basement, I was annoyed. It had taken almost ten minutes to usher Rosemarie out of the building, and I’d had to console her all the way to the door. When I walked into Room 74 and grabbed hold of the rolling tray, I forgot to unlock its wheels. My sudden push made the hair clips and some of the electrodes fall to the floor.

  By the time I had cleaned them, I was late to Room 76 and flustered. I knew Gabe had noticed—it was already eight thirty, and we were supposed to have Jamie fully prepared by nine—but he didn’t show it. When I walked into the room, they were chatting about Calvin and Hobbes, Jamie narrating his favorite strip while Gabe leaned toward the bed. When the story finished, he turned around as if I’d surprised him.

  “Ah,” said Gabe. “Here’s Sylvie. She’s come to show you all the machines you get to play with, and then I’ll be back before you go to sleep.”

  I could tell that Jamie didn’t want to see Gabe go. But he was sleepy, and he lay obediently while I uncapped a jar of rubbing alcohol. He wrinkled his nose at its acid perfume as I dabbed the places where the electrodes would be placed.

  “Tired?” I asked, smiling.

  “No,” said Jamie. But his eyes glazed over as I taped each of eight channels to his skin. Every so often, I pinned his hair back with a clip, and this got a laugh out of him, the same short wheeze.

  “I’m not a girl,” he said. I noticed a small, dented scar on his forehead—two connected semicircles, like a child’s drawing of a seagull.

  “Boys can wear their hair back,” I said, taping an electrode to the left of the scar, at his temple.

  “I never saw one,” said Jamie.

  “Well, I see you,” I said.

  He was still smiling—his two front teeth overlarge and spaced slightly apart; permanent teeth, I thought, while the rest were baby teeth—as he looked at the camera.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “A camera,” I said. “It records videos. Movies.”

  “I’ll be in a movie?”

  “That’s right.” I rolled the camera toward him. “Your own movie. Look.”

  I turned the camera toward the wall, its lens pointed toward the small window, and showed him the screen. The camera was already running—Gabe had activated the recording in Room 74—so this would be filmed, too. I rolled the camera back to its plac
e and turned it around again.

  “Do you remember your mantra?” I asked.

  His eyes were still on the camera.

  “What’s that?”

  “Something to repeat over and over again, to remind you that you’re asleep. You practiced it with your grandma, remember?”

  Jamie nodded, but I could tell that he was struggling to bring it up.

  “‘When I see my hand . . . ,’” I said, prompting him.

  “When I see my hand in my dream,” Jamie said, “I know I’m dreaming.”

  It was a simple stimulus-response technique first developed by Carlos Castaneda, a writer and anthropologist. Castaneda reasoned that the dreamer’s body was one of the few elements that did not change between sleep and waking—and that it could therefore be used to anchor the sleeper in an otherwise changeable dream world, reminding them both of their identity and their state of consciousness.

  Jamie kept his burned hand hidden: his elbow bent, the little fingers wedged beneath his torso. He held his other hand up, showing me.

  “That’s right. Perfect.”

  I stepped back to examine my work. The electrodes were precisely placed and taped; it was why Keller always left this part to me.

  “Where did . . . ,” said Jamie. He paused and looked toward the door. “Where did he go?”

  “Gabe? He’ll be back in a moment. We just have to run a few tests to make sure everything is working the way it should be, and then I’ll go get him.”

  “What kind of tests?”

  “Fun tests,” I said. “Like this. Close your eyes. I’m going to time you, and after thirty seconds you can open them—but no more or less.”

  He did so.

  “Now open them for thirty seconds. You can blink, but try not to move. Try to be still as a plank of wood.”

  Jamie clenched his jaw, his eyes on the ceiling.

  We began each session with this series of bio-calibrations to make sure the signals were accurate. I had him look left and right, to mimic the activity of the eyes in REM sleep; cough, which set a standard for snore levels; hold his breath; move his feet; look up and down. When we finished, I looked into the glass window and nodded. I couldn’t see in, but I knew Gabe was there, watching me.