The Anatomy of Dreams: A Novel

by Chloe Benjamin

  “I’m sorry you had to leave the PhD,” I said again. I felt embarrassed and guilty, as though it were my fault.

  “Let’s face it. I didn’t know what I was doing.” He turned to me, his eyes level with mine. “Did you?”

  “Know what I was doing?”

  He nodded. The door opened, and a chill passed between us, ruffling the hair on Thom’s forehead.

  “With me,” he said.

  It was too late to withdraw. In ten minutes, Thom would leave the deli, and I would probably never see him again. If I wanted to ask him anything, I knew I had to do it now.

  “In a sense,” I said. “Did you know I was asleep?”

  Thom flinched. He looked down and began to smooth a crease in his pants with both hands.

  “You were woozy, sometimes. You got confused. Goofy. But so did I—it was three o’clock in the morning. I didn’t expect you to act the way you did during the day. I just chalked it up to the hour. The way we were together.”

  “How were we?”

  “I don’t know. Uninhibited. Sometimes we fell asleep together. Other times we just laughed. We were always laughing.”

  His ears were pink, his eyes shifting.

  “You knew,” I said. “You did.”

  Once the words were out, I could tell I was right. A flush climbed his throat. He still wouldn’t look at me.

  “I don’t want to do this now,” he said, his voice low.

  “Oh, Thom, be honest. Please—just tell me the truth.”

  “Why?” His voice was hoarse, and there was something in his face I didn’t recognize—dread or shame or thinly veiled panic. “Do you really want to know? What’ll it do for you? For either of us? The truth’s a bitch, Sylvie. Always has been. Better to let her lie.”

  “Better for who? It’s already done. I know you don’t owe me anything, and maybe you’re angry at me. We fucked up, Thom, but we fucked up together. If there’s anything left—if there’s one last thing you’ll do for me—”

  My face was hot. It was humiliating, this groveling. And even as I asked him, I knew he was probably right. What was the point of knowledge, won so late and given over so reluctantly? What could I do with it? I was about to tell him to leave it when Thom shook his head, in wonder or in resignation.

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

  He ran a hand through his hair, smoothing it down where it had blown aside.

  “There was this night,” he said. “What was it—November? A few days before Thanksgiving, past midnight, and I was working in the living room. It was excruciating. The dissertation wasn’t coming, and I felt like a fucking fraud. I couldn’t breathe. I went outside to feel fresh air in my lungs. That’s when I saw you.

  “You were walking around your backyard. No shoes on, these funny little shorts, an old T-shirt despite the cold. I asked if you were okay. You came toward me like a hologram—you were swaying, and your eyes flickered. But every so often, they sharpened, and you looked at me like you really saw me. I didn’t know what to make of it. I thought you were on drugs, which was funny at first—I thought, Goddamn, Sylvie, you? You seemed so square. But you were making me nervous. I told you to go inside, get back to bed, but you didn’t want to. You were so damn stubborn that I finally just hopped the fence. You were shivering; I walked you to the door with my arms around your shoulders. I kept worrying that Gabe would see us, or Janna—that somebody would ask me what the hell we were doing. But nobody saw us. Nobody asked.”

  It was one thirty now, and the lunch rush was thinning. Several of the deli employees were taking their break, crowded into a nearby booth with plates from the buffet. They laughed rowdily; one of them threw a grape into another’s mouth.

  “I saw you again a few nights later,” he said. “Your arms were hanging over the fence, and you were looking into my yard like you were waiting for me. I came outside and asked you what you were doing. ‘Let’s go,’ you said. ‘Let’s go away.’ I think I started laughing, but I stopped when I realized how serious you were. I’d figured out by then that something wasn’t right. You can’t blame me, can you? I knew you were researching dreams, sleepwalkers, strange conditions. You had told me all about it—it was like you wanted me to know. Still, I helped you through a broken plank in the fence. It was early in December, and you kissed me. I’m not blaming you—I didn’t pull away—but you want the facts, don’t you? It was the first snow of the year. Frigid outside. Little crystals on your eyelashes and your nose.”

  Thom shook his head, brusque.

  “Anyway, it was too exposed out there. You didn’t seem to care, but I was paranoid that we’d be seen. So I took you down to the basement. From then on, that’s where we saw each other. I knew I should have made you go home, but I couldn’t. You were magnetic. You spun these long, fascinating stories—these yarns. You told the dirtiest jokes I’d ever heard. You kept on surprising me. I knew I was taking advantage of something, but I didn’t know what. In a way, I felt like you were taking advantage of me.”

  “That’s a convenient read.” The guilt I’d felt before was gone, replaced by an ugly fusion of anger and shame. “You had realized by then that I was sleepwalking. I obviously wasn’t myself. How could I have taken advantage of you?”

  “Don’t you understand?” asked Thom. “I was entranced by you. I would have done anything you wanted. And who was I to say you weren’t yourself? How was I supposed to know what that looked like?”

  I couldn’t answer. I smarted with shame. Still, I marveled at myself. Here it was: the truth of what I had done, laid out before me. If I chose to believe him.

  Thom checked his watch—a fat silver watch with large links, slightly loose. He shook his wrist until the face was visible.

  “I should go,” he said.

  “All right.”

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  “I will be. I am. I’ve developed a pretty high tolerance for surprise.”

  Thom smiled, if slightly. He stood and pulled his raincoat on.

  “Despite all that—everything I said.” He paused. “I really did like you. I thought we understood each other.”

  “Probably we did, in some way. Though I’m not sure what that says about us.”

  “Probably nothing good.”

  “Probably not.”

  The tension between us collapsed. Perhaps it was only momentary; in all likelihood, the sway of regret would soon return. For now, though, we were directionless. We floated. We left our embarrassment behind, like clothes cast off on the sand. Caught in the moorless place between young adulthood and middle age, we were just learning how to forgive ourselves.

  Thom nodded at me, briefly but not without genuine acknowledgment. Then he picked up his briefcase and left the deli, wind rushing in to meet me as the doors shut behind him.

  •••

  Even now, there are still nights when I skip along the surface of sleep like a flat stone on water, when I feel pulled in two directions. Like moths and mosquitoes, like migrating birds and microscopic fish, a part of me will always be attracted to the sun. But I’m drawn, too, to the deep drop of dreams, the plunge into an ocean where, thousands of feet below, creatures make their own light. Perhaps this is why Keller’s theory of simultaneous potentialities still makes sense to me, for I am not of one mind. In moments of decision, it seems as though a thousand versions of myself branch and spread like a deck of cards. One of them I select. Then they are once again stacked, facedown, and put in their box to await the next shuffle.

  On particularly bad nights, when I can’t help but look backward, one memory calms me. During my final days in Madison, I slept on the couch, half-packed boxes all around me. One night, I felt Gabe jostling me by the arms. His hold on me was both firm and gentle, the way a parent might wake a small child.

  “Sylvie,” he whispered. “Sylve . . .”
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br />   I sat up, shrinking away from him, as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. Seventy-two hours later, I would step onto the porch with my suitcases and look back at his face for the very last time.

  “You told me you wanted to see the stars,” he said.

  Slowly, his face materialized in front of me. It was the face of a younger Gabe, the boy who had something to show me—the boy who knew we called him Napoleon behind his back but who marched ahead anyway.

  “So that was real?” I had a groggy memory of shaking Gabe in bed—or was it Thom?—and asking where the stars had gone.

  Gabe nodded. And though I can’t quite say why, I decided to go with him. It was one in the morning. We drove through the night—past Middleton, past Janesville, to a small public park with a sloping hill.

  I’m not sure what we did when we got there. Gabe unrolled a blanket, maybe, or took off his coat, spreading it open on the grass. There was nothing to point out to each other. We knew the constellations—the Big Dipper, Gemini’s twin legs, Lyra and her harp—and we could see them clearly. Perhaps he laid his head on my lap, the way he used to at Mills when we stole out to Observatory Hill in the evening. Perhaps we didn’t touch at all. His eyes were trained on me in their intent, entreating way, or they flickered like a bulb going bad; or he had already closed them, had fallen asleep beneath the cape of dark sky and its light shop of stars. Probably I’ve chosen not to remember it. After a while, Gabe suggested we return to the car to sleep off the last few hours before daybreak. Soon, he was dozing in the passenger seat, but I couldn’t fall asleep, so I stumbled back out to the field and laid my head in the grass.

  What I do remember is that at some point in the very early morning, I woke up, and my mind was entirely blank. For the first time in months, I couldn’t remember my dreams or their aftertaste; the feeling was so alien that if it weren’t for the change in the light, I might not have been sure I had fallen asleep. I felt just-born, or born again—the night’s transgressions washed clean, muddy footsteps rinsed from the garden, my ignorance the purest blessing.

  In the pinkish glow of morning, I could see spring’s first daisies dotting the hill, their fragile petals peeled back and damply glistening. When I was young, I wove them into crowns, using my fingers to split each stem at its wet, fibrous center. And though I remember myself as a practical child, I imagined I was different when I wore the flower crowns: holier, or supernaturally powerful, as if I could spell myself new just by wanting it.

  But this time, I didn’t touch them; I left their roots in the ground. I laid my head on the grass and returned to the same deep, vacant sleep. I knew there was nobody watching me.

  Acknowledgments

  There are so many people to whom I have the honor of giving thanks.

  First, to my marvelous agent, Margaret Riley at WME, whose skill and unflagging support carried me through multiple drafts of this book (and moments of mild panic). All first-time authors need someone to take a chance on them, and I am so lucky you did.

  To Daniella Wexler, a dream of an editor: your belief, advocacy, and keen editorial insight brought this book into being, and I will always be grateful.

  To Judith Curr: you gave this book a home, and it means more to me than I could ever express.

  To the rest of the incredible team at Atria, thank you for all the phenomenal work you’ve done on my behalf. At WME, my thanks too to Britton Schey, for first supporting my work; Ashley Fox, film agent extraordinaire; and Tracy Fisher and Cathryn Summerhayes in foreign rights, among others. At both Atria and WME, I feel immensely lucky to be in such good hands

  To the mentors I’ve had throughout my writing life: Kiese Laymon and Paul Russell at Vassar, and Lorrie Moore, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Amy Quan Barry, and Ron Kuka at UW-Madison. A special thanks to the extraordinary Judy Mitchell, my MFA adviser and mentor, who rallied at my side through each step of this process. There are writers, and then there are teachers. It is my privilege to have learned from all of you, who are both.

  To the pioneers whose research informed my book: Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Stephen LaBerge and the Lucidity Institute, Rosalind Cartwright, Robert Stickgold, Deirdre Barrett, and others. This book would not have been possible without your contributions to the field.

  To my bighearted, brilliant friends, from the MFA and beyond: Bri Cavallaro, Alexandra Demet, Alexandra Goldstein, Andrew Kay, Nick Jandl, Angela Voras-Hills, my UW cohort, and many more.

  To my family: how can I ever thank you enough? Mom and Dad, Ellen and Molly, Jordan and Ty, Grandma and Papa, Bob and Kate, and all the rest—you know perhaps more than anyone else how much this means to me. Your unconditional support and love, your belief in me and in the value of the arts, are the great gifts of my life. I share this accomplishment with you.

  And to Nathan: for your passion, your love, your wisdom, and your partnership—which is not to mention your excellent copyediting skills and your willingness to listen patiently as I rattle off my dreams each morning. You are my person, and it thrills me every day.

  Contents

  * * *

  Copyright

  Part One

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  Part Two

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  Part Three

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  Acknowledgments