In Nightmares We're Alone

by Greg Sisco

  I sip the water and catch my breath but I don’t feel like standing up anymore. I just lie here for a while. After some time I begin to have trouble keeping my eyes open and Arthur says, “Go ahead and have a little nap. I’ll keep packing.”

  I don’t want to leave my handicapped husband to do all the work while I sleep on the couch, but there’s not much I can do. If I strain myself I’ll only end up fainting and maybe waking up in an ambulance we can’t afford. So I sit back and rest my eyes for a while and it’s not long before I drift off.

  * * * * *

  “Writing isn’t really a career where you can just jump right in and be successful,” Dad is saying. “It’s possible, sure, but almost nobody does it. It’s not a safe bet to take on your future.”

  This happened thirty-five years ago, but it’s happening again now in my dream.

  “I know I can do it,” I’m protesting. “Everybody always said I was a great writer. I even won that competition last year that—”

  “Not good enough to brush off university.”

  “Tom,” Mom’s saying.

  “What? You can’t possibly think it’s a good idea. Edna, you’re a really bright girl, but the world for adults isn’t the same as the one you’re living in now. It’s going to get a lot harder to impress people and if you don’t continue your education you’re going to find the door isn’t open to a lot of opportunities you could have had for yourself otherwise.”

  I sigh. “And then it’s working and studying and studying and working and I exhaust myself so much I never find time to work on what I want to, and then one day I wake up and I’m fifty.”

  Spot on, young Edna.

  “There you go. You’re making excuses already. This is why I don’t think it’s a good idea. Look, I’m not saying don’t write. I’m saying keep it in perspective as a hobby until you have a publishing contract—and I’m sure you will eventually—and then move on from there. But too much confidence can kill you. It never hurts to have a backup plan.”

  Or maybe it’s young Dad who was spot on. No way of knowing.

  I sigh like the spoiled teenager I am.

  “I think your dad has a point,” says Mom.

  “What’s your idea?” asks Dad.

  “I just finish school and spend all my time writing. I could get a part-time job if you want, to pay for rent.”

  “Yeah, for how long? Just a year or so until you become the world’s first nineteen-year-old to secure a publishing contract?”

  “May-be! I’ve already got a hundred and five pages double-spaced on that old typewriter you lent me.”

  Dad sighs, exasperated. “This is a pipe dream, Edna. It takes a lot of hard work to make something like that happen. Nobody hits it out of the park the first time.”

  “Then I’ll get a full-time job and get my own apartment and I’ll still have twice the spare time I’d have if I was going to college, and after a few years I’ll make it work.”

  “Well, be ready to start looking for jobs as soon as you graduate then, because if that’s the path you want to take I’m not going to help you with rent.”

  “Tom, come on!” says Mom.

  “What? She wants to make adult decisions, she better be prepared to live an adult life.”

  “Fine. That’s what I’ll do then.”

  “Great. Your mom and I will be able to take a nice second honeymoon with the money in your college fund.”

  “Well I hope you have a lovely time.”

  “And be prepared to move out on your eighteenth birthday. That’s the day you’re not a child anymore.”

  I pause. “I won’t even be out of high school!”

  “So? It sounds like you’ve got your whole life figured out.”

  Mom’s pulling on his shirt sleeve trying to get him to stop.

  “How am I supposed to get a job and save money while I’m still in high school?” I’m trying to keep the tears from running out of my eyes now.

  “I don’t know. Work nights, I guess. These are the kinds of problems adults have to solve.”

  “This is bullshit!”

  “Hey!” Mom and Dad shout in unison.

  “You want me to grow up in a hurry, I’ll start talking like an adult. Go to hell.”

  I storm out of the dining room crying and before I’m even up the stairs I can hear Mom and Dad fighting, Dad still defending his position and Mom finally arguing in my defense now that the argument is over. Now that there’s no use in it anymore.

  I remember this night. I remember what happened.

  I went upstairs and sat on the bed and cried and wrote ‘FUCK’ on that old typewriter over and over for seven pages. I gave Mom the silent treatment when she knocked on my door and tried to offer that sweet voice and convince me to let her in. Two hours later when everything had cooled down I told Dad fine, I’d agree to at least pick some universities to apply to and then we could play it by ear, which proved to be nothing more than an attempt at preserving dignity as I caved in and agreed to do whatever he wanted for the rest of my life.

  Late that night, in a fit of tears and rage and irrational teen angst, I tore my half-written manuscript to pieces and threw it in the trash.

  “Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?”

  Tennyson. I don’t think I learned that in college. Frankly I’m not sure I learned it at all.

  * * * * *

  I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep when I wake up, but it feels like the middle of the night now for some reason. The lights are on in the house and the first thing that comes into view when I open my eyes is that big oak table that used to sit in the dining room. That table where I last sat full of hope and dreams and ambition, right before the first of a thousand sacrifices I allowed myself to make for the sake of my parents. When my love of life was pure, when I hadn’t watered it down little by little like homeopathy until it got so diluted there was nothing left at all.

  Next to it sits Dad’s old typewriter, on top of the Storage pile. That’s right. Put your dreams in storage. At least you can tell yourself you’ve still got them somewhere.

  But the paper sticking out of the carriage… That wasn’t there before, was it?

  For a minute I want to avoid it, to pretend I didn’t notice and never look at it, but that would be giving in to this tiny flame of fear that’s been flickering inside me for days or weeks now and I won’t let it happen.

  I get up and snatch the paper out of the typewriter and sit back down on the sofa to read it.

  Once again, more or less centered at the top of the paper are a few brief words.

  “Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?”

  My hands shake so bad the sheet of paper falls on the floor. Arthur didn’t write this. Of course he didn’t. And unless someone has broken into my house and read my mind while I was sleeping, the only explanation is I was sleepwalking. Sleep-typing. Writing that dreams are real, that we live in dreams, while dreaming.

  That’s poetry. That’s meta-poetry.

  I spend a moment lying there and listening for Arthur. I don’t hear him packing boxes in the master bedroom. I can’t hear footsteps upstairs or drawers being opened in the kitchen. The shower isn’t running.

  I sit up on the couch and look around.

  “Arthur?”

  No answer. I stand up and look around the empty house.

  “Arthur?” I call louder.

  There’s a knock on the window across the room. Arthur is standing outside, his arms curled against him for warmth. He gestures for me to come.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  He doesn’t answer. He just waves me over again. I go to the door and step outside with him.

  “What? What’s happening?” I ask, out on the front porch.

  “Nothing. I was just… uncomfortable. I don’t want to be in the house anymore.”

  “Did something happen?”

  “Let’s just go. We’ll talk about i
t on the way home.” He looks like he’s freezing, the way he’s huddled against himself.

  “How long have you been out here?”

  “Not long. Do you have everything you need? Let’s go.”

  “I just need my coat and my purse.”

  “Get them. I’ll wait outside.”

  “Okay,” I say, a little skeptical. I go back inside for my things.

  * * * * *

  “What was it that you saw?” I ask him when we’re a few blocks down the road.

  The heater is starting to warm up and he looks more comfortable. The color is coming back to his face and he’s a lot more at ease in the passenger seat than he was standing outside the window.

  “I didn’t see anything. I just felt something. I can’t explain it.”

  “Can you make an attempt? You know how you sound right now, don’t you?”

  “No. How do I sound?”

  I hesitate. “I don’t know. Hiding outside the house like a child, wanting us to run away because of a feeling, and not telling me any more than that?”

  “Well, how does that sound?”

  “Like… Well, like a bit of a crazy person.”

  “It wouldn’t matter to you. You don’t buy into this stuff. You’d only roll your eyes at me.”

  “In twenty-five years it’s never bothered you before to have my eyes rolled at you.”

  “Okay. Fine. A presence. I don’t feel alone when I’m alone in a room. You know when you can feel there’s somebody watching you but you keep looking around and there’s no one? It’s like that.”

  I remember the feeling of Mom running her hand through my hair and whispering in my ear, but I don’t bring it up. Nor do I mention the typing I did in my sleep. Never. My superstitious husband. I give him wind of that little hallucination, one odd circumstance, and he’ll never let us get within a mile of Mom’s place again.

  “It’s weird,” I say. “Being in a house where two loved ones breathed their last. I understand. But come on. Are you talking about what I think you’re talking about?”

  He gives me a look without answering.

  “Ghosts?” I say for clarification.

  “See, that’s why I don’t want to have this discussion. You have to turn it into this childish nonsense and make me sound like I’m crying to you in the night that something’s under my bed. But I’m not going back in there.”

  “Arthur, don’t be spiteful. I’m not making fun of you.”

  He stares out his window, refusing to look at me. If he doesn’t want to be taken for a child, his behavior isn’t helping his case much.

  “Just for the sake of argument,” I say, and I may be saying it partially for my own benefit, “if Mom, or Dad, or both are still in that house in some… some ethereal, supernatural sense, why is that any reason to grab our things and get out? Where’s the harm in a couple loving, familial spirits sharing the house with us.”

  “I never said anything about your Mom and Dad,” he says quietly. “I said I felt something. You can call it immature and stupid and childish. Fine. But I didn’t like what I felt.”

  “You weren’t uncomfortable enough to wake me up. You left me in the house with it alone.” I don’t know why I say this. I’m just picking fights now. Out of habit, I guess.

  “Well… I didn’t think you were in any… I thought I was… I don’t know. You’re asking me to explain a feeling. It’s not something to put into words.”

  “Oh for Heaven’s sake, you’re talking like a lunatic. You’re telling me you felt a sense of danger and you got the hell out and left me sleeping on the couch for as long as it took me to wake up. So either you’re criminally neglectful or you know it’s all in your head.”

  “Probably. Yes. Okay? I said I felt something. I didn’t say it wasn’t in my head. But it kept getting stronger in my head and I knew what was best for me was to get out. I don’t know what’s in your head. This… shit… is never in your head.” Arthur swearing. A rarity. That’s when you know he’s really bothered. “You were sleeping off heat stroke. I thought what was good for you was to rest until you were recovered. What was good for me was to never be in that place again.”

  I shake my head as I drive. These theological debates. There’s never an opening for anyone who deals in logic. It’s unwinnable.

  “So you’re not going to help me with the rest of the stuff then?” I ask, unable to keep the hurt from my voice.

  When he turns to me he looks frail, wounded. “I can’t,” he says. “Please don’t ask me to.”

  I won’t. We’ve been together long enough for me to know there’s no use. The rest of the work is in my hands. Maybe Ellen will help me. Let Arthur talk to his medium about this. Let him try to contact my dead parents in some conman’s living room for a hundred bucks an hour we don’t have. There’s no changing him.

  Tuesday, September 28th

  I’m terrified I’ll find a Tennyson quote written on my chalkboard and I think I must be the first person ever to be terrified at the possibility of a Tennyson quote. What I find is this:

  “I am a part of all that I have met.”

  I have to sit down at my desk and Google it to find out that, goddamn it, it is Tennyson. But it has no meaning to me. Even if I could accept that Mom or Dad was trying to communicate with me, what, to tell me they’re part of me, not in their own words but in the words of Tennyson?

  No. It’s coincidence. I wish it had been any other poet, but at least it’s an arbitrary quotation.

  So no, Mr. Tennyson. We don’t live in dreams. We live in a cold, hard reality with laws and facts that are true for all of us and that we all experience together.

  I erase the words and prepare for the day. Macie Giddings is even absent. Maybe my mind will be fine after all.

  * * * * *

  “I’m sorry for this,” I say to Ellen on the way to Mom’s house after school lets out.

  She meets me on the front steps of the main building. I’ve been tempted to call in for the rest of the week so I can be sure to finish dealing with the rest of Mom’s things by Friday, but I haven’t done it. I need the money more than I need the peace of mind.

  “I’m happy to help,” says Ellen. “I know you’d do the same for me.”

  I don’t know, if I’m being honest. I’m always there to help a friend when I can but if Ellen had called me today about helping her move I probably would have told her to go to hell. What with two dead parents, the first long dead only in comparison to the second, a full-time job, and a husband too afraid of ghouls and goblins to be at my side, I’d tell myself I didn’t have the time for a friend. Life does that. Nice of Ellen to take the time anyway.

  “Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light,” said Helen Keller.

  Another pretty quote for college students, good for nothing except bringing a smile to an idiot when her life goes to shit.

  “How have your kids been treating you?” asks Ellen. She calls my students that. My kids. Neither of us ever reproduced, and I think it bothers her more than it does me.

  “Well enough, I guess. My mind is mostly turned off at school the last few months. That’s my time off.”

  “Sure.”

  “And yours?” Ellen’s kids aren’t kids at all. She teaches university like I always thought I would. My grades were better, but her personality puts mine to shame.

  “Not such a great bunch this semester, but there are some diamonds in the rough.”

  I nod my head and stare through the windshield. This small talk. Think of any date you’ve been on and remember how fast we run out of thoughts to communicate when we discuss the present. The solution of the young is to speak of the future because their pasts are empty. The solution of the old is to talk about the past because their futures are empty. But when you’re old and sick of remembering, there’s nothing left to talk about at all.

  A friend is a person you’re happy to sit with even when there’s nothing to say. />
  My education fails me, but I’m sure somebody’s said that better than I just did.

  “I can’t believe Arthur,” I say. “Cowering outside the house like a child and refusing to go back. I married a toddler.”

  Ellen laughs. “He’s got that childlike wonder in him. Always will. You knew that when you married him.”

  “I guess.”

  Yeah, I guess I even used to have it myself. I was supposed to be a writer. An artist. I was supposed to live in a fantasy world in my own head and it should have been easy married to that basket case. I had to go and grow up.

  Arthur didn’t answer his phone when I called after work. I got him the cell phone but it’s always a crap shoot whether he charges it or takes it with him. The house phone and the cell both, he missed. He better not be expecting me to come home and make him dinner tonight. Even if he wants to bail on our shared responsibilities, I won’t. I’m not quitting until this house is packed, cleared out, and sold.

  Then it’s a new life. Free of all the clutter of space and mind. No more past to weigh down the present. Maybe I’ll even sit down at that typewriter again.

  Who am I kidding? That manuscript I tore up at sixteen was the most substantial work I ever did. The past dies in pieces, and it always feels like your favorite pieces die first.

  * * * * *

  I jump when I come up onto the porch with Ellen and see Arthur through the window, sitting on the couch. He’s got that pale look on his face and he’s staring down at the floor between his feet.

  “What the hell?” I whisper.

  Ellen stands next to me and looks in at him. She says nothing.

  I unlock the door and as soon as I push it open I see him snap to attention and jump to his feet. He comes to me in the foyer and kisses my cheek.

  “Edna,” he says. “I thought I’d come by and get some packing done while you were at work. I was going to meet you. I guess I lost track of the time.”