It was part of her job to offer the dream. She lay there for a minute or two, allowing the silence to build around her, then said, “Two mornings ago. I’d sort of forgot it, but it’s coming back to me.”
She closed her eyes and continued. “There were hills, but no trees. I am on a hillside, and a river is running below me, fast and frothy. I am supposed to go down there. I’m a little afraid. I also know that I’m a very beautiful girl — say, fifteen. But I’m not me. I have silky blond hair to below my waist. I’m sitting on the hillside, twisting my hair between my hands.”
Actually, the dream was not a dream, but a story she had read. Andy, as far as she knew, didn’t have any dreams. But Dr. Katz seemed to like the dream stories she told him, and to find them revealing.
She went on, “I’ve been married twice already. So maybe I’m not fifteen. But it seems like both those things are true. The main thing is the feel of the grass on the hillside — rough and full of burrs.”
“Hmm,” said Dr. Katz.
“Then a man comes up to me, and I know that this is my new husband, and I really like him best.” She paused, then said, “He smiles more than the others did. He’s not Frank. Anyway, we walk along the hillside, which is steep, and then, all of a sudden, he has a bow in his hand, and he’s shooting arrows at some people. And his bowstring breaks, and he asks me for some of my hair. I say no.”
“Explain, please,” said Dr. Katz.
“I can’t explain. I just say no. So he stands there with the broken bowstring, and then he is shot through the neck, and I woke up. I guess I looked over at Frank, and he was lying on his back, but he was fine. So I lay there for a few minutes, and then went back to sleep.” In fact, Frank was not next to her. But, then, she hadn’t had the dream, either.
Dr. Katz said, “Do you feel that you withheld something from your husband, and it killed him?”
“Well,” said Andy, “he was outnumbered.”
“Is that what you feel, that he was outnumbered?”
“Why would he think that he could use hair as a bowstring? It makes no sense.”
“Did you feel that in the dream, that his idea was a foolish one?”
“I felt nothing. I just said no.”
“Did you feel in mortal danger?”
“No.”
Andy was beginning to regret that she had told this story. Finally, she said, “People die in my dreams all the time.” From, she thought, fallout. Dr. Katz said, “Yes, they do,” which surprised her. She said, “But it seems like, in the dream, I always know that it’s a dream, and that the person is not really dying, or that the person is not really a person. One or the other.”
“You do not grieve for them.”
Andy said, “No.” A question offered itself: was she a heartless person? When Lillian told her over the phone the night before that the son of a friend of hers, nine years old, also named Michael, had been hit by a car crossing the road by the house, killed instantly, Lillian wept in sympathy, but Andy felt cold, stared at the ash of her cigarette, had nothing to say. Was she the most heartless client he had? But you weren’t supposed to ask questions, you were supposed to arrive at answers.
There was an extra-long silence. Andy thought of being honest and telling him that she had related a story, not a dream. But then he would ask her what the difference was, and she would have to say that she didn’t know.
1957
WHEN DID LILLIAN HAVE TIME to read the papers, or to watch the news on TV? And yet things filtered through — Hungary in November, the Suez crisis at the same time, both of them crushing. Even so, though Arthur came home a little late, he did come home in the usual way, full of fun and with a big appetite, two helpings of everything, though you couldn’t tell that to look at him. He didn’t lose his sex drive until February, which Lillian thought, secretly, was a bit of a relief. Then, one night, she got up to go to the bathroom, and when she got back to bed, in the moonlight the tears were glistening on his cheeks and his eyes were wide open, even though he was lying still and not saying a word. It was like getting in bed with a stranger. She said, “Arthur?”
He rolled onto his side, his back to her, and she slipped under the covers. She put her hand on his head and scratched, just very lightly, and it put her right to sleep. Sometime after that, he slipped his arms around her sleeping body and woke her up, sobbing on her shoulder. He hadn’t been like this for years, not since Timmy was born alive and healthy. Even when his father died, his eyes had remained dry and his back straight.
She did what she did with Debbie and Deanie, just let him sob, patting him lightly on the leg. She could see the phosphorescent hands of the clock glowing from where she lay — a quarter after three, marching on to a quarter to four. Finally, he heaved a big sigh, pulled his one arm from underneath her, and sat up. She said, “You okay?”
He wiped his face with the corner of the sheet and sighed again. He said, “Well, if this room is bugged, I’m probably out of a job.”
“Is this room bugged?”
“I’ve checked. I don’t think so.”
Lillian said, “You’re kidding me.”
“I hope I am.”
He stood up and went down the hall to the bathroom. She heard him open and close doors — peeping in on the boys and the girls. Then he sat down in the armchair and said, “Did we say Dean could sleep on the floor?”
“For now.”
“Okay. I just wanted to make sure Timmy is not imposing some cruel and unusual punishment.”
“No, Deanie’s agitating for a tent. He wants me to tack one side of his blanket to the wall.”
Arthur said, “Please tell me that we’ve been married less than a hundred years.”
“We’ve been married eleven years and three months.”
Arthur let his head drop onto the back of the chair and inhaled deeply. Lillian was sure right then that he had found another woman — someone who had no children, or whose figure was holding up better. She, who had once worn a 4, now wore an 8. What had ever made her think that such a dashing man as Arthur would be satisfied with her? Georgetown was a hotbed of infidelity — the women who didn’t talk about it all the time were those who sleeping with their friends’ husbands, and so you could always tell who had just commenced an affair.
He said, “I don’t know how I’m going to take it anymore, and now—”
“Now what, Arthur?”
He leaned forward and put his face in his hands, and mumbled something. Lillian realized that he was not talking about their marriage. She knelt down in front of him, took his hands away from his face, and said quietly, “Say that again, Arthur.”