His Wife Leaves Him

Gulags—and placed the book against his upraised thighs, flattened out the paper on it and wrote the dream down on both sides of the paper and also what he thought the dream might mean and other things about it — that he’d never met anyone who entered his dreamlife so quickly, for instance, and that must mean something, and so on. He filled up both sides of the paper, knew he could write even more about the dream, but this was enough for now, he thought, and he was getting sleepy. He turned the page over to the first side and wrote in printed letters in the little space not written on at the top of the page and underlined it: “This dream is significant. 3 a.m. or thereabouts, Nov. 21st, 1978. Do not destroy!!!” After he read the notes to Gwen — only what happened in the dream, nothing about what he thought it might mean and other things related to it — he asked what she made of it and also that he’d had it so soon after they met. “Literal interpretation, I suppose you want? Then nothing more than the obvious. The long hallway resembled the stairway in Pati’s building. You know: the one I told you of that I didn’t want to walk down. Drearily lighted, dank and scary, no windows, naturally, and in a way, no door at the end of it either, on the ground floor, since it was locked or stuck the one time I tried opening it. What I don’t think I ever told you was that at the time I was petrified that I wouldn’t be able to get out of any of the doors upstairs, once I got inside the stairway. I saw myself pounding on the door on Pati’s floor till someone rescued me, and for a few moments I even thought I’d suffocate there. Real panic. So, substitute bottom of the stairs, in my real-world experience, to us walking up the last flight of stairs to the roof in your dream.” “I don’t understand,” he said, and she said “The obvious, how could you not see what I’m saying? You? My guy who rarely lets anything get past him? Please, you have to be kidding. Dankness for freshness? Unknown for the known? Dark night without end, to daylight? Seemingly lost in that corridor, to finding one’s way to release? Bleak prospect for hope, and so forth, but maybe I’m going too far with that one. With the last three, probably, and I said I’d stay literal. Although your dream did end hopefully, didn’t it? For you: the two of us together, even holding hands for a while till you started crunching mine. Now what was that all about? Perhaps to show there’s a little pain in every relationship, even at the beginning, no matter how promising and good it looks. And then, with that big sweep of the city, talking about where we should live in it and my saying why don’t you move in with me. Another thing is how protective you were of me that night. In the real world, I mean — saying you’d accompany me down that horrible stairway, and later, that you’d walk me to my subway station or bus stop, I forget which.” “Subway,” he said. “Because you thought the streets might not be safe. And in the dream, warning me not to get too close to the edge of the roof — for all I know, the warning might have been about getting involved with you — and also sort of saying that if I did fall off, you’d go over with me. You weren’t alluding there to falling for me if I fell for you, were you? No, it would have had to be the reverse, since you fell for me first. So, not only protectiveness and concern for me, but already, in the dream, sticking by me in the worst of circumstances — the literal interpretation — all of which you still are today. Even, on occasion, overprotective of me, as if you think I can’t deal with certain things or, more to the point, look after myself in what to others might be stressful situations, and I need your help. And I’m not criticizing you, you understand. Better that attitude from you than indifference and neglect, and it’s just your way. Incidentally, the roof-edge part of your dream is like a very short story you wrote before we met and was only published last year. What I’m saying is it could have snuck into your sleep and influenced that scene. The one — are you still with me?” and he was thinking something like Boy, her mouth’s on a roll; he’s never heard her go on like this, but said “Why? Sure; yes.” “That has a man jumping out of a plane after his young daughter, who was sucked out of the door when it fell off. The father grabbing the girl in the air — you had it that he catches up with her because he falls faster, being three times heavier, but I don’t think it works like that in real life — and holding her close to him and their flying together like that at the end, chatting normally and admiring the beautiful mountains and rivers and forest from so high up till they can find, he says, a safe place for a landing. It was about, I think, a father’s feeling of invincibility regarding his child, something most mothers might not feel, but I could be wrong there. You know — and this is how I think you’ll feel — that he can get his kid out of any perilous situation when they’re that young. The same reason he’d run into a burning building to save his child even if, from a practical standpoint, there doesn’t seem to be a chance in the world his rescue attempt will succeed, so instead of only the child dying — tragedy enough — they both do, something the father would probably want anyway if he couldn’t save his kid. Or maybe, taking from the last thing I said — have we talked about this before?” and he said “All you said after you read it was that you liked it and that you had read something else of mine similar in plot, maybe too much so because some readers — not that I have many; you didn’t say that; I did — might think I was repeating myself.” “That wasn’t nice of me, and I now can’t remember what it reminded me of yours.” “Free-falling.” “Still no bell rings. Not even the title. Anyway, your story also might have been about that the father knew, even before he jumped out of the plane after her, that they were both doomed, but he wanted to alleviate her fear as much as he could by not having her go down alone. Did I get close that time?” and he said “Both are good but the second’s better. But at the end they’re still flying as if it’s a perfectly normal thing for humans to do, so I don’t know. The flying part could be an after-death fantasy — I’m the last person to ask — but what else about my dream?” “Something to do with elevators. Riding down in one. I’d have to have the dream read to me again or read it myself, something I haven’t the time now to do. I know the elevator didn’t come for a while when we were waiting for it in Pati’s building, which gave us time to start talking. Otherwise, we probably wouldn’t have continued to talk on the street and exchanged names and my telling you how you can reach me, and so on. By the way, do you ever hear of men running into hopelessly burning buildings to save their mothers or wives?” and he said “It has to have happened; it’s just not as dramatic or emotional a news story. As for wives running in to save their husbands — I’m sure many mothers have run in for their young sons — it probably almost never happens. They instinctively know, if the fire’s really out of control, that they’re not physically capable of carrying or dragging out what in all likelihood is a much heavier and larger man.” She said “Now as to my coming into your dreamlife so fast that night — you asked that — I don’t know what to say. Can I be a little immodest by saying I might have made a strong impression, maybe even more than that? But I’m only repeating what you’ve told me a number of times, just as I’ve told you I wasn’t that immediately taken with you. Interested, curious, at least open to meeting you for coffee? Yes. You were so awkward but I thought gentle and civil and even gallant and possibly deep, funny and smart. That’s right, I took all that in. As for your dream — and I really have to get back to my work, sweetheart — starting out with you walking with your sister in that hallway and ending with you going up the stairs to the roof with only me, and I assume I was on the same side of you as your sister had been, and entering and walking around it? I’m going over old ground, I think, but that was both…oh, shoot, I lost it. It’ll come back, and when it does I bet you’ll find it wasn’t all that sharp.” “Never,” he said; “everything you say.” “Sure. What else, though, but quickly? My suggesting in the dream you live with me in my apartment? And how would you have known it was large enough for two? Maybe you were fantasizing a life with me that could go, for want of a better expression, all the way to the top. The roof’s the acme of a building, no? So: meeting for coffee, next for a glass of wine or beer, couple of dinners out, later seriously dating, sleeping together, part of our first summer together vacating to someplace north of New York, professions of love, or that came long before. You know: ‘You know I love you,’ and ‘And I love you.’ ‘But I said it first.’ ‘But I mean it as much.’ Then the big kiss and long embrace and so on. You moving in. Summer after that first summer, traveling around France. Picasso, Matisse, Giacometti, Braque, Chagall, Miró, maybe a chateau. Marriage, children, years and years of me till you’re sick of my wizening face and kick me out. Or, because it’s my apartment originally — no, by then we’d be joint lessees and we would have gone through several residences, maybe even owned a house— Anyhow, you leave and take up with a woman twenty years younger than I, which would put her around thirty years younger than you. That’s me now kidding, I hope; how come you didn’t laugh?” He said something and she said “I don’t know. My mother says I’ve become a lot funnier and my sense of humor has vastly improved, since knowing you,” and he said “So you’ve said, and I agree, but then you know I would never disagree with your mother. Oy, what am I saying? Bad joke, not even close to one — mine, and no offense to your mother, whom you know I really like and admire — and only kidding with my failed jokes too. Your sense of humor and flair for comedy and also your wit, etcetera — whatever I’m trying to say — were always tops. And you have, and not just compared to me — I’m hopeless, can’t even remember punch lines to jokes I’ve heard a dozen times — a great memory for the whole joke.” “I just thought of something,” she said. “In your dream did you have to unlock the roof door to get out? And he said “Wasn’t that in what I read you? It was one of those sliding bolts, no lock, same as in the brownstone I lived in. Why do you ask?” and she said “I thought there could be some connections to the stairway’s ground floor door in Pati’s building when I tried it from the inside and it seemed locked. And no alarm went off when you unbolted and opened the door? Although I think that only happens on roof doors of buildings when someone tries to break in from the outside, though in a dream anything can be the reverse of the real. All I’m saying is that if an alarm had gone off it could have been of some relevance to me. Think of it. The first night. We’ve just met. Hardly spoke. But your fantasy life’s been fired up. You’re already dreaming of me, and in the closest sorts of ways. So something self-protective could be warning you ‘Wait a minute, hold off, don’t jump in so fast,’ especially after you ended up so disappointed and hurt in what you told me were your last three relationships the past year. Not so much the long one with Diana — that one you said was already over, other than for you sleeping with her once or twice a month, when she broke it off completely with you — but the short one with Karyn and the quickie with whatever the third one’s name was,” and he said “Nadine, and no alarm, outside or in. If there had been one I think I also would have thought what you said. But it probably would have awakened me, as dream alarms do — ringing alarms, I mean — before we stepped onto the roof.” “So I got carried away a little, but not solipsistically, I hope you don’t think.” “Once again: you? Never.” “Sometimes I think you’d let me get away with or explain myself out of anything,” and he said “Maybe anything but sleeping with someone else, which you’ve said, and I’ve said too, you’d never do.” “Why would I?” and he said “Same here, so long as we’re together, which seems we’re going to be — I don’t know how it can’t be — for life, right?” and she said “I’m glad we got that cleared up and worked out, not that I was worrying. Holding hands was sweet. I’m talking about the dream. And squeezing my hand, in addition to how I originally saw it, I’d say it was you who got dreamily carried away with your ardor or some emotion — not ardor. What am I trying to say?” and he said “Beats me.” “It could have been just your uneasiness that I’d leave you for good if you let go of my hand — translate that as my not agreeing, when you called, to meet you for even a first date — so you felt you had to clutch it to stop me from pulling it away, and squeezed too hard. Anything in that?” “Would you consider it as even a slight act of desertion if I said I don’t think so?” “Whatever reason you did it, I forgive you for hurting me. And you did seem, from your account, to let go the second I showed pain, and were genuinely sorry. Just as you are in your waking life if you accidentally hurt me — stepping on my foot, that jar of olive oil you thought you’d tucked safely away in the cupboard, or even in sex when you go in too deep or poke around the wrong hole. I did like the line — I know, I said I had to go, and I do have to, so, much fun as this is, I’ll finish up—‘Which of these buildings would you like to live in an apartment with me’—what was it again: and he read it and she said “I liked it — the way it was worded, and also the rest of the line: ‘if you don’t want to live with me in the building we’re standing on now?’ Again, what was the exact wording? Though it’s something I remembered even that much of it,” and he read it and she said “Nice, uncomplicated, no trouble in understanding what it me