“I know that. But you could have a different one. You’re smart, Sylvie—smarter than anyone else in our class. You’ve got drive, and you don’t shy away from things that aren’t normal. And you want more”—he gestured to the dorms, the tall and columned buildings—“than this. I know you do.”
I stepped around him and started to walk again. He followed me, moving quickly, but I was faster.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “I’m happy here. You haven’t even been to college—do you have any idea what my life is like? I can’t just leave.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I don’t. But I still think you want to be involved in something bigger. I know it because I’m the same way. And because of what you said to me, back in high school. You begged me to take you with me.”
“What do you mean? I couldn’t have begged you—I didn’t know about any of this.”
“But you did know. You knew all along. You just weren’t conscious.”
There was a terrible whirring feeling in my gut. Gabe wouldn’t look at me.
“One night,” he said, “I was getting up in the middle of the night to meet Keller. I was in your room, getting my shoes on, when you asked me where I was going. I told you about the research, and before I knew it I was telling you everything. At first I thought you were awake. But something seemed off. You could barely open your eyes, and you only seemed to be half listening. I realized you were asleep.”
“So I was sleep-talking.” We passed the Mining Circle again; East Gate was in sight. “Really nice of you to fill me in, Gabe, but it isn’t the same. You could clear your conscience, and I didn’t remember any of it. It was a perfectly safe move.”
“You could look at it that way,” he said. “But I saw it as dangerous. I was speaking to a subconscious part of you—an uninhibited part of you—whose powers were a total mystery to me. I didn’t know what you’d do with the information, subconsciously or not, and I couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t remember it.”
“So you were just listening to me babble on all night? What else did I say?”
I tried to play it off as though I barely cared, but the truth is I was terrified.
“You said you loved me.”
I snorted.
“I didn’t mean it. I was sleeping.”
“More than once.”
“And what version of me do you think is more trustworthy? The waking me, or the sleep me, totally unaware of what I was saying?”
“The sleep you,” said Gabe. “Without question.”
“I probably thought you were someone else.”
“That’s exactly my point. You said things in your sleep, felt things, that you could never acknowledge in waking life. We all do. We’re too goddamn scared when the lights are on—we’re pansies. But the part of you that came out when you talked in your sleep? She shows you for who you are.”
“You took advantage of me,” I said. “You pried.”
I could feel my body heating up and my mouth began to quiver. But I didn’t want to cry in front of him.
“Why don’t you trust yourself?” he asked.
“Because I trusted you.”
It came out with more venom than I’d intended. We left campus and walked down the street again. He stepped closer to me, the curves of his face shadowed by a streetlamp.
“You chose me,” he said. “You didn’t have to, but you chose me. You told me those things for a reason, just like I chose to tell you what I was doing with Keller.”
We came to a crosswalk. The light was red, but no cars were coming, and I bolted across, the wind in my face. Just then, a car made a left turn into the intersection, and I leapt forward as it sped past me, honking.
“Jesus,” shouted Gabe, running across the street to meet me. “You trying to get yourself killed?”
“Just trying to get home.”
“Listen,” he said more frantically. “Is this really what you want? Chatting with girls in the lunch line, doing your physics homework at night? Sitting in your boyfriend’s nice little apartment, reading—I don’t know—reading poetry? That satisfies you?”
“What’s wrong with reading poetry? What’s weak about it?”
“All right. Maybe it does satisfy you, for now. But what about later? You don’t think you’ll wonder what would have happened if you’d come with me? Here”—he gestured to the shops, the students shuffling down the street in groups, the lit windows of upper-story apartments—“you have a perfectly decent life, I can see that. You could marry this—David, and maybe you’ll become a professor. I can imagine how your life might go from here, and I bet you can, too.”
I was quiet as we turned onto my block. I could see the square window in the galley kitchen lit up; David was there, cooking dinner, and all I had to do was return to him.
“There’s another thing, Sylvie. Keller’s patients—they’re not like most of us. They’ve got disorders that make them do things in their sleep. Dangerous things. They walk and talk—”
“I talk, apparently.”
“But they do other things, too. They can act out their dreams, like Stu. Sometimes they hurt people—people they love.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t say much more now. But I can tell you that it’s good work. We give these people a way to protect themselves, control their demons. Keller helps them to turn their disorders into something useful—something powerful. C’mon, Sylvie.” Gabe grinned. “I know you’re intrigued.”
“But why me?” That question had been nagging at me. “I haven’t studied neurology. There must be people better suited for this.”
“You’re studying psych.”
“But you just learned that. It couldn’t have been why you came.”
Gabe looked down. We were steps away from my apartment now; David could have seen us if he’d looked out of the window.
“You’re right,” he said. “There were other people suited for the job. It was no small feat to convince Keller to let me try for you. But I lobbied for it, said you wouldn’t let us down. He remembered you from school. He likes using people from Mills, giving us a chance out in the real world. I know it sounds hokey, Sylve, but I think he feels like a kind of father to us.”
“To you,” I said. I could still call up the image of Gabe in the mailroom at Mills, how he would go up to the counter and ask if anything had come for him from Florida, keeping his voice low so no one else in line would listen in. In the weeks around his birthday, he made us take a detour to the mailroom twice a day, after lunch and before dinner, and I always knew whose letters he was waiting for.
Night was falling fast, the sky shedding blue, and it was difficult to see Gabe’s eyes. But with his hair so short, the structure of his jaw was more visible, and that made me remember something.
“When I saw you at the lamppost, in my dream. How could I have pictured you with short hair if you weren’t really there? If I was dreaming, why didn’t you look the way you did at Mills?”
“Hmm,” said Gabe, his head cocked. “You might have seen me in town, even if it didn’t register. I’ve been lurking around here for a few weeks, you know. Keller wanted me to make sure you were ready before I approached you. See how you were, what you were up to.”
“Some people would call that stalking. I could probably have you arrested.”
“Oh, that’s a little harsh, don’t you think?” Gabe grinned. “I was observing. I was coming to see an old friend.”
I squinted up at the window again. Where was David? On the couch, probably, where he spread out with papers and poster board each night. Sometimes I liked to work in bed with the pillows propped behind me, but for David it was always the couch, never the bed. He only used the bed to sleep.
“I would have to leave school, wouldn’t I?” I asked.
&nbs
p; Gabe nodded.
“I’m sorry, Sylvie, but now’s when we have the opening. I’ll understand if it isn’t worth it to you, and Keller will, too. But think of it this way—you’d already have a job. A real, paying job, with benefits and a place to stay. Keller puts me up in Fort Bragg. It’s not a bad life.”
“Do you have friends?”
It sounded small, and Gabe laughed.
“Friends? No, not many. But I don’t need many friends. I have my research, which satisfies me, and Keller’s been a sort of mentor. I keep in touch with my gran; she’s still alive. And if you came with me, I’d have you.”
It was thrilling to hear him say those words. Still, I told him I needed the week to think about it and that I didn’t want him to come find me in the interim. He kept his promise. Whenever I sat down in a coffee shop or walked into a bookstore, I scanned it for him. But he was never there, and by the end of the week, I almost missed the feeling I got when I sensed he was nearby. Perhaps I was honored, or foolishly curious, or maybe I was still in love; it was probably some combination of the three that fated my decision long before it actually came time for me to make it.
It was the way I had felt when deciding whether to go to Mills. In middle school, I became resistant—I wanted to go to the public high school where my friends were going—but somehow I knew that my resistance was little more than a show. I had worn my dad’s old Mills sweatshirt since the age of eight, and I’d been hearing about the school for longer than that. The choice was mine to make, my parents said, but when I chose to go the route my father had, it seemed a choice made not by my rational mind but by the collective momentum of past experience. Later, in Keller’s psychology class at Mills—a subject I certainly wouldn’t have been able to take at the local high school, which adhered to a more limited state curriculum—I learned that Carl Jung had seen intuition as an irrational process, perception via the unconscious. I imagined intuition as an internal North Star, one that would lead me away from fairer climates of reason—if I chose to follow it.
In putting on a show of resistance, then, what had I been showing? Perhaps I meant to exert what I thought was my will, to prove I was governed by forces more logical, more solitary, than gravity or magnetism—the earth’s magic tricks. My friends would be attending the public school; therefore, I would be happy there. It was a simple equation, and like most simple equations, it probably would have been true. It would have fulfilled me, I think. But I made the decision to fulfill something else; or, as it happened, the decision made me.
When I told David that I was leaving—leaving both him and the university—he blinked at me not with sadness or anger but with absolute surprise. For a moment, I was disappointed that he didn’t react more strongly. Perhaps he had intended to break up with me, too, and was startled when I beat him to it. But if that were true, wouldn’t he have also looked relieved? There was such wonder in his face, such astonishment; it was as though I had vanished, and in my place was someone he had never seen before.
8
MADISON, WISCONSIN, 2004
The morning after Jamie’s session, I woke to thick, aggressive rain. It was nine o’clock, but it felt much earlier. The sky was a matte, slate blue, and I knew I hadn’t slept enough. Gabe was dozing with a peacefulness that irritated me, his arms curled to his chest. I pulled on an old pair of sweats and went downstairs to work in what he had dubbed my Oval Office. I couldn’t concentrate: I was still disturbed by what had happened the night before and angry that Gabe hadn’t stood up for me in front of Keller. When he woke, I wanted to talk about it again. But when I checked on him at eleven, he was still in bed. I decided I would wake him at noon, and in the meantime, I went outside to the porch.
The rain had stopped. Instead, a faint mist hung in the air. It made the world look static and grainy, like an old photograph. I sat down on the couch the former tenants had left. Time had softened the nubbly fabric, and its deep brown color hid any stains. I must have closed my eyes, because I felt myself wafting in and out of consciousness. Every so often, I came to, feeling the couch beneath me, and then I slipped away again.
“Sleepy Sylvie,” said a voice, too high to be Gabe’s. The couch gathered substance beneath me. When I opened my eyes, I saw a shadowy figure on the other side of the porch screen. Thom.
Though I knew I was awake, the quality of the light made him look like an old movie actor. I thought he was smiling at me, but I couldn’t be sure.
“Hello, you.” Thom poked his head in the door, and his features sharpened. “Didn’t mean to wake you—my apologies. Mind if I come in?”
“Sure,” I said, pushing myself into a seated position. He ducked his head beneath the door frame and dropped two large bundles on the wooden floor.
“Got caught in the rain,” he said, leaning against the screen. “I was picking up laundry. I’ll just take a moment—my arms need a rest. Not working today?”
“We had a lab last night, so I’m working from home.”
“Nice job.”
He lifted his head and grinned. His eyes were bright and owl-like behind the thick rims of his glasses, and his bangs were slicked to his forehead.
“And what are you doing today,” I asked, “besides laundry?”
“I teach a freshman composition course in the evening. And I’ll work on my dissertation.”
He hoisted one of the bags of laundry up on his back and straightened, tilting his head toward the door.
“Why don’t you come with? You can help me carry the laundry, have something to eat at our place. More fun than sleeping, I’d hope.”
“That sounds like free labor.” I grinned. “What’s in it for me?”
“The pure and stirring pleasure,” said Thom, “of hearing about my dissertation. Lots of people vying to hear more about this project, you know. It’s sure to make me a very attractive job candidate.”
Now I almost felt sorry for him. “What time is it?”
“Noonish.” Thom shook his shirtsleeve back and checked his watch. “Quarter after.”
I craned my head to look in the kitchen, but Gabe still hadn’t come downstairs. I wondered what he would think if he woke up while I was next door, but I wasn’t doing anything wrong. Besides, it would be nice to spend time with another person. So I took one of the bundles and followed Thom from my front porch to his, where hanging chimes made frantic, high-pitched music in the wind.
“Is Janna home?” I asked as we crossed through the kitchen. I hadn’t been to other parts of their house before, but now I saw it was the mirror image of the one I shared with Gabe—the rooms were identically shaped but laid out in opposite formation. In the living room, there were two wooden rocking chairs, a low table stacked with books, and an oval-shaped rug, knit in spiraling shades of pastel yarn. In front of a boarded-up fireplace, someone had set a row of candles on a tray. Along the wall were stencils in colored pencil, framed behind glass. The images were abstract, and they seemed to have been drawn in a quick, jittery hand; the thin lines had a sense of impulse and movement, and I had a strange feeling that the walls were quivering.
“She’s at work,” said Thom. “She has a new pair of clients, filthy rich, who founded some sort of artists’ colony in the Driftless Area. Janna takes care of the grounds, so I take care of the laundry.”
We set the laundry bags, the sort of drawstring sacks that may have once held a tent or a sleeping bag, down on the floor. They wavered, tubular and soft-bodied as dummies, before tipping over. A piece of Janna’s underwear, silky and magenta, sprouted from the mouth of the bag I’d carried.
I took a seat in the smaller rocking chair and crossed my legs on its salmon-colored cushion. In the wall closest to me was a small door that our apartment didn’t have.
“Where does that door lead?”
“The basement,” said Thom, sitting down.
“Funny,” I said.
“You have a basement, and we have an attic.”
Our attic was a small, cobwebby space accessible only by way of a rickety staircase. Probably it could have been an airy haven of some sort, if we’d put time into cleaning it, but we’d opted to use it for storage. There were piles of canvases and paints, boxes filled with winter clothing and Christmas ornaments.
“It’s where I go to write,” said Thom. “Clears my head to be underground. Nothing to look at, nothing to hear.”
“It isn’t depressing?”
Thom extended his legs and crossed one over the other. He wore a ragged sweater over a starched button-up shirt and a pair of beige slacks, which rode up around his ankles to reveal bones both large and delicate. His legs had the awkward grace of a giraffe, an unwieldy nobility, which made me want to pause in deference as he arranged himself.
“Depressing?” he asked. “It can be, but it also has the opposite effect. Sometimes I have to go to a place where there’s nothing to look at in order to see clearly. The more attractive the outside world, the more difficult it is for me to retreat into my head.”
“And what do you do there? What’s your book about?”
“Keats,” he said. “The poet who wrote the piece I quoted the other night—‘yes, in spite of all, some shape of beauty . . .’ You remember? He died at twenty-five, but he got more done in those years than most of us could hope to do by eighty. Keats was obsessed with beauty, thought it was the highest form of truth—he was a Romantic, so we can’t blame him—and he rejected the rationalism that was taking hold at the time. Other artists tried to analyze the world, pin it down like a butterfly staked to a board, but old Johnny just wanted to stare. He got itchy around people like Coleridge, who sought knowledge over beauty—people who were incapable, as Keats put it, of being content with half knowledge. In 1817, he wrote to his brothers about it, and he came up with this phrase called negative capability.”
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