The Anatomy of Dreams

by Chloe Benjamin

  Besides, we had bigger things to worry about that ­winter—and perhaps that’s why my dream life took on its own menace. Five days before Christmas, Keller called and told us to meet him at the lab. A fuse had blown in the living room furnace, and we were cranky, sore with cold. Besides, it was Sunday, a day we were supposed to have off. But Keller spoke in the stiff tone that indicated he was not open to ­debate, so we grudgingly trudged outside to scrape the car in our new boots.

  We never made it to the lab. A storm was dumping buckets of nasty slush on the roads, and the ground was so wet that we skidded twice before we pulled into somebody’s driveway and called Keller to say we’d have to meet him somewhere else. We wound up at the Starbucks on State Street—the kind of place Keller abhorred, but it was the coffee shop closest to our car.

  It was the last day of finals at the university, and it seemed that every undergrad had fled their dorm for the heat and cloying music and sweet whipped drinks at Starbucks. The chairs were covered in down coats in shades of pink and red and blue; scattered across the floor were backpacks splayed like fallen soldiers, squashed Ugg boots, pom-pom hats, fat little gloves. Mariah Carey’s Christmas album played over the speakers. We took the stairs to the second level, where there were more tables and leather armchairs (“Sorry,” said Gabe as he brushed past a girl who had fallen asleep with a chemistry book open on her lap, her mouth agape).

  We found Keller standing in a back corner, hands linked behind his back as he scanned the room for us. He’d staked out a trio of tables, not because we needed to spread out but because we needed the privacy. He hadn’t purchased anything, and a huddled group of underclassmen searching for a place to sit stared at his three empty tables with undisguised irritation.

  “Have a seat,” he said, oblivious. Gabe and I sat down, each at our own table, and pulled off our hats. A flurry of snow settled on our eyelashes and hair; we brushed it off, staring at him. Keller reached into his briefcase—black leather, tattered now, the same one he’d carried around at Mills—and put a thick newspaper in front of us. It was a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle, dated that same day.

  “I didn’t know you still get the Chronicle,” said Gabe, his brows raised. “Homesick?”

  “That’s beside the point,” said Keller, jabbing a finger at the paper. He had opened it to the crime section of the “Bay Area and State” page. Below his finger was the mug shot of a woman with scraggly blond hair—yellowed at the ends, brown at the roots—and sallow, deep-set eyes. I immediately recognized her cleft chin and widow’s peak, the pocked scars along her ­temples—remnants of a bad childhood bout with chicken pox, she’d told us, though we always suspected ­otherwise.

  MURDER ARREST MADE IN OAKLAND CASE

  (20-12) 06:51 PDT Rockridge—A suspect has been taken into custody in connection with the deaths of James, Leslie and Charlotte March, the Rockridge family found dead in September, authorities said Saturday.

  Anne March, 26, of San Francisco, was arrested on suspicion of murder after an extensive statewide search. March, who worked as a pediatric nurse at Kaiser Permanente, was first reported missing in early October. The turning point came last Tuesday, when an anonymous tip directed city police to an abandoned house in San Francisco where Ms. March was found squatting.

  “We have probable cause to believe Ms. March committed the murders of James, Leslie and Charlotte March,” said Sheriff’s Sergeant Jose Mendoza. Mendoza declined further comment, saying a press conference was scheduled for Monday morning. Other members of the March family are expected to attend.

  The suspect attended Oakland High School and college at California State–Long Beach. She has no prior criminal history, and public defender Linda Meyers has implied that the state might consider an insanity defense. Though prosecutor Kevin van Dyke called this “ludicrous,” citing Ms. March’s passing scores on the psychological exams required of all licensed nurses, Meyers maintained that “mental health cannot be reduced to a numerical score, a true-or-false question, a pass or fail.” Meyers alluded to Ms. March’s participation in a 2002 psychological research study as possible evidence of past instability, though she declined additional comment. Efforts by the Chronicle to contact the study’s director were unsuccessful.

  March was transported to the Central California Women’s Facility, where she faces a sentence of 50 years to life for the murders of her parents, James and Leslie, both 52, and her younger sister Charlotte, age 11. The San Francisco Chronicle first reported on the March case on September 12, when James March’s employer called city police to report his absence at work. The three victims were found in bed, dead due to fatal doses of morphine, administered intravenously. Their time of death was estimated to be ten days prior.

  CCWF is the largest female correctional facility in the United States. It houses the state of California’s death row for women.

  “Jesus Christ,” said Gabe. He set the paper down and stared at it for a beat before looking up at Keller.

  “I knew this would happen,” I said. “I knew it.”

  We were quiet. Something seemed to rise and spread between us like toxic gas. In the hall behind us, a toilet flushed, and two girls came out of the bathroom, their arms linked. The taste of bile climbed my throat.

  “Well, what do we do?” asked Gabe. “What the fuck do you suggest we do?”

  It took a moment for me to realize he was talking to Keller. I’d known Gabe to quibble with Keller, tease him, even, but I’d never heard him use this kind of language. Keller looked at him evenly, his head slightly bowed.

  “I suggest,” he said in a low tone, “that you don’t pick up the phone unless you’re sure the call is from one of us. Let everything else go to voice mail. If you’re contacted by anyone you don’t know—a reporter, a stranger, anyone—come to me immediately. I don’t care how innocuous it seems.”

  “Jesus Christ,” said Gabe. He ran his hands through his hair. “Okay, let’s think about this. Maybe it’s not so bad. It’s possible she wasn’t asleep, right? And even if she was, how could they possibly prove it?”

  “She definitely wasn’t asleep,” said Keller.

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “She couldn’t be. If you remember anything about Anne’s case, you’ll know that she was never a sleepwalker—her disorder most closely resembled RBD. She never left her bedroom. Her eyes were always closed. She was violent but clumsy. She had none of the fine motor skills required to operate a car or fill a vial of morphine.”

  “That’s a good thing, right?” asked Gabe. “That she wasn’t sleeping? I mean, if she was awake when she committed those murders, how could our study have had anything to do with them?”

  “It isn’t a good thing,” I said. “My God—do you really think we had no part in this? We knew exactly how violent she was. We gave her knowledge of her deepest impulses, and then we left her. We trusted her to know what to do with it.”

  “We aim to help patients resolve their sleep disorders. But we’re not responsible for the knowledge they receive in lucidity training, nor the actions they take as a result of it,” said Keller tightly. “You know this as well as I do—it’s in our release.”

  “Legally, maybe, but what about morally?” I asked. “I mean, isn’t that why we’re sitting here, freaking out? That disclaimer’s all well and good until somebody gets killed.”

  “We were operating within the constraints of client-­patient confidentiality,” said Keller. “Besides, RBD is characterized by unconscious outbursts of violence and self-defense. Nearly every patient we see shows these symptoms.”

  “Yeah, but Anne was different,” said Gabe. “She was cagier. Manipulative. We all knew it.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “We should have told somebody. We should have turned her in.”

  “And what should have happened then?” asked Keller. “Should she have been arrested for dr
eaming of murder? Charged? Where would it stop? Imagine—people being rounded up and accused, not for what they’ve done, but what they dreamed of doing. It’s thoughtcrime, and we would have been the policemen.”

  “Fine—but that still doesn’t mean we aren’t culpable. We held a mirror up to her mind and showed her what was inside it.” I felt nauseous, my head thick. “We gave her the idea.”

  “That’s impossible to prove,” Keller said.

  “But are you denying it?” asked Gabe.

  A strange, new dynamic uncoiled itself between us: Keller leaning slightly back, Gabe and I staring at him hungrily. Hungry for what? For him to admit some wrongdoing? For him to crack?

  Keller was silent, staring at a spot behind our heads, either lost in thought or ignoring us completely. For a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to reply; then he opened his mouth and exhaled, a rattle of a sound.

  “I don’t know,” he said, articulating each word carefully, and somehow this was worse, more humiliating, than a denial.

  I thought of Jamie: his tufted hair, his limbs straining against our straps, his shoes blinking red as he walked away from us. And I remembered something else: a warm night in September, a locket hanging from an index finger. My first conversation with Thom.

  Couldn’t what begins as an exercise in self-knowledge actually reveal our darkest impulses? he’d asked. Once we experience our dreams—not via recollection, but right there in the moment—how long is it before we start to believe that this is who we really are, what we really want, how we really feel? When does one’s dream consciousness become their consciousness, I mean? Maybe the dreams themselves aren’t dangerous. Maybe what’s dangerous is putting people in contact with them.

  “Oh my God,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “Thom was right.”

  Gabe had been staring at the wall, dazed, but now his eyes narrowed.

  “Thom was right?” he repeated. “You talked to Thom about our research?”

  “Well, you talked to Janna.”

  “She asked me about it. That’s different. I didn’t tell her shit.”

  “What’s going on?” asked Keller. “Who’s Thom? Who’s Janna?”

  Neither one of us answered immediately. But Keller looked stricken, as if we had betrayed him, and Gabe caved first.

  “Our neighbors,” he said.

  “I have told you,” said Keller, “countless times—”

  “Yeah, we know.” Gabe’s voice was tired, flat. “The first rule of Fight Club is that you don’t talk about Fight Club.”

  Keller was rigid. “This is hardly the time to joke, Gabriel.”

  “Who’s joking?” said Gabe. “If they subpoena our files—if they find out what we knew—we’re fucked. We could be implicated.”

  He slammed the heel of his hand on the table. The students sitting closest to us looked up, but nobody else paid much attention. They probably mistook Gabe and me for siblings, undergrads, and Keller for our father. A family tiff, they would think—our father come to pick us up after finals, Gabe edgy from that morning’s exam.

  “They won’t subpoena her file,” said Keller.

  “Why not?” asked Gabe.

  “Because I’ve gotten rid of it.”

  He was very calm. We stared at him.

  “That’s just great,” said Gabe. “That’s really great, Adrian. And what’s our excuse?”

  “A fire at the lab in Fort Bragg. Some combustible substance—kerosene, naphthalene, one of the pyrophorics. An act of carelessness, to be sure, but an ordinary accident.” Keller took off his glasses and set them down on the table on their delicate, spidery legs. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Though I’m open to other ideas, if you have them.”

  “What if you have to testify?” I asked.

  “Then I will,” said Keller. “The publicity is not necessarily the issue—it’s what kind of publicity it is. I have no problem speaking on behalf of our research. And if you find yourself in a similar situation, be sure to make it clear that the March case was entirely ordinary. Underwhelming, even. We worked with her for eight weeks, during which she couldn’t attain a lucid dream state. Because she was unable to meet the demands of the study, we released her.”

  “And what if she tells them otherwise?” I asked. “She was lucid.”

  “A little too lucid,” muttered Gabe.

  “With an insanity defense,” said Keller, “I can’t see that sort of inconsistency as being much of a problem.”

  We were quiet as the music—a rousing hip-hop version of “God Bless Ye Merry Gentlemen”—came to an Auto-Tuned crescendo. When the next song began, Keller shook his head.

  “It’s a tragedy,” he said. “She’s exactly the kind of patient we could have helped.”

  • • •

  On Christmas Eve, I dreamed of lying with Thom on the floor of the basement. Our bodies were slick and pressed together, pulsing against the floor’s wooden planks. Thom held my hips, easing me back and forth. Afterward, I climbed off of him, warm and light-headed, and he put his hand between my legs. When I came, sliding down the planks with my face pressed to his neck, the feeling was as strong as it had ever been when I was awake.

  A thin woman with a sliced red bob sat on the desk chair, watching us. It was Keller’s wife. She beckoned to me, and I rose. Gently, she tugged on the dangling chain of the bulb, but before the light came on, I woke up.

  I blinked in the darkness, my heart thumping, Gabe beside me. Sleeping with Thom—this was what I had been dreading and what a part of me wanted, too. But just as unnerving was the fact that the lightbulb—a dream bulb, and therefore, according to Keller’s rules, impossible to turn on—had almost worked.

  It was five in the morning now, Christmas Day. Gabe stirred heavily, sighing, and sat up; then he pushed out of bed and trudged into the hall. I heard the bathroom door close, the light turn on, the rushing noise of Gabe peeing. Full with the memory of Thom’s slack, open face—the way the lines on his forehead erased themselves as we rocked together—I slid my hand beneath my pajamas. Inside, I was slick, the flesh molding snugly around my finger. When Gabe stopped peeing, it was silent again, and I froze. After a pause, the toilet flushed and I pulled my thumb downward, my body beginning to shake.

  • • •

  Christmas Day seemed to yawn on infinitely: the practical gifts, the rigid appreciation, walking around in our sleeping-bag coats because the living room furnace still hadn’t been fixed. Every half hour we refreshed the major news websites, scanning them for news of the March case. So far, there had only been a brief addendum in the San Francisco Chronicle about the press conference, which devoted more space to the speeches of Anne’s relatives than to the insanity defense. Neither of us was very hungry, but the thought of the year-old cans of chicken soup in the pantry made me feel sick, so I left for the market with two layers of sweatpants beneath my coat. I brought home a rotisserie chicken for dinner, and because we’d eaten so little all day, our appetites surged: we picked it clean to the bone.

  That night, I felt too guilty to sleep. I lay awake until the clock on my night table read two thirty, then three thirty, then four. At four thirty, as the sky turned from black to charcoal, I pushed out of bed and went downstairs for a glass of water. I turned on the tap and let it run until the water turned from reddish-brown to clear. Outside, our car was a great white beast, magnified with snow. After drinking, I climbed the stairs to the attic.

  I opened the door slowly, so that it didn’t creak, and sank to my knees in front of the window. The moon glared outside the window like a policeman on night watch. As the rug printed my legs with the nubbly pattern of its yarn, I sketched my transgressions: Thom’s hips pressed to mine, the red-haired woman watching us. Angel or prison guard, I painted her in angles: the sharp points of her bob, the slice of nose, the eyebrows arced in expectation. She was ora
nge, the floor mahogany, and I was red as pleasure.

  When it came time to paint the canvas black again, I paused. This time, I wasn’t ready to return to bed, but I forced myself to open the lid of the black tube. As I did, the phone began to ring.

  I froze for only a second before running down both flights of stairs. We had two landlines, one at the first-floor landing and one in the bedroom. Gabe was out cold, but I knew he’d wake up if the phone kept ringing. I picked it up downstairs, the tube of black paint still in my hand.

  “Hello, neighbor,” said the voice on the other end.

  It was Thom. His characteristic lilt made me grow warm.

  “Thom.” I was stunned. It came out as a whisper, almost a question.

  “Don’t wear it out.” Thom was whispering, too; we had dropped into a low tone of intimacy that was as confusing as it was electric.

  “You shouldn’t call at this time of night,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I was sleeping.”

  “You were not.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You answered the phone.” He paused. “Plus, your light is on.”

  I turned. Faint light spilled into the stairwell—one of the lamps in the bedroom. My stomach clenched. Had I turned my lamp on before getting out of bed without realizing it, or had Gabe woken up?

  “Anyway,” said Thom, “I only called to see if you’d be interested in a nightcap. Fellow owls and all that.”

  “I was sleeping,” I said, more sharply than I’d meant to. Suddenly I felt guilty; he couldn’t know why he made me so uncomfortable. “Maybe another time.”

  “Strange,” said Thom. “I thought I saw you go downstairs for a glass of water.”

  “You were watching me? That’s harassment.”

  “I didn’t mean to.” The playful edge of his voice was gone; he sounded affronted. “I was sitting in my living room—couldn’t sleep, like I said—and I saw a shadow at your kitchen sink. Slight, so I figured it was you. Anyway, it was your shades that were up. Don’t leave your shades up if you don’t want to be seen.”