The Anatomy of Dreams

by Chloe Benjamin

  Thom leaned against the juniper tree as we had done together on Thanksgiving. There was an open book on his lap; his head was bowed and unmoving. The snuffling noise came again, followed by a high whistle. Thom’s head rose jaggedly, as if pulled by strings, before bobbing back to stillness. He was snoring. The pattern repeated every few seconds, familiar as a song I knew by heart.

  “Gabe?” I called. My chest squeezed like a fist, tightness radiating up to my jaw and throat. I stayed where I was until my vision cleared, the shapes of our yard reassuming their positions like actors after intermission. There was the rhododendron shrub, its petals vivid and velvety as scraps of brilliant fabric; there were the dogwood trees, their branches growing horizontally, as if to reach out for each other.

  There was a quick movement in the window of our bedroom—a flash of brown as someone’s head withdrew.

  Gabe had been watching me. The bedroom window was open, our eclipse drapes pushed to one side.

  I walked back into the house, grabbed my coat from the closet and took my keys from the basket by the door. On second thought, I took Gabe’s, too, shoving them deep into my pocket so he couldn’t come after me.

  • • •

  The parking lot was empty when I arrived at the lab. The Hungarian researcher was with family in Eastern Europe; I didn’t know about the other researcher. I flashed my ID card and stepped through when the doors opened for me. My footsteps made a flat rapping noise as I took the stairs to the basement, the fluorescent lights turning on automatically. A migraine in a box—that was what Keller called this building. I knew he had suffered from headaches for years, though he almost never mentioned them. Every few months, I saw him reach into his pocket for a small tin filled with flat, white rounds. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought they were mints.

  The lock on Keller’s office door jammed for a moment before giving way. Inside, it was silent: the air boxed and windless, the computer waiting patiently to be woken.

  I sat down in Keller’s chair and slowly spun. Now that I was here, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I’d come to look for something, but I didn’t know what it was—all I knew was a rumbling, bone-deep feeling of unease, the Madeline sense that something was not right. Keller’s new presence at our house. His hushed conversations with Gabe. It was as if there were a dark spot dancing at the edge of my vision, a jumping bean, slipping out of view whenever I looked at it directly.

  I came to a stop in front of the file cabinets. Keller had asked me to reorganize all of our hard-copy files. Right now, they were arranged in alphabetical order by last name, but he wanted them ordered chronologically by case number. It wasn’t difficult work, but it would take time—Keller had observed over three hundred subjects. I had been around for forty-eight of them, Gabe one hundred and twelve. The project afforded me unlimited access to Keller’s hard-copy files.

  The main filing cabinet was nearly six feet tall; I had to stand on the spinning chair, grabbing hold of the cabinet to steady myself, in order to reach the higher shelves. I took files out by the fistful, dropping them in stacks on the floor. There it was, our work: each patient reduced to a neat pile of papers in a pale folder, except Anne. I decided to start with the present and work backward. I knew 304—that was Jamie. I put a red label sticker on the edge of his file for the year and wrote the month on a white tab in a clear sleeve. Then I put it back in the first drawer, pressed against the back.

  It was the kind of rhythmic work that Keller could rely on me to do well. You’re a machine, Sylvie—that’s what Keller said to me, once, as he watched me entering numbers. It was easy, I told him—you just couldn’t get snagged. Each patient a number, each number an entry, each entry logged and saved in the automated depth of the computer’s memory. Such elegant architecture, and I the architect! Chip by chip, I built whole mechanical cities, maps of human dysfunction, each node blinking in place: 298, Maura Sanchez, a cafeteria worker who came to us after waking to find herself standing at the edge of a seventh-story fire escape; 296, bus driver Daryl Evans, who had screamed at night with the shrill and enduring vibrato of a soprano.

  By late afternoon I had worked my way down to participant 212. I’d filled an entire drawer with red-labeled folders, but I hadn’t found anything out of the ordinary. I opened the bottom drawer and took out the folders inside it, five at a time. When I finished, one folder was left. Either it had dropped out of my hands, or it had been wedged horizontally beneath the others.

  It was unmarked: no name, no number. Inside was a stack of old newspaper articles. An obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle, March 21, 1985. An interview with a well-known neurologist—Alec Ivanov, since deceased—in Time. An article from the Chicago Tribune, November 23, ’86: “The Fall of the Sexsomnia Defense: Delivery driver jailed for sexual assault, during which he claimed to be asleep . . .”

  Beneath the articles was a stack of smaller, handwritten notes on beige lined paper, the edges uneven, as if ripped from a journal.

  SEPT 16 ’91

  Another similar report. Twelve thirty—the second REM cycle, so far as we’ve been able to discern. I turned from back to stomach, reached for him. The testicles, as before. How humiliating it is to write this out. His report, of course, and it’s all I can do to trust it. Have thought of installing a camera but I’ve no desire to see myself that way. Sticky in the morning—again, as before. But I must not blame him. Tomorrow we have an appointment with Alec, the only one I’ll see. Adrian thinks it best to see someone who doesn’t know me, but I disagreed, and he relented. Someone who knew me as I was, and not only as I’ve become: this, I believe, is true impartiality.

  NOV 4 ’91

  Woke again at four this morning after another night of the new system. I’ve got it down, you might say, to a science—forty-five minutes of sleep, then the alarm. I get out of bed, distract myself. Then another forty-five minutes, then the alarm, and this way I recuse myself from each REM cycle like an athlete pulling out of a match. It’s my choice, though I can tell it hurts him. Perhaps he liked me better as I was: all animal, brute instinct. But I’d rather it be controlled. The device I keep under the waistband of my pants, next to the skin. Ingenious, now that I’ve figured how to cut the noise. It only vibrates, and in doing so it wakes me while he sleeps.

  JAN 1 ’92

  W 112

  H 5 ft 6

  T 98.6

  BP 90/60

  Six A.M. Exhausted. A happy New Year. I slept through the last two cycles this morning and I’m afraid to ask what happened. He’ll sleep another hour, and then I’ll do it. How much faith I had in that little toy! But it’s stopped doing its job, just like me. I may have to use noise again, though the thought of it is terrible—a regression. And who will I be if I keep going backward?

  FEB 21 ’92

  W 106

  H 5 ft 6

  T 98.7

  BP 80/55

  All nighttime things have taken on their otherworldly alternates. The moon, the stars, darkness and its shadows—all these are threatening for what they precede. My perceptions must be named as part of one of two camps. I am asleep, or I am awake. I am myself, or I am not. Each morning I take vital signs to see if my self has changed, mechanically speaking. Height is stable at 5 feet 6 inches. Ditto temperature, at 98.7. Weight has dropped and fluctuates weekly depending on my cycle, which I’ve managed to retain. Adrian says I shouldn’t worry so much about control, but it’s easy for him to say, who has it. He is eternally patient with me. I’ve no business asking why. Each morning we write our notes, compare them for holes and accuracy, and compile a cross-report. I must have faith that what we are doing will be of use to someone else, if not to me.

  The entries continued until October 5, 1993, with significant gaps between. Behind them was a patient intake report—an earlier version of what we used now. The boxes were supposed to be filled out by the patient, but I r
ecognized Keller’s tiny, slanted black script.

  PATIENT: Keller, Meredith

  DOB: January 4, 1950

  ORDERING PHYSICIAN: Ivanov, Alec

  REASON FOR TEST: A) SLEEP APNEA B) HYPERSOMNIA C) SNORING D) LEG JERKS (PLMS) E) INSOMNIA F) SEIZURE G) NARCOLEPSY H) OTHER: RBD

  READING DOCTOR: Keller, Adrian

  The bottom of the form was to be completed by the research team, then as now. In the line beside Patient Number, Keller had written, in his thin, recognizable handwriting: 1.

  • • •

  When I returned home, the door was unlocked, and Gabe was gone. Perhaps he was on his way to the lab; he might have even rumbled past me on the bus as I drove by in the opposite lane.

  I paced the living room while waiting for him. What did it mean that Keller’s wife was his first patient? Maybe it meant nothing at all. Clearly, she had made herself a subject. So why did I feel a sour crunch of nausea?

  I could do one of three things. I could tell Keller, but I would have to admit to snooping. I could tell no one, of course, but this knowledge was more than I could sort through alone. Despite my fight with Gabe and his loyalty to Keller—it was becoming clear to me that he saw not Keller but some kaleidoscopic version of him, a Keller whose bright particles could shift, protean, and rearrange to fit the shape of any answer—Gabe was still the person I trusted most, the only person I had.

  From the table next to the stairs, the phone began to ring. I picked up the receiver and slammed it down again. Next to the phone was a list of numbers I’d laminated with packing tape. Cell numbers for Gabe, Keller, and me, landlines for my parents and Gabe’s grandmother. The lab. The university sleep center. These were the numbers we dialed most often—really, the only numbers we dialed at all.

  I lifted the receiver and began to call Gabe before I realized there was no dial tone. I hung up the phone, picked it up again. Nothing.

  I put the receiver down and began to trace the wiring to the wall. I hadn’t set up the landline, but I assumed it connected to the plug a foot or so behind the table. But it was strange; the phone’s clear wiring, nearly invisible against the white wall, snaked around to the stairs. Then it began to travel upward, secured with plastic pins.

  At the landing, it took a left and followed the hallway to our room. Another left. Inside the bedroom, it threaded down the wall next to Gabe’s side of the bed, and then it disappeared behind his night table.

  I crouched and tried to pull the table forward, but it was too heavy to budge. What could he be keeping in those drawers? I opened them: scientific encyclopedias, a thick hardcover on rail transportation in the US. A large, knobbed fossil he had found on Martha’s Vineyard and insisted on bringing home, lugging it through Boston Logan in his carry-on. I laid each item carefully on the bed. Then I lifted the table and knelt next to the wall, where the plug finally found its entrance.

  The wire had been cut. About two inches from the wall was a tiny, rectangular black box, about half the size of a deck of playing cards. Two black probes extended from one end of the box, clipped to the ends of the severed wire.

  I shook my head. Where had I seen something like this before? A movie? A television show? The sleek little bug with clips as sharply ridged as incisor teeth. The innocuous black box, deadpan, poker-faced. Downstairs, the door opened and closed with a bang.

  “Sylve?”

  I sat in front of the bug as if rooted while Gabe climbed the stairs. The door flew open—we were accustomed to barging in with the heedless entitlement of college roommates. He stood in the doorway, panting, his hands braced in the frame.

  “I just wanted . . .” He inhaled. “I wanted to say I’m sorry. For yelling at you. I shouldn’t have. You don’t need me to tell you how to talk to Keller. You can talk to him how—however you like.”

  It was then that he looked past me to the wall. He stared at the bug.

  “Gabe?” I swallowed—a hard, scratchy knot. “What is this?”

  He squatted next to me and picked it up in one hand. Shook it lightly, as if to test its weight.

  “When did you find this?” he asked.

  “Just now.”

  The sun was sinking its little mound below the horizon of the city. Pink light skimmed Gabe’s cheek.

  “Sylvie.” His voice was low, steady. “Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

  “How many conclusions can there be? Someone’s been listening to our calls, and the only person who’s been here is Keller. Keller, and you and me.”

  Gabe’s hair was wild, his breathing labored. He looked at me a beat too long.

  “Oh, Gabe,” I said. “You can’t think I had anything to do with this.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Why can’t you admit that he’s fallible, that something incredibly sketchy might be going on?”

  “What do you mean, something sketchy?”

  He was still squatting, and one of his knees cracked. I climbed over him, leaving the bug by the wall, and padded quickly downstairs for my backpack. I brought it up to the bedroom, tossed it on the bed, and rooted around for the manila folder I’d taken from the lab.

  “I found this today,” I said, handing it to him. “It was in the filing cabinet, wedged beneath the others.”

  Gabe opened it gingerly and sifted through the papers inside.

  “Look.” I leaned toward him, pointing. “It’s Keller’s wife, her intake form. She had some sort of RBD—sexsomnia, it sounds like, if that even exists. She was tracking herself, keeping a kind of diary. Look at the handwriting. You recognize it, don’t you?”

  Gabe was silent. His body was perfectly still, but his eyes shifted across each page with incredible speed.

  “I don’t trust him,” I said. “He’s never told us about this, never even alluded to it.”

  “But why should he have told us? It was personal.”

  “That’s my point,” I said. “Science is supposed to be impartial. It’s supposed to be objective. And I’m starting to feel like Keller’s mission isn’t professional—it’s personal. It’s like he has a vendetta, Gabe—like he’s trying to avenge her by curing other people of the same sickness.”

  “And what’s so wrong with that?”

  I remembered something Gabe said months ago, last fall—both of us standing in the kitchen at dusk as the hazy golden light of evening slanted through the window. But what’s more ethical than helping the people you know? Why should the process be so quarantined, so sterilized? Science should be applicable to real life—so why should we divorce it from love?

  Outside the window, a crow paused on the fence. It trained on us one dark, beady eye before sweeping away.

  “How much do you know about this?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” said Gabe. “Nothing.”

  “Then why are you protecting him?”

  “I’m trying to see the good.”

  “But what if you’re wrong?”

  My faith in Keller had begun to erode years earlier, I think. But my faith in Gabe was, until that moment, mostly intact. Who else did I have but him?

  We looked at each other carefully. Then he sat next to me on the bed, kissed the line of my jaw.

  “Everything I do,” he said, “I do for you. For us. You know that, don’t you?”

  Was that romance? I had known no love but his. Rolling through the grass like wolves, limb for limb, scavenging for attention—the brute hunger, the desperate force—and then, days when we hunted alone, nosing our way through the brush and picking at stones, days when our tracks were parallel but far apart. That Christmas, my mother had called, her voice crackling with static, and asked if I thought I would marry him. I looked over at Gabe, who was making oatmeal at the stove, holding a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle in his non-stirring hand. What could I tell her—that we were caught in the pur
gatory of Anne’s trial, a trial that would name her fate but seemed just as likely to direct our own?

  I knew Gabe well enough to know when he was lying. Even so, the truth seemed elusive, as faint and faraway as half-hidden stars. I was afraid to look up. Why, I should have asked myself, did Gabe not suggest we dismantle the bug? As he walked to the bathroom to shower, I crouched on the floor and unclipped its teeth.

  • • •

  Psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs lists physiological needs—for breathing and food, for sex and sleep—as the most basic of all drives. Next comes the need for safety, followed by the need for belonging. But what about the need to forgive? There is no belonging without it, no safety, no love. And so I found myself climbing into bed with Gabe that night. I started to read my novel, but Gabe was fidgety: he rustled through the Isthmus, discarded it, futzed with his radio alarm clock. Music crackled to life: Jay Z, a classical crescendo, a mariachi band.

  “Can you turn that off?” I put my book down. “I’m trying to read.”

  “Hold on.”

  He fiddled with the dials, and Diana Ross’s “Ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do” came through, rich and jazzy and clear. Gabe began to groove in his seat. A pillow bounced and fell off the bed. He got to his feet, still on the mattress, and extended his hand.

  “Dance with me?” he asked.

  “Gabe—”

  “Come on, Sylve. We need a little music.”

  Diana’s voice faded, and the Jackson 5 took her place. I want you back, they crooned, and what could I do but take his hand? We jived down the mattress, jumped and rebounded; we spun and dipped and clung. Gabe knelt, playing air guitar, shaking his head until his eyes were masked by hair. For seconds, it was possible to forget everything we had ever done to each other. Hysterical with need, we yanked the curtains shut. As the furnace exhaled heat, we stripped off our clothes and climbed back onto the bed.