by Lisa Unger
“Well, first thing,” she says gently. I look up at her. She’s concerned but not shocked. “We’ll return to the original dosage on your sleeping pills to make sure you get the rest you need. Poppy, you look exhausted. That’s not helping, of course.”
Her blue eyes are amplified by the green frames of her glasses. I still don’t tell her that I have been taking some creative mixture of Layla’s pills and mine, sleeping pills, antianxiety meds. That I’m not sure how many I’ve been taking. Not to mention the alcohol last night. Wine. Vodka. I don’t tell her that I passed out in the tub. Sins of omission.
“What’s happening to me? Am I—hallucinating?”
“I don’t think so,” she says thoughtfully. “When the brain is sleep-deprived, it takes what we call microsleeps. In your case, you’re working through a lot. We’ve lowered the dosage on your sleeping pills, maybe causing you to remember more of your dreams. So your brain is getting less rest. I think your stress is manifesting itself in the form of these nightmares.”
I take in and release a deep breath.
“These events might seem like hallucinations, but they’re more like dreams. You know the types of dreams you have when you’re just drifting off—when you’re falling, or something leaps at you from the dark. The state is called hypnagogia, the transitional phase between sleep and wakefulness, or between wakefulness and sleep. The sensations there—be they visual, olfactory, auditory—are often quite vivid. I suspect that’s what you’re experiencing.”
I don’t argue. But she was there, that woman. The way the blood pooled on the table in front of her, the purple-black bruises on her swollen skin, that throaty voice. It was so real. My heart starts to race again at the thought of her.
“So, I think if we can get you a couple nights of solid sleep, we’ll be in a better place.”
Again, I almost come clean about what I’m doing. But instead I promise myself that I’ll toss all the other pills and only take exactly what she’s prescribing now. I’m not lying exactly. I’m just not telling Dr. Nash the whole truth. Like I’m an addict trying to hide how bad my habit has become. Maybe that’s what I am. But I can get a grip on this. I know I can.
“The fact that you couldn’t move this afternoon tells me the REM atonia had set in, the paralysis that one experiences in a dream state, accomplished through inhibition of the motor neurons.”
“English.”
“The body is almost completely immobilized during sleep, to prevent you from acting out your dreams. That’s why I believe you were dreaming, not hallucinating.”
I flash on the image again. In the Arms of Morpheus—the whispering angel, the prone woman in red.
I wasn’t sleeping, I want to say. But maybe I was. The truth is that I’m not sure.
Outside the window, clouds drift, misty slivers of white in the bright blue. A plane, distant and tiny, zips across the sky, leaving a trail of white. As a kid, the sight of an aircraft filled me with wistful longing. Who were those people jetting off to exotic locales, I used to wonder, living different lives, and when would I be one of them? I have that feeling now, wishing that there was a plane that could take me away from whatever is happening to me.
“On the train the other day, when you felt like you were back in your bedroom. I am guessing that was a hypnagogic state. And today, as well, with the woman in your conference room.”
The hard stutter, the startle; the experience was like those twilight dreams. But when did my dreams go rogue, invading my reality?
“So how do I know what’s a dream and what’s real?”
“How do any of us know?” Dr. Nash peers at me over her glasses, gives me a smile.
I laugh a little, though it’s mirthless. She’s being philosophical.
“I used to know,” I say. “Before Jack died, before my breakdown. There was never anything like this.”
She tucks a strand of her silver-blond bob behind her ear, leans forward.
“We know why you keep going back to that morning before Jack died—on the train, frequently in your dreams, in our conversations here. You’ve identified that as the moment where you could have effected change. You revisit it subconsciously to reconcile, to accept that the past cannot be altered. But this woman. What did she mean to you?”
“Nothing,” I say. “I’ve never seen her before.”
Dr. Nash watches me. “Nothing.”
I dig into my memory, but there’s nothing.
“The woman’s name on the matchbook in your dream from last night. Elena, was it?” presses Dr. Nash.
Last night, this morning, asleep, awake—it’s all running together.
“That’s right.”
“Elena is a Spanish name,” says Dr. Nash. “The young intern whose résumé you were reading, her name was Ellen.”
I try to remember what I was thinking about, feeling, while reviewing the documents in the conference room. Was the dream in my mind, that name knocking around my head? But, no, I was present, awake, just reviewing the documents in front of me. Trying, in fact, to forget everything else. But—
“Just before my meeting, I searched the name on the internet.”
“Okay.”
“You think the intern’s name—Ellen—triggered that dream, or whatever it was?” I ask.
“Not necessarily,” says the doctor, pushing up her glasses. “I think you may have dozed off—or microslept—and the detail of that name wove itself in, the way things do in our dreams. Your husband’s murder is unsolved—he was beaten as you say this woman was—there are days missing from your memory. Those are dark mysteries at the center of your life. It makes a kind of sense, that this beaten, bloody woman says she knows your husband.”
“So, scenes from my nightmares are weaving into these hypnagogic states?”
She leans back in her chair and regards me.
“‘All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.’”
“Edgar Allan Poe,” I say. “Very literary.”
Dr. Nash smiles, kindness and empathy radiating. “I’m not being flip, Poppy. I am just saying that the mind, our dreams can be labyrinthine. If we follow those paths, no matter how twisty and dark, sometimes we find answers about ourselves.”
It’s the exact opposite of Detective Grayson’s position. They never make sense. They’re not real.
I have a headache, a bad one. We fill the hour with more talk about my dreams that frankly leads nowhere. Jack thought psychotherapy was a pseudoscience. There’s nothing wrong with most people that can’t be cured by a few hours in nature, in silence. Maybe he was right.
“What about the hooded man?” she asks. “Have you seen him again?”
“He’s real.” I feel the need to assert this. I break office rules and take the phone from my bag, pull up the picture and hand it to her. She squints at it.
“I don’t doubt that you saw someone,” she says handing it back.
“But—”
She pauses a second, measuring her words. “I just think it’s notable that both times you’ve seen him, you pursued him. Most women, when confronted in that way, would run in the other direction, or call the police. But both times you chased after him.”
I don’t know what to say. She’s right.
“Both events, in the telling, seem very dreamlike. He’s there, you chase, he slips away. No one else sees him. Even in the picture, yes, there’s a man, but he’s one in a crowd of other people. Just standing there.”
“You don’t think there’s a hooded man.” There’s a swelling of shame, uncertainty.
“I didn’t say that,” she says easily. “I’m just asking you to think about it—when it happened, how you were feeling at the time. What did you feel when you were chasing him?”
“Just this—” I search for the right word “—this urgency to see his face.”
“Angry,” I say. “So angry, so frustrated. And after that, just exhausted.”
She’s quiet a moment, letting the words settle.
“It’s hard work chasing someone you can’t catch,” she says finally. “Someone who is always just out of reach.”
I know what she’s implying, but why bother asserting again that he was real? The more you must assert your reality, the more unstable you seem.
“Am I going to remember those lost days? Are they going to come back?”
“As your psyche grows stronger, as you recover from the post-traumatic stress symptoms and grief, those days may come back. You might get fragments, images, bits and pieces in your dreams. Or it could all come back in a rush.”
A bird alights on the windowsill, feathers shiny black, then flaps away.
“I have a suggestion,” she says. “Why don’t you take some time off, Poppy? Rest up, stay with your friends or go visit your mother. Some time away can make a world of difference when we’re healing.”
It’s solid advice, coming from all directions. Layla wants me to move in with her. Grayson wants me to be “low risk.” Ben tells me he can handle the office, that I should just take a few days off. I could do that, go back to that CPW womb, let Grayson do his job. I could let Layla and Mac hire that firm. It’s tempting, so tempting. But it also scares the hell out of me. If I stop moving, the weight of everything will crush me. I might never get up again. And Jack will just keep getting further and further away.
I make a promise to myself. I’ll go back to the prescribed sleeping pill dosage and stay on it. Normalize. Then I’ll work on getting off it altogether. And no alcohol. No other pills.
“That’s a good idea,” I say with a smile. “I’ll think about it.”
Leaving Dr. Nash’s office, the thought of going back to my dark and quiet apartment, all those open boxes with Jack’s name scrawled on them staring at me, presses down on me, a terrible weight. I can’t do it. I can’t go to Layla’s. There are so many questions, such an ache at the base of my skull, too many things I can’t remember. Something my mom said has stayed with me. No one knows you better than your mother.
I get on the 1 train and take it uptown.
14
I have been riding this train all my life, watching. All those lives crowded together—mothers and students, businessmen and panhandlers, club kids, thugs. The rich, the poor, the hustling, the ground down, the old, the fresh, all swaying to a rhythm of a train taking them in the same direction to different destinations. On the way uptown, I do something I haven’t done in a while—I take out my phone and start snapping pictures. The reflection in the window of a man reading his newspaper, a young mother with a child sleeping on her chest, a girl with a quivering little dog in her bag.
The details, the moments, leap out at me. A girl wearing red mittens, an older woman clutching a rosary, her eyes closed, a middle-aged man reading a novel, wearing a peaceful smile. Just moments for them, one they’ll likely forget before they go to sleep tonight. But that moment, captured on film, will last an eternity. The photographer is a thief, stealing time.
At 116th Street, Columbia University, there’s a big shift, lots of people getting off, others crushing on. I sit in the farthest seat, pushed against the metal wall by a large man, a redhead in a suit. I don’t mind. I’m ensconced, like a wildlife photographer hiding in a blind, undetected.
When the train hits an elevated stop at 125th Street, I send a text.
Mind if I come by? I’ve been thinking about you.
The response comes right away: Of course. You’re on my mind every day. When do you want to come?
Now?
I’ll be here.
The train rumbles and I feel its rocking lull as people come and go, a river, life flowing around me. I get to my feet quickly, accidentally jostling the guy next to me, who has started to snore.
“Sorry,” he grumbles, drifting off again. His head tilts, mouth gapes. I watch him a moment, envying whatever sense of security he possesses that allows him to just fall asleep on a city train.
I can’t afford to have Morpheus start whispering in my ear again.
The train is a stop-and-go crawl. The farther uptown it gets, the more it empties out.
My sleepy seatmate gets off at Dyckman and I’m alone in the car, still standing, holding on to the pole as the train bucks and moves. Then it starts to slow between stations, the windows only looking out onto black tunnel walls. When it comes to a full stop, the car lights flicker. Darkness, then light, then dark again.
When the lights come back up, I see him through the glass.
He stands legs spread and arms akimbo on the far end of the other car. The hooded man. My heart squeezes, adrenaline surging. My body, every muscle, nerve and instinct demand that I move away.
Then something else washes up: anger, white-hot and irrational. Who is he? Instead of moving in the other direction as good sense dictates, I break into a run toward him, burst through the doors between the two cars.
“Hey,” I call out as the door clangs shut behind me.
He stands a moment, then simply turns and walks away, effortlessly fast, long legs striding. He’s through the doors before I am halfway across the car. I keep my eyes locked on him; he’s not going to get away this time.
I pass an old woman who eyes me with the suspicion of a lifelong city dweller; a young man, headphones on, has dark eyes on me, too, wears a kind of smirk.
“Did you see that guy?” I ask as I pass quickly.
He just shrugs, looks away with a sullen tsk of his tongue. I keep going, my breath ragged, slam through another set of doors, leaving the unhelpful strangers behind.
What am I doing?
The dark figure glides, a wraith, heading toward the front of the train. With a hard jostle the train starts moving again; I’m knocked against the seats, almost losing my balance. But I regain my footing, keep moving through the cars.
He’s always just ahead of me, doors crashing closed behind him. The train seems to stretch and bend, as though there’s no end to it, like it would just keep going, the hooded man always just ahead of me.
The train pulls into the station as I reach the final car, the doors to the platform sliding open. And he’s gone. If he has exited, I don’t see where. I step out onto the platform. Other than a few tired commuters—the woman I saw dozing, the young man with his headphones and backpack—there’s no one in sight. The kid looks back at me, shrugs again, lifting his palms.
I go after him, catch his denim-clad arm. He turns, annoyed, pulls roughly away.
“Did you see him?” I ask. “The man in the hood.”
“What’s your problem? Are you high?” he says, nasty, disdainful. “I didn’t see anyone. Just you, running.”
The chime. Stand clear of the closing doors.
“This your stop?” he asks. “Get back on the train.”
His blank coldness, the face of an uncaring stranger—it pushes me back. This city, this world—it can be so hard, so unforgiving. I swallow a rush of sadness, of shame, slip through the doors before they close, my hands shaking. I walk back through the train as it moves out, scanning the platform. He’s nowhere. I walk the whole length of the train before the next stop.
If he was ever here, he’s gone. I can’t stop it, the flood of tears. I lean against the cool metal and let myself weep, alone in the rattling car.
By the time the train reaches 242nd Street in Riverdale, I’m still quaking inside like a prey animal—even though I was the one doing the chasing. My blouse beneath my jacket is sticky with sweat.
I exit the train onto the elevated platform and descend to the street, walking quickly, looking over my shoulder. The sky is ash and the air grown frigid, the streets and low buildings a line drawing of black and gray
. Van Cortlandt Park, in wild contrast, is an autumnal watercolor behind me as I jog up a flight of concrete stairs, pass a coffee shop, a dry cleaner, a café—finally coming to the wooded street where Jack grew up. When the house comes into view, his mother, Sarah, is standing at the door, looking out for me.
She descends the steps as I open the gate. She takes one look at me, tilts her head in empathy and opens her arms. I practically run to her, let myself be enfolded in her soft embrace.
“Come inside,” she says gently, leading me into the warmth of her living room.
* * *
It’s a shrine to him, to them, the men she’s lost. Everywhere my eyes rest, there’s a picture of one or both, or photographs taken by Jack. There are many of me, as well—our wedding day, shots from our honeymoon, Christmases we spent together, a selfie Sarah and I took during a weekend we spent at the beach. She’s the rare mother-in-law who also becomes a friend, a friend who, in my grief, I’ve sorely neglected.
Jack and I spent so much time in this house together—cooking with Sarah, decorating her Christmas tree, taking care of her after minor surgery a few years back. But today I feel like a stranger, my life unrecognizable from what it was when Jack was alive, this place crowded with memories of another self.
The room is orderly—magazines fanned out on the low cocktail table, soft navy couches accented with gray pillows and soft throws, Staffordshire dogs on the fireplace, an oil of an Amsterdam canal by the shelves where books are arranged tidily by size. I, in contrast, am shattered, carrying around the broken pieces of myself, my reality.
“I’ve been out of touch,” I begin weakly.
But she lifts a palm. “It’s okay,” she says. “You don’t have to explain. I know where you are right now, Poppy. I get it.”
A copy of the photo that was smashed on my hallway floor sits intact on her mantel in a simple white frame. Her kindness soothes me. She locked the door behind us, and I feel safe here with her. Whoever it is out there; he can’t get in here.
