Dreamer

by Daniel Quinn

  “I don’t feel depressed, Robbie,” Greg said. “I feel guilty. Monstrously guilty. I haven’t spent four thousand dollars on clothes in my whole lifetime.”

  “Don’t be dumb,” Robbie said placidly. “You’re a million-aire. You can’t dress in jeans and sneakers anymore.”

  Greg looked at him curiously. “How do you know I’m a millionaire?”

  “Huh,” Robbie grunted. “You can have anything you want out at that dump—except a secret. It’s like a small town—every-body knows everything about everybody. Besides, out there they wouldn’t even hand you an aspirin if you weren’t a millionaire.”

  “You’re a millionaire?”

  “Forty times over, kid,” Robbie said indifferently, his eyes on the road.

  Strange, Greg thought, how forty million could make four million sound like not much.

  “And I’m still depressed,” Robbie added heavily.

  Dr. Jakes dropped in as Greg was putting away the last of his new wardrobe and asked if she could have a peek. Greg gestured to the open closet. She examined a collection of Italian shirts and delicately ran her hand down the sleeve of a cashmere jacket. “Très élégant,” she murmured in a lamentable accent.

  “It was all they had,” Greg said defensively. In his remembered life he would have sneered at such garments as “movie star clothes.”

  She turned back with an understanding smile. “You’ll get used to it. Meanwhile I was wondering if you’d drop by my office when you’re finished.”

  “What’s up?” he asked, suddenly apprehensive.

  “Nothing’s up,” she replied lightly. “My office is where I generally see my patients.”

  “Yes, but why do you want to see me?”

  “To talk to you. To begin the program you were so anxious to hear about last night.” Amused, she cocked her head and asked, “Is that satisfactory?”

  “Yes. But I can come right now. I’m all finished here.”

  “That’s fine,” Agnes said and led the way to another wing and a large, airy, and elegantly furnished room that seemed neither office nor living room but a cross between the two, with a chrome and smoked-glass desk in one corner and several different seating arrangements scattered around the room: an el-shaped sofa, two Eames chairs face-to-face, and a traditional psychiatrist’s couch and easy chair. Along the shelves of one long wall was arranged a collection of what looked to Greg like very valuable antique toys, all pristinely gaudy, as if they’d just been taken from under the Christmas tree. He paused, smiling, before a garish collection of tin figures mounted on a stage: Li’l Abner’s Dogpatch Band, with Pappy Yokum at the snare drum, Daisy Mae at the piano, Li’l Abner ready to dance, and Mammy conducting from atop the piano.

  “Are these yours?” he asked.

  “Of course. This is my own personal madness. Please sit wherever you feel comfortable.”

  Greg looked around. “I usually sit in the Eames chair that faces the window, don’t I?”

  Agnes gave him an interested look. “Is that a memory?”

  He grinned. “No, just a guess.”

  “Ah. Well, your guess is correct.”

  They sat down. “You probably don’t realize it,” the doctor began, “but you’re something of a phenomenon.”

  “A phenomenon. You mean because . . .”

  She nodded. “Of course, in itself, there’s nothing new in the appearance of diverse personalities in one individual—even personalities that are unaware of each other. What makes the appearance of Greg Donner unique is that, instead of representing a psychological degeneration, it seems to represent a decisive step toward health.”

  “Yeah,” Greg said. “For Richard Iles.”

  “For the person sitting in your chair.”

  “Okay. So?”

  “You know I have an obligation to you as your psychotherapist. You should also know that I have an obligation to my fellow workers in the field to make a record of your case.”

  He gave her a crooked grin. “In other words, you’re going to get a paper out of me.”

  “Naturally that’s secondary to your treatment. You don’t object, I hope.”

  “Not at all. Agnes Tillford’s a writer too. Go for it.”

  Agnes laughed, shook her head, and picked up a large manila envelope from the table beside her.

  “I have here some photographs. Some are of people you’ve never seen in your life. Some are of people known to Richard Iles. I’d like you to go through them and see if you recognize any of them.”

  Shrugging, Greg held out his hand for the envelope. Inside he found a bundle of twenty or so pictures, some five by eight, some eight by ten, held together by a large paper clip. He slipped off the clip and studied the face on top: a kindly looking elderly man. He slid it to the bottom and looked at the next: a chunky girl in her teens—a graduation picture. He slid that to the bottom and looked at the next, a grinning couple in forties clothes. He sighed and went on.

  At the eighth his heart lurched and his mouth went dry. He looked up, stunned, and whispered, “Ginny.”

  Agnes nodded, obviously pleased. “Your wife.”

  “Jesus!” Greg shrieked, his face blazing. “Why didn’t you show me this before?”

  “Take it easy, Greg. I didn’t show it to you before because I didn’t have it before. It arrived in this morning’s mail.”

  “Well, why didn’t you at least tell me?”

  “Tell you what, Greg? That the woman you described to me might be your wife? If you consider it a moment, you’ll see that would have been most imprudent.”

  He looked at the photo again. “When can I see her?”

  “We’ll talk about that. Please go on.

  Greg blinked. “You mean with the pictures?” At the doctor’s nod, Greg took Ginny’s and set it on the table at his elbow. The next three faces were unfamiliar. He frowned at the fourth. In a tone of disbelief he said, “This is Bruce.”

  “You know him?”

  “Yes. Ginny and I met him in a bar the last night I was . . . the night before I woke up here.”

  The doctor raised her brows. “You liked him?”

  “Yes, very much.”

  “He’s your paternal uncle. Bruce Iles.”

  “Good lord.”

  “You say you met him that last night. That’s interesting.”

  “Why is that interesting?”

  “Because he evidently had no major role to play in your life as Greg Donner—yet he’s there.”

  Greg frowned. “There? I don’t get it.”

  “Richard Iles’s unconscious evidently didn’t want you to wake up to this life as an orphan, so it arranged for you to establish relationships with three key people you’d meet here. At least I have to assume that they’re key people. Flatteringly, me. More obviously, your wife. And then, just at the last moment, your uncle. He seems almost an afterthought. What was his last name?”

  “Let me think. Some famous name. He said, ‘No relation.’ Eddison. That’s right—’Two D’s, no relation.’”

  “Hm. By association with the famous name, it suggests that Richard Iles’s unconscious considers him a bringer of light. What else?”

  He smiled. “He has a strange hobby. He collects and analyzes family snapshots.”

  Agnes nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, that’s very good. Evidently Richard Iles’s unconscious is recommending Bruce as someone to shed light on your family. You say he analyzes snapshots? How?”

  “By expressions, gestures. By the way people arrange themselves in relation to each other.” Greg laughed. “I told him he should meet you—Agnes Tillford.”

  “Ah. That’s also suggestive. Why did you tell him that?”

  “Because you analyzed dreams the way he analyzed snapshots.”

  “Goodness, I had no idea all this nifty stuff was to be found here. I analyzed your dreams? How did that come about?”

  “I thought I told you. I was having a very weird series of dreams . . . and some v
ery weird, impossible things were happening. I can understand it all now, since it was all a dream, but at the time it was baffling as hell—and you sort of . . . held me together.”

  Agnes allowed herself a self-satisfied smile. “Well, that does pretty well describe my role in this bizarre situation.”

  “Yes. It’s starting to make some sense at last—even to me.”

  “I agree. I’m looking forward to hearing about all this in greater detail.”

  Greg said, “When can I see Ginny?”

  She nodded thoughtfully, as if she’d been anticipating the question. “Let’s give ourselves a month. That will give us time to . . . Oh my. I can see you don’t care for that.”

  “I certainly don’t. What’ll you know in a month that you don’t know now?”

  “Well . . . for one thing, I’ll know a great deal more about you than I do right now. And for another, if things keep on going the way they’ve been going, I’ll be pretty well convinced that Greg Donner’s here to stay.”

  “‘Pretty well convinced,’” he repeated with a sneer. “What are you right now, Agnes? Doubtful?”

  “No, I wouldn’t say I was doubtful. I’d say I was . . . hopeful.”

  “Good. That’s fine. You just get on the phone to Ginny and tell her there’s been a hopeful development here. That’s all I’m asking you to do. There’s been a hopeful development, and it would be nice if she’d come down and have a look at it.”

  Agnes’s bosom heaved with a weary sigh. “Greg, please don’t ask me to do something that all my experience tells me would be reckless and risky. It just doesn’t make any sense to plunge into something like this.”

  “Into something like what, Agnes? What is it you think we’re plunging into?”

  “I don’t know, Greg. That’s exactly the point.”

  He stood up. “Do you have a procedure for handling escaping inmates? If so, you’d better get it working.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  He turned and headed for the door, pausing with his hand on the knob. “I’m not kidding, Agnes. I know my way around now. I think I can get back to Chicago, even without money.”

  “Ginny’s not in Chicago.”

  He stared at her, frowning. “True. I forgot. Where is she?”

  “Come sit down.”

  He swung the door open. “I’ll find her.”

  “Sit down, Greg. I’ll call her.”

  “Now?”

  “Today. I promise.”

  “You’ll ask her to come down here as soon as possible?”

  “I will if you insist.”

  “I do insist—and I’m not in a mood to sit anymore.”

  “All right.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s been living with her father in New York State since all this began.”

  “Oh. And before that?”

  “Before that, you were living in Libertyville, Illinois.”

  “Good lord.” He stood blinking vaguely around the room for a few moments. “There was something else I wanted to ask. Oh. Right. All that preamble about studying me in the name of science. That’s just guff, isn’t it?”

  Agnes shrugged. “Call it misdirection. It was designed to spare you a possible disappointment. If you’d recognized none of the faces in those photographs, you’d have dismissed it as a foolish experiment and thought no more about it.”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  “On the other hand, I will get a paper out of you.”

  He laughed. “You’ll let me know what Ginny says?”

  “Of course.”

  Back in his room, Greg found he was too restless to stay there, so he took himself on a tour of the facility, which proved to be what he expected: a country club on a lavish scale, with indoor and outdoor swimming pools, an elaborate gymnasium, an eighteen-hole golf course, tennis courts, a small theater, several game and common rooms, a chapel, and, to his disappointment, a meager library offering only the blandest of light reading. The grounds were so vast and the activities so varied that the twenty or thirty people he saw seemed like stragglers in an off-season resort. He avoided encounters and was careful not to see the few hands that were waved at him from the pool side and the game rooms.

  At six o’clock he tried calling Dr. Jakes and was told she was with a patient. After fifteen minutes of fidgeting, he went back to the library, picked up an exhausted-looking English country house mystery, and took it to the dining room. With his nose buried in a book, he hoped Robbie would understand he didn’t feel like company.

  It wasn’t until seven-thirty that Agnes sank into the seat opposite.

  “So?” Greg asked, but the doctor was looking around for their waiter. When she’d caught his eye and ordered a sherry, she turned back to Greg, her eyebrows raised enquiringly.

  “So?” he repeated.

  Agnes sighed. “Your wife will arrive in Louisville on Wed-nesday morning at eleven.”

  “What day is today?”

  “Monday. I’ll be frank with you, Greg. I told her there’d be no harm in waiting a week or two, but apparently the suspense of not knowing is something she can’t stand any better than you can.”

  “What did you say had happened?”

  “I told her you were once again a fully functioning person and left it at that. She wanted to know if you’d shed any light on what happened to you in Russia, but I said we’d talk about that when she arrived. She’ll be met at the airport and should be here by twelve-thirty, at which time you’ll be having lunch.” She gave Greg a frigid smile. “By that I mean I don’t want you lurking in the corridors trying to get a furtive glimpse of her. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  “She and I will have lunch in my office, and I’ll explain the current situation. An hour or so should be enough for that. Then I’ll give you a call and you can join us.” Seeing Greg’s expression, she asked, “That’s not satisfactory?”

  “It’s not how I was imagining it. I was thinking of some-thing a little more . . . private.”

  She snorted in amused disgust. “Greg, I’d advise you to keep your romantic nature well throttled down. Candlelight and soft music are definitely not first on the agenda here. Just keep reminding yourself that the person Ginny married was Richard Iles, a school teacher of Libertyville, not Greg Donner, a free-lance writer of Chicago.”

  Greg nodded contritely.

  “Now,” she went on, “for tomorrow. Thanks to you, events are rushing us. Before I talk to Ginny, I want to find out as much as I can about your life in Chicago, particularly about the ‘weird events’ you mentioned earlier. So I’d like to schedule a two-hour session in the morning, beginning at ten, another in the after-noon, and, if need be, another in the evening after dinner. Okay?”

  “Of course. I’m at your disposal.”

  She nodded and drained her sherry glass. “I’m going to take myself off to bed. It’s been a hectic day.”

  “Can I ask a quick question?”

  “Certainly.”

  “It feels weird to ask such a question, but—how long have Ginny and I been married?”

  The doctor smiled wearily. “I’d have to check my notes to be sure, but my memory is that it’s six or seven years.”

  “And I assume you would have told me if we had any children.”

  “Your assumption is not well founded,” she said with mock formality, “but no, you have no children.”

  XX

  DURING THEIR MORNING SESSION, Greg recounted the first thirty years of his life: his childhood, his school years, his years in college, his years in publishing, the lean years spent establishing himself as a freelancer, the recent years when contacts had been cemented and work was steady. At the end of it, he asked, “When did I do all this? I mean, I’ve got thirty years’ worth of memories. My feelings say I lived through all those years.”

  Agnes said, “I’m not sure what you’re asking.”

  “Did I fabricate all this in a single night
, the night before I woke up here as Gregory Donner?”

  “We may never know, but it’s not inconceivable. The subjective time of dreams has little relation to the objective time of waking life. In just a few seconds of dreaming we may have an experience that would last for hours or even days in waking life. The same is true in hypnotic trance.” She paused, smiling. “Once, as a student, I re-experienced the entirety of the film Gone With the Wind under hypnosis—in just fifteen seconds.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. I read all the opening credits, heard every word, saw every scene and every gesture, listened to all the music. It wasn’t speeded up or distorted in any way.”

  “Interesting. So what’s your theory about me?”

  “At this point I’ve nothing but conjectures. You may have created Greg Donner in a single night—or it may have been the work of months. From a therapeutic point of view, the question’s academic.” She spent a few minutes scanning her notes. “An interesting pattern seems to be emerging, though it’s more or less what I expected. ‘Gregory Donner’ isn’t just any old alter ego: he’s a wish fulfillment.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Richard Iles married relatively young, just a few years out of college. My guess is that in later years he regretted that, wished he’d spent a few years leading a carefree bachelor life—the way Greg Donner did.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “Perhaps that early marriage thwarted some ambitions. He became a school teacher in Libertyville. Do you think that would have suited you?”

  “I think I would have detested it.”

  “Perhaps you did detest it, as Richard Iles. Perhaps you yearned for a more glamorous life—the life of a single freelance writer living on Lake Shore Drive.”

  He smiled crookedly. “I’d hardly call it glamorous.”

  “Perhaps you would if you were Richard Iles, school teach-er of Libertyville.”

  “True.”