The Lemon Jell-O Syndrome

by Man Martin

  Days turned to weeks and weeks to one month, and then two, and other than the mild nuisance of a recurring but unrecallable dream, Bone fell into a not unpleasant if lonely routine, the formerly sharp divisions of Yin and Yang blending into the uniform soft gray of a dove’s belly.

  During a checkup with Dr. Limongello, he told the neurologist he’d been bothered by an odd recurring dream that he couldn’t quite recall.

  Limongello raised an eyebrow and tucked his receding chin into his neck. He was sitting on the edge of the desk, and his leg, which had been slowly swaying like a metronome, stopped midsway. “Odd dreams are a potential side effect of the precursor,” he said. “Or it may just be an ordinary dream.” He stared at Bone as if trying to see straight through his skull until Bone shifted uneasily, repeating that he could never remember it.

  The doctor’s leg resumed its sway, but in a self-conscious way, and his heel thumped the desk. Limongello said, “I don’t think it’s anything to be concerned about, necessarily. Still, keep me posted if it continues.”

  “Do you think I should keep a journal?”

  “What?”

  “They say if you keep a journal and write in it when you first wake up, you’ll remember your dreams.”

  The neurologist looked uncomfortable and expelled a few “well”s and soft “harrumph”s before getting out “I don’t think that’s a very good idea. We don’t want you paying more attention to this than it deserves. Just keep me posted if anything changes. Still. Just to be safe. Let’s move up your next appointment a little sooner. I’d like to see you again at the end of the week.”

  After his appointment, Bone went to the Food Bank, and within an hour of his arrival, who should roll in but his favorite customer? For God’s sake, if she wanted to talk about Jesus, why didn’t she take it up with the priest? Pepys was standing right there. But no, she headed straight for Bone and grabbed his hand.

  Before she could start in on her favorite topic, Bone, hoping to forestall the inevitable waterworks, told her that he’d just seen the doctor himself and had a peculiar recurring dream that he could never remember the details of.

  Her reaction was as unexpected as it was gratifying. “You gots to keep a dream journal,” she said, her eyes wide, clearly impressed by the thought of a recurring but unretrievable dream. “It help you remember.”

  “That’s exactly what I think,” Bone said, marveling at the good sense of this woman who usually monopolized all the oxygen in the room talking and crying about Jesus. “That’s exactly what I think.” His arm went up, and it struck him how alike he and the one-legged lady were––alone with their strange afflictions; the difference was that when he had something to say, she listened and was interested. He began liking her a little better and vowed the next time they met, he’d take her hand before she took his.

  So Bone put a pen and pad of paper on his nightstand—since finishing Words, he’d ceased keeping writing materials by the bed—and was rewarded that very night with the dream. As it turned out, he didn’t need to write it down; waking up and seeing the pen and paper waiting at the bedside was enough to anchor the memory from floating off, and even though he still couldn’t entirely recall it, he knew that if he concentrated, this would be the day that he would. He sat on the edge of the bed and mused: What was it about? What was it about?

  Was Mary in it? No. He could touch the dream’s delicate, fragile rim with his mental fingertips, and he sat very still as if at the slightest breath, it would scoot away from him like a dust bunny under the farthest corner of the bed.

  Limongello was in it, although actually it wasn’t the real Limongello but the man who’d called himself Limongello, the impostor, and Rachel the nurse was there, only sometimes instead of being Rachel, it was the lady at the Food Bank, and Father Pepys was there, and talking about the Prodigal Son and how it proved something or other, and Rachel kept telling Bone not to be a dumbass.

  Bone chuckled and shook his head. What a funny dream. But what was it Limongello had been saying—something wasn’t done yet—odd that Bone couldn’t think of him as Flash Wye but kept calling him Limongello—somebody was feeding somebody something, but it wasn’t clear who—and what had Limongello, the fake Limongello, said? It was—just on the tip of Bone’s recollection—damn, what was it?

  Silly how dreams are, he told himself; there’s something you need to do in a dream, and when you wake up, you still feel like you really need to do it even if it’s nonsense like tightening the frimjab on the lindenbob. But it didn’t seem silly, and Bone clenched the edge of the mattress, his arms straight and rigid, as if he might rocket off into space if he let go or relaxed his grip just for an instant.

  When he came home from his afternoon class at Oglethorpe, he set his leather satchel of papers on the kitchen counter and started water boiling for tea. He could have easily used the microwave but was comforted by the routine of watching the silver bubbles form. He changed into jeans, tennis shoes, and polo shirt, by which time the bubbles had begun to rise along the edges of the pot, and Bone read a few pages until it came to a boil, then a few pages more as the tea steeped, then a few pages more as he drank the tea, which he liked with cream and sugar.

  By then it was time for his afternoon walk, and he strolled a precise circuit of streets—avoiding the street where Cash lived. Frequently, Bone ran into Mitch or another neighbor and made a point of stopping to talk. Each week, Bone watched just enough TV to come up with at least one well-rehearsed comment on the NFL or NASCAR. This was sufficient to set his neighbor off on a stream of happy chatter that required nothing from Bone but nods of simulated interest, or an occasional emphatic restatement of some point. It wasn’t as bad as it sounded, and in spite of himself, Bone considered one day actually watching an entire game. Football season was over, but it was spring training for baseball, and he was already making plans to learn about that. But today, instead of sports, Bone told Mitch about his dream, of which he had retrieved the main outlines but still tantalizingly lacked key details. Mitch looked suitably intrigued and stroked his chin. He advised Bone to keep up the journal thing and see if that didn’t help him remember the rest.

  “Sometimes, you know,” Mitch said, fumbling through a disorganized mental inventory of Freudianisms, “your dreams are trying to tell you something. It’s your subconscious, you know, subliminal stuff.”

  Bone asked himself whose advice to trust: the professional neurologist who was paid to treat him or random neighbors and acquaintances? The truth was, though, Bone didn’t need to ask. Something in his blood had made up his mind already.

  It was Wednesday, the night he traded off with Charlotte: one week she’d come to his house and he’d cook, and the next week he’d go to hers. Since it was his turn to host, he went to Kroger to pick up some snacks, and as he studied the shelf where the Spanish peanuts were, a cart turned its nose into the aisle, and behind that cart was Mary. He caught his breath at how it pleased and pained him to see her. They pretended it wasn’t awkward. Her hair was shorter, and he said he liked it. She thanked him and said he looked like he was taking care of himself. He said he was and held up the jar of Spanish peanuts, explaining he normally didn’t eat junk but was having someone over for dinner. Then he quickly added, without knowing why, that it was only Charlotte.

  And how was Mary doing? Bone asked, and she said she was selling homemade preserves and things at Nuts ’n’ Berries. A regular entrepreneur. He said that was good, and that things were going well at Oglethorpe. She asked about his condition, and he said it was fine, but the doctor thought it might be time to rebalance his meds.

  They separated, each looking for the other items on their separate lists. He saw her again when he checked out but didn’t speak to her this time. He tried catching her eye to give her a friendly nod, but she didn’t look in his direction. Perhaps deliberately.

  As he got into his car, he said to himself, “That wasn’t so bad.” They’d spoken, and he’d neither burst i
nto tears nor made a fool of himself.

  Later, Bone thought maybe Mary looked sad, but perhaps that’s just what he wanted to see.

  Months had passed since Mary had predicted it would be “about thirty days” before their divorce was finalized, but he hadn’t received the official papers. Things often went slower than expected at the DeKalb County courthouse. Perhaps they’d mislaid the papers. Bone was in no hurry to get them in any case.

  After supper, he and Charlotte played cribbage and watched TV. He told her about the dream he’d been having, the odd sensation of knowing it was repeating but being unable to remember exactly what it was, and Charlotte said she’d dreamed once that her niece was going to have twin boys, and that’s just the way it turned out, which only went to show.

  Thursday, Betty, who “just happened” to see Bone, said they were having a few people over Saturday night, nothing fancy, and could he come? There was an alarming proprietary twinkle in her eye, and Bone realized that his neighbor, with all the finesse of a kindly bear, was setting him up with a date. But after all, why not? There was no point turning into a eunuch. Bone said he’d be delighted to come, and what should he bring, bracing himself for whatever female golem Betty believed was “his type.”

  Once, he’d considered grammar and etymology the core of his being, the one thing he’d have pursued come estrangement from friends, unemployment, the loss of Mary—something that would justify himself to the universe and vice versa; he now realized grammar was just something he did, the way other people might grow sugar beets or do dry cleaning. Love, which he’d once thought was a period, he now realized was a semicolon. These were things he wished he’d known earlier.

  Maybe Betty’s golem wouldn’t be as bad as he feared.

  Bone didn’t bring up the dream or his progress in recalling it when he saw Dr. Limongello Friday, but Limongello brought it up himself. After the customary updates, the testing of reflexes, and queries about whether Bone were having any more troubles with doors or locomotion generally, Limongello asked, trying—and failing—to sound casual, “So, have there been any more of those dreams of yours?”

  “Oh, no,” Bone said. And then “I don’t think so,” to make the lie a little milder.

  “Uh-huh,” the doctor said. “Sometimes strange dreams, when you wake up from them, can start to seem real. If they’re vivid enough. Does that ever happen to you?”

  “Oh, no, no,” Bone said instantly, and maybe a little too instantly, because the doctor looked suspicious, and not for the first time, Bone suspected the neurologist might harbor a sneaking resentment, might be glad to see Bone get a little comeuppance for the fat check Rachel’s lawyer-boyfriend had squeezed out of him.

  “Well,” the doctor said, evidently dissatisfied, “we’ll keep an eye on it. Let me know if the dreams persist.”

  Bone left the doctor’s office trembling, because the truth was that as soon as Limongello had asked about it, the missing part of the dream had flown into Bone’s head all at once, and Bone had nearly blurted it out.

  It was the next step of the therapy, Limongello—the fake Limongello, but Bone did not think of him that way—was saying. Bone had to take the next step. He was almost done, but he had to take the next step or his self would dislodge all over again. What was the next step? What was the next step? And that’s what Limongello in his dream had come to tell him, that the next step was the part Bone had to figure out. Limongello couldn’t tell him, Bone had to figure it out, but as soon as Bone figured it out, he’d know exactly what he had to do. Figuring it out was part of the therapy. And Rachel, who sometimes changed into the fat, one-legged lady, kept telling him not to be a dumbass.

  As he did every Saturday morning, Bone walked a trail in a nearby park. His favorite part of the week was observing the changes of mood in that pond. Sunny mornings, it was the color of clouds and trees and sky; on overcast days, it was silver with dark ripples except in the shade, where it was dark with silver ripples. Today was foggy, and the pond was a bowl of smoke. Tonight was his dinner at Betty’s.

  After his walk, Bone came home and closed the door behind him.

  And that’s when he figured it out.

  The next step of his therapy.

  It was Mary.

  As soon as he thought of it, he knew. It was go time. He needed to resume his therapy. Shit or get off the pot. It was now or never. He was almost there. But he could wait no longer. If he delayed one more day, it would be over. He would dislodge forever.

  “God, this is crazy.” Bone began pacing in circles on the kitchen floor. “Are you listening to yourself?” he asked aloud. “This is crazy. You can’t be seriously thinking of doing this.” But Bone’s thudding heart would not let him heed his own advice.

  “I’ll go over there,” he said, “and tell her I love her, and that I think she loves me, but that even if she doesn’t love me, I love her. Although I think she does love me. And we need to try again, and keep trying, because we love each other, or at least I’m sure I love her, and if you love someone, you don’t quit or give up, you keep trying, and maybe that’s all love is, you just keep trying every day.”

  His heart was beating so hard against his rib cage, surely they could hear it down the street. “Be calm,” Bone told himself. “Don’t get worked up. You’re talking crazy. We’ll get you to the doctor. We probably just need to balance your meds.”

  But his heart was racing, and he could feel dopamine and oxytocin and serotonin fizzing up inside him like he was a shaken soda pop. He began to laugh. “Maybe you’re crazy. But even if you’re crazy—which maybe you are—what’s the worst that can happen? You go over there and make a fool of yourself. Meanwhile, if you don’t go—” Bone’s ribs ached; how could your heart beat so hard without killing you? Bone’s arm went up.

  “I’m going to do it,” Bone said. “I’m going over there,” Bone said. He did not believe he was saying this. He did not disbelieve he was saying it, either. “I love her. She belongs with me.” He merely said it. His arm went up. “She’s my wife, damn it.”

  Bone stepped toward the door. His arm went up. He loved her, and she belonged with him. She was his wife, and he loved her, and they would keep trying. He reached for the knob.

  Goddamn. Goddamn. Goddamn.

  “I can’t get through! Jesus!” Bone said. “I thought the medication was supposed to take care of this.”

  He took a breath, his jaw clenched. “It’s like Limongello said,” he told himself. He did not even realize he was thinking of the fake Limongello and not the real one. “You don’t need the medication. You’re more than just a bag of chemicals. You’re already cured; your body just doesn’t know it yet. Just square dance, and you can get through.”

  “Bow to your partner, bow to your side,” Bone murmured, sweat breaking on his brow as he went through the steps. He could delay no longer. He had to get there and tell her. He loved her, and no matter what, they would keep trying. His arm went up. “Take your partner, and swing ’er around.” His arm went up. “Do-si-do, and prah-men-ade!”

  His arm went up.

  His arm went up.

  He strode to the door and went out.