I was screaming words, but I wasnt really able to say them. It was like I dont know I couldnt close my mouth around them. I sounded like Id had a stroke. And my voice was lower. Not like my own voice at all. He pauses. I heard myself, and made myself stop. But I was shaking all over, and I had to turn on the light for a little while. I tried to pee, and I couldnt. These days it seems like I can always peea little, anywaybut not this morning at two-forty-seven. He pauses, sitting there in his bar of sun. She can see dust motes dancing in it. They seem to give him a halo.
What was your dream? she asks, and here is an odd thing: for the first time in maybe five years, since they stayed up until midnight discussing whether to hold the Motorola stock or sell it (they wound up selling), shes interested in something he has to say.
I dont know if I want to tell you, he says, sounding uncharacteristically shy. He turns, picks up the pepper mill, and begins to toss it from hand to hand.
They say if you tell your dreams they wont come true, she says to him, and here is Odd Thing No. 2: all at once Harvey looks there, in a way he hasnt looked to her in years. Even his shadow on the wall above the toaster oven looks somehow more there. She thinks, He looks as though he matters, and why should that be? Why, when I was just thinking that life is thin, should it seem thick? This is a summer morning in late June. We are in Connecticut. When June comes we are always in Connecticut. Soon one of us will get the newspaper, which will be divided into three parts, like Gaul.
Do they say so? He considers the idea, eyebrows raised (she needs to pluck them again, they are getting that wild look, and he never knows), tossing the pepper mill from hand to hand. She would like to tell him to stop doing that, its making her nervous (like the exclamatory blackness of his shadow on the wall, like her very beating heart, which has suddenly begun to accelerate its rhythm for no reason at all), but she doesnt want to distract him from whatever is going on in his Saturday-morning head. And then he puts the pepper mill down anyway, which should be all right but somehow isnt, because it has its own shadowit runs out long on the table like the shadow of an oversized chess piece, even the toast crumbs lying there have shadows, and she has no idea why that should frighten her but it does. She thinks of the Cheshire Cat telling Alice, Were all mad here, and suddenly she doesnt want to hear Harveys stupid dream, the one from which he awakened himself screaming and sounding like a man who has had a stroke. Suddenly she doesnt want life to be anything but thin. Thin is okay, thin is good, just look at the actresses in the movies if you doubt it.
Nothing must announce itself, she thinks feverishly. Yes, feverishly; its as if shes having a hot flash, although she could have sworn all that nonsense ended two or three years ago. Nothing must announce itself, its Saturday morning and nothing must announce itself.
She opens her mouth to tell him she got it backward, what they really say is that if you tell your dreams they will come true, but its too late, hes already talking, and it occurs to her that this is her punishment for dismissing life as thin. Life is actually like a Jethro Tull song, thick as a brick, how could she have ever thought otherwise?
I dreamed it was morning and I came down to the kitchen, he says. Saturday morning, just like this, only you werent up yet.
Im always up before you on Saturday morning, she says.
I know, but this was a dream, he says patiently, and she can see the white hairs on the insides of his thighs, where the muscles are wasted and starved. Once he played tennis, but those days are done. She thinks, with a viciousness that is entirely unlike her, You will have a heart attack, white man, thats what will finish you, and maybe theyll discuss giving you an obit in the Times, but if a B-movie actress from the fifties died that day, or a semi-famous ballerina from the forties, you wont even get that.
But it was like this, he says. I mean, the sun was shining in. He raises a hand and stirs the dust motes into lively life around his head and she wants to scream at him not to do that.
I could see my shadow on the floor and it never looked so bright or so thick. He pauses, then smiles, and she sees how cracked his lips are. Brights a funny word to use for a shadow, isnt it? Thick, too.
Harvey
I crossed to the window, he says, and I looked out, and I saw there was a dent in the side of the Friedmans Volvo, and I knew somehowthat Frank had been out drinking and that the dent happened coming home.
She suddenly feels that she will faint. She saw the dent in the side of Frank Friedmans Volvo herself, when she went to the door to see if the newspaper had come (it hadnt), and she thought the same thing, that Frank had been out at the Gourd and scraped something in the parking lot. How does the other guy look? had been her exact thought.
The idea that Harvey has also seen this comes to her, that he is goofing with her for some strange reason of his own. Certainly its possible; the guest room where he sleeps on summer nights has an angle on the street. Only Harvey isnt that sort of man. Goofing is not Harvey Stevenss thing.
There is sweat on her cheeks and brow and neck, she can feel it, and her heart is beating faster than ever. There really is a sense of something looming, and why should this be happening now? Now, when the world is quiet, when prospects are tranquil? If I asked for this, Im sorry, she thinks or maybe shes actually praying. Take it back, please take it back.
I went to the refrigerator, Harvey is saying, and I looked inside, and I saw a plate of devilled eggs with a piece of Saran wrap over them. I was delightedI wanted lunch at seven in the morning!
He laughs. JanetJax that waslooks down into the pot sitting in the sink. At the one hard-boiled egg left in it. The others have been shelled and neatly sliced in two, the yolks scooped out. They are in a bowl beside the drying rack. Beside the bowl is the jar of mayonnaise. She has been planning to serve the devilled eggs for lunch, along with a green salad.
I dont want to hear the rest, she says, but in a voice so low she can barely hear it herself. Once she was in the Dramatics Club and now she cant even project across the kitchen. The muscles in her chest feel all loose, the way Harveys legs would if he tried to play tennis.
I thought I would have just one, Harvey says, and then I thought, No, if I do that shell yell at me. And then the phone rang. I dashed for it because I didnt want it to wake you up, and here comes the scary part. Do you want to hear the scary part?
No, she thinks from her place by the sink. I dont want to hear the scary part. But at the same time she does want to hear the scary part, everyone wants to hear the scary part, were all mad here, and her mother really did say that if you told your dreams they wouldnt come true, which meant you were supposed to tell the nightmares and save the good ones for yourself, hide them like a tooth under the pillow. They have three girls. One of them lives just down the road, Jenna the gay divorcée, same name as one of the Bush twins, and doesnt Jenna hate that; these days she insists that people call her Jen. Three girls, which meant a lot of teeth under a lot of pillows, a lot of worries about strangers in cars offering rides and candy, which had meant a lot of precautions, and oh how she hopes her mother was right, that telling a bad dream is like putting a stake in a vampires heart.
I picked up the phone, Harvey says, and it was Trisha. Trisha is their oldest daughter, who idolized Houdini and Blackstone before discovering boys. She only said one word at first, just Dad, but I knew it was Trisha. You know how you always know?