He was nice and I was nice and when that is the case what to do but consolidate.
We bought a house.
In the years before we’d bought a house I had dreamt of a house and had loved dreaming of a house and then we had a house and I missed my dreams.
So I resumed them.
—The real estate agent stood on the lawn. She was my mother and she was also, in the dream, a large bird. It was a strange neighborhood, set deep in a valley. I kept asking my mother, the real estate agent, why the hills there were so blue but she kept trilling Copper plumbing! school system! and I knew she did not want me to know the answer.
—Out back was a deep well and we were rolling a rock over the grass to cover the well so that the kids would not fall in and the rock was very very heavy but in the dream I knew that, in real life, the rock was no bigger than my husband’s eye.
I tried reading Jung.
On page one, there he was, wishing to remember only when the imperishable world irrupted into the transitory one.
I said irrupted aloud. Then slept.
—We were frozen in the yard of a dollhouse. The yard was turf instead of grass. I was the wife doll in a lounge chair. The husband figure had a rake in his hands. The kids were also dolls and there were bubbles around their doll heads and they were posed as if trying to pop them. Then the yard suddenly exploded and in my doll head I thought, Run. Then it was later and a toy boat was coming to collect our bodies from the scene.
—The real estate agent’s throat was blocked. I knew that she had tried to swallow sperm and I knew that it was whale sperm. I was behind her in the Heimlich position and she took my arm from around her waist and pointed my pointer finger up at the sky where the sun was bright and high. I knew even during the dream why I was dreaming this and it was because, in real life, my mother has a high and bright voice.
—A homeless man was at the door of our house. It was my husband. I opened the door. He wasn’t speaking. I spoke. Everything I said was sounding flat. In the dream I told myself, Say something not flat, say something round. I looked over the man’s shoulders out at the round blue hills. I said, Boo hoo. I remember in the dream how glad I was that it was a dream because I had said the wrong thing.
The day after that dream, someone knocked on our real door.
I did not answer. I was pretending to read Kierkegaard.
A moment later my husband came in from the kitchen and asked me, Who was that at the door? And I said, It was you.
I said, I think it was you.
from Madame XFind more by Darcie Dennigan at the library
Copyright © 2012 Darcie Dennigan
Used with the permission of Canarium Books.