Dreamology (7 page)

“GROUP ATHLETICS ARE
a great way to meet people,” Petermann explains when I ask about the trophies.

There's a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf spanning an entire wall of his office, filled with equal parts books and awards, like tiny gold figurines of people about to hit a tennis ball or dive into a nonexistent swimming pool. “As you can imagine, it takes quite a bit of funding to keep an operation like this afloat. Connections are good for business.” He gives his signature smile, and I almost expect one of his teeth to sparkle like a toothpaste ad.
Ding!

Behind Petermann's desk hangs a giant photograph of an enlarged brain scan. He sits directly in front of it and kicks
up his white sneakers. He opens his mouth to speak, but the words come out in Italian.

“Idiota!”

“Did you just call me an idiot?” I ask.

Petermann shakes his head. “Sergio.” He points to a large birdcage in the back corner of the room by the doorway, where two giant blue parrots sit side by side, staring at us intently.

“And the one on the left is Brunilda. Aren't they gorgeous?” Petermann asks. “They only speak Italian, from the last person they lived with, an orthodontist in the North End. I'm trying to learn, but you know how it goes, busy-busy.” He sighs dramatically. We don't really know how it goes, though. I've never seen any other patients in the building.

“Quest'uomo non è uno scienziato. Lui è un pagliaccio!”
one of the birds cries, and what little Italian I learned during a summer my dad and I spent in Rome at a neuroscience conference tells me that it just called Petermann a clown.

“Exceptional,” Petermann says, looking at them fondly. Then he redirects his attention to us. “So tell me about the dreams. How often? Any distinctive patterns? Are they recurring, as in same place, same subject matter? Or are they individually unique?”

“The only thing recurring about my dreams is Alice,” Max explains, and I blush. I should be used to hearing him say my name out loud by now, but I'm not. “Ever since I was young,
she's always been there. When I was little, she was little, and as I grew, so did she. But we'd never actually met. I never told anyone about it. . . . I figured other kids had imaginary friends, so Alice must be mine. By my sixteenth birthday we'd climbed a volcano, won the World Cup, built a life-size gingerbread house—remember that one?” Max turns to me, chuckling. “Jerry kept eating all the doorknobs.”

“Who is Jerry?” Petermann frowns. “I don't recall ever having a patient by that name.”

I open my mouth to answer, but Max answers first. “Jerry is Alice's bulldog,” he says excitedly, as though talking about an old friend. “He's the best. Okay, he has a little bit of an attitude problem, but he calms down if you scratch just below his chin. He loves fetch.”

“Maybe in your dreams,” I mutter, thinking that I can't remember the last time Jerry had actually retrieved a tennis ball and dropped it at my feet.

“He's in about half our dreams. Wouldn't you say?” Max looks at me again.

It takes me a minute to respond because I'm too busy gazing at him, delighting in how much he seems to be enjoying this. To hear him describing the time we've spent together with the same pleasure that I feel. How despite our rocky real-life start, this has all clearly meant as much to him as it has to me.

“It's true.” I nod. “I think I dream almost every night, and about three nights a week are about Max. And yes, often they
are very exotic—riding pink elephants through the jungle, exploring underwater cities—but they can also be completely normal, like visiting a museum or eating really delicious ice cream. One of my favorites takes place on a rainy cobbled street. Just walking under a big umbrella.”

“A red umbrella that's also a heat lamp,” Max adds. “I love that one.”

“This is astounding.” Petermann is now leaning forward on his desk, his large fluffy head balanced between his thumb and forefinger. “What we did here was simple dream mapping, followed by some cognitive behavioral therapy. Yes, you were both here around the same time, but sessions are private. There's no reason for you to have known of each other.”

“So you have no idea why this is happening?” I ask.

“I don't.” Petermann begins tapping a finger against his skull, then stops. “But that doesn't mean I'm not willing to try and figure it out. The brain is a real mystery, but I'm sure we can get to the bottom of whatever it is, figure out what wires are crossed, so to speak.”

Petermann's theory bugs me. Max isn't just a brain malfunction. Some thing that got put in my head and can be explained away.

“Is it possible this is something that science doesn't have the answers to?” I ask.

Petermann shakes his head. “Science is the explanation for everything. We just have to ask the right questions.”

“This is the car you drive?” I ask, surprised.

Max has just pulled up next to me in an old turquoise-colored Volvo wagon. I'm struggling to put the blinking safety light on the back of my bike.

“Sentimental value. C'mon, let me drive you home. It's not safe at this hour.”

I let him get out and lift Frank with one hand, as though the bike weighs as much as a marshmallow, and place it in his trunk, while I hop in the passenger seat. As he pulls onto Memorial Drive, we are silent, the river speeding by to our right. The car is warm, the seats are plush, and I feel safe in this space with Max.

“In my favorite dream of you and me, all we do is drive. Just open road. Sometimes we're in the desert, other times swerving around woody mountain ledges, this feeling of total wonder and excitement coursing through me. In the dream I always know we are going somewhere great. But even if we never get there, it doesn't matter, because I'm with you.” He glances over at me, and I wish we were in that dream now. I wish we would never wake up from it. “Have you had this dream?”

“Of course,” I say. “It's one of my favorites, too.”

Then, I honestly wonder if we are dreaming. Because Max does something so unexpected that every hair on my body stands on end.

Slowly, so slowly I didn't notice it at first, he reaches for my hand. And suddenly there are two hands on top of my left knee. Mine and Max's, intertwined.

I stare at them, like if I look away, they'll cease to exist. How is it possible that even though only our hands are touching, the feeling of warmth has spread up through my elbow and into my chest? I don't take my eyes off them until we pull up outside my house, when Max is forced to release his grip so he can put the car in park. We sit in silence for a moment staring straight ahead, the interior of the car crackling with something beyond either of our understanding, my left hand feeling empty and cold.

I hesitate before turning to face him, and notice he has done the same thing. Max is giving me an odd look, his head angled down, his eyes peering up at me warily.

Is he going to kiss me?
I consider how dry my lips are for a second, then realize I'm biting them and wonder if he knows what I'm thinking about, and am instantly mortified.

“Alice,” Max says, tilting his head to the side and leaning it against the headrest as he watches me.

“Hmm?” is all I say, because I don't trust myself to form sentences or, for that matter, even whole words right now.
But when does the kiss part happen?
I want to ask.

“I don't think I can do this,” Max says instead. And then all the air gets pushed out of my body.

“I don't understand . . .” I start to say.

Max shifts his jaw back and forth, as he tries to find the words. “Alice, there is so much about me you don't know,” he says. “What we had, what we
have
, is awesome, but it existed in our dreams. What about everything we missed when we were awake?”

“So tell me,” I say, putting a hand on his knee. “I want to hear it all, Max. Whatever I missed. Whatever I need to know.”

“That's not what I mean.” Max shakes his head, shifting so he's facing forward again, and letting his right arm rest on the back of my seat. “I mean for so long, you were the only good thing in my life. You were what I looked forward to every single day.”

I lean toward him. “It was the same for me.”

“No, you don't get it,” Max says, his tone taking on an edge. “I mean the dreams were
all
I had. I wanted so badly for you to be real, and it just got so hard. Especially on those nights I didn't dream about you . . . It was like I'd become addicted. To the dreams, the world, and you. One day I woke up and I just knew I had to give it up. Maybe I couldn't stop the dreams—and I didn't want them to stop—but I could work to make my reality better. And I did. I worked harder in school, I got more involved in sports, I met . . . new people.” He looks away and a feeling of panic begins to creep slowly into my chest.

“You mean Celeste,” I say, so low it's practically a whisper.

“I mean Celeste,” Max admits. He pauses like he's waiting
for me to say something, but I don't know what to say. We've switched places now. Max has turned to me, pleading, trying to make me understand, while I stare straight ahead, unable to look anywhere but the changing traffic light up ahead.

“Alice, you were the girl of my dreams,” Max says. “But Celeste was with me in reality. She saw all the hard stuff. She saw a quiet kid who kept to himself, and she opened me up, opened up a whole new world to me. She introduced me to her friends and had me over to her house for family movie night and got me out on the weekends. And somehow I became a fully functioning teenager. I owe her so much for that.”

“You owe me for some of that, too,” I say, stung. “And just because I only saw the good, that doesn't mean I wouldn't have seen you through the bad.”

“I know,” Max says. “But you weren't there for the bad, and she was.”

At this point I would rather be dangling on a rope from the Empire State Building completely naked than listen to Max talk about Celeste anymore, so I shove open the door of his car and head for my house. Jerry is scratching madly from behind my front door, so I open it, but he bypasses me and scoots right to Max, who has just unloaded my bike, sniffing his ankles.

“Hey, Jer,” Max says, leaning down and giving Jerry a pat. Jerry plops directly at his feet. “I missed you.”

Max looks up at me then, and I hate it, because now when he looks at me like that, all I can see is Celeste's face beside him.

“I'm sorry.” He steps forward like he wants to touch me, but stops himself. “I can't go back to living in my dreams, Alice. I've worked too hard for my reality.”

“Even if your dreams are standing right here?” I ask, my voice coming out all broken and squeaky, moments from collapsing into tears.

Max just shakes his head.

I don't say anything. I lean down and scratch the top of Jerry's head, so Max can't see the tears welling up in my eyes. This must be what breakups feel like. For normal people in normal relationships.

Max seems to get it, because he doesn't wait for a reply. “I'll see you,” he says, before getting back in his car.

It hurts all over again when I realize he doesn't say “soon.”

I am wiggling
m
y toes in the grass of a lush green lawn, gazing up at a wooden tower, several stories high. As I look closer, I notice it's made entirely of Jenga blocks.

“Your turn, my dear!” Petermann cries. He's reclining behind me on a chaise with ease, sipping a cocktail with a giant pink flower floating in it. Far in the background appears to be the palace of Versailles, but its façade is inset with giant gemstones, like a family of My Little Ponies bought it and just finished renovating.

“But how do I get high enough?” I ask, eyeing the perfect move—a loose block about twenty feet up.

“Sergio will help you, of course!” Petermann replies.

Just then Sergio comes whizzing around the side of the tower, his blue feathers looking nearly electric in the afternoon glow. But
it's not the Sergio I remember. This Sergio is the size of a teenage dragon, and he's wearing a beautiful Italian wool scarf around his neck.

“Ciao, Alicia!” he says enthusiastically. “All aboard! Veniamo!”

I climb up on his back, and he gives me a twirl around the tower as I lean down and point him to where I want to go. Then I slide the block out and carry it in my arms as he flies me to the top, where I carefully set it down.

“Brava!” Sergio cries, and from below Petermann raises his glass in approval. Sergio returns me to the ground and I have a seat as I watch Brunilda take her turn, wearing a big emerald necklace that perfectly complements her plume. She uses her beak to pull a block out with dexterity and gracefully places it atop the tower, giving me a wink when I congratulate her.

“Pretty fun, huh?” someone says next to me, and I turn to find Max sitting closely by my side, his elbows resting on the tops of his bent knees.

“When did you get here?” I ask, sliding closer to rest my chin on his shoulder.

“I'm always here, Alice,” he says quietly. Then he leans his cheek against the top of my head.

It surprises me, how a gesture so small can feel so very big. How sometimes you don't realize the nervousness or sadness you were holding deep inside until the touch of someone you love lets it all out of you, like your entire body is exhaling. That's what this feels like. I close my eyes to savor it completely.

“Watch out!” someone cries from above, and we look up to see Petermann speeding down atop Sergio's back, as pieces of the Jenga tower begin to fall. “Take cover!”

But when the first block lands, bouncing and tumbling along the lawn, we realize there's no danger. They're actually just giant sponges cut in long thick strips, and suddenly we are swimming in a foam pit, like the one at my old gymnastics class in the Bronx.

“Max?” I say. “
Max
? Where are you?”

But before I truly panic, his head pops out of the pile with a huge grin.

“I'm here!” he cries. “I already told you. I'm always here.” Then he tackles me into a sea of sponge.