The Comfort of Black (3 page)

She reached under the sheets to find out and discovered he wasn't. Maybe she would crawl under the sheets and go down on him, making him hard. Then she would mount him, and he would wake up to find his dream coming true. How amazing
would that feel, she wondered, to dream about fucking your wife and to wake up and that actually be happening?

And he would come inside her again. Another chance.

As she slipped off her thong and pulled back the sheets to put her mouth on him, Dallin's limbs shook more violently. He was no longer twitching, his whole body seemed in a spasm. Hannah placed her hand on his chest, as if her touch could calm the shaking body. But Dallin came to life in his sleep, his arms suddenly flailing, his fists clenching, his head snapping from side to side.

Hannah lifted her hand and leaned away from him.

“Baby?” she said. “Dallin, are you okay? Are you awake?”

Dallin's voice was clear but quiet, as if he was whispering into a lover's ear.

“Yeah, you like that, bitch? You like my cock and my knife? That feel good, cunt? I want you to tell me what it's like to bleed out.
Tell me everything
.”

Hannah stared into the darkness, wanting to believe she only imagined what she'd just heard.
He didn't just say that. He couldn't have
.

“Dallin?” she said. “Dallin?” Her voice was fearful, a person asking a ghost to make his presence known. She said his name one last time, but did not touch him again.

Dallin was silent until, about a minute later, he began to softly snore.

Hannah pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around them, and stared away from Dallin and out the window, over Puget Sound, as her husband's words tumbled over and over in her mind without stopping.

The moon climbed.

D
AY
2

“So, tell me what's going on?”

Hannah looked at her therapist for a moment before shifting her gaze downward. Looking away was always the easiest option. Hannah sat in the same oversized leather chair she had been sitting in once a week for four years. It felt the same,
smelled
the same, as it always did and always would. There was usually comfort here in the office of Dr. Madeline Britel, but today Hannah didn't feel it. She shifted in her seat, trying to find support.

“I…I'm not sure what to say. Something happened yesterday.”

Hannah had tossed fitfully in bed last night, finally allowing herself an Ambien and a glass of wine when she hadn't fallen asleep by one in the morning. She woke up after nine. Dallin had already left for work, and a small blue Post-it note was on top of his pillow.
I love you!
Hannah normally kept these notes. This one she threw away, but not out of anger. She just had a strong sense of not wanting to keep it.

Hannah was both eager and afraid to tell Dr. Britel about what Dallin had said in his sleep. Not telling her wasn't really an option. What was the point of coming here if she held back what had happened? But the fear existed she was making far too much of this. It was a dream, after all. Did she not have her own dreams of violence, rage, and fear, dreams fueled by the memories of her father, who, after all, was really the reason she came to therapy to begin with?

Dr. Britel would tell her it was nothing to worry about. Then it would all be better again.

“What happened?”

Hannah sucked in a breath and then told her. Just as she had rehearsed it in her mind. Word for word, though she softened her voice when she said
cunt
. It took maybe two minutes to relate the story. When she finished, Hannah laced her fingers together tightly and looked down at her wedding ring.

“I see,” Dr. Britel said, her expression impressively unchanged. “What do you think that means?”

“I have no idea.”

“Don't you? Doesn't it make you think something?”

Hannah anticipated the question. Many of the arrows in a therapist's quiver were such questions.

“I'm not sure. Maybe…maybe it makes me think there's something about him I don't know.”

“Something like what?”

“I don't
know
. Why would he say that?”

“Do you have dreams that are incongruous with your character?”

“Of course I do. I mean…you know I do.”

“Have you ever had a dream you were hurting someone?”

Hannah felt anger creeping over her. “You know the answer to that as well,” Hannah said.

“Your dreams about Billy.” The doctor leaned forward just a few extra degrees over her crossed legs. “But those dreams are just you playing out what happened in reality. And in reality, you never actually hurt him.”

“I tried to kill him.”

It felt good to say aloud. Dr. Britel was the only living person outside of Dallin, Hannah's sister, and Billy himself who knew the full details of what had really happened that night. Hannah didn't tell the police, nor had Billy.

“But do you ever dream you succeeded in killing him? Or even hurting him?”

This is getting off point
, Hannah thought. She wanted the doctor to tell her something clearly was wrong with Dallin. She wanted to feel justified anger at her husband, because for Hannah getting angry was as satisfying as scratching a deep itch. Her anger was one of the reasons she came to Dr. Britel in the first place, and now Hannah was simmering at her own therapist. “I don't know. Maybe. I mean, I'm sure I do.”

“Does that make you a murderer?”

“That's different. This isn't about Billy.”

Dr. Britel shifted in her seat and cleared her throat, an indication she was going to make a statement rather than ask a question. Statements were rare.

“Your concern is understandable. You lived under the rage of your father for years, and the action you took…
almost
took…was a stand against a monster. So it makes sense something like what happened last night triggered your feelings of insecurity, fear. Dread, even. But I think what we need to explore is not what Dallin said. You're smart, Hannah. You know dreams can be meaningless, at least in context of a person's true nature. Our subconscious rules our nights, but that doesn't define us as a person. If he had a dream about, say, sleeping with his own mother, I'm sure you wouldn't fear that was actually happening.”

“God, of course not.”

“So I wonder if there's something about your relationship—your relationship with Dallin, and not your father—causing you to pay particular attention to what happened last night.”

Hannah sat up a bit more. “Are you saying that, in a healthy marriage, a person shouldn't question or be concerned about their spouse having a rape-murder fantasy dream?”

Dr. Britel left the question unanswered.

“How's the drinking?” she asked, instead.

Hannah bristled, hated having to feel shame at the question. Sometimes she wished she drank more than she did so she could just call herself an alcoholic and get on with her life, rather than
seesaw between good and bad nights, toeing the line between buzz-chasing and self-medicating.

“I stopped like I told you. For the pregnancy. But I had a glass of wine last night. Late. I needed it to sleep.” She paused and scratched her arm. “Maybe two glasses.”

“How's the anger?” the therapist asked.

“
Fine
,” Hannah said.

“It's okay to be angry, Hannah. You and I have discussed this many times. But you have to channel it. Find a healthy target for it. You grew up around rage and anger. It's understandable.”

“This isn't about my anger,” Hannah said. “It's about my husband fantasizing about raping and killing someone. Why does everything have to be about my fucking anger issues?”

Dr. Britel stared at her for a moment to let the irony sink in before speaking.

“You've used the word ‘mysterious' to describe Dallin in several of our sessions, since we first started. That's not a word commonly used by a spouse to describe the other. Most couples would say their marriages contain very little mystery. Spouses often think they know everything about each other, whether that's the actual case or not.”

Hannah was beginning to regret bringing the topic up. She felt her weight shifting, her back now pressing harder against the chair, assuming a retreating, defensive position. “I always meant that in a good way,” she said. “Mostly about his work. He's quiet about it. He's quiet in general. I've always been attracted to that quality in him.”

“But mystery can create doubt.”

“Are you asking me if I trust my husband?”

“Haven't you had questions about him before?”

Hannah paused, digested the question, and thought about the best way to respond.

“I'm getting the witness-stand feeling here.”

“I'm not prosecuting you, Hannah. We can move on to another subject if you prefer.”

That's right, Hannah. Shove all those doubts aside, just like
you always do. Because this isn't the first time you've wondered about him, is it?

“That was different,” Hannah finally said. “I questioned why he had a second phone that he hadn't told me about. It turned out to be another phone for work.”

“If I recall,” Dr. Britel said, “you found the phone in his jacket pocket. You asked him why he hadn't told you about it, and he got defensive about it.”

Defensive. Is that what it was? She remembered Dallin dismissing her question casusally.
It's a work phone. Emergency stuff. I rarely use it
. But when she pressed even a little harder, he had angered.
Jesus, Hannah, you can look at the phone if you want to. Do I have to give you an inventory of all my office equipment, too?

“There are two different issues here,” Dr. Britel said. “One is your concern about Dallin's fidelity.”

“I'm
not
concerned about his fidelity.”

“Forgive me. Let's just say there might exist some trust issues.”

Hannah wanted to argue but didn't.

“The other issue is the violence. Have there ever been any other situations where he's done something that seemed…unusual? Aggressive in a physical way?”

“No. No, of course not.”
Is that true, Hannah?
“I mean…I don't know. Sometimes he can get a little rough with sex, but I encourage it. It can be fun.”

Dr. Britel wrote in her notepad, and it made Hannah feel like she was giving a confession to the police.

“Rough in what way?”

“Nothing, really. I mean, I think I've mentioned it before. Sometimes he bites, but not too hard. Or wants to try something a little more experimental.” Hannah sucked in a deep breath and let go in one short, fast burst. “A couple of years ago he wanted to try choking me during sex. It's supposed to increase the intensity of the orgasm. I actually researched it. But…but I just wasn't
comfortable with it, so he let it go. It was no big deal. He asked a couple more times, but not in a while.”

“I see.” More note scribbling. “Did he ever ask you to choke
him
?”

“No.”

“And this dream last night. The talking in his sleep. Did you ask him about it?”

“No. I haven't seen him today. He'd left for work by the time I woke up.”

“Are you planning to?”

I don't know
.

“Yes,” Hannah said.

“Okay, then I suggest we move on from this subject for now. Let's wait until next week to explore this much further. I would like to see how you two discuss this first.”

Hannah nodded, relieved to be able to move on. Though she felt a twinge of panic.
Now I have to ask him about it
. She truly wanted and intended to, but the idea of actually asking him filled her stomach with ice. If she asked him, he might tell her an answer she didn't want to hear.

The remainder of her session was filled with the usual back and forth that seemed routine but was the essence of why Hannah had started her weekly therapy. After Billy went to prison, Hannah had left her tiny Kansas town and had matured immensely, but perhaps too fast to be healthy. Dallin's company had grown at light-speed pace, and by the time he'd proposed to Hannah almost six years ago, his net worth approached a million dollars. Today, that number was nearly forty times that, at least on paper. Growing up, Hannah's understanding of money came from Billy's profane outbursts about how they
didn't fuckin' have any
. Forty million was an incomprehensible number to Hannah, and the richer they became, the more detached she became from all of it. Now they had
people
to tend to the finances. Accountants. Advisors. And she had her sister nearby, who hadn't been nearly as prosperous. Their relationship strained as Hannah's wealth rocketed.

She could hear Billy in her head in these moments, saying she should have turned out more like her sister, Justine. Single mother of two kids from two different fathers. Decent job but hardly what one would call successful. Outward bitterness towards life.

But Hannah was not Justine.

“We're nearly out of time,” Dr. Britel said, “and I want to resume next week with our discussion earlier today. But let me ask you one last question before you leave.” Dr. Britel stared at her, those cold, clinical eyes framed by wrinkles of years asking a thousand patients a million questions about their most desperate thoughts and feelings. “Do you feel safe at home?”

“Safe?”

Dr. Britel nodded.

Hannah hadn't thought about that. For all the horrible things that her imagination let her paint in her mind, she had never questioned her own safety. Until now.

“Yes,” she said. “I feel safe. Dallin would never hurt me.” As if to convince herself, she then added, “Ever. Why?”

A small, polite smile from the doctor. “It's just something I need to ask.”