The Dogs of Babel (24 page)

I turn the pages, skimming through the magical and mundane dreams of little girls. One of them, dated when she was sixteen, makes me catch my breath: “I was on top of a high building, and I was walking close to the edge, and I fell off. I thought I was going to fall all the way to the ground, but halfway down, I found I could fly.” The height, the fall—it makes me dizzy for a moment. But so many people have dreams of falling, dreams of flight—I’ve had them myself, dreams where I wake with my heart pounding, convinced I’ve just fallen to the bed from a great height—that I have to conclude it doesn’t mean a thing.

I skip ahead past college dreams of missed exams and sex with strangers, past a recurring nightmare in her twenties about driving a car down a flight of stone steps. I skip to the part after she and I have met. And there I am, a new fixture in her dreams, sometimes a key figure, sometimes just a bit player: “Paul and I decide to buy a new house, but it’s so big I get lost. He keeps calling to me, and I try to follow his voice, but I can never find him.” Or “I’m on a train somewhere in Europe, and I’m not sure where I’m supposed to get off, but I’m not too concerned about it. I’m eating delicious pastries. Paul’s there, too.” I enjoy reading the ones that I’m in, even when the role I play in them is small. It’s gratifying to know that you’ve appeared in someone else’s dreams. It’s proof that you exist, in a way, proof that you have substance and value outside the walls of your own mind.

So many of the dreams are ones that Lexy told me herself—here are the laundry-shaped souls, here is “I remember my wife in white”—that I begin to feel ashamed. There’s nothing she kept from me, at least nothing that’s going to be found in this book. Of the ones I don’t recognize, some of them are very cryptic, as though she herself didn’t remember any more than the sketchiest details. “Snake eating money,” one of them reads. “So many people gave it to him.” And another one says only: “I put one in metal, one in glass, and one in wood.”

In the entries from the first winter after we were married, dreams of pregnancy and birth begin to appear. “I gave birth to a little girl who was afraid of me,” says one of them. And another: “I had a baby, but it wasn’t really mine.” In one dream, Lorelei has puppies, then swallows them one by one. In another, Lexy finds herself hugely pregnant and sitting in a courtroom. “I’m sorry,” the judge says to her, “but we have to put a stop to this.” She looks down to find her belly flat once again.

Looking at the dates of these dreams, I can see that they occurred around the time I was trying to convince Lexy that we should have a baby. It seemed to me then that she was dismissing the idea rather easily, without giving it the consideration it deserved, but I can see now that the decision weighed heavily on her, coloring even her sleep. Well, what of it, I think, a glimmer of my earlier anger rising within me. It was a reasonable expectation, that we might have a family together. I’m not going to feel guilty for wanting the things that everyone wants.

I’m expecting that the dreams will take a rather macabre turn around the time that she began making death masks, but this is not the case. In fact, I find only one dream about death during that entire period, although it seems to be a fairly significant one: “I’ve died,” she writes, “and I’m at my funeral. Paul is in the front row, and he’s crying. I want to comfort him, so I go up to him and put my hand on his shoulder, but he can’t feel me. Then he looks right at me, even though I know somehow that he can’t really see me. ‘I’m crying,’ he says, ‘because it’s such a relief.’ That’s when I wake up.”

But I have to emphasize that not all the dreams are like this. For every dream that seems to sing out with symbolism and revelation, there are ten others that are nothing more than ordinary. The week before the funeral dream, for example, she writes, “I’m in the supermarket, and I’m buying a lot of pineapples.” And the very night after she dreamed that I felt relief at her death, she had a dream that “Paul and Lorelei and I are taking a long car ride. Lorelei has her head out the window, and Paul and I are laughing.”

After our trip to New Orleans, there’s a period of a month or so with no dreams at all. I don’t know what to make of this; did Lexy really not dream at all during this period, or was she just not writing them down? The first dream listed after this fallow time sheds little light: “I’m swimming in a pool, but it turns out it’s actually the ocean. When I open my eyes underwater, I can see that there are colorful fish swimming all around me.”

I feel some trepidation as I near the end, as the dates move inexorably toward the day of Lexy’s death. I don’t know when exactly she learned that she was pregnant, when she first suspected it, and when she took the test, but I feel sure it will be reflected in her dreams. But again I’m wrong. This isn’t a diary, after all; it’s a record of random synaptic movements that defy my attempts to imbue them with meaning. There are no dreams of babies in her last days. There is one dream a week before her death—“My body is covered with scars from head to toe”—that might perhaps reflect a preoccupation with bodily changes. But then again, it might not. Four days before her death, she dreamed she went to the dry cleaner’s; a night later, she dreamed that she was cooking a wonderful meal. The last dream of her life, or at least the last one she wrote down, is this one, dated the day before her death: “I dreamed they cut me open and found I had two hearts. The second one was small, and it was a different color. It was hidden underneath the main heart, so they didn’t see it at first. I was very surprised when they told me about it, but the doctor said it was completely normal. He said that most people have two hearts, we just never know it.”

I’m intrigued by this one, and not only because it’s the last. It’s true, isn’t it, that each of us has two hearts? The secret heart, curled behind like a fist, living gnarled and shrunken beneath the plain, open one we use every day. I remember a night about a year or so ago, when I was lying awake next to Lexy, unable to sleep. For some reason, I began thinking about a woman I had known in college, a woman I had dated for only six or seven weeks. It was not a serious relationship, at least it wasn’t to her, but I had fallen in love with her, and it shamed me to realize that, all these years later, I still felt pain that she had not loved me back. How can it be, I wondered, that we can be lying in bed next to a person we love wholly and helplessly, a person we love more than our own breath, and still ache to think of the one who caused us pain all those years ago? It’s the betrayal of this second heart of ours, its flesh tied off like a fingertip twined tightly round with a single hair, blue-tinged from lack of blood. The shameful squeeze of it. Lying there that night, with Lexy beside me, I was surprised to find myself where I was. I was surprised to find I had lived a whole life in the meantime. And sitting here now, with all of Lexy’s dreams in my lap, I realize there are things about her I will never know. It’s not the content of our dreams that gives our second heart its dark color; it’s the thoughts that go through our heads in those wakeful moments when sleep won’t come. And those are the things we never tell anyone at all.

I
continued to call Detective Stack every day, hoping for news of Lorelei, but so far I haven’t had any luck. But today, he’s the one who calls me.

“Dr. Iverson,” he says. “I wanted to let you know that we arrested Remo Platt and Lucas Harrow last night. We got a tip as to their whereabouts, and we now have them in custody.”

“Oh, thank God,” I say. “What about Lorelei? Did you find her?”

“Well, I’m not sure,” he says. “There were several dogs recovered from the location where they’d been staying, but I don’t know if your dog was among them. The arresting officers handed them over to Animal Control. They’re at the pound now, if you want to go take a look.”

“Thank you so much, Detective,” I say. “I’m so grateful.”

“No problem,” he says. “I hope you find your dog.”

“Were the dogs… were they okay?” I ask.

He pauses. “Some of them were not in good shape,” he says. “I’m not going to lie to you. And we found some evidence at the scene of some dogs that had been… that were deceased.”

“I see,” I say. “Well, thank you.”

I drive to the pound, imagining all the possibilities: Lorelei’s not there after all, or she’s there, but she’s badly injured. Or she’s there, but she doesn’t want to have anything to do with me. This last is a stretch, I know, but who could blame her? Even dogs can feel betrayal. She knows that she trusted me and I brought her back to the place where they hurt her once. She knows that a man she was afraid of came to get her, and I wasn’t there to help.

I try to prepare myself for the fact that she might be dead, but I can’t bear to think about it. When I imagine those men hurting her, perhaps killing her, I start shaking so much that I have to pull the car over to compose myself.

Finally, I reach the pound. I park my car and go inside. There’s a young woman sitting at the front desk. She looks like a kind person. She’s wearing a name tag that says Grace.

“Hello,” she says when I approach the desk. She smiles at me. “Can I help you?”

“I hope so,” I say. “I heard from the police that they brought some dogs in last night. I think my dog might be one of them.”

“Oh,” she says, her face falling a little. “You mean the dogs from the animal abuse case?”

“Yes.”

“That’s such a terrible story. I’m glad they’ve arrested those guys. If you could see what they’ve done to some of these…” She trails off. “I’m sorry. What kind of dog is your dog?”

“A Rhodesian Ridgeback. A female. Her name is Lorelei.”

“That’s pretty. We do have a female Ridgeback. I don’t know if it’s the right one—there weren’t any tags or collars on any of the dogs. But she’s a real sweetheart. I was sitting with her most of the morning. We’ve become pals.”

“Is she okay?” I ask.

Grace looks down. “Well, she’s… she’s okay, don’t worry, she’s going to be fine. But they did some surgery on her. We had our vet examine her this morning, and it appears that…” She looks up into my eyes. “They removed her larynx.”

“Oh, God,” I say. “Oh, God.”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “But it’s not so bad. She’s recovering fine. The vet said the surgery was done really well, if that’s any comfort. She’s going to be fine. She just won’t be able to bark or anything.”

My eyes are filling with tears. “She won’t be able to talk,” I say. And suddenly I laugh at how ridiculous it sounds.

Grace smiles uncertainly, but when she speaks, her voice is gentle. “No,” she says. “She won’t be able to talk.”

I nod and bow my head, willing the tears to stop running down my cheeks.

“Oh,” Grace says. “Oh. Don’t cry.” She stands up, plucking a few tissues from a box in front of her, and walks around to stand beside me on the other side of the desk. She puts her hand on my arm and squeezes it lightly. “It’s okay,” she says, handing me a tissue. “It’s okay.”

She gives me a moment to pull myself together. I wipe my face and blow my nose, ashamed to be behaving this way in front of a stranger.

“Shall we go take a look,” she says, “and see if this is your dog, after all?”

“Yes,” I say. “Thank you.”

She leads me through a locked door into a corridor full of cages. It reminds me, sadly, of the kennels at Remo’s house. Dogs jump up on the bars of their cages, yelping and barking as we walk past. I can see that some of them are hurt, their wounds dressed with clean white bandages.

“She’s in the second-to-last cage on the right,” Grace says.

I quicken my steps, looking ahead, trying to see into the right cage. And then I’m in front of the cage, and there she is, my sweet Lorelei, my sweet puppy dog. She’s lying down in the back of the cage, but when she sees me, she jumps up and leaps into the air, spinning her body around in a circle. She propels herself toward me with great force, landing with her front paws propped high on the bars. She looks me right in the face. I can see that her throat is freshly bandaged. She makes a sound, sort of an empty whistling whine, like the sound of air rushing through a hollow reed. I put my fingers through the bars, and she licks them furiously.

“Lorelei,” I say. “What a good girl! What a good girl! I’m so sorry, girl.” I laugh as she sticks her tongue through the bars, trying to reach my face.

Grace is smiling. “I’m guessing this is the right dog,” she says.

I smile back, feeling happier than I have in some time. “Yes,” I say. “This is the right dog.”

I take Lorelei home with me, back to our little house. I give her her dinner and check her bandages, according to the vet’s instructions. Afterward, she settles down in her favorite corner and falls into a deep sleep, her paws twitching and jerking as she dreams. I wonder if her dreams, such as they are—I suppose I’ll never know, after all—have been changed by what she’s been through. As she lies here safe in our living room is she dreaming of men with knives, men who lock her in cages and make her throat burn like acid? Why would they do this to her, these men whose goal was to
enable
dogs to speak? And then, suddenly, it hits me, and I feel so sick I have to sit down. It’s because of me. I remember now that Remo and Lucas looked at me when the police broke through the door. They knew I was responsible for leading them there, unwitting fool that I was. It was all my fault. And they couldn’t silence me, so they silenced her. Whether they meant it as a message to me—did they know they’d get caught?—or whether they simply wanted to take their revenge on her, I don’t know. But it’s my fault, just as everything seems to be my fault, and I don’t know how I’ll ever make it up to her.

Lorelei begins to make noises in her sleep, gaspy, wheezing sounds that might have been yelps at another time in her life. I kneel beside her and stroke her flank until she jerks awake and stares at me with wide, unrecognizing eyes.