Object Permanence
by Frankie Concepcion
At the beginning of the end, when Alice’s office closed and restaurants closed and people still covered their faces, she’d felt certain that this was the moment that her mother and father would finally reach out to their daughter.
While others dreamed of brushed hands and fresh air, of loved ones gathered, of flying, what Alice looked forward to the most was sleep. A sinking in which all the lonely seconds and hours and days that a body can absorb went unnoticed. But each morning, waiting until the last moment to open her eyes, she would shut off her alarm and unplug her phone from her charger only to see that no missed calls nor texts had come in while she slept.
Faced with her own mortality, Alice called her mother. By then, people had forgotten the days when home felt like something the world had misplaced; days when longing had replaced the order of things. Like waking up from a very long nightmare, said one of Alice’s coworkers the day before the office reopened, on a Zoom call in which she’d seen no one’s face, not even her own. A return to normalcy, out of reach only for as long as was needed to get used to the change. In this way, even the end felt like so much dirty laundry.
Almost immediately, the phone’s steady ringing was interrupted by a woman’s automated voice. It said her mother’s name and phone number, but as it prompted Alice to leave a message after the tone, all Alice could think of was all the things she hoped to hear from them but never would: I miss you. I love you. Come home. She wondered if this would be enough to convince her to do just that, or if that was a kind of normal that was now too far out of reach. She hung up the phone without leaving a message.
That night, Alice dreamed of a man from her office whose name she could not remember.
It started in the way all her dreams did: in medias res, she and the man from the office already in the car together, the circumstances that had brought them there having already transpired. He was driving, and in dream-fashion Alice was both inside the car and could also see that the car was red. A sedan. They talked, but by the time Alice woke, whatever it was they’d talked about had retreated into the inner monologue of her subconscious. When the car finally pulled up to a sidewalk, Alice had expected to see her apartment in Cambridge, with its yellow siding and gray columns. Instead, when she stepped out, she saw that he’d taken her not home, but Home: to the bougainvillea-strewn, white stucco-ed walls of the home she’d grown up in and left, halfway around the world. Welcome home, he’d said then, and in her dream, his embrace was firm, familiar. She felt the pads of his fingers resting on her shoulder blades, his chin digging into her shoulder, and yet she did not shy away. When she woke up, she found that the patches of skin that he had touched were singing.
For the rest of the weekend, it was that embrace that her mind would drift to again and again, unprompted. Like a song stuck in her head.
On Monday, she thought about the dream again as she moved through the rows of empty cubicles. She was early, which meant that for just a few minutes, she allowed herself to wander the empty office maskless, to run her hands over the new plexiglass partitions that separated each desk. When she passed the one that belonged to the man in her dream, she remembered that his name was Carter. Without lingering, she drew her eyes over the papers strewn on Carter’s desk, the empty box of tissues, the stack of paper Starbucks cups and the rings of coffee stamped onto the table. The chaos of it was enough to make her flinch. She’d been wondering if he was a new hire, if this was why her subconscious mind had tucked him away for later use. But his cubicle looked broken in, and on second thought she had no recollection of meeting him at all. She hadn’t realized she even knew his name until after she’d dreamed of him, nor did she speak to him when he arrived, minutes later, fresh coffee in hand. He was wearing a khaki jacket with buttons running down the front, which she also recognized from her dream. It frightened her, almost: how closely her dreams could emulate the real thing, even though until that moment, she would not have been able to pick him out of a crowd.
While others dreamed of brushed hands and fresh air, of loved ones gathered, of flying, what Alice looked forward to the most was sleep. A sinking in which all the lonely seconds and hours and days that a body can absorb went unnoticed. But each morning, waiting until the last moment to open her eyes, she would shut off her alarm and unplug her phone from her charger only to see that no missed calls nor texts had come in while she slept.
Faced with her own mortality, Alice called her mother. By then, people had forgotten the days when home felt like something the world had misplaced; days when longing had replaced the order of things. Like waking up from a very long nightmare, said one of Alice’s coworkers the day before the office reopened, on a Zoom call in which she’d seen no one’s face, not even her own. A return to normalcy, out of reach only for as long as was needed to get used to the change. In this way, even the end felt like so much dirty laundry.
Almost immediately, the phone’s steady ringing was interrupted by a woman’s automated voice. It said her mother’s name and phone number, but as it prompted Alice to leave a message after the tone, all Alice could think of was all the things she hoped to hear from them but never would: I miss you. I love you. Come home. She wondered if this would be enough to convince her to do just that, or if that was a kind of normal that was now too far out of reach. She hung up the phone without leaving a message.
That night, Alice dreamed of a man from her office whose name she could not remember.
It started in the way all her dreams did: in medias res, she and the man from the office already in the car together, the circumstances that had brought them there having already transpired. He was driving, and in dream-fashion Alice was both inside the car and could also see that the car was red. A sedan. They talked, but by the time Alice woke, whatever it was they’d talked about had retreated into the inner monologue of her subconscious. When the car finally pulled up to a sidewalk, Alice had expected to see her apartment in Cambridge, with its yellow siding and gray columns. Instead, when she stepped out, she saw that he’d taken her not home, but Home: to the bougainvillea-strewn, white stucco-ed walls of the home she’d grown up in and left, halfway around the world. Welcome home, he’d said then, and in her dream, his embrace was firm, familiar. She felt the pads of his fingers resting on her shoulder blades, his chin digging into her shoulder, and yet she did not shy away. When she woke up, she found that the patches of skin that he had touched were singing.
For the rest of the weekend, it was that embrace that her mind would drift to again and again, unprompted. Like a song stuck in her head.
On Monday, she thought about the dream again as she moved through the rows of empty cubicles. She was early, which meant that for just a few minutes, she allowed herself to wander the empty office maskless, to run her hands over the new plexiglass partitions that separated each desk. When she passed the one that belonged to the man in her dream, she remembered that his name was Carter. Without lingering, she drew her eyes over the papers strewn on Carter’s desk, the empty box of tissues, the stack of paper Starbucks cups and the rings of coffee stamped onto the table. The chaos of it was enough to make her flinch. She’d been wondering if he was a new hire, if this was why her subconscious mind had tucked him away for later use. But his cubicle looked broken in, and on second thought she had no recollection of meeting him at all. She hadn’t realized she even knew his name until after she’d dreamed of him, nor did she speak to him when he arrived, minutes later, fresh coffee in hand. He was wearing a khaki jacket with buttons running down the front, which she also recognized from her dream. It frightened her, almost: how closely her dreams could emulate the real thing, even though until that moment, she would not have been able to pick him out of a crowd.
*
That morning, Carter got off the train at the wrong station in pursuit of someone he thought he recognized. Instead of getting off at Park Street as usual, by chance he’d looked up just as the train hovered over the river to see a woman with dark hair and a red coat standing in front of the doors, her face turned toward the window. Truly, he’d only meant to shift his body, to see if he could catch a glimpse of her face. But at Charles, as he watched her step out onto the open-air platform, panic seized him and he followed.
By that time it was rush hour and the station was bloated with people. They gathered in front of the doors and at the top of the escalator, but Carter was quick to spot the woman’s red coat from within the crowd. In fact, Laura had bought that coat for that exact purpose—so that he could easily find her if he ever got lost. He was prone to distraction, wandering as they walked. They’d laughed together about that, once.
Once, the two of them had set their eyes on this city, and in doing so their future together had sharpened, coming into focus. But that was before the lockdowns, before the coffee shop they both worked at went take-out only, and then folded; before everyone he knew started leaving—either moving closer to their loved ones; or, lacking human roots, seeking ways to bring themselves closer to the earth, to see places most people had only dreamed of. If asked, Carter would have told you that he and Laura had no such dreams.
The last time they spoke, she had been thinking about getting a dog. We were supposed to get a dog, he’d said, not sure she could hear him over the sound of the wind blowing through her car window. She still called him every week or so (or whenever she could get reliable service) and he liked to think that it was because he was her tether to home, that some part of her needed him even though she would never say it out loud. He even had some of her things still, boxes and boxes of everything she wasn’t able to take with her, stacked neatly in the pantry, where he saw them every time he put away his groceries.
Over the phone, her voice gravelly with static, he heard Laura mumble, Maybe someday it can be our dog, not knowing if she meant it, or even if she did, when that someday might be. Nor did he tell her that the idea of living with a dog that was already loyal to someone else was like having no dog at all. By then he’d lost track of where she was or who she was with. Recently, their connection had begun to feel like no more than dots on a map, strung together with frayed conversations and memories of what it had been like to be together in the same city: memories of days bursting with companionable silences and arguments over where to eat, toes touching on the couch, strands of hair brushed from a cheek with the edge of a fingernail.
Now, in front of Carter, the girl in the red coat was walking through the turnstile, the glass coming between them, a dark film across his vision. He stood back and let her pass. He’d realized soon after getting off the train that she was too tall, her cheekbones too sharp, skin a shade too dark under her hat. It was only that, for the brief moment he’d allowed himself to believe it was Laura, he’d felt himself click into place again: a key in a lock, turning.
His evening commute brought no such feeling. On his way home from work, he felt no more than just another body on a packed train. Like everyone else, he wore a mask, though recently he’d noticed that more and more faces were reappearing each day. Still, he was used to the press of someone’s arm on his arm, a leg on his leg, the murmur of voices as steady as his own thoughts.
So when he heard a voice calling out his name, he’d thought, at first, that it was coming from inside his own head. When he heard his name again, this time his gaze hooked on a familiar face, just inches away. Holding on to the same handrail was Alice. She was wearing a mask too, and suddenly Carter realized that he had no idea what she looked like without one.
“Is this a dream?” she said. This struck him as an odd thing to say.
“Are you on your way home?” he asked her. A strange look passed over her face, and then she told him that she lived just off the Davis Square T stop. It was the second longest conversation they’d had—the first being the day he’d bought coffee for the office and she’d stopped by his desk to tell him ‘where the good coffee was.’ Since then he’d thought of her as somewhat opaque.
There was a moment, as the train stopped, passengers stepped on and off, and the train readjusted itself, that he thought he’d lost her. But after some shuffling they found each other again.
“So you’ve been dreaming about me?” he said when they reunited. He’d meant to tease her, it was true, but as she began to describe her dream to him, she blushed, turning redder and redder, like a slowly ripening apple. In her voice, something he could only describe as a spilling, a desire to let the dream overflow from her body into another’s. His instinct was to catch.
When she’d finished, when she’d reached the dream’s tender end and looked up at him with what he could only describe as relief, the idea that it was he who had caused that relief was so thrilling that he couldn’t help himself—he laughed. Whatever negative feelings he’d had for her dissolved into something else, something warm and taut against his stomach. It was as if she reached her hand out and strummed him.
“Sorry,” she said then. “I know other people’s dreams aren’t as interesting as they seem to the dreamer.” Her eyes crinkled in what Carter believed was a smile, even as the redness crept its way further down her cheeks, disappearing behind her mask and into the collar of her coat.
By that time it was rush hour and the station was bloated with people. They gathered in front of the doors and at the top of the escalator, but Carter was quick to spot the woman’s red coat from within the crowd. In fact, Laura had bought that coat for that exact purpose—so that he could easily find her if he ever got lost. He was prone to distraction, wandering as they walked. They’d laughed together about that, once.
Once, the two of them had set their eyes on this city, and in doing so their future together had sharpened, coming into focus. But that was before the lockdowns, before the coffee shop they both worked at went take-out only, and then folded; before everyone he knew started leaving—either moving closer to their loved ones; or, lacking human roots, seeking ways to bring themselves closer to the earth, to see places most people had only dreamed of. If asked, Carter would have told you that he and Laura had no such dreams.
The last time they spoke, she had been thinking about getting a dog. We were supposed to get a dog, he’d said, not sure she could hear him over the sound of the wind blowing through her car window. She still called him every week or so (or whenever she could get reliable service) and he liked to think that it was because he was her tether to home, that some part of her needed him even though she would never say it out loud. He even had some of her things still, boxes and boxes of everything she wasn’t able to take with her, stacked neatly in the pantry, where he saw them every time he put away his groceries.
Over the phone, her voice gravelly with static, he heard Laura mumble, Maybe someday it can be our dog, not knowing if she meant it, or even if she did, when that someday might be. Nor did he tell her that the idea of living with a dog that was already loyal to someone else was like having no dog at all. By then he’d lost track of where she was or who she was with. Recently, their connection had begun to feel like no more than dots on a map, strung together with frayed conversations and memories of what it had been like to be together in the same city: memories of days bursting with companionable silences and arguments over where to eat, toes touching on the couch, strands of hair brushed from a cheek with the edge of a fingernail.
Now, in front of Carter, the girl in the red coat was walking through the turnstile, the glass coming between them, a dark film across his vision. He stood back and let her pass. He’d realized soon after getting off the train that she was too tall, her cheekbones too sharp, skin a shade too dark under her hat. It was only that, for the brief moment he’d allowed himself to believe it was Laura, he’d felt himself click into place again: a key in a lock, turning.
His evening commute brought no such feeling. On his way home from work, he felt no more than just another body on a packed train. Like everyone else, he wore a mask, though recently he’d noticed that more and more faces were reappearing each day. Still, he was used to the press of someone’s arm on his arm, a leg on his leg, the murmur of voices as steady as his own thoughts.
So when he heard a voice calling out his name, he’d thought, at first, that it was coming from inside his own head. When he heard his name again, this time his gaze hooked on a familiar face, just inches away. Holding on to the same handrail was Alice. She was wearing a mask too, and suddenly Carter realized that he had no idea what she looked like without one.
“Is this a dream?” she said. This struck him as an odd thing to say.
“Are you on your way home?” he asked her. A strange look passed over her face, and then she told him that she lived just off the Davis Square T stop. It was the second longest conversation they’d had—the first being the day he’d bought coffee for the office and she’d stopped by his desk to tell him ‘where the good coffee was.’ Since then he’d thought of her as somewhat opaque.
There was a moment, as the train stopped, passengers stepped on and off, and the train readjusted itself, that he thought he’d lost her. But after some shuffling they found each other again.
“So you’ve been dreaming about me?” he said when they reunited. He’d meant to tease her, it was true, but as she began to describe her dream to him, she blushed, turning redder and redder, like a slowly ripening apple. In her voice, something he could only describe as a spilling, a desire to let the dream overflow from her body into another’s. His instinct was to catch.
When she’d finished, when she’d reached the dream’s tender end and looked up at him with what he could only describe as relief, the idea that it was he who had caused that relief was so thrilling that he couldn’t help himself—he laughed. Whatever negative feelings he’d had for her dissolved into something else, something warm and taut against his stomach. It was as if she reached her hand out and strummed him.
“Sorry,” she said then. “I know other people’s dreams aren’t as interesting as they seem to the dreamer.” Her eyes crinkled in what Carter believed was a smile, even as the redness crept its way further down her cheeks, disappearing behind her mask and into the collar of her coat.
*
A few stops later, Alice got off the train at Davis and thought back on their conversation as she began her short walk home. She remembered his laugh, how it was too high pitched and trilled too much in the middle. Alice thought he had an annoying laugh. It made her regret telling him her dream at all.
She didn’t expect him to speak to her the next day. In fact she hoped he didn’t. She would have preferred, instead, to let the whole encounter fall into the past, for her face to be subsumed into the background noise of the office, as he had once been for her. She hadn’t meant to tell him about the dream. Once, she would have described herself as someone who knew better than to take up too much space. You never knew what others expected of you, never knew what they saw when they looked at you. She resented having the responsibility of someone else’s actions placed upon her and tried to avoid doing the same for others.
But on the train that night, pushed together by the faceless, masked masses, she’d seen him and remembered the press of his body, the way her skin had jolted awake beneath his hand. Welcome home. After her confession, she’d expected him at the very least, to laugh, and he had. But before that, he’d leaned into her as she spoke, and she’d watched his eyes grow so wide that she’d seen herself reflected there. For a moment, she had allowed herself to believe that she could tell him anything.
At five-thirty, when she saw him coming down the hall toward her, she did not look at him. She allowed him the grace of moving around her, turning away from his path to shrug on her own coat and backpack. She let her arm meander its way into her sleeve for as long as she thought it might take him to pass her desk. But when she turned around, he was waiting for her.
“Walk with me?” he said.
They took Beacon Street down to the Common and Park Street Station. Once they were outside, he took off his mask, and the sight of his face felt suddenly too intimate to Alice—it knocked her off balance. Into her silence, he began to speak, asking: Where was home for her? Where was her family? Did she find it difficult, moving so far away from them? The questions stung her skin. She’d never learned the right way to say that she had always been used to distance, had grown to prefer it. She didn’t know how to explain that she’d left home not out of desire but necessity; creating, by will, a world wherein she could be neither neglected nor forgotten. A world that put herself first.
Again, she recalled the last time she’d been home to see her parents. The day she told them she’d received a work visa and would be returning to the U.S., she’d delivered the news proudly. She’d realized too late that she was disappointing them by leaving, even as she waited for them to give her a reason to stay. Instead, her mother had simply turned away from her, while her father looked at her and said, There’s plenty of work to do here. She knew better than to be disappointed by their reaction, and yet that did not dissolve the lump that formed in her throat that day, nor had it dissipated the silence that had wedged itself between her and her parents ever since. Only when the virus came did she begin to wonder if she was a bad person, if she should feel guilty for choosing distance at a time when everyone else had so much more to lose.
Now, she wondered how much of herself she could reveal before she became a disappointment to Carter, too. Instead, she turned the questions onto him; preferred listening to speaking. The narrow sidewalk forced them, more than once, to brush elbows, and she feared her desire to fall into the heat of that touch almost as much as she feared him pulling away.
It was warm inside the train. So thick was the air with the vapor of breath and sweat that you could see it on the train windows, condensing where it touched the cool glass, bead after bead after bead. When the train began to move, a few of the beads came together, trickling down. The world on the other side of the window blackened. She could see herself reflected there, and Carter’s reflection too, which turned to hers and said, “I guess dreams are contagious, then.” She noticed that he had slipped his mask back on.
A crow, he said. He dreamed he was standing in an open space, and a crow had landed on his shoulder. Its talons dug into his collar bone, its feathers against his cheek. Then from out of the clouds, another one swooped down and landed on his other shoulder. And another, at his feet. And another, and another.
Soon he was overwhelmed by them. Feathers in his nose, his mouth. He shut his eyes against the slice of their beaks and claws but even the darkness was oil-slicked. He tried to pull them off him but they’d kept coming, blanketing his body, until he couldn’t tell his own body from theirs, couldn’t feel his own skin beneath feather and bone.
Then, suddenly, he felt a hand close over his, felt it tugging him out. As it pulled, the birds themselves came apart, melting into a liquid that clung to his skin and the inside of his mouth. But the hand kept pulling, until that too fell away. When he finally came out the other side, he saw that the hand belonged to Alice.
“Which hand?” she asked when he was finished.
“The right one,” he said after some thought. “Why?”
“I had another dream too. I dreamt we went to the aquarium together,” she began, until the memory of Carter’s laugh and the potential of humiliating herself once again silenced her. For once, she was grateful for the mask she wore for hiding her expression. But Carter’s eyes were bright now. He inched closer, despite the fact that there was no one standing behind him.
“And?” he prompted.
“And… you held my hand. That’s all. We were just standing there, watching the turtles and the clownfish and the stingrays, and then you took my hand.”
“Like this?” he said.
“Yes,” said Alice. “Just like that.” Welcome home.
She didn’t expect him to speak to her the next day. In fact she hoped he didn’t. She would have preferred, instead, to let the whole encounter fall into the past, for her face to be subsumed into the background noise of the office, as he had once been for her. She hadn’t meant to tell him about the dream. Once, she would have described herself as someone who knew better than to take up too much space. You never knew what others expected of you, never knew what they saw when they looked at you. She resented having the responsibility of someone else’s actions placed upon her and tried to avoid doing the same for others.
But on the train that night, pushed together by the faceless, masked masses, she’d seen him and remembered the press of his body, the way her skin had jolted awake beneath his hand. Welcome home. After her confession, she’d expected him at the very least, to laugh, and he had. But before that, he’d leaned into her as she spoke, and she’d watched his eyes grow so wide that she’d seen herself reflected there. For a moment, she had allowed herself to believe that she could tell him anything.
At five-thirty, when she saw him coming down the hall toward her, she did not look at him. She allowed him the grace of moving around her, turning away from his path to shrug on her own coat and backpack. She let her arm meander its way into her sleeve for as long as she thought it might take him to pass her desk. But when she turned around, he was waiting for her.
“Walk with me?” he said.
They took Beacon Street down to the Common and Park Street Station. Once they were outside, he took off his mask, and the sight of his face felt suddenly too intimate to Alice—it knocked her off balance. Into her silence, he began to speak, asking: Where was home for her? Where was her family? Did she find it difficult, moving so far away from them? The questions stung her skin. She’d never learned the right way to say that she had always been used to distance, had grown to prefer it. She didn’t know how to explain that she’d left home not out of desire but necessity; creating, by will, a world wherein she could be neither neglected nor forgotten. A world that put herself first.
Again, she recalled the last time she’d been home to see her parents. The day she told them she’d received a work visa and would be returning to the U.S., she’d delivered the news proudly. She’d realized too late that she was disappointing them by leaving, even as she waited for them to give her a reason to stay. Instead, her mother had simply turned away from her, while her father looked at her and said, There’s plenty of work to do here. She knew better than to be disappointed by their reaction, and yet that did not dissolve the lump that formed in her throat that day, nor had it dissipated the silence that had wedged itself between her and her parents ever since. Only when the virus came did she begin to wonder if she was a bad person, if she should feel guilty for choosing distance at a time when everyone else had so much more to lose.
Now, she wondered how much of herself she could reveal before she became a disappointment to Carter, too. Instead, she turned the questions onto him; preferred listening to speaking. The narrow sidewalk forced them, more than once, to brush elbows, and she feared her desire to fall into the heat of that touch almost as much as she feared him pulling away.
It was warm inside the train. So thick was the air with the vapor of breath and sweat that you could see it on the train windows, condensing where it touched the cool glass, bead after bead after bead. When the train began to move, a few of the beads came together, trickling down. The world on the other side of the window blackened. She could see herself reflected there, and Carter’s reflection too, which turned to hers and said, “I guess dreams are contagious, then.” She noticed that he had slipped his mask back on.
A crow, he said. He dreamed he was standing in an open space, and a crow had landed on his shoulder. Its talons dug into his collar bone, its feathers against his cheek. Then from out of the clouds, another one swooped down and landed on his other shoulder. And another, at his feet. And another, and another.
Soon he was overwhelmed by them. Feathers in his nose, his mouth. He shut his eyes against the slice of their beaks and claws but even the darkness was oil-slicked. He tried to pull them off him but they’d kept coming, blanketing his body, until he couldn’t tell his own body from theirs, couldn’t feel his own skin beneath feather and bone.
Then, suddenly, he felt a hand close over his, felt it tugging him out. As it pulled, the birds themselves came apart, melting into a liquid that clung to his skin and the inside of his mouth. But the hand kept pulling, until that too fell away. When he finally came out the other side, he saw that the hand belonged to Alice.
“Which hand?” she asked when he was finished.
“The right one,” he said after some thought. “Why?”
“I had another dream too. I dreamt we went to the aquarium together,” she began, until the memory of Carter’s laugh and the potential of humiliating herself once again silenced her. For once, she was grateful for the mask she wore for hiding her expression. But Carter’s eyes were bright now. He inched closer, despite the fact that there was no one standing behind him.
“And?” he prompted.
“And… you held my hand. That’s all. We were just standing there, watching the turtles and the clownfish and the stingrays, and then you took my hand.”
“Like this?” he said.
“Yes,” said Alice. “Just like that.” Welcome home.
*
They took the T home together for the rest of the week. Each time, Alice spoke very little until they got on the train, and once they did, they spoke only of their dreams. Carter did not try to hold her hand again, and she did not offer it. He’d realized as soon as their fingers touched that this was not what she needed from him; that what she desired could not be satisfied by the crude, borrowed intimacy of physical touch.
Instead, each night after getting off the train, he found himself carrying her dreams like eggs on a spoon, balancing them at the tip of his mind until he could take them into his own bed. He’d never paid attention to his dreams before, hardly even remembered them. But by morning, Alice’s metabolized dreams stuck so firmly in his mind that he found himself pulled to her by the end of each workday.
In one, for example, Alice told Carter that she watched all his teeth fall out; had spent the rest of the night meticulously fitting them back into his mouth, figuring out which tooth went where, lining the exposed root with some kind of adhesive before plugging them back into his gums. When they were done, he’d looked at her and said, your turn, opening his hands to reveal her own teeth cupped neatly in his palms. That night, Carter dreamed that he was floating in a silence black and amniotic-thick, until a bright light pierced him through his heart and pulled him out screeching. When it faded, he found himself in Alice’s arms, his entire warm body nestled snug against her cool chest, his ear pressed to her heart.
In another, Alice dreamed herself a bird, and him a cuckoo in her nest. As a result, on the train the next evening, Carter told her about a dream wherein she’d convinced everyone they knew to pretend he didn’t exist—how he’d enter the room to silence, to eyes passing through him, and yet he’d seen no other choice but to stay.
They dreamed each other through time and memory, into different bodies and different places. Always, when they were finished, he could see it on her face: relief. It was like gravity, like their dreams had created an orbit from bed to train to bed, inevitable as any force of nature. Hearing them, receiving them, gave him a sense of purpose.
What he didn’t tell her: that in many of his dreams, he sometimes could not tell if the woman who appeared was Laura or Alice, or a combination of them, or neither of them at all. During the lockdowns, when the rules were still changing and the reality people now found themselves in was still frightening and new, like everyone else, he’d experienced vivid, visceral dreams unlike anything he’d ever known before. Almost every night, he’d woken up sweating, be it from fear or ecstasy, and each time, as soon as he realized he was awake his first instinct was to tell Laura. In the early days, when she still lived with him, he’d even gone so far as to wake her up. It just seems impossible that I’m the only one who saw what I just saw, he’d say to her, before willing himself back to sleep. Good or bad, he was always eager to chase wherever it was the dream would lead him to next.
Instead, each night after getting off the train, he found himself carrying her dreams like eggs on a spoon, balancing them at the tip of his mind until he could take them into his own bed. He’d never paid attention to his dreams before, hardly even remembered them. But by morning, Alice’s metabolized dreams stuck so firmly in his mind that he found himself pulled to her by the end of each workday.
In one, for example, Alice told Carter that she watched all his teeth fall out; had spent the rest of the night meticulously fitting them back into his mouth, figuring out which tooth went where, lining the exposed root with some kind of adhesive before plugging them back into his gums. When they were done, he’d looked at her and said, your turn, opening his hands to reveal her own teeth cupped neatly in his palms. That night, Carter dreamed that he was floating in a silence black and amniotic-thick, until a bright light pierced him through his heart and pulled him out screeching. When it faded, he found himself in Alice’s arms, his entire warm body nestled snug against her cool chest, his ear pressed to her heart.
In another, Alice dreamed herself a bird, and him a cuckoo in her nest. As a result, on the train the next evening, Carter told her about a dream wherein she’d convinced everyone they knew to pretend he didn’t exist—how he’d enter the room to silence, to eyes passing through him, and yet he’d seen no other choice but to stay.
They dreamed each other through time and memory, into different bodies and different places. Always, when they were finished, he could see it on her face: relief. It was like gravity, like their dreams had created an orbit from bed to train to bed, inevitable as any force of nature. Hearing them, receiving them, gave him a sense of purpose.
What he didn’t tell her: that in many of his dreams, he sometimes could not tell if the woman who appeared was Laura or Alice, or a combination of them, or neither of them at all. During the lockdowns, when the rules were still changing and the reality people now found themselves in was still frightening and new, like everyone else, he’d experienced vivid, visceral dreams unlike anything he’d ever known before. Almost every night, he’d woken up sweating, be it from fear or ecstasy, and each time, as soon as he realized he was awake his first instinct was to tell Laura. In the early days, when she still lived with him, he’d even gone so far as to wake her up. It just seems impossible that I’m the only one who saw what I just saw, he’d say to her, before willing himself back to sleep. Good or bad, he was always eager to chase wherever it was the dream would lead him to next.
*
On a Thursday morning Alice woke up drenched from a dream that started out as a memory. In it, she was a child, and she was both drowning and watching herself drown. Standing at the lip of the pool, she watched as her own arms strained limply against the weight of water, even as she felt that same water flowing into her mouth, streaming hair into her eyes. Each time Alice-in-the-water’s toes found the bottom of the pool, she would kick up enough to breach the surface. But with each small breath came another rush of water into her mouth, filling her lungs, until there was less and less room for air.
Across the water, her mother and father were having breakfast, their faces hidden behind newspapers, mountains of fruit and steaming cups on the table between them. Seeing them, Alice-outside-the-pool cried out, but instead of sound, from her mouth came only a great stream of water. As it splashed onto the ground, her parents looked up, their eyes questioning, but they did not rush to her, did not know that Alice was drowning right in front of them. She tried again, and again there was only water, its sharp sting inside her throat, droplets caressing her chin. Her lungs shriveled to stone inside her ribs, stones that pulled her underwater as her parents raised their newspapers to their faces once more.
With the last of the air left in her body, she opened her mouth. She screamed one more time. Finally, the sound of her own voice rushed into her ears. She realized then that there was only one person sitting at the breakfast table, and upon hearing her cry out, that person flung the newspaper away from their face and jumped into the pool, and this was where the dream ended. She knew, in that strange way of dreams, that what mattered was not that she was saved, but that someone heard her. It was only when she opened her eyes that she realized that person was Carter.
The day after was filled with waiting. That morning, instead of working, Alice found herself glancing again and again at the clock, watching the door, waiting for Carter to walk through. For the first time, their evening commute seemed so far away, and she wondered what it might be like to speak to him freely, to sit down together for lunch or a coffee. She wanted to tell him how in real life she hadn’t screamed, had known better than to assume that anyone was listening. She’d tell him how she held her breath and clung to the bottom of the pool like a lizard, heart pounding, and slithered her way to the end of the pool until the water was shallow enough that she could stand on her own again.
By noon, when it was clear he would not show, Alice walked by his desk. She thought about texting him, only to realize that they had never exchanged numbers. Instead, she pulled up the last email he’d sent. It was a reply to an all-staff email about someone’s birthday lunch. She copied the address into a new window, leaving the subject blank. Just checking in, she wrote. Hope ur OK. She hesitated, and then hit send.
When his reply came into her inbox, just seconds later, she almost jumped. Thank you for reaching out, it said. It was an away message. It didn’t say when he would be back.
Across the water, her mother and father were having breakfast, their faces hidden behind newspapers, mountains of fruit and steaming cups on the table between them. Seeing them, Alice-outside-the-pool cried out, but instead of sound, from her mouth came only a great stream of water. As it splashed onto the ground, her parents looked up, their eyes questioning, but they did not rush to her, did not know that Alice was drowning right in front of them. She tried again, and again there was only water, its sharp sting inside her throat, droplets caressing her chin. Her lungs shriveled to stone inside her ribs, stones that pulled her underwater as her parents raised their newspapers to their faces once more.
With the last of the air left in her body, she opened her mouth. She screamed one more time. Finally, the sound of her own voice rushed into her ears. She realized then that there was only one person sitting at the breakfast table, and upon hearing her cry out, that person flung the newspaper away from their face and jumped into the pool, and this was where the dream ended. She knew, in that strange way of dreams, that what mattered was not that she was saved, but that someone heard her. It was only when she opened her eyes that she realized that person was Carter.
The day after was filled with waiting. That morning, instead of working, Alice found herself glancing again and again at the clock, watching the door, waiting for Carter to walk through. For the first time, their evening commute seemed so far away, and she wondered what it might be like to speak to him freely, to sit down together for lunch or a coffee. She wanted to tell him how in real life she hadn’t screamed, had known better than to assume that anyone was listening. She’d tell him how she held her breath and clung to the bottom of the pool like a lizard, heart pounding, and slithered her way to the end of the pool until the water was shallow enough that she could stand on her own again.
By noon, when it was clear he would not show, Alice walked by his desk. She thought about texting him, only to realize that they had never exchanged numbers. Instead, she pulled up the last email he’d sent. It was a reply to an all-staff email about someone’s birthday lunch. She copied the address into a new window, leaving the subject blank. Just checking in, she wrote. Hope ur OK. She hesitated, and then hit send.
When his reply came into her inbox, just seconds later, she almost jumped. Thank you for reaching out, it said. It was an away message. It didn’t say when he would be back.
*
In the early days, when Carter and Laura had just moved into the city, they would walk into open houses pretending to be husband and wife. Wandering the empty rooms, they picked which ones would be their bedroom or office, pushing imaginary furniture from wall to wall, arguing over which windows would let in the most sunlight. It was never long before a realtor, sensing their eagerness, started asking questions. If they asked Carter and Laura if they had children, they would provide the same answer, well-worn names for the son and daughter they did not yet have. They’d nod and smile politely as their host directed them towards the hardwood floors, the crown molding. How about this marble countertop? they’d say, and Laura would reply, It’s a dream.
When she finally called again, almost three weeks since her last, he hadn’t meant to tell her about Alice. He didn’t even know how to explain what exactly it was they were doing, or if he should be keeping it a secret from Laura. But then Laura told him that she’d been in town for a week to see her family in Salem. She’d called because she was wondering if she could go through some of the stuff she’d left, to see if there was anything worth selling.
Instead of asking Laura why she didn’t want to see him, Carter had instead told her about Alice. He told her about Alice’s dreams, knowing that it was a betrayal, not caring that it was. He told Laura intending to make her jealous, despite already knowing that she would not be. When he was finished, there was a long pause. He’d thought he lost her until he heard her sigh and then say, “You always do this.” In the background, the sharp rhythm of a dog, barking.
“I can’t wait for you forever,” he said.
“I never asked you to,” she said. They were in dangerous waters now. Knowing this, he changed the subject, but it was too late—the line had been breached, and with it came a severing.
It had been, after all, over a year since she’d left—a span of time that was as much of a shock to him as was her leaving. Before she was gone, he’d watched her scroll through ads for used cars on Craigslist, helped her map out routes and reserve campsites across the country. Yet in the days before she’d driven away, he’d found himself in shock, destabilized by the velocity of her leaving. He’d tried, he could admit now, to entice her into staying, to see the life they could build together. He thought about putting an offer down on the house with the marble countertops and the good schools, until he remembered that he couldn’t afford it. So we can find another house, he said. It doesn’t have to change our plans.
Plans? she said, stuffing random items into unlabeled boxes wherever they would fit. Books, a record player, mismatched pots and pans—he had agreed to store them all until she decided she needed them again. I thought we were pretending.
On the phone, she’d told him that the only time she could drop by was Monday afternoon. “If you leave the key under the mat I can just let myself in while you’re at work,” she’d said. Instead, the next morning, he called in sick to work and spent the day pulling all her boxes out of the pantry and lining them up by the door. Then he waited. As he did, he imagined what he might say to her when she arrived, but with each hour that passed, the conversation changed—first blissful, now explosive, then contrite, and finally frigid. He imagined locking the door and letting her knock and knock, and he imagined begging her to stay. He imagined screaming and he imagined crying. But in each scenario, he could only picture himself clearly. He realized that he no longer knew how she might react. Maybe she had changed too much. Maybe he never knew her in the first place.
He waited until four, and then he left to buy some groceries, in case she showed up hungry and wanted dinner. Then he waited until nine and made himself some ramen. Finally, at ten, he took her boxes to the dumpster.
Carter returned to the office the next day and realized that he hadn’t dreamed all weekend. All that hauling and crawling beneath pantry shelves had plunged him into a black pool of sleep that had lodged itself in the corners of his eyes and inside his ears. At the end of the day, passing by Alice’s cubicle, he considered making the long trip home by himself for the first time, considered dreaming his own dreams. But upon hearing his approach, she’d looked at him so expectantly that he felt he had no choice.
“Where were you yesterday?” she said as soon as they got on the train. It was emptier than usual, a few seats still unclaimed, but neither she nor Carter sat.
“I was going to meet a friend,” Carter said.
“Oh,” said Alice.
“But she never showed up.”
“Oh,” she said again.
They made it two stops before the train stuttered to a halt between Kendall and Charles, stranding them above the water. A voice on the overhead speaker garbled something about a delay at Alewife.
“They’re always doing that, aren’t they?” Alice said suddenly.
“Who? Doing what?” he said.
“People,” she said. “Disappointing.” He wasn’t sure whether or not he agreed, but before he could decide, she began to tell him about her most recent dream: about the pool, and her parents, about the memory it had come from. She told him about the feeling of drowning, of feeling like her whole life was a cry, unheard. All the while feeling like he was watching her blouse slowly and unknowingly come undone, or had found himself suddenly in her home, unannounced.
“I asked them about it once,” she said to him. His eyes had wandered to the passengers closest to them, embarrassed at the thought that they might be able to hear her. “This was years ago, back when we all still thought I was going to come home eventually. I asked them whether they’d seen me fall into the pool. ‘Oh we saw you,’ my mother said. I asked them why on earth they’d just stand there and watch. ‘Well I learned how to swim when I was your age,’ she said. ‘By then we assumed you already knew how.’”
Carter was staring at a woman, sitting close to them, whose gaze was fluttering between the book on her lap and to him and Alice. He couldn’t see the woman’s expression behind her mask. “So you iced them out for no reason? For something you just made up?” he said eventually. He just wanted the conversation to be over.
“You don’t understand. It’s what I believed. Not because I made it up,” she said, “Because my whole life was like that.” The train began to move. He watched the river disappear beneath their feet.
“It’s what I believed,” she said.
When she finally called again, almost three weeks since her last, he hadn’t meant to tell her about Alice. He didn’t even know how to explain what exactly it was they were doing, or if he should be keeping it a secret from Laura. But then Laura told him that she’d been in town for a week to see her family in Salem. She’d called because she was wondering if she could go through some of the stuff she’d left, to see if there was anything worth selling.
Instead of asking Laura why she didn’t want to see him, Carter had instead told her about Alice. He told her about Alice’s dreams, knowing that it was a betrayal, not caring that it was. He told Laura intending to make her jealous, despite already knowing that she would not be. When he was finished, there was a long pause. He’d thought he lost her until he heard her sigh and then say, “You always do this.” In the background, the sharp rhythm of a dog, barking.
“I can’t wait for you forever,” he said.
“I never asked you to,” she said. They were in dangerous waters now. Knowing this, he changed the subject, but it was too late—the line had been breached, and with it came a severing.
It had been, after all, over a year since she’d left—a span of time that was as much of a shock to him as was her leaving. Before she was gone, he’d watched her scroll through ads for used cars on Craigslist, helped her map out routes and reserve campsites across the country. Yet in the days before she’d driven away, he’d found himself in shock, destabilized by the velocity of her leaving. He’d tried, he could admit now, to entice her into staying, to see the life they could build together. He thought about putting an offer down on the house with the marble countertops and the good schools, until he remembered that he couldn’t afford it. So we can find another house, he said. It doesn’t have to change our plans.
Plans? she said, stuffing random items into unlabeled boxes wherever they would fit. Books, a record player, mismatched pots and pans—he had agreed to store them all until she decided she needed them again. I thought we were pretending.
On the phone, she’d told him that the only time she could drop by was Monday afternoon. “If you leave the key under the mat I can just let myself in while you’re at work,” she’d said. Instead, the next morning, he called in sick to work and spent the day pulling all her boxes out of the pantry and lining them up by the door. Then he waited. As he did, he imagined what he might say to her when she arrived, but with each hour that passed, the conversation changed—first blissful, now explosive, then contrite, and finally frigid. He imagined locking the door and letting her knock and knock, and he imagined begging her to stay. He imagined screaming and he imagined crying. But in each scenario, he could only picture himself clearly. He realized that he no longer knew how she might react. Maybe she had changed too much. Maybe he never knew her in the first place.
He waited until four, and then he left to buy some groceries, in case she showed up hungry and wanted dinner. Then he waited until nine and made himself some ramen. Finally, at ten, he took her boxes to the dumpster.
Carter returned to the office the next day and realized that he hadn’t dreamed all weekend. All that hauling and crawling beneath pantry shelves had plunged him into a black pool of sleep that had lodged itself in the corners of his eyes and inside his ears. At the end of the day, passing by Alice’s cubicle, he considered making the long trip home by himself for the first time, considered dreaming his own dreams. But upon hearing his approach, she’d looked at him so expectantly that he felt he had no choice.
“Where were you yesterday?” she said as soon as they got on the train. It was emptier than usual, a few seats still unclaimed, but neither she nor Carter sat.
“I was going to meet a friend,” Carter said.
“Oh,” said Alice.
“But she never showed up.”
“Oh,” she said again.
They made it two stops before the train stuttered to a halt between Kendall and Charles, stranding them above the water. A voice on the overhead speaker garbled something about a delay at Alewife.
“They’re always doing that, aren’t they?” Alice said suddenly.
“Who? Doing what?” he said.
“People,” she said. “Disappointing.” He wasn’t sure whether or not he agreed, but before he could decide, she began to tell him about her most recent dream: about the pool, and her parents, about the memory it had come from. She told him about the feeling of drowning, of feeling like her whole life was a cry, unheard. All the while feeling like he was watching her blouse slowly and unknowingly come undone, or had found himself suddenly in her home, unannounced.
“I asked them about it once,” she said to him. His eyes had wandered to the passengers closest to them, embarrassed at the thought that they might be able to hear her. “This was years ago, back when we all still thought I was going to come home eventually. I asked them whether they’d seen me fall into the pool. ‘Oh we saw you,’ my mother said. I asked them why on earth they’d just stand there and watch. ‘Well I learned how to swim when I was your age,’ she said. ‘By then we assumed you already knew how.’”
Carter was staring at a woman, sitting close to them, whose gaze was fluttering between the book on her lap and to him and Alice. He couldn’t see the woman’s expression behind her mask. “So you iced them out for no reason? For something you just made up?” he said eventually. He just wanted the conversation to be over.
“You don’t understand. It’s what I believed. Not because I made it up,” she said, “Because my whole life was like that.” The train began to move. He watched the river disappear beneath their feet.
“It’s what I believed,” she said.
*
Alice watched Carter get off the train at Central Square—watched him shuffle through the turnstile with the rest of the crowd, watched him pause at the bottom of the escalator before ascending out of sight. It was a game she played: to see how long she could follow him before he dissolved into the crowd or the doors closed. Once, she even saw him wipe his nose on his sleeve—the beige fabric of his jacket darkening slightly—an automatic, unselfconscious movement in a crowd of seeming-strangers.
Before Carter, Alice had spent the majority of her trip home outside of her body: legs carrying her home on autopilot, earbuds piping in whatever song or podcast was easiest to turn into white noise, the frantic honking of a car horn the only reminder that she had a body to lose. She’d told herself that this was simply her body’s way of adjusting to loneliness; that this was better than opening herself up to the longing that lived under her skin like an itch that threatened to crawl out of her, searching for the nearest warm body.
But with each day that she and Carter made the journey home together, each time she stepped onto the Davis Square station and the escalator buoyed her back up out of the darkness and onto the twilit expanse of Elm Street, more and more she found herself aware of a world beyond that sorrow. Instead, she felt the cool air blowing through her hands and into the collar of her coat, and she shivered. She heard the soft huffing of her own breath beneath the hum of streetlights, music and the scent of spilled beer trickling out the door of a Prospect Street bar, toes blistering in her boots.
Until tonight. Bloated with desire, she’d gotten on the train with Carter, and the dream spilled out of her mouth like a sickness. She’d felt it wedge itself between them, and as hot tears began to pool in the corners of her eyes, she felt that longing return.
The doors were closing again. Soon the train would begin to move, delivering her to her stop. Already it was picking up speed, forcing her to realize that this was the last trip home she would ever share with Carter. But as the tears slid down her cheeks and disappeared into her mask, Alice told herself that she should have known better than to trust someone who had never seen her face. She told herself that it had been foolish to mistake silence for sympathy. He was, she realized, no more than a captive audience. Whatever she thought she’d lost had never existed in the first place. She told herself that she should have known better. The tears kept coming.
Before Carter, Alice had spent the majority of her trip home outside of her body: legs carrying her home on autopilot, earbuds piping in whatever song or podcast was easiest to turn into white noise, the frantic honking of a car horn the only reminder that she had a body to lose. She’d told herself that this was simply her body’s way of adjusting to loneliness; that this was better than opening herself up to the longing that lived under her skin like an itch that threatened to crawl out of her, searching for the nearest warm body.
But with each day that she and Carter made the journey home together, each time she stepped onto the Davis Square station and the escalator buoyed her back up out of the darkness and onto the twilit expanse of Elm Street, more and more she found herself aware of a world beyond that sorrow. Instead, she felt the cool air blowing through her hands and into the collar of her coat, and she shivered. She heard the soft huffing of her own breath beneath the hum of streetlights, music and the scent of spilled beer trickling out the door of a Prospect Street bar, toes blistering in her boots.
Until tonight. Bloated with desire, she’d gotten on the train with Carter, and the dream spilled out of her mouth like a sickness. She’d felt it wedge itself between them, and as hot tears began to pool in the corners of her eyes, she felt that longing return.
The doors were closing again. Soon the train would begin to move, delivering her to her stop. Already it was picking up speed, forcing her to realize that this was the last trip home she would ever share with Carter. But as the tears slid down her cheeks and disappeared into her mask, Alice told herself that she should have known better than to trust someone who had never seen her face. She told herself that it had been foolish to mistake silence for sympathy. He was, she realized, no more than a captive audience. Whatever she thought she’d lost had never existed in the first place. She told herself that she should have known better. The tears kept coming.