12
MADISON, WISCONSIN, 2004
December crawled on, and I got my first taste of winter in Wisconsin, the snow and rain that alternated like dueling lawyers in a courtroom battle. First came the soft flakes, demure in their quietude, which settled gently on cars and trash bins until they swelled like marshmallows; then the balls of hail as big as eyes, spraying rooftops and branches until they were bony and shivering. On a particularly frigid day midmonth, Gabe and I inexpertly scraped the car of snow and drove to the Walmart in Waukesha County to buy the sleeping-bag coats everyone else owned. We invested, too, in real snow boots: fur-lined, insulated monster shoes that could protect the feet in temperatures as terrible as forty degrees below zero.
If we felt isolated in the summer, that humid haze was nothing when compared to the stark, icy quarantine of winter. I couldn’t have stopped to say hello to a familiar face if I’d wanted to; I was focused only on survival, my face raw with cold, hands frozen in a rigor mortis grip around laundry bags or library books. When I stepped inside our house, gasping, I had to sit pressed up against the heating vents until my skin began to thaw. Once, Gabe and I saw a man waiting for the bus in a bank robber’s ski mask, with tiny holes for his eyes and nostrils, and though we laughed at the time, I can’t say we weren’t tempted to get our own.
We saw Thom and Janna less and less. Every so often, they invited us over for a game of Scrabble or Charades, and though Gabe showed interest, I was filled with an aversion that confused me. (“Go yourself, then,” I had snapped during a hailstorm, pulling a blanket tighter around me.) Since Thanksgiving, I had dreamed of Thom: frenzied, consuming dreams that I found myself unable to shake the next day. I could never remember how they began. My consciousness picked up somewhere in the middle, in the underground room with the golden light, what I realized was Tom’s basement. A clock hung on a cord on the wall behind Thom’s head, and the hour was four, or two. Thom leaned against the sharp legs of a desk in his striped pajama pants, his legs spread in a wide V, a jam jar between them. In the jar was a honey-colored liquid without ice. He played with the glass, stirring the liquid with the tip of his ring fingernail.
Or we were sitting beneath the juniper tree of his backyard, Thom listening attentively—leaning in with his whole body, his chest curved toward me like a cave I could speak into. We sat on the ice, but neither one of us was cold.
“You’re wet,” he said. “Your hands—they’re wet”—and he nuzzled me, the soft fuzz of his chin on my cheek, his skin blessedly warm, as an orange cat purred its motorized hum and the moon shed light like a second skin.
I always woke from these dreams sweating, the blankets soaked and tangled, my muscles throbbing with strain. I had never remembered this much of my dreams. Now they were so vivid that I was terrified I’d spoken out loud, but whenever I looked over at Gabe, he was shut-eyed and still.
And so I left him. I climbed the stairs to the attic and turned on the lamp by the window. My canvases appeared suddenly, like a television turned on in a dark room. I painted my dreams to get rid of them, to exorcise the shame and betrayal they brought up in me. I wanted to remember them and let them go, as if the act of memory would give me control. I had only brought five canvases to Madison, but I didn’t buy more for fear that Gabe would wonder what I was doing. Instead, I painted over and over those same five canvases, sweeping each one black when I was done.
Sometimes, when Gabe and I returned home in the early morning after a session at the lab, we saw Thom striding to the garage in his corduroy pants and dress shoes, an arm held over his head to block the snow. In these moments, Gabe raised a hand in salute, but I ducked my head and climbed into the car. The dream Thom had become so vivid that the sight of the real one gave me a crawling feeling of guilt. When Gabe shut the car door and turned to me—“That was Thom; did you see him?”—I always feigned surprise, said I hadn’t seen him through the snow.
Besides, we had bigger things to worry about that winter—and perhaps that’s why my dream life took on its own menace. Five days before Christmas, Keller called and told us to meet him at the lab. A fuse had blown in the living room furnace, and we were cranky, sore with cold. Besides, it was Sunday, a day we were supposed to have off. But Keller spoke in the stiff tone that indicated he was not open to debate, so we grudgingly trudged outside to scrape the car in our new boots.
We never made it to the lab. A storm was dumping buckets of nasty slush on the roads, and the ground was so wet that we skidded twice before we pulled into somebody’s driveway and called Keller to say we’d have to meet him somewhere else. We wound up at the Starbucks on State Street—the kind of place Keller abhorred, but it was the coffee shop closest to our car.
It was the last day of finals at the university, and it seemed that every undergrad had fled their dorm for the heat and cloying music and sweet whipped drinks at Starbucks. The chairs were covered in down coats in shades of pink and red and blue; scattered across the floor were backpacks splayed like fallen soldiers, squashed Ugg boots, pom-pom hats, fat little gloves. Mariah Carey’s Christmas album played over the speakers. We took the stairs to the second level, where there were more tables and leather armchairs (“Sorry,” said Gabe as he brushed past a girl who had fallen asleep with a chemistry book open on her lap, her mouth agape).
We found Keller standing in a back corner, hands linked behind his back as he scanned the room for us. He’d staked out a trio of tables, not because we needed to spread out but because we needed the privacy. He hadn’t purchased anything, and a huddled group of underclassmen searching for a place to sit stared at his three empty tables with undisguised irritation.
“Have a seat,” he said, oblivious. Gabe and I sat down, each at our own table, and pulled off our hats. A flurry of snow settled on our eyelashes and hair; we brushed it off, staring at him. Keller reached into his briefcase—black leather, tattered now, the same one he’d carried around at Mills—and put a thick newspaper in front of us. It was a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle, dated that same day.
“I didn’t know you still get the Chronicle,” said Gabe, his brows raised. “Homesick?”
“That’s beside the point,” said Keller, jabbing a finger at the paper. He had opened it to the crime section of the “Bay Area and State” page. Below his finger was the mug shot of a woman with scraggly blond hair—yellowed at the ends, brown at the roots—and sallow, deep-set eyes. I immediately recognized her cleft chin and widow’s peak, the pocked scars along her temples—remnants of a bad childhood bout with chicken pox, she’d told us, though we always suspected otherwise.
MURDER ARREST MADE IN OAKLAND CASE
(20-12) 06:51 PDT Rockridge—A suspect has been taken into custody in connection with the deaths of James, Leslie and Charlotte March, the Rockridge family found dead in September, authorities said Saturday.
Anne March, 26, of San Francisco, was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping and murder after an extensive statewide search. March, who worked as a pediatric nurse at Kaiser Permanente, was first reported missing in early October. The turning point came last Tuesday, when an anonymous tip directed city police to an abandoned house in San Francisco where Ms. March was found squatting.
“We have probable cause to believe Ms. March committed the kidnapping and murders of James, Leslie and Charlotte March,” said Sheriff’s Sergeant Jose Mendoza. Mendoza declined further comment, saying a press conference was scheduled for Monday morning. Other members of the March family are expected to attend.
The suspect attended Oakland High School and college at California State–Long Beach. She has no prior criminal history, and public defender Linda Meyers has implied that the state might consider an insanity defense. Though prosecutor Kevin van Dyke called this “ludicrous,” citing Ms. March’s passing scores on the psychological exams required of all licensed nurses, Meyers maintained that “mental health cannot be reduced to a numerical score,
a true-or-false question, a pass or fail.” Meyers alluded to Ms. March’s participation in a 2002 psychological research study as possible evidence of past instability, though she declined additional comment. Efforts by the Chronicle to contact the study’s director were unsuccessful.
March was transported to the Central California Women’s Facility, where she faces a sentence of 50 years to life for the murders of her parents, James and Leslie, both 52, and her younger sister Charlotte, age 11. The San Francisco Chronicle first reported on the March case on September 12, when James March’s employer called city police to report his absence at work. The three victims were found in bed, dead due to fatal doses of morphine, administered intravenously. Their time of death was estimated to be ten days prior.
CCWF is the largest female correctional facility in the United States. It houses the state of California’s death row for women.
“Jesus Christ,” said Gabe. He set the paper down and stared at it for a beat before looking up at Keller.
“I knew this would happen,” I said. “I knew it.”
We were quiet. Something seemed to rise and spread between us like toxic gas. In the hall behind us, a toilet flushed, and two girls came out of the bathroom, their arms linked. The taste of bile climbed my throat.
“Well, what do we do?” asked Gabe. “What the fuck do you suggest we do?”
It took a moment for me to realize he was talking to Keller. I’d known Gabe to quibble with Keller, tease him, even, but I’d never heard him use this kind of language. Keller looked at him evenly, his head slightly bowed.
“I suggest,” he said in a low tone, “that you don’t pick up the phone unless you’re sure the call is from one of us. Let everything else go to voice mail. If you’re contacted by anyone you don’t know—a reporter, a stranger, anyone—come to me immediately. I don’t care how innocuous it seems.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Gabe. He ran his hands through his hair. “Okay, let’s think about this. Maybe it’s not so bad. It’s possible she wasn’t asleep, right? And even if she was, how could they possibly prove it?”
“She definitely wasn’t asleep,” said Keller.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“She couldn’t be. If you remember anything about Anne’s case, you’ll know that she was never a sleepwalker—her disorder most closely resembled RBD. She never left her bedroom. Her eyes were always closed. She was violent but clumsy. She had none of the fine motor skills required to operate a car or fill a vial of morphine.”
“That’s a good thing, right?” asked Gabe. “That she wasn’t sleeping? I mean, if she was awake when she committed those murders, how could our study have had anything to do with them?”
“It isn’t a good thing,” I said. “My God—do you really think we had no part in this? We knew exactly how violent she was. We gave her knowledge of her deepest impulses, and then we left her. We trusted her to know what to do with it.”
“We aim to help patients resolve their sleep disorders. But we’re not responsible for the knowledge they receive in lucidity training, nor the actions they take as a result of it,” said Keller tightly. “You know this as well as I do—it’s in our release.
“Legally, maybe, but what about morally?” I asked. “I mean, isn’t that why we’re sitting here, freaking out? That disclaimer’s all well and good until somebody gets killed.”
“We were operating within the constraints of client-patient confidentiality,” said Keller. “Besides, RBD is characterized by unconscious outbursts of violence and self-defense. Nearly every patient we see shows these symptoms.”
“Yeah, but Anne was different,” said Gabe. “She was cagier. Manipulative. We all knew it.”
“Exactly,” I said. “We should have told somebody. We should have turned her in.”
“And what should have happened then?” asked Keller. “Should she have been arrested for dreaming of murder? Charged? Where would it stop? Imagine—people being rounded up and accused, not for what they’ve done, but what they dreamed of doing. It’s thoughtcrime, and we would have been the policemen.”
“Fine—but that still doesn’t mean we aren’t culpable. We held a mirror up to her mind and showed her what was inside it.” I felt nauseous, my head thick. “We gave her the idea.”
“That’s impossible to prove,” Keller said.
“But are you denying it?” asked Gabe.
A strange new dynamic uncoiled itself between us: Keller leaning slightly back, Gabe and I staring at him hungrily. Hungry for what? For him to admit some wrongdoing? For him to crack?
Keller was silent, staring at a spot behind our heads, either lost in thought or ignoring us completely. For a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to reply; then he opened his mouth and exhaled, a rattle of a sound.
“I don’t know,” he said, articulating each word carefully, and somehow this was worse, more humiliating, than a denial.
I thought of Jamie: his tufted hair, his limbs straining against our straps, his shoes blinking red as he walked away from us. And I remembered something else: a warm night in September, a locket hanging from an index finger. My first conversation with Thom.
Couldn’t what begins as an exercise in self-knowledge actually reveal our darkest impulses? he’d asked. Once we experience our dreams—not via recollection, but right there in the moment—how long is it before we start to believe that this is who we really are, what we really want, how we really feel? When does one’s dream consciousness become their consciousness, I mean? Maybe the dreams themselves aren’t dangerous. Maybe what’s dangerous is putting people in contact with them.
“Oh my God,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “Thom was right.”
Gabe had been staring at the wall, dazed, but now his eyes narrowed.
“Thom was right?” he repeated. “You talked to Thom about our research?”
“Well, you talked to Janna.”
“She asked me about it. That’s different. I didn’t tell her shit.”
“What’s going on?” asked Keller. “Who’s Thom? Who’s Janna?”
Neither one of us answered immediately. But Keller looked stricken, as if we had betrayed him, and Gabe caved first.
“Our neighbors,” he said.
“I have told you,” said Keller, “countless times—”
“Yeah, we know.” Gabe’s voice was tired, flat. “The first rule of Fight Club is that you don’t talk about Fight Club.”
Keller was rigid. “This is hardly the time to joke, Gabriel.”
“Who’s joking?” said Gabe. “If they subpoena our files—if they find out what we knew—we’re fucked. We could be implicated.”
He slammed the heel of his hand on the table. The students sitting closest to us looked up, but nobody else paid much attention. They probably mistook Gabe and me for siblings, undergrads, and Keller for our father. A family tiff, they would think—our father come to pick us up after finals, Gabe edgy from that morning’s exam.
“They won’t subpoena her file,” said Keller.
“Why not?” asked Gabe.
“Because I’ve gotten rid of it.”
He was very calm. We stared at him.
“That’s just great,” said Gabe. “That’s really great, Adrian. And what’s our excuse?”
“A fire at the lab in Fort Bragg. Some combustible substance—kerosene, naphthalene, one of the pyrophorics. An act of carelessness, to be sure, but an ordinary accident.” Keller took off his glasses and set them down on the table on their delicate, spidery legs. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Though I’m open to other ideas, if you have them.”
“What if you have to testify?” I asked.
“Then I will,” said Keller. “The publicity is not necessarily the issue—it’s what kind of publicity it is. I have no problem speaking on behalf of our research. And if
you find yourself in a similar situation, be sure to make it clear that the March case was entirely ordinary. Underwhelming, even. We worked with her for eight weeks, during which she couldn’t attain a lucid dream state. Because she was unable to meet the demands of the study, we released her.”
“And what if she tells them otherwise?” I asked. “She was lucid.”
“A little too lucid,” muttered Gabe.
“With an insanity defense,” said Keller, “I can’t see that sort of inconsistency as being much of a problem.”
We were quiet as the music—a rousing hip-hop version of “God Bless Ye Merry Gentlemen”—came to an Auto-Tuned crescendo. When the next song began, Keller shook his head.
“It’s a tragedy,” he said. “She’s exactly the kind of patient we could have helped.”
•••
On Christmas Eve, I dreamed of lying with Thom on the floor of the basement. Our bodies were slick and pressed together, pulsing against the floor’s wooden planks. Thom held my hips, easing me back and forth. Afterward, I climbed off of him, warm and light-headed, and he put his hand between my legs. When I came, sliding down the planks with my face pressed to his neck, the feeling was as strong as it had ever been when I was awake.
A thin woman with a sliced red bob sat on the desk chair, watching us. It was Keller’s wife. She beckoned to me, and I rose. Gently, she tugged on the dangling chain of the bulb, but before the light came on, I woke up.