Usually, we went to the lab around seven, a couple of hours before the participant went to sleep. It was our job to explain the procedure, soothe them—you’d be amazed how many seemed to treat the experiments like therapy—bring them water, if they asked for it, but no food. Often, the anxious ones asked for Gabe instead of me. I was more businesslike, explaining the procedure matter-of-factly, but Gabe didn’t talk about the study. Instead, he got the participants to talk about their children, their partners, their ailing parents. Once they fell asleep, I monitored the polysomnogram in an adjoining room while Gabe stayed next to the bed, watching closely for signs of movement or speech and intervening as necessary.
On days when we didn’t have a procedure scheduled, we worked at the university sleep clinic with Keller, where our tasks were more routine. Some of the higher-ups at the clinic knew about our project, which had been commissioned by the Center for Neuroscience, but most of them didn’t. They didn’t seem to find our caginess odd—it wasn’t uncommon for researchers to keep their work close to their chests—but I can see now that it prevented us from feeling at home in the university community. The department’s interest in Keller’s work had been a surprise: his research was so experimental that getting mainstream validation was always an uphill battle, and we felt like we were working on borrowed time.
We worked in the lab about four nights a week, and on those days we slept from the time we got home until early afternoon. We had brought our eclipse curtains with us from Fort Bragg, made of a tightly woven fabric that blocked light completely. It was part of our work to be interested in dreams, and we always listened intently to each other’s stories—not that I had many. I was rarely able to remember them; no matter how vivid my dreams felt at the time, they slipped through my hands in the morning. All I had was a faint sense of space and emotional residue that lingered, like a bad taste in the mouth. Gabe dreamed, most often, of transportation: helicopters and planes, commuter trains, and ships that crossed vast bodies of water with impossible speed.
When he told me about them, he looked not at me but at the ceiling, or out the window to the neighbor’s house, an arm bent behind his neck. He was my height, five feet seven, and by then he was stocky and muscular, with a head that almost looked to be too large for his body. With me, his face softened: his mouth untensing, the wide-set brown eyes, which narrowed when we worked, becoming gentler and more open. Other women seemed to find him attractive, though I suspected that had less to do with the way he looked than with his confidence. He was decisive and convincing in speech, but he could also drop into a low tone of intimacy that was, for Keller’s participants especially, profoundly comforting.
We worked in the old neuroscience building, a mile away from the quad of undergraduate classrooms and dorms near State Street. It was a flat, drab structure the color of brown eggs. Most neuroscience operations had transferred to a newly constructed, multistory building closer to the heart of campus, but this one still housed experiments, and Keller had a five-room complex in its north wing. Only one of the rooms had windows, so the wing felt like a collection of cells.
A petite, red-haired woman and an older Hungarian man conducted experiments in other parts of the building. I never knew exactly what they did, but I always stopped and made small talk when I saw them. In fact, I was rarely the one to end a conversation with anybody; I became so friendly with two of the checkout men at our local grocery co-op that Gabe accused me of flirting. I denied it at the time, but perhaps I was—flirting not with them, but with the idea of another life. We kept such irregular hours that neither of us had much opportunity to develop outside friendships.
This was the way our lives went for that first month of August—muggy, static days filled with fatigue and the little caffeine pills Gabe bought online—so I would probably have been grateful for any shift in our routine. It just happened that the shift came in the form of Thomas and Janna.
I remember the evening they arrived because there was a terrible thunderstorm, the kind I learned was common during Midwest summers. The rain was warm and steady, but the sounds were violent: great, piercing cracks, the taut sky shot open. Thunder like this used to terrify Bo, my family’s dog; I had always talked in my sleep, and my brother told me I often comforted Bo in that state. I was packing dinner for the lab with Gabe, thinking about Bo cowering in the closet, when we heard the garage door open next door.
Instinctively, we gathered at the kitchen window to watch. We’d been wondering about the neighbors. Gabe thought they were a family band, folk performers gone until the children were required to be back in school. Hypothesizing about them gave us a small, secret pleasure, like reading a cheap magazine, and when we heard the garage door, I thought they might be better left unknown. Whoever got out of the car would certainly be more ordinary than we’d hoped.
It was a small blue Honda with a bent-in bumper. Before it reached the garage, the car halted abruptly, and the passenger door swung open. A pair of shoes hit the pavement, and that was when we first saw Janna. She was a tall woman, practically at eye level with our kitchen window and maybe ten feet away, though she wasn’t looking at us. First she stomped several times; then she grabbed the bottom of her white, sack-shaped dress and shook, as if brushing out crumbs. She wore chunky motorcycle boots, laced and buckled up to her knees. The combination of the black boots and white dress made her look eerily spectral. Up close, I would see her skin was very pale, with undercurrents of veins so visible it seemed she lacked a layer the rest of us had. Her light hair was shot through with red and black; in the rain, the blond parts were almost translucent. She turned and walked inside before I could see her face.
Next, there was Thom, coming out of the garage as the wide door descended behind him. He was even taller than her and slender, his reddish-blond hair matted like grass. Behind him, he pulled two suitcases, his shoulders hunched. He wore a white T-shirt, blue-striped scrubs, and scuffed brown moccasins. Right before he reached the porch, he pulled off his round glasses and held them up to the rain. Then he ducked through the screen door and rubbed them with the underside of his T-shirt, leaving the suitcases outside to be splattered. When he finished, he slipped the glasses on again, hoisted the suitcases onto the porch and walked into the house. The lights inside came on just as he disappeared from view.
“Bad trip,” joked Gabe, turning away from the window.
“Maybe she felt sick,” I said.
I was still looking; I thought one of them might open the drapes, and then I felt silly. It was night—who opened the drapes at night?
“Could have at least helped him with the bags,” Gabe said.
He wrapped our sandwiches in foil and put them in the cooler. I was filling water bottles up from the tap. The water was cloudy and tasted faintly metallic, but the landlord said this was normal.
“How old do you think they are?” I asked. “About our age?”
“Probably,” said Gabe. “Late twenties, I’d say.”
We were twenty-four. Most of the neuroscientists we worked with were in their fifties and sixties, and Keller was over fifty himself.
A light came on in the second floor of the neighbor’s house. Gabe and I leaned toward the kitchen window.
“What is it people do around here, when someone new moves into the neighborhood?” he asked. “Don’t they bring over a casserole?”
“Casserole,” I said. “That’s pretty antiquated, don’t you think?”
But we each harbored the hope that casserole would be delivered to our porch the next morning, that we would all eat together in the dim light afforded by the old dining room bulb. We hoped for the arrival of the Welcome Wagon, something we had heard our parents talk about, as if the Welcome Wagon would drive right out of their generation and into ours. But weeks passed, and we heard nothing from the neighbors, though we spotted them now and then. Evenings, I saw the woman getting out of the Honda, her arms c
overed in a gray film of dirt. Other times I saw her on the porch, wearing satiny pink shorts and a thin tank top, as if she were lounging in the privacy of her bedroom. She also had an array of little dresses that she wore with the black boots—ruffled miniature things in shades of coral and lime, or stark black and white shifts with pointed shoulder pads. But she didn’t seem to go anywhere in them: whenever I saw her coming or going, she was in shorts and a T-shirt, her body covered in that sheer coating of dirt.
In each incarnation, I found her beautiful, though I couldn’t quite say why. Because she never looked our way, I had ample time to study her without fear of eye contact. She had a narrow face with angular bones that rose prominently beneath the skin: high, sharp cheekbones, wide-set eyes, a long nose that pointed toward the line of her mouth. Her lower lip was pierced with a ring, and she had a barbell through her left eyebrow. I had a visceral reaction when I first saw it—a slight clench, as I imagined she did when the needle went through. It gave that brow an appraising, arched appearance that was at odds with the glaze of her eyes.
She walked with an elfin bounce that came from her knees rather than her feet and gave her a look of youthful awkwardness. But her body was a woman’s body. Her height had given her large feet and long, slender legs. She had broad hips and a soft dumpling of a belly. A long tattoo curled up her left forearm, though I was too far away to tell what it was. I knew I could still pass for decent looking: I had a narrow build, small features, and brown hair the color of coffee with milk, which had been cut the same way for most of my life. I was fascinated by the neighbor’s turns and bows, her breasts. They were rounder than mine and emerged from her undershirts in firm slopes, like islands coming out of water.
3
EUREKA, CALIFORNIA, 1998
Janna reminded me of Nina, a Ukrainian girl who transferred to Mills when we were juniors. She and Gabe dated on and off that year. Nina was a tall brunette with large gray eyes and a pursed button of a mouth. She had Janna’s combination of airy nonchalance and unexpected vigilance, something I would see in Janna only later. It was as if she had a number of extrasensory probes, sent out every which way to gather information, while she sat on the porch and feigned disinterest.
Nina’s mother was a celebrated mathematician, and Nina was my biggest competition in statistics. Once Mr. Lee called the two of us up to the board and wrote a logic problem between us. It was meant to be a playful competition, but I could feel myself beginning to sweat as I started in on it.
Nina finished before I had even drawn my truth table. As we were walking back to our desks, she said, “You shouldn’t focus so much on the little details, Sylvie. You’ll miss what’s coming.”
I bristled, but I knew she was right. I had a habit of zeroing in on the specifics to the exclusion of the whole, and I didn’t have very good foresight. That night in November, for instance, when I saw Gabe leaving Mr. Keller’s garden—despite how much it disturbed me, or perhaps because of it, I tried to forget it when Gabe seemed to return to normal. There was a several-week stretch when I found him beside me in bed every morning, and I convinced myself that he must have been sleepwalking, like I’d done as a kid. How could this warm and peaceful body, this person who had become more precious to me than anyone else at school, have done anything so strange on purpose?
That year, we both decided to stay at Mills for Thanksgiving. We were puppyish with infatuation—after a rocky, bitter breakup with David Horikawa, Hannah had started to call us the Moonies—and the idea of eating turkey and canned cranberries with our families was wildly undesirable. I told my parents that the six-hour plane ride was too long for three days at home, with finals just around the corner. Gabe called his mother and received surprisingly immediate clearance to stay, too.
We spent most of that long weekend exploring the woods around campus, the little hill-dips and streams, kissing on Observatory Hill with grass stains on our jeans. We found a pile of dusty board games in one of the common rooms and played deep into the night, betting over who’d win, wrestling for the best pieces. In the dorm kitchens, we cooked ambitiously: stuffing with pecan and thyme, real cranberry jelly that didn’t come from the can. We drove to a nearby market in Hannah’s clunker Honda and got a whole turkey that we roasted and took out too soon, pink juice streaming down its legs. But even this made us laugh.
One afternoon, we walked to the top of Skinner’s Hill, where the Rock Shelter was. It was a massive stone, hollowed out by erosion and open on the inside like a cave. We lay down on the cool, smooth floor. It began to drizzle, then pour. I climbed on top of him. I could feel his erection through his jeans, his belt buckle digging into my stomach.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi,” said Gabe.
We peeled off our wet jeans, our sweaters, our socks. My body seemed to vibrate, in hunger and in terror; I had only kissed a boy before. I played with the elastic band of his boxers, then put my hand inside to touch him. His body was tight and dense: muscles cabled through his back, and the tendons in his neck rose like a sculpture in relief. He followed me with his eyes as I stripped off my camisole and pulled down my underwear, then his. We fumbled and grasped at the puzzle of sex, the strange angles, Gabe gasping, open-mouthed, when he came; for me, there was only pulsing discomfort, which faded to a dull throb. The next day, in Gabe’s room, I held his chest as he lurched and rocked above me; and then I was the one who was lurching, rocking, tentatively at first and then with a voraciousness I didn’t know I had. We moved together brutally, our teenager’s need as aggressive as it was ravenous, shoving until we seemed less to be having sex than pushing outside our own skins. It was as though there was something to be found beyond sex and we were running for it, clasped together but somehow in competition. Which is not to say it didn’t feel shared; we were together in those moments, the only ones who knew what it was like.
Around this time, I started to have dreams I could barely remember and that left me physically exhausted, as if I had run great distances. Once, I woke with a bloody scrape on my left knee. I showed it to Gabe: the scrape glittered red under my desk lamp, as if it were not a wound but a jewel I had been given. I attributed the dreams to sex, both their physical manifestations and their psychological features. I was always exploring a space I never had before—walking across an empty room or through an unfamiliar forest. There were never other people, but sometimes, there were animals. In the forest I saw squirrels whose rustles of movement startled me, but I was most afraid of a cat in the unfamiliar room. It was a small creature, silky and mustard colored and not overtly intimidating, but I felt loathing when I saw it. Often, the cat circled me or pushed against me with its head. Now I think my aversion had more to do with my resentment at being left alone in the room than the cat itself—probably it could sense my fear and was trying to comfort me. But I felt strongly that some wrong had been done in putting me there, and I directed this bitterness at the only creature I could.
On the last night of the Thanksgiving break, Gabe and I fell asleep together: our legs braided, our chests stacked spoons. The next morning, though, I woke up alone. I’m not sure how I knew he hadn’t gone back to his own room—call it instinct or intuition, the last cry of the subconscious. Before I could convince myself otherwise, I shoved into my sneakers and yanked on an old sweatshirt, grabbing a flashlight on the way out of the dorm.
It was cold outside, wind sighing in the trees. Fog had turned the sky cottony, so it was difficult to see Keller’s house—only its smudged outline, faint as the sun’s corona, before a scrim of trees. As I came closer to the house, I could hear the stream that ran behind it, making noises like little licks. I intended to go all the way to the garden, though I had no idea what I’d do when I got there. But I didn’t have time to decide, because Gabe walked right out of the front door.
“Sylvie,” he said, stopping in front of me.
I was stunned. Even if I feared I’d find him here, I
hadn’t actually expected it. Still woozy in that early-morning hour, I almost felt I was dreaming. I reached for him.
“No, don’t.” He stepped back. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Not supposed to be here?” We were both whispering, though my voice was getting louder. “You just walked out of Keller’s house. I saw you—out of Keller’s house. And I’m the one who’s not supposed to be here?”
“It’s part of the—” Gabe turned his head, and his eyes flickered to the left, as though searching for someone. “Remember what I told you, Sylvie. It’s part . . .”
His mouth hung open for a few seconds, then closed. But before I could tell him that he hadn’t told me anything, another voice came from the doorway.
“Gabriel.”
Mr. Keller stood in the arch that led into the house. Keller didn’t often appear among us students when he wasn’t teaching, but when he did, his presence was electrically charged. If he was ever in line at the dining hall, the entire row of students fell silent in a current. He had a light, charming way of interacting with us, but his power and influence always ran underneath it. Nobody wanted to disappoint him in case his amiability cracked and something else surfaced.
It was more than that, though. He had an attunement to us, an awareness of our inclinations and desires, that was unusual for an older teacher. Once, he came upon a group of us standing in the foyer of the library, with a boy named Will Washburn off to one side. Prone to colds and dramatic, exclamatory falls in gym, Will was particularly on the outs with us that day: another boy had ribbed Will about his lack of athletic skill, and Will had shouted insults until one of the hall monitors gave our entire class early lights-out for the week. Keller could have continued into the library, but instead he paused.