She’s dreamed. How old is she in it? — that’s always the first thing she asks about her dreams. Same age she is today. She and Dan were on a beach. It seemed like the same beach she rents a cottage on every summer for one or two months, lots of pebbles and shells and huge smooth tocks sticking out of the sand or the water near shore. Then it seemed like Coney Island, a gray colored sand but without people or wire trashcans or lifeguard highchairs on it, and no pebbles, shells or rocks. The sky was clear, weather was mild and the sun was setting in the East. He was in bathing trunks and a tank top, she in a light sleeveless cotton dress, more like a young girl’s dress with blue forget-me-nots all over it and a big bow at the waist in back. She have one like it as a girl? Doesn’t recall. They were holding hands. The Boardwalk and Parachute were behind them — still no other people — and she pointed to the Parachute and said “I once got stuck at the top of it for half an hour when there was a fire in the gear box thirty feet above me and it scared me so much I couldn’t speak for a week and could never go on an amusement park ride again, not even the merry-go-round or one of those dumb bumping cars I used to love.” All that happened. She also couldn’t get into an elevator for months or on a plane till about ten years ago and even today when she drives a car over a high bridge her pulse speeds up. He said “Don’t look at it then,” not that sympathetically; “let’s just count birds.” They turned back to the water. Both were barefoot and her feet were sinking into the muddy sand, making her shorter and then much shorter than he. She held a finger out to point at birds and he held a pen and pad in his free hand. A bird flew past. She said “There’s one — a tern. How many are we up to now?” He said “One,” and let go of her hand to write the number in the pad. She said “It seems we’ve been here much too long for just one tern.” “There’s a second bird,” he said; “quick, what is it?” “A sandpiper, but they usually travel in twos or schools.” “Prides,” he said. “Plagues,” she said, “or maybe not. I can be very morbid, so you better watch out for me.” He said “I’ll do more than that; a gaggle of mores. I’ll look out for you, look after you, look forward to you, look into you, look up to you, but I’ll never look down my nose or look through you, or so I say.” “Never mind,” she said, “but tell me: why are we counting birds?” “We were asked to for the betterment of our environment, yours, mine and the child’s.” “Never mind, and look; there’s a third one — a murmuration bird,” and she took his pen and wrote the number and name in his pad. He hugged her, she didn’t resist. He said something like “Stabilize your mouth, I’m going to navigate you,” she opened her mouth wide and moved her head closer to his. He kissed her neck and fiddled with her dress bow and shoulder strap. She said “Will you get your hands and lips off me? I don’t know you and I do mind.” He let go, held his hands out to her in a strangulation pose. She backed away and he dropped to his knees, put his face to the hole her feet had made and screamed the most horrified scream and she thought he’d just found his child dead in its crib, and woke up.
What to make of it? The dream, if just the scream and dead child thought, certainly woke her up. But what of the rest? Multiple meanings of tern? Fiddling with her bow only in there for a laugh? All the baby talk with Marietta could explain the dead child being in, but what does that dropping-to-his-knees scene mean: child she wants but might never conceive, being stillborn? Her wanting to kiss him, then resisting, related to what happened with Peter before? Was the mud she was in primeval? The strangulation pose supposed to be what she thinks sex would be like with him? The sandpiper flying past the piper of passing time? Nothing she can now think of makes her think the dream was very self-revealing or profound. Engaging, moving, cinematic, even tragic, and her favorite kind stylistically, one that for the most part moves forward and tells a story. But when the meaning doesn’t come at once or after some thought, she lets the interpretation of it drop till it pops out on its own. Now
