“This is different,” I insisted. “You both had dreams—but you didn’t have the same dream.”
“Honey, neither did you and Donald.”
“I’m telling you—”
“Listen,” she said, “in my dream my father came to me, talked with me and told me everything would be all right. The dream Mom had was essentially the same. He came to her, they talked, he promised he was fine and everything was going to be OK. It’s the same with you and Donald. You were both close to Bernard, you both dreamed of him in very similar ways, as if he were contacting you. It’s not an uncommon occurrence at all. People dream of loved ones after they die all the time, particularly soon after death.”
“This isn’t the same thing, this—”
“Have you spoken to Rick about it?”
“No, not about this specifically, but I doubt—”
“Maybe the dreams people have—yours included—really are those who have died making contact. Was it really my father who came to me in that dream? I’d like to think so—it’s comforting—and I believe in an afterlife, so assuming that’s true, why would a visitation through dreams be outside the realm of possibility? It wouldn’t.” She smiled. “Maybe that was the only way Bernard could say goodbye.”
“Fine. Then if that’s true why couldn’t we have had the same dream?”
“Essentially, you did.”
“Not essentially.”
Toni smiled. “Alan, first of all Donald’s account is unreliable because of his condition. When someone drinks the way he does you can’t—”
“It’s not like I told him about my dream and in some drunken stupor he claimed to have had the same one. I never even brought it up. Donald told me about the nightmare first—and before I said anything he already knew I’d had the same one.”
“OK, then what did he say when he described the nightmare? What were his exact words?”
I stared at her; already aware of the direction in which her questions were headed, and suddenly skeptical of my own certainty. “He mentioned a few particulars that sounded exactly the same as my dream,” I said, “but I didn’t question him on every little detail.”
“Well, there you go.” She raised her hands, palms up, then let them fall and slap against the outside of her thighs. “You both had a dream where Bernard came to visit you. In both, he wasn’t alone. In both, he had come to say goodbye, and in Donald’s he said he had gone to see you. Is that the size of it or did I leave something out from what you’ve told me?”
“No,” I sighed, “that’s it.”
“Just like lots of other people, you had similar dreams. Similar, Alan, not identical—and I’m not saying that isn’t sometimes a little unsettling in itself—but there’s nothing unique or even unusual about it.” She returned to the counter to fuss with the salad. “Besides, when you two discussed this Donald was blasted out of his mind. Add to that the fact that you’re exhausted and haven’t slept or eaten and the two of you are still dealing with the shock and stress and emotional turmoil of the death of someone you loved, and you’ve got a situation that would almost certainly blur your sense of what’s real—or more importantly, accurate—and what isn’t.”
“You’re—yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s just…” I shook my head both in confusion and in the hopes of clearing it a bit. “Neither of us had a good feeling about it. It wasn’t like a nice, reassuring dream. This was a nightmare.”
“Well if one of your best friends was dead in it, of course it’s a nightmare, sweetie.”
“That’s not what I mean.” I was wringing my hands without even realizing it; my palms had again begun to perspire. “There was a darkness to it, a sense of—I know this sounds silly, but—a sense of evil to it. It was like Bernard was going to Hell.”
Toni covered the salad with plastic foil and slid it into the refrigerator. “Honey, Bernard committed suicide, and it was a total shock to you guys. What’s worse, he didn’t even leave a note explaining or maybe shedding some light on why he did it. It’s a horrible and hideous and painful thing.” She looked at me, compassion in her eyes. “You probably feel some guilt—which is wrong but inevitable—and you have confusion and anger and God knows how many other emotions all boiling to the surface at once. What happened is a dark and evil thing, and you’re dealing with it, working through it, trying to make sense of it. That’s all, Alan—and that’s enough—but that’s all.”
Something similar to a smile twitched across my lips. “Not bad.”
“Can’t work for a shrink for ten years and not learn a couple things.” She grinned, but it left her quickly. “Death is a huge factor in a lot of the cases Gene sees.”
Toni worked as a secretary for a psychiatrist in town with a private practice, and had learned quite a bit about human nature in her tenure there. Unlike my rent-a-cop gig, which I loathed, she had a job she genuinely enjoyed, where she got along with and was respected by her boss. Still, if there had ever been a person who should have continued their education beyond high school, it was Toni. She’d always had tremendous interest in psychology, and though I’d encouraged her to take some courses over the years, she never had. Whatever small bit of extra money we had always went directly into the “house fund,” a savings account she’d set up right after our honeymoon. It grew at such an anemic rate we were consistently three or four hundred years away from ever owning a home, but she never closed it out or lost faith. In many ways it reminded me of our marriage, and why despite our failings, she remained with me.
Certainly her physical beauty had lured me originally, and although we were the same age she looked considerably younger than I did and had maintained not only her figure but a good deal of the vibrancy of her teenage years. Still, her visceral advantages aside, it was the genuine connection between us that kept our relationship afloat. I knew better than anyone that I had not become the provider she’d expected—that I was trapped in the same lowly security guard job I’d held since right after high school—and that after twelve years of marriage odds were I probably wouldn’t ever do anything else. For Toni, that was a realization she had accepted and learned to deal with long before I had, and at the end of the proverbial day, she’d chosen to stay.
It was something neither of us had ever voiced, but we were both somewhat disappointed in each other, in the often-monotonous routine our lives had become and in the robotic patterns we executed day in and day out. But there was comfort here, safety, trust, and there was something to be said for those things. Familiarity and reliability had replaced the passion that weakened after the first few years of marriage, and instead of panting lovers we were steady companions, friends, sound and dependable roommates who now and then made love, as if mistakenly.
“Not everyone can handle death,” I heard her say. “Most can’t. But it touches us all.”