“Fried is fine,” he said automatically. He blinked, rubbed his eyes. He was awake. This was not a dream. This was happening. “Where’s Robin?”
“I gave her her breakfast and let her play outside with one of her friends. You were sleeping so nicely I didn’t have the heart to wake you. Let me get you some coffee.”
“Gretchen—”
“Just a second.”
She came back with a mug of coffee. “I’m all right now,” she said, her voice very matter-of-fact. “I know you’ve heard that before but this time it’s true. I woke up this morning, and everything was different. It was, you know, I don’t know how to put it. Like taking off sunglasses indoors. That’s not really good. I can’t think of a good way to put it. But it’s true, Petey. I’m all better.”
“Jesus.”
“I’m not even going to apologize. I don’t know what happened and I don’t know how you put up with me but it’s over.”
He got up, reached out a hand for her. He said, “I’ll help you make it, baby.”
“But I don’t need help,” she said. She smiled radiantly, and he tried to guess how long it had been since he had seen her face aglow like this. “I mean it,” went on. “I don’t need any help. I don’t know what was, but whatever it was, it’s all over now.”
“God, I hope so.”
“I know so.”
“It’s such a lightning thing.”
“I know. I went to sleep with something and it was gone when I woke up.” She frowned in thought. “I think it was the death.”
“Last night?”
“Whatever his name was. Something Italian.”
“Bill Donatelli.”
“That’s right. Donatelli. I’m sorry for him, except that I’m not really sorry, I never knew him, and I can’t be sorry about anything that snapped me out of it. I don’t know how it happened. I guess it took a death to bring something home to me. How important life is, maybe.” She thought about this for another moment, then shrugged. “Doesn’t matter what done dood it, does it? Thing is, it’s done. Christ, baby, I’m ravenous. I already ate and I’m gonna eat all over again. Eggs for you and another batch of eggs for Mama Gretch. And how would you feel about running down the street for some English muffins?”
“I think we have some.”
“I think we had some. Robin had one and I had three. Get some jelly, too. There’s a little left but I don’t intend it to last long. Get lots of things, come to think of it. I’ll eat anything you bring back. Look at me. I look like total hell.”
“You look beautiful.”
“I guess you still love me if you can say that. I look like a Vogue model who didn’t know when to quit. You know that line from ‘Cocaine Blues’? ‘Woke up this mornin’ and my nose was gone.’ Well I woke up this morning and my tits were gone. Among other flesh. These clothes are the closest I’ve got to the right size and there’s room for a couple of extra people in here. Go. Get food. Much food. Go!”
There had been other transformations, an endless parade of New Gretchens, but none had ever been like this. Each time she had pulled herself back together with an agonizing effort, fighting long odds, doing a little at a time in the attempt to overcome whatever it was that was dragging her down. Now there seemed to be no discernible struggle at all. She was simply herself again. She had taken time off to be someone else and now she was once again herself.
At first he had tried to make her take things a little at a time. That first morning she had insisted on going to her shop and straightening it up. “Give it a few days,” he advised her. “Get used to being you.”
“I’ve had years of experience being me,” she replied. “It’s like swimming or fucking, you don’t forget how. I’m not trying to be Wonder Woman, Petey. I know I must be weakened physically even if I don’t happen to feel it at the moment. I’m not going to try to do everything at once, but I’m not going to work up to normal life like a paraplegic learning to walk, because I just don’t have to.”
If she was capable of an overnight change, he himself was not. On the contrary, he was very cautious about changing the living pattern he had devised as insurance against her unreliability. He still left Robin at Raparound while he was at the theater. Gretchen knew why he did this; more surprisingly, she took no offense. “I wouldn’t trust me either,” she told him, winking. “I can know damn well I’m all right, but there’s no reason why you should buy the whole trip the first day out of port. I’ll let you believe it a little at a time, baby. No problem.”
He stopped at Raparound to inform Anne the first night he left Robin with Gretchen. The waitress seemed dubious.
“You haven’t seen her,” he insisted. “I can hardly believe it myself, but it’s real.”
“I could go over once or twice and look in on them.”
“She’d know why you were doing it.”
“Maybe I’d better not, then.”
“The thing is, I don’t think she’d mind. She really has herself together.”
Anne laid a hand on his arm. “I’m so happy for you, Pete.”
“Not as happy as I am,” he said.
But was he happy?
There were irritating moments when it seemed to him that he was not. He could not understand these moments, did not know what might be causing them.
And then he dreamed the dream.
It was more perfectly detailed than most of his dreams. In it, he returned home from an evening at the theater with Gretchen. She had come to watch the show while he lit it. They stopped for a bite of food on the way home, then returned to the apartment, dismissed the baby, sitter, and made sure that Robin was sound asleep.
Then he went into the kitchen and picked up a sharp knife. She asked him what the knife was for but he did not answer. Instead he used it to cut a length of cord from the Venetian blinds. She asked him what the cord was for, and again he made no response.
He positioned a chair beneath the lighting fixture and told her to take off all her clothes. She did so, asking him if he was going to make love to her. He did not answer. When she was naked he told her to stand on the chair. She asked why, and again he failed to answer, and she obediently mounted the chair.
As he wrapped the cord first around her neck and then around the fixture, she asked him very reasonably why he was going to kill her this way. This time he tried to answer but could not form the words. He got down from the chair, and she told him that it was all right, that she could understand the way he felt, that he should not feel bad about it. He tugged the chair out from under her and watched in fascination as she danced on air. The twitching of her legs slowed, then stopped. He turned from her, and in the open doorway stood everyone he had ever known in his life. Their fingers pointed at him, and just then the dream ended and he was awake.
The meaning of the dream was too hideously obvious to him. Dreams should form themselves in subtle symbols, he thought, so that one would not have to bear the brunt of their awful truth.
He wanted her dead. He had wanted her dead when she was insane, and now, although she had recovered, he still wished for the liberation her death would bring him. He did not love her, sane or mad; sane or mad he did not want her.
His immediate impulse was to leave. He loved the child, wanted to be close to the child, but with Gretchen sane and functioning as a capable mother he no longer had an overwhelming responsibility to the child. All he had to do was pack up and go, and surely it was a greater kindness to do that than to go on living with a woman you’d rather see dead.
But if he left, Gretchen would probably go mad again. He could not make himself believe otherwise. And so if he left, Robin would be without him and without an adequate mother at the same time, and—