deeplyshallow // eleanor no. 41

eleanor no. 41

The first time is when Jack comes home after two weeks gone.

In these two weeks Eleanor has been at wit’s end. The dream, after months of quiet, has returned. She wakes, lost in the empty space of the little blue cottage that she shares with him, except he is not around, and has not told her why, and has not told her when. Days she sits behind the triple-thick glass in her booth, counting Toyota pickups when they come through her teller lane. Jack has never come to her at work, but this has not stopped her from dreaming that he might one day roll up and place a ring in her vacuum tube and press the button that sends it zipping up and away and to her little cubicle. She sits in this booth and counts an endless stream of money and feeds a thousand checks into the reader and sends dozens of cheap plastic-sleeved candy suckers to children in car seats. All of the days Jack is away, her mind is on the why and when, and her heart is sick in her stomach.

The dream returns, and with an impassive fury that she has never experienced. It wakes her as it has not since she was a child: with fear and vomit rising in her throat, with the blankets kicked and twisted and roped around her legs, with her pillow clenched between white knuckles. The dream has gone sadistic and threatening, its once-gentle edges curling in to smother her as she sleeps. She falls and falls and never slows. Sometimes there is a bottom, now, and is not made of cotton or down. It is a bottom of hard, broken rock. In the dream her legs break into a million shards. Bone erupts from skin at such velocity that it embeds itself in the stones around her. Her skin is a crumpled paper bag.

Two nights of this foreign dream are enough. She keeps herself awake for three straight days, until her eyes are deep and bruised in their sockets, until her every nerve is bright and aware so that even the touch of her clothing sends her into a fit of nervous shakes. Her hair hurts, her tongue hurts. She eats only enough to stave off the cramps in her belly. It is bad enough that she is alone; it is worse that Jack is nowhere she can go to. It is horrible that he will not come to her, and she has to remind herself that he has no idea, that anyway he cannot save her every time. The dream is and always has been hers to bear up beneath.

On the fourth day her resistance gives, and she falls asleep in the hard chair at the little table in their small kitchen. The dream rushes in and she panics and jerks herself awake with such force that the chair kicks sideways and she bangs her head against the side of the table as she falls. She blacks out briefly; the blackout is empty the way her dreams have not been. She comes to, swimming up to the top of this black sea, and her instinct is to submerge herself again in the merciful dark. On her knees she rests her head on the edge of the table, but she cannot bring herself to strike the table again. She feels crazy, but she is not.

The two weeks pass as two years. She falls beneath the wheels of sleep again and again, and over and over she wakes. One night she shakes hard in her sleep and she feels the weight of his hand upon her hip, and she comes awake and turns to him, and he regards her through tired eyes, and says, Ellie, and in the shadows he looks even more tired than she feels. She presses her forehead to his and pushes her fingers through his hair and she says If you leave me again I won’t come back, and she means it, and surprises herself to say so. Their eyes are too close to focus but neither of them pull away. He doesn’t know what to say, and anyway, she doesn’t give him time to say it. She folds her body up at the waist and knees and with pointed toes she nudges his underwear down his thighs. He looks at her questioningly but doesn’t say anything. She can feel that he is ready, that he has been ready for years, and Eleanor pushes him onto his back and climbs onto his hips. His hands fall naturally to the curve of her waist and hips, and tighten on her skin when she takes him inside.

All these years she has chosen the dream over Jack. The dream has been her only guide on a quest with no real path; it has been vivid and moving and comforting. It has been her north star, her blue fairy, her landmark. She has kept Jack at length, afraid that her heart had room for only one wonder at a time, afraid that giving herself to him would mean giving up the dream, the voice. But the dream’s vicious turn is more than she can bear. Jack watches her. His hands map her body beneath her nightdress, and she bows over him in the dark and presses her cheek hard to his and says I am sorry I waited so long, and his hand finds the small of her back and holds her close, and she is done for.

Eleanor lies against him in splinters, as crumpled as the dream has left her, and it is as if her heart has exploded, and every piece has grown into a new heart, and her capacity to love has increased a thousand times in a second. Jack kisses her forehead. She tilts her eyes up to his mouth and says Where do you go, and his lips part and he hesitates to answer. She lets it go, but her heart suddenly hurts, and the scattered pieces dwindle and break, until she is left with just the one again. She remembers that hesitation. Though she has not seen him this way since just after the accident, she has never forgotten why. She remembers the spike she felt twist inside her when he admitted to her that he had kissed Stacy. She has an idea, now, where he goes when he leaves her, and she feels instantly stupid. She turns and he holds her, but she sleeps alone. In the morning, before he wakes, Eleanor will leave their home, having lost Jack and her dream in one sudden moment. Her leaving will be another sort of fall altogether.