November 2 - I dreamed you were dead

“I dreamed you were dead,” Grace said, letting out a soft sigh of relief when she rolled over and saw that Gary was still lying next to her in bed, clad in only his skin just as he had been when they went to bed the night before, his chest still rising and falling with even breath. She curled her body against his, aligning ankles to ankles, knees to knees, groin to groin, her nipples squishing into his back. Gary turned to look at his wife and reached back one hand to ruffle her hair playfully.

“What a silly thing to dream,” he chided gently. “Of course I’m not dead.”

“Of course.” Grace didn’t say it with the confidence that Gary possessed. She watched as he stood from the bed, stretching naked in the pale morning light as though the winter cold didn’t affect him, and found comfort in the normal noises of his morning routine – the hot water turned on and set to steam up the bathroom while he shaved, the sound of his toothbrush against the sink as he tapped off the excess water, the coffee maker in the kitchen giving a ding to signal that his cup had brewed. She made herself breathe normally at the familiar sounds. It was a normal day, with a normal routine, and of course Gary would make it home safe.

She was staring so intently at the steam rising from the tea kettle that she didn’t hear him come up behind her. She gave a start of surprise. Gary shook his head, half-mocking her tension, and kissed her forehead before starting for the door.

“Hey,” she called to his back. “Just promise me you’ll be careful out there today.” Gary saw the urgency in Grace’s face, so he nodded sincerely.

Gary wasn’t too troubled because he was used to these unfounded worries in his wife. Grace had worried herself sick - literally. Her anxieties had caused an ulcer two years ago, but worse than that, she suffered from a cold that had lasted for twelve years now. Psychosomatic, Dr. Lang called it.

“You mean like in Guys and Dolls?” Grace asked fearfully, when given the prognosis.

Dr. Lang pressed her lips together in what was probably meant to be an ‘I’m sorry modern science can’t help you’ expression. “Kind of like that, yes.”

Gary had long since grown used to the mountains of tissue paper in the waste bins from Grace’s constant noise blowing, to the throat lozenges on the bedside table because her throat always scratched, to the coughing at night that was a soft, sputtering into her pillow, not a keep-him-awake kind of hacking. It was the worrying that had shattered her immune system; worries about being late to events, worries about traffic accidents, worries about things breaking, worries about being a proper hostess, worries about things she couldn’t control like turbulence during an airplane flight or how much other people liked her or whether or not she would be alive when World War III consumed the planet. When Dr. Lang’s Western medicine failed to keep the coughing and sneezing at bay, Grace turned to all manner of alternatives: there was a stint with giant needles sticking from her sinuses like a porcupine at an acupuncturist, herbal remedies drunk down under the watchful eye of women who claimed to be Healers, and copious reflexology sessions, although Gary had his suspicions that these last were simply because Grace liked to have her feet rubbed.

So for all that, Gary never took his wife’s hunches too seriously. He liked to think they balanced one another out like a see-saw on a playground, his care-free to her worry, his adventure-seeking nature to her caution, his come-what-may to her plan-what-will-be. Now, he whistled as he made his way down the three flights of stairs to the sidewalk and hailed a taxi cab with two fingers between his teeth.

Grace felt jumpy all day at work. She couldn’t shake the nagging sense of the dream, and she felt a tight pain across her middle that meant the ulcer was acting up even though she had popped that morning’s purple pill. She poured cup after cup of chamomile tea, but with no result other than that her bladder was on constant alert.

“Again?” Martha asked, as she saw Grace grab the key in the shape of a cartoon woman for the fourth time. Martha was one of the lawyers at the firm where Grace was an assistant, and she always looked pulled together. She was wearing a beige paint-suit today, and her hair was caught up in a beehive. Grace looked at her image in the bathroom mirror; she had neglected to blow dry her hair that morning in her worry, and now it frizzed about her head, her curls looking like burst pieces of popcorn, and she noticed with a grimace that her blouse didn’t match the caramel brown of her skirt. She smiled over at Martha.

“Lots of tea,” she explained.

Martha shook her head. “Shouldn’t have too much of it, you know. Everything in moderation.” Martha swished from the bathroom and Grace had the feeling her idea of moderation meant counting out carrot sticks. She suddenly worried that the lunch she had brought was too much food and that the other women in the firm would scoff at her. Her ulcer gave a tug at her stomach to remind her it was there, and she placed a hand over her belly with a groan. Then sneezed. Popping a lozenge into her mouth, she made her way back to her desk.

“He won’t die, he won’t die, he won’t die,” she said under her breath.

All day, she checked Google News to see if there had been any breaking updates. Nancy, the other assistant, snapped her gum loudly. She chewed the rubbery stuff so much that Grace worried her friend would have a mouthful of cavities in the next year or so.

“You’ve been on that site all day, hon,” Nancy chided. “What’s up?”

“A dream,” Grace admitted with a guilty sigh. “That Gary was going to die today.”

“Oh hon,” Nancy began but Grace gave a shriek.

Breaking news, read the headline. Train wreck in Arkansas kills four.

Grace spit out a mouthful of tea, soaking her skirt in the hot liquid but not noticing the burn. “Nancy look!” she cried with horror, pointing. Nancy wheeled her chair over with a squeak squeak. She gave Grace a withering look.

“We don’t live in Arkansas, honey,” she reminded.

“Right.” Grace hunched her shoulders and clicked out of the website. Two minutes later, glancing over her shoulder to make sure Nancy wasn’t looking, she checked again.

“Oh!” she cried in horror. “Car pileup. On Long Island! That exit’s only about twenty minutes from the city, I think.” She wished she had a map.

Nancy’s look should have frozen Grace to her chair.

“Gary doesn’t drive, honey,” she assured her. Grace shook her head, the curls frizzing back and forth.

“Yes,” she agreed, hiding a cough in one fist. “But what if he had to get in a car to see a client, or if something came up, or if he found out he had to visit his mother for some reason and hired a car…?”

“Grace!” Nancy’s yell cut off any protest. “You’re worrying yourself sick. It was just a dream.”

Grace clicked out of the Google webpage.

While his wife fretted, Gary was going about his day normally. “One venti latte,” he ordered promptly at Starbucks. The server – she looked to be about fifteen and had no fewer than five piercings in various places on her face and hair that was dyed cranberry red – looked like she was in a surly mood. She confirmed this when she slapped his coffee on the counter without a lid, and the liquid gushed all over Gary’s hand as he reached for it.

“Shit!” he exclaimed, feeling the scalding liquid seep into the cuffs of his shirt. He licked up the coffee and saw already that the skin beneath was raw and red. If the server noticed his distress, she didn’t betray the fact. “Four fifty,” she said, bored.

“Keep the change,” Gary muttered, handing her his soggy five. He stepped back outside into the bracing winter air and tucked his scarf up just under his nose, squishing his iPod ear buds further into his ears. He started to step off the curve, when he heard a voice louder than Sting was singing Roxanne.

“Hey, watch out man!” shouted the delivery man riding by on his bike with two pizzas balanced on his handle bars. Gary took a quick step back, then heard the sharp honking horn. The taxi driver missed his foot by inches and gave him the middle finger as he drove past. Gary would have signaled back but he was too shaken. He hopped back up onto the curve. Maybe there was something to what Grace had said.

He started to step carefully. He didn’t walk over manhole covers – too many stories of those popping up and causing freak accidents – or take another taxi that whole day; too much potential for a car crash.

At work, he squinted at the computer screen and the account books but couldn’t seem to make sense of the numbers. His throat itched. He passed his hand back and forth across his Adam’s apple. “You all right, man?” Henry asked, leaning into his cubicle. Gary gave a nervous start and looked up.

“What? Oh yeah, I’m all right. Not feeling so hot, that’s all.”

Henry frowned. “You never get sick!” he laughed. It was a running joke between them, to see who could hoard more of their sick days in exchange for vacation ones each year. Gary always won. Now, Henry’s frown deepened. “Actually, you really don’t look good. Your face is kinda flushed. Maybe you should go home?”

Gary waved Henry away with a stab of irritation, but his head was pounding, and he rubbed his temples for fifteen minutes before remembering he was supposed to be concentrating on the numbers on his computer screen.

Suddenly, normal objects in the office looked threatening. The stapler was practically grinning at him. I’d love to bite off your finger, it said with a toothy metal grin. Gary shuddered. He worried about the microwave rays when he heated up his soup for lunch; stairways suddenly looked like deathtraps. One wrong trip and… He pictured himself with his skull cracked open at the bottom and shuddered again.

He started looking over his shoulder at every noise, loud or small, then, inevitably, had to whirl back around to grab a tissue as a sneeze caught him. His nose started dripping during the weekly office meeting.

“Gary?” the boss said sharply, crossing her arms. “Gary, if you’re feeling that poorly, maybe you ought to go home.” He coughed weekly and acquiesced.

When Grace heard his key in the door, she leapt up from the stool in the kitchen, where she had been staring fixedly at the television set for any news of explosions or tornados. So far so good, except for the news of a three-year-old who had been wounded on a school playground; Grace was ashamed at her own relief because Gary would never be mistaken for a three-year-old.

“You’re home,” she cried with relief. “I was so worried all day.” She pulled back, staring with worry into his face. “Are you all right? You look awful?”

“Can you make me some chicken soup, honey?” he asked with a hoarse cough. “I need to lie down. I think I understand now how you can worry yourself sick.”