Early Warning

Andy was lying on his couch, though it was more like a daybed. He was behind her. This was her thirty-second appointment. She had started in the summer, after reading about how H-bombs had potential as usable conventional weapons. She realized that she could not get the word “fallout” out of her mind — it was planted in there like a black pea that sometimes sprouted and sometimes did not — but Dr. Katz didn’t seem interested or impressed by her worries. He said he wanted something “deeper.” She was up to five days a week now, as of September 1, when they both returned from their August vacations. It had been fifteen dollars a session, but since she was seeing him every morning, like a regular job, he was doing it for $12.50. Frank didn’t mind. This year he stood to earn fifty thousand dollars at Grumman, and that did not include their investments in what they called their “Uncle Jens Fund,” named after that strange great-great-uncle of hers who had left all his money to be divided up among his descendants, but only after those who were living when he was still alive had themselves died — a grouchy, Nordic legacy that Andy hadn’t yet mentioned to Dr. Katz. She said, “Not much. Well, one sticks in my mind.”

It was part of her job to offer the dream. She lay there for a minute or two, allowing the silence to build around her, then said, “Two mornings ago. I’d sort of forgot it, but it’s coming back to me.”

She closed her eyes and continued. “There were hills, but no trees. I am on a hillside, and a river is running below me, fast and frothy. I am supposed to go down there. I’m a little afraid. I also know that I’m a very beautiful girl — say, fifteen. But I’m not me. I have silky blond hair to below my waist. I’m sitting on the hillside, twisting my hair between my hands.”

Actually, the dream was not a dream, but a story she had read. Andy, as far as she knew, didn’t have any dreams. But Dr. Katz seemed to like the dream stories she told him, and to find them revealing.

She went on, “I’ve been married twice already. So maybe I’m not fifteen. But it seems like both those things are true. The main thing is the feel of the grass on the hillside — rough and full of burrs.”

“Hmm,” said Dr. Katz.

“Then a man comes up to me, and I know that this is my new husband, and I really like him best.” She paused, then said, “He smiles more than the others did. He’s not Frank. Anyway, we walk along the hillside, which is steep, and then, all of a sudden, he has a bow in his hand, and he’s shooting arrows at some people. And his bowstring breaks, and he asks me for some of my hair. I say no.”

“Explain, please,” said Dr. Katz.

“I can’t explain. I just say no. So he stands there with the broken bowstring, and then he is shot through the neck, and I woke up. I guess I looked over at Frank, and he was lying on his back, but he was fine. So I lay there for a few minutes, and then went back to sleep.” In fact, Frank was not next to her. But, then, she hadn’t had the dream, either.

Dr. Katz said, “Do you feel that you withheld something from your husband, and it killed him?”

“Well,” said Andy, “he was outnumbered.”

“Is that what you feel, that he was outnumbered?”

“Why would he think that he could use hair as a bowstring? It makes no sense.”

“Did you feel that in the dream, that his idea was a foolish one?”

“I felt nothing. I just said no.”

“Did you feel in mortal danger?”

“No.”

Andy was beginning to regret that she had told this story. Finally, she said, “People die in my dreams all the time.” From, she thought, fallout. Dr. Katz said, “Yes, they do,” which surprised her. She said, “But it seems like, in the dream, I always know that it’s a dream, and that the person is not really dying, or that the person is not really a person. One or the other.”

“You do not grieve for them.”

Andy said, “No.” A question offered itself: was she a heartless person? When Lillian told her over the phone the night before that the son of a friend of hers, nine years old, also named Michael, had been hit by a car crossing the road by the house, killed instantly, Lillian wept in sympathy, but Andy felt cold, stared at the ash of her cigarette, had nothing to say. Was she the most heartless client he had? But you weren’t supposed to ask questions, you were supposed to arrive at answers.

There was an extra-long silence. Andy thought of being honest and telling him that she had related a story, not a dream. But then he would ask her what the difference was, and she would have to say that she didn’t know.

1957