Dreams

Robert dreams of finding a new wife, an attentive mother who will cook oatmeal with raisins, do laundry, read bedtime stories. He can’t remember where he got this image. His own mother worked ten-hour shifts at the textile mill and slept all weekend to fight the anemia that drained the color from her face.

This dream, this recurring dream, always starts with the two of them, he and his new wife, in a car, driving away from a church, straight to a small white-shingled house in a neighborhood of similar houses where Marcie and Bobbie are waiting, dressed in clean clothes, dancing on the lawn with a golden retriever puppy while a yellow tabby watches from the porch.

The dream always ends the same way. Robert awakes just as a large crack is opening, slashing across the yard, gulping down the boy, the girl, the dog, the house, while he and his new wife watch, unable to make a sound, not even a simple “No.”
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Blue light edges into the room and six-year-old Bobbie reaches under the bed for the shoebox with holes punched in the lid. Careful not to wake his sister, he slips out of the room and heads outdoors where lizards and toads and other creatures wait their fate.
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Marcie forms the ground beef into perfect round patties, places them in the skillet to wait for her father to light the burner. She pulls ketchup and mustard and lettuce from the fridge, sets three places with paper plates and plastic cups, pours Coke into one, dreams of living next door to a Burger King.