THE VALIDITY OF A DREAM

The easiest way to know for sure you are dreaming is to kill yourself. I know, it sounds a little harsh (and potentially permanent), but think about it: When is the last time you have dreamt your own death? The answer must be never. We can get close, sometimes so close we actually soil our bed linens. But, alas, we wake in the tangible world in shitty pajama bottoms and a whole basket of embarrassing laundry.

This validity of a dream while one is inside of it had never occurred to me until recently, when I went back to visit my hometown in Massachusetts for the first time in more than ten years. My brother was getting married, and he not only paid for my flight, but his Indian fiance had purchased me a gown during their recent trip to Bangalore. Needless to say, I couldn’t refuse. It wasn’t such a bad thing to go back, just strange. I had moved after my friend Jim died. I would have been gone long before if he hadn’t gotten sick, but I stayed with him right up until the end. He had no family there, just me and his ever-changing version of a girlfriend.

I met Jim at a bar one night in my early twenties, and we were joined from then on—spiritually, cosmically, alcoholically, comedically, creatively—we were crafted for one another. Not in a romantic way, however, which is actually sad. I had my romantic interests, Jim had his. When Jim first got sick, his girlfriend-of-the-week called me and said they had taken him to the hospital with appendicitis. By the time I’d arrived, they were in the process of removing a softball-sized tumor from his colon. His battle went back and forth, good and bad, up and down, surgery after surgery, until he was done. My handsome, green-eyed best friend from the Bronx, who’s birthday was September 11th, died with nothing but little old me and a beeping machine at his side.

Within the first conversation I’d had with Jim the night we met, we discovered he had moved into the apartment on Second Street I had moved out of only a week before. It was a fifth floor apartment with no elevator or working intercom to the outside world, but it was bright, airy, and just the right size for a single up-and-comer. The coincidence seemed marvelous and made us giddy. The next day, I met him at the building with a stack of pictures from the two years I had lived there, and he invited me up to see what he’d done with the place. He was a far better decorator than me, though that’s not saying much. My idea of decor was whatever seemed cute on the back shelves at Salvation Army or Goodwill. Jim, though, he had a knack for aesthetics. It was a talent he probably could have exploited and made a decent living from if he’d been afforded the years to do so.

Before my brother’s wedding, I had two glorious days to revisit my old haunts in Massachusetts, which basically consisted of one horse stable and my favorite hiking trail. After my nostalgia-fueled trek to the overlook at Kennedy Park in Lenox, I ate at my beloved bagel shop and drank an iced-soy chai latte from my dearest coffee shop. I walked up and down the Lenox streets, smelling the tourism, glancing at the charming restaurants where I’d once waited tables, washed dishes, or gotten drunk after closing a lifetime ago. It felt good to be home. Lonely, somehow, but good.

On my way back north to my parents’ house, I stopped at the old apartment building where Jim and I had lived, just not together. The same gravel parking lot for residents across the street. The same trees, only larger. Same sidewalks, only slightly more cracked. I parked in the residents’ lot, got out of my mother’s CRV, and looked up. A sensational, blooming cherry tree was blocking my view, and for a moment I was glad. I breathed in its subtle perfume, unsure if it smelled like cherries at all—more like a girl’s skin after washing with lilac soap. I petted the tree for some reason, as if it were a wayward farm animal in need of caress. It was so beautiful! I had grown up in the Berkshires, arguably some of the most breathtaking countryside in the east, but this mere cherry tree, planted simply because they needed to put something there, had overwhelmed me.

I pinched a low hanging blossom and smiled, rubbing the satiny petals between my thumb and forefinger, pulling it closer to my nose to savor the note even more. I might have stayed there longer, but I wanted to look up at the windows. I wanted to see if Jim’s curtains were still there. Of course, they wouldn’t be, but why not have a glance? There were no curtains at all, it appeared. At least not on the fifth floor windows. The first through the fourth were covered, some with lace, others with solid drapes, but the fifth was open, and someone was standing there, behind the glass panes, looking down on the street. 

I blinked a couple times and squinted. Maybe I had parked in his spot. Or, maybe he’s the building watchdog—the guy who sits around waiting for barhoppers to illegally park there so the cops don’t spot their cars outside the pubs. I waved, hoping to communicate to my watcher that I am not one of those people. He raised a hand in return, but then pressed it against the glass and left it there. I took a step closer. The man moved his hand to the middle of the window, fiddled with something, and slid the window up. He leaned his head and shoulders outside, and I collapsed to my knees.

“What are you doing?” he called down, his words pelting me on the back of my bowed head like pinging pebbles.

I was having a nervous breakdown. Why was I having a nervous breakdown? Or was it called a psychotic break? The latte—one of those hippies must have laced my drink with something. I was hallucinating.

“Get off the ground! People are gonna think you ain’t right!”

Jim always said that. People are gonna think you ain’t right. That was his thing! That doesn’t seem like a hallucination. Or does it? God, how I wished I had done more drugs when I was young. Then maybe I’d know what was going on.

“I’m coming down. Stay right there, okay?”

I said nothing, but did look up toward the door. Second Street was a slow, two-lane street, but not too far away a car was headed in my direction—speeding, nonetheless. Dreaming. I decided both suddenly and with utter certainty. I was dreaming! I grabbed the skin on my arm and twisted. It hurt, but I didn’t wake. I slapped myself, but still, nothing. That’s when I had the epiphany: I’ll wake up if I die here. It made total sense! I’d always marveled at the brain’s limitless abilities while dreaming, and how they came to an abrupt end at the matter of death. I was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, asleep and dreaming because Jim was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, dead. I kept his ashes on my bureau, for Christ’s sake! 

That was all the careful planning it took. At the same time Jim opened the door to the outside and we locked eyes, I was mid-sprint into the path of the old Buick going forty-two in a twenty-five.

I woke up in the hospital, Jim sitting next to me, holding my hand between his with the knot of fingers pressed up to his mouth just like I used to do. He looked healthy, and young. Like he hadn’t aged a bit. I tried to say his name, but my mouth was drier than Styrofoam. A smug little smile curled around his lips, and he took a hand away to get a cup from the nearby table.

“I like it better on this side of the hospital bed, you know? We should have traded places years ago.” 

In a rehearsed move, he slid the oxygen mask up and rested it on my forehead, the air hissing onto my eyelashes and causing tears to run in little trickles down my cheeks. From the cup, he removed a foam paintbrush, the sponge soaked in cool water, and placed it against my lips—liquid chilly and invigorating, slipping over my chin and down the sides of my neck. He re-wet the sponge and said “ah” so he could press the sponge against my tongue and soften my parched mouth. I swallowed once, a sudden, profound thirst awakening within me.

“Here.” He held the cup of remaining water to my lips. “Have a drink. Slowly.” I sipped and watched him, like a baby nursing a bottle with her mother. “Glad you’ve finally come to, sport. That was some kamikaze bullshit you pulled out there.”

I stopped drinking and relaxed my head back against the pillow. It really was him. My Jim. I couldn’t help but cry.

“So? Are you glad to see me?”

I nodded, my tears getting fatter. I could feel my ugly sobbing face taking over. My lips would be upside down, nostrils flared in the most unflattering way, and my chin so filled with dimples it closely resembled avocado skin.

“Hey, it’s okay. I’ve got you.” He stroked the side of my head, smoothing the sweaty hair away from my face, making me feel safe, beautiful, and like an infant all in the same movement. “But it’s time to get up now, okay? We waited long enough.”

My forehead contorted, confused, and I muttered only a dull, airy wuh sound.

“You were a little confused, I think. Trying to figure out if you were dreaming?”

I nodded.

“You weren’t dreaming, darlin’. But come on. They’ve been waiting on you for a while. I know you don’t like being late.”

Jim stood up and raised my hand, like guiding Cinderella from her carriage. The bed fell away, and the floors and table. That was the last time I saw him, but we were together from then on, always.