Dreamology(48)

I UNLOAD SOME potting soil in Nan’s garden, pausing to shoo Jerry away from a snail he is sniffing, when my phone buzzes. My heartbeat picks up speed as I look to see if it’s a text from Max, but it isn’t. It’s about my mother. Apparently I forgot about the Google alert I set up for her a few years back. When we figured out what Google alerts were all about, most of my friends chose televisions stars or pop singers. Who is he dating now? What did she buy at the supermarket? But my mother was just as elusive to me as any celebrity, perhaps more so. It just never worked . . . until now.

PRIMATOLOGIST MADELEINE BAXTER

TO ATTEND ENVIRONMENTAL RALLY IN DC

AND SPEAK AT THE SMITHSONIAN ON THE ROLE

OF DEFORESTATION IN THE ACCELERATION OF

SPECIES EXTINCTION AND CLIMATE CHANGE

I stare at my phone, stunned, then put it back in my pocket and walk into the house, where my father is reading National Geographic in the living room.

He speaks before I can. “Did you know that in certain indigenous cultures of Papua New Guinea, yams are considered sacred?”

“I did not,” I say. “But, Dad . . .”

“If a man grows a large yam among his crop, he must give it to his neighbor, thereby shaming him, until the neighbor is able to grow a larger one himself . . .”

“Dad,” I say.

“I don’t know if they ever even eat them!” he cries. “Really makes you rethink our favorite Thanksgiving dish, doesn’t it?”

“Dad,” I practically yell. I have no patience for his factoids today.

“Sorry, yes?” He looks up now, as though seeing me for the first time.

Now that I have his attention, I pause. He’s not going to like this. Taking a breath, I decide to just rip the Band-Aid off. “Did you know that Madeleine is coming to DC?” I ask.

My father’s face flashes from happy to grim to perfectly controlled. “I wish you would just call her Mom,” he says. When I don’t say anything in response, he asks, “How did you know that?”

“I have a Google alert for her,” I answer matter-of-factly. The less I beat around the bush, the less he will be able to lead me off course in this conversation.

“I see . . .” he says, laying down the magazine and folding his hands in his lap, thinking.

“Do you think we’ll see her?” I ask.

“It’s possible,” he says, glancing at his watch, out the window, anywhere but my face.

“Possible?” I ask. And I want to say, That my mother might decide to swing by to see her own daughter for the first time in ten years? But I don’t say that part.

“Sure, of course,” he says, looking back down at his reading again. “We should email and check.”

“You mean you’ll email her?” I ask. I know I’m pushing, but why is it up to me? He is my dad. He is supposed to take care of me. He is supposed to be able to ask my mother when she is coming home.

“Sure,” he says, turning a page in the magazine. “I can do that.”

He’s being deliberately vague, noncommittal. And I want to scream. At him for letting me down, for being unable to talk about something so important. At my mom for being such a crappy mom in the first place, for never being here when I need her. At Max for saying he didn’t mean it, for walking away on the quad and leaving me all by myself.

At all of them, for leaving me alone.

“You wanna cool it with that tiny shovel?” I hear Oliver say behind me. I’m crouched over the soil back in Nan’s garden, planting succulents to grow in a cold frame for the wall at the science center. But now that I look, I seem to have been doing more harm than good. Less planting, more rampant soil stabbing with my trowel.

“Sorry.” I peer around to look at him. “Rough morning. Actually, what are you doing today? I could really use an adventure right about now.”

I stand up, wiping my hands on my knees, and only now do I see that something is off about Oliver. He hasn’t moved from the front gate, and is standing a little rigid, his hands clutched to his sides.

“Actually, no,” he says. “That’s not why I’m here. I wanted to . . .” He stops, frustrated, then tries again. “Alice, how could you do what you did?”

I sigh. “I know. Oliver, I can explain. The dreams . . .”

“What, the dreams made you do it, Alice? The dreams control your mind now? I believe you when you say you and Wolfe dream about each other. But I can’t believe that.” Oliver is frowning at me, his shoulders clenched. He’s never looked at me this way before.

“Oliver.”

“He’s not your boyfriend, Alice.”

“I know that,” I start to say.

“He’s not yours, Alice. He belongs to Celeste. And Celeste is a good person; she doesn’t deserve this. He’s hers. He’s not yours.”

“But he was mine!” I finally yell. “He was mine. For years. For my entire life, he was mine. My best friend, my boyfriend. My partner. I can’t just turn it off,” I say, realizing suddenly that Oliver is not the person I want to be yelling this at. The person I want to be yelling at is Max. I also realize, when I say those words out loud, that while they are exactly how I feel about Max, they are exactly how Max feels about me, and what he was trying to tell me in the elevator that night. That sometimes you can’t just turn it off, even when you know it’s wrong. “People can’t just turn off how they feel because someone tells them to,” I say to Oliver now, more quietly than before. “You wouldn’t understand.”