Ellen's Dreams

She was one of those girls who have gone out of style. They just don't seem to make them much any longer. Softly rounded and pink. Roses, frosted cake, light wine, waltzes. Men on the street would stare at her with that old-time twinge, thinking that, for Christ's sake, maybe loose hair, no bra and sandals weren't the only answer. Ellen had one deeply hidden flaw.

Rich--well, Rich was no real match-up. As a college football player, he had posed for some very good-looking press shots, but Cal-Berkeley, it turned out, was 1--7--1 for the season. He wore his hair right, had several nice $200 suits and was handsome in a kind of no-style. "You are charming and have money," it said in his horoscope, but that was all--it overlooked his secret fault.

Ellen and Rich met at one of the few great, great cocktail parties of March that year, and they were married in June. They bought a grand house in Berkeley, on a hill overlooking the Bay. It was something like three redwood platforms with wonderful Plexiglas cubes atop them. And they were pretty happy.

That is, until the second year of marriage, when Ellen began to have disquiets she couldn't put her finger on.

"I have these dreams again," she said one morning at breakfast.

"Anxiety or wish fulfillment?" asked Rich, helping himself to sausage.

"Oh, neither. You see, I forgot to tell you that I'm Welsh. Just by descent, of course. Harris is a Welsh name."

"How nice for you," he replied absent-mindedly. "Eisteddfods, Caernarvon Castle and the poetry of Dylan Thomas."

"I don't mean that," said Ellen. "What I mean is that my great-grandmother lived in a little village in Wales and had second sight. She was thought to be a witch. When I was young, my family thought I'd inherited this funny thing."

"Very interesting," he said. "How is Xerox going to do today? Up or down?"

"It doesn't work like that," said Ellen thoughtfully. "I used to have dreams about things I couldn't have had any real knowledge of. Then the dream would turn out to be something that had actually happened, more or less."

"More or less?" he asked. "More or less is one hell of a kind of second sight."

"Well, when I was six or seven, I dreamt that Grandpa was sitting in a big box under a clothesline and something happened to him and he fell over dead."

"Felled by a falling clothespin?"

"No, silly, I'll have you know that Grandpa had died of a heart attack while riding a trolley car in Washington, D. C., during the rush hour the day before. That's when they thought I had second sight."

"Any other examples?"

"Nothing very important. After a while, the gift seemed to go away. Now I'm having some queer dreams again."

He laughed. "Like what?"

"Well, it's so weirdo, I thought I wouldn't tell you. But, since you're in a good humor--I had a dream about you. You were in a big room with a very pretty redheaded girl. Lots of eye shadow, a real minidress, you know. You seemed to be sitting or kneeling on some low kind of furniture. A man came along and served you both a drink. That's about all I could make out. The thing is that I don't remember your telling me about having drinks with some redhead."

This time, Rich really laughed. "Wonderful! Marvelous!" he said. "Second-sight myopia. It's perfectly true!"

"I don't see what's so funny," said Ellen, getting pinker and a little angry.

"OK," he said. "Don't get mad. Remember that I left a little early on Wednesday? On my way to work, I stopped by and took Communion at Saint Mark's. Since you're supposedly still one of those hokey Christian Scientists and won't set foot inside a decent Episcopal church, I have to lead a secret life. Yes, there was a redheaded girl at the altar rail next to me. I don't know who she was. And yes, just as always, the rector served us both bread and wine."

Ellen cried a little with embarrassment. Rich kissed her and went off to work whistling.

She looked so worn and troubled one morning at breakfast two weeks later that he finally got it out of her. "Please, it's just as silly as the last one. Another stupid dream."

He insisted on hearing it.

"It's awful to say. Well, anyhow, I dreamt that you were in a room with a lot of low lights. You seemed to be taking off your clothes. There was a girl--I think it was the same girl with the red hair, but I could be wrong--lying on a bed or something. You came over and started to lie down with her."

"Oh, God!" he groaned. "All too true. Just like Grandpa's clothesline."

"It's true?" she asked anxiously. "Oh, Rich, don't hurt me!"

"Dummy," he said. "We were shooting a commercial for some kind of headache remedy. Jesus, if I can't remember the brand names, how can the customers? Anyway, this chick was lying on a couch with an ice pack on her head, and Eddie-with-the-camera was going nuts, because she couldn't seem to hold it right and give out sounds of woe at the same time. So I took off my jacket and went over, got on one edge of the couch and showed her how to hold the damned thing for the best camera angle. End of vision. Oh, yes, maybe she was a redhead, but she was all of thirty-five. Housewife-type model. You idiot."

"Oh, Rich, forgive me. I promise never to dream again," Ellen said with anguish.

But she did. It took all of one Saturday afternoon for him to get it out of her, and it was only after the shopping and two drinks that she would confess. "Somebody out there is playing dirty jokes on me in my sleep," she said. "If I tell you this one, promise to laugh. I don't believe them for a minute when I'm awake, but the thing is, they seem terrifically real while they're going on."

"Why don't you ever dream about walking down the street naked? Or being chased by a giant fire hose?" he asked. He looked a little strained, as if the humor were wearing just a little close to the warp and weft.

"This is the most awful," Ellen said. "I saw you in this small room. There were three other people there--another man and two girls. You were all laughing. I can't say if one of the girls was the famous redhead, but I think maybe she was. Then you and the other man were putting your arms around the girls. As I say, I don't believe a word of it." She paused and frowned. "Rich, how could you?"

"But, wow!" he said. "I do lead a wild and wallowing sex life in your sleep, even if not in my own. Wow! You zeroed in on our naked gang scene in Pomfret's department store yesterday afternoon about three P.M. What a gas! You ESP-ed the whole bit, my dear."

Ellen gasped and a tear started. She was not a quick learner.

"The only trouble is, I didn't get laid."

"Rich, please! You're tormenting me."

"Now to put a little Windex on the crystal ball," he said. "We see the little room--but there is something funny about it. It seems to be descending. Aha! It is a freight elevator. In it are two men and two absolutely ravishing, absolutely naked girls. The men are clasping the girls around their torsos. Finally, the elevator comes to a bumping halt. A voice is heard. It is the heavy, phlegmatic voice of a non-sex fiend. 'Mr. Markham, I wonder if you'd do me a favor and carry one of these dummies out to the place where you got the camera set up? What's happened to that lazy slob that's supposed t'be helpin' me?' Second voice: 'Sure thing, Tony. I want to get this take and blow.' "

Then they had another drink and another laugh. In fact, Rich had three more drinks.

"Mother, listen, I'm just fantastically ashamed to talk about it, but I've had another one of those funny dreams.... No, that isn't the reason I'm calling you at one A.M. Not the real reason.... Yes, I know you need your sleep and, yes, I know I shouldn't act like a neurotic child, but I expected Rich home at six-thirty and he still isn't here. Meanwhile, waiting for him, I fell asleep and had a dream.

"Rich was in a bathtub with a girl. I saw them laughing and putting their arms around each other. Then all of a sudden, both faucets began to spurt water and they couldn't turn them off. Then--this is horrible--the whole room filled up with water, and there they were, dead. By the way, it was a redheaded girl who's come into some of my dreams before. Nobody answers at Rich's office, so please call the police or somebody. I don't know where he is and I'm so worried I'm beginning to scream."

She did scream an hour later, when her father arrived at the door with their family doctor. They managed to get Ellen partly under sedation before they gave her the news. It was bad for a while, but they finally got her to sleep just as her mother arrived.

"What did she mean, mumbling, 'Liar, liar, liar'?" asked her father.

"Oh, God!" said her mother. "Poor child. If you were a girl whose husband, with his popsy in the car, had just managed to get drunk enough to drive off the road into fifteen feet of water and get drowned, wouldn't you say some crazy things?"