The August of Our Dreams

It is all over the news this summer, that the southern parts of the country are experiencing the rainiest and coldest summer in twenty years. Therefore Mrs. Dalloway cannot help herself, but takes an extra helping of raspberries on top of her usual soygurt breakfast, musing absent-mindedly, that she is feeling a sense of almost overpowering extravagance, of unnecessary inappropriateness, about her meal.

She sips her mineral water, waiting for the fresh coffee to drip, and touches the left side of her head, where the grays have appeared, just above the left temple. That is where she is hurting now, almost constantly, since her episode five days ago.

In her dream, she is at a house by the woods, her house, apparently, and as she is approaching the sauna building and the work shed, walking a narrow pathway between the strangely silent and ominously dark firs and pine trees, she is overcome by a certainty that she is not alone, and she starts running the path, a first careful but bit by bit a more and more panicky run, singing out loud some silly song she would never remember like this awake, but in the dream the lyrics come to her easily. The wooden buildings are approaching fast, but suddenly she has no desire to step inside either one. She is terrified now, and because it is dark, the nightwood all around her seems to hum a malevolent, hostile hum that makes the side of her head hurt. She is screaming the lyrics into the night sky now, and with a loud and deliberate yank she swings the door to the sauna open, and flicks the lights on in a violent, aggressive manner, never stopping bellowing the silly tune into the woods and in the now illuminated, empty sauna. With haste, she runs to the second door, positive that the evil presence is inside the tool shed, but there is no one there, either.

She hadn’t had an episode in almost a year. When you didn’t have one for a long time, the stupendous enormity of it, the incomprehensible force, the pain that blindsided her in its dull, hammering urgency was so exquisitely superior to her it seemed almost prosaic and provincial in its all-consuming vastness; how could she suffer from it, be taken by it, in such a helpless, mediocre, bourgeois way? Out of the pink and turquoise haze of okay feeling, into the deep gray-green and black present; she had had one in May, and one the last day of July. Her episode, her rampage, her stark, raging lesser self, her otherwise silent Other, her doppelgänger, her shadow self. Her demon.

The nurses’ station is empty, it isn’t that kind of home, they trust her enough to let her stay here alone. The sun is out now, but the horizon promises hard rain. Someone is mowing the lawn nearby. Mrs. Dalloway pours some coffee in the yellow mug, her mug here. Her hair is down, not done up energetically, but shooting lazily in all directions like a petulant but extremely tired little child’s. That is what she feels like, sometimes. Like a petulant, but extremely tired little child.

She finishes breakfast and tries to go back to her reading. The garden sways and dances outside her window, and casts beautiful shadows on the gossamer curtain. She had to get rid of some spiders, in her room, last night, and she killed them all, in cold blood, remembering, though, each time to say sorry to each one. Black spiders, one walking on the ceiling, so she had to take out the wooden stool from underneath the nightstand. Most of them on the floor, under things, hiding. One on the bed, trying to run when she had lifted the covers. She didn’t believe in curses, so she killed them. She had a moment thinking the one on the bed might cause for her to sleep badly, but when she did lay awake in the dead of night, she never once considered the Araneae, never once thought they were issuing their revenge on her by damning her to lose sleep.

It was all nonsense, anyway. They hadn’t caused this. Her Nurse had told her to try and keep calm, no matter what, because having those screaming fits did nothing good for her, now did they? No, they didn’t. She wondered, not for the first time, if it was possible to scream oneself into a brain hemorrhage.

But she hadn’t done just that. There was also the hitting. Right there, on the temple, and she was afraid. She came to like suffering an excruciating hangover, after each one of those horrible bursts of terrible power, as if she had poured all of herself out, like there was no one left but a hollow shell of a woman. Her eyes felt as if she had taken a good beating, and she had trouble keeping them open. Her hands trembled. She sweat profusely. Her voice was gone, and would stay gone, for a couple of days. Her throat hurt. She would sit still, dazed, almost as drugged, incomprehensive, lethargic, totally beat. Sometimes she would cry. Sometimes she was too tired to do even that.

At least it wasn’t like with the beetles that year, was it fifteen years ago? They were falling from the ceiling with a loud bang, and had to be chased, they were so fast. She had had trouble killing them, but they were so many of them, the clok! on the wooden floor a daily sound, the chase a daily nuisance. It was theorized that they had nested somewhere inside the woodwork in the attic; hence the dropping from the ceiling.

She visualizes her walking route today: the lupines already colorless and seeding by the road, the cow parsley handsome and lace-like above others, the tansy, the common yarrow. Over the barley and wheat fields, the cranes fly only a little bit above ground, they probably have a nest somewhere close by. The marshes empty of egrets this year.

The silly song comes to her in bits, now. I’ve got a theory that it’s demon, a dancing demon, no, something isn’t right here.

Meds. Medication. Would it help at all? But then she would have to tell them she was sick. Her Night Nurse is full of love, she is the only one who could just take her by the shoulders, and she would be calmer just by the touch. Meds? Why, you are not sick, dear, you just need to keep your head a little better.

She thinks of a few nights ago, when Peter was holding her head, caressing her out of control hair, when she had taken her pillow and entered his room, despite her misgivings, but it had felt right, and needed, and safe, almost. And he had been so gentle, so tender. Laying curled in Peter’s arms, while Mr. Dalloway was out, collecting her shoes from the cobbler’s. And hadn’t Peter’s face reminded remarkably her of Mr. Dalloway?

(But weren’t they the same man? Mrs. Dalloway looks around her, out the window into the rare sunlit morning, and is confused by the memory of the face in the dark, the kind eyes that so seldom make themselves known to her. Brown lashes rimming the beautiful blue and green eyes. The eyes which are the same.)

(Suddenly, she has a clear and precise moment of revelation, of the meaninglessness of it all, of her own true lack of contribution, that it comes down to nothing, all of it, her stupid, provincial pain, her screaming, her night terrors, how Mr. Dalloway and Peter are both just different facets of the same idea, of the same man, just like she, Clarissa, is both here and elsewhere, both her and her demon, both herself and this Alexandra she dreams about, who is stuck inside her wacky Broadway nightmare, and when she is gone, life will go on, like it always does, because all of this, this artificial importance, this waste of energy, is just that. Don’t waste your breath, Clarissa, don’t waste your emotion, and for heaven’s sake, stop screaming or I’m gonna drive this car right into the on-coming traffic!)

She remembers how hard it rained that day, when she was driving home from work, back East, when she still had her forest green Mazda, and a slice of a row house by the river, an old housing development that was torn down many years ago, the first one of the many dwellings she has inhabited to be demolished. Some places are destroyed by one’s mind, others, in reality. The downpour was so hard it felt like she was driving underwater, and she had to pull over because she couldn’t see anything. She remembers how alone she felt, then. And she was. She never told anyone, there was nobody to tell.

Whoever it was that night, when she took her pillow and escaped the musty dimness of her bedroom, who held her head and caressed her hair, whispering to her that she had nothing to fear, she was alright, that man was the man she loved. How confused she got, sometimes! It really wasn’t a lark at all.

(Words are just words, Clarissa, and you made me feel bad, but I’ll be fine, it really isn’t that big a deal.)

The black currant bushes invite magpies in the garden, and Mrs. Dalloway knocks loudly on the window to drive them away. The creepers are swaying in the wind, she notices some of the leaves just above her window. The wind is growing stronger. She sees the large, black, ripe black currant berries that are making the branches sag, some of them so heavy they are almost right on the lawn, where the ants can get to them. The doves that live in the hawthorn hedge are purring and cooing. Will it rain again? It is raining always. (- Can you imagine? It’s raining! - God, no(!). - No, I mean since this morning!)

Mrs. Dalloway feels her gray hairs on her left temple. On the left, because I am left-handed, she thinks idly. She can’t tell if the gooseberries are ripe or not. Last year, the gooseberry bushes were looking like green spiky cornucopias filled to their last inch by bright green-yellow bells. Maybe they are like the apple trees, she thinks. Last year was an apple year, so this summer there were hardly any blooms at all. This year belongs to the black currants.

The rain comes, with a soupcon of relief in its midst, as Mrs. Dalloway notices the way the drops hit the leaves of the hawthorn hedge, growing all over the place, because no one has had the time, or has bothered, to trim it this summer. She hears the rain drumming against the tin roof, and for a while, she is happy the thick hedge surrounds the yard so she can think her thoughts unobstructed and unobserved.

It is late when she finally gets dressed. Early August light is blue and orange and gray, but not a frightening gray. Just gray. Like her hair. And Peter’s beard. Peter’s, who is also Mr. Dalloway. A kind gray. A gray that says I know you are hurting, but you are not this emotion. It will pass. It always does, and you should dry your tears and calm down, because graying your hair like this, before your time, is unnecessary. The rain will pass, too, and like the shadow of the floral pattern in the gossamer curtain makes pretty shapes on the wooden surface of the desk, the restless, thunderous shapes of the demon on your wild, agonized mind will pass. Those are exactly what they are. Mirages, glamours, shapes. Don’t be fooled. Be strong. Let it go. Just – let it go. Tough love, baby.

Mrs. Dalloway walks out the door, and into the sunlight. A hundred meters from the gate, she sees the borderline where the wall of rain begins. The faintest hint of a smile lifts the corner of her mouth a little.

This piece was in part inspired by and contains elements or ideas from the following works:

Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf

The Witches of Eastwick, by John Updike, and

The Witches of Eastwick, screenplay, by Michael Cristofer

Evening, by Susan Minot

A Pale View of Hills, by Kazuo Ishiguro

Once More, with Feeling, ep. 7 s. 6 in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, created by Joss Whedon