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The wind brushes hair into her face, tangling the strands together and then whipping them apart. Her hands are molding wet sand, shaping turrets and battlements. She scoops a circle around the sandcastle and water floods in to fill the moat. She hears a giggle and smiles, squinting at her companion through the sunlight. A small child crouches next to the sea. The boy wears pastel swim trunks and a long sleeve swim shirt. The air smells of sunscreen and salt, and she can feel grains of sand between her toes and on the backs of her knees. She and the child work in companionable silence, adding sticks and bits of broken shells to their castle. When it is finished, they stand back to admire their work. They laugh when ocean water creeps up to their castle and washes bits of it away, and they let their toes be washed clean in the ice-cold surf that has carried their castle out to sea. The child reaches out to clutch her hand, tugging her deeper into the sparkling water.
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Naomi stays in bed, blinking up at her popcorn ceiling. She chooses to avoid looking at the alarm clock on her bedside table. The dream is fading fast and she wants to cradle the memory of it for a little longer. She spends a few more seconds on the beach listening to the tide come in and feeling the sun on her face before reality finds her. It takes a great deal of internal coaxing to come out of sleep and back into the waking world.
She is alone in the apartment where she has lived for four years, and the dream puzzles her. It is not just that she has dreamed of a toddler, or that she lives nowhere near a beach. It is the connection that the dream version of herself instantly felt for the boy.
Naomi has no children. She has had no recent lovers that could potentially lead to a future with children. Why, then, does she feel a pinprick of absence behind her ribs when she thinks of the boy in her dream? Her mind cannot consider the fine points of this new feeling and what it might mean without the help of caffeine.
The duvet sticks to her skin in the heat and the sheets have been pushed down to the foot of the bed to form a twisted pile. She pushes the covers off and swings her legs over the edge of the bed to stand. The wood floorboards have warped in the humidity and she can feel the cracks between them when she shifts weight to the balls of her feet. When she makes her way down her narrow hallway to the kitchen, she does so on tiptoe. She’s never liked the sound of her own footsteps against the wood.
Naomi’s dream and her feelings about it are forgotten by the time she is pouring grounds into the coffee maker. The fan in her kitchen spins lazily above her, doing little to dispel the sticky heat that permeates the small space. There is a thin layer of sweat on her skin, and tendrils of her hair are plastered to her neck. She told the superintendent two weeks ago that the air conditioning was broken. So far, there has been no progress with getting it turned back on.
She flips idly through her record collection, settling on The Velvet Underground. A soft static fills the room before the needle catches the groove of Sunday Morning.
It is early, and she might just be able to fit in an hour or two of illustrating before she has to leave for work. This is a luxury—time spent on a personal project. After work she will have to head over to her father’s house to help care for him, and she won’t be able to return to her apartment until much later tonight. From the drawer of her coffee table, she pulls out paper, colored pencils, and her sharpener. She doesn’t put pencil to paper, though, not yet. The coffee maker gurgles from the kitchen, the fan spins, and the sound of an ambulance carries from a block or two away. There is not enough of her awake for the kind of focus required for drawing.
Her mind is filled with a mental list of what she needs to do today. Emails to respond to at work, clients to call. Picking up groceries for her father—where is that list he gave to her yesterday? It was in her pocket… She tiptoes over to her laundry machine and opens the door. A sopping wet tangle of clothes greets her, which she digs through for a few minutes. There are the pants from yesterday, dripping onto the kitchen linoleum. After a quick check through the pockets, she finds the list. All of the writing on the list has washed away. Shit. She moves the pants to the dryer along with the rest of the clothes, which have begun to smell of mildew.
The coffee’s ready and she reaches up to grab a mug from the cupboard. She fills it and sits back down at the coffee table, staring at the drawing materials she’s just pulled out. Naomi picks up the pencil and hesitates, hovering over the paper. Instead of drawing, she begins writing down what she can remember of her father’s list.
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Her feet carry her swiftly, scrambling over rocks and dirt. She doesn’t tell them where to go; they seem to know something she does not. She stumbles, but her right foot catches her before she hits the ground and she keeps going, side aching and some unknown force propelling her forward. Determination courses through her, but for what purpose? Is she running away from something or towards it? The sun beats down on her back, a small amount of warmth in the otherwise chilly air. There are no trees, thankfully, since her vision is fuzzy and she’s not sure she would be able to avoid them if they were there.
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When Naomi wakes from the dream, two things are clear to her. The first is that she remembers her prior dream, and the boy that she built sandcastles with. She remembers the way his toes looked next to hers as they waited for the surf to wash them clean, and the hint of absence deep in her ribs that startled her as she lay in bed alone. The second is a strong feeling that the boy who made sandcastles with her is who she was running toward in this latest dream. She can’t pinpoint how she knows these things, but she is certain of them.
Unlike the first dream, she does not forget about the boy while she is going through the motions of her day. When she pours the coffee grounds she thinks of his small palm in hers, and when she sits down at her coffee table with colored pencils and paper she finds herself absently sketching his curls. She thinks of him as she sits at her desk at work and avoids the gaze of her boss, who sits in a walled office in front of her cubicle. On the bus to her father’s, she sees a billboard of a woman kneeling next to a child. The feeling of absence for the boy grows, and she finds herself looking away, embarrassed at the force of her reaction to an advertisement.
She is able to make her way through her day without alerting anyone to the fact that things are not quite right. The feeling bothers her, though. The dream memory of the boy is a low hum in the back of her mind. When she settles down to sleep in her bed, she wonders if the boy will greet her in her dreams and can’t decide if she wants him to or not. The alarm clock by her bed glows red, and she shifts from her back to her left side, then her right. Sleep does not come easily. When it finally does come, she is less sure of what is dream and what is real.
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A happy shriek greets her, and she feels familiar arms grip her biceps. At first she cannot make out the details of his face, but she knows she loves it. There is a wide, toothy grin and small hands that fit just inside her own. He is happy to see her and she, him. She runs her fingers through his curls. They are almost black, and his skin is light brown. He is a toddler, just at the age between baby and boy. The sun shines on his face and his eyes carry a newness in them, a trust in her and the world around them. This boy loves her. The love coming from the boy brings out her love of him, and she is surprised at its strength. They are together for a few moments before he starts to fade, slipping away from her.
“Mama,” he mutters against her shoulder before he’s gone, and it is the most beautiful sound.
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When Naomi wakes she is soaked in sweat and her breathing is shallow and fast. The sheets are once again twisted at the foot of her bed. She glances at the alarm clock next to her; 5:00 AM. It is so difficult to keep her eyes open, and when she swings her legs over the side of the mattress, she can’t bring herself to stand up. Fatigue has settled into every joint and muscle. Her mind registers the physical exhaustion most acutely. Each part of her screams to crawl back under the covers and call in sick to work. The force of her feelings is so strong she briefly wonders if she really is sick, if she might have somehow caught the flu.
It has been two months since her first dream of the child. The dreams have become increasingly vivid, and her sketchbooks are now filled with him, this unknown boy who has captured her imagination. Her father tells her it is her biological clock sending her one last hail Mary, but she has no desire to get pregnant. No desire to start a family beyond the one she already is starting to believe she has.
Whatever the cause, Naomi can’t seem to shake the feeling that something is wrong. That this life is wrong. The details of this apartment no longer feel like her own. The gray curtains, the twisted sheets, the fan spinning agonizingly slow above her. The warped wood beneath her feet is no longer as real to her as the boy murmuring ‘Mama’ into her shoulder. Naomi wonders more than once if she has lost her mind. A dream now seems more real to her than the solid floor beneath her. That can’t be a good sign.
She has not admitted to her father that she suspects she is having a mental breakdown. Her thoughts have circled around wilder theories, and it has become an obsession. She cannot deny that any longer. Her internet search history is filled with subtle inquiries about alternate realities, about switching places with another version of yourself. Her nights are filled with dreams; her days are spent picking them apart and analyzing them for clues.
There is something about the child. Some part of him that feels like it is a part of her. There is something about the way his hair curls at the nape of his neck, and the distinct shade of brown in his eyes. Naomi knows the child is hers, knows it in her bones. She tries to close her eyes and force sleep again. If she can just get back to the dream, she can be with him again. She can be a mother. She takes three deep, long breaths and sinks deeper into her mattress, but sleep does not come. When she swings her legs over the side of her bed to come to standing, she feels a profound sense of déjà vu. She has done this so many times. She pads down the hallway to the kitchen, keeping all the lights off.
For the past two decades, Naomi has always lived alone. Relationships have come and gone, and in the midst of each of them she has been adamant about keeping space for herself. She has lived alone because it suited her, and there have been many moments where she has felt at home in this apartment. It has been a refuge from the outside world, a place to create and relax. A place to hide. Lately, though, these rooms have stopped feeling like her own.
She boils water on the stove and makes herself a cup of tea. Her hands are shaking as she pours it into a mottled blue mug; the first sip burns her tongue and forces her to slow down. She takes a few capsules of melatonin with her when she brings the mug back to her bedroom. When she finally does sleep it is hours later, long after she’s stopped trying to.
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Naomi wakes to see a pair of warm brown eyes staring at her. The boy from her dream is standing next to the bed, head cocked curiously to one side. She recognizes his hair first, the dark brown curls piled on his head. Then there are his eyes, that exact shade of brown that matches her own. There are certain details of him that did not reach her in her dreams; the dimple on his left cheek, the way his eyebrows are thicker towards the center of his forehead, his perfectly round baby teeth.
“Mama, are you still asleep?” he says in a loud whisper. Relief floods through her. She is home. She has found him.
She turns to face the boy—her boy—tucking her left elbow behind her head.
“No.”
The details of this reality become sharper the longer she is awake.
“What can you make me for breakfast?” There is a slight lisp with the word ‘breakfast’ that she finds charming.
“Mm… what about banana pancakes?”
His grin is wide, and each perfect tooth is visible. Instead of answering he makes coyote yips and howls and launches himself out of her bedroom, presumably toward the kitchen. The walls of the bedroom she finds herself in are a deep navy blue. The curtains are cream-colored and thick, and a slightly different duvet covers the bed. A small cupboard in the corner is overflowing with board books and stuffed animals, and there is a framed set of handprints on the wall.
His name comes to her, then, and she is surprised she had not known it before: Paul.
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It is quiet. There are no shrieks, no tugs from a child begging for her attention. The shades are drawn and the clock reads 8:00 AM. This Naomi is not used to being alone, and she can’t remember the last time she slept in this late. She spreads out her arms and legs as wide as they can go, like she’s making a snow angel. She flexes each muscle and relaxes them each in turn. She laughs into the empty room, then jumps to standing.
She is alone; totally and blissfully alone. It is raining outside, and the apartment is dark despite the fact that it is morning. The shades are drawn. There is a shadowy mass of clothes piled high on the chair, and discreet hints of clutter throughout the room. Nail polish bottles are grouped together on the corner of the dresser, and a few books are piled on the bedside table.
She finds a record player after a quick scan of each room, and a collection of records that looks very much like the one she would want if she wasn’t afraid her toddler would destroy it. Upon further inspection she finds no sippy cups in the cupboards, no Legos scattered across linoleum. There are no mac and cheese boxes or apple sauce pouches in the pantry. When she opens the refrigerator there is white wine and Greek yogurt and a few take out containers.
She is alone, and it is such a rare thing that she laughs again just to hear the sound of her own laughter in a room filled with the sounds of no one else. She strips down to her underwear, drinks wine straight from the bottle, sings along to Led Zeppelin. The solitude is invigorating. She wants it to last forever.
Hours later, after she’s deep cleaned the kitchen and binge-watched trashy T.V., Naomi curls up on the couch. It is only in that moment that she begins to feel that there is something missing. More precisely, there is someone missing. While at first the isolation was liberating, it quickly loses its appeal. There is a tug behind her ribs, an absence.
Where is Paul?
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E.B. Sommer's work has been published with The Stygian Zine, Death Wish Poetry Magazine, and The Piker Press. She likes to invent stories on her porch, preferably with a caffeinated beverage at hand. www.ebsommer.com, Instagram: @e.b.sommer
