In my dream, I’m striding through a sunlit room to a large stained glass window. The ocean glints in the distance, barely visible through the trees. The room is empty, redolent of floor polish, the walls painted soft butter-yellow. On one wall, a painted tree grows a riot of emerald leaves. This house is perfect, old and quaint, quirky and bright. I move through the rooms, comfortable, as if this is already my home. I imagine a child’s laughter, dolls and building blocks strewn in a playroom. The smell of garlicky spaghetti on the stove. The heady scents of jasmine and Mexican orange plants in bloom. I’m in the blue dress, glowing in shiny cobalt silk, but when I look down, a dark stain spreads across the fabric, swallowing all the color, seeping out across the room, turning everything black.
I awaken disoriented, unnerved. It takes me a minute to figure out where I am. In the dream, I was somewhere else. But where? And when? The water is running somewhere. A waterfall—no, the shower. I’m beneath the comforter. I’m not wearing any clothes. Jacob is whistling in the bathroom. A veil lifts from the sky as the sun rises.
The night climbs back into me. The restaurant, our wedding attire. Jacob carrying me into the bedroom. What we did afterward. My head throbs. Is this a hangover? The last time I drank too much and woke up naked in bed, I was an undergraduate in my dorm room. I think.
Jacob emerges from the bathroom, toweling his hair. “You’re up.” He looks even more handsome in the morning light, every muscle defined; the small mole where it has always been on his right shoulder.
“Barely. I was having a dream. Not about the dive, though. It was a good dream this time—”
“About us?” He sits on the bed and touches my cheek, leans forward to kiss me gently. He smells of toothpaste.
“I was in a house all painted yellow. In the blue dress, but then the stain ruined everything.”
“The tea stain.”
“Must be. But the house was beautiful.”
“So are you. Especially when you’ve just woken up.”
“I look a mess.” I reach up to touch my tangled hair, rub my eyes.
“A beautiful mess. A natural mess.”
I pull the covers up to my chest. “Could you pass me my robe? It’s in the closet.” I’m suddenly self-conscious.
He hands me the robe. “Breakfast?”
“We need to talk about what happened last night.”
His mouth tightens. “You regret what we did.”
“It’s not that. We moved a little fast.”
“We’re married,” he says sharply. “We’ve made love a thousand times.”
“I know it wasn’t the first time.”
“Did it feel like it was?”
“Not really.”
He looks at his hands for a minute, then seems to force a smile. “It was a great night.”
“It was,” I say. “I’m not saying anything was wrong. It was amazing.”
“But fast,” he says. “We can go slower next time.”
Next time. Something feels . . . off. As if there might have been a time when we thought, when I thought, there might not be a next time.
“The house in my dream was so vivid, like we were there. Like we wanted to live there. Or like we did live there.”
“Dreams can be like that,” he says gently. “Maybe you visited a house like that once.”
“Maybe,” I say.
He kisses my forehead. “I should go into town. We’re almost out of coffee. Don’t wander off before I get back.”
“If I do, I won’t go far.”
“Good.” He goes into his room. He’s whistling while he gets dressed. I wonder if he will move back into my room now. Our room.
While he’s gone, I slip into the bathroom to take a shower. Beneath the hot water, I work up a lather. The night with Jacob, the romantic dinner, what we did in the bedroom—did it all really happen? What about the house in my dream? The beauty, the comfort, and the hope I felt there—it seemed real, but then, so did recurring dreams I had as a child. I kept returning to the same treehouse made of blankets and pillows, as if that imaginary fort really existed. Could this yellow house be a figment of my imagination, appearing only in dreams? The dark stain spread across the scene almost as an afterthought, suggested by Jacob’s explanation of what happened to my blue dress.
I rinse off, pull aside the shower curtain, and grab a towel. There’s a dent in the bathroom door—a deep impression that I didn’t notice before. Almost as if something hit the door with great force. Or maybe it’s simply a flaw in the wood.
A headache pounds at my temples. I consider taking an aspirin, or an ibuprofen pill, but I discard the thought. I’d rather down a cup of strong coffee and take a long walk. First, I check through the photo albums in the living room again, but I discover no hint of the yellow house. Not that I expected to find one.
In my office, I sign into my email. More ads, news, and a message from Linny.