A man who got on at Kendall Square began to stare at him. The sergeant was "discomfited" by the strange man's interest in him; "it felt like an unnatural interest--a foreboding of something violent, or at least unpleasant." (It was the language of the story that made this recurrent dream seem more real to me than other dreams. It was a dream with a first-person narrator--a dream with a voice.)
The man on the subway started changing seats; he kept moving closer to my dad. When they were almost in physical contact with each other, and the subway was slowing down for the next stop, the stranger turned to my father and said, "Hi. I'm Bovary. Remember me?" Then the subway stopped at Central Square, where the bookworm got off, and the sergeant was once more on his way to Harvard Square.
I WAS TOLD THAT the fever part of scarlet fever abates within a week--usually within three to five days. I'm pretty sure that I was over the fever part when I asked Richard Abbott if he'd ever told me this story--perhaps at the onset of the rash, or during the sore-throat part, which began a couple of days before the rash. My tongue had been the color of a strawberry, but when I first spoke to Richard about this most vivid and recurrent dream, my tongue was a beefy dark red--more of a raspberry color--and the rash was starting to go away.
"I don't know this story, Bill," Richard told me. "This is the first time I've heard it."
"Oh."
"It sounds like a Grandpa Harry story to me," Richard said.
But when I asked my grandfather if he'd told me the Madame Bovary story, Grandpa Harry started his "Ah, well" routine, hemming and hawing his way in circles around the question. No, he "definitely didn't" tell me the story, my grandfather said. Yes, Harry had heard the story--"a secondhand version, if I recall correctly"--but he conveniently couldn't remember who'd told him. "It was Uncle Bob, maybe--perhaps it was Bob who told you, Bill." Then my grandfather felt my forehead, and mumbled words to the effect that my fever seemed to be gone. When he peered into my mouth, he announced: "That's still a pretty ugly-lookin' tongue, though I would say the rash is disappearin' a bit."
"It was too real to be a dream--at least, to begin with," I told Grandpa Harry.
"Ah, well--if you're good at imaginin' things, which I believe you are pretty good at, Bill, I would say that some dreams can seem very real," my grandfather hemmed and hawed.
"I'll ask Uncle Bob," I said.
Bob was always putting squash balls in my pockets, or in my shoes--or under my pillow. It was a game; when I found the balls, I gave them back. "Oh, I've been looking for that squash ball all over, Billy!" Bob would say. "I'm so glad you found it."
"What's Madame Bovary about?" I asked Uncle Bob. He'd come to see how I was recuperating from the scarlet fever, and I'd given him the squash ball I had found in the glass for my toothbrush--in the bathroom I shared with Grandpa Harry.
Nana Victoria "would rather die" than share a bathroom with him, Harry had told me, but I liked sharing a bathroom with my grandfather.
"Truth be told, I haven't actually read Madame Bovary, Billy," Uncle Bob told me; he peered into the hallway, outside my bedroom, checking to be sure that my mom (or my grandmother, or Aunt Muriel) wasn't within listening distance. Even though the coast was clear, Bob lowered his voice: "I believe it's about adultery, Billy--an unfaithful wife." I must have looked baffled, utterly uncomprehending, because Uncle Bob quickly said, "You should ask Richard what Madame Bovary is about--literature, you know, is Richard's department."
"It's a novel?" I asked.
"I don't think it's a true story," Uncle Bob answered. "But Richard would know."
"Or I could ask Miss Frost," I suggested.
"Uh-huh, you could--just don't say it was my idea," Uncle Bob said.
"I know a story," I started to say. "Maybe you told me."
"You mean the one about the guy reading Madame Bovary on a hundred toilets at the same time?" Bob cried. "I absolutely love that story!"
"Me, too," I said. "It's very funny!"
"Hilarious!" Uncle Bob declared. "No, I never told you that story, Billy--at least I don't remember telling you that story," he said quickly.
"Oh."
"Maybe your mom told you?" Uncle Bob asked. I must have given him an incredulous look, because Bob suddenly said, "Probably not."
"It's a dream I keep having, but someone must have told me first," I said.
"Dinner-party conversation, perhaps--one of those stories children overhear, when the adults think they've gone to bed or they can't possibly be listening," Uncle Bob said. While this was more credible than my mother being the source of the toilet-seat story, neither Bob nor I looked very convinced. "Not all mysteries are meant to be solved, Billy," he said to me, with more conviction.
It was shortly after he'd left when I discovered another squash ball, or the same squash ball, under my covers.
I knew perfectly well that my mother hadn't told me the Madame Bovary, multiple-toilet-seats story, but of course I asked her. "I never thought that story was the least bit funny," she said. "I wouldn't have had anything to do with telling you that story, Billy."
"Oh."
"Maybe Daddy told you--I asked him not to!" my mother said.