In my office, I couldn’t concentrate on my novel so I reread the scene in American Psycho where Paul Owen is murdered and again was appalled by the details of the crime—the newspapers covering the floor, the raincoat worn by Patrick Bateman to protect his suit, the blade of the ax splitting Paul’s head open, the spraying of blood and the hissing sounds a skull makes coming apart. The thing that scared me the most: What if there was no rage in this person haunting Midland County? What if he just serenely planned his crimes and carried them out methodically, his emotional level akin to pushing a shopping cart through a supermarket while crossing items off a list? There was no rationale for these crimes other than that whoever was committing them liked it.
I did try Aimee Light again. Again she didn’t pick up. Again I didn’t leave a message. I didn’t know what to say anymore, since I had now dreamt seeing her pull out of the Whole Foods parking lot and onto Ophelia Boulevard with Clayton by her side. That—at this point in the dream—had not happened on Saturday afternoon.
I did not see Robby when he came home from school, and he did not sit down to dinner with the family, preferring to eat alone in his bedroom while ostensibly starting his homework. Sarah, sitting with Jayne and me, seemed unaffected by the events of last night, and during the meal I figured out why: she was part of the dream.
I dressed in a suit for parent/teacher night. I looked responsible. I was a concerned adult who yearned for news about his child’s academic progress. The following is the dialogue I wrote for the bedroom scene that night, but which Jayne refused to play and rewrote.
“What should I wear?” I asked.
After a long pause. “I think a smile should be enough.”
“So I can go as the naked grinning idiot?”
Muttered, barely audible: “All you have to do is nod and smile for ten minutes in front of a few teachers and meet the principal. Can you handle that without freaking? Or pulling out a gun?”
Apologetically: “I’ll try.”
“Stop smirking.”
Jayne conferred with Marta about what time we would be returning home.
Jayne did not seem to realize how seriously I was taking things.
We took the Range Rover and drove to the school in silence except when Jayne told me that we were seeing Dr. Faheida tomorrow night. I refrained from asking why we weren’t going at our usual time on Wednesday, because in the dream it no longer mattered.
At Buckley, security guards were everywhere. They stood at the gates, inspecting cars with flashlights while checking names on their lists. At the valet parking, more security guards—some armed—insisted on seeing photo IDs. The entire student body of Buckley, from nursery school through twelfth grade, amounted only to six hundred students (each class held about forty kids) and tonight just the parents of the elementary children were invited, and it seemed as if they had all turned out. The campus was mobbed with neatly dressed young couples, and Jayne received the requisite stares. By the Starbucks cart that had been set up outside the library, we ran into Adam and Mimi Gardner, and once it became apparent that they were ignoring me and no one was going to mention last night, I realized that they were part of my dream as well.
The school was sleek and industrial, with large steel doors that loomed above you wherever you turned, and the entire campus was surrounded by an immense amount of foliage. Trees canopied the school—it was hidden in a forest. Within these woods were a series of block structures—rows of anonymous bungalows dotted with small slotlike windows which comprised the bulk of the classrooms. The architecture was so minimalist that it possessed an unnerving glamour. And it was all based on control, yet it wasn’t claustrophobic, even with all the elms and shrubs that enclosed the school’s grounds. It was comforting, even playful. It was an undeniably chic little school. The gymnasium was a soaring space where we sat on concrete bleachers and listened to the principal make a compact but contrived speech about efficiency and organization, about the linking of mind and spirit, about safety and challenge, about our children’s yearning for a greater sense of the unknown. The following lecture was given by a behavioral pediatrician who had made numerous TV appearances, a silver-haired, soft-spoken Canadian who at one point suggested a Bring Your Stuffed Animal to School Day. And after the desultory applause we went to brief meetings with the teachers. We were shown samples of Robby’s artwork (all moonscapes) and we were told what was positive (not a lot) and what needed improvement (I zoned out). The teacher who worked with Sarah on language skills and word recognition and counting and primary numbers explained that Buckley tended to students’ emotional needs as well as their educational needs and after observing that children are not immune to stress she suggested that we enroll both Sarah and Robby in a confidence-building seminar and we were handed a pamphlet filled with photos of garishly dressed puppets and tips on such relaxation techniques as how to master bubble-blowing (“steady breaths will produce a nice stream”) and a reading list of books about positive thinking, texts to help children find “the quiet on the inside.” When Jayne began protesting charmingly, we were told, “Ms. Dennis, children are often stressed not because they weren’t invited to the right birthday party or were threatened by a bully, but, well, because their parents are stressed too.” Jayne began protesting again, this time less charmingly, and was interrupted with “How well a parent copes with stress is indicative of how well a child will deal with it.” We didn’t know what to say to that, so the teacher added, “Did you know that eight and a half percent of all children under the age of ten tried to kill themselves last year?” which rendered me silent for the rest of the meetings. I overheard another teacher tell a concerned couple, “That could be the reason that your child may end up developing interpersonal difficulties,” and the couple was shown a drawing of a platypus their son had made and was told that an average platypus should look “less deranged.” At one point Jayne muttered softly, “I practice yoga,” and we read a disturbing essay Sarah had written called “I Wished I Was a Pigeon,” which reduced Jayne to tears, and I just stared mutely at the drawings of the Terby—there were dozens of them—swooping down on a house that resembled ours, angry and in full attack mode. Parents were handed complimentary “stress baskets,” which included, among other items, a book called A Weed Can Be Transformed into a Flower. These meetings had wounded me sufficiently. I needed a drink more badly than I ever had. The dream was cracked and I needed it to keep streaming. There was no recourse except to smile darkly at everyone.