inception fic: i strive (4/5)
part one // part two // part three
She calls Arthur, but he doesn't answer his phone. Dom has been at home for a few days, which means his involvement in Arthur’s current job is over, and Arthur is probably in Taipei, or Antananarivo, or Bandar Seri Begawan.
On Saturday, Dom takes Philippa and James to a baseball game. Laure has flown home for a week, to put some affairs in order before she returns. "I need to be with you for now," she says to Mal, when Mal tries to convince her to stay in Lyon.
Mal shops for spaghetti, makes meatballs from turkey and lamb-her family's favorite meal neatly dovetailing with the one thing she knows best how to cook. She's just set the tomato sauce simmering on the stove when the doorbell chimes.
It's Arthur. "You rang?" he says.
"What are you doing here?" Mal asks.
"Your Arthur has responded to your summons."
"My Arthur," Mal says, rolling her eyes. "You're Dom's Arthur now."
Arthur slides his hands into his pockets. "You haven't asked for me in a very long time," he says.
****
"Stay for dinner," she tells him. She sets an extra plate, then sits across from him, watches as he turns up his sleeves, folding the cuffs back meticulously. When he's done, he looks up at her, and his face turns sheepish at her amusement. "Very presentable, Arthur," she says.
"Bite me," he says, and she laughs.
"And how was Beirut?" she asks. "Tell me everything you're allowed."
"I wasn't in Beirut."
"Just guessing," Mal says. "Where were you then? Bruges? Seogwipo? Caracas?"
"Boise," Arthur says.
"Wonderful," Mal breathes.
Arthur laughs. He hesitates before saying, "You know, you could-I've wanted to ask you for the longest time if you wanted some work."
"I'm done with dream-sharing," Mal says instinctively.
"It's rewarding. Not in every way, but-" He leans back in his chair. "Even you would find it challenging."
"Is this your soft sell?" Mal asks, her chin on her hand. She's missed Arthur. The satisfaction that burns in his eyes when he's allowed to demonstrate his competence.
"You were fantastic," Arthur says. He drops all pretense of nonchalance. "A session or two, tops, to get you up to speed, to put a gun in your hand, and you would be outpacing me by day four."
"And you are the very best."
Arthur smirks. "Remember who taught me the basics, back in the day. The foundation upon which my reputation now stands."
Mal looks down at the table. She fingers the mismatched silverware. "Do you ever think of Kit?" she asks.
She doesn't need to look up to know he shutters. "No," he lies, smoothly.
****
Arthur relaxes when Dom and the children come home, and it's only when she watches it happen-visible in his posture, in the sudden settling of his tapping fingers-that she realizes he was nervous with her.
He's really gotten very good.
"Arthur," Dom says, surprised. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm trying to talk Mal into running away with me," Arthur says. "Of course."
"It's not going very well," Mal says. She hugs James hello, kisses Philippa's cheek. She gets to her knees, taking a critical eye to her children's faces. "I think my rabbits have grown a little red from the sun."
James beams at her. "I ate a hot dog," he says.
"Lucky you," Mal says. She kisses him, too, at the corner of his pink mouth.
"Did I really burn, mommy?" Philippa asks.
"A little toasted, maybe," Mal says. "But I can fix that after dinner. Go wash up."
"We're having spaghetti," Arthur says. The children peer shyly at him, and Arthur shuffles his feet, submitting himself for inspection.
"You remember Uncle Arthur, don't you?" Dom says to the children.
"Bonsoir, Philippa," Arthur says solemnly. "Hello, James."
James curls a small fist in Mal's shirt, and Philippa bumps her hip against Mal's body, turning in toward her warmth. Philippa smiles shyly at Arthur, then whispers to Mal, "Mommy, can I wash my hands now?"
"Of course, sweet." She picks James up, takes Philippa's hand, allows her daughter to tug her away.
"I'm sorry," she hears Dom say. "They've had a long day."
"God, they've gotten so big," Arthur says.
"Give them some time to warm up to you," Dom says.
"I honestly don't think I'd have recognized them if I passed them on the street."
It jolts her. She squeezes Philippa's hand, memorizes the shape of it in hers, the little scar that runs along Philippa's index finger from where she was bitten by a neighbor's dog. She calls up the exact shade of James' hair, that sunny blond, and matches it to the boy in her arms.
"Mommy," Philippa says. She twists out of Mal's grip. "Your hand is sweaty."
****
Dom puts the children to bed after spaghetti, after Mal brings them tall cups filled to the brim with little scoops of ice cream, and long-stemmed spoons.
"What a day for you," Arthur had said to them, and James just nodded in agreement. Philippa leaned her head against Mal's hip, looked up at her, communicating in silence, until Mal laughed and went to bring another spoon for Arthur.
They ask for Dom tonight, like they have for many nights. She nurtures a small jealousy in her heart.
When she comes back to the kitchen after saying good night, Arthur has already cleared the table, stacked dishes neatly in the sink. His sleeves are pushed further up his arms, messily, water steaming from the faucet.
Mal takes her time, putting away leftovers. Replacing ice cream lids and portioning away pasta.
"You seem better," Arthur says.
"Do I?" She laughs and wonders, idly, who had bought butter pecan ice cream. Why anyone would buy such a flavor.
"Are you?" he asks.
Mal opens the refrigerator. She stares at the jam-packed contents, a Tupperware in her hand. There's no place for it. She narrows her eyes. "I'm myself again," she says, a bit sing-song.
"Clearly," Arthur says, with that tone in which the listener can hear whatever they like: sincerity, sarcasm, anything in between.
She hears something new. How you've changed, she thinks. How different this world is from what it was yesterday. Heady with uncertainty, she swings the refrigerator door closed, drops the Tupperware onto the floor.
She looks at Arthur's back. The lissome strength of his shoulders, his narrow waist, the proportions of him accentuated by the black back of his vest.
She goes to him and slides her arms around that waist. She sinks her face into his neck, turns up and kisses his jaw. She can feel it, ticcing.
"Stop," he says.
She takes her lips from his skin, her embrace growing friendly. She props her chin on his shoulder.
"You're mocking me," he says.
It wasn't a joke, exactly. She colors. "No."
"I don't understand." He keeps his voice lowered. "Why did you do that?"
Because, she thinks. You haven't moved away. Because here you are, still leaning back into me. Because your fingers are almost familiar, and there are soap bubbles disappearing into thin air on the backs of your hands. "God," she says, pulling away. She fidgets with the pockets of her jeans. "This night has taken such a turn for the strange."
****
They move to the living room, where Dom joins them after the children have fallen asleep. "Look at you," she says to Dom.
"Why?" he asks, settling next to her. He pushes up, under her arm, resting his head on her shoulder.
"You look at ease," Arthur says to Dom. "It's startling." He's taken up residence in the armchair across from the sofa she shares with Dom. It's not comfortable, she knows. The cushions are too firm.
"Well, my kids are sound asleep, with full stomachs. My wife’s indulging my desire for her proximity, and my best friend has decided to stay despite the time for what will be, I'm sure, hours of stimulating conversation."
"You have to pick one," Mal chides. "A single hour of stimulating conversation or many of inanity."
"Greedy," Arthur says.
Dom smiles. He turns his face into her body, breathes deep. He looks up, and his expression sends a flood of feeling through Mal's insides. "Thank you for dinner," he says.
She feels entirely loved, and guilt, like a leavened dough, rises in the warmth.
"Maybe I should go," Arthur says. "It's getting late."
"No," Dom says. "Stay a little while longer. I never get to see you in my house."
"What you don't know is that I'm here all the time," Arthur tries to joke, but it comes out feeble.
"Yes, Arthur," Mal says. "Stay."
He looks up at that. He's too collected to start, but his eyes hold hers for just a second, before they slip away, to the neutral space somewhere above her head. "Ten minutes," he says.
She wants to tell him to relax. That she won't tell Dom until after Arthur has left. That Dom tonight is too glad, too secure to ruin. Let him have another hour.
"Did you hear," she says. "The Yo Gabba Gabba tour will be in town next month."
"I hadn't heard," Arthur says.
"Everyone's talking about it," Dom says.
"Everyone with any cachet, anyway," Mal says.
"Oh, Yo Gabba Gabba," Arthur says. "I thought you said something sensible. Of course, I remember hearing about that now." He keeps his face so straight. No sign of a smile, smartly brushing a piece of imagined-lint off his knee. He raises an eyebrow. "What is that? I picture rapping toads."
Dom laughs. He's so happy.
****
They've drifted deep into the night by the time Arthur leaves. Her body operating without the aid of her mind, all slow, floating movements enacted by muscle memory. Dom dozes for minutes, here and there, wakes up silently, absorbing the conversation before making only a vaguely related comment and falling back asleep.
"I should go," Arthur says.
Mal touches Dom's face. "Dom," she says. "Arthur is going."
He blinks. His eyes, she thinks. "I'm up," he says.
She smoothes his eyebrows. "Can I talk to Arthur for a moment, just he and I?"
Dom sits up. He stares at the floor, extricating himself from sleep. "Yes, of course. I'll-I don't know. I'll get some water."
Arthur stands when Dom stands. His jacket over his arm.
Mal goes to Arthur, adjusts his tie. He watches her do it, as stiff and wary as she's ever seen him. Her heart a little gasp of sadness. "I'm sorry, Arthur," she says.
"Okay," he says.
She looks at him, her hands dropping to her sides.
He lets out a short sigh, glances back toward the door Dom had disappeared through. "I'm not angry. I know it seems that way, but-" he says. "I'm lost."
"Fair," she says.
He softens, touches her elbow. "Dom's still worried about you, you know. You haven't been the same since your time together in Limbo."
"Limbo," Mal says. "It's such a ridiculous-sounding word."
"You should talk to him. He's not the same either."
"Yes, Arthur," she says, appeasingly.
He rolls his eyes. "A wolf in sheep's clothing is what you are right now."
She laughs, quietly, and he turns to collect his shoes, abandoned somewhere near the door. Padding along in forest green socks, and it moves her, the sight of them-their grey toes, the little hole over his ankle.
He pulls Alden derbies over his feet, the leather gleaming softly. She and Dom had had them restored for Arthur on his birthday. "They'll last you a lifetime," Dom had said, an arm around her waist.
Arthur ties his laces. "I think of Kit a lot," he says, suddenly. "More, lately." He hides his face from her. "I should have been better prepared, for her. I could have been honest about how much I admired her. How I missed her when she was away. I should have known how much she would weigh on my mind and my heart, and done much more and much better."
"Arthur," she says.
He looks up, still and grave. "And you?" he asks. "Are you very much of her same mold?"
"No," Dom says before she can answer, and Mal turns to see him standing there in the doorway. The vision of him swimming, and made small by the tears she finds are filling her eyes.
****
Here is a truth Mal is ashamed of:
No. It's too terrible to say.
****
Her father had been the rare academic whose passion had sincerely lain in teaching, rather than the research, the glory that came with breaking discoveries and trumpeted publications. She supposes, though, that the interdisciplinary nature of what he called the Creation project made up for the time he spent away from his students.
When she was a senior, soon-to-be accepting her undergraduate degree, Miles had asked her, "And now what? Will you continue to ascend the white tower of academia? Or has the world of regular hours and a competitive salary beckoned?"
"I'm not sure," she'd said.
"What do you want to do with your life, my girl?" He'd persevered, despite her obvious discomfort. "It's my duty as your father to ask you these questions."
"I want to solve problems," she'd said.
"Which? What kind?"
"All of them," and she'd smiled, expansive, over at him.
****
She asks Dominic to come with her to take Philippa to school and James to day care. He doesn't look surprised. He just comes.
She kisses their dear faces. She wipes a smudge of dirt that had already found its way onto James' cheek. As Dom pulls out of the parking lot, she says, "I have something to tell you."
He waits. She's twisting the fabric of her skirt in her hands, and Dom puts one of his over hers, stilling them.
"I kissed Arthur last night."
His grip tightens for a moment. He turns the steering wheel in a smooth motion with the palm of one hand, pulls over onto a side street-Willow Glen, she notes, the name of the neighborhood seeming very important-and Mal feels sick. "Why?" he asks.
"I don't know," she says.
"I need you to know." His voice grim.
She tears her hands from his. She looks out the window. "I love you, you know. Only you."
He gets out of the car and the slam of the door closing jolts her. She's shaking.
He comes around to her side of the car. He opens the door. He cups her face with his big hands and kisses her. "I love you," he says, fiercely. "Tell me why. Be honest. More than anything, honest." His heated hands, his brows set in a straight line.
"Oh god," she says. The sky is a brilliant blue, the far away hills a remarkable, enhanced green. It-it isn't right, and she clutches at Dom, tries to stand, tries to move. "We have to wake up," she says. --I have to wake up. My god, my life.
Her French slipping away from her memory like a language she had lost long ago.
"We're awake, Mallorie." Dom is breathing her air.
"We're not." She closes her eyes to force away the constructed world she faces, the dizziness of it. She can hear him, reaching into his pocket, taking out the scrimshaw lighter there, imagine the exact angle he holds it at. Lid clinking open, and then the flint striking, once, twice, the quiet hiss of flame.
"It caught," he says, as if it was proof. As if his totem could know better than she did.
"I'm not sure of anything anymore," she says, an admission pulled out of her throat, piece by piece.
"Be sure of me." His lips. His lashes. The touch of them a thing she knows with more certainty than she has of the existence of the moon, its craters never a comfort.
****
She had found Kit, deep, deep, in a crevice of a hole down to the center of the earth. A shaft of light reaching down to illuminate her in its one particular way.
"Aren't you lonely?" Mal had asked, to this old woman with straight eyebrows. A familiar shape to her nose.
"I know you," Kit had said.
They climbed a kick up to the third level of Kit’s consciousness, where they found water and sand that turned to rock. A steep slope, and at the top a green meadow, with a tent of netting. "You look so young," Kit had said.
The second, through a door onto a roof, overlooking a city of neon and steel. "Mal. Where are you taking me?"
The first, laughing. "Never doubt the mind's capacity for self-deception." Kit looked around, at the intimate red velvet of the booths of a steakhouse. Her brother's wallet on the table, his keys, a half-dollar. She put it up on its edge, sent it spinning, watched it turn for second upon second. She smiled, looking at Mal. "It should fall, shouldn't it?" Then stood up, went running for the door, toward a cliff, her limbs pumping, ready to take flight. She called over her shoulder, to Mal, "And you're sure the next one is the last? The real, true one?"
The entire time, a distraction in the dream. An almost presence in the breath of the wind, in the step of her feet, in the taste of the air in her mouth. It switches her survival instincts on, every one, burst after burst of crackling fire.
"We'll see," Mal said. "Now jump."
They woke up in a hospital, and Mal felt her husband's touch on her stomach. Too distracted to really note the way Kit looked at her own hands, as if they were alien objects. When Kit locked herself behind the door, Mal was furious, and terrified. A panic rising.
"Say what you want to say," Kit had said.
--This world is yours. Your dream to manipulate, Mal said, desperate to convince her. --Your projections, coming to expel us. To tear at Arthur again. Could you watch all of us die? Is this the end you want to witness? I won't come back. I won't share your dreams anymore, I swear upon every life. This is how you'll say good-bye? Turn them back. Come out, and turn your projections back.
But still the sound of marching boots.
****
"Tell me again," he says, days later. His brow furrowed, as if ready to reason.
"I've submitted already to a written exam," Mal says, smiling half-heartedly. "Yet still more tests?"
"This isn't a test," Dom says. "Please, tell me again."
Mal leans toward him, in the booth of their favorite restaurant. She holds Dom's hand. "You look at me like you think I'm crazy."
"Aren't you?"
"Dom!"
He laughs, shaky, and Mal smiles, too. A pinprick of light.
"I'm beginning to wonder about other possibilities," she says.
"You don't think that you and I woke up to a dream within a dream?"
"I still support that theory," Mal says. "I'm in its corner."
He nods. "I like when you use sports metaphors."
She pinches the inside of his elbow, rolls her eyes at the injured face he makes at her. "Take me seriously," she says.
He sobers, so fast it's startling. "I've always. I will always."
She can feel herself blushing. The heat down her collar. She takes a long drink of water, looks away, touching the back of her neck. "Dominic. What if I never woke up from the first time that I went down, the time I went to find Kit? What if I'm still lying in some Pentagon facility and you are being forced to do terrible things, or are on the run, or in jail, and the whole time, my stomach swelling? What if Philippa is yet to be born?"
"Mallorie." He struggles; she can see him holding back expletives, the strain around his mouth. She's glad. Every 'fuck', 'shit', 'goddamnit' a hard jar to her nerves. "That's a lot of what-if's," he says.
She lets go of his hand.
"And what about me?" Dom asks. Staring into the little candle flickering on their table. "The me here across from you."
Mal straightens her silverware, in motions unshaken and graceful. "It's romantic, isn't it?" she asks lightly. "To say you are too good to be true."
A smile at his lips, a touch of bitter. "So it's me, this time, who might be your creation."
She laughs. "Turnabout."
"Mallorie-" He stops.
Mal is cold. She wishes for his jacket, draped over her shoulders.
Dom picks up the glassed candle. He turns it in his palms, the flame sputtering. "Sometimes I think about what I would have done, if you had asked me to stay in our dream together. If you had asked me to love you enough to forget all my doubts."
"And?" Mal asks.
He sets the little light down. He grips her hand, his palm too-hot. "I would have said yes. If you’d asked." He blows the candle out.
She is greedy of him, she realizes. So greedy she questions her goodness. "Dominic. Please understand. Please. One way or another, this world is false."
"Let me ask you something," he says.
****
--I'd like to take a trip," she tells her mother over the weekend as they drive home from the community plot her mother has begun to work. --But Dominic won't leave the children."
--I'll stay with them. Let him know they'll be well cared for.
Mal traces a pattern on the car window. --It'll be harder than that, she says. --He's too much of a father to decide to be away from them.
--And you are too much of a mother, Laure says.
Mal rolls down the window. The breeze stealing the air from her lungs. --Yes, she says. --Too much to be away for long.
It’s surprising, she thinks. How little she has cried. Just the undercurrent, ready to swallow her up.
****
They fight, many times, and it's only now, when she has reached a depth of despair at his lack of faith that things have escalated.
"Please," Dom says. "Mallorie, please. Our children are real. How could you doubt them?" He's anguished.
"Dominic," she says. "We can't be chained here. You must be an actual father. I love them, too, believe me, but we're only practicing here." Her heart run through a shredder, divided into this, which she will keep, and that, which she cannot.
"Don't do this. Don’t leave me here without you," Dominic says. "Put the knife down."
"You don’t have to be scared," she says. “This is the only way.”
She hears the unlocking of the door. The turning of the knob, and then voices: her mother, whose flight was to land later this afternoon. The sound of her children, chattering to their grandmother. It's too late to hide the knife, but she turns, quickly, lets it hang loose at her side, and she can see Dom, in the sheen of the refrigerator, falling back against the counter, shoulders collapsing.
"Mommy," Philippa says.
"I arrived early," her mother says. "And thought I'd pick up the children on my way home."
"We rode in a taxi," James says.
Philippa has gone silent. Ever the most attenuated to Mal's mood.
Laure pauses. She puts a hand against the side of the refrigerator, taking measure of the room. “What's wrong?"
Dom lifts his head. "Nothing," he says. "Everything is fine." He claps his hands. "Come on, kids. Let's get your shoes off." He leads James away. "Philippa," he says.
Her mother looks troubled. Her hair swept back with a scarf, gray where her roots are showing. "Mallorie," she says. "Why are you holding a knife?"
Mal can only watch the door through which her children had went. She can't stand to look at them. She cannot stand to see them gone.
Her mother comes close to her. She takes the knife from Mal's rigid grasp.
"You aren't real, Maman," Mallorie says. --I like to imagine you're this gentle, maybe.
Laure's mouth goes rigid. She points. "You are a stronger woman than this, Mallorie." Her English hard.
"None of this is real," Mallorie says. It's the simplest way she can state it.
"Why are you so certain?"
Mallorie, she counts the tile on the floor. A rebellion in her mind, a little coup. "I just know. I know."
Her mother sighs. She slides the knife back into the butcher block. "Be resolute," she says. "You are a person who needs no luck. Too passionate to wear this world like a loose garment."
You don't understand, Mal thinks. She remembers the look on Philippa's face. The way the little girl's glance had bounced off the knife, repelled by its magnetic force.
This cannot be my life.
****
She dreams of Kit. This woman, her friend, whom she had known for less than a year, who had cut words into an untouched expanse, there, in her heart. "Some people," Kit had said, "You know were meant for you."
They're sitting in a church. The stained glass windows turning white light into so many shards of color. "I never forgave you," Mal says.
Kit squeezes her hand. "You should run,” she says.
The sound of many boots whittles down behind Mal as she sprints, until there is only the slap of two, a man, dogged. Inexorable.
She is half over a wall, her feet in the air, when a hand closes around her ankle, and she screams. She calls on a god.
Yanked back, dragged over exposed brick, until she is clamped between someone's arms, her name being shouted in an increasingly familiar voice. "Mallorie!"
She opens her eyes to see Dom. His face is different. Younger, and smooth. Lines from when he smiles pale against his deep tan.
He's frowning. He brushes the curls away from her forehead, holds them in place with gentled hands. "You're sleeping," he says. "I’ve been waiting for you for so long. Please," he says, begging. He laughs, a little, through his tears. "I need you."
She wakes, gasping, in the hotel room she had reserved for their anniversary. She fumbles for the lamp but knocks it onto the floor instead: the satisfying crack of it, the porcelain splinters.
One must always have a plan in place.
****
The first thing, the very first thing he says to her when he finds her outside along the ledge is this: "You look cold."
He might be a projection-a pale imitation of the man she knows and loves-but he is still an imitation who asks her to put on a coat. Who looks at her with a love just this side of reverent.
Will he love me so much when I wake. Will it have faded.
She cannot risk leaving him behind. “Join me,” she says.
****
People say that time slows down when you are faced with death. In the immediacy of a threat to your life, the seconds tick by slower, like a mercy extended.
It's a nice thought. Instead, what happens is that your mind, usually discerning in what it chooses to record into the bank of your life, blows open.
It's something Mal remembers, falling.
Dom believed that she was absolutely certain in her conviction. It's true-she was certain enough to plan, and, in the end, enough to jump-but it didn't mean she had not the slightest of doubts.
To those I am leaving behind, she thinks, unhurried. If my death is truly a death. To the people I pray are waiting for me when I wake:
For Maman, who taught her daughters to shrug away what does not fit;
For James, who is young and will lack for nothing;
For Arthur, who deserves to know why:
For Dominic, who is not following me down. Who is beautiful, and right in his intentions. Whose good morning I will hear, at any cost;
And for Philippa, whom Mal had climbed into bed with the night before.
She went from sleeping to awake in the blink of an eye when Mal pulled her close, and whispered her name. "Did you know," Mal said. "That from the very second you were born, I loved the presence of you. Before then, even. You are the best daughter. Already you are kind, and generous, and strong. You see everything, and that takes courage, to keep your eyes open so."
Philippa had only listened, all sleepy warmth. A clear-eyed gaze. Her little hand on Mal's collarbone.
"I admire you very much," Mal said. She blinked away tears. "And someday-someday, you may discover that the things you carry, the person you have become is not quite enough. That you are not infinitely capable. And then you will have to be discerning, and brave, to face those demands you may not be able to meet. To take the action you can." She kissed her daughter, words torn from a dark, damp place. "Be very, very brave.”
--My little girl.
Mal flies. She waits, to break awake. There is only a little fear, and even that she tramples underfoot.
Coda
She calls Arthur, but he doesn't answer his phone. Dom has been at home for a few days, which means his involvement in Arthur’s current job is over, and Arthur is probably in Taipei, or Antananarivo, or Bandar Seri Begawan.
On Saturday, Dom takes Philippa and James to a baseball game. Laure has flown home for a week, to put some affairs in order before she returns. "I need to be with you for now," she says to Mal, when Mal tries to convince her to stay in Lyon.
Mal shops for spaghetti, makes meatballs from turkey and lamb-her family's favorite meal neatly dovetailing with the one thing she knows best how to cook. She's just set the tomato sauce simmering on the stove when the doorbell chimes.
It's Arthur. "You rang?" he says.
"What are you doing here?" Mal asks.
"Your Arthur has responded to your summons."
"My Arthur," Mal says, rolling her eyes. "You're Dom's Arthur now."
Arthur slides his hands into his pockets. "You haven't asked for me in a very long time," he says.
****
"Stay for dinner," she tells him. She sets an extra plate, then sits across from him, watches as he turns up his sleeves, folding the cuffs back meticulously. When he's done, he looks up at her, and his face turns sheepish at her amusement. "Very presentable, Arthur," she says.
"Bite me," he says, and she laughs.
"And how was Beirut?" she asks. "Tell me everything you're allowed."
"I wasn't in Beirut."
"Just guessing," Mal says. "Where were you then? Bruges? Seogwipo? Caracas?"
"Boise," Arthur says.
"Wonderful," Mal breathes.
Arthur laughs. He hesitates before saying, "You know, you could-I've wanted to ask you for the longest time if you wanted some work."
"I'm done with dream-sharing," Mal says instinctively.
"It's rewarding. Not in every way, but-" He leans back in his chair. "Even you would find it challenging."
"Is this your soft sell?" Mal asks, her chin on her hand. She's missed Arthur. The satisfaction that burns in his eyes when he's allowed to demonstrate his competence.
"You were fantastic," Arthur says. He drops all pretense of nonchalance. "A session or two, tops, to get you up to speed, to put a gun in your hand, and you would be outpacing me by day four."
"And you are the very best."
Arthur smirks. "Remember who taught me the basics, back in the day. The foundation upon which my reputation now stands."
Mal looks down at the table. She fingers the mismatched silverware. "Do you ever think of Kit?" she asks.
She doesn't need to look up to know he shutters. "No," he lies, smoothly.
****
Arthur relaxes when Dom and the children come home, and it's only when she watches it happen-visible in his posture, in the sudden settling of his tapping fingers-that she realizes he was nervous with her.
He's really gotten very good.
"Arthur," Dom says, surprised. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm trying to talk Mal into running away with me," Arthur says. "Of course."
"It's not going very well," Mal says. She hugs James hello, kisses Philippa's cheek. She gets to her knees, taking a critical eye to her children's faces. "I think my rabbits have grown a little red from the sun."
James beams at her. "I ate a hot dog," he says.
"Lucky you," Mal says. She kisses him, too, at the corner of his pink mouth.
"Did I really burn, mommy?" Philippa asks.
"A little toasted, maybe," Mal says. "But I can fix that after dinner. Go wash up."
"We're having spaghetti," Arthur says. The children peer shyly at him, and Arthur shuffles his feet, submitting himself for inspection.
"You remember Uncle Arthur, don't you?" Dom says to the children.
"Bonsoir, Philippa," Arthur says solemnly. "Hello, James."
James curls a small fist in Mal's shirt, and Philippa bumps her hip against Mal's body, turning in toward her warmth. Philippa smiles shyly at Arthur, then whispers to Mal, "Mommy, can I wash my hands now?"
"Of course, sweet." She picks James up, takes Philippa's hand, allows her daughter to tug her away.
"I'm sorry," she hears Dom say. "They've had a long day."
"God, they've gotten so big," Arthur says.
"Give them some time to warm up to you," Dom says.
"I honestly don't think I'd have recognized them if I passed them on the street."
It jolts her. She squeezes Philippa's hand, memorizes the shape of it in hers, the little scar that runs along Philippa's index finger from where she was bitten by a neighbor's dog. She calls up the exact shade of James' hair, that sunny blond, and matches it to the boy in her arms.
"Mommy," Philippa says. She twists out of Mal's grip. "Your hand is sweaty."
****
Dom puts the children to bed after spaghetti, after Mal brings them tall cups filled to the brim with little scoops of ice cream, and long-stemmed spoons.
"What a day for you," Arthur had said to them, and James just nodded in agreement. Philippa leaned her head against Mal's hip, looked up at her, communicating in silence, until Mal laughed and went to bring another spoon for Arthur.
They ask for Dom tonight, like they have for many nights. She nurtures a small jealousy in her heart.
When she comes back to the kitchen after saying good night, Arthur has already cleared the table, stacked dishes neatly in the sink. His sleeves are pushed further up his arms, messily, water steaming from the faucet.
Mal takes her time, putting away leftovers. Replacing ice cream lids and portioning away pasta.
"You seem better," Arthur says.
"Do I?" She laughs and wonders, idly, who had bought butter pecan ice cream. Why anyone would buy such a flavor.
"Are you?" he asks.
Mal opens the refrigerator. She stares at the jam-packed contents, a Tupperware in her hand. There's no place for it. She narrows her eyes. "I'm myself again," she says, a bit sing-song.
"Clearly," Arthur says, with that tone in which the listener can hear whatever they like: sincerity, sarcasm, anything in between.
She hears something new. How you've changed, she thinks. How different this world is from what it was yesterday. Heady with uncertainty, she swings the refrigerator door closed, drops the Tupperware onto the floor.
She looks at Arthur's back. The lissome strength of his shoulders, his narrow waist, the proportions of him accentuated by the black back of his vest.
She goes to him and slides her arms around that waist. She sinks her face into his neck, turns up and kisses his jaw. She can feel it, ticcing.
"Stop," he says.
She takes her lips from his skin, her embrace growing friendly. She props her chin on his shoulder.
"You're mocking me," he says.
It wasn't a joke, exactly. She colors. "No."
"I don't understand." He keeps his voice lowered. "Why did you do that?"
Because, she thinks. You haven't moved away. Because here you are, still leaning back into me. Because your fingers are almost familiar, and there are soap bubbles disappearing into thin air on the backs of your hands. "God," she says, pulling away. She fidgets with the pockets of her jeans. "This night has taken such a turn for the strange."
****
They move to the living room, where Dom joins them after the children have fallen asleep. "Look at you," she says to Dom.
"Why?" he asks, settling next to her. He pushes up, under her arm, resting his head on her shoulder.
"You look at ease," Arthur says to Dom. "It's startling." He's taken up residence in the armchair across from the sofa she shares with Dom. It's not comfortable, she knows. The cushions are too firm.
"Well, my kids are sound asleep, with full stomachs. My wife’s indulging my desire for her proximity, and my best friend has decided to stay despite the time for what will be, I'm sure, hours of stimulating conversation."
"You have to pick one," Mal chides. "A single hour of stimulating conversation or many of inanity."
"Greedy," Arthur says.
Dom smiles. He turns his face into her body, breathes deep. He looks up, and his expression sends a flood of feeling through Mal's insides. "Thank you for dinner," he says.
She feels entirely loved, and guilt, like a leavened dough, rises in the warmth.
"Maybe I should go," Arthur says. "It's getting late."
"No," Dom says. "Stay a little while longer. I never get to see you in my house."
"What you don't know is that I'm here all the time," Arthur tries to joke, but it comes out feeble.
"Yes, Arthur," Mal says. "Stay."
He looks up at that. He's too collected to start, but his eyes hold hers for just a second, before they slip away, to the neutral space somewhere above her head. "Ten minutes," he says.
She wants to tell him to relax. That she won't tell Dom until after Arthur has left. That Dom tonight is too glad, too secure to ruin. Let him have another hour.
"Did you hear," she says. "The Yo Gabba Gabba tour will be in town next month."
"I hadn't heard," Arthur says.
"Everyone's talking about it," Dom says.
"Everyone with any cachet, anyway," Mal says.
"Oh, Yo Gabba Gabba," Arthur says. "I thought you said something sensible. Of course, I remember hearing about that now." He keeps his face so straight. No sign of a smile, smartly brushing a piece of imagined-lint off his knee. He raises an eyebrow. "What is that? I picture rapping toads."
Dom laughs. He's so happy.
****
They've drifted deep into the night by the time Arthur leaves. Her body operating without the aid of her mind, all slow, floating movements enacted by muscle memory. Dom dozes for minutes, here and there, wakes up silently, absorbing the conversation before making only a vaguely related comment and falling back asleep.
"I should go," Arthur says.
Mal touches Dom's face. "Dom," she says. "Arthur is going."
He blinks. His eyes, she thinks. "I'm up," he says.
She smoothes his eyebrows. "Can I talk to Arthur for a moment, just he and I?"
Dom sits up. He stares at the floor, extricating himself from sleep. "Yes, of course. I'll-I don't know. I'll get some water."
Arthur stands when Dom stands. His jacket over his arm.
Mal goes to Arthur, adjusts his tie. He watches her do it, as stiff and wary as she's ever seen him. Her heart a little gasp of sadness. "I'm sorry, Arthur," she says.
"Okay," he says.
She looks at him, her hands dropping to her sides.
He lets out a short sigh, glances back toward the door Dom had disappeared through. "I'm not angry. I know it seems that way, but-" he says. "I'm lost."
"Fair," she says.
He softens, touches her elbow. "Dom's still worried about you, you know. You haven't been the same since your time together in Limbo."
"Limbo," Mal says. "It's such a ridiculous-sounding word."
"You should talk to him. He's not the same either."
"Yes, Arthur," she says, appeasingly.
He rolls his eyes. "A wolf in sheep's clothing is what you are right now."
She laughs, quietly, and he turns to collect his shoes, abandoned somewhere near the door. Padding along in forest green socks, and it moves her, the sight of them-their grey toes, the little hole over his ankle.
He pulls Alden derbies over his feet, the leather gleaming softly. She and Dom had had them restored for Arthur on his birthday. "They'll last you a lifetime," Dom had said, an arm around her waist.
Arthur ties his laces. "I think of Kit a lot," he says, suddenly. "More, lately." He hides his face from her. "I should have been better prepared, for her. I could have been honest about how much I admired her. How I missed her when she was away. I should have known how much she would weigh on my mind and my heart, and done much more and much better."
"Arthur," she says.
He looks up, still and grave. "And you?" he asks. "Are you very much of her same mold?"
"No," Dom says before she can answer, and Mal turns to see him standing there in the doorway. The vision of him swimming, and made small by the tears she finds are filling her eyes.
****
Here is a truth Mal is ashamed of:
No. It's too terrible to say.
****
Her father had been the rare academic whose passion had sincerely lain in teaching, rather than the research, the glory that came with breaking discoveries and trumpeted publications. She supposes, though, that the interdisciplinary nature of what he called the Creation project made up for the time he spent away from his students.
When she was a senior, soon-to-be accepting her undergraduate degree, Miles had asked her, "And now what? Will you continue to ascend the white tower of academia? Or has the world of regular hours and a competitive salary beckoned?"
"I'm not sure," she'd said.
"What do you want to do with your life, my girl?" He'd persevered, despite her obvious discomfort. "It's my duty as your father to ask you these questions."
"I want to solve problems," she'd said.
"Which? What kind?"
"All of them," and she'd smiled, expansive, over at him.
****
She asks Dominic to come with her to take Philippa to school and James to day care. He doesn't look surprised. He just comes.
She kisses their dear faces. She wipes a smudge of dirt that had already found its way onto James' cheek. As Dom pulls out of the parking lot, she says, "I have something to tell you."
He waits. She's twisting the fabric of her skirt in her hands, and Dom puts one of his over hers, stilling them.
"I kissed Arthur last night."
His grip tightens for a moment. He turns the steering wheel in a smooth motion with the palm of one hand, pulls over onto a side street-Willow Glen, she notes, the name of the neighborhood seeming very important-and Mal feels sick. "Why?" he asks.
"I don't know," she says.
"I need you to know." His voice grim.
She tears her hands from his. She looks out the window. "I love you, you know. Only you."
He gets out of the car and the slam of the door closing jolts her. She's shaking.
He comes around to her side of the car. He opens the door. He cups her face with his big hands and kisses her. "I love you," he says, fiercely. "Tell me why. Be honest. More than anything, honest." His heated hands, his brows set in a straight line.
"Oh god," she says. The sky is a brilliant blue, the far away hills a remarkable, enhanced green. It-it isn't right, and she clutches at Dom, tries to stand, tries to move. "We have to wake up," she says. --I have to wake up. My god, my life.
Her French slipping away from her memory like a language she had lost long ago.
"We're awake, Mallorie." Dom is breathing her air.
"We're not." She closes her eyes to force away the constructed world she faces, the dizziness of it. She can hear him, reaching into his pocket, taking out the scrimshaw lighter there, imagine the exact angle he holds it at. Lid clinking open, and then the flint striking, once, twice, the quiet hiss of flame.
"It caught," he says, as if it was proof. As if his totem could know better than she did.
"I'm not sure of anything anymore," she says, an admission pulled out of her throat, piece by piece.
"Be sure of me." His lips. His lashes. The touch of them a thing she knows with more certainty than she has of the existence of the moon, its craters never a comfort.
****
She had found Kit, deep, deep, in a crevice of a hole down to the center of the earth. A shaft of light reaching down to illuminate her in its one particular way.
"Aren't you lonely?" Mal had asked, to this old woman with straight eyebrows. A familiar shape to her nose.
"I know you," Kit had said.
They climbed a kick up to the third level of Kit’s consciousness, where they found water and sand that turned to rock. A steep slope, and at the top a green meadow, with a tent of netting. "You look so young," Kit had said.
The second, through a door onto a roof, overlooking a city of neon and steel. "Mal. Where are you taking me?"
The first, laughing. "Never doubt the mind's capacity for self-deception." Kit looked around, at the intimate red velvet of the booths of a steakhouse. Her brother's wallet on the table, his keys, a half-dollar. She put it up on its edge, sent it spinning, watched it turn for second upon second. She smiled, looking at Mal. "It should fall, shouldn't it?" Then stood up, went running for the door, toward a cliff, her limbs pumping, ready to take flight. She called over her shoulder, to Mal, "And you're sure the next one is the last? The real, true one?"
The entire time, a distraction in the dream. An almost presence in the breath of the wind, in the step of her feet, in the taste of the air in her mouth. It switches her survival instincts on, every one, burst after burst of crackling fire.
"We'll see," Mal said. "Now jump."
They woke up in a hospital, and Mal felt her husband's touch on her stomach. Too distracted to really note the way Kit looked at her own hands, as if they were alien objects. When Kit locked herself behind the door, Mal was furious, and terrified. A panic rising.
"Say what you want to say," Kit had said.
--This world is yours. Your dream to manipulate, Mal said, desperate to convince her. --Your projections, coming to expel us. To tear at Arthur again. Could you watch all of us die? Is this the end you want to witness? I won't come back. I won't share your dreams anymore, I swear upon every life. This is how you'll say good-bye? Turn them back. Come out, and turn your projections back.
But still the sound of marching boots.
****
"Tell me again," he says, days later. His brow furrowed, as if ready to reason.
"I've submitted already to a written exam," Mal says, smiling half-heartedly. "Yet still more tests?"
"This isn't a test," Dom says. "Please, tell me again."
Mal leans toward him, in the booth of their favorite restaurant. She holds Dom's hand. "You look at me like you think I'm crazy."
"Aren't you?"
"Dom!"
He laughs, shaky, and Mal smiles, too. A pinprick of light.
"I'm beginning to wonder about other possibilities," she says.
"You don't think that you and I woke up to a dream within a dream?"
"I still support that theory," Mal says. "I'm in its corner."
He nods. "I like when you use sports metaphors."
She pinches the inside of his elbow, rolls her eyes at the injured face he makes at her. "Take me seriously," she says.
He sobers, so fast it's startling. "I've always. I will always."
She can feel herself blushing. The heat down her collar. She takes a long drink of water, looks away, touching the back of her neck. "Dominic. What if I never woke up from the first time that I went down, the time I went to find Kit? What if I'm still lying in some Pentagon facility and you are being forced to do terrible things, or are on the run, or in jail, and the whole time, my stomach swelling? What if Philippa is yet to be born?"
"Mallorie." He struggles; she can see him holding back expletives, the strain around his mouth. She's glad. Every 'fuck', 'shit', 'goddamnit' a hard jar to her nerves. "That's a lot of what-if's," he says.
She lets go of his hand.
"And what about me?" Dom asks. Staring into the little candle flickering on their table. "The me here across from you."
Mal straightens her silverware, in motions unshaken and graceful. "It's romantic, isn't it?" she asks lightly. "To say you are too good to be true."
A smile at his lips, a touch of bitter. "So it's me, this time, who might be your creation."
She laughs. "Turnabout."
"Mallorie-" He stops.
Mal is cold. She wishes for his jacket, draped over her shoulders.
Dom picks up the glassed candle. He turns it in his palms, the flame sputtering. "Sometimes I think about what I would have done, if you had asked me to stay in our dream together. If you had asked me to love you enough to forget all my doubts."
"And?" Mal asks.
He sets the little light down. He grips her hand, his palm too-hot. "I would have said yes. If you’d asked." He blows the candle out.
She is greedy of him, she realizes. So greedy she questions her goodness. "Dominic. Please understand. Please. One way or another, this world is false."
"Let me ask you something," he says.
****
--I'd like to take a trip," she tells her mother over the weekend as they drive home from the community plot her mother has begun to work. --But Dominic won't leave the children."
--I'll stay with them. Let him know they'll be well cared for.
Mal traces a pattern on the car window. --It'll be harder than that, she says. --He's too much of a father to decide to be away from them.
--And you are too much of a mother, Laure says.
Mal rolls down the window. The breeze stealing the air from her lungs. --Yes, she says. --Too much to be away for long.
It’s surprising, she thinks. How little she has cried. Just the undercurrent, ready to swallow her up.
****
They fight, many times, and it's only now, when she has reached a depth of despair at his lack of faith that things have escalated.
"Please," Dom says. "Mallorie, please. Our children are real. How could you doubt them?" He's anguished.
"Dominic," she says. "We can't be chained here. You must be an actual father. I love them, too, believe me, but we're only practicing here." Her heart run through a shredder, divided into this, which she will keep, and that, which she cannot.
"Don't do this. Don’t leave me here without you," Dominic says. "Put the knife down."
"You don’t have to be scared," she says. “This is the only way.”
She hears the unlocking of the door. The turning of the knob, and then voices: her mother, whose flight was to land later this afternoon. The sound of her children, chattering to their grandmother. It's too late to hide the knife, but she turns, quickly, lets it hang loose at her side, and she can see Dom, in the sheen of the refrigerator, falling back against the counter, shoulders collapsing.
"Mommy," Philippa says.
"I arrived early," her mother says. "And thought I'd pick up the children on my way home."
"We rode in a taxi," James says.
Philippa has gone silent. Ever the most attenuated to Mal's mood.
Laure pauses. She puts a hand against the side of the refrigerator, taking measure of the room. “What's wrong?"
Dom lifts his head. "Nothing," he says. "Everything is fine." He claps his hands. "Come on, kids. Let's get your shoes off." He leads James away. "Philippa," he says.
Her mother looks troubled. Her hair swept back with a scarf, gray where her roots are showing. "Mallorie," she says. "Why are you holding a knife?"
Mal can only watch the door through which her children had went. She can't stand to look at them. She cannot stand to see them gone.
Her mother comes close to her. She takes the knife from Mal's rigid grasp.
"You aren't real, Maman," Mallorie says. --I like to imagine you're this gentle, maybe.
Laure's mouth goes rigid. She points. "You are a stronger woman than this, Mallorie." Her English hard.
"None of this is real," Mallorie says. It's the simplest way she can state it.
"Why are you so certain?"
Mallorie, she counts the tile on the floor. A rebellion in her mind, a little coup. "I just know. I know."
Her mother sighs. She slides the knife back into the butcher block. "Be resolute," she says. "You are a person who needs no luck. Too passionate to wear this world like a loose garment."
You don't understand, Mal thinks. She remembers the look on Philippa's face. The way the little girl's glance had bounced off the knife, repelled by its magnetic force.
This cannot be my life.
****
She dreams of Kit. This woman, her friend, whom she had known for less than a year, who had cut words into an untouched expanse, there, in her heart. "Some people," Kit had said, "You know were meant for you."
They're sitting in a church. The stained glass windows turning white light into so many shards of color. "I never forgave you," Mal says.
Kit squeezes her hand. "You should run,” she says.
The sound of many boots whittles down behind Mal as she sprints, until there is only the slap of two, a man, dogged. Inexorable.
She is half over a wall, her feet in the air, when a hand closes around her ankle, and she screams. She calls on a god.
Yanked back, dragged over exposed brick, until she is clamped between someone's arms, her name being shouted in an increasingly familiar voice. "Mallorie!"
She opens her eyes to see Dom. His face is different. Younger, and smooth. Lines from when he smiles pale against his deep tan.
He's frowning. He brushes the curls away from her forehead, holds them in place with gentled hands. "You're sleeping," he says. "I’ve been waiting for you for so long. Please," he says, begging. He laughs, a little, through his tears. "I need you."
She wakes, gasping, in the hotel room she had reserved for their anniversary. She fumbles for the lamp but knocks it onto the floor instead: the satisfying crack of it, the porcelain splinters.
One must always have a plan in place.
****
The first thing, the very first thing he says to her when he finds her outside along the ledge is this: "You look cold."
He might be a projection-a pale imitation of the man she knows and loves-but he is still an imitation who asks her to put on a coat. Who looks at her with a love just this side of reverent.
Will he love me so much when I wake. Will it have faded.
She cannot risk leaving him behind. “Join me,” she says.
****
People say that time slows down when you are faced with death. In the immediacy of a threat to your life, the seconds tick by slower, like a mercy extended.
It's a nice thought. Instead, what happens is that your mind, usually discerning in what it chooses to record into the bank of your life, blows open.
It's something Mal remembers, falling.
Dom believed that she was absolutely certain in her conviction. It's true-she was certain enough to plan, and, in the end, enough to jump-but it didn't mean she had not the slightest of doubts.
To those I am leaving behind, she thinks, unhurried. If my death is truly a death. To the people I pray are waiting for me when I wake:
For Maman, who taught her daughters to shrug away what does not fit;
For James, who is young and will lack for nothing;
For Arthur, who deserves to know why:
For Dominic, who is not following me down. Who is beautiful, and right in his intentions. Whose good morning I will hear, at any cost;
And for Philippa, whom Mal had climbed into bed with the night before.
She went from sleeping to awake in the blink of an eye when Mal pulled her close, and whispered her name. "Did you know," Mal said. "That from the very second you were born, I loved the presence of you. Before then, even. You are the best daughter. Already you are kind, and generous, and strong. You see everything, and that takes courage, to keep your eyes open so."
Philippa had only listened, all sleepy warmth. A clear-eyed gaze. Her little hand on Mal's collarbone.
"I admire you very much," Mal said. She blinked away tears. "And someday-someday, you may discover that the things you carry, the person you have become is not quite enough. That you are not infinitely capable. And then you will have to be discerning, and brave, to face those demands you may not be able to meet. To take the action you can." She kissed her daughter, words torn from a dark, damp place. "Be very, very brave.”
--My little girl.
Mal flies. She waits, to break awake. There is only a little fear, and even that she tramples underfoot.
Coda