B. Elizabeth Beck

Kim hums the lyrics of the Rolling Stones tune as she brushes her teeth. It isn’t until she’s rinsed that she realizes the song is from her dreams. A song she hasn’t heard in years. The only Rolling Stones song ever evoked in her daily life is You Can’t Always Get What You Want, not Loving Cup. That is a song from college, but she wasn’t dreaming about college, was she?

Kim has time to luxuriate for ten minutes in the shower because it’s her husband, Tom’s turn with the kids. Long enough to remember her dream from the night before. A dream she knows is recurring, but Kim is ordinarily too busy to concentrate on the specifics. Because she owns an interior design firm and Tom is a busy surgeon, their alternating morning schedule is key to domestic bliss. Tom uses his morning off to stop at the gym and shower there before heading to do rounds at the hospital or see patients at his private practice, conveniently located across the street from each other. Being a cosmetic surgeon has many benefits, including a regular schedule, which is a top priority when raising three small children. There aren’t many emergency facelifts or tummy tucks, the type of cosmetic surgeries Tom does. Kim wishes she could say she peacefully writes her gratitudes into a journal with a steaming mug of green tea before practicing yoga, but the reality is Kim uses the time to do a load of laundry, scroll social media, and obsess over the complicated calendar in the kitchen, color labeled for each of their three children. That’s only if one of the children doesn’t text to ask her to please bring the permission slip, the soccer cleats, and the overdue library book to school on her way to work, requests she receives several times a week.

“You need to let them suffer their consequences, Kim. You’re not doing them any favors, running around, making everything perfect for them. Their lives aren’t one of your interior design projects,” Tom says in exasperation. “Maybe if you didn’t rescue them every time, they would be more responsible.”

Easy for you to say, buddy, Kim thinks but doesn’t speak. Why bother? After twenty years of marriage, Tom isn’t going to change who he is. Besides, Tom doesn’t understand that compared to other mothers, Kim is far from being a helicopter parent. Tom doesn’t know some mothers volunteer at their children’s school practically full-time just so they are on the premises with their children. She isn’t even on the PTA because they meet during the work week in the middle of the day. Who has that kind of time? Even if Kim weren’t a successful designer, she would at least earn money and substitute teach if she felt the need to hover like that.

She cues up Rolling Stones on her drive to school (yes, she is bringing Emily the packed lunch sitting on the center of the kitchen counter. Shut up, Tom) and barks a laugh to Tumbling Dice. Kim parks in front of the school and waits for the song to finish before dropping off the lunch. Only after she pulls away from school does she let the tears flow, remembering. She knows what she’s been dreaming about, or at least about whom she has been dreaming. Joshua. Always Joshua. No matter she has spent twenty years forgetting him. Her subconscious is knocking. In response, Kim cues up, Can’t You Hear Me Knocking, a song Joshua had never performed on stage.

As Kim drives to the furniture warehouse to meet her business partner, Carrie, the memories of practicing lyrics of Tumbling Dice over and over with Joshua are too strong to ignore. She and Joshua rented an attic space, apartment to generous a word to describe the one room the slum lord deemed an apartment to charge a stupid amount of rent. Kim and Joshua hid their bed, a mattress on the floor flanked by milkcrates on either side, behind a tapestry they hung from the slanted ceiling and delighted over the tiny refrigerator, one-burner range, and tiny porcelain sink that made up the kitchen in the far corner. A futon folded out for the musicians who flopped with them after gigs. Too poor for curtains, Kim filled the windows with potted snake plants and hanging spiders. Books lined the walls under the guitars Joshua hung with hooks, their only nod to interior design other than the poster of Frank Zappa that had cost a fortune to frame.

Kim blushes as she remembers the orgasm that her dream evoked. When was the last time that happened? Kim used to have orgasms in her sleep when she was younger, but sex was the furthest thing from her mind these days. Masturbating was almost a chore, something she did quickly, and only because she read somewhere, it was healthy for her body. Something about releasing hormones or endorphins, maybe. And Kim is lazy about the task. Lucky to have found the wand, she accomplishes the task with the same efficiency she does brushing her teeth. What used to be an erotic relationship with Tom had trickled into the quiet, ordinary weekly connection couples learn so as not to wake the babies.

The whole thing is ironic, though. In the two years Kim and Joshua lived together, she never had an orgasm during intercourse. As a couple, they were more interested in staying up late to discuss philosophy, existentialism, and smoke weed than having sex. They were a meeting of minds, best friends with a shorthand usually reserved for married couples. For example, if they were watching a movie, Kim could say, “Isn’t that the actor from? You know—”

“No, that’s the other guy from that show—”

“Oh, right,” Kim would respond, both knowing to whom the other was referring without finishing their sentences. There was no need to finish sentences when their minds, souls, and thoughts were connected, if not their bodies. Joshua considered himself asexual if pressed. Something about his fastidious nature inhibited his idea of the messy reality of sex. Almost as if he felt his consciousness to be on a higher realm than to demean it with something as base as sweat, secretions, and sticky sheets. Instead, he preferred to reach ecstasy on stage, insisting the music inspired cosmic orgasms more potent than anything the human body could offer.

Consequently, Kim never opened up to Joshua in bed. He wasn’t interested. She was inhibited and unsure of her sexuality, not knowing how to deal with a partner’s lack of interest. When they broke up, Kim decided she would seek a partner more interested in sex than which chord to play to segue from song to song on stage. Joshua’s abandonment hurt her. She didn’t even know if she would trust a man again, but certainly not another musician. What attracted Kim to Tom when they met was his tie, haircut, career, and to be completely honest, because he was Chinese. Kim’s mother never visited her apartment when Kim lived with Joshua. She was relieved her daughter’s wild phase in college, living with a white boy rock star, was finally over, and Kim’s real life as a doctor’s wife and mother to her Chinese family could begin.

 The first time Kim and Tom had sex, on the verge of orgasm, Kim knew if she were courageous enough to touch her clitoris, she would come. When she did, it drove Tom over the edge, and from there, their sex life skyrocketed until it quietly fizzled these past few years. But that was to be expected when you are parents raising three very active children. Surely, it would rekindle again in the future. Kim isn’t worried about that. What concerns her is why her dreams conjure up Joshua after all these years. As she pulls into the warehouse parking lot to meet Carrie, Kim has a sinking feeling this isn’t the first dream about Joshua. She knows he has appeared more often than she cares to admit.

“Are you okay?” Carrie asks as they search the warehouse for the pieces they need to stage the house. These clients are particularly demanding, and the job has lingered almost a week longer than Kim anticipated.

“I just haven’t been sleeping well lately,” Kim says as she triumphantly holds the lamp aloft. “Yes! This is it. Now we just need that damn table. Look over there, please.”

The rest of the day is a blur once the women locate the pieces and drive to the client’s home to finish the project. Kim operates on autopilot as she retrieves the children from school, dropping one at ballet and the other at soccer practice, then hustles to prepare dinner as the children arrive home minutes before Tom. Family dinner, dishes, homework, and two loads of laundry because Kim’s daughter absolutely had to have her favorite pink shirt tomorrow, regardless her mother was loading the dryer. Kim merely sighs, accepts the shirt, and runs a second load. There’s always more laundry to do in the house.

Kim is so exhausted, irrationally irritated with the click of chopsticks against bowls when her family eats dinner. Of course, like most American families, they usually eat with forks and knives, but practicing chopsticks is something Kim and Tom force their children to do every year the few weeks before Chinese New Year to stave off the glaring criticism they will receive from their mothers if the children can’t use chopsticks. It’s bad enough the children can only say a few basic phrases in Chinese. Her irritability intensifies as the evening wanes. Kim clenches her teeth when Tom clips his toenails at the side of the bed. It doesn’t matter that he carefully collects them into a tissue to dispose. She has asked him a million times to do that in the bathroom, yet he never listens. Finally, Kim suffers a flash of irrational anger when she hears her husband snoring. How he can fall asleep the moment his head hits the pillow is beyond her. It takes Kim at least an hour to silence the endless lists that run through her mind. Kim glances at her emails, removes Tom’s glasses, places them on the bedside table, clicks off the television, and goes to sleep.

Who is blasting music this early on a school day, Kim wonders when she awakens the next morning. Is that Wild Horses? Her children only listen to Disney-safe hip-hop and pop music, not the Rolling Stones. Kim rolls over for Tom, but the bed is empty. She abruptly sits up and gasps. She is back in her attic apartment, behind the tapestry. How can this be? Dreams have never been this vivid, certainly not enough to include music she clearly hears, but when the tea kettle whistles , she is shocked to her core. Kim and Tom drink coffee, not tea. In fact, Kim hasn’t drunk tea since her days with Joshua, not even at New Year’s Dinner, much to her mother’s chagrin.

Kim pushes back the tapestry to find Joshua preparing tea in the mugs they made together at a ceramics class before Joshua dropped out to pursue music with his band. Kim wonders where those mugs went. She hasn’t seen them in twenty years.

“Good morning,” Joshua says, handing her the tea and kissing her on the cheek. “I’m sorry the music woke you, but I need it to inspire this new song. You know how I am when I’m writing. I’ve been up all night. Do you want to hear it? Let me turn this down so I can play it for you, okay?”

Kim forgot how much Joshua talked. His rapid-fire monologue is jarring after spending the past twenty years with her quiet husband. Kim sits on the futon as Joshua clicks off the Rolling Stones, picks up his guitar, and squints over the lyrics he’s scribbled on a yellow legal pad. She immediately recognizes the song and takes that as evidence this is absolutely a dream—a realistic, incredibly vivid dream, but a dream, nonetheless. The song is the one that garners the attention of a major record label and goes on to launch Joshua’s band into the national spotlight.

“Into the light she goes,” Kim interrupts Joshua.

He picks up his head, startled.

Kim says, “The lyric should read, into the light she goes.”

Joshua nods, leans over his legal pad, and makes scratches on the page. “Yes. That makes sense. That sounds better.”

He picks up his guitar and continues. Kim nods along and begins to sing. Joshua stops and asks, “I haven’t gotten further than that. What do you think, Yoko?”

Kim tries not to grimace at the nickname. Joshua knows how much it irritates her when the band teases them by calling them John and Yoko. Yoko is Japanese, not Chinese. It’s infuriating when people think all Asian people are the same, from the same country, same culture. Furthermore, Yoko is credited with breaking up The Beatles, and Kim resents the implication that she would do the same. Especially now that she’s forty-two years old and knows her younger self didn’t break up the band. Just the opposite. She sacrificed her heart for their success.

Feeling disoriented, Kim rises and walks to the bathroom. The reflection of herself in the mirror startles her. She reaches to touch her hair. It’s long again. And her face. Kim doesn’t realize how wrinkled she is becoming until she sees herself. This is weird. And a very long dream. Has Kim ever peed in her dream? Does that mean she is peeing the bed, at home, next to Tom?

Kim gasps and sits up. Tom turns over and mumbles, “Ten more minutes.”

Kim reaches for her phone, which reads five-fifty in the morning, precisely ten minutes before Tom rises like clockwork. She touches her hair, cut blunt at her jawline, and without looking, knows it is streaked with gray, not the long, almost blue-black her hair was when she was twenty. Because it’s her turn with the children, Kim doesn’t ponder the dream even as it hovers in her peripheral vision as she assembles lunches and cuts fruit to be eaten with breakfast cereal before shuttling the children to the bus stop, but she does try to confide in Carrie as they eat lunch together.

“I had no idea you were a groupie,” Carrie says, eyes widening. “You lived with a musician before you met Tom? When was this, in college?”

“First of all, I wasn’t a groupie. I was the lead singer’s girlfriend. There’s a big difference. I wasn’t one of those girls who hung out at the stage door. I knew Joshua before he was Joshua Brenner,” Kim says without thinking.

Carrie almost chokes on her sandwich and says, “You were Joshua Brenner’s lover? Are you serious? How have you never told me that?”

“Because it was twenty years ago, something I don’t discuss with Tom, and a time in my life I’d prefer to forget,” Kim says. “That’s why I’m so confused. I’m not talking about just one dream. I’ve had several, and last night’s? Let’s just say it was so vivid, I’m still not quite sure it didn’t happen. I know that sounds crazy. Of course, it didn’t happen, but Carrie. It was just so real.”

“Listen, you’re exhausted. We’ve been working our asses off to finish this house, and it’s taking a toll on you, that’s all. What you need is a long rest. Maybe you and Tom should book a weekend away together. We’ll be done with the house by Friday, and our next project doesn’t start for what? Two weeks? You have time. Take it,” Carrie says.

“You’re right,” Kim says because it’s easier to agree than explain how complicated her family weekend plans are to her friend, who is childless and single by choice. Practices, games, and rehearsals are scheduled months in advance. If Kim and Tom wanted to go away together, it would take almost military precision in tactical scheduling of that complicated color-coded calendar in the kitchen, a thought that exhausts Kim as she studies it that evening while the children feast on pizzas delivered. Kim opts for the easiest route in her disoriented state, a special treat for everyone, not requiring chopsticks and patience. She is careful with her tone in guiding the children through homework, bath, and bed and solicitous to Tom, bringing him a bowl of vanilla ice cream with a slice of cantaloupe, his favorite. At bedtime, Kim lingers in the hallway, studying the picture gallery instead of her ordinary thoughtlessness, taking for granted the family she built and the memories they created.

“I’m going to take a bath,” Kim says to Tom, who is already in bed, watching television. She fills the tub with lavender-infused Epsom salts and adds a dollop of bubbles. As it fills, she washes her face and moisturizes, realizing the money she has spent for twenty years hasn’t really done much compared to the face she remembers from last night’s dream. No amount of Botox or plastic surgery can recreate dewy youthfulness, so beyond moisturizing and the occasional facial, Kim has accepted reality. She thanks her Chinese genes, knowing she looks at least ten years younger than Carrie, who is the same age. So, at least, there’s that, even though Kim winces at how petty that sentiment is.

Feeling relaxed, Kim surprises Tom by initiating sex, which is good, satisfying for them both in their quiet, accustomed manner. Tom mumbles, “Love you,” as he drifts to sleep.

In the morning, Kim can’t believe she awakens in the attic. Again, she finds Joshua in the living room, yellow legal pad on the table, guitar on his lap.

“I’ve written more. Want to hear?”

Kim nods and perches on the other end of the futon. She remembers these pajama bottoms, the owl print once her favorite, which she wears with a white tank top. Big mistake. She should not have looked down. Kim doesn’t believe her breasts, perky before nursing three children, and resists the urge to cup them to feel their buoyancy.

Instead, Kim focuses on how beautiful twenty-two-year-old Joshua looks in the morning light, brow furrowed over his guitar, singing softly. Before the fame, before the Grammys, before the record-breaking, sold-out shows, Joshua is the poet Kim loves, and she has forgotten how much she misses him. She could sit forever in this private moment, listening to him sing softly, just to her, but he gets the lyrics wrong.

“Wait,” Kim says. “It goes like this.” She sings the song she has known for twenty years, the song that still plays on the radio, the song that won Joshua his first number-one single. She sings it, replete with the hums, little snatches of repeated words, everything exactly how it will be recorded before she can stop herself.

In the silence, Joshua is open-mouthed before he picks up his pen and begins frantically scribbling as Kim’s heart pounds. What has she done? She didn’t write the song when they lived together in college, did she? She wracks her brain, trying to remember Joshua writing the song, but the memories are hazy, and because when wasn’t Joshua writing, singing, strumming? Music was breathing to Joshua. From the moment he woke until he fell asleep, songs came to him in his dreams. Driving down the road, in the shower, he scrawled on endless post-it notes. Joshua hummed even when running errands, picking apples at the market, replacing a lightbulb.

“What was the chord switch again?” Joshua asks. “Before the chorus? Can you sing that part again?”

Kim obliges. She quietly sings the entire song from beginning to end as Joshua nods and takes notes. When she finishes, he says, “How have I never known how beautifully you sing? Did you write this yourself? When did you write it?”

“It’s not my song,” Kim says, leaning over to kiss his cheek. She inhales deeply, remembering the combination of sandalwood, tobacco, and the very essence that is Joshua.
“It’s yours.”

Before he can reply, Kim hears, “Mommy?” and turns. She opens her eyes to find her youngest standing at her bedside. “I had a nightmare. May I tuck in, please?”

Kim lifts the sheet in answer and spoons her baby while brushing the silky bangs from her forehead, whispering Joshua’s song to lull her child to sleep.