The Anatomy of Dreams: A Novel by Chloe Benjamin

Author:Chloe Benjamin [Benjamin, Chloe]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: ScreamQueen, kickass.to
ISBN: 9781476761176
Google: gTJCAgAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1476761167
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2014-09-16T05:00:00+00:00

10

MADISON, WISCONSIN, 2004

As October gave way to the stark skies of November, its spindly, barren trees, I was surprised to find a cream envelope beneath the porch door of our house: perfectly square, licked shut, with a calligraphic scrawl—G + S—in black ink. I opened it in the kitchen while Gabe slept off the late study we’d monitored the night before.

Greetings, pals—

Janna and I’d be delighted if you’d treat us to your presence(s) on the eve of 25 November. We’ll give thanks, we’ll drink copious amounts of liquor, and, Janna willing, we’ll eat the appropriate troughs of food, American and otherwise. Come in your finest around the hour of five, post meridiem—and bring something to contribute, you lazy fucks.

Hugs—

T.

I read the letter twice in a row with a seeping feeling of delight. It had been years since I’d had a proper Thanksgiving meal—not since I lived with my family. Gabe and I had a halfhearted tradition of eating dinner at an ethnic restaurant, though I’d never really been sure whether we did it out of protest or laziness. Thom’s letter made me feel normal. We were the sort of young people who had neighbors, had friends; we would go to their house for Thanksgiving, and we would fall asleep, along with the bulk of the country, at the pathetic hour of seven thirty or eight, bloated and sewn-in as stuffed animals.

I decided to make a sweet potato dish, something roasted that I was sure I couldn’t mess up. After picking up the ingredients in town, I stopped at the Goodwill on State Street. Keller paid us fairly well—even better now that we worked for the university—but I was my mother’s daughter, and most of it went into savings. Usually, I was attracted to clothes in muted colors, though perhaps attracted is the wrong word; it was more that I knew these were the styles that suited me and I had resigned myself to our partnership. Today, though, I wanted something different. I brought home a suede skirt in a rich and dusty orange and paired it with a low-backed black top; as I closed the bedroom window, cool air brushed my spine. When I added the little gold hoops Gabe had given me for my twenty-third birthday and a pair of bronze heels, I felt almost unlike myself.

“You look great,” said Gabe, in a tone I tried not to take for surprise, as he came downstairs to meet me. He had dressed up, too: he wore a starched navy shirt and a skinny green tie with his Chucks.

“So do you,” I said. Had he gotten a haircut, or was the structure of his face always so clear—the sharp jaw, the deep-set and crinkled hazel eyes?

As we crossed the lawn to Thomas and Janna’s house—a bottle of wine in Gabe’s hand, the sweet potato dish in mine—we could have been any young couple. We rang the doorbell and waited on the porch, Gabe’s sneaker tapping the planks.

Janna opened it. Her hair

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