Picture a house. Light-brown wall-to-wall carpeting so the floor looks like dirt, though it conceals footprints. That sounds grim, but it's not. The house just feels used, stained, because there's been a lot of life here. Kids' marker drawings on the wall that can only be removed with a coat of paint, the house feels cluttered even when it's clean, cracks in the wall where there was once a picture. A thread hangs down from the straight-backed chair, chair legs chipped but colored in with a brown marker if you look close enough, flowers of some kind on the windowsill, a petal falls undramatically. No nightmare, but not exactly a dream. It seems familiar.
Travel through the living room slowly and silently like a tracking shot into the kitchen. It's brighter in here, seen more daily life, less avoided. The wood tabletop of the kitchen table is slightly concave, a small TV on the countertop, kids toys on the countertop and floor, a squeak toy, maybe these are dog toys, four cereal bowls on the table. In the middle of it, a woman who is a reflection of the house. She looks part tired, part pragmatic. She's cleaning patiently. She surveys the breakfast table, ambivalently, as if she wants to keep the bowls on the table as company. She looks under the table and sees a mountain of Captain Crunch underneath one of the chairs. This didn't fall from the table, it was put there; somebody's project. She barely changes expression-pragmatic still, not exhausted. Maybe if she knew that someone was watching she would have affected a look of exaggerated bemusement, but she's alone and has no need to act. She's not the type to perform for herself or imagined people, or even God, though she's entertained the thought. So she gets to work and picks up the mound of cereal with two hands and carries it to the sink.
I hear my voice then. It must be how schizophrenics hear other voices. I'm not talking to myself as I normally do, with no lag between when something is thought and said. This is another voice-my own but from somewhere else. Eerily, like my voice is detached from my mind, saying:
"This is Miranda Goodling. 400 Riverside Court, Irvine. Remember her name. Miranda Goodling."
***
I woke up on my back, woozy, the worst kind of drunk. I felt like I'd been hit in the head-no better way to describe it. My thoughts were tick and compressed. It was hard to form words. "Stephanie," I said. I wasn't sure if it came out right.
She was sitting in the corner watching TV forlornly, as if watching a story about me. She shot to my side at the sound of my voice.
"I need to throw up," I told her.
She handed me a plastic trash can with a band-aid stuck to the bottom. "They said this might happen," she said, apologetically. Her voice was as reassuring as gauze.
I threw up, which burned my throat and stomach, but cleared my head, and I realized what had happened: I was attacked and now I was in a hospital room, walls turquoise and gray.
"How you feeling?" she asked. "Do you know what happened?"
I pictured the shadowy figure who hit me, faceless like a wraith. It wasn't the same person who erased the video, it was an accomplice, waiting in the back all that time.
"I was assaulted," I told her. "On the street," I added.
I didn't want to tell her about what had happened. Like I said, I felt I deserved some kind of beating for not being a better father. I did what I needed to do, he did what he needed to do. And I thought telling her could make it worse. Pressing charges seemed like an additional humiliation, if not dangerous for my family.
"Someone dropped you off," Stephanie said. "They don't know who. It's so strange."
"It is strange," I said.
"They say you're going to be all right. It's a mild concussion. You might feel out of balance for a day or two."
"OK."
"What were you doing out, anyway?" she asked. No hint of accusation.
"Just going for a walk," I said. "Thinking about the book I'm writing. On the bright side, now I have something to write about."
***
The city looked different on the drive home: more awful. The realization of what had happened was settling in. Assaulted by the man who had basically raped my daughter-if not literally, then raped her conscience. I felt forsaken. What else was the world going to throw at me? Relatively speaking, I knew I was doing all right. I had never lived through a war, been abused, sold into slavery, etc. Discovering my daughter online and then having my head kicked in was a paradise compared to many other people. But they were my problems. I stared out the window at the L.A. city-a collection of decaying strip malls, one of the least attractive cities on earth, populated mainly by people who wanted to be someone else, except for those who bled success, more abuse than reward. If so, I belonged here, dead like this city. Grim, but I was rattled.
We were trapped behind a large black SUV that had failed to signal it was turning left, blocking the entire lane so we couldn't pass. People just didn't give a shit about other people.
"Do they just expect us to know why they're suddenly stopping? They're just totally fucking selfish. Not signaling is a sign of the apocalypse."
"Settle down, Road Warrior," my wife said, smiling. "You need to take it easy, that's what the doctor said. Let's get you home so you can get some sleep."
Then I remembered. The woman from my dream. The housewife, Miranda Goodling. It was as clear as any vivid memory when it finally hit me. In fact, more so. I had a terrible memory. One of the reasons I thought I wrote fiction was to invent stories and characters because I remembered so few from my life. Other writers could remember vivid details of their childhood, stickball in Brooklyn. My own life was mostly bland and eventless. Might have contributed to my enduring faith in the future. I could watch the dream replay in my mind like a movie you've seen several times, committed to memory. I could picture the woman, her kitchen, her name.
"I had the strangest dream while I was out," I told Stephanie. "It was an everyday scene of a woman doing housework. Then I heard my own voice telling me her name and address. It was so strange because it was so normal. What do you think it means?"
"It means you're dreaming of other women," playfully.
But I was intrigued. Recently, I had been struggling with where to take my novel. Part memoir about my own life, part paranoia about the president's life. I considered writing about my family fleeing a war, but that felt hackneyed and done. This dream could be a potential plot. It wasn't much-the image of a woman cleaning her kitchen. But the writer contacts her and finds out that she's a real person. It was a premise.
I kept this to myself. My wife had been through my flashes of enthusiasm before. My promises of a better life. But at least the world didn't seem like it was coming to an end.
