The Body Electric

Chapter 9

I hear music. I almost recognize the tune, something soft, played on a guitar, but then the world bursts into being. Light explodes from a pinpoint in the distance, and with the light, everything else—scents, warmth, the feel of air on my skin.

In the distance, I can see a house. I know that house. It’s where we lived when I was a kid, before everything bad happened, a narrow two-level building in Rabat, a dusty, limestone-drenched suburb of New Venice.

I step toward the house, and in that one step I cross kilometers. The house moves from the background to right in front of me, so close that I can touch it.

Singing.

I creep around the edge of the house. It’s perfect in every detail, from the stone walls to the clay tiled roof with aggressively green, stubborn ivy crawling up the wall toward the kitchen window. A potted chinotto tree standing by the doorway wafts in the warm breeze.

The window in front of the kitchen sink is open. I stand on my tiptoes, peering inside. My mother—younger than normal—dances around the kitchen, laughing, covered in flour. And Dad’s behind her, pulling out a huge bouquet of yellow roses for her. I can hear childlike laughter—my laughter, I realize, when I was a little kid— weaving in and out of the sounds of my parents’ chatter and over the whirr of the electric mixer, but my mother’s reverie isn’t focused on me as a little girl.

It’s focused on Dad.

If my mother looked through the window over the sink, she could see me as I am now—eighteen years old with dark brown hair hanging just past my chin, my gold- flecked brown eyes staring straight at her. But I don’t think Mom will do that. Her body is aware that this is a reverie and not real, but her subconscious is letting her relive the memory. I could probably stand nose-to-nose with her and she wouldn’t see me. Her brain wants to live in the reverie and will do anything to protect itself from leaving it.

From becoming aware that this isn’t real.

Looking at Mom and Dad now, I wish this was real. I would trade anything to be able to let my mother live this life.

But it’s past. This is long ago, well before her disease ate her from the inside out. Before I grew up. Before Mom developed the technology that even makes reverie possible. Before Dad died, giving her the reason to invent the process of reveries so she could live with him in her mind.

Mom’s memory falters. The house flickers.

I duck under the window, just in case this was enough disturbance to push Mom out of the reverie. Crouching against the house, I cup my hands and blow air into them, thinking cinnamon.

A warm, overwhelming scent of the spice wraps around me. I throw my hands up, envisioning the smell permeating every corner of Mom’s dream.

“The cookies!” I hear Mom say, her voice a trill of laughter. She’s fully back in the reverie now, the flicker gone.

But just in case, I do everything else I can think of to make Mom’s memory even more real. I hum the opening strands of Dad’s favorite song, “Moon River,” the song I heard at the start of the reverie. The sound continues long after I quit humming—Mom’s memory has picked it up, adding depth to her reverie. I add my memories of the old house to hers, and the kitchen grows in sharper details, like a blurry image coming into focus.

I think everything’s going well. Maybe I can leave the reverie, let Mom’s mind fill in everything else.

But then I hear her voice. It is so strained that I stand up and lean closer, despite the already-weakened state of the reverie.

“Philip,” Mom says, her voice heavy with unshed tears. “Philip, I don’t think this is real. I wish it was... but I’m in a reverie, aren’t I? You’re not real. You’re just a memory.”

I act on instinct as I swing my arm, and the wall separating me from the kitchen and my mother disappears. The laws of physics do not apply in reverie. My mother starts to turn, but I lunge forward and grab the sides of her head, keeping her facing Dad.

I can feel, deep within me, power. Control. I can control my mother’s reverie, like a puppet master pulling strings. I concentrate with all my strength on the idea of this memory.

But then I hear my mother whimper, and I know that now she’s remembering the pain of her disease, and all around me the kitchen flickers, and even the memory of my father flickers.

No. I reach deep within me, to a core of power I didn’t know was there, and tap into every happy thought and memory I have of my parents like this and I imagine them all pouring out of me, engulfing my mother.

warmth love heart-full joy love chaos kissing the taste of his lips the feel of his body love the child the soft sleeping noises tiny fingers tiny toes clear brown eyes open wide love love love

I rip my hands away. My mother’s reverie body sags and relaxes. I reached inside her and pulled out the deepest memories in her body, the memories that words can’t describe, the memories that are as much a piece of her as her arms and legs. Those are the ones she’s filled with now.

Mom’s face looks up to Dad’s, and I know now she truly is in the reverie, and this feeling of peace and joy will stay with her long after she wakes up.

It worked.

I turn to leave. It’s safe for me to go now; Mom’s reverie is definitely connected.

But I glance back. I can’t help it.

I miss Dad, too. I miss the way he looks. My own dreams are nowhere near as vivid as Mom’s. And even though he’s younger here than I remember him, and he has a scruffy bit of facial hair that makes him look reckless, and he’s missing his glasses, and there’s more hair on top of his head, it’s still Dad.

And then he looks at me.

“Ella,” he says, his voice cutting through the soft sounds of memory in sharp, precise tones. “Ella. You have to wake up.”