Steps
By Jim Getz
The dream was always the same, and now Bob was beginning to become unnerved by its reappearance every night.
Inside the drama, he came to consciousness in a white, claw-footed bathtub enveloping him in perfectly warm water. The tub sat in the enclosed back porch of a house he knew and yet did not. When he turned to his left and looked through the greenhouse-type panes, a field of sunflowers under a perfect sky waved to him in a gentle breeze.
He turned to his right, gingerly placed one foot after the other on the hardwood floor and, nude, walked into the kitchen. Annie, his elder sister by seven years, took his hand and accompanied him, walking side by side throughout the many rooms. Furniture and pieces of art were hazy on the periphery, but the hardwood floors and giant clear panes were consistent throughout. He perceived Annie’s voice describing things to him, but he couldn’t decipher her words.
Until the bottom of the staircase. He would look upward but could discern only blackness beyond the first three steps. Then Annie’s words became clear and caught his attention: “This is where I must leave you now. Go on up.” And then, she became translucent and faded from view. He turned his eyes back to the blackness. His paralyzed legs could not climb onto even the first step, much less count them by climbing them.
Then he awoke with a start, perspiring. Every time.
At first, Bob tried drinking the dream away, half a liter of gin each night. That only made the dream more vivid, and now he awoke perspiring and hung over.
Then, Bob tried working the dream away. He had a complicated legal motion to finish before a court deadline, and so he put in extra billable hours. That merely resulted in a desk and computer appearing in one of the dream rooms.
Finally, after turning in the motion, Bob asked for week off. Maybe a change of venue will rid me of it, he thought, or at least change the scenery or layout? He felt as though his whole life was as stuck as the dream.
Annie greeted him with a big hug at the airport curb as the loudspeaker repeatedly droned, “This curb is for loading and unloading only.” As usual, she smelled like cigarettes. She grabbed his suitcase and, saying “Hop on in,” flung it into the rear of her aging SUV. A cigarette was still burning in the ashtray. Annie used it to light another.
“Thanks for putting me up,” Bob said.
“Of course!” she grinned, her tight lips securing the cigarette as she buckled in. “Hey,” she added. “I got news. Walt’s dead. Just this morning. Thought you’d want to know.”
Bob closed his eyes, absorbed this report for three seconds, then stared straight through the windshield. “Breaks my heart.”
Annie recognized the sarcasm as she felt the same way about her stepfather. “Straight home then? You know it’s about an hour and half.”
“Take the scenic route.”
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She hit the gas. The city and suburbs drifted away in the rearview. Farms, interrupted by breaks of trees, rolling hills or full forests, flashed by in the summer afternoon sun. Annie burned through another couple of smokes.
Then a field of sunflowers burst into view, neighbor to a house.
“Stop!” Bob yelled — loud, he realized too late.
Annie brought the SUV to a gentle halt in the gravel drive. A For Sale sign, suspended from a post, waved gently in the breeze.
“You recognize it.” Annie stated. It wasn’t a question.
“What? No. I don’t think so,” he said, even as he clambered out of the vehicle and strode up the drive. She quickly reached him, put her hand on his shoulder, turned him to face her.
“You were born here, in the back of the house. Mom was in that birthing-in-a-bathtub phase.”
Bob stared at her. “There’s more,” she breathed. “Walt died here — upstairs. They just took him away, before I drove up to get you.”
His words stumbled out: “How come I …?”
“After Walt turned out to be an asshole, Mom never wanted you to have anything to do with him, know where he lived, anything. We left here when you were just a year and a half. She swore me to secrecy. But now that they’re … both… gone, I don’t give a shit. It was unfair.” A beat, as she dug into her jeans pocket and produced a jangling set of keys. “I locked up this morning.”
The hardwood floors creaked as they walked through. Then they came to the looming staircase. It wasn’t dark — light from the upstairs windows shone through the open door at the top.
“Hey,” Annie said. “I gotta pee. Go on up if you wanna.”
As was his habit, Bob counted steps as he ascended. Twelve. The bedroom was tidy. He walked about for a bit, surveying, unsure of what he was seeking. His eyes fell upon a plain, worn, dark blue book, no dust jacket, on the nightstand. He opened to a random page. “ … you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the Road of Happy Destiny.” Hearing Annie’s footsteps upon the stairs, he dropped the book lightly upon the nightstand.
He opened window, allowed the breeze to waft over him. Arriving beside him and sharing his view, Annie looked down at the sunflowers.
“Did you ever feel stuck, and then suddenly unstuck?” he asked her.
She opened her mouth, but before she could answer, the words strolled out: “How much do you think they want for this place?”
— MAY 2023
