moments, like the dream, that forecast subsequent events with such accuracy you wonder how you possibly could have been deaf to their message. Thing is, it’s only once what they were anticipating has come to pass that you’re able to recognize their significance. The morning after I’d had that dream, while the sight of that raging stream, Marie’s face opening up, were more than fresh in my memory, if you’d asked me what I thought the dream signified, I imagine I would’ve said it was expressing my fear that I’d replaced my wife with fishing. I reckon we’ve all seen enough pop psychologists on this TV program or that for a lot of us to be able to offer convincing interpretations of their dreams. Had you asked me if I thought the dream a caution, a prophecy like you read about in the Bible, I’d most likely have given you one of the looks we give to characters we’re pretty sure are pulling our legs and asked you what you’d been drinking. After all, even if I were the kind of person who believes that dreams can tap into what’s waiting for us down the road, what was there for me to fear in fishing?
On top of that, the dream never recurred, and isn’t that what those psychic warnings are supposed to do, don’t they repeat themselves to prove their seriousness? I suppose it remained sufficiently clear in my memory not to need repeating; if I pondered it at all, however, it was as a curiosity of my own psyche, a peculiarity my mind had thrown up from its depths. I’d been a bit lax in visiting Marie’s grave that winter. I assumed the dream had more to do with that than any real place, or person. Nor, for what it’s worth, did I connect my dream of Marie with her visits to me while I was fishing; the thought never even occurred to me.
Dan’s appearance, his state of mind, that Sunday night were the first signs of a change that overtook him during the next couple of months. To this day, I’m not sure exactly what triggered it, but his grief, kept at bay so long, found a way to tunnel under Dan’s defenses, and, while he was otherwise distracted, seized the moment and fell on him, burying its dirty teeth deep in his gut and refusing to let go. Dan wore the same suit and tie for days at a time. A scraggly beard surged and ebbed across his face. His hair, longer still, frequently jutted out in strange configurations. His hours at work became erratic, to say the least. Some mornings he wouldn’t show up until nine or nine thirty; others, he’d be at his desk by quarter to seven. Even on those days he was in well ahead of the rest of us, he’d spend most of his time staring at the screen of the computer he hadn’t switched on yet. His stare, that look that I had felt wanted to pierce through you, worsened to the point it was next to impossible to hold any kind of conversation with him. He didn’t appear to be listening to anything you were saying, just boring into you with those eyes that had been turned all the way up, blowtorch bright. He never left work later than the rest of us, and it wasn’t unusual to walk by his office at the end of the day and find it empty.
Before long, his job was in serious jeopardy. He’d been team leader on a pair of important projects, one of which demoted him, while the other dropped him outright. The company had changed. This was not, as management had started trumpeting, your father’s IBM, which I guess meant it wasn’t my IBM. The notion of a corporate family that took care of its own and in so doing earned their loyalty was on the way out, evicted by simple greed. What this meant practically speaking was that Dan could not be assured of the same understanding and indulgence I had received more than a decade prior. That he didn’t much care if he kept his job or not at this moment didn’t mean he wouldn’t feel differently in the future, and I did my best to make him see this. He wasn’t much interested in what I had to say. His grief had taken him far into a
On top of that, the dream never recurred, and isn’t that what those psychic warnings are supposed to do, don’t they repeat themselves to prove their seriousness? I suppose it remained sufficiently clear in my memory not to need repeating; if I pondered it at all, however, it was as a curiosity of my own psyche, a peculiarity my mind had thrown up from its depths. I’d been a bit lax in visiting Marie’s grave that winter. I assumed the dream had more to do with that than any real place, or person. Nor, for what it’s worth, did I connect my dream of Marie with her visits to me while I was fishing; the thought never even occurred to me.
Dan’s appearance, his state of mind, that Sunday night were the first signs of a change that overtook him during the next couple of months. To this day, I’m not sure exactly what triggered it, but his grief, kept at bay so long, found a way to tunnel under Dan’s defenses, and, while he was otherwise distracted, seized the moment and fell on him, burying its dirty teeth deep in his gut and refusing to let go. Dan wore the same suit and tie for days at a time. A scraggly beard surged and ebbed across his face. His hair, longer still, frequently jutted out in strange configurations. His hours at work became erratic, to say the least. Some mornings he wouldn’t show up until nine or nine thirty; others, he’d be at his desk by quarter to seven. Even on those days he was in well ahead of the rest of us, he’d spend most of his time staring at the screen of the computer he hadn’t switched on yet. His stare, that look that I had felt wanted to pierce through you, worsened to the point it was next to impossible to hold any kind of conversation with him. He didn’t appear to be listening to anything you were saying, just boring into you with those eyes that had been turned all the way up, blowtorch bright. He never left work later than the rest of us, and it wasn’t unusual to walk by his office at the end of the day and find it empty.
Before long, his job was in serious jeopardy. He’d been team leader on a pair of important projects, one of which demoted him, while the other dropped him outright. The company had changed. This was not, as management had started trumpeting, your father’s IBM, which I guess meant it wasn’t my IBM. The notion of a corporate family that took care of its own and in so doing earned their loyalty was on the way out, evicted by simple greed. What this meant practically speaking was that Dan could not be assured of the same understanding and indulgence I had received more than a decade prior. That he didn’t much care if he kept his job or not at this moment didn’t mean he wouldn’t feel differently in the future, and I did my best to make him see this. He wasn’t much interested in what I had to say. His grief had taken him far into a
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