On a visit Dick paid her in the nursery it occurred to her to ask his advice. She hadn’t thought of it earlier—or had, but didn’t want to bother him. He might be flattered, though, to be needed by her in this new way.
“Dick, this is going to sound strange, but I’ve had an idea. I don’t know how to express it, though.” She leaned forward, careful of sleeping baby Theo, who lay cradled between her legs on the covers.
“An idea?”
“A discovery, really.”
“A discovery? Have you found money in a drawer?”
“Har har, you wish! No, nothing so fortunate. My discovery occurred in a dream.”
He raised his eyebrows skeptically. “Ah, a dream. You know there’s nothing to them, don’t you? They’re just electrical impulses firing off during sleep.”
“Yes, I’m sure. But this was more the kind of dream people have in the Bible, where you’re somewhere between awake and asleep and you hear words. You tell yourself that they must be coming out of your own mind, but you hear them as if another person were speaking. It was strange, and I don’t even know if I believe in messages or visitations, but it happened. So I want to tell you about it.”
“What did this voice say to you?” He was kindly, humoring, but unaffected, poised on a ledge, peering down. Yet she had to make him understand.
“This is what I heard.” She sat up and lifted her head, affecting a posture of authority. “Nothing owes its existence to something, and vice versa.”
“That’s it?”
Upon saying the main thing, her shyness became excitement. “That’s it, and everything! Nothing owes its existence to something. And something owes its existence to nothing.”
“You realize you’re toying with one of the central arguments of philosophy—the argument from contingency.”
“I am?”
“Yes. Perhaps you heard me mention it.”
“No. I’m telling you my vision.”
“The vision that came in a dream.” He raised his eyebrows.
“Oh, Dick, I know I sound like a nut, but I have been having these dreams and seeing and learning things. It’s so marvelous. I feel as though we’ll be able to start talking about ideas now, this kind of idea, the kind you work with. What did you call it?”
“The argument from contingency, which has been refuted by many famous people. And I said you were in that ballpark, not hitting a home run. Philosophical arguments are developed through work and thinking, not in dreams.”
“But ideas can come that way, can’t they?” There must be a way to secure a fair hearing. She sifted back through moments when he’d paid attention, searching them for a common denominator, but her findings showed caprice more than any specific action she could take. She turned to other examples for support. “I’m sure I’ve read about scientists who saw things in a dream.”
He hesitated. He picked up one of the Maine lucky stones she’d laid out on the bedside table, satin black with a white circle around it, and rolled it across his palm.
“There have been such cases. Are you taking up science now?”
She looked down at baby Theo, who, sensing the maternal countenance tipped toward him, opened his eyes and searched her face. Perfect trust, or something even deeper than trust—faith, perhaps. Or a word that didn’t exist. Whatever it was she drank it in, took courage from it, and this enlarged him in return. When they two were alone in the room they completed each other and she whirled through space with him.
But they weren’t alone in the room. For once Dick’s nearness was unwelcome. She had a soul mate, and that gave her the wherewithal to see that Dick wasn’t one, after all, and that he was gearing up to belittle her with skepticism and disdain. There it was, configuring his face, bent on rendering her whole experience inconsequential. This had happened many times, she realized now, but she’d scrambled so hard to be close to him that she’d never seen it clearly. He was small, and petty. Just as Agnes said. Her idea was good, she was sure of it. Philosophers had thought something like it, he’d said so himself. But he would not compliment her. She was sitting in bed with her baby, experiencing an unprecedented firestorm of cerebral activity, and his plump pink lips, indecently protruding below his mustache, refused to acknowledge it. What was he, what was this? Words floated past, ephemeral as soap bubbles, each one popping as she tried to grab hold. How had he managed that, and how had she allowed it to happen? She was in danger. He could eliminate a true part of her right now.
“Never mind. It was just a dream. Maybe I’m still a little delirious.”
He looked at her, assessing her sincerity, and she had a sudden comprehension of what he was like in the world: competitive, in a stealthy way; belittling of good ideas that weren’t his; suspicious. She organized a childlike expression on her face, and he relaxed, seeing it, and accepted her demurral with magnanimity and a loving smile, and rewarded her by kissing her cheek. From far away she viewed the charming portrait of a contented threesome and doubted anyone would wonder what the woman was thinking.
“You need to rest. This one took it out of you.” He reached for Theo’s foot and rolled it in his palm in the same way as he had the stone.
She thought Dick was probably right, yet the thoughts and dreams persisted, and she was as besotted with them as she was with baby Theo. Each mode required her to inhabit it, and she imagined dressing herself for these different roles; either as a bluestocking, like the women who’d taught her at Miss Dictor’s, in tailored no-nonsense suits, or like a modern version of a mother in a Mary Cassatt painting, an innocent and cosseted Madonna dressed in the frilly and the floral. On her mother days she played with the boys and pottered around the house and outside, setting flowers everywhere. On her bluestocking days she went to her desk and tried to elucidate her visions on paper. She’d assumed it was easy for Dick because he did it all the time, but she understood now all the hours he spent in his study. The ideas were right there, clear and simple, yet when she tried to write them, there seemed to be a gate or a barrier between her mind and her hand that made the visions vanish, like the uncatchable rainbows cast by the crystal pendants in the dining room. She ached to think of Dick battling with this all the time, but was afraid that if she discussed it with him again he would say she should stop.
She didn’t stop. Instead she pressed until she got her entire idea written down. The piece was formed, the argument made. She stacked her notes in an ordered pile and copied them onto her letter paper, numbering each paragraph as she went along. When she’d seen how it would appear on the page, she began to copy it again, but her work was interrupted by Theo waking up and wanting his food and embraces. As he sucked with his cheeks and tapped at his bottle with his tiny hand, it occurred to her that her work would look more important if it were typed. She rarely had cause to use the typewriter and didn’t know how to use more than her index fingers, but she’d manage. When Theo was satiated with milk and affection, she handed him to Bailey for a walk outside and took her pages down to Dick’s study. Briefly she caught a mental picture of his eyebrows raised, but she’d finish before he got home and wouldn’t touch anything in his office but the typewriter.