Porch

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Over the phone, a woman I used to see tells me about her nightmares. What do you know about dreaming, I think.

“I couldn’t even begin to tell you,” she says. From the bathroom, the washing machine clicks off.

“Go ahead,” I say. “Try.”

“Well,” she says, “one time I was stuck lying on the floor, looking at the ceiling of our old house.”

We had decided to move in together too quickly, the counselor had said; we had committed to something without leaving room to breathe.

“There was a small crack in the plaster, and it kept growing, slow. I wanted to close my eyes but I couldn’t. I wanted to go outside but I couldn’t.”

We bought the house from a couple that was tired of the weather up north. They were moving south, not for warmer air, but because they thought the wind would blow softer.

“Someone started knocking at the door and I couldn’t open my mouth.”

The house wasn’t too bad, just needed a few quick fixes. The back porch, for one, needed a new coat of paint.

“I couldn’t move my head.”

She wanted to help but she said she had never painted before, had never even held a brush, had heard somewhere that it was best to go against the grain.

“They just kept knocking and knocking. There were two of them, I could tell. They were saying something but I couldn’t hear over the knocking. There was nothing really wrong, they weren’t in trouble, I don’t think. They just wanted to come in, check up on things.”

“Here,” I had said. I dipped the roller in the tray and smoothed over a spot where the wood was chipped. “Like this.”