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Maggie dreams. She dreams every night and always in color. Sometimes she dreams the boyfriends she has loved and lost, but she only dreams them after their deaths. Sometimes she wonders why it is that they should come to her only after they have gone.
Maggie dreams her childhood, dreams long talks with her grandmother, dreams her mother's self-righteous speeches and the pristine expanses of the Grosse Pointe Country Club. When she wakes after a Country Club dream she hugs herself, feeling as empty inside as she once suspected the Club members were.
Maggie dreams of Cicely, mostly in distorted dreamscapes that leave her questioning what is real. She longs to ask Chris about those dreams and never does, unsure why she fears what he might say.
Maggie never dreams of Mike. She thinks this should be a comfort, a sign that he is alive and well somewhere, because, after all, she can only dream those she has loved after they are dead.
Once Maggie dreamt her father and woke in a cold sweat, convinced he had died in the night. She called long distance to Michigan again and again until she heard his voice on the phone. Even then, she almost didn't believe it was him. She adds this to the list of dreams she can't share, afraid that if it doesn't portend her father's death then it means she doesn't love him. She wants to love her father.
Maggie dreams Joel oddly, dreams him in strange erotic fantasies and wakes after them knowing she could never love him, only desire him. On the nights when she dreams of Joel holding her and hears herself calling his name softly she wakes early to walk alone in the cold morning and wonders why she feels so strangely like crying. The worst mornings are the ones that follow her favorite Joel dreams, the dreams in which he teases her with affection in his voice and she punches his shoulder softly while they do any of a million daily things together. In those dreams she feels completed in a way she seldom does while waking. She feels safe, as though her missing pieces have been found and forgiven. On those mornings she invariably wakes reaching out for someone who is never there.
Maggie wants to dream as she has read about, wants the dreams of romantic movies, wants the perfect surety of her youth when she dreamt a family for herself. She never saw them, but she knew they were there, just around the corner, just beyond the door. She knows, because she could feel their love.
Maggie dreams every night. She is torn each morning between relief and regret, afraid of who she may become in the waking hour and what she may lose. She walks her days briskly, hoping to outrun the memories of the previous night and racing toward the new dreams to come with anticipation and unease. She thinks that surely others don't have this tempestuous relationship with dreaming and that she will never have a way to know.
Maggie dreams.