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Therese dreams of tunnels thrice over.
—
On her first visit to Carol’s house, when she is still a shop girl at Frankenberg’s, a mystery to Carol and to herself, she dreams of tunnels collapsing.
It had been a brief thought as she and Carol made their way through the Lincoln Tunnel. Oh how attractive Carol had looked, how Therese had felt like Danny studying his movie stars. The radio buzzed with something popular that Therese had heard often in the store and was rather tired of. They were the only ones in the tunnel then, everyone else still preoccupied with church or with Christmas shopping in the city. It made Therese feel as though they were doing something forbidden. She had said goodbye to Richard and Carol was whisking her away to a life of intrigue and excitement. She had already been cracked open, all she needed now was to be filled with gold.
Therese already liked Carol so much, even though she barely knew her. She wanted so badly for this woman to accept her, to hold her in her hands like an injured bird or a lover finally returning home. But Therese hadn’t known, and would not know for years after, how to tell Carol that without sounding ridiculous. She pictured the disgust on Carol’s face and couldn’t bear even her imagination's poor rendering of it, so she remained silent. She had not even the words to describe what she was feeling to herself. It was an incomprehensible mass inside of her, swirling and bubbling with every sidelong glance Carol threw her way.
When the words did not come, she pictured the tunnel caving in on them and killing them both. Death was the most indescribable thing she could describe. So final, so feared, it seemed the only thing serious enough to capture what she was feeling right now. What she felt for Carol could not be love. She loved Richard, and what she felt for Carol dwarfed that into insignificance.
She pictured how their bodies would be found together and how they would be written about as a pair in the newspaper. Everyone would know that a woman like Therese had been of interest to a woman like Carol. Somehow she knew that everyone would sense their love, how they had been preserved in time.
Then, she had had no idea of Carol’s daughter or friends, anyone who would miss Carol dearly if she had been dragged out of the Lincoln Tunnel dead and gone. She had not met Rindy and knew nothing of Abby. But it was true that Carol had several of those people — if not as many as one would expect of a woman of her status. She lived in a large beautiful house surrounded by beautiful things and beautiful people. She herself was stunning. She had more money than she knew what to do with. It hurt Therese to think that she had nobody who would miss her the same way Carol would be missed.
Once Therese is tucked into Carol’s guest room and her mouth is stale with the taste of the burnt milk, she is pulled back to the tunnel.
She can hear Carol downstairs doing something, the melody from a jazz standard floating up into the room. It soothes her more than the milk, the thought of Carol down there. She would've loved it even more if Carol had stayed in the room to read or finish some embroidery. Therese can see her in her mind’s eye in the corner armchair watching over her fondly. She hopes that Carol would like to watch her sleep. Therese feels silly, with her camera full of film burned with Carol’s face. Would Carol like to have photos of Therese? Does she enjoy looking at her? It feels impossible to understand her. Slowly Therese’s eyes fall shut and she sinks into sleep. Resting in a stranger’s house would’ve been unthinkable if it were anyone else. Usually Therese had a hard time allowing herself to stay over even with Richard. But the wild stories of women in trouble don't plague her here. Therese wouldn't mind being killed by Carol.
She dreams of cracks in that solid concrete and jazz floating from the radio. In her head Carol strokes her hair with her unoccupied hand. Reality and memory mix in dream — Carol wears the beautiful red scarf she had on their first meeting. She tells Therese there’s nobody more important in the world to her, nobody more dear. Everything Therese wants to hear. The tunnel shakes slightly but Carol keeps driving. Therese doesn’t imagine her scared. No, as always Carol is serene and unaffected. Her fingers play with the soft strands of hair at the nape of Therese’s neck and Therese leans into the touch. Carol’s fingers are thin and warm, meant for something like painting or sculpting. Stones pelt the windshield. Glass falls in Therese’s lap. A bit of blood runs down her temple. The light from the end of the road flickers. Eventually Therese can only see the outline of Carol’s face illuminated by a single fluorescent that has managed to stay on. It doesn’t matter either way, she could recognize Carol in the dark.
Death doesn’t hurt. They’re pulled from the rubble and beautiful pictures are taken of the two of them, only damaged in hidden places except the dried blood on Therese’s temple. Carol is still as beautiful as ever. Therese thinks everyone would go to her funeral just for a chance to look at her. They’d have to rent out a big church, the kind that hosted celebrities’ funerals, so everyone could get a chance to pay their respects.
Photographers gather and policemen examine them. Eventually EMTs take them both away and the rubble lies barren. They lie together in the morgue, in the ambulance.
When Therese wakes to Carol sitting on the foot of the bed she feels shame bubble up in her throat. There’s no way Carol can know what Therese has been thinking, but still she worries that it shows on her face somehow. That Carol will be able to see her own fictionalized death in Therese’s eyes and will be disgusted by it. Therese worries that Carol will be disgusted by any number of things. She just wants so desperately for Carol to let her stay. Not in her house necessarily, but in her life.
Carol puts a hand on the quilt over her knee and asks how she slept. Therese feels herself reply but doesn't know what she's saying. Whatever it is seems to make Carol smile, so she gives one in return.
“It’s nearly five o’clock. You slept quite a while.” Carol’s hand shifts on her knee. Her fingers wrap around it and grip it more firmly.
Only then does Therese bring her eyes to look out of the window. It had been light when she dozed off, but now she can’t see anything save the reflection of her and Carol in the darkness of the glass. Surely Richard has called her apartment by now, asking if she’s already home and if he can come over for a bit tomorrow. She tires herself even by imagining it.
“You should’ve woken me up, you must have things to do tonight.” Therese sits up straighter and rubs the sleep from her face. She does not want to go, but she feels she must give Carol the chance to kick her out.
Carol shakes her head and places a hand on Therese’s shoulder.
“Relax, there’s nothing I have planned. Just dinner with Rindy, of course.”
Rindy is a sweet girl, and Therese finds herself fond of her even though she has never felt comfortable around children. Mostly she just sits and nods along while Rindy talks about her school or her dolls. It isn’t too unlike being with some of Richard’s friends. But the idea of dinner with her and Carol, well that ignites a strange feeling of terror in Therese that she can’t quite place. With it comes a desperate need to stay. The two emotions war in her chest.
“You’re welcome to join, if you’d like.” Carol continues after Therese has said nothing.
“Alright — if you’re sure.” Therese flashes a bashful smile and looks down at the blanket.
Carol pats her hand shoulder and tells her everything will be ready in half an hour. Therese feels a bit queasy all of the sudden. The world has spun faster than she’s used to.
—
Therese dreams of tunnels again when she is alone.
Carol had left her in the middle of the country and flown back east. Nothing ever felt as dark as the days that stretched out before her endlessly. She hadn’t the energy to go home nor travel further. She didn’t even want to stay put. She wanted to be nowhere, nebulous and nonexistent.
It would’ve been better to have never known her, part of Therese’s mind proclaimed. But what would she have then? Would she still be tied to Richard, wanting to drown herself on their boat to Paris? Without Carol it’s difficult to imagine Therese would’ve ever broken out of her life. Newton’s first law. Every object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless compelled to change its state by the action of an external force. But Carol’s entrance had knocked her off course and left to flounder in the dark. Therese was tired of movement. She just wanted to stay still. Her fantasies had stopped being of Carol’s mouth and the feeling of her strong arms, now Therese embraced the frozen Earth. Maybe if she was buried she could find enough quiet to make her head slow down.
Therese rented a small room in a town she had no real interest in staying in, simply because she didn’t know what else to do. It was cheap, a necessity since her money was dwindling. The other tenants must find her odd. A young woman from New York spending her winter holidays here? Maybe they could read in her face that a tragedy occurred. A relative dying, a divorce, a lost child. Therese made no moves to correct them. The endless sunset Carol spoke of seemed now to be a farce. Meaningless words on a page, more cruel than Mr. Tucker’s tapes. There was no sunset. Just Therese wanting to bury herself in the dirt.
On the ninth night of her stay, once Therese had settled fully into the fact that nobody knew where she was, that she was completely alone until her money dried up and she was forced to go back to the city, the dreams return.
For a while she had dreamt of nothing. Her nights were a void into which she fell for hours at a time, only barely managing to claw her way back into the world of the conscious every morning. But that night, a world materialized behind her closed eyelids.
She finds herself back in Carol’s car, but this time alone. It’s pitch black, with the only light coming from a pinprick at the end of the road. She sits there, unsure of what to do, when she hears a voice calling out. It’s muffled by the car, but she’s sure she heard something. Really there’s no choice but to get out. Otherwise she’ll rot away in that passenger seat for eternity. And the voice could very well be Carol calling out for her help. Carol calling for her to come back. Carol calling for her to get out of the car and crawl into her embrace like she had that last night they were together. Therese opens the door slowly, worried she might hit something accidentally. She can barely make anything out in the darkness. The voice calls again when her door is opened – something unintelligible but distinctly painful. Once the car door clicks back into place Therese hears the locks click. It suddenly seems like a terrible idea to have left the safety of the car.
With a shaky hand she stretches out her lighter to see where she’s going. The voice echos so much off of the walls that she can’t tell what direction it’s coming from. But the idea of going away from the light scares her more than her guilt is able to overpower her. She can’t tell if it’s Carol or not — but her brain pesters her with what-ifs anyway. How could she possibly leave Carol, Carol whom she loves more than anything in the world, to save herself? Yet the opposite is true. How could Carol leave her in the first place?
Slowly, the light grows closer. Therese’s feet are beginning to hurt from the uneven ground she’s walking on, trying not to trip over chunks of concrete that litter the street. The voice still calls out but it’s further away. Tears stream down Therese’s face. She’s sure it’s Carol now, her mind has convinced her of it regardless of reality. For a moment she considers that Carol has found another way out and is trying to help Therese out of the tunnel. Perhaps Carol is as scared as she.
Therese wakes in her twin bed, sheets twisted all around her legs effectively trapping her in one position. She feels a sense of eerie calm within herself. Like she’s stuffed with cotton. The room is freezing. Hazy morning light streams through the window — it must be sometime between 5:30 and 7am because of how quiet the world still feels. Therese begins the painstaking process of detangling herself. In a way she feels she's freeing herself in some grand metaphorical sense, that once she's out of this bed she will be good as new. Simultaneously she’s aware of her own foolishness.
Downstairs her landlady is starting the first pot of coffee. The burnt smell drifts upwards into Therese’s nose. The window has frost creeping in the corners. If this is what rebirth is like she’s not sure she wants it. Her head hurts from oscillating between hope and despair, love and hatred for Carol. Both options made her feel ashamed. Both feel like a betrayal.
A knock sounds against the wood of the door.
“Therese?”
It’s the landlady. She cracks open the door — a kind woman who reminds Therese a bit of Mrs. Robichek in her love that makes Therese feel pathetic.
“Are you awake — Oh! You are, good morning, Dear.”
She shoves a cup of coffee into Therese’s hands and promises breakfast in twenty minutes. Therese thinks only of Carol. Of the shitty coffee they shared in numerous hotels. Of Carol’s moods and ryes. Of the red tipped nails that dripped with Therese’s blood.
—
The tunnels appear once more years later.
Those terrible weeks alone in the Midwest had long since passed, only existing now as a horrible memory neither she nor Carol liked to discuss. They were here now, in an apartment on Madison Ave., in a bed together where they slept every night. Therese had her job at the Times, Carol had hers at that furniture store. A pleasant stability had settled over their lives, finally. It would’ve been impossible to picture something so wonderful when they met.
Carol had written to her that perhaps they were only destined to have a beginning, that the beginning was the best part. But to Therese it seemed as though they had emerged from the darkness into a soft and welcoming light. Things were not easy — they still had to hide from the world most every day — but she was not alone, and neither was Carol. The beginning had been a test to see if they could bare to make it to the middle.
Part of her can even admit that their brief and excruciating separation was necessary for them to get to where they are now. Without it Therese may have never come into herself. The progress she had seen as a betrayal of Carol then was the only way for them to ever come back together.
She is wrapped in Carol’s arms in their queen sized bed (Therese has a room down the hall that has never once been used by anyone but Abby) when the dreams come again. It’s atypical. Usually Therese has unremarkable dreams of her work that she forgets seconds after waking. Carol is the one prone to dramatics in her sleep.
The two of them are driving through the Lincoln Tunnel, Therese looking so young. She seems to be out of her body looking down upon herself and Carol in the car. Now she notices how Carol’s hand had shaken slightly when she flicked the radio on, when she lit her cigarette. Carol had smoked like a chimney then. Therese tries to temper her habit a little now, with the whispers of health concerns that she hears at the magazine. Therese sees herself staring out of the window and knows she is wishing for the tunnel’s collapse.
How selfish it seems now. Rindy without a mother, Abby without her dearest friend. And Danny, Richard, Phil too, expected to care for her absence because Therese had no family to do it. Then Therese had thought it unbearably romantic, the idea of dying together; the reality of living with each other was much harder.
A rumble shakes through the tunnel, just a train passing, but Carol’s flicker in fear for a second. Therese had thought her as unshakable as a statue made of marble, ignored the cracks that were threatening to tear themselves open in the driver’s seat next to her. Therese wishes she could throw her arms around that Carol knowing what she does now, reassure her that she was a fine mother and a magnificent woman. She wants to scold herself for being unable to do it then. But she too looks fragile. It’s hard to imagine what kind of threat Harge saw in her, how he could be so cruel to the two women in front of her eyes right now.
A pop song Therese is now nostalgic for filters through the car’s radio. She sees Carol smile at her, sees the uncertainty and excitement in her own eyes. She still cannot see why Carol had fallen in love with that girl in her passenger seat — something that frustrates Carol all these years later — but now Therese can appreciate better how unlikely it was that they would ever met. More unlikely that they stayed together, came back together.
Suddenly Therese is in the driver’s seat, Carol next to her. It makes her heart plummet for a moment with the shock of it. Abby had taught her last spring how to drive manual. Carol was much too nervous to be a good teacher. Her vice grip on the door scared Therese more than the car did. So Abby had taken the responsibility. Still, Therese isn’t the fondest of driving. It makes her anxious. Especially now, with the tunnel so dark. But Carol is asleep, trusting Therese to get her wherever they are going safely as Therese herself had done so many times before. The tunnel shakes once more. Therese cannot hear the chiming of the bells that warn of a train’s arrival.
Death does not come easily. Carol cries and Therese grips her hands, the steering wheel abandoned. She worries about what will happen to Rindy. She does not want her picture on the front page of the Times. Those photographers she had imagined so long ago, documenting their affection for each other, now seem like vultures. Nobody will think them lovers, only close friends, and they will fade away from public memory the same way every other news story Therese helps publish does. If not, they will be scorned, scoffed at. The disgust Therese had always been so afraid of receiving will pile upon their graves along with the dirt.
She wakes with sweat on her brow. She shakes, not from cold, the thick quilt from Abby is more than enough to keep them warm, but from anxiety. She would like to get up and collect herself in the bathroom, but Carol’s hold on her arms prevents her from going anywhere. Even her slight movement wakes the woman.
“Therese?” She mumbles out, eyes trying to force themselves to stay open.
“Go back to sleep.” Therese says softly, trying to hide the waver in her voice. It fails, of course. Once Carol had learned what to look for there was no use in hiding from her.
Carol’s eyes stay open much easier now, and she takes a long look at Therese to try and figure out what’s wrong. Therese can’t help how her lip trembles. She had always been more susceptible to crying at the sight of care than that of a wound. And Carol’s face is full of it, care, that is. Her moods had tempered in the years since the divorce that had cleaved her life in two. Therese doesn’t think she’ll ever recover totally (and sometimes she selfishly wishes she had the same chance as Abby to have seen her before all of that) but they speak more openly now. Carol does not have to ask her what she’s thinking so often, and Therese does not drive herself mad with insecurity over Carol’s affections.
“What happened?” Carol asks.
Therese knows she will not understand without a mountain of explaining, particularly Therese’s less than pleasant fantasies that she used to entertain quite frequently. It would scare her to think that Therese would ever wish to die. She would think it her fault somehow, when it wasn’t. There were a slew of people before Carol that had hurt her as well. But that would require more explaining, about Therese’s mother, her schooling, the years of her late teens that were less than kind. Some of it Carol knows, and some Therese keeps as to protect her.
“Therese,” Carol says again, running a hand up Therese’s arm.
“Bad dream.” Therese replies, hoping to save most of the explaining for the morning when her words won’t be half nonsense. Her eyes plead with Carol’s to let it rest for now. They stare at each other for a few breaths.
Carol opens her arms for Therese to come closer, which Therese happily obliges. She smells wonderful and feels even better and Therese cannot think of concrete long when Carol’s skin is pressed against her own. She feels lips on her shoulder. Perhaps Carol can sense that she is still far away, floating in her own head the way she tended to do, and was trying to tether her back to Earth. They couldn’t have her floating back into space. Carol needed her here. She made that fact evident nearly every day. Hands come to grasp at her back underneath the cotton of her pajamas as Carol’s lips grow more insistent. A lazy heat spreads over Therese’s body, soaking through muscle and bone down to her marrow. Carol is here with her. Therese will wake up to the sight of her tomorrow. She will remain with her until either one of them absolutely has to get up for work. Therese will attempt to keep her as long as possible.
The day after next they will have dinner with Abby and her girl. Carol will fuss about the apartment and her dress when she will not need to. Abby will of course tease her about it, smiling conspiratorially with Therese. Rindy will come that weekend. Then next month, Therese’s birthday, a trip somewhere special.
Their future spreads out before them, a sunrise like Carol had said. Therese no longer finds it easy to imagine tunnels crushing them both or wishes to bury herself in the dirt. She finds it much easier to imagine what tomorrow will be. She will chose Carol today and tomorrow and next Thursday, and every one of those days will be an exercise in the faith that life is worth living.