The Man Who Invented History - continues (B. Lapin)

I keep having this freaky dream. I wake up in bed trembling, completely panicky, covered in sweat with a scream half-stifled in my mouth. My wife is grabbing at me, nearly as agitated as I am, asking “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” Which seems only to make me even more hysterical so that suddenly I’m sobbing, throwing my arms wildly from side to side, kicking my legs. By this point, my wife is half on top of me, pinning me down by the shoulders and, at the same time, shaking me hard. “Stop it,” she yells, “stop it this instant!” And looking at her, I can see how angry she is. She’s positively furious, her face is completely red and contorted in rage. And then all of a sudden I remember that the only other person I have ever seen that angry before was my mother. And when I open my eyes, it is my mother except not exactly her, rather a younger look-alike version, but with the same 1970s bouffant hairdo, a vast tower of tortured curls and colored tangles now hanging precariously over my head, and she’s screaming at me, screaming at the top of her lungs. “What have you done? What have you done to your father?”

Then I’m in our old house in the Hollywood Hills and here’s where it changes every time. Sometimes I’m in the living room and my old man is sitting there on his big comfy chair with his feet up and an open book in his hands. Other times he’s out by the pool or in his bedroom, laying on a chaise lounge or the bed with the same book, this time upside down and covering his face. I go up to him and I say “Hey Pop, I need to talk to you,” but he doesn’t answer. So I say it again and still he doesn’t respond. By now, I’m standing right next him and I can see the book and, holy fuck, it’s the Bible, something my father wouldn’t be caught dead reading. “What are you reading that for?” I say, but again he doesn’t reply. “Hey, old man, can’t you hear me? What’s wrong?” I reach out and touch his shoulder.

“He’s dead, can’t you see, you’ve killed him?!” It’s my mother, that is, it’s the bouffant-wearing look-alike mother and this time she’s featuring the same pink chiffon baby-doll nightie my real mother used to wear in the 1970s and smoking one of those same Kent cigarettes with the Micronite filter that she chain-smoked for years and years.

“He’s not dead,” I say with rising irritation, “he’s just sleeping.” And I give his shoulder a gentle shake. “Come on, Dad, wake up. I have to talk to you.”

“He’s dead and you killed him,” the look-alike mother says, shaking her cigarette at me, the ash flying in every direction. “You killed him, you Oedipus you, you Cenci, you, you, Shane Cubbage!”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. If anyone killed him, it was you, you fucking bitch!” I’m shouting by this time and I know my father would be seriously pissed if I was shouting at my mother, even if she isn’t really my mother. “And who the fuck is Shane Cubbage?” I ask.

By this point in the dream, we are face-to-face, almost touching. The smoke from her cigarette is right in my face and my eyes are watering. “Who the fuck is Shane Cubbage?” I repeat, “I never heard of any Shane Cubbage.”

“You know who he is all right,” she responds, smoke billowing from her mouth and nose, “he’s your boyfriend and he killed his father, just like you killed yours!”

Now I’m so angry that I can’t speak. I can feel the blood in my veins burning, boiling. The words won’t come. They’re stuck in my throat. My head is pounding, my heart is beating harder and harder. My mouth is hanging open. I’m trying to say something to her. I desperately, urgently want to say something, but I can’t get the words out. I can’t get the words out.

Then I wake up in bed trembling, completely panicky, covered in sweat with a scream half-stifled in my mouth.