DREAM LIFE
As a child, she had dreams about dolls. In the northwest
corner of their shared room, she and Melissa had a whole
family of plastic and cloth children, asleep in a miniature
crib. Missy adored playing house--feeding the dolls their
fake formula and putting throw pillows under her clothes to
pretend she was pregnant--but, even as a tiny girl, Dana
knew it was just a game. So while Missy changed imaginary
diapers, Dana shot BB guns and got into crab apple fights
with the boys. Until she started having the dreams:
nightmares of plastic babydolls wielding knives and
handpuppets trying to strangle her while she slept. Even
then, she understood the symbolism. After that, she made
sure to play with them every day, even for a few minutes,
and the dreams stopped.
They started up again after Mulder disappeared. She
dreamed of dolls almost as often as she dreamed of her
abduction. She told herself, rationally, it had to do with
fear of this new-found domesticity, with this shift that
she was making from the boy's club of the FBI to Tupperware
parties and diaper bags. When she woke screaming and
Mulder held her, she couldn't explain it, feeling as
ridiculous as when she'd been on that "case" in Maine with
the doll she nuked in the microwave.
Tonight when she woke gasping she left Mulder wrapped in
sage-colored down and shuffled into the kitchen. She sat
at the table, sipping warm milk and stroking her belly
absentmindedly, lulled by the gentle undulations of her
child's movement.
"Scully?" Rubbing his eyes, Mulder sat heavily in the
chair beside her. "You ok?" She nodded and took another
sip of milk.
"The guppy awake?"
She nodded again, a soft smile on her lips at "guppy," the
nickname she'd given their baby while he'd been gone and
she took care of the fish, the Scully fish and the Mulder
fish and the tiny guppy swimming in the tank. Their family
in miniature.
Between the baby kicking and the need to pee, it had gotten
hard for her to fall asleep and the nightmares woke her up,
while Mulder slept surprisingly well, spooned up behind her
with his left hand on her big belly. Six weeks to go.
This was her dream life and it was scaring her senseless.
* * *
She didn't know what to do with herself all day while
Mulder was at work. Take it easy, the doctor said, high
blood pressure, the doctor said, pre-term labor, the doctor
said, Dana, you need to relax.
What she needed was to get out of the house. She pulled on
her biggest trenchcoat, grabbed her oldest copy of Moby
Dick, and headed for the coffeeshop not far from the
apartment. She'd always walked past it but never allowed
herself the indulgence of whiling away the afternoon with a
book and a hot drink. It was filled with students studying
for exams and poets diligently writing in their notebooks.
She watched people come and go for a while and then settled
in to read, turning pages between sips of hot chocolate.
"This seat taken?"
She knew the voice before she looked up. "Daniel... you're
looking well."
"And you are positively radiant."
"Vitamins." She smiled softly and cleared her throat.
"Please, sit."
"So...how's the FBI?"
"Fine. How's Maggie?"
"Maggie is...Maggie. She's a painter who refuses to
commercialize her work so she doesn't make any money and
she refuses to accept help from me. She's living in this
rat-trap of an apartment that is literally overrun by cats.
It's a wonder she hasn't been evicted."
"But she's living her dream. She has spirit, Daniel, and
courage."
"And how about you, Dana? Are you living your dream?"
"Yes, Daniel, I am. I finally am."
* * *
Funny how accidental run-ins with an ex-lover seemed to
give her a sense of perspective these days. In the bedroom
with a basket of clean laundry, Scully wrestled with an
obstinate fitted sheet and contemplated her conversation
with Daniel, about fate and the paths a person's life can
take. He was softer and less intense than he had been that
day in the hospital, when he confessed, all too easily,
"you're all I live for." Daniel from the coffeeshop was
the Daniel she fell in love with years ago, talking about
the Hippocratic oath in the crisp October air. They'd all
changed and somehow they remained the same. Somehow Maggie
the girl in paint-splattered t-shirts had become Maggie the
struggling artist and cat lady, while she hunted aliens and
mutants in every conceivable part of the world, from a
spaceship in Antarctica to a sewer system infested with
rats. All that was about to change. She felt it in the
loosening of her joints, in the weight of her breasts, in
the shimmy of her waterbound baby girl.
"Whatever," she murmured, giving up. "Folding sheets is a
man's job, anyway." She curled up next to a tangle of
sheets and waited for Mulder to come home.
* * *
"So how was your day, dear?" Mulder was leaning over her,
smirking in typical his parody of this domestic life. It
was like living with Rob Petrie all over again, only this
time they shared more than toothpaste.
She exhaled slowly. This was all so new, Mulder coming
home from work and waking her with a kiss, joining her on
the bed with a pile of sheets. "Fine."
"I see."
"Mulder, don't be like that."
"Like what?"
"Don't get huffy just because I use an adjective you find
distasteful."
"I don't find it distasteful, I find it uncommunicative and
I thought we were beyond that." He paused. "I don't want
to fight with you, Scully, so would you please tell me what
I did to piss you off?"
"It's nothing, Mulder. I'm sorry. Just lie down with me
for a minute?"
He set the basket of laundry on the floor and took his
place on the queen-sized bed. Ordinarily they both
preferred facing away from each other, his body fitted
against her rounded back, but tonight he needed to see her
face. Her eyes were bright and wet, the way they got when
she tried overly hard not to cry. He ran his thumbs over
her cheekbones and kissed her forehead. Then she buried
her face in his blue dress shirt and sobbed.
"Scully? Sweetheart please talk to me."
A sniffle turned into a snort. "Sweetheart? In almost
eight years you've never once used any term of endearment
on me or anyone else. Get a girl pregnant and that gives
you a right to call her sweetheart, is that how it goes,
Agent Mulder?"
"Something like that, yeah."
She wiped the wet skin under her eyes with her fingertips.
"I'm sorry. Blame it on hormones or lack of sleep or a
conversation with a certain cardio-thoracic surgeon that I
really didn't want to have."
"You saw Daniel today?"
"Yeah. It wasn't bad, actually, just unexpected, but it
made me think a lot about the path my life has taken. The
path our lives have taken."
"You're not happy?"
"Did I say I wasn't happy? I'm ecstatic, Mulder. I mean,
my god, we're having a baby and we're not too bad at this
cohabitation thing. But it's like I turned my head and
someone pressed fast forward on the remote control. I
mean, it hasn't even been a year since our first kiss. . .
" Suddenly he was kissing her again, tender and passionate
all at once. Like him.
"What was that for?" she said huskily, when their mouths
separated.
"Just wanted to let you know how happy I am, honey-bunch."
"God I love you, poopy-head."
* * *
They held hands on the way to the restaurant. She detailed
her rendezvous with Daniel between his snide comments about
bureaucracy and afternoon meetings at the bureau.
"Daniel asked me a question today, Mulder, and the answer
was so obvious I didn't need to think about it."
"What did he ask?"
"He asked me if I was living my dream. I know he wanted me
to say that I wasn't, that my dream life revolved around
him, or even that I was, that murdering psychopathic dolls
and moth-men was my lifelong ambition. . . But I said yes,
Mulder, because I have you and this baby. It is a dream
life because I desired it so deeply and never thought I
could have it."
He rubbed his thumb over the thin leather of her gloved
hand and waited. If she had more to say, she would say it.
She sighed deeply. There it was. "I guess I'm afraid,
Mulder, that I'm going to wake up and this dream life will
disappear. What makes this any more substantial than you
imagining you lived in a house with Diana and a
refrigerator perpetually filled with sunflower seeds?"
"The seeds in the fridge should have been a big tip off,
huh?"
"What you found out, though, was that your dream life,
living with Samantha in reach, was really a nightmare set
in a posh neighborhood."
"You're saying what if what you thought you wanted turns
out to be the opposite? What if you can't stand changing
diapers and taking the kid to endless ballet recitals and
spelling bees and going to McDonalds instead of the Phoenix
Dumpling on a Friday night? What if you remember the real
reason we never shared hotel rooms on the road and ship me
off to the Gunmen as a punishment for leaving the toilet
seat up one too many times?"
"No, Mulder, I'm saying what if I'm not good at it. What
if I do something wrong and the dream turns into a
nightmare?"
Realization hit, the way it did when they were on a case
and he was listening under her words, not to them, his ears
attentive and his mind somewhere else. "The dream about
the dolls. . . you think that's about you being a bad
mother?"
They stood next to the doorway to the restaurant, letting
customers enter in their winter coats. He pulled her into
his arms, tucking her head under his chin. "The thing is
Scully," he whispered into her wind-blown hair, "there was
one thing missing in the dream. The dolls didn't have a
dad."
* * *
Taking her to dinner was better than any dream. It gave
them an excuse to get out of the cramped apartment when
she'd been resting most of the day on the couch, and it
gave them time to connect with each other in the way they'd
just started to when she got pregnant and he got abducted.
He loved watching her eyes widen when she saw a pasta dish
with artichokes and then linger on the list of desserts--
tiramisu and creme brulee and a rich espresso cheesecake.
He'd cherished mealtimes most of all since he'd been back,
for it was then that he saw the old Scully, the one he fell
in love with over a dribble of barbecue sauce on her chin.
And it was then that he fully understood how much she was
giving up to give him this child. Every day she craved
something new, and he teased her mercilessly about it.
"I don't know how you can even think about eating mushrooms
after that run-in with the giant fungal organism." In
truth, he wasn't sure he could stomach it.
"Well," she folded her hands and looked up from her menu,
"to put it in the simplest terms, I'm perfectly capable of
distinguishing between your garden variety mushroom and
yellow, hallucinogenic slime. Aren't you?"
"Funny, Scully. I really didn't need to be reminded of
that little field trip to North Carolina."
"So, Agent Mulder, are you trying to tell me that you
haven't eaten a single *fungal organism* in over a year?"
"No."
"Not on a pizza?"
"No."
"In hot and sour soup?"
"No."
"On a hamburger? Fried and dipped in bleu cheese
dressing?"
"No, Scully, would you drop it already? I would not eat
them in a bowl, I would not eat them on a roll."
"Why are you talking like Dr. Seuss?"
He reached across the table and took her hand. "You know
what, Scully? It's really good to be home."
* * *
Climbing into bed, she wrestled with pillows, tucking one
under her head, one between her knees, one under the
"maternal bulge"--that's what one of those silly books that
Byers kept buying called it--while Mulder stood by and
watched. Once she was settled, he slid behind her and
pulled the clean top sheet and comforter over them.
Nocturnal like her father, Guppy tested her fins in her
amniotic sea.
"Pipe down in there," Mulder said, running his hand over
the length of Scully's stomach. "The old folks need their
sleep."
"How'd you do that? She never listens to me." Scully
grumbled, her face smashed into the pillow.
"Daddy magic. Goodnight, Laura."
"Night, Rob."
For long minutes, Mulder listened to Scully's breathing
deepen and slow. Then, like a girl at a slumber party, she
started giggling. "I would not eat them with a fox, I
would not eat them from a box."
"Or wearing socks."
She stifled a giggle and burrowed into the covers.
"Goodnight, Mulder."
"Sweet dreams, sweetheart."
FIN
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