It is the wedding night of an unnamed bride and her dreams are fueled with weirdness. As she lies next to her newly wedded spouse in the honeymoon suite of a hotel, lovers from her past who failed to win her hand or perhaps never bothered trying are parade past framed like the credits at the end of some movies. That’s not the weirdness, however. The weirdness is that each and every one of them—all perfectly mobile in real life—are seated in wheelchairs suspended from cables which allow them to joyously with the freedom of trapeze artists against the backdrop of cerulean skies with nary a cloud to mark their lucid perfection.
It is a portrait of a dream—a perfectly happy if bizarre dream—rather than a nightmare. And yet, suddenly, she is crying out into the quite of her wedding night boudoir, “Don’t forget your seatbelts!” And then, for seemingly unnecessary emphasis, she repeats the cry and this is enough not only to pry herself out her dream state and into the waking world, but to do the same to brand new husband John. “Seatbelts? What seatbelts?” he naturally inquires. She describes the content of the dream. John, described by the narrator as a man content not to work too actively at interpreting the content of dreams levies a quick review, nonetheless dismissing it as absurd and boring. She agrees, they laugh and then back to sleep.
The next morning as they both go jogging, the narrator offers one of the few examples of extensive insight into the mind of the characters. The reader learns that young woman has an appreciation for male legs that almost borders on fetishistic: “They were holy territory, uninhabited by fat cells...perfectly fabricated systems designed” for stealthy predatory movement. Later that afternoon, they go through their wedding gifts, separating them into three different piles: “lovely, passable, and impossible.” Since yellow is her favorite color, any gift actually colored yellow was automatically assigned to the “lovely” pile and there were lots of them since almost every knew her favorite color was yellow. The sea of yellow gifts sends her mind once more into dreamland as she briefly fantasizes about life together with husband in their one-bedroom apartment. It is a vision of John coming home from work while she never has left, spending the day sewing and cooking. The fantasy concludes at night as they slide between the sheets. Except for a close-up image of John’s legs standing on the yellow bath mat.
Popping back into the present, she and John are both in complete agreement upon the rest: frying pans and waffle irons go into the “passable” section, but the Blue Mountain pottery definitely qualifies as “impossible.” Their easy agreement on which gifts belong to which section mirrors their absolutely lack of irreconcilable differences. They agree on everything: what music to listen to, what cocktails to order, what comic strips were funny, and even politics: “It was all very comforting.”
The narrator breaks in once more to provide some descriptive information. John is a lawyer who has just been offered a partnership in the firm. She was a journalist who tendered her resignation because of her imminent nuptials. Despite having earned a degree and landing a job she really wanted, the thrill was short-lived as the novelty of something new in her life once again wore away rapidly.
Back in the present, following the separation of gifts, they make love. Afterward, while John enjoys a post-coital cigarette, he is suddenly moved to ask, “Why were they in wheelchairs?” She can only respond rhetorically: “Who ever knows in dreams?” Then they both fall asleep and enjoy a little nap.
Later that afternoon, she sits on the balcony overlooking the beach and watches as John walks down to the water on his “beautiful spare legs.” While he swims, she begins the task of writing thank-you notes in reply to the wedding gifts. Once again, however, her focus on a task is easily distracted and her focus turns from note-writing to watching her husband in the waters of the ocean. The slow, predictably repetitive movement of the waves coming into shore. The slow, predictable response of John’s body to each new approach of a wave. Again and again, wave after wave, John’s body always repeating the same fluid response to match the ocean’s fluid response.
And then, once again, her consciousness gives way to feeling more primal in nature, to a message being sent to her conscious mind from deep within her subconscious, a message that her consciousness is eager to accept it, but for novelty purposes only, not for any sort of serious complex interpretation. She is overwhelmed a temporary shock of dread at the realization that “the organized behavior of the Atlantic was what the rest of her life would be.” She foresee with terrorized trepidation a future where everything is easily slotted into agreed-upon categories and where the monotony is so overwhelming that it gains the power of monotony. As she looks out at the small figure of John in the water, she is overcome with wonder at how he can seem to be enjoying the monotony of the water so very much.
And then, like a dream suddenly ending with a cry in the night, her mind is back to the task at hand. The note is for a gift-giver named Lillian: “John and I just love Blue Mountain pottery.”
