Just Like a Man by Elizabeth Bevarly

were the ones over which she had no control.
    So if, say, he wanted to appear in a dream, she couldn't stop him. And if, say, he wanted to appear in that dream holding a banana, she couldn't stop him from doing that, either. And if, in that dream, he offered his banana to her, she couldn't help that. Nor could she help it if she also appeared in that dream, holding a doughnut, through which she slid Michael's banana after he offered it to her. And she also couldn't help it if they were both naked in the dream. She couldn't help that any more than she could help waking up all hot and sweaty and agitated afterward, with her tangled sheets bunched between her legs.
    Still, she was confident that the dream wasn't symbolic of anything. Unless maybe it signified that she needed to go to the grocery store because she was running low on phallic symbols… ah, food, she meant. Surely that would have been the way Freud would have interpreted it. So here she was, home from work with two bags of groceries. Bags of groceries that did
not
contain bananas or doughnuts, since Hannah suspected maybe an excess of carbohydrates might just be to blame for her sleep problems in the first place. So she'd bought lots of protein and vegetables—hot dogs and sausages and pickles and cucumbers and zucchini and… and… and…
    Hmm. Maybe it was an excess of something else she should be worrying about.
    Shaking the thought off almost literally, Hannah kicked closed the back door and settled her burdens on the kitchen counter. Then she shrugged out of her trench coat and hung it on a peg on the basement door to dry. It had rained all day, a development that rather suited her mood, and she looked forward to a cozy evening at home. Alone. Just her and her phallic symbols. And also a private celebration to which she had been looking forward. Because among the groceries she unpacked was a birthday cake, chocolate with white frosting, her favorite. It wasn't a big cake, but it was beautifully decorated with pink and yellow roses and pale blue trim. Across the top of the cake, plastic pastel prima ballerinas posed in perfect pirouettes, and fancy pink script across the middle read,
Happy Birthday, Hannah.
And Hannah smiled, because it was exactly the kind of birthday cake she had always wanted as a little girl, the kind of cake she'd never once had.
    She sighed with much contentment and made her way to the bedroom, shedding her workday clothes as she went, anxious, as always, to be free of them. After making herself comfortable in a loose-fitting, long-sleeved white T-shirt and even looser-fitting pale blue lounging pajama bottoms decorated with clouds, she plucked the pins from her hair and gave it a thorough brushing, looping the elbow-length tresses through each other to form a loose knot at her nape. Then she returned to the kitchen to prepare for her celebration, calling the number of Pizzarama to order a large garbage pizza and cheese sticks. Then she opened a bottle of Chianti and poured herself a generous glass. And then she went to the hall closet to retrieve her presents.
    Naturally, they were presents Hannah had bought for herself, since no one she knew had an inkling that today was her birthday. But because she'd never been able to celebrate her birthday as a child, when birthdays meant so much—mostly because her father always forgot when her birthday was—she made sure she celebrated them as an adult. Because even as an adult, birthdays meant so much to Hannah. Each one marked another year in which her life had been stable, secure, and uneventful, and in which she had been reasonably happy.
    The Pizzarama guy came and went, and by the time Han-nah finished dinner, she was halfway through the Chianti and was feeling pretty festive and eager to open her gifts. She'd save the one from her imaginary Great-Aunt Esmer-alda for last, since Auntie always gave her the nicest gifts. But she always got things from her pretend parents, too, not to