Fever Dream: A Novel(20)

There’s a water fountain just behind her, and she fills two cups of water and hands one to each of us, and she also gives us each a pill. I wonder what they are having Nina take, if it’s the same thing they give me.

“Carla,” I say, and she turns toward me in surprise. “We have to call my husband.”

“Yes,” she says. “Nina and I were already talking about that,” and her condescending tone bothers me, and it bothers me that she doesn’t stand up right away to do the thing that I have finally managed to ask her to do.

“You each take one of these pills every six hours, be sure not to go back out in the sun, and lie down and take a little nap in a dark room,” says the nurse, and she gives the blister pack to Carla.

On top of my hand, Nina’s hand still seems to want to restrain me. It’s a pale and dirty hand. The dew has dried and the lines of mud cross her skin from one side to the other. It’s not dew, I know, but you don’t correct me anymore. I’m so sad, David. David. It scares me when you don’t say anything for so long. Every time you could say something but don’t, I wonder if maybe I’m just talking to myself.

It takes you a while to get back to the car. Carla leads you both by the hand, one on either side. You or Nina stop every few steps, and then the whole group waits. Then, in the car, the gravel keeps Carla gripping the steering wheel in silence. None of the three of you says anything when you drive past the door of the house you left that morning and Mr. Geser’s dogs race across the yard and under the privet hedges to run alongside the car, barking. They are furious, but neither you nor Carla seems to notice them. The sun is already directly overhead, and you can feel the heat rising up from the floor. But nothing important happens, and nothing important is going to happen from here on. And I’m starting to think you’re not going to understand, that going forward with this story doesn’t make any sense.

But things keep happening. Carla parks beside the three poplar trees at her house, and there are many more details you’ll want to hear.

It’s not worth it anymore.

Yes, it is worth it. Carla pushes the button on her seat belt and it whips back into place, and with that whipping noise, my perception of reality comes back clearly. Nina is sleeping in the backseat. She is pale, and even when I say her name a few times she doesn’t wake up. Now that her dress is completely dry I see the haloes of discolored fabric, huge and amorphous, like a big school of jellyfish.

Really, Amanda, there’s no point.

I have an intuition, I have to go on.

“I’m going to carry this precious little thing inside,” says your mother, opening the door to the backseat, putting Nina’s arm over her own shoulder and lifting her out of the car. “And you two are going to take a good nap.”

I have to get out of here, I think. That is all I’m thinking while I see her struggle to close the car door with her foot, and then walk toward her house carrying my daughter. The rescue distance shortens and the rope that connects us pulls me to my feet, too. I follow them without taking my eyes from Nina’s little arm hanging over Carla’s back. There is no grass around Carla’s house, it’s all earth and dust. There’s the entrance to the house in front and a small shed to one side. In the backyard, I can see the fences that must have been for the horses, but there are no animals in sight. I look for you. I’m worried about the possibility of finding you in the house. I want to take Nina and get back into the car. I don’t want to go inside. But I need so badly to sit down, I need so badly to get out of the sun, to drink something cool, and my body goes inside after Nina’s.

This is not important.

I know, David, but you’re still going to listen to it all. It takes a minute for my eyes to get used to the darkness in the house. There isn’t much furniture but there are a lot of random things. Such ugly and useless things, little angel ornaments, large plastic boxes piled up, gold and silver plates nailed to the wall, plastic flowers in giant ceramic vases. I had imagined a different house for your mother. Now Carla sits Nina down on the sofa. It’s a wicker sofa with cushions. Across the room in the oval mirror I see myself, flushed and sweaty, and behind me I see the plastic-strip curtain over the front door, and beyond, the poplar trees and the car. Carla says she’s going to make the iced tea. The kitchen opens up to the left; I see her take an ice cube tray from the freezer.

“I would have straightened up some if I’d known you were coming,” she says, reaching for two cups on a shelf.

I take two steps toward the kitchen and I’m almost next to Carla. Everything is small and dark.

“And I would have baked something. I told you about the butter cookies I make, remember?”

I do remember. She talked about them the first day we met. Nina and I had arrived that morning, and my husband wouldn’t be there until Saturday. I was checking the mailbox because Mr. Geser had told us he would leave a second set of keys there, just in case, when I saw your mother for the first time. She was coming from her house carrying two empty plastic buckets, and she asked me if I’d noticed the way the water smelled too. I hesitated, because we had drunk a little as soon as we’d arrived, yes, but everything was new and if it smelled different it was impossible for us to know if that was a problem or how it always was. Carla nodded worriedly and went along the path that edged the lot our house was on. When she came back I was already settling our things in the kitchen. Through the window I saw her put down the buckets to open the gate, and then put them down again to close it. She was tall and thin, and though she was carrying a bucket on either side, now apparently full, she was upright and elegant as she walked. Her gold sandals traced a whimsically straight line, as if she were practicing some kind of step or movement, and only when she reached the veranda did she raise her eyes and look at us. She wanted to leave me one of the buckets. She said it was better not to use the tap water that day. She insisted so much that I ended up accepting, and for a moment I wondered whether I should pay her for the water. Out of fear of offending her I offered, instead, to make some iced tea with lemon for the three of us. We drank it outside, with our feet in the pool.