Fever Dream: A Novel(21)

“I make some mean butter cookies,” said Carla. “They’d go perfectly with this iced tea.”

“Nina would love those,” I said.

“Indeed, we would adore them,” said Nina.

In the kitchen at your house I fall into the chair beside the window. Your mother adds lemon to the tea and hands it to me with the sugar.

“Put a lot in,” says Carla. “It’ll clear your head.”

And when Carla sees that I’m not touching the sugar, she sits in the other chair and stirs it in for me. She looks at me out of the corner of her eye.

I wonder if I’ll be capable of getting myself out to the car. Then I see the graves. I just look outside, and there they are.

There are twenty-eight graves.

Twenty-eight graves, yes. And Carla knows I’m looking at them. She pushes my tea toward me. I don’t see it but its cold nearness fills me with disgust. I won’t be able to, I think. I feel bad about it for your mother’s sake, but it’s going to be impossible to drink anything. And yet I’m very thirsty. Carla waits. She stirs her tea and we are silent for a while.

“I miss him so much,” she finally says, and I struggle to understand what she is talking about. “I checked all the kids his age, Amanda. All of them.” I let her talk and I count the graves again. “I follow them without their parents’ knowing. I talk to them, take them by the shoulders to look them right in the eyes.”

We have to move forward. We’re losing time.

Now your mother looks toward the backyard too.

“And there are so many graves, Amanda. When I hang up the clothes to dry I always look down at the ground, because I tell you, if I step on one of those mounds . . .”

“I need to go to the sofa,” I say.

Your mother gets right up and goes with me. With one final effort I fall onto the sofa.

I’m going to count to three, then let’s get you up.

Carla settles me in.

One.

She gives me a pillow.

Two.

I reach out my arm, and before I fall completely asleep, I hug Nina tightly against my body.

Three. Grab the chair, like that. Sit down. Do you see me? Amanda?

Yes. I see you. I’m very tired, David. And I have some terrifying nightmares.

What do you see?

Not here. Here I see you. Your eyes are very red, David, and you have almost no eyelashes left.

In the nightmares.

I see your father.

That’s because he’s in the house. It’s nighttime and my parents are looking at you and Nina lying on the sofa, and they’re arguing.

Your mother is going through my purse.

She’s not doing anything wrong.

Yes, I know. I think she’s looking for something. I wonder if she’s finally going to call my husband. That’s all she has to do. Did I tell her enough times?

You told her at the beginning, and now she’s trying to find a phone number.

Your father sits across from the sofa and looks at us. He looks at my untouched tea still on the table, he looks at my shoes, which your mother took off for me and left to one side of the sofa, and he looks at Nina’s hands. You look a lot like your father.

Yes.

He has wide eyes, and though he would prefer we weren’t there, he doesn’t seem frightened. I sleep for moments at a time, and now the lights are off and everything is dark, it’s night and your parents don’t seem to be in the house. I think I see you. Do I see you? You’re next to the plastic curtain but there’s no light anymore, I can’t see the poplars or the fields. Now your mother walks past me and opens the window that looks out on the backyard. For a moment the air smells of lavender. I hear your father’s voice. Now there’s someone else. It’s the woman from the emergency room. She’s in the house, and your mother comes over with a glass of water. She asks me how I feel. I make an effort to sit up, and I swallow another pill from the blister pack. They also give one to Nina, who seems to be a little better and asks me something I can’t answer.

The effect comes and goes. You’re poisoned.

Yes. So why are they giving us something for sunstroke?

Because the nurse is a very stupid woman.

Then I go back to sleep.

For several hours.

Yes. But the nurse’s son, the children who come to this room, aren’t they kids who’ve been poisoned? How can a mother not realize?

Not all of them go through poisoning episodes. Some of them were born already poisoned, from something their mothers breathed in the air, or ate or touched.

I wake up in the early morning.

Nina wakes you up.

“Can we go, Mommy?” she says while she’s shaking me.

And I am so grateful to her. Her words are like a command, and it’s as if she’s just saved both our lives. I bring a finger to my lips to tell her we have to be quiet.

You both feel a little better now, but it’s an effect that comes and goes.

I’m still dizzy, and I have to make a few attempts before I manage to stand up. My eyes are burning and I rub them a couple times. I don’t know how Nina feels. She ties her own shoes, though she still doesn’t really know how to do it well. She is pale, but she doesn’t cry or say anything. I’m standing now. I hold myself up by leaning against the wall, the oval mirror, the column in the kitchen. The car keys are next to my purse. I pick everything up slowly, careful not to make any noise. I feel Nina’s hand on my leg. The door is open, and we hunch over as we go through the plastic curtain across the door. It’s as if we were emerging from a cold, deep cave into the light. Nina lets go of me as soon as we leave the house. The car is unlocked, and we both get in through the driver’s-side door. I close it, start the engine, and drive a few meters in reverse until I reach the gravel road. Before turning, in the rearview mirror, I look at your mother’s house for the last time. For a moment I imagine her coming out in a bathrobe, making some kind of sign to me from the door of the house. But nothing moves. Nina climbs without any help into the backseat and then buckles her seat belt.