Fever Dream: A Novel(23)

And is it true?

This isn’t her fault. It’s something much worse.

And Nina?

Carla came right away, and when she saw that you were so feeble, sweating with fever, and that you were hallucinating me, she was convinced that the important thing was to talk to the woman in the green house.

It’s true, she’s sitting at the foot of the bed, and she says talking to the woman in the green house is the best thing we can do. Now she wants to know if I agree. What is she talking about, David?

Do you see her? Can you see now, again?

I see a little, it’s all very white still but my eyes aren’t burning now. Did they give me something to calm the burning? I see blurry shapes, I recognize your mother’s form, her voice. I tell her to call my husband, and Carla practically runs to me. She grabs my hands, she asks me how I am.

“Call my husband, Carla.”

I tell her, I really did tell her.

And she calls him. You say the number several times until she can get it down, she manages to find him, and she hands you a phone.

Yes, it’s his voice, finally it’s his voice, and I’m crying so much that he can’t understand what is happening. I am very sick, I realize, and I tell him. David, this is not sunstroke. And I can’t stop crying, so much crying that he yells at me over the phone, he orders me to stop, to explain what is happening. He asks about Nina. Where is Nina, David?

Then Carla takes the phone away from you, gently, and she tries to talk with your husband. She feels embarrassed, she doesn’t really know what to say.

She says that I’m not well, that there are no doctors in the emergency clinic today but they’ve sent for one. She asks my husband if he’ll come. She says yes, that Nina is fine. You see, David, you see that Nina is fine. Carla is very close now. Where are you? Does your mother know you’re with me?

She wouldn’t be surprised if she knew; she tells herself that I’m behind all of these things. That whatever has cursed this town for the past ten years is now inside me.

She sits on the bed, very close. Again, the sweet perfume of her sunscreen. She smooths my hair, and her fingers are icy but her touch is pleasant. And the noise of her bracelets. Do I have a high fever, David?

“Amanda,” your mother says.

I think she is crying, there is something halting in her voice when she pronounces my name. She insists on calling the woman in the green house. She says there’s not much time.

She’s right.

“We have to do it fast,” she says, and she holds my hands, her cold hands squeeze mine, soaking wet, and she caresses my wrists. “Tell me you agree, I need your consent.”

I think she wants to bring me to the green house.

“I’ll stay in my body, Carla.”

I don’t believe in those things, I want to tell her. But it seems like that’s something she’s unable to hear.

“Amanda, I don’t mean you, I mean Nina,” your mother says. “As soon as I heard they’d brought you here I asked about Nina, but no one knew where she was. We went looking for her in Mr. Geser’s car.”

The rope pulls tighter.

She was sitting on the curb, a few blocks past where they parked your car.

“Amanda, when I find my real David,” your mother says, “I won’t have any doubt it’s him.” She squeezes my hands very tightly, as if I were going to fall over from one moment to the next. “You have to understand that Nina wasn’t going to make it many more hours.”

“Where is Nina?” I ask again, frantically. Hundreds of needles of pain radiate from my throat to the extremities of my body.

Your mother isn’t asking for my consent. Your mother is asking for my forgiveness, for what is happening right now, in the green house. I let go of her hands. The rescue distance knots up, so brutally that for a moment I stop breathing. I think about leaving, about getting out of bed. My God, I think. My God. I have to get Nina out of that house.

But it will be a while before you can move. The effect comes and goes, the fever comes and goes.

I have to talk to my husband again. I have to tell him where Nina is. The pain comes back, it’s a white blow to the head, intermittent, blinding me for seconds at a time.

“Amanda . . .” says Carla.

“No, no.” I say no, over and over.

Too many times.

Am I shouting?

Nina’s name.

Carla tries to hug me and it’s hard to push her away. My body heats up to an unbearable temperature, my fingers swell up under my nails.

But you don’t stop shouting, and one of the nurses is in the room now.

She talks to Carla. What does she say, David, what does she say?

That a doctor is on the way.

But there’s no hope for me now.

The pain comes and goes, the fever comes and goes, and there is Carla again, holding your hands.

I see Nina’s hands, for a moment. She’s not here but I see them with utter clarity. Her little hands are dirty with mud.

Or they’re my dirty hands when I came into the kitchen, and without letting go of the wall, I looked for Carla from the threshold.

That’s not true, they’re Nina’s hands, I can see them.

“It was what had to be done,” says Carla.

It’s happening now. Why are Nina’s hands covered in mud? What do my daughter’s hands smell like?