Fever Dream: A Novel(7)

Why does she do that?

It’s a routine she’s gotten into here. She runs two or three times around the house at every lunch.

This is important. This could have to do with the worms.

When Nina passes the kitchen window, she presses her face against the glass and we smile at each other. I like her bursts of energy, but this time her running makes me anxious. My conversation with Carla pulled the rope that ties me to my daughter even tighter, and the rescue distance is shorter again. How different are you now from the David of six years ago? What did you do that was so terrible your own mother no longer accepts you as hers? These are the things I can’t stop wondering about.

But they aren’t the important things.

When Nina finishes her salad we go out to the car together, carrying our empty shopping bags. She gets into the backseat, buckles her seat belt, and starts asking questions. She wants to know where the woman went when she got out of the car; she wants to know where we are going to buy the food, whether there are other kids in town, if she can pet the dogs, if the trees around the house are all ours. She wants to know, especially, she says as she buckles her stuffed mole in too, whether people here speak the same language we do. The car’s ashtray is clean and the windows are rolled up. I lower mine, and I wonder when exactly Carla could have gone to the trouble to tidy up the car. A fresh breeze enters with the sun, which is already burning. We’re driving slowly and calmly; that’s how I like to go, and when my husband drives it’s impossible. This is my moment to drive, when I’m on vacation, skirting potholes of gravel and earth between the weekend estates and the locals’ houses. In the city I can’t drive, the traffic makes me too nervous. You said these details were important.

Yes.

Twelve long blocks separate us from downtown, and as we get closer the houses grow smaller and more humble, fighting each other for space, with tiny yards and fewer trees. The first paved street is the boulevard that crosses the downtown from one end to the other, around ten blocks. It’s paved, yes, but there is so much dirt that the feeling inside the car as we drive hardly changes. It’s the first time we’ve made this trip, and Nina and I talk about how nice it is to have the whole afternoon ahead of us to shop and think about what we’re going to have for dinner. There is a small market in the main square, and we park the car so we can walk a little.

“Let’s leave the mole in the car,” I say to Nina.

And she says, “Yes, m’lady,” because sometimes we like to put on airs and speak to each other like rich nobility.

“And how would the lady like some candied nuts?” I ask, helping her out of the car.

“We would love some,” says Nina, who has always been convinced that lords and ladies speak in the plural.

I like that, about the plural.

There are seven stalls improvised using boards and trestles, or just with canvases on the ground. But it’s good food, artisanally produced or grown on the local estates. We buy fruits, vegetables, and honey. Mr. Geser had recommended a bakery where they bake whole-grain rolls—apparently they’re famous around here—and we go there, too. We buy three, to give ourselves a real bellyful. The two old men who work there give Nina a doughnut filled with dulce de leche, and they almost cry with laughter when she takes a bite and says, “How divine! We adore it!” We ask where we can find a blow-up toy for the pool, and they give us directions to House & Home. We have to go from the other side of the boulevard, some three blocks toward the lake, and since we have energy to spare we drop our purchases in the car and walk there. In House & Home, Nina picks out a killer whale. It’s the only one, but she points to it without hesitation, sure of her decision. While I’m paying, Nina walks away. She’s somewhere behind me, walking among the appliance display racks and the garden tools; I don’t see her, but the rope pulls taut and I could easily guess where she is.

“Can I get you anything else?” the woman at the register asks.

A piercing cry interrupts us. It’s not Nina’s voice—that’s the first thing I think. It’s high-pitched and clipped, like a bird imitating a child. Nina comes running from the kitchen aisle. She’s flustered, somewhere between amused and scared, and she grabs hold of my legs and stands staring back toward the end of the aisle. The cashier sighs in resignation and turns to come out from behind the counter. Nina pulls on my hand so I’ll follow the woman down the same aisle. Ahead of us, the woman puts both fists on her hips, pretending to be angry.

“What did I tell you? What did we talk about, Abigail?”

The cries repeat, clipped but much quieter now, almost shy at the end.

“Come on, let’s go.”

The woman reaches out her hand toward the other aisle, and when she turns back toward us, a small hand comes with her. A little girl slowly appears. At first I think she is still playing, because she hobbles so much she looks like a monkey, but then I see that one of her legs is very short, it barely goes past her knee, but she still has a foot. When she raises her head to look at us we see her forehead, an enormous forehead that takes up more than half her face. Nina squeezes my hand and laughs her nervous laugh. It’s good for Nina to see this, I think. It’s good for her to realize that we aren’t all born the same, and to learn not to be scared. But secretly I think that if the girl were my daughter I wouldn’t know what to do, it would be horrible. Then your mother’s story pops into my head. I think about you, or about the other David, the first David without his finger. This is even worse, I think. I wouldn’t have the strength. But the woman comes toward us dragging the girl patiently; she wipes her bald head as if it were dusty, and she talks to her sweetly in her ear, saying something about us that we can’t hear. Do you know that girl, David?