Fever Dream

I’m wondering whether what happened to Carla could happen to me. I always imagine the worst-case scenario. Right now, for instance, I’m calculating how long it would take me to jump out of the car and reach Nina if she suddenly ran and leapt into the pool. I call it the “rescue distance”: that’s what I’ve named the variable distance separating me from my daughter, and I spend half the day calculating it, though I always risk more than I should.

“Our eyes met, but I looked away immediately. She pushed him toward me and he took a few more steps, almost stumbling, and now he was leaning on the table. I think I’d stopped breathing for that entire time. When I started again, when he took another step toward me, this time of his own volition, I leaned away. He was very flushed, and sweating. His feet were wet; the damp prints he’d left behind him were already starting to dry.”

“And you didn’t pick him up, Carla? You didn’t hug him?”

And Nina? If all of this is really happening, where is Nina? My God, where is Nina?

That doesn’t matter.

It’s the only thing that matters.

It doesn’t matter.

A few more modest houses stand along the stream bank, squeezed in between the fine, dark thread of water and the wire of the next estate. The next-to-last one is painted green. The color is worn but it’s still bright, it stands out from the rest of the landscape. I stop for a second and a dog comes out of the field.

This is important.

Why? I need to understand which things are important and which aren’t.

What happens with the dog?

He pants and wags his tail, and he’s missing a back leg.

Yes, this is very important, this has a lot to do with what we’re looking for.

“I’m not Nina,” says Nina.

She leans back and crosses one leg over the other in a way I have never seen her do before.

“Tell your mother why you aren’t Nina,” says my husband.

“It’s an experiment, Miss Amanda,” she says, and she pushes a can toward me.

My husband takes the can and turns it so I can see the label. It’s a can of peas of a brand I don’t buy, one I would never buy. They’re a bigger, much harder kind of pea than what we eat, coarser and cheaper. A product I would never choose to feed my family with, and that Nina can’t have found in our cupboards. On the table, at that early-morning hour, the can has an alarming presence. This is important, right?

This is very important.

There are two men unloading plastic drums. They are big, and the men struggle to carry one in each hand. There are a lot, the truck is full of barrels.

This is it.

One of the drums is left alone in the doorway to the shed.

This is the important thing.

This is the important thing?

Yes.

How can this be so important?

What else?

“It happens, Amanda. We’re in the country, there are sown fields all around us. People come down with things all the time, and even if they survive they end up strange. You see them on the street. Once you learn to recognize them you’ll be surprised how many there are.”

Why do mothers do that?

What?

Try to get out in front of anything that could happen—the rescue distance.

It’s because sooner or later something terrible will happen. My grandmother used to tell my mother that, all through her childhood, and my mother would tell me, throughout mine. And now I have to take care of Nina.

But you always miss the important thing.

They’re taking us to the waiting room. That’s where they leave us before the day starts. If we have a bad day they take us home early, but in general we don’t go home until night.

A woman stands at each corner to be sure the crosswalk is safe.

It’s difficult to care for us at home. Some parents don’t even know how.

“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.”

And now the rope, the rope of the rescue distance.

Yes.

It’s as if it were tied to my stomach from outside. It pulls tight.

Don’t be scared.

It’s crushing, David.

It’s going to break.

Hanging on the wall behind him, there are two pictures of the man with the same woman, and below are more photos of the man with various horses. A single nail holds them all up. Each picture hangs from the previous one, each tied with the same thin rope.

Then my husband sees you. You’re sitting in the backseat. Your head barely clears the backrest. My husband approaches and looks in through the driver’s-side window, determined to make you get out. He wants to leave right now. Upright against the seat, you look him in the eyes, as though begging him. I see through my husband, I see those other eyes in yours. The seat belt on, legs crossed on the seat. A hand reaching slightly toward Nina’s stuffed mole, covertly, the dirty fingers resting on the stuffed legs as if trying to restrain them.

Only then does my husband start the car, drive down the hill, and take the gravel road. He feels like he’s already wasted enough time. He doesn’t stop in town. He doesn’t look back. He doesn’t see the soy fields, the streams that crisscross the dry plots of land, the miles of open fields empty of livestock, the tenements and the factories as he reaches the city. He doesn’t notice that the return trip has grown slower and slower. That there are too many cars, cars and more cars covering every asphalt nerve. Or that the transit is stalled, paralyzed for hours, smoking and effervescent. He doesn’t see the important thing: the rope finally slack, like a lit fuse, somewhere; the motionless scourge about to erupt.