“I’ve been up here before,” says Libby.
It is a shock that her sister has kept this small secret, that she has maintained any private life in this house.
“But I’ve never opened them,” she says. And Sara has the feeling that this might be true or it might not be.
The cats have followed them in through the open door and are sniffing around. Daisy soon finds a mouse, a dead one stuck in a trap.
“Let’s open these downstairs,” says Sara.
They hide their trail into these boxes, like thieves. They are careful with the tape. Their fingers get dusty with the work of it.
As Sara pulls back the last bit of tape on the first box, an intense anticipation rises in her body, as if these boxes might finally answer some unanswered question, as if they might finally tell the girls who she was.
The first box is full of clothes.
These were her clothes, Sara thinks to herself as she lays them out on the couch, like sacred relics.
“I think I remember this one,” says Libby. She holds a green one up to the light—moths have eaten holes in the sleeves.
“Really?” says Sara. She wants to remember them, too, these sweaters and these jeans. But this is the truth: those sweaters seem as alien as the ones that hang at the Salvation Army downtown.
Libby lays everything out on the living room floor. The summer dresses, the sandals, a set of black ceramic birds that say MADE IN PORTUGAL on the bottom, but bought in this country or that one—who knows? What they do know, or can assume, is that her hands once touched them, and so they want to touch them, too.
There is a tiny magic in a box of jewelry. This turquoise necklace hung on her neck, these silver hoops from her ears. But it is less than Sara wants to feel. There is a disappointment in objects.
But Libby is far away, deep in concentration, as if these things have succeeded in taking her somewhere else.
* * *
—
Something outside soon catches Sara’s attention: the wanderings of a small black bulldog, who, at that moment, is lapping up what little water there is in the gutter. There is something familiar about the shape of his head, that red collar.
“Hey,” says Sara. “Isn’t that Akil’s dog?” Akil: a private shimmer always accompanies his name. But this time, it comes with a new dread—why is his dog outside all alone?
“He must be lost,” says Libby, face pressed up to the window. It is a relief to have her back. “Poor little guy,” she says. “We should take him home.”
Sara feels the weight of what her father would say. “We can’t risk going outside again,” she says.
She rushes to the bathroom. She is still busy with her bleeding, soaking the last of it up in her own made-up way: washcloths and toilet paper and not much walking around. Of all the supplies their father requisitioned, he never thought of this.
By the time she is out of the bathroom again, she hears the banging of the screen door hitting its frame, and then the unmistakable clink of a water bowl landing on the patio. Libby has corralled Akil’s dog into the backyard.
He is friendly and grateful, this dog—what else could that wet look in those dark eyes mean? His tongue lolls wildly as he drinks, as if it has been a while since he has done it, the water splashing out of the bowl and onto Libby’s bare feet. He does that thing dogs do with their teeth, an almost smile.
The cats are lined up at the kitchen window, scratching at the glass as Libby rubs that dog’s back like he’s hers. Libby’s little brown curls fall over his ears as she lets him lick her mouth. They have this in common: they are both so quick to love.
His tags confirm who he is. Akil’s last name and address are engraved on the piece of metal dangling from his thick neck. That tag, shaped like a bone, looks suddenly alien to Sara, like an artifact from a lost time, like touching a parallel world. The dog’s name is Charlie.
“I should call Akil,” says Sara. There is a certain excitement in the idea. But once the phone is in her hand, her heart begins to pound so hard she can’t speak.
“I’ll do it,” says Libby.
But no one answers Akil’s phone.
“Let’s just walk him home,” says Libby.
It is only a few blocks, but the neighborhood is full of soldiers in fatigues and big boots, rifles perched on their shoulders, and those trucks in camouflage, rumbling around like tanks.
“What if someone sees us?” says Sara. The soldiers might take them away: two girls living alone in a contaminated house.
But Libby is already sliding her bare feet into her white cowboy boots, no socks. She is tying a piece of old rope to Charlie’s collar, a makeshift leash. She is going, she says, whether Sara comes or not. And anyway, there is a certain thrill in the idea: to do something nice for this boy.
* * *
—
They take the back way, through the dead and drying woods. They will never remember the way these woods looked before the drought. To these girls, it is the nature of this place that every tenth tree will be a dead one, a skeleton standing amid the ones still trying to survive.
There is a feeling, as they walk, of being watched. Every rustling of pine tree might be a soldier shifting his weight, every fluttering of wings a whisper. They walk fast.
But they see no one, not in the woods and not on the streets they glimpse through the trees. Sometimes, the air is so quiet that it feels like they are the last ones left awake.
Through the trees, Akil’s house looks the way it always does: those big clean windows, the red curtains, the potted plants on the porch. The garage door is open, leaving exposed the bicycles bunched in the corner and Akil’s science fair project, a model for some kind of robot. Beside it are three suitcases stacked against the wall—is that the luggage they brought with them from Egypt, she wonders, when they left in the middle of the night?
A shiver of shyness moves through her body.
Only later will Sara think about the lights, how the porch light is on in the middle of the day, how the chandelier in the dining room is blazing like it’s night.
And then Charlie is suddenly sprinting across the street, up onto the porch and right into the house. This is when they realize: the front door is standing open.
“Hello?” says Libby.
Akil’s green backpack is slumped by the door. Books are scattered everywhere.
They are inside for only a minute, just long enough to discover a dinner spread out on the table, flies drifting from the soup to the bread.
Charlie is barking and barking.
“We shouldn’t be here,” says Sara, and at the same time, she notices what they should have seen before: a drippy black X spray-painted on the front door.
Oh, Akil: to survive one terrible thing, and then be caught by something else. Tears rush into Sara’s eyes.
Someone is suddenly shouting at them.
“Hey, girls,” a man’s voice is calling. A neighbor is leaning out from an upper window of the house next door. He has a full mask on his face. “Get away from that house.”
* * *
—
They run all the way home through the woods, pinecones cracking beneath their feet. Charlie runs with them, suddenly silent, his black fur going dusty.
Once they are home, sitting, panting in the yard, a new worry comes to Sara:
“What if he has it on his fur?”
So they pull out the hose. They put their gloves on first and long sleeves, but they forget to wear the masks. Sara sprays him from far away, as far away as possible. What they do not think of is how much he will shake once he’s wet. He shakes that water all over the vegetables. He shakes water all over them. Then it’s their turn to take showers.
“Try to hold your breath,” says Sara as the steam fills the bathroom, but it is too many minutes.
They breathe it right in.
* * *
—
They feed the cats. They change the litter. They arrange and rearrange their mother’s things.
That same afternoon, when a terrier comes wandering down the street, his leash snaking behind him, tangling with the fences, Libby runs out and scoops him up, too.
Now they have two dogs to feed. Two dogs and five cats.
From the widow’s walk, the neighborhood seems drained of neighbors. Whenever the helicopters float briefly out of earshot, a strange quiet rushes in: no lawnmowers whirring, no children yelling, no basketballs bouncing in driveways. No buzzing of garage doors opening and closing on tracks. No slamming of car doors. No one is out for a run. In the house across the street, a television has been flickering, unattended, for days. And somewhere out there, their father sleeps.
But the birds go on singing. The squirrels rummage through the garbage, which has not been collected for days. A group of stray cats has started living in the wreckage of the nurse’s house across the street.
At these times, and these times only, Sara feels suddenly grateful for the rumbling of a Humvee—proof that she and Libby are not the last ones left.
That night, Sara falls asleep in one of their mother’s sweaters.
38.
In other parts of the country, certain skeptics remain. A new hashtag begins to trend: #SantaLoraHoax.
The government, they are sure, knows more than it is saying. That’s the real reason they’ve cut off the town: to hide whatever it is they have done.
The only thing that’s real are the soldiers. That’s what this is really about: an excuse to let the government take control. Think about it. Santa Lora is probably only the beginning, a test case.
Or if it is real, it’s our own damn fault. It might be Russia that’s behind this, or North Korea. Some kind of nerve agent, maybe, released by a drone. Haven’t we been asking for something like this for years? Going around the world and dropping our bombs? Or more likely, the government just wants us to think we’re under attack.
Just open your eyes, people. If you really believe this Santa Lora story, then you probably think that the fluoride in the water really is for our teeth and that a passenger airplane really did crash into the Pentagon on 9/11.
And have you heard the latest numbers? Fifteen hundred cases in six weeks? Come on, nothing spreads that fast.
39.
It is around this time that Ben’s dreams begin. They come quickly when they do. No matter how brief his sleep, the dreams rush in immediately, as if his consciousness can hardly keep them away. And always—always—at the center of these dreams, like a song that lives for days in his head, is Annie. In the dreams, she comes back to him in the smallest possible ways, in the form of things he did not know he knew: the click of her ChapStick rolling across the counter, the crisp scent of her practical soap, the way she lets her nails grow until they break, so that they’re always a little ragged and each one a different length. Sometimes, he dreams of what she sounds like moving through the rooms of the house, the flush of the toilet through the wall, the small splash of her spit landing in the sink, or her humming interrupted by the stubbing of her toe, once again, on the same loose floorboard she always trips on, that small familiar chirp: “Shit.”
These dreams always end the same way: with the wailing of the baby for milk.
* * *
—
Walking soothes the baby. And it soothes Ben, too, and what else is there to do? So they walk: two, three, four times a day.
This is a pine tree, he says as they drift once again down their street, and here is a pinecone. This is our shadow, yours and mine, long on the sidewalk because the sun is low in the sky at this time of year. And what we call it, this season, is fall.
Those people on that porch, he says, his eyes going watery, that woman looking weary and saying, “No, no, we have to stay inside again today”—we call her a mother. And that boy in the doorway, we call him her son.
Here is a sidewalk, he says. Here is a street. Here a spider web. A birdhouse. A car.
But not everything is so easy to name.
What are the right words for this: someone in a blue plastic suit who is crawling around in the middle of the street.
Ben and the baby are half a block away when he notices. The person’s hands are pulling at the rubber of his hood, yanking at the mask, the movements urgent but inefficient. Panic is a feeling you can recognize from a hundred feet away. Finally, those hands succeed in lifting that hood up and off the head. A face is revealed: a young man with sweaty black hair.
He is saying something, this man, sounds without meaning, an urgent mumbling. Something is wrong with his eyes—a blankness.
Ben steps back. His arms encircle the baby on his chest, as if the muscles of his wrists are separate from him, as if they know what to do before his mind can decide.
“Are you okay?” Ben calls out to the man.
But the man does not answer, this man in the blue plastic suit, and he does not turn his head. Instead, he begins to climb onto the hood of a parked station wagon. His feet keep slipping because of the booties he is wearing over his shoes.
A few neighbors now appear at their windows.
“Are you okay?” Ben calls out again.
But it is obvious what this is: the man is asleep, a walking dream. What is not clear is where he came from or who he is—a paramedic, maybe, left behind by his crew?
For a moment, his mumbling turns clearer, swiftly rising to a shout: “I can’t swim,” he says to no one. “Help me. Please. I can’t swim.”
A few people have collected on their porches now, watching, but they stay where they are: the unkindness of fear.
Ben is sure he would do something to help if he didn’t have the baby, her warm head resting against his chest. The baby makes everything simple. All he can do is get her away from this man. All he can do is get her home.
He calls 911 on the way. An ambulance will come, he is told. But it takes a long time. Ben can hear the man shouting for more than an hour, his voice drifting farther away, as Ben fastens and unfastens one diaper and then another and as he opens another package of formula.
All this time, while the man is shouting on another street, Ben’s baby girl stares at Ben’s face, as if she understands everything better than he does, and her whole growing up will be a slow coming-to. “Someone will help him,” he says to her, as if she has asked or accused. “Someone will help.”
If Ben were to turn on his television at that moment, he would discover that one of the news helicopters has begun to trail the man in the blue suit, so that millions of people are watching live as he zigzags down the street, disappearing at one point into the woods and then reemerging, barefoot, a few minutes later.
Ben is not one of the millions who see what happens next: how the man walks right into the path of a speeding Humvee.
But six blocks away, Ben hears the sound—a screeching of brakes, a breaking of glass—not knowing, or at least having no proof, that the man in the blue suit, this volunteer from Tennessee, as the world will soon learn, has been crushed beneath those oversized wheels.
* * *
—
The dreams: the more often they come, the stranger they are. Maybe it’s the sleep deprivation. Maybe it’s the isolation. Maybe something is happening to his mind. Whatever it is, these are not normal dreams. They contain, somehow, the heft of lived life. It’s hard to explain, but there’s a sensation that these experiences are real, as real as anything in his waking life.
At first, he dreams of the past: he and Annie in their old neighborhood in New York, he and Annie at a concert, cold beers in their hands, the feel of her waist in the dark as they sway to the music, real days unspooling in her dorm room, real afternoons in the park.
But he does n
ot dream of that trip they took to Italy. He does not dream of their wedding. He never dreams of their favorite places: Venice, Mexico, the hammock in Maine. He dreams of her body—of course, of course. But he never dreams of her in that green dress he likes, or with glossed lips, or with her hair blown shiny and straight. Instead, he dreams of her in sweatpants. He dreams of her in smudged glasses. He dreams of her drinking a beer in her pajamas on their old vinyl couch in Brooklyn, the shape of her breasts just visible through that old T-shirt as she laughs. He dreams of her watching a documentary on his laptop. He dreams of those ice cream sandwiches she once made for a road trip—who makes ice cream sandwiches for the car?—the way they dripped and crumbled everywhere, the steering wheel sticky for weeks.
Sometimes he dreams of old arguments or small annoyances, how she never does the dishes and never takes out the trash, how she is never the one to think to buy the toilet paper, and how she was afraid to let them use the wobbly ceiling fan on the hottest night of the year. But there is a certain pleasure even in these dreams, the pleasure of problems that can be solved in the morning—with only a screwdriver and a stepladder, a quick trip to the drugstore.
And he never dreams, anymore, that Annie has left him for her advisor. In these new dreams, she is always at his side, sturdy and constant and calm.
He cannot always tell which are the real memories and which are not. Like those ice cream sandwiches, now that he thinks of it. “Did we really do that?” he asks the baby as he bathes her one morning in the kitchen sink, her eyes big and blank like a fish’s. He can no longer remember where they were going with those ice cream sandwiches or whose car it was or how old they were then. Or that wedding in the middle of the woods—was that real? “Whose wedding was that?” Maybe that wedding was only a dream.
But this is when a certain strange sensation begins to come over him—the feeling that these dreams are somehow glimpses of days yet to come.
The Dreamers Page 19
