“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?
Yes, I know her.
Is there part of you in her body?
Those are stories my mother tells. Neither you nor I have time for this. We’re looking for worms, something very much like worms, and the exact moment when they touch your body for the first time.
“Who is she, Mommy?”
There’s no more put-on nobility now. When they are close to us Nina takes a few steps back; she wants us to move farther away. We make room for them by pressing up against the ovens. The girl is Nina’s height but I couldn’t say how old she is. I think she’s older, maybe your age.
Don’t waste time.
It’s just that your mother must know this girl, the girl and her mother and their whole story. And I go on thinking about Carla as the woman leads the little girl around the counter and the girl disappears from view because of her height. The woman presses the button on the register and hands me the change with a sad smile. She does all of this with both hands, one for the button, the other for my money, and just as I’d wondered a moment before how she could take that child’s hand, now I wonder how it’s possible to let go of it, and I accept the change thanking her many times, with guilt and remorse.
What else?
We go back home and Nina is sleepy. A nap so late is a bad business, later she has trouble falling asleep at night. But we’re on vacation—that’s what we’re here for. I remind myself of that so I’ll relax a little. As I put away the food we bought, Nina falls soundly asleep on the living room sofa. I know her sleep. If nothing loud wakes her up, she could be there for at least an hour or two. And then I think about the green house, and I wonder how far away it is. The green house is the house where the woman took care of you.
Yes.
The one who saved you from the poison.
That is not important.
How can it not be? That’s the story we need to understand.
No, that’s not the story, it has nothing to do with the exact moment. Don’t get distracted.
I need to measure the danger, otherwise it’s hard to calculate the rescue distance. The same way I surveyed the house and its surroundings when we arrived, now I need to see the green house, understand its gravity.
When did you start to measure this rescue distance?
It’s something I inherited from my mother. “I want you close,” she’d say to me. “Let’s stay within rescue distance.”
Your mother isn’t important. Go on.
Now I walk away from the house. It’ll be fine, I think. I’m sure the walk will take only around ten minutes. Nina sleeps soundly, and she knows how to wake up alone and wait for me calmly; that’s how we do it at home, when I go down to buy something in the morning. For the first time I walk in the opposite direction from the lake, toward the green house. “Sooner or later something bad is going to happen,” my mother would say. “And when it happens I want to have you close.”
Your mother is not important.
I like to look at the houses and the grounds, the countryside. I think I could keep walking like that for hours.
It’s possible. I do it sometimes at night.