She has a very sweet perfume.
Nina looks at you without coming too close, maybe she’s starting to realize you aren’t well. Carla says she’ll go get the car, she laughs to alleviate the situation, she tells herself out loud that this is all so she will finally have the courage to drive alone, and so you will finally come over to her house for a cool drink. She’s going to give you a cold iced tea with lemon and ginger, and that will cure everything.
That won’t cure anything.
No, it won’t cure anything. But you’re feeling a little better, the discomfort comes and goes, that’s how it always is at first. Carla tells Nina that she’s leaving her in charge while she goes to get the car. She explains to Nina that she’ll come back from the other direction, on the dirt road.
Nina comes over to me, sits down, and hugs me.
It takes Carla a while to come back.
But Nina is so close that I don’t care, and we stay like that for a long time. She’s lying down, close against my body. She makes her hands into circles and brings them to her eyes, like binoculars.
“We like the treetops very much,” she says.
But you are thinking of the night.
Our first night in the house, yes. Because hugging Nina reminds me of my first fears. I wonder if there could have been a warning in them. I walked, and the flashlight drew an oval in front of my feet. If I shone it forward to see what lay a little ahead of me, it was hard to see where I was stepping. The sound of the trees, the cars on the road every once in a while, and the barking of a dog confirmed that the country spread out immensely to either side, and that everything was miles away. And even so, blinded by the oval of light, as I walked I had the feeling I was moving deeper into a cave. I hunched over, and I moved forward taking short steps.
And Nina?
This is all about Nina.
Where is Nina, during that first walk?
She’s sleeping in the house, soundly. But I can’t sleep, not the first night. Before all else, I have to know what is around the house. Whether there are dogs, and if they’re friendly, whether there are ditches, and how deep they are. Whether there are poisonous insects, snakes. I need to get out in front of anything that could happen, but everything is very dark and my eyes never get used to the darkness. I think I once had a very different idea of the night.
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.
And what is the important thing, David?
Nina sits up, she searches the horizon with her finger binoculars. Your own car drives up from the other side of the stables.
For a moment I think it’s my husband, I think he’ll get out and give us each a hug, and I’ll be able to sleep peacefully the whole drive home, until I get to my bed in the city.
But it’s Carla. She gets out and walks toward you and Nina.
She’s barefoot and in her gold bikini. She skirts the pool and walks over the grass a little apprehensively, as if she weren’t used to it or she remembered its texture with a little distrust. She forgets her sandals on the pool steps.
No, Amanda, that was before. Now Carla skirts the stables.
Because I’m on the ground, in the field.
Exactly.
But I always remember Carla with bare feet.
She gets out of the car and leaves the door open. She approaches quickly, waiting for Nina to give her some sign about how things are going, but now Nina is sitting at your feet with her back to Carla, and she doesn’t take her eyes off you. Carla helps you stand up, says you’re already looking better. She loads everything into the car and takes Nina by the hand. She turns around to be sure you’re following her, she tells you jokes.
Carla.
Yes, Carla.
It’s true, I do feel better. And the three of us are in the car again, like in the beginning, with your mother in the driver’s seat. The car’s engine stalls a few times, but your mother finally manages to put it in reverse. My mother said that the country is the best place to learn to drive. I learned in the country, when I was younger.
That’s not important.
Yes, I figured.
Carla doesn’t feel very comfortable driving.
But she does it well. Although we don’t go in the direction I had expected.
“Where are we going, Carla?”