The Dreamers

37.

Every tensed muscle must eventually relax. Adrenaline cannot flow unending. At a certain point, a new feeling begins to dominate these long homebound hours: boredom.

This is how it comes to be that Sara and Libby resurrect one of their oldest games, to go exploring in their own house, to open the drawers they are not allowed to open, to comb the closets they are not supposed to enter. Their father is a keeper of secrets, and there is usually some small thing to find.

It does not need to be said out loud what kind of treasure they are really after: traces that their mother once lived in this house. This is how they have learned most of what they know of her days on earth. She wore pastel nail polishes and faintly silver eye shadow; she once bought eight jars of baby food and one bottle of wine at Ralphs; she once bought a book about Italian painters from the used-book store; she once took a watercolor class at the college; she was once prescribed antibiotics for pneumonia and was late to pay the bill. She once got a speeding ticket. She had a library card. A driver’s license. She kept a photograph of the girls in her wallet.

“I know you’re going to say we shouldn’t,” says Libby, suddenly cheerful with possibility—or risk. “But let’s check the attic.”

The attic: the only time that little door has ever creaked open is for the few moments it takes for their father to set the mousetraps in the corners. Those mice—or else the possibility of some creature much worse lurking up there—have always kept them clear of the attic.

But on this day, Sara surprises her sister. “Okay,” she says. “Let’s go.”

The door is locked but Libby knows where their father keeps the key. The door sticks a little in its frame, but one hard push and it flies open.

It is smaller than Sara thought, this attic, and a little brighter, too. Sunlight is streaming in through a dusty oval-shaped window, the light catching on the fluttering wings of moths.

Mouse droppings litter the floorboards. There is a stink in the air.

But this, too: a stack of cardboard boxes, sealed shut. Libby goes straight for them, as if she knows just what she is looking for.

Maybe Sara has seen these boxes, too, years earlier—because when Libby slides one of them toward her, it does not surprise her to see what is written on the side, in their father’s handwriting, all caps: the letters of their mother’s name. MARIE.

“Did you know these were here?” says Sara.

“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.