"Children, sir?"
"Yes. Do you like them? Get on with them? Personally, I find them rather trying."
Sara felt a familiar pang. "Yes, Deputy Director. I like them fine."
She waited for further explanation from Wilkes, but none was evidently forthcoming. He inspected her for another few seconds from across his desk, then picked up the telephone.
"Tell them we're on the way."
* * *
Roughly an hour later, Sara found herself garbed in an attendant's robe, standing at the threshold of a room so sumptuously decorated that its volume of detail was difficult to absorb. Heavy drapes were drawn over the windows; the only sources of light were several large silver candelabras positioned around the room. Gradually the scene came into focus. The sheer volume of furniture and bric-a-brac made it seem less like a place where someone lived than a storage room of miscellaneous objects. A voluminous sofa covered in fat, tasseled pillows, as well as a pair of equally overstuffed chairs, stood to one side, facing a low square table of polished wood, its surface piled with books. More pillows of various colors were scattered on the floor, which was dressed by an ornately patterned rug. The walls were covered with oil paintings in heavy gilt frames-landscapes, pictures of horses and dogs, as well as a great many portraits of women and their children in curious costumes, the images possessing a disturbing half reality. One in particular caught Sara's attention: a woman in a blue dress and an orange hat, sitting in a garden beside a little girl. She moved toward it to have a closer look. A small plaque at the bottom of the frame read, "Pierre-Auguste Renoir, On the Terrace, 1881."
"Well, there you are. It's about time they sent someone."
Sara pivoted. A woman, arms folded over her chest, was standing in the bedroom doorway. She was both more and less than the image Sara had assembled from the things Vale and Wilkes had said. The person she had envisioned was at the very least a substantial presence, but the figure before her appeared quite frail. She was perhaps as old as sixty. Deep fissures lined her face, cutting borders between its various regions; crescents of drooping skin hung like hammocks beneath her watery eyes. Her lips were so pale they were practically nonexistent, like ghost lips. She was wearing a shimmering robe of some thin, shiny fabric, a thick towel encircling her head like a turban.
"Hablas ingles?"
Sara stared dumbly, unable to formulate a reply to this incomprehensible question.
"Do ... you ... speak ... English?"
"Yes," Sara stated. "I speak English."
The woman gave a little start. "Oh. So you do. I have to say, that's a surprise. How many times have I asked the service to send somebody who spoke even a little English? I don't even want to tell you." She made a distracted gesture with her hands. "I'm sorry, your name again?"
Never mind that she hadn't told her to begin with. "It's Dani."
"Dani," the woman repeated. "Where are you from, exactly?"
The most general answer seemed the wisest. "I'm from here."
"Of course you're from here. I meant originally. Your tribe. Your people. Your clan." Another agitated flutter of her hands. "You know. Your familia."
With each exchange, Sara felt herself being pulled deeper into the quicksand of the woman's oddness. Yet something about her was almost endearing. She seemed quite helpless, a twittering bird in a cage.
"California, actually."
"Ah. Now we're getting somewhere." A pause; then, with a dawning look: "Oh, I see. You're working your way through school. Why didn't you say so?"
"Ma'am?"
"Please," she chirped, "call me Lila. And don't be so modest. It's an admirable thing you're doing. A great show of character. Of course, that doesn't mean I'll be paying you more than the other girls. I made that clear with the service. Fourteen an hour, take it or leave it."
Fourteen what? Sara wondered. "Fourteen is fine."
"And, of course, the Social Security. We'll be paying that, and filing the 1099. David is very particular about these things. He's what you'd call a rule follower. A big ol' stick in the mud. No health insurance, I'm afraid, but I'm sure you get that through your school." She beamed encouragingly. "So, are we good?"
Sara nodded, completely dumbfounded.
"Excellent. I have to say, Dani," the woman, Lila, continued, gliding into the room, "you've come just in the nick of time. Not a moment too soon, in fact." She had taken a box of matches from her robe and was lighting a large candelabra near her dressing table. "Why don't you just put that over there?"
She was referring to the tray Wilkes had given her. On it was a metal flask and cup. Sara placed the tray on the table the woman had indicated, adjacent to an ornately carved wardrobe draped with scarves. Lila had positioned herself in front of a standing mirror and was turning her shoulders this way and that, examining her reflection.
"So what do you think?"
"I'm sorry?"
She placed one hand on her stomach and pressed inward as she filled her chest with air. "This awful diet. I don't think I've ever been so famished in my life. But it really does seem to be doing the trick. What would you say, Dani? Another five pounds? You can be honest."
Standing in profile, the woman was just skin and bones. "You look fine to me," she said gently. "I wouldn't lose any more."
"Really? Because when I look in this mirror what I'm thinking is, who is this blimp? This zeppelin? Oh God, the humanity. That's what I'm thinking."
Sara remembered Wilkes's orders. "I think you're supposed to eat, actually."
"So I'm told. Believe me, I've heard that before." She placed her hands on her hips, scrunched up her face, and dropped her voice an octave. "Lila, you're too skinny. Lila, you've got to put some meat on those bones. Lila this, Lila that. Blah, blah, blah." Then, her eyes widening with sudden panic: "Oh my goodness, what time is it?"
"I guess it's ... about noon?"
"Oh my goodness!" The woman began to dart around the room, snatching up various belongings and putting them down again in a manner that seemed arbitrary. "Don't just stand there," she implored, grabbing a pile of books and shoving them into the bookcase.
"What would you like me to do?"
"Just ... I don't know. Anything. Here-" She filled Sara's hands with pillows. "Put these over there. On the whooziwhatzis."
"Um, you mean the sofa?"
"Of course I mean the sofa!"
And just like that, a light seemed to switch on in the woman's face. A wondrous, happy, shining light. She was staring over Sara's shoulder, toward the door.
"Sweetheart!"
She dropped to a crouch as a young child, a girl in a plain smock, blond ringlets bouncing, dashed past Sara into the woman's outstretched arms. "My angel! My sweet, sweet girl!"
The child, who was holding a sheet of colored paper, pointed at the woman's turbaned head. "Did you take a bath, Mummy?"
"Why, yes! You know how Mummy likes her baths. What a clever little girl you are! So, tell me," she continued, "how were your lessons? Did Jenny read to you?"
"We read Peter Rabbit."
"Wonderful!" the woman beamed. "Was it funny? Did you like it? I'm sure I've told you how much I adored him when I was your age." She turned her attention to the paper. "And what do we have here?"
The little girl held it up. "It's a picture."
"Is that me? Is it a picture of the two of us?"
"They're birds. That one is named Martha, the other one is Bill. They're building a nest."
A flicker of disappointment; then she smiled again. "Why, of course they are. Anyone could see that. It's as plain as the nose on your pretty little face."
And on and on. Sara barely ingested any of it. An intense new sensation had come over her, a feeling of biological alarm. Something deep and atavistic, tidal in its weight and movement, accompanied by a focusing of her senses on the back of the little girl's blond head. Those curls. The precise and singular dimensions that the little girl's body occupied in space. Sara already knew without knowing, a fact she also knew, the paradox building a kind of hallway inside her, like images reflected infinitely in two opposing mirrors.
"But how awful of me," the woman, Lila, was saying, her voice at some impossible remove from reality, a transmission from a distant planet. "I've totally forgotten my manners. Eva, I need to introduce you to someone. This is our new friend ..." She paused, drawing a blank.
"Dani," Sara managed.
"Our wonderful new friend Dani. Eva, say how do you do."
The child turned. Time collapsed as Sara beheld her face. A unique amalgamation of form and features that was the only one in all the universe. There was no doubt in Sara's mind.
The little girl sent her a shining, closed-lip smile. "How do you do, Dani?"
Sara was looking at her daughter.
But in the next second something changed. A shadow fell, a dark presence descending. It jolted Sara back to the world.
"Lila."
Sara turned. He was standing behind her. His face was a man's, ordinary, forgettable, one of thousands like it, but from it radiated an invisible force of menace as incontrovertible as gravity. To behold him was to feel oneself plunging.
He looked Sara contemptuously in the eye, piercing her utterly. "Do you know who I am?"
Sara swallowed. Her throat was as tight as a reed. For the first time, her mind darted to the foil package secreted in the deep folds of her robe; it would not be the last.
"Yes, sir. You're Director Guilder."
His mouth curled downward with distaste. "Put down your veil, for God's sake. Just the sight of you makes me sick."
With trembling fingers, she did so. Now the shadow became a shadow literally, his features mercifully blurred behind the blush of fabric, as if in mist. Guilder strode past her, to where Lila still crouched with Sara's daughter. If his presence meant anything to the little girl, Sara couldn't see it, but Lila was a different story. Every part of her tightened. Clutching the child in front of her like a shield, she rose to her feet.
"David-"
"Just stop it." His eyes flicked disagreeably over her. "You look like hell, you know that?" Then, turning to face Sara once more: "Where is it?"
He was, she understood, speaking of the tray. Sara pointed.
"Bring it here."
Her hands, somehow, managed this.
"Get rid of them," Guilder said to Lila.
"Eva, sweetie, why doesn't Dani take you outside?" She looked quickly at Sara, her eyes beseeching. "It's such a beautiful day. A little fresh air, what do you say?"
"I want you to take me," the girl protested. "You never go outside."
Lila's voice was like a song she was being made to sing. "I know, sweetheart, but you know how sensitive Mummy is to the sun. And Mummy has to take her medicine now. You know how Mummy gets when she takes her medicine."
Reluctantly, the child complied. Breaking away from Lila, she moved to where Sara was standing beside the door.
With excruciating miraculousness, she took Sara by the hand.
Flesh meeting flesh. The unbearable corporeal smallness of it, its discrete power, its infusion of memory. All of Sara's senses molded around the exquisite sensation of her child's tiny hand in her own. It was the first time their bodies had touched since one was inside the other, though now it was the opposite: Sara was the one inside.
"Run along, you two," Lila croaked. She gave a wave of absolute misery toward the door. "Have fun."
Without a word, Kate-Eva-led Sara from the room. Sara was floating; she weighed a million pounds. Eva, she thought. I have to remember to call her Eva. A short hallway and then a flight of stairs: a pair of doors at the bottom pushed into a small, fenced yard with a teeter-totter and a rusted swing set. The sky looked down with a solemn, snow-filled light.
"Come on," the child said. And broke away.
She climbed aboard a swing. Sara took her place behind her.
"Push me."
Sara drew back the chains, suddenly nervous. How much was safe? This precious and beloved being. This holy, miraculous, human person. Surely three feet was more than enough. She released the chains, and the girl arced away, vigorously pumping her legs.
"Higher," she commanded.
"Are you sure?"
"Higher, higher!"
Each sensation a piercing. Each a painless engraving in the heart. Sara caught her daughter at the small of her back and thrust her away. Up and out she rose, into the December air. With each arc her hair volleyed backward, suffusing the air behind her with the sweet scent of her person. The girl swung silently; her happiness was bound into a pure occupation of the act itself. A little girl, swinging in winter.
My darling Kate, thought Sara. My baby, my one. She pushed, and pushed again; the girl flew away, always returning to her hands. I knew, I knew, I always knew. You are the ember of life I blew on, a thousand lonely nights. Never could I let you die.
Chapter 46
Houston.
The liquefied city, drowned by the sea. The great urban quagmire, none but its skyscrapered heart left standing. Hurricanes, drenching tropical rains, the unchecked slide of a continent's waters seeking final escape to the Gulf: for a hundred years the tides had come and gone, filling the lowlands, carving out grimy bayous and contaminated deltas, erasing all.