Barbara Kingsolver - Animal Dreams

“How’s your father?”

“Oh,” I said, “deteriorating. Forgetting who I am. Maybe it’s a blessing.”

“Are you sleeping these days?”

“Yeah, I am, as a matter of fact,” I said, evasively.

“You haven’t had that eyeball dream?”

I’d never been able to explain this to Carlo’s satisfaction. “It’s not really an eyeball dream.”

“What is it, then?”

“Just a sound, like popping glass, and then I’m blind. It’s a very short dream. I’d rather not talk about it if you don’t mind. I’m afraid I’ll jinx myself.”

“So you haven’t been having it?”

“No, not for a while.”

It was kind of him to be interested. He gently squeezed my shoulder in the palm of his hand, releasing the tightness in my deltoid muscle. Not that it applied to us anymore, but people who know a lot about anatomy make great lovers. “So you’re getting along okay there?”

“As well as I get along anywhere,” I said, and he laughed, probably believing I meant “As poorly as I get along anywhere.”

“I’ve been giving some thought to Denver,” he said. “Or Aspen.”

“That would be a challenge. You could sew the faces back onto people who ski into trees.”

“You want to come? We could ski into trees together.”

“I don’t know. I’m not really thinking too far ahead right now.”

He took my feet into his lap and massaged my arches. He had the famous hands of a surgeon, there was no denying it, but I had no sexual interest in Carlo. I still had a slight hope he’d come up with the perfect plan for the two of us that would make me happy and fulfilled, but even that was fading.

“What else could a modern couple like ourselves do in Aspen?” I asked him. “Besides ski into trees, and try to spot movie stars snorting coke in hotel lounges? Aspen sounds kind of fast-lane.”

“After Grace, it would be, yes.”

“Don’t make fun of my country of origin.”

Carlo looked surprised. “I’ve never heard you defend it before.”

“It was a joke.”

“Well, what about Denver, then. Not so fast-lane.”

“Denver’s nice.” I felt the familiar tug of a brand-new place that might, this time, turn out to be wonderful. And the familiar tug of Carlo wanting me to go with him. I’d seen Denver once. It had endless neighborhoods of sweet old brick houses with peaked roofs and lawns shaded by huge maples. It would be a heavenly place to walk a dog.

“Would you ever consider getting a dog, Carlo?”

“A dog?”

“They have four legs and say ‘woof woof.’”

“Oh, right.”

“I’ve met this wonderful dog, in Grace. He’s half coyote and he’ll sit for five hours in the back of a pickup truck waiting for you, just because he trusts you to come back.”

“This sounds serious.”

“He’s a good dog.” I realized I hadn’t thought about Loyd all day, which I viewed as an accomplishment. This must be how it is to be alcoholic: setting little goals for yourself, proving you can live without it. When really, giving it all that thought only proves that you can’t. My mood suddenly began to plummet; I’d felt elated all afternoon, but now I recognized the signs of a depression coming. If I timed it right, Hallie’s letter addressing my last depression would arrive on target.

“Shoot, look at that!” Carlo dropped my feet and jumped to turn up the volume on the TV. “That’s you!”

It was. I yelled for Emelina but the spot was over by the time she showed up in the doorway wearing one of J.T.’s shirts, looking stunned.

“You were on the news,” Carlo explained excitedly. “They said something about the Peacock Ladies and then they said something about Southwestern folk art, and they showed you two standing up in the truck, and this old lady in a black dress…”

“Doña Althea,” I said.

“…holding up the piñata, and another lady and a cop…”

“Officer Metz.”

“…and I didn’t hear anything else because we were yelling.” He stopped suddenly, looking embarrassed by his enthusiasm. He and Emelina hadn’t officially met.

“Oh. Carlo, Emelina. Emelina, Carlo. An old friend from a previous life.”

I didn’t say which one was the previous life, and which was the present. I didn’t know.

Hallie, what I can never put a finger on is the why of you and me. Why did you turn out the way you did? You’re my sister. We were baked in the same oven, with the same ingredients. Why does one cake rise and the other fall? I think about you on your horse, riding out to the fields in your gray wool socks and boots and your hair looking like the Breck Girl gone wild, setting off to make a new world. Life must be so easy when you have dreams.

I read in the paper that we’ll be sending another 40 or 50 million to the contras, so they can strafe little girls and blow you up with your cotton crop. It hurts to know this; I could be a happier American if I didn’t have a loved one sending me truth from the trenches. You’re right, we’re a nation of amnesiacs. I’m embarrassed. It’s an inappropriately weak emotion. You risk everything, while I pay my taxes like everybody else and try not to recall the unpleasant odor of death.

My life is a pitiful, mechanical thing without a past, like a little wind-up car, ready to run in any direction somebody points me. Today I thought I was a hero. We sold fifty peacock piñatas to raise money for the Stitch and Bitch Club, which will somehow save the town of Grace. But it’s not my cause, I’m leaving. I have no idea how to save a town. I only came along today because it looked like a party and I was invited. Remember how we used to pray to get invited to birthday parties? And they only asked us because we were so grateful we’d do anything, stay late and help the mothers wash the cake pans. I’m still that girl, flattered to death if somebody wants me around.

Carlo asked me to go with him to Denver or possibly Aspen. Carlo’s still Carlo. He wants to know why you haven’t written. (I told him you’re busy saving the world.) I almost think I could go to Denver. Carlo is safe because I don’t really love him that much. If he stopped wanting me around one day, it wouldn’t be so terrible. I wouldn’t die.

Hallie, I realize how that sounds. I feel small and ridiculous and hemmed in on every side by the need to be safe. All I want is to be like you, to be brave, to walk into a country of chickens and land mines and call that home, and have it be home. How do you just charge ahead, always doing the right thing, even if you have to do it alone with people staring? I would have so many doubts-what if you lose that war? What then? If I had an ounce of your bravery I’d be set for life. You get up and look the world in the eye, shoo the livestock away from the windowsill, and decide what portion of the world needs to be saved today. You are like God. I get tired. Carlo says “Let’s go to Denver,” and what the heck, I’m ready to throw down the banner of the Stitch and Bitch Club and the republic for which it stands. Ready to go live in Denver and walk my dog.

I went out at dawn, alone, to mail my letter and prowl my old neighborhood. I kept trying to believe I felt good in this familiar haunt. I’d brought my city clothes: a short skirt and black tights and stiletto-heeled boots (the sight would have laid Doc Homer flat), and I walked downtown among strangers, smiling, anonymous as a goldfish. There was a newsstand four blocks down where I used to go for the Times or the Washington Post, which Hallie and Carlo would spread all over the living-room floor on Sunday mornings. Hallie would constantly ask us if she could interrupt for a second. “Listen to this,” she’d say. She needed to read it all aloud, both the tragedies and the funnies.