by Cote Smith
Her mother told her not to tell anyone. She said they wouldn’t understand. “I ignored her,” she said. “I told my counselor, who didn’t laugh but didn’t take me seriously either.” She saw a doctor, who recommended a clinic downtown. The next day she skipped school and drove to the city. She met with a nice physician who asked if she had considered checking herself in. She signed a form that she didn’t read and was shown a room. That first week they asked questions to tease out the real problem, some underlying psychological disorder they could prescribe a drug for. But the drugs just made her groggy, so that she dreamed even more, only now through a fog. She saw partial pictures, enough of the mystery to make a person go mad. A week later she tried to leave, reminding them that she was a voluntary patient. She didn’t have to be there. But everyone simply smiled and said they would look into it. Meanwhile, her dreams became worse, more distorted. She saw things that couldn’t possibly be real. From a cloud she looked down upon a town. She saw people singing and dancing, as small as ants. She saw them grow tired. She saw them grow thirsty. They gathered in a field and they drank, the big helping the little. Afterward, the ants lay down, all thirsts quenched, all desires satisfied.
Then, a man came to the clinic. A specialist, the other doctors called him. He was much younger than they were. He sat in her room and said, “I can help you. Would you like that?” He called her Claire when no one else would. “Well then, Claire,” he said, “tell me about your dreams. Tell me everything you remember.”
He asked her to check into another facility, close to a hotel he owned in Colorado.
* * *
Lia drove for twelve hours straight, stopping only for gas. Her mother told her where to go, though Lia spent most of the drive wondering what the hell she was doing.
Well after midnight, when it made no sense to go any farther, she pulled into a rest stop. She wrapped herself in the blanket her mother had given her, locked her doors, and slept. When she woke, her toes and fingers burned from the cold. She cranked the defroster and watched as the ice receded from the windshield, giving way to mountains.
This was where the man took her mother. His name was Oskar Totem, her mother had explained.
Lia knew that name.
“Of course,” Claire said. “He was at Limetown.”
But first, Oskar Totem was at the Eldridge, overseeing things, digging in his nails. As young as he was at the time, he somehow owned the hotel in the town below, and the facility nearby where Claire had stayed. He would visit Claire in her room and ask how she was feeling. Her fretful dreams had waned as of late. No longer did she see any ants.
More time passed, and as the dreams decreased, so did Totem’s visits. Every day became every other day; every week became every other week. “I’m better,” Claire insisted, one afternoon. Totem dismissed her. “These dreams of yours—why don’t we wait a little bit longer, to see if they come true? That way we know for sure you’re cured.”
It was his way of making her stay without force. But a few months later, when the dreams had completely stopped, she was let go. An orderly released her one morning, put some forms in front of her (she read them this time, skimming through the language that demanded nondisclosure) and showed her the door. She left the Eldridge in a daze. Outside the sun was brighter than it had any right to be.
Before she left town, she used a pay phone to call her mother. A stranger answered the phone. Some man who claimed to be a cousin. He’d taken over the property last month when Alison was away and her mother fell ill again. Ill? Troubled, he explained. Alison raced back to the Eldridge, demanded to see Totem. She found him outside, roaming the grounds.
“My mother,” she said. “They have her in some run-down county hospital. I can’t afford— she needs help.”
“But there’s no reason for you to stay,” Totem said. “You’re better. Isn’t that what you said?”
Alison stopped walking. “I can’t make myself dream.”
“You can’t?”
“You fixed me,” Alison said. “Didn’t you?” Totem didn’t respond. He wasn’t very tall, about the same height as Alison. “You never wanted me to stop dreaming. You never wanted to help me.”
“No,” Totem finally said. “Not in the way you imagine. I wanted to understand you. Your . . . telos.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Telos is your purpose. Why you’re here on Earth. Everyone has one.”
Alison fell to her knees. “She needs me,” she said.
Totem stood over her, his face eclipsing the sun. “So stay,” he said. “Help me, and we’ll help her.”
And so Alison became Claire again, carrying out Totem’s wishes for several years, waiting for her mother to get better. Waiting and waiting, until Emile arrived, with Lia’s father.
* * *
Lia headed down the mountain in her mother’s car. She kept the radio off and in her mind replayed her mother’s words.
“The dreams,” Lia asked. “Did they ever come back?”
“Yes,” her mother said. “But Totem never knew that.”
“What were they about?” Lia thought she saw a quick tremor in her mother’s face. Another question formed immediately, in the absence of an answer. “Mom, did you dream about Limetown?”
Her mother looked out the screened porch.
Lia said what her mother couldn’t. “You knew what was going to happen.”
Her mother covered her mouth with a trembling hand. Lia crawled out of her chair and kneeled by her mother’s side. “What is it?” she said. “What did you see?”
* * *
She still didn’t understand it. Most of her dreams came in snippets, her mother explained. Flashes. It was only when she was awake that she could splice the images together, build the bigger picture. But this dream was different. It came to her fully formed, and whereas in the other dreams she had always felt like she was intruding on the future, here, she felt invited. She wasn’t spying. She was shown.
A young girl wakes with a scream. It is the middle of the night. She covers her mouth, worried she’ll wake her parents. But her parents are already up. She can hear them yelling in the living room. She jumps when a door slams, and slides out of bed to the window, watches her father huff out of the house. Streetlights guide him into the dark. The girl crawls back into bed and waits. This is not the first fight. This is not new. In a moment her mother will creak open the door and sneak into the girl’s room. She’ll slip into the girl’s bed, though there is little room. She thinks the girl is asleep. She thinks the girl can’t hear her when she whispers, “We have to get out of here.”
The mother is sad. This is new. The girl likes to think of the world in this way, what is new and what is not. It makes the world easier to understand. In the morning the mother makes the girl breakfast. She holds the girl’s hand as they stroll down a peaceful street, waving to neighbors, but not saying much. This is new. In the beginning there were barbecues, late-night drinks while the girl turned sleepless in her bed that was and wasn’t exactly like her old bed, the bed in her old home. Now there are no more barbecues or late-night drinks. Everyone keeps their distance, as if they’re scared of one another. The girl saw a movie like this once. She doesn’t like movies. She prefers books. But the theater is the only place her mother will take her. “I like it there,” her mother once said, when the girl asked why they couldn’t go someplace else. “It’s quiet.” The girl has theories of her own. One is that her mother likes the theater because it is on the opposite side of town from where the girl’s father works. That big bubble built into the mountain. Maybe Daddy likes the distance too.
They are the only ones in the theater. The girl has seen the movie many times before. It is an old story. Much older than the girl, perhaps even older than the mother, though maybe not as old as the father, who is old enough that, before, in their old town, when the three went out, people would stare. As the movie plays, the girl mouths the lines before they appear o
n-screen. This is the only way to stave off boredom, to stay awake. She doesn’t even like the movie. The bright orange hurts her eyes. And she doesn’t like that there aren’t any girls in it. Just a sad man in a sad place, wishing he wasn’t sad. She closes her eyes sometimes, when the man finally takes off his helmet and calls out for his wife.
On the walk home the town is still. The girl cannot tell if this is new. It is difficult to keep track sometimes. A letter is missing from the movie theater marquee. The sun is lower than before. The moon is a sideways frown. A few people have gathered in the town square. They were not there before; the girl is sure of it. They are gathered around something—a big piece of wood, sticking out of the ground. It is as tall as her father.
The mother pulls the girl by the wrist, tells her to come along.
That night her father doesn’t come home. This isn’t new. That night the mother does not come to the girl. The girl waits and waits, watching the cracked door, but there are no footsteps in the hall. She doesn’t mean to, but she falls asleep.
She is woken by an earthquake. No, someone is shaking her bed. But when she reaches out to tell her mother to stop, no one is there. The girl tiptoes out of her room and down the hall; the entire house smells of smoke. Her mother is in her bedroom. She has taken off her day hair and wears what God gave her. She looks beautiful, but the girl knows she is not happy. She is wrestling with something. She is deciding on the right thing to do.
The mother opens her arms and calls the girl to her. She asks the girl how she would like it if the two of them went back to their old home. Right now. The girl doesn’t answer. She knows the mother has made up her mind. “What about Dad?” the girl asks, and her mother squeezes her tighter. “Your father will find a way,” she says. “If it’s important to him, he’ll find his way home.”
They make the mistake of going out the front door. Several neighbors are outside too. At first the girl thinks they are waiting for her and her mother, that they know they plan to leave. But the neighbors barely glance in their direction. They’re looking down the street, toward the town square, at a large orange glow blooming into the night. The smell of smoke is undeniable, and the neighbors, they walk toward the fire without speaking.
The girl’s mother pulls her the opposite direction. The girl protests. She wants to see the fire. The mother picks the girl up, even though she is too big for this, and carries her six houses before stopping. The mother is not tired, but she puts the girl down. She crouches to the ground. She holds her face. This is and isn’t new. The girl has seen her mother like this before, though never when the mother was alone. But then the mother stops, and when she pulls her hands away they are wet. Her face is stricken with fear and something else the girl can’t recognize. Something she has never seen before. Something new.
The mother stands up. She takes the girl by the hand and pulls her back the other way, toward the fire. They are running now. The mother is fast, but the girl is faster. The girl breaks free from her mother’s hand. She can feel the heat rush her face. She wades into a crowd of people. She doesn’t hear her mother anymore. She pushes through the people. When she finally sees the fire, it is not what she expected. Already it has started to die down. It takes the girl a moment to realize what she is looking at in the flames. A blackened figure slumped against a post. Is it new? She turns to look at the faces of the townspeople, on which she sees rage and despair, pain and pride, familiar expressions she has seen on her mother and father. She finds a man whose head hangs low, and it’s only when she looks at this man that she understands that what has happened is nothing new. It is her mother when she realizes her father isn’t coming home for the evening. It is her father crawling out of his car in the middle of the night, sighing to himself before taking on the front porch steps. And lately, it is what she feels when she sees the neighbors, their tired, old faces. It is the feeling of extraordinary guilt, the knowledge that they have done something terrible they can never take back.
“Sylvia,” the girl’s mother says. She has finally caught up. She grabs the girl by the shoulders and turns her away from the fire. “Don’t look, honey. Don’t look.” But the girl can still smell it.
“Is it him?” the girl asks.
But the mother doesn’t answer. She picks up the girl and carries her away from the fire, from the blackened figure, away from the people, away from the town and away from what happens next. This was the Panic at Limetown.
* * *
Lia’s mother didn’t know who burned. But she had found Sylvia’s name in the Limetown Commission Summary, and the name of the girl’s mother. Their last names didn’t match any of the men listed. Perhaps they weren’t really married, the girl’s mother and the man she called her father in the dream. Anyway, the who didn’t matter, Lia’s mother had argued, as much as the why.
“Mom,” Lia said, “it was just a dream.” It was her turn to console, to pretend.
“No,” her mother said. “It was a warning.”
“You couldn’t have known—”
“Of course I knew. And still I didn’t save him.”
“Who? The man?”
“Your uncle. Emile. He came to me. Before the dream, but I already knew something bad would happen if Totem was involved.”
“Emile.” Lia rolled off her knees.
Her mother closed her eyes. “I don’t know. God, I don’t know. Every night I go to sleep with this dread. Wishing that the dream will show me more, but fearing I’ll see his face in the fire.”
Lia watched her mother for a moment. She knew there was still so much that Alison wouldn’t allow Claire to share.
“Let’s say the dream was real,” Lia said. “If it was a warning or whatever. Why do you still have it? What’s happened has happened.”
Her mother rubbed her arms. She pulled a blanket from a basket and wrapped herself in in it. “Well,” she said.
“I’m listening,” Lia said.
Her mother took Lia’s hand. Alison, Claire. This woman of mystery, of power, whose dark eyes and dazzling smile, though changed by motherhood and time, had never truly faded in the years since the photograph was taken.
“Maybe the dream isn’t a warning,” she said. “Maybe it’s a calling. I couldn’t stop what happened. And we can’t change the past, but you can reveal it.” The dream was now a scene from a movie burnt out of existence, her mother explained, erased from prying eyes. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. “Doesn’t that story, your uncle’s story, deserve to be told? Aren’t you the one to tell it?”
Lia shook her head. She’d never told her mother the whole story about what happened at her internship, but she knew that her storytelling days were over.
“Lia. If not you, then who? What was it all for?”
“What was what for?” Lia asked.
“Everything!” her mother said, with a sudden burst. “The letter! The transcript! The boxes in the attic! All those clues, Lia. All those . . . nudges.”
“What do you mean?” Lia said. “I found those. I did.”
Her mother looked at Lia like she was a co-conspirator, not her daughter. “Oh, Apple. You wanted to, yes. I know you wanted to.”
“No,” Lia said. “That’s not—” But already her mind was rewinding to everything she’d found since her mother first disappeared, searching for Emile. All the clues that fell into Lia’s lap. The boxes in the attic. Emile’s books, his pin and scarf. And when she returned to the States, what her mother called a “fresh start,” there was the dead letter envelope from Max Finlayson to Dorothy. All of this was her mother’s doing. All of this was her mother’s plan, to continue her search for Emile without having to search for Emile herself, without her father knowing. Lia suddenly remembered what her mother said to her when Lia first got to Oregon, when she asked her mother why she finally gave up looking for Emile. Why do I need to keep searching? her mother had said. I have you.
“Wait,” Lia said. “The transcript. What does that have
to do with Emile?” But she knew the answer to that too.
“Everything,” Claire said.
Lia understood then that Emile must have been one of the mice, Moyer and McNellis the others. “That was you? But how—” She tried to stand up, but she felt the weight of everything she’d discovered crashing down on her, crushing everything she thought she understood. She backed into the corner of the porch, suddenly afraid of what her mother might say next.
“Apple.”
“Stop,” Lia said, backing against the corner post. “This whole time. I thought I was going crazy.”
Her mother bristled. “You’re not crazy, honey. It’s just— you’re a part of this. You always have been.”
Lia ducked away from her mother. She grabbed the blanket and ran out the screen door, down the porch steps, and into the rain. “Apple. What are you doing? You’re going to get all wet.”
“You used me?” Lia said.
“It’s more complicated than that. Come on, Apple. You’ll catch a cold.”
“You used me,” Lia repeated, this time as a statement. “Why? Why not just find all the answers yourself?”
“I told you. Your father. I couldn’t leave him again. I couldn’t—”
“Bullshit,” Lia said. “You don’t care about him. You don’t care about either of us.” And as she said that her mind flashed to the photo. Of her mother with Emile, the happiest Lia could remember seeing her. “That photo. Are you in love with him or something? Is that what all this is about?”
“No. Lia. It’s not that simple.”