One day Tonio might like to sleep with the window open, maybe dream about wind, but he can’t reach. The one time he tried, Magdala caught him, screamed, and he lost his balance and fell on the floor. It took both girls to lift him back on the bed. “Don’t move, Papa. You could hurt yourself,” they warned him.
He asked, “What do I do if there’s a fire?”
“There’s no fire, Papa,” they said.
He tried to tell them, waving his fingers frantically through the air in circles like smoke.
“Hold his hands down,” Magdala told the girls. “He might hit himself.” And they obeyed, strapping him down on the bed, unaware of his melting skin.
Tonio can hear the rumble of the washing machine through the vents, its starts and stops, the regular burbling of the wash cycle. He imagines his clothes, their stains, drowning in the water, spitting out into the basin. Before, they had talked about moving him to the basement. Fewer stairs, and Magdala spent most of her day down there doing chores. They could be closer. She could reach him earlier if needed. And he would have a window at ground level to call her when she was outside. “We could make it nice, Tony. I could hire someone to move all the furniture and put down a carpet.”
He protested. “Too much work for you, Mamma. You have enough to do already.” But there were days he wished he would wake up and find himself down there in the basement, listening to the washing machine, dreaming of thunder and hot rains and bleached white sheets spinning.
In many of his dreams, Tonio’s crawling in the garden, pushing down the lines of wooden stakes with his arthritic hands, his feet dragging behind in the dirt like heavy luggage. He can hear the push of the water and smell the pull of the smoke; this is when the dreams combine. To his left are all the fabrics hung on the line, motionless without wind, necklines drooped like people in prayer. The endless days he struggles in and out of those lines stand erect. “I surrender,” he tries to say, but can’t get the words out; he tries, but has to keep his mouth shut against the smoke, his eyebrows starting to burn. He can feel each individual hair parting. The neighbours, the ones he remembers from years ago, the Italian couple with the large van and the three boys, yes, it was the man who had taken the photograph for them the day they moved in, are in their backyard, drinking or walking, the boys playing ball or running under a sprinkler, yelling in English mixed with Italian. He can barely understand either, but he knows basic words. “Water!” he yells, but no one hears him. They are busy playing and talking, and no one sees him crawling on the ground. The last time he had the dream, he got farther and started to dig in the garden with his hands, pulling up cold, black soil. Maybe if I plant myself upside down and perfectly straight, like a carrot, he thought, it will all be over. He would have figured it out. He had been digging, holding his breath to keep out the elements, when the sun peeled open his eyes this morning.
Magdala returns with a letter, places it on his nightstand beside the handkerchief, smiling, her cheeks cracked with deep lines. “A letter, Papa, from Portugal. I’ll read it to you later.” Tonio nods, pleased to see her smiling, the ribbons of white hair twirled into a bun, reminding him of the flowers she wore on their wedding day.
“You’re such a good woman, Magda.” She pauses to scan his face, then kisses his forehead. Tonio feels sealed by her lips, to be opened later when she has the time to sit and love him. He knows she skips parts of the letters, probably when they ask about his health. He can tell. She pretends she can’t make out the handwriting, that, out of practice, it takes her longer each time to make out the Portuguese, and then she flips the page behind the envelope. Sometimes she says, “Oh, this part isn’t interesting to you. It’s just a recipe.” Sometimes she says nothing and hides her eyes.
“You should send your recipe for stains,” he tells her, nodding his head vigorously as he usually does when he praises her. “They always come out.” When the laundry comes back, he is often amazed by the clean slate in front of him, tells himself today, today, there will be no need for any more. Today they will stay white …
Tonio wakes again to Magdala’s voice rolling across her tongue and teeth like waves in their old speech, the letter held up in front of her reading glasses. “… the weather’s hot … Mamma … drinks three jugs of water a day and goes back and forth to the washroom all night … isn’t that funny, Tony?”
He nods, gives her a little chuckle, and sips the glass of wine she brought him, content she let him have some in the afternoon to help him sleep. He tries to make it last, hoping if he takes his time it won’t flood his body, but already he can feel his toes filling up with fluid. He wants to tell his wife about the water dreams, how the water spreads over him like a thick wet blanket and he sinks. Wants to tell her how it feels not to breathe anymore. He wonders what her mamma dreams of, if she tells her daughter, if that is the part she skipped over in the letter. Tonio has never met anyone underneath the water in his dreams before, but maybe he hasn’t been looking. Maybe they could meet, touch hands, get out of the dream together.
“What a big garden they have again back home,” Magdala says, eyeglasses on her lap, face turned towards the window.
“You make the best zucchini.”
“It’s been a good year, Papa,” she sighs. “They grew big and firm. Maybe next year will be a good year, too.”
“You did it, Magda.” Tonio nods vigorously and starts coughing. Magdala jumps off her stool and shoves the letter and envelope into the pocket of her apron. Silent, she hands over a fresh handkerchief, waits to see how bad the fit will be, then walks to the other side of the bed to shut the blinds, the missing slats like empty spaces in an old smile.
“I was crawling in the dirt and …”
“Tony, the war is over.”
No, he tries to tell her, no, no. He can’t get it out; only the coughs. The fire swells in his lungs. Tonio wants to build himself a shelter in the garden, beside the zucchini, the firm and large vessels almost as tall as the stakes, wants to become one of them, wrapped in tough wax, plucked ripe. He has a plan, wants to tell Magdala he has a plan, if only he could just finish his dream uninterrupted. If only he could have wind, maybe the sheets would move and someone would see he has already surrendered. When things move, people notice them, he thinks. Let me dig my hole.
Magdala picks up the plastic meal tray and turns to leave. “You need anything, Papa?”
“A hole in the dirt.”
Madgala stops at the door, her back to Tonio. “Don’t say that Tony, please …” She closes it behind her.
Tonio wants to see the girls today, but knows that he won’t. He said too much and said it all wrong, and he curses the dreams that keep his words away, hoarding them, shoving them deeper inside his body. The little bombs are like my words, he thinks, shooting inside all hot, fiery, and useless, poking me in the ribs and thighs, making me feel but not tell. Rosa and Teresa. He wants to see them. They are good girls to their papa, but Teresa’s too pretty and Rosa knows about the dreams. He can tell. She dreams, too, but he doesn’t know what she dreams of, and neither of them could ever find the right words to share them. She always says, “Sweet dreams, Papa. Sweet ones today,” and Tonio wants to take her in his arms and kiss her, even though she is too big, and sometimes he can’t control his hands so the girls aren’t supposed to touch him in case they get hit. So, instead, they wave to each other, nod, and once in a while Rosa combs his hair. Tonio tells Magdala what to say to them, especially if he thinks they’re in trouble. He tells her to warn Teresa about boys and Rosa about crossing the street. “Teach Rosa how to do things for herself,” he says. “Soon you’ll need her.” And Magdala has been teaching her all about the chores. She’s a good woman. She knows about these things.
Tonio never sees the girls in the dreams, but thinks that sometimes they can see him from the window. Maybe they want to see what he’ll do, if he can make it, and when he thinks this, he can feel their eyes on him like rays. Sometimes the girls hang the shirts on