Fire Watch by Connie Willis

She shook her head. “Not like this. They weren’t like this. I always had good dreams.” The memory was coming now, faster this time, a throbbing in her side where the pink and white book said her ovaries were. She was not sure she could make it to her room. She stood up, clutching at the white tablecloth. “They weren’t like this.” She stumbled through the milling people toward her room.

  “Oh, and Daisy,” Ron said. She stopped, her hand on the door of her room, the memory almost there. “You’re still cold.”

  “What?” she said blankly.

  “Still cold. You’re getting warmer, though.”

  She wanted to ask him what he meant, but the memory was upon her. She shut the door behind her, breathing heavily and groped for the bed.

  All her family had had nightmares. The three of them sat at breakfast with drawn, tired faces, their eyes looking bruised. The lead-backed curtains for the kitchen hadn’t come yet, so they had to eat breakfast in the living room where they could close the venetian blinds. Her mother and father sat on the blue couch with their knees against the crowded coffee table. Daisy and her brother sat on the floor.

  Her mother said, staring at the closed blinds, “I dreamed I was full of holes, tiny little holes, like dotted swiss.”

  “Now, Evelyn,” her father said.

  Her brother said, “I dreamed the house was on fire and the fire trucks came and put it out, but then the fire trucks caught on fire and the fire men and the trees and—”

  “That’s enough,” her father said. “Eat your breakfast.” To his wife he said gently, “Neutrinos pass through all of us all the time. They pass right through the earth. They’re completely harmless. They don’t make holes at all. It’s nothing, Evelyn. Don’t worry about the neutrinos. They can’t hurt you.”

  “Daisy, you had a dotted swiss dress once, didn’t you?” her mother said, still looking at the blinds. “It was yellow. All those little dots, like holes.”

  “May I be excused?” her brother asked, holding a book with a photo of the sun on the cover.

  Her father nodded and her brother went outside, already reading. “Wear your hat!” Daisy’s mother said, her voice rising perilously on the last word. She watched him until he was out of the room, then she turned and looked at Daisy with her bruised eyes. “You had a nightmare too, didn’t you, Daisy?”

  Daisy shook her head, looking down at her bowl of cereal. She had been looking out between the venetian blinds before breakfast, looking out at the forbidden sun. The stiff plastic blinds had caught open, and now there was a little triangle of sunlight on Daisy’s bowl of cereal. She and her mother were both looking at it. Daisy put her hand over the light.

  “Did you have a nice dream, then, Daisy, or don’t you remember?” She sounded accusing.

  “I remember,” Daisy said, watching the sunlight on her hand. She had dreamed of a bear. A massive golden bear with shining fur. Daisy was playing ball with the bear. She had in her two hands a little blue-green ball. The bear reached out lazily with his wide golden arm and swatted the blue ball out of Daisy’s hands and away. The wide, gentle sweep of his great paw was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Daisy smiled to herself at the memory of it.

  “Tell me your dream, Daisy,” her mother said.

  “All right,” Daisy said angrily. “It was about a big yellow bear and a little blue ball that he swatted.” She swung her arm toward her mother.

  Her mother winced.

  “Swatted us all to kingdom come, Mother!” she shouted and flung herself out of the dark living room into the bright morning sun.

  “Wear your hat,” her mother called after her, and this time the last word rose almost to a scream.

  Daisy stood against the door for a long time, watching him. He was talking to her grandmother. She had put down her yellow tape measure with the black coal numbers and was nodding and smiling at what he said. After a very long time he reached out his hand and covered hers, patting it kindly.

  Her grandmother stood up slowly and went to the window, where the faded red curtains did not shut out the snow, but she did not look at the curtains. She stood and looked out at the snow, smiling faintly and without anxiety.

  Daisy edged her way through the crowd in the kitchen, frowning, and sat down across from Ron. His hands still rested flat on the red linoleum-topped table. Daisy put her hands on the table, too, almost touching his. She turned them palm up, in a gesture of helplessness.

  “It isn’t a dream, is it?” she asked him.

  His fingers were almost touching hers. “What makes you think I’d know? I don’t belong here, remember? I work in a grocery store, remember?”

  “You know everything,” she said simply

  “Not everything.”

  The cramp hit her. Her hands, still palm up, shook a little and then groped for the metal edge of the red table as she tried to straighten up.

  “Warmer all the time, Daisy-Daisy,” he said.

  She did not make it to her room. She leaned helplessly against the door and watched her grandmother, measuring and writing and dropping the little slips of paper around her. And remembered.

  Her mother did not even know him. She had seen him at the grocery store. Her mother, who never went out, who wore sunglasses and long-sleeved shirts and a sun hat, even inside the darkened blue living room—her mother had met him at the grocery store and brought him home. She had taken off her hat and her ridiculous gardening gloves and gone to the grocery store to find him. It must have taken incredible courage.

  “He said he’d seen you at school and wanted to ask you out himself, but he was afraid I’d say you were too young, isn’t that right, Ron?” Her mother spoke in a rapid, nervous voice. Daisy was not sure whether she had said Ron or Rob or Rod. “So I said why don’t you just come on home with me right now and meet her? There’s no time like the present, I say. Isn’t that right, Ron?”

  He was not embarrassed by her at all. “Would you like to go get a Coke, Daisy? I’ve got my car here.”

  “Of course she wants to go. Don’t you, Daisy?”

  No. She wished the sun would reach out lazily, the great golden bear, and swat them all away. Right now.

  “Daisy,” her mother said, hastily brushing at her hair with her fingers. “There’s so little time left. I wanted you to have …” Darkness and blood. You wanted me to be as frightened as you are. Well, I’m not, Mother. It’s too late. We’re almost there now.

  But when she went outside with him, she saw his convertible parked at the curb, and she felt the first faint flutter of fear. It had the top down. She looked up at his tanned, smiling face, and thought, He isn’t afraid.

  “Where do you want to go, Daisy?” he asked. He had his bare arm across the back of the seat. He could easily move it from there to around her shoulders. Daisy sat against the door, her arms wrapped around her chest.

  “I’d like to go for a ride. With the top down. I love the sun,” she said to frighten him, to see the same expression she could see on her mother’s face when Daisy told her lies about the dreams.

  “Me, too,” he said. “It sounds like you don’t believe all that garbage they feed us about the sun, either. It’s a lot of scare talk, that’s all. You don’t see me getting skin cancer, do you?” He moved his golden-tanned arm lazily around her shoulder to show her. “A lot of people getting hysterical for nothing. My physics teacher says the sun could emit neutrinos at the present rate for five thousand years before the sun would collapse. All this stuff about the aurora borealis. Geez, you’d think these people had never seen a solar flare before. There’s nothing to be afraid of, Daisy-Daisy.”

  He moved his arm dangerously close to her breast.

  “Do you have nightmares?” she asked him, desperate to frighten him.

  “No. All my dreams are about you.” His fingers traced a pattern, casually, easily on her blouse. “What do you dream about?”

  She thought she would frighten him like she frightened her mother. Her dreams always s
eemed so beautiful, but when she began to tell them to her mother, her mother’s eyes became wide and dark with fear. And then Daisy would change the dream, make it sound worse than it was, ruin its beauty to make it frighten her mother.

  “I dreamed I was rolling a golden hoop. It was hot. It burned my hand whenever I touched it. I was wearing earrings, little golden hoops in my ears that spun like the hoop when I ran. And a golden bracelet.” She watched his face as she told him, to see the fear. He traced the pattern aimlessly with his finger, closer and closer to the nipple of her breast.

  “I rolled the hoop down a hill and it started rolling faster and faster. I couldn’t keep up with it. It rolled on by itself, like a wheel, a golden wheel, rolling over everything.”

  She had forgotten her purpose. She had told the dream as she remembered it, with the little secret smile at the memory. His hand had closed over her breast and rested there, warm as the sun on her face.

  He looked as if he didn’t know it was there. “Boy, my psych teacher would have a ball with that one! Who would think a kid like you could have a sexy dream like that? Wow! Talk about Freudian! My psych teacher says-s—”

  “You think you know everything, don’t you?” Daisy said.

  His fingers traced the nipple through her thin blouse, tracing a burning circle, a tiny burning hoop.

  “Not quite,” he said, and bent close to her face. Darkness and blood. “I don’t know quite how to take you.”

  She wrenched free of his face, free of his arm. “You won’t take me at all. Not ever. You’ll be dead. We’ll all be dead in the sun,” she said, and flung herself out of the convertible and back into the darkened house.

  Daisy lay doubled up on the bed for a long time after the memory was gone. She would not talk to him anymore. She could not remember anything without him, but she did not care. It was all a dream anyway. What did it matter? She hugged her arms to her.

  It was not a dream. It was worse than a dream. She sat very straight on the edge of the bed, her head up and her arms at her side, her feet together on the floor, the way a young lady was supposed to sit. When she stood up, there was no hesitation in her manner. She walked straight to the door and opened it. She did not stop to see what room it was. She did not even glance at the strangers milling up and down. She went straight to Ron and put her hand on his shoulder.

  “This is hell, isn’t it?”

  He turned, and there was something like hope on his face. “Why, Daisy!” he said, and took her hands and pulled her down to sit beside him. It was the train. Their folded hands rested on the white damask tablecloth. She looked at the hands. There was no use trying to pull away.

  Her voice did not shake. “I was very unkind to my mother. I used to tell her my dreams just to make her frightened. I used to go out without a hat, just because it scared her so much. She couldn’t help it. She was so afraid the sun would explode.” She stopped and stared at her hands. “I think it did explode and everybody died, like my father said. I think … I should have lied to her about the dreams. I should have told her I dreamed about boys, about growing up, about things that didn’t frighten her. I could have made up nightmares like my brother did.”

  “Daisy,” he said. “I’m afraid confessions aren’t quite in my line. I don’t—”

  “She killed herself,” Daisy said. “She sent us to my grandmother’s in Canada and then she killed herself. And so I think that if we are all dead, then I went to hell. That’s what hell is, isn’t it? Coming face to face with what you’re most afraid of.”

  “Or what you love. Oh, Daisy,” he said, holding her fingers tightly, “whatever made you think that this was hell?”

  In her surprise, she looked straight into his eyes. “Because there isn’t any sun,” she said.

  His eyes burned her, burned her. She felt blindly for the white-covered table, but the room had changed. She could not find it. He pulled her down beside him on the blue couch. With him still clinging to her hands, still holding onto her, she remembered.

  They were being sent away, to protect them from the sun. Daisy was just as glad to go. Her mother was angry with her all the time. She forced Daisy to tell her her dreams every morning at breakfast in the dark living room. Her mother had put blackout curtains up over the blinds so that no light got in at all, and in the blue twilight not even the little summer slants of light from the blinds fell on her mother’s frightened face.

  There was nobody on the beaches. Her mother would not let her go out, even to the grocery store, without a hat and sunglasses. She would not let them fly to Canada. She was afraid of magnetic storms. They sometimes interrupted the radio signals from the towers. Her mother was afraid the plane would crash.

  She sent them on the train, kissing them goodbye at the train station, for the moment oblivious to the long dusty streaks of light from the vaulted train-station windows. Her brother went ahead of them out to the platform, and her mother pulled Daisy suddenly into a dark shadowed corner. “What I told you before, about your period, that won’t happen now. The radiation—I called the doctor and he said not to worry. It’s happening to everyone.”

  Again Daisy felt the faint pull of fear. Her period had started months ago, dark and bloody as she had imagined. She had not told anyone. “I won’t worry,” she said.

  “Oh, my Daisy,” her mother said suddenly. “My Daisy in the sun,” and seemed to shrink back into the darkness. But as they pulled out of the station, she came out into the direct sun and waved goodbye to them.

  It was wonderful on the train. The few passengers stayed in their cabins with the shades drawn. There were no shades in the dining car, no people to tell Daisy to get out of the sunlight. She sat in the deserted dining car and looked out the wide windows. The train flew through forests, thin branchy forests of spindly pines and aspens. The sun flickered in on Daisy—sun and then shadows and then sun, running across her face. She and her brother ordered an orgy of milkshakes and desserts and nobody said anything to them.

  Her brother read his books about the sun out loud to her. “Do you know what it’s like in the middle of the sun?” he asked her. Yes. You stand with a bucket and a shovel and your bare toes digging into the sand, a child again, not afraid, squinting up into the yellow light.

  “No,” she said.

  “Atoms can’t even hold together in the middle of the sun. It’s so crowded they bump into each other all the time, bump bump bump, like that, and their electrons fly off and run around free. Sometimes when there’s a collision, it lets off an X-ray that goes whoosh, all the way out at the speed of light, like a ball in a pinball machine. Bing-hang-bing, all the way to the surface.”

  “Why do you read those books anyway? To scare yourself?”

  “No. To scare Mom.” That was a daring piece of honesty, suitable not even for the freedom of Grandma’s, suitable only for the train. She smiled at him.

  “You’re not even scared, are you?”

  She felt obliged to answer him with equal honesty “No,” she said, “not at all.”

  “Why not?”

  Because it won’t hurt. Because I won’t remember afterwards. Because I’ll stand in the sun with my bucket and shovel and look up and not be frightened. “I don’t know,” Daisy said. “I’m just not.”

  “I am. I dream about burning all the time. I think about how much it hurts when I burn my finger and then I dream about it hurting like that all over forever.” He had been lying to their mother about his dreams, too.

  “It won’t be like that,” Daisy said. “We won’t even know it’s happened. We won’t remember a thing.”

  “When the sun goes nova, it’ll start using itself up. The core will start filling up with atomic ash, and that’ll make the sun start using up all its own fuel. Do you know it’s pitch-dark in the middle of the sun? See, the radiations are X-rays, and they’re too short to see. They’re invisible. Pitch-dark and ashes falling around you. Can you imagine that?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”
They were passing a meadow and Daisy’s face was full in the sun. “We won’t be there. We’ll be dead. We won’t remember anything.”

  Daisy had not realized how relieved she would be to see her grandmother, narrow face sunburned, arms bare. She was not even wearing a hat. “Daisy dear, you’re growing up,” she said. She did not make it sound like a death sentence. “And David, you still have your nose in a book, I see.”

  It was nearly dark when they got to her little house. “What’s that?” David asked, standing on the porch.

  Her grandmother’s voice did not rise dangerously at all. “The aurora borealis. I tell you, we’ve had some shows up here lately. It’s like the Fourth of July.”

  Daisy had not realized how hungry she had been to hear someone who was not afraid. She looked up. Great red curtains of light billowed almost to the zenith, fluttering in some solar wind. “It’s beautiful,” Daisy whispered, but her grandmother was holding the door open for her to go in, and so happy was she to see the clear light in her grandmother’s eyes, she followed her into the little kitchen with its red linoleum table and the red curtains hanging at the windows.

  “It is so nice to have company,” her grandmother said, climbing-onto a chair. “Daisy, hold this end, will you?” She dangled the long end of a yellow plastic ribbon down to Daisy. Daisy took it, looking anxiously at her grandmother. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Measuring for new curtains, dear,” she said, reaching into her pocket for a slip of paper and a pencil. “What’s the length, Daisy?”

  “Why do you need new curtains?” Daisy asked. “These look fine to me.”

  “They don’t keep the sun out,” her grandmother said. Her eyes had gone coal-black with fear. Her voice was rising with every word. “We have to have new curtains, Daisy, and there’s no cloth. Not in the whole town, Daisy. Can you imagine that? We had to send to Ottawa. They bought up all the cloth in town. Can you imagine that, Daisy?”

  “Yes,” Daisy said, and wished she could be afraid.

  Ron still held her hands tightly. She looked steadily at him. “Wanner, Daisy,” he said. “Almost here.”