The Last Days of California: A Novel

by Miller, Mary

  “Mom was crying in front of those people,” I said.

  She was so drunk her face was taking on different shapes, the muscles bunching and flattening beneath the skin. As soon as she’d gotten her shorts up, I opened the door. The bartender was standing there with our mother behind him.

  “Get out,” he said, and Elise started screaming that we were leaving.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “What are you sorry for?” Elise said. “You’re always apologizing for things that have nothing to do with you. Nothing has anything to do with you.”

  Our mother grabbed her by the arm and jerked her around, hair flying. Everyone was looking at us. They were still and quiet except for the jukebox, which was loud. It was weird, all of these trashy people looking at us like we were the trashy ones. We were solidly middle class. Our parents were college-educated.

  The bartender hustled us out the door and we stood there for a second before our mother started walking. We trailed behind her like little ducks, Elise carrying her flip-flops in one hand. There was a lot of glass in the parking lot, but I didn’t tell her to put her flip-flops back on. It was car-window glass, the pieces small and shimmery blue, and probably wouldn’t cut her.

  Elise tripped over a hunk of concrete and I linked my arm through hers. She had her face to the sky, mouth open. She pointed up at something while I dragged her along, my eyes searching out the curved and shiny glass of beer bottles. The temperature had fallen and there was a breeze. It was so nice out that I wished we were driving at night and sleeping during the day. There was nothing to say we couldn’t, there were enough 24-hour gas stations to see us through, but of course my father wouldn’t go for it. He didn’t go for anything out of the ordinary. He liked for things to be the way they were supposed to be.

  “I want that ID,” my mother said.

  Elise handed it over without protest and my mother slipped it in her pocket. I scanned the motel to see if any lights were on: two rooms. What were the people in those rooms doing? Watching TV? Having sex? Somehow, it was more interesting to think about what people were doing when the options had been narrowed so drastically, like I might guess correctly.

  Our father was asleep, his robe in a pile on the floor and the covers at the foot of the bed. His stomach was hard and tight, like a pregnant woman’s belly. Our mother sighed as she took off her shoes and shorts and replaced the covers. Elise went to the sink and guzzled water out of her hand. Then she went to the bathroom, coughed a few times, and was quiet. I got in bed and waited. After a while, I went over and put my hand on the bathroom door, leaned in. She was crying. Like our mother, she would cry if she was sad and didn’t care who saw or heard her. The last time we watched Forrest Gump, she’d bawled shamelessly throughout the entire movie and I’d had to go upstairs and finish it in my room.

  “Elise,” I said.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Elise.”

  “Go away.”

  I got back in bed. A few minutes later, she crawled in next to me and put her face close to mine. I liked to sleep on my left side and she preferred her right.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I hate it when you cry. It makes me sad.”

  “There’s an angel looking out for me,” she said. She was so close that she could only look into one of my eyes at a time.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I saw my angel tonight.” She waited for me to say something but I didn’t want our mother to hear us. Our mother believed in angels but you weren’t actually supposed to see them. It was like the prayer-rug Jesus opening his eyes. He wasn’t going to and anyone who claimed he had was lying or dangerous.

  “Tell me about it tomorrow,” I said.

  She turned her back to me. As kids we used to fight to be the one who got to sleep on their preferred side, with their leg slung over the other’s hip, but that was a long time ago. I put the extra pillow between us and thought, love one another. It was so simple. How was I always forgetting something so simple? If Jesus’s message had to be reduced to one thing, that would be it.

  Soon everyone was asleep and I was awake, listening to the steady, slightly ragged breaths of my sister, the snores of my mother and father. I liked to be the last one to fall asleep, the last one to see the last thing to happen in the day.

  THURSDAY

  When I woke up, a weak gray light was coming in through the slit in the curtains and I knew it was too early to be awake. I checked the clock: 6:24. I’d had bad dreams, a whole series of them, but could only recall the last one. I was at a concert with thousands of people, in some kind of pit, when a structure fell on us. The dream ended like that—we were alive but knew we wouldn’t make it out. The death dreams weren’t that bad, though, because on some level I always knew they were dreams whereas my other bad dreams felt so real, like I was failing a class and was going to have to take it over, or one of my teeth had fallen out. It was always just one tooth, usually a bottom one, and I would search for this lost tooth and find it, attempt to stick it back into my head while blood gushed. Sometimes I glued it. I’d wake up distraught, running a finger over my slick morning teeth, and the upset feeling would hang around long enough for me to forget what it was that had upset me.

  My father was usually awake first, but he was still asleep. They were all snoring now, even Elise, though my father was by far the loudest and sometimes he stopped breathing for long stretches. The word “cacophony” came to me—it was a cacophony. I rolled out of bed and went to the bathroom. On the toilet, I recalled the events of last night: Jimmy looking at me through the windshield, Elise’s angel, love one another.

  I put on my shorts, grabbed my purse, and closed the door.

  It was already hot out. I should have been used to the heat, but every summer it came as a surprise; every summer I wondered if it was hotter than all of the summers that had come before. A bird flew out of a tree, its wings beating so loudly I could hear every flap. I thought about a Diet Coke and what I might eat for breakfast—a bag of sandwich cookies, if they had those, a Honey Bun if they didn’t. Maybe a two-pack of strawberry Pop-Tarts. If there was only a drink machine, I’d go over to the gas station and buy some powdered doughnuts. It was what I liked best about mornings—a Diet Coke and something sweet. Elise and my mother liked the night and my father and I liked the morning.

  At the bald man’s room, I stopped to watch the curtains flutter above the air conditioner. And then I was leaning in, trying to hear something. I wanted to hear the woman moan.

  The vending machines were next to one of the out-of-order ice machines. I opened the silver flap—yellowed, empty space. I let it slam and considered the offerings. I slid quarters and dimes into the slot and a Honey Bun fell. I had a difficult time getting it out, and when I looked up, the bald man was standing there with his bucket under one arm.

  “It doesn’t work,” I said, tilting my purse to one side to gather more change. I picked out the silver, dropped the pennies and gum wrappers back in.

  “You need money?” he asked, pulling out his billfold.

  “No thanks,” I said.

  He held out a dollar. “Here.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “It’s just a dollar,” he said. “Take it.”

  I thanked him and slipped it into the machine. The bottle clattered down. It was always the same temperature, not quite cold enough.

  He was still standing there with one arm around his ice bucket, looking at me, so I asked what I always asked when I was uncomfortable—if he’d been saved.

  “I’m Catholic,” he said.

  “My mother grew up Catholic, but she’s not anymore.”

  “I’m not anymore, either. Have you been saved?”

  “Of course,” I said, gazing out at the parking lot like there was something there.

  “Did you get dunked in a lake?”

  “No, just at church.”

  “I like to im
agine you in a lake, in a white dress.”

  “I think that’s just on TV,” I said.

  “I don’t go to mass anymore, except at Christmas. It gets me in the spirit, kind of like turkey at Thanksgiving. I guess I’m fair-weather, is what I’m saying, like if the Cowboys are losing, I don’t watch.”

  I nodded, smiled.

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Fifteen.”

  More nodding, smiling.

  “Thanks for the dollar,” I said.

  “Hey, wait. You got any advice for an old sinner?”

  I twisted the cap off my Diet Coke. “The world’s going to end,” I said.

  “That’s not advice.”

  “Prepare yourself for the world to end.”

  He reached forward and grabbed my arm. I yanked it away, but he didn’t even have a grip on it; then he took a step back and showed me his palms as if he was innocent.

  He looked slowly around the parking lot before turning back to me with cold eyes. “Why are you still standing here?” he asked in a voice that was different from the one he’d used before. I took off running, my purse banging against my leg.

  I was breathing heavily and must have looked alarmed, but my father didn’t notice.

  “Good morning,” he said, sitting up.

  “Good morning.” I crawled in bed next to Elise and closed my eyes. I tried to slow my breathing, but the more I tried, the harder it became. Same as sleeping and everything else, breathing was only easy if you didn’t think about it. I will kill you, I thought. I will rip you limb from limb. I imagined shooting the man and watching him die, hitting him over the head with a hammer. His blood leaking all over the pavement. It made me feel powerful.

  I lay there for a long time, thinking about what I would do to the man and how I would enjoy watching him suffer, but I must have fallen asleep because when I opened my eyes my father had made coffee and the cleaning lady was pushing her cart down the bumpy concrete outside.

  She stopped in front of our door and banged with a handful of keys. “Housekeeping!” she called. Elise groaned and turned over.

  “We’ll be out in an hour,” my father called.

  The woman banged again and Elise yelled, “Go away!”

  There was a moment of silence and then the cart rattled on. Elise flung the covers off and went to the bathroom. She turned on the shower but didn’t get in, so she must have been on the toilet. It was awful using the bathroom in a space this small. Trying to be quiet, trying not to make any noise. I’d recently found that if I sat forward on the toilet and positioned myself to miss the water, I could avoid making any sound.

  I checked my King Jesus t-shirt. It was still slightly damp but I put it on. It would dry as soon as I stepped outside.

  After I was dressed, my face washed and teeth brushed, I stood in front of the mirror. No one was paying any attention to me—my parents were watching the news and drinking their coffee, and Elise was still in the bathroom. I only looked at myself when no one was around. There was something embarrassing about it, like I thought I was beautiful. My nose was a little big and my skin was broken out along the jawline. My hair was wavy and hung just past my shoulders. I could never get it exactly right—if I washed it every day, it was dry and frizzy, but if I alternated days, it was greasy. My eyes were nice and my eyelashes were decently long, my teeth straight without braces. Hair, body, skin—these were the three things I had to monitor. It seemed simpler when I broke them down like this, more manageable.

  I sat on my bed and turned it to Regis & Kelly. I waited for my father to tell me to change it back but he didn’t. Kelly had been to the latest Pirates of the Caribbean premier and she and Regis were wearing skanky black wigs. Regis was making his usual Gelman jokes, which made me feel bad for Gelman even though it was just Regis’s shtick and Gelman made a lot of money and probably had a lot of friends and a nice family, too. But something about it still made me uncomfortable. I bet in his quietest moments, right before he went to sleep in his nice bed in his nice house, he hated himself.

  Elise came out of the bathroom and dug through her suitcase, one towel wrapped around her body and another around her head. She pulled her t-shirt off the hanger and went back into the bathroom.

  “Save me some coffee,” she called. Of course the coffee was gone; the machine only made two cups. She came out wearing the same thing she’d had on for days, blue jean shorts and her King Jesus Returns! t-shirt.

  “You still stink, Jesus,” she said, lifting a fistful of shirt to her face. She pronounced it Hey-soose. “How’s your Jesus smell?”

  “Like hamburgers,” I said. “And it’s wet.”

  “They smell like Tide,” our mother said.

  After our father took a quick shower and put on another of his no-iron Brooks Brothers shirts, we were back on the road.

  He pulled off after a few exits and we got in line at a McDonald’s drive-thru. There were many cars, and our parents had the usual discussion about whether it would be faster to go inside or wait it out. No matter what they decided, they would determine that it had been the wrong decision.

  “I could really go for some Restaurant right now,” Elise said. “Some Restaurant sure would be better than another McDonald’s biscuit.”

  “You should get that yogurt-granola parfait,” I said. “You’d like that.”

  “Granola has a ton of calories.”

  “Get the pancakes, then.”

  “Just order for me,” she said, getting out of the car. I watched her walk inside, a man in a suit rushing to hold the door for her.

  “I’m about done with her attitude,” my father said.

  “She hasn’t been feeling well,” I said.

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Her stomach’s been upset.”

  “Maybe she’s coming down with a bug,” my mother said.

  “She needs to eat some meat,” my father said. “She’s not getting enough protein.”

  “I don’t think meat has anything to do with it,” I said.

  Elise returned as we were pulling up to the second window. My father paid with his credit card, and I thought of him double-checking the Waffle House bill, running his finger down the column.

  “Perfect timing,” my mother said cheerily, taking the cups and bag as my father handed them to her.

  He pulled over into a parking spot to administer his insulin shot. He took his time, opening the case, lifting his shirt and squeezing hunks of stomach to find the perfect spot. As always, he was dramatic—sighing and grunting—and the process took longer than was necessary. Then he said the prayer and our mother passed the biscuits around, doctoring our father’s with jelly and wrapping a napkin around it before handing it to him. He did his usual back-up-without-looking routine and it made me want him to crash even though it would be a lot of trouble for all of us and I might even get hurt in the ordeal. I still wanted him to crash. It would be his fault. He would try to blame it on us, but we would all know it was on him and he would feel terrible about it.

  We were quiet after that, eating our biscuits, not listening to the Christian radio our father liked, or the country our mother preferred. Elise liked NPR, but our father was suspicious of public radio. He called All Things Considered, Some Things Considered, and said the women were all lesbians. I looked at my sister, sitting Indian-style with the big plastic container of pancakes in her lap, hunks of butter melting into the squishy cakes. I hoped she’d offer them to me before they got cold.

  My father took his hands off the wheel to adjust his napkin and the car drifted off the road. He jerked the wheel back into place, making me spill orange juice on myself.

  “Thanks, Dad,” I said. “You just made me spill orange juice everywhere.”

  Elise socked me in the arm. “There’s another one,” she said. It was her favorite Jesus billboard, the one that asked IS HE IN YOU? in bold black letters on a white background. She had a standard response, which she whispered i
n my ear, “If he is, I can’t feel him yet.”

  “You know Marshall hasn’t given away any of his money,” Elise said as our car began to veer off the road again.

  “Dad,” I said. He yanked it so hard we went into the other lane.

  “It would be a nice gesture, don’t you think?” she asked.

  “It would be a nice gesture,” I agreed. “A lot of people gave their money away—the Ultcheys and the Smiths.”

  “And the Sellers,” Elise said. Dan was a Sellers. If the rapture didn’t happen, Dan was going to be poor and wouldn’t be able to help her raise the baby, or even pay for an abortion.

  “Hopefully they didn’t give it all away,” I said.

  “All of it,” she said. “What’s the point otherwise? To show people that you half-believe? That you one-quarter believe?”

  “They’ll be taken care of,” our father said.

  “But, seriously. Don’t you think he should give his money away? Prove he believes what he says he does?”

  “He’s not required to prove anything,” our father said.

  “But he’s convinced all these other people to do something he’s not willing to do.”

  “Do you think all of this is free?” he asked, waving his biscuit around. “All the caravans and billboards? He’s spent millions of dollars of his own money. They’re all over the world, from Abu Dhabi to Katmandu.”

  I had no idea where those places were, but I recalled an episode of Garfield when he put Nermal in a box and addressed it to Abu Dhabi. I thought it was a made-up place.

  “There’s nothing here,” Elise said quietly.

  “I can always count on you to ask the tough questions,” he said.

  “I could come up with some tougher ones if you like.” She popped the lid off her pancakes and smeared the butter around with a finger. I passed my wrapper up to my mother and she handed me another biscuit. I’d only asked for one, but I took it and unwrapped it. While I ate, I watched out the window: the grass was brittle and yellow; shreds of tire lined the side of the road. In the span of a minute, I saw two dead dogs and one dead armadillo. I didn’t care about the armadillos, but the dogs about killed me. I mentioned it and my mother told the story of the time she ran over a turtle. I’d heard this story a dozen times—how loud the crack of its shell had been, the sick feeling that followed.