The Last Days of California: A Novel

by Miller, Mary

  I rested my head against the window and waited for the vibration to give me a headache.

  “The mileage is posted every two miles here,” Elise said. “It makes me feel like we’re not getting anywhere.”

  Our mother turned on the radio. She stopped at a station our father wouldn’t like, but he didn’t say anything. We listened to Kelly Clarkson and Maroon 5 and Billy Joel and he even hummed along to “Piano Man.” The station was the kind that was popular now—they played what they wanted and would give you money if you could tell them how much they were giving away. The jackpot was at $2,200 when my father changed the station and I repeated this to myself, but then I remembered that they wouldn’t dial our area code and maybe they only called landlines, anyway.

  My father pressed SCAN and found a Christian program. The man had the pleasant, confident voice of all pastors, awful and fake, but I wanted to trust it, regardless. He told a story of a child who’d been attacked by an alligator. The boy’s mother kept a tight grip on him during the struggle, which was a metaphor for parents keeping a tight grip of protection on their children as they faced life’s challenges. The child had no visible scars except three little half-moons from his mother’s fingernails, pulling him back from certain death. Elise rolled her eyes and I made a face even though I liked the story. There had been alligators in a dream I’d had recently, but I couldn’t remember what happened. I knew why I’d dreamed of them, though—in Louisiana we’d gone to a restaurant that served fried alligator tail and my father had ordered a basket. Little nuggets he dipped into different sauces. I thought I should start writing my dreams down, taking notes; it was another part of the mission I could undertake.

  “Lake Amistad,” our father said, tapping the window. “Some good fishin’ there, I bet.” He kept glancing over, jerking the wheel. “Oh man,” he said. “Look at all those boats.” My father had had a boat once, but my mother put it on Craigslist without telling him. I’d stood in the carport and watched a man with a handful of cash talk him down. I rarely felt sorry for my father, but that day I’d loved him more than I’d ever loved anybody.

  After that, the land grew more barren. I attempted a game of solitaire on my lap while Elise scrolled through peoples’ status updates on Facebook. She told me about our cousin, one of our father’s sister’s kids we didn’t know very well, and how he was a psychic now. Our father overheard us and asked if he was still four hundred pounds.

  “I don’t know,” Elise said. “How would I know?”

  “Because you’re Facebook friends with him,” I said.

  “He doesn’t have that many photos up—you know how ugly people use a baby picture as their profile picture? That’s what he does. Wait, hold on a sec, there are testimonials. ‘There’s just something about Cam McKnight you can’t help but gravitate towards. From Day One, I knew this was a person who was firmly grounded and yet wholly spiritual and connected to the Universe in a way few people truly are. My reading was not only spot-on but incredibly moving. You can’t help but think that wherever Cam’s guides are speaking to him from, it’s coming straight through his heart, a heart which is immeasurable in strength and boundless in love for those who come to him seeking direction in their lives.’ Wow,” she said. “Do you think he wrote that himself?”

  “It sounds like he cut and pasted it out of a testimonials handbook,” I said.

  “Totally. It’s fifty dollars for a half-hour reading. Should we make an appointment?”

  “That would be weird.”

  “You’re not doing that,” our mother said. “What’s wrong with that kid?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with him,” our father said, and then he brought up a few of my mother’s nieces and nephews—a gay man with an apartment full of empty fish tanks, an anorexic who’d swallowed a bottle of aspirin and driven herself to the hospital.

  “I’m making an appointment,” Elise whispered.

  My mother flipped down her visor to look at us, asked what we were doing.

  “We’re making our psychic reading appointments,” Elise said.

  “You’d better not be,” she said. “Hand me your phones.”

  “I’m kidding.”

  “Hand them to me.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” I said.

  “Well then turn ’em off and put ’em away,” she said.

  “Mine’s been away,” I said. Elise muted hers so it would stop dinging but didn’t turn it off. She set it on her leg, where it continued to buzz and light up and nobody said anything.

  Our father stopped at Wendy’s without consulting us. He didn’t want to go into a diner full of oddball locals any more than we did, take his chances on the chicken fried steak when he could have the square beef patty he’d come to know and love. We all liked Wendy’s, except for Elise, who only liked Burger King because they had a veggie burger, but their fries were bad. Their onion rings were decent but the portions meager, even if you got a large.

  Elise and I went to the bathroom. There was a line bunched up in the small space, and I kept having to move because I was blocking the hand dryer. A mother had her little girl in the handicapped stall, coaching her in a high voice: “Now wipe, now pull up your panties, now your pants, are they zipped? They’re not zipped. No, you can do it yourself—you’re a big girl now.” Somehow, it felt like it was all for our benefit.

  Elise tried to call Dan but he didn’t answer.

  “He doesn’t want to talk to you,” I said.

  “He always answers my calls, even at the movie. He could be in a ditch somewhere.”

  “He’s not in a ditch—he either lost his phone or he’s avoiding you.”

  “How do you know?” she asked. “You’ve never even had a boyfriend.”

  “I have a cell phone.” “I know how cell phones work—people pick up if they want to talk to you, or they see you called and call you back.”

  She looked like she was going to cry, so I told her I was sure it was nothing, his phone was broken or he’d lost it. Dan was supposed to love her. He told everyone he loved her. Once he’d even told me. The two of us had been sitting together in the den, waiting for Elise to finish getting ready, and I’d stopped eating a bowl of Cap’n Crunch to listen to him tell me how great she was, how she was “his person.” He had found “his person” in life early and he was one of the lucky ones. He must have been drunk. By the time he finished, my cereal was soggy and I took the bowl into the kitchen and dumped it out.

  Our parents were halfway through with their hamburgers when we returned. My father handed me fifteen dollars and we got in line behind a pair of guys in work clothes, their names in cursive on their shirt pockets. They stared at Elise.

  “What?” she asked, and one of them mumbled, “Nothing.” The other said, “Dang.” They inched forward, discussing secret menu items.

  “You know what’s funny?” I said.

  “What?”

  “If those guys were cute, you wouldn’t be like, ‘What?’ You’d be glad they were looking at you.”

  “You’re a deep thinker,” she said. “One of the best thinkers of our time.”

  “Fuck you.” The counter lady heard me and looked horrified.

  I ordered a combo: cheeseburger, fries, and a vanilla Frosty—which was even better than the original—and Elise ordered a side salad and a baked potato with butter, sour cream, and chives.

  “Why can’t we ever go to Burger King?” she asked, taking everything off of our tray.

  “Because their fries are awful,” I said, unwrapping my burger. “It’s like they were fried and then sat for a while and then fried again.” I looked out at the parking lot, packed with cars and trucks and boats.

  “Bow your heads,” our father said, and we stopped eating and looked at the table. Somebody had spilled salt everywhere. My father grasped my hand so tightly I didn’t have to hold his at all. My sister’s hand was cool and dry.

  “Dear Heavenly Father,” he said
.

  “Why do we always have to pray in public?” Elise asked, cutting him off. “People are staring at us.”

  “People are always staring at you,” I said. Nobody was looking at us except for a well-dressed older lady sitting by herself. She was smiling, but it was a sad smile, like she’d had a family once, too.

  “We’re praying because we’re about to eat,” our father said. “To thank Him for providing this food for us.”

  “You always do it so loud.”

  My father bowed his head and continued.

  We ate in silence until Elise asked if anyone wanted her potato.

  “I don’t eat vegetarian food,” our father said, in the nastiest voice he could muster.

  “It’s a potato,” Elise said. “You’re eating potatoes right now. You also eat eggs and grits and bread and ice cream and about a million other things that are vegetarian.” She got up and threw her food away. I was worried that the baby wasn’t getting enough nutrients. At home, she mixed chocolate protein powder with vanilla almond milk, took multivitamins.

  She went to the bathroom again and I listened to a conversation at a nearby table—a white girl with cornrows telling her friend she didn’t eat chicken. Her friend said it was un-American. “What do you eat?” she asked.

  “Hog, cow,” the girl with cornrows said. I’d never heard anyone say “hog” or “cow” to refer to meat before.

  I finished my burger and fries, saved my Frosty for later.

  In the parking lot, a man approached my father with a story about a dead body he had to pick up in Oklahoma, and the gas money he needed to get there. My father said he didn’t have much and the man told him his older brother had been in an automobile accident and there was no one else to claim him. The body had been in the morgue for three days. Elise walked over to the car. My father repeated that he didn’t have much money and then asked how much he needed and the man went over the mileage there and back and said he guessed about eighty dollars. When my father hesitated, the man told him he had a check for that exact amount but didn’t have time to cash it. He promised to take our address and pay us back, swore he’d have the money by Monday and could put it in the mail.

  We left our father with the man, who wasn’t poorly dressed or dirty. He was just a regular man, a little overweight, in worn but clean clothes. I wouldn’t have given him anything, but he wasn’t looking at me like that, with those eyes full of need and an answer for everything.

  My mother and I got in the car. She played with the radio while Elise and I watched.

  “I can’t believe he’s giving him money,” Elise said.

  “It’s okay,” our mother said.

  “But we don’t have any money.”

  “We have money.”

  “We know he lost his job.”

  “It’s not your business what your father does,” our mother said. “He wouldn’t give it if we didn’t have it to give.”

  “Is that true? He lost his job?” I asked, stirring my Frosty, which tasted better when it was half-melted, like a cold delicious soup.

  “And now he’s giving him some more!” Elise said. “Oh my God. Anybody could tell that was a story—he’s been rehearsing it all day.” My mother turned the air conditioner up and adjusted all the vents so they pointed at her. “If he gives that man our address, he’s a bigger idiot than I thought.”

  Our father got back in the car, wiping his face with a handkerchief.

  “How much did you give him?” Elise asked.

  There was a long pause before he said, “Eighty dollars,” like he couldn’t believe it himself.

  “Eighty dollars!” Elise said.

  “He needed it more than we do.”

  “Did you even give him a tract?” I asked.

  “He was in a bad fix,” he said.

  My father knew he’d been taken but stuck with his story—that he believed the man—the man wasn’t on drugs or alcohol, and was clearly in a bad fix. It made me a little sick to think about his wallet minus eighty dollars. I imagined the man at the liquor store, buying steaks for a cookout. How he’d tell the story of the sucker who gave him eighty bucks and laugh.

  “Did you give him our address?” I asked.

  “It’s bad practice to lend money, it creates resentment. Money should be given with no expectation of repayment,” he said, trying to turn it into a teaching moment.

  “I’m going to be sick,” Elise said. “Pull over.”

  Our father pulled onto the big shoulder, cutting off a truck in the right-hand lane. The person in the truck laid on the horn; he honked so long we could hear it fade out. Elise toppled out of the car making retching sounds, but there was only a string of spit.

  After several more hours—during which time the radio was silent and everyone slept or pretended to sleep—our father pulled off at an exit. I hadn’t seen a sign advertising gas and he was taking his chances. He’d waited nearly too long. The car told him exactly how many miles it had to go until it was empty and we were down to eight, which was the lowest he’d gotten while traveling, though not in Montgomery. In Montgomery, he’d made it to two.

  “You ran out of gas once,” our mother said.

  Elise and I didn’t remember him running out of gas, but he didn’t deny it. And then we were at seven miles and the car dinged again—ding, ding, ding! Elise raised her eyebrows at me and elbowed me for good measure.

  At the top of the hill, we looked left and right and saw no sign of a gas station, no sign of anything in either direction.

  “What do you think?” he asked. “Left or right?”

  “Why didn’t we get gas when we stopped for lunch?” my mother asked.

  “That question isn’t relevant or helpful, Barbara,” he said. He never called her Barbara. It was funny hearing her name.

  “It might not be helpful but it’s certainly relevant, John,” she said.

  “Take a right,” I said.

  “That means left,” Elise said. “Jess has a one hundred percent inaccuracy rate.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “I do.”

  He took a left and drove a ways and then a ways farther. He was searching for a place to turn around when we saw it. The gas station sat by itself, weeds growing up through chunks of concrete. There were bars on the windows and the advertisements were all in Spanish. It was hard to believe that there was any need for a gas station out here.

  “I bet the bathroom’s on the outside,” Elise said. “I hate when it’s on the outside.”

  “I like those enormous keys,” I said.

  Our father went inside to pay—the pumps didn’t take credit cards—and the three of us followed him. Two men stood in front of a fireplace, smoking and drinking coffee. It was like we’d walked into their living room. They stopped talking and one of them pointed to the right back corner.

  Elise tried the knob and it opened, felt around for the light. She shut the door, but then she opened it and pulled me inside with her.

  “I think it’s a front,” she said. “There wasn’t much for sale.”

  “Gas is for sale,” I said.

  “It’s a front,” she said, “trust me. I know one when I see one.”

  The bottle of soap had been diluted to a thin pink liquid. I pumped some into my hands and held them under the water while Elise squatted over the toilet. There wasn’t a mirror. There wasn’t even the outline of a place a mirror had been.

  “I hate traveling,” she said. “People think it’s so fun to be uncomfortable but it’s not fun. I’m not feeling challenged. I’m not learning anything.”

  “Who thinks it’s fun to be uncomfortable?”

  “Oh you know, traveler types. On the upside, at least my period won’t be making a surprise appearance.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “It’s not funny. It’s not funny at all. Hand me a paper towel, this toilet paper is wet.”

  Our mother and father were waiting when we o
pened the door.

  “Use the paper towels,” I said.

  Elise told the men that the bathroom needed toilet paper and they nodded slowly. We debated over popsicles, deciding coconut would make us feel like we were on vacation. We opened the wrappers and placed them on the counter, ate them while checking out the bricks of beige candy, bags of chips with crazy fonts. I picked up a thick bar with almonds on top and Elise took it out of my hand and put it back.

  “Mexican candy isn’t any good,” she said. “It just tastes like sugar.”

  “I like sugar.”

  “It tastes like stale old sugar. Let’s look at the shirts.”

  We flipped through a rack of oversized t-shirts in thick, scratchy cotton until Elise noticed a stack of cowboy boots in a corner.

  “Dude,” she said. “I can feel it. It’s my lucky day.”

  She sorted through the boxes until she found a pair of bright blue boots in her size. She held her popsicle between her teeth as she slipped one on. “A little big,” she said, turning her foot this way and that. She put her hands on her hips. “What do you think?”

  “They make your legs look good.”

  “They do, don’t they?” she said, kicking a Styrofoam cooler.

  Our father came out of the bathroom and I waved. When I saw him in public, even at an empty gas station in the middle of nowhere, I liked him better. I thought about these men treating him unkindly or laughing at him and it hurt my feelings.

  Elise put her flip-flops in the box and placed it next to our popsicle wrappers, and our father paid without comment. Once we were in the car, I wished I’d gotten a pair so we would be wearing the same thing, but I hadn’t even checked to see if they’d had my size.

  Our mother wanted to stop at a flea market in a dusty town full of cactuses and oversized aloe vera plants. “It’s one of the top-ten flea markets in the country,” she said. “And it’s on the highway we’re already on so we won’t even have to go out of our way.”