The Last Days of California: A Novel

by Miller, Mary

  “No problem,” the man said. “We got it.”

  Our father protested mildly before thanking them and moving off to the side. He stood next to our mother and we were lined up like the characters in a Flannery O’Connor story I’d read in school. “The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida.” That was the only line I remembered. “The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida.” I didn’t know what it was about that sentence that stood out to me, why I remembered it.

  As the men worked, Elise and I shared earbuds, listening to the same songs as beads of sweat welled up from improbable places on my body. Sweat ran down my sides, trickled down my legs and arms.

  “I like this,” I said. “Who is it?”

  “Katy Perry. You don’t know who Katy Perry is?”

  “Yeah, I know her.”

  “Name another song,” she said, staring at one of the younger guys. She scratched her shoulder and touched her hair, trying to get his attention.

  The older man let out a hacking cough and I jumped, my heart speeding up; any unexpected noise could startle me. My mother said it was because I read Stephen King novels before bed. She always had simple explanations like this, which made it hard for me to consider her advice. My favorite was Duma Key. I also liked It and The Tommyknockers. The books frightened me but it didn’t make me not want to read them. This seemed to imply something defective in my character. It was like the other things I did to make my life harder—eating too much when I knew I’d get a stomachache, drinking water when I had to pee and there was nowhere to use the bathroom.

  The men moved fast, like they’d done this a hundred times, but then there was some problem getting the donut on and they stood around looking at it, forming a tight little circle so we couldn’t see what was going on. It wouldn’t take much for them to steal our money and our car, to kill us. Or they could simply change our tire and get us back on the road, our faith in humanity restored. Both options seemed equally likely. I imagined them discussing how it was going to go down, which one of them would make the transition from nice guy to killer.

  Elise pinched my leg, and my mother and father, standing above us, waited for the judgment. I imagined them asking us to turn around. Elise and I would stand, slowly, so slowly, and my father would take my hand and then we would all take each other’s hands. We would remember in this moment how much we loved one another, how we would do anything to spare even one of us. But then the tire was in the trunk and the spare was on and my mother was offering them bottles of water. My father took out his wallet and tried to give them forty dollars, which they refused.

  “This spare’s about had it,” the older man said, kicking it with his boot. “Where you headed?”

  “Oakland,” my father said.

  “You’ve got a long way to go.”

  “We’re on a pilgrimage,” I said. “For the rapture.”

  The men continued to stand there, nodding and smiling with their hands in their pockets.

  “The end times?” I said.

  The one who was supposed to pull out a gun or a knife was hesitant now, unwilling. I smiled above them, into the sun. I was good. I was a good girl.

  “All right,” one of the young ones said.

  “Y’all be safe,” said the other.

  When they pulled onto the road with a wave, Elise and I stood and brushed ourselves off.

  We got in our car and sat there, letting them put distance between us. I ran my fingernail back and forth against the seat, making a nice little pattern like a freshly mown lawn.

  “Is everything okay?” my mother asked.

  “It’s fine,” my father said, agitated. He pulled onto the road, but he wouldn’t drive over fifty and kept talking about where we were going to get a tire. There weren’t any tire stores out here; there wasn’t anything out here. As if to help him, I dutifully watched out the window for signs of life. The interstate markers ticked by and the signs preceding each exit let us know there was no reason to stop. Sometimes the signs were completely blank except for the words “gas” or “food.”

  I got out my phone and typed Gabe a message. I erased it and tried again. Nothing said what I wanted to say. Everything sounded generic, boring. I might as well have used the prewritten messages. I put my phone away and listened to my Heaven mix: “Tears in Heaven,” “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” “Stairway to Heaven,” “Heaven Is a Place on Earth.” I’d made the mistake of limiting myself to songs with the word “Heaven” in the title whereas Elise had just gone with theme.

  “What are you listening to?” Elise asked.

  “Belinda Carlisle.”

  “Man, your mix sucks.”

  “Let’s trade,” I said, offering her my hot pink iPod. I’d regretted choosing pink the moment I’d stepped out of the Apple store.

  “I’m listening to the Dalai Lama right now,” she said, and leaned her head against the window, closed her eyes.

  I found a comfortable position and closed my eyes, too. I thought about my job—at least I wasn’t at work. I already wanted to quit even though I’d only been there a month and a half. I had to haul huge blocks of ice from the freezer in the back of the store to the machine at least six times a day. The rest of the time, I stood at the window, taking orders and making snow cones for bratty kids and their young mothers. I didn’t like those mothers, how they assumed doors would be held for them and everyone would get out of their way because they had small children. I liked the boy who worked there, though, watching him change lightbulbs and move boxes around, and I liked the lady with the fake blue contacts who melted Nestlé’s and poured it into molds. Her irises were an unnatural shade and there was a ring of dark brown around her pupils that made her seem alien.

  After a while, my thoughts stopped making sense, but instead of slipping into sleep, I realized my thoughts were no longer making sense and I got so excited I was about to fall asleep that I jarred myself awake.

  When I looked out the window again, there were more cars. Two lanes split into three and then four and then more lanes than I’d ever seen. I touched Elise but she was asleep, or pretending to sleep, so I left her alone. It was good to see cars again, good to see Starbucks and Taco Bells and gas stations that people didn’t live in. A mountain range loomed in the distance, growing closer by the second, and the sky was clear except for some thin clouds like the streaks left behind by an airplane.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “El Paso, and Ciudad Juárez is right there to your left,” my father said. “Surely this place is full of tire stores.”

  “Look, kids, it’s a shantytown,” Elise said, sitting up. She Googled Ciudad Juárez on her phone, and after the general Wikipedia entry, the first thing that came up was “Female homicides in Ciudad Juárez.” She started reading it aloud, and I covered my ears because I didn’t want to hear about women who were sold into slavery and killed at bus stops. Our cousin was murdered by a man who was never found, who would never be found. She was a drug addict and probably a prostitute and no one had bothered to find her killer. It wasn’t like the TV shows, where detectives worked forty-eight hours straight and became close with the victims’ families. I was sure it was the same with these women: they were poor; they shouldn’t have been out at three o’clock in the morning. They were expendable. People were always saying the world was small but that was only to make it seem less terrifying. The world was so big. I hadn’t realized how big it was until now.

  My father got off at an exit and drove along the frontage road. Soon enough, we saw a tire store, the kind of place you don’t see unless you’re looking for it. He parked and we went inside and sat in a glassed-in waiting room with a TV in one corner, outdated magazines, and free coffee. It was like every other carwash and car-repair waiting room in the world, and I thought of all the Saturday mornings I’d spent with my father at Personal Touch. He’d read the newspaper while I watched the men clean and vacuum our car and then we’d go to Krispy Kreme, where I’d get my
own bag of doughnut holes. I never thought about calories or fat grams then. I just ate and enjoyed eating and didn’t get on the scale to watch my weight creep up.

  It took less than half an hour for the old tire to come off and a new one to be put on, and we were back on the road, my father flying through El Paso, gunning it on the curves. He had once dreamed of being a racecar driver. He’d told me this one night when it was just the two of us having dinner, a rare moment when I’d responded to his questions with answers and he’d rewarded me by telling me something about himself. But it was probably just one of those dreams kids have, like they want to be an astronaut or a garbageman, the kind of thing no one actually wants to be when they grow up.

  The downtown skyline was impressive—lots of tall buildings and a mountain backdrop. It was like the Old West, despite how big and concrete everything was. There was something about it that made it feel a million years old.

  Soon we were in New Mexico, a state none of us had been to before. Our mother said she’d heard New Mexico had nice rugs; she wouldn’t mind bringing home a nice rug.

  “We don’t need a rug where we’re going,” our father said.

  “Then I don’t see what the problem is with getting one,” she said, which didn’t make sense, but I knew what she was saying. Buy a rug or don’t. Drive across the country or stay home. None of it really mattered.

  “Anybody hungry?” he asked. “We’ve got choices here, we should probably take them.” He pulled off at an exit and we were faced with the usual selection of fast-food restaurants.

  “Burger King,” Elise said.

  “Taco Bell,” I said.

  Our mother also voted for Taco Bell. She liked the regular, crunchy-shell tacos, the kind of thing nobody ordered unless they were getting a dozen in a box. Our father agreed to go through the drive-thrus at both if we ate in the car. I didn’t like to eat in the car because he might wreck and kill us all, but I didn’t want Burger King, either. The only thing I really liked there was the chicken sandwich, and it was good, but I could get more at Taco Bell without looking like a pig.

  I ordered some onion rings at Burger King, seven in the box, and a bean burrito, a chicken quesadilla, and a Frutista Freeze at Taco Bell.

  “Let me have a sip of that,” Elise said, and I passed my drink to her—strawberry on top and mango on bottom.

  “You know this probably has like five hundred calories in it,” she said, stirring it, messing the flavors up.

  “Leave me alone,” I said.

  Our father pulled into a parking space and bowed his head. He said the standard prayer followed by a long-winded, rambling one in which he asked for guidance and courage. You’re going to need it, I thought, popping an onion ring into my mouth and chewing quietly.

  Elise slopped the condiments off her veggie burger with a napkin. She took a bite and said she thought it was MorningStar Farms. It hadn’t occurred to her before but she was pretty sure it was MorningStar, the regular veggie patty, cooked to within an inch of its life. My mother unwrapped my father’s double cheeseburger and secured a napkin around it, and he ate while reaching his other hand into the bag for fries. He steered with his elbows and knees, and when the car began to veer off the road, she reached over and took the wheel. I wondered what she thought of him now, if she still saw him as the man she’d married or if he was so different he was like a stranger. She’d told me once that she’d married him because he was ambitious and honest, which weren’t qualities I’d have used to describe him at all. He had been handsome once, though, tall and slim with a full head of hair. Sometimes I got out their wedding album and flipped through the pictures. There was one in particular I liked: the two of them about to leave for their honeymoon. They stood in front of my father’s sports car, and my mother wore an outfit she had bought special for the occasion, had had her hair and makeup done. They were about to fly to Hawaii, first-class. I knew my mother’s suitcase had been lost, but the airline had given her the money to buy a whole new wardrobe, which she’d spent on beach hats, strappy sandals, and overly revealing dresses that she’d probably never worn again. My father hated to fly, and I couldn’t imagine him agreeing to take her somewhere so far-off and exotic. I couldn’t imagine them snorkeling and exploring the beaches, driving around in a rented jeep with the top down. It made me love them more because I knew the day would come when I would also be unrecognizable to myself.

  New Mexico was going by quickly, dull and flat but otherworldly. There were strange flat shrubs and bunches of small trees I’d never seen before. In the distance, mountains loomed low and jagged. The Jesus billboards had been replaced by billboards telling us not to drink and drive, which our father said was due to all of the Indians. Their bodies didn’t process sugar like ours did, so they were more susceptible to diabetes and alcoholism.

  “You have diabetes,” Elise said. “And they’re called Native Americans, not Indians. Indians are from India.”

  Our father said he’d never met an Indian or a Native American that he liked.

  “Hey,” Elise said, and we looked out her window at some dust kicking up.

  “Thrilling,” I said, but I kept watching it and it was pretty mesmerizing, the way it moved. I’d never seen dirt act so purposefully. I fingered a tiny scrape on my knee from the bottom of the pool—reassurance that I hadn’t dreamed Gabe. I thought about how he’d looked at me, the things he’d said. I thought about his body and his face and the smell of gas in his van. I was going to replay our time together so often I’d have it memorized forever. I was going to replay it so many times I’d never remember any new details.

  After that we watched YouTube videos of people driving on I-10 in New Mexico, same as us; most of the videos were shot by a guy who went around the country filming sections of interstate. He’d added various facts and notes at the bottom—when certain projects would be completed, crime rates, the longest and tallest and biggest. The videos were strangely riveting. The speed was doubled or tripled and fast music played. When we ran out of interstate videos, we watched others: kids recording a dust storm they called a white devil, a couple in a motorhome driving across the country. The man kept saying things like “Confidence is high” in a cheerful voice while the woman talked to the dog in her lap. Elise and I speculated about the nature of their troubles, but her phone died and she had to pass it up front to charge it.

  In Arizona, everything looked different again. I felt like all of the people who were always talking about the homogenization of America were wrong—each place really was different. There were McDonald’s and Targets, but every town was full of different-looking people who had different accents and manners. In some places, the people said “Good morning” and “It’s nice to see you,” as if it wouldn’t be the first and last time they’d be seeing you, but twenty minutes down the road, the people might be cow-faced and unfriendly.

  We were charmed by the cactuses, like giant hands reaching into the sky, and the camel at the dollar store where we stopped to buy Pepto-Bismol and toothpaste.

  While our parents went inside, Elise and I stood in the parking lot watching a man give camel rides on the little stretch of dirt. I’d never seen a camel before. It was ugly and the humps were closer together than I’d imagined. A young girl, wedged between them, held up a hand and her mother took a picture. Elise took a picture of her mother taking a picture. And then Elise took a picture of me standing in front of the camel with my own hand raised, squinting below the enormously blue and cloudless sky.

  We didn’t make it to California. At two o’clock, our father stopped at a casino resort somewhere near Phoenix. He pulled the car into the circular drive and waved the valet driver off.

  “Why are we stopping?” I asked. “It’s early.”

  “I’m going to check the rates,” he said, getting out and taking the keys with him. There was a bounce in his step I hadn’t seen in days. We were quiet as we watched him walk through the door.

  “This place looks nic
e,” I said.

  “If you’re into big, generic casino resorts,” Elise said. “Which I am, don’t get me wrong. They’re a heck of a lot better than the places we’ve been staying.”

  “What’s the deal?” I asked.

  “The deal with what?” our mother said.

  “She means last night we stayed at a ghetto motel and now we’re at this luxury resort,” Elise said.

  “No, I mean why are we stopping so early. I thought he wanted to make it to California.”

  “He wants to gamble,” Elise said. “He’s desperate to get his hands on a slot machine.”

  “He’s not going to gamble,” our mother said, though we all knew he’d step onto the casino floor and the lights and sounds would trigger something in his brain, and he’d sit for hours, slipping twenty-dollar bills into machines. For years, he’d been sneaking off to the Indian casino on Eddie Tullis Drive, a beige monstrosity that could have doubled as a medical clinic.

  “He gambles all the time,” Elise said. “Everybody knows he gambles.”

  “Everybody does not know,” our mother said. “I haven’t told anyone, and you shouldn’t either. It’s nobody’s business.”

  “We’re not like you,” Elise said. “We don’t want to live like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Lying—pretending we’ve got money when we don’t, that we’re these perfect Christians who never do anything wrong.”

  “It’s not lying.”

  “It’s deception,” Elise said.

  “It’s our reputation,” our mother said.

  “I don’t care about my reputation.”

  “And it shows,” our mother said, which was possibly the meanest thing I’d ever heard her say to my sister.

  Elise paused dramatically and said, “I’m sorry I’m not the daughter you wanted.”

  I picked up an empty popcorn bag and stuffed candy and gum wrappers into it, passed it up. My mother took it and held it. It would be no fun being a mother, everybody handing you their garbage and wanting things all the time, nobody to tell your problems to. She could never say anything bad about our family. She could only talk about other peoples’ problems as a way of talking about her own.