The Last Days of California: A Novel

by Miller, Mary

  “That’s why I’m calling, I don’t feel prepared at all. I don’t even know if I want it to happen.”

  He paused for a moment, as if to let this sink in, and said, “What if it’s not Him you’re doubting, but yourself?”

  That sounded right. I had no reason to trust myself.

  “There’s something you’re not telling me,” he said, and his baby, Rachel, started crying. She had some kind of deformity, one side of her face pocked with strawberries, a tumor eating up her eye. A benign tumor, my mother said, not life-threatening or even painful, though I didn’t know how she would know whether it was painful or not. The only time I’d held her, I put my hand over the bad side of her face to see what she would have looked like normal, what she was supposed to look like. She would have been a pretty baby.

  His phone fell to the floor and he picked it up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You still there?”

  “I’m here.” I turned on the TV and pressed mute—no matter what station you left it on, it defaulted to the hotel’s channel. At the spa, a smiling brunette was giving a pretty Asian woman a facial. I wondered if they hired actors or if these were real employees.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  “Tell you what?”

  “Tell me.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  “How you violate yourself,” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “Do you want to be forgiven?” His voice cracked on the word “forgiven.” “We all want to be forgiven, Jess.” He breathed my name into the phone—Jess, Jess—as I sat there, unable to say anything. We were quiet for a long time, maybe ten seconds, and then he said my name louder, more clearly. I threw the phone across the room; it hit the wall and bounced off. I walked over and picked it up, knowing I hadn’t thrown it hard enough to break it. It made me hate myself. I was always worried about everything, how much a new phone would cost, how much trouble it would be to go to Verizon and get a new one. I wanted to break it and not think twice about breaking it. I wanted to be beautiful enough to demand expensive things and believe I was worthy of them.

  I made a half-assed search through Elise’s suitcase for a cigarette, but of course she had them with her. Then I went to the bathroom and sorted through her makeup bag, the inside coated with a thick film of shimmery powder. I put on eyeliner, mascara, and blush. I used the hair dryer and some lotion to try to get my hair to do something it didn’t want to do. Then I put on Elise’s blue silk dress, a dress I’d specifically asked to wear before and she’d said no, and stood in front of the mirror. I didn’t look like a different person, but I didn’t quite look like the same one, either.

  The bar was like Applebee’s with its green-glowing beer signs, men hunched over baskets of fried food. Elise was seated at a four-top by the window with a salad in front of her, watching a tennis game on TV. She’d changed into a new outfit, a short black dress and a pair of heels. She might pass for a woman meeting friends for drinks after work.

  “Order a Coke,” she said. “I have a flask.”

  “Where’d you get a flask?”

  “Dan gave it to me for my birthday.” She took it out of her purse and passed it across the table. GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER, it said. “The whiskey I got at the liquor store. It cost me twenty dollars of your money.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “That’s right,” she said. “You won’t need it where you’re going.”

  “I wish you’d stop taking my money,” I said.

  “That’s the first time I’ve ever taken your money.”

  “I wish you’d stop asking for it, then.”

  The waitress came and I ordered a Diet Coke. I looked around—it was Friday night and people were celebrating the start of their weekend. Weekends meant nothing to us. We had no reason to keep track of days except for the one our lives had been revolving around for months.

  My drink came. I took a few gulps and poured the whiskey in. I stopped myself from checking to see if anyone was watching. If someone saw us, they might say we couldn’t do that, or kick us out. I told myself it didn’t matter—worst-case scenario, we got kicked out and we’d go someplace else, but even though the worst-case scenario wasn’t even bad, I dreaded it. I hated to be told I couldn’t do something. I checked my breasts, adjusted them.

  “How are your boobs?” she asked.

  “Nice.”

  “You look pretty.”

  “Thanks.”

  We drank for a few minutes and then she said, “I’ve been thinking about something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Cinderella’s slipper.”

  “Cinderella’s slipper,” I repeated.

  “Yeah—how come it didn’t turn into a rat or whatever when the clock struck twelve?”

  “Why would you be thinking about that?” I asked.

  “Because I was thinking about leaving my clothes outside and it reminded me.” She took out her cigarettes and her LOVE HURTS lighter and placed them on the table, though there were no ashtrays and no one was smoking. “It’s a good question, right?”

  I wondered if she’d just light up, like a movie star. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen Cinderella in a long time.”

  “But you know the story.”

  “Yeah, I know the story.”

  “The slipper’s left on the step and the prince takes it around—”

  “I know what happens,” I said. “Have you seen the boys?”

  “No,” she said. She took her straw out of her glass and drank from it, tiny little sips like she was feeding an injured baby bird.

  “I called Brother Jessie,” I said.

  “Yeah? What’d he say?”

  “He asked me to tell him how I violated myself.”

  “He asked you to tell him what?”

  “He said, ‘Tell me how you violate yourself.’ ”

  “Bullshit,” she said.

  “No, I’m serious. I could hear his baby crying in the background. Rachel.”

  “Stop.”

  “And the ice clinking in his glass.” I picked up my Diet Coke and moved it around but there was too much ice, the glass too tall and thick.

  “What are you gonna do?”

  “What do you mean ‘what am I gonna do?’ ”

  “I mean ‘what are you gonna do?’ ” she said.

  “Nothing.”

  “What are you talking about? What if he’s done this to other kids? What if he’s done a lot worse?”

  Who cares about other kids? I thought, but then I felt bad. I cared about other kids. “I doubt he’s done anything,” I said. The one and only time he’d touched me, we were at church. I’d been sick and hadn’t seen him in a few weeks and he’d pulled me to him, cradled my head to his chest. The hug had gone on too long—anyone who’d seen the entire thing, gauged its length, would have found it inappropriate.

  “We have to tell Dad,” she said.

  “Why? We never tell him anything.”

  “But this is important,” she said, looking at the door. I turned to watch the guys from the pool walk over. There were four of them, sunburned and wearing their nice clothes.

  “Can we sit?” the one who’d held me asked.

  “Sure,” I said. His eyes were bloodshot, a swampy green. Two of them went to get chairs and the other two sat, making a lot of noise and taking up as much space as possible. They seemed wrong out of water.

  The fattest, loudest one put his hand on the back of my chair and smiled with all of his teeth. The one who’d held me—Jay or Jason—picked a cherry tomato off Elise’s salad and popped it into his mouth. She pushed it across the table to him and took out her flask, poured more whiskey into her glass. I wondered if she was always so standoffish, or if she only acted this way for my benefit. Who was she, really? Was she the person who rode bikes with me and jumped on the trampoline, or a careless drunk who went off with strange men and did God-knows-what? Was she a standoffish bitch, or a good-hearted person who
was kind to the most downtrodden of God’s flock?

  “What’s your name again?” I asked.

  “Jake,” he said.

  “Jake,” I said. “I like that name.”

  “You guys been here long?” the fat one asked.

  One of the others set shots on the table. “Date grapes for everyone,” he said.

  “That’s not funny,” I said.

  “That’s what they’re called. We all got date grapes, not just you guys. I’ll get you a birthday cake next if you want.”

  “I’ll have a birthday cake,” Elise said.

  We held up our shots.

  “To new friends,” the guy who’d bought them said.

  “To the rapture,” said Elise.

  We clinked glasses and drank. I drank half and set the other half back down. I could feel my blood start to move again. I couldn’t hear the buzz in my ears, but if I went to the bathroom I might be able to hear it.

  “I’m Brad,” the guy who’d bought the shots said.

  “Jess.”

  “You’re a bad cheerser,” he said, and asked if he could give me a lesson. He picked up my glass of Diet Coke and whiskey and gestured for me to raise my shot. “First you make brief but meaningful eye contact.” We made eye contact that was longer than brief. I smiled, but he looked at me like this was serious business. “Then you raise your glass, clink, and look the person in the eye again. And then you drink. If it’s a shot, you take the entire thing—not half.”

  “I can drink half if I want to,” I said.

  “You can,” he said, “but that’s not how it works.”

  He had me practice until he was satisfied I’d gotten it right. Then he took out his wallet and went back to the bar. I wanted to know a man well enough to go through his wallet. I imagined faded, unused, and expired things, a stack of warm bills. Everything mine for the taking.

  The fat one started telling me about Yelapa, Mexico, a place he’d lived after he graduated high school. He’d made a lot of money crabbing and spent his free time surfing. He’d go back there one day, he said. He’d live on a boat and sail somewhere when he got bored and eat fish right out of the ocean. I tried to make eye contact with Elise but she was talking to Jake, laughing and touching her hair. It was getting so long, like Amish hair. Like Mennonite hair. He told me about a particular tree where he’d always find coconuts that had sprouted, the inside like a marshmallow you could eat with a spoon. But sometimes they’d sprouted and were bad.

  “How could you tell if they were bad?” I asked.

  “The smell,” he said, shaking his head. “The smell was awful.”

  I didn’t care about him or his dreams, but it didn’t stop me from imagining the two of us on a boat, scooping the marshmallows out of coconuts before they turned.

  “So Jess called our pastor earlier,” Elise said, and everyone stopped talking and looked at me.

  “Elise,” I said.

  “And he wanted to know about her masturbation techniques.”

  “He wanted to know what?” they said. “Wait up, hold on a second.”

  “Tell them,” she said.

  I told them the story: the phone call, the ugly baby, ice clinking in his glass. As I talked, I realized how infrequently I told stories to a group. I didn’t like feeling that I had to hold their attention, like at any second I could lose it. This was a good story, though, and they sat with their elbows on the table, leaning in. When I was finished, I had the same conversation with them that I’d had with Elise, about what I was going to do. I didn’t like this talk about what I was going to do. I would tell Shannon and my mother, maybe, and she could tell my father if she thought it was necessary. But there was something else that made me want to keep quiet—I didn’t want anyone to say I was lying. I’d only told the story twice, and was sure it had happened, but already it felt like something I’d made up.

  “That’s some fucked-up shit,” Brad said after everyone had returned to their separate conversations. I took a sip of my drink. He said he was sorry that that had happened to me. There was an awkward pause and then he tapped the window. “I’m in asphalt,” he said, still tapping, as if I didn’t know what asphalt was.

  “It must be boring being a grown-up,” I said.

  “There are perks.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I can walk into any bar and have a drink.”

  “I’m having a drink at a bar right now and I’m fifteen.”

  “You’re having to be careful, though,” he said.

  “I like being careful,” I said, which wasn’t true. I was tired of being careful. Kids weren’t supposed to be careful all the time. I wanted to be like my sister, who made friends and mistakes easily. It was like she’d been born knowing how to live.

  Half an hour later, the boys left to go to a different bar and Elise and I walked over to the coffee shop. I bought a brownie and we sat at the bar facing the casino floor. I looked around for my father.

  “Do you want some?” I asked. The brownie was huge, like a giant piece of birthday cake.

  “No,” she said.

  “It’s terrible, like a grocery-store brownie. Really waxy.” I squashed a corner into the doily, getting chocolate in my nails. This made me happy and I smiled and then looked around to see if anyone had seen me. I didn’t like to be caught entertaining myself in public; there was something humiliating about it, though I couldn’t say what it was.

  The woman on the other side of me had a mug of tea. She held it up to her lips and blew. Tea looked so relaxing. I thought I should start drinking tea.

  “Hello,” she said. She was in her mid-twenties, with a boy haircut and long dangly earrings. She asked where we were from.

  “Alabama,” I said.

  “Alabama the beautiful,” she said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Is it beautiful there?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Is it green?”

  “It’s pretty green,” I said, “but not like some places, not like North Georgia or anything. It’s just regular green.”

  “I miss green,” she said.

  Elise jumped off her stool and said she’d be back, and the woman and I were quiet, watching people move around the floor. There were a lot of old and disabled people, but there were plenty of young people, too—girls in dresses and sandals, boys in khaki shorts and collared shirts. They looked so easy, relaxed. I wondered how many of them felt that way.

  “Why are you here?” the woman asked, moving her head so her earrings swung back and forth.

  “We’re staying at the hotel,” I said, “me and my parents and sister. My dad likes to gamble.”

  She waited for me to say more, but I didn’t. Then she said, “I’m with my family, too. Last summer we stayed at a cabin at Slide Rock and this summer . . .” She waved her hands around. “I guess I don’t always get to pick.”

  “How many nights are you here for?” I asked.

  “Just two. I told them I couldn’t stay any longer than that.” She took a sip of tea. “I brought along some projects to occupy myself, but I don’t see myself doing any work. This isn’t exactly a work-conducive environment.”

  “No,” I said, my eyes following a long-haired boy in smiley-face pajama pants. I folded the doily around the rest of the brownie and squeezed until oil soaked through. “What do you do?”

  “I’m a caregiver,” she said. “I sit with elderly people.”

  “Oh, that’s nice.”

  “I guess. It leaves me a lot of energy to make my art.”

  “What kind of art?”

  “All kinds—photography, murals. I work a lot with found objects.”

  “Oh wow,” I said.

  “And sometimes I write things.”

  “What do you write about?”

  “Last week I wrote a twenty-word poem about honor killings,” she said. “Do you know what honor killings are?”

  “Like when a woman in the Middle East chea
ts on her husband and her family has to get their honor back?”

  She nodded. “It was titled ‘Field’s Last Bloom.’ ” She continued nodding and I wondered if she nodded so much when she wasn’t wearing dangly earrings. She must have liked to feel them move. “After I finished writing it, I felt compelled to do something so I found an empty field and dug up the words by hand.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s really neat. Whose land was it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  She shook her head, took another sip of tea.

  “How’d you get the letters to look the same?” I asked.

  “I didn’t bother too much with that,” she said.

  “Was it hard?”

  “The hardest part was remembering which letter I was on. I kept having to go back and check.”

  “That’s really neat,” I said again.

  She shrugged and drank her tea. I wanted to know why she’d done it, what the point of it had been, but I didn’t want to offend her. It seemed unbelievable that someone would spend so much time and effort doing something so purposeless. It would have been better to donate money, or write a blog post about it. I imagined her standing in front of the poem after it was complete and seeing nothing but a bunch of holes. Like a pack of moles had dug up the ground.

  “Did you take any pictures of it?” I asked.

  “A few, but only for myself.”

  “That’s really cool. I’d like to do something like that.”

  “You should,” she said. “I’ll do anything once and if I don’t like it or I’m not having fun, I’ll think, You are having an experience.”

  “So you’re thinking that right now?”

  She smiled. “Touché.”

  I’d never met anyone like her. Instead of watching TV or playing on the Internet, she wrote poems about human rights issues and searched out empty fields. It made me envious, but I also felt sorry for her. If she went back there now, her words would be unreadable; she’d have nothing to show for her efforts. But maybe that was the point.

  Elise returned with a plastic bag and I stood and told the woman it had been nice talking to her.