The Golden State: A Novel

by Lydia Kiesling

  If I have learned anything from my twenties it’s that rather than fight against hangovers you have to let the badness wash all over you, this is bad, this is the worst, this is the worst feeling, things are bad, and then perform a quick reckoning and giving of thanks. I am of sound body reasonably sound mind I have a treasure of a child who is healthy and loving and makes eye contact I have $1,847 in savings a loving husband and all that’s standing between us is some administrative bother some paperwork and it’s all going to be fine. I get myself into child’s pose on the bed which is the only thing I can remember from my brief tenure in yoga but then I think of the pictures of the little children on the beaches I used to visit with my parents, the little boy in the red shirt in a pose just like this, and the badness is back but now it’s world-historical badness, all the dead women and children on every continent on the planet and I have to stuff them all back with apologies so flaccid and pointless they become their own source of badness in the room. I lie flat on my stomach with my legs straight toes pointed and clasp my hands together under my chin and my chin to my chest and I say the Lord’s Prayer making sure palms touch, a remnant of my childhood marked by ritual gestures conforming to specifications mandated only by myself. Then I smell toast and hear the sounds of cupboards opening and closing and have such a strong sense memory of being in my mother’s house that I try and place the child I hear until I realize it’s my own.

  I’m simultaneously desperate to cuddle and unable to deal with her so I lie there for a while longer and doze until the absence of sound wakes me again. I sit up. The room swims but the awful clamoring of my head has died down to the point where the pain of the fall speaks louder than the noise of my parched and alcohol-wounded brain cells. It’s 1:10 by the nightstand clock which means incredibly that I have been sleeping for around six hours and I wonder what in god’s name she can have done with Honey all this time. I stand up and slowly maneuver around the bed to the pile of clothes outside the closet door and I put on my stained white shirt my pants and pull my hair into a bun and shuffle to the bathroom splash water on my face brush my teeth and look at my mangled eyebrow again. I slowly move out of the bedroom into the kitchen and from the kitchen I see the back of Alice on the couch, and Honey’s feet stretched out beside her. Miracle of miracles, my child is sleeping on a lap, something she has not done since she was just a small baby.

  “Hello,” I say to Alice in a whisper and she cranes her head around to see me, smiling faintly. “This little one was very tired,” she says. “I can’t believe how long I slept.” I raise my hands in an odd rueful gesture and let them drop limply. “Has she been putting you through the wringer?”

  “Not too badly,” she says. “We read stories”—pointing to the pile of books on the floor—“and we learned nose eyes mouth fingers toes and we went for a walk around the front of the house.” What, I think to myself. How. She looks me up and down. “We walked very slowly” and I nod.

  “Are you better now?” she asks.

  “I feel more like a human being,” I say. “Thank you so much for doing this, you really don’t know what it means.”

  “I know what it means,” she says. “Didn’t I tell you I had three small children and no husband to help me?”

  I want to ask what happened to her husband but I feel very raw and tender and wish to spare myself further bad information for just a little longer. So I just say “You’re an amazing woman,” which seems likely to be true even apart from the amazing favor she has done me by coming here to care for the child of a potentially dead stranger. Her hand holds one of Honey’s hands; Honey’s other hand is flung out and dangling off Alice’s knees.

  “I made some tuna fish if your stomach can take it,” she says, and behold there is a sandwich on the kitchen table with a little pile of chips next to it.

  “Bless you,” I say. I pour myself some coffee from the pot and take the coffee and the plate gingerly over to my grandfather’s La-Z-Boy, facing Alice on the couch.

  “Why isn’t your husband here?” she asks me. I sip the coffee and it’s thin but it’s coffee.

  “After Honey was born and much agonizing we decided he should finish his certificate in video postproduction so that his employment prospects would be better, and it was going to be cheaper and easier to do it in Turkey, so he went back to Turkey for what was supposed to be a total of six months, but when he came back to see us midway through, under sinister and it turns out illegal pressure he was made to relinquish his green card at the San Francisco International Airport and go back to Turkey and is now waiting indefinitely to obtain a new one, a process which has been slowed by bureaucratic incompetence.”

  “That sounds bad,” she says.

  “It is bad,” I say.

  “How long has he been gone?”

  “Eight months, more or less.” When I say the amount of time I am struck anew by its longness, it’s an amount of time that if he had left me for example and was not hanging out on his mom’s couch in Kadıköy would mean it was time for me to move on find closure start trying to make a new life. As it is I am getting the distinct impression from Meredith and Hugo and everyone at work that they think he is an imaginary man, or at least one who isn’t planning to come home, which is really rotten of them.

  “And you’re on your own with the baby.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s not easy.”

  “No.”

  “But you earn your own living.”

  “Well, I was. I guess I still am. I’m not sure, actually. I walked out of my office a few days ago and I know I’ve got to go back but I just can’t stomach it for some reason.”

  “Must be why you drank so much.” I laugh. “I guess so.”

  “And the house?” She looks around and I follow her face, trying to see it as it is, and noting how odd it is that neither Mom nor Rodney nor I ever found it within ourselves to change a single thing about its interior, to divest it of any of its furnishings, dismantle the world that my grandma made.

  “Ah, yes, this is my house, technically.” I wave my hand around the expanse of the living-dining room. I catch a glimpse of my pale arm in the reflective glass of my grandmother’s hutch housing her milk glass treasures.

  “My grandparents lived here and left it to my mom and she left it to me. It’s been for sale for years but no one seems to want it. How long has Honey been like that?” I gesture at the sleeping cherub.

  “Only about twenty minutes.”

  “We can move her into the crib if you want.” Alice looks wounded by this. “I mean, only if you wanted to be on your way,” I say. “I’d love for you to stay forever!” I say brightly, just to make sure she doesn’t think I’m trying to get her to go. I desperately do not want her to go.

  “I don’t have anywhere to be,” she says.

  “I’m really sorry to impose further but do you think it would be okay if I took a shower?” I venture, and she says “Go ahead.” I creep slowly back to the bathroom. First, brush teeth, I think. Clear away the scum so you can think clearly.

  I come out of the bathroom feeling as fresh as can be given the circumstances, some of the badness washed down the drain and I find a clean white Engin T-shirt and look sorrowfully at my aching eyebrow. Honey is still asleep, the woman must be a witch.

  “Thank you,” I say again, running out of ways to say it. I bring her a glass of water which she accepts and sips and I sit back in the La-Z-Boy. “So what’s your plan?” I ask.

  “I’m trying to get to a place called Camp Cooville, that’s where my husband was. It isn’t very far, somewhere over the Oregon border. I’ve been there before, I think I told you. We always wanted to get back sometime after the war but never got to it.” A fly buzzes against the window, trapped between the glass and the tweedy beige curtains.

  “When are you going to go?”

  “I should think the next few days. I’ve been trying to get up my strength a little. I thought maybe if I ate some real food
instead of the hundred pounds of banana bread Yarrow made me bring.”

  “Ha!” I say. “You’ve come to the wrong place for that.”

  “I like the Mexican place,” she says. “I can’t say I care for the Golden Spike.”

  “Yeah, we’re maxed out there, I think.”

  “The fellow at my motel says you can get a prime rib dinner at a place called Antelope Pines.” The site of the ratty swing set and the man-made lake.

  “That’s right. Antelope Meadows. I forgot about them,” I say. “They have an ice cream bar. I mean it’s just a machine but they have a variety of toppings to go on the ice cream.”

  Normally when I am interacting with a stranger I want it to be over by a certain point so that I can avoid the inevitable moment of giving or taking offense or feeling bored or boring someone else but it feels so unexpectedly nice to “visit with” someone as my grandmother would have said and to have someone else smooth my child’s hair while she miraculously sleeps in a lap that I try to prolong it.

  “We could go for dinner,” I venture. “If you aren’t busy. I mean I don’t want to impose,” which I realize I’ve already said. “I’d just like to buy you dinner or something to say thank you for coming this morning and taking care of us.”

  “Okay,” she says.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “I’ll have to have a nap myself,” she says, looking down at Honey. “I guess I’ll go after this one wakes up and then we can go early, say about five.”

  “That sounds perfect,” I say. “Would you like me to bring you a newspaper or something? I have yesterday’s.”

  “That might be nice,” she says, and I bring her the paper and I get Jurassic Park but the sentences make my head spin so I just curl up and kind of stare into space and remember that Engin will want to know where we are and why we haven’t Skyped yet.

  “I have to go outside where I get a signal and try to call my husband,” I tell Alice, and she nods, and I surreptitiously get the cigarettes and the lighter from the cupboard and head outside to the deck corner and try Engin on a voice call. He answers right away and the first thing he says is “What’s going on?” and I say “I tripped and fell,” pointing to my forehead even though there’s no video. “I hurt my eyebrow pretty badly.” Then I wonder why I told him this since it will just make him worry.

  “Where’s Meltem?”

  “She’s inside with a nice auntie I met here. Sleeping.”

  “What auntie?”

  “Just an old lady we met in the coffee shop. She’s a stranger here too. She’s my new friend, I guess.” “Great,” he says, and he sounds sour. “She’s been to Turkey,” I say brightly as he says, “Did you go to the doctor?”

  “No, it’s fine.”

  “I’m worried about you.”

  “I know,” I say. “I’m sorry. I think I’m just having a meltdown,” I say in English. I start crying. “I’m also sorry that every time we talk I start crying,” I say to him. “I don’t know why we thought this would be a good idea, to have you leave to take the course.” I realize how much of the time he’s been gone that I’ve been trying to assure him that everything is going really extremely well. I think I can feel him starting to ruffle, preparing to launch into “So I could get a better job and earn more money” but he stops and just says “Biliyorum.” I know.

  I have the feeling which never fails to destabilize me, a sudden reminder of the faith I’ve placed in the strength of invisible bonds, ties stretching across the ocean like the fiber-optic cables or whatever it is that allow us to Skype. Spending the summer in Turkey, abandoning my Ph.D. program, marrying Engin, these were not so much decisions as they were realities that quietly but ecstatically asserted themselves at the time. Every so often this thought comes and knocks me on my ass, that we’re just building this whole castle on such a flimsy and hastily constructed premise that we love each other and want to be together raise our child together grow old together and how easy—how wrong but how easy nonetheless—it would be to walk away from it all, with nothing changing except I could stop worrying about the progress of a lot of expensive pieces of paper through a vast administrative machine, although I’m sure it would come with its own tortuous administrative processing. But then again I have Honey and if Engin feels even a tenth of what I feel about Honey he’ll never live without her.

  Badness washes around my ankles on the deck, rising swiftly. I’m just crying into one hand and holding the phone with the other hand and Engin is silent on the other end. I have the distinct impression that we have entered a definitive moment, when Engin or I can say the thing that will snip apart the whole nest of skeins that tether us to each other. Now in this moment it seems incredible that such an apparatus, a child, all this paperwork, could have been born of something so careless as two people deciding to spend the night at the bar and never again be parted. But at the time all obstacles seemed to melt away with no resistance.

  I wait for the word that will highlight what a disaster it’s all been. But he just says “I love you,” in English, and I say “I love you too” and I know it will carry us forward another day. “Listen,” I say, when I stop shuddering. “This is a Humanitarian thing, they have a category for it in Citizenship and Immigration. Maybe the lawyer can push it through on those grounds.”

  “Okay,” he says.

  “Are you mad at me?” I say in Turkish.

  “No, my love. I’m not mad at you.” I want to ask what about your mother what about Pelin what about Savaş what about Gökay what about Özgür and Sema and everyone else you know but decide to stay with the answer that matters, the one that feels good. We stay on the line just listening to each other breathe and I take out a cigarette and light it and he says “Öfff” which is a sound expression that conveys all the frustration of the world and I say “Fucking hell” in English and he says “Fucking hell” too.

  “I’m sorry that I made you do this,” I say.

  “What are you saying? I’m the idiot who gave the immigration guys my card and signed that fucking paper.” While we talk I think suddenly of a thing I saw in a BabyCenter comment, a random flash of true insight imparted by a stranger. It was about the “culture” of your family, that only you and your partner can make and which dictates the things that you do and enjoy and the way you raise your kid. I think the remark was delivered in the context of making your baby go the fuck to sleep or something like that. But I think of how it is when Engin and I are in the Buick together or sitting on the couch each doing our own thing or when we talk throughout a TV show about where we should buy our stone shack or how much of an idiot Tolga is or the nature of Hugo’s essential being or what new bizarre baby behavior Honey is exhibiting. When Rodney and Helen visited when Honey was born she told me “Just remember that these are the good ole days” which seemed kind of sinister but now I understand. I have always just liked to be around Engin so much and it occurs to me that I am denying myself and Honey that opportunity, that I am robbing us of the good ole days, that I am stymying further opportunities to build our singular familial culture, and I get pissed all over again.

  I remember too that I have been feeling very sorry for myself and not that sorry for Engin which is unfair because he is the one who had the god-awful demeaning interaction with the two men resulting in his being turned away from the United States and put back onto a plane and not being able to see his infant daughter and then discovering that his compliance with their demands, his signing of the dreaded fucking form I-407 meant that he is on record as voluntarily surrendering his green card and he like me must look back at that encounter and want to literally murder everyone involved, as I do, poke them with a knife, except that he can actually picture it and see the scene in his dreams whereas I rely on stock footage of various bland consular rooms I have known and every beefy male movie villain to fill in as the Homeland Security guys and every day I ask myself why I didn’t warn him to be careful why I assumed good faith on the part of these p
eople why I pictured all the kind friendly consular officers of my childhood helping me renew my passport or giving my mother her terra-cotta urn, and not the people Engin had to see, people who took him away from his child because they vibrate with some higher mandate about securing our fucking borders. I feel so much hate and I wish I had somewhere to put it, that there was some decisive action to take.

  “I’m so sorry,” I repeat. “I’m so sorry we did this to you.”

  We sign off and I light another cigarette smoke it down to the filter staring across the road at the scrub beyond the split-rail fence, where some quail are making their coordinated swarm through the sagebrush, and then I wipe my face off and go back inside. I feel clean, somehow. Or neutral. It’s like the hangover and the anguish of the morning has wrung out sentiment from me, I am a dishrag that has been squeezed and placed over the rack to dry. Alice is there on the couch, petting the head of Honey, whose eyes are heavy but open, her rosy little lips pursed into a kiss, her hand reaching up toward Alice’s face.