The Golden State: A Novel

by Lydia Kiesling

  “How long were you married before he died?”

  “Twenty years.” A long time, I think, and then I remember that it’s been fifty years since. “How long have you been married?” She asks as though she doesn’t really care to know the answer. She’s distracted, staring out the window but I answer her anyway.

  “Three years. I met him almost ten years ago and we dated for a month, and then we didn’t see each other for five years and then we basically got married right away. My mom got sick in the meantime so I had gone back to be with her and we weren’t serious anyway, I mean I barely could talk to him, linguistically speaking.” It doesn’t matter if she’s listening or not, it’s nice to be asked about yourself I don’t care who you are.

  “You can’t know them anyway,” she says, so I guess she is listening. “I mean you don’t know what they are going to do when the rubber meets the road.”

  “What did your husband do when your kids got sick?”

  “Well, he agonized, he loved them, he made up stories for them, he read to them all night long. But he went to work all day long too, and he had very strict politics. He didn’t believe it was right to pay someone to look after them, because of the power balance. He was an egalitarian.” I almost stop the car. “So what did you do?” “We compromised,” she says. “We could accept someone’s help if they were getting something in return.” “Something other than money?” I asked. “He was a Marxist, I guess you could say.” Not a spook then, I think to myself and make a note to pursue further inquiries at a suitable juncture. “So instead of paid help we had fellows come and stay with us after they got out of bad situations, jail and such. I had to negotiate with him about what kind of crimes were acceptable.”

  I can’t help myself, I laugh. “What the fuck,” I say and immediately freeze but she actually laughs too. “Anyway, it was very difficult. Even their wheelchairs were huge wooden things I couldn’t really get up the stairs. And then after the first of our girls died he up and died too.”

  “What did you do?” I look back at Honey and she is lulled by the road. “What do you mean what did I do? I despaired. I grieved. I carried on.”

  I feel there is something accusatory in her tone, as if to say, “I didn’t have some little meltdown like you seem to be having over nothing,” and I am preemptively mad about this, since I’m driving her ass to god knows where but then she says “But I did finally pay someone to help me out” and I look over and she has a small smile on her face.

  She leans her head against the window.

  “I think I’ll take a little nap, if you don’t mind.”

  “Go right ahead.”

  My energetic feeling from the early morning is collapsing in its usual midmorning way and I try to muster new feelings. First I think about what a luxury it is to be a Marxist who has an extremely accommodating wife. Then I think about the salami in the cooler and the cigarettes in my bag and the fact that the house is all packed up the bed is made and there’s no reason at all to go back. The road is so smooth—kaymak gibi, like cream, you say in Turkish—and the Buick gliding over it. Honey has quieted in the back seat.

  After twenty minutes or so Honey is asleep and Alice is emitting light snores next to me. I glance at her and see how very old she looks. We speed along. We begin the slow climb to Surprise Pass and when we reach the turnout I pull the Buick over. To get to the prime grassy spot you have to walk a little way on a trail and it occurs to me that this will be impossible for Alice, something I have failed to take into account. But there is a decrepit picnic table not far from the commemorative stone pillar and plaque and the valley is still a wide sweep before us, with Altavista a few clustered buildings in the distance. The sky is a pallid, milky blue now, save a gray mass to the far north, with the shady apparition of summer rain high in the sky in the far distance. Alice opens her eyes as soon as I turn the car off.

  “Hi,” I say. She grunts.

  “Well, we’re here now, if you’d like to have a picnic,” I say.

  “Sounds nice,” she says thinly. She looks absolutely exhausted.

  “I’ll get everything set up if you want to stay put for a second.”

  “Okay.” Honey is still asleep. I hustle around the back of the Buick and get the cooler and the tote bag with Honey’s diaper accoutrements and I lug them to the picnic table and spread out Grandma’s plaid tablecloth and take the tomato the cheese the salami etc. out of the cooler and start slicing and putting out mustard and cutlery and I lay out what I think is frankly a very nice little spread. I return to the car and extend my hand to Alice, who looks at it a minute before taking it and allowing me to hoist her up. She shrugs off my hand once she’s on her feet and straightens her skirt and walks slowly to the picnic table. “I probably won’t be able to swing my legs over that bench,” she says, and I say, “We’ll face out and look down at the valley then.” I begin unbuckling Honey from her seat and she stirs and her face immediately crumples. I coo and make funny faces and peekaboo and she does her cry laugh and I kiss her cheek and her neck and she squirms and snorts. I disentangle her from the seat and carry her over to the picnic table. “We’re going to have a picnic,” I say to her, and she says “Bibit” and I recognize that she is trying to say picnic and I make a fuss.

  “She’s starting to try and say a lot more words since we’ve gotten here,” I say to Alice, and she says, “That’s good. Smart baby.”

  “It’s only been a week,” I say, and she smiles a little wanly and I wonder if this was the reverse of her experience, her babies going backward into themselves and I try to be more subdued about Honey’s developments.

  “Picnic,” I say to Honey. “Bibit,” she says. I make her a kind of deconstructed sandwich with cheese shreds salami shreds pieces of bread and Alice says, “She probably doesn’t need you to shred it all up like that, she’s a big girl. You’re a big girl, aren’t you?” She looks at Honey and smiles broadly and it looks almost ghoulish compared to her normal expression.

  “I guess you’re right,” I say. “I just don’t want her to choke.”

  I gesture at the valley and say, “This could be apocryphal but I think the reason this was called Surprise Pass is that this was where one of the emigrant trails came through and I guess at some point a group of settlers hunkered down to celebrate their successful passage west, and they were attacked by Indians. I think that was the surprise.”

  “That’s cute,” says Alice and it makes me laugh.

  “Or maybe the surprise is how underwhelmed they were,” I say. “Maybe the surprise is that you make it over a huge mountain pass and see the massive desolate plain you’ve still got to cross.” “Surprise!” Alice says, spreading out her hands.

  “Cholera!” I laugh frankly and I feel how long it has been since someone other than Honey made me laugh. But the valley is a balm after the ravages of town, a vast open view of soft-looking green grasses, the yellow sweep of hills moving up into low forested peaks at the basin’s far reach. It’s not verdant, not gentle, but it looks pretty good.

  “When did your people come here?” she asks.

  “Eighteen eighties, I think. They had a pretty good run.”

  “But you never lived up here?”

  “My dad was in the foreign service, did I tell you that?” She doesn’t say anything. “We always lived in cities. I had a crazy thought maybe we could stay up here for a while but I just can’t. The largest group of people I’ve even seen since I’ve been here is the damn State of Jeffersoners,” I say. “And they’re literally separatists. Not to mention my husband could never stand it assuming he ever gets back here.” I fold a piece of salami into my mouth. Honey who has been on my lap starts squirming and I set her on the bench next to me.

  “You’re going to sit like a big girl, oh boy!” I say. I notice Alice isn’t eating and gesture at the food. She fumbles for a piece of salami and puts it on bread. Honey has slid off the bench with her plastic spoon and is jamming it into the ground. She
bends forward, planting her hands and her forehead on the dirt in a way that can’t be comfortable but I can see her upside-down smile between her legs. I stand and grab her ankles and flip her over in a somersault, resting her gently on her back. She screams joyfully and springs up and I brush the dirt off her forehead and she struggles free to do it again.

  “What fun!” says Alice. “Such good somersaults!” We repeat this three more times and then I’m winded and I pick her up and dance her over to Alice, who has been watching and clapping cheerfully.

  Flies are beginning to descend and buzz. “You’re not eating,” I note. “Aren’t you hungry?” She looks at the beading salami on the paper plate skeptically and says, “I guess not. I only do one big meal a day lately.” She must see my concern because she sort of fluffs herself up. “Why don’t we stop in the town you showed me on the map tonight and get a big pizza and a pitcher of beer?”

  “That sounds like heaven,” I say.

  “And we can call Mark and Yarrow.” I lift Honey to smell her butt, which squishes, and dig in the tote to find her changing things. I lay out the pad on the bench opposite Alice and tug off Honey’s socks pants undo her diaper and hush her fake crying. I try to avoid pushing poop into her vagina, try not to get poop on my hand. A wipe tumbles into the dirt and I pick it up gingerly and place it onto the bench behind me.

  “Always such a mess,” I say to Alice, who is staring into space vaguely in our direction. All I want to ask is How did you do this how did you do this. I want to know how she cared for three sick infants, how it was physically possible, how did she not murder her husband or even the children. I sort out Honey’s diaper and Alice has moved everything on the table into a tidy pile. I put salami and cheese slices in Ziploc bags and the bags in the cooler. The last cheese scraps dispatched into Honey’s mouth, I look expectantly at Alice.

  “Ready?” I say. “Let’s go,” she says. I put Honey on my hip and help Alice stand. Back into the car, back onto the road, heading toward gray skies.

  Alice sleeps and Honey stares blankly. I sing a little Barış Manço to myself, “Dağlar dağlar,” mountains mountains, it means. To be honest I don’t even really know what most of the words mean—songs give me the most trouble in Turkish. I mean I understand the individual word meanings but not how they fit together. Something about “You plucked my flower and put it in your hands.” God forbid I ever be forced to literally translate it for someone. But even if I don’t get it it’s just the right mournful tone for being around here.

  I pass the time trying to think of all the Turkish words I can that still have Arabic and Persian roots because it turns out Atatürk didn’t get all of them during his nationalist purges and I wonder, briefly and insanely, if I should go back to school because what am I doing with all this pointless information—it just sits there uselessly until I use it to pass the time on a long drive. I won’t even teach it to Honey. But then like that, we are in Berwin Falls on the other side of the border.

  When we drive in I get almost a festival feeling. The town is roughly five times the size of Altavista, and has things like a small hospital, a minimall, even a variety of fast-food establishments. We find a motel just by driving along an honest-to-god strip and Alice wakes up and points out one called the Wagon Wheel, with faux-stone pillars and a pleasing old-timey sign and the inevitable wagon wheel out front.

  “Let’s stay there,” she says. I pull in and make to go inside and find out about rooms.

  “I’ll pay,” says Alice and I say “Oh no” and she says “Oh yes” and takes a credit card from an inner pocket of her purse.

  “You can’t take it with you,” she says again. I am wondering whether I should presume to put two rooms on her credit card or whether she might like a roommate and am slightly paralyzed thinking about what is the correct course of action but she says “Get two rooms next to each other, if you can” and I say “Roger” and make my way inside leaving her and Honey in the car.

  The interior of the motel is marvelously ugly. There are wagon wheels everywhere—one has even been employed as a chandelier holding faux candles above. I determine that they have two rooms adjacent and I give them Alice’s credit card to swipe and return to the car and collect Honey and her diaper bag and Alice’s wheelie bag and then scurry around to Alice’s side to grip her elbow and try to gently haul her out. I put Honey down next to me and the diaper bag over my shoulder and the wheelie bag handle in my hand. “Two o’clock,” I say. “Probably time for a nap,” thinking of Alice since Honey has slept most of the day and is probably feeling rambunctious needless to say she needs to eat but we can have a second picnic in our hotel room and maybe maybe she will go back to sleep and I can have a cigarette which I want desperately, it being some five hours since I had one. I think maybe it’s just time I smoke in front of the baby but then I imagine her putting her two little fingers together and putting them to her lips and I curse myself for thinking any such thing.

  Alice who has been rather aloof about attempts to assist her physically is leaning on my elbow and I am feeling vaguely guilty since she is obviously so frail and we haven’t yet spoken to Mark and Yarrow and I’m not sure what kind of exertions this trip is going to portend. Honey trips merrily along next to us onto the maroon shag of the motel, she has a good herd instinct.

  The woman at the front desk says “Oh, are we visiting with Granny,” and I look at Alice and say “Yes” just as she says “No” and we both laugh and keep walking toward our rooms. When we reach Alice’s door I unlock with the mini wagon wheel key and lead her in with Honey at our heels. “Good work, baby girl,” I say to her. “Good walking and following,” I say. I wheel Alice’s bag in and say “Now the woman at the front desk is going to think I kidnapped you and am passing you off as Granny” and Alice laughs.

  “We’ll hear the police cars any minute,” she says. I bark at Honey who has reached up her mitts to try and touch the enormous old TV perched on a rickety stand.

  “Should we call up Mark and Yarrow to let them know where you are,” I venture. “Okay by me,” says Alice, and I pull out my phone and see that, miracle of miracles, I finally have some goddamn cell service. The screen is alive with WhatsApp and e-mail notifications and seeing Hugo’s name I immediately experience several physical manifestations of dread, in my stomach and the palms of my hands. I swipe all the notifications away and open up the dial screen.

  “Do you have their number?” I ask and Alice begins rummaging around in her ratty leather purse until she pulls out a bundle of tiny squares of paper rubber-banded together.

  “My address book,” she says and pulls out the top square and hands it to me. “You dial and then let me talk to them.” I punch in the numbers and hand her the phone and see with one eye that Honey has wandered into the bathroom where I follow and find her standing with one hand on the toilet flusher and a shit-eating grin on her face. She pulls at it and it clicks and the toilet flushes. I hear Alice’s voice in the next room and I do a quick check for death traps and shut the toilet lid and leave Honey to her flusher. I go into the bedroom where Alice is leaning against the wardrobe on the phone.

  “Yes, I got someone to drive me the last little while.” I hold out my hand as though to offer my assistance and she says “Wait a minute, Yarrow. I’m going to let her talk to you.” I take the phone.

  “Hello?” I say brightly, and a voice just like mine, a young woman’s voice on a woman who probably isn’t very young, says “Hello” at the other end. “This is Daphne,” I say, and I stand up straight and tuck forearm around my waist and allow the elbow of the hand holding the phone to rest on it. I try to reinhabit my adult professional self. “It’s nice to meet you over the phone!”

  “I’m Yarrow Passafarro,” she says tentatively. Her obvious concern is straining against all our shared instincts to be nice to each other but I have to suppress a strangled hysterical squawk at the rhyme. “Could you tell me how Alice is and how you met her and what’s going on?�
��

  “Of course!” I say. “I hope you haven’t been too worried! I know it’s a little odd to hear that she’s thrown in her lot with a stranger. My daughter and I were visiting my hometown and we met Alice at our local coffee shop. She’s taking very good care of herself but I know she’s very conscious of your concern and she thought it was best not to attempt the last leg of her trip alone.” I don’t add that she also rescued me and my child and saw me half naked after I drank to excess and fell down the stairs.

  “I’m glad she’s made a friend,” the woman on the other end of the phone says. “We’re just really worried—she hasn’t traveled far off her property in the fifteen years we’ve known her and then she wanted to drive ALONE to the other end of the country at her age. It’s concerning to say the least.”

  “I can imagine,” I say. I hate it when people say “concerning.” This is not the direction the verb goes. In Turkish you could make it go that way, in Turkish you can make a verb be causative by adding a few letters but English does not have this feature built in and “concerning” just seems wrong in that regard.

  “Well, what would be helpful now? I’m not actually sure how long she’s planning to stay at the camp but she mentioned maybe one of you flying out to meet her and get her car? I’m on a little bit of a hiatus from work so I’d be happy to stick around if that’s what makes sense.” I look at Alice and she has the sourest expression on her face and no wonder when she’s sitting there while two mere children decide how to transport her like she’s a piece of valuable furniture.

  “I’m not even sure where you are. We had talked about her just going out to Colorado so this is already a big change. Could you let me know some of the nearest towns so I can talk about it with my husband? And what your number is?” I rattle off Bend Medford even Reno and my number. “To be honest you’re looking at a big drive no matter where you fly. Maybe I could drive her down to San Francisco and you could fly in there.” This would be a good way to solve my problems, I think—just let Alice bring us back home like a rising tide. I decide to lobby for this course. “Yes, actually—that really makes sense. You’ll have a lot of flight options that way and you won’t have to drive.”