The Golden State: A Novel

by Lydia Kiesling

  I am a little worried about how he is planning to present all this information to the cops and wonder idly what will happen to Cindy but I write down Camp Cooville and my name and my phone number even though my phone is useless and then I run outside jump back in the car where Honey is screaming bloody murder and I kneel by her in the back seat and wipe her face and give her kisses and find her sippy cup which has a few fingers of warm milk in it and give that to her and say “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry Mama’s so so so sorry.”

  We go back the original way, the way I’m hoping will not be blocked by Cindy if as I imagine they have had to spread their sparse-ass movement across hundreds of state and county roads across hundreds of miles of territory. The rain has barely let up and I am driving slowly slowly and I creep around every corner in case of blockades and mercifully there are none which just makes me feel more furious that I lost all this time to have a fucking procedural argument with Cindy when it was a moot fucking point anyway since I could go five miles over and achieve my desired outcome and I almost want to turn around and tell her what a fucking moron she is but then I remember and I start a running prayer Please let Alice be okay Please let Alice be okay. Honey is doing a low moan in the back seat and I think about how long she has been in the car and how generally unenriched unstimulated and then I think Well she won’t remember any of this anyway, but that makes me oddly sad too.

  When we pull onto the dirt road to Camp Cooville it’s 2:07 which isn’t that bad but I’m terrified of getting the Buick down that road which must be a mud river in this downpour but I tell myself it’s American-built, thousands of pounds, made for hard North State winters and we inch slowly down the road and when the road finally levels I race forward to Alice’s stump and she’s not there, just the cooler bag and the blanket and the sweatshirt slumped in a pool of water on the surface of the stump. I see the umbrella leaning neatly against the stump and I wonder what this can mean. I put my head on the steering wheel and yelp and then I get out of the car pulling my jacket over my head and peering through the rain for some sign and I can’t leave Honey in the car but I can’t take her out in this so I get back in and start driving bumpily slowly around the buildings praying not to hurdle us into a sinkhole or a stump. My eyes strain so hard to make out the navy skirt the white turtleneck and the gunmetal hair that I keep seeing apparitions through the trees, but none of them are her.

  I drive around slowly with the window down calling Alice’s name with rain coming in sideways onto the door panel and dash. But then I imagine the horror of running over her prone in the tall grass and I stop and start honking the horn and screaming her name intermittently. Finally I think I have to get out so I look at Honey and I try to really get through to her and say “Mommy is getting out of the car, but she’s not leaving, okay. I’m going to be right back. Mommy’s coming right back.” I don’t know if she understands this but her face crumples once I unclick the seat belt and by the time I’ve gotten myself out of the car she is sobbing and I think five minutes, we can have five minutes. I sprint around the clearing holding my breasts with one arm and putting my hand over my eyes with the other. “ALLLLIIIIIIIIIICE” I scream and I stop panting under the eaves of one of the buildings to catch my breath. The rain is relentless and I think an insane thought what if she has just been rained away pounded into the earth by the deluge. I recover my breath and run a series of jagged loops around and between the buildings and then I run back to the car and Honey is crimson in the back seat and looks at me in furious reproach and I kiss her and I am crying too and I reach in the diaper bag for the halves of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and I say “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry” and “We’re gonna leave real soon” and then I am back out into the rain. I run to the stump and look helplessly at the evidence which tells me that she touched nothing but leaned her umbrella against the stump and I think maybe she went into the woods to get out of the rain which would make sense and I think I’m going to have to go in there and I walk a few feet in and look all around me but then I think This is madness I can’t leave the car I can’t leave Honey in the car you always read about how getting lost in the woods is the easiest thing you can do and the very thought of not being able to get back to Honey makes me panic and spring back to the stump which is where I think it should be and then I consider bringing Honey into the woods with me but the problem of being lost remains, it’s just that we would be lost together. I start to bawl. I don’t understand how all of this went south so quickly but I guess that is what I’ve told myself I was waiting for, things to go quickly south.

  I think I will just have to get Honey and we will have to look together so I take the umbrella from the stump and run to the car squishing into the mud and open the door and Honey knows that things are weird and I say “Hi” brightly and “We’re just going to get out for a minute to look for Auntie Alice” and I unbuckle her and wrestle her out of the seat and pick up the umbrella and hold her in one arm to my hip, hitching her up to make sure of my grip and put the umbrella over both of us and enter the woods at the stump. I turn back to look at the car to try and orient myself and think hysterically that I need some kind of marker so that I can indicate our location because I’m irrationally terrified that we are going to be swallowed into the forest and never get out. I think we will just walk directly forward in a straight line and then after two minutes turn around and walk directly back and then we should I think get back to the stump or thereabouts, as long as we can get to the tree line at the edge of the clearing. The rain isn’t coming through too badly so I put Honey down on her feet and she clings to my shins and I close the umbrella and pick her back up and hold her tight with the umbrella sticking out perpendicular under my armpit and we walk forward and I look left and right and within a few yards we’ve climbed up a partially buried boulder which I think Good a landmark and then at the top I see on the other side Alice, Alice lying on the ground curled on her side with her head on her hand looking like a sleeping child. I cry out and say “Alice Alice Alice” and she doesn’t stir and I spring around the side of the rock and put Honey down as gently and quickly as I can and I put my hand on Alice’s neck like someone on a television show and I just feel cool soft papery skin and I put my head on her chest and try desperately to hear something beyond my own panting and I don’t but have no idea whether or not I would and I try to gently shake her shoulder and think she stirs but I’m not sure and I smooth her hair down with one hand the hair I’ve always wanted to touch and then I hear faintly a wailing through the rain and the wind in the trees and I pick up Honey and run back toward the clearing, straight back from the boulder where yes there is an ambulance barreling down the road and it appears Ivan from the safari motel has come through. It crosses the field and stops short just by the Buick and I run to it yelling “She’s back there” like a madwoman and it’s a man and a woman who emerge and they say “Calm down ma’am” and they go into the ambulance cab and say something into a walkie-talkie and then retrieve a stretcher and I point toward the woods and pant along beside them into the trees holding Honey who is absolutely silent and wide-eyed. Once they see Alice they drop to their knees and start their ministrations and I’m darting around saying “What’s happening is she okay is she okay” and the man says “Ma’am why don’t you take the baby and go on back to the car” and I turn tail with Honey and run back to the Buick and set her on the passenger seat next to me and I say “Fuck it” and “I’m sorry” and get out a cigarette and open the window all the way down but water comes in so I raise it up halfway and light the cigarette and she stares at me in quiet wonderment and starts to fiddle with the buttons on the passenger side seat and once I chuck the butt out the window I see the paramedics coming through the trees with something on their stretcher and the man looks at me and nods his head, one swift, grim motion.

  I haul Honey onto my lap and get out of the car holding her and run to the paramedics who are putting Alice into the ambulance. “Honey, we’ve
got to get her to the hospital, she’s real frail,” the woman says kindly and Honey the baby turns her head from my cheek to look at her. “Where are you taking her?” I say and they tell me the name of a hospital which is Bernville Emergency Clinic and the man barks some directions at me that I try to hold on to and then they have loaded her up and closed the door and I think I should have said goodbye and then I wearily get Honey back in the car and follow to the best of my ability the ambulance and once it has made its way up the dirt road and peeled out into the horizon I try to keep the directions in my head, mercifully the hospital is not back in Berwin Falls but just thirty miles from here. I think I did it once so I might as well count this day as a wash and light another cigarette and smoke out the window while driving which I don’t think I have done in ten years.

  I say a prayer for Alice but while I am doing it my mind wanders and I callously think of all the administrative bullshit that is about to come my way. I will have to explain no doubt to the hospital and maybe the police who I am and why I am the one who had the old lady in my care and failed her and they probably won’t tell me anything about Alice because I’m not a relative and Mark and Yarrow will probably try to send me to prison not to mention that I am a witness, maybe among the first, to the attempted secession taking place up the road and I just pull hard on my cigarette and think It’s all out of my hands.

  We reach the outskirts of the town where the clinic is and it’s so small we find the place right away and I park and get Honey out who is almost almost almost asleep, probably stupefied from the carbon monoxide of the cigarette, and I open the front door to the low-lying clinic which reads Emergency along its top and I ask the gal at the front desk for the older lady who just came in and she says “Oh okay, yeah they have a couple questions” and gestures toward a towheaded policeman sitting legs spread against the wall of the clinic and he stands while she calls behind her “Dooooooc.” “I’m Officer Bentley,” he says and I say “I’m Daphne Nilsen,” isn’t it strange, I’m a Nilsen not a Burdock not a Mehmetoğlu and extend a hand while holding Honey and he says “Can you tell me what your relationship was to the woman who got brung in?” and I say “I actually hardly know her,” feeling a small stab of disloyalty. “I met her in Altavista where I’ve been staying at my grandparents’ house. She was passing through and she asked for some help getting to Camp Cooville. Her husband used to be stationed out here and she wanted to visit. So, uh, I drove her out and when we got there today she asked me to give her some time alone and this was before it was raining” and I can feel myself speaking too fast and try to slow it down and I’m also starting to cry and I say “I’m sorry” and compose myself and Honey whines and I say “While I was trying to get back to her I ran into this State of Jefferson blockade thing—I have the piece of paper in my car—they were giving out some kind of Declaration of Independence” and I pray he will know what I’m talking about and not think I’m insane and his face, previously impassive, almost imperceptibly nods and I say “Yeah, so I had to turn around and was late getting back to her but only by about forty-five minutes, I also stopped at the hotel to tell them to call you all, that’s the Safari Motor Inn, and when I got there I found her on the ground in the trees.” While I’m talking a good-looking thirty-something brown-skinned man in blue scrubs comes out and is standing at a little remove, clearly listening to my account, and I turn to face him and he gives a very very subdued smile and says “I’m Dr. Bakhtiyar” and extends a hand and my insane brain thinks Bakhtiyar, from Persian: lucky, fortunate and I say “What happened to Alice?” and he says “Are you a relative?” “No,” I say. “I was giving her a ride. I have their phone number though.” I take my phone out of my pocket and pull up the call from yesterday and hand it to him. “What’s going on?” I say helplessly and he says “Just a moment” and writes down the number and says “I’ll be back shortly” and disappears into the back of the clinic with his slip of paper. I hug Honey and kiss the top of her head and exchange a small smile with the receptionist and realize I must look like hell, my clothes plastered to me, my knees and shoes covered in mud. Honey is in much better shape but I feel her shivering in my arms and I say “I’m going to get her some clothes from the car” and run out to find her spare pants which I had thank god packed in the diaper bag. When I get back in the clinic with her dry things Dr. Bakhtiyar is back in the waiting room holding a phone and says “They’d like to speak with you” and I take the phone and say “Hello” and Yarrow is on the line crying and manages to get out “Well, she’s gone,” and while this is half what I’d expected I still can’t really believe it’s true, and I just say “I’m really sorry” and she cries and then a man’s voice which I presume is Mark is now on the phone and says “Can you please tell us what happened” and I don’t actually believe that it has happened, and I try to think of how to explain it all, Cindy and the blockade and the Proclamation of Independence, and I just say “She asked to be left alone at the camp and when I came back for her she was gone” and again I say “I’m so sorry, I didn’t want to leave her alone but she really insisted” and Honey strains to get down and I put her on the floor and she falls down and cries and Mark says “We’re trying to figure out how one of us can get out there if you can manage to stay put until we arrive” and his tone is bitter and I have to just accept that, of course he’s going to be furious and I say “Of course” and he says “Yarrow and I will talk and call you back at the number you called on yesterday” and I say “Okay” and give Dr. Bakhtiyar back the phone and then I gather Honey and sit down on one of the plastic clinic chairs and bawl my eyes out while Officer Benson or Bentley or whatever it was stands awkwardly next to me, his police bells and whistles creaking.

  * * *

  After making my statement to Officer Benson and Dr. Bakhtiyar both of whom seemed bewildered but not really angry, not really judgmental I finally get Honey back into the car and then back to the motel and I explain what happened to Ivan who kindly opens Alice’s room and gets her things out and puts them in our room and even bless his heart gives us a box of granola bars and two packets of ramen and I feed Honey and me and give us a hot bath and get us into the bed and despite the scratchy white sheets the physical comfort of being so cozy with the rain coming down outside feels obscene. Honey is leaning quietly but alertly against me contravening all of her usual ways and I have the TV on and on the local news there is the blockade and there are Cindy and her friends looking grimly into the camera and there are police cars parked before them and the police appear to be standing around in a clump and the camera cuts to several other blockades, maybe three others around the two states and it’s only a matter of time before it’s national news but I can’t bear to put on CNN Fox News or any of the others can’t bear the thought of their scrutiny on this parcel of the earth.

  The phone rings and I answer and Mark informs me curtly that he will be landing in Medford, Oregon, tomorrow at 4:00 and I say “I will pick you up and drive you wherever you need to go, and back to the airport. Whatever you need” and he says “I’d appreciate that. And I just really want to get to the bottom of what happened” and I say “Of course, I can’t imagine what you must be thinking and feeling” and I get choked up and he hems and haws and says “Well, we’ll get everything sorted tomorrow.”

  I pull Honey to me and kiss her head over and over again and prop her against the pillow and get up and get Alice’s hard-backed suitcase and hoist it onto the foot of the bed. I click open the two snaps and on top of neatly folded clothes there is a folded paper reading “In case of emergency” and I think Jesus Christ and I unfold it and it is a piece of stationery from the Wagon Wheel motel and on it are written two phone numbers and below that in a crabbed cursive it just says “I’m not coming home” and her little day-by-day pill box with today’s pills untaken and yesterday’s too and I lie down next to Honey and cry like my heart is breaking.

  DAY 10     One of the State of Jefferson guys was shot by th
e police early this morning when they moved to retake the interstate here at the northernmost point of the fifty-first State of Jefferson. He fired and then they fired and now he is in “stable” condition in the hospital, probably the same one as Alice, probably having his life saved by Dr. Bakhtiyar who, if I had to guess, is probably the only doctor for a hundred miles and who if I also had to guess is probably not the person the wounded man pictured sharing his new state citizenship with not to mention having his life saved by. The blockading groups were apprehended pretty quickly after that and the roads are clear but one group of five has moved into the national forest along the border and is claiming to be hunkering down for a long siege. I wonder if Cindy is in the forest or in jail. I wonder whether she made common cause with the Cunt after all. I hope I never see Cindy again.

  Honey is sitting on the floor leafing rather deftly through a Gideon Bible that she found in the drawer which she herself opened. I have already smoked a cigarette out of the motel window this morning while she slept so my parenting is not off to a good start in any case.

  Last night while I was trying to fall asleep I thought about kinds of death. I shooed my father my mother Ellery out of my mind and I tried to empty everything but Alice out in the wood. I pictured her walking across the clearing and turning toward the trees on some mission of communion. I saw her moving with certainty across the uneven forest floor while I was laboring in futility with Cindy and her coconspirators. Under the forest canopy the rain would have taken on a new sound, not the pounding of water against the defenseless grass but something gentler and hushed, a sound like an expectant audience whispering in an amphitheater at dusk. And maybe her foot slipped on a root and then she was on her back in a divot of earth looking up at the trees. I pictured her lying in the divot just the right shape to cradle her with her face up to the sheltering canopy. Maybe she felt the pine needles under her hands and made a tentative move to try and stand and she couldn’t get anything to cooperate and she was dry and more or less comfortable and she closed her eyes. I closed my own eyes and clasped my hands under my body. Please God, I say to myself. Let her be out of the Abode of Pain. Let her be with her husband and her babies.