California: A Novel

by Edan Lepucki

  At first, that’s how it had been. August hadn’t found them yet, nor had the Millers, their closest and only neighbors, a few miles to the east. They later learned that Bo Miller had built the shed, years before. Their first four months out here, Cal and Frida had spoken only to each other, and sometimes that was the hardest thing, more trying than the planting or irrigating or the labor it took to build the rudimentary outdoor kitchen. Though she’d tried to prepare herself, Frida couldn’t believe that they were really alone. Just the two of them.

  One afternoon, at the end of their first summer, Cal had just called her over to the shower, a plastic receptacle heated by the sun that they’d secured to a tree branch. They had done this back home, when the gas bills got too high, although they’d hung the warmed water in the shower stall. Now they were outside. Everything was outside; it was like they were on an eternal camping trip.

  That day the air was still warm, but with a sharpness to it that hinted at the chill to come. Frida looked forward to autumn; she actually liked collecting wood and making a fire as Cal had taught her to do. It seemed almost romantic. But Cal had warned her that she didn’t really know what cold felt like. And he was right; she didn’t.

  “Go ahead,” Cal had said, his hand on the plastic. He was confirming its temperature, and all she had to do was turn the plastic spigot.

  Frida thanked him and pulled her dress over her head. She no longer bothered with underwear or a bra. She liked being naked outside. Right then she tried to catch her husband’s eyes, maybe shimmy her shoulders and bite her lower lip. Remind him how nice the line of her hips was. She might even say, Hey there, and smile.

  But Cal had already turned away. He had the next task on his mind—the first one, perhaps, being his wife. In their four months out here, Frida had become a problem to solve, and once solved, she was invisible to him.

  At the time, Frida imagined herself describing the moment. Maybe to an old friend or to her mother. Or online, as she used to do until their last year in L.A., before electricity became too expensive, before the Internet became a privilege for the very few. She had once kept a diligent online record of her life; she’d had a blog since she’d been able to write. Her brain couldn’t just let that habit go, and in her head she said, There I was, naked, my hair falling over my shoulders. But he didn’t care! He had become immune to my nakedness. The phrase was so silly, so melodramatic. Immune to my nakedness. But it was true. Cal wasn’t looking.

  And all at once she understood: no one was looking.

  That day, Frida stood under the weak stream of water, never as hot as she wanted. It was the end of summer, and the only thing this world could promise them was that it would get colder, which would certainly crush their morale further. The finality of their situation sat on her chest like a brick and pushed. No one was looking. Her audience was sucked away, the ones keeping her safe with their concern, keeping her okay, keeping her the same as before, and she was spit out as if from a Wizard of Oz tornado. She felt like she and Cal were really alone.

  She’d been wrong, of course: they’d met Sandy and Bo soon after. But maybe that was why Frida didn’t like to think about that moment, because the Millers, who had seemed to be watching over them those first few months, weren’t here anymore. Now she and Cal really were alone, and her old fears were too dangerous to revisit. Some feelings were hard to recover from.

  She needed Cal. Her darling husband. She would call him in from his digging, tell him she was late, and he would remind her to breathe, and smile at her with his gentle, beautiful eyes.

  She grabbed her hat and pushed open the door. Though it was overcast, there was still a glare, and she wished, yet again, for sunglasses. A breeze rustled the woods, and a far-off twig split from a branch.

  Across the yard, Cal was pushing the shovel into the ground, his back to her. Behind him, the garden looked crowded and lush; the squash had come in, and once it was harvested they’d plant the lettuce and peas. The land had not given up on them, thank goodness. They had both been relieved when the rains came—and the house hadn’t flooded. They had already lived through two winters here, and their third would be upon them soon. Frida would help Cal plant the garlic, if they could get it. If nature continued to cooperate, they would be okay.

  Frida watched Cal push the shovel into the dirt and scoop it out. There were piles of dirt all around him, and the latest one was still small, the size of a science project volcano. Cal was muttering to himself, which meant he was worrying about something, unknotting some problem. She smiled and crouched behind the outdoor stove. She put her hands to her lips and whistled.

  Cal lifted his head immediately. He looked past the crops to the line of trees there. Most were still green and lush, but some were starting to turn. Fall.

  Frida whistled again, and Cal dropped the shovel. He was looking for a bird. She had fooled him. She saw him smile.

  “Hello?” he called out.

  Frida waited, her heart beating faster.

  “Hello?” he said again.

  Frida whistled back, Hello, darling, and this time Cal started. He slowly reached out his hand. Was it meant as an invitation? Did he think he was Saint Francis, that a bird would come to him?

  She laughed and stood up.

  “Fuck,” he said when he saw her, and shook his head.

  “I can’t believe you fell for that.” As she approached, she put her lips together and made the sound again.

  “You got me. Good one.”

  She could tell she’d shaken him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Can I help?”

  He shook his head. “No, but keep me company.”

  Frida nodded and sat down right on the dirt; it was cold, and she moved quickly to a kneeling position. She’d finally given in and worn one of Sandy’s long dresses. It was made of denim and looked vaguely cultish, but it was comfortable and, with leggings beneath, warm.

  She kept her eyes on the shovel.

  “How deep do you need to go?”

  He shrugged. “Deep enough.”

  She rolled her eyes. She hated when he offered vague, poetic answers to her questions.

  “Sorry.”

  “I didn’t get my period,” she said. Why had she just blurted it out like that?

  He looked at her carefully for a moment, as if willing himself to recognize her. “How late?”

  “Too late. Thirteen days. You know I’m always on time.”

  On one wall of their home, Frida kept track of her cycle. She wrote with a chalky stone, sharpened to a point with the paring knife. She’d learned the system from Sandy Miller, who said she’d served as her own midwife for her two children. Frida liked the tallies and the circles, the order of it, how the body adhered to some invisible system. She sometimes called herself a hippie, told Cal she had an intimate relationship with the moon, but they both knew she took the record very seriously.

  “Pregnant?” he said. He could barely get the word out.

  “Maybe.” She paused. “Or there’s something wrong with me.”

  He nodded.

  After they’d met the Millers, she and Cal had thought perhaps having children would be all right. Jane and Garrett breathed easily in this world and didn’t want for anything, had no idea there was anything more to want. Maybe it was Frida and Cal’s destiny to be parents. They even joked with Bo and Sandy about their families joining, as creepy as that sounded. Their children would mark the beginning of a new and better species, start the world over.

  But Frida kept getting her period. And they made love all the time. Sometimes their lust was unquenchable, and sometimes they were just bored. Sex was the only fun, the only way to waste time. It replaced the Internet, reading, going out to dinner, shopping. The universe had righted itself, maybe. Still, no children. Now that the Millers were no longer around, Frida had begun to think it was for the best.

  “So that’s what’s been bothering you,” Cal said now.

  She nodded. “Maybe it’s just a nu
trient I’m missing.”

  “Meat,” he said, and nodded to his half-dug hole.

  “I feel okay. I’m fine.”

  “You think August has a test?” he asked.

  She laughed. “I doubt it. Eventually, I’ll know one way or the other.” She brought her hands to her stomach; it was still flat. “But maybe he knows a witch doctor. He could bring her over here.”

  This was a thing Frida liked to do: try and figure out where August traveled, and with whom else he traded. On his first visit he said he lived “around the way” and gave them a look that meant he didn’t welcome personal questions. Short of following him, which they had promised never to do, there was no way of knowing where he went in the month they didn’t see him. He refused to provide any clues. He had once told Frida, “I’m warning you, don’t be nosy. I don’t serve the curious.”

  “When he comes,” she said, “make yourself scarce. Go forage or something.”

  Cal thought about it for a moment. “He does like you better.”

  “And if I tell him our situation…”

  “He’ll at least give you a deal on the garlic.”

  They fell silent. Somewhere, far away, but not so far off, a bird began to call.

  “What if you aren’t sick?” he asked. “What if you’re—”

  “I can’t even imagine it…”

  She suddenly thought of her parents. Hilda and Dada, they called them. As if on cue, she thought of Micah, too. Dead five years.

  “Hey,” Cal said. “Don’t go there.”

  She smiled, and he helped her to her feet. She took note of how careful he was being, how tightly he held her hand. Already, she realized, he thought of her differently.

  * * *

  Frida had imagined a child inside of her so many times, it was a wonder she had never given birth to one. She had felt her hips expanding, conjured morning sickness and swollen breasts, and sent love to an imagined fetus: fingerless and translucent, its heart glowing in its chest, tiny but there. Frida knew better and, in fact, often wished away the baby she had imagined. And maybe the wishing worked, because she never was actually pregnant.

  Frida blamed Sandy for planting in her mind the notion that a family was a good idea. Not only that it could happen, but that it should. On one of their long foraging walks, Sandy had asked, “Who else will look after you in your old age?” as if it were assumed that Frida and Cal would live long enough to have that problem. Sandy believed strongly that the world wasn’t going anywhere. The country was wrecked, yes, but something else, something better, something beautiful, was bound to replace it. Many times she had swept an arm through the air in front of her and said, “Look at what my children will inherit!” It wasn’t hard to be seduced by Sandy Miller.

  Frida had first met her down by the creek, which was only about a fifteen-minute hike from the shed. The walk was almost always pleasant; in the spring, Cal had pointed out the baby blue eyes and, in the summer, the clarkias. When she was alone, Frida would keep her eyes out for snakes, listen closely for other animals that might be hidden by the trees. That first summer, a porcupine had walked into her path, quills up, and Frida sucked in her breath and turned around, ran back to the shed crying like a kid. She imagined coming upon a bigger, more dangerous animal, being eaten alive. Cal said she shouldn’t worry, but he didn’t call her crazy, either. They were in the wild, after all, and anything could happen—to think they could control their surroundings was foolish.

  It had taken two weeks for Frida to find the bravery to venture into the forest by herself again. When she did, she was vigilant as a hunter and proud of herself for not turning back at every unknown rustle in the foliage. It only took two solo treks for her to get comfortable again. The green world filled her head and cleared it.

  But on the day she met Sandy, their first summer out here was quickly turning into fall, and Frida’s initial panic about their isolation had been replaced with a low hum of hopelessness. She barely saw the world around her. Not even five months into the afterlife, and she had turned to chores as a way to cope.

  That day she was headed to the creek to wash some clothes. She pushed through the cattails to get to the edge of the water, the canvas bag of laundry bouncing over her shoulder. She should feel like a buffalo, she thought, heading to the water to drink. Instead, she was channeling a cartoon bandit or Santa Claus. As she stepped onto the muddy patch where she would do her soaking and wringing, something moved in the brush a few feet away. She froze. Between the grasses, a flash of corn silk. Barbie hair, Frida thought.

  A very small boy popped up from the ground, and she let out a cry. She knew he was real because of the details she couldn’t have made up: hair so blond it was almost white. The small scratches and bug bites on his arms and legs. Freckles all over his face, except his eyelids, which were as white as his hair. The man’s T-shirt he wore like a dress, which read OFFICIAL PUSSY INSPECTOR. That made her laugh, and she glanced at his feet, which were bare, calloused into hooves.

  “Don’t be alarmed!” a female voice called out.

  Frida looked up, and across the creek stood a woman, almost as blond as the boy. She was tall and thin and wore overalls. It didn’t look like she had on a shirt, but it couldn’t have mattered—she looked as flat chested as a ballet dancer. A girl, older than the boy, with long brown hair, hid behind her mother’s legs. She was wearing what looked like a burlap sack, sewn into a jumper.

  “I come in peace,” Frida yelled. What was this, some terrible alien flick? She started again. “Who are you?” All at once, she felt electric. They weren’t alone!

  Frida turned to the boy again and smiled. He widened his eyes, as if he, too, couldn’t believe there was someone else to talk to. Later, Frida would learn that this was the way Garrett showed his pleasure.

  Frida marveled at how quickly Sandy and Jane got across the creek. They knew which rocks would hold them and which ones were slippery with algae and should be avoided. Jane was barefoot like her brother, but Sandy wore hiking boots. Once across, she introduced herself and her two children. Jane was seven. Garrett was three. Up close, Sandy looked older: the face of a woman who worked outside without sunscreen.

  “Bo and I,” Sandy said, “we’ve been watching you two for some time. Making sure you were safe.”

  Frida nodded slowly. She and Cal hadn’t counted on a family of spies. Making sure you were safe. Did that mean they were judging them, or protecting them?

  “The birds!” Garrett cried. He was pointing at Frida now, as if he had just figured something out.

  Frida raised an eyebrow.

  “We took to calling you the birds,” Sandy explained. “As in lovebirds. You two sure do like each other.”

  In a different context, Frida might have blushed. Instead she said, “It’s cheaper than going to the movies.” She was trying to keep her eyes off Sandy’s chest. Her overalls had shifted in her commute across the water, and one breast, all nipple, peeped out from the bib, its tip long and knobby. It reminded Frida of a caterpillar.

  “You’re living in our shed,” Sandy said. She didn’t seem mad, and so instead of apologizing, Frida thanked her for building it.

  “I assume you don’t want us to move out. It was empty when we arrived.”

  “Oh no, we love that you’re there. It’s where Bo and I first settled. We built that well you’re using, you know. We like the little outdoor kitchen and fire pit you’ve added. I told Bo it was proof of your ingenuity.”

  “How long have you been here?” Frida asked.

  “Forever,” Sandy said.

  That was the thing about the Millers: they never got specific. It was easy to deduce they’d arrived at least seven years before, since Jane was born on the land, but that was as much as Frida could figure out on her own. Sandy and Bo wouldn’t say where they were from, either, though Los Angeles didn’t seem to register much familiarity on their faces, nor did Cleveland, where Cal had been raised. It wasn’t that their speech w
as accentless but that it shifted, from bland to twangy and back again in a single conversation. Once, Bo wore a Duke shirt, but Sandy said she’d gotten it from a friend, years and years ago. “Be protective of your past,” she finally told Frida. “Our children don’t need to know too much about ours.”

  On that first meeting, Sandy told her the names of the fish in the creek. “We don’t know what that one’s called,” she said, pointing to a thin silvery one, “so we call it a princess.” Frida wished she had a Device that worked, to take notes. She hadn’t felt this happy in—maybe ever. Sandy’s eyebrows were light as dandelion fuzz, and Frida loved the surprise of them. She hadn’t realized how tired she’d gotten of Cal’s face.

  Sandy offered to help Frida with her laundry, and Frida accepted. Garrett ran up and down the creek, collecting rocks, and Jane stayed to help the women. Frida hadn’t been taking much notice of her until Sandy said in a stern voice, “Hand that over.” When Jane hesitated, Sandy snatched Cal’s red bandanna out of her daughter’s hand. She threw it to the ground as if it were on fire, her eyes squeezed shut.

  “You okay?” Frida asked.

  “She likes red,” Sandy said. She affected a breezy laugh, but there was something shaky and nervous behind it. “We don’t let her have too much of it.”

  “Sorry, Mama,” Jane whispered.

  The next time Garrett sped by, Frida tried to keep her voice casual. She didn’t want to freak Sandy out again. “What’s with his shirt?”

  “He likes to help forage.” Sandy raised an eyebrow, her eyes going twinkly for a moment. “Pussy is a kind of mushroom.”

  Frida laughed until she realized Jane was watching them.

  “We find food, in the forest,” the little girl said.

  “Cool,” Frida said. Cool? She supposed it didn’t hurt, lying to the kids. It wasn’t like Garrett would find out the truth. They could rename everything, if they wanted to.

  The laundry was drying by the time Sandy led her kids away, back to their house. Frida practically ran to the shed. Sandy had invited them over for lunch the next day! The route to their house was easy, Sandy had said. With a stick she drew a rudimentary map in the mud. “And we’ve nailed hawk feathers into trees, to mark the trail. You haven’t noticed them?” Frida shook her head.