California: A Novel

by Edan Lepucki

  It took some effort for Frida to convince Cal she wasn’t playing a trick on him. And once he believed her, he was concerned. How did she know they weren’t dangerous? Why had they brought children into this world? “That’s troubling to me,” he said, but Frida wasn’t eager to follow this line of argument. He sounded like her brother when he talked that way—all doom.

  “I’m going whether you come or not,” Frida had said, and that settled it.

  The Millers’ house would have been impossible to find, were it not for those feathers, and those key phrases chiseled into Frida’s brain: “Turn left at the boulder, walk until you reach two fallen trees, one atop the other, forming a cross. Turn right.” A few times, Frida felt a flash of nervousness that they were lost, but an hour later they pulled back a large branch, attached to which was another feather, tied with turquoise-colored leather, and entered a clearing. Across the field, a house materialized. Frida felt victorious.

  Compared with the shed, the Millers’ home was enormous, and durable, its exterior built of stone and wood. The family must have heard them approaching because all four of them were waiting outside the front door.

  “Are they getting their portrait done?” Cal whispered. Frida barely registered the comment, so transfixed was she by Bo’s naked face, no beard to obscure it. Cal himself had a thick beard going, the same look Micah had sported when he left for college, as if he hadn’t been raised in a city, as if he’d ever gone camping. She kind of liked Cal’s copper-colored beard, but maybe this Bo could teach her husband how to shave with a knife. What she missed was having the option.

  “Welcome.” Bo stepped forward and shook hands with both of them. He did not smile. He was shorter than Sandy but sturdy with muscles, barbed with them. His seriousness took something away from him, Frida thought, his high cheekbones and heavy black eyebrows menacing rather than dignified. And he squinted, as if he’d lost his glasses. Perhaps this was a man who had been broken down by blurriness.

  “We’re so happy you made it!” Sandy said. She wore the same overalls but, thankfully, had added a blue T-shirt to the ensemble. She held Jane’s hand, and Garrett was slung on her hip. At Frida’s greeting, the boy rubbed his left eye with a fist and shook his head. “He just woke up from a nap,” Sandy said. The little girl nodded, as if confirming her mother’s story.

  Bo invited them inside, and Jane skipped forward to lead the parade. The house was one large, low-ceilinged room, with two cubbylike spaces for bedrooms. They slept in real beds; Sandy and Bo’s had a wooden headboard, and the children slept on what looked like sturdy cots. Frida saw Cal take in these comforts. In the shed, she and Cal had four sleeping bags, which they rotated or layered. No pillows.

  “What a place,” Cal said. Later, when he was trying to make Frida laugh, he would refer to it as the Miller Estate.

  There were no windows, so the house was dark, but it was surprisingly cool, like a basement. They could open the door for light and air, Sandy explained.

  In the middle of the room two mismatched couches faced each other. The setup reminded Frida of a rundown rec center or a home for the elderly gone sadder than expected. Someone had built smaller chairs for the kids, but they looked about as comfortable as birds’ nests: twiggy and sharp. On the rudimentary wooden table nearby, Frida counted two oil lanterns and half a dozen candles.

  With Garrett still on her hip, Sandy moved toward the kitchen area. It was just a stone fire pit, and a trashed card table. No chairs. Bo had built shelving into the walls, and on these the family’s dishes and tools were crowded. Frida took note of the plastic tarps, folded on the bottom shelf. She wondered if the house leaked.

  “We do most of our cooking outside, or we eat raw,” Bo said. “Smoke from the fire pit in here won’t kill us—there’s a chimney of sorts—but we could’ve designed it better.”

  Sandy smiled. “I hope you’re hungry. We’ve got rabbit, just need to put it on the fire.”

  Frida squeezed Cal’s hand; she couldn’t remember the last time they’d eaten meat.

  “We use snares,” Bo said, and Cal said he’d love to learn more.

  Bo offered to show them the root cellar next and the outhouse and their new underground shed, where they were doing their curing.

  Despite his initial austerity, Bo treated Frida and Cal with a tenderness that seemed Southern. He often used their names when speaking to them, as if his conversation were a gift. “You see, Calvin,” he would say, “snares can be difficult to build, but they’re quite efficient.” Like his wife, Bo wore a gold band on his left ring finger. So they’d been out here awhile, Frida thought, long before the world really went to shit. Hilda and Dada had given Frida their rings as a wedding present, but she and Cal had sold them not long after.

  “You two married?” Sandy had asked her at the creek. No wonder.

  With the Millers, Frida felt like she’d fallen asleep and awoken in a bygone era. They could have been pioneers, hitching their covered wagons, staking claim on a new frontier. Manifest destiny bullshit. Or the opposite: with Bo and Sandy, the land outside wasn’t wild and uncharted, something to fear until conquered. No, the earth was to be respected. Only then would it collaborate with you, tell you what it needed and what it was willing to give. And it was willing to give you a lot, if you knew how to ask. It was a lesson in coaxing.

  After they’d eaten a meal so succulent and satisfying Frida could have moaned with pleasure, Sandy asked her to follow her back into the house. The men had begun to discuss how to handle larger predators and keep the deer away from food storage and scare off the rare bear that skulked the grounds. Bo had once seen a mama bear and her cubs at the edge of the land; “Imagine if I’d been near them,” he was telling Cal. “They’re just animals and I’ve got a gun, but still, I’m not stupid. They scare me.” It was a conversation Frida thought she should be involved in, but what the hell, she could get a distilled version from Cal on the walk back to the shed. She wished Sandy and Bo would invite them to stay over, but she knew they wouldn’t. Already, Bo had made it clear that they would not be seeing one another all the time. “There’s always work to be done,” he’d said during lunch.

  Sandy had grabbed Frida’s hand as they walked into the house. It was as dry as Frida’s own, her knuckles white and flaky. “I guess you won’t be lending me any lotion,” she said, nodding at their intertwined hands.

  “I wish. I’m dry as an old lake bed. But I did want to show you this.”

  They were like two little girls on a playdate, like Sandy was about to reveal her secret doll collection, her stickers, or her mother’s lacy lingerie. Jane tried to follow them inside, but once they were a few feet into the house, Sandy had turned around and said, “Go to Papa.”

  Once Jane was gone, Sandy pointed to the far wall, just to the left of the bed she shared with Bo. Frida had seen the grayish marks earlier, but had taken them to be Jane’s scribbles: the cave paintings of a seven-year-old.

  “Go ahead,” Sandy said, and Frida let go of her hand to walk closer.

  Of course the drawings couldn’t be Jane’s, they were too far up the wall. At the top, a line of carefully drawn circles, some of them shaded in, others only partially.

  “The phases of the moon,” Sandy said behind her, and Frida raised an eyebrow. She hoped Sandy wasn’t inviting her into a coven.

  “You can’t just run to the store for tampons,” Sandy said, and Frida understood what this calendar kept track of.

  “I figured that out pretty quickly,” Frida said. She didn’t bother to tell Sandy that most stores in L.A. had found the needs of women harder and harder to meet.

  “You can’t be teenagers forever,” Sandy said. “Cal should give you a child.”

  “Excuse me?” Frida said. No wonder Sandy had made Jane stay outside. “I don’t think I understand what you mean.”

  “Yes, you do,” Sandy said. “Lovebirds. Eventually there’s a cloacal kiss.”

  How close had the Millers be
en watching them? Close enough. They had seen Cal move off of her, just before he came. She and Cal liked to do it outside, if the weather was nice. Frida wanted to sew this strange woman’s mouth shut—or, better, her eyes.

  “I don’t think that’s any of your business,” Frida said.

  Their birth control of choice was common back home. She didn’t know anyone who did it otherwise; it wasn’t foolproof, but no one she’d known had ever had an accident. And, thank God: Who wanted to bring children into this world? Who could find a doctor, who could afford condoms, let alone the Pill?

  When Frida was in high school, she’d taken it to help ease her cramps. She’d loved the little pink clamshell they came in and the way the tiny tablets popped out of their plastic sheaths. But before her senior year began, Dada started having trouble finding work, and gas prices were rising every week, and the family began its Great Austerity Measures, as Hilda put it. Goodbye clamshell and a menstrual cycle Frida actually kept track of. Goodbye almost everything frivolous and easy.

  By the time she and Cal had agreed to leave L.A., it seemed like no one had access to meds; only the deranged would buy a handful of drugs from a guy on the street corner. Was that really Xanax wrapped in tinfoil? Prescriptions, like doctors, were for the rich. The lucky ones, the people with money, had long fled L.A.

  “I apologize if I’m embarrassing you,” Sandy said then. “I didn’t mean to see.”

  “Don’t you believe in privacy?”

  “Not really, I guess.”

  Frida didn’t know what to do with Sandy’s candor. She finally asked: “Why are you showing me this?”

  “Because it’s your responsibility. It’s everything,” Sandy said.

  In the doorway, the sun caught the lightness of her hair, and it seemed for a moment as if she wore a halo.

  “Don’t tell me you came out here to die.”

  Frida was about to ask Sandy if she was nuts. She wanted to say it was too risky to have a kid, that it was selfish. What if they got sick? What if there wasn’t enough food? What if, what if. But Sandy was already turning around. She left Frida alone in the dark house.

  Cal admitted he’d been wrong, that—after spending the afternoon at the Millers’ place—he trusted them. “They have small children,” he said that night, once they’d finally reached the shed, just before sunset, thank goodness. As if he hadn’t known about Jane and Garrett before he’d met them. As if people with small children couldn’t cause harm. Frida decided not to tell him what Sandy had said. They would be seeing the family fairly regularly, and as weird as they were, Frida was relieved they existed.

  “But I do wonder where they get the salt to cure their meat,” Cal had added. Frida didn’t have an answer, and, anyway, it was the farthest thing from her mind, and she didn’t press Cal to go on. She couldn’t stop thinking about what Sandy had told her in the house. It changed things. Frida felt her perspective shifting, tilting the world, blurring the colors, brightening them.

  The next time they had sex, when Cal said, “I’m close,” Frida held him to her, wouldn’t let him go. “Good,” she’d whispered into his ear.

  They didn’t talk about what had happened, not at first. When they did, they both admitted it felt right. Having the Millers nearby, just the very idea of them, gave them both solace. The hopelessness lifted right off of Frida.

  Three weeks later, the Millers arrived at the shed. Already Garrett looked older, taller, and someone had given Jane a bob.

  “You look like a flapper,” Frida had told her that day. The girl frowned. Of course she had no idea what that was.

  “It’s a kind of lady, from a long time ago.” Jane waited, as if expecting more, and Frida kept talking. “From like a hundred years ago…actually longer, maybe close to a hundred and thirty. A long time.” Frida paused. “She liked to dance.”

  At this Jane beamed, but a moment later, as if startled by her own joy, she turned away from Frida, hiding her face in her mother’s thighs. Sandy said, “Sometimes Garrett bangs on the drum we have, and Janey dances.”

  Frida laughed, and so did Sandy.

  “Do you mind showing me the shed?” Sandy asked. “I’m curious to see what you’ve done with the place.” Frida agreed, and Sandy grabbed Jane’s hand. The three headed to the shed.

  When they reached the open doorway, Sandy looked up, her eyes on the dark interior. Suddenly, she stepped back into the sunlight and pulled Jane’s hand so roughly her daughter crashed against her thigh. What was it? Cal’s bandanna wasn’t in sight, but then Frida saw it: her sleeping bag was a bright red.

  “You okay?” Frida asked.

  Sandy said nothing, only stepped farther away from the shed, dragging Jane with her.

  “Sandy,” Frida called out, but Sandy was already halfway to the garden, where Bo, Garrett, and Cal were bending over something in the dirt.

  Frida followed them. When Sandy saw Frida behind her, she forced a smile and said, “Oh! I almost forgot. We brought you some stuff.”

  The Millers had come bearing gifts. A rabbit, already skinned and ready to roast. Also some chanterelles. “Sandy will show you how to find those,” Bo said to Frida. The subtext being: I hunt. You, Woman, shall gather.

  The third gift was the most surprising. Sandy smiled at her, as if to say, Let’s forget about what happened in the shed, and pulled from their bag a box of Band-Aids. Frida yanked it out of her hand.

  “Where the fuck did you get this?” she asked.

  “Frida, calm down,” Cal said, but Bo was laughing. In another minute, Sandy was, too; she seemed totally relaxed now. Frida felt relieved.

  “It’s okay,” Sandy said. “They are exotic, aren’t they.”

  Frida flipped open the tin’s lid. Inside, the Band-Aids behaved so well, lined up like schoolchildren. Already she was imagining plucking one out. Its white wrapper thin as rice paper, and those tiny blue arrows at the top. Open here. How it would peel back so easily to reveal the Band-Aid itself, nestled flat inside. Frida’s stomach fluttered. She could have sucked on it. The salty, pretzel taste of wounds.

  “Thank you,” Frida said finally. “How long have you had these?”

  “A few weeks,” Bo said. “We traded for them.”

  That’s how they learned about August.

  “He travels widely,” Bo said. “He won’t tell us how many others are out there, but there are a few.”

  “Is that so?” Cal said. “I guess this is the place to be. Who knew that—”

  “Don’t,” Bo said, holding up his hand.

  “Don’t what?” Frida asked.

  Sandy smiled weakly. “Never say where we are.”

  “It’s something we decided on,” Bo said. “The state. Place-names. Keep all that out.”

  Sandy added, “It feels more private this way.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in privacy,” Frida said.

  “You got me there.”

  The men didn’t catch their little joke. They were clueless. Some things didn’t change.

  “Think of it as a place of mystery,” Bo said.

  Later, Cal said the Millers were a little nuts. But he liked the rule. “This place of mystery,” he said. “It’s got a ring to it, don’t you think?”

  Yes, Frida had to admit. It did.

  2

  Cal had to hold himself back from touching Frida’s hair as she slept. It lay dark and wavy across the pillow, shinier than the creek at midday. She sighed and turned over, pushing her heel into his calf so hard it almost hurt. Asleep, her mouth a flat thin line, she looked plainer than she was; without her big soulful eyes—how they lit up when she smiled or pried into him when she was serious or upset—her beauty was evident but unremarkable. She looked older than twenty-nine.

  The sun hadn’t yet risen, and here he was, staring at his wife, wide awake. He’d give his left nut for a new book or the chatter of a sports-radio jackass. Anything to get through this almost-dawn. At least it wasn’t that cold; som
eday they might be trapped in here because of a freak snowstorm. And then what?

  There was bound to be some bad weather down the line: a drought or relentless, heavy rains. They’d wanted to avoid the kind of storms that had battered the Northwest the year before they left L.A.; those states had barely recovered, and he and Frida had settled here because the climate was milder. So far, they’d been spared really bad weather. But for how long? He turned the question over and over in his mind.

  This was one of things he loved about life out here. The space to consider questions. Even if he sometimes longed for mindless diversions, mostly he was grateful for the silence, the time. It reminded him of college, where thinking itself was considered noble, and where there had been nothing to distract from that endeavor. For most of his fellow students, it had been the first break from Devices, but Cal had never owned such things. There were too many links to cancer, his mother said, and she wanted him to feel lost once in a while. Everyone else was dependent on instant answers, on satellites, and this was turning them stupid. He’d written papers about how painful the shift to digital had been, about people’s addiction to the Internet, about how the batteries in dead laptops were leaking into the earth. That last one had been for the Politics of Geography course his mom had designed. Cal had been homeschooled. His mother had taught him everything he knew, until he took the train to a tiny town in California and started college at Plank.

  There, they’d stay up all night, considering the nature of being, of meaning. In retrospect, they seemed like such stoners, holding up a flashlight and questioning their perception of it. If they weren’t Americans, they asked, how would they see it? If they weren’t men, if they weren’t privileged…the questions were endless. Most of the time they weren’t high, just serious. Too serious, probably. But they had joked around a lot, too. Especially Micah.