California: A Novel

by Edan Lepucki

  Cal called her name, but only after the door had slammed behind her.

  3

  Frida was chopping beets for dinner when she heard the crack of twigs and the rustle of trees and, after that, an animal’s hooves against the hard dirt of the path to their house. She could just barely make out August’s whistling, and then he stopped to mutter something. It sounded soothing, and she knew he was talking to the animal, Sue, probably congratulating her on another safe arrival.

  Frida put down her knife and turned to Cal. They hadn’t spoken much beyond the necessary all day. She wasn’t sure why she was mad, and at whom, even. Her husband had brought up something stupid, something from a long time ago. It shouldn’t matter now, but it did.

  They didn’t talk about Micah because, when they did, Cal got pissed and Frida got sad, and everything miserable about the world wedged itself between them. Frida knew what her brother had done; she had accepted it; she wasn’t in denial. But sometimes, the Micah that Cal remembered had not a lick of goodness in him. That dumb college kid who had once been into Gerhard Richter and other pretentious shit? That was her little brother. Whatever else he was, well, it didn’t erase that fact.

  Cal probably wouldn’t bring up her family now, not for weeks. He’d be afraid that if he did, she’d fall into a grief spiral. As if never mentioning her brother or her parents made her longing for them disappear. As if he could will all that pain away.

  Cal was sprawled across one of the couches, an arm slung over his eyes. He was thinking. This was an actual activity they did now—just lay down and let their minds wander. Sometimes they gave each other a term to meditate on: Magic Marker, air conditioner, strawberry. It was more entertaining than Frida would have ever imagined it to be. Sandy Miller had told her about it. She and Bo used to do it, before they had kids. “Jane and Garrett keep us busy,” she’d said. That made sense now: parenting as a way to kill time.

  “He’s here,” Frida said, and Cal moved his arm off his face, sat up. “Get your foraging gear and meet him on your way out.”

  “You can hear him? Your ears are as good as a dog’s.” He grinned, his version of an olive branch.

  “Hurry,” she said.

  Frida dried her hands and placed the beets in one of the metal bowls. With a little dried mint, they would be all right for dinner.

  She heard August greet Cal. After a few moments, Cal yelled her name, and she headed outside.

  The two men stood at the edge of the clearing, Cal with the foraging bag over his shoulder, the gardening gloves and paring knife in his hands. August had jumped off his buggy and was running a brush across the mare, who snorted at his touch.

  The first time Frida had seen him approach the shed, sitting high on his carriage like someone out of Victorian England, she had felt oddly homesick. The carriage, choked with discarded furniture, car parts, crates of produce, and even a dollhouse, reminded her of those rundown trucks in L.A., filled with junk. There was always a hand-painted phone number on the side, to call if you needed something picked up and discarded. When she was younger, it had been a job for illegal immigrants, but over the years, more businesses like it began popping up, with all kinds of drivers. Near the end, they’d begun to disappear; you had to have a safe place to store your truck and its discards, or else all of it would be looted, and almost no one had that.

  When she told August about these trucks, he had shrugged. “I’ve been out here a long time,” he said. But what was a long time? She’d wondered if he’d struck out for the wilderness before the earthquakes. At the time, Frida had been seventeen, Micah fifteen, and L.A. never recovered from the destruction. Nor had San Francisco, six months later. In the year following, the film industry—the kind that paid Dada, at least—left L.A. altogether, and the rich fled to the new Communities popping up everywhere. Hilda took to crying a lot and saying, “What now? What now?”

  If August hadn’t seen the reports of wildfires in Colorado and Utah or, later, those snowstorms across the Midwest and the East Coast or the rainstorms north of here, he would have no idea how battered the world was. And besides, would they have bothered a man who only whispered his secrets to a mule?

  August was wearing what he always wore: a gray sweatshirt and sweatpants, the pants pushed to his calves like britches; white tube socks; and the black lace-up boots of a soldier. His head was covered, as always, with a black beanie, and his wraparound sunglasses shielded his eyes. He never took them off. Frida hated how she saw herself in their reflection, which kept her from looking him in the eyes. His intention, she presumed.

  He nodded at Frida but returned his gaze to Cal, who had begun walking backward.

  “I gotta run while the sun’s still up,” Cal was saying. “She’ll take care of everything.”

  “I’d expect that,” August said.

  Frida was close enough now that she could greet him properly. Always a handshake.

  “Nice to see you,” he said. “You look well.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I feel great.”

  Cal looked away; he had the worst poker face.

  Once Cal was gone, August invited Frida to come around to the back of the carriage. “I have a few new things,” he said, and climbed up. Frida remained where she was. No one was allowed up on the carriage except August.

  “Do you have any garlic?” she asked. “Cal wants to plant some. For flavoring, obviously. But also to ward off colds.” This might be a perfect segue, she thought. Something about how she’d need to stay healthy, that the stakes were higher now that she might be pregnant.

  “Let me check,” August said, and rummaged through his belongings, which, today, included an old bicycle, missing its seat, and a pile of tarps, one of them already shredded to confetti. A moment later, August was grinning. “I’ve got Vicodin.”

  Had she heard him right? She’d never been much of a pill popper—as a teenager she’d preferred weed above all else—but she imagined the Vicodin sliding down her throat, on its way to making her feel good. A buzz: that’s what she wanted.

  “Did I hear you right?”

  “I knew that’d get your attention. Always took you for a party girl.” August pulled something from a mesh bag and stuffed it into his pocket. He climbed out of the carriage. “I’ve got a couple of the big boys. Seven hundred fifty milligrams.”

  Frida nodded. If she was pregnant—what would happen? “I thought the Communities had killed the drug trade.” She remembered reading about it back in L.A.; the Communities were so safe and clean, even smoking a cigarette could get you exiled. That, and not paying your membership fees. “But I guess they’ve got to have a black market.”

  August just raised an eyebrow; he never wanted to talk about the world beyond.

  “I guess Vicodin was always legal with a prescription,” Frida said, keeping her eyes on him. “And those Community bastards still have access to everything that makes you feel better. Have a cold, call the doctor, et cetera, et cetera. Right?”

  August was silent.

  “What are you asking for it?” Frida asked finally.

  “I knew it,” he said. “You love pills.”

  “I was always more slacker stoner than glamorous party girl. A pothead through and through.” She shrugged. “But I could use a little fun.”

  “But you don’t have any pain,” he asked, “do you?”

  “Define pain,” she said, and laughed. But he remained serious, and she shook her head. “I told you, it sounds like fun.”

  He said the pills would cost her. After a couple of offers, he finally accepted a bra, barely worn when they had moved here and almost forgotten. Frida knew Cal would never notice its absence.

  “I’ll throw in the garlic for free,” August said, reaching into the carriage to stuff the bra into a duffel bag. “The bulbs I’ve got are a little shriveled, don’t know if they’ll take anyway.”

  “A steal!” Frida cried. She wouldn’t have to tell Cal a thing.

  From
his pocket, August pulled an amber-colored plastic vial, the prescription information torn off. “Put out your hand,” he said. He shook out two white pills onto her palm.

  “Two seems a bit much,” she said.

  He handed her a canteen. “It’s water,” he said, and Frida threw one of the pills back before she could change her mind. She bit the second pill in two and downed half of it. The other half she handed back to August.

  “Gee, thanks,” he said, but slipped it back into the vial.

  Frida was ready for the high to slink upon her. It reminded of her being a teenager, when she’d nurse joints until the world felt different. Once she was rightly stoned, she’d go and make dessert. By high school, baking had become a kind of obsession. She’d plunge her hand into a bowl of silky, sifted flour, so high she thought she was communing with the stuff, and she couldn’t wait to taste the cake at the end. She liked to bake all night, and at some point her mother would walk in and tell her to finish up, it was time to sleep. She often missed her morning classes, and her mother was too crazed to even notice.

  “Do you always have drugs to trade?” Frida asked. Already, she felt the world going loose and dreamy.

  August shook his head. “Rarely, and if I do, it’s this playground stuff.”

  “I do feel like a kid again, even if this isn’t weed.”

  She closed her eyes, opened them.

  “Don’t tell Cal, okay?” she said.

  “Tell him what?” he asked, and she caught her reflection in his glasses. She looked drawn and tired. Jesus, what was she doing? Endangering the life of her child? Oh, Frida, she told herself. Relax.

  They were standing on the other side of the carriage now. She put her palm on the mare. She felt a peace emanating from the center of her body. A mellow.

  “I was much less tired looking when Cal and I met.”

  She wanted to complain about their stupid fight, tell someone, but from August’s pause she could tell he wouldn’t care to hear any of that. She’d wait him out.

  “How did you two meet?” he finally asked.

  His question was innocuous—maybe he wasn’t really interested in the answer—but now she would have to talk about Micah.

  “Through my brother,” she said. “They were roommates in college.” But Plank wasn’t just any college, and that would need explaining, too.

  “Your brother. Huh.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Older or younger?”

  “He’s dead.” She hadn’t meant to say it aloud, and that was probably obvious to August, who, for a moment, remained silent.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She didn’t want to answer, but she knew she would, and that she’d tell him everything.

  “He was a suicide bomber,” she said.

  “Shit.”

  She could tell he was truly surprised. Perhaps August had been a vagabond at the edge of civilization for so long that, for him, history was news.

  It was true: Micah had strapped dynamite to his chest and blown himself up. He had killed thirty-one people and injured many others. Everything else about him was merely postscript, and the same probably went for Frida. She was the sister of a suicide bomber, the guy who blew himself up at the Hollywood and Highland mall, the man who had yelled, “Listen!” before pushing the button that set off the timer, which set off the explosion.

  “He was the first to do it in L.A.,” she said, “which made him…notable.”

  After Micah, she explained, people were killed at the supermarket, at all the other malls, at gas stations. Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Boston, D.C., Chicago, Memphis. The good cities, all of them rendered violent and terrifying by men and women who martyred themselves in the name of—what?

  “I thought I got over it,” she said.

  “But you didn’t,”

  “Right, I didn’t. Not really. I put on a brave face, you know? For my parents.”

  “Understandable,” he said.

  “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him.” She paused. “Cal brought him up this morning. That’s why he’s on my mind, I guess.”

  Maybe now she’d tell August about her possible pregnancy. He’d be especially nice, maybe offer her some free stuff. Or he might be mad she’d taken the Vicodin. Cal certainly would be.

  The pills were doing their job. Her nose was tingling, and the space above her upper lip had started to itch. Her tongue felt a little thick, and so did the air. Things seemed so calm; it was as if the whole world had slowed.

  She thought she could sense her parents, Hilda and Dada, nearby, as if they’d just gone into the house to get something.

  After Micah died, Hilda wouldn’t come out of her bedroom. She started to stink, and her hair hung in greasy strips around her sagging face. She kept refreshing the news pages, trolling for articles about Micah. She would leave anonymous comments, sometimes trashing her own son, calling him evil, sometimes celebrating what he’d done. She used all kinds of usernames, played all kinds of roles, became other people, told Frida it helped somehow. Dada didn’t go into the room very often, and Frida had to take care of everything. Two years later, her father had called her the traitor, for planning to leave L.A., for planning to leave them. He wouldn’t forgive her for abandoning the family. He had already forgiven Micah.

  August cleared his throat, and Frida shook herself back to the present. She realized she hadn’t said anything for some time.

  “Sorry.”

  “I read somewhere about Iran, back in the day,” August said. “They had these backpacks. For kids, you know? Decorated with pictures of suicide bombers like they were SpongeBob. Remember that old cartoon?”

  Frida shook her head. “My brother was in the Group.”

  August squinted, like he was trying to figure out what that meant. Then he said, “Was he one of those pissed-off students?”

  So August hadn’t been gone so long; he knew what the Group was. According to Micah, the L.A. contingent had emerged a year after the earthquake, mostly college students who had been left with insurmountable debt and no way to pay it back. Nobody knew about them back then, or they did, but they didn’t care. In the beginning, the Group was concerned that the city was still in shambles: collapsed houses and condemned schools everywhere, and the 101 severed in two at the 110. The Group couldn’t believe the rich were complaining that their own neighborhoods weren’t getting fixed fast enough, especially when it seemed like the only areas of the city that functioned at all were the affluent ones. A few of the founders were interested in politically motivated performance art; it was a means to get attention, they argued, a more interesting way to express their dissatisfaction. That was the theory, at least. Half a year later, the first Community opened, and people still hadn’t heard of the Group. It had taken a long time for anyone to notice them.

  A few months before Micah’s death, Frida had convinced him to come over. She told him Cal would be at work. They’d gotten drunk on the bathtub gin he’d brought in his jacket pocket. Micah had insisted they enjoy it in the alley below their unit, and Frida complied because she never got to see him and she didn’t want to scare him off. By then, her brother had become very particular about how he spent his time.

  It was on that visit that Micah had told Frida the Group’s origin story. She hadn’t even asked; in her memory, he took a sip from his flask, leaned against the stucco wall of the neighboring apartment complex, and just started talking.

  “A year after the quake,” he said, “some wealthy douche bags took their stupid Range Rovers or whatever and surrounded an ambulance. They wouldn’t let it south of Pico. Do you remember that?”

  Frida didn’t. She wondered if this was more legend than history, but of course she didn’t say anything.

  Micah went on: “Those assholes said whoever was dying hadn’t paid for those services.” He snorted and passed her the flask, which she took, grateful. “They didn’t want to share, didn’t care about a
nyone but themselves.” He smiled then, his eyes glistening. “The Group was born right after that, to fight that kind selfishness, to keep people empowered.” When Frida said nothing, he said, “Or at least amused.”

  “‘Amused’?” Frida said. “But how?”

  “A couple of the founders were into theater and performance theory, shit like that. Their early stunts were a little silly—I’ll be the first to cop to that. Sure, maybe skipping around in a Mexican wrestling mask gets more attention than a regular old protest, but it’s hard to be taken seriously when you act like that. But, then again, maybe that’s what’s kept us from being shut down.” He paused. “Nobody saw us as a threat.”

  Micah reached for the flask, and once Frida handed it to him, he slipped it into his jacket and said, “Time to go.” He pushed himself away from the wall, gave her a cursory hug, and left. Like that. She hadn’t told Cal about the visit, but she was drunk and cagey when he got home, and he’d guessed.

  The Vicodin was bringing this all back vividly. She shook her head at August. “Micah wasn’t one of the Group’s founders, but, yeah, you’re thinking of the right people. He only got involved after he finished school. He didn’t have debts like the first members, but I guess he had that same…” She searched for the right word. “Anger?” Frida paused. “By then, you know, things were a lot worse.”

  August’s blank expression suggested that, no, he didn’t know. “What about you?” he asked.

  “Me? I wasn’t in the Group.”

  A bird cried in the trees somewhere.

  Usually, she was angry at her little brother for believing that strongly in the Group and its edicts: that money only poisoned people, that government was just bureaucracy, corruption, and oppression, that working wouldn’t save them, only engagement would. Micah was always using that kind of language near the end—engagement, engaged. The Group didn’t have a manifesto, or if it did she wouldn’t know; it was so secretive by the end. But some of the members acted like a single unified truth was leading them forward. How could her brother value that stupid truth more than the blood pumping through his veins, his own beautiful, delicate joints, the intricate machinery of his breath?