California: A Novel

by Edan Lepucki

  It didn’t take long for Frida to understand that Anika was a fine baker, probably a great one, and that she didn’t need any help from Frida. Anika kept inviting Frida back to the kitchen, not for assistance, but because she wanted her there. She was after information, and Frida had it. For the first time, Frida was valuable.

  They started out small. Anika asked, “What was it that Sandy named her second child again?” and Frida said, “Garrett.”

  “A boy.” Anika paused. “How old?”

  “He’s four. Was. He was four when he died.”

  Anika nodded.

  She waited for Anika to ask another question, and when Anika didn’t, she realized it was her turn to ask something. It was that easy.

  “How old was Jane when they left?”

  “We’d celebrated her third birthday a few months before. I made her a belt I sewed from an old dress. It was purple, and adjustable because she was growing so quickly.” She smiled. “Everyone gave her presents, and we sang all the songs she loved.”

  Frida didn’t respond immediately, and when Anika looked away, Frida felt the delicate connection between them tremble, threaten to snap. Frida realized she should have pretended to have seen Jane wearing the belt, but now it was too late to lie; Anika wouldn’t fall for it.

  During that evening’s Church meeting, Micah told everyone that Cal was helping him in the mornings, as if everyone didn’t already know. He also announced that he was pushing back the Vote until all the winter preparations were finished and August had returned from his latest trade rounds. August seemed to have left unexpectedly, but Frida wasn’t sure how often he usually came and went.

  “This will give you all more time to consider the decision,” Micah said, and from the last row of pews someone yelled, “More time to eat that killer bread!” As far as Frida could tell, everyone laughed, even her brother. Anika grinned at her from across the aisle.

  After the meeting, when she and Cal were lying in bed, Cal assured her that no one had complained about the postponement. “Everyone wants August here—his opinion matters.”

  “Where did he go this time?” she asked.

  Cal said he didn’t know the details.

  Was that true? He still hadn’t told her what happened during the meetings.

  “You’re so CIA,” Frida teased. Let him be sly, she thought. He had no idea what she had planned; he had overlooked Anika, and Frida’s mornings with her. Men were stupid to forget what good sleuths women could be.

  The next morning, Anika brought a bag of coconut from the root cellar, along with the now-familiar baking crate. “This must have fallen behind the shelf,” she said, and handed it to Frida. It was a plastic bag knotted closed, as if from a bulk bin, the flakes lab-coat white. Smelled like Thai soup, or like a high school girl’s shampoo.

  “I love coconut cake,” Anika said, and took the bag from Frida. She shook it as if it were a snow globe. “There’s a whole box of these bags downstairs. I totally forgot. August got them last time.”

  “Last time what?”

  “On his last trip, months ago. To Pines.”

  Pines. Anika didn’t even stumble over the word.

  Frida didn’t know much about Pines, except that it was one of the earlier Communities to be established, not long after Bronxville, Scottsdale, Amazon, and Walmart. It was the first to be named not for its original city or neighborhood, nor after the corporation that had put up the money to build its hospitals and schools, its borders and security teams. Its name was meant to summon images of nature and greenery. “And also stability,” Toni had told her once. Pines was one of the smallest Communities, but it had a decent amount of money. Or it used to.

  “I see,” Frida said to Anika. She wondered if this was what Cal had been learning in the meetings.

  With rounded cheeks, Anika blew the air out of her lungs. “We give August a list every couple of months, and he returns a few weeks later with everything we’ve asked for. Or almost everything, at least. It’s been like this ever since Micah got here, though how he persuaded Pines to work with us, I have no idea. I wish I knew. Actually, no, I don’t wish that. I don’t want to know anything.”

  “Ignorance is bliss?” Frida asked.

  “Something like that.”

  So that was how it worked. August went into a Community and returned bearing gifts. Was it like driving a car or sending an email, not having the least interest in how the science worked? Might as well be magic, because even if someone explained it to you, it still wouldn’t make sense. Or was there another reason Anika preferred to be kept in the dark? Maybe it was dangerous to know how the Land worked.

  Micah had once hated the Communities, and now he was trading with them. Frida wondered if Cal had pointed this out in the meetings.

  Without speaking, Frida poured the bag of coconut into a bowl Anika had handed her, and swirled her fingers through the flakes. She’d never cared much for the taste, but she loved how it looked: as if a cake had grown fur. She imagined August buying the coconut from a supermarket in Pines. Did he use money? If so, where did he get it from? Why did they let him in? Were there even markets there?

  Frida tried to remember what Toni might have told her, but she came up empty. Everyone on the Land had to know how August procured the supplies, but only a few would understand the process intimately. Cal might have learned about Pines days ago and kept it all from Frida, just like he’d hoarded Bo’s story about the Spikes. There was no telling what he might keep from his little wife.

  Frida had always been fascinated by the Communities, the secret life behind their walls, their riches and beauty all conjecture. In the first couple of years after they opened, Frida had conjectured a lot. L.A. was a festering wound, but just a few miles away men and women slept peacefully on canopied beds in large rooms in large houses. At eighteen, Frida thought canopy beds were so glamorous. A few years later, when Toni started telling her about the Communities she’d researched, Frida had eaten up every detail: there were bikes everywhere, and helmets were required; residents had to pass a rigorous physical exam to gain entry; each child was sent a toy on their birthday. In a Community, someone flipped a switch, and a light turned on.

  “You really don’t want to know what goes on in Pines?” Frida asked.

  “No, I don’t.” Anika raised her eyebrow. “Curiosity leads to trouble. You’ll learn one of these days. What made you curious about the Land? Why did you come here?”

  Frida had already told Anika about how she’d met Sandy and about her first visit to the Millers’ house. Anika knew that Frida and Cal had been living there when they decided to come to the Land.

  “Was it August?” Anika said. “He can be charming.”

  Frida laughed. “We didn’t know he was here. We knew nothing about you guys.” She described what Bo had told Cal: his story of him and Sandy visiting the Spikes, how they had turned back in fear.

  Anika seemed confused. “So Bo acted like he didn’t know us? He lied?”

  “He didn’t tell me, he told Cal. And Cal kept it from me for months and months.”

  “Men are asses,” Anika said. “Stubborn.”

  Frida laughed again and smoothed the side of the last cake with a butter knife. They’d made five so that everyone on the Land could have a piece.

  “He claimed he was just trying to protect me.” As she spoke, an anger bit into her so deep she couldn’t say anything else. Cal would withhold the world from her in the name of safety.

  “Oh, I don’t doubt it,” Anika replied. “But that’s always their reason. It was probably Bo’s, too, because he was never a liar when I knew him.”

  Something in Anika’s voice made Frida nervous. “What happened back then?” she asked. It was her turn for information, but she knew this was too broad a question, the parameters for answering recklessly wide.

  Frida waited. 10-9-8-7-6-

  “Jane had friends here,” Anika said.

  “She did?”

 
Jane had friends here. Jane had friends here. As she put the cakes in the oven, the words knocked deliriously around her brain like the lyrics to a pop song. Anika meant other kids, didn’t she? She had to. Or was it simply code for having allies? Did someone not want the Millers, and Jane in particular, to leave? Anika could have merely been talking about herself. She had obviously adored that little girl.

  Frida’s stomach seized. It was as if she’d been struck with motion sickness, like she’d been reading in a car—she still remembered that feeling. She didn’t take another step, telling herself that if she remained perfectly still, she wouldn’t be sick.

  She put her hand over her mouth as if to stop whatever might happen next. She must have looked green because Anika was right at her back. Frida vomited as she stepped into the small hallway off the kitchen.

  “Sorry” was all she could think to say.

  As soon as Frida had wiped her mouth with the back of her arm, Anika put her hand on Frida’s forehead, then the back of her neck, asking if she felt hot, or cold, or a combination of both.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “It must have been the stuffy air in here.”

  If Anika was disgusted by what had just happened, she didn’t show it. Frida was grateful.

  Anika asked, “Does this happen a lot?”

  Micah wanted her to keep her pregnancy a secret, but maybe the baby didn’t want to cooperate. Thank goodness she wasn’t showing yet.

  Frida realized that Anika was judging her body: its strength, its health, its tendency to collapse into illness. It was how August used to treat her and Cal whenever he came to trade.

  “Sometimes I get overheated,” Frida said. “That’s all.”

  “You should rest,” Anika said. She nodded to a door across hall. “My room is right there. You can lie down. I’ll clean this up and get you some water.”

  Frida could have hugged Anika right then, not only because she was being so nice but also because she was letting her inside her room, as if they were actually friends.

  “Thank you,” she said instead.

  Alone on Anika’s bed, Frida waited for her stomach to mutiny again. But the nausea had passed as quickly as it arrived. What a capricious little fetus.

  So you’re in there, Frida thought. If a baby could absorb nutrients from its mother’s bloodstream, then it must be able to intuit her thoughts, too. What number am I thinking of?

  She told herself, Five, and she imagined the baby holding up its paddle hand.

  “I never doubted it,” she said aloud, her voice lilting into song. If she wasn’t careful, she’d soon be gaga-gooing to the tiny thing, whose heart couldn’t be larger than a freckle.

  She remembered Hilda saying that forty weeks was ample time to fall in love with a person you hadn’t officially met yet, though when Micah was born, Dada said Hilda had been so tired and overwhelmed she’d beg him to take both kids off her hands. “Just for ten minutes, please,” she’d say. “They’re killing me.”

  “I hope there’s just one of you in there,” Frida whispered now.

  She sat up and took in her surroundings. It was very similar to her own room, one of the few she had seen on the Land with a door. Many of the residences on the Land were wide open, without even a curtain to provide privacy. Fatima had given that up for them, which now struck Frida as extremely generous. But even their door didn’t have a knob, and here was Anika’s, with a knob made of metal, the kind Frida imagined in old Victorian mansions. About half a foot up from the knob was a modern-day lock, just like the one Cal and Frida had had on their door in L.A.

  How had Anika snagged that?

  She looked around for anything else unusual, but there was just a bed and a child’s step stool with a candle atop it. The single window was covered with a piece of sheer cloth; perhaps Anika would board it up herself when the cold became truly unbearable. Or, more likely, she’d suffer through the winter nights, teeth chattering. The closet did not have a door, but it didn’t matter because the only thing in it was a pile of clothes, including the overalls Anika had been wearing a few days before.

  Frida realized the nausea had distracted her from the best part of Anika’s room—it was right underneath her. Unlike the straw monstrosity she and Cal slept on, Anika had a twin-sized mattress, practically new, maybe twenty years old. How had she gotten dibs on it? Anika must be favored. Not Micah-level special, but special nonetheless. The headboard was modern, too, cheap that way, made of a light, hollow metal, probably from Ikea, which had closed when Frida was twelve. “They took their meatballs and went back to Sweden,” Hilda had said wistfully.

  Frida turned onto her back and looked up at the ceiling. It was badly cracked, in worse shape than she expected, and she thought maybe she’d tell Cal about it. Maybe he could get Micah to bring in the construction team. She realized how protective she’d become of Anika. She really cared about her.

  Above her was a drawing. It had been made on a piece of fabric, cotton most likely, or maybe muslin, though Frida couldn’t be sure, torn into a square and stuck to the ceiling with sewing needles. Only a soggy, sagging building would be weak enough to pierce with such flimsy things, Frida thought as she took in the drawing itself. It looked like charcoal, but more likely it was ash. There were two stick figures.

  Jane had friends here. Jane had friends here.

  Frida stood on the bed in order to get a better look. It looked like an adult and a child—both female, with triangles for skirts. To the left of them was a tree and, above them, a smiling sun. A few birds flew across the page, depicted as sure-handed Ms—had every child since the dawn of time learned to draw flying birds this way? Next to the figures was a tiny oval shape with eyes. Was that an animal? Or a baby?

  Frida placed her hand on her stomach, finding her breath. She wanted to yank the drawing from the ceiling, find out more, a name maybe, but she knew she couldn’t.

  Was this a drawing of a mother and her daughter? Did she belong to Anika? Who but a mother would keep something like this?

  Frida would ask her. That’s what Anika wanted; she must. Tomorrow, as they baked, Frida would find out the truth.

  There was a knock on the door, and Frida knew who it was before he stepped inside. Cal looked so clean compared with last week, when he would return from Morning Labor covered in dust and sweat. Now he wore the faded button-down jean shirt he had always loved. Holes in both elbows, but at least tucked in.

  “You okay?” he asked, but not until he’d shut the door firmly behind him. “Anika came to get me.”

  “I’ve got those symptoms you asked for.”

  “I hope Anika doesn’t put two and two together.” He pulled the shirt from his waist, as if home from a long day at the office, and sat on the edge of the bed. “Just in case, Micah’s telling people you used to barf a lot when you were a kid.” He paused. “It’s really happening, isn’t it?”

  She nodded. “I think so.”

  “No one can find out. Not yet.”

  Frida pushed herself up to sitting. “What happens if they do?”

  Cal shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s why we should wait. I’m working on Micah.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “To be honest, I’m not sure. Just trying to subtly persuade him, I guess.”

  Frida didn’t want to laugh, but she couldn’t help it. “My brother can’t be persuaded.”

  “That’s what I told Peter.”

  “You two talk about my brother?”

  Cal nodded.

  “Without him?”

  Cal nodded again. “When we have the opportunity. Peter thinks Micah’s a great leader, but that he needs to be kept in check. His ego, and all that.”

  “And you think you can change him?”

  Cal shrugged. “I guess Peter got him to loosen up. He once stole Micah’s clothes while Micah was taking a shower, then put them on one of the goats. I guess that finally broke your brother. He was buck naked and couldn’t stop laughing. Maybe that
convinced Micah he could think of this place as family.”

  Family. Frida put a hand on Cal’s cheek.

  “Tell me what you did in the meeting today,” she said.

  He smiled, but it looked more like a wince. “You know I can’t.”

  Frida imagined Micah telling Cal about Pines. Her brother would describe in detail how August got inside and what he did once he was there. They were big secrets, she imagined, and they would have to be whispered. Frida couldn’t summon Micah’s words, though. It was like trying to continue a dream after she’d already woken, and she hated that she didn’t know what would happen next. She wanted to know what Cal knew. Didn’t she?

  “You can tell me,” she said. “I’m your wife.”

  He shook his head. “I want to, baby, you know that. But if they find out I did, I would lose the access I’m gaining. You have to understand.”

  “I see.”

  If he wasn’t going to divulge, well, then, neither was she.

  “I can’t,” he said. His words were sweet, but he wasn’t even looking at her. “I crossed my heart and hoped to die.”

  “Stick a needle in your eye?”

  “Is that really what the saying is? Jesus.”

  He was already standing, as if eager to be away from her.

  * * *

  Frida rested all day, and the next morning, when she got up to bake, the Hotel was still dark. She felt fine, thank goodness. Dawn was a ways off. Would morning sickness coincide with the rising of the sun?

  She read the hallway walls with her hands, tiptoeing to the staircase, and wondered what she’d say once she reached the kitchen. She wanted to ask who had drawn that picture. She wanted to ask if Anika had been a mother. Frida wished she could tell Anika that she herself would be one in just a few months. Now, at least, she was certain of the pregnancy. Last night at dinner she’d refused the kale dish, the sight of greens making her queasy, and she’d fallen into bed soon after, as exhausted as she’d ever been. Her body was in this child’s clutches, and he wasn’t—she wasn’t?—letting go.