Pacific Edge: Three Californias (Wild Shore Triptych)

by Kim Stanley Robinson

  I stared at him.

  Think about it, he said.

  So I thought about it. And later I met with some of his colleagues, and talked about this new party, and met more people, and talked some more. And I saw that there is work here that I can do.

  I’m going to stay. There’s a job and I’ll take it. Work for Pam, too. Talked to her on the ship-to-shore, and she sounded pleased. A job, after all, and her kind of work. My kind of work.

  It didn’t take all that much to convince me, really. Because I have to do something. Not just write a utopia, but fight for it in the real world—I have to, I’m compelled to, and talking with one of the people here late one night I suddenly understood why: because I grew up in utopia, I did. California when I was a child was a child’s paradise, I was healthy, well fed, well clothed, well housed, I went to school and there were libraries with all the world in them and after school I played in orange groves and in Little League and in the band and down at the beach and every day was an adventure, and when I came home my mother and father created a home as solid as rock, the world seemed solid! And it comes to this, do you understand me—I grew up in utopia.

  But I didn’t. Not really. Because while I was growing up in my sunny seaside home much of the world was in misery, hungry, sick, living in cardboard shacks, killed by soldiers or their own police. I had been on an island. In a pocket utopia. It was the childhood of someone born into the aristocracy, and understanding that I understood the memory of my childhood differently; but still I know what it was like, I lived it and I know! And everyone should get to know that, not in the particulars, of course, but in the general outline, in the blessing of a happy childhood, in the lifelong sense of security and health.

  So I am going to work for that. And if—if! if someday the whole world reaches utopia, then that dream California will become a precursor, a sign of things to come, and my childhood is redeemed. I may never know which it will be, it might not be clear until after we’re dead, but the future will judge us! They will look back and judge us, as aristocrats’ refuge or emerging utopia, and I want utopia, I want that redemption and so I’m going to stay here and fight for it, because I was there and I lived it and I know. It was a perfect childhood.

  * * *

  Kevin was working at Oscar’s place when he heard the news. He was up on the roof finishing the seal and trim around the bedroom skylights, and Pedro, Ramona’s father, came zooming up on his hill bike, skidding to a stop on the sidewalk. “Kevin?” he called.

  “Yeah, Pedro! What’s up?”

  Serious look, hands on hips. “Get down here, I’ve got bad news.”

  Kevin hustled down the ladder, heart thumping, thinking something’s happened to her, she’s hurt and wants me there.

  “It’s Tom,” Pedro said as he reached the ground. Kevin’s heart leaped in a different direction. Just the look on Pedro’s face told him. Deep furrow between his eyebrows. He grasped Kevin’s upper arm. “Their ship was wrecked in a storm, and Tom—he was washed overboard.”

  “He what?”

  It took some explaining, and Pedro didn’t have all the particulars. Gradually it dawned on Kevin that they didn’t matter. Killed by a storm. Lost at sea. Details didn’t matter.

  He sat on a workhorse. Oscar’s front yard was cluttered with their stuff, dusty in the sun. He couldn’t believe it.

  “I thought ships didn’t sink these days.” Proud Ganesh flying away from Newport’s jetties.

  “It didn’t really sink, but a lot of compartments flooded, and they judged it safer to get out into the lifeboats in case it did sink. It’s still out there wrecked, dead in the water. I guess it was a typhoon, and they got hit by a load of lumber, tore the ship all up.”

  Pedro was holding his arm again. Looking up Kevin saw on his face the strain of telling him, the bunched jaw muscles. He looked as much like Ramona as a short gray-haired sixty-year-old man could, and suddenly a spasm of grief arrowed through Kevin’s numbness. “Thanks for telling me.” Pedro just shook his head. Kevin swallowed. From his Adam’s apple down he was numb. He still had a putty knife in his hand. It was Pedro’s kindness he felt most, it was that that would make him weep. He stared at the dirt, feeling the hand on his arm.

  Pedro left.

  He stood in Oscar’s yard, looking around. Working alone this afternoon. Was that better or worse? He couldn’t decide. He was a lot more solitary than he used to be. He climbed back onto the roof, returned to work on the trim around the skylights. Putty. He sat on the roof, stared at it. When he was a kid he and Tom had hiked in the hills together, sun just up and birds in the trees. Bushwhacking while Tom claimed to be on an animal trail. They’d get lost and Kevin would say, “Animal trail, right Grandpa?” Seven years old and Tom laughing like crazy. Once Kevin tripped and skinned both knees bad and he was about to scream when Tom grabbed him up and exclaimed like it was a great deed, an extraordinary opportunity, and pulled up his own pantlegs to reveal the scars on his knees, then had taken out his Swiss army knife and nicked a scar on each knee, touched their four wounds together and then actually sucked blood from Kevin’s shins, which had shocked Kevin, and spit it in four directions rattling out the nonsense words of an ancient Indian blood oath, until Kevin was strutting around glowing with pride at his stinging knees, badge of the highest distinction, mark of manhood and oneness with the hills.

  * * *

  That evening and the next day, the whole unwanted raft of condolences. He preferred swimming alone. Laps at the pool, thousands of yards.

  He made calls to Jill and his parents. Jill gone as usual. He left a message, feeling bad. He got his mother on screen: weird moment of power and helplessness combined as he gave her the news. Suddenly he appreciated what Pedro had done, to come over and tell him like that. A hard thing to do. The little face on the screen, so familiar—shocked by the news, twisted with grief. After an awkward brief conversation they promised each other they would talk again soon.

  Later that day he watched Doris cook a dinner for the house, when it was his turn. “You know we don’t have any way to find those friends of his,” she said. “I hope they’ll get in touch with us.”

  “Yeah.”

  She frowned.

  * * *

  He was angry at the crew of Ganesh, angry at Nadezhda. Then she reached him on the phone and he saw her, arm in a sling, grim, distracted. He recalled what Tom had told him of her life, a tough one it sounded. She told him what she knew of the wreck. Four other crew members missing, apparently they had been trapped in a forward compartment and had tried to make their way back over the deck. Tom had disappeared in the chaos of the foundering, no one sure what had happened to him. Disappeared. Everyone had thought he was in one of the other lifeboats. She went on until Kevin stopped her. He asked her to come back to El Modena, he wanted her to return, wanted to see her. She said that she would, but she looked tired, hurt, empty. When the call was over he couldn’t be sure if she would come or not. And then he really believed in the disaster. Tom was dead.

  * * *

  They finished the work on Oscar’s house a couple of weeks later, in the burning heat of late September. They walked around it in their work boots and their greased, creased, and sawdusted work-shorts, brown as nuts, checking out every little point, the seal on the suntek and cloudgel, the paint, the computer (ask it odd questions it said “Sorry I fail the Turing test very quickly”), everything. Standing out in the middle of the street and looking at it, they shook Oscar’s hand and laughed: it looked like a clear tent draped over one or two small dwellings, red and blue brick facades covered by new greenery. Oscar did a dance shuffle to the front door, singing “I’m the Sheik, of Ar—a—bee” in a horrible baritone. “And your love, belongs, to meee,” pirouetting like the hippopotami in Fantasia, mugging Valentino-like swoops at Jody and Gabriela, who squeaked “Don’t—stop—don’t—stop” in unison, pushing him back and forth between them.

  Inside they split up and wandered thr
ough the rooms, looking things over. Kevin came across Oscar and Hank standing together in the central atrium. Hank said, “These black pillars are neat. They give it an Egyptian Roman wrapped in plastic look that I like.”

  Oscar looked around dazed. “Egyptian Roman, wrapped in plastic,” he murmured. “I always dreamed of it.”

  Kevin went back out front to get a beer from his bike basket.

  Ramona appeared down on Laurinda, pedaled up to him. He waved and put down the dumpie, feeling strange. They had talked briefly several days before, after the news about Tom came in. Condolences.

  “Hi,” she said, “How are you?”

  “Fine. We’re just having a little celebration here.”

  “All done?”

  “Yep.”

  “Hopefully Oscar will have a housewarming?”

  “I think so, yeah. This is just an informal thing, the inside’s still a mess.”

  She nodded. Pursed her lips. The furrow between her eyebrows appeared, reminding Kevin sharply of Pedro. “You okay?” Ramona said.

  “Oh yeah, yeah.”

  “Can … can I have a talk with you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Now’s not a bad time?”

  “No, no. Here, let’s walk up the street, if you want.”

  She nodded gratefully, eyes to the ground. They walked up the bike path, her bike between them. She seemed nervous, awkward, uncomfortable—as she had been, in fact, ever since her birthday. It made Kevin weary. Looking at her, the long stride, the sun bouncing off glossy black hair, he felt an ache of desire for her company—just that, nothing more. That he would lose even her friendship. “Listen, Ramona, it’s all right.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not all right.” Voice muffled. “I hate what’s happened, Kevin, I wish it never would have.”

  “No!” Kevin said, shocked. “Don’t say that! It’s like saying…”

  He didn’t know how to finish, but she nodded, still looking down. All in a rush she said, “I know, I’m glad too, but I didn’t ever want to hurt you and if it means I did and we can’t be friends anymore, then I can’t help but wish it hadn’t happened! I mean, I love you—I love our friendship I mean. I want us to be able to be friends!”

  “It’s okay, Ramona. We can be friends.”

  She shook her head, unsatisfied. Kevin rolled his eyes, for the sake of himself alone, for his own internal audience (when had it appeared?). Here he was listening to himself say things again, completely surprised by what he heard coming out of his own mouth.

  “Even if—even if…” She stopped walking, looked at him straight. “Even if Alfredo and I get married?”

  Oh.

  So that was it.

  Well, Kevin thought, go ahead and say something. Amaze yourself again.

  “You’re getting married?”

  She nodded, looked down. “Yes. We want to. It’s been our whole lives together, you know, and we want to … do it all. Be a family, and…”

  Kevin waited, but she appeared to have finished. His turn. “Well,” he said. He thought to himself, you make a hell of a crowbar. “That’s quite a bit of news,” he said. “I mean, congratulations.”

  “Oh, Kevin—”

  “No, no,” he said, reaching out toward her, hand stopping; he couldn’t bring himself to touch her, not even on the forearm. “I mean it. I want you to be happy, and I know you two are … a couple. You know. And I want us to go on being friends. I mean I really do. That’s been the worst part of this, almost, I mean you’ve been acting so uncomfortable with me—”

  “I have been! I’ve felt terrible!”

  He took a deep breath. This was something he had needed to hear, apparently; it lifted some weights in him. Just under the collarbones he felt lighter somehow. “I know, but…” He shrugged. Definitely lighter.

  “I was afraid you would hate me!” she said, voice sharp with distress.

  “No, no.” He laughed, sort of: three quick exhalations. “I wouldn’t ever do that.”

  “I know it’s selfish of me, but I want to be your friend.”

  “Alfredo might not like it. He might be jealous.”

  “No. He knows what it means to me. Besides, he feels terrible himself. He feels like if he had been different before…”

  “I know. I talked to him, a little.”

  She nodded. “So he’ll understand. In fact I think he’ll feel a lot better about it if we aren’t … unfriendly.”

  “Yeah. Well…” It seemed he could make the two of them feel better than ever. Great. And himself?

  Suddenly he realized that what they were saying now wouldn’t really matter. That years would pass and they would drift apart, inevitably. No matter what they said. The futility of talk.

  “You’ll come to the wedding?”

  He blinked. “You want me to?”

  “Of course! I mean, if you want to.”

  He took a breath, let it out. A part of his mind under clamps sprang free and he wanted to say Don’t, Ramona, please, what about me? Quick image of the long swing no. He couldn’t afford to think of it. Find it, catch it, clamp it back down, lock it away. Didn’t happen. Never. Never never never never never.

  She was saying something he hadn’t heard. His chest hurt, his diaphragm was tight. Suddenly he couldn’t stand the pretense any more, he looked back down the street, said “Listen, Ramona, I think maybe I should get back. We can talk more later?”

  She nodded quickly. Reached out for his forearm and stopped, just as he had with her. Perhaps they would never be able to touch again.

  He was walking back down the street. He was standing in front of Oscar’s. Numbness. Ah, what a relief. No pleasure like the absence of pain.

  Hank was around the side of the house, loading up his bike’s trailer. “Hey, where’d you go?”

  “Ramona came by. We were talking.”

  “Oh?”

  “She and Alfredo are going to get married.”

  “Ah ha!” Hank regarded him with his ferocious squint. “Well. You’re having quite a week, aren’t you.” Finally he reached into his trailer. “Here, bro, have another beer.”

  * * *

  Alfredo and Matt’s proposition got onto the monthly ballot, and one night it appeared on everyone’s TV screens, a long and complex thing, all the plans laid out. People interested typed in their codes and voted. Just under six thousand of the town’s ten cared enough to vote, and just over three thousand of them voted in favor of the proposition. Development as described to be built on Rattlesnake Hill.

  * * *

  “Okay,” Alfredo said at the next council meeting, “let’s get back to this matter of rezoning Rattlesnake Hill. Mary?”

  Ingratiating as ever, Mary read out the planning commission’s latest draft, fitted exactly to the proposition.

  “Discussion?” Alfredo said when she was done.

  Silence. Kevin stirred uncomfortably. Why was this falling to him? There were hundreds of people in town opposed to the plan, thousands. If only the indifferent ones had voted!

  But Jean Aureliano was not opposed to the plan. Nor her party. So it was up to the people who really cared. The room was hot, people looked tired. Kevin opened his mouth to speak.

  But it was Doris who spoke first, in her hardest voice. “This plan is a selfish one thrust on the community by people more interested in their own profit than in the welfare of the town.”

  “Are you talking about me?” Alfredo said.

  “Of course I’m talking about you,” Doris snapped. “Or did you think I had in mind the parties behind you putting up the capital? But they don’t live here, and they don’t care. It’s only profits to them, more profits, more power. But the people who live here do care, or they should. That land has been kept free of construction through all the years of rampant development, to destroy it now would be disgusting. It would be a wanton act of destruction.”

  “I don’t agree,” Alfredo said, voice smooth. But he had been stung to s
peech, and his eyes glittered angrily. “And obviously the majority of the town’s voters don’t agree.”

  “We know that,” Doris said, voice as sharp as a nail. “But what we have never heard yet from you is a coherent explanation of why this proposed center of yours should be located on the hill instead of somewhere else in the town, or in some other town entirely.”

  Alfredo went through his reasons again. The prestige, the esthetic attraction of it, the increased town shares. On each point Doris assailed him bitterly. “You can’t make us into Irvine or Laguna, Alfredo, if you want that you should move there.”

  Alfredo defended himself irritably. The other council members pitched in with their opinions. Doris mentioned Tom, started to tell them what Tom had been working on when he died—dangerous territory, Kevin thought, since they had never heard from Tom’s friends. And since much of the material had been taken from Avending by Doris herself. But Alfredo cut her off before she got to any of that. “It was a great loss to all of us when Tom died. You can’t bring him into this in a partisan way, he was simply one of the town’s most important citizens, and in a way he belonged to all of us. I think it very well might be appropriate to name any center built on Rattlesnake Hill after him.”

  Kevin laughed out loud.

  Doris cut through it, almost shouting: “When Tom Barnard died he was doing his damndest to stop this thing! To suggest naming the center after him when he opposed it is obscene!”

  Alfredo said, “He never told me he opposed it.”

  “He never told you anything,” Doris snarled.

  Alfredo hit the tabletop, stung at last. “I’m tired of this. You’re getting into the area of slander when you imply that there’s illegal capital behind this venture—”

  “Sue me!” Doris shouted. “You can’t afford to sue me, because then your funding would be revealed for sure!” Kevin nudged her with his knee, but as far as he could tell she didn’t even feel it. “Go ahead and sue me!”