“Oh honey,” says the woman. “We miss your mom and her mom and dad too.” I nod and wipe my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I just don’t really know anyone up here, I thought I’d say hi.”
“We were just saying we hardly recognize anyone anymore. We live down in Red Bluff most of the year now. We just came up for the Parade and the Cattlewomen’s shindig.” Oh god. The Fourth of July parade. The Cattlewomen’s Association.
“This is Honey,” I say.
“Well hi, little Honey,” the lady says. “Bill, just look at her!” That’s right, his name is Bill.
“Where do you all live now?” Bill asks.
“Well, we live in San Francisco, but it’s a little complicated right now because my husband is Turkish and the government made some mistake with his green card and he’s stuck there while we’re trying to get it figured out.”
“Oh gosh, that’s too bad,” she says.
“Turkish!” the man says and chucks Honey under the chin. “Imagine that!” and I say, “Yep, she’s ah, Honey Mehmetoğlu.” “Well hello, Honey,” he says and smiles kindly.
“Now didn’t you and your mom live somewhere over there,” the woman says. “Yeah, we did for a while,” I say, and she nods and says “What an interesting experience you all got to have,” and I say “Sure did” and the waitress arrives to take orders and I glance at Alice staring off into space and say, “Well, nice to see you all,” just as the man is saying “Now, how’s Rod doing,” and I say, “Oh, real good,” and they say good and I say again “Nice to see you all” and they say “Yes, yes,” and pat me and I walk back to our table carrying Meltem Mehmetoğlu.
Alice is looking bored by the time I get Honey back into her high chair and cut some more meat for her and start working away on the sinewy pieces.
“How was your visit,” she says and I chew and say “Fine” through a mouthful of meat and then I swallow the meat and say “Um, so, would you like us to come with you, to the camp?”
“I suppose that would be all right,” she says. Honey starts thrashing in her seat and I smell poop. “Okay,” I say. “Good.” I want to show Alice that I am not crazy and that I can take care of the necessary arrangements. “So shall I talk to Mark and Yarrow? I mean, I’m happy to get on the phone with them and just tell them I’m a responsible person and I’ll, uh, take care of you. Not that you need taking care of.”
“Okay,” Alice says. “That’s probably wise.” I pick up Honey. “I have to change her diaper, I think,” I tell her. “Would you like to try the ice cream bar? I can bring you something.” “No thank you,” she says, and I think I might want something from the ice cream bar, but I remember I have the Diamond box at home still and this time I won’t throw myself down the stairs.
I sling Honey over my hip and we walk across the room waving at the van Voorheeses and to Kimmy, who points me to the bathroom. “We’ll catch up,” she says, and I say “Absolutely” and rush Honey to the bathroom because she is starting to cry and squirm and the smell says to me that the diaper has been breached. I feel calm and capable and as we open the door to go into the bathroom I say “We are going to have you fixed up in a jiffy,” and then with the mother machine brain I run a quick diagnostic of the situation and recall that I have already put her spare pants on her but then remember that the other pants are just wet with water and so they will work as a switch if the worst has happened. There is a changing table in the handicapped stall and I set Honey down and she cries and squirms and I babble at her “You’re fine you’re fine you’re fine” and think about what we’ll need to get done before we take Alice to her last stop. We’ll need to clean up the house. We’ll need to call Engin send several e-mails to the Institute do laundry and pack everything up. Sure enough there is a smear of poop that reaches up to Honey’s back, peeking out of the diaper onto the inside band of her pants but mercifully not her shirt. I regret that poop is getting on the changing pad I’ve spread over the fold-out changing table but remember also that I have hand sanitizer because I am organized and ready for anything. I wipe Honey’s bottom put on cream put on the new diaper put on the damp previous pants and pack everything up and set her down on her feet and glance at my phone which tells me it is nearing bedtime. She grabs my leg and says “Mee-ow mee-ow mee-eow” which I realize with sudden clarity is “Pick me up!” and I say “Ah, yes! Yes I will pick you up! Listen to all this talking you’re doing” and I pick her up and kiss her a big dramatic kiss that makes her giggle and I think I don’t make her laugh enough and I do it again and again until she’s laughing so hard her hiccupy baby laugh it’s hard for her to catch her breath. I don’t do anything for her enough, I think, not enough talking singing playing teaching.
I knock the door open with my butt and pass by Kimmy who says “Can’t wait to get our kids together” and it almost dissipates the all-pervading feeling of desolation I get in Altavista, look at this friendly normal person raising her family and having a great life up here even if she is homeschooling them and teaching them god knows what. I file this thought and get back to the table and look around for someone to get us the check and Alice says “I paid,” and I consider groping around for cash I don’t have and instead just say “Thank you, that’s very nice.” I set Honey on her feet and get on my knees to clean up the wads of bread and napkin and meat and other shit all over the dense nap of the rug and tuck it into a napkin and when I lift my head I see Honey is running down the room with that forward tumbling run. By the time I’ve leapt to my feet to go after her she’s splayed headlong on the ground and wailing and I pick her up and kiss her grab the bag make sure Alice is out of her seat and walking slowly behind and wave to the van Voorheeses wave to Kimmy and I’m sweating when we get out into the cool night air.
I put Honey down on the crunchy grass that abuts the parking lot and let her run around. It feels so good outside, the air smells so good and feels so good on my skin and it’s the first time in weeks I’ve felt a good physical sensation that wasn’t immediately followed by psychic distress. Honey screams just to hear herself and pants, she’s so happy to run around.
“Well,” I say to Alice, “I guess I ought to take you back and we’ll all get ready to go tomorrow.”
“Let the little one run around some,” Alice says. “You don’t let her stretch her legs enough.” It’s amazing to me that I find a rebuke of my mothering in even the mildest statements from friends coworkers strangers i.e. “Sleepy baby!” or something innocuous but this actual rebuke, this correction, feels so natural I accept it without injury. “Stay on the grass, please, Honey,” I say and lower myself onto the low concrete wall that lines the path to the lodge. I’d love to pull the cigarettes out of my bag where I’ve stashed them just in case but there’s Honey and there’s Alice and all the promises I’ve made to myself about not being trash. Not trash. Shouldn’t say trash. Alice stays standing. “If I sit on that thing I’ll never get up,” she says. I wonder at her body, that she’s been able to drive out here all alone.
“So how will we work this?” I am feeling efficient ready to bang out some logistics. “So you’re going to call Mark and Yarrow and tell them what exactly? That you met a responsible person who is going to drive you out there and then bring you to an airport? I haven’t looked at a map yet—do you know what town this place is near?”
“It’s in Oregon,” she says. “Someplace over the border. I have it all printed out in my folder. It’s something like four hours from here.”
“That’s nothing,” I say. “Do you want to do it in one day or break it up?”
“Maybe we can see how everyone does.”
“We can stop in Berwin Falls or something if you want to spend the night. Ooh, if we leave early enough tomorrow we can drive up to Surprise Pass and have a picnic. It has a beautiful view.”
“Well, all right.”
I have been making a little grocery list for what would make the nicest picnic when I pause to realize that som
ething about our plan makes no sense. Honey runs up to us and throws herself against Alice’s legs and I hold a hand out to Alice’s arm to steady her and say “gentle, please be gentle” and she takes off whirling unsteadily and falls onto her back in the grass and says “baaak” which is “bonk.”
“Sorry, Alice—I just realized—are we going to drive your car? And then we’ll all drive back together? You mentioned the airport, I guess I didn’t think about what would happen to your car.”
“No airport,” she says. “If I need to I’ll ask Mark to come and drive me home from Altavista. This will just be a day or two, to see the place. We can take your car. It’s more comfortable than mine.”
“The Buick! Can’t beat it,” I say. Honey is yanking on my pant legs and she has that shark look like she might bite me. “Shall we…” I say, and Alice begins moving toward the car.
* * *
We drop Alice off and agree to meet at the motel at 9:30 a.m. after I’ve stopped at the market to get provisions. She eats everything, she says, except very chewy things. Back home Honey is a damp wriggling critter thrashing in the bath but we get through it then we read the two halves of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and she puts her finger in the hole left by the caterpillar and when I put her in the Pack ’n Play she just lies right down with her head on the pillow and her butt in the air and suffers to be covered up with her blanky and the light turned off with no fuss. There is enough vodka left for two little drinks, I reckon, and I carefully pour half into a glass stir in the juice and almost run onto the deck to smoke. Inside Cindy’s lit window I see her and Ed toing and froing and when she walks out the door onto her porch I holler at her. “Hi,” she says very curtly, and carries a duffel to Ed’s truck. “Going somewhere?” I ask, but she doesn’t hear or doesn’t answer, and I realize I don’t care. I have a real friend now, I laugh to myself. Me ’n’ Alice, against the world. One more drink, I think, and amble inside to mix it feeling the whole night stretching out before me to relax in my lawn chair on my deck and look at the stars. By the time the relief of being off duty re: Honey has faded and I start to feel horribly lonely I’ll be slightly blotto and ready for the king bed to receive me. I sit down with my new drink. I pass my hand over the egg on my eyebrow and light another cigarette and again see how far I can draw it down with one drag.
DAY 8 I have my dream I have all the time where I am in an office trying to talk to a Turkish person, not Engin, someone unknown to me, and I’m saying “Oh of course I speak Turkish,” in Turkish, preparing to launch into the explanation of what is wrong, a thing I don’t know in the dream, and find I can’t speak Turkish at all and can only force a few words out until they smile sympathetically and shake their head and I want to start screaming and I open my mouth wide to do it and nothing really comes out, just a tiny squeaking and I wake up feeling that there’s nothing a man can tell me about impotence.
But I wake up feeling surprisingly fresh given the dream and the egg on my forehead, just a gentle throb on my eyebrow. I wake up with the expectation of hearing Honey and realize I don’t. The clock reads 6:57. I move very carefully out of the bed and tiptoe around to the closet and peer in and she’s sprawled on her back, deep asleep, and I pause long enough to see her chest rise and her fingers move. I scurry away into the shower and take a long hot one listening for her cries. She’s still asleep when I emerge and I say the prayer of thanksgiving for how much I am about to get done unencumbered. Now that I am not really doing anything there is nothing I am really unencumbered from but it’s still easier to do anything when your baby is asleep. I make coffee. I put laundry in. I pick up the living room. I smoke a cigarette out on the deck knowing I need to call Engin and trying to see if I can pick up Cindy’s Wi-Fi which is recalcitrant this morning when I hear Honey beginning to chirp. I go in.
“Hello, sweet pea,” I say. “We’re going on a trip today!” She doesn’t really know what that means I’m assuming but she laughs and claps her hands and waves her arms up and down and I scoop her up do a running jump onto the king bed twisting in midair so that she lands on top of me as I land on top of it and she screams with joy. I put Cheerios banana a little milk into one of my grandmother’s glazed white bowls with its spidery gray cracks and she uses her spoon like a big girl and I say the whole time “We’re going to go in the car with Auntie Alice, we are going to a new state.” I put her on the living room rug with her milk and books and fly around the bedroom and the back porch throwing things into the duffel and the tote keeping up my singsong “Now we put the socks, now we put the comforter, now we pack the Pack ’n Play” until I realize we are packed, completely packed, as though we aren’t planning to come back and I’m shocked by how little impression we’ve made on the place. I notice I have been standing stock-still in the middle of the room chewing on this thought because I feel a silence in the place of Honey’s low hum and see her sitting in the corner of the room with her shoulders hunched, listlessly turning over the pages of one of her books. She does this sometimes when I don’t play with her or fuss over her for an extended period of time, just goes all mopey and quiet like she’s expecting no one to ever talk to her again and it makes me feel like a murderer. So I look at her and say “We could not come back.” And then I zoom over to her on my hands and knees and bury my face in her belly and she laughs and revives and gets that awful sad hunch out of her back and climbs all over me shrieking.
I decide to treat this excursion as a possible exit strategy and just put everything in the car and act like when we lock it up it will be the last time. I get the cooler from the garage and look at Mom’s boxes. I say “Bye Mom” softly to the boxed-up sleeping things with which she made all our dwellings a home, and then I say “Bye Dad” and before I can hang around and start to feel morose I get the cooler and close the garage behind me. I walk over to the front of the house and straighten Rosemary Urberoaga’s For Sale sign and smooth back its folded corner and brush off some caked-on dirt.
* * *
Everything is in the car now and we are in the car and we have gotten turkey salami cheese bread banana chips cutlery and two big jugs of water and are making our way to the Arrowhead Motel, which is just past the Golden Spike on the way out of town, when I remember I didn’t return the library books and I file this away. They’ve got a big sign soaring up to the sky like the Frosty, and the customary cattle skulls and old wagon parts with some geraniums and so forth planted around. At the end of the row of rooms and the parking lot is a ludicrous patch of very green grass that they must spend a fortune keeping wet all year around, but right now there are a group of deer on it finding tender morsels and Alice is sitting primly on a bench overlooking the patch and it makes such an oddly nice tableau you kind of see why they do it. I’m turning into the parking lot when I realize that I didn’t take a moment to call Engin before leaving and I’m not sure when I’ll be able to and say “Fucker” so loud that Honey startles in the back and drops her cup and says “Uh-oh” and I say “Mommy said a bad word sweet pea” and I think to myself I spoke with him yesterday, I spoke with him yesterday, I spoke with him yesterday, everything’s okay and then I drive over to Alice and roll down the window and say “Going our way?” and she says “You’ll have to get my bag from the room” and gestures at the open door. I unbuckle dart out and into the damp cave of her room and find a tidy little wheelie suitcase and tote and a big umbrella and see she’s left $20 for the maid, which is the ultimate mark of civility as far as I’m concerned. I get her suitcase into the trunk and hover over her while she navigates to the passenger side and onto the soft seat of the Buick. She’s holding a folder which she waves my way.
“I got the fellow at the front desk to print out some maps.” “Excellent,” I say, although it’s been years since I read a map that wasn’t on my phone. But I see he’s printed out the step-by-step directions from Google and I shuffle through these and say, “Okay, I think we’re good.” He’s mapped the route west and then north o
ver the border once we’re closer to the coast and this means we can have the hoped-for picnic at Surprise Pass.
I look back at Honey who has her cup but is waving her arms like she wants to throw it and is whining and just generally has an ornery look as she strains against her straps. I say “We’re having fun” which my grandpa used to say and then look at Alice who is wincing a little and wriggling in her seat. “Are you sure you’re going to be comfortable,” I ask, and she says “I’ll manage.” Honey starts bawling openly so I just say “We’re having fun” again, with emphasis this time, and point the car out of the Arrowhead parking lot. Alice points at her car in a far corner spot and says “Goodbye, Rocinante!” and looks at me. “That’s the car’s name,” she says solemnly. I laugh with approval but then I feel my shoulders creep up to my ears as is their wont when Honey cries. Alice twists her narrow body to the extent possible and says “Now what” to Honey, and puts her hands over her eyes and does a creaking peekaboo, and the little internal combustion engine of joy that runs Honey makes a smile bloom on her wet cheeks.
“There’s not a thing wrong with this little baby,” says Alice. I notice she is wearing a wedding ring, a yellow gold band around her finger that wasn’t there yesterday.
“You’re wearing your wedding ring,” I venture.
“Sometimes I put it on.”
“You never got remarried?” She looks out her window at the scenery, which has given over to sagebrush and will soon climb into scrub pine. A jackrabbit runs across the road before I can even think to slow the car. “I never met anybody I wanted to get remarried with.”
The Golden State: A Novel Page 21