The Optimistic Decade

by Heather Abel

  It was Caleb’s Suze song: the song he imagined Suze hearing in a car in Santa Fe, Bozeman, wherever she was, and when it came on the radio, she would think of Caleb, the smell of Russian olive, the ceiling of stars. She would miss Caleb with the force of snowmelt. The guy next to her would ask a question, and she wouldn’t answer. She would turn up the radio. Our good times are all gone, I’m bound for moving on. She would dump the man at a gas station and drive straight through the night until she arrived at Llamalo. But she was already here, singing their song with David.

  Kayla, the sneak, was asleep, but every time Donnie lifted his hand from her belly, her eyes opened. When he set his hand back down, they closed. He was stuck in his dad’s bedroom forever, his hand riding the breath of her belly, the fan twisting its head from one side to the other, saying no, no, no.

  Donnie dozed off, and when he woke, it was dusk outside. He sat up from the bed, rolled up towels, and placed them around Kayla so she wouldn’t fall out. He walked into the trailer’s other room, which was somehow cramped even though there was hardly any furniture in it, nothing on the walls. His dad lived with nothing after all these years, lived like a shadow. His towels were old and crusty, his TV was old with a bent antenna, and his toaster was so old it made old burned toast. All this in grief for a woman Donnie could hardly remember. His own mom and he couldn’t remember.

  “She sleeping?” his dad asked. He sat at the table, tapping his cigarette into an old ashtray. The dishes were washed beside the sink.

  “If she wakes, put your hand on her belly and pretend you’re me,” Donnie said, stepping into his boots. They’d been fighting all afternoon. His dad wouldn’t even admit that Caleb had trashed the place. All those ugly half-assed buildings with no system, no order. It was a disgrace. A teepee? Even if the Talcs did get their land back, it would take a long while to clean it up.

  “Where you going?”

  “Taking a walk.”

  “Stick to the road then, and don’t bother Caleb. We’re not allowed up there in the evening.”

  Donnie opened the door, and the wind poured in. He walked against it to the house where he grew up, the house that Aemon built, now with an ugly cement patio stuck to the back of it. Picnic tables and painted signs. He opened the kitchen door. It was dark inside, but his hand reached up in exactly the right spot to find the string light pull that still hung in the center of the room.

  When the light switched on, he saw that the rest of the kitchen was new, tricked out with a restaurant-sized dishwasher and stoves and fridges. And still his dad insisted that a twenty-four-year-old had just happened to have cash for all this. “He was a journalist,” his dad had said earlier today. “He earned his money.” Well, who did his dad think owned the newspapers? The same people who shut down mines. It was all related, but his dad wouldn’t listen.

  Donnie walked into the living room, his living room, the living room where his mom sat in his memory, because of course he remembered her. His mom on the floor in her green dress, playing rummy, screaming and laughing. That’s my card. Give me that card. Donnie, I’ll pay you for it. Taking out a dollar from her purse and throwing it at Donnie. Like the entire world was a joke between the two of them, while Don just looked on from his chair.

  He walked through the front door to the porch, and goddamn but the moon was rising full over the mountain. This was his. He used to sit on this porch with his Grandpa Conway, who would talk to him. And Donnie should’ve listened, but he never did, because he had too much to think about. He wished he could remember anything, either what Grandpa Conway had said or what he used to think about as a kid.

  Donnie could hear the kumbaya song as he walked down the steps. Nobody even turned to look at him. They were all crowded around on the dirt watching Suze, who was singing with a boy. All this lawn and they chose to sit on the dirt. Only Caleb stood, arms folded at his chest, like he was too important to sit. The boy strummed his guitar like all the boys in Telluride had strummed their guitars, like he was in a porno, like everyone would want to see the expression on his face when he was fucking.

  This afternoon, Donnie had called Marci when she got home from the laundry. “So, did it happen like you said it would?” she’d asked. “Should I pack? Are we moving to Colorado?” She’d laughed like she never believed he would pull it off. Then she started crying. He said, “I’ll see you tomorrow, baby. We’ll be home tomorrow.” She said, “Put Kayla on. I want to hear Kayla.” He held the phone next to Kayla’s ear and could hear Marci say, “Did Daddy get you a ranch like he promised?”

  The kumbaya song finished, and he saw Suze throwing her arms around the boy’s neck, pecking him on his cheek. Poor, poor Caleb, watching his girl love on someone else. And then a hippie lady ran up to the boy and said, “Are you using my guitar? I really hope not. I’m pretty sure I didn’t give you permission to use it.”

  “Fine, take it,” the boy said, swinging the guitar cockily. All pumped up with a kiss from Suzy-Q. “You weren’t even using it.”

  Caleb felt an ocean rise within him. “Come with me, David. Now.” He turned and began walking.

  “What is it?” David asked from behind. “Everything okay?”

  Caleb wove between tables on the eating platform. He held the kitchen door for David to enter. After which, Caleb shut the door hard and leaned against it. The kitchen ladies had left the light on, and it bothered his eyes.

  “Look, I’m sorry about Mikala’s guitar,” David said, moving to the center of the kitchen before noticing that Caleb was still standing at the door. “I didn’t think she’d mind.”

  “You’re sorry? I’m sorry. And not about Mikala’s guitar. I don’t give a shit about Mikala’s guitar. Mikala’s guitar is the least of your concerns. Let me ask you a question: Are you the social director of this place now? You’re making phone calls? You’re inviting people to come see you here?”

  “What?”

  “I’m talking about Suze, David. I’m talking about Suze.”

  David began biting his lower lip. “I thought you would like it.”

  “Me? I would like it? Me or you, David? Who were you really thinking about? Me or you? Because I’m trying to get this straight. You went up to my office, somewhere you’re not allowed. You looked through my papers and found her number. You picked up the phone and decided to make a call, also not allowed. So tell me, David, was this a case of poor judgment or utter idiocy?” After a day of restraint, it felt amazing to scream. He couldn’t stop himself and wouldn’t even if he could. He was coasting on his anger, riding the downhill of it.

  David said nothing. The pull string of the overhead bulb was swaying from the wind that snuck through the windows, hitting his forehead rhythmically, but he didn’t move away.

  “Right. You can’t even answer. Can you answer? Do you even understand the first thing about this place?”

  “But it was Suze. She’s about this place. Everyone wants to see Suze.”

  “Not me, David! I didn’t want to! But you didn’t think about that, did you? Completely oblivious. Just thinking about yourself and what you want. A fucking unmitigated disaster.”

  I thought . . . I mean I didn’t think . . . I really am sorry.” His voice was growing high-pitched, prepubescent. “Is this a problem?”

  “Is it a problem? That’s what you want to know? Is it a fucking problem? Yes, it’s a problem. It’s a goddamn problem.” He crashed his fist onto the counter and opened the door, leaving David below the swinging cord.

  “Wait.”

  Caleb turned to see the boy’s face scrunched, his arms wrapped around himself. “I mean, is it a problem with our plan?” he said, nearly inaudibly.

  “Plan?”

  “For me to move here. Like we talked about?”

  “Move here? Move here, David? Honestly, I can’t see you coming back here in any capacity. I don’t imagine you’ll have anything to do with Llamalo after tonight.” And with that, Caleb was spent. The ocean settled, just gen
tle lolling waves now. He walked out into the night.

  On the Overlook, he saw three girls shimmying their little hips, lamenting their singledom. Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match. The beams of flashlights crossed, hit the bushes, illuminated the traffic cones. The moon had risen and shrunk, pursued now by a satellite. The cool air pushed the lingering heat up over the Rockies and into the Great Plains.

  He saw the white eyes of a car backing up. Find me a find, catch me a catch. Later, on the way to the campfire, Caitlin stood small in front of him. “Um, Suze said to say bye to you. She had to go. She couldn’t find you. She said to tell you bye.”

  Night after night in the dark I’m alone, so find me a match, of my own.

  After the performance, Rebecca sat on the porch steps in the dark, hoping, and admonishing herself for hoping, that David would seek her out. Her mind kept showing a short movie with David’s response to the shattering of her life (Fuck him. So it’s over—who cares?), followed by him singing with Suze in that blissed-out way, tra-la-la, like nothing had happened. It would be best to never see him again, but she listened for him among the shapes passing below, and she imagined him apologizing, redeeming himself by asking to see the letter, which, as it happened, she had at the ready in the pocket of her shorts, as well as a flashlight by her side to shine on it. Together they would read her father’s despairing words and contemplate the bleakness of her future and the meaninglessness of all action.

  Then, footsteps on the stairs.

  “Rebecca? I couldn’t find you anywhere.”

  “Well, I was just here.” She forced relief from her voice.

  “I have to talk to you.” He sat, his bare arm touching hers. She wanted to fall on him, to push him down, but first he’d have to acknowledge her suffering and his role in it.

  As campers and counselors streamed by, David told her he needed help. He’d messed up; he didn’t explain how, only that Caleb was angry and he needed Rebecca to intervene. He spoke in rapid bursts, none of it apology. “If you could tell Caleb . . .” David paused. He licked at the crease between his lips. “If you could just convince him . . . If you could assure him that I actually did this for him. Because I thought he’d like it. That was the only reason.”

  “Oh my god,” a passing camper squealed. And then the Overlook was empty as everyone headed up to the Gathering for a final fire.

  “Caleb’s just an asshole sometimes,” Rebecca said. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  “Not him,” David snapped. “He didn’t do anything wrong. I did.”

  David’s ardor for Caleb seemed to be a delicate glass bauble forged in a decade-long fire, held out before Rebecca in his trembling hand.

  “I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t idealize Caleb.” She was lifting the bauble from him, palming it, feeling the cool smoothness of the glass. “He’s just as fucked-up as everyone else. He’s so pious about his rules, and then he breaks them all. He drinks every night. He sleeps with a different counselor every summer. He arranges the seating charts based on what girl he wants to sit near.”

  “Don’t mess with me right now.”

  “Well, it’s true.” And whether or not it was—the alleged bottle of whiskey in his yurt, the way his hand seemed to linger on the backs of certain counselors—whether or not it was the truth did not matter right now. Or so Rebecca told herself as she dropped the bauble and stepped on it, feeling the crunch of broken glass underfoot.

  “It’s true,” she went on. “He has no special knowledge. No special rules or, I don’t know, system of how to live. Believe me, he’s as lost as anyone. So what do you care if he hates you? Plenty of people hate you, right? And you don’t care. So fuck him.” She stood. “Who gives a flying fuck.”

  David was shaking his head. “Seriously? Can’t you just help me?”

  But why should she help him when he hadn’t helped her? Rage filled the space carved inside her by desire. It fit perfectly and felt more familiar. She longed to hurt him, to pound upon the chest she wanted to lie on. But instead, she jumped down from the steps, headed toward the faint chirr of campers singing. “Have to go add my voice to the choir now, David, that sort of a thing, but maybe I’ll catch you later, okay?”

  The wind thrashed the tarps like a woman beating rugs. It swung the branches, creaked the wooden platforms, ululated to the owls. The camp had gone to bed, which meant David had gone to bed, but he wouldn’t sleep.

  In eight years, David had never walked away from his platform in the night. Now, as he descended the steps, he was disappointed to learn that it was as simple as leaving school. It was simple to walk downhill. He left his duffel but wore his backpack, which he’d stuffed with his sleeping bag, flashlight, and sweatshirt. It was simple to barge into the ranch house and turn on all the lights. Nobody came, and nobody noticed.

  Nobody noticed that David knew everything about this place. He knew that the small room off the kitchen was full of silver trash cans with bungee cords fastening down their lids, a whole room of these cans, like some giant science experiment, breeding pods for aliens.

  David lifted lids and let them crash down like cymbals. Still, nobody came, nobody noticed. He pulled out a sticky plastic bag of dehy chili and another of powdery green flakes—splt p sp—and tossed these aside, dove for the mc n chs. From a cabinet marked poison—keep out, he slipped forbidden chocolate bars and a waxy envelope of graham crackers.

  He scavenged packets of oatmeal, peanut butter in a salsa jar, saltines, a red bowl scratched and softened with use, a fork, a dented saucepan, a knife that he sheathed in cardboard torn from the cache of boxes under the table.

  He descended to the basement, which housed the coal furnace, legions of spiders, and craft materials dusted with a shadow of coal. The walk-in freezers hummed. From a box labeled oranges, David retrieved a water pump, an insect-legged stove, a fuel canister, and a book of matches.

  The lawn was pewter in the moonlight. David packed as Caleb had taught him, lining everything up on the grass like tin soldiers before marching them into his bag.

  It was simple to leave Llamalo, to walk up the road past Don’s darkened trailer, to follow the familiar route. It was simple to be gone.

  Nobody noticed that David was made from this place, his skin from the cracked clay ground, his legs from the branches of a Russian olive, his teeth from a king snake’s skull, his fingertips from the soft lobes of sage. The strange thing was, when he reached the edge of the cliff, he stepped onto the trail to the river, and the trail wasn’t there. He stepped into air.

  The Reagan Years: July 1982

  To reach Peter Finkel in the overgrown Berkeley Hills, Caleb hiked past houses of dark wood, where purple wisteria drooped over potted succulents and Frank Lloyd Wright stained-glass windows. Finkel’s house was set back from the sidewalk, behind a koi pond. A woman in a black smock, with a bowl cut of gray hair, answered the door and told Caleb to wait, eyeing the whole length of him before vanishing. The foyer was mirrored on three sides, and a black stone vase with white calla lilies like swan necks rested on a low table. Caleb could see at least fifteen clean-shaven Calebs in suits, and they looked like dorks, like eager little boys. He straightened his spine, and the crowd of Calebs transformed into young-but-visionary leaders.

  Ira had said, “The guy I’m setting you up with is a former radical, deep underground kind of guy, who went soft, made a fortune on computers and is choking on guilt, looking for ways to spend his cash. His nom de guerre was Peter Pan. You’ll call him Peter Finkel, which is close but not identical to the name he was given at birth.” Caleb had heard “computers” and went to Sal’s Army, where he bought a suit the color of a Girl Scout uniform. Now, staring at his selves greenly multiplied, he was sure it was a mistake.

  “We remove our shoes before we enter the house,” Peter Finkel said when he appeared at last: a short, thick man, bowing at Caleb. Unshod, Caleb followed him into a large room with tatami mats on the floor and two blue ovoid meditation cus
hions, like the eggs of some passing dinosaur. There was no furniture other than a small shrine on a shelf in the corner with a stone Buddha who had a lei of dried marigolds at his feet. Peter Finkel folded his body onto a cushion, like a gazelle kneeling, and Caleb perched on the other, his knees in front of him, pants hitched up to reveal unfortunate white tube socks.

  “So here we are.” Peter Finkel smiled stingily. Caleb waited for him to continue. A wall of this room was mirrored, too, but Caleb avoided it, unsure of which self he’d find there. “The nephew of the great Ira Silver.”

  Caleb offered Peter Finkel the folder containing his mission statement and budget, but Peter Finkel waved it away. “Just speak. Bring your idea to life for me.”

  Caleb said he wanted to start a summer camp that was like no other summer camp. He used hollow nouns: nature, harmony, self-discovery. He felt his earnestness ooze from him like molasses.

  Peter Finkel played with a toy on the mat, five silver balls hung from five silver wires. He pulled one back and let it go. Click-click. Click-click.

  Caleb talked about utopia, that glorious word. Click-click. He talked about homesickness, about being at home in the outdoors. Click-click. He talked about Drop City in Colorado and the Hog Farm and New Buffalo and the other communes—the topic of his senior thesis—and how he believed that even though they’d failed, the promise of a new society wasn’t over, but it was children—who’d been ignored in the 1960s communes, left to wander around naked and dosed—who needed it most, click-click, who needed to be released from nuclear families, who need to be click-transformed-click before they grew up.

  Usually, Caleb felt an onrush of love for these hypothetical children when he spoke about them, love for the actual thirteen-year-old boy he’d been the day he learned his father had killed himself, but now he felt only ridiculous and far too warm in his suit. Peter Finkel was wearing a purple T-shirt and running shorts. Caleb mentioned the feeling of trees and rocks talking back to him, albeit in a pre- or post-verbal way, and beneath his poly-blend shirt, molasses dripped down his back.