Lauren Groff - Arcadia

On the way back up the hill, Helle says, How come the Naturists are never the people you want to see naked? Bit and Armand Hammer laugh.

The laugh burns away Armand’s shyness, and he says to Helle, I know it’s trite and all, but it’s awesome to be here. I was in a squat in Portland and I saw this one-hour special on Arcadia? And it was, like, heaven. All singing and working in the fields and people free to do what they want, and Handy so eloquent. And the mansion! My parents have a shitty duplex in Pittsburgh. When do you ever get to live in a mansion? Plus, the prettiest girls I’ve ever seen.

He’s ogling Helle openly now, the acne-scarred boy. Bit is surprised how much he wants to punch him in the throat; Bit, who would be broken with a flick of Armand’s wrist.

They stop outside the Runaway Quonset. On a brown-stained mattress three Runaways sit, a fat girl braiding the hair of a boy with the triangular face of a fox, a topless girl with delicate wrists. The topless girl smiles to see Armand gawking at her, and it startles Bit, as it always does, to see perfect teeth in the mouth of a person his age. Many Runaways, mostly suburban kids, had orthodontia, while the kids of the Old Arcadians often have twisted teeth, sometimes set two deep.

Helle says, flatly, Here’s your new home, Armand Hammer. Then she laughs, feeling his ridiculous name leave her mouth.

What’s this? Armand says.

It’s where you stay, Bit says, trying to not enjoy the crumpling of the other boy’s face. I know you were looking forward to Arcadia House, but we’re too crowded. You can try to get a cot in one of the other camps. Singleton Tents, Swingers’ Tents if that’s your thing, Naturists. If you get enough people for a family unit, you can apply for a bus or van from the Motor Pool and park it in Ersatz Arcadia. Then, if the Council approves of you, you can move up to the House when there’s a place.

Yeah, right, says the topless girl. I’ve been here two months and nobody even lets us go anywhere up there but the Eatery.

That’s a lie, Helle says flatly. The topless girl looks her up and down and mutters something that sounds like skinny cunt .

Bit sees Helle expanding the way Astrid expands when she’s angry, and he takes her loosely by the wrist. He says, as calmly as he can, You can use the Library, and you’re supposed to be going up in the mornings for the State Lessons. And you can go to all the lectures and slide shows and concerts you want in the Proscenium or the Octagonal Barn.

But the topless girl rolls onto her belly and says into the mattress, If I wanted to learn things, I’d still be in school.

Whatever, says the fox-faced boy, it’s all bullshit. Handy goes on about equality and subverting the hegemony, but Arcadia’s no different from anywhere else. You all are up on your hill. We’re down here in the mud. I’ve been here for a year and a half. If that’s nonhierarchical, or even fucking respectful, I’ll eat my own ass.

I don’t see you working, you little shit, Helle says. Try working once in a while and maybe you’ll deserve respect.

The boy slowly stands up, and Armand drops his junk on the ground, folding his arms, stepping before him.

But all the fox-boy says is, All right. Okay. Make you a deal. First time I see Handy out busting his ass like the rest of y’all, I’ll be glad to work myself. Until then, I do what he does.

The boy settles back between the plump legs of the girl on the mattress and touches the bare back of the other girl with a long, slow stroke. Both girls giggle.

Helle blanches and strides away.

Bit would like to explain more to Armand, but the other boy is savagely kicking his box of shit into the Runaway Quonset, muttering, I want to live in the mansion, I fucking came here for the mansion. Bit escapes under a volley of catcalls and sneers from the mattress, and catches up to Helle in Ersatz Arcadia.

She is crying, and Bit says, aching for her, Helle. Oh, don’t. They’re not worth it. That guy was an idiot.

Helle passes a forearm over her eyes. She gives a shaky laugh, and the new, harder Helle slides over the old one again. In the face of this complicated girl, Bit feels the straightforward pull of the Pot Plot: there, at least, he knows what he has gotten into, and why.

Yeah, she says. I know. But, she says, a new sour look on her face; what sucks is that he’s also a little right, Bit.

It is hot for a June midafternoon. The scent of Verda’s rosehip tea fills the air; her anise cookies are sweet in his mouth. Beside him, on the rug faded into ashy roses, Eustace, the white dog, snaps at his own privates and looks a question at Bit. Bit rubs Eustace’s head, and the dog sighs back to sleep. Bit frames his mother and Verda in the viewfinder of his camera, their heads on opposite sides of the table, loose wisps sparking with light from the window. Hannah is intent on Verda, who has gone distant, the recorder spinning at her elbow.

They were deeply strange people, she says in her anchorite’s rasp. They called themselves Divinists, because they believed that people could become perfect, therefore divine. They believed that intercourse was a gift from God and had great quantities of it with everyone in the community. To avoid the consequences, namely babies and love, they had a rotational schedule: every night, a new woman with a new man, and the men had to release themselves into their handkerchiefs.

Bit shrivels inside himself a little. Verda looks at him. You will forgive me, Ridley, for my bluntness, she says in her grand and distant way.

She says, But then their leader, John Noland, my great-grandfather, decided it was time to reproduce. He had gone to a Shaker community and saw that they were in danger of dying out, and didn’t wish that upon his people. And so they instituted a program called Eugeniculture. The most spiritual men and the most spiritual young women were allowed to mate, after a very thorough matching. Of course because the most spiritual men were old men, and nobody was more spiritual than John Noland, out of forty-eight babies born, twenty-three were his. One of them was my grandmother Martha Sutton. Her mother, Minerva, was, at the time, a bare thirteen years old.

Verda smiles wearily. One finds that when children are involved in these things, she says, the cracks in the system become clear. Babies that belonged to individual mothers, the claim on the fathers. There was some romantic love going on, verboten of course, and the breeding program interfered with the heart. And, of course, the parents had to watch as their twelve- and thirteen-year-old daughters slept with old men. Word spread to the outside, newspapers had fiery editorials, and John Noland was chased out of Summerton by the townspeople. He fled to Canada. There was nothing binding the community. The center could not hold.

Hannah’s face is shining. Bit clicks another photo of her, and then one of Verda, reflected again and again in the tarnished silver tea set on the table. Verda says, My dear Hannah. I have to stop. I am very tired, and I need to be alone.

Thank you, Hannah says. Her hands are shaking when she lifts her teacup to her lips. Do you have any primary sources, by any chance? Papers, things like that?

Verda says, Loads. She stands and pulls down a hatbox, and when she releases the top, there pours out the smell of sage and tobacco. I’ll give you my great-grandmother’s diary, she says. But that is all for this visit, at least. I’d like for you to return for something, even if it’s just a dusty old book.

She sees Bit gaping into the box and lifts out the dull gleaming thing he is trying to see.

Scrimshaw, she says, putting it in his hands. Walrus tusk. One of John Noland’s sons went out on the high seas and carved the face of his wife over and over again. After a year away, he came back to port and learned that she’d died of yellow fever the day after he’d left.