Mary Miller - The Last Days of California

Elise got in bed and tested out the pillows to see how high they were, if she was likely to get a crick. Then she went to the bathroom and peed with the door open.

“There’s a TV in here!” she called. “It looks like it’s from 1989.”

“I saw it.”

We didn’t know anything about 1989 but we referenced it a lot. It represented all of the movies we loved. It represented a time when the captain of the football team might actually fall in love with the homely red-haired girl, when they could make us believe it. I got in bed and Elise continued to talk to me from the bathroom. Maybe we wouldn’t have to drive tomorrow and we could just stay here. And what if the rapture actually happened and we got to watch it on TV? Wouldn’t that be kind of amazing? There were Aveda products! She loved Aveda products! I got out of bed and turned on the water in the tub. The pressure was bad—it was going to take forever to fill up. I kept turning the knob but the water didn’t come out any faster. We could go down to the pool for an hour and come back and it still wouldn’t be filled.

“I’m going to get ice,” she said, clutching the bucket to her stomach.

“Okay, Dad.”

“Come here,” Elise said, setting the bucket on the table.

“What?”

“Just come.”

I followed her to a room catty-corner from ours where a fat lady was sprawled on a king-sized bed, her purple dress bunched up like a tablecloth between her legs. Against one wall, there were four cages stacked on top of each other with two birds in each. Some of the birds were white and some were a pale, lovely pink.

“Mourning doves,” Elise said.

The woman sat up, excited to have visitors. “Hey, hon,” she said. “Come on in, make yourself at home.” She was truly massive, wonderfully enormous, but her face was oddly thin. “Have some cheese and fruit, if you want. We were just about to have a snack.”

“How’d you get the birds up here?” Elise asked.

“I tip people,” the woman said. “Whenever I go to hotels, I carry a lot of small bills. You give people a handful and they don’t even care if they’re all ones.”

The toilet flushed and a man came out of the bathroom. He was fat but not enormous, just normal fat, with a patchy beard.

“That’s my son, Luke,” the woman said, lighting a cigarette. “Luke and I travel everywhere together, don’t we?” She leaned over the bed and produced an ashtray, set it on her stomach. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. She was magnetic, strangely beautiful, and had long strawberry blond hair. I imagined her at the beauty salon, having it highlighted, talking to people and laughing like she was just as good as anybody.

Luke stood there watching us, scratching his beard. His feet were planted shoulder-width apart.

“There’s a male and female in each,” Elise said, squatting to look in the cages. I knelt next to her.

“Did you know that mourning doves are monogamous?” the woman asked, waving her cigarette around. “They mate for life.”

“I love monogamous animals,” Elise said.

Luke laughed and my sister turned to look at him, her ponytail flying. He had the kind of eyes that couldn’t look at you straight on—they were always slightly to the left or right, as if you were standing next to yourself.

“How can you tell which are male and which are female?” I asked.

“You put two together and see if they try to kill each other,” the woman said. “That’s why I stack ’em like that—if the males even see each other, they go berserk. Beat their wings and puff out their chests.”

Elise stood and said, “Thanks for letting us look at them.”

“Let’s let ’em fly around,” the woman said.

“Maybe later?” my sister said. “We just got here and we have to unpack and stuff.”

“I trained them in the bathroom and now I can let ’em fly wherever. Even if I leave the door open, they don’t fly away. If I’m not feeling well, they land on my chest and look at me like, Dodo, you okay in there, Dodo? They’re very intuitive animals.”

“Maybe later,” Elise said.

“We’ll be here,” the woman said. “We’re not going anywhere, are we, Luke? We were just about to have a snack.”

Elise thanked her about fourteen more times and we went back to our room. I remembered my horoscope from a few days ago, how I was supposed to be asking questions and I’d hardly asked anybody anything. I should have asked the woman why she chose birds, or about the mating process—did the male and female always like each other, or was it a matter of trial and error? Or I could have asked where they were from, where they were going. It seemed silly that we were all moving around the world for no other reason than we could—cars and planes and boats taking people from one location to another as if we weren’t all going to die.

Elise stood at the desk and flipped open the binder.

“How come you didn’t want to see them fly?” I asked.

“Because that guy was creeping me out,” she said. “Wasn’t he creeping you out?”

“Yeah.”

“He was a fucking creep.”

“Probably a parking garage whistler,” I said.

She picked up the phone and ordered a veggie burger with onion rings, a Diet Coke, and a piece of apple pie. If she hadn’t asked for the pie, I might have believed she’d actually spoken to someone. She never ate pie.

“You didn’t order anything,” I said.

“What I really want is a cheeseburger. Actually, I think it’s the baby who wants a cheeseburger.” She stood in front of the mirror and looked around to see if there was enough space to do her jumps. “I’m going to call room service for real in a minute. What’re you having?”

“Ice cream,” I said.

She did a herkie and then three more in quick succession; they seemed so effortless, so easy, it made me think I could do them.

“Have you ever noticed how skinny people get vanilla and fat people get chocolate? And really skinny people get strawberry. I should probably start ordering strawberry, then I’ll be skinny.”

“I don’t think it works that way,” she said.

“It would be a start,” I said. “It would be something.”

“And you’re not fat, you’re just a little plump.”

“I don’t want to be plump , that’s an awful word, don’t ever say that to me again.” I put my bag on the bed and started going through it. I missed the rest of my stuff. I missed our house, my bed. If we were at home, Elise and I would be outside on the trampoline. She’d insist I do a back handspring and spot me, taking her hands away at the last minute so she could tell me I’d done it on my own. The baby would already be a bad dream and I’d never mention it again, even when we were old, even if I was really pissed off.

She dialed room service and ordered a veggie burger and fries. “Strawberry?” she asked.

“A hot fudge sundae and a Diet Coke.”

“And two hot fudge sundaes and two Diet Cokes,” she said. She hung up and climbed into bed, spread out in the middle.

“You know how you said you never feel anything in church?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“I’ve been thinking about that.”

“And?”

“I don’t feel anything, either,” I said.

“What about when you were saved?”

I shook my head. “It never even occurred to me to think about whether I was feeling something, or if I believed or not. Do you think I’m stupid?”

“No,” she said. “I think you’re a kid.”

“I want to believe,” I said.

“I know you do.”

“Maybe I should talk to Brother Jessie.”

“Call him,” she said. “I’m sure he’ll talk to you.”