Mary Miller - The Last Days of California

“No,” he said. “Of course you didn’t.” He didn’t say anything else, and we listened to our mother tell one of her sisters about the fabulous dinner we’d had last night—it was the best lobster she’d ever put in her mouth. The lobsters had been small and overcooked, but our steaks had been good—tender, medium-rare.

My father turned the sound on, a reporter interviewing an unknown man. The man said we were likely to go through the stages of grief from denial to depression. He said we would probably experience psychological trauma and may consider suicide. I looked at my father to gauge his reaction.

I climbed out of the tub and sat next to him. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” he said. Then he patted my leg and said I was his girl and I loved him so much in that moment. I was his girl and would always be his girl.

“It could still happen,” I said.

“No it couldn’t,” Elise said.

“The Middle East is full of Muslims,” I said.

“Australia’s mostly Christian. New Zealand, too.”

Now that she told me she made things up, I was suspicious of everything. I got out my phone and Googled “Drunken revelers in Australia release blow-up dolls,” but there was no sign of these people. Most of the links had to do with women and binge drinking.

My father walked over to the window. “Why don’t y’all go back to your room for a minute and let me talk to your mother,” he said. But we’d left our keys in our room; our bags were in their entryway. Elise pointed this out and asked if he wanted us to go to the coffee shop.

I went to the bathroom and admired my face some more, my red lips. I was thirsty but didn’t feel like drinking any water.

“Jess,” Elise called. “What are you doing in there?”

“Nothing.”

“Will you make me some coffee?”

I sorted through the little plastic bin. “There’s only decaf.”

“Go find the lady.”

“Go find her yourself,” I said. I went to the door and looked out. There was a cart in the hall. I walked over and saw a cleaning lady pushing a vacuum by the window. I tried to get her attention but she didn’t see me so I opened a plastic drawer and took out two packets. Just as I was turning, she met my eye—a flash of hatred and surprise.

I ran back to the room like someone was chasing me and tossed them to my sister.

“It would taste better if you made it,” she said.

I got in the tub and we watched coverage we’d already seen—dozens of news vans camped outside of Marshall’s offices, a wide lot and a half-dozen trailers. A pretty black woman in a pantsuit knocked on a door. No one answered, so she knocked on another and another until she was back at the first one. It was always so damning when no one could be reached for comment. Then it cut to a reporter interviewing a man from the Florida leg. He was in the driver’s seat of a rapture van, his tan arm hanging out the window. The reporter asked if it had been a waste of his time and the man said he had brought many people to God, that lives were changed because of what they’d done. I looked at my father and wondered if he could convince himself he had changed lives. He didn’t look sad or traumatized or angry. He didn’t look anything.

“I hope they show Greta,” Elise said.

“I don’t,” I said.

“Why not?”

“I just don’t.” I imagined the door to her home ajar, all of her electronics gone. Cats gone, husband. The faces of her plain, overweight children stapled to telephone poles. Long after they were found dead, strangers would still be peering into their eyes.

My father stood and wheeled his suitcase into the bathroom. “We have to be out in forty-five minutes,” he said.

Elise and I looked at our mother, who was now watching something on her phone.

“She hates us,” Elise said.

“Don’t say ‘hate,’” our mother said, glancing up at us.

“See? She hates us.” She took the bobby pins out of her hair one by one and laid them on the edge of the tub.

“I always wanted two girls—two girls, two years apart. You know that.”

“I’m sure you were so specific,” Elise said.

“We’re two and a half years apart,” I said.

Elise put her feet on either side of my head and lifted herself into a backbend, her crotch pointed at my face. She moved her head from side to side and her hair swung back and forth like a pendulum.

On our mother’s phone, a crowd cheered.

“What are you watching?” I asked.

She turned the screen to me but I was too far away. “Have you seen this video?” she asked. “This man in Oregon made a video proposal.”

“No. Why would I have seen it?”

The cheering died down and a man was telling a woman he loved her more than life itself. Then he was saying he was going to spend the rest of his days trying to make her happy. He didn’t say anything remotely original and the woman, of course, was crying. When the boy I loved proposed, he wouldn’t say the usual things about how much he loved me or get on one knee. He’d say he wanted to die with me in a freak submarine explosion. He’d say he loved me down to the squishy insides of his bones. I could help him come up with things if he needed me to. Boys had trouble expressing themselves because they weren’t as good with language.

Elise walked over to the desk and picked up the landline.

“What are you doing?” our mother asked.

She turned her back to us and placed an order for room service, more food than we could eat. It was probably going to cost a hundred dollars.

I looked at my mother, smiling at her phone. I wanted to go to her, curl up in her arms. I missed her and wanted to tell her I missed her. At home, we shared bowls of popcorn, sat close to each other on the couch to watch movies. When we were finished eating, we’d scratch each other’s backs. I want to put you in my pocket, she’d say, so I can pull you out whenever I want . I would imagine myself small, pocket-sized, nestled against the warmth of her leg. I was afraid she would die without knowing how much I loved her, and it made me want to tell her things, let her get to know me, but I didn’t think she’d be able to love me if she knew me.

Our father came out of the bathroom smelling like Colgate and Barbasol, same as always. He sat on the bed and opened his Bible.

“You won last night, didn’t you?” Elise said.

He grinned, the kind of grin we only saw when he returned from the casino with a wallet full of money. That hadn’t happened in a long time. I couldn’t remember the last time it had happened.

“How much?” I asked.

He raised his eyebrows at us, and his hand moved to his wallet as if to check and make sure it was still there.

“Did you get your picture taken?” I asked.

Years ago, when he first started gambling, he’d won big. He was given balloons and an oversized check and had his picture taken; the photo was hidden in his underwear drawer. Winning was the worst thing that had ever happened to him, he’d said once, in a rare moment of reflection.

“Don’t give them any of it back,” Elise said.

“I’m not going to,” he said, “don’t worry,” and then he began to read as if it were any other morning, only he started at the beginning: “‘The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.’”

I closed my eyes and listened, trying to picture the earth without form, the water with a face. I thought I could see the water’s face. It was happy. Elise got up and went to the bathroom. Our father kept reading: God rested, man took his first breath, God planted a garden.

My phone beeped. I hoped it was Gabe, but it was Elise: Come in here .