Lydia Kiesling - The Golden State

“One sec,” the man says and I hear another ring and another and another and I think of course she’s asleep and not going to answer a ringing motel phone but then I hear a click and clattering and a croaking hello.

“Ms. Alice,” I say, and start rushing so I can get to the end of this mortification. “I am so very sorry to bother you—I’m Daphne, from the restaurant tonight, with the baby, Honey?”

I wait two beats for her to say “Oh, hello” and rush ahead.

“I am so, so embarrassed to say this but I’ve had a fall and hit my head and I’m concerned about the possibility of a concussion and so while I’m sure everything’s fine I’m wondering if you could maybe check on me in the morning since they say you shouldn’t sleep with a concussion. I mean, that’s what I’ve read.” There is a pause.

“Don’t you think you ought to call 911?”

“Well I considered it,” I say, “but I actually feel okay and think I’m probably fine, this is just more of a contingency plan in case the worst should happen, I like to have all my bases covered and I don’t want to upset the baby with an ambulance, which would have to come all the way from the next county over probably.” A longer pause.

“Okay,” she says.

“Oh, thank you thank you thank you” I say. “I’m at Three Paiute Way in Deakins Park, the one with a Buick and big birch tree out front.” “Hold on,” she says, and makes me repeat it, which I think is a good sign.

“What time do you want me to come?”

“What time do you usually wake up?”

“About six.”

“Well I think if you were to come at seven that would be good. I’ll leave the door unlocked so you can get in.”

“Okay then.”

“I’ll, um, leave you some instructions on the very off chance that something bad happens.”

“Okay.”

“I really can’t thank you enough for this, Alice.”

“Okay. Take care of yourself,” she says, and hangs up. I wonder whether she will really come.

My head swims a little and I light a cigarette which I remember now was the precipitating factor and now the ashtray is out in the yard somewhere with cigarette butts strewn everywhere but I don’t dare brave the steps again to find it. I take a long drag to anchor myself to the bench and my head throbs. I will need to write the number for Uncle Rodney as he can take Honey if I die until Engin can get her but how he will get her is another question. I have to assume hope pray that there will be some way the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services can find their humanity if Honey is left motherless and her father needs to come and get her even without his papers in order but I’m sure they won’t. I google “mother dead father no green card” and after some grinding on the part of my phone an answer appears in the form of an applicant whose sponsoring sister died and evidently something exists called “Humanitarian Reasons” but it all hinges as usual on the submission of new and different forms and I think how the fuck will he ever be able to get through on the telephone to a person to say “MY FUCKING BABY is there in CALIFORNIA” and I just have to hope he has the good sense to go to the U.S. consulate in Istanbul and throw himself on their mercy and I think I need to make this list as simple as possible I need a process chart a job tree an org chart like I make at the Institute so first Alice calls Uncle Rodney and then he’ll need to come up from Quincy and get Honey and I guess he should be the one to call Engin and then Engin will need to call the lawyer and the consulate about what to do to get Honey and I realize I don’t have a will and wonder if I should make one and briefly hysterically I think that Engin’s only conduit to his child will now be a forest ranger in Plumas County who calls him “Engine” like fire engine even though it’s Engin more like Angler and I don’t bother to correct Uncle Rodney anymore because it’s like he just cannot do it no matter how many times he hears you say it. I consider that if I really thought any of this was going to happen I would be crying but then I think no one ever really expects these things, you physically can’t anticipate them, so how I feel has no bearing on what will actually happen and I need to just make sure everything is organized and at least I have some life insurance through the University.

I pour some of my melting ice on the cigarette and hear it hiss and put the butt on the windowsill and I go inside to find the small notebook I use to scribble Hugo’s various instructions in during our conclaves. I tear out several sheets and I consult the contacts list on my phone and I number one sheet “1” and write “In case of emergency please call my uncle Rodney Burdock at xyz. He should call my husband Engin Mehmetoğlu at xyz and our attorney at xyz.” I laboriously write out the link to the site explaining what to do about Humanitarian Reasons for the green card and I put all the pieces of paper in the middle of the dining room table and I unlock the front door and go outside and finish the screwdriver and smoke what I consider might be the last cigarette of my life so I try to make it count.

I wake up to the cooing of Honey and as soon as I achieve consciousness I feel my head in the hands of an unloving god and my mouth full of acid and ash despite a clear memory of brushing my teeth in the fluorescent light of the bathroom vanity and helplessly swallowing three expired Advil against the knowledge of what was coming. The red numbers on the hotel-style clock on the nightstand read 5:45 a.m. and I think please Honey, please Jesus, please go back to sleep, but her coos are becoming squawks and caws and I sit up and feel a wave of such profound dread that I have to lie down again and close my eyes. What unforgivable things did I do last night, I wonder, and try to still my pounding heart with the true fact that there is nothing unforgivable I could have done apart from the simple folly of drinking to excess at high altitude and falling down the stairs. Whatever devastation I’ve wrought I’ve wrought quietly in the privacy of my own mobile home. The pounding isolates itself to the upper-right quadrant of my head and I feel the egg on my eyebrow and think “I’m alive.” And then I think “unfit mother unfit mother unfit mother,” one of those word pairings of the sort my brain likes to get stuck in its gears.

“Shhhhh,” I say to Honey in her closet wondering whether she might lie back down and soothe herself to sleep. “Shhhhh,” but the position of the tongue to produce the sound allows me to taste the full ruin of my breath. Her caws become shrieks. “Dadadada,” she says. I force myself up and place my legs over the side of the bed. I am wearing only underwear and I look down at my slack white belly and the long thin hairs growing around my bikini line. I lie back down; I sit back up. I shuffle around the enormous bed and into the bathroom and see my eyelid is so purple it is nearly black and it becomes red radiating out from my eye. I drink the glass of water that is sitting forgotten by the sink. I know I have but it feels like I have never had a hangover like the hangover I have now and I can only propel myself out of the bathroom by hunching forward sagging my shoulders like Early Man. Honey’s noises are insistent and I shuffle to the closet and see her bright face like a little night-light in the dark. “Ameeeee,” she says, and lifts up her arms to me. I have heard her say “Amee” before but she’s said it to several people and I’ve never been positive she is referring to me. But this seems very clear and my heart starts bleeding and I pick her up and she is incredibly heavy and I carry her back to the bed and lie down, trying to clutch her to my bosom while she squirms and writhes to sit up stand up try and jump on the bed and my stomach is full of water and baby bees. My head pounds so much I have to sit up and put it between my knees. She stops her frenzy and puts her arms around me and her cheek against my back.