Lydia Kiesling - The Golden State

The interior of the Antelope Meadows lodge has an air of abandonment notwithstanding the cars out front. There is a bulletin board with laminated informational sheets about the variety of floor plans available for anyone who might still wish to purchase a plot in the development. There is a separate bulletin board for current residents, with yellowing cautionary notices about water scarcity and bears. A few dusty animal heads gaze out from above a cold fireplace. To the left of the main room is the bar/lounge with pool table and a sour smell that extends faintly to the lobby and to the right is the restaurant. I lead Alice to the hostess stand where there is a pretty peaches-and-cream-complected youngish woman in a T-shirt and ponytail with a rose tattoo peeking up near her collarbone. “Two adults and a baby,” I say, and she looks questioningly at me.

“I know I recognize you,” she says, “but I’m trying to think from where.”

“My grandparents used to live here,” I say. “Frank and Cora Burdock, over in Deakins Park.” Her face lights up.

“We used to ride bikes!” she says. “My folks lived behind them on the other side of the circle for a few years.” “Kimmy?” I say after a moment of silence, remembering being five, seven, eight, eleven on home leave, and riding bikes with a moon-faced, smiling girl around and around the park.

“I remember,” I say, marveling at how completely that tie had been severed over years of sporadic visits. I don’t know her last name; we aren’t Facebook friends. We ceased to exist to each other when we were teenagers and I’m surprised by how clearly her child’s face returns to me now. We hug around Honey and I say “Can you say hello to Kimmy” and she squirms against me. “This is Honey,” I say.

“My goodness, how beautiful,” she says to the baby. “What is she, year and a half?”

“Just about,” I say. I always feel impressed by how easily other women can do this. I don’t think I have any idea how old babies are from looking at them yet.

“I’ve got three,” she says. “My oldest is twelve if you can believe it.” We are the same age or thereabouts, thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three. “Amazing,” I say, feeling truly amazed.

“I know, I’m crazy! But we have a lot of fun.” She laughs. “I married a local boy, we live out over on the road to Rigby” and motions east. “I’m just helping out my sister tonight, so this is a real coincidence!” I shift Honey to my other hip and smile broadly wondering what I should say. She saves me the trouble. “My folks are down in Chico now.” “Great,” I say.

“We always missed your grandparents so much,” she says kindly. “They were real good people.”

“Thank you,” I say. “I miss them too.”

“Your mom was in Sac…”

“She’s gone now too,” I say, and she nods. “I heard that. I’m sorry. Are you up here to stay?” she asks, with seemingly genuine interest.

“Just visiting, you know, showing Honey the place. We’ve been trying to sell the house but it’s just sitting there.”

“Yeah, the market’s no good right now, unless you got a land parcel to go with it. Where are you living now?” She darts her eyes over my hand and then her gaze moves and lingers on my face and I remember suddenly my ghastly eyebrow and how it must look. I put my hand to it and say “Ugh, I know, it’s awful—I tripped last night and banged it on the front walk.” And she says “Yikes” and I answer her question and say “Down in San Francisco. My husband is Turkish—he’s over there now finishing school. We had some mix-ups with his green card that we’re trying to deal with.” I hate how much of a shady business this makes it sound like our marriage is, not to mention my fucked-up face and the fact that she probably thinks I married a foreign wife-beater even though this makes no sense because I just said he was back in Turkey and I feel irrationally angry at Kimmy and her local boy and three children.

“I remember when we were kids you always lived somewhere over there… was it Greece?” “Yeah,” I say. “Good memory!” Alice shifts beside me and I realize how rude I’ve been. “Uh, I’m sorry, Kimmy, this is Alice, my friend” and Alice nods and Kimmy says “Pleasure” with a huge smile.

“How long are you here? We should get together. My kids love little kids. And they’re homeschooled so we love getting together with other families.” I feel equal parts suspicion and guilt at the word “homeschooled” but I say “That sounds really good” and it actually sort of does. She’s so cheerful and nice. She picks up a pen to take my number and I consider giving her the number which is functionally useless but then I think that’s hostile and I say “My phone doesn’t work that well here, and we cut off the landline. Maybe we ought to just pick a time.”

“Gotcha,” she says. She looks inside her mind with the look all women get as they tally their forthcoming obligations. “How about Tuesday lunch?”

“Great,” I say weakly.

“You want to just save my address on your phone? It’s out on County Road Twelve” and rattles off a number that I type into a draft text message. Honey is still resting limply against my body and I am feeling so fatigued from this interaction that I start rocking from one foot to the other in my impatience to exit.

“Well, see you then,” I say. An elderly man in a trucker hat hobbles up to the hostess stand.

“Well, let me get you seated,” she says, and she puts us in the corner by the huge window looking over the swing set and the lake and lugs over a high chair for Honey.

“Can’t wait to catch up,” she says, and I say “Yes, yes” and she goes back to seat the old man. I get Honey in the high chair and Alice slowly eases herself into her chair.

“You found a friend,” Alice says drily.

“It’s so strange. I hardly remember anything from when I was a kid,” I say. “Like I deleted most of my memories somewhere along the line. But I remember her face.”

“They always come back when you least expect it,” she says. “Prime rib, rib eye, T-bone, New York strip, lamb chops, pork chop,” she reads. “Not an easy place to be a vegetarian.”

“Oh god, I’m sorry,” I say. “You didn’t say.” I scan the menu. “There’s, uh, a Caesar salad. French fries.”

“Oh, I’m not a vegetarian anymore,” she says. “It’s too hard on the road. Especially here in cow country.”

I am distracted by Kimmy walking back to the hostess stand. “Three kids,” I say absentmindedly. “I literally cannot imagine.”

“Well, some people take to it better than others,” Alice says and I feel a little resentful at the implication.

Honey takes a soft gold-wrapped square of butter from the bowl next to the basket of dense white bread and mashes it onto her salad plate. I’m suddenly aware of the lingering upset of my stomach and the pounding of my head. “What am I going to do,” I say to Alice helplessly.

“Order your prime rib,” she says kindly.

A teenage boy comes to wait on us and we order. I ask for the inevitable Sierra Nevada which I am suddenly desperate for and Alice asks for a glass of red wine.

“So how much longer are you planning to be on the road,” I ask Alice, while Honey tears up her bread and stuffs it into her mouth.

“Well, the map says it’s just a few more hours to the place I’m trying to get to.”

She looks out the window. “I’ve been stalling. It hurts so much to drive honestly, I’m not sure what to do.”

“And then you’re supposed to drive all the way back once you’ve gotten there?”

“Something like that,” she says. Honey grabs a fistful of the polyester tablecloth and yanks, and I put both hands on the surface of the table to stabilize it and say, “We don’t do that,” while keeping one eye on Alice.