Lydia Kiesling - The Golden State

“How long were you married before he died?”

“Twenty years.” A long time, I think, and then I remember that it’s been fifty years since. “How long have you been married?” She asks as though she doesn’t really care to know the answer. She’s distracted, staring out the window but I answer her anyway.

“Three years. I met him almost ten years ago and we dated for a month, and then we didn’t see each other for five years and then we basically got married right away. My mom got sick in the meantime so I had gone back to be with her and we weren’t serious anyway, I mean I barely could talk to him, linguistically speaking.” It doesn’t matter if she’s listening or not, it’s nice to be asked about yourself I don’t care who you are.

“You can’t know them anyway,” she says, so I guess she is listening. “I mean you don’t know what they are going to do when the rubber meets the road.”

“What did your husband do when your kids got sick?”

“Well, he agonized, he loved them, he made up stories for them, he read to them all night long. But he went to work all day long too, and he had very strict politics. He didn’t believe it was right to pay someone to look after them, because of the power balance. He was an egalitarian.” I almost stop the car. “So what did you do?” “We compromised,” she says. “We could accept someone’s help if they were getting something in return.” “Something other than money?” I asked. “He was a Marxist, I guess you could say.” Not a spook then, I think to myself and make a note to pursue further inquiries at a suitable juncture. “So instead of paid help we had fellows come and stay with us after they got out of bad situations, jail and such. I had to negotiate with him about what kind of crimes were acceptable.”

I can’t help myself, I laugh. “What the fuck,” I say and immediately freeze but she actually laughs too. “Anyway, it was very difficult. Even their wheelchairs were huge wooden things I couldn’t really get up the stairs. And then after the first of our girls died he up and died too.”

“What did you do?” I look back at Honey and she is lulled by the road. “What do you mean what did I do? I despaired. I grieved. I carried on.”

I feel there is something accusatory in her tone, as if to say, “I didn’t have some little meltdown like you seem to be having over nothing,” and I am preemptively mad about this, since I’m driving her ass to god knows where but then she says “But I did finally pay someone to help me out” and I look over and she has a small smile on her face.

She leans her head against the window.

“I think I’ll take a little nap, if you don’t mind.”

“Go right ahead.”

My energetic feeling from the early morning is collapsing in its usual midmorning way and I try to muster new feelings. First I think about what a luxury it is to be a Marxist who has an extremely accommodating wife. Then I think about the salami in the cooler and the cigarettes in my bag and the fact that the house is all packed up the bed is made and there’s no reason at all to go back. The road is so smooth—kaymak gibi, like cream, you say in Turkish—and the Buick gliding over it. Honey has quieted in the back seat.

After twenty minutes or so Honey is asleep and Alice is emitting light snores next to me. I glance at her and see how very old she looks. We speed along. We begin the slow climb to Surprise Pass and when we reach the turnout I pull the Buick over. To get to the prime grassy spot you have to walk a little way on a trail and it occurs to me that this will be impossible for Alice, something I have failed to take into account. But there is a decrepit picnic table not far from the commemorative stone pillar and plaque and the valley is still a wide sweep before us, with Altavista a few clustered buildings in the distance. The sky is a pallid, milky blue now, save a gray mass to the far north, with the shady apparition of summer rain high in the sky in the far distance. Alice opens her eyes as soon as I turn the car off.

“Hi,” I say. She grunts.

“Well, we’re here now, if you’d like to have a picnic,” I say.

“Sounds nice,” she says thinly. She looks absolutely exhausted.

“I’ll get everything set up if you want to stay put for a second.”

“Okay.” Honey is still asleep. I hustle around the back of the Buick and get the cooler and the tote bag with Honey’s diaper accoutrements and I lug them to the picnic table and spread out Grandma’s plaid tablecloth and take the tomato the cheese the salami etc. out of the cooler and start slicing and putting out mustard and cutlery and I lay out what I think is frankly a very nice little spread. I return to the car and extend my hand to Alice, who looks at it a minute before taking it and allowing me to hoist her up. She shrugs off my hand once she’s on her feet and straightens her skirt and walks slowly to the picnic table. “I probably won’t be able to swing my legs over that bench,” she says, and I say, “We’ll face out and look down at the valley then.” I begin unbuckling Honey from her seat and she stirs and her face immediately crumples. I coo and make funny faces and peekaboo and she does her cry laugh and I kiss her cheek and her neck and she squirms and snorts. I disentangle her from the seat and carry her over to the picnic table. “We’re going to have a picnic,” I say to her, and she says “Bibit” and I recognize that she is trying to say picnic and I make a fuss.

“She’s starting to try and say a lot more words since we’ve gotten here,” I say to Alice, and she says, “That’s good. Smart baby.”

“It’s only been a week,” I say, and she smiles a little wanly and I wonder if this was the reverse of her experience, her babies going backward into themselves and I try to be more subdued about Honey’s developments.

“Picnic,” I say to Honey. “Bibit,” she says. I make her a kind of deconstructed sandwich with cheese shreds salami shreds pieces of bread and Alice says, “She probably doesn’t need you to shred it all up like that, she’s a big girl. You’re a big girl, aren’t you?” She looks at Honey and smiles broadly and it looks almost ghoulish compared to her normal expression.

“I guess you’re right,” I say. “I just don’t want her to choke.”

I gesture at the valley and say, “This could be apocryphal but I think the reason this was called Surprise Pass is that this was where one of the emigrant trails came through and I guess at some point a group of settlers hunkered down to celebrate their successful passage west, and they were attacked by Indians. I think that was the surprise.”

“That’s cute,” says Alice and it makes me laugh.

“Or maybe the surprise is how underwhelmed they were,” I say. “Maybe the surprise is that you make it over a huge mountain pass and see the massive desolate plain you’ve still got to cross.” “Surprise!” Alice says, spreading out her hands.

“Cholera!” I laugh frankly and I feel how long it has been since someone other than Honey made me laugh. But the valley is a balm after the ravages of town, a vast open view of soft-looking green grasses, the yellow sweep of hills moving up into low forested peaks at the basin’s far reach. It’s not verdant, not gentle, but it looks pretty good.

“When did your people come here?” she asks.

“Eighteen eighties, I think. They had a pretty good run.”

“But you never lived up here?”

“My dad was in the foreign service, did I tell you that?” She doesn’t say anything. “We always lived in cities. I had a crazy thought maybe we could stay up here for a while but I just can’t. The largest group of people I’ve even seen since I’ve been here is the damn State of Jeffersoners,” I say. “And they’re literally separatists. Not to mention my husband could never stand it assuming he ever gets back here.” I fold a piece of salami into my mouth. Honey who has been on my lap starts squirming and I set her on the bench next to me.