Lydia Kiesling - The Golden State

“You’re going to sit like a big girl, oh boy!” I say. I notice Alice isn’t eating and gesture at the food. She fumbles for a piece of salami and puts it on bread. Honey has slid off the bench with her plastic spoon and is jamming it into the ground. She bends forward, planting her hands and her forehead on the dirt in a way that can’t be comfortable but I can see her upside-down smile between her legs. I stand and grab her ankles and flip her over in a somersault, resting her gently on her back. She screams joyfully and springs up and I brush the dirt off her forehead and she struggles free to do it again.

“What fun!” says Alice. “Such good somersaults!” We repeat this three more times and then I’m winded and I pick her up and dance her over to Alice, who has been watching and clapping cheerfully.

Flies are beginning to descend and buzz. “You’re not eating,” I note. “Aren’t you hungry?” She looks at the beading salami on the paper plate skeptically and says, “I guess not. I only do one big meal a day lately.” She must see my concern because she sort of fluffs herself up. “Why don’t we stop in the town you showed me on the map tonight and get a big pizza and a pitcher of beer?”

“That sounds like heaven,” I say.

“And we can call Mark and Yarrow.” I lift Honey to smell her butt, which squishes, and dig in the tote to find her changing things. I lay out the pad on the bench opposite Alice and tug off Honey’s socks pants undo her diaper and hush her fake crying. I try to avoid pushing poop into her vagina, try not to get poop on my hand. A wipe tumbles into the dirt and I pick it up gingerly and place it onto the bench behind me.

“Always such a mess,” I say to Alice, who is staring into space vaguely in our direction. All I want to ask is How did you do this how did you do this. I want to know how she cared for three sick infants, how it was physically possible, how did she not murder her husband or even the children. I sort out Honey’s diaper and Alice has moved everything on the table into a tidy pile. I put salami and cheese slices in Ziploc bags and the bags in the cooler. The last cheese scraps dispatched into Honey’s mouth, I look expectantly at Alice.

“Ready?” I say. “Let’s go,” she says. I put Honey on my hip and help Alice stand. Back into the car, back onto the road, heading toward gray skies.

Alice sleeps and Honey stares blankly. I sing a little Barış Manço to myself, “Dağlar dağlar,” mountains mountains, it means. To be honest I don’t even really know what most of the words mean—songs give me the most trouble in Turkish. I mean I understand the individual word meanings but not how they fit together. Something about “You plucked my flower and put it in your hands.” God forbid I ever be forced to literally translate it for someone. But even if I don’t get it it’s just the right mournful tone for being around here.

I pass the time trying to think of all the Turkish words I can that still have Arabic and Persian roots because it turns out Atatürk didn’t get all of them during his nationalist purges and I wonder, briefly and insanely, if I should go back to school because what am I doing with all this pointless information—it just sits there uselessly until I use it to pass the time on a long drive. I won’t even teach it to Honey. But then like that, we are in Berwin Falls on the other side of the border.

When we drive in I get almost a festival feeling. The town is roughly five times the size of Altavista, and has things like a small hospital, a minimall, even a variety of fast-food establishments. We find a motel just by driving along an honest-to-god strip and Alice wakes up and points out one called the Wagon Wheel, with faux-stone pillars and a pleasing old-timey sign and the inevitable wagon wheel out front.

“Let’s stay there,” she says. I pull in and make to go inside and find out about rooms.

“I’ll pay,” says Alice and I say “Oh no” and she says “Oh yes” and takes a credit card from an inner pocket of her purse.

“You can’t take it with you,” she says again. I am wondering whether I should presume to put two rooms on her credit card or whether she might like a roommate and am slightly paralyzed thinking about what is the correct course of action but she says “Get two rooms next to each other, if you can” and I say “Roger” and make my way inside leaving her and Honey in the car.

The interior of the motel is marvelously ugly. There are wagon wheels everywhere—one has even been employed as a chandelier holding faux candles above. I determine that they have two rooms adjacent and I give them Alice’s credit card to swipe and return to the car and collect Honey and her diaper bag and Alice’s wheelie bag and then scurry around to Alice’s side to grip her elbow and try to gently haul her out. I put Honey down next to me and the diaper bag over my shoulder and the wheelie bag handle in my hand. “Two o’clock,” I say. “Probably time for a nap,” thinking of Alice since Honey has slept most of the day and is probably feeling rambunctious needless to say she needs to eat but we can have a second picnic in our hotel room and maybe maybe she will go back to sleep and I can have a cigarette which I want desperately, it being some five hours since I had one. I think maybe it’s just time I smoke in front of the baby but then I imagine her putting her two little fingers together and putting them to her lips and I curse myself for thinking any such thing.

Alice who has been rather aloof about attempts to assist her physically is leaning on my elbow and I am feeling vaguely guilty since she is obviously so frail and we haven’t yet spoken to Mark and Yarrow and I’m not sure what kind of exertions this trip is going to portend. Honey trips merrily along next to us onto the maroon shag of the motel, she has a good herd instinct.

The woman at the front desk says “Oh, are we visiting with Granny,” and I look at Alice and say “Yes” just as she says “No” and we both laugh and keep walking toward our rooms. When we reach Alice’s door I unlock with the mini wagon wheel key and lead her in with Honey at our heels. “Good work, baby girl,” I say to her. “Good walking and following,” I say. I wheel Alice’s bag in and say “Now the woman at the front desk is going to think I kidnapped you and am passing you off as Granny” and Alice laughs.

“We’ll hear the police cars any minute,” she says. I bark at Honey who has reached up her mitts to try and touch the enormous old TV perched on a rickety stand.

“Should we call up Mark and Yarrow to let them know where you are,” I venture. “Okay by me,” says Alice, and I pull out my phone and see that, miracle of miracles, I finally have some goddamn cell service. The screen is alive with WhatsApp and e-mail notifications and seeing Hugo’s name I immediately experience several physical manifestations of dread, in my stomach and the palms of my hands. I swipe all the notifications away and open up the dial screen.

“Do you have their number?” I ask and Alice begins rummaging around in her ratty leather purse until she pulls out a bundle of tiny squares of paper rubber-banded together.

“My address book,” she says and pulls out the top square and hands it to me. “You dial and then let me talk to them.” I punch in the numbers and hand her the phone and see with one eye that Honey has wandered into the bathroom where I follow and find her standing with one hand on the toilet flusher and a shit-eating grin on her face. She pulls at it and it clicks and the toilet flushes. I hear Alice’s voice in the next room and I do a quick check for death traps and shut the toilet lid and leave Honey to her flusher. I go into the bedroom where Alice is leaning against the wardrobe on the phone.