Lydia Kiesling - The Golden State

I expect a town of this size to feel less depopulated than Altavista but there are only three sat tables in the restaurant. I reflect that almost everyone I’ve seen since we came north besides Kimmy has been a teen or the aged or aging.

The beer comes and I cheers Alice and she says cheers but then sits there silently and I am not sure whether or how to make a conversation go. Honey is shredding napkins and banging her spoon gently and she is occupied and before I know it the pizza arrives and I serve all of us and cut up Honey’s piece.

Alice tries to pick up her piece and then sets it down again.

She drinks some of her beer. I’ve almost finished mine and realize I need to pace myself if I’m going to drive us home.

“I wanted to be a playwright, you know,” she says out of nowhere. I don’t really know what to say so I say “I thought you were a teacher” and she says “Yes but in my spare time I wrote plays.” She goes again. “Do you want to be a teacher?” She looks at me. “Since you work at the University?”

“No,” I say. “I don’t know what I want to be exactly. I was going to get a Ph.D. but I never really had a plan for after. I just like to know things and feel useful.”

“You should be sure you have a way to support yourself,” she says.

“My mom always said the same thing,” I say. “When my father died it was like we lost the thing about our family that said what our family was and then she had to make herself over.”

“When I had all those babies they kind of railroaded the rest of my life.” She takes another long sip of her beer. “This just tastes so good,” she says, as though she had not just issued an utterly devastating statement in Berwin Pies. Honey is playing and spilling milk and I try to shovel some more pieces of pizza into her.

“Why are you AWOL from your job now,” she asks.

“One of our work-study students and her classmate got a grant from my Institute to go interview refugees in Turkey, and I helped them plan their trip and when they were there they got into a car accident and one of them was killed.” The mustard gas doesn’t accumulate behind my eyes like it normally does. She doesn’t say anything. “I don’t love the way my institution does things normally but, like, this girl died . I can’t cope with listening to everyone fall all over themselves to abdicate responsibility. Even though it was an accident and it technically isn’t anyone’s responsibility. We’re supposed to be in loco parentis.”

“You’re never safe from bad things happening,” she says. This thought is so profoundly depressing I hope the earth opens and gently swallows everyone on it, right now.

She seems to feel how despondent that makes me and she looks at me with some fond light in her eyes and she says “I want to apologize if I’ve been bad company for you,” and I say “Alice no, no” and she cuts me off and says “I don’t make friends easily. I say the wrong thing” and I say “Alice I don’t know what we would have done if we hadn’t met you” which is true because at the very least she got us out of the damn house.

“I told you about our farm,” she says and I nod and she says “It was going to be a place for the girls to run around and catch fireflies” and I can just picture it something verdant and humid and the lightning bugs flashing. “There was a long time after they died where I was so angry I didn’t try to make the house nice, when I didn’t always behave nicely with people. I was in the… abode of pain.” I don’t exactly see what this has to do with being good company to us but I just say “I find you delightful to be with,” which is basically true.

“Ever since I got in the car to come west I feel some of it falling away,” she says and I just say “I’m glad.”

The air feels fresh when we get outside, I mean really really fresh. It must be the proximity of the lake because we are as high as Altavista here but something feels a little cooler, a little more moist, than the plain where Altavista sits. Honey struggles to get out of my arms and I say “Do you want to ride on my shoulders” and carefully put her up there and hold on tight to her ankles. My blood feels loose and I wonder momentarily whether I should drive but I think why not it was only one and a half beers and still holding tight to her ankles I touch my nose with one finger then the other and walk in a straight line and it all seems in order. I get her into the car get Alice into the car and drive very slowly back to the motel seeing maybe three cars on the way. Honey is asleep before we get to the motel—I remember she had no big afternoon nap and instead stared at television while I snoozed beside her. She stirs when I get her out of the car seat and then puts her head back on my shoulder and goes back to sleep, a rare event.

“We can get an early start,” I say to Alice before we head into our rooms.

“Seven o’clock,” she says.

I keep the lights off and the door to the room open and find my way with the illumination from the motel hallway. I strip off Honey’s shoes and her socks and her pants and I leave her in the onesie underneath, none the worse for wear. I lay her gently on the pillow and cover her with the blanket and stare at her for a minute. I go over to the dense drape at the window and realize our room looks out at the bench which in turn looks out over the parking lot. I calculate that if I open the window it will take me about thirty seconds of negligent parent time to get from the room through the lobby and to the bench, from where I can smoke and look at all the e-mails and hear Honey if she cries out. So I open the window, collect the essentials, make sure I have the key, close the door gently behind me, and sprint down the hallway and out through the front door of the Wagon Wheel and confirm, from the window, that I can see my sleeping child through the gauzy second curtain. I move six feet to the right and light a cigarette and take the phone from the pocket. It’s still light out. I open Skype and press to call Engin. It rings and rings until the British woman is there. “The person you are trying to reach…”

I finish my cigarette and look at the e-mails. I hear a reedy sound through the window adjacent. “That’s poison, you know.” It is the voice of Alice, presumably talking about my cigarette.

“I know,” I say. “I’m quitting when we get back.” Her window slides shut.

I write to Hugo awkwardly with thumbs, the cigarette perched on the bench beside me. “Dear Hugo,” I say. “Once again, I am sorry for the delay. The key box is in the bottom drawer of the reception desk—Meredith at one point knew this; perhaps she’s forgotten. My grandmother has passed away; I am settling some things at her home and I will be back in the office next week.” I cc Meredith and Karen and send the message and hope that it will be good enough. I write to Meredith. “Dear Meredith, I have written to Hugo and cc’d you. I am so sorry for the trouble I have caused. For your exception you will need to have Karen write a letter from you to the Acting Vice Provost explaining why the extraordinary expenditure was necessary, and then he will need to sign off.” I feel like I’ve dispatched these two items well, but I can’t ignore the electronic evidence of all the things I’m really supposed to do. There is an e-mail from our friendly local Gülenist organization with which we have agreed to plan an interfaith Iftar dinner and from which Hugo is always encouraging me to “raise money” although their office is absolutely threadbare and the manager applies for every job the University posts which indicates it may not be a likely avenue for fundraising. There are the reminder e-mails from the federal entity that grants part of our funding reminding that it is one month until our quarterly compliance report is due, a task that takes approximately one month of agony to dispatch correctly. I try to remind myself that I have successfully dispatched them in the past many times and that nothing will stop me from doing so again. I smoke another cigarette and try to think calmly about my calendars and spreadsheets and efficiency tools back in the office but for some reason they fail to calm me and then I go back inside the motel and illuminate our room with the screen of the phone to set the alarm.