Lydia Kiesling - The Golden State

I pull Honey to me and kiss her head over and over again and prop her against the pillow and get up and get Alice’s hard-backed suitcase and hoist it onto the foot of the bed. I click open the two snaps and on top of neatly folded clothes there is a folded paper reading “In case of emergency” and I think Jesus Christ and I unfold it and it is a piece of stationery from the Wagon Wheel motel and on it are written two phone numbers and below that in a crabbed cursive it just says “I’m not coming home” and her little day-by-day pill box with today’s pills untaken and yesterday’s too and I lie down next to Honey and cry like my heart is breaking.

One of the State of Jefferson guys was shot by the police early this morning when they moved to retake the interstate here at the northernmost point of the fifty-first State of Jefferson. He fired and then they fired and now he is in “stable” condition in the hospital, probably the same one as Alice, probably having his life saved by Dr. Bakhtiyar who, if I had to guess, is probably the only doctor for a hundred miles and who if I also had to guess is probably not the person the wounded man pictured sharing his new state citizenship with not to mention having his life saved by. The blockading groups were apprehended pretty quickly after that and the roads are clear but one group of five has moved into the national forest along the border and is claiming to be hunkering down for a long siege. I wonder if Cindy is in the forest or in jail. I wonder whether she made common cause with the Cunt after all. I hope I never see Cindy again.

Honey is sitting on the floor leafing rather deftly through a Gideon Bible that she found in the drawer which she herself opened. I have already smoked a cigarette out of the motel window this morning while she slept so my parenting is not off to a good start in any case.

Last night while I was trying to fall asleep I thought about kinds of death. I shooed my father my mother Ellery out of my mind and I tried to empty everything but Alice out in the wood. I pictured her walking across the clearing and turning toward the trees on some mission of communion. I saw her moving with certainty across the uneven forest floor while I was laboring in futility with Cindy and her coconspirators. Under the forest canopy the rain would have taken on a new sound, not the pounding of water against the defenseless grass but something gentler and hushed, a sound like an expectant audience whispering in an amphitheater at dusk. And maybe her foot slipped on a root and then she was on her back in a divot of earth looking up at the trees. I pictured her lying in the divot just the right shape to cradle her with her face up to the sheltering canopy. Maybe she felt the pine needles under her hands and made a tentative move to try and stand and she couldn’t get anything to cooperate and she was dry and more or less comfortable and she closed her eyes. I closed my own eyes and clasped my hands under my body. Please God , I say to myself . Let her be out of the Abode of Pain. Let her be with her husband and her babies.

I will pick Mark up at the airport in Medford this afternoon at 4:00, and then I will take him to the coroner and then I guess and hope he’ll take over from there. I take a photo of Alice’s note in case they’ve decided to sue me or arrest me which I guess is not outside the realm of possibility. I hate the lizard part of my brain that made me avoid saying anything like “I feel responsible” to Mark, but I somehow also feel that Alice knew a sucker when she saw one and that sucker was me and when I think back there’s not really one particular thing I would have done differently and whether I should have done something differently has not yet revealed itself.

I watch a commentator on CNN interviewing a man in camo and there is a graphic of a map of the State of Jefferson, and there within it, unmarked, is Paiute County, Altavista, Deakins Park. I open the laptop and I look at my Institute in-box and think about all the things I have to do and I open my Tasks spreadsheet and start to make a list and then I look at Honey who is tearing pages out of that Bible like a heathen and I think about Engin and the culture of my family and the brevity of life and how you could spend fifty years missing someone who is gone and never coming back and I close the spreadsheet and open Skype and it rings and rings and rings and there is no Engin and I will have to trust that he is not dead not with another woman and I don’t want to lose this feeling while I wait for him to call so I open WhatsApp on my phone and write “Aşkım sana geliyoruz” which is “My love we are coming to you” which is pop-song corny but just what comes to mind and like that it’s decided, at least assuming they let me out of here. And then I close the computer and get off the bed and look down at Honey and she looks at me with her father’s eyes and my eyebrows and her very own look of self-reliance and determination and I say “Well, Miss Honey. Shall we go have a look at this Wildlife Safari?” and she scrambles to her feet and reaches up her arms to her mama.

Endless thanks to Claudia Ballard for giving me the courage to try this, and to Emily Bell, Maya Binyam, Jackson Howard, Sarita Varma, and everyone at MCD/FSG for making it a book. Special thanks to Oya Topçuoğlu, who read portions of the text and provided valuable insight, and to Alex and Petter, who provided inspiration.

C. Max Magee and The Millions gave me the space to become a writer and I’ll never forget it. I’m thankful also for the many writers who have provided encouragement and community over the years, in person or in the ether, especially Adam Boretz, Kirstin Butler, Nicole Chung, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Katie Coyle, Vinson Cunningham, Michelle Dean, Jen Gann, Emily Gould, Rahawa Haile, Garth Risk Hallberg, Jane Hu, Vanessa Hua, Brian Hurley, Crystal Hana Kim, Reese Kwon, Edan Lepucki, Kara Levy, Lillian Li, Lili Loofbourow, Yael Goldstein Love, Michael David Lukas, Manjula Martin, Laura Miller, Kate Milliken, Caille Millner, Nick Moran, Ismail Muhammad, Mark O’Connell, Meaghan O’Connell, Katie Raissian, Lisa Srisuro, Lucy Tan, and Laura Turner.

I am eternally grateful to the people who helped me learn Turkish over the years—professors, fellow students, and friends—among them: Gökay Abeş, Begüm Adalet, Toygun Altıntaş, Helga Anetshofer, Hakan Karateke, Kağan Arık, Özge Atamtürk, Fatih Ateş, Rezeda Azangulova, Osman Balkan, Özgür Baykal, Valantin and Murat Bilir, Andrea Brown, Christopher Markiewicz, Yaşar Tolga Cora, İpek Hüner-Cora, Öcal Çetin, Coşkun Çokbilir, Madeleine Elfenbein, Molly Laas, Murat Gökdemir, Emma Harper, Glyn Harris, Özgür Hekimoğlu, Bengi Hürriyetoğlu, Ekin Enacar-Kömürlü, Fatih Kurşun, Zuhal Kurtcebe, Stephanie Ruggles, Merve Sarı, Ahmet Tunç Şen, Sümeyye Yar, Zübeyde and Mitul Sheth, Oya Topçuoğlu, and the Izmir CLS Yaşlılar. There is no way to sufficiently thank Linda and Gary Caldwell, my second parents, or Müge Bal, Gaye Gülenay, Esra Girgin Gümüştekin, Sema Gökmen Ölmez, and Dilara Nergis Şabciyan, with whom I passed so many afternoons in the teachers’ room. I’ll never forget your kindness.

Thanks to the Hodgsoniyya , particularly Terry Burke, Prairie Sundance and Lindsey Kroll, Nelda and Reuben Smith, Gretchen and Tom Spicer, Fanou and Bryan Walton, and John Woods. This project also benefited indirectly from the Title VI program of the Department of Education and the Critical Language Scholarship of the Department of State. Many thanks to Hossam Kaddoura for providing a place to work, and to Xiao Yan Li for providing wonderful childcare.

Thanks and love to all the friends who always told me I should do this, especially the Rats and the Boehners, Hope McGrath, Emily Behl, and Erin Hall. I started being a writer while working for John Crichton at the Brick Row Book Shop. David Beckman, Georgia Prosalentis, and Fatima Makhzoumy all took care of me in different ways.