The Golden State

“Please,” she says. “Go find us a motel and check in and then come back for me. I want to be alone. I won’t be foolhardy. I promise. Give me two hours.” She gives my hand a little squeeze. I agonize for a second. “Okay,” I say, hearing Yarrow’s worried voice on the phone. “But first I’m going to get out and do a lap and make sure there aren’t any big holes or snakes or anything. You’re going to let me do that.” I try to sound commanding. She nods. “And you’re going to let me pull some food together for you to keep in a dry spot. And you’re going to let me drive you over to the buildings.” “Sure,” she says. I go around to the trunk and get Honey a cheese out of the cooler and I collect the other leftover picnic materials crackers and cold cuts and put them into a couple of gallon Ziplocs. I put these on top of the car and give Honey her string cheese and think about getting her out of the car but then consider what it will then be like to get her back into the car seat. She is whimpering and straining but the cheese pacifies her for the time being. “Tseeeeeeeee,” she says. “Tseeeee.” I start a slow jog toward the buildings and am encouraged that the ground beneath the ankle-high grasses is dry and reasonably flat. I feel my lungs scratching and protesting and my ancient sports bra riding up over the underside of my breasts and I slow to a brisk walk. One of the long, low bunkhouse-looking buildings is a ruin, not burned, just collapsed in at one corner, splintered planks raised in mute supplication. Some of the buildings are in better shape, but all appear to be padlocked. I try to shake off my overwhelming recent feelings of helplessness and try to be the person I am at my job during my most successful efficient and results-getting. I have written a multimillion-dollar federal grant, I think to myself. “What are the things I need to assess this situation,” I say aloud, but I don’t know, I just don’t know what exactly is the right thing to do. Some kind of bird of prey caws hoarsely above and I think For god’s sake. I go to the edge of the clearing, a hundred yards or so from the nearest structure, and there are some huge worn stumps right before the forest starts in earnest and I find the flattest one, about the height of my thigh, tucked under an enormous pine, and I say, “Okay,” and I run back to the car and point out the stump to Alice. “This is where I’m going to put the food and everything,” I say. “Do you feel like you can walk that far from the buildings? I’m going to drive you right up to them.” She nods. “Sit tight a little longer” I tell her and she is sitting there as is Honey who is crying now and she laboriously twists her back to try and wave a crooked finger at her and get her to smile. I get the food, and one of Honey’s blankets, and the trunk flashlight for good measure and scurry back to the stump and lay them out. Back at the car Alice raises an eyebrow. “It looks like you’re getting ready for me to live under that tree.”

“I’m anxious about leaving you here with the sky gray like that. You know I am. Do you want a sweater or something?” and she shakes her head.

“They’re all packed up. Don’t need you messing in my suitcase.” I go back to the trunk and rummage in my duffel and pull out the “I Climbed the Great Wall” sweatshirt and I run it back over to the stump. Back at the Buick I’m out of breath.

“I put my sweatshirt there, just in case.” Honey is crying in the back seat and my shoulders start climbing up to my ears like they have done since I first heard her first tiny infant cries. I take my phone out of my back pocket and look at its barless screen. I hop in and start the car and drive slowly over to the most official-looking structure.

“I’m pretty sure they are all locked up, and some of them are in real bad shape,” I report. “Please don’t try to walk up into one and find yourself falling through a rotting floorboard.”

“I won’t,” she says. I fish her maps out of the center console and figure if I go back east on a different state road I’ll eventually come to the interstate and all the motels that cluster around it. I look at the clock on the dash. “It’s ten forty-eight right now,” I say. “I think it will take me around an hour to get to a motel at the outside. If it gets to be noon and I haven’t found one I’m just going to turn back around. So either way I’m going to be back here at one-thirty. That seems like an awfully long time for you to be by yourself here.”

“I’ve been ‘by myself’ for longer than you’ve been alive,” she snaps.

“Yes, I understand that, but you weren’t living outside for twenty years.” I am feeling and sounding shirty. Honey is shrieking. I point up at the amassing gray. “And it looks like rain.”

“One-thirty,” she says. “That’s fine.”

“You have your purse?”

“Yes.”

“Did you take your pills?”

“Yes.”

“Is your cell phone in your purse?”

“Yes.” She digs for a long while and pulls it out. “I don’t get any reception, though.”