The Golden State

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.