The Golden State

“When you wake up we can have the pizza and beer,” I say mostly because I really want this and hope she still does too and she smiles weakly. “That’s right.” I scoop up Honey who reaches her arms out to hug Alice and Alice smiles and reaches her arms back and we do an odd group hug with Honey squirming between our bodies and I feel her bony hands on my arms, the first person besides Honey who has touched me in a long time. Alice turns on her heel and walks out of the bathroom.

I start to carry Honey to our room and then realize I don’t have the Pack ’n Play which I will need to put her to bed. I poke my head back into the room. “Actually, sorry, do you mind watching her,” I say. “I need to run and get her crib and so forth from the car.”

“I don’t mind,” Alice says, and smiles at Honey who runs toward her skirt and buries her face in it and laughs. I walk briskly out of the room and down the corridor not insensible to the fact that this means I can smoke a cigarette. I get the Pack ’n Play and the various other things and I find my cigarettes and sit on the bench outside the front door of the motel looking out at the wagon wheel and the highway. Beyond is a row of mountains two of which have the slightest little bit of snow on them. I feel like seven minutes is a reasonable amount of time to leave them and while I recognize the addict’s brain serving forth this logic I don’t care and light the cigarette and as usual the first drag is both less and more satisfying than anticipated. Now that I am sitting still I realize I should call Engin and then I remember all of those notifications waiting on my phone to upset me.

I decide to get the worst over with and look at the Institute e-mail and whatever is going on with Hugo and Meredith. It is calming to first delete all the things that do not matter so I select everything that falls under this category, all the cheery euphemistic updates from the University’s head cheese, all the e-mails about various sexual assaults that have taken place on campus, all my mass mailings from the Council on American-Islamic Relations. This leaves behind several e-mails from Purchasing which portends that my reimbursements are probably not forthcoming because I need to submit a different form than the form that was initially provided to me by Purchasing. There are twenty-two e-mails from Hugo one of which reads EMERGENCY, and twelve from Meredith. There is one from Karen that says “Are you okay” in the subject line so I know that she must be back from vacation and that things must not be going very well. I smoke more of my cigarette and then I open EMERGENCY and it says “This is not acceptable, Daphne—we have lost the key box and need to be able to give keys to our visiting scholars. I understand you have your family situation but you need to get in touch.” Six months ago I would have composed a florid apology outlining all the ways I was going to solve this problem and ensure that no other person ever have to face anything like this ever again but now I don’t care. The last e-mail from Meredith says “Hugo is on the warpath, you probably need to check in soon” which is pretty decent from Meredith all things considered but then I see the e-mail preceding it which is her asking for me to get her an exception for a travel expense since Karen is swamped and I decide that was the real emergency. I consider writing them now but I remember Honey is with Alice and Alice is frail and Honey is a wiggleworm a grenade a timebomb and I pull down the last of the cigarette and stand up feeling lightheaded and hurry back into the motel with the bag and Pack ’n Play and various other things.

Inside Alice’s room Honey is sitting in the hard little chair that goes with the desk and Honey is painstakingly trying to pull Alice’s shoelaces out of her sensible shoes. “Hi hi,” I say, “Mommy is back. Sorry it took me so long,” and I realize I didn’t do gum or wash hands or anything and now Alice will know I smoke but what’s it to her and I drove her across state lines and am now probably under investigation by a concerned and concern-causing but not concerning hippie named Yarrow Passafarro.

“Do you need me to help you with anything,” I ask Alice, looking around at her suitcase and the bed and wondering whether she will need to be lifted into it or anything like that.

“No,” she says irritably. “I’m fine, thank you.”