The Last Days of California: A Novel (24 page)

BOOK: The Last Days of California: A Novel

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We sat on the floor and watched TV. It was nighttime and the women were in a circle, sewing by candlelight. One woman was talking about dropping out of the project, saying she didn’t know why she’d signed up for it in the first place, what the point of it was, while the others tried to talk her out of it. The more they tried to explain the purpose of the experiment, though, the less sure they sounded. And then they were all talking themselves out of it—they were hungry and hot and might even go blind. Didn’t the girl from
Little House on the Prairie
go blind, like for real, in real life?

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m fine,” she said, looking at me so miserably I felt like I’d lost something, too. It could be terrible having a family—you had to suffer their pains and disappointments along with your own—but the good stuff couldn’t be shared, at least not in the same way.

“Maybe it’s not a miscarriage. Maybe it’s just a little blood.”

“I know my body,” she said.

I know my body
, I thought.
I know my body.
I wanted to know my body. We ate M&M’s and watched commercials for cleaning products and lunch meat, and then it was morning and the women were back at work, feeding the animals and washing clothes and there was no more talk of abandoning the project. Elise sorted the M&Ms by color; she ate the red ones and the brown ones and the blue ones in twos and threes. I bit into one that didn’t have a peanut, which was lucky, like finding a four-leaf clover in a field.

When we’d finished the bag, I took her hand and held it. I held it until both of our hands were sweaty and I wanted to let go but didn’t. I wanted her to know I would always be there for her, that I would never leave her.

“I have to change this pad,” she said finally, and I stood and closed the door behind me.

As soon as
Elise came out, the food arrived—plates of scrambled eggs and bacon, fruit salad, pancakes, a carafe of coffee.

“Are you feeling better?” our mother asked.

“A little,” she said. She sat on the bed with us and I reached out and touched her hair. She smiled at me and poured herself a cup of coffee, stirred in cream and a packet of sugar. She put a spoonful of eggs on her plate, a scoop of fruit salad.

Our father popped the needle out of his case and pinched his belly, but stopped before shoving it in. “I think I’m going to go on that hospital diet Woo’s been trying to get me on,” he said.

“That’s a great idea,” our mother said, handing me a roll of silverware.

“I could do it,” he said.

“Of course you could.”

“You don’t think I could do it,” he said.

“You can do anything you put your mind to,” she said in a cheerful voice that confirmed his suspicions.

“I think you can do it,” I said.

“I do, too,” Elise said. “You’re the most stubborn man we know.”

He chuckled and pushed the needle in, saying perhaps it would be one of the last times he’d have to stick himself. Then he bowed his head. “Thank you, Lord,” he said. “These are simple words but they come from simple hearts that overflow with the realization of your goodness. We ask you to bless us as we eat, bless this food and bless the hands that prepared it. May the words of our lips spring forth from hearts of gratitude and may we bless others as we fellowship today.” He paused and we waited for him to say something else, something more. “Thank you for our family,” he said. There was another pause and he said, “Amen.”

“Thank you for our family,” our mother repeated.

I put a single pancake on my plate, a piece of bacon.

Elise turned it to
The Price Is Right
and we watched while we ate. In the Showcase Showdown, a woman won a trip around the world. Her friends rushed the stage and they ran around looking at the pictures of the places she would go. It was better when they all got to pile in a car and wave through the windows. They might actually get to cruise around in that car but they weren’t going around the world. I thought about the dusty flea market with the saddest lady I’d ever seen, the camel in the parking lot of the dollar store, the old man pushing his lawnmower across the highway. They were all things I wouldn’t have seen in Montgomery. I wondered if the Las Vegas girl made it to Las Vegas. I hoped she had and that her life would be better there. I imagined she’d kept the dog, calling to him at the last minute.

And then
The Young and the Restless
was on and I asked questions, trying to catch up with who was with who, what was happening. We were finished eating but no one moved. Once we moved, we’d have to keep moving. We’d have to get in our car and drive home and that would feel like failure but it didn’t feel like failure now. It felt like all sorts of things were still possible.

“Are you going to eat that?” I asked my mother.

She handed me her last piece of bacon, soft and floppy like all restaurant bacon.

“Give me half,” Elise said.

I gave her the whole thing and she ate it like she’d never stopped eating meat. And just like that, she wasn’t a vegetarian anymore. It was strange how you could be something and then not be that something so easily. Last night, I’d been a virgin. Elise had been a vegetarian. Last night, not being those things had seemed impossible. I eyed the remaining biscuit, an unopened jar of jelly. I picked up the jar and peeled off the thin black strip that said it hadn’t been tampered with, took a clean spoon and held it up to my face.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am indebted to the Michener Center for Writers. It was my dream to be a Michener Fellow and I still can’t quite believe it came true. Thanks to my professors, Michael Adams and Elizabeth McCracken, who were incredibly generous with their time and expertise. I couldn’t have done it without you. A number of friends also read early drafts: Melissa Ginsburg, Ethel Rohan, Elizabeth Ellen, Aaron Burch, Derek Asuan-O’Brien, Dolores Ulmer, Nick Ulmer, Claudia Smith, Jane Collins, and Lee Durkee. Thank you. Thank you, Katie Adams, for taking a chance. Lastly, thanks to Sarah Bridgins, who wanted to represent a woman who said she would always and only be a short story writer.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mary Miller
is the author of the story collection
Big World
. Her work has appeared in
McSweeney’s Quarterly
,
New Stories from the South
,
Oxford American
, and
American Short Fiction
. A former Michener Fellow in Fiction at the University of Texas, she will serve as the John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi for the academic year 2014–15.