California: A Novel (23 page)

“But why risk it?”

“Because,” Micah said. “There are options.”

“We want the baby.”

No one said anything. Why did Cal feel like Micah didn’t believe him?

“I still don’t get why you want me and Frida here. It seems like all we’re doing is causing you all a lot of trouble.”

Peter smiled at Micah. “That’s what I kept asking.”

“‘Kept’? Why did you stop?”

Peter nodded at Micah.

“My sister,” Micah said. “She’s here.”

“So you’re human after all,” Cal said. “Is that it?”

Peter actually laughed. It was such a clear, pure thing. Cal could see the man respected him. “This is why we need you in our morning meetings! To put Mikey in his place.”

Micah practically growled. “I realize you and Frida are a package deal, whether I like it or not. If you’re here, we might as well use that noggin of yours. Our garden isn’t doing well— the irrigation system is clogged. Go make yourself useful.”

Meeting adjourned. Cal used the footholds on the way down, and Peter told him he could find his own way back. Cal was flattered that Peter had that much confidence in his sense of direction. He was also smart enough to know that Peter was aware of this.

Before Cal left the woods, Peter told him to talk to Frida himself, and as soon as he could. “She should have no problem with keeping the secret,” he’d added, and smirked. Cal wanted to spit in his face for that, even though it seemed like Peter had been on his side in the tree house. He was probably the only reason Cal hadn’t pushed Micah out of the tree. And, anyway, Peter was right: Frida was having fun with her little secrets. Hopefully, for once, she would do what Cal asked and keep her mouth shut. She could be so selfish sometimes. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Peter said. “At our meeting.” He smiled. “You’re in the cabal, Mr. Paranoid. Get ready.”

There it was. Tomorrow morning he would head to the Church along with the influential men. The move would be noted by everyone else on the Land. After that, wasn’t voting just a formality? If the others wanted him and Frida to leave, wouldn’t Micah step in to veto their decision?

He would go to the meeting tomorrow because he wanted to understand how the machine worked. Micah had intuited that immediately. He’d give Cal what he wanted, but Cal would have to pay for it. Cal just had to figure out the price.

Working in the garden, Cal felt the foul mood that had threatened to take over all morning crouching in again. His hands were muddy, a blade of grass had dug itself into his thumbnail, and it seemed the woman he was working with, Rachel, knew next to nothing about…well, about anything, really. But that wasn’t any excuse for his being so rude. He was sighing like a sullen teenager every few minutes. Rachel didn’t deserve his crabbiness; after all, she had to sit in the dirt, too. At least the canal would be cleared soon, and then she could go sit at a table with someone more pleasant.

“That does it,” he said, and they both got to their feet.

“Thanks, Calvin,” she said.

“Can I ask you a question?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“Are you going to vote?”

She laughed. “Oh boy.”

“It’s none of my business, sorry.”

“It will be soon enough. The Vote is public. Didn’t anyone tell you that? You’ll see who wants you to stay.”

“And who doesn’t.”

“I wouldn’t worry.”

“You don’t even know what outcome I’m hoping for.”

“Oh, please.” Rachel raised an eyebrow. Cal thought he could see an old piercing there, the tiny hole abandoned; it had been left to close, but it was stubborn, it wouldn’t.

“Everyone knows you’re tight with Micah and them,” she said. “You’re in the meetings now, aren’t you?”

Cal was too stunned to answer. How did she know?

“I’ve gotta get some food in me,” Rachel said. “A sweet pancake maybe.” With that, she turned and left Cal alone in the mud.

Cal went to find Frida to tell her what Micah and Peter wanted. They were right; Frida couldn’t whisper news of her pregnancy to a soul. “I’m serious,” he’d say. He wanted to protect her, but he couldn’t say that: she’d laugh or, worse, be offended. She’d tell him she didn’t need his help, his strength, his useless male bravado. For all he knew, Frida was keeping secrets just to prove he couldn’t keep her safe. But this wasn’t a final paper in a women’s studies class; Frida needed him. He needed her, too.

If Frida could display a few symptoms, that would shut Micah and Peter up. Cal believed what he’d told them, that it was still too early in the pregnancy, but he couldn’t help but wish a little nausea on her, a fatigue that dragged her into a nap every other hour. When he went to find her in the Hotel dining room, Anika had said she was resting, tired after waking up so early to bake. Cal’s heart sped up. Maybe it had nothing to do with getting up early, maybe this was the beginning of the symptoms he had been hoping for. He’d ask her when they were alone.

It was funny to think that way now:
when they were alone.
Before, that’s all they ever were. He’d loved being the only two people around for miles; he understood that now. The life they’d created for themselves had been fragile and solid at once, and beautiful in those ways, too: the shell of an egg, the stone of a pillar. Now things felt wrong. These people had no idea what Frida was like, what she needed, what she called out for in the middle of the night when she was afraid, when her stomach hurt, when she just wanted dawn to come and ease the dark. She and Cal had been through so much. It was like Frida didn’t agree, like she didn’t care.

Cal found Frida in the outdoor lounge with Sailor and Dave. Dave had shaved, and without the scruff of hair covering his face he looked younger than before, and better looking; his beard had been hiding a strong jawline and a wide smile that made him look almost arrogant.

Did he want to impress Frida? Dave had been so rude when they’d arrived—the suspicious glances, the rough way he’d handled their things—but maybe by now he’d cooled off. And Frida was the new girl in town. The first and last, supposedly.

When Cal was a little boy, his mother had told him that someday his true love would seem different from everyone else in the world. “Like a bright red car in a sea of jalopies,” she’d said. It struck him that, although his mother had not been in love with his father, nor with her various long-term boyfriends, she’d been right. This was exactly how Cal felt, looking at his wife. His red car.

Dave saw Cal first. He waved, and Frida turned.

Though she smiled and called his name, Cal thought he detected a microsecond of disappointment on her face. It reminded him of how she used to act after spending the day with Micah. It was as if she’d gotten so used to her brother’s inflections and cynicism, and the way he could make her laugh, that returning to Cal jarred her. He wondered sometimes if Micah made fun of him to his sister, so that when Frida saw Cal again, she had the urge to laugh and had to force herself not to.

“Hi, babe,” he said now, and bent down to kiss her on the mouth.

“Hi,” she said.

What was it that had fled so suddenly from her face? Was it that she’d been sitting with two attentive men she didn’t know very well, their lives mysteries she could mine for years, and Cal had barged in to interrupt the moment? She’d been so happy just seconds ago, as giddy as she’d been when she first met Sandy Miller by the creek. But now that Cal was here, breaking up playtime, she looked, if not unhappy, then concerned. Perhaps she was worried about what he’d say.

“Nice face,” Cal said to Dave, and Frida giggled.

“He’s a looker, isn’t he?” she said, her hands clasped under her chin like a cartoon animal in love. “Sailor’s jealous.”

“Am not,” he said, pouting.

“Poor baby,” Frida said. She was laughing again.

“I heard about your fancy pancake,” Cal said.

“It was amazing!” Sailor said, and Frida fake-protested.

“It was,” Dave said. “Did you try it?”

Cal shook his head. “Everyone else got a taste but me.”

This time, Frida didn’t laugh.

“How come you didn’t get any?” she asked. “What were you doing?”

He told her about helping Rachel in the garden. “She told me the Vote is public,” he said. “Did you know that?”

Frida seemed to think about this. “I guess so. I assumed it would be.”

“Really?” Cal raised an eyebrow at Sailor. “Even at Plank, the controversial topics were voted by secret ballot.”

Dave looked stunned, and Sailor gave him an appeasing look.

“We wouldn’t know,” Sailor said. “During our tenure, there was never a controversy we had a say in.” He paused. “The school closing was never up for debate.”

“I didn’t know you guys went to Plank,” Frida said. She turned to Cal, as if to say,
Why didn’t you tell me?
She didn’t look angry, just surprised.

“You’re such a fucking big mouth,” Dave said to Sailor, who grinned.

“Keep thinking that, my friend,” he said.

“Is it a secret?” Cal asked.

Sailor frowned. “The recruiter said no one would care where we came from. And that’s turned out to be sort of true.”

“Until now,” Frida said, and reached out to push a lock of hair out of Cal’s eyes.

Cal turned to Dave. “So if a bunch of you are Plankers, why not do things the Plank way and allow everyone to cast their decision privately?”

“Why?” Dave asked, eyebrows raised. “Are you assuming it’s a controversial topic?”

“Yeah,” Frida said, turning to Cal. “You think too highly of us, babe.”

When they were alone on their walk back to the Hotel, far from anyone who might hear them, Cal told her to keep her pregnancy a secret. “Micah asked us to,” he said.

He was surprised that Frida didn’t protest, though he didn’t say so. Instead, he began to tell her about his trip to the tree house. He waited for her to say that she’d been there, too, but she didn’t. She didn’t speak at all. It seemed so easy for her, to not tell him things.

He asked her if she felt different, now that she was pregnant. She just shook her head.

“Peter and Micah are looking for confirmation, I guess.”

“So you want me to start barfing?”

He shook his head, and then nodded. She laughed, and relief moved like sunlight across his body. “You seem really happy today,” he said finally. “Just now, when I saw you there, with Sailor.”

“Anika knew Jane,” she said.

“What?”

“Sandy had Jane on the Land.”

“Are you sure?”

Frida nodded. “It’s happened before, Cal. There’s been a baby here.”

She took Cal’s hand and squeezed it three times, as if she were sending him a message.

“If it happened once,” she said, “that means it can happen again, don’t you think? Maybe that’s what Micah and Peter were getting at. We just have to wait until we’re fully accepted here.”

They had almost reached the Hotel, where people were milling about. On the porch, a man was strumming a guitar with only two strings; Cal had learned his name yesterday but had already forgotten it.

“Frida,” Cal whispered. “Be careful.”

“Of what? Smolin, with his ballads?” She nodded at the man with the guitar.

Cal couldn’t believe Frida was being so blind, but he didn’t want to worry her or crush her hope. It was probably keeping her spirits up. He couldn’t say what he wanted to say, which was that she might be wrong. Even if Anika was telling the truth, it didn’t necessarily bode well for him and Frida. Sandy Miller might have had Jane on the Land, but Jane wasn’t raised here. And what about Garrett? The Millers had left this place: that was the point. Now Cal and Frida needed to find out whether they had done so by choice.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” she said. After a moment she added, “Are you really joining Micah in the mornings now?”

“How does everyone know? This is why we can’t tell anyone you’re pregnant.”

“It’s true, then?”

He nodded. “I’ll be on the inside, Frida.”

“Try to hide your boner.”

He ignored her. “I’ll find out what happened to the Millers.”

“Sure you will,” she said, and raised an eyebrow.

They were almost to the porch, and Frida was waving at one person and then another, like a beauty queen on a parade float.

“You must be happy about the Plank contingent,” she said.

“It kind of weirds me out, actually. What did they think they were coming out here to do?”

T
he cold weather had snuck up on her. Frost lay on the field every morning, and one night, hard rain pinged off the Hotel roof. The next day, the construction team had nailed boards across all the glassless windows on the Land. Now the Hotel was dank and fortresslike, Frida and Cal’s room simultaneously stuffy and cozy, especially when they were falling asleep. “At least it’s not freezing in here,” Cal said.

Frida preferred the Hotel kitchen to anywhere else. Not only was it the warmest place on the Land, but she could also still look out the windows and watch the sky turn lighter and lighter as she worked. Once the sun rose, they had to stop baking and start Morning Labor, but she didn’t mind. She was just happy to be able to walk down the Hotel stairs in the morning before anyone else did, pondering the tasks ahead and wondering if what she made would taste as good as what she’d served the day before. She had a reputation to uphold. After the first morning with the clafoutis, Anika had given in and allowed her to bake bread.

“I guess we need something to soak up all the soup,” Frida had joked.

Anika didn’t laugh. “We need bread for sustenance. Desserts are frivolous, but they help every once in a while to keep up morale.”

Anika always had the oven lit by the time Frida met her in the kitchen. She’d be standing by it for warmth, and when Frida entered the room, Anika would lift one hand in greeting before bringing it back to the flames. More than once Frida had expected to see Anika plunge her whole arm into the oven with barely a wince; she seemed indomitable like that. Or just crazy.

Anika could be a little scary, but beneath her swagger was a softness. The more time Frida spent with her, the more it seemed that Anika longed to reveal this side of herself, exchanging history for history, secret for secret. She wanted to share things like old friends did, or maybe like a mother would, carrying her newborn through the house, naming all the objects around them. The lesson being:
This is how the world works. This is how we make order.

It didn’t take long for Frida to understand that Anika was a fine baker, probably a great one, and that she didn’t need any help from Frida. Anika kept inviting Frida back to the kitchen, not for assistance, but because she wanted her there. She was after information, and Frida had it. For the first time, Frida was valuable.

They started out small. Anika asked, “What was it that Sandy named her second child again?” and Frida said, “Garrett.”

“A boy.” Anika paused. “How old?”

“He’s four. Was. He was four when he died.”

Anika nodded.

She waited for Anika to ask another question, and when Anika didn’t, she realized it was her turn to ask something. It was that easy.

“How old was Jane when they left?”

“We’d celebrated her third birthday a few months before. I made her a belt I sewed from an old dress. It was purple, and adjustable because she was growing so quickly.” She smiled. “Everyone gave her presents, and we sang all the songs she loved.”

Frida didn’t respond immediately, and when Anika looked away, Frida felt the delicate connection between them tremble, threaten to snap. Frida realized she should have pretended to have seen Jane wearing the belt, but now it was too late to lie; Anika wouldn’t fall for it.

During that evening’s Church meeting, Micah told everyone that Cal was helping him in the mornings, as if everyone didn’t already know. He also announced that he was pushing back the Vote until all the winter preparations were finished and August had returned from his latest trade rounds. August seemed to have left unexpectedly, but Frida wasn’t sure how often he usually came and went.

“This will give you all more time to consider the decision,” Micah said, and from the last row of pews someone yelled, “More time to eat that killer bread!” As far as Frida could tell, everyone laughed, even her brother. Anika grinned at her from across the aisle.

After the meeting, when she and Cal were lying in bed, Cal assured her that no one had complained about the postponement. “Everyone wants August here—his opinion matters.”

“Where did he go this time?” she asked.

Cal said he didn’t know the details.

Was that true? He still hadn’t told her what happened during the meetings.

“You’re so CIA,” Frida teased. Let him be sly, she thought. He had no idea what she had planned; he had overlooked Anika, and Frida’s mornings with her. Men were stupid to forget what good sleuths women could be.

The next morning, Anika brought a bag of coconut from the root cellar, along with the now-familiar baking crate. “This must have fallen behind the shelf,” she said, and handed it to Frida. It was a plastic bag knotted closed, as if from a bulk bin, the flakes lab-coat white. Smelled like Thai soup, or like a high school girl’s shampoo.

“I love coconut cake,” Anika said, and took the bag from Frida. She shook it as if it were a snow globe. “There’s a whole box of these bags downstairs. I totally forgot. August got them last time.”

“Last time what?”

“On his last trip, months ago. To Pines.”

Pines. Anika didn’t even stumble over the word.

Frida didn’t know much about Pines, except that it was one of the earlier Communities to be established, not long after Bronxville, Scottsdale, Amazon, and Walmart. It was the first to be named not for its original city or neighborhood, nor after the corporation that had put up the money to build its hospitals and schools, its borders and security teams. Its name was meant to summon images of nature and greenery. “And also stability,” Toni had told her once. Pines was one of the smallest Communities, but it had a decent amount of money. Or it used to.

“I see,” Frida said to Anika. She wondered if this was what Cal had been learning in the meetings.

With rounded cheeks, Anika blew the air out of her lungs. “We give August a list every couple of months, and he returns a few weeks later with everything we’ve asked for. Or almost everything, at least. It’s been like this ever since Micah got here, though how he persuaded Pines to work with us, I have no idea. I wish I knew. Actually, no, I don’t wish that. I don’t want to know anything.”

“Ignorance is bliss?” Frida asked.

“Something like that.”

So that was how it worked. August went into a Community and returned bearing gifts. Was it like driving a car or sending an email, not having the least interest in how the science worked? Might as well be magic, because even if someone explained it to you, it still wouldn’t make sense. Or was there another reason Anika preferred to be kept in the dark? Maybe it was dangerous to know how the Land worked.

Micah had once hated the Communities, and now he was trading with them. Frida wondered if Cal had pointed this out in the meetings.

Without speaking, Frida poured the bag of coconut into a bowl Anika had handed her, and swirled her fingers through the flakes. She’d never cared much for the taste, but she loved how it looked: as if a cake had grown fur. She imagined August buying the coconut from a supermarket in Pines. Did he use money? If so, where did he get it from? Why did they let him in? Were there even markets there?

Frida tried to remember what Toni might have told her, but she came up empty. Everyone on the Land had to know how August procured the supplies, but only a few would understand the process intimately. Cal might have learned about Pines days ago and kept it all from Frida, just like he’d hoarded Bo’s story about the Spikes. There was no telling what he might keep from his little wife.

Frida had always been fascinated by the Communities, the secret life behind their walls, their riches and beauty all conjecture. In the first couple of years after they opened, Frida had conjectured a lot. L.A. was a festering wound, but just a few miles away men and women slept peacefully on canopied beds in large rooms in large houses. At eighteen, Frida thought canopy beds were so glamorous. A few years later, when Toni started telling her about the Communities she’d researched, Frida had eaten up every detail: there were bikes everywhere, and helmets were required; residents had to pass a rigorous physical exam to gain entry; each child was sent a toy on their birthday. In a Community, someone flipped a switch, and a light turned on.

“You really don’t want to know what goes on in Pines?” Frida asked.

“No, I don’t.” Anika raised her eyebrow. “Curiosity leads to trouble. You’ll learn one of these days. What made you curious about the Land? Why did you come here?”

Frida had already told Anika about how she’d met Sandy and about her first visit to the Millers’ house. Anika knew that Frida and Cal had been living there when they decided to come to the Land.

“Was it August?” Anika said. “He can be charming.”

Frida laughed. “We didn’t know he was here. We knew nothing about you guys.” She described what Bo had told Cal: his story of him and Sandy visiting the Spikes, how they had turned back in fear.

Anika seemed confused. “So Bo acted like he didn’t know us? He
lied?
”

“He didn’t tell me, he told Cal. And Cal kept it from me for months and months.”

“Men are asses,” Anika said. “Stubborn.”

Frida laughed again and smoothed the side of the last cake with a butter knife. They’d made five so that everyone on the Land could have a piece.

“He claimed he was just trying to protect me.” As she spoke, an anger bit into her so deep she couldn’t say anything else. Cal would withhold the world from her in the name of safety.

“Oh, I don’t doubt it,” Anika replied. “But that’s always their reason. It was probably Bo’s, too, because he was never a liar when I knew him.”

Something in Anika’s voice made Frida nervous. “What happened back then?” she asked. It was her turn for information, but she knew this was too broad a question, the parameters for answering recklessly wide.

Frida waited.
10-9-8-7-6-

“Jane had friends here,” Anika said.

“She did?”

Jane had friends here. Jane had friends here.
As she put the cakes in the oven, the words knocked deliriously around her brain like the lyrics to a pop song. Anika meant other kids, didn’t she? She had to. Or was it simply code for having allies? Did someone not want the Millers, and Jane in particular, to leave? Anika could have merely been talking about herself. She had obviously adored that little girl.

Frida’s stomach seized. It was as if she’d been struck with motion sickness, like she’d been reading in a car—she still remembered that feeling. She didn’t take another step, telling herself that if she remained perfectly still, she wouldn’t be sick.

She put her hand over her mouth as if to stop whatever might happen next. She must have looked green because Anika was right at her back. Frida vomited as she stepped into the small hallway off the kitchen.

“Sorry” was all she could think to say.

As soon as Frida had wiped her mouth with the back of her arm, Anika put her hand on Frida’s forehead, then the back of her neck, asking if she felt hot, or cold, or a combination of both.

“I’m fine,” she said. “It must have been the stuffy air in here.”

If Anika was disgusted by what had just happened, she didn’t show it. Frida was grateful.

Anika asked, “Does this happen a lot?”

Micah wanted her to keep her pregnancy a secret, but maybe the baby didn’t want to cooperate. Thank goodness she wasn’t showing yet.

Frida realized that Anika was judging her body: its strength, its health, its tendency to collapse into illness. It was how August used to treat her and Cal whenever he came to trade.

“Sometimes I get overheated,” Frida said. “That’s all.”

“You should rest,” Anika said. She nodded to a door across hall. “My room is right there. You can lie down. I’ll clean this up and get you some water.”

Frida could have hugged Anika right then, not only because she was being so nice but also because she was letting her inside her room, as if they were actually friends.

“Thank you,” she said instead.

Alone on Anika’s bed, Frida waited for her stomach to mutiny again. But the nausea had passed as quickly as it arrived. What a capricious little fetus.

So you’re in there, Frida thought. If a baby could absorb nutrients from its mother’s bloodstream, then it must be able to intuit her thoughts, too.
What number am I thinking of?

She told herself,
Five,
and she imagined the baby holding up its paddle hand.

“I never doubted it,” she said aloud, her voice lilting into song. If she wasn’t careful, she’d soon be gaga-gooing to the tiny thing, whose heart couldn’t be larger than a freckle.

She remembered Hilda saying that forty weeks was ample time to fall in love with a person you hadn’t officially met yet, though when Micah was born, Dada said Hilda had been so tired and overwhelmed she’d beg him to take both kids off her hands. “Just for ten minutes, please,” she’d say. “They’re killing me.”

“I hope there’s just one of you in there,” Frida whispered now.

She sat up and took in her surroundings. It was very similar to her own room, one of the few she had seen on the Land with a door. Many of the residences on the Land were wide open, without even a curtain to provide privacy. Fatima had given that up for them, which now struck Frida as extremely generous. But even their door didn’t have a knob, and here was Anika’s, with a knob made of metal, the kind Frida imagined in old Victorian mansions. About half a foot up from the knob was a modern-day lock, just like the one Cal and Frida had had on their door in L.A.

How had Anika snagged that?

She looked around for anything else unusual, but there was just a bed and a child’s step stool with a candle atop it. The single window was covered with a piece of sheer cloth; perhaps Anika would board it up herself when the cold became truly unbearable. Or, more likely, she’d suffer through the winter nights, teeth chattering. The closet did not have a door, but it didn’t matter because the only thing in it was a pile of clothes, including the overalls Anika had been wearing a few days before.