California: A Novel (31 page)

“Let’s figure out another plan, okay?” Cal said.

He wouldn’t tell Frida any of this, at least not until the plan had been perfected, and maybe not even then, not if keeping it a secret meant she would sleep soundly at night. She needed to rest for the baby. She would be happier not knowing, as long as he had her best interests in mind. As long as he kept demanding information from Micah and was being smart, she’d be satisfied. She could trust him to make decisions for their family.

Cal sat down on the couch again. “There’s got to be another way to return the Group to its pure beginning, to cause problems for the Communities.” Even as he said these words, their cheesy call to arms, their rah-rah-rah cheerleading, he felt their power. He did want to find a better way.

“I’m listening,” Micah said.

“I have no idea what that is yet. But there has to be something. There’s always another way to approach the text, isn’t there?”

“Oh, baby, talk nerdy to me,” Micah replied, but he was listening.

“There has to be a better plan,” Cal said.

Before they left the room, Micah went to the bookcase and pulled out the Kant.

“Stuff it into your jacket, and don’t let anyone see it. And I mean it, Cal, not anyone, not even Frida. If you do, I swear I will cut off your balls with a paring knife.”

Cal took the book, nodding. It was his victory, and both of them knew it.

F
rida couldn’t tell if she’d overslept because it was always dark these days when she woke up. She’d fallen asleep to the sound of rain, imagining the Land turning soggy and slippery as she remained safe and dry inside the Hotel, but all was quiet now. It must have stopped. Good. Cal had spent the last few nights on security, and Frida didn’t want him getting soaked and sick.

Now that the boards had been nailed to their bedroom window, it was night all the time. The darkness and damp and the smell of people sleeping reminded Frida of the Millers’ house. On the coldest days, she and Cal used to crawl into bed, into that corner where the mattress fit perfectly, and force themselves to sleep as long as they could.

“We’re hibernating,” Cal would say, and reach for her.

She’d been so bored with that one-room house and the woods surrounding it. That grimy outdoor cooking pit of theirs, it would never get hot enough until it got too hot, and that same door to look at when she woke every morning. Sometimes even the sound of Cal’s voice, his stiff walk, how he held his mouth when he was being serious, had bugged her. She’d been so sick of their isolation. And now look at her, she was imagining that old life with something bordering on longing. Dada had always called her capricious. Maybe this was what he was talking about.

The first time they were alone after they argued in the Bath, he’d said, “I’m doing what you asked.” He had pulled her to him, and kissed her.

Whatever he meant by that, Frida felt comforted. She wanted it to be enough. It had to be. Cal was offering her the only solace available, and she took it because it helped push the gruesome images of her brother out of her mind: Micah using a large knife to behead the Pirate; threatening Anika with that bandanna; taking the Bee from Ogden. Did the baby wail out for the toy, refusing to let go, or was he asleep, and Micah nimble as a thief so as not to wake him?

“I found out what happened to the children,” Frida had said.

“So did I.”

“Micah told you?”

He nodded. “We have to remember that not everyone on the Land had children. And those who did knew they were giving their kids a better life. It wasn’t cruel, Frida. You see that, right?”

“What about the older children?” Frida asked. “They weren’t adopted. Did you find out about that?”

Cal didn’t say anything.

“Cal?”

“He won’t touch our baby,” he whispered. “Micah needs us here. He won’t let us be exiled.”

“You really think Micah will protect us?”

“You’re his sister. And he needs my help.”

“But don’t you think some people will be upset about the pregnancy?”

“I don’t know, Frida. We need to wait and keep watching. With a little more time, I think we can win them over. Micah will make them see that it’s for the best. He’s good at that.”

“That’s true,” she said.

Frida let him kiss her again. He’d said he was doing what she’d asked, and she decided that meant he was looking out for her. Since their fight, he’d been attentive and gentle, actively seeking her out after Morning Labor, seeing if she needed anything. He was paying attention to her again. He hadn’t gotten lost in the dark.

Frida got out of bed and got ready to head downstairs to the kitchen. She was just pulling on a sweatshirt when Cal entered with a flashlight. He was wearing a raincoat, but it looked dry.

“You’re still in here,” he said, surprised. The flashlight’s beam bounced across her and then paused on the unlit candle by their bed. “I didn’t see any light coming from under the door, so I assumed you’d left for the kitchen already.”

“I can get dressed without a candle,” she whispered.

He kissed her and put down the flashlight so that its light spread across the ceiling.

“But why?” he said, heading to the candle. “Let’s splurge.”

The flame flickered and rose, and Cal turned off the flashlight.

“I’m going to the campfire tonight to talk to Anika,” she said.

She’d decided that she would be up front with Cal, show him she could gather information, too.

“I’m going to hang out here,” he said, “if that’s okay.”

“Of course it is,” she said. “I think I’ll have a better chance of talking to her there. I haven’t been able to since Fatima started baking with us.”

“I thought Anika already told you everything.”

“She did.”

“You haven’t said anything about the baby, have you?”

“You know I haven’t,” she said.

“I know.”

“I guess I still feel unsettled,” she said. “Like, I need to see that this place is good, despite all that’s happened.”

“It is,” Cal said. “It will be.”

He was sitting on the bed now, and she stood before him. She placed her hands on his shoulders, her eyes on the far wall. She imagined herself on the deck of a majestic ship. She would just have to keep reminding Cal that they’d come here together, and that, if necessary, they’d leave that way, too.

“I love being married to you,” she said.

Cal smiled. “I could live off those words,” he said, and pulled her toward him.

There were at least fifteen people sitting around the campfire, talking loudly over one another as if drunk, passing a cup of something hot, poured from an ancient metal thermos. Frida thought she could smell mint tea, but that had to be her imagination because the air was so smoky she’d started breathing through her mouth. The scene reminded her of the beach, cooking oysters in sand pits with her parents on a trip to Northern California when she was thirteen, before they’d had to sell their second car. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting of this campfire, but it wasn’t this. This was a party.

Anika looked up at Frida when she arrived but didn’t wave her over or even nod. Peter was there, too, plucking at a guitar in a rickety lawn chair, trying to recall a song. He hadn’t seen her. Frida tucked herself behind Anika on the shower curtain where she was sitting. The perfect waterproof picnic blanket.

Anika hadn’t told Frida anything since Fatima had joined them in the kitchen; no doubt, that had been Fatima’s goal. Someone had asked her to intrude on their privacy, and she had complied. How many times had Frida wanted to tell Anika she was pregnant? Just to lean away from Fatima and whisper the news. Anika might be upset at first, but not when the reality of Frida’s pregnancy settled in. There would be a child on the Land again. Anika could be Frida’s guide. She could be the child’s aunt.

Frida had so much to say to her. She wanted to know about Ogden’s birth, for one, and ask her about diapers and clothing. She wanted to tell Anika that she was certain she was having a girl. A daughter.

Frida looked around and realized with the noise from the fire and singing and guitar, they could talk fairly openly without being overheard.

“Fatima’s in the way,” Frida whispered finally.

“Fatima’s a bitch,” Anika said. “She came a few weeks after Micah, you know, with the rest of his settlers. She was real close with August.”

“Were they a couple?”

“They claimed to be just friends. Not long after she arrived, she became Peter’s girl.”

There was reproach in her voice, and Frida realized that Anika really did hate Fatima. For taking Peter. For simply having a partner. Or for treating herself as chattel, passed from one man to the next. Or for joining their morning sessions without asking first, for babysitting them.

Babysitting. The baby. It always came back to that. She had to keep it a secret until Micah thought it was the right time. Definitely not before the Vote.

Maybe Cal was right: he and Frida could help make the Land into the place they needed it to be. She wanted to ask Anika if such a dream was possible.

Betty came over and sat down next to Frida, who had scooted over to make room on the shower curtain.

Betty rubbed her hands together, her face to the sky.

“Cassiopeia,” she said, to no one in particular.

Frida looked up but saw only white clouds.

“In theory,” Betty said, and laughed.

Lupe and Sheryl came over and sat next to Anika. Frida liked Lupe, but Sheryl—what had Cal called her?

A stick-in-the-mud. That was a nice way of putting it.

But now, looking at their backs, Lupe’s slumped, Sheryl’s straight, Frida saw a closeness between the two women that she’d never caught on to before, and it made her happy. It was the casual intimacy of old friends; they had shared beds, swapped shoes, probably undressed in front of each other dozens of times, kept talking as one of them peed. If they had looked anything alike, they might be mistaken for sisters.

Frida watched as Anika, without speaking, passed first the cup and then the thermos to Lupe, their fingers briefly touching, and she realized all three women must have started the Land together. With Sandy Miller, too. They probably had known Jane. They remembered Ogden; maybe they had advised Anika on what to do. Or they had given away children, too. They probably still avoided red and certain stories. They had accepted Micah and his way of doing business. Maybe Anika didn’t trust Micah, but Lupe and Sheryl probably believed things were better with him around. Maybe Sheryl wasn’t that bad; maybe she was just prickly like Anika.

Peter had finally found the correct chords for the song he wanted to play, and the other side of the circle began singing along with him. Frida couldn’t place the song, though she thought it was a ballad from the last century, something her father might sing as he made dinner, humming everything but the chorus. As the voices rose, earnest and off-key, Betty leaned forward and whispered to the women in front of them, “I hear Rachel’s sleeping with Dave.”

Frida could tell the women had heard Betty by the way they looked at each other. Sheryl had the cup and thermos now, and she snapped them together so forcefully that Lupe laughed.

“Settle down, Miss Sensitive,” Lupe said. “It’s not as if he’s any good.”

If Frida had been drinking anything, she would’ve choked on it.

“Dave?” Frida said, without thinking.

This time, Sheryl turned around. “Anika said you were cool.”

“She is,” Anika said, still facing the fire.

Betty put a hand on Frida’s knee. “We’re warm-blooded creatures.”

“But Dave is so young,” Frida said. These women were old enough to be his mother, but she didn’t say that. She knew she sounded prudish already, and she didn’t want to be nudged out of this locker room too quickly. “I mean…good for Rachel.”

Lupe laughed, turning around. “Sheryl, give her some of the milk.”

Sheryl unscrewed the thermos slowly. “She doesn’t look thirsty to me.”

“Oh, but I am,” Frida said.

It was cow’s milk, heated to a foam. It smelled oddly sweet, like the postage stamps her grandfather had collected for nearly his whole life. He liked extinct things. He’d given Frida one for her eighth birthday, and she’d licked it as soon as she was alone in her room.

“So there aren’t rules against it?” Frida asked Betty.

“Not officially.” She smiled. “But you must have seen the whole drawer of Pills in the Bath.”

Frida was surprised, but she knew she shouldn’t be. Micah didn’t want children here, and he’d make sure no accidents happened. Likely, the women were grateful to have access to birth control, certainly procured from Pines.

“Otherwise, when it comes to love, we can do what we like,” Betty said. “As long as we’re discreet, that is.” She grinned. “And those who prefer to abstain pretend everyone prefers that.” She nodded at Anika.

“I never said that!” Anika said. “It’s just my own personal choice.”

“You’re our nun,” Betty said.

“Ha,” Sheryl said. “You and Micah.”

“My brother?” Frida said. “Really? He used to be such a dog.”

“He’s too serious for all that now, I suppose,” Anika said.

“The fact that he’s never been interested in sex made us like him,” Betty said. “He never touched us.”

The women fell silent.

“Who knows what happens on his treks off the Land,” Lupe said.

“Micah leaves?” Frida said. “With August?”

“Not often,” Betty answered. “Occasionally he needs to help August at Pines. They have to lug these big containers of soil. Sometimes cantaloupes or lettuce, whatever it is that we’re trading that month.”

“I bet he just wants to get away from us,” Lupe said. “It can be pretty boring around here. Maybe he has a secret wife living in the woods.”

The other women laughed.

“Micah? Can you imagine him having a wife?” Sheryl said as she reached her hand out behind her. She wanted the cup back.

Anika turned to grab the cup from Frida. “I hope you weren’t hoping for a top-secret meeting of the minds tonight. It’s just us ladies, gabbing.”

“Sure, it is,” Frida said.

“Micah should bring his secret wife here. It’s not like someone is going to try to steal her,” Lupe said. “No one goes after other people’s partners here. Monogamy is respected, rare as it is.”

“She’s saying you don’t have to worry about your husband,” Betty said.

Frida shook her head. “It didn’t even occur to me that I should.”

Now all four women were looking at her closely, as if trying to gauge her truthfulness.

“Not even his eye wanders,” Sheryl said, oraclelike.

“I don’t know about that,” Frida said. “But he’s a good man.”

“You don’t worry when he leaves you at night?” Anika asked.

“He’s with some of the other men,” Frida said. She paused. “And at dawn he goes to see my brother. And, Lord, if they’re being amorous, I don’t want to know.”

The women laughed, almost loudly enough to be heard over the singing voices. The song sounded melancholy now, the key too high for most, but still the singers tried to reach it.

“The Vote’s coming up,” Anika said. She was looking at Sheryl.

“I know,” Sheryl said. She turned to Frida. “Glad you could make it here tonight.”

So Anika wanted Frida to get to know her friends, to prove to them that the new girl was cool. That she could fit in. That she was worth voting for.

“I’m glad I could come,” she answered. She smiled. “If you keep me on the Land, I’ll let you sleep with my husband.” She winked at Anika.