The Last Days of California: A Novel (11 page)

Elise tried the knob and it opened, felt around for the light. She shut the door, but then she opened it and pulled me inside with her.

“I think it’s a front,” she said. “There wasn’t much for sale.”

“Gas is for sale,” I said.

“It’s a front,” she said, “trust me. I know one when I see one.”

The bottle of soap had been diluted to a thin pink liquid. I pumped some into my hands and held them under the water while Elise squatted over the toilet. There wasn’t a mirror. There wasn’t even the outline of a place a mirror had been.

“I hate traveling,” she said. “People think it’s so fun to be uncomfortable but it’s not fun. I’m not feeling
challenged
. I’m not
learning
anything.”

“Who thinks it’s fun to be uncomfortable?”

“Oh you know, traveler types. On the upside, at least my period won’t be making a surprise appearance.”

“That’s not funny.”

“You’re right,” she said. “It’s not funny. It’s not funny at all. Hand me a paper towel, this toilet paper is wet.”

Our mother and father were waiting when we opened the door.

“Use the paper towels,” I said.

Elise told the men that the bathroom needed toilet paper and they nodded slowly. We debated over popsicles, deciding coconut would make us feel like we were on vacation. We opened the wrappers and placed them on the counter, ate them while checking out the bricks of beige candy, bags of chips with crazy fonts. I picked up a thick bar with almonds on top and Elise took it out of my hand and put it back.

“Mexican candy isn’t any good,” she said. “It just tastes like sugar.”

“I like sugar.”

“It tastes like stale old sugar. Let’s look at the shirts.”

We flipped through a rack of oversized t-shirts in thick, scratchy cotton until Elise noticed a stack of cowboy boots in a corner.

“Dude,” she said. “I can feel it. It’s my lucky day.”

She sorted through the boxes until she found a pair of bright blue boots in her size. She held her popsicle between her teeth as she slipped one on. “A little big,” she said, turning her foot this way and that. She put her hands on her hips. “What do you think?”

“They make your legs look good.”

“They do, don’t they?” she said, kicking a Styrofoam cooler.

Our father came out of the bathroom and I waved. When I saw him in public, even at an empty gas station in the middle of nowhere, I liked him better. I thought about these men treating him unkindly or laughing at him and it hurt my feelings.

Elise put her flip-flops in the box and placed it next to our popsicle wrappers, and our father paid without comment. Once we were in the car, I wished I’d gotten a pair so we would be wearing the same thing, but I hadn’t even checked to see if they’d had my size.

Our mother wanted
to stop at a flea market in a dusty town full of cactuses and oversized aloe vera plants. “It’s one of the top-ten flea markets in the country,” she said. “And it’s on the highway we’re already on so we won’t even have to go out of our way.”

“We could pass out tracts,” Elise said.

“Like you would ever pass out tracts,” I said.

“I’ve passed out tracts before.”

“When?”

“You know, that time,” she said. “At that thing.”

From the highway, it didn’t look like much—a wide gravel lot and some makeshift buildings attached to other makeshift buildings, a few tents scattered around the edges. Our father parked and we all got out, our eyes adjusting to the brightness.

“Take some tracts,” he said, and I put a few in my purse.

At home the flea market our mother frequented was full of old people selling junk from their attics: stamps and clothes and Christmas decorations, porcelain dolls in yellowed dresses—the same things week after week that nobody seemed to buy, or else they had an unlimited supply. But this was a Mexican flea market, full of Mexicans, my father pointed out, but he got excited when we passed the first concession stand selling turkey legs and funnel cakes for two dollars apiece.

He bought a huge Coke and a funnel cake and we strolled the aisles, looking back and forth between the booths of refurbished washing machines, VHS tapes and serving dishes, cowboy boots and cowboy hats, and so many baby things: baby clothes and baby toys and baby strollers and baby bassinets. I watched Elise to see if her eyes lingered on any of it. Maybe she would pick up a tiny pale pink dress and it would change everything.

I stopped in front of a big-butted mannequin wearing an off-the-shoulder dress. They waited as I sorted through the rack and chose a shirt with Our Lady of Guadalupe on the front. It was gaudy, something I’d never wear at home. I paid for it and put it on over my King Jesus t-shirt, and we continued walking, pulling pieces off of our father’s funnel cake until he passed me the plate and bought himself a turkey leg. He was so happy with his turkey leg, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

I watched an older woman in a tight black jumpsuit put on mascara, her mouth an O and her eyes wide. She was looking in a mirror and didn’t care who stopped, mid-aisle, to gape at her. Her booth was selling miscellaneous electronics, VCRs and cassette players, things that had become obsolete.

Our mother detoured into a pottery booth and our father stopped. Elise and I kept walking, men forming a loose circle around us, talking to each other in rapid Spanish. A teenager swept the pavement in front of us while we pretended not to notice. I dared her to say something to him, thought it would scare him if she actually spoke.

“I wonder if they’ll sell us a margarita,” she said, digging around in her purse. “Give me some money.”

“You have money.”

“No, I don’t,” she said.

“You can’t drink here, anyway.”

“The drinking age is eighteen in Mexico.”

“We’re in Texas.”

“I know we’re in Texas but do you see any white people?” she asked, but then she became distracted by a man drawing a caricature of two teenage girls. Next to the man, a sad woman in full-on tiger face sat at a card table. Her sign said,
SMALL DESIGN $4 WHOLE FACE $9
. She had a boy haircut and was wearing regular clothes. I wondered why someone would paint her face like a tiger and drive all the way out here to sit at a card table, looking so miserable that no one would ever go near her.

“Maybe we should get our faces painted,” I said, nodding at the woman. “Or just go over there and talk to her. Drum up interest.”

“She’s so sad,” Elise said.

“I know. It’s making me sad.”

“Don’t ask her if she’s been saved.”

“I’m not going to ask her that,” I said. “I don’t ask people that anymore.”

“Since when?”

“Since now.”

The woman’s head turned toward me, so slowly that I had time to look back at the drawing of the two girls without getting caught. In real life, one of the girls was fat and the other was thin, but in the drawing they were the same size. The thin girl, however, was given sexy eyes with long eyelashes.

Our mother and father shuffled past. Our father was still working on his turkey leg, and our mother was smiling and looking about excitedly.

Elise approached the tiger woman, who didn’t acknowledge her until she sat across from her in the blue plastic chair. I went over and stood next to my sister.

“We both want full face,” Elise said.

“I was thinking smaller,” I said.

“Full face. What can you do besides tigers?”

“Zebras, lions—” the woman said.

“I’m not feeling very safari animal today,” Elise interrupted.

“Elf, mermaid, Smurf, cow, snake, chimpanzee,” the woman continued.

They decided on a snake, its mouth open wide above one eye.

“See, you
do
like snakes,” I said.

Her snake was awful, a coral snake or the snake that looks like a coral snake but isn’t poisonous. When it was finished, the woman held up a mirror and Elise said it was amazing.

“I want the tiger,” I said, sitting down in the seat Elise had warmed for me. The woman stared at me with no expression whatsoever—it didn’t seem to please her like I’d imagined it would—and picked out the colors.

Her fingers were cool, papery. I liked the feel of them on my cheek.

“How long have you been doing this?” I asked.

“Awhile,” she said.

“Do you get much business?”

“Sometimes,” she said. “It’s been slow lately.”

“The recession,” I said, like I knew what I was talking about. I had heard talk of this recession for years. I must have been born in a recession.

There was something about the face-painting woman that made me achy. It felt a little like love, though I’d never been in love and couldn’t say for sure what it was. I wondered if it would always feel like pain.

Elise wandered off and I watched the men gather.

“Do you live nearby?” I asked.

“Not far,” she said. “A few miles.”

She didn’t have a ring on her finger. I could nearly always predict who would have a ring on their finger. If they were young, they were usually pretty and had positive attitudes. The ones I would want to marry myself if I had to marry a woman. They would drag you out of bed in the morning and say what a nice day it was, even if you were sick or sad or it was raining and you’d get up and do things and feel better. They’d make lunch and dinner, put clean sheets on the bed.

I concentrated on her fingertips pressing into my cheek.
Just feel this. There is only now.
I kept telling myself to be in the present, which kept me from being in the present. I wanted her fingers on my face forever, or at least a very long time.

She handed me the mirror, and I hesitated long enough for her to know that whatever I said next wouldn’t be the truth. “I love it,” I said. I had the urge to wash it off immediately. I paid her and then took out my phone and snapped a picture of her next to her sign.

“You didn’t ask if you could take her picture,” Elise said. “Maybe she didn’t want her picture taken.”

“What?”

“You should always ask first.”

“It’s not like this is a third-world country and she’s naked and covered with flies.”

“You should always ask.”

“Back off,” I said. I saw our parents turn a corner, and we ran to catch up with them.

“What’d you buy?” I asked my mother.

“What’s all this?” our father said. He had another funnel cake, a fresh hot one. Powdered sugar caked at the corners of his lips. Elise told him about the woman we’d met, a sad woman whose spirits we’d lifted by having our faces painted.

“Was she saved?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I gave her a tract anyway.”

My mother showed me her purchases—two soap dishes and a delicate gold bracelet. My father stopped at a covered pavilion with a lot of tables. He sat at one and I sat across from him. My mother and Elise kept walking.

A band was setting up, a Mexican band in Mexican costumes. I looked at my shirt, felt the paint on my face. I was in disguise.

“How are you?” he asked after a while.

“Good,” I said, stealing glances at his cake.

“Are you having fun?”

“Yeah, I’m having a good time.” I had a friend at school, more of an acquaintance really, who was always asking everybody how they were feeling. “
How are you feeling?
” she’d ask, because someone had labeled her the caring friend. I always told her I was fine, but what would she do if I said I wasn’t fine? Next time she asked, I was going to tell her I was terrible and see what happened.

The band began to play a traditional Mexican song, the kind of song that sounded like every other song, but maybe it didn’t to the Mexican ear. Maybe it was like the faces of a different race, how it was harder to tell them apart. I wondered if they’d play “La Bamba” but figured they only played it for white people. Once I’d decided they weren’t going to, I really wanted to hear it.

“I need a picture of you in that getup,” my father said.

I got out my phone and tapped the camera button. “Just press here,” I said, passing it across the table. I noticed the number 2 on his hand over yesterday’s faded 3. He took my picture, shook his head a little, and smiled.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

“No, I’m good,” I said. He was trying so hard and I wanted to give him something but couldn’t. I felt totally incapable of it.

“Your mother’s worried about you.”

“Why?”

“You’ve been mighty quiet.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “We’ve all been pretty quiet.”

“Not Elise.”

“She doesn’t know how to be quiet,” I said.

I reassured him that everything was fine as the band played the first few notes of “La Bamba.” What did he want me to say? He always asked such big questions, questions that there was no way for me to answer.

“Why don’t you go tell them we’re ready?” he said, wiping his hands on a crumpled napkin.

I went. My mother had made a few more purchases, her hands full of bags. I took them from her and we met my father at the car.

We drove for
hundreds of miles with nothing to see but a bunch of low, craggy mountains. Mostly they were in the distance, and didn’t seem to be getting any closer, but then I’d look up and we’d be driving through slices of smooth stone.

“Is there a map of Alabama somewhere?” Elise asked.

My father pulled the stack of maps from his car door and sorted through them, his other hand moving back and forth on the wheel like somebody driving on TV. Our mother reached out to steady it and he waved her hand away.

He found the map and passed it back, and Elise looked up the elevations of our mountains so we could compare them to the ones in Texas, but there was no comparison—the mountains in Texas were six times the size of ours.

We drove through a series of small towns, one of them an actual ghost town. Sanderson was by far the most desolate place I’d ever seen: dirt and power lines and signs advertising propane, a Kountry Kitchen restaurant. There were a few two- and three-story buildings right next to the highway, buildings that could have held a lot of people, but none of them appeared to be open and there were few cars in the lots. Elise got out her phone and started filming. She tried to talk our father into stopping so we could walk around, but he said we were done stopping. We were behind schedule.