California(106)

“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.

Sheryl snorted.

“I thought you’d never offer!” Betty said, and they all laughed again. Frida felt the pride that being funny brought, and for the first time in days, she felt happy, and safe.



The women left before the fire got too low, but Frida stayed. She wanted to listen to the singers for a little longer, she said. She promised Betty she’d return the shower curtain picnic blanket to the outdoor lounge. The night air, scraped clean by the rain, felt good on her face.

Rachel showed up soon after the women left. Without the guitar to guide her, Rachel began to sing “This Little Light of Mine.”

Her voice was deep and scratchy. She had been a smoker in her past, Frida could tell. She imagined Rachel twenty years earlier, Dave’s age: her hair long, lots of eye shadow maybe, definitely a run in her tights, drinking a lot, every night her lips stained purple with wine. Back then she wouldn’t have sung, unbidden, like she did now. Dave probably wouldn’t have liked her young. Hilda had once said that some women, the lucky ones, lost their youth but found something much better, something sexier, to replace it.

Frida was still young, though, wasn’t she? She was sort of in between the younger men and the older women. That couldn’t have escaped notice. The women must wonder if she wanted children, now or ever. They must have considered her fertility. If they felt threatened by her youth, they didn’t show it.

The next song was one she knew, and Frida decided, what the hell, she would sing along. She remembered the lyrics from day camp so long ago, when there was still money for that kind of thing. She wondered whether Micah had supplied it to the Land’s canon.

Frida sang loudly and terribly, and she laughed with everyone else when Peter supplied the baritone echoes. She wanted this. She wanted to stay here. It was what she’d wanted when they arrived, when she had fallen into her brother’s arms, and when she met all these strangers, saw their buildings, ate their food. She had wanted to be part of a community, and, abracadabra, here it was. She’d felt so lucky. That feeling was coming back to her now.



Once the fire died down and everyone began to disperse for bed, Frida’s secret surfaced in her thoughts once more, and she wasn’t sure what to feel. She was a fraud. She was a liar. Her friends were all following the rules of this place without complaint, and now here she was, an exception to those rules. It wasn’t right. If Frida thought Anika would be happy, she was crazy. Anika would come around to the idea, Frida was sure of it, but the longer the pregnancy was a secret, the worse it would be. Frida would look no better than Micah, who fed off secrets. She and Cal would be starting off here badly if they withheld this information.

She tried not to think about it. She wanted to push the baby from her mind. Not now, not now.

Already sounding like a mother, she thought.

When Peter caught up with her on the way back to the Hotel, there was no use wasting time with a preamble. “I feel like people should know,” she said.

“They will soon enough,” he said.

He seemed so glad that she was pregnant, despite the complications that were sure to take over this place, at least for a little while.

Frida smiled. “It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” She couldn’t help it.

She was channeling Sandy Miller, she realized, triumphant before her chart of menstrual cycles, glory be the gift of children, excited for the bounty they would inherit. Because that’s what moms did, right? They chose to believe the future was good. To assume otherwise was to participate in a kind of despair.

Peter squeezed her shoulder and told her to sleep well. “August will be back tomorrow,” he said, and she nodded. The Vote was upon them.

*



And here she was, a few nights later, sitting in the Church next to Cal, in the same pew they were always led to, right up front so that nearly everyone was behind them. The first time, she’d been too shocked to really take anything in; her brother was alive and here was a whole town of people just a two-day journey away from the Miller Estate. The first night, she couldn’t possibly have been bothered to notice that someone had carved the initials D.B.B. into the pew’s wooden seat or that the buzzing lights at the back of the room seemed to be saying uh-huh, uh-huh over and over again. Cal had initially found those lights to be obnoxious, but he didn’t seem to mind them now. He had nodded at a few people on their way in but had since fallen quiet. He squeezed Frida’s hand every now and again, and she squeezed his back.