Golden States

  “Okay.”

  “David?”

  “What?”

  “We’re glad you’re all right. We both love you.”

  “Oh. Well, I do too. I mean, I love you too.”

  “Now put Janet on. I need to get the flight number from her.”

  He passed the phone back to Janet, and they shuffled around each other again. While Janet gave Mom the information about the flight, David hung around outside the booth. He could see Rob’s dark face inside the car, and one finger tapping on the steering wheel. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and leaned against the glass wall of the booth. Faintly, he could feel Janet’s voice vibrating on the glass.

  _____

  When they got to the airport Rob let them out in front of the terminal, and went to park the car. David took his backpack with him, the towel and the umbrella tucked inside.

  He and Janet stood in line at the ticket counter. He was surprised to find that they didn’t talk, not even with Rob out of the way. Janet smoothed his hair and rested her hand on his shoulder. Something in the way she kept touching him made him think she was anxious to see him go.

  They moved up until only one person stood ahead of them, a woman with two blue plaid suitcases. David said to Janet, “Do you love Rob?”

  “Stop that,” she said. “You’re only twelve, you won’t know what love is until you’re at least fourteen. Do you know that what you did was wrong?”

  “Well, no,” he said.

  “It was. f love Rob, I’m going to marry him. I’ve made my decision. And David, to come after me with a gun—”

  “I wasn’t after you.”

  She sighed, a dry, papery sound. “Frankly, I’m a little worried about you,” she said.

  “You don’t have to be,” he told her. “I can take care of myself.”

  “What?”

  “We’re next,” he said.

  She turned and said, “Stark,” to the blond, uniformed woman who was wearily smiling. “I made a reservation on the eleven o’clock flight to Los Angeles. For one.”

  By the time they got the ticket Rob had come back from the parking lot. He was waiting for them with his hands in his pockets, the fluorescent lights graying his face.

  “All set,” Janet said. “Now let’s get you something to eat.” “Okay,” David said. The pack, now light as a teddy bear, flopped against his leg as he walked.

  They went to a fast-food stand, Rob several paces ahead, walking with his arms swinging out from his body and hisshoulders canted forward. At the stand, Janet ordered David a hot dog, french fries, and a Coke, and coffee for herself. Rob didn’t want anything. He stood far enough down the counter that another body could have fit between him and Janet.

  David wolfed his food. Though he’d thought his hunger had gone numb, the first bite of the hot dog brought his body to sharpened, salivating life. He devoured it and Janet ordered him another one. He finished off the french fries while they were waiting for the second hot dog. He gobbled it down and could have eaten a third and a fourth with no trouble, but they had to go catch his plane.

  With food inside him he felt less dazed. The three of them passed through the metal detector and found his gate. It was only as Janet was checking him in that the full weight of his failure settled down on him. He was being sent home, having done nothing more than make himself ridiculous. Nothing was changed. There was nothing much you could do about anything.

  Janet told the man at the desk, “Nonsmoking,” then turned to David and said, “You don’t smoke, do you?”

  “No,” he said.

  She handed him his boarding pass. “Now let’s get you on that plane before you get into any more trouble. March.”

  “You sound like Mom,” he told her.

  “Well, I am like Mom.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “Now you sound like Lizzie.”

  “I’m like myself,” he said, and realized it was true.

  Janet bent over and kissed him on the forehead. “Call me when you get home, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  They went to the gate, where a sign said passengers only beyond this point. Rob came up behind Janet and took her hand in his.

  “Bye,” she said. “Don’t hijack the plane.”

  “Bye,” David said. He went several paces into the boarding tunnel, and turned to face them again.

  “Hey, Rob,” he said.

  “What, David?”

  David raised his right arm, thumb and index finger erect, and fired three shots. He made the sounds. “Pshiew. Pshiew. Pshiew. ” He shot Rob straight in the head.

  An unmistakable look of fear skated over Rob’s eyes before they hardened in anger. He strode up to David as if to knock him over. David stood unflinching, his feet planted wide apart and his finger still cocked.

  “You watch it, you little psychopath,” Rob said in a whisper. “Watch it or I’ll have you put away in an institution. You’re about this far from juvenile hall right now.” He held his thumb and finger an inch apart.

  David poked his finger into Rob’s shirted belly, looked deeply into Rob’s face, and said, “Pshiiiieeeeew. ” He said it this time in a whisper to match Rob’s. Then he turned around and walked, without hurrying, down the boarding tunnel and onto the plane. He was able to keep himself from looking back.

  Mom stood off to one side of the crowd at the L.A. airport, in her light blue jacket with the big collar. When David reached her she held him a moment, her thin hands pressing hard on his shoulders, and he thought it was a different sort of hug from the ones she usually gave him. It was more the kind of hug you’d give a man, respectful of his body.

  She reared back and held him at arm’s length, and shook him. “You’re okay?” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Tomorrow I’m going to kill you.”

  “Okay.”

  They walked together down a long tiled corridor and out of the terminal. Mom said, “I’m not going to ask you for the story right now because you’ll just have to tell it again to Lizzie. She’s in the car, sleeping. I tried to wake her up but you know how she gets, like a ton of bricks.”

  “I know,” David said.

  “Be ready, she’ll be mad when we get to the car.”

  “Yeah, she will.” He could not remember Mom confiding tohim about Lizzie before. She had always treated him and Lizzie as a unit, so deeply linked in their quarrels that blame was impossible to fix.

  The car was parked under a shaggy palm tree which looked, from across the street, like it grew out of the hood. Lizzie slept on the back seat, in her robe and nightgown, her hands fisted like a baby’s.

  She woke at the sound of Mom’s key in the lock. As Mom opened the door, her voice was already up to full volume.

  “—didn’t you wake me up?” she said. “You promised you’d wake me up.”

  “Look what I have here, Lizzie,” Mom said. “Your brother, back from the crusades.”

  She let her face settle into neutral. “Hi, David,” she said.

  “Hi, Lizzie. Are you glad to see me?” he asked, just to hear what she would say.

  “You were only gone one day,” she told him.

  The information was startling. It was true, he had only been gone a day. “You haven’t gotten any more ugly since I left,” he said.

  “You have,” she replied. He had to give her credit for picking up a straight line.

  Mom started the car, and they headed for home. As they drove, David told the story of his trip. He told it pretty much the way it happened, except that for Warren he substituted a dark-haired, foreign lady who took him over the Bay Bridge and had to leave him at Van Ness because she was late to meet her husband. It pleased him to know that a small part of his life was completely unverifiable; people would have no choice but to believe whatever he told them about his doings from dawn until after eight. As he described the dark lady to Mom and Lizzie he could see her so perfectly—hooked nose, hair pulled back tight, a wh
ite scarf around her neck—that she blended with the truth. He knew ten times more than he told: she drove a white Fiat, she used to give ballet lessons, herhusband was a famous psychiatrist. After he was done telling about her it seemed impossible that she didn’t exist.

  Lizzie fell back to sleep before he was finished talking. She lay slumped against the back door with her legs tucked under her and her mouth hanging open. She made a hushed growling noise that was like a bow being drawn back and forth and back again over a violin string.

  “Is she out?” Mom asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’ve never seen anyone sleep like that,” Mom said. “She could win a blue ribbon at a county fair.”

  “She snores,” David said. He couldn’t take his eyes off Lizzie. She was astonishingly small. Folded up like that, she looked like she’d fit inside a suitcase. He watched her sleep until Mom asked whether Janet had fed him before putting him on the plane.

  “Yes,” he said. “But I’m still hungry.”

  “I’ll fix you something when we get home. I’m glad you’re back.”

  “Me too,” he said.

  “David, did you really think you could get Janet to come home with you?”

  He turned back to the front seat. Mom drove straight-backed, her eyes fixed to the road, like an illustration of right driving technique, her hands on the wheel at two and ten o’clock.

  “I don’t know,” he said. That wasn’t enough. “I guess I just wanted to do something,” he added.

  “Did you talk to her about it?”

  “A little.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Well, I guess she wants to stay with Rob.”

  “She’s an adult,” Mom said. “Maybe I helped give you the wrong idea about Rob.”

  “Do you think she doesn’t love him?”

  “I think she’s confused. I think you may have to help her out later on, if she gets even more confused.”

  “Will you help her too?” David asked.

  “I sure will. If I’m around, I’ll do anything for her.”

  “Where else would you be?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Oh.”

  A moment passed. David lightly touched her knuckles on the steering wheel. She looked at his hand in surprise.

  When they pulled into the driveway at home, Lizzie woke up as if she’d been pinched. “Last stop,” Mom said. “Wake up, everybody.”

  “I wasn’t sleeping,” Lizzie said. “Oh, look. ”

  “What?”

  “Over there.” She pointed to the trash cans that were lined up at the curb, waiting to be emptied. A coyote stood on its hind legs at the farthest can, its long snout poked under the lid.

  “Pretty soon they’ll be turning up in the living room,” Mom said.

  David opened his door and jumped out onto the driveway, yelling and waving his arms. The coyote dropped onto all fours and trotted off up the street in an annoyed, unhurried way. David stopped at the sidewalk and watched its shaggy white hind end retreating. The coyote glanced over its shoulder at him, showing a serene, wolfish profile. David shouted as loud as he could and ran after it. It broke into a run without looking back.

  It cut across a lawn and darted under a hedge, its bony back feet scrabbling in the dirt. David sprinted to the hedge and wriggled under, right where the coyote had gone. Twigs scraped his back, and a sharp branch cut him below the eye, as neatly as a razor slicing a peach. He crawled through on his belly and came out the other side, onto the front lawn of the next house. The coyote was there, not ten paces away, its big,nicked ears perked up and its yellow eyes staring. It seemed surprised to see him. He paused, also surprised, held by the coyote’s perfect round eyes, the unreasonable life in them. He and the coyote stood through a long moment of mutual shock and recognition. Then he yelled again, a war whoop he pulled up from deep in his gut. The coyote turned and ran. A man in white pajamas appeared in an upstairs window and called sternly, “Hey, what’s going on out there?”

  The coyote darted across the next two lawns and turned down a side street, running with its tail between its legs like a beaten dog. David kept after it. He ran so fast he knew, for a dizzying moment, he would catch the animal and wrestle with it.

  When he reached the side street the coyote was gone. It had melted back into the shadows like a cup of water poured into a lake. David sprinted on anyway for another few blocks, screaming into the night, until he ran out of breath. When he stopped and turned around he saw that he had set off a string of house lights. As he walked back he waved to the houses and said, “Just a coyote, everything’s all right. Go back to bed.”

  Mom and Lizzie were waiting for him on the front stoop. Mom had her hands on Lizzie’s shoulders, and Lizzie’s robe belled slightly in the breeze. She was holding his pack in front of her like a shield.

  “Did you get him?” Mom asked.

  “No,” he said. As he strode up the walk he felt proud and light-headed.

  “What happened to your face?” Lizzie said.

  He touched his cheek. His finger came away dotted with blood.

  “It’s nothing,” he told her.

  “Well, I know,” she said.

  “Come on,” Mom said. “We’ll get you patched up and feed you and then I want you both in bed.”

  “Okay,” he said tolerantly, though he knew he didn’t have to go to bed until he decided to. Lizzie handed him his pack. Tomorrow he would carry her outside and throw her in the pool, no matter how she screamed and hit him. If she sank when he threw her in he’d pull her back out, wait for her to catch her breath, and throw her in again. She would not escape him until she’d learned to swim.

  They all went into the house. Mom looked at the cut and told him she thought he’d pull through. “I know I will,” he said. “It’s nothing.”

  Mom and Lizzie did the cooking, and David set the table. Forks, knives, spoons. He watched them go down in their correct order, as though he was watching somebody else do it. A fog was rising inside his head, a lazy shimmering fog that was hunger and exhaustion and something else too, like a second intelligence, that saw everything a half size smaller and made him feel peaceful and in control. Fork, knife, spoon. His hands knew the business. His arms and legs felt heavy and far away, as far away as San Francisco. Someday he would go back to San Francisco. Warren would still be there.

  Mom brought over plates of bacon and eggs, and Lizzie brought a platter of toast. She had made eight pieces. The three of them sat down to eat.

  “I don’t think I like these eggs,” Lizzie said.

  “Eat them,” David told her. “They’re just passing through.” “We may all need our strength,” Mom said. Her eyes were sunken and bruised-looking from tiredness. “The weatherman says there may be more rain coming down from up north.”

  “It’s not going to rain anymore,” Lizzie said.

  “I don’t think so either,” David said reassuringly. “There won’t be any more rain for a while.”

  “Yes there will be,” Lizzie said. She was so sleepy she was losing track of herself. In her confusion, she ate a forkful of eggs. “Was that thunder?” she asked with her mouth full.

  “It’s only an airplane going by,” Mom said. “Keep eating.” “Hey, I just remembered. I brought you something from San Francisco,” David said.

  “You brought who something?” asked Lizzie.

  “Well, both of you. Just a second, I’ll get it.”

  “How about waiting until after you’ve eaten?” Mom said. “No, I want to give it to you now. It’ll just take a minute.” He got up and went out to the hall for the umbrella. He could hear Lizzie say, “I bet he doesn’t really have anything.”

  He unzipped his pack, which he had left slumped by the front door. Once he’d gotten the umbrella out he realized how small it was—not much use in the rain, really, except to keep your head dry. It would melt in the first good storm. Still, it was funny to have something like th
at just when everybody was talking about rain. He opened it, to make it look more impressive.

  He went to the kitchen doorway and called out, “Okay, close your eyes. Are they closed?”

  A moment’s silence passed. “Lizzie, close your eyes,” he said. He was surprised at how definite his voice sounded. “Okay,” she called back.

  “We’re ready,” Mom said.

  He walked into the room, followed by the umbrella, which caught a moment in the doorway. Mom and Lizzie were sitting at the table with their eyes closed. Mom’s face was calm and pale; her hands lay folded in her lap as neatly as a pair of gloves. Lizzie sat with her chin resting on her fists, her eyes and mouth squeezed tightly shut as if she expected something to fall on her. David came and stood between them, holding up the umbrella. Light from the fluorescent ceiling shone through the thin green ribs and the brown paper. He might have been a tightrope walker standing in the spotlight, perfectly balanced. He held the umbrella over Mom’s head and then over Lizzie’s. They were circus performers too, a family of acrobats who walked blindfolded from one spangled crow’s nest to anotheron a silver wire. The blindfolds kept them from knowing how high up they were. He watched Lizzie’s shaded face in wonder, until she started to squirm. “Come on,” she said.

  He held the umbrella over her head. For the first time in memory, his arm felt strong. “Okay,” he said.

  He waited for them to open their eyes.

  Advance Praise for Golden States

  “Golden States is a wise, funny, and touching novel. Michael Cunningham views his characters with tenderness and respect—the reader can do no less.”

  Hilma Wolitzer

  author of Hearts

  and In the Palomar Arms

  “Golden States is a hearteningly generous and wise book: the prose maintains a delicate precision and the insight is sharp and sure. Michael Cunningham’s young protagonist, whose mission in life seems to be to save women—any women, but most particularly those of his family—from the world and themselves, makes us feel with him the longing of only wanting everything to go right and the melancholy heroism of discovering that often we have nothing for those we love but our presence.”