15

WALKING THE TRAIL TOWARD TOWN ONE MORNING during our first week in Bellinas, I encountered the women from the dinner party, their long blond hair flowing in a breeze behind them. Their pink-cheeked babies slept propped on hips or slung across their chests. The women all appeared slightly breathless, and the air around them seemed to hum. It was the first time I’d seen them, or anybody other than Guy, since the dinner party. I had done my best not to think of them at all, for reasons I invented and others I denied.

“Tansy,” said Aster, waving. At first, it was all I could do to distinguish her from the others, they resembled each other so closely. Just as every day was the same in Bellinas, golden and shimmering, so too were all the residents. I seized on what differences I could. Aster with the curls. Iris with eyes as purple as her namesake. Lily, with hair so blond it was nearly white, but not as lustrous as Mia’s. They could have been sisters, with their height and hair. Like all beautiful people, they had migrated to one another. Anyway, I have come to feel that there is something bland in perfection. I’d say it would be a good lesson to leave in the schoolhouse, but the children will be as gorgeously ho-hum as their parents.

Aster skipped forward with another wave, and a small child followed her, holding the tip of her finger. “I’m so glad to see you,” she said, kissing both of my cheeks.

She seemed genuinely pleased to see me. All the women did. Iris and Lily smiled and waved from the path. With the sunshine passing through their long, lovely dresses and their babies strapped to their chests in swathes of voluminous, intricately patterned fabric, it was like looking at a magazine feature. Guy would have no trouble taking decent pictures here, I thought.

“I went by the bungalow to get you, but nobody was home.” Aster bobbed for the sleeping baby strapped to her chest, and let her hands fall to her older child’s head. A girl, wearing a dress that matched her mother’s.

“I was just kind of walking and thinking. In New York, I walked everywhere. It’s been a hard habit to break. Have you been with Mia at the Manor?”

“Yes,” she said, running her free hand over the fine golden hair of her baby. “We had bread to bake for Father M orders. Then the shepherd from Point Ray brought a lamb down for Mia. It takes a few days to drain the blood and age the meat. It’s a beautiful process. A butcher does that part, but Mia has such a way with the lambs at the end. She knows exactly what to say to comfort them.”

“I’ve never really seen . . .,” I mumbled, noticing the other women had disappeared.

“Why don’t you come over to my house?” she asked, removing a hand from her baby’s head and placing it on my arm. “I’ve been meaning to invite you all week, but I wanted to give you some space to settle in. We can get to know each other, without any frills or fuss, and I need an extra pair of hands for an hour.”

As I began to hesitate, she lifted the older child at her feet and set her in my arms, and I extended them without a thought. The girl wrapped her little legs around my waist, and a heel dug into a fading bruise on my side. I wondered for a moment why I didn’t jump, as I had with Guy. Then, she kissed my cheek and nestled into my side, and I could think of nothing but how content I felt. I found myself following Aster, carrying a child in my arms, as I’d dreamed of doing in Bellinas.

“She likes you,” said Aster.

“What’s her name?”

“Daisy.”

“Another flower.” I was unable to stop the words, but they somehow landed more softly than I had intended. It is hard to remain apprehensive, derisive even, when the future you’ve always wanted falls asleep smiling on your chest. “How long have you and your husband been in Bellinas?”

“Aldus.” She looked back sympathetically, guessing correctly that I didn’t remember his name. How many times she saved me . . . “Three years now. We started out in the guesthouse where you and Guy are, but when Daisy was born, we moved to a house here on the Mesa. Manny rents it to us for practically nothing. We’ve fixed it up a lot, though. It’s true about how run-down the town was. Before Manny moved back, everything was falling apart. Look at it all now.”

As she instructed, I looked around. We walked down a narrow street, newly paved in smooth, shining black, which led to the ocean, glimmering under the usual cloudless blue sky. Behind us, newly renovated homes filled the wide blocks back toward the main trail. All wooden, of the same deep brown stain, designed to blend into the golden, waving grass that led toward the sea. Though each was shaped slightly different. Roofs sloped toward the water, and others seemed to be all window, reflecting the tall grass and the ocean. Had I not known to look for hints of refurbishment, I would not have guessed at Manny’s philanthropy. As we approached the block of homes closest to the cliffs, Main Street and the line of pastel Victorians appeared in the distance. It looked as if the entire Mesa had been coated in a shining lacquer or Scotchgarded in a protective shimmer.

“When we arrived, the homes here were falling down. Half our roof was a tarp for the first month we lived here. The wind had blown the shingles off, and the previous owner couldn’t afford to replace anything. The wood on most of these homes was all rotten. Even the buildings on Main Street have been freshly painted. Mia chose the pinks and yellows to restore the look to how it was when it was built. Making the town look nice again is important to the Roses.”

“You don’t feel like people were forced to leave?” I asked, bouncing the little girl on my hip.

“Not at all. There weren’t that many people living here full-time when we arrived. And even if they were, they were better off. If it wasn’t Manny, who looked after them, it would’ve been a stranger or an investment company or the government. Now the town has a purpose. Manny has a vision. We bake the bread for the brand, and he hopes to expand it, bring more people in to live beautiful lives. The things he’s making and doing are helping others.”

Aster’s house was tiled in cedar shake, with large, arching windows comprising half the exterior. It was smaller than Rose Manor, but bigger than our bungalow. Their living room overlooked the surfing beach at the end of Main Street on the southern side, and the lovely cliffs stretched north on the other. “The men will still be at it,” she said, nodding toward the small dark figures I could see in the waves. Surfing and diving for abalone, their ritual. She took her daughter from me and set her down on a shearling rug. I have always wondered if the pelts come straight from Mia’s knife, but that is neither here nor there.

In the corner of the living room, a large wooden structure and a long bench caught my eye. “My loom,” she said, as if reading my mind. “What I need help with, actually.”

“Like Penelope.”

“Is that someone you know?”

“No.” I laughed. The last time I had seen a loom, it had been hundreds of years old, displayed at a museum exhibit on tapestries of Ancient Greece, but hers was not much different from the looms of antiquity. I suddenly felt very far away from myself. I wondered again, as I did more often with each passing year, if I should have gone abroad to study the Classics. Where that future had scared me before, I took comfort in visions of myself, fingers ink-stained, clothed in tweeds, in the sprawling stacks of a university library. Something heavy lifted as I imagined myself as the scholar I might have been.

“I’m starting a new wrap. Iris is expecting, I’m sure you noticed.” She walked over to the tall beams of wood. I had not noticed. The woman with the purple eyes seemed as slim as all the others. “I need someone to keep tension on the wool on one side while I get it tied onto the other,” she explained, disappearing into another room. “Tying on the warp and threading all the lines of wool through the middle is a chore, but I guess it’s like a lot of things—getting started is the hardest part.” She reappeared and handed me a mug of the same fragrant tea I’d had at Rose Manor. Sitting on the couch, she waved me over to join her. “Once I get to weaving, it’s my favorite thing in the world.”

I noticed a shaggy tapestry displayed on the wall. A narrow strip of intricate, swirling colors lay across a table. On the floor was the wrap she’d used to carry her baby. Wide stripes of alternating navy blue and rust with braided fringe on either end. The colors twisted across the fabric in small flowers and waves and diamonds.

“Did you make all of these?” I asked.

“Just something I dabble in.” She shrugged. “The men go off and do their projects, and it’s the same with us, Tansy. Mia does her pottery and sculpting. Iris and Lily play their instruments. Mine’s a bit more involved, but I find it relaxing. I sit and watch Aldus surf and dive from here. Daisy helps me throw the shuttle across the warp sometimes, depending on the pattern. The sound of the pedals keeps the little one asleep.”

As she talked, she stood and plucked what looked like a long rope from a wooden peg on the wall with one hand. What did I bring to this glamorous group of artists and musicians and so-called influencers, I wondered, not for the first time. I had never really considered my potential worth in terms of social currency or cachet to any friendship or group. The magazine job I’d found so unfulfilling impressed people who did not know any better. An association with a storied place glossed over the low-level roteness of my actual duties. I only corrected the copy written by interns and heiresses, the daughters and nieces and family friends of the higher-ups. I did not belong there, as I did not belong in Bellinas.

“How are you settling in?”

“So far so good.”

“You can be honest. It’s a big life change. One we’ve all done.”

“I guess I thought, I don’t know . . . Things have been a little off between me and Guy since we got here. Since the other night. I was sort of hoping that we could have a fresh start here in Bellinas. Everything’s so perfect here, and we were so happy when we were visiting.”

She returned to the couch and the long, looping line of wool she’d been holding fell in coils at her feet. “Tansy.” She whispered my name with such familiarity, I found myself against her shoulder. I had never had a large group of women friends before, but I found myself missing the few who had dispersed across the country with their new families, leaving me and Guy more and more alone in New York over the last years.

“It’ll be okay,” she said into my tangled, dark hair until I quieted, like one of her children. I wiped my face a final time with the wrist of my sweatshirt, and she handed me another cup of fragrant tea. Its calming effects were immediate. “We were like you and Guy,” she continued, sitting next to me. “Before we came to Bellinas, we were constantly on the verge of breaking up. I was so unhappy. I felt like no matter what I did, nothing was good enough for him.”

I couldn’t believe how she could be describing my feelings so well. If someone like her couldn’t be good enough . . .

She held up a hand, as if she could again sense my thoughts. “You can’t think that way, Tansy. The way I felt was never about my husband or our relationship. I wasn’t feeling worthy in myself. All the messages in the world were telling me I wasn’t enough, and I had internalized it. Before we came to Bellinas, Aldus and I fought constantly. I felt like neither of us had any sense of direction. My influencing was taking off and I had some brand partnerships, sure, but I was miserable. When Mia and Manny invited us to live here, it was a last-ditch thing. But being away from all the news and the old friends we’d outgrown, being in the clean air and really connecting with nature, brought us together. It was hard the first few months, but once we found out we were having Daisy, everything clicked. I know that it’ll be the same for you and Guy. Mia wouldn’t have invited you here if you weren’t special.” She set down her tea and held my free hand in both of hers.

It was exactly what I needed to hear. Again I let myself be convinced by their generosity. Yes, by their looks, too—I am only human—but most of all, by the look of their lives. I wanted to be like her, to be like all of them. Looking at her sleeping children, I wanted to be like her in every way. I was seduced. Her next line of persuasion was utterly unnecessary, except to reveal another of her well-honed skills.

“We’ll be like sisters here, Tansy. The Bohemian Club is a family,” she said, and I found myself in tears again.

“What about the club thing? You don’t think it’s a little weird?”

“It helps, you’ll see. It keeps everyone motivated and positive. It’s better in a marriage, and in a community, we think, to have a shared vision. Just go along with it. And one day, you’ll wake up, and all the small gestures and habits will fit together into a happy life. It will be like the beautiful pattern across a warp, and you’ll forget about the unpleasantness or tedium that went into getting it started. Like weaving.”

With that, she stood and picked up the voluminous length of wool. “Just like in weaving. You’ll have a beautiful pattern in no time. Now come help me with the warp.”

I did my best to believe her. The next day, I plucked a gauzy blue dress from the closet to wear.