19

WE LEFT BEFORE THE CHURCH BELLS. AS SOON AS WE made the turn onto the main road out of Bellinas, early-morning sunshine landed on my skin. I could see the fog behind us in a white slab, but to the east, a darker gray stalled at some invisible boundary. Smoke from the wildfires surrounded the good town of Bellinas. They must have gotten worse since our arrival in July.

I made Guy stop at the first gas station for coffee, and I have never tasted anything so satisfying as that watered-down cup of gas-station coffee mixed with powdered creamer and yellow paper packets of refined sugar.

“How can you drink that, Tansy? Manny is always saying how bad it is for women.”

“I didn’t sleep. Please just let me enjoy a cup of coffee.” Seeing me perk up at the coffee, at the caffeine, or at being away from Rose Lane, seemed to brighten his mood slightly. He leaned over in the car for a chaste kiss on my cheek.

“Well. Here we are, away from Bellinas. Where should we go?” he asked.

“To get some real food? Maybe to a bakery? Or the lighthouse in Point Ray? I’d be happy just to drive. Do you think that’s okay, with all the smoke? Maybe we should check the news,” I said. I had no idea what was happening beyond Bellinas. I marveled at that. I had not missed the constant flood of information, I cannot lie, but to live without any connection to the greater world did not seem very community-minded to me. It seemed in our most isolated of towns, in my own isolation, I had cut myself off from the world that might have saved me. To reach out and admit how bad everything was would have been to admit that my marriage was unsalvageable. That I, an educated woman, had let myself fall into the oldest of traps—the unhappy marriage. That I had ruined my whole life.

The air that only occasionally held a hint of campfire in the wind was heavy and chemical past the town’s boundaries. Still, it was easier to breathe with Bellinas behind me. How to account for such a phenomenon, if not magic? Guy slowed as we approached a curve, and as we rounded the other side, I saw the grass was neither green nor gold, but dull and black. It was just like me, I thought. Gone from Green to Black.

“The fires must have been so close to us,” I said, but Guy didn’t respond. A red stain bled down the black and brown, where poppy blooms had spilled between hills in June. I thought it was a fire at first. “What’s the red stuff?”

“Flame retardant. From helicopters. Just a precaution,” he said. How could it be a precaution if the hills up to the coast were burned? I felt like I was the only one seeing what was real.

“The fire must be close,” I said again.

“Mia says the town is protected.”

Forty minutes from Rose Manor, we passed a bakery with the look of a tiny Alpine cottage, and I made Guy turn around. It was even smokier by then, but everyone seemed to take in stride the orange sky and falling ash, white like snow on the windshield. Occasionally, someone wore a surgical mask.

“They’re used to it, Tansy,” Guy said as we walked in. “Like you and hurricanes.”

“I can’t imagine ever getting used to places burning down.”

With another, improved cup of coffee—into which I swirled heavenly heavy cream and spoonfuls of pebbly brown sugar—I ate a whole loaf of real bread. Still warm, its looping ribbons of cinnamon and chocolate stuck to my fingers, and I bought three more to take back. Guy wouldn’t touch any of it, but I heard his stomach rumble, and his mood turned from indulgent to irritable as I sucked cinnamon sugar from the tip of every finger. We drove to Tolemas and stopped at a restaurant that overlooked the narrow bay, where we watched seals swim around neon plastic kayaks and had a drink with a lunch of seafood that Guy found tolerable.

“Geez, Tansy. Coffee and beer in one day? You know what Manny says about what alcohol does to you,” he said. I finished the last sip, the same yellow-brown as the hills behind us, and asked for a second pint from the waitress.

“That’s an elk preserve across the water.” He pointed to the strip of mottled greens behind the lolling baby waves of the bay. I suppose he didn’t care to press the point, given my unraveling the previous night.

“Do you ever think that it’s too beautiful here? It’s almost like there’s something here that feels unbalanced. Maybe it’s just the weather. It’s kind of erratic. Scary,” I said, waving my hand to the haze of wildfire smoke behind us.

“Like you, you mean?”

This was the closest we’d come to flirtation since we moved into the bungalow on Rose Lane, and I felt emboldened to press my luck. “Did you mean it when you said you’d be ready to have a kid if we moved to Bellinas?”

“I didn’t say that, Tansy.”

“You and I both know you did.”

“I said we could talk about it.”

“How can you lie to me like that?” I asked, and yet I found myself questioning what I knew was the truth. He wanted me to believe that what I knew to have happened had not happened at all. If that was the case, what else wasn’t real? My hand fell to the comfort of a pocket-size paperback I’d brought with me. With my Anna Nováková, I was less lonely. I had a witness to the history unfolding around me. Sunshine that falls in circles brings more than one truth.

“I’ve been trying to give you some space. Wait for you to initiate things. I mean, you were up for it that one time, but . . . you acted like I’d hurt you or something that morning, Tansy. And maybe you just imagined what you wanted to hear. I’ve never been a hundred percent sure about a kid. I’ve got so much to do, and we’re just getting settled into life in Bellinas . . .”

“I didn’t imagine anything. That’s the whole reason I agreed to move here. Remember? ‘I could do the family thing in Bellinas.’”

“Well, I can’t. I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”

To say that I was furious with him, well, that would be too simple. I was, of course, but I was angry with myself. That the whole world is not on fire with the anger of women is a miracle.

“Your precious leader and your stupid club lecture me nonstop about a woman’s purpose,” I said, unable to look at him. “I could have been a scholar, Guy! I won an award. And instead I’m stuck at home all day alone or with the Stepford Wives.” On an impulse, I kicked his shins under the table, as he had done to me at the Roses’. Picking up my second drink, I looked him in the eye and downed the whole thing.

“Nice. There it is.” He shook his head. “The constant judgment. Maybe I don’t want to have a kid with someone who’s so critical all the time.”

“So, which is it? You haven’t wanted to have sex because you’re being so considerate of me, or you don’t want a baby?”

“Manny and Mia don’t have kids, and they’re happy. Maybe I want what they have. We can have that. I want a community. Friends, adults. How can I be a real artist with that responsibility?”

“Plenty of artists have children. And I’m not crazy. I know what you said.”

“Maybe you are, Constance. Because I never said that.”

The ocean air met my cheeks silvery and cool as the flat of an abalone knife, and a perfume of salt and seaweed and smoke from the nearby fires burrowed into the folds of my sweatshirt and the matted wreath of my hair. I watched the whitecaps to-and-froing in the breeze from the bay. I had a buzz that was different from the one from all their fragrant tea. The spiraling seams beneath the water’s surface ripped and mended in small splashes, and I had the urge to push him in.

He was making a show of convincing himself, more than me. If he could make me doubt, then he could feel better, but we both knew what he had promised. What do you do when the person who is supposed to be most on your side refuses to believe you? He succeeded, you see, in making me question, even for a heartbeat, what was real, but this history has recorded the truth. He was never a man who knew what he wanted. He preferred to be told what was right and good, to let others take care of basic tasks. In that sense, the Bohemian Club, the lifestyle of Bellinas, suited him perfectly. There I go, making excuses for him. A hard pattern to break, I suppose. The truth is that he never wanted what I wanted, but couldn’t bring himself to tell me. Had I been really listening, I would have understood his ambivalence for what it was—he just didn’t want children.

In the imperfect gray light of an overcast day, under falling flakes of ash, I could tell Guy wanted to return to Bellinas. Time spent with me was time that could have been better spent with his community. I should have left him right there. How many times had I thought that during our life together? Left behind our marriage. Left behind their club. Left behind their abalone and their dresses. Called a cab, whatever the expense, to the nearest airport. Hitchhiked back to my future as an academic. Hopped into a kayak and paddled all the way to the foreign university. There is a cost to staying each time you know it is time to leave. Every time I stayed when something inside me begged to go, there was less of myself to save until I felt like nothing at all. That made it easier somehow, becoming the smallest version of myself. There was less of me to get in the way, and I was so afraid of being alone. I must forgive myself, as there were other things at work. Secrets my body held. I must work on forgiving myself for whatever comfort I found in our marriage, however wretched it was.

Having talked and talked with no further outburst from his troubled wife, grown even smaller than when they sat down, his mood improved. We paid our check, and I grabbed a thin local newspaper from a wire rack by the door. Bellinas was barely an hour’s drive back down Highway 1, but I begged to stop at every pullout and scenic vista to take in the views, to delay our return a little longer. We saw whales cresting in sparkling blue water, bursts of drifting gray mist a sign that glossy tails were about to appear. The natural landscape of California is truly stunning. Perfect for utopias real and imagined. Even better for hiding truths in its beauty. As if the land itself were luring us, though I know now that is not how it works. Like most forces, the power in the land is neutral, harnessed for both good and evil. Like clear quartz crystal, says Mia.

WE PASSED A few sleek, modern, and quietly opulent houses built to blend in with the rolling flora on the driver’s side of the highway. On my side, wildflowers waved at the tops of pathways and steps down jagged drops to the water. For a Sunday, the road was free of other travelers.

“Do people actually live in these?” I asked as he passed another empty house, this one with a large circular window on its second story and shining solar panels across the roof. Loneliness recognizes itself even in objects. I could tell just by looking that the house had long been without company.

“Usually not,” Guy answered. “Probably vacation rentals or second or third homes for techies from San Jose. Manny said he owns a few homes along the highway here.”

We rolled through a tiny fishing village, and passed a turnoff for the Point Ray lighthouse.

“Can we stop?” I asked.

“I don’t know, Tanse. We’ve already stopped so much. It’s taking us forever to get back.”

“Please, Guy, just one more.”

In addition to a mounting nervousness about returning to Bellinas, to the Roses, to the house on Rose Lane, I was beginning to feel nervous about giving up our solitude, even after our fight. At least I knew that was real. Before, I had reasoned away my loneliness with my fantasies of our future family. To be alone among those happy couples and their serene blue-eyed babies was too much then, and I certainly could not face them now. I could not face being the butt of his jokes or feeling completely forgotten for entire evenings at their Sunday parties, as he “connected” with everyone else for hours without a glance in my direction. It was no different under the nude portrait of Mia in Rose Manor than at dinner parties in New York, if I am being honest. At the end of evenings, after I’d have pleaded to leave, he’d introduce me to whomever he was charming, and inevitably, they would be momentarily thrown that he had a wife at all, much less one in the same room. The energy required to smile and pretend these moments didn’t bother me suddenly felt too heavy.

The road to the lighthouse widened in closeness and then narrowed in the mirror behind us.

“What about here?” I asked, practically begging, as another fishing village appeared in the distance ahead of us.

“There’s really not much to do in Albion Bay,” he said, but he’d already put his blinker on to pull over at a small strip of stores ahead.

A more picturesque coastal hamlet I’d yet to see, except for Bellinas. The town seemed deserted. A yellow filter had settled over the area like the color of a bruised sky before a summer storm, though it was cool enough to need a jacket, overcast and smoky. Three o’clock and not a rainbow to be seen.

We pulled into the parking lot that adjoined the road, but the stores were closed. The sign I’d seen from the car was wind-frayed and sun-faded, advertising saltwater taffy and clam chowder. It was nice to stretch my legs, and I shuffled my way over to a sandy path on the side of the building. Guy was still in the car, holding his phone up at a funny angle over his head, looking for reception.

I wandered down the footpath in the direction of the tiny harbor, where a dozen or so battered fishing boats bobbed. The path cut downhill as a shortcut to a boardwalk that connected the harbor and the parking lot on the north side of a black-sand cove. I’d never seen such a beach before and wanted to get closer. As I stepped from the boardwalk down a few steps to the beach, I noticed a sea cave exposed by the low tide. Though I knew better, I turned my back to the water and walked across the black sand, which I now saw was truly as black and fine as dust from charcoal, with tiny flecks of white ash or pink shells flashing underneath snarls of brown kelp left behind by the last high tide. The darkness of the sand lent the whole cove a purple tint against the deep green of the cliffs and the yellow, smoke-filled sky. I felt as if I were inside a photograph. The surf moved in friendly, distant laps. Specks of ash continued to fall, the closest thing to rain I’d experienced in months.

Nearing the halfway point in the little curve of beach, I noticed a sound coming from the direction of the cave. Or perhaps just on the other side of the rocks around a curve in the coastline. Stepping over the pebbles and bulbous tendrils of seaweed, wrinkling my nose at the clumps of tiny flies swarming over them, I reached the mouth of the cave as if in a trance and stepped into cold darkness. The heels of my shoes sunk into the sand, and the icy water pierced the fabric, claiming my toes. I remember grasping the ocean-carved rocks under my hands to steady myself. Step after slow, wet step inside the blackening cave, its jagged sharpness slicing fingertips that were too cold to feel themselves being cut open. I had to keep going. I had to reach that sound. It was so clearly a voice—no, voices—swirling arpeggios and scales, and its beauty reminded me of the shifting purples and greens of abalone I’d seen worn around the necks of the women of the Bohemian Club. I had heard the song before, but I could not remember where or when. I tried to recall as one gropes at a dream that’s evaporated.

As I got closer to the source of the sound, the echoes feeling more urgent and somehow familiar, I recognized my own name in the darkness. My name was part of the song. It was like a key. Like the key Manny had given me in their bedroom at Rose Manor, which I had tucked away in a drawer after returning to the bungalow after the hot springs. Heavy and cold in my hand, it smelled of metal, like blood. Then I could not stop remembering. The slippery flashes between the grasps and scrapes of wind in the night, every night, that kept me awake. What my body remembered that I had refused to recall, until I heard the water singing into the rocks as they had that night under the full moon. My denial continually topped up by the warmth, the wooziness, of their fragrant tea. How could I have been so trusting? I had no idea what kind of tea they served, and I must have had gallons of it. I let my inhibitions and my memories disappear with every sip. There, in the cave, triggered by the sloshing sound of waves against rock in the dark, I remembered Manny pressing me against the rocks, into the cold, into the sharp edges of the rocks, the wind in my hair and his whispers in my ear. I remembered everything my body could not forget as the wind howled and laughed, and the women of Bellinas sang over my fear.

The singing stopped, and muffled splashes replaced the melody in the cave.

Guy grabbed my wrist and yanked. I stumbled in a backward splash toward him. “Are you okay?” he demanded. I could tell he was angry by how hard he’d pulled me, but looking at his face, I also saw worry and concern and perhaps even panic.

“Constance, I thought you’d had a stroke or something. I’ve been calling and calling. It was like you didn’t hear me at all.”

“Did you hear it?” I asked.

“Hear what?”

“The singing?”

His expression, confusion with flickers of tenderness, shifted into one of outright alarm and then back into the anger I knew was coming.

“I only hear the waves getting louder outside. The tide comes up fast in these caves. People drown all the time. What were you thinking?”

My wrist was still locked in his grip, and after a few long strides and hops on my part, we were outside again.

“What’s that smell?” I asked, before noticing that the edge of the surf that had lapped so tamely a few meters away from the cave’s entrance when I walked over was now just a few inches from our feet.

“Didn’t you notice when you went in?” He pointed to a brown lump on the rocks barely a foot from the cave’s mouth. It took me a second to understand that it was the remains of a seal.

I saw the white of its jawbone through dried-out pink flesh. Its eye sockets were ragged and empty where birds had pecked them clean. Even half-gone, its body was so much bigger than I’d have thought watching them from the shore. It was as long as Guy was tall, and something had taken a bite out of its middle, leaving broken ribs and rotting organs flapping and floating in the lulls of the water.

“Probably a shark,” Guy said just as I noticed the edge of tattered, leathery skin.

My eyes watered, and I tried not to retch. Something in the smell reminded me of the abalone we ate nearly every night. The water had risen more in just the moment I spent looking at the poor seal. My feet were submerged in cold, clear ocean water. The black sand I’d walked across had disappeared under the incoming tide. In silence, we hugged the cliff’s edge, and Guy dropped my wrist only so that we could use both our hands to grab roots and rocks as we stepped carefully and quickly along the cove’s cliff edge, the water creeping up to our shins by the time we reached the steps to the boardwalk.

I expected Guy to erupt, as sometimes the smallest of annoyances or perceived social missteps would set off his temper. I feared that such a lapse in my judgment must surely have him thinking of divorce. A surge of relief surprised me. I didn’t have to be the one to leave. I wouldn’t have to choose to be alone. He remained silent as he drove us back to Bellinas. Perhaps he did not know how to respond to irrational and reckless behavior from me, however sullen and withdrawn I might have been since our move. In the years we had known each other, it was usually he who misbehaved. I kept my eyes downcast, thinking over my elopement at the cave and shame at my carelessness, and for the first time I noticed the red, throbbing ring that Guy had left encircling my wrist. In my memory now, it clearly mirrors the gold band he had also placed on my ring finger, but I cannot say with certainty that such an image is not what they call poetic license.

I do recall trying to avoid his gaze for as long as possible, stretching numbed and still-wet and pruned fingers along my thighs and observing, as if from a distance, both the traces of blood seeping into denim, not unlike the stains from Guy’s nosebleed the day we first drove into Bellinas, and the slow sting of salt water seeping into my open fingertips as warmth and feeling returned. The building throbs begged for my attention, but I could not take my eyes from the pattern of blood I had printed on myself. How had I not noticed such deep cuts as they happened? Examining my fingers and palms, and still frightened by what I’d remembered in the cave, I experienced that sensation of having a word on the tip of my tongue and being unable to grasp at knowledge that I knew was mine. I thought of those games of girlhood. Pouring wax into water and divining the future by the shapes. A wedding ring. A lightning bolt. A man. A baby. When was the last time I had bled? After our honeymoon. In New York. Just after I threw away the soft purple envelope of contraceptives in the airplane bathroom somewhere over Nevada. A new terror. I’d come as close to entertaining the idea of divorce, or separation, as I ever had that afternoon with the cold wind on my cheek and the smoke from the wildfires filling my lungs. Driving back to Bellinas, I was sure that I was pregnant and that I didn’t want to be.