24

IT WAS A SUNDAY NIGHT, AND AFTER RETURNING TO the bungalow, I went to Rose Manor as expected. “Feeling better? You still don’t look so great,” said Manny, who greeted me with his usual overlong embrace. As usual, I did my best to smile. A cup of fragrant tea appeared in my hand, and so dearly needed were its calming effects that I hardly questioned from where and how it had come to me.

“Good work today, Tansy. I tell you, I am super excited for you and Guy to see this thing tomorrow. We live in a special place.”

Where was my husband? I craned my neck and saw him standing with the other men in front of Mia’s portrait. Not ogling exactly, but beneath her nude portrait above their modern hearth for reasons that may or may not have been coincidental. But then, you know by now the folly of believing in coincidences.

“I was a bit surprised at the posters I saw all over town. I thought that a lot of places around the area celebrated Harvest Day. I thought I saw in a newspaper up in Tolemas—”

“I get you,” he said, gripping my upper arm. One. Two. Three. Four. “You’ve got a big heart, Tansy. It’s an attractive feature. The truth is, we’re a special community in Bellinas. Not everyone gets to live here. Bellinas is like our own little Walden Pond. You’ll appreciate this, as a writer, Tansy. Thoreau was a real game-changer for me, when I had to read it in high school. I’ve been marching to my own drummer since.”

“That’s not how the line goes,” I said. No amount of herbal tea could smooth over my irritation that night. “Didn’t his mother bring him his meals and do his laundry for him while he wrote that?”

As I ignored him, so he ignored me. I knew he cared for my thoughts or words only as much as my inquiring bolstered his reputation with himself, but after letting myself tear down those stupid signs, I could not stopper my anger. I hated this perfect place and his stupid club and its ideals. I didn’t want a separate life with the women, the witches of Bellinas, even if it meant I could control my husband by magic or manipulation. I wanted to be believed, to suffer no longer the harassment of the winds. I did not care to be a goddess or a temptress to service the men of the club, even if it meant freedom and wealth. I had wanted only the touches of my husband. Unwilling, I realized, to give up what Guy would not give me, I was also stuck here. There was no escape without Mia’s knowing. Besides, how would she take my departing with her secret?

“Right on,” continued Manny. “It’s not every place that would be okay with what we’re doing up here, but that’s the vibe in Bellinas. It always was, really, even when I was growing up here. My folks came here as, like, real-life refugees from the city in the seventies to reclaim their family farmland. The flower farm now. I moved them to Hawaii a few years ago, but I’m sure you know all about that. How do we keep people out who want to take advantage of the beauty we have here? Because there are people who want to take advantage of how perfect it is here. If disaster ever struck, like, the rest of the world, we would be prepared to weather the storm, you know? We could survive and repopulate the world with beautiful, cool people who knew how to live off the land. We can’t let in just anybody. We’ve got the community to think about.”

I must have downed a number of cups of tea, so urgent was my need to respond, so galling my inability to do so. If I was anyone at all, I was just an anybody. He went on and on about his own perceived achievements, but their club was not the meritocracy he claimed. Usually Mia intervened when he was like this, but I did not see her. Perhaps there was some magic to prepare for tomorrow. Knots to tie or untie. A sailor come begging at the door.

“Can you believe that?” My host had nearly noticed my attention elsewhere, but then I shook my head in practiced neutrality that could pass for either agreement or disagreement. “It’s not our problem up here if the city’s got an issue with homelessness. Who are they to say we have to house anybody in our vacation homes up here? I mean, a lot of the houses sit empty all year, but what happened to private property, you know? Then the county wanted to build some shelter, and I had to make a donation to some guy’s campaign . . .”

“What happened to the couple who lived in our house before?”

“That was a tragedy, let me tell you. We welcomed them into the club, you know. But they never really got it. Some people just don’t get it. They up and disappeared one day. The authorities say they drowned and all, but I guess it doesn’t matter. Spirit always knows best, you know?”

The wind scratched at the walls and windows. I had condoned everything by taking anything from this man, by belonging, however reluctantly, to his Bohemian Club. He may have been clueless to his wife’s secret life, to the powers of the women he thought he controlled, but he was no less a monster for his ridiculousness. Perhaps then the sarong was a savvy misdirection. What had I given up, when I gave up my life as Constance Green? No news since our arrival, except the newspaper I’d picked up in Tolemas. No calls to friends.

Some women disappear when they enter relationships. I imagined my friends back in New York thinking that I must be too ecstatically happy here to remember them, so busy was I with this perfect life in a perfect place. The heaviness of all my sleepless nights pulled at my limbs. Is not the weight of a day the weight of the world, the same as Atlas carried? It was a wonder I did not faint again. Nausea crept up on me with the shadows and creaks of the wind. For the first time since I discovered Mia’s secret coven in the woods, I excused myself from his presence.

My husband did not notice my departure, as I knew he wouldn’t. The door to the cabin blew open and shut behind me with such forceful politeness, I had no need to touch the handle. Guy returned home, hours later and well into the wind’s nightly assault on my spirit. If he’d known it was our last night together, would he have chosen to spend it with me? Laughable, I know, looking back, but I still cannot help thinking that there is some circumstance under which he would have chosen me instead of them. Instead of the good and perfect town of Bellinas. When he returned, I didn’t bother to hide my tears; nor did I pretend to sleep.

“Not this again, Constance,” said Guy, before falling asleep. His snoring was barely audible beneath the winds. With the faint gray promise of morning, I took a walk alone to gather myself before the expected Harvest Day activities. I showered and applied oils of jasmine and amber to my skin. Beneath the dress whose arms practically reached for me from the hanger, I wore my long underwear. Instead of going barefoot, I laced and knotted my shoes. Perhaps that is why the women do not wear them. Who knows what stray thoughts and wishes are carelessly crossed into the rabbit ears of shoelaces? I left my necklace of abalone on the dresser.

The barbed wire felt cold and hard as I lifted the top line and maneuvered between. The edge of my dress, or whoever’s dress it was, caught on rusty metal, as if whatever life or spell was in the threads of the garment were trying to keep me from crossing over. I landed on the other side with a shredded hem and felt immediately more myself lying on the soft green moss. The cool mist enhanced the sweet smell of oak. The peppery scent of bay laurel underneath the blue-green of eucalyptus, whose leaves seemed to rustle and sway with my sighs. What was I going to do? I had no family, other than Guy and the Roses. No job. The possibility of life as a scholar was by now another fantasy. I had only this place. I walked the cliff coast trail to my bench and sat watching the waves crash on the small beach below. At very low tides, on nights like our full-moon trek to the hot springs, hidden rocks emerged from craggy tide pools. The site of shipwrecks and suicides. A beautiful final view, as I’ve mentioned before.

From the cliffside bench, I could see the milky white sheet of fog clear in the time it took to count my breaths. One. Two. Three. Four. Were I close enough, I could have heard the church bells casting out the morning fog. Behind me just a few weeks ago, I had stood in front of Mia as she told me that she and her friends were witches, and that I was one, too. There were no cauldrons or brooms, no pact with any devils, unless she herself was one. I felt more a witch, whatever that meant, on my solitary walks than during any of their forest frolics. My tangles were smoothed, and blooming moonflower and morning glory glowed from my braids under afternoon skies. Guy seemed more attentive for my conformity, for want of a better word. Still I slept little. My only peace was in the wild imperfections of the Hidden Coast. I sighed and looked down toward the distant beach of the Reef again. To my astonishment, it looked as if words were drawn across the sand, a large “SOS” made from driftwood and seaweed. Perhaps my thinking had induced the wind to scrawl the message. The wind knew everything. It knew what I had been denying for weeks. My worst fears were true. The father of my baby was not my husband, and I had only myself to blame. Under the full moon at the hot springs, as their club sang and splashed in the lithium-laced water, as their fragrant tea turned the ocean spray into fireworks, the wind had watched as my longed-for child was conceived.

The sleeves and tattered hem of my dress pulled me to standing. It was time to join the Bohemian Club and the residents of the good town of Bellinas for their festival. From the hill of Rose Lane, I saw on the lagoon the shape of cat’s paws blown across the water by an ocean breeze. A white cat, I would bet anything, with one eye blue and one eye green.

Guy breakfasted with the Roses in the solarium, I could see through the glass as I returned. Perhaps he didn’t know what to do without me there to bring him breakfast in bed. I walked over to join them, but can’t recall our greeting. Part of me had already left Bellinas and Guy behind. I could not raise a child here, despite the beautiful nature and the perfect town. The other couples met us at the intersecting trail from their homes on the Big Mesa. Their babies were alternately naked or wearing tiny sundresses to match their mothers’. Getting to Main Street, the town residents whose homes and livelihoods were owned by Manny, scant as they were, began to crowd us as they too came to celebrate the founding of their perfect-seeming home, the good town of Bellinas. My anger stowed itself away in a chosen nook of my body for later. It was almost like they were all there to worship Manny. He considered himself a god, or close to godlike, I am sure.

Music played from somewhere. Crepe paper in rainbow shades fluttered from tree limbs and mailboxes. Confetti floated through the air. I could see a few floats parked down at the far side of Main Street, where it dead-ended into the beach by the museum and the fishing shacks. Blocking the only road in and out of town from its intersection with Main Street was a portion of a white picket fence that was tied around eucalyptus trunks on either side of the street. Balloons waggled in the air, their strings knotted to the fence below. Taped to its middle was a piece of poster board decorated with gold stars and hearts. “Turn Around: Non-residents not welcome.”

I felt the message more disturbing this morning, if only because nobody else in town seemed to give it a second glance. In spite of my marital troubles and my general uneasiness, I had nurtured hopes of calling this place home. It had not been six months since our April Fool’s Day wedding. The city clerk had been right. I felt like a fool having married him at all. Our growing distance and strained company; I had thought it was a phase that would pass. The first year of marriage being the hardest, and all that. I could not help but look at everybody, at every resident, with a wariness bordering on fear. Who else was not welcomed, and what had happened to them? Was the fate of the others really what Manny had claimed? Would the same thing happen to me? I didn’t believe him, and I had more to protect than just myself. How I wish I had left at that moment. How I wish that I had left so many times.

Distracted by my decision to leave Guy and Bellinas, I tuned out the conversation among the group. I would only embarrass myself and Guy anyway, but I wouldn’t need his approval anymore. Nature does not hurry, and yet everything is achieved, according to Confucius. So reads the hand-painted wooden sign nailed to the wall of the general store, with its stenciled flowers and erroneous, tacky attribution. The I in Confucius is dotted with a heart, believe it or not. I couldn’t imagine drawing such a thing in New York.

What I wouldn’t give to be complaining about the winter weather in our old apartment. To be complaining about the coming cold in cardigans with pockets filled with ticket stubs and subway cards and crumpled tissues and grocery lists. Evidence of who we were. What a blessing the honest discomfort of straightforward cold was compared with deathly incantations whispered on a violent wind to induce unnatural perfection.

We walked on, though Guy must have felt the hitch in my pace at seeing that sign decorated in joyful colors and sparkles. The villagers of Bellinas were proud of their isolation. It was, of course, a pleasant day, temperate and sunny, neither too hot nor too cold, but I felt dizzy. I had the urge to run. To turn around and bolt. One. Two. Three. Four. My secret, revealed by the wind, had made everything clear. In trying to get a hold of my breath and quiet my pounding heart, I hadn’t noticed the waving arms of the artistic couples that directed Guy, with me in tow, to where they stood, ready to welcome us in a flurry of darlings and air kisses so that we could watch the parade together. When had we been separated? I was aware of the closeness of bodies, the hot exhales and prickling of near-touches. Mia stood in front of Guy, and the cousins chatted happily. And then I noticed Aster, whom I’d thought my one real friend in Bellinas. Who had braided my hair and frolicked in dancing rings with my hand in hers in their sacred grove. Who brushed away my uneasiness and advised me to stay in Bellinas. Was that her arm coiled around my husband’s waist? If women save one another, they betray just as often. It all balances out, I suppose.

Whose hand rested on my back? I had assumed it was Guy’s, but his other hand was in his pocket. It would be Manny’s, then, of course. I stiffened as his thumb began to move up and down my spine. I managed to step away, knocking into Guy, and he gave me a look of annoyance. The hairs on the back of my neck stood. A sense of dread came over me. I can only trust that my body was warning me of the approaching danger, begging me to pay attention. I assure you, it is not the desire of hindsight to accredit my instincts on this first impression. I never wanted anyone to get hurt that night.

Manny stepped away from me and climbed onto one of the floats. “Fellow citizens of Bellinas, you all know we’re not too formal in these parts. Everybody here knows me as Father M, and I just wanted to say that I feel like the luckiest dude around. In actuality, we’re all the luckiest for yet another year in this glorious paradise that we have chosen to call our home. We, of course, welcome those who share our values”—I thought he looked down at me at this line, but cannot be sure—“while we must also remember that as things change around us, we have to hold on to the communal traditions that have kept us together. If we may accomplish all this, I gotta say, I think we can be an example to the world.”

The music started up again, and the town applauded and hollered its approval. The three-o’clock rainbow appeared. “So what do you think?” I jumped at Manny’s question, whispered into my ear. “Not much of a spectacle by New York standards?” He pressed against me, laughing at my surprise and tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. Guy was in an animated conversation with Aster.

Manny ran a finger over my cheek, and I froze. One. Two. Three. Four.

“Wasn’t there a library around here?” I asked, taking a step back.

“That old place? I converted the building into a meditation center. Way more vibey.”

“So what’s next, after the parade?”

“Bonfire at the beach, just for the club. We’re not supposed to, it being fire season and all, but it shouldn’t be a problem by the water. Hauled up a ton of abalone yesterday. It’s all cleaned and ready to roast.”

I thought of how dry the inland grass had become. The smell of smoke, hardly discernible in Bellinas, was strong in the woods of the Hidden Coast. The whole world could have been on fire, and I would not have known it in Bellinas.