25

IN LITTLE MOOD TO SMILE, I WANDERED AWAY FROM the group. What harvest did they celebrate? Only what would serve themselves. If I could get down to the beach, I might be able to think more clearly. I could do the circular walk around the curve of beach and back to the end of Main Street, passing by the general store stocked with Manny’s health food, Father M and his blue-eyed avatar. If death saves me from another slice of their so-called bread or another cup of their coffee substitute, Koffix, it will be worth it. The schoolhouse looked, in its whitewashed stucco between the emerald hill and shining lagoon, like a mirage. A postcard come to life. The church whose bells exorcised the fog of night from morning with nine clangs. Here in Bellinas, I think the fog is the only real thing, and its lovely imperfection is chased away. The winds, banished in the day by the workings of Mia and her witches, return at night doubled in strength and laced with her words. Mine, too. I wanted a baby, and now I was expecting one. Guy would never have questioned the baby’s too-blue eyes.

I watched Guy and Aster under the three-o’clock rainbow. Where I had been willing to give up myself to be a good wife in Bellinas, his head was turned already. What had Mia said about sex? It was, like magic, only another tool. As nothing seemed to happen to me without her knowing about it, surely Mia, and perhaps the whole town, knew what I was just seeing. I knew always that he was what Herodotus would call a soft man. Aster’s baby slept knotted across her chest, as he leaned forward to whisper. About me, I am sure . . . I wanted to cry, but I would not let myself in front of them. It was time to leave. For that realization, I should thank Aster for one last rescue. I always knew that one day he would realize he didn’t want me. My fears were coming true before my eyes, and it was my fault, just as Manny preached.

I walked on. What else was there to do. Confront them? I should have been more upset, but I’d already decided to leave. At the end of the beach, I saw the lagoon again. The cat’s paws had disappeared. How right she always is, my Anna Nováková. Seals beached and sunned themselves on the sand. Pups cuddled into sleeping mothers. By the time I had done my lap and returned to Main Street, the members of the Bohemian Club stood together once more. Dusk began its slow shift, a hint of peach at the horizon blending into clear blue. By the time we reached the beach, a bonfire was lit already. Warm and waving in the evening wind. I should not have been surprised. Not by any of it. But always, I wondered how it was so perfect.

Blankets block-printed in paisleys and florals were set with Mia’s dishes, already bearing nuts and dried fruits. It was hard not to think of our trek to the hot springs. By my participation I was inaugurated a member, and the baby I carried was a result of that night. I had scoffed at them all, at their diets and theories and pseudo-beliefs, while going along with it. I was worse than any of them. By dancing in the forest, in blowing open the sleeping flowers of the woods and wearing their dresses and abalone charms, I had given life to whatever forces tormented me. I was only a vessel sung over and anointed to carry a new child of Bellinas, a lifelong member of the Bohemian Club.

The flames of bonfire waved, and a spritz of embers was snatched by the wind. The sun set in glorious, gaudy vividness. Winds flicked my long hair across my face. Strips of sweet-salty abalone roasted over the fire beneath the black body of the lamb. The men laughed and ran their hands down the backs of the women, who smiled and replaced their empty cups with ones overflowing. I sat apart from them.

It must have seemed strange to their merry group, to the artistic couples of the Bohemian Club, that anyone would leave their revelry, but I did. Assuming they noticed my departure at all. I had a lifelong habit of going unnoticed. In my boots, I ascended the sandy rock-strewn trail back to the top of the cliff. Instead of following the paths to Rose Lane, I walked across the cheatgrass whipping wildly in the wind. There is sand in my hair still from that night, nearly three days later. Near the edge of the cliff, I looked down at the white foam left from cresting waves that slapped the rocks. I could see the bonfire and the colorful silks of their dresses waving like flags. Was this the last view of the couple who disappeared?

“What are you doing up here?” asked Guy.

I jumped in surprise at either the sound of his voice or the fact of his following me, and he lurched forward to grab my arm.

“Just thinking,” I said as he yanked me away from the cliff.

“Do it over here, will you?”

“Do you think we can go back?” I asked.

“That’s why I came to get you.”

“I mean in time.”

“Might be a little tricky.” He could be charming, remember? “To when?”

Even to him I could not say what I needed him to hear most. That I needed to leave him and Bellinas. That I carried a baby that was not his. I was tied to him in knots of love, of memory, of hope, of denial. The expression is not for nothing, to tie the knot. To marry is to perform an act of magic.

“They’re not what you think they are, Guy,” I managed.

“Not this again.”

“Both of them, Mia and Manny. All of them. They all have secrets.”

“Like what?”

“Why can’t you just believe me?” I had to yell over the wind.

Here he let go of my arm and gave me a look I had seen only after my fugue in the cave at Albion Bay. He was afraid of me. We both stumbled at a gust of wind, and then, somehow, we had switched places. In pulling me away from the cliff, he had gotten closer to the edge, his back now to the ocean.

“What do you mean, Constance?”

Before I could answer, another gust blew with such strength, I had to shut my eyes at the sand it threw in my face. Trying to silence me, no doubt. Though I couldn’t answer him anyway. I knew it would sound ridiculous, and I could see he would not believe me, just as I feared.

“Constance, stop acting like this. Let’s just go back down to the beach.”

“That night at the hot springs—”

Nothing happened in Bellinas that was not carried by the wind back to Mia. Here she came, her golden head emerging from the steep trail, her silvery-white dress spread like a sail. I would like to say that I was not scared, as when I saw for the first time that blue sign warning of tsunamis in this land so wild and cruelly beautiful, but I was.

“What are you two doing up here?”

“Help me talk some sense into her,” he said to Mia. “Why don’t we go join the others, Constance.”

I could hardly stand for the strength of the wind now, coming from the ocean in frigid, sandy blasts. A long flash of light turned the sky a dark purple, and the air rumbled. Guy said that it didn’t storm here. The scenery in California is truly enchanting, I cannot say it enough. I should have asked them for a love spell, and I would be living, if not happily, then in a state of adoration. Reverence from one man might not be so bad, if he believed me every now and then.

“I’m pregnant, Guy. I know you don’t want it, but I am. And it’s not yours, anyway. It’s Manny’s. Father M’s, whatever you want to call him.”

He stood looking confused. Maybe he didn’t even hear me over the waves crashing below. For the first time, I could make out clouds of smoke from the wildfires. Above the tree line of Hidden Coast Park, a line of orange haze glowed against the purple-black sky. Billowing clouds of smoke drifted toward the ocean. Another flash and boom. Lightning and thunder coming from the smoke clouds, I realized.

“It’s dangerous to stand so close to the edge. Please come just a bit closer,” I said to my husband, trying to protect him. The wind blew harder, and the air smelled of fire. His eyes met mine, I know they did. Perhaps my husband and I even shared a memory as we looked to each other, the very last moment of our marriage. I flatter myself now, to think that his last thoughts would be of me, but I must claim what rights a wife can in my final hours.

The stars carried on from their usual places as my marriage, and my life in Bellinas, ended. It’s funny what you notice, what memories catch you off guard. On our first date, Guy had set up a telescope on the roof of his building and pointed out the constellations. It had to be that night, he insisted, the night we met, because Venus would be brighter than the moon, a slim wink of a quarter moon. “A sign,” Guy had said. Perhaps the wind blew to me this first image of our falling in love as my eyes fell on Guy for the last time. He stood at the edge of the cliff with his back to the ocean, exactly what the brochures had warned against.

“I’m fine, Constance,” he yelled. “Why do you do this? Why can’t you just be happy?”

Those were the last words of my loving husband. I expected such a response, but still, I was furious. Angry over all the years he had dismissed my feelings. Over the future he had taken away from me. How he tried to convince me that what I knew to be real was imagined. I was no longer crying, though. Instead, I heard myself cackling as a witch might. If staying with him had depleted my sense of self, then I had been remade by the winds of Bellinas and their crimes against me. For the most fleeting of moments, I wished that he was gone. I wished to no longer be married. In short, I wished he were dead. I watched my wishes join the wind in a swirling stream of blues and purples to land on his chest just as a flash of jagged lightning crackled over the night sky. A storm in the clouds of black smoke from the wildfires nearby. I had wished for a storm, and there it was.

It’s true what they say about seeing disasters in slow motion. Guy looked up at the storm and tilted backward. I heard the rocks and dirt crumbling. His arms flailed upward with a puff of dust. His toes lifted and then his heels, and then he was in the air falling. He landed on the rocks below. Possibly a shark with a leering grin waited for him. The coast that had claimed so many lives in Bellinas had claimed one more.

On the edge of the cliff, I waited and waited to see him in the water. I counted. One. Two. Three. Four. All the way to a hundred. He did not appear in the churning surf. It was so far down. I had barely believed myself capable of any real magic, and yet I was part of their rituals, wasn’t I? So-called magical ideation and catastrophic thinking are symptoms, a psychiatrist told me more than once, of what she called generalized anxiety. It was not real. You could make it go away by counting, by breathing. Well, what would all my psychiatrists say now? I had done it again.

There was a tug on my sleeve, and I turned to see Mia. “Come away now, Tansy. No, don’t look. I’ll go down. You must think of the baby.” Her tone was not unsympathetic. Kind, even. But I would not hear it. I twisted and slipped her hand from mine. This was her fault, as much as mine. Had I not been part of their witchcraft and rituals, maybe I would not have been able to cause Guy’s fall. But then, it’s my thoughts that create reality, so I suppose it would have happened either way. Magic or no magic.

I ran, first to the bungalow, where I filled a bag with the books of my beloved Anna Nováková and a bottle of spring water. I was not in the best state of mind. I might have thought to grab a brick of their bread, despite the moldy smell, but the house screeched and the winds howled. I had to escape its whips and cries. I ran across their perfect lawn. My bag caught on a statue, but I pulled it free. Down the hill, through a canyon of thick, shining poison oak. All the way hounded by the wind. Hounded by what had happened to Guy. I can no longer deny that I am the murderer they will say I am. It was me who killed my husband by magic or manifestation. For just one moment, I wanted him dead.

Now here I am in the schoolhouse awaiting my fate. I did not believe I was a witch, not really, but as Mia said, it didn’t matter if I believed or not. Here I wait for their justice, whatever that will be. How can they keep themselves a secret from the authorities after what I have done? By now, I have given up almost all hope of escape, you see. I must abandon magic, intended or coincidental. I can no longer live in denial. Please—you must believe me. What wife is not guilty of occasionally wishing her husband dead? Of fantasizing about widowhood on windy, sleepless nights? Not one, I wager. It could not have been an accident, because I wished for the weather. But I never intended to kill my husband that night, no matter how angry I was. If only he had believed me.