Golden State Read Free Page A

our parts for years. Sara did the aging hippie on her plot of land miles from anywhere, rewashing plastic baggies. I was the corporate lawyer’s wife with the evidence of our careless consumption overflowing the bins at the side of the house.
    A few minutes into our conversation, though, Sara threw me a curve. “I thought I’d go down to Mom’s this weekend for her birthday. It’s her eightieth. You should come, Natalie. Mom would like that. The three of us together.”
    “Mother isn’t turning eighty,” I corrected. “She was born in 1916. She’s going to be seventy-nine.”
    We argued for a few minutes, but the number was hardly the point. Seventy-nine, eighty-four, a million. What did it matter? We both knew that all Mother really wanted for her birthday was to hear from Bobby.
    * * *
    E RIC INSISTED I drive his Lexus to my mother’s even though I was more comfortable in my old Honda. There was something about his car, the padding of the seats, the quiet climate control of the ride, the way the windows demanded to be rolled up, that made me feel not quite present. I was driving from Berkeley to Sacramento, but I was in no way connected to the road.
    I pulled off on Stockton Street, the exit for the house I’d grown up in, swearing when I realized my mistake. I’d have to drive through traffic and turn around to get back on the freeway. But, really, what was the rush? There wasn’t any set time for us to gather in the gated community where my mother now lived.
    Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to drive by the old house, I thought, wondering if that had been my aim all along. I turned off the air conditioner, rolled down the windows, and headed toward Forty-Sixth Street. In a car that was not my own, parked in front of the house where my mother no longer lived, I remembered the summer heat of my childhood. Valley heat so intense it burned the grass and shimmered the air, sweat dripping onto my cotton top, my father coming up the walk, his white shirt stuck to his back, his fingers hooked into a jacket thrown over his shoulder, my mother behind drapes drawn to keep out the sun.
    When the heat became unbearable, I’d go across the hall to Bobby’s room in the coolest corner of the house. He had a Boys’ Life room with brown-on-brown-striped bedspreads, shelves crammed with books, a built-in desk stretching under the window, and a small, shady sun porch stacked with more books. He never seemed to mind it when I showed up in his space. He’d let me read from his collection of Superman and Batman comics. I’d sit on the floor between the second twin bed and the wall, a tall metal glass of icy Kool-Aid at my side, my back against the bed, my bare feet resting on the cool plaster wall. I remembered the smell of those comics, the feel of them on my fingers, my big brother building his model planes or playing a solo game of chess, the two of us quietly together.
    A car horn sounded up the street. I snapped to attention, as if thehonk had been directed at me. Then I started my own car, and headed to where I was supposed to be.
    * * *
    T HE GUARD at my mother’s complex waved me through. He wasn’t doing much of a job guarding, but then I didn’t look like much of a robber, a middle-aged woman in her husband’s shiny car, a present for her mother gift-wrapped on the seat beside her.
    Even though my mother had lived here four years, I still struggled to find her condo among all the other pale-colored units surrounded by artificially green lawn.
    “You shouldn’t have come,” she said at the door. “I told Sara not to, but she had a bee in her bonnet.” My mother had graduated first in her class from Berkeley, traveled the world, and danced at the White House, but at heart she was still a girl from the Sacramento Valley. She looked like an advertisement for the golden years—tall, broad shouldered, and smooth faced, her once-salt-and-pepper hair now a stylishly cut white. She wore expensive slacks, a crisp white