He supposed he’d always withheld things from her; sometimes the whole story should not be repeated. He wouldn’t describe how it felt, to carry those children.
Frida thought that the worse things got, the more women lost what they’d worked so hard to gain. No one cared about voting rights and equal pay because everyone was too busy lighting fires to stay warm and looking for food to stay alive. “It’s like the only thing that matters anymore is upper-body strength,” she complained. “Brute force.” This was before the Millers died, when he told her he could lift the firewood on his own, warned her she’d get a hernia. Frida had been pissed, but, really, what did she have to be angry about? Yes, they had to rely on an antiquated division of labor. And yes, she would be rescued first from a sinking ship. Wasn’t that a relief? “Spare me your white man’s burden,” Frida had said—which reminded him of Micah, in their Postcolonial Sexualities course.
Cal was sure it had been the worst for Bo. He had probably been the last to eat the poison. Someone had to make sure their dosages were correct and that his children, his wife, wouldn’t awake. It must have been terrible. Who wanted to be a man?
Cal looked at Frida across the table. She was scraping at her food with the fork, her focus anywhere but on him. He cleared his throat. “Frida,” he said.
“What?” she asked, and looked up.
“I have no interest in finding out what’s beyond the territory we’ve already explored.” He paused. “All I need, all I want, is right here. With you.”
The only sound was Frida’s fork hitting her plate.
“I hate these beets,” she said.
Though he agreed, Cal shook his head. “You have to finish them,” he said. Already the possibility of their unborn child was exerting its influence. It needed the nutrients.
*
Cal had last seen Bo alive six months ago, when the Millers had come to the shed for dinner. It was the beginning of spring, and Cal had again found himself missing the jacarandas in L.A., which had to be blooming soon. Two years earlier, they’d left town before the trees blossomed, and sometimes he imagined the purple flowers pastel against a cloudless sky. He used to love that, and how, come summer, the sticky flowers would carpet the sidewalks.
On that visit with the Millers, though, he felt at home. He didn’t miss anything. The weather was warm, and the sun was a neon peach in a charcoal sky. He had roasted cauliflower, and Frida had steeped jugs of water with lemon balm. Thanks to the garden’s bounty, they’d been getting crafty with their meals. They could have been back in L.A., throwing a dinner party. In the year and a half since they’d met the Millers, they’d learned a lot. They were getting the hang of things; that, or they had let themselves be fooled.
The Millers had brought a tent for sleeping, but Cal remembered waking the next morning to their absence; the family had risen before dawn to be on its way. They probably hadn’t even gone to sleep, Cal thought. He imagined Sandy and Bo alternating security shifts, the chilly wind the only thing keeping their eyes open. He envied and derided their brand of dedication. Breathe out already, he wanted to say.
Still, the families were getting comfortable with each other. Garrett sat on Frida’s lap occasionally, and the couples shared a few inside jokes. Bo and Cal had already gone hunting a handful of times, and Sandy had shown Frida how to forage for mushrooms and berries. She had explained to his wife how to distinguish between the poisonous and the safe.
That night, while Frida helped Sandy tuck the children into the tent, Cal took Bo up on his offer of moonshine. The liquor tasted like Windex, but he drank it anyway because he wanted to feel that old familiar ease in his brain and limbs.
It didn’t take long for Cal to feel a little drunk. If he weren’t, he wouldn’t have asked Bo what was beyond their land. The Millers never spoke of this, even as they approached other topics: the local flora and fauna, visits from August, how to keep animals away from the garden. They were full of advice, and yet continuously evasive. This place of mystery, Cal reminded himself. But he wanted answers.
He could tell Bo was tipsy by the way he lay back on the faded quilt they’d been dining on and propped himself on his elbows. In the daylight, Bo had an alert and serious face, but in the darkness it was hidden, and he simply seemed small, and thus more vulnerable. Frida liked to remind Cal that their neighbor was short, as if this spoke of some deeper lack. “This isn’t a nineteenth-century novel,” Micah had liked to say back at Plank, and Cal thought of that now. Bo could just as well have had a wooden leg, he thought. It would mean nothing.