She avoided eye contact.
“Thanks. It’s a beautiful pen,” she said, smiling wanly.
“Best in the world. Ink flows out like music. So that everything you write turns to gold.” He kissed her hand. “Music contracts too.”
Deva’s father went inside to get the fried eggs. I reached for her knee beneath the table and gave it a squeeze. A shaft of sunlight divided us perfectly from one another at the table. I gripped her knee tighter. She, too, I thought, must have been feeling the urge to stay close to me, to keep bathing in the wide-open waters we’d dipped into that morning, our infinity pool. I saw glimpses of blue lakes and daffodils and fuming chimneys, ivy-covered cottages, and more canyon adventures on the horizon for us. I ignored her hand not looking for mine under the table.
I ate the eggs, smiled, and helped myself to more even though my stomach turned and the smell of maple syrup over the pancakes was making me sick. Deva’s father drank a Budweiser and ate some strips of bacon. He glanced at his daughter then pushed his index finger over her bleary eyes, picking out crumbs of dry desert mucus.
“You both look like you came out of a washing machine. Are you sure you got enough sleep last night?”
She nodded yes, spreading food on her plate.
“You’re not hungry?”
“Not much.”
“Well, you better eat if you want to hike to Eagle Rock today.”
“Maybe we should go in the afternoon,” Deva suggested casually.
His face turned cross. He got up in a jolt, went inside, and returned with two pairs of boots. He gave her one and dropped the other one by my feet.
“We had a plan. We always celebrate your birthday like this.”
He gave her a pat on the cheek, playful but stern—on the verge of a friendly slap.
“I know,” Deva said cowering, too tired to come up with an excuse. “We are happy to go, okay?” she cut him short.
We set out for the great Eagle Rock. We were in no condition to go hiking, but Deva said if we didn’t go, it would be worse. I’d hoped Chris would be coming with us, but he’d disappeared into his cottage after breakfast. Part of their separate birthday deal, I imagined. Deva asked me to act normal, to think about the way we hopped fences in school and how we always looked up at the sun and never turned back. I said I would, but the canyon’s sunlight was dim that day, as if it had been flung off the sky. No golden rays, just faded blues and wintery metallic grays.
We hiked past the commune and red canyon rocks. Her father lifted his arm to salute Bob, who gave us a nod from the cottage he was hammering into, fixing what the rain had torn apart. I pretended not to know him. Deva waved politely as if their only connection was through her father. No traces of feral daughters or jealous wives.
The riverbanks had retired and the old mudslides from the storm had solidified into lush purple earth. We crossed the stream through the trees, guarding our heads from overgrown branches and tangled shrubs, and trailed along past the cottage with the outdoor tub where we’d bathed through the winter. A couple of Norwegian tourists hung underwear on a clothesline. Their daughter waved at us from the tub as one of the commune’s stray puppies scratched its paws against the faded enamel.
“Look at that! An outdoor bathroom! Bob’s a crazy cat, isn’t he?”
“He sure is,” Deva muttered.
Our eyes lingered on the entrance of the cabin. We’d crossed that threshold many times before, but now that we were with her father, it all seemed separate from us, as if we were walking through another version of our winter, like it wasn’t us who hopped fences and broke in to cabins. We were not those kinds of girls now. We were girls who followed fathers through the woods, obedient.
We hiked back down across the main road and up into more woods through a path bordered by tall thorny bushes, down a slope, and up another hill that opened onto the entrance of the state park. The farther up we moved over rocky stretches, the colder it got.
“It’s a lot of walking, but it’s the best ocean view in LA,” Deva’s father announced. But his daughter’s smile had vanished. She was meek and waxen as if she’d turned into an object during the course of the morning. Her pants were sliding off her waist and her panties bulged out of her crack in a bundled wedgie. Her breathing became fatigued. Her father noticed and walked over to her. He patted her on the shoulder.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “You look like a ghost.” His tone wasn’t fatherly or reassuring. He rubbed the back of her head with a noogie. Her long hair, heavy with desert dust, clumped up.
“What’s this shit in your hair, Deva? Didn’t you wash it yesterday?”
Deva nodded yes, pulling strands behind her ears to get them out of the way.
“It looks like you’ve been out camping or something. It’s full of…” He combed through her mane with his fingers, picking out bits of sand. “Dirt…sand? What is this?” he asked, opening his hand for her to see.
Deva shrugged her shoulders.
He let out an impatient sigh then looked over at me.
“Veal parmesan,” he said with a cackle, then turned around, and kept walking.
“Are you okay?” I whispered to Deva.
She signaled to move on with a nod of the chin, worried her father might hear us. She finally grabbed my arm, but only because she couldn’t hold herself up. I made myself strong like a pole and pushed her up the hill. A little longer and we’d be on Eagle Rock. We could take a break there.
The mountains looked like distant accumulations of charcoal. Nothing was welcoming. Every leaf on the trees was like a sterile drawing. When we got to a clearing filled with oaks, they were all split in half like divaricated legs. The olive trees in a distant grove appeared remote and bare, like rickety, outstretched skeletons. Hills turned into lurching cliffs that fell off steep ridgelines into empty space. Winter.
When we reached Eagle Rock, Deva’s hand was sweating in mine. The grass around the rock looked like flat patches of wire under the shadows of the clouds. Her father sat on the boulder, overlooking the precipitous bluff below, satisfied with his efforts.
“Look at that.” He sighed at the view, but the ocean behind the hills was black. His face and chest were pouring with acrid sweat, and Topanga did not seem beautiful to me anymore.
Deva took her final steps in a zigzagged line and stumbled toward a lateral bush. She leaned on her knees and threw up. I cleaned her face with dead leaves. Her father saw it and backtracked toward us.
“What’s gotten into you, Deva?”
She propped herself up, resting her hands against her knees, and vomited again. I kept her hair back, but her father thrust me away with his hips.
“You want to tell me what’s up?” he asked. He took her by the wrist and yanked her toward him.
“Nothing. I’m just not feeling well,” she answered, collapsing into him.
He pulled her up in his arms.