The Last Days of California: A Novel by Mary Miller Page A

the gun case and catalogue the contents of the pantry before planting a garden in the wide, flat backyard, the place where we had always imagined a pool. She’d give birth to a healthy baby girl, or maybe a boy—our own boy. And I’d work hard all day and at night I’d be so tired it wouldn’t occur to me to sleep badly. But then I thought about every postapocalyptic movie I’d ever seen and how we wouldn’t be able to stay there because men would want our guns and our food. They’d want us to have their babies in order to repopulate the world, all of the pretense of love gone.
    “Forget it,” Elise said, sitting up abruptly. “I’ve changed my mind. I’m not wearing it again until Saturday, you can tell Dad that.”
    “Tell Dad what?” our father asked, opening the door. “You’re wearing those shirts, they cost me twenty dollars.”
    “Each?” I said.
    “That’s right, each. There’s only one ice maker working in this entire motel. This wouldn’t happen at a Days Inn.” He set the bucket on the table. He was partial to Days Inns. He had brand loyalty: Colgate, Maxwell House, Ivory soap.
    “You’re the one who stopped here,” Elise said.
    “I don’t like Days Inns. I always find little nests of hair in the bathroom,” I said. “It’s like they don’t even pretend to clean it.”
    “But the ice makers work,” he said. He took off his glasses and held the bridge of his nose. Then he opened his eyes and looked blindly around the room. I hardly ever saw him without his glasses—he looked like someone who had been asleep for a long time and had just woken up.
    Our mother squeezed the water out of our shirts while he chased a fly around the room with a newspaper. Then she went to the bathroom and did her business, silence punctuated by long airy farts, as our father continued to pursue the fly. Elise and I watched him with the blankest faces we could muster. When our mother came out, she washed her hands and made their drinks—a Sprite for herself and a whiskey for our father. She tried to hand the cup to him, but he was busy taking everything out of his suitcase: stacks of no-iron shirts, bundles of socks, a pile of tighty-whities.
    In the doorway, they turned to us.
    “We’ll be at the pool,” our mother said. Our father took a sip of his drink and made a face like it was too strong before closing the door.
    “Finally,” Elise said. “Good Lord.” She rocked back and forth so the headboard knocked against the wall.
    I searched for something to listen to on my iPod, scrolled through each of my playlists. Before leaving Montgomery, I’d made a Heaven mix and Elise had made an End of the World mix, but I was already tired of the songs I’d chosen. I decided on a mix labeled Jogging , though I never jogged. It hurt my knees.
    Elise got out of bed and turned the air conditioner on high, checked the closet for extra pillows. She found one and launched it at my head.
    “I can’t believe they left the liquor. Is this some kind of test?”
    “What?” I asked, taking out an earbud.
    “Maker’s Mark,” she said, “whiskey.” She took the bottle out of our mother’s carry-on and held it up to the light like she might find something floating.
    “Put it back.”
    “What?”
    “You shouldn’t drink,” I said.
    “I’ll put some water in it and they’ll never know.”
    “That’s not why,” I said. I’d found the First Response box in a trash can in Biloxi, faceup, like she’d wanted me to find it. That day, our father had stopped driving after a couple of hours and we’d spent the afternoon feeding the seagulls on the beach; they’d taken the chips right out of our hands. When I confronted her, she set the plastic stick on the table—the lines so brightly pink they glowed. Then she called Pizza Hut and paid for a half-veggie-half-sausage with her own money. I hadn’t asked any questions, how far along she was or if she might want to keep it. We ate the entire pizza while