The Ruins of California Read Online Free

Islands.”
    I forced a smile.
    Cary shrugged. “Gee, Paul. I think it’s really neat.” She tried to catch my father’s eye. “Where’d you get that groovy bag, Inez?”
    “Is it neat?” He faltered, temporarily at a loss. “Perhaps so. Gee, what do I know, right? I’m so out of it. Hey, Inez, you’re looking swell.
Swell.
”
    I didn’t say anything for a while, just watched him lift the suitcase to the hatch of the small car and felt an old dread returning. He acted so glad to see me but at the same time seemed sorry I’d ever been born.
    “Let’s go!” he called out. And in one fluid motion, he jackknifed his long, lean body and dropped into the driver’s seat of the MG. Cary waited beside her open door so I could climb in the backseat. Except it wasn’t a backseat, really, just a narrow ledge. When he’d first gotten the car, the year before, I was able to crawl right in. But now some gymnastics were required. I stepped backward through the door and positioned my bottom on the ledge before squeezing the rest of my body inside. As we rode along, my head bent down to avoid painful contact with the roof, my clodhoppers were wedgedup against the back of the front seats and one elbow was positioned on the ledge to steady me during my father’s great bursts of speed and frequent lane changes. Once, the year before, during a particularly exciting stretch of road, he swiveled his head all the way around to tell me that sometimes he wished he’d become a race-car driver, but now it was too late.
    Cary smiled at me sympathetically. “How’s it going back there?”
    She seemed a little younger than Marisa, as far as I could tell. Or maybe just softer and more vibrantly sweet, if that was possible. But, just like Marisa, she generated an atmosphere of intelligent passivity, of being a good-natured passenger in a Paul and Inez Ruin Weekend. The only other noticeable pattern as far as I could tell was that both women had dark hair, large eyes, small noses, and an overbite. But then, my mother had all those things, too.
    “How is
Mrs. Craig
?” my father asked. “Any goose-stepping in the classroom?”
    “Mrs. Craig”—he turned to Cary—“is really uptight. Right, Inez?”
    “Yeah.”
    “She’s an angry John Bircher who’s got Inez in her grips for third grade. She hobbles around on a wooden leg like Captain Ahab and has one of those bird’s-nest hairdos. And according to Inez she’s made the class memorize the names of Richard Nixon’s cabinet.”
    “Oh, God!” Cary shrieked. “You’re kidding!”
    My father watched me in the rearview mirror. “Inez, who is the secretary of health, education and welfare?”
    “Robert Finch.”
    “Hey!”
    “Secretary of state?”
    “Henry Kissinger.”
    “
Herr Doctor Strangelove
, you mean.”
    Cary giggled.
    “Mrs. Craig is totally paranoid and always raving on about the commies. Right, Inez? Completely hysterical. Just like my mother. I don’t get it,” he went on. “It’s hard for me to get that worked up. Who needs more labels? Right, Inez? To me, hawks and doves are all birds, and politics is just a lot of wing flapping.”
    My neck wasn’t in a position to nod, but I tried—strangely enthralled by his charm, almost hypnotized. My chin moved up and down a bit, and I hoped that he could see it in the mirror.
    “Don’t vote,” he said. “
It only encourages them.
Right, Inez?” Then he lowered his voice to paternal tones. “Memorizing isn’t such a bad thing anyway. It’s how we learn stuff—”
    Behind the MG an explosive rumbling quieted all conversation. From the slanted hatch window, I saw a dark cluster of motorcycles getting bigger, enveloping our car on all sides. There was a group of eight or ten men in denim and leather and World War II helmets spray-painted black.
    “Harleys,” my father said.
    “Far out!” said Cary. “The Hells Angels.”
    At the very end of the pack, a skinny girl was wearing a crocheted halter top