Going way back she remembered a time when orchards, not silicon, supported the valley. A time when the fruity summer air sang with susurration of bees and yellow jackets and everyone got stung and bit and knew to jump into an irrigation ditch if a swarm attacked. Today there were freeways where she remembered tacky apartments, malls like castle complexes, and cars, thousands of cars. It was worse than Miami. Overhead the sky was yellow.
Smaze, Hannah called it. “The drought just makes it worse.” The interior of the Volvo was hot and close and Liz rolled the window down a little. The noise of engines and tires on asphalt was unpleasant.
“I can’t hear you over the racket.”
“What about air conditioning?”
“I am permanently and politically opposed to it,” Hannah said and grinned. “If you have time, I want you to visit Resurrection House with me. There’s one little baby, her name is Angel . . .”
“You haven’t changed, Hannah. Always a cause. Always the life saver. Vietnam protests, abused animals—”
“I have changed,” Hannah snapped. “Don’t patronize me because I haven’t had your big exciting life. What I do at Resurrection House is very important.”
Shit.
Coming home was like swimming in a strange sea. Below the surface there were thickets of tangled seaweed. “But you’ve got to admit there was a time—” Liz giggled and covered her mouth with her hand. “Remember when you decided it was cruel of Mr. Silva to keep his Japanese quail in that little cage?”
“He was such a prick. He wanted to send me to Juvie.”
They were eleven and in school they read about the cannibalism of overcrowded, stressed-out rats.
“I couldn’t stop thinking of those pretty birds all pecking each other to death.” Hannah laughed. “How was I to know they were worth two hundred bucks each. They just looked like birds to me.”
She turned off the freeway at Lark Avenue. The exit ran through a new housing development built in an old prune orchard. The homes were two- and three-story affairs with triple garages and massive brick and stone facades crowded onto lots suited to buildings half their size.
“So much tack, so little time,” Liz said.
Hannah braked and idled in a line of cars waiting for a landscape truck to unload a twenty-foot liquid ambar. “Gail Bacci says they’re going for more than a million each.”
Someone in the line of cars banged on his horn.
“Jerk,” Hannah said.
“Who buys them?”
“I don’t know. Computer people, I guess. They’re like an invading species. We never mix. We’re the old-timers. The newcomers think we’re frumpy. All they want to do is buy our houses, tear them down and build more of those things.” The line of cars moved forward. “You’re looking at the new Rinconada. Kids in Ingrid’s class drive Lexus SUVs.”
“Are they nice kids?”
“Jesus, who knows. The school’s got more castes than India. And it’s huge. Not like it was for us, the way we knew everyone.”
“My parents would have hated it.”
Hannah looked at Liz and shook her head. “Your parents wouldn’t have noticed.”
A stinging wind blew through Liz’s mind, plucking the strings of her headache.
When she was seven, she spent the night at Hannah’s house for the first time. On the twin beds in Hannah’s bedroom with its dormer windows and walk-in closet, the blue satin coverlets had been turned down and the pillows plumped. Liz saw Hannah’s sprigged flannel nightie laid across the blankets like a patch of garden and compared it to her own pj’s, buttoned up with safety pins. From the distance of several decades the disregard of her distracted intellectual parents still had power to tear her heart. It shouldn’t matter anymore, she told herself, but it did.
“It’s all so clear in my mind, like it was yesterday . . .” Say it. “Remember Bluegang?”
Hannah shuddered. “It’s changed too, big time. If I didn’t love my house and if the wildwood weren’t there like a barrier, I’d move across town. Gail says there are homeless people living in those caves up beyond the swimming hole. There’s trash all around and sewage too, I suppose. You’d probably die if you drank the water.”
Talk, talk, talk. Saying nothing, nothing, nothing.
Remember Bluegang?
“Gail’s always after me to join the group she’s organized to clean it up, but I just don’t have the time. You know? I give her a big check every year but there’s only so much a person can do.” Hannah braked and turned into a parking lot.
Liz read the sign painted on the building in front of them: Bacci’s Italian Market. In cement planters between parking places, purple and gold lantana drooped under the midday sun. The fragrance of salami, briny olives and baking bread came through the car window.
Hannah switched off the ignition and reached into the backseat for her straw purse. “You want to come in? It’d tickle Mario to see you. He and Gail are coming to dinner Saturday if you’d rather not.”
“I’ll stay.”
Liz put her head back and closed her eyes. Fatigue and apprehension lay on her eyelids like iron coins.
“Were you asleep?” Hannah asked as she opened the door fifteen minutes later. “Do you feel okay?”
“I’m fine.” Liz poked in the brown paper bags. “What did you buy me?”
“Salami. Biscotti with walnuts and anise dipped in chocolate. Mindy Ryder makes it.”
“What’s she doing with herself?”
“That’s probably not a good question to ask.” They laughed. “She’s coming on Saturday too so you can ask her yourself.” Hannah pulled out onto Rinconada’s main street lined with specialty shops and boutiques with clever names: Bearly Yours, Heavenly Heels.
Liz said, “I was in love with him once. Mario.”
“When’s the last time you saw him?”
“Fifteenth reunion, I think. It was before I met Gerard.”
“Well, let me prepare you. The Italian stallion has eaten a bit too much of his own spaghetti.” The car in front stopped suddenly. “Shit.”
Liz double-checked her seat belt.
“Gail’s made a fortune selling real estate to half of Silicon Valley and they all drive down Santa Cruz Avenue cruising the shops. Jeanne says when Judgment Day comes, Gail’s going to burn in hell for what she’s done to this town.”
“How is Jeanne anyway? Her letters don’t give much away.”
Hannah drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as they waited for traffic to clear. “She’d say the same of yours.”
“Lord, Hannah, I’m an open book.”
Hannah’s gaze snapped. “Don’t forget who you’re talking to, Lizzie. I’m the girl who knew you when.”
And I you.
Liz asked, “How’s the abominable spouse?”
“Still abominable.” At a stoplight Hannah signaled right and turned up Casabella Road.
By contrast to Santa Cruz Avenue, Casabella Road had changed little in the years since Liz and her two friends walked it to and from school every day. It began at the Corner Drug Store and, staying level for a while, curved around the little town cemetery before it turned again and ran parallel to Santa Cruz Avenue for several blocks. Beyond St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church where Hannah’s father was rector for more than