California Gothic (Part One)

Mrs. Temple woke early, anxious like the night before. Her skin prickled with imaginary thorns when she looked out the window at her rose garden—the constant cause of her anxiety. In her narrow twin bed that rarely sinks beneath the pressure of things related to love, she can already smell rotting roses. Mrs. Temple is old, of course, but her sense of smell grows sharper every year. Her alarm buzzes unnecessarily, and she says something inaudible under her breath—still stale with sleep.

On the other end of town, but on the same morning, Jillian wakes up oddly calm in her double bed that quakes frequently under the pressure of such things. Jillian is a photographer who takes pictures of pleasant things for money and unpleasant things for fun. She has a paying job later that day, but Jillian can’t bring herself to care, making it harder than usual to face the morning that’s started to float aggressively through her window. Instead, she contemplates breakfast: savory or sweet. Today, she picks the former.

It is the Friday after Thanksgiving in a town whose name is as unimportant as the swollen people who call it home. Residents brag they live in California’s newest town—an accomplishment in a state where only dirt is old. The town spreads itself beneath the San Gabriel Mountains on the Eastern edge of Los Angeles, near enough to lick smog from your teeth when the wind blows Northeast, but far enough away that The Lakers aren’t your team. Everything here is fresh, but somehow faded like Mrs. Temple herself. Pretty in the way that Southern California is pretty. Pretty in the way that Jillian is, too: thick and sultry, sparkly like miles of pavement. The driveways curve left and the streets are named after mainstream fruit. Air spreads on toast like soft butter sweating on Formica—not that anyone eats carbs. When they drive, people drive fast through the concrete jungle, tangled strangers until they hit the Pacific. Mrs. Temple and Jillian have their driving licenses, but both refuse to drive because of things remembered only vaguely.

The last time Mrs. Temple and Jillian saw each other was in the ethnic food section of Albertson’s, which makes sense. Everyone in the town knows everyone else—as it goes in small towns—but connections are peripheral and unfriendly. As they drive up the mountains toward home, people may stop to wave, but they could just as easily look straight ahead, waiting for green. No one likes each other much, so they stay in their matching houses and pass the time, whispering strange things into the smoggy air.

During the drought last summer, there was a caterpillar infestation. Throughout town, the branches and leaves of the dry trees became coated with furry green caterpillars. Almost cute, like inchworms. The branches drooped so low with the weight of tiny bodies that they creaked and almost broke, brushing against the sticky sidewalk when they blew in the wind. The caterpillars multiplied every day until something had to be done; people were staidly upset. After enough complaints, an exterminator came to kill the caterpillars. Everyone stayed inside and closed all the windows, cranking the air up to sterilize the discomfort of extermination. Once the exterminator left, the caterpillars were still attached to the tree branches with feet that grasp posthumously. When the wind blew or a kid climbed up into the trees, dead caterpillars rained from the branches and coated the sidewalk and streets in a seventies shag carpet of shriveled, dead caterpillars. You couldn’t walk without stepping on them, little dead organisms crunching underneath the flimsy plastic flip-flops of Southern California. But the trees stood tall and normal after that, so Mrs. Temple finally opened her windows and looked out at the sidewalk massacre.