Golden State: A Novel by Michelle Richmond Read Free Book Online Page A

something terrible that had happened to them in the war; there would be a window of vulnerability, of honesty—and then it was as if a switch would flip, and we were supposed to go back to discussing mundane things. As a physician, I should have been able to make the transition, but in all my years of practicing medicine, I’d never gotten used to it.
    “From Laurel,” I added. “The kid who used to cut our grass for free because he had a crush on you.”
    She nodded, seemingly happy to change the subject. “I heard Buddy moved to Birmingham. He married a girl from New Jersey, and they own a Krystal franchise.”
    She gathered the sections of her paper into a neat pile and placed it carefully in the center of the table. Then she wiped the table with a napkin, which she folded and tucked into her coffee cup. “Do you have time to go for a walk?”
    I glanced at my watch; it was still forty-five minutes before morning rounds. I’d been coming in early for months, avoiding the moment when Tom walked in the door from his night shift at the radio station. I didn’t quite know how to face him anymore in the early hours, those hours that had once been so intimate. I used to stay inbed longer than I should, just to feel him curl up beside me, his skin layered with the smells of the station, his hair out of whack, his breath smelling of chocolate milk.
    As I followed Heather out of the cafeteria, I wondered if she could sense how wary I was. Waiting to hear her latest angle, her newest troubles. Waiting to suss out the truth from the fiction. Ever since I’d left Mississippi, eighteen years before, Heather had never shown up on my doorstep without needing something. Each time she arrived, there were always lies, and something bad happened. I’d always managed to put it behind me, until the last time, with Ethan, her one mistake that was too big to forgive.

8
    6:52 a.m
.
    I hobble up to the intersection of Front and California, my ankle throbbing. The brisk, briny smell of the bay mingles with the scent of chestnuts from a stall. A small crowd has already gathered at the cable car turnaround, in the shadow of the towering office building at 101 California. The building, with its distinctive pleated façade, has a tragic history: in 1993, a businessman named Gian Luigi Ferri entered the offices of the law firm Pettit & Martin and began firing with two handguns and a pistol. He roamed several floors, killing eight people, before shooting himself. In the aftermath, the California legislature passed some of the most stringent gun laws in the country. Later, Stephen Sposato, whose wife, Jody, died in the attack, would carry their infant daughter in a backpack while testifying before Congress. The man with the motherless baby in the backpack helped Barbara Boxer push the Federal Assault Weapons Ban through Congress. The expiration of the ban in 2004 is in the news every time there’s a mass shooting, one more piece of emotionally charged evidence the secessionists use to point out the fundamental differences between California and the rest of the country.
    Now another young man with a backpack stands at the end ofthe line, intently reading a worn copy of
Home-Grown Medicine: A Marijuana Primer
. There’s a reason San Francisco has a reputation; half of what people say about this city happens to be true.
    The backpack moves, a tiny hand pops out, and a baby appears.
    My stomach does that weird looping thing it always does at the sight of a baby. I settle on the sidewalk to wait. My ankle is on fire. I turn on the Bakelite, hoping to distract myself from the pain. Tom’s on the air, all control and good humor. You’d never know that he’s been up all night, that his personal life is falling apart.
    “Thanks for tuning in to KMOO on this highly unusual Tuesday morning,” he says. I always thought the call letters were bizarre, a strangely rural reference for an urban station in a city teeming with vegans, until Tom explained