Chapter One

Bliss is driving north on Highway 1, looking at the crashing Pacific. She would like to pull the car over and walk along the water's edge, but there is no beach here, only cliffs jutting out over the ocean. The mountains, the road, the water-it's so gorgeous it's getting monotonous. So she begins to make small promises to herself. If Gerald starts in on the beauty of the self-sufficient life, she will allow herself a solitary one-hour walk. If Marisa invites her to join in the baking of bread or the pickling of cucumbers or the gathering of fresh-laid eggs, she will invent a friend who lives nearby with whom she has promised to have a drink. These people-her younger brother, Gerald, and his girlfriend, Marisa (his R.F.L., as he calls her, his Reason For Living, and, really, this irks Bliss as much as anything else)-live in Mendocino County, two and a half hours north of San Francisco, a mile from the coast, in a small, isolated house of their own design. It is, Bliss remembers, a nice enough house, made tacky by a pair of stained glass windows that flank the front door-windows that Marisa made. She is, Gerald has said more than once, an artisan. Life for Marisa-and, now, for Gerald-is about using your hands whenever you can. Bliss has been tempted in the past to point out that your brain must contribute something to this equation, but she is determined to keep all snide remarks to herself on this visit. After all, it will be the first time she has seen them in over a year. And, too, today is the tenth anniversary of their father's suicide. She wants to be on her best behavior.

Bliss would like to think that this reu