In their shared, wood-frame house over the eucalyptus-scented cliffs of Gualala, two hours north of the Golden Gate bridge, the group lived an idyllic existence. The women made and sold kites and wind chimes to passing motorists and the men rented themselves out as Sherpas to hikers who wanted to explore the nearby hills. Mary-Sue and a girl who’d grown up on a farm in Wisconsin made cheese using milk from the goats they raised; one of the boys brewed organic tofu in the feed barn. They grew their own food, made their own clothes. At night, they often discussed books but not to the exclusion of any slow readers, so the standbys were The Great Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye, The Wizard of Oz. Mary-Sue donated her collections of Rimbaud and Céline to enrich the communal stash but as far as she could tell, nobody cracked a single tome, not even out of curiosity.

Every month or two, the residents got punch-drunk and gave each other haircuts. Every week or two, they traded partners. Mary-Sue shared her bed with Chad for about three weeks, off and on. When a former cattleman from Colorado moved in, she went with him as soon as she saw his big hands.

Bobby came out to visit the summer their parents were separating. Their mother had been strident in her demands, and Daddy began retreating into dark afternoons of bourbon and Bullwinkle cartoons. He wanted to tag along whenever Bobby went tooling around for skirt and that was more than the boy could take.

“Daddy’s losing it. I’m blowin’ this pop stand.” That was how he’d put it on the phone. Within twenty-four hours, Bobby was strolling through Mary-Sue’s front door in Gualala, licking his lips when he glimpsed the ocean through the kitchen window.

Though Bobby was Mary-Sue’s baby brother, she never felt she needed to protect him. He’d leapt out of the womb with a natural knack for taking care of himself. It might have been his lopsided smile. You could have dropped six-year-old Bobby in a Harlem sandbox or the dining hall of an English boarding school and he’d be telling jokes and shaking hands. Unlike Mary-Sue, he always belonged.

Bobby stayed in the group house for three weeks, and nobody complained. He regaled the men with news of Iowa inter-city politics—regurgitated from Daddy’s mutterings—which for some reason they found fascinating. The women he charmed by playing the new boy with the greedy, greedy penis. He slept with the farm girl from Wisconsin until her Hare Krishna boyfriend put an end to it. After that, Bobby bicycled into town for fresh bait, some of them housewives more than twice his age.