“They’re still in Australia. Melbourne. These days I only see him and the boys on FaceTime,” said Lola with a hint of sadness in her voice. “But tell me what’s new with you? Do you have any pictures of the twins?”
Olivia pulled out her cellphone to show Lola, Diana and Andrea dressed in identical party dresses, smiling at the camera in the arms of Olivia and Felix. Lola adjusted her reading glasses on the tip of her nose and took a closer look.
“A true miracle. I’ll tell you all about that,” said Olivia.
“We can’t let so much time pass by. It has been what, five years since we actually saw each other? Next thing you know I’ll be dead and gone!”
“Don’t even say that! What’s going on with you? Have you retired?”
“Oh, no. I’ll never retire. You mean, am I still working for the Haldipurs? Their kids outgrew me a couple years ago, but I stay busy with some stuff in the neighborhood. And you? How’s the architecture business going?”
“Two of my projects have been featured in design magazines. Many are old properties, neglected rentals. I did one recently on Hub Street, actually, right around the corner. Maybe you’ve seen it—it’s the house with the second-floor addition.”
“I see.”
“You’ve really kept your house as beautiful as always! I can see the love on the walls,” said Olivia, pointing at the picture frames.
“A house is all about the love you put into it.”
Olivia looked around at Lola’s home. Small but perfect.
“Look, Lola, I’d love for you to come and help me with my twin girls. Please consider it for old times’ sake. I’ve been relying on my mom, but she’s just too distracted. You know how she is. To be honest, it’s been a disaster.”
Monday, January 25th
“My mom canceled family dinner last night. That’s how bad it is,” said Patricia.
She was with her husband, Eric, in a hotel room near LAX.
“Oh, Pats, I’m so sorry to hear that. You must be feeling awful. What are your sisters saying?” said Eric in a French accent he’d continued to cultivate, even after living for twenty-one years in the United States and after having earned his U.S. citizenship in an emotional ceremony with four thousand other immigrants waving little American flags.
“We texted this morning. Claudia asked what we expected, considering Mom just announced to us that she wants to divorce Dad. Olivia says it’s the beginning of the end. And I haven’t told Daniel. I’m afraid he’s not going to take it well. I guess he’ll have to find out if things continue to deteriorate. I hope Mom and Dad really do give themselves a year to make up.”
“Twelve months is a long time; I’m trusting your parents will deal with whatever is going on,” said Eric, holding her hand. “Have you talked to your dad about all this? Something’s happening to him. I feel it.”
“Of course something’s wrong, I feel it too, but it’s not the threat of divorce. He’s been weird for a while, but he won’t say anything, I’ve tried. It’s so damn frustrating.”
Patricia turned over to face the nightstand, hoping the conversation with her husband would stop, and adjusted her pillow to rest her head. She hadn’t slept much and—even worse and unheard of—had declined to have sex with Eric the previous night.
“How can I cheer you up? Do you want to do anything special for your birthday tomorrow? I can stay in town, work from the hotel. Let’s go out to dinner.”
“No, that’s okay. I’m in no mood for birthdays.”
Tuesday, January 26th
Oscar didn’t come home to sleep.
After dropping Daniel off at school, Patricia, concerned, texted her sisters for an emergency breakfast at John O’Groats, one of their favorite weekend dives, never mind it was Tuesday.
“Dad’s disappeared. He didn’t sleep at home last night. His suitcase is gone, his car’s not in the driveway,” she said as soon as her sisters sat down at the table. “I already left several messages on his phone. Nothing.”
“He’s never done this before,” said Olivia. “Has Mom said anything?”
“She wasn’t home either when I left this morning,” said Patricia.
“Maybe they left together,” said Olivia, hopeful.
“You must be kidding. The way things are right now between them? Call her,” said Claudia.
Patricia hit the Mom contact in her list of favorites and activated her phone’s speaker so her sisters could hear as the waitress brought three plates with eggs and bacon and a side of English muffins.
“Mom? Where are you? Dad didn’t sleep at home last night,” said Patricia.
“I know,” she replied dryly. “But don’t worry. He’ll come back sooner or later.”
“Have you reported him missing?”
“Why would I do that? He’s not lost. He left of his own will, on his own two feet. And happy birthday, by the way. Is Eric coming down to L.A. to celebrate with you?”
“No. I’ll see him over the weekend. Bye, Mom.”
If Patricia’s cellphone had been a landline telephone, she would have slammed the receiver. Unfortunately, with these new technologies it was hard to express anger, unless she resorted to using emojis, but this was a call, not a text, so she was left with her feelings, a mélange of annoyance, frustration, and fear, wondering how to proceed. She suddenly hated her mother’s lack of concern.
“Of course,” she said to her sisters, enraged. “She’s mad at him. Why would she be worried?”
“Some birthday you’re having, Pats,” said Olivia. “Are you doing anything interesting?”
“Not really.”
“We can take you out for drinks tonight, if you feel like it.”
“I know a new bar downtown,” said Claudia.
“Thanks for the invite, but I can only think about Dad. I hope Mom’s right, that he just left and is coming back soon, that it’s only a tantrum.”
“I’m sure it is,” said Claudia. “So, no drinks?”
“Not tonight,” said Patricia.
* * *
After she dropped off her sisters and called her office to request a flex day off work, Patricia drove to Eagle Rock in Topanga. She’d hiked the Musch Trail many times before and knew she’d have a decent phone signal in case Oscar tried to reach her. That was the birthday gift she wanted: to spend this perfect seventy-two-degree day by herself, walking among chaparral and sagebrush, admiring the Santa Monica Mountains in the distance and thinking hard about the state of things among the Alvarados. As her legs negotiated the uneven and sometimes dodgy climb along the dirt paths, her mind kept going back to a single question: How had her family become so disconnected? She remembered the days when everyone knew where everybody else was, what everybody else was doing. Every year, color-coded calendars were posted on the fridge and were updated daily by all involved. A tin can with markers sat on the countertop: yellow for Oscar, green for Keila, blue for Claudia, pink for Olivia, red for Patricia, orange for Daniel, and black for family events. It was all there: Daniel’s chess club and swimming competitions, Keila’s mammograms and gallery openings, Patricia’s parties and weekend trips, Oscar’s multiple errands around town, Olivia’s school presentations, Claudia’s marathons. Birthday parties, quinceañeras, bat mitzvahs, weddings, holidays, vacations. Everything was shared. A rhythm, the way the Alvarados moved along the hours and days and weeks of those calendars, year after year, had served as a thread of sorts that tied her family together. But by the time her older sisters had gone to college in New York and Miami and had gotten married and moved to their respective homes, something had broken. The calendar had ceased to exist years ago; the markers, still in the tin can, had dried up and were now relegated to the top shelf with the sous vide cooker, the ice cream maker, and the crème brûlée set still in its original box, aging undisturbed. It seemed to her that each member of her family was a top spinning on a surface by itself, unencumbered by what the other tops were doing or where they were going. What surprised
her the most was the fact that they still met for Sunday family dinners, rain or shine, with or without husbands, with or without the twins. But people sitting at a table don’t make a family. Monologues don’t make a conversation. Even the most delicious meal meticulously prepared by Keila didn’t inspire anymore. And in the past year, she’d watched her father descend into apathy. She didn’t rule out depression, but she was more inclined to believe something was bothering him. Had she done enough to figure out what it was? She thought not, and this upset her. She wished she could pry open his mind and extract his pain, his worry. Or was this deterioration part of the process of aging? She wondered if all families went through this emotional separation as the children grew up and the parents got older. Perhaps she had a heightened sensitivity to what was going on because she lived with Oscar and Keila and could see the day-to-day decline in their care and affection for each other. Why did she live at home anyway? Was she hoping to hang on to the thread of days and weeks that connected her and her parents and sisters in the family calendar? She decided to ask her loyal Twitter tribe.
Am I suffering a bad case of millennialism, or am I justified to be comfortably living at my parents’ house at twenty-eight? Share your thoughts.
She posted her tweet but deleted it almost immediately, suddenly feeling ashamed of herself at the thought that she might be closer to people she’d never met than to her own blood.
Wednesday, January 27th
As Lola drove up and down the hills of Highland Park, the neighborhood she’d lived in for the past thirty-seven years, she could easily distinguish which houses had been bought and renovated to be sold at twice the price and which ones hadn’t yet: that one over there still had its patina, the charm of an old garden populated with gnomes and swans and Catholic saints, a wrought-iron fence and lightly chipped paint on the walls. That other one with the Tesla parked in the driveway sparkled with newness, surrounded by a water-wise garden, a bright red front door and a fence built with horizontal cedar slats. She wondered which of those new houses Olivia had transformed, sending the longtime tenants to live where the wind faded into oblivion, the only place where they could afford rent.
As she drove down the main drag, Figueroa Street, she counted the few landmarks and establishments that had survived—for the time being—her neighborhood’s dizzying transformation from a quaint old Latino enclave into “America’s hottest neighborhood,” at least according to L.A. Weekly. She found a parking spot in front of the flower shop and squeezed her bright yellow, lightly dinged Honda Fit in the small space and waved at her friend Susana, the florist, through her storefront window. She’d babysat for her years ago. Five boys; all grown, but still to this day one or another would stop by and bring her gifts, like a live turkey that instead of food became a pet, a sack of yams that she gave away, a fuchsia rebozo that she loved and used only on special occasions. Susana opened the door and yelled, “Lola! Come over for dinner tonight! The boys are in town and will want to see you. Seven o’clock?”
“I’ll bring tamales costeños,” shouted Lola as she walked past. Her meeting with a Legal Aid lawyer was only a few blocks away, so she headed down Figueroa in the direction of York Avenue, walking past La Fuente restaurant (their sopa de albóndigas was a dish she’d raved about on Yelp). She never ordered delivery; she preferred takeout just to have a chance to get a glimpse of Chicken Boy, the old, bizarre statue towering over the street, perched on the next-door neighbor’s rooftop. It always made her smile, all the weirdness that L.A. had to offer, if you knew where to look. She wished Chicken Boy would stay there forever. But she knew it was doomed: prospectors, speculators, flippers, and developers were quickly taking over her neighborhood right in front of her eyes. It was becoming a playground for affluent hipsters: there they were, eating at Martita’s, her favorite taco place, or spending their money at Verde, the organic juice bar, or at Vegan-O, the vegan restaurant next door. She’d seen a new bookshop right next to a 99 Cents Only Store, and Our Daily Bread, a bakery that sold croissants for four dollars. At least that place had preserved a famous mural of the Virgin of Guadalupe painted years before on its storefront. She had fought for that. Forcefully. Not that she was religious. It had been a matter of principle.
And now she’d learned that Olivia, the little girl she had helped raise, was contributing to the assault. How could she? She’d always come to her, not her mother, for comfort, until she went to college and Lola moved on. It was painful to accept that the sweet little Olie of her memories had turned out to be—well, the enemy. La pinche enemiga!
She felt light-headed. As she tried to hold on to a lamppost she almost got knocked over by a young man gliding by on a skateboard.
When she arrived at Kindness & Mischief, one of those new coffee shops, Kamirah Jones, flaunting a burst of curls the color of raven wings, was already waiting for her. Kamirah was a fierce pro-bono human rights lawyer specializing in eviction defense. She and Lola had become friends years before when Lola first went to seek help at Legal Aid on behalf of one of her neighbors.
“I almost got run over by a man-bun-wearing torpedo,” Lola said, still stunned.
“I’m not surprised. Those people!” said Kamirah, offering Lola a cup of drip coffee and a poppy-seed muffin to calm her down. “I got you the same as last time.”
Both women sat to discuss a new case that Lola had brought to her, a ninety-two-year-old widow who’d gotten an illegal eviction notice and had nowhere to go. In the middle of the conversation, Kamirah asked, “You seem upset. What gives?”
“Remember that family I used to nanny for—on the Westside?”
“It was quite a few years ago, right?”
“Right! I used to love working there. They spoke Spanish and cooked Mexican. And the middle girl, Olivia, she was my favorite.” Lola looked guilty for a moment. “I wasn’t supposed to have favorites, but she just won me over on day one when she put together a welcome-to-our-family bouquet from her mother’s roses. I’ll always remember the mom’s face when she recognized her flowers, my flowers! But now this girl is all grown up. She’s an architect, one of those people destroying Highland Park! I only know because she showed up on my doorstep the other day, asking me to come back to take care of her twin girls. Who almost drowned! That’s what you get for having a swimming pool. A goddamn rich people accident,” Lola said. “That would never have happened on my watch!”
“And so?”
“It’s bothering me like a stone in my shoe!”
“Does she know you’re an advocate with us?”
“No.”
* * *
After her meeting, Lola drove home. Her house was on Range View Avenue, a hilly street with a partial view of the city sprawl. She’d been able to buy it outright years ago thanks to a settlement from a bus accident in which her parents were killed. She arrived at the precise moment when the afternoon sun bathed her avocado-colored house and made the color pop. Shadows danced on the walls as the branches of her sycamore tree swayed in the mild breeze. It was as if the entire house glistened with joy. She walked through the wrought-iron gate onto her patio, where she had planted two rows of corn and a patch of serrano peppers, tomatillos, and epazote to give away to friends. Once inside, she dropped off her purse, plopped down on her couch, and took her shoes off. Her two-bedroom house was small, but it was hers. Lola owned it free and clear and she wasn’t going to let anyone make her move out, not for a million dollars.
Thursday, January 28th
“I bet your dad is in some hotel room, sulking,” said Gabriel, sipping his morning coffee.
“He’s not with Aunt Belinda. We already checked. He didn’t go to Mexico; Patricia says his passport is in his closet. He’s never done this. Never. I’ve been leaving voicemails on his cellphone and nothing. What if he kills himself? He’s been in a weird funk forever,” said Claudia.
“He’ll turn up. I’m sure of that.”
“No, you can’t be sure, so stop invalidating my ang
st.”
“I’m just trying to be supportive. He’s probably regrouping, considering his situation, and wondering how he’s going to save his marriage. People do this sort of thing. They step aside, away from the trouble zone, so they can think things through. I would certainly do something like that.”
Claudia got up behind Gabriel’s lounge chair and squeezed his shoulders, massaging deep.
“How long are you staying?”
“I’m off to New York on Sunday. I’ve got back-to-back meetings all of next week.”
Claudia lifted her hands off Gabriel’s shoulders. She might never get used to Gabriel’s nonstop travel. It maddened her. Suddenly she felt an urge to run to the bathroom and shower off his sweat from the night before, and that’s exactly what she did.
Sunday, January 31st
“Have you tried calling your dad again?”
“For the millionth time,” said Olivia to Felix on their morning walk. “He’s not answering. And on top of it all, my mom canceled family dinner again.”
“Why don’t we go for tacos tonight, then? The twins could use a little outing, and so could we.”
Olivia was eager to normalize their family life after the accident and had even organized a playdate with a neighbor’s toddler the day before to test the girls’ tolerance to activity. Perhaps these efforts to get back to life could help her shake the feeling of inadequacy as a mother that still loomed over her.
“He’s probably teaching your mom a lesson. He wants her to miss him,” said Felix.
“Personally, I think it’s rude of him to have us all worried.”
“I’d stay out of it.”
“I can’t talk about my parents and their idiotic fight right now.”
Olivia accelerated her pace, leaving Felix a few steps behind.
“Hey, wait up,” he said, out of breath. “Stop right now!”
But Olivia pressed on, risking an explosive reaction of foul temper that turned Felix into a basilisk for little or no reason. Fortunately for Olivia, that night he was more interested in Oscar’s disappearance than in picking a fight over anything that made her feel inadequate (You put a ding in the car! You lost the keys again!), so later that evening, having decided against tacos, they stayed home.
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