L.A. Weather

by María Amparo Escandón

  “I saw it last month, when you uploaded it.”

  Simon clicked on Keila’s website and the computer screen filled with images of sculptures of couples in bed, their backs turned against each other, their eyes open, staring at the emptiness, every one of them looking deep in thought.

  “I’m drawn to the drama of this series, but right now I’m more in the mood for spooning,” he said.

  Over the years Keila had been subjected to plenty of men’s advances. She had developed an ability to shrug them off by using a moral compass of sorts that worked quite effectively: she’d imagine Oscar standing right next to her. This gave her the power to express an absolute lack of interest that men quickly interpreted as thanks, but no thanks. Usually that would be the end of it. Simon was the only man who had persisted. For twenty-three years. He was still married when they met at a gallery opening. He pursued her, at first professionally, inviting her to have a solo show at his gallery. Then things began to get more personal. She stopped him immediately, but every so often Simon would bring out his feelings for her and put them on the table, usually a restaurant table, which was Keila’s preferred setting for meeting with him. Neutral. Public. Safe. The answer was always no, but this time was different. Being at odds with Oscar had weakened her resolve. She had to imagine Oscar kissing her at that moment, although she wished it were Simon.

  “The spooning series, then,” she said, pretending to ignore Simon’s obvious pass. “I’ll have them shipped on Thursday.”

  She left the gallery with a wrung-out heart, wishing to get into bed and dream something, anything, instead of going back to her parents’ house, which she had inherited and kept in her name after their deaths. She decided to go to the cemetery to visit their graves. The two-hour drive allowed her ample time to think about what had just happened at the Brik & Spiegel Gallery. Her sudden attraction to Simon was a natural reaction given the state of affairs with Oscar, but if she were to continue with her commitment to try to rescue their marriage, she’d have to kill her feelings immediately. “Stick it out!” she shouted as she parked her rental car.

  The Panteón Jardín, one of the largest cemeteries in Mexico City, had been sold out for years. “We’ve got a full house,” the director would tell potential customers, but new burials were conducted daily in any remaining nook and cranny, letting no space go to waste. When relatives did not meet their perpetuity contract obligations, corpses were readily exhumed and placed in common graves to allow room for new tenants, many of them buried in recycled coffins that were still in good shape. There were several smaller cemeteries side by side within the walls of the Panteón Jardín, perfectly separated by wrought-iron fences, to house the deceased depending on their religion or other form of affiliation. Nowhere else was it so true that even after death segregation was still an issue, Keila thought. She walked past the mausoleums of notable Mexican families that still held on to expired and useless titles of nobility, past rows of plain graves painted in bright colors and decorated with virgins and crucifixes and wilted flowers in plastic vases, past the Water and Power Union cemetery, past the Mexican Social Security Institute cemetery, and past the Rotary Club cemetery, until she arrived at the Panteón La Fraternidad, the Jewish cemetery. She opened the gate and went straight to the far end. A small stone she’d left on her father’s headstone years ago was still there, untouched. The thoroughly washed and wrapped bodies of her parents peacefully decomposed underneath the soil in simple pine caskets.

  “I told you not to marry Oscar, but you wouldn’t listen. I’m convinced you did it just to hurt us. He’s not even one of us! He’ll never understand. And I told you he was going to take you to live in Los Angeles. Look how long you’ve been gone,” Keila almost heard her mother complain. Then she went on to hear her moan, as when the girls were little, “Now you have the three girls. Who’s going to help you raise them? Now you’ve made your decision and we will just rot here by ourselves until we die and then we’re going to rot some more in our graves. But that’s all right. You go on and live your life without us. It’s okay.”

  This guilt-inducing spiel was not new. In fact, Keila’s mother would inflict it on her every time they spoke on the phone, even past the girls’ teen years and into adulthood, and she would endure it stoically at the other end of the line. But now, at the cemetery, the spiel resonated more. It hurt. It was too late to fix the abandonment she had imposed on her parents by leaving for Los Angeles, even though she went back home to visit several times a year, but she still had the chance to recover what she had worked so hard to attain. Her marriage to Oscar against her parents’ wishes had quickly morphed into a family, her own. It happened subtly and without her full awareness when she heard Claudia’s first cry in the delivery room. This moment was followed by never-ending lessons that taught her not just how to be a mother, but how to be an American mother: Soccer mom? You must mean soccer dad. Why do I have to volunteer at the school carnival? My mother didn’t even know where my school was. Your friends are hanging out at our house and plowing through our fridge and they don’t even say hello? Manners are strictly enforced in Mexico and parents always call the shots. What? Your boyfriend is sleeping over? Not until you’re married, missy.

  Confronting and adapting to the way people raised their children in the United States had been Keila’s major challenge and an unbridgeable divide that separated her from the other moms. It didn’t help that with every new situation, whether it had to do with schooling or social life, Keila would hear her mother’s voice inside her head giving instructions that contradicted what everyone did around her: “She can’t go to coed sleepaway camp! God knows, hormones can unlock every dorm door, get past every counselor supervising those kids!”

  Still, Keila persevered by purposely betraying her own upbringing time and again throughout the girls’ growing years until she convinced herself that she’d finally obtained the Great American Mom title. But this notion had lasted only until it was time for Claudia to go away to college. Why she’d decided to go to NYU, all the way on the East Coast, with so many fine universities to choose from right in town was a mystery to Keila. But more important, why did she trade her beautiful bedroom with a walk-in closet in Los Angeles and her mom’s daily affection and off-the-charts gefilte fish for a cramped, dirty dorm full of New York cockroaches, a broken-down microwave oven with burnt pizza drippings, and four smelly roommates she didn’t even grow up with? Not just that, as if four years of absence hadn’t been enough, right after graduating she’d gone on to culinary school somewhere inaccessible by plane in upstate New York.

  And why did Olivia go to the University of Miami at the other end of the country to go through a similar experience? At least she had benefited from better weather than Claudia. Had her daughters decided to go one step farther away from her, they’d have fallen into the Atlantic Ocean. Only Patricia had stayed home and enrolled at UCLA to be close to little Daniel. Keila ached every time another mom would say “Good riddance!” and quickly redecorate her child’s empty bedroom to become a studio, or worse even, a guest room. Then there was her mother’s voice, “You see Keila, Keilita? Now you are living in the same hell you put us through.” Her children leaving for college had indeed been punishment for having left her parents in Mexico. Keila was sure about that and she endured it accordingly: payback time.

  She sat up, dusted herself off, and left the cemetery, quickly stopping by the grave of the late Mexican singer and movie idol, Pedro Infante. He was still so famous that every year for sixty years, right on his birthday, even if it fell in the middle of the week, the management had to remove three tons of trash left by fans who came to bring flowers, have a picnic, sing his songs, and celebrate. How odd is transcendence, Keila thought. In a hundred years—not even a tiny blink in the history of humankind—no one would remember or care about her ordeal. It was important to remain humble and small. Having been an only child, she had to remind herself that not everything was about her. She felt an ur
gent need to go home.

  Friday, February 19th

  Patricia slowed down her Prius and glanced at her phone’s screen. It was a text from Eric.

  client not buying the idea

  She waited to reply until she stopped at the traffic light.

  Fuck.

  have to stay in seattle till monday. need to rework the forecast

  She looked up to check if the red light had turned green.

  Want me to fly over there?

  busy with the team. let’s hang out next weekend in sfo or la, schedules permitting

  The line of cars started to move, so she accelerated with the traffic.

  K. Cool.

  She wrote the last text driving at eighteen miles per hour and quickly put away her phone just before a police car sped past her, beacon flashing, siren blaring. She was relieved when the officer stopped another motorist. She’d been fined before for using her cellphone while driving but, like every other Angeleno, she could not abide by that particular law. It was impossible to be out of touch during the long periods of drive time. This rule would have to be updated to meet the changing needs of society. Either that, or technology would have to hurry up and deliver the much-anticipated self-driving cars, not just for the elite, but for the masses, so people could focus on other tasks while getting from one place to another. This was, of course, a not-so-novel concept to people who lived in cities like New York, where public transportation had allowed multitasking since way before the tech boom. She envisioned a fast-arriving future where transportation would become on-demand driverless-car services owned by fleets, corporations, not by individuals. You could call a ride through an app and get a driverless vehicle to suit your need at that particular moment: one passenger, two, four, or more. Are you hauling something large? Are you going long distance or just a few blocks? Privately owned cars would be as obsolete as typewriters. Parking lots would be converted into apartments, since cars would be operating 24/7 with no idle time. She wondered what Eric would have to say about her ideas.

  Eric lived in the future. He enjoyed an ultra-fine-tuned gut feeling that allowed him to predict consumer trends for brands and corporations. Chief culture officer was his title at Avenir, the trends and strategy company he’d started with his best friend from middle school. His routine involved dissecting every other newspaper, magazine, and blog, no matter how mainstream or obscure, how well established or underground; talking to people in bars, restaurants, clubs, schools, galleries, and at events; watching broadcast television, streaming and binge-watching digital content, listening to radio talk shows, stalking shoppers at grocery stores and passengers on planes to ask them questions about their purchasing habits. He conducted focus groups on all kinds of themes, fact-checked current research, and examined the competition. He then met with CEOs to discuss his vision of things to come. He braided together what appeared to be random social facts, interpreted odd consumer behaviors, discerned patterns that no one saw, and delivered stories about the destiny of products and services to bigwigs in boardrooms around the world. He sometimes got involved in the nuts and bolts of the operations; for instance, as Patricia sat in her car that day, Eric was at a client meeting in Seattle working out some logistical details for Flying Burrito, a start-up company he was helping launch, which would deliver fast food to college students via drones. That’s what Eric did. “I see things coming,” he’d joke.

  Eric and Patricia met when she attended a panel on career opportunities in the tech industry for graduates at UCLA, which he moderated.

  “Just be aware,” he told a group of female students when they approached him with questions after the panel ended and most people had left the room. “Women are outnumbered by men in the tech industry four to one. They get bypassed, isolated, pushed out. It doesn’t look like it’s going to improve much in the next few years. You’re a new generation; I hope you can change that.”

  It might have been his directness, or perhaps the way he pointed his big Frenchman’s nose straight at her, that made Patricia invite him for drinks.

  “I don’t see an obstacle,” said Patricia later that night after she took a swig of her mezcal, her eyes fixed on Eric’s nose as he tilted his head to allow his shot glass to reach his lips. “You think women are not prepared to fight that battle? Just try us.”

  Dazzled by Patricia’s assertiveness, Eric proposed within two months and the two were married despite Keila and Oscar’s dismay.

  “Why so soon? Can’t you just wait to see how the relationship evolves?” asked Oscar, puzzled.

  “We’re fast-tracking it. It’s going to evolve as we go. He already accepted my one major condition, which is that I stay in L.A. with you and Mom. I can keep raising Daniel here, with your help. Eric really doesn’t envision himself as a father figure anyway, so he’s going to keep living in his Queen Anne landmark house in San Francisco. That’s where he likes to manage his virtual office. I’ll fly up to visit him on weekends. It’s going to work out fine, Papi. Don’t worry.”

  Patricia parked in front of Claudia’s house and texted her.

  I’m here.

  Coming!

  Hurry up. I hate parking on PCH. It’s a fucking racetrack.

  Take it easy. We’re just going shopping.

  After fifteen minutes, during which Patricia sorted out a client emergency, replied to three emails, jumped into a conference call that she had previously excused herself from, and added a coat of fresh nail polish to her manicure, Claudia emerged from her house with a wrinkled Barneys New York shopping bag, apologizing (but not really) for being late.

  “I don’t like where this is going with Mom and Dad,” said Patricia while speeding down Pacific Coast Highway. “They barely talk, they haven’t scheduled another therapy session, and Dad just wanders around the house, or he drives off and doesn’t come home until late at night.”

  “Maybe he has a lover,” said Claudia as she rolled down the window to get a whiff of sea breeze.

  “Why would you say that? He’s never given a hint.”

  “Then where does he go? With Aunt Belinda managing the finances, he only has to go to the office once a week.”

  “Somewhere dusty,” said Patricia, wondering if that was some sort of indication of her father’s strange behavior.

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve noticed dust on his car. He hoses it down right away when he comes home. I’ve seen him.”

  “Oh, look at you, the little gumshoe! I’m going to start calling you Philip Marlowe,” said Claudia.

  “I’m just saying.”

  “Everyone washes their car at least once a week,” Claudia said, as if there was nothing unusual about that practice, even in the middle of a drought. “Lover. I’m telling you,” she added a couple of minutes later.

  At the store, Claudia went straight to the designer dresses department.

  “I want to return this item,” she said to the salesperson behind the register, taking a black dress out of the shopping bag.

  Patricia pulled Claudia aside and whispered in her ear, “Didn’t you wear that to Mom and Dad’s dinner a couple of months ago?”

  “Of course not. You’re confused, little Marlowe. I have many black dresses,” Claudia mouthed back.

  “This is too embarrassing. Text me when you’re done.”

  Patricia was familiar with Claudia’s long-standing habit of returning clothes she’d already worn. She’d keep the tag attached. She’d wear the clothes only once. She’d refrain from using any perfume. She’d bring them back quickly and exchange them for something else. She’d only select items that were under eight hundred dollars, preferably at Barneys or Bloomingdale’s, and would never, ever return anything at Neiman Marcus. For Patricia this behavior was consumer abuse of the worst kind, a betrayal of the retailer’s trust, and she sided with the retailer. She wandered off to the shoe department to distract herself. She tried on a pair of Louboutin ankle boots that she had added to her shoe board on Pi
nterest. John Varvatos had some nice ones, too. She finally picked a pair of studded, laceless Sartore boots, perfect for her boyfriend jeans. She wasn’t much of a shopper. Her trips to the mall were mostly for work, when she needed to do store checks or observe certain consumer habits. When she wanted to buy something, she’d shop online, but mindless shopping at the point of purchase was an ideal activity that allowed her to think about other issues, namely, her parents’ possible divorce. Did her father’s behavior deserve such drastic retribution? Or was it something else? She wished he wouldn’t be so hermetic, so like a Tupperware container. She needed to find out what it was that hurt so much. After all, she was his chamaquita and believed she had a better chance of succeeding than her sisters.

  Claudia was trying on sunglasses when Patricia found her.

  “I’ve been looking all over for you. Don’t you check your text messages?”

  “I’m here, right? Let’s go,” Claudia said, and grabbed her handbag and shopping bag from the counter and headed for the door. “You know, dust on the car doesn’t rule out the possibility of a lover,” she added, picking up the conversation where they’d left it earlier.

  “Oh, stop it. What’s the likelihood of either of our parents taking a lover? And I thought you weren’t returning worn clothes anymore. We talked about this already,” Patricia said as she followed her out.

  “Stay out of this, Patricia, or I won’t invite you shopping anymore.”

  “Oh, what a loss. I guess I’ll have to miss the excitement of watching my sister trick the store.”

  As soon as they reached the exit and pushed the door that led to the parking valet bay, two security guards (who surely also worked as nightclub bouncers in the evenings) surrounded them.

  “Please come with us. You’re being detained for shoplifting,” said the bigger man, looking Claudia straight in the eye.

  “This is ridiculous! I’m a frequent customer!” said Claudia, raising her voice.