L.A. Weather

by María Amparo Escandón

  “I’m keeping this boat, you know. Just to fuck him over,” she continued.

  “I’m sure in time you’ll develop a taste for sailing.” Olivia wished she had her friend’s malice and ability for revenge. She surely could use it now that she was about to start a cruel battle against Felix.

  “Very unlikely. But it makes a nice hiding place when I want to be off the grid. It doesn’t even have to leave the dock, ever.”

  Carolina turned over to expose her belly to the sun and took a sip of her Arnold Palmer. It was one of those days when the marine layer had dissipated earlier than usual and people basked in a mild midmorning sun.

  “He’s keeping Fang, the asshole. Just because he proved he’s the one who walks him and picks up his shit. Yes, of course, while I’m busting my ovaries at the office making the money. I wish I’d married someone like me.”

  Olivia drove home with a page of notes and advice, as well as the T. rex’s contact information. The 405 Freeway, packed as it was with cars sluggishly moving along, gave Olivia ample time to distill her conversation with Carolina. Definitely, she thought, God had invented traffic so people could slow down and think. In evaluating the consequences of the divorce process, she had to rely on assumptions, friends’ anecdotes, celebrity gossip in tabloids, and a wide variety of films, telenovelas, and books that explored the end of love. She knew she was not prepared for battle and would have to learn quickly.

  Protected by her minivan’s bubble, she sped home, determined to be swift and smart from that moment on, to remove all passion and lock up her emotions during the ordeal. She’d have time later to grieve and smother herself in her unfulfilled longing for a big and happy family. This divorce would be a business negotiation, and she and Felix and the twins would all win. Her motto would be, “This wineglass shattered; nobody got cut.”

  A call from Patricia distracted her for a second, but she waited to call her back until she reached her driveway off of Mulholland Drive.

  “Can you help Mom with Passover? She needs a lot of stuff and Claudia is not picking up,” said Patricia.

  “Is she even in town? I haven’t heard from her. What are you up to this weekend?”

  “I’m off to Coachella with Eric. LCD Soundsystem and Calvin Harris are headlining this year.”

  “Lucky you. I haven’t been to the festival in at least five years. I’ll call Mom. Have fun.”

  “Just don’t get that dreadful rabbi-gourmet wine we had to drink last year.”

  * * *

  Olivia got out of her car, walked past her garden populated by cacti, and stood in front of her door. How many more times would she be able to open it and enter the house, her house? She and Felix had been looking to buy one. During an intensive and dizzying week, they’d toured dozens of homes in every L.A. architectural style: Spanish Colonial Revival, craftsman bungalow, English and Tudor Revival, hipped-roof cottage, Egyptian Revival, even one Châteauesque in Los Feliz. Finally, a Realtor friend of Felix’s had said he’d take them to visit a fixer-upper with potential, but as soon as Olivia walked around the rooms and the yard, it became clear to her that this property was practically a teardown, a hopeless dump. It didn’t need tender loving care, as the listing ad cheerfully stated; it was desperate for resuscitation. She immediately fell in love and bought it for half its value; it had been sitting on the market for nearly a year. Bringing this midcentury house back to life had been her masterwork. Rather than renovating it she set out to restore it, using original materials and regarding the floor plan as if it were the Ten Commandments. She researched the records at the building department to confirm her hunch: this was indeed a house designed by the famous Los Angeles architect from the fifties, Jerrold Lomax, and she owed him veneration. Every morning she’d stand by the full-height window to watch the sun peer behind the San Bernardino Mountains slowly waking up the Los Angeles basin. The feeling of openness, of a seamless affair between indoors and outdoors provided by the architectural expressions of modernism in Los Angeles, was what fueled Olivia’s passion for finding houses in need of love. She’d renovate them with absolute respect for the initial idea, albeit with modifications to improve the lighting, create more storage space, and update kitchens and bathrooms. That’s what potential buyers always looked at when considering making an offer. Over the years she had gathered a crew of loyal and excellent workers, all Mexican, to help her knock down walls, build new ones, rip up floors and carpeting and wallpaper, gut rooms, paint, and landscape. There was Sergio, the drywallero. Tony, the tilero, who worked with his two brothers laying tile, creating little masterworks in kitchen and bathroom floors around the city. Then there was Mauro, her electrician; Javier, her plumber; and Roberto, her rufero. They were her brothers in arms, her second family. And she’d even had the pleasure of attending a few naturalization ceremonies over the years.

  At Felix’s insistence, she had reluctantly agreed to have smart devices installed around the house: speakers, sound system, security cameras, thermostats, lights, doorbells, burglar alarm, irrigation, and digital locks.

  “All those gizmos and blinking lights everywhere disrupt the clean midcentury design. Those things don’t belong in a house like ours” was her argument, but ultimately she caved in, fixing one more issue with Felix by being submissive and hating herself for it.

  Olivia’s latest project had been to convert her garden into a water-wise space. She had removed most of the plants and replaced them with indigenous succulents and palms: a Joshua tree at the edge of the cantilevered terrace, a golden snake next to it, a patch of fishhook, foxtail, and strawberry cacti mixed with different varieties of tall grasses, like the dwarf pampa grass she loved, where the lawn used to be, and her favorite, a young saguaro planted outside the twins’ bedroom that would become, in time, a sentinel looming over the house, its arms spread upward to protect the dwellers, when it had reached its full height.

  Olivia went in and checked on the twins, who were with Lola in the playroom. When they asked about Daddy, Olivia told them he was on a trip, but then she thought about the latest news she’d heard about him: Carolina Donoso had seen him enjoying the tasting menu with a woman at Providence. She wondered if he had found someone else to latch on to, a successful partner to admire and loathe at the same time. Her stomach churned, so, for her own mental health, she forced herself to think about the innocent bystanders. She knew she’d have to tell the twins eventually about their parents’ separation. She wanted the news to be the least harmful to the girls as possible, so she had picked up a couple of books on the subject and highlighted them so thoroughly that most pages were entirely bright yellow.

  Since the pool accident she’d been looking for anything odd in the twins’ performance, per doctor’s orders. Were they slow to react? Did they focus on tasks? How was their balance? Did they awaken easily? Did they look pale? They seemed fine, but she didn’t trust her observations, so she took them to the pediatrician regularly for proper checkups, even after they were given a clean bill of health.

  After watching cartoons on her tablet for a while with the girls, she went to her bedroom to review her divorce notes. She called the T. rex and explained the situation.

  “I’ve worked very hard during this marriage. I’ve contributed far more than half of our assets. My husband is a Realtor, but he doesn’t make much money and it’s not steady at all. I’m assuming I could get half of what we own. What do you think?” she asked on the phone.

  “You could have been eating bonbons all day in your bed watching TV, never worked a day in your life, and still get half. It’s the law.”

  “Can I get custody of my girls?”

  “That’s going to be a problem. Visitation rights. It’s always a problem, a big one. Don’t think you’ll negotiate this one easily. The girls almost drowned in your care. He’ll use that against you. You might lose, understand?”

  “My mother was babysitting, not me. Does it matter?” Olivia sank in her seat a bit more.

&
nbsp; “You left them in your mother’s care.”

  “What about the house?”

  “You’ll need to fight for that. Most likely you’ll have to sell it and split the proceeds.”

  “And the embryos?” she asked in a raspy voice, the words struggling to make it out of her mouth.

  “That will depend on how aggressive we are, but I don’t see how you can win this one. It’ll be up to the judge.”

  “How do you know it’s going to be so difficult? I haven’t given you all the details of my situation yet.”

  “You don’t need to. I know how this is going to go.”

  He seemed to Olivia to be the kind of lawyer who inflames the spouses just to complicate and prolong the process, taking the case to court rather than opting for mediation. He had said the word “judge,” hadn’t he? She’d heard of cases that had gone on for years, depleting the family’s assets to cover legal fees, and she wasn’t about to go through such an absurd scheme. She explained to the second lawyer on the list, a woman, that she wanted the divorce to be quick and fair. Carolina had recommended this lawyer for her swift negotiation skills and strong hand, and Olivia thought she seemed less nasty than the first lawyer. She agreed with Olivia and spoke at length about ways to separate from one’s spouse without anyone getting hurt. She considered herself an expert in amicable divorces and shared a couple of cases—without revealing clients’ names, of course—that could have gone quite wrong and that she had masterfully steered toward a better outcome.

  * * *

  After Olivia hung up she felt her head throbbing as if a reggaeton rave were in full swing inside her skull. Suddenly, a heavy blanket of sorrow suffocated her. Perhaps there was still time to ask Felix if they could make peace and try to mend the marriage. Divorce was not in Olivia’s vision of the future. She felt for a moment that she was living someone else’s life and pulled herself back from the dark room her mind was entering. Would hiring a less bellicose lawyer be a mistake? She had promised herself not to hurt anyone, but Felix’s threat had scared her. If she wanted to keep the girls and the embryos, she’d have to go with the T. rex.

  Thursday, April 14th

  Early in the morning Olivia took the girls to Mommy and Me class at a nearby nursery school for two hours of structured play in the sandbox. Lola had business at Legal Aid and was out until the afternoon. Of the eight moms present, two were discussing their divorces, but Olivia felt unprepared to share her story. Not yet, perhaps never. So instead, she told them about the girls’ accident and how they had recovered fully thanks to the pediatrician’s thorough care. All the other moms were surprised to learn about the diving reflex and went on to discuss cases they’d heard of drowned children and careless moms who couldn’t be trusted with their kids around swimming pools. This conversation sank Olivia into her most self-punishing thoughts, the place in her mind where she questioned her ability to raise her daughters. She realized her guilt was still burrowed deep inside and wondered if she’d ever forgive herself.

  After class ended and she changed the twins’ clothes, breaded in sand like chicken breasts, Olivia drove them home to Lola and headed back out to buy a set of Passover Seder plates that Keila had seen in a Judaica shop in Westwood.

  “Make sure it’s the one with Hebrew and English names for each food,” Keila had told Olivia on the phone that morning. “I can’t find your bubbe’s plate set for the life of me. I’m sure it was in the Jewish suitcase in the garage. I even looked in the Catholic suitcase. It was an antique!”

  While looking for street parking around the shop, Olivia made a note of future errands. Later in the week, she’d have to buy all the needed groceries: walnuts, apples, wine, pears, horseradish, bitter herbs, and a long list of other items that she still hoped Claudia would take care of, if she turned up. She had no way to confirm her suspicion that Claudia might be overusing prescription pills, or drugs, or alcohol, or all of the above. She’d have to confront her. Then, in the middle of this scary thought, finally, a parking spot, a beautiful one half a block away from the shop, became available.

  Luckily, the full set of plates was in stock and Olivia could drop it off at Keila’s later on.

  “I’m sorry,” the saleswoman said, “your card was declined. Do you have another one?”

  Olivia scrambled to pull out a second card, which was declined as well. She looked for the credit card that she used for her business, but remembered she’d left it at her desk.

  “Maybe there’s something wrong with the machine?” she asked in disbelief. “I still have at least two weeks before payment’s due.”

  “I just ran another card for someone else and it went through,” said the saleswoman, tired and annoyed.

  “I’ll be right back.” Olivia went to her car to check the credit card apps on her phone and gasped when she realized that Felix had been staying at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. At eighteen hundred dollars a night for a Superior Suite, plus room service, plus charges in an array of famous chef restaurants. Her stomach churned again, but now she could even hear her intestines rumbling. Out of curiosity she checked the balance on their joint bank account and was shocked to discover that thirty thousand dollars had been withdrawn. Her immediate reaction was to call Felix.

  “What a small and ineffective way to get your stupid revenge,” she yelled at him on her cellphone.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The credit cards! The money! You depleted our bank account! You think the judge is not going to notice? If you were trying to shrink me to size, to make me feel powerless, you failed! I left you. Remember this.”

  Here was the ultimate conflict avoider shedding her conciliatory skin to reveal her new self. Gone was the era of Felix trying to make her feel like a lesser being. No more put-downs! Armed with unheard-of self-assurance, she called the T. rex to report the incident. As for the Seder plates, she’d have to pass on the task to Patricia.

  Friday, April 15th

  “We’re going to have to cancel our trip to Coachella,” said Eric on the phone. “So sorry, Pats.” It was right around the time he should be boarding his flight to Los Angeles.

  “Why? Are you working this weekend? We got tickets, everything’s packed.”

  “Did you check the weather? It’s like a desert storm out there. The winds are knocking down power lines, trees are toppling, and tents at Coachella are blowing away. That’s no way to enjoy a music festival. We’ll go next year. Promise.”

  More than the tents, what seemed to be blowing away was Eric himself. Opportunities to meet were getting scarcer these days. This or that got in the way. Plans changed. The client; the partner; the flight; the wind. It was the wind changing direction. She launched the weather app to make sure it was a climatological event and not a metaphor of her marriage.

  “All right then, I’ll take Daniel hiking,” she said, resigned.

  Saturday, April 16th

  Unbeknownst to Olivia, a coyote ate her next-door neighbor’s cat at 3:38 A.M. right below her bedroom window. The following morning she’d find some of the remains on her driveway and the rest among the cacti and grasses she loved so much.

  Sunday, April 17th

  After posting a series of angry messages denouncing anti-vaxxers in support of World Immunization Week, Patricia prepared lunch and drove west with Daniel.

  She parked near the trailhead at Los Liones Canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains. It had always bothered her to have to live with misspelled names of places and towns. The early Spanish-speaking Californios, who named and renamed most of the places in the state, would surely flunk out of even the easiest of spelling bees today: Los Liones as opposed to Los Leones, La Cienega as opposed to La Ciénaga, Calabasas as opposed to Calabazas, Garvanza as opposed to Garbanzo, La Jolla as opposed to La Joya. She could go on, as she had a hefty collection of examples, but chose to focus on Daniel.

  “We can go up in less than two hours if we keep a good pace,” Patricia told Daniel. “T
hen, we can have lunch at the Parker Mesa Overlook and be home way before dinnertime. Okay with the plan?”

  She ruffled Daniel’s caramel mane, a mop of hair that had once been home to a colony of lice that he’d caught at the school’s swimming pool.

  “Okay with the plan!”

  They walked along a mildly graded path with patches of shade, avoiding the occasional spiderweb and the chaparral branches hunched over from thirst. In other times, the canyon floor would be covered with wild lilacs and the spring bloom would burst with color, but these were times of dust and death on the Earth’s skin. She knew well that she was walking on a bed of matchsticks, a highly flammable landscape that could turn into an inferno at any moment. She could see burn scars from old fires on the surrounding mountains and made a mental note to review the contents of her go-bag. She hadn’t updated it since the last evacuation and couldn’t remember if she’d packed cellphone batteries, or if they were in her earthquake survival kit.

  They stopped at a clearing on a ridge to drink from their canteens and to get a view of the Santa Monica Bay, not quite a thousand feet away beyond the mouth of the canyon.

  “I’m glad Bubbe didn’t come with us. She’d slow us down!”

  “Don’t underestimate your grandmother. She may seem old to you, but she’s super strong.”

  “She said we might adopt a cat, but you’d have to say it’s okay.”

  “We’ll have to discuss that with her. By the way, did you save the coupon to buy the trekking shoes you want?” she said, steering away from the cat issue, as she wasn’t a fan of felines.

  “It’s going to expire next week.”

  “Well, then, let’s go shopping tomorrow.”

  Patricia paused for a minute before finally guiding the conversation to what was on her mind.

  “So, whatever happened with that kid who called you bean queen?”