L.A. Weather

by María Amparo Escandón

  “Who’s my favorite sister-in-law? Huh?” he said, close to her ear, wondering if she was capable of hearing him. Just in case, he tried to sound chirpy in a futile effort to lift her spirits. “I’m sure you’re going to recover someday what with your off-the-charts spunk. Hang in there, warrior. I’ll see you next weekend,” he whispered, trying to mask the dread in his voice, not sure if she’d be there when he returned.

  Claudia and Eric’s friendship had flourished early on. He loved helping his sister-in-law around the kitchen whenever she cooked at the Alvarados’, frequently advertising his French upbringing as if that alone qualified him to be the family food critic: more butter, less salt, it’s overcooked, nothing I haven’t tasted, I’m not impressed, or this dish deserves a mention in Deliciously Ella’s blog. Claudia would humor him, finding his comments endearing. And as long as he volunteered to peel tomatoes, chop onions, pit cherries, and wash pots and pans, he was welcome in her kitchen.

  Standing next to her bed, Eric studied his comatose sister-in-law, carefully allowing himself to feel the pang in his chest, a far worse pain than any acid reflux he’d ever felt before, worse even than a bleeding ulcer (not that he’d ever had one). He sent a small prayer into the sky not really believing it would ever make it to the appropriate deity and, teary-eyed, said his good-byes.

  Eric had just left when Claudia opened her eyes. Tangled thoughts began to form in her mind. A dark shroud of confusion prevented her from realizing where she was or what had happened to her. She made a weak fist and felt her fingers coiling softly, touching her fingernails with her thumb. She lay on a bed; that was certain. A blanket covered her. Was that a hose between her legs? It felt warm and weird. She closed her eyes again. The beeps and chimes of machines suggested a hospital environment. Was she hungry? She didn’t feel any pain. She wondered if she’d been in an accident, and tried to remember the details, but drew a blank. She thought random words in English and in Spanish. She mixed them up: sábana, bed, pipí, dark, tortilla con salsa. Yes, she was hungry. Then, after what could have been minutes or hours in which she moved her hands and wiggled her fingers, twitched her nose, opened and closed her eyes in the darkness, and felt her tongue sliding over her teeth, she heard a voice that she recognized and even felt a tender closeness to but could not pinpoint whose it was.

  “Good morning, Clau. How’s my lovely sister this morning?” said Olivia, not expecting an answer.

  The slight touch of Olivia’s cheek against hers, a kiss, a sense of familiarity that she couldn’t understand, prompted Claudia to whisper with much effort: “I can’t see.”

  June

  Wednesday, June 1st

  In typical June Gloom fashion, the month had begun with no sign of rain, just a dreary, overcast sky, confirming Oscar’s fears: the much-hyped El Niño was a total disappointment. Los Angeles had recorded its driest five-year period in one hundred and forty years. That’s what the meteorologist had announced on TV the morning of Memorial Day. But the most anticipated breaking news had come a few minutes later, when Olivia called to tell him that Claudia had woken up from her coma and that she couldn’t see. He’d rushed to the hospital to find Patricia, Olivia, and Keila crowded around Claudia’s bed, listening to the doctor’s explanation.

  “Her recovery will be slow. The loss of sight is temporary. She’ll have blurry vision, but the optic nerve is intact, so it should take only a few days before she begins to focus. It’s going to be an adjustment. There’s still some swelling in her brain. She’s producing quite a lot of fluid that will need to be drained through these little hoses inserted into her skull. She’ll start very strict physical therapy as soon as she can eat a meal on her own. She’s very strong, so I’m not concerned, but of course, time will tell as she progresses if there is permanent damage in other areas.”

  Friday, June 3rd

  Two days later, Oscar was again driving to the hospital, thinking about what the doctor had said. What if he was wrong and Claudia’s blindness was permanent? He parked right next to Gabriel’s car, relieved and upset at the same time to find he had come back from New York. When he reached the lobby, he found him coming out of the elevator, so he couldn’t avoid him.

  “It’s good to see you came back. Have you spoken with Claudia?”

  “She won’t talk, her eyes are closed, and she just breathes heavily. It seems there hasn’t been much improvement since she woke up from the coma. What’s the prognosis?”

  “Didn’t you ask the doctor?”

  “I couldn’t wait for him to come out of surgery. I’m already running late for my flight back to New York. Will you keep me informed?”

  “Listen, Gabriel, Claudia has her entire family watching over her; she doesn’t need you, but I’m sure she’d want to have her husband around while she recovers. I don’t know what’s so important in New York that’s keeping you from camping at the hospital day and night. I know I’d do that if it was my wife fighting for her life.”

  “I’ll spend time with her next week. I promise you,” said Gabriel.

  Oscar said good-bye to his son-in-law and immediately, as Gabriel disappeared through the hospital doors, regretted not insulting him. He’d been too soft, too wimpy. He thought about Keila. What if she’d really been the one recovering from a coma? Suddenly he felt an urgent need to hug her with all his strength and never let go, but he knew he’d have to come up with a solution to his conundrum first. Such a failure he was, so deceitful. He caught himself just in time, before he sank into the deep well of self-pity that he visited regularly, and pulled out of it with pitiful explanations to himself for why he had bought Happy Crunch Almond Orchard in secret, why he’d kept it from Keila all these years, and why he wasn’t confessing all this to her now. In truth, his behavior had been driven by pure fear. He realized he loved his wife more now than during their child-rearing years, which to him had been the best in the entire marriage. But he also concluded that he feared her just as much.

  He walked into the dark room and made his way to Claudia’s bed.

  “It’s me,” he whispered. “Are you awake?”

  “Papi,” she said in a clear voice, extending her hand to touch Oscar’s. “Don’t ever leave me alone with Gabriel.”

  Oscar took Claudia’s request as a call for help. He held her hand.

  “What happened? Did he say anything mean to you? Did he hurt you?”

  “I feel like shit. What’s this on my head?” she asked, touching the dressing wrapping her head.

  “You had a brain tumor, a benign one, the size of a kiwi,” he explained, trying to downplay the impact of the news. “They took it out; it’s gone. You’re recovering very quickly! The doctors are very impressed. One of them is even writing a paper on your case.”

  “Ah, okay,” she mumbled, not quite awake.

  Desperate to feel useful, Oscar checked the shunts inserted in her head to drain excess fluid, but they were dry.

  “Something’s clogged here. Where’s the nurse?” He clumsily moved the shunts this way and that to try to get a better view. Not a drop. He ran into the hallway, yelling, “Nurse! Nurse! Something’s wrong!”

  By the time he reached the station he had lost his composure. “I’m calling you and you don’t come! What if it’s an emergency?”

  “You don’t have to get so worked up, Mr. Alvarado,” said the nurse behind the counter. “Let’s go see what’s going on.”

  He followed her, half angry, half worried, into Claudia’s room. He knew he needed to have the nurses on his side to get the best care for his daughter, so he made an effort to calm down.

  “The shunts are clogged,” he said. “And you weren’t paying attention. Do you expect us to know what to do?”

  The nurse checked the shunts quickly and said: “She’s healing, getting better every day. That’s why she’s producing less fluid. Please don’t panic like that, Mr. Alvarado. And next time, use the call button. We’re right outside.”

  “I’m sorry,”
he said, feeling foolish.

  “I’ll be fine,” said Claudia after the nurse left the room.

  Later, after Claudia had slept for a while, Oscar sat next to her and gently brushed a strand of hair off her face.

  “Have you eaten?”

  “If you can call that mushy stuff they served me food, yes, I have. Even Silly Putty has more taste,” she said in a barely audible voice, still feeble from her days in a coma.

  Oscar saw Claudia’s sarcasm as a good sign.

  “Do you want me to open the curtains? It’s nice out,” he said, not paying attention to the fact that Claudia could not see.

  “It’s always nice out.”

  “People around the country tend to think so. East Coast people, people from the Midwest. They say, ‘There’s no weather in L.A. It’s always seventy-two and sunny,’ but that’s inaccurate. Few people consider our five seasons to be different from one another, but they are. You know this. I know this, because we’ve lived here all our lives. Ah, but go ahead and tell this to someone back east. Our winter rainy season overlaps with our sunny and mild spring, then with our jacaranda season, our horribly hot late summer, and the Santa Ana season. That’s five seasons there. Of course, some people in town would include the award season, but that’s not climate-related unless the Oscars’ red carpet gets rained on. And then, what about the drought, the winds, the marine layer, the brushfires, the gigafires, the mudslides, the landslides, the flash floods, the atmospheric rivers, the heat domes, the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge, the very real possibility of a catastrophic ARkStorm, El Niño, La Niña, La Nada?”

  “You’re obsessed, Papi.”

  He held on to the curtain for a minute before dropping it. “You might be right. I’ll stop boring you with all this weather talk.”

  Oscar held Claudia’s hand, surprised to hear her call him “Papi,” like when she was a little girl. She tightened her grip.

  “You’re starting physical therapy today, the nurse told me.”

  But Claudia didn’t answer. She had fallen asleep again. Oscar tucked her in and left the room, finding Keila by the door, quietly waiting her turn to visit. Had she been eavesdropping?

  “Claudia is sleeping. Do you want to get coffee downstairs?”

  “I’ll just stay here. Thanks,” said Keila, a bit surprised by the invitation.

  “I am trying,” said Oscar, and left.

  In the car, driving to Happy Crunch Almond Orchard, he wondered if they’d have to make special accommodations for Claudia: a wheelchair, a ramp, or maybe even Braille lessons. She certainly wouldn’t be able to live alone in Malibu while she recovered—if she recovered. How useless could Gabriel be? And then there was her puzzling request to avoid leaving her alone with him. He sure had behaved horribly throughout her surgery and recovery. He had meant to ask her what had happened between them, but he didn’t want to pry. She still seemed so frail. He promised himself to oblige. He’d find out in time, for sure.

  As he meandered around the dirt rows, he thanked each and every one of his trees, sometimes even hugging one and feeling its quiet thirst, its struggle for life. He stopped to caress the velvety shells hanging from the branches, hardening as the kernels formed within. He would have to irrigate them with scarce and expensive water. Would the weather change and bring rain in the next two months, before the start of the harvest? Doubtful. Drawing well water was out of the question. Not only was it expensive, it was unhealthy for the trees, with all those salts in the groundwater. And depleting the aquifers had already sunk the soil in the valley to alarming levels. He could not leave his orchard to die of thirst. Insects would populate the trees and spread to neighboring crops. He reevaluated his initial hope and realized he was reaching the point he feared the most: losing not only the crop, but the trees.

  He returned to his car, thinking about the dark side of almonds, the killer side. If he could get ahold of and ingest the variety with the right kind of bitterness, he would be able to permanently solve the entire mess he was in and find eternal rest. Cyanide was not on his list of possible suicide means, but perhaps it should be.

  Tuesday, June 7th

  “You will lose the embryos and will have to sell the house to split the proceeds with Felix.”

  The T. rex’s words went through Olivia’s EarPods directly into her brain and bounced around inside, like a pinball.

  “But the good news is that he agreed to let the court award you child custody,” he added, his voice sounding distorted by a bad connection. “He can still see the girls on a schedule. It’s up to you to accept this. If you prefer to continue paying me to challenge this, I’m fine with that. Your husband’s attorney is happy to continue with the case, too.”

  Olivia hung up the phone, but called him right back.

  “Okay,” she said, blowing her nose and drying her tears with the same tissue. “I accept the terms.”

  Wednesday, June 8th

  For the past thirty-three years, on the second Wednesday of every month, Keila got together with a group of friends to discuss a novel, a collection of short stories, or some other work of fiction. Her book club, endearingly named by its members The Sumo Team, was much more than a literary experience. It was group therapy, fashion consultancy, political analysis, career coaching, child-rearing and lately empty-nesting advice, and a gastronomy extravaganza. Sometimes they’d go for two or three months without agreeing on which book to read, but that didn’t stop them from meeting at a different house each time and sharing their latest dishes and drama. This tight-knit group of eight remained the same over the years, having lost only one member, to breast cancer. Anyone aspiring to join was instantly rejected. In fact, people had stopped trying to get accepted and envied their activities from afar. The women also met between book club sessions to go shopping, or to have dinner in one of their homes, to which their spouses were invited, or in the case of those who were divorced or widowed, the occasional paramour. They organized a yearly fundraiser to finance tattoo-removal procedures, a service they provided free of charge to former gang members and ex-convicts who had signed up for rehabilitation at a nonprofit organization run by a priest in downtown Los Angeles. Every November, they congregated for Black Friday shopping, cramming into tiny fitting rooms and expressing their opinions.

  “Don’t even think of buying that dress. You look like a sack of potatoes,” one would warn the other.

  Telling the blunt truth with no filters was one of the most important rules in the club and was strongly enforced.

  “I almost cheated on Oscar,” confessed Keila to the group on that particular Wednesday, as soon as she walked in, bringing a Pyrex with huitlacoche crepes with poblano salsa, a recipe she’d perfected over the years. “If Claudia hadn’t woken up from her coma, I would have gone to Mexico City to meet with Simon Brik. I already had my plane ticket.”

  Everyone knew who the main players were in everyone else’s lives. They had a phone chat group that kept them informed of one another’s life details in real time, so there was no need to explain any further. Keila’s friends, sitting around the table, began pouring their comments over the spread of huitlacoche crepes, taquitos, spinach dip, zucchini-flower quesadillas, and guacamole and chips.

  “Don’t cancel.”

  “Don’t cheat.”

  “You said you’d give it a year.”

  “You need to be up-front with Oscar.”

  “Remember the Tarzan Principle: never let go of a vine before taking hold of the next one. I’d try things out with Simon before leaving your husband.”

  “Leaving your husband” were words Keila had never imagined she’d hear. She cringed when they floated out of her friend Betty’s mouth as she chewed on a chicken taquito with crema and guac. The shock made her tune out the rest of the conversation, and as her book club members discussed the situation, talking all at the same time, she did a mental inventory of each instance in which Oscar had been assertive and helpful during Claudia’s medical crisis. B
ringing her a cake when no one else remembered it was her birthday certainly qualified as the gesture of a non-zombie. He had spoken with doctors, informed the family, made sure Claudia had plush pillows on her bed. She had to admit that he had made some attempts, however pathetic, to start a conversation with her, like when he offered to have coffee with her at the hospital and she declined. Many times he seemed to be about to say something but looked at her with sorry eyes instead. Lately she had awakened to his warm hand lightly caressing her shoulder over the pillow she’d placed between them as a barrier when he thought she was asleep. Not only was she failing to make good on her promise to her daughters to try to mend her marriage, but she was resisting all of Oscar’s efforts. Worse even, she was contemplating an affair with Simon Brik. Was she abandoning her commitment halfway through the year?

  By the end of book club, in which no one mentioned the book they’d read, Keila was lost in a jumble of thoughts. The wine had been particularly good that evening, so she drove home buzzed and confused and eager to call Simon.

  Or not. Maybe. Damn.

  Thursday, June 9th

  The upcoming weekend was full of possibilities. Patricia was to pick up Eric at LAX the following day and drive up to Santa Barbara to spend a couple of days together. She lay in bed—house quiet, rooms dark—her hand distractedly reaching for her clitoris. She’d never really liked sex toys. Her fingers did a fine job in Eric’s absence. But Eric wasn’t on her mind that night, or the night before, or the night a week before when she had had impromptu sex with Benjamin in Minneapolis. Perhaps she was feeling giddy at the news of Claudia coming out of her coma and her attraction to her client prompted her to make the wrong decision. Funny, in all honesty, it didn’t feel like a wrong decision. Her sex life with Eric had been more than satisfactory. She loved to fuck him, she on top, looking down to see his face contort with the pleasure of ejaculation. But in the past few days a feeling she had suppressed had risen to the surface, one that was far stronger than a craving and much more powerful than sex: she wanted warmth. She needed care. She missed the domesticity she had been brought up with.