L.A. Weather

by María Amparo Escandón

  This shift puzzled her, and she was unable to pinpoint an event that had triggered it. Having grown up watching telenovelas with Lola (unbeknownst to Keila), she’d developed an aversion to men who smothered women with their kisses and cheesy declarations of love. Of the many boyfriends she’d subjected to her chilly attitude throughout her high school and college years, she recalled the worst one, a sociology assistant professor in her senior year who had put his beating heart on the pillow of their lovemaking bed and set out to recite Hallmark-greeting-card-style poetry in her ear. Not quite down to the last stanza, she had quickly collected his clothes and shoes and sent him on his honey-dripping way. Eric was different. Cerebral. Calculating. If he ever felt he was melting with feelings of love, he masterfully concealed it. He agreed to her sexual demands and followed her lead. This was her unwritten contract and a major reason why she’d married him. But now she wished for what he could not provide and felt an explosion of despair inside.

  Saturday, June 11th

  The waxing crescent moon floated in the never completely dark predawn Los Angeles sky, like a fingernail clipping lost in the fibers of some old purple shag carpet. Olivia had been following its course for an hour. Unable to sleep, she had been spending time outside, where she believed she could think more clearly. She lay on the hammock hanging on her terrace and took in the mild breeze. The divorce process was advancing faster than she had imagined when she first served the papers on Felix. Now she and Felix were waiting for the court to enter the judgment under the agreed-upon terms. How ironic, she thought, that she’d fought so hard to have a family and that the very fight was what had caused its demise.

  * * *

  After arranging a playdate for the twins and planning the rest of the day with Lola, who was taking them to get a haircut at the Yellow Balloon, a children’s hair salon in Westwood, she left for the hospital. Olivia was the first visitor to arrive that morning and the hallways were eerily quiet. She had brought Claudia a box of macarons from a shop she loved in the Grove. She could never go to that mall without stopping to get some of those delectable French pastries.

  “These are stale,” said Claudia after nibbling on a few of them.

  “I just bought them yesterday. Try the licorice.”

  Claudia put half a disk in her mouth.

  “Nope. Tastes like air.”

  “How about this one? It’s orange blossom.”

  She chewed slowly, trying to make out the flavor.

  “Tastes like a rag,” she said, and gave Olivia a piece to try.

  “It’s delicious. You’re worrying me. Have you told the doctor?”

  “I have and I didn’t like his answer. It seems I have anosmia. I’ve lost my sense of smell and my sense of taste. My CN1 nerve was permanently damaged by the tumor. I didn’t even know that fucking nerve existed.”

  Olivia considered the implications of what Claudia had just informed her of and sat on a corner of the bed.

  “I know what you’re thinking. Just say it,” said Claudia.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “History is full of deaf composers and blind painters. I don’t see why there can’t be a chef with no sense of smell or taste. At least my sight is coming back. If I trusted what I’m seeing, I could tell you I’m in a shower with the glass doors all fogged up. The doctor says it’s expected.”

  Olivia extended three fingers in front of Claudia.

  “How many fingers do you see?”

  “Three. That’s an easy one. Did you bring a pistachio macaron? Let me try it.”

  Olivia put the little green disk in Claudia’s hand and waited for her to chew it.

  “Nothing. It’s like I’m chewing on cardboard. I don’t know what’s worse, having lost my sense of taste, or having lost Gabriel.”

  Was that a hallucination caused by the tumor, or had Claudia just dropped a bomb?

  “What are you saying?”

  “He has a lover in New York, Tammy fucking something, a lawyer at an oil company. I confronted him two weeks before I landed in the hospital. I thought you already knew.”

  “How could I know? No one told me. Does Mom know? How can anyone keep up with anything in this family!”

  “I’m not sure. Didn’t Gabriel tell you all? I told him I wanted to divorce him, which should have hurt, but the reality is that I wasn’t feeling any pain. I really didn’t care about his affair when he finally confessed. Maybe it was the effect of the tumor. I haven’t been giving a shit about anything.”

  “That much I could tell. Just ask your Skirball Center client.”

  “But now it’s starting to hurt. Not surgery, but Gabriel cheating on me.”

  “I have to call Mom. Stay here.”

  “Not going anywhere,” said Claudia with a droplet of sarcasm.

  Olivia excused herself and walked along the hallways trying to imagine a future for her sister. It seemed to her that Claudia’s life was playing out like a soap opera: the successful chef, the brain tumor, the coma, the loss of her sense of taste and smell, the end of her career, and now her husband cheating on her in the middle of her health crisis. It all suddenly came into focus, the fact that Gabriel was so interested in the possibility of Claudia dying before she regained consciousness. It was no accidental omission on his part, not telling the family about his lover, about Claudia’s wish to leave him. He had to make sure no one knew Claudia had asked for a divorce, or he would have had a difficult time claiming her assets as his own.

  Olivia called Keila and summoned her to the hospital. Then she called Patricia but could not locate her, so she texted her:

  Call me ASAP. Fucking Gabriel cheated on Claudia. She wanted to divorce him since before the surgery.

  ?!?!?

  We’re meeting at the hospital.

  Coming now.

  Her next call was to Lola.

  “Why didn’t I see this?” said Olivia.

  “All those trips. All the mystery. He sure does seem like a man who would do something like that, so suave and cool. But it’s not your fault if you didn’t see it coming. What is it with you girls? Why did you choose such crappy husbands?”

  “I wish I knew, Lola.” Olivia stopped and changed the subject out of profound discomfort. That was the key question she would have to ask herself later, when the fog of divorce finally dissipated from her mind. “I’ll be back later, if you want to come to the hospital then. I know Claudia needs you.”

  “Of course.”

  Finally, Olivia called Gabriel, who surprisingly picked up at the first ring. “Don’t you ever show your face around us again! You very well know why,” she said, and hung up without letting him utter a word.

  Sunday, June 19th

  On this cloudless ninety-six-degree Sunday, Olivia forced herself out of bed, through the record-shattering heat and into the cool confines of her car, and drove down the 134 to have breakfast with Lola. Olivia could have waited until Monday to tell her that her divorce process was coming to an end, but that morning she’d woken up with an uncontrollable urge to hide in Lola’s arms, so she drove the twins to the bungalow that Felix had finally rented, dropped them off with an extra change of clothes, toys, blankies, and an emergency card with all their doctors’ contact numbers in their bags, and sped downtown, not without first avoiding Felix’s blank stare when he opened the door. No words were said. An exchange with a supermarket cashier would have been more cordial.

  The street was populated with parked cars, some old and beat-up, others shiny and new. Olivia squeezed her minivan into the only available spot, half a block away from Lola’s house, and passed through the elaborate wrought-iron gate. There was so much TLC concentrated in this tiny patio: the bougainvillea that embraced the façade, the numerous pots with hydrangeas, lavender, hibiscus, and rosemary, the little fountain with the carved stone angel spreading its wings, the vegetable garden, the rows of corn. Lola opened the door before Olivia even knocked.

  “That was quick!”
>
  “The freeway was empty. I got you tamales.”

  “And I made chilaquiles with low-carb tortillas, just for you.”

  Once settled at the dining table, Olivia said, “The attorney just got the judgment notice on Friday. We’re done. We’re sharing child support of the twins, but I get custody; they’ll be living with me. We each get to keep our business. We’ll have to sell the house and split the proceeds.”

  Lola passed the platter with the low-carb chilaquiles.

  “What’s happening to the embryos?” she asked.

  Olivia took her time to answer.

  “The judge decided that he couldn’t force Felix to be a parent. They’ll have to be discarded.”

  Olivia hugged Lola tight, and in her arms, her favorite place in times of despair, Olivia came to the end of a life she’d imagined for herself, for the twins, for Felix, and for the embryos. In the minutes that the embrace lasted, she saw reflected in her inner eyelids the slides of a show that would never be projected, fading out as in a digital effect. No more could she wish for a family vacation, a road trip with the girls singing in the back seat and her riding shotgun, chatting with Felix about nothing important. Gone was the possibility of a quiet family evening in their living room, enjoying the girls’ play, while cuddling with her husband on the sofa. What she might have lived in the future had vanished. How can I miss what hasn’t happened? she thought, suddenly realizing she was in full bereavement for a lost life that had existed only in her hopes.

  “Now go on and be with your dad,” said Lola. “It’s Father’s Day, and as far as I can tell, he’s being sorely neglected by all of you.”

  * * *

  By the time she arrived at the Alvarados’, Patricia had already prepared a brunch to celebrate Oscar on Father’s Day—as Keila had refused to cook—and everyone was seated. On Claudia’s recommendation, she had made curry chicken crepes, a simple frittata dish, and turkey bacon. The spread included a basket of corn muffins and other pastries that Eric had brought from a bakery on La Brea. But the table was half empty. With Claudia still in the hospital, Gabriel gone forever, and Felix at his bungalow, the festivity was mostly a mix of empty chairs and incomplete couples. In fact, the gathering was no festivity at all. All they could talk about was Claudia’s impending divorce process. Oscar was meeting with a lawyer later in the evening and the family as a whole had to make some decisions and run them by Claudia.

  But this was also Oscar’s day, so he made the effort to be in better spirits than usual, if only to humor his daughters. He didn’t deserve the acknowledgment. Only good fathers did. Perhaps he had been a better father before, when there were no secrets.

  “Where’s Felix?” asked Keila.

  “He’s in Oxnard with the twins. They’re visiting his dad,” Olivia replied quickly in front of an empty plate, her belly full of tamales and chilaquiles. She regretted not having thought of a believable explanation for Felix’s absence.

  But Keila didn’t seem curious enough to continue the inquiry and moved on to the business of filling everyone’s glasses. Eric had brought two bottles of Keila’s favorite cava, a recurring gift that had quickly become a tradition with its corresponding expectations.

  Olivia sat quietly passing the platters around, skipping Felix’s empty seat. She imagined him reading the newspaper on a park bench while the twins played, half supervised, in a nearby sandbox, putting leaves in their mouths, getting sand in their eyes, and her mood soured even more. He didn’t deserve the girls, not even on Father’s Day.

  She realized she could no longer keep her divorce from her family, but she had yet to come up with a strategy to announce it without infuriating her mother, given how advanced the process already was. And then there was Claudia’s own ordeal. How much divorce could her family stomach?

  Monday, June 20th

  By Monday morning the Alvarados had united against Gabriel after a weekend of intense discussions, first by Claudia’s bedside, and then at Keila and Oscar’s home after the doctor asked them to leave and let Claudia rest.

  Oscar hired a lawyer immediately and took charge of leading the strategy. Keila’s surprise was evident, but she didn’t say anything. Instead, she let him direct everybody, as he always had in the past.

  Oscar didn’t acknowledge his change in mood; he simply focused on the task of getting his daughter divorced as quickly as possible. But he did realize that any lingering thoughts of suicide had dissipated, so he silently thanked Gabriel.

  By day’s end, the lawyer had replaced all mentions of Gabriel in Claudia’s will with her sisters’ names and had gotten Claudia’s approval to proceed. They had offered a clean deal in which Gabriel got to keep the New York apartment and his business, but nothing else. Claudia would keep the Malibu house, her cooking show, royalties, residuals, books, catering business, and anything related to her career, and no alimony at all. She’d also keep Ramsay and Velcro.

  Tuesday, June 21st

  Early in the morning, Oscar went outside to the shed where his work tools stoically accumulated dust to find a quiet moment to read the newspaper. Well, that was his reasoning, but on a more profound examination, he realized he was really hiding from the pain of watching Claudia’s life crumble. He sat on the only chair and spread the paper over the worktable. Not one, but two wildfires had broken out at the same time: the Reservoir Fire and the Fish Fire. He wondered how many thousands of acres would be scorched. In a few days the final tally would be published in the paper and Oscar would add the incidents to the long list in his Weather Events notebook, always hoping for zero fatalities. Sometimes unrecognizable bodies would turn up under ashes and debris, days or even weeks after cleanup crews combed the area.

  He googled the satellite pictures on his phone, recognized the smoke and the burn scar on the surface of the Earth, and felt sorry for those people who might have lost their lives, for those who evacuated, for dogs and cats and wild animals running away bewildered and terrified. Everyone seemed to be suffering around him, coyotes and mountain lions immolated by raging fires, birds with ignited feathers as they flew their last flight in the red air. The images in his brain killed him with despair.

  Wednesday, June 22nd

  In the middle of all this, Patricia lost her Target client to a rival agency. She brushed the news aside and focused on helping Claudia get divorced. She could replace the account easily, but not now. Her sister needed her wisdom.

  Thursday, June 23rd

  By Tuesday morning, a sheriff in New York had served the divorce papers on Gabriel as he was leaving his building to go to his Pilates class. A preemptive attack was the best way to proceed, according to Oscar.

  To everyone’s shock, the reply came on Thursday, so the family agreed to hold an emergency meeting at the hospital to advance the process as swiftly as they could. Gabriel claimed that he deserved to keep Velcro and the Malibu house, even though that had been Claudia’s home years before she met him.

  “Let him have the house,” said Claudia. “I don’t want to live in a place that reminds me of him. But Velcro is nonnegotiable. He loves me more than him. He has always slept on my side of the bed.”

  “Fine. We’ll fight for Velcro. As for the house, let’s sell it. There’s no reason for you to lose it for emotional reasons,” said Olivia. It pained her to not be able to share her own torment with her family, especially now that Claudia was going through it herself. How could she upstage her sister? But her comment didn’t go unnoticed by Patricia, who gave her a knowing look across the room.

  By the end of the day, they agreed to counter Gabriel’s demand with the proposal to keep Velcro, sell the house, and split the proceeds 75 percent for Claudia and 25 percent for Gabriel.

  Back at the Alvarados’, Patricia and Olivia continued to discuss Gabriel’s descent into the infra-world of jerks. How quickly he’d gone from ideal husband to concerned husband to absent husband and, finally, to the horrible person he now was.

  “The monster was
always there, just underneath the allure, under those fucking pink shirts he always wears,” Olivia said, not quite in the room, thinking about Felix.

  Exhausted from it all, Keila started the kettle.

  “A cup of tila tea, anyone, to calm the nerves?”

  Friday, June 24th

  Claudia and Gabriel’s last call went like this:

  “I’m calling to let you know I’ll agree to your terms. We can get this done very quickly,” he said coldly.

  “I see you can’t wait to marry your lover. What’s her name? Tammy? I have a collection of photos of both of you in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. Six red carpets! Eight screenings! And who knows how many more events that have not been reported by the media, how many more that happened while I was in a coma. You’re so damn careless I even thought you were subconsciously screaming to be found out.”

  “Yes, maybe I was. But I didn’t ask you to divorce me.”

  “I’m glad I did, and on my terms.”

  “Speaking of the terms, I still think I deserve to keep the Malibu house and the apartment in New York. I’m the one who is bicoastal. I need the two properties. Besides, you don’t even know if you’ll ever be able to live on your own again.”

  “I may end up being an invalid stuck in some assisted-living facility, but you can’t even write a sentence and that’s your worst handicap. You wish to be one of the writers you represent and worship, you want to be the storyteller being discovered, the one who concocts tales that send people to unimagined worlds, but you can’t. You haven’t got a single creative hair on your body and that’s the one thing you’ll never be able to acquire. In terms of talent, you’ll always live in poverty. Get your own house in Malibu. And I’m glad I’m keeping Velcro.”