L.A. Weather

by María Amparo Escandón

  Keila stood still, her eyes fixed on Oscar.

  “And I also need to apologize to you all for behaving as horribly as I have,” Oscar continued. “For a long time, almonds have been our family’s livelihood unbeknownst to you, but the drought has driven the orchard into the ground, which is why I’ve been obsessed with the weather. Now we’re broke, in debt, and it’s possible we might lose the proceeds of the crop. I just had to share this dreadful secret that’s been killing me.”

  “I’m speechless, Dad. What did you gain from all this deception?” said Claudia, still in shock.

  “I thought I could prove to you that I shared the ability of our ancestors to become a great steward of the land, to collaborate with nature making something beautiful and delicious, and not telling your mother gave me the freedom to act alone and try my luck at agriculture, but I was wrong. I’m not the farmer I was hoping to be.”

  “I’m sure you must have felt awful, keeping this secret and watching how it has driven Mom away,” said Olivia, trying to understand. “You could have picked Yom Kippur to come clean, but any day is a good day to repent.”

  “If I may say with respect, Oscar”—Keila spoke in a low voice—“I know how much you admire your ancestors, but you’re not being fair to yourself by making comparisons. Don Rodrigo Alvarado and Doña Fermina de la Asunción Ortega received the land grant from Governor Figueroa because he was a friend of Don Juan Bautista de Anza. The key word here is ‘received.’ They didn’t start out at zero.”

  “Neither did we.”

  “Fair enough, I know, but you didn’t just sit on the part of the land you inherited; you tried to grow the wealth for us, for our daughters. I will help you and we will come out of this slump. We’re not done yet,” said Keila with teary eyes.

  “Yes, Dad. We will help too,” said Olivia, who had been instantly enamored with the land.

  Patricia was silent, until Claudia noticed: “Aren’t you going to say something?”

  Patricia wavered for a moment, turned her gaze at the plates of food on the table, and said: “I already knew about the orchard.”

  “How did you find out? Why were we in the dark?” said Claudia, annoyed.

  “All I had to do was ask. You never seemed to care about why Dad was so sad and worried all this time.”

  “Hey! Stop now. Don’t point fingers,” said Oscar. “All of this is my fault and no one else’s. I want us to look to the future. My appeal to you today is that we work together as a family to try to save Happy Crunch Almond Orchard.”

  The explosion of laughter startled Oscar.

  “What did you call the orchard?” asked Claudia.

  “Happy Crunch?” said Olivia in disbelief.

  “You don’t like the name either?” said Oscar, a bit offended.

  Keila laughed with her daughters, delighted to realize that they also found the orchard’s name preposterous, but she was determined to defend it just because it included the word “happy” and she was ready to feel happiness again.

  When the initial shock subsided, the Alvarados and Los Tres Primos shared the picnic that Oscar had prepared, starting with slices of apples dipped in honey, one of Dani’s favorite dishes of the traditional Rosh Hashanah meal. The potato kugel was so good that Olivia suspected Oscar had bought it at Canter’s Deli instead of making it himself, but she decided not to comment. Then, instead of sweet brisket, Oscar brought carne asada, a far tastier choice. Mario fanned the flames in the firepit by the side of their picnic area and heated the meat, the rice, and the tortillas for everyone. There was no gefilte fish or roasted asparagus, but the refried beans and the sliced poblano peppers with sautéed onions were perfect sides for the main course.

  Not far from where they sat, a harvester was busy vacuuming the nuts onto carts to get them ready for distribution.

  “After that machine over there is done,” explained Lucas, “we’ll be sending the almonds to a huller to clean the crop and separate the shells from the hulls. Nothing goes to waste. Shells make great livestock bedding. Cows love to eat the hulls, and the whole world eats our almonds. Next time we see the nuts they’ll be at the grocery store.”

  Dani raised his hand, as if in a classroom.

  “What happens to the trees?”

  “Under normal circumstances, that is, if we weren’t going through a bad drought,” explained Lucas, “the trees spend the winter in a sort of downtime. Then in March we’ve got the bloom. That’s Don Oscar’s favorite time. It’s when all the blossoms come out. In June we get the kernels. That’s the time I like the most. And at the very end of the cycle, in September, is the harvest. It’s when we’re the busiest, but we don’t care. It’s the big payoff, when all our work gets rewarded.”

  “But what happens to the trees now that there’s the drought?” Dani insisted.

  “That’s a decision your grandpa has to make,” said Lucas, his brow creasing.

  “We’ll have to wait and see what the weather brings,” said Oscar, trying to hide how horrified he was at the idea of having to pull out the trees.

  No one understood better than Los Tres Primos the decision Oscar had to make. Oscar had told them already that there was no more money to prep the trees for the winter downtime. They knew Oscar had taken bank loans against the orchard to pay for water and was on the brink of defaulting on them. Not only did they fear he could lose the trees, but the entire orchard, the land, which he’d used as collateral on the big loan.

  “I have something to say,” Keila interrupted the almond lesson. “Before we finish these delicious figs with cream, I want to come clean myself.”

  “You have secrets too, Mom? What’s going on with you guys?” asked Claudia.

  “Your father didn’t tell us about the almond orchard because I spent years sabotaging his business ideas. I was so angry! And I didn’t know why I felt so resentful. Now I know I’ve had this thorn stuck in my heart for being excluded from his ancestors’ trust. I wasn’t seeing everything your dad has given us, all that love and attention and care. I’ve been an idiot. I’m so sorry.”

  Oscar held Keila’s hand and let his wife’s words lodge in his brain for future understanding. Claudia started packing the leftovers in silence. Olivia hugged her mother and wiped a tear from her cheek. In the aftermath of Keila’s declaration and as everyone was getting ready to leave, Patricia quietly checked in Claudia’s handbag and, not surprised, pulled out an enamel plate that she put back on the table, right in front of her sister.

  “Goddammit, are you stealing from the farmworkers, klepto?”

  October

  Sunday, October 2nd

  For the third time since their breakup, Felix brought the twins back to Olivia’s early.

  “Another date?” asked Olivia, regretting it at once.

  “It’s not your business what I do or who I go out with, so stop.”

  Olivia grabbed the girls’ little backpacks from his hand and closed the door, holding her breath. What do I care? she thought.

  She had been thinking and rethinking a plan that was still vague in her brain. She was terrified by what Felix might do if he found out the truth, that Patricia was pregnant with the embryos that were supposed to have been discarded.

  She shut the door quickly as if that would blow the problem away and hurried inside to hide under the sheets. That little space had become her thinking shrine. Surely a brilliant idea would pop into her head like magic. She waited. And waited.

  Thursday, October 6th

  The money from the sale of the crop came in sooner than Oscar had anticipated. Just in time to keep the bankers satisfied, and to hire the tree-removal and grinding service. His trees, only eight years old, could have yielded crops for another twenty years. What a waste, he repeated aloud over and over on the way to the orchard.

  They were very busy, the executioners of his beloved trees. They’d told Oscar on the phone that morning that they’d have to schedule him for the end of the month, which was fine by h
im. He had yet to collect some more money from the sale of the hulls to dairy farmers, which would go to pay down more debt. When all was said and done, he’d have no money left, and no trees.

  Such a farmer he’d turned out to be. A fraud. A failure. A flake. A featherweight. A flop. A fucking fool. He tried to find another fitting word starting with the letter “f” but couldn’t come up with one. He’d have to sit down with Los Tres Primos and Aunt Belinda and consider his options, but before then, he’d lay it all bare in front of Keila. She had offered to help. She needed to know that they’d soon be losing the trees, if not the entire orchard. Enough subterfuge.

  Saturday, October 8th and Sunday, October 9th

  Ninety-two degrees for an outdoor party. Not bad at all. Patricia and Eric had hired one of Claudia’s caterer friends to serve at the soiree after Hiroshi declined, explaining he didn’t have the manpower to serve forty-seven guests. Performing at the top of her game, locally famous DJ AlleyCat, in fishnets and stilettos and bleached cornrow braids crowned with a sparkly kitty-ears headband, spun fast-paced sets, all vinyl—garage, electro, funk-punk, reggaeton, mashups, whatever—to the thumping crowd on the dance floor that covered most of the Alvarados’ lawn. There was even a three-tier cake with dark-chocolate frosting, absent the sugar bride and groom on top. Patricia made a special effort to look dazzling, wearing a black dress that seemed to have been painted on her skin.

  Aunt Belinda quietly wondered whether Patricia and Eric’s marriage, which seemed passionless to her, had meant anything to them, or if they were just conducting their split with dignity and grace? She took a swig of champagne and thought about her own marriage. Losing her husband to cancer early on had been a blessing of sorts. She’d often say, “Every married woman deserves at least ten years of widowhood.” If he’d lived, would she have left him? Or would she have braved a contentious marriage? The answer was evident. She attributed it to the times. In her day, you endured it till the very end and that was that.

  “If you thought we were going to return the wedding presents, you’re mistaken,” joked Eric during his speech before several dozen people, some of whom had flown down from San Francisco for the event. “But we are untying the knot and wanted you to be the first to know. Please don’t take sides. We both love you all, and since Pats and I will remain friends, there’s no reason for you to choose one or the other. Cheers!”

  After a robust round of applause, the party went on until daybreak, when the last guest, a pothead friend of Eric’s, zigzagged across the front lawn and boarded an Uber with the help of the driver.

  Patricia and Eric collapsed on her bed and slept until early afternoon on Sunday.

  “Let’s wrap this up,” said Patricia when she woke up.

  “What are we wrapping up?”

  “Our marriage.”

  “Oh, I get it.”

  Patricia turned over and mounted Eric, but this time swaying tenderly, as if she waved good-bye with a silk handkerchief.

  Something had changed. The way she had learned to approach Big Boy at the horse pen, quietly, slowly, her gaze fixed on his in complete communion, had taught her that she didn’t have to call the shots, and that even though he was many times her weight and could hurt her if he wanted to, he wasn’t in command either. That in order to find the little space where intimacy flourished, they’d have to aim for reciprocity.

  Later, while getting coffee down the street, Eric asked, “We’re ending our marriage, but that doesn’t mean we’re not going to see each other again, right? You said to me that we’d be writing the rules of this divorce. I said in my speech that we’d stay friends.”

  “You tell me. How do you envision our friendship?”

  “I just want to leave the door open for possibilities, you know; maybe later we could do a triad with someone else.”

  “As in a thruple?”

  “Something like that. Or even a V.”

  Patricia took time to answer.

  “If you believe polyamory might work for us, then I suppose that can stay on the table for the future. We’d have to see where we are in terms of relationships. Right now, I just want to focus on my pregnancy. Do you have anyone in mind?”

  “Not really. Just thinking out loud.”

  “Sounds intriguing, but at this point I don’t see how that kind of arrangement would fit into my life now,” she said, motioning to her abdomen.

  They left the coffee place and walked to Patricia’s house. Eric got his suitcase and called a car.

  It didn’t feel like good-bye.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, Oscar and Keila drank a glass of cabernet in the lounge chairs in the backyard, facing the keloid scar. Rental tables, chairs, and soiled linens sat by the gate waiting to be picked up.

  “Great party,” said Oscar, afraid to start a conversation he’d been practicing in front of the mirror (by now a habit) for the past few days. This was not about the loss of the orchard, or about their daughters’ divorces, or their particular drama. This was a far more crucial matter and he needed to deliver a pristine message to his wife if he wanted to save his marriage.

  “No need for small talk. I know what you really want to say.”

  “You do?”

  “I don’t read minds; don’t freak out. I heard you rehearsing in your closet.”

  Oscar had to laugh.

  “Well, then. You know what I want, what I’ve wanted all along. What do you say?”

  “I say yes.”

  Oscar got up and sat next to Keila on her lounge chair. He put his hands on her cheeks delicately, as if holding an injured dove, and kissed her. Upstairs, unbeknownst to them, the pillow that Keila had placed between them in bed for the past two years morphed from a snarl of concertina wire into a giant marshmallow of love.

  Wednesday, October 12th

  How fitting that Oscar and Keila picked Yom Kippur to announce to their daughters that they had decided to stay together.

  “So, here we are this evening,” Keila announced in a soft voice to her three daughters. “You demanded that we work out our problems and asked us to give ourselves a year to decide if we were staying together or not. We already processed this as a family, thank you again for your apologies. And now, I’m happy to report that we are indeed staying together, not because you asked us, but because we want to. There’s still a lot of forgiving to do, though.”

  “And it’s not just between us, your mom and I,” Oscar added. “We believe you deserve an apology, at least from me.”

  “It seems to me that you’ll need to start by forgiving yourself, Dad,” said Patricia.

  “Agree,” said Olivia.

  “Forgiveness is as much for the one being forgiven as it is for the one forgiving,” said Oscar. “So, let’s forgive each other, let’s forgive ourselves, and let’s get on with our lives. We have too much to do as a family and we’re going to need one another’s help.”

  “Oh, you bet we will,” said Claudia.

  As the family sat around in the living room, Velcro on Claudia’s lap, Ramsay on Olivia’s, the twins in the other room, playing with Dani and Lola, it became clear to each of them that a cosmic mandate had brought them together again in the house of Rancho Verde.

  “Time to break our fast. I’m starving. Who wants deviled eggs?” said Keila, looking at her watch.

  Friday, October 14th

  Even without looking, as he woke up the next morning, Oscar recognized the symptom that had become uneasily clear under the sheets: the hairs on his arms and legs were standing like passengers on a platform waiting for a train. He feared he’d engage in a stupid argument with someone (last year was a neighbor; the year prior, the gardener). He’d refrain from driving the car, since there was an increased probability of getting involved in some road rage situation. He knew this meant he needed to stay out of Keila’s way. His first order of business would be to separate Ramsay from Velcro, locking them in different rooms of the house to avoid a confrontation between the p
ets. He also needed to put away the lounge chair cushions and make sure the patio umbrellas were secure. The Santa Anas were back.

  Funny how they meant different things for different people, he thought, as he shut the bedroom window tight. For Patricia, a Santa Ana wind day was a bad hair day. For Oscar, it was a hundred-mile-per-hour disaster electrifying the air and wreaking havoc. Over the years he’d seen those nasty winds fuel devastating wildfires with massive property destruction and countless fatalities. He’d watched jacarandas falling on top of cars, crushing the people inside. He’d avoided driving over fallen palm tree branches spread all over the city streets. He’d helped homeless people chase after their tents. The Santa Ana winds were a Los Angeles season in themselves. He waited for it with dread.

  When Keila came back in one piece from her weekly shopping, this time at the farmers’ market in Echo Park, Oscar sighed with relief.

  “Some of the awnings on the produce stands blew away. One pipe from the structure hit a woman on the head. Look!” Keila showed Oscar a bloodstain on her scarf. “I held her until the paramedics arrived. I was standing right next to her. It could have been me.”

  Oscar hugged Keila tight and cursed the Santa Ana winds before going on to curse the drought, the fires, and a long litany of weather events that had preoccupied him to the point of obsession in the past years. How could he have neglected the woman he now held in his arms, and focused instead on the weather, something he had absolutely no control over? He had risked losing her for what? Almonds? It was indeed better than losing her for peanuts, but still, not worth it at all.

  * * *

  Later, at precisely 11:58 P.M., the order to evacuate came loud on everyone’s cellphones, jolting the entire family out of bed. As previously rehearsed, they automatically engaged in their wildfire emergency action plan: Prepacked suitcases at the front door in four minutes flat. Ramsay in his carrier, barking away. Backpacks with laptops, hard drives, chargers, passports, medications, cash, all ready to go.