L.A. Weather

by María Amparo Escandón

  Oscar came down from the ladder and looked at Keila for an infinite minute. Of the myriad thoughts that his brain produced at warp speed, one question stood out: Would he be able to live with this information? He checked his feelings and realized he wasn’t surprised. There was no rage, no horrible feeling of betrayal. No humiliation. Just Keila, there, telling her truth. He saw in front of him a field of wildflowers waving in the mild wind of a clear day and felt clean, transparent, new. So, holding on to this image and before he changed his mind, he kissed her long and tenderly, not even trying to avoid soiling her clothes.

  “I know. Welcome home, love,” he said, and started rolling her suitcase into the house.

  Sunday, October 30th

  Right before Keila’s homemade cajeta flan and after her legendary chicken with pistachio and chile poblano mole, Patricia called for silence, clinking her glass with the edge of her dessert spoon. She had news.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  It took only an instant for Claudia to recover from the shock to reply: “But you just divorced Eric!”

  “It’s not Eric’s. I’m pregnant with Olivia’s embryos and Felix doesn’t know about it.”

  There. She’d said it.

  No one comprehended what they’d just heard Patricia say, so blunt and jarring, like a sudden hailstorm in midsummer.

  “Why would you girls do this?” Keila’s voice expressed surprise, dread, and delight all at once. “Didn’t the judge order the embryos to be destroyed?”

  “We weren’t going to let an Alvarado go to waste,” said Patricia. “We’ll just have to find a way to deliver the news to Felix. He needs to know I’m pregnant, just not with his and Olivia’s embryos.”

  “Why make up a new secret that can haunt us for years to come?” said Keila.

  “Well, this year we’ve proved that we’re good at keeping secrets.”

  “What if he finds out? He can very well sue you!” Keila warned Olivia.

  “It’ll be worth it.”

  “This was highly irresponsible, girls, and we don’t know at this point what the consequences will be, and there will be for sure, ugly ones, but I have to say this: now that it’s done, we have to stick together and raise that baby with all our love.”

  “Are we having twins?” said Oscar, now thrilled after the initial shock.

  “We don’t know yet, Dad. But however we handle it with Felix, Olivia and I are going to raise our kids together as sister-mommies,” said Patricia.

  Suddenly, Claudia, who had been quiet throughout the entire revelation, got up from the table, lunged her napkin in the direction of Olivia, and stormed out of the dining room.

  “Claudia!” yelled Olivia. “What’s the matter? Come back!”

  Olivia ran after Claudia, followed by Patricia into the kitchen. Claudia stood by the peninsula, furious.

  “What’s going on?” asked Olivia, puzzled.

  “You stole the embryos from the fertility lab?!?”

  “Yeah, I guess we did,” said Patricia, suddenly realizing the enormity of what they’d done.

  “Don’t you ever, ever call me klepto again!” she said, and as she released her anger, her screams turned to laughter and she hugged both her sisters, who were still processing her reaction.

  “How could I steal something that’s mine?” asked Olivia.

  “Half yours!” corrected Claudia. “Deal with it.”

  Oscar and Keila watched Claudia’s outburst from the kitchen door, calibrating the magnitude of the news. When they all calmed down and as they all settled back in their seats, it suddenly became clear to Oscar that the heart was not a pie. If it were, slices would become thinner with each new baby. He could feel his heart growing to make room for the new addition or, better yet, additions. He marveled at this revelation, and just as he proclaimed, “Let’s celebrate!,” the rain began.

  Monday, October 31st

  The IronWolf 700B, a fifty-ton behemoth of a machine, waited for the Alvarados at Happy Crunch Almond Orchard, its steel rototiller fangs on alert, its engine snorting impatiently. Nearby, Los Tres Primos discussed with the University of California Cooperative Extension adviser and the machine’s operator the multiple advantages of using this novel method to remove almond trees instead of the traditional multistep process that ultimately turned the trees into wood chips.

  Asking around at UCLA, her alma mater, Patricia had come across this new method, contacted the researchers who were helping roll it out to the industry, and negotiated with them: the Alvarados would volunteer the orchard so the university could conduct a demonstration for the students, free of charge to Oscar. They were to remove the entire orchard. Cheaper and faster methods were being experimented with, using other machines like the horizontal chippers, but given Oscar’s financial situation, no speed or cost could beat a free tree-removal service, so he canceled the service he had initially hired.

  When the Alvarados arrived, a few dozen students were already there, clustered around the IronWolf, ready to watch the formidable feat that was about to take place.

  Diana and Andrea had stayed home with Lola, but Dani was allowed to skip school. Wearing his Imperator Furiosa Halloween costume—the top half of his face stained with charcoal, his left arm covered in a tin contraption resembling a mechatronic prosthesis—he climbed on the IronWolf’s roof and, playing the part, yelled incomprehensible words while wielding a stick with his one able arm.

  “Is it safe for him to be up there?” asked Patricia to the operator as she took a picture of her son with her phone.

  “This is not a high-speed battle rig. It’ll be like reenacting the movie in slo-mo. He’ll be fine. Just ask him to wear these protective goggles.”

  He climbed into the IronWolf’s cab, gave Patricia a pair of goggles, and revved up the engine.

  “Ready, Mad Max?”

  “Not Mad Max, I am the true fearless heroine, Imperator Furiosa!” yelled Dani, thrilled.

  No one else among the Alvarados seemed to share Dani’s excitement. In fact, the atmosphere was somber and anxious, as if they were about to witness someone getting burned at the stake.

  The beast’s fangs, accustomed to crushing ice and rock, started rolling. Its road wheels began to turn the tracks that slowly crunched the ground beneath like a panzer relentlessly and unapologetically climbing over war rubble. As the machine pushed the first tree over, Keila watched with horror as it devoured its trunk and branches, ripping it entirely into shreds, mulching it and incorporating the bones and guts back into the soil, all within one minute.

  “I can’t watch this anymore,” said Keila, after an entire row had been obliterated.

  “I was waiting for someone else to say it first,” said Claudia, who was sitting on a folding chair she’d brought from home.

  “This will go on for a whole week. I think we’ve seen enough,” said Olivia.

  “Fascinating, worth sharing on social media, but I’m ready to get out of here; it’s too depressing,” said Patricia, still documenting the process with her phone’s camera.

  Oscar found it harrowing to see his beloved trees disappear under the crusher, but he endured it stoically as part of his self-imposed punishment. What he could not tolerate was to watch Keila suffer.

  “Let’s go, then,” he said, relieved as well.

  November

  Tuesday, November 1st

  Early in the morning, after she clipped her fingernails short (no pretty manicure for clay artists), Keila brought in a large box and set it on the worktable with some tools she had ordered online and a few glazes that she wanted to use on her next project. But as she organized the new materials, she decided to discard the idea that she had been developing of families clustered together and replace it with a more pressing one. Having watched the almond trees being mutilated and digested by that mechanical monster had stirred fears that she needed to portray in her work. She cut open the plastic bag that contained a puttylike dark brown clay block and kneaded it as if it
were dough. Then she flattened a portion of it on the table with a rolling pin and loaded an extruder with the rest of the material to produce several clay cylinders and coils of different widths and lengths. Later, she molded the material with her fingers to resemble torn branches, broken tree trunks, hopeless twigs, sad wood chips, and desperate root snarls. As she worked on the elements of her future installation her anger intensified. Why was she just now starting to worry about the drought? Why hadn’t she understood Oscar’s obsession with the weather? Her dismissiveness had prevented her from seeing the truth. She only had to read the news, listen to her husband, visit Kern County, and watch the crops suffer to accept it. Now she had the need to unite her voice with the ones of those who cared about the Earth, to express a message so urgent and vital that denying it would be a mortal sin. She’d join Oscar in his quest, in her own way, through her art. She’d create clay installations of destroyed forests, melting glaciers, expanding deserts, flooded coastal cities, burn scars seen from space. She’d be a warrior for the planet. For home.

  Thursday, November 3rd

  There was definitely something there, in that little story that Claudia had written. Olivia was not a literary critic, but she did enjoy reading more than anyone in her family and was able to discern if a piece was decently composed. It was, in her view, well told, a bit heavy on the dialogue, but it felt colloquial, natural, and that was not easy to accomplish, let alone by someone who had only written cookbooks. But the subject matter bothered her to the point where she considered throwing the pages in the trash bin, out of her sight, mostly because she recognized the event and it made her anxious.

  In one of the scenes, the main character, a famous chef, was driving along the freeway in her convertible car speaking with her assistant on her cellphone. The dialogue went like this:

  “Hey, sorry, I had to hang up,” said the chef. “A police car was following me, but he got off the freeway so we’re good now.”

  “No problem. Everything all right?”

  “My nieces had an accident in the pool. They fell in. I’m on my way to the hospital. Write down this menu in case there’s a funeral and we need to cater it: the squash-flower mini tamales, the grilled lobster tail skewers with tamarind dipping sauce, the silver-dollar quesadillas with chilorio, the scallop ceviche tostadas from Culiacán, and check on our tequila inventory. Don’t buy anything just yet. Let’s see how this develops. Shit! Missed the fucking exit! Can’t talk and drive. Call me later.”

  In the story, the nieces die.

  Tuesday, November 8th

  The day ended in mourning. Like a majority of Angelenos, Oscar went to bed with a debilitating stomach ache. The life his people had worked so hard to achieve was no longer possible, all their sacrifices in vain. Would recent immigrants be deported immediately or held in limbo? He wondered what would happen to Los Tres Primos and their families, to so many farmworkers who fed the country with their backbreaking labor. He tried to sleep but was kept awake through the night by a profound sadness. He knew there wasn’t much he could do for all the Mexicans who would suffer the wrath and bigotry of the newly elected president of the United States. So he wept.

  Wednesday, November 9th

  “Should we move to Mexico City? We still have my parents’ house. It’s large enough for everyone to come with us. We could bring our girls and our grandchildren and settle there. Not many people have that choice. We should feel fortunate.”

  “No. I refuse to be bullied out of my country by anyone.”

  Thursday, November 10th

  When Keila first migrated to the United States years before, she was told that in this country anyone born in the United States could become president. She took this assertion as a hopeful sign that she was going to live in a real democracy where every election was clean and every vote counted. She quickly developed a profound pride, knowing she was a tiny thread in the great American fabric. But on that morning, as she sat at the dentist’s and her hygienist asked her question after question that she could not answer with her mouth open and full of cotton balls, she remembered what she’d been told. Yes, anyone could become president. What she hadn’t been told was that this applied literally to everyone. She worried that the new president would project his wrecking ball toward long-standing institutions and wept silently.

  “Am I hurting you? Want some more anesthetic?” asked the hygienist.

  Monday, November 14th

  “I’m starting school in January. Writing school.”

  Claudia made her announcement to Keila, Oscar, Olivia, and Patricia at Hiroshi’s Japanese restaurant. Hiroshi sat at the table with them for five minutes before going back behind the sushi bar. He had been visiting Claudia often during the past few weeks. Although he had been clear with her that he didn’t believe eating large amounts of wasabi would bring her taste buds back, he still humored her and served her little plates full of the cone-shaped green paste. This night was no different, and as she put them in her mouth, one after another without breaking a sweat, she explained her reasons for going back to school.

  “I can’t be a cook anymore. I’m not going to sit at home all day moping around. I need to help Mom and Dad around the house. I’m bored. I’m done focusing on my recovery. I need a creative outlet.”

  She could have continued to produce more reasons but decided that the ones she’d offered were enough to convince her family that she was sane and sound and still worth something. There was one more reason she thought about, but kept to herself: she hoped to wrack Gabriel, fucking Gabriel, with envy.

  Wednesday, November 16th

  When Patricia’s first ultrasound at the seventeenth week of her pregnancy showed two shapes side by side on the blurry screen, the doctor, an Asian woman in her forties who seemed just as thrilled as the Alvarado sisters, said: “Twins! And look here, this one’s a boy! That’s his penis!”

  “He’s certainly going to make someone happy with that!” said Patricia.

  The little protuberance coming out of a larger mass disappeared quickly, morphing into another image: two tiny flickering lights.

  “Those are their hearts, beating.”

  “What’s that?” asked Olivia.

  “That’s one of the babies sucking on his toe, and it’s also a boy!”

  Olivia burst into tears. “We’ll raise all five kids together,” she said to Patricia, sobbing, trying to make out the shapes of her babies as they came on the screen.

  Neither of them was thinking about the future complications of such a venture; they were too excited to see the embryos turned into babies, alive, healthy. But later, in Olivia’s car on the way to pick up Lola and Diana and Andrea at the park, they discussed the scenario that likely awaited them.

  “There’s nothing special about our arrangement. How many war widows throughout history have done the same thing?” said Olivia, seeking to reassure herself.

  “Right. It’s totally normal. We can definitely take care of five kids between the two of us. Who needs dads?”

  “We do have Dad around. He can be the father figure.”

  “Yeah, for sure.”

  “And Mom can help.”

  “And Lola.”

  “And Dani. He’s almost all grown up now.”

  “Claudia can be the crazy auntie.”

  “I don’t think she’s much of a baby person.”

  “She’ll be a better influence when they’re older.”

  “As long as she doesn’t teach them to steal stuff,” said Patricia with a hint of dread in her voice, aware that these babies existed as a result of a theft.

  “Where are we going to put their cribs?”

  “In my room, of course. Diana and Andrea are already sleeping in your room.”

  “Right. Plus, you’ll be breastfeeding them.”

  “Oh, shit. I hadn’t thought about that.”

  “You could pump milk into bottles, and I can take care of the night feedings so you can sleep.”

  “We�
��ll take shifts.”

  “We’ll have each other’s backs on everything. We’ve both been through it already, with Dani and the twins.”

  “Except when they throw up. I can’t deal with that.”

  “Are you saying I’ll be assigned to vomit duty?”

  “Please.”

  “All right then, you’ll be the diaper changer.”

  “I feel I’m getting the raw deal here.”

  Friday, November 18th

  Keila’s pieces arrived from Mexico City in well-packed crates. Simon had sent them along with a nice, but impersonal, note. Nothing else. Keila stored the packages in the garage without opening them. She didn’t see this delivery as the end of something, but as a beginning. She went into her studio, opened her laptop, and searched for “art galleries in downtown Los Angeles.”

  Saturday, November 19th

  “Guess what? Your aunt Pats is going to have two baby boys! They’re in her tummy!” Olivia told Diana and Andrea as they were getting dressed and packed up to spend the weekend with Felix.

  “Is Uncle Eric going to be their daddy?” asked Diana.

  “No. Uncle Eric is not your aunt’s husband anymore. Remember the party where he said good-bye to you? Now she found someone else to have the babies with: Mr. Sperm Bank. He’s going to be the daddy.”

  “Oh,” said Diana, half interested, when the bell rang.

  “Your dad’s here. Let’s go.”

  The seed of the Great Family Farce had been planted.

  Sunday, November 20th

  Nothing could be accomplished in Los Angeles. The weekend had been ruined. Beaches were empty. Parishioners had skipped Mass. Brunch reservations had been canceled everywhere, even at indoor restaurants. No cookouts. No swimming. No volunteering. No jogging. No errands. The streets were a mess. Traffic was unbearable. A winter storm had moved into the city. A flash-flood watch had been issued for last season’s burn areas. It was time to rejoice. This was the official arrival of the rainy season they’d been praying for.