He soon discovered that Americans, not the hard-core foodies, but Americans in general, were far more inclined to try sushi than any other Japanese dish, and some even believed that that was all there was. “It’s the taco syndrome,” explained Claudia when she and Hiroshi discussed the issue. “Ask most people and they’ll tell you that Mexican cuisine is just tacos, nachos, quesadillas, burritos (which aren’t even Mexican), and guac and chips. In the case of Japanese cuisine, it’s all about sushi and tempura. So sad,” she sighed.
“I believe in the Angeleno sense of adventure when it comes to Japanese food. I won’t despair,” he said. “There’s no need to impose California’s foodie culture on everyone else. Gastronomic proselytism is not what I do.”
And so their conversation went, a succession of erudite insights about food culture, ping-ponging all night with the sole purpose of impressing each other.
In the beginning Hiroshi had settled in the back room, setting his futon on the floor among crates of food and sacks of rice. The living arrangements were supposed to be temporary while he made enough money and developed a sound enough credit history to rent an apartment, but as time went by, he could no longer see himself anywhere else, so he stayed put and enjoyed his full-immersion, round-the-clock culinary lifestyle. It all fit perfectly, until his sous-chef, holding a knife in one hand and a fillet of salmon just delivered by the fishmonger in the other, walked in on him and Claudia as they were in the middle of performing a complicated sex position.
“We need to find another place to fuck,” she said.
In one of his letters to his parents (yes, Hiroshi still wrote letters longhand and mailed them by post across the Pacific Ocean) he told them that he was dating an American woman four years older, and divorced. The reply came back drenched in dismay (weren’t there any single, young, Japanese girls in California?), but he ignored their concern and continued pursuing Claudia.
Claudia, for her part, was delighted to be pursued. For a while after the surgery she had believed herself to be damaged goods. But Hiroshi quickly changed her thinking. And she changed his. “You could add to your sushi rolls ingredients like chipotle, corn, nopal cactus leaves, Cotija cheese, papaya, manguitos con chile, Tampico habanero salsa, poblano pepper, whatever,” she’d say, sitting up on the futon. “Go crazy; you don’t have to be so orthodox.”
“Move in with me,” he said.
Claudia took her time to reply to Hiroshi’s proposal. Of course, he wouldn’t mean move in with him to the back room of the restaurant. They’d have to get a proper place; an apartment with some natural light and a bed she could get up from. The futon was definitely a challenge. But those were easy accommodations. There was something else that prevented her from accepting Hiroshi’s invitation, as much as she was falling headlong for him, and it took her a long minute to realize it.
“I won’t leave my sisters. Not now. Maybe not ever.”
Friday, December 16th
Rained hard. All night.
Saturday, December 17th
The loud thud woke everyone up. It was 5:23 A.M. and the Alvarados quickly jumped out of their beds and gathered in the TV room, as it was the previously agreed-upon safe spot in case of an earthquake. But there was no shaking.
“What was that about?” asked Oscar. “Wait here.”
He went downstairs and looked out the window to discover that the Sellys’ old eucalyptus tree had fallen across the backyard. The fence and the lounge chairs were squashed underneath, and the treetop was spread over the keloid scar and the other neighbors’ hedge.
After delivering the news to everyone, he suggested they all go back to sleep.
“Another Santa Ana wind casualty,” he said stoically.
“It could have fallen on top of the house,” said Patricia.
“But it didn’t,” said Claudia.
Back in bed Patricia wrapped herself with the comforter but wasn’t able to find the security she needed. For the first time she felt a strange angst. She was carrying her sister’s babies, the bump now evident, and the responsibility of this commitment suddenly crushed her. She’d have to stay away from peril, avoiding car accidents and falling trees.
Sunday, December 18th
Back in Kern County, Oscar and Keila went to visit Los Tres Primos to say good-bye and to celebrate their new endeavors. As soon as the word got out, several farms had offered them jobs, but they only accepted the one that had proposed to hire all three of them together as a team.
Keila and Oscar arrived bearing an assortment of foods: Keila’s mole coloradito from Cuicatlán, tamales de elote, empanadas de morilla, and salpicón de cazón, brought in several reusable containers, a couple of beer six-packs, and an orchid plant in a terra-cotta pot. Lucas had insisted on hosting them for lunch, and they in turn proposed a potluck, which Los Tres Primos agreed to cheerfully. Mario and Saúl, who lived nearby, were already there with their respective wives and their children.
Martha, Lucas’s wife, was still in the kitchen steaming a large pot of tamales over two burners, but that didn’t stop her from getting the party started. Bottles of beer were handed out. A bowl of chips and guacamole appeared, and the volume on the radio tuned to the local Spanish station was cranked up. A framed poster of the Virgin of Guadalupe hung high on the living-room wall, along with the kids’ graduation pictures, some wearing braces, others beautiful smiles. Half a dozen small appliances occupied the kitchen countertop, next to a traditional stone molcajete. A colorful zarape was draped on the easy chair next to a sparkling Christmas tree tucked in a corner. The oversize TV was tuned to a football game in full swing: the Philadelphia Eagles against the Baltimore Ravens.
After the sun set, after the Ravens won, and after many hugs and kisses, the Alvarados left Lucas’s home with a full belly and a sad feeling.
Monday, December 19th
“You really shouldn’t write autobiographical details involving our family,” said Olivia; outside, an unheard-of forty-one degrees. “It’s been bothering me; I had to tell you.”
She poured herself another cup of green tea to warm up and looked Olivia in the eye, sitting across from her in the kitchen peninsula.
“I’m so sorry if it’s irritating to you, but I can’t commit to that. I can only write what I know about and my family is what’s closest to me. It really does spark creativity.”
“Why did you have to kill off the twins?”
“It’s more dramatic.”
“Why don’t you write a memoir, something we can all live with, which is the reality of our lives?”
“Our life is boring.”
Olivia let out a loud “Ha!”
“It’s got to be more dramatic. I want this story to be a television series. That’s the most profitable genre these days, aside from the ransom note, which I won’t get into for obvious reasons. Cutting letters out of magazines … it’s a pain in the ass.”
“Then write a television series based on us but stick to the facts.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
Wednesday, December 21st
The people that Claudia now saw as the characters in her yet-to-be-written television series got in Oscar’s SUV and headed to Kern County. Even in cars the Alvarados respected a well-established seating arrangement, always in birth order, survived by numerous uprisings throughout the years started by Patricia (why do I have to sit behind Dad where there’s no legroom?), then Olivia (the middle seat is the worst; there’s no place to put my feet), then Claudia (when Mom’s not in the car I get to ride shotgun because I’m the oldest). Dani was allowed to sit anywhere in the third row, and when the twins arrived, he decided to sit bookended by the two car seats, picking up pacifiers and toys from the floor and managing their feedings, as the good babysitter he was.
Oscar, at the wheel, wondered that morning if he’d have to replace his SUV and get a mariachi-band van or one of those little tour buses that circulated all over Hollywood with sunburnt tourists to accommodate th
e new set of twins that were on the way.
After three stops, one to take Andrea to the bathroom, another to buy strawberries by the side of the road, and one more to allow Patricia to throw up, they arrived at what had been Happy Crunch Almond Orchard.
“I know it’s a sad sight, this barren land,” said Oscar as they all got out and were stretching their legs. “But I want you to see it as a clean slate. Your mom and I have moved on and are looking forward to the future. So, welcome to Happy Sunshine Fields!”
Oscar expected loud laughter from his daughters and was not disappointed. After a series of jokes, Olivia asked: “So, what crop are we planting?”
“We’re planting acres and acres of solar panels,” said Keila, proud of her literally brilliant idea. “We’ll be harvesting sunshine.”
And, as if on cue, it started to rain.
Thursday, December 22nd
As soon as the proceeds from the sale of the Mexico City house came in, Oscar and Keila spent most of the morning at the bank paying off the debt, sending hefty severance-pay checks to Los Tres Primos, and opening accounts for their new company, Happy Sunshine Fields, LLC. The world was quickly moving away from fossil fuels and into clean energy. There was no going back, and Oscar and Keila knew this.
Back at home, a crew was furiously cutting and hauling away the trunk and branches of the fallen eucalyptus, as they’d promised to finish by end of day.
“It would have been nice to plant windmills,” said Keila, back in the car and on their way to lunch, again at Hiroshi’s. “Imagine an army of giants creating power out of air. It’s so poetic.”
“I’ve thought about it, but our land is not suitable, except maybe on the hilly side. We’d have to partner with a bunch of neighboring farms. Definitely a much more complicated operation. I’m very happy with our decision to go for solar.”
Friday, December 23rd
“We’re a bunch of weather wimps; we can’t even stand a little rain,” said Claudia, driving for the first time since her brain surgery in the middle of a superstorm, just the kind that holiday shoppers did not need, not in the open malls all over the city.
“We’re not used to it, give us a break,” said Patricia, nearly hypnotized by the fast-paced windshield wipers waving at her, as if they were a new invention. She’d heard Claudia was on her way to do some Christmas shopping and decided to go along to make sure she didn’t put anything in her purse without paying for it, now that she had started therapy to treat her kleptomania.
“You’ve never lived outside of L.A.,” said Claudia with authority. “New York winters? Now, that’s real weather.”
“I’ve spent a lot of time in Minneapolis. I know weather. But what I’m saying is that everything’s relative. People on the East Coast, the Midwest, they’re used to extreme cold, tornadoes, hurricanes, just as we’re used to drought, extreme heat, fires, and flash floods. So don’t weather-wimp me,” she said.
“Look at that idiot! Move it!” Claudia yelled as she passed a slow Honda and a couple of cars stalled out in high water that ran down the curb. “I’m just saying, we pray for rain, and when we finally get it, we’re miserable.”
“That’s L.A. for you.”
Sunday, December 25th
After a hefty brunch composed of Christmas Eve’s leftovers—Keila’s salted bacalao, romeritos, and huauzontles filled with quesillo—the family gathered in the living room, sitting on chairs and on the floor next to the Christmas tree surrounded by boxes of all sizes wrapped in colorful paper. Nearby, on Keila’s mother’s cabinet, a menorah still held the little stubs that had once been pencil-thin candles.
Outside, the rain was coming down, hard and persistent.
Dani was the first to open his gift, a guitar. The twins followed, pulling a stuffed unicorn and a bear wearing a blue ballet tutu out of their respective packages. Claudia got a monitor for her desk, Olivia and Patricia got two beautiful baby cribs, and Oscar and Keila got a weekend at a spa in Palm Springs. This could have been an ordinary Christmas morning at the Alvarados’, but it wasn’t.
The new 2017 calendar had appeared posted on the refrigerator’s door a few days before. Keila had custom-ordered it online and had personalized it with a different family picture for each month. Patricia flipped through the pages to find that a photo of the twins coming home from the hospital was featured in January; there was one of Oscar staring out the window in February; a family shot, minus Claudia, during Easter brunch in March; Patricia and Dani, sweaty and dusty, on a hike in April; Claudia on a hospital bed surrounded by Keila and Oscar in May; a selfie of Olivia and Oscar on Father’s Day in June; another selfie of the three sisters unpacking Olivia’s stuff at the Alvarados’ in July; Dani on his way to Sunday school in August; a family shot with Los Tres Primos at the Rosh Hashanah picnic at Happy Crunch Almond Orchard in September; Dani dressed as Imperator Furiosa right before the almond trees got pulled out in October; a picture of the family at the Alvarados’ table over Thanksgiving dinner in November; in December, a group shot of the entire family standing on the barren land that would become their new venture, Happy Sunshine Fields.
How arbitrary is the measure of time, Patricia thought. Earlier that morning, after everyone had opened their Christmas gifts, they sat in a circle on the floor and shared their New Year’s resolutions, as if the turning of the calendar offered a clean slate, as if every struggle, crisis, or project could be resolved by the end of the year, only for fresh challenges to arise come January. She thought about her parents, having just barely made amends. What kind of new drama would 2017 bring to their marriage? How would they launch their renewable-energy business? What kind of crisis lurked just beneath the surface waiting to pounce at the least expected moment? And Claudia? Venturing into a whole new career, a writer in the making, still recovering from the consequences of her brain tumor. What awaited her in her writing class? Would her new relationship with Hiroshi lead to marriage? She rubbed her belly and wondered if her pregnancy would be complicated, if the babies would be born healthy, if Olivia would allow her to co-parent as they had agreed. Would the Alvarados continue living together in the house in Rancho Verde, or would they go their own ways? Would the house burn in a fire? Her family’s stories were never neatly wrapped up at the end of the year. They just went on, and it felt good, this continuum. There were so many unknowns, so many loose ends; there was so much to look forward to and so much to dread. No wonder fairy tales ended with “… and they lived happily ever after.” Once all the conflict got resolved, the stories became boring. There was not a morsel the storyteller could leave for the reader to imagine. What else could be told?
Patricia reviewed the entries that had been posted already for the month of January 2017. There was Oscar and Keila’s meeting with investors for the solar farm on the seventeenth; Claudia had entered the word “write” along a long and overoptimistic Sharpie line covering the entire month; Olivia was taking the twins to a birthday party on the twenty-first. She took the red Sharpie from the mug next to the fridge (her assigned color) and entered “First Lamaze class” on the twelfth and “Dani’s orthodontist appointment” on the fourth. Then she noticed an entry from Keila on the tenth: “Mammogram at Dr. McLean’s.”
“Mom? Isn’t your yearly checkup with Dr. McLean in May, around Mother’s Day? You put it down on the calendar in January.”
Keila was busy putting away a stack of plates in the cupboard, but stopped to reply, “Ah, yes. I want to get this little lump in my left breast checked. It’s the size of a pea. It’s probably nothing.”
“Nothing?” gasped Patricia, alarm bells clanging in her head. “You can’t wait until the tenth! We have to see the doctor now! And why didn’t you tell us?”
“First, it’s Christmas. Try finding a doctor. Second, I didn’t want to ruin the holiday. I was going to tell you tomorrow.”
“What kind of priorities are those, Mom? For God’s sake! First thing in the morning we’re all going to the doctor’s off
ice, whether we have an appointment or not. It’s Monday. Someone should be there to take care of emergencies. And you better tell everybody else now.”
As Patricia and Keila entered the living room, where the rest of the family picked up shredded pieces of wrapping paper, boxes, and bows to throw in the trash, she announced: “Mom has something to tell you. Listen up!”
“I don’t think this is cause for alarm,” said Keila in a minute voice. “I found a tiny lump in my breast and I’m going to get it checked. That’s all.”
Oscar’s blood seemed to drain into his gut. A feeling of nausea made him hold on to the back of the sofa so as not to fall.
“When did you feel it?”
“Just a couple of days ago,” said Keila, waiting for a scolding for not sounding the alarm immediately.
“What are we, strangers? Didn’t we have a right to know as soon as you found out?” he said, in a raspy voice, terrified, angry, confused, in shock.
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