“Travelers who have been convicted of crimes such as controlled-substance violations are not admissible to our country.”
“So why don’t you kick out all your crack fiends? Just dump them in the ocean! I hear we’re close to South Central. There’s a lot of them there.”
The writer turned to me. “I can’t believe I even removed my bloody nail polish for them.”
I shook my head to show support, but I was too tired to feel properly sorry for him.
The writer was escorted out the door to be put on a plane back to England.
The Pakistani guy looked at us and tapped his left temple with his index finger to suggest everyone in the room was crazy.
After hours in the interrogation room, surrounded by waves of strangers, screaming with papers in hand, I realized it wasn’t the officers I was afraid of, nor their SS interrogation tactics, as my father called them. What I was really afraid of was being sent back. A year earlier I would have made any false statements in order to have a free pass back to Italy, but after that summer, I wasn’t sure.
—
“Why the hell did you tell them you were on vacation?” my parents both screamed at us before saying hello, when we finally stepped into the arrivals hall.
“I don’t know! You told me if all else failed to play the vacation card.”
“Yes, but not when you mention my work here first!”
“I told you it was a bad idea,” my brother interjected.
They grabbed our luggage and rushed us out. Neither of them hugged us. It was late afternoon. We’d been gone for two months.
My mother looked younger after a summer without us. She wore a fringed leather jacket and cowboy boots. Her tan was deep brown and golden, her hair short and spiky and platinum blond. She looked somehow Australian and also a bit like a python.
“Do you like it?” she asked, combing her fingers across her new chunky locks. “It’s a Meg Ryan haircut. Very trendy right now.”
I nodded absently, noticing her ivory-colored French manicured fingernails and that she was clasping a Starbucks iced tea. She shook the ice in the cup impatiently as if she didn’t have time to listen to my answer.
“What happened?” I asked. “How did you get us out of there?”
“Let’s go, quickly, before they change their minds.”
We sped down the hall, out the sliding doors toward the parking lot.
Los Angeles. We were back to the leaden sun. The familiar distant haze engulfed us. A feeling similar to the mirrored room we left behind, another no-man’s-land.
Max was waiting for us inside our old Cadillac.
“Ooh la la, here’s our little girl with the big mouth!” He hugged me, shaking his head in mock disapproval.
My parents rolled their eyes and got in. Over the summer they had installed a car phone, but it didn’t work. Ettore now owned a lot of leather binders from Office Depot. They rested on the dashboard with credit card receipts sticking out.
On the ride home, the lapping sounds of the Mediterranean were zapped out of our ears, absorbed into a funnel that pulled out silence and poured in airplanes and choppers flying over Compton.
This was one of those times when the ambiguous nature of Italy’s post-communist government-owned regimes came in handy. RAI, Italy’s public-broadcasting company, had originally sponsored my father’s visa. In typically Italian style, RAI was an everything medium: a national radio network, a television network, a cable channel, and a film production company. If you worked under its broad wings—I understood then why Italians called it Mamma RAI—you could be anything from a big-time film producer to a news anchor to a talk-show host. Max figured this ambiguity would be our way out, or rather our way back in. He showed up at the airport disguised as my father’s lawyer—he had passed the bar exam and had been a practicing lawyer before venturing into film—and argued with the officer that the film my father was preparing was in fact a documentary for RAI, and therefore perfectly within the boundaries of his visa permit.
“So you’re not working illegally?” I asked, relaxing into the rubbery backseat.
“Of course we are,” my father answered.
—
Ettore’s film production had taken over the house. Two fax machines beeped incessantly. Piles of papers and Post-its were stacked next to one another. The kitchen was littered with fast-food bags, leftovers, wrapped straws, and binders full of documents and photos. Max prepared a pitcher of sangria, blasting Phil Collins’s “One More Night” from a new multidisc CD player, ignoring the chaos. He whistled to the rhythm of the cheesy song. Over the summer he had befriended Johnny Depp’s agent, who invited my parents to the Viper Room regularly. They had gone to parties with Brad Pitt and met a group of actors from the movie Dazed and Confused, which was about to be released. Things were happening, they said.
“So Johnny Depp is going to be in your film?” I asked, excited.
Max poured me a glass of wine and fruit. “We’re working on it, chica.”
My father put his hand on my shoulder. “Do you know that we are growing vegetables in the yard now?” He opened the fridge, pointing to bowls filled with fresh vegetables and fruits. “We have amazing tomatoes and zucchini. And you know why they grow so well?” He picked out an overgrown zucchini and held it between us like a powerful scepter.
“The sun?” I asked.
My father shook his head and threw the huge green thing back in the fridge.
“Compost,” he said with a knowing grin. “Compost is everything from lemon peel, to garlic cloves, to rotten cheese.” He pulled my brother and me closer to him. “You need to create a fertile terrain for things to come to fruition, kids. Johnny Depp’s agent is my lemon peel. The Viper Room is my garlic clove, and the film Max and I are going to make is delicious rotten cheese. We are officially in the right milieu.”
“So Johnny Depp is not going to be in your film, then?” my brother concluded.
I kept walking around the house, amazed at how different it looked. My father’s office extended into the backyard, where a workstation had been set up on the patio with a desk, a computer, and another phone.
“What’s all this stuff?” I turned to my parents again.
“We didn’t want to tell you over the phone because we didn’t want you to be worried and think it was worse than it is,” my mother said.
“Worse than what?”
“We’ve started preproduction on the film and we’re using the house as a—”
“Production office,” my father concluded with a professional tone.
“We have a crew of people working for us already and we didn’t know where to put them. We couldn’t, you know…” Serena faltered.
“Afford an office,” my father finished. “Yet. It’s all going to change when the money comes in. We might even move out of the Valley.”
“Move out of the Valley?” I gasped with a shiver of exhilaration. Now I was glad they’d stayed behind.
The hallways were lined with black-and-white portfolio pictures of important-looking yet obscure Hollywood actors. Next to them were Post-its of their possible roles in Ettore’s film. Tamara Landkin: Grace? Ellen Studelli: Stephanie? If These Walls Could Talk was the title of Ettore’s movie, and it would be a psychological horror film, a Poltergeist-style ghost story inspired by the haunted Hotel Alexandria in downtown LA—one of the most prestigious venues in the city during the heyday of the motion-picture business, which had since turned into a low-income housing cluster of rooms and apartments. Shooting at the Alexandria was cheap, especially on the eleventh floor because the hotel owners believed it to be infested by ghosts and wanted nothing to do with it. That was where most of the paranormal activities took place, they said.
“It’s actually completely haunted, which is great for the actors. Less work to get in character,” my mother explained.
I entered the dining room. It was sealed off by a makeshift sliding door. On the other side were a bunch of su
itcases and some furniture I recognized from Max’s old house.
“This is where Max is storing his things,” Serena announced timidly.
Max gave me a sly, melodramatic look. “Lo siento, chica. Just for now.”
He slid through the door, whistling. My father pretended he just remembered something urgent and followed him out. My brother and I stayed, question marks in our eyes.
“He didn’t have anywhere else to go!” Serena finally broke down. “He was evicted. His landlord was a real bastard, you know.”
“What about Phil Collins? Isn’t he his friend and neighbor? He has a mansion. Can’t he stay with him?”
“It would look bad,” Serena said with pride.
“When were you going to tell us this?”
“Aren’t you happy?” she asked, her quivering lip ready to go off. “Max is fun to have around and Dad is finally going to make his American film. You should be happy. I don’t understand why you can never just be happy.”
Max, in a bathrobe, crossed the kitchen with a Dorito chip popping out of his mouth.
“We’re deducting rent from his production fees,” my mother explained.
“You’re paying him to produce the film?”
“It’s a co-production,” my mother sighed. She seemed annoyed, like we were stupid for not understanding this thing that happened in Hollywood where people converted their homes into offices and gave out free rooms to producers.
“Dad gets the money from Italy and Max is going to get money here. Then they put the money together and we make the film. Once Max gets his money, he’ll pay off production expenses and contribute with rent for his room here.”
“So where does he sleep?” I asked.
Silence.
I dashed out of the dining room. My mother caught up to me, trying to delay the inevitable. I reached my bedroom. Serena leaned on the door to block me.
“It’s temporary,” she pleaded.
I pushed her aside and opened the door. My clothes had been stacked at the far end of my closet. My posters had been removed and folded onto my desk. An ashtray filled with Cuban cigars and joint butts sat on the windowsill. The yellowing walls were staled by smoke and the bed was covered in bundles of sweatpants and dirty emerald green silk boxers.
I let out a scream.
“Just until he finds a new place. It’s easier if we’re all in the same house.”
“Where do I sleep?”
In my brother’s room Serena had created a Eugenia corner with a desk, garage-sale lava lamp, and Nirvana poster.
“Cool lamp, right? When I saw it I thought of you right away.”
I poked my brother’s water bed with the tip of my shoe. It gurgled and moved in tiny waves.
“If you don’t like it we’ll put a real mattress on the floor for you. How does that sound?”
My brother shrugged his shoulders, looking at the wall. “I hate Nirvana.”
13
I didn’t wear Reebok Pumps to school that fall. I wore sandals and shorts and let my tanned legs be part of the scenery. I was equipped. I had my big anthology. I knew where the buildings were. I knew how to open my locker. I knew where to go for naps, where the holes in the fences were, and thanks to the freckled girl with the bouncing ponytail, I knew how to hop them. Arash’s death left me unexpectedly confident, as if I were the heir to a very important secret. He left a space nobody was willing to fill and maybe because of this, everyone was a bit more tolerant. There was a truce—temporary but effective. I walked by the Persian tables on the upper quad. They had allowed Azar in. She waved rapidly but full of pride when I passed by—head still fuzzy and disproportionate but smiling. I felt the weight of Arash’s absence still there on my shoulders, but I aligned with the others and pretended I too had turned a page because the more I pretended the more I felt like turning pages was easy.
I’d spent my summer reading from the American literature anthology and even though my English wasn’t perfect, Mrs. Perks kept me in her class. I wasn’t an excellent student. She was hard on me and was never sentimental, but I could tell she cared. She wore suits. She knew where Rome was. She’d been to Italy. Her breasts were real. She was perfect. Twice a week we met privately during lunch to go over the Italianisms in my essays. I started collecting books at yard sales and writing stories. When Simon came looking for me—wearing sandals with no socks now—I got rid of him fast because nothing about sex with him was appealing any longer. I was on my feet. It wasn’t going to be that kind of year. I would try to get to college without his tutoring. Early in the summer the literary journal with the “Bad Love” theme to which I had submitted my essay about ugly men who didn’t read—the one that got me suspended—published it. The editor said my piece had “reflected the contemporary attitude over the no-strings-attached lifestyle.” They used the essay as a kind of decoration piece for the last page. It was printed in a tiny font and I was sure nobody had read it, but I didn’t care. I felt encouraged for the first time. Henry was wrong: I didn’t have to hide books to be accepted.
It wasn’t just Arash’s death that made the difference but also that enough time had passed since the riots. In the fall of 1993 the city had started to function again, the wound was beginning to heal. Anger against injustice had transformed into silent sorrow, a suffering acceptance that we were all in the same boat—no use fighting. Or maybe, as with any army, one had to know when it was time to withdraw the troops and care for the wounded in order to prepare for the next battle. After all the violence the city seemed to open up to its more benevolent nature—especially the flora and fauna. Elm trees with bulging roots cracked through the pavement of residential streets. Mountain lions climbed down from the canyons and walked stealthily toward the sea. Hawks circled the hills saluting mourners, reminding them of a life up high, away from bus stops brimming with homeless people, away from the LAPD and patrol helicopters. The city had been shocked by the Rodney King riots. Every corner had buzzed with the electric field of war zones and injustice. Everyone had been on the edge over spilled blood and burned buildings, but we’d entered a different stage of mourning now. After adrenaline came anger. After anger, pain. Then peace or the vanishing of something. Nature was the biological aftermath to the riots’ mourning cycle, and it took precedence over everything else. Ivy grew quicker over the industrial buildings downtown. Polluted waterways cleansed themselves spontaneously. The Santa Monica pier became populated by more seagulls than humans. Seals and otters occupied the wood foundations below. You could feel the city’s parameters changing. Its new essence was friendlier, part of an organic order of things. It was right, or at least it felt right. And I wanted to be part of it.
“Hey, I heard you give good head,” a voice called to me as I lay in the shade of the magnolia tree in my new hiding place at school.
I propped myself up, the sun in my eyes. A blazing silhouette came into focus. A guy with a beanie and long hair stood in front of me. He kicked a hacky sack that landed on my legs. Chunks of his hair were twisted inside beaded hemp strings.
“What?” I asked defensively, throwing the hacky sack back at him.
“Wanna suck mine?”
“No.”
I looked at him up close and realized I’d seen him before. Arash had pointed him out to me the day he briefed me on every group in school. He was Chris, Arash’s pot dealer. I remembered Arash mentioning the fact that he’d grown up in some kind of hippie situation and had no social skills, hence the crack about my oral-sex abilities. Arash must have told him about us. He probably thought the guy was too much of an outcast for the news to get out.
“Well, do you at least want to come over to my house after school and listen to music, then?” he asked.
I felt a rush of longing for Arash, as if he were back in a new form but with the same audacity and cockiness. I wanted to draw out the line that could connect me to him a little further, and so I said yes. The tacit agreement with my parents was that I was granted more fr
eedom because Max had taken over my bedroom. I needed to get out of the house to obtain privacy, I explained. So far that had translated into uneventful strolls up and down the grids of the San Fernando Valley, but that day I was invited to experience the thrill of a different area code.
Chris lived in a funky collective of wooden cottages on a slope at the top of Topanga Canyon. The main house on the property had a panopticon-like presence and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a valley of oak trees. The smaller cottages below—creaking wood satellites to the master house—served as bedrooms for him and his twin sister. Between the main house and the cabins there was a kind of small amphitheater; the bricks on the edge had crumbled apart a bit, but the semicircular shape was intact. Chris hopped in the center of the miniature arena and let out a small scream. There was a specific point that generated an echo.
“You have to stand right here or it won’t work.”
Chris showed me to a little dent in the ground.
I screamed an “Oh” sound that bounced back to us. Chris said that when he and his sister were kids their father told them “echo” was a man who lived in the air and he only stayed alive if you screamed at him.
“We had to scream for so long every day because we were worried he’d die. It was his way of keeping us busy without having to play with us.”
We both laughed. We heard the thump of a glass bottle falling to the floor in the balcony of the main house. Chris shoved me inside his cabin furtively and peeked out the window.
“Oh…It’s just a bottle of beer that fell with the wind.”
He kept an eye out toward the balcony.
“Are we not supposed to be here?” I asked.
“My dad doesn’t allow us to have guests. He’s at his studio now. He’s a musician. Classic rock. Terrible shit.”
The cottage was small and damp. Chris plugged in an electric heater with frayed wires. It smelled like a burned animal. He pulled out a box hidden beneath one of the floorboards, took out a bong, and loaded it with weed. There were spiderwebs on the ceiling and a branch of wild laurel had squeezed its way into the room through a cracked floorboard. There was a mattress in the corner, a guitar, a beanbag, and a pile of CDs and tapes stashed neatly under the window. Next to them was a framed picture of Neil Young. He was standing next to a younger man with long brown hair similar to Chris’s. They wore slightly torn T-shirts and had big smiles on their faces. Both held beers. I noticed they were standing in the same echo spot where Chris and I just were. The amphitheater was brand-new, though, no chipped bricks. There were musical instruments in the background.
Things That Happened Before the Earthquake Page 14
