Things That Happened Before the Earthquake

by Chiara Barzini

  I gathered from what she told me that there had been an invisible moment sometime in the mid-eighties, when a group of musicians moved away from the canyon. The recording studios shut down, Deva’s father, Bob, and all the guys from the commune went from being stars to becoming burned out. The men’s beautiful long hair thinned out; they grew long beards to make up for it. Their taut muscles turned into beer bellies.

  “By the time my dad was ready to get his feet back on the ground, the train had left the station. That’s when he became conservative with us. He was afraid his wild kids might turn into wild teenagers who would abandon him like he had abandoned his parents. We were the only investment that had given him something in return.”

  Deva got quieter. She put her head down and rested it on my thigh.

  “The problem is you can’t unlearn things,” she whispered. “When I was ten my father’s best friend gave me a joint for my birthday, but now he expects me to work, stay at home, and help him with his music stuff. I have no life.” She let out a small, incredulous snigger. “My dad took me to all-night rock concerts when we were kids and now he hates the fact that I want to go to raves. Makes no sense, right? When he found out I’d been going, he freaked out. He started crying in my lap. But it’s too late for me to be a good girl, you see. I think he knows that too. And it pisses him off. He feels like he owns us because he raised us on his own. He can’t handle us having lives of our own. He feels it’s like a betrayal of him or something. Of everything he’s done for us.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I mean, it’s a cycle with him. One moment he’s happy, the next he’s enraged. You just have to be smart and find him on the right swing. Nobody is perfect.”

  Deva dug her fingers into the hot wax that was spilling out of the candle. She let it dry on her nails, then scraped it off. I sighed, thinking about how angry my father had sounded on the phone. I cracked a joke about his family business model and the theories about why it worked and the whole “stealing from your family is like stealing from yourself” idea.

  “I mean, who says you have to be in your dad’s video and I have to be part of my dad’s film, right?” I proclaimed self-righteously.

  Something in the air broke.

  “I don’t think it’s the same thing,” Deva said dryly. “You have a whole family. I just have my dad and brother.”

  She got up and placed the candle on the windowsill. She jumped off the bed and carved the pit from the avocado on her desk.

  “In the video you looked a lot older—” I said.

  “It’s the makeup.” She cut me short. She did this whenever I went on for too long about something she didn’t want to talk about anymore.

  “It seemed like you were playing the role of his love interest or something,” I insisted.

  “Not really. It’s more abstract.”

  There was a moment of silence. Deva peeled the avocado and cut it into small pieces.

  “Did your dad ever have a girlfriend after your mother left?” I asked.

  “No.”

  She left the avocado cubes on the table, got back into bed with her clothes still on, blew the candle out, and went to sleep.

  I told myself that she was just tired, that the storm and the talking and the Vicodin had drained her. I lay awake listening to the downpour. Hours into the night, through the top corner of the cabin’s window, I saw Deva’s father standing half naked on the windowsill of the main house, swales of rain falling against him. He was drunk. He oscillated, struggling to stay on his legs, on top of a round glass table. It was unclear what he was doing at first, but when I propped myself up for a better look, I realized he had strapped on a guitar and was using the table as an improvised stage. I got off the bed and opened the cabin door a crack to take a better look. He was right above me now. With a trembling jaw, he sang a wild song in the tempest. His knees shook and his bones seemed to jump out of his body, trying to escape his limbs. It was the first time I’d heard him sing, all upward-curled lips and high-pitched vowels. The wind blew his beard and the silver leaves rustled like metal chimes to the rhythm of his music. His audience members were the spread-out branches of the swinging eucalyptus trees. He eyed the leaves seductively as they flushed water to the ground, addressing them like groupies in the first row at a concert. His performance was a lonely cry. It welled out of a debilitating pain that was hard to look at. He was drenched and disoriented. His intonation rose and fell with his jerking knees. The jolts in his legs opened a space in his voice until the whole song turned into a soaring wail. The rain was weeping with him.

  I stood there for a bit, looking at his drunk concert and feeling like I should, that someone should be there for him. And just standing there, I felt good, like I was doing the right thing, supporting someone else’s father since I couldn’t support my own. I swayed my body to the slurred song. I moved from foot to foot until Deva’s father was too drunk to stand or sing.

  —

  I woke up the next morning and Deva wasn’t in the cabin. The weather hadn’t improved. I turned the heater on and ripped off a piece of a stale bagel. I had slept with my clothes on. I tried to fix myself up, pushing hair out of my eyes. I needed to wash.

  The main house was empty. I opened the bathroom door and found Chris inside, taking a shower. I closed it and waited for my turn, leaning on the kitchen counter. There were dishes piled in the sink. None of them contained food debris except for bagel crumbs and jam slabs. The faucet was rimmed with a rubbery layer of mildew. I wrapped my fingers around it because that fungus was the only thing that seemed alive. Over the sink was a cardboard chore wheel indicating it was Chris’s turn to wash the dishes. There were recycling bins overfilled with beer bottles and cans. Above them a Post-it read: “Deva don’t forget recycling!!!” The mud from the previous day had dried on the floor. The house smelled like stale beer, but somehow I thought it was a happy smell. There were no ornaments. Nothing to give pleasure to the eyes. Yet the bareness of it all made me think there was something noble at play beneath the surface. As if that grim room was a choice, the result of some kind of idealism. This was a place where chores were divided equally and everyone took care of one another. It was crooked and imperfect and dirty, but there was a reason for it. Furniture didn’t matter because art was more important than anything. It struck me how willing I was to consider Deva’s father’s work more artful than my father’s. We’d always had paintings on the walls and books on the shelves. Our houses were cozy and tasteful. But this place made a radical statement. One that none of our houses had ever made.

  In the office area beneath the framed awards, the brand-new fax machine emitted compact, electronic sounds. I walked over to the desk and looked at the framed photo of Deva, smiling from the watering hole, her father’s pictures displayed around it. The clean computer monitor reflected on the desk’s luminous metal surface, no beer-can marks there. I tested the drawers. They pulled out easily, making a smooth buttery sound.

  Chris came out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his hips and another one on his shoulders. I turned away from the desk, feeling as if I’d been caught in the act of unmasking a secret.

  “They went to the grocery store. The canyon is still blocked,” he explained.

  “I was going to take a shower. I didn’t mean to walk in on you.”

  I gravitated back toward the bathroom and tried to pass by him. We met in front of the kitchen sink and he rubbed his wet hands on my arms. He took the small towel off his shoulders and handed it to me.

  “There’s no more towels. We used them for the floor. Ceiling is leaking. Don’t be long in the shower. The water heater is on its last leg,” he said, smiling.

  He was beautiful in a similar way to Deva. I could see how they had shared space inside someone’s womb. It was as if they’d assigned each other their future roles early on and established their fates. Hers would be different from his. He looked like his father did when he was young, taut stomac
h muscles and pale skin, except his was even paler than Deva’s—translucent and dead.

  “Thanks.” I pulled away from him, but he held me back.

  “Look. I know you really like it up here and you and my sister are having fun. I know you’re sneaking out. Deva’s been sneaking out since she was eleven. But do you really think you’re going to change her?” he asked. “You believe in miracles, then.”

  “What are you talking about?” I gave him a push.

  He stayed there with his wet hands planted firmly on my arms.

  “This is a really complicated family.”

  —

  I was about to plug in the blow-dryer after the shower, when I heard the front door open, then the rustle of paper bags on the kitchen counter. A voice was singing a tune. It didn’t sound like Deva. After a moment the same song came blasting from the living-room speakers.

  I opened the door a bit and peered in. The curtains on the sliding doors in front of the desk were drawn open now. Finally some light. I could see the wide terrace outside facing the valley of oaks beneath the house. It was Deva singing. A big voice blasted out of her tiny stomach. She kept her hand on her belly as she spun on the swivel chair at her father’s desk, singing over the recording of his song. Her father stood next to her looking at the monitor. I edged my feet back on the wet bathroom floor. It was his music video playing on the screen. The song blaring from the speakers was the same one I’d heard him sing to the wet trees last night. Deva joined in on the chorus: “And when I say I’m looking, don’t mean I wanna find what I’m looking for / When I say I’m searching, don’t mean I want to search at all.”

  Chris came into the kitchen, dressed now. He whistled, unloading the grocery bags by the counter as if nothing had happened. I saw Deva’s father grab her up from the chair, inviting her to dance. She laughed and went with it while the video played on. I couldn’t blame him for casting Deva in his video. She was so beautiful, a perfect model. When she sang from the top of her lungs, her face expanded and illuminated. She stole the show.

  Chris joined in, doing a kind of goofy mashed-potato dance, swinging his arms up and down. Their father was fresh-looking and sober now. Deva was right about his mood swings. I could see the beautiful man from the early days. I could see how special he was. When he danced he kept Deva close to him, like a little doll. She was so light he could push and pull and twist her around. She followed his lead. He was overbearing, always on the verge of pushing her too hard or too close, but Deva bounced back with her own special skill. She knew how to interact with his jaggedness. Even if at times there was something strained about the way they all moved around that kitchen floor, I thought to myself that the three of them on that Saturday morning looked like a happy family.

  I slunk back, closed the bathroom door, and flushed the toilet to make myself heard. I shuffled about the shower, turning the faucet on and off. When I opened the door again, I pretended to be surprised to see them. Deva casually turned off the video and put on an old vinyl record. Tim Buckley’s Goodbye and Hello came on. His powerful, spirited voice filled the room.

  “There’s the Italian one! Allora! Mamma mia! Buon giorno!” Deva’s father greeted me with unlikely avuncular affection. It was the first time I’d seen him really smile.

  —

  Rain fell through the rest of the day, soaking life with it. At night I saw it break the roof off the Alexandria and float down the hotel’s marble stairs. I was late from lunch break. It was the day we shot in the Valentino suite. An important day, my father said. I ran to get there on time, but running felt like trudging in the mud from Bob’s commune. I was dirty and wet and late. The red velvet from the antique suite appeared in the periphery of my eyes. I tried to walk faster toward the room. The sound of something buzzing, an incessant and repetitive hum, slowed me down. My father was there with his American cap and tennis shoes, preparing the next shot. I hauled costumes in my arms, knowing they were not the right outfits for the scene, thinking they’d just have to do because we were running out of time. When I stepped into the room I noticed there were no actors. It was completely empty except for the director. He turned around. He had long hair and beard, a plump nose, and veiny cheeks. It was the face of Deva’s father that greeted me. Not Ettore’s. He started to clap his hands, inciting applause, but there was nobody to clap with him. The sound of his hands echoed in the empty room. I turned my back on him and ran away, knowing I had ruined everything. The film was over. I had missed my chance.

  I felt something cold holding me. I was back in Deva’s cabin now, my eyes open. I was asleep but staring at the wooden ceiling. Deva’s hand was shaking mine.

  “Stop doing that. You are scaring me,” she said.

  Her long hair was on my chest. I blinked.

  “I was sleeping with my eyes open,” I muttered. “I was dreaming.”

  But the humming sound was still there.

  “It stopped raining. I think they’re moving the boulder from the canyon road. Should we go and see?”

  I glanced up toward the main house, instinctively.

  “He’s passed out,” Deva reassured me.

  She hopped off the bed and changed into the satin fairy-princess dress she liked to wear when we went out at night. Her eyes were darting around with ideas.

  We made our way toward the main road, slipping downhill through the mud. Deva climbed over a few fences and I followed. A nocturnal demolition crew had been sent out to drill the rock apart and remove it. The people from the commune had gathered around the boulder in a circle. They played drums and didgeridoos. That’s where the electric hum in my dream came from. Ignoring the musicians, the demolition crew spoke on their walkie-talkies with the local police.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Heide. She was sitting on the wet concrete, legs and arms crossed.

  “The cops are trying to tell us the boulder has ‘fallen off’ the mountain.” She made air quotes with her fingers. “Bullshit. This is a meteor. It has landed on sacred Native American land to tell us something. These guys just want to ignore it and break it apart.”

  I looked at the slope from which the rock had supposedly fallen. There was a hole there.

  “Maybe it did fall off?” I ventured.

  Another woman with a long thin snake wrapped around her hissed at me.

  “This meteor was predicted. We’ve been waiting for it. Earthbound spirits have been trying to tell Angelenos it’s time to wake up for years now. Where do you get your information?”

  “She probably doesn’t!” a man in spandex pants with flame patterns screamed from inside the circle.

  The musicians echoed his words, arranging them into an improvised song.

  “She probably doesn’t. She probably doesn’t,” they chanted.

  The crew captain spoke into his megaphone, asking everyone to break the circle. They had to crack open the boulder. Bob stared him down.

  “You’ll regret it. The meteor has arrived, and we have to respect it,” he said with the translucent gaze of a cult leader.

  —

  Finally the music and chanting stopped and the commune dwellers scuttled to the side of the road. From their van, the crew unloaded a power generator and a tank-looking structure with long yellow tubes attached to it. They plugged a nozzle in to the yellow tube and directed it from a distance toward the rock. They asked everyone to stay back and once the generator was turned on, a glowing white laser beam shot out toward a central spot on the boulder. It wasn’t like a normal lightbulb, spreading light in all directions. It was a small but continuous shaft of focused, self-contained light emitting a warm fuzzy sound. We perched next to Bob, observing the process in awe. The hum intensified, and after a few minutes the rock began to crack open. The heat from the laser had a strange, almost palpable feeling, like it was buzzing into our own skin, an ongoing vibration that tugged at the edges of our bodies. The laser was so strong, it eliminated the debris while it drilled. Parts of the stone vaporized comple
tely, just disappeared, and soon enough the boulder began to look like a clean-cut precious gem.

  “Radical,” the snake woman exclaimed.

  The ray was so beautiful and precise that nobody dared speak over it. We stared, hypnotized like ancient farmers in front of fire. It felt like we were witnesses to a secret ritual. Topanga was a beautiful, mysterious place where things like this could happen in the middle of the night. Bob stood by impassively, surveying the scene. Even the demolition crew was bewildered by the power of their tool. The stone looked monumental, like a cathedral getting sawed in half. When the sacred building collapsed, the people from the commune howled. Deva and I joined in. The beam-projecting structure was disassembled and placed back into the truck. Bulldozers cleared out the rest.

  “Take home a slice of heaven,” Bob said, handing over broken rock bits. He gave Deva and me a deep hug. “This fell from the sky, sisters. Keep it close to you.”

  He was jovial and peaceful. There were no signs of the stressed-out man whose commune was sliding away in the mud. It gave me a sense of how rapidly things in the canyon could heal and move on.

  I pocketed my rubble. The boulder had delivered Deva back to me and for that I was thankful. Those two days under the rain with her had been an incursion into her real world. She could hop as many fences as she wanted and duck my questions a million times, but from now on out it would be harder to keep me in the fun-only section of her life. We coexisted, our cells had spoken to each other for many consecutive hours.

  I took her hand in mine. I could feel that what had been a conquest for me—being given the chance to dig a little deeper into her life—was a defeat for her. The idea that I had been part of her ordinary days, with moldy faucets and chore wheels and rain trickling through the roof onto wet towels, worried her because it meant we were just a few layers away from getting to what it was that pained her. Maybe Deva heard my thoughts because she retracted her hand from mine. She dug into her purse, took out a flask of vodka.