by Maria Semple
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For my little family
Someone put
You on a slave block
And the unreal bought
You
Now I keep coming to your owner
Saying,
“This one is mine.”
You often overhear us talking
And this can make your heart leap
With excitement.
Don’t worry,
I will not let sadness
Possess you.
I will gladly borrow all the gold
I need
To get you
Back.
— Hafiz
CHAPTER ONE
Those Violets Night Visitor Tuesdays in Los Angeles
One Car Museum of Broadcasting Parrots! Miracle Me
For a Geek Troubadour The Coatroom
DAVID STOOD AT THE SINK, A PINE FOREST TO HIS LEFT, THE PACIFIC OCEAN to his right, and cursed the morning sun. It beat through the skylight and smashed into the mirror, making it all but impossible to shave without squinting. He had lived in Los Angeles long enough to lose track of the seasons, so it took glancing up at CNBC and seeing live images of people snowshoeing down Madison Avenue for it to register: it was the middle of winter. And he determined that all day, no matter how bad things got, at least he’d be grateful for the weather.
His pool shimmered. Stone Canyon Reservoir shimmered. The ocean shimmered. He cocked his head and flicked his wrist, skipping an imaginary stone from the pool to the reservoir. It split some Westwood high-rises, then landed in the Santa Monica Bay. He wound up again — this time to clear Catalina — then stopped.
There was a furry . . . brown . . . thing floating in the Jacuzzi.
“Honey!” He walked into the bedroom. “There’s something in the Jacuzzi.” He paused, waiting for the daylight in his eyes to fade.
His wife was in bed, her back to him, her hair seeping from under the pillow she’d taken to putting over her head at night.
“Ma-ma, Ma-ma.” A squawk erupted from the baby monitor. There was a cough, then a bleat.
But Violet didn’t move. What was her plan? Who did she think was going to get the baby? Was a standoff really so necessary that Violet would let Dot cry like this? Jesus Christ. David marched by the bed, skirting the rug so his bare heels struck the hardwood.
“Aggh.” Violet pulled the pillow off her head. And there they were, the reason he fell in love with her almost twenty years ago in front of the Murray Hill Cinema: the violets tattooed behind her ear.
David’s dog walker, a friend of Violet’s from Barnard, had set them up. David managed two bands at the time — big ones, but still, only two. He’d been told Violet worked for a legendary theater producer and was the daughter of some obscure intellectual he’d never heard of. The plan was to meet half an hour before Full Metal Jacket. David arrived on time, but the movie had already sold out. He spotted Violet — she had said she’d be the one wearing red plastic sandals — sitting on the sidewalk in the ticket holders’ line, engrossed in the New York Times, and listening to a Walkman. Two movie tickets were tucked under her leg. She wasn’t a knockout, but wasn’t fat either, and had a face you wanted to look into. She turned the page of the business section and folded it, then folded it again. An artsy chick who read the business section? Who was responsible enough to have arrived early and bought tickets? With enough Ivy League pluck to sit on a dirty sidewalk and not care who saw her? It was done and done. He had to have her. As he stepped forward, she absentmindedly twisted her long hair off her neck. That’s when he first glimpsed the tattoo behind her ear, teasing him from the edge of her hairline. He found it wildly sexy. But something inside him sank. He knew then there’d be a part of her he’d never possess.
“I’ll get her, I’ll get her, I’ll get her.” Violet threw off the covers and trudged to Dot’s room without looking up.
The violets. Those fucking violets.
DAVID headed to the kitchen, comforted by the sounds of the morning: babbling Dot, the hiss of brewing coffee, the crunch of Rice Krispies underfoot. These days, there were two kinds of Rice Krispies, those waiting to be stepped on and those that already had been.
Pffft. He landed on some Krispy dust.
“Dada!” Dot shouted. She sat with perfect posture at her miniature wooden table, covered head to toe in croissant flakes, a darling, crusty monster.
“Aww, good morning!” David said, stepping on some Krispy virgins. “That’s what I like to see, my girls!” A carafe of coffee and his newspaper awaited. “Honey,” he said to Violet, “there’s something floating in the Jacuzzi.”
Violet opened the fridge. “What?”
He walked to the window. “It looks like a dead gopher.”
“Then it’s probably a dead gopher.” She rooted around in the fridge. “Ah! There it is.” She tore white butcher paper from a hunk of cheese. At least she still did that for him, got him the good cheese.
“How long has it been there?” David asked.
“Mama, what’s dat?” said Dot.
“It’s cheese, sweetie.” Violet sliced some off.
“Want dat.”
“I’ll get you some. First, I’m making Dada his breakfast.”
“How long has the gopher been there?” David repeated.
“I don’t know. This is the first I’ve heard of it.” Violet placed David’s breakfast on the counter: wheat toast, sheep’s-milk cheese, sliced apples sprinkled with lemon juice and freshly grated nutmeg. “Are we good?”
“You didn’t notice it when you looked out the window this morning?”
“Apparently not,” Violet said. “Oh! Your milk.” She removed a small pitcher from the microwave, set it next to the coffee, and surveyed David’s domain. “Okay, that’s everything.”
“It doesn’t upset you that there’s a dead animal in our Jacuzzi?”
“I guess it does, a little. For the gopher.”
“What gopher?” asked Dot.
“That water could have dysentery in it.” David sat down. “What if Marta took Dot in there to swim?” To underscore the seriousness of his point, he had called their nanny by her real name, Marta, not their nickname for her, LadyGo.
“Mama! Want cheese,” said Dot.
“I’m getting you some.” Violet walked a piece of cheese over to Dot, then sat down on a tiny stool beside her and looked up at David. “Marcelino is coming today. I’ll have him fish out the gopher, drain the Jacuzzi, and disinfect it.” There was no discernible edge to her voice. This was one of Violet’s most bedeviling tactics, acting as if she was being completely reasonable and it was David who was hell-bent on ruining a perfectly fine morning.
“Thank you,” he said. “Look, I’m sorry. Today’s big. KROQ is debuting the Hanging with Yoko single at nine. I’ve got tickets going on sale at the Troubadour at ten — Shit.”
“What, Dada?”
“Yesterday was my sister’s birthday,” he said to Violet. “I totally spaced it. That must have been why she kept calling the office.”
“I’ll get her something and have it messengered over,” Violet said. “I’ll
make sure it’s expensive enough so she can’t complain.”
“Really? Thanks.” David was heartened. This was the Violet he loved, the Violet who took care of business. He jiggled the mouse on his laptop and clicked open his brokerage account. Up from yesterday, and the Dow was down eighty points. The hard part wasn’t making the money, it was keeping the money. And he had his gold stocks, his little fighters, to thank for that. He opened the chart for Nightingale Mining and sang its theme song. (After all, what would a stock be without its own theme song?) For Nightingale Mining — symbol XNI — he sang Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.” “X-N-I. X-N-I. Take my hand. Off to never-never land.”
Plunk. Something landed on the newspaper. David ignored it and clicked the chart for Wheaton River Minerals. “Now, that’s what you want a chart to look like.” To the tune of “Whiskey River,” David sang, “Wheaton River, take my mind. Don’t let memories torture me. Wheaton River, don’t run dry. You’re all I got, take care of me.”
“Good morning, Meester David.” It was LadyGo, sliding open the back door. She carried clippers and a canvas gardening bag.
“Good morning,” he said, then resumed singing. “I’m drowning in a Wheaton River —”
Plunk. David looked over. The Los Angeles Times was covered in something sticky. “Violet? What is this?”
“What is what?” She was lost in thought, staring at the floor.
“What’s all over the newspaper?”
Violet blinked, then got up. She stuck her finger in the goo, smelled it, then raised it to her mouth.
“Don’t eat it —”
Too late. “It’s honey,” she said. “That’s weird. I didn’t put any honey out.” She looked up. “There must be a beehive in the crawl space.” There was, in fact, a dark stain between two cedar ceiling planks.
“What do you mean, There must be a beehive in the crawl space?”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“You act like that’s something that always happens.”
“Want honey,” said Dot.
“No, sweetie,” Violet said. “This honey is not for you.” She turned to David. “Perhaps because it’s been so unseasonably hot, the honey melted and dripped through the ceiling.” She shrugged and returned to the little stool. “But I don’t know anything.”
The only reason Violet dared say something so self-pitying and provocative was that she knew David wouldn’t get into it in front of LadyGo. LadyGo, the human shield! David glared at Violet, but she wouldn’t look at him.
“Meesuz, look,” the nanny said to Violet, a glint in her eye. “The animals. They eat all the vegetables.” LadyGo held out a handful of sugar snap peas. Each pod had tiny holes bored in it. “I ask Javier. LadyGo, What animal is it? LadyGo, I spray next time.”
“No,” said Violet. “I don’t want Javier spraying the vegetables.”
“What animals?” asked Dot.
“Maybe las ratas. All the carrots? No mas.”
“That’s probably gophers,” Violet mused. “Oh well. I’ll just have to get carrots and peas at the farmers’ market tomorrow.” She got up. “Okay, I’m going to take a shower.”
David stared at the floor, took a long breath, and clenched his jaw. What the fuck was going on around here? Was this his house or a goddamned wild-animal sanctuary?
“I’ll call the gopher guy and the bee guy at nine,” Violet said. “There’s nothing I can do but deal with it, right?”
“Those are your vegetables. You planted them from seeds. They’re ruined. Why doesn’t that upset you? I don’t understand you sometimes.”
“I’ll try to be more upset, then.”
“What kind of a thing is that to say?”
“David,” Violet said. “Please, I can’t.”
“Where las ratas?” squeaked Dot.
“You can’t what?” David asked.
“I can’t,” Violet said. “I can’t . . . nothing.”
“You can’t nothing! Great. Thanks for the fucking insight.”
“Why Dada sad?” asked Dot.
“Dada’s happy,” Violet said quickly.
David got up. At the sound of the stool skidding, Violet flinched. LadyGo swooped up Dot and carried her away. For fuck’s sake.
A drop of honey landed on David’s shoulder. He pinched it off and grabbed his car keys. “I’m going to fucking Starbucks.”
SALLY awoke to the rising sound of the “babbling brook” feature on her alarm clock, which, like “bamboo waterfall” and “ocean waves,” just sounded like an airplane flying overhead. She hit the snooze button and braced herself. It wasn’t yesterday, her birthday, that had worried her. That was filled with phone calls, funny cards, a cake at work, and margaritas at El Coyote. It was today she feared, the day after: when everyone’s attention drifted elsewhere and she woke up in her same one-bedroom apartment on a noisy street, one year older. She took a breath, then another, then smiled. Thirty-six she could manage.
Moving on to today. Sally was teaching back-to-back ballet until Maryam picked her up for the party where Sally would finally be introduced to Jeremy White. Her husband to be. Since today was so jam-packed, Sally had done her bring-a-new-guy-home sweep of the apartment last night. She went over the list in her head one last time.
Waste baskets: empty
Box of tampons: off the toilet
Dishes: washed and put away
Floors: vacuumed
Medicine: tucked away in the fridge
Credit card bills: in the back of the desk drawer
Candles: everywhere
Sally sprang up. The gossip magazines she had plucked from the studio’s recycling basket were still visible on the coffee table. She didn’t want Jeremy White to think she was shallow, so she’d bought a New Yorker to place on top of them. She got out of bed, then tripped on something.
A wisteria vine from the balcony had crept under the door, across the carpet, and under Sally’s bed. She had noticed it last night when she was vacuuming. Thinking it a carefree touch — a thing Holly Golightly might have let grow wild in her first apartment — Sally had vacuumed around it. Now something terrible occurred to her. As of eleven o’clock last night, she’d been able to pick up the whole branch; this morning it was stuck to something. She dropped to her hands and knees and traced the vine under the Laura Ashley dust ruffle. A lime green tendril was coiled around the leg of her bed. That meant the vine had snaked around it while she was sleeping.
Sally shuddered. She yanked the wisteria, but that only tightened its grip on the metal rod. She clawed off the wet young growth with her fingernails, then threw open the door and hurled the awful branch off the balcony. But the door wouldn’t close. The stupid knob had been painted over too many times. She kicked the wood frame until the lock clicked. Her hands trembled as she checked to make sure her manicure wasn’t wrecked.
The tap, tap, tapping of tangled backstage passes hanging from the doorknob slowed until there was silence. Def Leppard, the Rolling Stones, Commonhouse, the Red Hot Chili Peppers. All bands managed by David at some point. All more important than his little sister’s birthday.
The babbling brook started up again. The New Yorker. She couldn’t forget The New Yorker.
TUESDAYS in Los Angeles made Violet sad. It always caught her by surprise, the sadness, like today, as she was driving, safe and alone in her car after another revolting morning with David. Then she’d see the open-house signs and would remember: Tuesday, open-house day.
She stopped at the light at Beverly Glen and watched Gwen Gold struggle to haul a sign from her white Lexus SUV and place it strategically to block the other signs. (Who cared if a dozen cars saw her, she had a house to sell, baby!) Gwen stuck several eye-catching GWEN GOLD flags in the hard earth, careful not to muss her Chanel knockoff pantsuit. She wore a grimace, and unlaced hiking boots over her hose, saving her smiles and good heels for later, when she’d be all poise as she presented the peekaboo city views and granite countertops, trying to co
ncentrate on the client and not the math in her head — listed at 1.65, half of 3 percent of 1.5 is 30,000, if I can get five of these a year, that’s 150 before taxes, I could pay off the face-lift and put ten down on a condo. That’s good, that’s enough. . . .
Violet knew the type, and they made her sad. Those divorcées who had staked it all on being the perfect wife and mother. Nothing evil in that, nothing that everyone else wasn’t doing, nothing to be punished for. But something had gone awry, and now these women were single, fifty, and forced to earn a living without any discernible skills. So they became realtors. How had Gwen played her cards wrong? Had she let herself go after giving birth to four boys? Had that driven her husband into the arms of his hard-bodied young secretary? Had the pressures of a disabled child been too much for even a solid marriage? Or had Gwen had the affair? A desperately needed fling with a young green-eyed man who worked at J. Crew? And her husband, Stan — Violet thought Gwen would be married to a Stan — Stan had caught them and thrown Gwen out, just when her preppy lover got scared away by her need. Whatever Gwen had done, she didn’t deserve the indignity of this; of that Violet was certain.
The light turned green. Just past Deep Canyon, a woman wearing a puffy straw hat and a billowy white linen dress painted a picture of the valley, taking advantage of this especially crisp day. Violet caught a glimpse of the oil as she drove past. It wasn’t very good. It would never sell. How sad for this woman, who obviously imagined herself on Nantucket the way she was dressed, not choking on fumes overlooking Sherman Oaks. Would she try to get into a group art show with her series of unremarkable landscapes? Would a friend buy a few to make her feel good? Violet had an impulse to turn around and buy the painting on the spot, but she’d never make the U-turn. The traffic on Mulholland had gotten so relentless. She always felt as though someone was about to ram into her while she snaked along the only street in LA she had ever lived, the spine of the city.
