Chapter Six
The drive to Broad Beach down the Pacific Coast Highway is one of my favorite stretches of land in the world.
Not that I’ve seen them all, or even that many in my thirty-seven years.
I’ve been to Europe once, never South America or Africa—or even Morocco.
There were a few trips to Hawaii, and one to Mexico, both over a decade ago.
I used to travel with my parents, but lately they don’t get on planes as much, and neither do I.
There was never a huge need to leave, either.
Malibu has the ocean—and I was happy to spend whatever vacations we got in the water.
Today it’s still bright sun as I make my way out, and the salt air hits as soon as I turn off Entrada and onto the highway. Even in traffic the sea breeze is clear. You don’t have to be moving fast to feel it. It’s just there. It’ll greet you at a standstill.
It’s this landscape that I love. The familiar bend of the road, the way as soon as the ocean comes into view I feel like I could drive with my eyes closed. There’s a downshift that happens on this drive, the drive home.
I leave Pea home when I come to the beach. We put out extra food, and the neighbor comes and checks on her—the one stranger she actually seems to like. So it’s just me in the car.
I pass Dad’s office, the same place he has worked since the eighties, and then Cross Creek—the country mart with all the high-end shopping centers and restaurants.
On my left a little way up is the Colony—an exclusive enclave of Malibu complete with a gated community and at least four A-list movie stars.
And then Pepperdine University up past the hill.
I take the highway farther, past Geoffrey’s, to where the land starts to split. I pass Paradise Cove and Point Dume and then I turn off Pacific Coast Highway at Broad Beach and take the road all the way down.
31382 Broad Beach greets you shyly. The house doesn’t look like much from the car—an old, shingled, crumpling pile of wood—but once you’re through the driveway and up to the front door, you start to get a sense of her splendor.
It has peeling paint, a roof that is flat in places and angled in others, out-of-style bay windows, and a wood door stained with sun spots.
But none of that matters because the house is right on the ocean.
The house is old, but that’s less of an anomaly in Broad Beach than it is in other spots in Malibu.
Still, we are surrounded by mega mansions and multimillion-dollar renovations.
My parents have never really touched the place.
For one, they never could have afforded it, construction costs being what they are, but for another, they love this house—we all do.
It’s like a living piece of history, our history.
They’ve done small things—repainted and regrouted—but the windows are the same bays from the eighties, there’s pottery painted red with turquoise on the inside, and the granite in the bathroom is a pink geometric shape running up and down the walls.
The house leaks when it rains and heats up to ninety-three degrees in the summer when the glass windows magnify whatever light is outside. But to me, it’s perfect.
They could sell it for millions, it’s true, but every time someone knocks on the door with an offer—and they do often—Sylvia always gives them the same answer: I’m not going anywhere.
The house sits directly on Broad Beach—a public beach and a great surf spot.
The plot of land is also the largest on the strip, so while the house is modest, there is space for a small back cottage—a bedroom, bathroom, and kitchenette—where most of the houses are mere feet apart.
This is where Sylvia lives now. It has easy access to the garden and is all one level.
I park behind my dad’s silver Volvo station wagon, and as soon as I open my door, I’m immediately struck by the ocean air. It’s heady, dense, mixed with the florals that creep up the shingled walls.
The same roses have grown out here my whole life—hearty ones, big and pink and plump.
There were two years when they didn’t bloom because of the drought, and we thought maybe they were gone for good, but they came back with the rain—more Technicolor than ever before.
The garden is properly weeded but grapevines crowd out passion fruit in a tangled ballet against the side of the house.
There are overgrown bushes, and a pile of a fig tree that’s been trying to die for the past eighteen months.
There’s a terra-cotta pot directly outside the door with an olive tree inside that’s just beginning to fruit, and above it hang some wind chimes that are dancing in the sea breeze.
I don’t knock, just open the door. It’s unlocked, of course. It’s always unlocked, to Marcella’s dismay. But this is the beach. There’s an inherent trust to the coastline houses that persists.
I’m greeted immediately with the smells of garlic and oil and herbs. I follow my nose to the back of the house, where Sylvia is in the kitchen chopping onions and sautéing sprigs of rosemary—almost certainly from the garden. She turns around when she hears me, wiping her hands on a dish towel.
“Mamashana,” she says. “Let me see you.”
She takes me into a hug, and I feel her bony body in my arms. She’ll be ninety-two this fall, but the woman acts like she’s sixty.
She let her hair go gray in her forties, so I don’t remember a time before it was silver—although it’s shorter now than it ever used to be.
Her skin bruises, so she wears long sleeves, even in the summer, and she’s thinner, but she’s still so quintessentially Sylvia.
She still wears mala beads in heavy strands around her neck, and canvas hats nearly everywhere, even inside, and wide-legged Indian-print pants.
And she’s always barefoot. “The secret to a long life is to feel the ground,” she always tells me.
“Hi, G-money,” I say. I’ve been calling her that since childhood. Likely because she used to give me an extra allowance, although, like all things from memory, hard to know. “Where is everyone?”
I look around the house. A cookie jar—a butler, holding a bottle of champagne—sits proudly on the kitchen counter; I can remember it being stocked with knobby granola bars as a child.
From the kitchen you can see straight back to the entry and directly out to the water.
To the left of the kitchen is the living room with large, oversize paisley-print sofas, mismatched plaid and floral pillows, and an antique wood credenza.
There’s also a grandfather clock that stands proud in the corner and a glass hutch that displays what feels like hundreds of different dishes and glassware. Sylvia has always loved to thrift.
She gives the oil and herbs a good stir.
“Your mother went for a walk; your father’s upstairs.” She sets the wooden spoon she is using down. “And you are here. You want to help an old lady?”
I move to wash my hands at the sink. “I’d love to.”
She hands me some eggplant to skin and chop and then points to a basket of vine-ripened tomatoes. “I thought about putting together a little salad,” she says. “What do you think?”
I pull open the fridge, already searching.
“Top shelf,” she says, and I pull down the burrata. We grin at each other. Exactly what I was looking for.
Sylvia always cooks with a glass of wine, and in her hand now is a glass of white, beads of sweat running down the glass.
“You want one?” she asks me.
I pull a cup out of the china cabinet—something porcelain and round—and hand it to her in answer.
The kitchen has a door that leads to a bleached-out wooden deck that hangs over the sea, with steps down to the ocean. It’s still early—only five o’clock in the summer—and the sun is blazing high. The water is a stunning, sparkling blue.
“Where’s Leo?” she asks me.
I pick up an eggplant and start to skin it with a knife. “New York for work. He’ll be back tomorrow.”
When I was growing up I’d watch my grandmother in the kitchen every day.
She always fed our family. My mom was never really that interested in cooking, and Dad can’t tell an orange from a spatula, so Sylvia did all the meals.
Salads were from the garden, the wide array of ingredients dependent on the time of year.
There’d be cucumbers in May, tomatoes in July, delicata squash and snap peas in September.
Potatoes and zucchinis as the weather got cooler.
When I started cooking, it felt like a language I’d once known as a child but had since forgotten.
I chop shallots, mix a tangy lemon-and-mustard-seed dressing with tarragon and olive oil. As I cook, my eye keeps being pulled out to the water. Sylvia notices.
“Why don’t you go find your mom?” she says. She takes a long sip of wine. “It’s early, yet. There’s plenty of time.” She sets her glass down. “You know Marcella. She’s probably out there worrying about the tide.”
“Ha,” I say.
My grandmother raises an eyebrow at me. “Worry gets you nowhere.” Another familiar refrain.
I laugh again. “Might be too late for that.”
She puts a hand tenderly on my shoulder. “It’s not ever too late,” she whispers. “I just took up Pilates.”
Sylvia has never told us what she used her do-over for, only that it happened a very long time ago.
“Maybe a night with Kennedy,” she sometimes says.
“You think Marilyn was the only one who shot her shot?” Or: “I once sold this house, regretted it, now it’s like it never even happened.
” Or: “Oh, there could have been a small plane crash. Who would remember.”
The answer is always the same: It’s none of your business.
I give Sylvia a kiss on the cheek. She smells like her Pond’s cream, like she always does. The two most comforting scents in the world: the ocean and Pond’s face cream.
“Don’t lift the pots. They’re heavy,” I tell her.
She swats me away with a dish towel. “Still my kitchen. Get out!”