Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Thirteen
In the morning, we pack our suitcases, scrambling to find Emmy’s missing sandal and squeezing the water from her still-wet bathing suit.
Emmy sits on my suitcase so I can zip it closed and then runs for the elevator.
Oliver and I check for chargers and forgotten toothbrushes, and with one last satisfied survey of the room he says, “I’ll miss quiet patio sex. ”
On the drive to Petra’s, we take turns guessing what her house looks like. Emmy decides it’ll look like a cross between her two favorite rides, Splash Mountain and Cinderella’s Castle. She’s not totally wrong.
Behind the gates of Malibu Colony, we follow a long, winding driveway bringing us closer to the shore, to Petra’s front door.
“This can’t be it.” Oliver’s eyes go as wide and sparkly as the ocean.
Petra’s housekeeper, tall and trim with a sleek blond ponytail, greets us at the front door. “I’m Brina.” She grabs three bags at a time. “Anything you need just let me know.”
“I definitely want to live here.” Emmy sighs then runs through the wide-open living room straight for the deck, and down the wooden stairs leading directly to the sand.
“Bathing suit first! Sunscreen!” I turn in a full circle, trying to remember which suitcase has what.
“I’m happy to take her for a swim,” Brina offers.
“Really?”
“Sure. Take your time and settle in. We’ll be just out front; first I’ll take Emmy’s bag back and get her into her suit.”
After Brina calls Emmy to come up and change, Oliver and I step onto the deck set high on stilts dug into the beach.
The waves are small and calm today, gently rippling onto the shore.
Soon we see Brina and Emmy chasing the tide, following it as it recedes and then giggling as it hits their ankles and splashes their knees.
“This house is unreal,” Oliver tells me, “but Brina is the best part of L.A.”
“Emmy is not going to want to leave for her grandparents’.”
The waves are too small to bodysurf but Emmy tries anyway, hurling her small body forward and then scrambling for the shore. She tumbles into the sand then pops back up and runs for the next. Again and again.
“She’s not coming inside any time soon. Come on, I have something to show you.”
I follow Oliver into the house. He reaches for his bag and digs around, then pulls out a shiny silver pair of handcuffs.
His eyes crinkle in the corners the way they do when he’s hoping I’m as genuinely excited as he is.
This expression used to get under my skin, like he was pressuring me to be happy about the same things he was, in the exact same moments.
But here, in Petra’s living room with its vaulted ceiling and the sun streaming in, it feels less like a demand or even a plea and more like… an invitation.
His smile, too, is infectious.
“When did you have time to get those?”
“You can get anything in L.A. I also found—”
“They have an outdoor shower!” Emmy calls from the beach.
Oliver quickly tucks the handcuffs back in his bag. From the deck, we watch Emmy play in the surf until someone else on Petra’s house staff, a lanky man in a crisp white polo shirt, approaches me with fresh celery juice and a cell phone.
“I have Petra for you.”
On the other end of the line, Petra tells me she wants to be on the phone when I see the room for me and Oliver. “Down the hall to your left, past the Nan Goldin.”
I follow her directions to one of the guest suites, a sprawling room with walls painted a pale green, all the furniture a dark maple wood.
“It’s gorgeous.”
“Mitch called it the ‘mint chip’ room. But he secretly loved it.”
The glass doors to the room lead out onto the deck, and down to the beach.
They’re open a crack now so I can hear the crashing waves.
And in front of the sliding glass doors is a blank canvas set up on an easel, with another stack of canvases leaning against the wall.
They bring a rush of excitement. Like holding a new book, all potential and adventure.
“You set this up for me?”
“Brina did. Which is essentially me.”
—
Alicia is the next to arrive, an hour later, as floored by the place as we are. “Malibu. Jesus. What is happening right now?”
From behind her legs, I see Elvis’s head of curls peeking out.
I kneel to give his chubby hand a fist bump.
Alicia’s husband, Nico, lifts me off my feet in a bear hug.
As I give them the tour, Elvis does not let his mom out of his sight.
Wherever Alicia goes, Elvis is there, a small but determined shadow.
Twice, Nico tries to lure him away, first to see his room, then to the beach, but both times he shakes his head. “He’s going through a little bit of a Mommy stage,” Alicia tells me. “Which is weird, we can all acknowledge, because Nico is way more fun.”
Nico sighs. “True.”
At dinner, Elvis warms up to Emmy, but he still trails Alicia to the kitchen, the bathroom, the couch.
Over ice cream, the six of us play UNO on the deck, the waves crashing in the dark behind us.
The night is cool, and we bundle under the blankets and let Elvis win the last round.
Emmy winks at me, more delighted to be in on the adult plan than to win herself.
She follows Alicia to their bedroom and reads Elvis a story, the novelty of having a younger sibling coursing through her veins like sugar.
Eventually, Oliver carries her off to bed, and a full hour later, Alicia finds me on the deck, everyone else already fast asleep.
“Oliver passed out putting Emmy to bed,” I say.
Alicia scoots in next to me on the chaise and yawns an entire sentence, “I get it. I’m so tired I think I’m beyond sleep. It’s a new state of being that’s unpleasant and useless.”
“Where’s Nico?”
“Also beyond tired and watching monster truck videos to fall asleep. He says it works.”
For a long time, we talk about how stunning Petra’s house is.
“Do you think Petra ever gets lonely here?” I wonder. “It’s so big.”
“I would crush this house alone. Just thinking about it…” She trails off.
“We all need a vacation,” I say not so helpfully.
“When does the independent part kick in?”
“Well, you see Emmy. It’s all in stages…”
“But Elvis is not like Emmy. Elvis watches me when I go to the bathroom. And I have to watch him. Eye contact and everything. If I even turn away for a second, he gets scared.”
“He loves you.”
“And he loves his dad just as much, but somehow Nico gets a pass with him. He can come and go, no tears, no questions, just happy to see him when he comes home.”
“It will get better.”
“That’s the thing. It’s already great. But it hasn’t gotten better. And so maybe it’s me that can’t keep up? You want to hear my fantasy?”
“Can I record it?” I tease.
“Of course. I’m serious. Hand me your phone.”
Alicia rests the phone on her stomach and hits record. The waves crash and a car honks on the PCH. I smile thinking this is how we always did it before Petra invested in Dirty Diana and we had an actual soundproofed studio.
“I’m tired all the time. And I have no idea why because it feels like I don’t even do anything.
So last week I made a list of everything I did in a day.
Starting from when I woke up and gave the dog her arthritis medicine to the end of the day when I crashed after putting Elvis to bed.
And the list was dismal. It was full of things like Trader Joe’s and calling the sanitation department to get new trash cans because ours have cracks in the bottom and rotten milk spills onto our sidewalks.
I read fifteen mediocre scripts from my students and met with two undergrads to discuss their half-baked ideas and one of them cried even while I worried I was being way too easy on him.
I cooked, got the car washed, and did three loads of laundry.
Do you know how many pieces of Elvis’s little clothes can fit in one load?
Five hundred. I swear. Forever folding tiny pairs of shorts and marrying little pairs of mismatched socks the size of a lollipop.
I fed shredded kale to our bearded dragon, who honestly eats better than I do, and who I secretly hope dies while I’m here because his care routine is insane, and I switched insurance plans to cover Nico’s ADHD medicine, which took almost two hours and I said “representative” into the phone so many times I actually turned into a robot.
I walked our dogs, cleaned up their poop from the backyard, and found old Chinese food that was making our fridge stink.
That one I was proud of. It was really foul.
And then I looked at the list and I thought, what the hell did I do today? ”
“You’re taking care of a lot of people.”
“So are most people. But some days I’m so depleted at night and when I get into bed Nico gives me this look—this look I used to love and now I just want to slap him when I see it.
And I don’t really mean that about the bearded dragon.
I’m actually very attached.” She turns to me, a faint smile on her lips.
“And if I had to tell you my fantasy right now it would be flying to Alaska. A truly remote part where no one lives. Not even that crazy lady.”
“Sarah Palin?”
“Away from her. All by myself in a tiny cabin. Dressed warmly, of course, with a little fireplace. And no one for miles. No one to ask me for anything. Just silence. In the morning, I open the front door and it’s sunny and so bright and covered in snow.
And the air is so cold and the only sign of human life is my breath.
In and out. The only sound is the crunch of my boots in the snow.
But when I stop moving, so does the sound.
And it’s quiet again. Days and days of pure, absolute silence. ”
—