Yerba Buena, page 5
As she undressed, she imagined Annie arriving here at the base of the mountains, in the doorway of this shitty motel room in her jean jacket, saying, How could you even think of letting anybody but me touch you? Come on, let’s go. She’d grab Sara’s arm and they’d race down the stairs and to Grant’s car, and the three of them would speed away.
Sara turned on the water, stepped into the shower. She closed her eyes and felt the heat. She washed her hair and rinsed it. When she opened her eyes again and looked down, she saw red in the water.
She put her hand between her legs.
Oh.
She had tampons in her backpack. Unwrapping one was as familiar as a homecoming. Her body, reliable, despite all that had gone wrong. And here it was: the answer she’d been searching for earlier, not from the sky or the trucks or the horizon after all. She would listen closer from now on.
She dressed quickly, made sure the bathroom was clean, and returned the supplies to their places. While Vivian was probably knocking on the doors already and waiting for Sara to open one, Sara was demanding thirty dollars from Bruce instead of the fifteen he’d given her yesterday. They settled on twenty-five and, with the cash in her fist, she ran the blocks to the Civic, past the rows of trucks, past the strangers who would remain strangers forever after all. Grant had found them a box of French fries, cold but barely touched, and an unopened packet of ketchup. He had them propped on the dashboard for the moment she came back.
She knocked on the window, so much sooner than expected. He sat up straight, looked through the glass. Clutched his heart at the sight of her.
THE FLOWER SHOP & THE STUDIO
Emilie, in the Los Angeles summer heat. Cutoff shorts, skin on the fabric seat of her Tercel, pulling up to her parents’ house for brunch. And there was Mrs. Santos, tending to her front garden and waving.
“I’ve missed you,” Emilie called out, crossing to her.
Emilie had worked as a receptionist for the Santoses’ real estate business until the month before. It had been a normal afternoon in the office. She’d just finished refilling the cups of ballpoint pens and paperclips on the desks when a hush fell. She turned to find Mr. and Mrs. Santos and Randy, their elder son, standing in the reception area with a cake.
“Happy five-year anniversary!” Mr. Santos said, and they’d all cheered, heading toward her.
Randy lowered the cake onto the desk, bright purple yam and white coconut, one of the Filipino dishes she’d grown up eating at their house “Ube,” she said. “My favorite.” But she could barely get the words out. Five years? It was supposed to have been a summer job, something to pay her rent between her sophomore and junior years of college. She stared into the tiny flames of the five candles and began to cry, and Mrs. Santos said, There, there, while Mr. Santos pretended to get a phone call and closed himself in his office.
“You know he’s terrible with emotions,” Randy said. “But we understand.”
“I’m being rude. You made me a cake. You’ve been so good to me.”
And they had been. Her responsibilities consisted of answering the phones and brewing the coffee and talking to Mr. Santos about recipes and bird watching (though Emilie neither cooked nor watched birds), and on the best days Pablo came by and spun in Randy’s office chair and made her spin in hers and they got dizzy and gazed at the yellowed dropped ceiling of the office as though it was sky, marveling at songs they loved or films they’d seen. Sometimes Pablo pulled up pictures of his latest collages and drawings on the office computer for her to critique. Sometimes he read sections from her essays, and everyone gave her their full blessing to print them out, every draft of them, page after double-spaced page.
“Tax deductible,” Mr. Santos would tell her, extending his arm toward the printer as though bestowing upon her a small kingdom of ink and paper.
It had been so easy to stay. For the years to slip by. It had been good, but its time was over, and Mrs. Santos said, “Let’s eat cake while we decide what you’ll do next,” and Emilie had stopped crying, grateful to be understood.
Now, in her garden, Mrs. Santos said, “Colette drove up a few minutes ago. Family brunch?”
Emilie lifted the bottle of orange juice she’d been instructed to bring in confirmation.
“How’s she doing?” The same question, asked so many times over the years.
Emilie shrugged. “You never know with Colette.”
“Poor girl.”
“Woman,” Emilie reminded her. “She’s twenty-eight.”
“You’re all still so young. But yes. She’s a woman now. Your poor parents. And you, too, Emilie. It’s good to rest. Finish your studies. We always have a place for you at the office if you need a few hours here and there. Randy’s loving real estate…”
“Too much paperwork. Tell me about these flowers. They’re just like California poppies but they’re pink.”
“A hybrid. Don’t you love them?”
Inside her parents’ house, she set the orange juice on the counter and kissed her mother and father on the cheek. They were both in striped aprons, Lauren’s hair neatly swept off her face, Bas swaying to The Neville Brothers. The waffle iron steamed, the bacon crackled. Coffee dripped into the pot.
“Will that be us someday?” Colette asked, appearing from behind her, speaking low into her ear. “Attached forever to the music of our youth?”
Emilie tilted her head a little closer, felt the thrill of Colette’s attention. “I’d be fine with that. As long as we don’t match aprons with our spouses.”
Colette threw her head back and laughed and Emilie was flooded with love, with regret. How could she forget how much fun they had when they were together?
Their neighborhoods bled into one another, but over the years they’d settled into a halfhearted avoidance. Sometimes they’d run into each other in cafés or restaurants. “I didn’t know you hung out here,” one of them would say. “It’s like three minutes from my place,” the other would answer.
When they were with friends, the run-ins were briefer and more pleasant. When they were each alone, Emilie felt guilty for not calling more often, not checking in to see how Colette was or if she needed anything. Once, standing in line at a café, Emilie caught sight of Colette alone at a table, reading, and she turned and hurried out. It was too difficult to know the right thing to do. Sitting at a different table would have been an acknowledgment of their distance. She could have taken a spot at the second, empty chair and read alongside Colette, but that would have taken too much pretending. They weren’t that kind of sisters. They didn’t have comfortable, familiar silences. They talked on the phone when it was necessary, did each other favors, got together for family gatherings, but they’d never felt easy in the other’s presence.
Not since they were teenagers, anyway.
“Help me set the table,” Colette said.
They gathered the blue placemats and the matching napkins, the silverware and the glasses, and took them outside to the table on the deck they’d helped build a decade ago. Colette went back inside and Emilie closed her eyes and made herself very still, listening for the ocean. It was only four blocks away, but with the traffic and the people in between, it had a way of getting lost. Colette returned with sparkling water and the orange juice and the silver salt and pepper shakers, shaped like birds.
“All together!” Lauren said, apronless now, stepping out with a platter of fruit.
“Our beautiful girls,” Bas said, coming after her with the waffles and bacon. “Tell us everything new.”
Colette started. She was volunteer tutoring at a place her best friend worked for—a nonprofit that started in San Francisco and now had a center in LA. “You walk up and it’s this funny store where everything is time travel themed.”
“I’m not following,” Lauren said, pouring coffee.
“It’s almost like a joke shop, but the stuff is actually cool. But it doesn’t even matter—the tutoring happens in back. I go a couple afternoons a week when kids get out of school and I help them with their homework.”
“You’ve always been great with kids,” Bas said.
“Yes,” Lauren said. “It sounds perfect for you.”
Emilie couldn’t remember a single instance of seeing her sister interact with a child. But it was possible she missed something. Likely she missed it. Even though the farthest Emilie had moved was from Long Beach to Echo Park, she managed to fall out of touch with her family from time to time. She’d see them again after a few weeks and there would be a new story among the other three. A dinner or a museum visit, something they hadn’t told her about but that they weren’t exactly hiding either.
Once, after hearing about a weekend trip to Joshua Tree, Emilie had excused herself for the bathroom and sat on the toilet, scrolling through their family text chain, making sure she hadn’t missed the invitation.
“I’ve always wanted to go to Joshua Tree,” she’d said when she returned to the table.
“You should have come,” Lauren said.
“No one told me about it.”
“Bas, you told her, didn’t you?”
“I thought you were telling her. Of course, you were invited, Em—we thought you were busy.”
“Maybe next time ask me,” Emilie said, staring at her plate.
But they were together now, and it was her turn to share what was new. “Well, you know I quit the real estate office.”
“It was time,” Lauren said. “I mean, the Santoses are a wonderful family, but you couldn’t work for them forever.”
“I have to figure out what to do next, but I have some ideas. And last semester I took this women’s studies class that was focused on writers and we read the most incredible plays and novels. I decided that that’s what I want to study. Literature. So I changed some things around and—”
“No,” Lauren said. “No. Emilie.”
Emilie felt her face get hot. “I know, it sounds crazy, but I’m really sure about it. I signed up for classes and they look incredible.”
“I’ve lost count,” Colette said. “First it was ethnic studies and then women’s studies?”
“Design was in between,” Bas said. “If I’m not mistaken.”
Emilie nodded. “Yes. Design was in between.”
“So this is your fourth major.” Lauren sighed, pushed her plate away from her. “And you’re entering your … seventh year of undergraduate studies?”
It was her fifth major, actually. She was relieved they’d forgotten botany. She refilled her water glass. Was grateful when the conversation moved on.
* * *
Brunch was over and she was driving again, a few blocks from her studio apartment, when she saw the woman hanging the HELP WANTED sign in the window of the flower shop. Fate, she thought, pulling over.
The school conversation clung to her as much as she tried to shake it, to tell herself it didn’t matter, that they were only concerned. Most people go to college for a degree, she told herself. She went for an education. And so who cared if it was taking her a long time? She would put all of it out of her mind. Here was the mid-afternoon summer sunshine, the heat of the sidewalk, the flower shop up close. Enough to numb the sting for a little while.
It was the opposite of Pablo’s family’s office: everything was unabashedly beautiful. The bright and deep greens of the sidewalk plants against the blue-black shop facade. Glint of metal planters, warmth of clay pots. Inside, the smell of clean dirt and candles.
The woman who had moments ago hung the sign was now behind the counter.
“Hi,” Emilie said, and extended her hand.
She had her interview right then and there. She had never before worked for a florist but she’d taken a weekend class in floral design, had made many wreaths, had even done the flowers for the low-key wedding of a college friend. And, of course, there were the lessons Mrs. Santos had given her over the years. The reverence she’d imparted.
Meredith, the shop owner, asked her to assemble a few sample arrangements and Emilie got to work.
She wanted this job. She felt its rightness. She thought the beauty of it might coax out some dormant part of her and jolt it awake.
“The florist I’m replacing had our restaurant accounts,” Meredith said. “Olive, The Grant Club, Yerba Buena, Silverado…”
“I love Yerba Buena,” Emilie said. “I had my first legal cocktail there when I turned twenty-one.”
“Sophisticated choice for a twenty-one-year-old.”
“It’s my parents’ favorite restaurant. They leap at any excuse to go. Actually, I’ve noticed the floral arrangements there. A lot of branches and leaves, right? Big blossoms—proteas, leucadendrons. Nothing too traditional.”
“Yes, but I’d want you to bring your own vision. As long as you’re good and the arrangements complement the space, the owners will be happy.”
My own vision, Emilie thought. Her flora phase was so long ago and yet it came back to her, the woody smell of snipped stems, thorn pricks and sore fingers.
Meredith craned her neck to see what Emilie was doing. “Take your time with those. Let me know when you’re finished.”
Emilie could have spent hours editing and adding, but she knew Meredith would appreciate efficiency, so after only a few minutes she stepped back, made a few changes, and declared the arrangements complete. Meredith admired them, impressed.
“Can you name the flowers?” she asked, and Emilie looked at the wall lined with silver buckets. She named as many flowers as she could and promised she would study the rest. She wanted a job offer on the spot. She knew it would pay next to nothing, but she would make it work.
“Write down your information here,” Meredith said, handing her a legal pad and pencil. “I’ll get back to you soon.”
Emilie faked a smile and hoped it looked genuine. “Great,” she said. When she got to the door she turned back. “I’d love to work for you. Your shop is beautiful.”
Then she shut the door behind her and felt the weight of the day.
* * *
She drove to Echo Park Lake and walked its perimeter, not ready to go home yet. The swan boats were out on the water, the downtown skyline in the distance. She tried to pay attention only to what she could see and hear, to the sensation of her feet on the path and the sun on her skin.
But she kept thinking of her family. How terrible it felt to her, to be a disappointment. And she thought of Olivia, too. Her former professor turned secret girlfriend had broken up with her half a year before for the same reason—because Emilie was still an undergrad. Even though their ages weren’t all that far apart, Olivia could have been fired had the administration found out about them, and Emilie had to accept it, knew she had only herself to blame.
She got halfway around the lake, paused at her favorite spot. Gazed at the reeds, the fish flashing below the water.
Maybe her family was right to give her a hard time. Maybe she was wrong to continue as she had been. But she was enrolled in the classes, it was too late now.
She longed for the life of a fish. In and out of reeds they swam. All color and movement and blankness.
* * *
She drove the rest of the way home, climbed the stairs to her studio apartment, and opened the one window that wasn’t painted shut. She hoped for a breeze. She sat on her bed and looked out. Above the garbage-strewn sidewalk, the run-down motel, the row of houses and palms on the hill behind it, was a blue sky with a single white cloud.
She would need to find something for dinner.
She opened her refrigerator. A half carton of eggs, a bottle of ketchup, a jar of jam. Some juice that expired yesterday and a carton of iced coffee. She’d order a burrito from the shop a couple blocks down. She grabbed her purse and her phone and saw that a text had come in. It was Meredith.
Why postpone a good thing?
She called her friend Alice, who always picked up for her even though she had a real job as a stylist for photographers and filmmakers and ignored almost everyone else.
“I have good news,” Emilie said.
“As long as it has nothing to do with Olivia.” Emilie could hear the music and conversation in the background, pictured Alice at one of the parties she was always asked to go to or waiting for someone to join her for happy hour somewhere.
“Not about Olivia,” Emilie said. She took the phone away from her ear to order her burrito and then, choosing a table in the covered back patio full of palms and bright colors, said, “I got a job at that flower shop on Sunset and North Vermont.” They’d never spoken about the shop, but Emilie knew Alice would have noticed it. Alice moved through the world noticing beautiful things.
“That place is absurdly pretty. And you’ll be doing arrangements again! You were always so good at that.”
“Thank you.” She tried to hold the compliment as what it was—something true and simple—and not feel bad about possibly moving backward, twenty-five with a minimum wage job, not pursuing anything, really, not moving toward a bigger life.
“I think it’ll be good,” she said. “For now, at least.”
* * *
Emilie spent two weeks training at the florist before she was sent out in the mornings to the restaurant accounts, her car full of flowers and leaves and blossoming branches. Tuesdays she visited a sushi place downtown, everything white and spotless. On Thursday mornings she made centerpieces for each table in a blue-tiled Greek restaurant famous for its eighty-two-year-old chef. And two mornings a week, she arranged flowers for Yerba Buena.
The restaurant at Sunset and Selma was a Los Angeles institution, revitalized in the past decade by Jacob Lowell, a chef who’d earned a reputation through his decade at the French Laundry, followed by a series of pop-up restaurants after his move to LA.
The restaurant that formerly occupied the space had been known for its steak and its duck, its formal service and decadent architecture, its decades-loyal regulars and throngs of tourists. It had coved ceilings, private leather booths, multiple dining rooms, and a Michelin star—though each year rumors circulated that it was on the verge of losing it.
