has also always taken for granted the duality of life in Cali. There’s her family. The country club. The maids.
Nini with her beautiful fourteenth-floor apartment, overlooking that vast, impossibly green valley. From the window of Gabriella’s
Italian-tiled bathroom, she can see the mountain range—blue in the distance, with high peaks dipped in clouds—as she takes
a shower. In the evening, lights flicker on the hills south of the building, making one think of a little Bethlehem. But when
you drive along those foothills, as they do today, it’s not cute or picturesque, but dirty and poor. The houses are shanties,
their roofs made of corrugated tin or cardboard. She knows that when it rains, water pours down from these hills, taking the
unpaved rocks and dirt of endless trails, and wreaks a havoc of mud on the road below. She knows this, but she’s never experienced
it, no more than she would by reading the
Los Angeles Times
in her Beverly Hills home. She’s but a breath away from all this, she thinks, looking intently for once. All she needs to
do is lower her window and reach out and touch it, but all these years, she’s been detached. What had he said? Aloof.
Today it’s sunny, and the midday stupor that permeates Cali at this time, before the afternoon breeze sweeps in at three,
barely reaches them, impervious, inside their air-conditioned car.
Gabriella rarely talks during this trip to the middle of the city. Nini doesn’t, either. They stop at a light and a little
girl, one of hundreds that show their stuff at stoplights around the city, furiously juggles three balls. Nini automatically
reaches into her purse for a coin, opens the window a sliver, and hands it to her.
She quickly shuts the window and reaches for Gabriella’s hand in the backseat, covering it carefully, comfortingly, with her
own, small and manicured. In the sunlight, her wedding diamond glitters.
Helena
Querida Gabriella:
When you’re older, I will bring you here every year. Every year. It’s important to never fully sever the ties that bind you.
You’re probably wondering why I haven’t brought you here before. I don’t have a good answer, baby. I knew I could always bring
you, you know? I knew nothing would change here. Everything would always be ready for you, exactly the way I left it. Even
my house, my room, are the same. The same bed. The same bookshelves. My high school nightgown.
In the mornings, I stand on the terrace and look at the houses below. They’re the same, too, and I still know what tiles are
broken on their roofs.
Time stood still here and time just went by, and there was always something else. Like this summer. I’ve come home to work,
but you’ve stayed with Daddy and Grandpa and Grandma over there. They have a house in Lake Tahoe. You love it there because
you get to go out on the boat, and there are no boats here.
But we’re coming next Christmas. I have it all planned out. We’ll have big parties with your cousin and invite all the kids
we know, and you’ll decorate the manger with real moss.
Gabriella
T here’s no one here at this time of the day, and Nini has a parking pass that allows Edgar to pull up inside the gates, right
in front of the chapel. It’s full of trees here, old trees, solid and generous with their shade.
When they built this cemetery, over two hundred years ago, these were the outskirts of town. But the city has grown and swallowed
the dead, who are now shielded from traffic and smog by walls of concrete. From the outside, only the trees peek out, and
a guard zealously mans the gates, following a strict schedule, to prevent any pillaging from these tombs that house the poor
and the not so poor and the patrons of the city.
No one gets buried here anymore. There aren’t any more plots to be had. And it’s not the thing to do, anyway. People prefer
those pastoral cemeteries that are miles away, where each grave has its plot,
Nini with her beautiful fourteenth-floor apartment, overlooking that vast, impossibly green valley. From the window of Gabriella’s
Italian-tiled bathroom, she can see the mountain range—blue in the distance, with high peaks dipped in clouds—as she takes
a shower. In the evening, lights flicker on the hills south of the building, making one think of a little Bethlehem. But when
you drive along those foothills, as they do today, it’s not cute or picturesque, but dirty and poor. The houses are shanties,
their roofs made of corrugated tin or cardboard. She knows that when it rains, water pours down from these hills, taking the
unpaved rocks and dirt of endless trails, and wreaks a havoc of mud on the road below. She knows this, but she’s never experienced
it, no more than she would by reading the
Los Angeles Times
in her Beverly Hills home. She’s but a breath away from all this, she thinks, looking intently for once. All she needs to
do is lower her window and reach out and touch it, but all these years, she’s been detached. What had he said? Aloof.
Today it’s sunny, and the midday stupor that permeates Cali at this time, before the afternoon breeze sweeps in at three,
barely reaches them, impervious, inside their air-conditioned car.
Gabriella rarely talks during this trip to the middle of the city. Nini doesn’t, either. They stop at a light and a little
girl, one of hundreds that show their stuff at stoplights around the city, furiously juggles three balls. Nini automatically
reaches into her purse for a coin, opens the window a sliver, and hands it to her.
She quickly shuts the window and reaches for Gabriella’s hand in the backseat, covering it carefully, comfortingly, with her
own, small and manicured. In the sunlight, her wedding diamond glitters.
Helena
Querida Gabriella:
When you’re older, I will bring you here every year. Every year. It’s important to never fully sever the ties that bind you.
You’re probably wondering why I haven’t brought you here before. I don’t have a good answer, baby. I knew I could always bring
you, you know? I knew nothing would change here. Everything would always be ready for you, exactly the way I left it. Even
my house, my room, are the same. The same bed. The same bookshelves. My high school nightgown.
In the mornings, I stand on the terrace and look at the houses below. They’re the same, too, and I still know what tiles are
broken on their roofs.
Time stood still here and time just went by, and there was always something else. Like this summer. I’ve come home to work,
but you’ve stayed with Daddy and Grandpa and Grandma over there. They have a house in Lake Tahoe. You love it there because
you get to go out on the boat, and there are no boats here.
But we’re coming next Christmas. I have it all planned out. We’ll have big parties with your cousin and invite all the kids
we know, and you’ll decorate the manger with real moss.
Gabriella
T here’s no one here at this time of the day, and Nini has a parking pass that allows Edgar to pull up inside the gates, right
in front of the chapel. It’s full of trees here, old trees, solid and generous with their shade.
When they built this cemetery, over two hundred years ago, these were the outskirts of town. But the city has grown and swallowed
the dead, who are now shielded from traffic and smog by walls of concrete. From the outside, only the trees peek out, and
a guard zealously mans the gates, following a strict schedule, to prevent any pillaging from these tombs that house the poor
and the not so poor and the patrons of the city.
No one gets buried here anymore. There aren’t any more plots to be had. And it’s not the thing to do, anyway. People prefer
those pastoral cemeteries that are miles away, where each grave has its plot,
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