by Maria Semple
VIOLET stepped out of the shower and did the unthinkable: stood squarely in the mirror and examined her naked body. Over the years, she had perfected the art of getting out of the shower without catching even a fleeting glimpse of herself in the mirror. But it was imperative to know what Teddy would be seeing tonight so she could offer him only the most flattering angles. She had lost fifteen pounds in the past month and a half, but God she was fat! She might feel thinner, but that didn’t mean she was objectively thin. And the skin on her cheeks hung off her high cheekbones. Sometimes her face looked plump and youthful; sometimes it looked like an arid hide. This is what happened when you were forty-two: sometimes it all came together and you looked okay; sometimes you looked fifty.
It was noon. On his message, Teddy had said he was going onstage at eleven to play for half an hour. It would take another half hour to load his gear back into his car. He was in the valley, but where exactly? Violet figured it would take him half an hour to drive home. Assuming that he didn’t loiter at the gig — and why would he, he had called it lame in his message — that would put his estimated time of arrival back home anywhere between twelve thirty and one. Violet had to leave pronto if she wanted to catch him.
She picked up the phone on the wall to call him. The message light was flashing. Violet’s whole body seized up.
“Hi, girls.” It was David! “I’m leaving early so I can come home and see my two favorite people. I miss you both and can’t wait for a group hug.” Beep. “Received Tuesday, 4:35 AM.” Shit. Violet hadn’t reset the date and time since the power went out last month. If David had left this message an hour and a half ago, she was in good shape. But if he had called just after she left for RIE class, he might burst through the door any minute.
“LadyGo!” Violet screamed. “LadyGo!” She had told the nanny to pack the car for a trip, but there was no way to tell how much LadyGo actually understood. LadyGo’s English seemed to have somehow gotten worse over the past fifteen years. All Violet could do was instruct her and hope. Violet called LadyGo’s cell phone. The one reliable law of the universe: nothing got between LadyGo and her cell phone.
“Allo?” LadyGo said.
“Could you please come into my bathroom?” Violet hung up. She grabbed a duffel bag and pell-mell crammed it with handfuls of underwear, pants, and shirts.
LadyGo plodded in. “Yes, meesuz?” Violet had relinquished command of the household to the El Salvadorian, who hadn’t missed a day of cleaning in fifteen years and who now reigned supreme as the nanny. Violet had never enjoyed a relationship as simple as this, where the more she paid someone, the happier they were. Most people turned on her and got resentful for the vulgar wealth on display, but never LadyGo. She lived in an apartment in Pasadena with a rotating cast of sisters and cousins fresh from, as she’d wistfully say, “my country.”
“When did Mister David call?” Violet asked. “Did you hear the message?”
“I don’t know, meesuz.” LadyGo smiled. Violet never knew what LadyGo was always smiling about. It had even occurred to her that LadyGo wasn’t smiling at all. Rather, it was just the deepening contours of her Indian face. There was no use trying to wring information out of the inscrutable nanny.
“Did you pack Dot’s things like I asked?”
“Yes, meesuz.”
“Please have her in the car and ready to go in five minutes.”
“Yes, meesuz.”
“We’re going away in the car. For a trip. In five minutes. You understand?”
“Yes, meesuz.” LadyGo wasn’t moving.
“We’re going to the Ritz-Carlton.” Perhaps the lure of purloined shoe mitts and sewing kits would light a fire under LadyGo’s ass.
“Ritz-Carlton, meesuz?” Indeed, the name enlivened LadyGo. “Ritz-Carlton is spencie.”
“Yes, very expensive.”
“Club floor?” asked LadyGo. The club floor with its twenty-four-hour buffet of shrimp, Coca-Cola, and miniature pastries was a veritable pleasure dome to the El Salvadorian.
“Yes. And we need to be out the door in five minutes.” Violet held up five fingers.
“No Meester David?”
“No Mister David.” Violet then noticed LadyGo’s T-shirt. It read HOLD MY PURSE WHILE I KISS YOUR BOYFRIEND . It was a mystery to Violet where LadyGo got these things. (They seemed to have a connection to her prodigal nephew, Marco, who LadyGo was constantly bailing out of jail.) It mortified Violet to be seen at the Brentwood Country Mart or the Wednesday farmers’ market alongside LadyGo pushing the stroller, wearing one of her bizarre T-shirts. The best/worst was last summer at an engagement party for someone from David’s office. LadyGo had worn one that read ASS IS THE NEW MOUTH . Violet thought it was hilarious and dragged David over to see. David exploded; Violet had been apologizing for it ever since.
Violet grabbed a fleece and tossed it to LadyGo. “Here. Put this on.”
“For me?” LadyGo smiled big.
“For you. Now go!”
“We go now?” asked LadyGo.
“We go now.”
“Why you call me for?”
“Just be ready to go in five minutes.”
LadyGo left and Violet took a breath. She had her phone, cash, clothes. She raced down the hall and found Dot in the middle of the kitchen, completely naked and eating a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
“LadyGo!” called Violet. LadyGo knew Dot shouldn’t eat processed food; it made her eczema flare up. More important, Violet needed Dot hungry for the hour-plus drive down to Laguna. That way, she could ward off Dot’s fussing with grapes and juice. The last thing Violet wanted was to scare off Teddy with a crying kid in the backseat. Violet squatted down and held out her hand. “Dot, sweetie? I don’t want you eating Cheetos. Please give me the bag.”
“Want Cheetos,” replied Dot.
“I know you do. You can have some grapes later, when we’re in the car.”
The back door creaked open. Violet jumped. It was just LadyGo, speaking animatedly into her cell phone in Spanish, something about the Ritz-Carlton.
“Please, would you put a diaper on Dot,” Violet said. “I want to leave in five minutes.”
“Yes, meesuz.” LadyGo took Dot’s hand. “Come, Mama.”
Violet grabbed hold of the counter and pulled herself up. She dialed Teddy on her cell phone. It went straight to voice mail. Shit. Violet dialed his number again. Voice mail. Again. Violet closed her phone.
The orchid on the counter. It was abloom in scowling, pinched faces! Slanted black eyes and yellow puckering mouths teetered under gigantic velvety white headdresses.
“Gaah!” Violet chucked the plant into the sink. She called Teddy again. Voice mail. She knew it was risky to show up without notice to whisk him off. But what qualm could he possibly have about an ocean-view suite at a five-star hotel? Violet dialed his number again. Voice mail. She hung up.
Dot emerged from the bathroom, dressed but still clutching the bag of Cheetos.
“Honey, give those to me,” demanded Violet.
“Want dem,” said Dot.
“You can’t have them!” Violet tore the bag from Dot’s hands. Angry red Cheetos flew all over the floor. “LadyGo!”
“Cheetos!” wailed Dot.
The back door opened. “LadyGo!” Violet scooped up the Cheetos. “Dot can’t have these. It’s what causes that rash on her feet—”
“Meesuz, you want LadyGo put Miss Dot in car seat now?” LadyGo appeared from the bathroom.
Violet froze. Who, then, had just entered through the back door?
“Knock-knock,” a woman’s voice chirped. “Anybody home?”
Violet spun around. Walking toward her were Sally and some guy she’d never seen before.
“HELLO!” Sally called. “David? Dotty Dot? Anyone here?” She breezed down the hall, Jeremy right behind.
Finally, it was Sally’s chance to prove there was nothing wrong with her. Not that her brother or sister-in-law had ever come out and said as
much, but it was what that shrink one time called “the elephant in the room.” The elephant in Sally’s room was that something must be wrong with her if she was so pretty and thin and still single. It was also why Sally had stopped telling people she was David’s sister. At first, they’d be impressed. But then, the elephant in the room: that there must be something wrong with Sally if David Parry was her big brother and she was still driving around with a trunk full of tutus. This engagement ring would slay both those elephants, and even a third: that Violet was somehow better than Sally. Now Sally would also be the wife of a rich guy. Plus, hers was on TV.
Sally stopped. Violet was in a dogfight with her wailing baby over a bag of chips. Dot’s face and hands were covered in red dye, and that awful nanny just lurked and smiled.
“Hi, sis,” Sally said.
“Sally. How did you get in?”
“I know the code to the gate.” Sally prayed she was wearing enough foundation to hide that her face was most likely as red as Dot’s. “From when I house-sat for you. I just wanted to stop by so you could meet my fiancé.”
“David’s not with you?” Violet asked.
“No.” Sally hooked her arm in Jeremy’s. “Violet, this is my fiancé, Jeremy White.”
“Oh.” Violet stuck out her hand. “Nice to —” She looked down. Her hand was covered in red dye. She wiped it on her pants. “Shit,” she said.
There was a long pause. “Where are you going?” Sally asked.
“What?”
“Your car is packed.”
“Ritz-Carlton, meesuz,” chimed the nanny. “They give you steak and shrimp all day. I bring my wallet, but lady go, If you have special key, you no pay. No charge extra, nothing.”
Violet told the nanny, “Put Dot in her car seat, please,” then turned to Sally. “I’m sorry,” Violet said, “but this isn’t a good time to chat.”
This wasn’t a flipping chat! Sally had just announced she was getting married. Wasn’t the big whoop about Violet that she was so classy with her fancy-pants upbringing? Sure, Violet was rich. The kitchen alone screamed money. The French sea salt in the silver dish. The Montblanc pens, some without their caps, stuffed into a Rolling Stones mug. The Cartier watch tossed into a bowl of miniature red bananas. The slim basket of boysenberries they wanted ten bucks for at Whole Foods. The shoes with the red soles that Nora Ross sometimes wore, so they had to cost a fortune, just kicked into the corner. But class?
Violet was a wreck! Her home was a pigsty. There was a two-hundred-dollar orchid — that their “orchid guy” came once a week to “switch out” — crashed in the sink. Her brat was screaming. The word congratulations had yet to be uttered! She was probably a size twelve. What was the use of having money and health if you weren’t grateful? If you didn’t look good? If you were going to act so weird and rude?
“We didn’t want to stay long, anyway.” Sally tightened the grip on her purse. “We just wanted to share the good news.”
“I’m glad you did. But we’re in a rush. I’ll make it up to you.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Sally said with a swallow. She took Jeremy’s hand and turned to leave. “Oh, and Violet?” Sally added. “You look amazing. When I get pregnant, I want all your secrets so I can be tiny like you a year after giving birth.”
“Oh, yeah . . .” Violet said. Then her face dropped.
Sally turned. David had entered, an uncharacteristic spring in his step. “David,” she said. “Hi!”
“Dada!” Dot raced into his arms.
“Hey, beautiful!” David scooped up his daughter. “The whole gang’s here! All my Parry girls! What’s the occasion? Where’s everyone going?”
“Ritz —” the nanny started in.
“David!” Violet jumped in. “Sally got engaged.”
“Wow! You what?”
“I’d like you to meet my fiancé, Jeremy White.”
“Wait,” David said. “Jeremy White from the LA Times?”
“And now TV.” Sally demurely held out her left hand.
“How about that sparkler! Jeremy White part of the family; who would have thunk such a thing? Welcome.”
David grabbed Jeremy’s hand, then winced in pain. David’s hand was bandaged and he wore some hippie-looking braid around his wrist. “I forgot,” he said. “I messed up my hand.” Both knees were cut and swollen, too. “Honey,” he said to Violet, “you know who Jeremy is. He’s the one who picks the NFL games. He had an amazing run last year.”
“A zillion percent or something,” Sally mooned.
“Seventy-one against the spread,” Jeremy said.
“Yeah, right.” Violet’s words looked like torture to get out.
“Hi, gorgeous.” David walked over and hugged Violet. But she just stood with dead arms, car keys in one hand, cell phone in the other. David then announced, “There’s something outside I want everyone to see.”
Violet grabbed Dot and said, “We’ll be right there.”
Sally and Jeremy followed David outside. David stood at the edge of the lawn and pointed toward the horizon. “See them? Painted lady butterflies.” Indeed, butterflies, in groups of a dozen, were flying in a straight line. “They’re migrating from Mexico,” he said. “They’ll end up in the Pacific Northwest. It only happens once a decade. See them, Sally?”
This was the David she knew. The David who loved nature. The David who had been an Eagle Scout. The David who had taken her overnight camping in the Rockies and hung their food from a tree so bears couldn’t eat it. The David who had brought her to a pond to study the movement of frogs for her solo in The Frog Prince. But that David left home the first chance he got, never to return. Now theirs was strictly a business relationship. David paid Sally’s medical insurance and she kept away. Another elephant in the room.
“Yeah,” Sally answered. “There are hundreds of them.”
“Back in ’98, Violet and I drove to this spot in Topanga that the entomologists projected would be on the migration path. It was like a Dead show. There were a hundred cars on the side of the road, and people were hanging out, listening to music. But the butterflies ended up migrating about five miles east. By the time everyone packed up and caravanned down Topanga, across PCH and up some other canyon, it was too late. The butterflies had gone. Just now, when I pulled up, I saw them. Of all places, of all times, they chose Stone Canyon, right now. What are the odds?”
“I’ve been trying to calculate them,” said Jeremy.
“I bet you have!” David let out a big laugh, then turned to Sally. “Maybe these butterflies are a sign that you two should get married here.”
In all of Sally’s fantasies about her wedding, she had never allowed herself to imagine getting married at David’s house. It was so obvious and within reach that for it not to happen would have been too cruel to endure. She looked up at Jeremy. “What do you say, sweetie?”
“Anything you want.”
“Isn’t this wild?” David said. A butterfly had just landed on his hand. “It’s a chemical that builds up in their brains. Every ten years, the switch is flipped and nothing can stop them. Who ever thinks of a butterfly on a mission?”
Sally saw it before David did. She didn’t know what it was exactly, but she wanted to protect him from it: Violet was in the car with Dot and the nanny, screeching onto Mulholland.
VIOLET felt LadyGo staring daggers at her from the backseat. “This Ritz-Carlton?” Violet said. She adjusted her mirror, but LadyGo averted her eyes. “It’s supposed to be the best. Beautiful beach. Big pool . . .” Unimpressed, LadyGo shook an elephant rattle in front of Dot.
The scene back at the house was certainly inelegant. Sally barging in trailed by that sportswriter with the earplugs. And David. Bounding in, wearing a grass thing around his wrist, acting like Mr. Natural? His last words before he had driven off for the weekend were, You’re not necessary. That’s what Violet was fleeing, a dead marriage with a cruel husband who raged at her. His bruised knuckles told the r
eal story. The peace-and-love David would soon revert to the volatile wall-punching David. Violet ached for Teddy — to be entwined in his dark, scarred arms, treated rough, exalted, laughing, kept guessing but always knowing. She crossed the double yellow line to enter the car pool lane.
“Truck with cars!” Dot pointed to a transporter loaded with Mini Coopers.
“That’s right,” Violet said. “A truck with cars.”
“Mas!” Dot said. It had been her first word, mas. “More” in Spanish.
“It’s right there,” said Violet.
“Mas!” said Dot. “Mas!” She started to cry.
Violet slowed down so Dot was abreast of the transporter. “See it? It’s right there. You don’t need mas.” But Dot was implacable. “Baby, what’s wrong?”
“Right turn ahead,” said the computer lady on the GPS.
“Mas!” wailed the little girl.
“Give her some juice or something,” Violet told LadyGo, and exited onto Sepulveda, then turned left on Venice.
“Your destination is ahead on your left.”
Violet cruised past a ninety-eight-cent store. A place to refill your water jugs. Piñatas hung from a bodega’s tattered awning.
“SpongeBob!” said Dot.
“Sí, Mamacita, SpongeBob!” LadyGo said, full of pride. “Miss Violet, the baby is too much intelligent.” How would Dot know about SpongeBob? Violet and David didn’t let her watch TV. LadyGo must be plopping Dot in front of it while Violet was away.
“You have arrived at your destination,” announced the voice with an almost grotesque calm. Next to a Mexican dentist’s office with bars on the windows, set back from a patch of dead grass, was a small two-story building.
Violet pulled an illegal U and parked the car. “I’m going to run in and pick up my friend,” she told LadyGo. “Then we’ll go to the Ritz-Carlton.”
“Miss Dot stay in Mercedes car,” said the nanny. Violet had seen where LadyGo lived and it was no step up from this. But get LadyGo in a Mercedes with a blue-eyed child and she became the queen of England.