The Summer We Fell Apart

by Robin Antalek

  That time, the last thing Eli had said to her was “Please don’t do this to us.”

  This time, Kate said, “I may be moving to Los Angeles.”

  Eli’s face registered surprise and then, almost as if he realized he had no right to that emotion, he nodded and quickly said, “Good for you.” His voice broke on the word you, but when Kate looked up one last time, Eli’s face betrayed nothing.

  Kate’s legs were shaking as she walked to her car. It was dusk. She checked her watch, surprised that it was only just after five. It wasn’t until she was back on the interstate heading south that she allowed herself to cry.

  It took all her willpower to stay on the road, not to turn the car around and ask Eli to come away with her even if he already had a life that she was no part of—that she had no right to. It was better this way, she knew, better that she would never know what choice he’d make. Better that she’d never really know that this time it wouldn’t be her.

  seven

  THIS IS THE PART WHERE HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

  There were too many condos to count, although Kate was sure her Realtor, Naomi, was secretly recording the many hours of wasted time in the BlackBerry that was glued to her hand. Since moving to Los Angeles several months ago, Kate had toured multiple units indistinguishable from one another save for the address. They all had a balcony. That balcony, in turn, had a view. Some had a view of the hills, while others had a view of downtown Los Angeles. All views came with a scrim of smog, so, in Kate’s opinion, it really didn’t matter what was outside the windows. The bathrooms had “spa features” and the kitchens had stainless-steel appliances and granite countertops. The walls were painted in shades of white that were touched with gray or blue but never beige. Whether it was Century City or Mid Wilshire, Kate quickly found out that every preconceived notion she held about Los Angeles was true.

  The problem was that now Kate really needed to get out of the hotel. Putting off searching for a home while setting up the office, she’d been living out of suitcases for too long. Five fucking stars and still she avoided going back to her hotel room, instead ordering dinner at her desk and staying so late every night that the security guard insisted upon walking her to her car in the underground garage. The combined hotel bill and her furniture in storage back in D.C. were costing the firm a small fortune. And although Ben would never mention the money, every time they talked he inquired (with just a hint of an edge to his voice) about her apartment search, to which Kate’s answers had grown increasingly vague. How could she explain to Ben that she just couldn’t make a commitment, when he was banking the firm’s success and her future partnership on the Los Angeles office?

  Every time Kate went out with Naomi, she saw nothing she could picture herself living in and she didn’t know why. She even tried some relaxation technique she had once read about in a magazine in her dentist’s waiting room years ago when she had gone for an emergency root canal. She was supposed to close her eyes and breathe deep and imagine herself somewhere safe and loved. But what she saw instead, when she closed her eyes, was her father at his desk, after she came home from school. Often he would be muttering to himself as he read aloud what he had written that day. Sometimes he would repeat a sentence over twenty times. Each time after he did, he would frown, scratch his eyebrow or his scalp, pick up his pen to write, only to put the pen down, and say the sentence out loud all over again. He would never look up to see her standing there, and eventually she would leave and go into the kitchen and make the little kids peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that they ate while she did her homework. The relaxation technique only scared her and made her heart race, so she gave up on that.

  Kate was lost. Utterly and completely lost. Although she would rather die than admit it, for once she needed someone to help her figure it out, to offer an opinion. The only person she could think of was Eli, but she would not allow herself to call him, even though he had left three urgent messages on her cell since they’d seen each other and half a dozen other calls she had refused to pick up. Kate needed to be steadfast. He had nothing to do with this life, and dragging Eli into the mix would get her nowhere.

  Of course, Kate could tell herself that all she wanted, but Eli, tucked deeply into a pocket of her subconscious, was at least part of the reason she called her Realtor from the side of the road and asked her to find out information on the house for sale behind the gate she was currently staring at. The gate was padlocked with a knot of chain so old it had turned to a nearly unrecognizable ball of rust. The FOR SALE sign was faded and overgrown by vines, but Kate could still make out enough numbers that she could recite them into the phone as she left Naomi a voicemail. Tempted by the locked gate and the bramble of trailing plants, she got out of the car and walked up the drive as far as she could. It was a short, broken trail of gravel and rock at the bend of the road, barely enough to get a car safely over to the shoulder to make the turn unless you knew where you were going. On either side of the gate were boulders that at one time had approximated a stone wall about eight feet high with jagged pieces of glass embedded along the top to prohibit anyone from scaling the wall. Kate could see nothing beyond the forgotten landscaping, and so she got back into the car unsatisfied.

  That morning, she had driven north of Los Angeles to an area called Silver Lake. Since she had been in Los Angeles, Kate had probably driven more than she had in all her years in Washington. It was true when they said no one walked in L.A. proper, although here, where it was more residential, Kate could see thin scraps of sidewalk where children zoomed unevenly on bikes and scooters, while adults, draped in brightly colored layers of clothing, stood in clusters talking. There was something familiar about them and yet there was not one specific memory. They reminded her of her parents in those once-upon-a-time years that now seemed like something she must have dreamed.

  She had come to Silver Lake to meet a client as a favor to Ben. He had asked that she handle this case personally and not pass it off to one of the junior associates. The client was a widow of an artist whose name meant nothing to Kate but Ben swore was famous. (A quick Google search confirmed that, but still, to Kate he remained anonymous.) The widow was his second wife and was being sued by the son from his first wife. He wanted access to his late father’s studio, so she had a guard posted outside (if Kate hadn’t seen him, she would have sworn it was untrue). Paintings were involved, as well as an endowment to MOMA in San Francisco. Apparently, Ben was an old college friend of this woman’s son from her union with the artist, hence the favor. And Kate wanted to be made partner, hence the acquiescence.

  The widow, Shelley, met Kate at the door barefoot, dressed in a pink caftan with little tiny mirrors along the hem that caught the light as she walked. Stringy gray hair fell nearly to her waist and several strands kept getting caught in the bell sleeves of her caftan as she gestured at some paintings she was sure Kate would recognize. They were bold studies of saturated colors, one bleeding into the next in horizontal lines, which Kate failed to understand or see the beauty in, but she did not let on that she didn’t recognize them. Then Shelley pointed to the guard out back, on the far side of the pool, policing the building that Kate assumed housed the studio. While Shelley walked Kate to the door of the studio, she did not invite her to look inside. She made it clear to Kate that would be something saved for a later visit. It was obvious to Kate that Shelley viewed her as a member of the sellout generation and was only putting up with the law because her stepson had forced her into this position.

  After their meeting, which Kate had left with five boxes of paperwork that the widow said contained her husband’s last wishes (Kate had lifted the corner of one of the lids only to find scribbling on the backs of envelopes, takeout menus, and torn scraps of paper), she had taken a wrong turn and ended up on the street in front of the house with the padlocked gate that was for sale.

  Ordinarily, she didn’t believe in signs. Nothing about her life up until this point had been propitious, left t
o chance or whimsy. Her sister was one of those people, ruled by desire, never thinking about the consequences. Amy had the moral compass of a Ping-Pong ball. Even agreeing to finally meet Eli after all those years had been a decision Kate agonized over. But there was something about that gate, and even more so about the thought of the house beyond, that made her curious enough to call Naomi. After she left her a second I really need you to call me back now voicemail, Kate drove into a more commercial area of town instead of getting back on the freeway and heading south toward downtown.

  From the car, she could see several coffeehouses, art galleries, bookstores, and clothing boutiques. She parked her leased Lexus next to a van whose back window and bumper were crusted with socially conscious bumper stickers. Everywhere she looked, there were statements of civic activism ranging from organic farms to impassioned pleas to buy local that rarely entered Kate’s speech. She went into the first coffee shop she came to and was never more aware of her black pantsuit and pearls. As Kate sat with her coffee at a table by the window, she fingered the strand of pearls self-consciously. But as she looked around the room, she realized no one was paying any attention to her. Some were reading, some were minding babies and talking, some were scribbling in notebooks. The ages probably ranged from her sister Amy’s age to a little older than herself. When she thought of Amy, she fidgeted in her chair. If Amy could see her here right now, she would probably smirk and say: “Who are you kidding?”

  She was about to abandon the foolish notion of the hidden house and chalk it up to a lark when her phone buzzed. It was Naomi calling her back.

  “What is it?” Kate asked, trying to quell the sudden excitement.

  “A dump,” Naomi said with a sigh. She paused for dramatic effect. “A tear-down.”

  Kate heard the word tear-down and immediately thought of her childhood home no longer there, a stone-and-glass monstrosity in its place. Had that been the selling point her mother had offered to the people who purchased it?

  “Kate? Are you there? Kate?”

  She cleared her throat to indicate she was still on the other end of the phone, but she couldn’t speak, not yet. If she even attempted to articulate what she was feeling…shit, who was she kidding? She didn’t even know what the hell she was feeling. Why all this emotion? Why now? Why was she so…so…so…clogged? Clogged. She thought about how she and her siblings had trespassed in the dark like thieves carrying the box of their father’s ashes. If she tried, she could still feel the soft dirt at the edge of the bank give way where her heels sunk into the mud. In response, Kate curled her toes inside her pumps as she felt a choking feeling in the back of her throat. She tried to lift her coffee to her lips but her hand was shaking so badly that she put the cup down. My God, she needed to get a grip.

  “We’ve been looking at condos, Kate,” Naomi continued. “This isn’t exactly move-in condition. And it’s in Silver Lake. Have you driven around Silver Lake?”

  “I’m sitting in a coffee shop right now.”

  “In Silver Lake?” Naomi asked. “Really?”

  “Yes,” Kate said harshly. A girl a few tables away from Kate looked up at her but then looked away when Kate caught her eye. Kate lowered her voice, picked up her coffee, and went out onto the sidewalk. “If you don’t want to help me, I’ll find another Realtor.”

  Naomi stammered. “I’m only asking you these questions because you never mentioned anything like this before. You wanted no maintenance and modern, close to the office. That’s what I’ve been trying to give you.”

  Kate sighed. She had chosen Naomi as her agent because she had been the only one on the entire associates’ sheet that had brown hair. The rest had been bleached, blow-dried, and Botoxed, and brown-haired Naomi had stood out as a beacon of sensibility and reason. And now? Of course she was right when she told Kate she had given her what she wanted all along. Yet even as Kate questioned what on earth she was thinking by wanting to see the house, she said, “Well, maybe I’ve changed my mind.”

  “Okay,” Naomi said. “I’ll see what I can do about getting you in there.”

  Before she left Silver Lake, Kate drove back to the property. She edged the car off the road and parked but didn’t get out. All those years of growing up in that run-down house, hating every single minute of it, counting the days until she could escape, and yet, she imagined she felt like her father probably did when he had found that house for them. Kate conveniently forgot the truth: that he bought the house because he had cash and his accountant advised him that he needed a write-off. She forgot that he fancied himself a handyman yet never completed a task. After that initial windfall to purchase the house, there was never enough cash to hire anyone, so things were left to disintegrate. Through the years, the house was overrun by animals in the eaves and the attic, faulty wiring that threatened fires, and windows that didn’t open, while her father holed up in his study, pretending to write or worse.

  But Kate was nothing if not practical, wasn’t she? And practical Kate tried to justify looking at this house by reasoning that her condo in Foggy Bottom had sold before the listing even went public. She had made a killing, so much so that if she didn’t buy something to roll over the profits into, she’d be screwed in capital gains alone, come tax season.

  She sighed as she turned the key in the ignition. She was getting way ahead of herself. What was she thinking? Was she buying a house for a dead man? Or for the imaginary life she wanted with the man she couldn’t have?

  The contents of the artist’s boxes were strewn across the floor of Kate’s office. She had attempted piles according to importance, although most of what was here amounted to incoherent diatribes. So far, only a few passages alluded to art and they were broad at best, mostly about the texture and color of the stucco on his next-door neighbor’s pool house. The writing was unremarkable save for the lone exception, a love letter to the black-bean hamburger at a place in the Yucatán where he had eaten a dozen or more years before. He was also a huge saver of receipts, ranging from the absurd (gum, newspapers, tea, the occasional Baby Ruth bar) to the legitimate (film, canvas, paper, brushes, and paint). He probably could have used an accountant. Or maybe he had imagined he’d save himself money keeping track of his expenses himself. Either way, it was a disaster and Kate quickly made a mountain of paper to throw away.

  The largest pile concerned his desire—or, more accurately, lust—for Shelley that Kate simply could not bring herself to read anymore. They apparently had voracious appetites for each other, and the artist always seemed to document their encounters on stained Chinese takeout menus. Kate came to the conclusion that MSG must have really rocked his libido. Or maybe Shelley was a lot younger than she appeared. Either way, this information wasn’t going to help Shelley (the contortionist) in her fight with the heirs, although it was definitely a boost for yoga practitioners everywhere.

  Kate was on the floor, crouched over the fourth box, when Naomi finally called with news on the house. Kate had just gotten off the phone with Ben. Their conversation had been terse and unproductive, and because of his love for the final word, when her phone buzzed, she was sure it was Ben again, with one more reminder. Ben hadn’t been pleased with her progress and urged her to look through the papers one more time. He even hinted that perhaps she was too emotional. That the artist’s death was too close to her own father’s death. It was funny, but until Ben said that, she hadn’t even been thinking about her father. Sure, his estate (if you could even use that word) had been in similar disarray. But the only thing that was remotely personal that he had left behind was expired coupons and that cryptic laundry list. He was unlike the artist, who obviously recorded every little detail of his life. Of course, by the time her father had probably thought to write something down, the tumor had eaten away at his ability to reason. In order to prove Ben wrong, she had gotten off the phone and attacked the boxes with renewed vigor. She really wanted to ask him what stake he held in all of this—but she bit her tongue. Above all else, she
was not stupid enough to jeopardize what she had worked so hard for all these years.

  Her heart beat fast as she reached for the phone.

  “Kate?”

  “Here,” Kate said, trying to make her voice appear nonchalant.

  “Can you get away this afternoon? Around five?”

  She glanced down at her calendar and ran a shaky index finger over the end of her day. She had scheduled a staff meeting for four, but she could push it to a dinner meeting at seven. “Sure,” she said, as she stood up from the floor and e-mailed the change to her staff.

  “Okay,” Naomi said with trepidation, “just don’t act like I didn’t warn you about the place.”

  Kate laughed. “I get it—this is ARO: against Realtor’s orders.”

  Naomi returned the laugh and signed off while Kate returned to the pieces of paper on the floor. For once, she was relieved to be numb with busywork.

  It had taken a few days to get into the house, because the lock had to be cut off the gate before Kate and Naomi arrived. In its place was a shiny new padlock with buttons that Naomi manipulated until it fell open in her hands. She swung the gate wide and then got back behind the wheel of the car. It was all Kate could do to keep herself in her seat belt as they drove up the rutted path. The first thought Kate had as the house came into view was of the Seven Dwarfs. Hadn’t Walt Disney imagined a place just like this?