by Deb Caletti
There were also various boyfriends. Ben Salvador. Super nice. He made enchiladas even a kid would like. Roberto-someone, who always remarked on what Lila ate and how she dressed. Something was always too tight or not tight enough. Trace Williams, who “had a temper.” Had a temper, like it was a pet hamster. Erik. Derek. Enough that a few had names that rhymed.
Every time, it looked like this: Things would be going along fine, him being the big strong guy, her being the delicate flower, until she didn’t want some controlling asshole telling her what to do anymore. She really didn’t need rescuing, and the man arms just got suffocating after a while. His macho gallantry was actually domineering jerkdom. She’d speak up. She’d push back. Because, basically, she was strong. She was capable. She could get what she wanted. People forget that “feminine” doesn’t mean “weak.” Maybe she forgot that, too.
The You be the little girl and I’ll be the big, strong daddy deal that the guy loved so much would blow up in his face. This would piss him off greatly. He’d wonder where his sweet, frail Lila had gone. She’d wonder how he didn’t know she was more than that, way more, all along. Of course she was. She couldn’t have gotten where she did if she weren’t.
He’d feel pushed away. Rejected. A hole was blown through the thin membrane of his ego. She’d stopped caring about his ego weeks before. Propping it up by letting him be bigger all the time had gotten exhausting. And, you know, that was why he chose her. To be the bodyguard of his ego.
That’s when the trouble would start.
By “trouble” I mean divorces and slammed doors, money problems, you know. His car screeching off, unopened bills stacking up. Not the trouble that was coming as I stood in that airport.
Not danger.
* * *
Lila wasn’t there.
I looked around the waiting area. A woman hugged a man in an army uniform. An elderly couple greeted a little girl. A guy in a suit stood around holding a Starbucks cup. But no Lila. I waited. Sometimes she was late. A lot of times she was late. Late gave you the spotlight. I wondered if I should go down to baggage claim and look for her there, even though I never checked luggage because I had most everything I needed at her house.
I tried to call. No answer. Just her voice on the recording: Oh, just do the thing!
“Where are you?” I said, and then hung up.
All of the fun excitement I’d managed to feel was vanishing fast.
I went to the airport bathroom and chose the first stall, and also used some paper towels to turn the faucet on and off. I missed Ellen and Meredith already. So much. Also, Cora and Hoodean, and even our dorm supervisor, Mrs. Chen, who was kind of cold and bossy, but so what. I wanted to cry. I almost did. I actually wadded up some paper towels and put cold water on my face so I wouldn’t.
When I came out of the bathroom, he was there.
Jake Antonetti.
I knew it was him instantly. And he was standing right outside, like he was sure I was in that bathroom.
I just took him in for a second. His stocky build. Really stocky, that kind of muscle-mass square body that meant he probably played football back in high school. His squarish head and hooded eyes and jet-black hair turning ever so slightly gray at the temples. His nose, which bent strongly to the left, maybe from a fist or an aggressive tackle. My first thought was, you wouldn’t want to mess with him. Which meant, ugh, he was just Lila’s type.
“Hey, sorry I’m late,” he said. And then he hugged me. Ew. I didn’t even know the guy. He had those squatty fingers that look like a row of wrestlers standing on a mat. I felt them pressing into my back. His cologne wrapped around me.
“Where’s my mom?” I didn’t say, Where’s Lila? It was childish, but I wanted him to know who got there first.
“She hurt her… like, her wrist or hand or something. I guess the dog yanked—”
“Dog?”
“The German shepherd.”
“We got a dog?”
“Nah, he’s mine.”
Lila didn’t like dogs. Dogs jumped up on your dresses and snagged your silk blouses and did disgusting stuff like poop and pee and need you at the wrong times, kind of like kids.
I felt a little rise of hope, though. If I had to have Jake in my life, at least he came with a dog. We’d never had one with a dog before. Kevin-someone had a cat, and Papa Chesterton had horses, but that was the grand total of pets.
“Baggage?” he asked.
“Probably lots.”
“I’ll get a cart.”
“It was a joke. You know, lots of baggage, haha?”
“Oh, hey. Yeah.” He chuckled.
God.
I wanted to turn around and go home. The IT optimism I had when I was packing seemed stupid now. This was my life. We made our way through the airport to the parking garage. Somehow, he’d taken my bag and was carrying it. There was a corridor of awkward silence between us.
“I’m over here.”
I followed. I realized as we were walking that I didn’t really know anything about the guy. Lila usually spilled way too many details, but she’d been weirdly quiet about him. For all I knew, he might be a nice teacher. He could work in computer sales. Maybe he was a film producer, or a screenwriter, or a chef.
He pointed his keys in the general direction of the row of cars in the lot. A bleep-bleep chirped. I tried to figure out where it was coming from.
Then I saw it. A yellow Lamborghini.
He wasn’t a teacher.
Even when we lived with Papa Chesterton in Hidden Hills, we didn’t see many of those. The doors lifted like the wings of a praying mantis. I got in. I held my bag of candy on my lap. Back in the Milk Duds factory, those little chewy nuggets never imagined they’d end up here.
Neither did I.
Once he got out of the parking lot, Jake Antonetti hit the accelerator, and I held on.
And I held on and I held on. I held on until that rainy night in August.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Exhibit 10: Aerial photo of Sea Cliff Drive, east/west
Exhibit 11: Aerial photo of Sea Cliff Drive, north/south
I’d been to the Sea Cliff house only twice before, for a few days over Thanksgiving break and for a week at Christmas. I know that seems strange. People who live in one house their whole lives—like my friend Cora, for example—can’t imagine it.
“How does it feel like home?” she asked.
“Home is where your family is,” I answered, but this was a lie. I only said it because I knew the moving thing worried her. Honestly, the idea of home was confusing. If it meant what was most familiar, then home was there, in that dorm. With her and Lizzie, and our other friends, Hailey and Gia, and even Mrs. Chen. Home was Meredith’s house, where we’d go and watch TV and Ellen would make us popcorn, and Meredith’s sister and dad would come in and we’d throw pillows at them. Home was Edwina’s, even if she told me to get my feet off the furniture, and said stuff like Do you think I’m the maid? I’m not the maid, and asked me if I’d met any new boys since Daniel. Samuel, but whatever.
If home was what you knew and what knew you, then home was the big evergreen out my window, and rainy, rainy days, where the needles would drip, and windy, stormy ones, where the boughs would bend and shake. Home was the curve of the Montlake Cut and the houses that followed its south bank. Home was Coach Dave, and the crew team. Yeah. Definitely them. Home was my favorite teachers: Terrence Oglio, English; Jayne Fiori, art. Or maybe, home was a longing for a place I’d never been.
It was hard to get attached, after all the houses. Papa Chesterton’s mansion in Hidden Hills, the Spanish colonial a few blocks from the beach in Santa Monica. When Lila wanted to “escape pretension” (meaning her Papa Chesterton money was running low), there had been the smaller redwood-and-glass contemporary in Topanga Canyon. She sold that one a little over a year ago to rent the one on Sea Cliff Drive. Our family has a long history in San Francisco, which is why she moved there, Lila said. Edwina was rai
sed in the city too. She told me a million times about her beautiful great-grandmother Ella, who survived the 1906 earthquake and fire. The story was, Ella fled with only her baby and her wedding photo, her cruel husband trapped in the blaze. Whether it felt like home or not, now that I was in that car with Jake, I couldn’t wait to get there. Or maybe I just wanted to get out of that car. Jake wasn’t much of a conversationalist, though I admit I wasn’t exactly helping. I stared out the window as we drove down 101, turned onto busy Octavia Boulevard, and then finally headed down Fell, where I started to recognize things—the Painted Ladies (the row of Victorian houses on all the postcards), Golden Gate Park, with its big glass conservatory.
“You like the car?” Jake finally said.
“Yeah. It’s nice.” It sounded brattier then I meant. But then again, he was fishing for compliments, so yuck.
“Aventador,” he said. I had no idea what that meant. It sounded like a character in one of Hoodean’s video games. Maybe Jake was showing off his flair for languages. C’est la vie, carpe diem, aventa dor.
“I’ll let you drive it if you promise not to crash into a tree.”
“I don’t even have my permit yet. And Lila doesn’t want me to drive until I’m older.”
“You’re kidding me. The minute I turned fifteen, boom. No one took you to get it? All these years?” He was ready to be pissed at Lila or Edwina on my behalf, which, honestly, was kind of nice.
“It hasn’t been years. I’m only fifteen now.”
He seemed truly confused. He gave me that Whaa? look.
“Well, basically sixteen. My birthday’s tomorrow.”
He raised his eyebrows at me like this was surprising information, but I couldn’t imagine Lila not mentioning either of these things. And then, I swear to God, his eyes went straight to my boobs, but maybe I was wrong, or just feeling uncomfortable in that small space. “Wow, well, you look a lot older.”
This was news to me. I tried to sneak a glance at myself in his side mirror to see if he was right. It was hard to tell. I was used to myself. Maybe I did look a little older.
It was quiet for a while. And then, “So, you like school?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s your favorite subject?”
“All.”
“All, huh?” He chuckled like I was a real go-getter.
After this, we ran out of conversation topics. Jake tapped his fingers on the steering wheel as he drove. I could tell I was making him nervous. I noticed the giant diamond ring on his right hand. It was one of those big, clunky kinds that look like college rings but aren’t. Every time we hit a red light, he exhaled as if the world were against him.
We were on Twenty-Seventh—I was paying attention to street signs so I could learn my way around—when he started whistling. He looked over at me and lifted his eyebrows in some sort of question, only I didn’t know what the question was. Then he grinned. I smiled back. I was supposed to smile back, but I felt uneasy in that hard-to-explain way, like when a certain man sits next to you on a bus. Or like that time Gia’s brother drove me back to the dorm after her birthday dinner. You don’t get the creeps exactly, just the pre-creeps. You start imagining how you’ll roll out of the speeding vehicle if you need to.
I smiled back out of duty, but he must have thought we were pals now, because he reached over and squeezed my knee with his two fingers, in that place where it really hurts. He shook it a little, like we were playing a game. I think I was supposed to squeal. Instead, I said, “Ow,” and he took his hand back, and I couldn’t tell, but I thought he looked pissed.
The scenery was a disorienting mix of the familiar and unfamiliar, since the city was still newish to me. I was sure I recognized a street of tightly packed houses, but then again, it looked like all the other streets of tightly packed houses. Suddenly, though, the homes got larger and nicer. There was more space between them. And then, yeah, those I recognized—two cement pillars standing like guards on either side of the street, with the little metal plates labeled SEA CLIFF.
The first house through the pillars was a white wedding-cake mansion with a manicured green lawn. The street was wide and roomy, and the houses had actual yards, and the gray sky got brighter and larger, as it does when you get closer to the ocean. There were terra-cotta roofs and brick stairwells, hedges cut into fancy shapes. There were columned estates with large, curved white windows and embellished balconies and gated driveways. You felt the calm orderliness of money. You felt the way some people paid other people to clean up their messes. You felt… like there were lots of secrets hidden behind all that order.
The crew from a yard service swarmed a lawn like hedge-clipping ants. A leaf blower hummed, and the smallest gathering of leaves blew up like confetti. In between the houses, I spotted glimpses of the Pacific Ocean and the orange Golden Gate Bridge. We made a left and there it was: 716 Sea Cliff Drive.
You’ve seen it, I know, but for the record, Lila’s house was a Mediterranean-style stucco painted a Tuscan orange, with a large stucco wall closing off the garden. It was maybe the fixer-upper on the street. At least, the garage needed a tiny bit of painting in spots, and the grass had a few rogue dandelions.
As Jake pulled into the drive, I was suddenly nervous to see Lila. This always happened. Even though she was ever-present, in texts and calls and magazines right on my lap, not seeing her for almost six months could make it feel like our first date. My stomach fluttered.
“All righty. Here you go,” Jake said. He released the trunk so I could get my pack.
“Thanks.”
Thanks. It was the wrong word. The very most wrong word. I forgive myself, because we say a lot of wrong things to a lot of wrong people. Still, when I think about it now, I want to spit that word right out of my mouth. I can see it landing in the dirt, feeding some ancient tree, one with the kind of big, old roots that crack sidewalks and lift foundations, same as an earthquake.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Exhibit 12: Floor plan, 716 Sea Cliff Drive
Exhibit 13: Photo of 716 Sea Cliff Drive, main entry
As I headed up the walkway to the door, I heard Jake’s dog barking his head off. Actually, he sounded like he wanted to rip mine off. Visions of some adorable puppy vanished in two seconds.
“Max!” I heard Lila yell from behind the door. “For God’s sake!”
I figured it might be better if I didn’t just walk in. If Max thought I was an intruder, he might tear my leg off like I was the turkey and this was Thanksgiving. Jake was still in the car on his phone, so I rang the bell. The dog went insane.
“Knock it off, you idiot!” Lila shouted. When she opened the door, she had the dog by the collar. Or rather, the dog had her by the hand. He had the golden brown and black coat of a German shepherd, and his teeth were bared, and his toes slid and skittered along on the marble entry like the most furious novice ice-skater you’ve ever seen in your life.
“Niiiiice puppy,” I crooned.
“Jesus!” Lila was using every muscle in her body to hold him back.
But then Jake came up the walk, tucking his phone into his pocket, and before my very eyes, the dog transformed into an entirely different animal, the loving little angel in sweet reunion with his master. His limbs were his own again. He wound and bumped through Jake’s legs as Jake kept walking, ignoring him. I actually felt kind of sorry for the dog—insulted by Lila, snubbed by Jake. He was like the bad kid that acted out in class because no one paid attention to him.
Jake kissed Lila’s neck. “We’re back,” he said. But now Lila was doing the ignoring. The kiss was like a bee she swatted away.
“Hey, guy.” I scruffed the dog’s scary head and patted his large, intimidating body. “You’re a beautiful boy,” I told him. This was too much love too fast, because then he jumped up excitedly and we were staring at each other, eye to eye. I gave him a big shove down. In two seconds, I had dog hair all over me, but I didn’t mind.
“Don’t I get a hello?” Lil
a said. “Baby! I am so glad to see you. Come here.”
I hugged her. She smelled like Lila—the gentleness of orange blossoms, the aggressiveness of spice. Of course she looked beautiful, in her white capris and a sleeveless navy top, her hair up in a stylish messy bun. Her wrist was wrapped in an Ace bandage. Lila was always getting injured or sick. Twisted ankles, broken fingers, mysterious stomach maladies. Little amber pill bottles lined her bathroom sink.
“What happened to your arm?”
“Damn dog pulled me right to the ground when the UPS man came. I’m sure it’s a sprain. Baby, I missed you! Get in here.”
Inside, the terra-cotta floors opened to a large staircase, which curved upward, like the inside of a seashell. The kitchen and the dining room were on the main level, and so was the centerpiece of the house, a large living room done all in white—white rugs, white furniture, white pillows. Lila called it the White Room, for reasons that should now be obvious. The entire back of the room was glass—windows that looked out onto the Pacific, and glass doors that opened to the patio, which perched scenically over the cliff. From there, an orange stucco staircase wound like a maze down to China Beach.
Lila told me she’d gotten a great deal renting the place, but this was hard to imagine. How could the word deal even sit in the same sentence with that house? That view. It took your breath away. Literally, like a sock in the stomach. Even when I knew what to expect, I walked in that day and wow. There it all was—the sea and the Marin Headlands, laid out like nature’s most valuable work of art. And the Golden Gate Bridge, too, right there, looking close enough to touch. It shocked me, how beautiful that view was. It pulled me toward it. I went to the glass and looked out.
“You want lunch? I ordered all your favorites. Beecher’s mac and cheese? Those lovely tomato basil paninis?” Beecher’s mac and cheese was my favorite when I was six, and the tomato basil paninis were her favorite, but I didn’t care. I was happy she’d thought of me.