This Must Be The Place

On love and renovation

Many years ago, on our way to breakfast, Emma and I drove along the street in Los Angeles where I’d lived as a kid. It was our first trip to L.A. together. “This must be it,” I said, pulling up to the curb, though I wasn’t sure. The entire block was unrecognizable to me.

“That’s our old house, right there,” I said.

“That one?” Emma said. “It looks sweet.”

The last time I saw this house, it was a wreck: half of the roof caved in, a translucent plastic tarp stretched across a gaping hole, broken rafters visible through the tarp like bared teeth. A forty-foot Sycamore tree had toppled and smashed our house, tilting the facade so that our front door wouldn’t close properly. The front yard was a jumble of cut logs. We lived under that tarped roof for three years, finally moving out when I was thirteen. It felt like living in a ruin.

“It’s kind of adorable,” Emma said. “Look at the flowers, and the trellis.”

She was right; it looked happy and inviting, a flagstone path leading up to a pine green door, fringed by jasmine and roses. It was clean, bright, fixed up. So many skylights! I felt such a swirl of feelings about all of this, that someone had restored our former wreck into something so lovely.

Huge swaths of L.A. have been remodeled beyond recognition, of course. But I somehow imagined our little house by the freeway had escaped all of that. I wanted Emma to see what I’d come from, what I’d survived, but looking at this house, it was hard to imagine.

Even the 405 Freeway, a half-block up, was now hidden behind a thirty-foot wall covered with ivy, the wall itself obscured behind purple-flowered lantana and crepe myrtle trees.

“All of this was much shabbier before,” I said, waving a hand at the expensively landscaped houses, the lush citrus trees and fancy desertscapes. I could see that Emma was unable to picture it, nodding half-heartedly.

“I’m sure it was shabby,” she said, giving me an encouraging little pat on the arm. She was already thinking about our next stop: breakfast tacos, lattes, and meeting my mom for the first time.

A few months earlier, as a new couple, Emma and I lay in the dark in my Brooklyn bedroom. She had just told me a little about her childhood, going to Jesus camp and having to move to New Jersey as a shy British teen. She wanted to know how it was for me as a kid.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It was pretty crazy.” She pressed further.

What could I even begin to say? I didn’t tell anyone about these things. Sometimes I’d meet another person who also came from chaos and violence, and we would recognize something between us, like a shared language. I always felt like I could just sense it in others. Across the room, I’d get a sort of recognition: Oh, you’re like me. Sometimes it’s something small, like the way I notice you’re quietly keeping tabs on everyone.

I’m still half-convinced I have this sense, though these days I’m less sure of everything. Of course, the more people I talk to, the more I see how no one had it as easy as I once imagined. We were all pretending so much of the time, hiding so much.

Lying in the dark, feeling like I was stepping off a ledge into a void, I told Emma about some of the violence that fell on our house like a heavy rain. How our kitchen walls were carved up, from one of my mom’s “bad nights.” How she dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night by the pajama collar and stood me in the corner, telling me I was worthless and rotten, and that everyone could see it. How she seemed almost possessed in these moments, her eyes wild. How I’d then go to school with no sleep, trying to pretend to be a regular kid.

I worried immediately that I’d said too much. “Go on,” Emma said, reaching for my hand. “Tell me more.”

The night before I met Emma, my mom was visiting me in Brooklyn, and I met her for dinner in Fort Greene, bringing my pal Laurie along for moral support. Laurie had just set me up on a blind date for the following night. Much to my dismay, she started telling my mom about it.

“I just know it, they’re going to fall in love and get married,” Laurie told my mom, who started clapping and making weird happy mom noises, as if this were actual news we were celebrating.

“Okay,” I said. “Maybe we could tone it down a notch. I haven’t even met this person.”

“Emma,” my mom said, luxuriating in the name, like she was wrapping herself in a warm scarf.

After the brief visit to my old street, Emma and I drove toward my family’s favorite Mexican breakfast spot. My mom was waiting just inside, looking beautiful and glamorous, as always. This petite Aussie woman with bright blue eyes. She hugged me, then Emma. I could see how nervous she was, how much she wanted Emma to like her.

We were seated at a small wrought iron table with dark red napkin rolls. My mom started up with her anxious little habit of pointing out things that were right in front of us.

“They have chips and salsa here,” she said, pointing at the basket of chips and salsa.

“They do,” I said.

This habit of hers always irked me, but I felt a great tenderness toward her in that moment, seeing how much she wanted everything to be okay. Hadn’t she always, in spite of everything, just wanted everything to be okay? There was always, without question, so much love in her heart, which was so flawed, and so tender at the same time. I know a little about what my mom went through back in Australia, and it’s just unthinkable. Whatever I went through, what she survived was far, far worse.

Emma excused herself to find the bathroom, and of course, of course, my mom had to say it.

“Well, this one’s a keeper,” she said.

“Yes, she is,” I said. “By the way, on our way here, we stopped by to see our old house.”

“Oh,” my mom said. She looked worried. Her greatest fear was always people knowing anything of those days. I wanted to tell her that I’d told Emma some things, that I’d been honest with her, and that she was still here.

“All of that was such a long, long time ago,” I said. “You wouldn’t even recognize the place.”

I pictured our old house again. Along with the tarped roof and the troubles, I had a flash memory of my little sister and me blasting music and dancing around the living room in our socks, seeing who could come up with the funniest dance move, flapping around and laughing while our mom made dinner. Nothing’s ever just one thing.

As Emma returned to the table, my mom was a little teary. I wanted to ease her worry, somehow send her a message that everything was okay—maybe beam it right across the table to her. She looked toward the window at the sidewalk beyond, then futzed with her napkin, wiping her mouth twice, and folding it again.

“Well,” she said.

“Well,” Emma said, smiling.

My mom looked over at Emma, then at me. Something in her shoulders relaxed a little. She was back, right here at the table with us. It wouldn’t last long, this brief spell between worries, but just then the whole day was before us, everything suddenly unencumbered. She reached out with both her hands, and patted Emma’s hand and mine at the same time, her face illuminated with relief.

“Isn’t this just lovely,” she said.