Palisades

palisades [plural] US : a line of steep cliffs especially along a river or ocean

The special imported tea had been steeping for the requisite seven minutes in the Wedgwood teapot, and Adele poured it into two exquisite matching teacups. She and Eddie both brought the fragrant cups close to their faces and looked through the steam as they sipped, contemplating the glorious Pacific view, and their future.

Her grandmother’s funeral had been four days ago, and today they’d had a disappointing meeting with the lawyer. Adele knew her grandmother, Veronica, had been depleting the family fortune for years. It had started when her so-called financial advisor had drained several of her accounts and disappeared. After that debacle her daughter Margaret, Adele’s mother, had taken over the money management, but it was really too late. Maintaining the gorgeous family home was expensive, and the remaining investments just weren’t up to the task. And Veronica angrily resisted any attempts to help her live within her means.

For years, everyone from her daughter to her lawyer to her doctor had been telling Veronica it was time to sell the house and its contents. As long as she stayed, there was no cash money to speak of, but if she sold it all, she’d have plenty to spend, likely tens of millions. They argued that she could move into the best senior living community in Los Angeles and live like a queen, instead of hermitting away in the five-bedroom mansion she’d grown up in.

But she refused to consider it. Meanwhile, her daughter Margaret had died last year in Arizona, after a long struggle with breast cancer. In her last days, when Adele had been with her, waiting for the inevitable, they’d talked about Veronica. 

“I’m sorry, sweetie, but this will be on you now. There’s nobody else. The lawyer is good, but a family member needs to be her official conservator and sign the papers. I know you don’t want to force her into anything, but maybe you’ll be able to talk her into it. Try to get her to sell the house now. Maybe she’ll listen to you.”

That hadn’t worked out at all. Veronica had been impervious to Adele’s arguments and Adele couldn’t bring herself to force her grandmother to move. Veronica could no longer afford household help, let alone the full time caregiver she really needed, so Adele and her husband Eddie moved in with her. They quickly came to love the rambling old home with the high ceilings, big closets, and spectacular Pacific views. They had even fantasized about staying on after Veronica eventually died, and had been thinking about ways to make that possible. Adele had quit her job to care for her grandmother and the house, but obviously she could get another job when the time came. But selling the contents of the house seemed the best chance of raising a lot of money quickly.

Veronica loved her possessions, mostly collected by her parents, everything the best quality and tastefully chosen. Some of the furniture and paintings, and several pieces of jewelry, were precious enough to have been loaned to museums in the past. When Veronica was up to wandering around the house with her walker, she loved talking about each item with Adele, who took note of it all: The carved antique furniture, the glass-enclosed clocks and figurines, the paintings by famous artists, the handwoven carpets and tapestries, the highest quality everything.

Obviously, Adele and Eddie hadn’t been able to get it all appraised while Veronica was alive, but they’d done enough internet searching to believe that once it was Adele’s, they’d be able to sell the many precious items for a small fortune. They hoped that would allow them to make the family home their own, a place to have children and make memories in one of the most beautiful places on earth.

But looking at the cold hard numbers today, it had been clear to them that this was a wish they just needed to let go of. If they sold the house and the contents, even accounting for the debt that clung to everything, there would be a significant sum for Adele and Eddie to start a new life, but not in this house. It was just an old-fashioned mansion that was crumbling, and suffering from decades of deferred maintenance that would require a million-dollar-plus remodel just to make the plumbing work right and replace wiring and windows and deal with dry rot. They’d have to pay for that by selling the contents of the house, and then they still wouldn’t have the money they needed to manage the expenses of actually living there. 

Tomorrow they’d look for an appraiser for the exquisite treasures the house held, and they’d start talking to real estate agents about the property itself. But today, they sat near the curved window in the formal parlor with their tea, hoping the steam would metaphorically cleanse their minds, and chase away the disappointment. They talked about where they might want to move — anything would be a letdown after this view from the Palisades, the Pacific Ocean in one direction and the lights of the magical city of L.A. in the other. At least they wouldn’t be starting from scratch. The sum the lawyer had speculated would be left over was enough to elevate their lifestyles and make them homeowners, though certainly not in this neighborhood.

At last they walked out onto the deck and gazed at the vista all around. The morning was hazy, and there was the smell of smoke in the air, but grassfires were common in this part of California and there had been a couple in the last few days. More worrisome was the swift, gusty wind that rattled the deck furniture and whipped the branches of the nearby trees. As they turned to go inside, Eddie pointed and said “Whoa! That’s close!” Just out of sight through the leafy neighborhood was some kind of fire, enough to be sending thick smoke toward the ocean in the wind.

“That’s not good. That’s way too close. Wait, do you think it’s burning houses?” Just as Adele finished speaking, an orange column of flame whipped up from the ground fire that they could now see was just blocks away. Glowing embers, riding on the wind, began to rain down around them.

They froze in place for a moment before kicking into the evacuation mode that every Californian learns, a process reinforced by the media after every fire disaster.

“I’ll get the go bag,” said Eddie. “What else?” He ran for their emergency bag that contained passports, important papers. He slipped in both their laptops but didn’t wait to find charger cords. Adele, mentally ticking through the treasures to find something small and valuable she could save, ran to her grandmother’s bedroom and retrieved the large jewelry case, full of three generations of diamonds, gold, and other precious stones, set in jewelry pieces fit for royalty. On her way out the door, she grabbed her purse from the coat rack.

Seven minutes from the time they had been looking at the view from the deck, they were in the car. By now, embers were raining all around them, the house’s exotic shrubbery was burning, and there was a small fire on the roof, and another at the side of the garage. 

The road was already crowded by the time they got there, horns honking and panicked faces in the windows. It wasn’t clear why the cars were so slow, and why they were stopping every few moments in gridlock.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!” shouted Eddie, pounding the steering wheel as Adele craned her neck out the window, trying to see the road ahead through the gathering smoke. As they watched, a fresh hail of embers rained down. There were fires, carried by the wind, all around them. The car ahead of them had a fire close by its side, and with nowhere to go, the family inside scrambled to get out of the car on the other side, screaming. Just as they had exited, a burning tree came down on top of their car, setting it ablaze and blocking the road for everyone.

Eddie and Adele looked at each other. “This is it,” said Adele, and simultaneously Eddie shouted “We’re not going anywhere in the car. Let’s go!”

“I’ll get the jewel box!”

“Leave it! There’s no time!”

“My purse! My stuff!” It seemed like the flames were everywhere.

“There’s no time!” and Eddie pulled Adele away from the car, which they could see was about to be taken over by flames on the ground. Through the choking smoke they joined dozens of neighbors, all running downhill for their lives. They tried to stay close to the road, but the flames were chasing them and they went wherever they could see a break in the fire. 

An ember fell on Eddie’s jacket, and he brushed it off before it could catch. Another fell on Adele’s head, and she shook it free from her hair, screaming in panic. They kept running, making their way around and over barriers, and after what seemed like hours, they were standing on a street below the cliffs, dirty, coughing, hearts pounding, tears flowing. Later, they were relieved but shocked to hear that no one had died in that panicked escape. But so many homes were gone, a whole neighborhood burning and devastated.

Hours later, sitting in folding chairs at an evacuation center in Westwood, they were almost too exhausted to contemplate their next step. They had no family in the area, almost no family at all except for cousins in other states. They had nowhere to live. They had no clothes, no car, no computers. The valuables they’d had in the car were burned, melted, and by now, bulldozed. The mansion Adele had inherited, and that they’d counted on to be their future security, was presumably leveled, gone as the neighborhood was gone. Eddie had his phone and his wallet. Adele had nothing at all.

They sat, hollow-eyed, glancing at each other from time to time thinking, “What do we do now?” But neither said the words out loud. It was pointless. No one knew. Even if they did know, they were so heavy with weariness they could barely move at all.

At first, neither noticed the volunteers moving around the room with clipboards, talking to other stunned and filthy fire victims. Some with clipboards wore clerical collars, some were dressed like office workers, and others were in jeans and sweatshirts. After a time, one of the jeans-sweatshirts ones came to them, checked their names on a list, pulled up another folding chair, and sat in front of them.

“I’m Jenny,” she said. “Do you want to talk about what happened?” They looked at each other and shrugged, so weary they could hardly respond. Just a few hours ago, they’d been sad because they couldn’t live in the beautiful home in Pacific Palisades forever, but they’d known they had the resources to start again. Now they didn’t have any idea if they had anything at all. In a couple of days, they’d get the energy to call the lawyer. Meanwhile, all they could do was sit.

“Do you need a medical check? Are you breathing okay? Did you hurt yourself at all when you were evacuating?” They shook their heads. 

“We just…” said Adele. “We lost everything. I just don’t know…” And the three of them contemplated the sea of bruised and despairing people filling the community center, some weeping, some staring at the floor, most probably in the same situation of having lost all they had. 

Jenny nodded sympathetically. “This is a terrible thing you’re going through. See all the people. Everyone needs help, but here’s the thing. We can help them. We can help you. You’re not alone.” She leaned forward and squeezed their hands. “We’ll be able to help you with the information side of this, figuring out claims and deeds and so forth, probably by tomorrow,” said the kindly volunteer. “Tonight, if you don’t have anywhere to go, we’ll have hotel vouchers and transportation for you. They’re still setting up that part of it, but they’ll get it done and we will take care of it for you. Meanwhile, how about something to eat? We have sandwiches.”

Eddie and Adele looked at each other and shrugged again. Neither felt hungry and the thought of eating wasn’t welcome at all.

The volunteer saw that in their faces. “Well, at least I’m going to get you a cup of tea,” she said. They watched as she went to the table by the wall, extracted two teabags from their paper wrappers and put them in paper cups, pouring boiling water in them. She brought them back with a handful of sugar packets and a smile, said a few reassuring words, and was off to talk to others.

Adele and Eddie breathed the steamy air rising from their cardboard cups, and sipped the bitter black tea. It tasted right — harsh, strong, and energizing. “There will be something left, right?” asked Eddie. “It won’t be a total loss, right?”

Adele shrugged. “I suppose. The lot will still be worth something, I guess. And she had insurance, not enough, but some.”

They both brought the cardboard cups close to their faces and looked through the steam as they sipped, contemplating the roomful of victims, and their own future.