So we moved into our rented house on Friday. It’s five minutes from George’s 90-year-old dad whom we haven’t seen in a week. During our walkthrough with the woman who owns the house, who is also a mother of teenage girls, I showed her a picture of Catherine. The timestamp stops me cold: January 4th. I say that was three days before our house burned, when Catherine and her boyfriend D. went to a Lakers Game. Fuck.
We keep saying shit like that during the walkthrough. “Oh yeah, we used to have one of those,” I say. “Not anymore,” George adds, looking up from his phone.
I think our landlady is ready to end the walkthrough.
We are all beyond exhausted and yet we can’t sleep. We don’t feel “home.” The dogs barked a lot last night. George and I both take over-the-counter sleep aids but they have stopped working for me.
It was one thing when we were in the temporary Airbnb. That was clearly temporary. It’s another thing being in this place now, for the longer term. We are still in a temporary place, only the temporary is now permanent – at least temporarily permanent. And it starts to set in. And it doesn’t feel good. We are renting someone else’s home with someone else’s stuff. It’s like it’s their sponges, their strainers, their couches, their beds. We have entered and will stay in someone else’s home.
I constantly feel like I’m in a movie - acting in it and watching it at the same time. There are even some aspects that have heart. The acting is okay but it’d be better if everyone showed their emotions a little more - were a little less, I dunno, flat. They also need to DO something - be more active - get off their asses, stop whining and have some fun - get off their computers and ride around on electric bikes - the wind blowing in their hair! This movie - the whole storyline is ONE NOTE.
It’s time. For the credits to roll, the movie to stop, the lights to come up.
But every morning, I wake up - and I’m still here. Groundhog day. I have not learned my lesson yet so let's do this over again. Let’s do this thing - let’s load this up - and one more day. And the movie plays again…
No, please…seriously? Let’s do a different movie. I’m tired of this one! Lemme click my heels - “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home….”
George and I sit across from each other - unbathed - the dogs beside us - our laptops open. George has me adding things to his spreadsheets. But I’ve missed a column. I’ve just listed the thing but not the price.
“Oh my God! This does not help me! I need the price!” He screams (sort of).
I tell him I have been trying to gather receipts: that’s what I WAS doing when he took me off receipt gathering to go to his spreadsheet.
“Just do an inventory of the thing then later we will research how much it would cost to replace the thing. That’s how you said we’d do this,” I protest.
“But it doesn’t help! I need how much the thing costs!” He says. “I can’t do this alone!”
The potato masher, the can opener…I AM LOSING MY MIND. THIS IS THE WORST ONLINE SHOPPING TRIP EVER. I AM DROWNING IN TABS AND COLUMNS. AND NO MATTER WHAT I AM DOING, I AM DOING THE WRONG THING. I AM IN THE WRONG PLACE. Column H instead of G. The kitchen instead of the bathroom or Blaze’s room.
“You’re not doing this FOR ME,” he says. He is right, of course.
We are doing this FOR US. The whole big sprawling mess of us. Blaze and Catherine and my mom - and the dogs - and Blaze’s boyfriend and Catherine’s boyfriend.
If it were only me, I might have given up by now. I might have taken the afternoon off, or even the weekend. George has always been the parent to do some of the really shitty jobs - hose down the vomit, do the 1 AM pick up from Pasadena. It’s probably good George is such a taskmaster. FOR ALL OF US.
Still, it is NO FUN.
George informs me that no matter what reimbursement we get from the insurance company, no matter how many receipts for bras I find, we will keep the funds in a bank and they will go into our home rebuilding. We will not spend these funds on more stuff because rebuilding is likely to be very, very expensive. And I’m like - but what if I need bras? Or a belt?
(My mom and I have now realized we are doing GREAT with socks. Two weeks in, thanks to an amazing care package from the Droz family and one of Mom’s partners, we got socks - we got koozies - we got all the essentials. :))
But I still need bras and a belt. No one is going to give me a bra and a belt. That’s more personal. That’s on me.
But George makes it very clear: we are not accumulating anymore stuff. We are doing this inventory of the shit we used to have to get as much money as we possibly can from our insurance company but knowing we will likely need to put that money into something else. Like the foundation.
I honestly feel like this is a kind of hell. I did this inventory shit from 5:30 AM yesterday until 8:00 PM. How is that even possible?
My mother moved into her one-bedroom apartment on Friday, too. She’s got a great view but her place is very impersonal. It’s like she’s living in a Courtyard by Marriott. Or in an Olympic athlete's dorm. Her walls are white. She has nothing on the walls. She misses her art.
When I’m supposed to have moved on to the next room, I sneak a look at Facebook and someone else’s post. See how Sundance Day 2 is getting along. Michelle Satter and Ondi Timoner and Peter Golub - friends who have all had their homes burn, too. Also their work and their work stuff. How are they? I’m up here in Santa Barbara to get away from the flames and smoke but it was mostly because we had a place to crash night #1 when we thought all this was just a dry run. Just an annoying evacuation.
For some reason, I keep seeing this post from this really rich lady, a mom from Blaze’s class in elementary school, who keeps posting photos of her fancy charred lawn furniture overlooking her pool at her house that was saved.
George looks up: “All done? Ready for the next room?”
Blaze is playing a video game in her new basement room with a couch that is now her bed. She picked it – the foosball room -- probably because it is the farthest from everyone else. But I can still hear her sometimes down there. Blaze thinks we didn’t try hard enough to find a place to live in LA. Maybe she is right. We just assumed it would be hard. Three dogs and everyone like us in a scramble. But maybe it would have been the better move, to stay local, to have that community. So many decisions we had to make so quickly. And now that I am here I sometimes wonder (regret?) whether we could have done this better.
I take an inventory break with Blaze to get lunch to-go. While we are walking around, waiting for our food, we walk past a running store that has baseball caps in the window and one says “Pacific Palisades.” I say to Blaze, “We should get that!”
So, we walk in. Blaze holds up some sandals, some running shoes. “These - we should add these to the list,” Blaze says. “I wrote those down,” I say.
Earlier that morning, George roped Blaze into reviewing the inventory. We had forgotten her skateboards.
In the running store, neither one of us makes a move to replace anything. We know we’re just here for the hat. When we’re at the counter waiting for payment to load, I add, “We lost our home. We were from the Palisades.” Explaining our purchase of the hat.
“There are a lot of evacuees up here,” the guy says, “It’s sad. Some people come in and have lost everything.”
“That’s us,” I say.
“It’s sad,” he says, without looking up. It wasn’t clear that he heard me.
When we leave, Blaze says, “They just have to say they're sad and sorry because they work there. But I bet he wasn’t really.”
“I don’t think I actually care one way or the other” I say to Blaze, realizing that I don’t. Is that man sad my home burned? Doesn’t matter. I don’t actually care about this man’s feelings on the subject one way or the other. We leave it at that.
The patch on the front of the hat says Pacific Palisades but it’s next to a chair. “Why does it have a chair?” Blaze asks. I don’t know.
I put the hat on the coffee table, between George and me on top of a pile of socks. We are back to our inventory.
If I wear this thing up here, is the hat going to be like me announcing this is where I’m from? And is the hat going to elicit conversation (and sympathy) I don’t actually want? “I’m sorry.” Or “That’s so sad.” When I don’t actually care if someone is sorry or sad.
I have enough sorrow and sadness for myself. I guess I won’t wear the hat for them. I’ll wear the hat - the hat I actually don’t like because I don’t understand the chair - I’ll wear the hat for ME.
It’s raining on this Sunday morning. The rain really makes me feel like time is moving on. We are starting the next chapter. The fires are now a thing of the past. Now it’s a new thing, the next chapter. The aftermath. The music is supposed to swell.
I think about our old neighborhood. What our old place is now. It might be lonely. Denuded of trees. Ash and rubble - and now in the rain, mudslides? Is it sad without us too?
I didn’t go back with George and Catherine days after the fire. I had to stay back to take care of the dogs and Blaze. And maybe now I never will never go back. In a Facebook post, I see famous filmmaker, OT, in a hazmat suit – how she went back and recovered the Sundance Grand Jury Prize…Shit. Wow.
Mine is/was still in my home. My office was on the bottom floor. It will be buried deep.
George looks at me: “How’s that inventory coming - are you done with your closet?”
I get back at it. I text with a neighbor whose house did not burn. Do you remember that online store you recommended for me to buy shoes for Tribeca? She texts back with the answer. “Thanks! I wish I’d had you over for dinner,” I write. “2028!” She texts back.
I dunno, I think to myself. That seems awfully soon.
I search a website and try to remember the brand name of the shoes. I can’t. I call Catherine. Remember those shoes - with the studs? Who made them? She can’t remember. None of us can remember. Blaze wore them for her grandmother Farmor’s burial in November - remember?
When I look up from my screen, I can see that this temporary/permanent place is nice. You can hear the train passing through town. There are candles here. There are even dog treats. It’s nice - very nice. Some of the stuff is nicer than our stuff. Unlike my mom’s corporate apartment, there is nice art on the walls. It’s just like, when will I get to live here like a normal person? And do things that are not fire-related? Look up from this spreadsheet and, like, go grocery shopping and buy spices and use the pots and pans? George keeps saying we have to make dinner for everyone who’s helped us, to thank them. And I’m thinking, how am I going to be sitting in this chair working on this spreadsheet - and also there in the kitchen making food?
I’m grateful to land in a place that accepts our dogs and our mess – and simply to have a place to land. I am also so sad. I can’t exhale yet. We are quickly throwing blankets on everything. Shit, the dogs will now have muddy feet. I wish we had more blankets.
We keep getting notices that Blaze has been absent from Palisades Charter High School - absent from her Zoom classes. We have tried to answer back. Blaze lost her home. We are not there in our burned out town. We have moved. We have found a school up here. Blaze starts on Monday and has picked the basement room here in our rental that is far away from the Palisades, and from the rest of us.
We tell Blaze not to eat down there in her room. When we are busy on our computers doing this rat-race inventory - a financial gun cocked to our heads - real fast, think now, think of every valuable thing you ever owned - and list it now - and know the amount - and let’s see what it totals now - with the can opener! What does it total now? Blaze eats her sandwich and drinks her matcha down there. She puts her water bottle directly on the wood.
George says Blaze doesn’t understand there are rules. We worry we will trash the place.
Blaze wants to know what happened to her school computer charger – the one from the school that said Palisades Charter High School on it. George and I exchange a look. I didn't tell her I threw it out when we were making the move here. “Why do you need it?” I ask. “The school computer burned.” “I just wanted to keep it - for memories,” Blaze says.
Oh shit.
Today, if I can get a half-hour break, I will go back to our old Airbnb - in the rain - and see if I can go through the trash. We lived in that temporary place for two weeks, so I know the tricks - the gate that’s not locked. I’ll untie those plastic Target bags and hope to find the Palisades Charter High School computer charger for the Palisades Charter High School computer that burned.
Blaze has reminded me several times that she didn’t want to change schools. She wanted to graduate from Palisades Charter High School. I know, I tell her. Sixteen days ago, it was an ordinary day. We all thought you would graduate from there (eventually).
This rainy Sunday is the day before Blaze starts her new school. Maybe on a break from inventory, if she will let me pick up the piles down there in her chosen room, I will do some laundry. The past two days, though, it’s been, “I’m in the middle of something! I need privacy! Just leave it!!”
Maybe while George is walking his dad’s dog in the rain I’ll try to help Blaze get ready for tomorrow. Set out some clothes (and a hat?), get her backpack ready. You want me to set out your water bottle? You got your computer charged? Just like we used to. Only Blaze won’t be walking to school.
But wait. George just walked back in the kitchen and said, “You ready to get at it again?”
P.S. George, who wanted to be an architect in a former life, says the chair on the hat is an Eames chair. Because of the Eames house. We try to see if the Eames house burned. At least on January 8th it was still standing.
