Page 10

Palm Springs

November 6, 2022

To enter Le Desert was to experience the world flipping inside out. The security wall that just moments earlier kept us outside seemed to suddenly embrace us, providing me with the false sense that nothing could go wrong here.

Despite Grant’s initial skepticism about the place, I could tell he was as taken by surprise as I was, because the exterior of the Spanish Mission–style complex didn’t even hint at the sort of lushness that existed on the inside.

It wasn’t the explosive foliage I associated with summer in the Midwest, when all the green could eat you alive. Here, every bit of color stood out like a miracle. Leggy palm trees created a stark contrast to the crumbling mountains in the background. Hummingbirds, startled by our arrival, hopped in the branches of the lemon tree next to the entrance and then, like birds in a Disney movie, darted directly in front of our faces. The fancy orange and coral flowers were so bright it almost hurt to look at them. The ground cover beyond the paved walkway and courtyard was essentially a carpet of cacti, the names of which I would soon know: San Pedro, Mexican fence post, barrel, and Peruvian apple. Hammocks were strung between surprisingly fat, bearded palm trees. The courtyard was not groomed per se, but it was tended to and cared for, an arid Eden.

The main building had six or seven units on each side, judging by the rosy-pink doors, each with an adjoining walk-out patio, and formed a C-shape around the courtyard. Two squat, charming detached bungalow-style casitas with wide chimneys and shutters sat on the far side of the property. Bright purple bougainvillea smothered the stucco walls. The jagged profile of the mountains in the distance rose above the clay-tile rooftops as though they were part of the architecture. It felt as though Le Desert had been there for so long that it had become a natural feature of the landscape.

Beyond the courtyard was a garden that went back beyond my view. I could just make out a dilapidated tiki bar and a mini golf course in the distance. I scanned for unit numbers on the main building.

“I was expecting this place to be more… Jetsons, ” Grant said, pleased. He had an appreciation for old things. “I feel like we just got off the last train to Marrakech.”

“This is old-school Southern California glamour,” I said. “Do you think we’ll be haunted by the ghost of some Hollywood director from the twenties?”

The pool in the center of the courtyard was the crown jewel, the vortex, accessorized with wrought-iron loungers and fanciful striped umbrellas dripping with hot-pink fringe. In the middle of the pool a woman was swimming laps, oblivious of our arrival. Her rear was perfect and round, two brown moons divided by the metallic-copper thong of her bikini bottom. Her stroke was propelled by her slim but powerful arms, and as she moved, floating blow-up flamingos bobbed spookily on the surface in her wake. As soon as she got to the edge, she changed direction with an expert kick turn, and then, as if she could sense us looking at her, she stopped. She swooshed the long dark hair like oil slicks from her eyes and ungraciously spit out a mouthful of water. “Yeah? Hello?”

“Hi!” I said, my voice echoing off all the hard surfaces.

She stepped out of the pool, revealing gloriously ripe breasts that were barely covered by the two copper triangles of her bikini top, like the flags you put in the ground to show where the electricity runs. She was utterly gorgeous and cool in her youthful fullness, and her skin glowed with health. I couldn’t really blame Grant for standing there dumbfounded as a teenage boy at the sight of this estrogen bomb. I was dumbfounded, too. I nudged him with my elbow, almost knocking him over.

Even in my best years, I’d never felt that comfortable with my body, preferring Speedo one-pieces to bikinis, pants to skirts, high-neck sweaters to V-necks. As a teen, I’d tried to tamp down my breasts with Ace bandages from my mother’s office in fear that they would eventually hang to my waist like those of the topless women in the photos I saw in National Geographic. When I was growing up, looking sexy could get you a bad reputation. I dressed almost exclusively in stretchy, comfortable clothing. Grant teasingly referred to me as “our Lady of Athleisure.” How I wished I’d had this woman’s body confidence when I was young—and now.

I held up the key chain. I felt I needed to prove that we weren’t impostors, even if that’s how we felt. I said, “We’re guests of Basil?”

“Oh, I love Basil. He’s a starseed.”

“A what?”

“He’s connected to the universe.”

“Oh. Yeah. Well, he’s my ex-husband. Who are you ?” I didn’t mean for it to sound like an accusation.

She smiled dreamily. “I’m Cassie.” She said her name with importance, as though she were Oprah or Cher.

“We’re Kim and Grant,” Grant said.

“Awesome! Are you Canadian?”

“No, we’re from Madison.”

“Oh. You look Canadian.” She seemed disappointed. “We all love the Canadians.”

A man’s voice boomed from behind me, “And we love you right back, Cass.” I turned and saw an older couple slowly walking toward us. Their matching white hair was amazing in the sun; it was almost unnatural, like pearly-silver nail polish. Two angels; I loved them instantly. They were Grandma and Grandpa, people who seemed as if they were born asexual, sweet and old.

“Well, how about that. Basil was married? To a gal?” The man rocked back on his feet. “How’d that happen? He’s gay as a three-dollar bill. Come on, we’ll show you to his place. Just wait till you get a load of it.”

The woman said, “We’ll see you tonight for dinner, Cassie. Taco pie! We made it vegan and keto and paleo and all that jazz, just the way you like it.”

“It’s basically a pile of sand,” the man said.

“Love you guys!”

The couple slowly led us to the detached unit with the 1 on the door. “You’re going to be right next door to us. We’re neighbors! We even share a patio.”

It didn’t surprise me that Basil lived in a condo complex when he could have afforded a house. He loved to be around people, and here it seemed he could be surrounded by all kinds. Even so, he wasn’t exactly slumming. His was one of the largest, nicest units with the most commanding views.

The man said, “Tell me, how long are you here for? And don’t say a week or two, there’s too much coming and going as it is. We like people to stay a while, like back in the day before all these short-term rentals.”

Grant gave me an uh-oh look. “We’re here through March,” I said.

The wife clapped her hands together and smiled. “Oh, we’ll be good friends. Wonderful, wonderful! We’re seasonals, too. We arrived last week and we’ll be here until April—”

“Unless we crap out before then,” the man said, giving his chest a pat. “Could happen. Lots of people around here arrive on their feet and leave on their backs.”

“We started coming, oh, what was it, twenty-five years ago now, Gene? We’ve returned every winter since, aside from 2020 because of the plague. You’re from Wisconsin? That’s as good as Canadian. We’re from Regina. As far as everyone around here is concerned, that may as well be Saskatchewan. One of these days we’re going to have a geography bee and see who knows what’s what.” The woman nudged her husband. “That’s a good idea, Gene, ya? Instead of canasta, we can find out who can name all ten provinces.”

“She’s Little Miss Social Director,” he said.

“I’m Jeanie,” the woman said. “And this good-looking guy here is Gene. Easy to remember. We are quite a pair—a pair of jeans, that is!”

“I always say we should be a band. We’d call ourselves Denim and DNA.” The couple laughed as though they hadn’t told that joke a million times. Everything about them matched: their accents, silvery hair, and large wrinkled faces.

Jeanie gave the thick wood door with the little window covered in decorative iron a pat. “This here’s Basil’s place.”

“Hey, I don’t mean to intrude, but do you mind if we have a peek inside?” Gene asked. “We’ve been in almost every unit except this one. Did you know Basil and Hobie have fireplaces?”

“Who’s Hobie?”

“Oh, everyone knows Hobie.” Jeanie gestured at the mountains. “He thinks he’s the boss. He’s always hiking or chasing the sheep or spending time with lady friends or whatever he does while the rest of us are up to our ears in a whole lot of nothing. He can be very rude.”

“Doesn’t seem fair that we don’t all have fireplaces.” Gene made me feel as if I’d taken something from him.

“Come in,” I said, even though I knew Grant would rather enter our new space alone. It was as if I’d grown an emotional periscope into his brain. I was so familiar with his comforts, anxieties, likes, and dislikes that I swore I felt his feelings for him.

The four of us walked into the living room like aliens stepping off a spaceship for the first time. It was bigger than I thought a condo could be and so perfect we had to catch our breath.

“Oh, is this ever nice!” Jeanie elbowed me. “Two bedrooms! Lucky ducks.”

The wall facing the courtyard had large windows that revealed million-dollar views of the mountains. The exposed wood of the beamed ceiling made the space seem church-like and airy despite the heavy furnishings. I’d read that a well-decorated room should not have a single focal point. That was the case here, with balanced and explosive bursts of saturated colors punctuating the white expanse. The Moroccan ceramic tiles framing the fireplace were blue and teal. The deep velvet sofa was green, and the Turkish rug was red and gold. A gleaming white baby grand sat in the corner next to neatly stacked LPs, a record player, and six-foot speakers.

On one wall was a giant painting of a McDonald’s french fry container, and on the other hung a giant Asian pop art painting with a lacquered surface. I found myself getting lost in it—a floating pink iPhone shot out of a raging neon-yellow sea. Some people want to surround themselves with beauty, while Basil, who could have afforded an original van Gogh, was content to make himself laugh. I was touched to see a framed photograph of Basil and me from our younger days on his mantel. We were standing in front of the First Down Moses statue on the Notre Dame campus, pointing up at the sky. How young we were. It was another lifetime, and it could have been yesterday.

Grant walked over to the piano to pick up a gold statue—a real Tony. The plaque said BASIL UNDERWOOD, BEST SCORE.

Gene whistled. “Think that’s a fake? You can buy those on eBay, you know.”

“It’s real,” I said, feeling defensive. “Basil is a genius, and he’s very well-known.”

“I’ve never heard of him outside of Le Desert,” Gene said knowingly. “Then again, half the people you bump into in this city are sort-of and used-to-be famous.” He stepped into the recessed dining room, stopping to stare at a stark painting of a red cube. Below it, stamped in big red letters, were the words EVERYTHING, BUT DESPAIR. He said, “Weird.”

I met Grant’s gaze from across the room and saw a smile in his eyes. From this day forward, I knew that if I thought something was strange, I could call it “everything, but despair.” Our lexicon was filled with phrases like that, some dating so far back that I couldn’t even remember their origin stories. What would it be like to go through life without the ability to share that language?

Grant said, “Fascinating that there’s a comma between everything and but. ” He loved to say things were fascinating. And to him, they usually were. “Do you suppose the message is meant to be hopeful, like ‘do everything but despair,’ or ‘despair everything’?” Grant paused. “Or ‘despair everything but despair’?”

“Beats me,” Gene said.

“Grant is a philosophy professor,” I explained, feeling funny about using the present tense, and genuinely annoyed that he had to show off for these people we’d just met; this was the Grant show, and I’d seen it many times. “He usually has lots of thoughts.”

“Well, I worked at the power company for forty years, so what do I know? Go on, smarty. Tell me what you think.”

Grant said, “You might not want to know. You see, I’m a rather pessimistic philosopher.” He winked.

“Is there an optimistic kind?” I asked.

Grant pretended to ignore me. I noticed a little spark in him that hadn’t been there in a while. He was always happy to have an audience.

“Schopenhauer—Arthur Schopenhauer, a German philosopher, and an even greater pessimist than me—believed we wander across the stage of life in a state of constant misery, driven only by desire. But when we’re satisfied, our desire dies, and without desire we die, too. See? That pretty much goes against the ethos of a resort town. We might be relieved of pain, but that same relief destroys existence. In other words, the only thing that exists is the present, so why bother striving to enjoy it? Maybe that’s what this artist is getting at, albeit backward. Ignore despair, even if it’s baked into everything.”

“Bet you’re fun at a party,” Gene said, slapping Grant on the back. “Well, thanks for showing us around. Welcome! Palm Springs is a slice of heaven. We’re off to the Mizell Center for some bowling with dice or what have you. When you get settled, you can join us. There’s plenty to do, and all the time in the world to do it. Come on, Jeanie.”

Jeanie suddenly seemed confused. She looked around, baffled. “Do we live here?”

We all fell silent.

Gene was incredibly patient and kind. “No, my love. We live next door. Come on, I’ll show you.”

As soon as they were gone, Grant said, “That was terrifying. That’ll be us someday.”

We wandered around Basil’s place, opening cabinets and doors, all the while taking in his full-throated sense of style. “This,” Grant said, “is what a home looks like when a fashionable homosexual blesses it with his magic sword.”

I loved it, even though it made me feel like a complete failure. I’d never had the luxury of designing a room from scratch, or the money and taste to make it look cohesive, or the guts to buy avant-garde artwork or pillows with tigers’ faces on them. Decorating had never been a priority for me. Our Madison home had become a comfortable museum of our former life, filled with framed photos and artwork I didn’t have the heart to let go of. Our rugs were stained, and our couch sagged from use. When Mitzie moved into assisted living, Grant held on to some of her fussy Victorian antiques because he didn’t have the heart to part with them. Somehow, we found room, but I resented Grant’s inability to let go. Our space felt even more chaotic and crowded, a clash between Nancy Reagan and the Olive Garden.

I’d begun to see our possessions not as things to enjoy, but as future burdens for the girls to get rid of when we downsized or died. I resolved in that moment to return home and get rid of everything, maybe even the house. Start anew.

Grant said, “There are no books here, Kim. None.”

A coffee-table book called Let’s Get Lost about bucket-list travel destinations sat atop the credenza. I pointed at it, reminded of the sabbatical, and the time alone, that I didn’t have. “I saw some cookbooks in the kitchen.”

“Those aren’t real books. This is what I hate about California. Nobody reads. They just want to relax and… vibe.”

“Grant, since when do you hate an entire state? That’s a pretty harsh generalization.”

“Sunshine all year long makes you soft.”

“You think suffering through winter gives us moral superiority? More depth?”

He shrugged. “Yeah, I do actually.”

I didn’t want to admit that part of me agreed with Grant. “They have plenty of stress here, too. Droughts and wildfires. Earthquakes. Kim Kardashian.”

Grant would not be swayed. “I wouldn’t know Kim Kardashian if she rang my doorbell.”

We walked into the larger of the two bedrooms. Basil’s room was more spacious than our bedroom back home, where we slept in a wooden sleigh-style bed that looks as big as an SUV, a splurge from the early years of our marriage. Basil’s headboard was covered in green silk, and the walls featured a pink, green, and red Chinese-pagoda and dragon pattern.

Exhausted, I flopped next to Grant on the bed and kicked off my shoes. His shirt was pulled up to reveal the beginnings of a belly. I was always after him to lose weight. Still, I found his body attractive. Irresistible, even.

I stared up at the vaulted ceiling and began to giggle.

“What are you laughing at?”

“It’s just so crazy that we’re here. We’re like the pelicans that were found in Greenland.”

He rolled over and wrapped his leg over mine and stared at me lovingly. “Does it strike you as odd that I’m about to make love to you in your ex-husband’s bed?”

“No. Not at all.” I ran the palm of my free hand over the tickly soft hair that ran down his belly.

“I’ve been going crazy sitting in a car with you for so many days. I always want you. I want you now.”

“It’s the middle of the day.”

“What else is there to do?”

“A million things! We need to unpack. Grocery shop. I was about to reach out to Melody. I told Basil—”

“Melody can wait. I can’t.”

Our lovemaking felt less routine in a different bed, a different room. Grant was slower and more purposeful, intent on my pleasure. Octavia had told me that marriages fail for the same five reasons: the balance of power, work, kids, money, and sex. We struggled with the first four. Then again, people have sex for different reasons. Sometimes out of frustration, sometimes love. Sometimes to pin each other down.

Usually, Grant would call out my name, or tell me he loved me, or say that I was beautiful, but he uttered something different at the height of passion, and in a more urgent, even scared, tone of voice: “Oh, Kimmy, I need you.”

In all our years together, he’d never said that out loud. He would never have dared, and neither would I. Why, I wondered, did he say it now?