Love & Other Natural Disasters Read online

“Ha-ha.”

  “Whatever. You get my point,” he says. He goes back to sorting his socks, clearly over our little sibling bonding moment, so I leave.

  I’m halfway down the hallway when he sticks his head out the door and says, “Hey.”

  “What?” I turn.

  “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings earlier. I don’t think you’re a loser.”

  “Oh.” It’s ridiculous how much better that makes me feel. “That’s okay. Thanks.”

  “I mean, let’s not kid ourselves, the odds are definitely against you. But there is hope. No one’s met you yet, right?”

  “Fuck you, Max.”

  I go down the stairs, pausing at the bottom in front of a mirror to gaze at my reflection. I know Max was joking, but the reality is, he’s right. The odds are against me. On the other hand, it dawns on me, he’s also right about no one having met me. I could be—could become—anyone. Nozomi Nagai, Beige Wallpaper, who fades passively into the background until she blurts out her feelings in a drunken rush, is a thing of the past. This summer, I will take charge of my fate. I will make things happen, live my best life, and—yes, own it, Nozomi!—have the summer romance of my dreams. I will become Nozomi Nagai . . . whatever the opposite of beige wallpaper is. A cerulean blue accent wall? A sculpture with its own spotlight? Anyway. My point is that I can become whatever I want. By the end of the summer, I will be completely transformed.

  2

  IN THE MORNING, WE ALL GO OUT TO BRUNCH at the Moonraker, a fancy seafood restaurant tucked into a cove just south of the city, with tables overlooking the Pacific Ocean through big picture windows. The last time I was here, I was just a little girl, and Dad told me that if I watched very closely, I might spot a mermaid. I spent the entire meal staring intently out the window. I spotted a lot of kelp and some driftwood but alas, no mermaid. When I wondered out loud that night whether I might have seen one if I’d had binoculars, Max told me I was being stupid and there was no such thing as mermaids—Dad had only told me that to keep me quiet during the meal. I hit him, hard, and he hit me back, and I ended up sleeping in my parents’ room, with Dad stroking my hair and reassuring me that of course there were mermaids out there, that he’d seen one once, as a child, so he knew they existed, and one day, if I was patient, if I believed hard enough, then I’d see one, too.

  While Stephen, Lance, and Max wait inside for the host to call us to our table, I go to the deck to get some time alone with the view. I close my eyes, grip the cold metal railing that separates the deck from the rocky shore, and breathe in lungfuls of bracing ocean air. The wind whips my hair around my face. Ahhhh.

  If this is going to be the summer of my transformation, right here is the perfect place for it to start. I lift my face to the sky and fling my arms out, taking in the moment as completely as I can. I can feel myself transforming already. It’s like magic. I feel like I can do anything—be anyone—if I just believe hard enough. Inspired, I open my eyes and scan the ocean with my new, magical vision. Okay, mermaids, I know you’re out there. Show yourselves.

  Someone clears their throat next to me, and I realize with horror that I’ve spoken those last words aloud.

  I turn to face a girl so strikingly beautiful it takes my breath away. She has high cheekbones, dark, arched eyebrows, soft, pouty lips, and—ohh, her eyes. Kind and just the tiniest bit sad. Like a teenage Gemma Chan. Her hair is in a braid crown, and her face is framed by a few loose tendrils and drop earrings that sparkle in the sunlight. It’s enchanting. Literally, like I can’t look away. In my shock, I half wonder if she’s a mermaid, and I just barely stop myself from looking down to check to make sure she has legs.

  “Um. I don’t actually believe in mermaids,” I mumble.

  “Me neither. But you never know, right?” The corner of her perfect mouth edges up and her eyebrow twitches and I think my heart stops beating for a second. “They might exist.”

  Under the influence of that heart-stopping half smile, a flood of tantalizing possibilities bubbles forth: What if she’s queer? And single? What if she became my summer fling? What if this is the moment my transformation begins?

  My beautiful enchantress’s half smile falters, and I realize I have to say something before she flees and takes my transformational moment with her. Focus, Nozomi. What were we talking about? Oh, right—mermaids.

  “I read somewhere that Columbus thought manatees were mermaids,” I say, which . . . is definitely a sentence about mermaids.

  To my utter surprise, she laughs and says, “Well, that tracks.”

  “Yeah, I guess it does.” Buoyed by her bright golden laughter, I manage another sentence. “Though in his defense, I once mistook a sea otter for a mermaid.”

  “You probably weren’t a grown man, though,” she says with a little grin.

  “No. I was five.”

  It’s at this point of my potentially (please, oh please) life-changing conversation that Max appears at the edge of my field of vision and bellows, “Nozomi! The table’s ready!”

  I ignore him. I am talking to a fairy queen and things are going far better than I ever could have imagined. The table can wait.

  Only I didn’t figure on said fairy queen looking down at her phone and saying, “Well, I’m meeting someone in a few minutes, so I’ll let you get back to your mermaid search. Good luck!”

  “Wait!” I say desperately. I have to get her name. I have to know who she is.

  She turns back, her smile a little bemused, but still warm and friendly.

  “Um.” Focus! Name! “I’m Nozomi. I’m visiting San Francisco for the summer.”

  “Cool!” she says. “I’ve lived here all my life. You’re gonna love it.”

  So she lives here. The universe is on my side.

  “What’s your name?” I ask her. Clumsy, yes, awkward, definitely, but there’s no time to be clever. She’s about to melt back into the void from whence she came.

  “Willow.”

  A beautiful name for a beautiful girl is the sentence that comes into my head. I have the presence of mind, thank goodness, to realize that this is corny-bordering-on-creepy before I say it, but before I can think of an appropriately not-creepy way to get her phone number, I feel a light punch on my arm and Max’s voice says, “Hey, Zomi. The table’s ready.”

  “What? Oh, right! Table. Okay! Um, so I guess I should go,” I tell Willow.

  “Yeah, me too. Have a fun summer.” Willow turns to leave again.

  “Thanks. Um, actually—”

  “Zomi! Let’s go.” Max grabs me by the arm and drags me away before the words do you want to hang out sometime leave my mouth.

  “I hope we run into each other again!” I call, and almost trip when Max gives my arm another tug, muttering, “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up,” under his breath.

  “What the hell, Max? Why’d you have to drag me away like that?” I yank my arm back. “I was just about to get her number.”

  Max rolls his eyes. “I was rescuing you from ignominious defeat, because you were not about to get her number.”

  “I was, too,” I say, annoyed.

  “She was trying to get rid of you.”

  “She was not.”

  “She most definitely was.”

  “Do you think if I went back there—”

  “No.”

  “But what if—”

  “No.”

  “But—”

  “No!” he says, and herds me into the restaurant, and that’s the end of that.

  Inside, Stephen and Lance wave to us from a table by the window. The Pacific Ocean stretches behind them, and I gaze out at the waves as I take my seat. While Lance and Stephen start talking about the museum’s upcoming fund-raising gala, and then about skyrocketing home prices in the city, my thoughts drift back to Willow. What if I’d been a little quicker? What if Max hadn’t interrupted us?

  We might find each other again. She said she lives here. After all, the prince found Cinderella, didn’t he? Westley found
Buttercup. And I don’t know why or how, but when I think of Willow, all the arguments against me—we don’t even know each other; she’s vanished without a trace; she’s a fairy queen and I’m wallpaper (I’m not. I’m not.)—quietly fade away, and the only thing left is the shiny possibility of me, Willow, and a thousand fluttering hearts.

  3

  “SO, A LITTLE HEADS-UP, GUYS. ABOUT BABA,” says Stephen. He clears his throat, taps the steering wheel, and glances at me in the rearview mirror, and the tight, prickly feeling that’s been hounding me all morning intensifies.

  One of the things Max and I are supposed to do in San Francisco this summer is spend quality time with Baba—my grandmother, Stephen and Dad’s mom. We haven’t seen her in a very long time, and Dad wants us to reconnect.

  Calm down, I tell myself. It’ll be good to see her. She’s my grandmother. She’s just a helpless, harmless, little old lady. How bad can it be? But Stephen’s obvious anxiety is making me think it could be pretty bad. As is Lance’s absence from the car.

  The thing is, despite living in the LGBTQIA capital of the world and Stephen reportedly having been a walking, talking gay stereotype in his teens and twenties, Baba managed to keep her head firmly in the sand about his sexuality until he announced ten years ago that he was in love with Lance, at which point she insisted it was a phase. When he told her a few years later that they were getting married, she cried for days and begged him to “go back” to being straight, and when he said that was impossible, she demanded that he fake being straight so that he could have a “real family.” Depending on who you ask, either she refused to attend the wedding, or Stephen told her not to come. Dad took Stephen’s side, and since then our visits with Baba have been limited to a short, awkward, stressful lunch date once every two or three years.

  It’s sad. Tragic, even, because I used to adore Baba when I was little, and here I am dreading seeing her. Because believe it or not, homophobia is not one of this queer girl’s Top Ten Favorite Traits in a Grandmother.

  Lately, Stephen and Dad have been edging toward a friendlier relationship with Baba, though to be honest, I don’t know if it’s because she’s starting to change her mind, or if it’s because her mind is changing. Baba’s car has run out of gas three times in the past year. She’s forgotten how to work the cable remote and how to do video calls. Stephen, especially, has had to step in and help her manage her life, since he’s the one who lives closest to her. I’ve even heard him and Dad on the phone talking about possibly selling her house and moving her to an elder care facility.

  So maybe that’s what Stephen’s about to tell us. Maybe she’s worse off than we’ve been led to believe, and he’s trying to prepare us.

  I don’t know what to root for: having to talk about Baba’s homophobia, or having to talk about her dementia. Both options are decidedly suboptimal.

  Stephen pulls cautiously into an intersection and executes a left turn. “Keep an eye out for parking spaces, okay?”

  “What’s the heads-up?” I prompt him. “About Baba?”

  “Well.” Stephen clears his throat again, takes a long, fortifying breath, and says, “I just wanted to check in with you. Are you—you’re not planning on coming out to Baba, are you?”

  Homophobia it is, then.

  “Um,” I say. “Uh.” I really don’t know. After hearing about the way she reacted to Stephen and Lance’s wedding announcement, I’ve always done my best not to think about it. Does that make me a bad lesbian, somehow?

  “Because . . . well. I’m not sure she’s quite ready. It, ah, might make things easier for you—for everyone—if you don’t mention it. Oh! Is that a space?” But it’s someone’s driveway, and he sighs and turns at the next stop sign.

  It’s not like I had plans to sail through Baba’s front door with a burst of trumpet fanfare, my rainbow flag rippling in the wind. But Stephen was the one who encouraged me to come out to Mom and Dad when, on a visit to Chicago a few years ago, he accidentally walked in on me looking up images of girls kissing. He’s always talking about how proud he is of me, how inspired he is by the fact that I’ve been officially out since ninth grade. And now he’s suggesting I jump back into the closet like a scared little rabbit because Baba might not be “quite ready” to accept me as I really am?

  Helpless, harmless little old lady or not, the idea of “reconnecting” with her is starting to feel a little delusional on Dad’s and Stephen’s part.

  “That’s bullshit,” Max says. “What’s wrong with Zomi being out to her own supposedly loving grandmother? That’s not right. Someone needs to tell Baba to get her shit together.” Max, defending me! I could hug him right now.

  “I know. I’m so sorry, I really am.” Stephen makes another turn. “But try to understand. This is your grandmother we’re talking about. I want you to have a relationship with her, and she’s growing, but it’s . . . well, it’s a slow process, and coming out to her could be painful. Take it from someone who’s been there, Zozo. I just don’t want you to get hurt.” He meets my eye in the rearview mirror.

  I don’t want me to get hurt, either. But it’s too late for that. Why did Stephen have to bring this up?

  I hate that I’m in this situation. My friends all have stronger opinions about pizza toppings than they do about other people’s sexual identities. But with the rest of the world, I have to look for rainbow pins and listen for clues about how others might react; I have to decide over and over whether being true to myself is worth risking rejection, or worse. Most of the time, it only takes a second, but those seconds add up. And sometimes, like now, with someone I love, it takes longer and the stakes are so much higher, and all I can do is wish it didn’t have to be like this. I wish I didn’t have to deal with Baba at all. She’s the only thing standing in the way of what could be the best summer of my life.

  Stephen makes yet another turn and I’m pretty sure we’re back where we started. He sighs, though whether he’s sad about this whole thing or about the dearth of parking spaces in the Richmond District, I’m not sure. “I’m not telling you what to do, Zozo,” he says. “It’s your choice how you want to handle things. Just be aware that she may not react well to you correcting her if she asks you about boyfriends.”

  “Highly unlikely that question will come up,” Max deadpans. “Zomi being the blemish on the face of humanity that she is.”

  “Ennhh, funny, Max. Better than being a blemish on the ass of humanity like you,” I say, sneering, but it’s actually kind of nice to be back on familiar territory, and I throw myself into the ensuing squabble with gusto. At least I know what to expect with Max.

  Finally, after three more trips around two more blocks, Stephen whoops and pumps his fist in triumph—a space has opened up right in front of Baba’s house. “See? It’s a message from God: Don’t give up hope. Everything will be okay in the end.” Once we’re out of the car, he kisses my forehead. “Trust me, I know how hard this is, Zozo. I love you.”

  Baba’s house is almost exactly the way I remember it. The paint is peeling on the trim and on the front steps where she taught me to play janken—Rock, Paper, Scissors in Japanese. The winner of each round would get to move up one step, and if I reached the top of the stairs first, I got a quarter from the jar of change she kept on her dresser. The honeysuckle is still climbing up the frame on the front of the house, and the porch is crowded with potted plants: petunias, geraniums, begonias, hydrangeas, and even a miniature rosebush.

  The front door opens and Baba emerges. She’s shorter than I remember, which I guess makes sense, and her hair is whiter and thinner. She’s wearing khaki slacks and a pale pink blouse with pink Crocs, and she looks kind of frail and adorable in her little porch garden. In spite of myself, I feel a wave of affection for her, followed by a wave of nostalgia for the relationship we had when I was little.

  “Welcome, Nozomi! Welcome, Max!” she says, hurrying toward us with quick, decisive steps. She reaches Max first and clasps his arms, one with ea
ch hand. It’s been three years since we’ve seen her. Her eyes, under peaked eyebrows that make her smiles look impish and her frowns look furious, are as quick and bright as ever—only, are those tears I see?

  It must have been lonely, with her husband dead, her two sons barely speaking to her, and her grandchildren almost completely out of her life. Maybe that’s why she agreed to let Stephen back in. Dad wouldn’t send me into the den of a raging homophobic monster, would he? Maybe Baba has learned a lesson about loving and accepting your family. Maybe she’ll prove us all wrong.

  Maybe not, though, says a voice in my head.

  Shut up, I tell it.

  Lance wasn’t invited to dinner, it persists.

  Shut UP.

  “Max, you’ve grown,” she says, looking Max up and down and beaming.

  Max smiles at Baba and nods. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Yes, it has,” she responds, and adds with a proud pat on the shoulder, “You’re always so handsome. That is my genes of the family.” Stephen rolls his eyes at me. Baba has always maintained that the good looks in our family come from her side. I roll my eyes back, because the last thing that Max needs is someone telling him he’s handsome, even if it’s his own outrageously biased grandmother.

  Baba shifts her attention from Max to me, and I feel myself tense up a little.

  “Hi, Baba,” I say. Despite the obvious delight in her eyes and my earlier sympathy for her, suddenly all I can think about is whether or not she might have a homophobic meltdown if she ever finds out that I’m queer. Damn Stephen for putting this in the front of my mind.

  Or maybe it would have been there, anyway.

  Be positive, I tell myself. She’s just a lonely old lady who wants to have a relationship with her grandchildren. I step toward Baba and give her the warmest hug I can muster, even though I know she’s not much of a hugger. “It’s really nice to see you.”

  Baba hesitates for a flicker of a second and says, “Oh!” before I feel her hands move tentatively around my back, and she gives me a couple of awkward pats: pat, pat.