Some Kind of Miracle (22 page)

“Stay by my side forever,” Sunny sang. “Stay by my side, my friend.”

Dahlia made a right onto Wilshire Boulevard and was heading east when the dawn broke, and she harmonized with Sunny all the way home.

“T
ell me all the song hooks you have in your head, and I’ll tell you which ones grab me and which ones don’t,” Sunny said as Dahlia scraped a bright yellow mound of scrambled eggs onto her cousin’s plate. Then the toast popped, and Dahlia hurried over to try to extract the two pieces from the toaster without burning her fingers.

After breakfast they took a hike up through the hills around Dahlia’s house, talking over the songs Dahlia had been trying to make work and the ideas that Sunny wanted to try. Sunny was never more lucid than when she was talking about songs.

“When it comes to lyrics, you have to deliver ideas that are from so far inside you that you need to wear one of those hats with the lights on it to go in and find them. You get what I mean? The ones you’re giving me now are cute, they’re fun, but they’re not from
where you hurt. Great songs come from you really, truly telling your story, and if you tell your story, you tell everyone else’s story, too. Because in the end people are all the same.”

Dahlia wasn’t so sure that was true, but Sunny was right when she said that the ideas Dahlia was coming up with were from some surface level she’d always shown to the world. Certainly it was the level she’d shown her clients, the friendly, chatty, nice girl. Maybe the only person who had ever mined beyond that level, insisted she give more, was Seth, and she’d sent him away. Sunny had never learned the worldly art of faking it, so what she showed the world was always genuine.

“Yeah, maybe,” Dahlia said grudgingly.

“Well, don’t do that anymore,” Sunny said, as if it could be so easy for Dahlia to drop the artifice of a lifetime. “I think you need to make a point of dredging up ideas you don’t want to tell anyone. And then sharpen your pencil and tell them to the world. Not that I’m an expert. But I think that’s the secret.” They walked for about a mile before Sunny spoke again. “So with that in mind, try coming up with some message for Seth,” Sunny said. “Not anything cutesy.”

Dahlia sighed. Seth. God, she missed him. “I want you back so much I ache,” Dahlia tried.

“That’s a very feeble start,” Sunny told her, and they both laughed.

“If I get you back, I’ll never let you go again.”

“Better put on your miner’s hat,” Sunny joked. “It’s a long way down.”

By the time they got to the piano every morning,
they were excited by most of their combined ideas and afraid they’d forget all the potential song hooks they’d come up with if they didn’t start writing them down in some form. They laughed over some of Dahlia’s bad rhymes and talked about which old songs were their favorites and which songs they wished they’d written. Then Sunny pulled melodies she wanted to try for Dahlia right out of the air, melodies that would work with whichever of Dahlia’s hooks she liked best.

Within minutes she could take musical riffs that sounded at first as if she were primitively banging them out and work them into a lush tune. The cousins’ collective energy was as high as it had been when they were girls, and they tossed the ideas back and forth excitedly. Many days they never even stopped for food, and suddenly they’d realize they’d worked without a break and it was five o’clock in the afternoon.

“I’d better get to the market,” Dahlia said, searching for the keys to the van, “or we’ll starve to death for our art.”

“I could use a little starvation,” Sunny said, patting her own hips.

“You look gorgeous,” Dahila told her, and it was true. Sunny’s cheeks were rosy, and her eyes were bright, and she was looking more and more like a weathered version of her young, beautiful self. And Dahlia was surprised at how easy it was to have her around all the time. Except for those early years of Dahlia’s life when she’d spent nearly all her time with Sunny, Dahlia thought of herself as a music nerd, in
terested in doing only the minimum required academic work to get to the next music class and then hurry home to practice or to write her songs, hardly ever socializing with kids her age. Even in her few years of college and after, the men she allowed into her life were always the type who were too busy to cling to her during the day, knowing instinctively they had to leave her alone to make her music. She had never been comfortable having another person around constantly.

Tonight she was planning to make the burritos Sunny especially loved, so she went to Whole Foods Market, even though it was expensive to shop there and she was down to the bottom of her checking account. She loved Whole Foods Market. The colors of the produce piled high along one entire wall and the cans of flowers and the bins of bulk grains looked so pretty and abundant and lush that just strolling through the aisles always felt like a luxury.

She’d been cooking dinner for Sunny nearly every night, explaining the basics of nutrition to her as if Sunny were a Martian. And, in the food department, she might as well have been a visitor from another planet. She’d spent too many years in hospitals where the food had been badly prepared, overcooked, too salty or too saucy, so she’d rarely had a well-prepared meal of fresh, wholesome foods.

Now she’d become a big fan of Dahlia’s cooking. She watched the chopping and sautéing, as fascinated as a child, sneaking and nibbling the ingredients and then laughing when Dahlia caught her in the act. And as a result of all the healthy eating, she was looking
very good. Her skin was radiant, and the orange hair had grown out so that now it was just orange at the tips, and her own white-blond color was back.

Today Dahlia was marketing alone. She had left Sunny at home in the backyard, feeding the squirrel. Her bag of groceries was filled with clusters of bright red tomatoes still on the stem, an assortment of lettuces, and pears she was going to put into a salad. A sourdough baguette and some sunflowers stuck out of the top of the bag as she made her way to the parking lot. But her walk to the van was stopped short by the sound of a scream as an old woman tripped over a parking barrier and toppled forward with a thud.

“Oh, nooo!” the woman wailed from the ground, her bag of groceries ripped and lemons and onions and cans and jars rolled out in all directions. Dahlia dropped her own bag at her feet, rushed to the old woman, and knelt to comfort her.

“You’ll be okay,” she said. “Let me help you.” Then she jumped to her feet and put her hand up like a traffic cop to stop a Lexus that was just about to back out of a spot and run over the woman’s bag. She helped the woman to her feet, slowly and carefully, and walked with an arm around her to a seat at one of the iron sidewalk tables, where a few oblivious people sipped coffee.

“My heart is racing so fast,” the woman said, and Dahlia held her hand and told her to take long breaths and relax. As soon as she was calm, Dahlia hurried back to the parking lot, gathered up the groceries and the now torn paper shopping bag, and came back to comfort her.

“I’m fine, dear,” the woman said, “and you’re too kind. I guess I didn’t see that cement guard sticking up there. I’m sorry to inconvenience you. You are my Good Samaritan.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Dahlia asked, gesturing at the same time for a bag boy to come over. “Would you mind rebagging these, please?” she asked him, and the boy took the woman’s groceries back into the store. The woman gave Dahlia a thank you hug, and Dahlia sighed, picked up her own bag, and was heading toward her car when she was surprised to see Seth and Lolly sitting on the hood of Seth’s Jeep, applauding. She felt her face flush.

“Nicely done,” Seth said. And Lolly was actually smiling at her. Seth looked so adorable wearing jeans and a washed-out blue work shirt that Dahlia thought about just throwing her arms around his neck and begging him to come back.

“You saved that lady,” Lolly said, surprised. She was wearing a blue work shirt, too, and looked as cute as her daddy. “We were proud of you.”

“Real proud,” Seth added, and his eyes held Dahlia’s for a long moment.

“Didn’t know I had an audience, or I would have washed her bruises and carried her home,” Dahlia joked. There was an awkward silence. “So where are you living now?” she asked.

“Got a little place in West Hollywood. You can come by anytime,” he said, and she felt a surge in her solar plexus.

“Except when
I’m
there,” Lolly added, and Seth grinned.

“Hey, wait a minute,” he said. “Now that we know she saves little old ladies, maybe we’ll let her come when you’re there, too.” He ruffled Lolly’s hair.

“Maybe,” she offered with a grudging nod.

“You can come to my house, too,” Dahlia said. “My cousin Sunny lives with me now,” she added. Dahlia watched with great satisfaction as surprise filled Seth’s face. She knew that that was a statement he never thought he’d hear in a million years. Dahlia, the selfish bitch, was taking care of another human being. And a difficult one at that. “We’re writing songs together, and one of them was just recorded.”

“No kidding?” Seth said. “And Sunny actually lives there? How’s she doing?”

“Okay. Good days. Bad days. We weather them. Just us and her pet squirrel.” Seth raised an amused eyebrow at that mental picture.

“Whoa,” Lolly said. “I want to see a pet squirrel. A real one?”

“Yep. It fell out of a tree, and we nursed it back to health,” Dahlia said. Okay, that was pushing it. It was Sunny who had done everything for the chirpy little beast. Dahlia had never once lifted a finger for it. But she was on a roll here, looking like Lady Nice, so why not include herself in the credit for Rose’s recovery? After all, wasn’t
she
the one who was paying for the goddamned walnuts or whatever the hell else Sunny was feeding the freaking thing?

“Can we go see the squirrel, Dad?” Lolly asked Seth, tugging at his shirtsleeve.

Seth looked at Dahlia for a response. “Sure, come on,” Dahlia said, and Seth and Lolly scurried off in
the direction of the Jeep, climbed aboard, and followed Dahlia as she walked to her parking spot. She was pleased to be getting into the new Celica convertible she’d traded the van for last week. Okay, it wasn’t the Mercedes yet, but that would be her next car.

“Must have been a good song,” Seth said, rolling down the window as he watched her deposit her groceries in the trunk, then slide in and gesture for them to follow her. My God, she thought, he is so adorable it makes me weak. You’re a jerk to do this, she told herself as they drove up Laurel Canyon and she looked at Seth in the rearview mirror. This is probably a giant mistake. Sunny could be naked in the garden or at the piano or doing God-knows-what bizarre thing a kid shouldn’t see.

She heard the sobs as she unlocked the front door and turned to Seth and Lolly. Another Sunny incident was in progress, and it could be about anything.

“This might be a bad idea. Sounds as if we’re in crisis mode here,” she said softly.

“We’ll be okay,” Seth said. “We’ll lay back while you check on her. If it’s too big a problem, we’ll leave.”

Sunny was sitting on the ground out in the backyard looking up into the tree and crying. “It’s Rose,” she said when she saw Dahlia. “I took her out of her box so she could run around a little bit, and after a while she ran over to the tree and didn’t even look back to say good-bye to me. Just zoomed right up there as if I were never a part of her life. And now
she’s so far up I can’t even see her anymore. I can hear her singing to me. She’s back in her world, Dahl.”

“Sun, you knew someday she had to be on her own again,” Dahlia said, silently thanking heaven the furry beast was gone and trying not to show it.

“But I miss her,” Sunny said.

“And she’ll miss you, but it’s better for her to be on her own now. Aren’t you glad for her? Like parents who send their kids off to college. Think of it as Rose going to college.” Sunny laughed through her tears at that. “Besides, we have company who I think will cheer you up. Seth and his little girl are here.”

“A little girl?” Sunny brightened. “I love little girls. Oh, if only Rose were here to meet her.”

Seth and Lolly were still standing in the open doorway when Sunny and Dahlia came in from the yard. Dahlia tried to imagine how Sunny with her pink-trimmed white hair and her long shocking-pink nails looked to Lolly.

“Lolly, this is my cousin Sunny.”

“Where’s the squirrel?” Lolly asked, seemingly unfazed by Sunny’s appearance.

“She went away to college,” Sunny answered, and that made Lolly giggle. “But I can teach you how to play the piano. Want to learn how to play the piano?”

“Okay,” Lolly said, and she hurried over and climbed up onto the piano bench as Sunny sat next to her, and Dahlia watched the lesson begin, with Sunny explaining very carefully which notes were which and then placing the little girl’s fingers on the keys, just the way she used to do with Dahlia.

“This is called ‘Chopsticks.’ You put these two fingers on these two notes, and you play them like this.”

“Guess we’re not needed
here
anymore,” Seth said to Dahlia.

“Want coffee?” she asked, loving the familiarity of having him follow her into the kitchen, remembering his touch, wanting to drop all the formal chitchat and put her arms around him, feeling genuinely sorry she had ever let him go for such stupid reasons. One of the songs she and Sunny had written recently was all about how Dahlia never appreciated Seth. Sunny said it was Dahlia’s best lyric so far. It was called “Knowing What’s Real.” It played in her head now as she watched him walk to the freezer and take out a can of Yuban as naturally as if he still lived there.

“What is all this?” he asked, looking around at the toys Sunny had put out for Rose.

“Squirrel stuff,” Dahlia explained.

“Squirrel stuff?” He laughed, filling the glass carafe of the coffeemaker with water. “I love it. I remember when you told me you wouldn’t even buy a plant because you wouldn’t have time to take care of it.”

“I still say that. Believe me, nothing’s changed. I didn’t really take care of the squirrel. Sunny did. And every day we write songs together.”