Wanda in Redondo

Interstate 5 north, into the vast belly of the LA beast, is a wide and crowded and fast and noisy highway, riven unrelentingly by exit and on ramps. Big semi-trucks, SUVs, sports cars with vanity plates pile onto the freeway and fill the lanes, riding close upon each other, front to back, side to side. Tail lights light up and the vehicles pack even closer together as the pace suddenly slows from 70 mph to 40 then to 20; soon, though, the speed climbs again, at least till the next slow down.

Close to the broad interstate stand big signs for motels and restaurants, seedy apartment buildings, crowded strip malls, and one car dealership after another (a malevolent business, considering); the hills are blanketed with swarms of cube-shaped, stuccoed houses.

In the one hundred miles between San Diego and Los Angeles, only the open land of Camp Pendleton, a Marine base, provides respite from the sprawl; but the sky over the base is filled with helicopters, and tanks rumble over the hills, and then one comes upon the twin domes of San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant, safe enough, supposedly, but ominous nonetheless.

Just before Pendleton I pulled off into a Rest Area, and here too the fruits of overpopulation were manifest. All the parking spots were taken, and I had to wait for someone to leave. Fifty people, almost all of them either Asian or Hispanic, loitered outside the bathrooms, smoking, eating snackfood from the vending machines, holding the hands of small children. Displayed on a bulletin board nearby were dozens of photos of missing children, most of them teenaged girls.

After two and a half hours of brutal, frightening driving, I arrived in Redondo Beach, greatly relieved to be off the road and out of the van.

I had come to a house two blocks from the beach to see my aunt, Linda, and her boyfriend, Bruce, who were visiting from Maryland. The house belongs to Wanda, who’s 96 and the mother of Linda’s late husband Steve, who died in 1993. Wanda has recently been moved to an assisted living situation, but the family is keeping the beach house for the time being.

Inside the small three bedroom house one steps back in time. The decor, the lamps and chairs and cabinets and appliances, date from the 1950s and 1960s. Pale pink and dark maroon tile in the bathroom. Wood paneling and a corner bar and an ancient Philco regrigerator in the den. Norman Rockwell prints and a crotcheted owl on the walls, quilts on two-single beds in the guestroom. And throughout the house the framed and fading photographs of children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren—family artifacts now bereft of their long-devoted caretaker. Little if anything seems to have changed in decades, though time has worn down the home’s features and fixtures. Supposedly the house is worth a million dollars, but probably the next owner will tear it down and build something fresher and bigger.

Ryann, my cousin, came over after getting off work. She works for an insurance company, managing offices in Pasedena, Mission Viejo, and Phoenix. I asked if she liked her job, and she smiled and said, “yes, I’m good at bossing people around.” She’s 32, witty, competent, and beautiful. She showed me two faint lines on her forehead, the scars of a recent bike accident on the boardwalk, in which she had hit her face on the handlebar basket. Later her boyfriend Chris came over for dinner and I wasn’t sure he deserved her.

Before dinner we went to see Wanda. She lives in a house only a mile or so away, inland, with another elderly white lady, Olivia. They are cared for by Ellen, a middle-aged Filipino woman, who is on-site six days a week and overnights, and Richard, a young Hispanic man, heavily tattooed, who mostly attends the women during the day and who told Bruce that he neither swims nor drives. The house has room for more residents, as many as six, but one recently died.

Wanda was sitting on a vinyl couch watching tv when we arrived (all the couches and chairs were either vinyl or plastic-covered). She was sunk down into a corner of the couch, a small woman with wispy white hair. Her walker stood beside her with a full water glass in a cup holder. Linda and Ryann and Bruce each gave her a kiss and when I was introduced we shook hands and I sat down in a chair next to her. She said, “aren’t you in the Navy?”

Her hearing is quite poor so it took several shouted disclaimers to correct her impression. Still, she was reluctant to let it go. “I really thought you were in the Navy,” she said, as if disappointed in me. Then she asked, “so what do you do?” When I told her I was a professor, she said, “very impressive” and nodded her head in approval, and I felt that I had come through for her after all.

We watched the network news and Wanda said some man looked familiar, and he did look a lot like Henry Kissinger but he wasn’t. She gestured at the television and said, “that thing is always on.” She leaned over and told me that she and Olivia don’t talk much (neither can hear well) and she gets bored. She drew out the last word and came down hard on the concluding d, to emphasize her annoyance. Ryann visits her a couple times a week, but of course Wanda wants more and who wouldn’t. Linda and Bruce have seen her often during their visit, and Bruce does crossword puzzles with her, though some days she’s not quite up to it.

I liked her. She had questions to ask and things to say—some of which were reasonable, some maybe delusional, as when she referred to a disappointingly bad dog show she had attended but Ryann said it had actually been a session of pet therapy. Wanda pointed to her knees and said they weren’t working today, but she bore her occasional frustration with what seemed a matter of fact good nature. Still, she has been whittled down quite a ways, and that I imagine is no picnic.