The first one to grab it would get a dollar. Enrique and I would jump in and paddle furiously toward the yellow fruit, a little sun bobbing on the waves. I’d grab the lemon first or Enrique would and then my dad would reach into his back pocket and pull out his wallet. He’d hand me or Enrique a dollar bill and one of us got to feel rich for a day. My dad worked long hours in a tall office building in Culver City. Sometimes he came home early with cardboard tubes of floor plans under his arm. In his office at our house there were blueprints thumbtacked to the walls, the bones of a gymnasium or bridge. His desk had a transparent T-square attached to the side that slid up and down. He used the lopsided coffee mug I made in kindergarten to hold his pencils. He had a snow globe paperweight, a miniature cabin surrounded by a dome of glass. Beside the tiny pyramid of logs, a man leaned on his axe. That, he told me once, is me in a nutshell. Now it was my mom who had to work, who drove off to waitress at this fancy Thai restaurant called the Palace, who came home tired and smelling of spices—lemongrass and curry and tamarind.
