Malibu Rising

The four Riva siblings surf together. When Kit steals Jay’s wave, he tells her that it’s dangerous. She is annoyed that he doesn’t realize how good of a surfer she is. As Nina goes into her house to meet the cleaning staff, Hud wishes that Nina didn’t always put others first.

We flash back to 1964.

Mick’s career takes off again. His children feel his presence through his fame, but he is never there.

As part of the second divorce, Mick gives June their house, but stops paying child support. However, she is reticent to call and ask him for anything, so she starts working at Pacific Fish. During the summer of 1969, June and her children spend each day at the restaurant. June works and 11-year-old Nina cleans the tables. June looks at Nina and “saw herself, only twenty years younger, and suddenly had the feeling she was going to jump out of her skin” (117). She quickly tells Nina to take her siblings to the beach. “June believed she was setting [Nina] free” (117), but Nina assumes she has done something wrong.

The children carefully cross Pacific Coast Highway, run into the ocean, and swim out toward the waves. Jay and Hud stick together, but it’s clear that all of the children know that the two boys aren’t actually twins like June told them. They body surf in the water, with Nina keeping Kit nearby.

Jay spots a surfboard abandoned on the beach. They are unable to afford one for themselves, and, despite Nina’s protests, he runs and grabs it. After he tries to ride a wave and falls off, Hud grabs the board and passes it to Nina, who takes it and paddles out. As she rides a wave, she feels “weightless and free, the wind blowing past her. What glory it was to feel the ocean move with you, to ride the water” (123). She tells her siblings to paddle with their arms until they catch the wave, and they spend the rest of the afternoon surfing with delight. June makes them leave the surfboard on the beach in case someone comes back for it.

At dinner, June listens to her children talk about their adventure, knowing “that her children had found a previously undiscovered part of themselves that day” (125). For the rest of the night, the four of them think only about surfing. For Nina, surfing is the most visceral. She wants to get back out on the waves, remembering an image of a surfer in Portugal. She wonders if she could become a surfer and travel just for the waves. Her thoughts keep her awake, but when she goes back to the kitchen, she finds her mother drinking. Nina asks for a job at the restaurant to buy all of them surfboards. June says that she will buy them.

June thinks about Mick missing how remarkable his children are. She wants someone to be just as amazed by them as she is. She knows that she is lucky and would rather be with her children than anywhere else.

The next day, the surfboard is gone, but on Christmas morning, four surfboards await the kids.

Hud goes to develop the photos he took that morning of Ashley at a studio at Pepperdine University. On his way, he thinks about how little he knows of his mother and what traits she passed down to him. A few years ago, he saw a photo of Mick and noticed that they both raised their eyebrow in the same way. It made him wonder if he would grow up to be like his father. At the studio, Ricky Esposito, who went to school with Hud and Jay, nervously confirms that he’ll be at the party later. As he works, Hud wonders if he’s willing to mess up his relationship with Jay for Ashley.

The narrative flashes back to 1971.

June is drinking regularly with each meal. Nina first notices it when June grabs a bottle of vodka before they evacuate because fires are spreading through the area. When they return a few days later, Nina sees June put a new bottle of the clear liquor in the fridge. Still, June continues to diligently care for her children.

In the fall, June’s mother Christina passes away. The day after the funeral, Nina offers to stay home and help June, but she refuses. Nina accepts this, but says to call if she is needed, and June reminds her that she is the parent. June is now the sole owner of the restaurant. Two weeks later, she decides to rename it “Riva’s Seafood.”

Jay and Hud slowly recognize that their mother is an alcoholic. Nina pretends to enjoy driving so that she can drive her siblings around. A year later, Kit hears the term “drunk” on TV: A character says, “You’re a drunk […] and you’re killing yourself with that stuff” (137), she gets angry, recognizing that this is exactly what her mother is doing. When June burns dinner the next week, Nina, Jay, and Hud all say it’s fine, but Kit refuses to eat, exclaiming, “We’re not going to pretend you didn’t just burn dinner like we pretend you’re not a drunk!” (138). June sends Kit to her room, and Nina comforts her. Jay and Hud wonder if they should call Mick, but decide that their mother is just going through a phase. The siblings gather in Kit’s room. Nina promises that everything will be alright, and despite all that they’ve gone through, the other three believe her.

Nina surveys her now-clean room, noticing which of Brandon’s things are missing. This bothers her so much that “there was a part of her that wanted to get out a bottle of Smirnoff and fix herself a Sea Breeze,” just like June (143).

The narrative flashes back to 1975.

All four of the siblings have sleepovers planned for the same weekend, so 17-year-old Nina is nervous about June being alone. June reminds her that she is the parent and tells her to have fun. While they’re gone, June watches TV and hears the news that Mick has remarried for the fifth time. She sobs, realizing that he is never coming back. Then, she decides to pull herself together. She knows that her children are aware that she is struggling “from the way they doted on her, the way they no longer trusted her to remember what they needed for school, the way they had started whispering to one another in front of her” (145). June puts on one of Mick’s old albums, finishes the vodka, opens a bottle of tequila, and starts the bath. Once in it, she closes her eyes and thinks that everything will be alright as she dies from drowning.

Nina finds her body and tries to think of whom to call, but there is no one. She dials 911, and the EMTs confirm that June is dead. Afterward, she calls each of her siblings home and tells them the news, knowing that she is now responsible for them. 

Kit is getting dressed for the party, but she doubts her ability to look good. She plans on kissing a boy for the first time. She decides to go to Nina for help.

The narrative flashes back to 1975.

The Riva children bury their mother. Mick does not show up. That night, Nina can’t sleep. She sees four seals on the beach, wishing that she could join them. She feels guilty for thinking about going for a swim, but realizes that she has “to model for her siblings what she wanted them to do for themselves. They would not be OK if she was not OK” (152). The next morning, she gets them all up to go surfing.

Nina takes over caring for her siblings. Each of them has chores that they are responsible for. Jay tries to surf as often as possible, but doesn’t let Kit join, so she watches from the shore with binoculars. When it comes to permission slips, Nina just forges Mick’s signature. The principal had pulled her aside and told her that as long as it looked like an adult was there, he wouldn’t call the state.

Nina begins to skip school as bills come due. By the end of her junior year of high school, she has dropped out and taken over Riva’s Seafood. On her 18th birthday, Nina files to become her siblings’ official guardian in court. As part of the process, Mick gets notice that he could claim his rights as their father. The paperwork goes through without any response from Mick. To celebrate, they go to Riva’s Seafood. Nina makes the Sandwich for the first time by putting “a bunch of stuff in the kitchen onto a roll” (159). Grateful that Nina is officially their guardian, Jay is relieved of his fear that the state will come and take Kit. They all thank Nina.

Kit arrives at Nina’s, where a pretty cocktail waitress named Caroline tells her that Nina is in her room getting ready. Kit asks Nina to help her dress more sexy without having to wear a tight dress or high heels. Nina takes her jeans and cuts them into shorts and corrects Kit’s posture, telling her that she has great boobs, as all Riva women do. Knowing that Kit rarely comes to her for this sort of advice, Nina is grateful but thinks that “[t]hey should’ve had this conversation earlier. It was Nina’s job to make sure Kit learned how to be herself, all sides of herself” (163). She wants Kit to know that she can be “whatever type of woman she wanted” (163).

Nina cuts Kit’s shirt into a crop top, puts some make up on Kit, and compliments her shoes, making her sister feel good that she brought the right ones. Kit feels cool, “like there were parts of herself she was just meeting for the first time” (164). She thanks Nina, wanting to be what Nina is to her for someone. Kit tells Nina that she’s here to talk about Brandon leaving, if Nina would like. Nina passes, and Kit feels like Nina’s self-sufficiency steals from those who care for her “how good it feels to give, of their sense of value” (165).

The narrative flashes back to 1978.

Three years have passed since June’s death. Nina keeps her family afloat emotionally and financially. She refuses to let Jay or Hud drop out of school to help, threatening to kick them out of the house if they do. They both finish high school. Jay starts working at Riva’s Seafood and Hud attends Loyola Marymount University. Often, the boys spend weekends together, Jay surfing and Hud taking photos. Nina and Kit stay home until Kit starts going to sleepovers, and Nina is left alone. One night in February 1979, Nina sees a family of dolphins on the beach, which makes her cry, mourning her mother. This helps her feel renewed, so she goes surfing.

Two months later, a magazine editor sees her surfing and pays her to take some photos. When she sees the photos, she sees that she is beautiful. The images appear in Vivant in 1979. Once people realize that Mick Riva is her father, she becomes “the face of women’s surfing” (172). Nina’s agents discourage her from entering competitions, and instead offer her an appearance in a calendar. Kit sees Nina as proof that there is a chance for female surfers. Hud gets serious about surf photography and Jay gets more serious about going pro.

When Nina receives the calendar, her white bikini is more see-through than she was told. She feels uncomfortable, but the photo cements her career. She chooses not to get upset and instead focuses on the money, which she uses to promote Ramon to run Riva’s, and to pay Hud’s tuition, Kit’s medical expenses, and the entry fee to a surf competition for Jay. Afterwards, she suggests they throw a party.

In the present, Jay and Hud finish a liquor run. Hud nervously asks whether Jay would be ok with Hud dating Ashley. Jay is not hung up on her, but doesn’t like the idea of his brother dating her. At Nina’s house, Brandon appears and tells Nina that he wants to come home.

The novel flashes back to 1981.

Brandon, already a famous tennis player, spots Nina at a restaurant while he’s doing a photo shoot and asks her out. Brandon learned to play tennis as a kid. His father told him to “always win and […] always act like a gentleman” (184). He won the Australian Open at 19, treating his opponent with such kindness that the media called him “the Sweetheart” (184).

Nina enjoys Brandon’s company and spends more and more time with him. To her, he feels “like falling into a warm, soft bed. And she was so tired” (187). They get married in the spring of 1982, with all of her siblings walking her down the aisle. Brandon buys them the house on Cliffside Drive without Nina seeing it first.

In the present, Nina remembers the night he left. He’d just returned from winning Wimbledon, went into their bedroom, and told her that he’d met someone else. Nina cries and thinks that maybe she should’ve expected it since it’s what happened to her parents.