Manolo lost his temper when something happened with the girls that he could blame on Dolores. She assumed they’d leave them at home with Ruth. On a cruise, there would be no reason for him to get angry even if he drank. This would be their chance to reconnect, to fall in love again. The smile she gave him felt more genuine. “It sounds like fun.”
On March 12, they boarded the Matsonia, one of Matson Lines’ finest ships. Every color was vivid, from the green rim of Punch Bowl on the hill above the city to the sapphire ocean below. On the pier, brass instruments flashed in the sun as the Marine Band in their white uniforms played “Aloha ‘Oe,” Queen Lili‘uokalani’s beautiful song of farewell. Hawaiian girls danced the hula nearby, their hair twisted with white pīkake flowers that gave sweetness to the air. Family and friends waved good-byes, their clothing adding dots of color to the scene.
Green palm trees swayed behind the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, also known as the Pink Lady. Waikiki’s pale cream sand stretched toward Diamond Head, majestic as always above Honolulu. On the white ship, fragrant leis, orange and purple and yellow and pink, covered Manolo. Dolores inhaled deeply. The leis that should be around her neck hung from Ruth’s arm. “I want to wear them, Ruth.”
“No, no. It’s bad luck to wear them if you’re pregnant!”
Dolores crossed herself and said, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. There. I’ve cancelled out the Hawaiian superstition with the Catholic!” She laughed and slipped the flowers off Ruth’s arm. The fragrant cloud settled around her neck, and she crossed herself again just to be sure.
“It seems every flower in Hawai‘i has given its life to send you off in style,” Ruth said. The bell clanged, signaling visitors to depart. Ruth gave Dolores a kiss and scurried down the gangplank.
Dolores turned to wave toward Pearl Harbor, out of sight beyond Hickam Field, in farewell to Alberto, who couldn’t get away from his new job to see them off. She imagined seeing past Hickam Field, its gray runways, planes, barracks, Quonset huts, and jeeps, to Pearl Harbor with its American Navy ships.
The smokestacks with the big blue M belched dark clouds. The ship churned the water as it pulled away from the dock. Honolulu faded until she couldn’t make out the Pink Lady. All eyes fastened on Diamond Head, the last view of home. In keeping with tradition, they threw a lei overboard as they passed the extinct volcano, a promise they would return to the islands. They watched until Diamond Head faded to purple distance and blended into the ocean.
The steward put the luggage in their cabin, which was spacious and well-appointed.
“I read that this ship was retrofitted only two years ago,” Manolo said.
“It feels brand new,” she said.
“Well worth the money they spent,” he agreed. “Of course, the fares increased, too. You’re worth it though.”
They held hands like newlyweds and made their way to the main lounge. They would spend a lot of the next six days here as they read and talk to other passengers and to each other. The walls were all in beige tones, with bay windows on both sides. A central dome in the ceiling gave added height. The furniture and carpeting was very elegant, mostly chairs and couches placed around tables. It looked very inviting.
That night for dinner, they walked into the main restaurant as if they’d done it a thousand times. The center of the room soared upward for two decks, with a light fixture and grand dome in the center. Dark wooden chairs complemented the black-and-gray marble floor. Silver, fine porcelain, and crystal glasses gleamed on the tables.
“I feel as though I’m dining with ali’i,” Dolores whispered to Manolo.
“No royalty could be as beautiful as you,” he replied.
Dolores refused to ruin the moment by pointing out how trite he sounded. Instead, she smiled as they sat and picked up the menu. “I’m going to pick something I’ve never had before,” Dolores said. “And can we have the Strawberry Charlotte for dessert? I promise to save room for it. My stomach is growing anyway, so I might as well enjoy the fancy desserts!”
“Sounds delicious.” Manolo ordered a porterhouse steak. The steward brought a bottle of wine Manolo had preordered.
Dolores twisted the napkin in her lap. She reached out the other hand and laid it on his arm.
“I’m perfectly capable of having wine with dinner,” Manolo said. His eyes bored into her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just don’t want to ruin all this.” She waved her hand to indicate the opulent room.
“You’ll only ruin it if you have morning sickness or go into labor.” The words stung. His tone, though, teased her.
She smiled. “No chance of that, I promise. I’ll stick with iced tea though.”
He raised a glass of wine to toast her. She clinked her tea glass against his and added a silent prayer. God grant this trip is successful. I must repair my marriage.
On their first full day at sea, Dolores commandeered a deck chair and lay watching the ocean. She tied a scarf over her hair so the sea wind wouldn’t ruin it. The sun felt marvelous on her face and the bit of her legs that showed below her dress. Manolo joined her after a deck tennis game with some of the men he’d met the night before at the bon voyage party.
“This is lovely,” she said, basking in the sun.
“Think of it as our honeymoon.” He leaned over her and kissed her forehead. A whiff of whiskey tickled her nose. Her joy plummeted like a stone in the sea. She tried to tell herself it was possible the scent remained from a spill on his shirt from the island. Her mind was smarter though. It kept giving her images of a furious Manolo tossing her overboard. He whistled as he left her to shower. Once again, the surrounding luxury masked dark depths.
That night, after another wonderful meal in the main restaurant, Dolores put a hand on her belly. “I’m so full that our baby has no room in there.”
Manolo’s eyes darkened, his hand tightening on his glass of wine. “You shouldn’t be discussing such things in public.”
“It’s just the two of us.” Her stomach fluttered, and it wasn’t the baby or the meal.
She saw his face run through a myriad of emotions as changeable as the ocean’s colors on a stormy day. What emotion would it land on? With great effort, he smiled.
She relaxed a bit. “So shuffleboard tomorrow?” she asked. He agreed. Crisis averted.
The next day Dolores and Manolo played a languid game of shuffleboard with a couple on their way home to San Francisco after a honeymoon in Honolulu. Their arms reached around each other as if they couldn’t live apart. They smiled at Dolores and Manolo, but the smiles they had for each other were brighter. Dolores focused on Manolo and sent him the brightest smile she could manage. She lightly touched his arm as often as she could, trying to infuse tenderness into her touch. He didn’t respond.
“Oh, wonderful game,” Dolores said, wiping her forehead with a handkerchief. “Next time we must play to twenty instead of seventy-five though!”
The couple laughed politely. Remembering Manolo’s words of the night before, Dolores said nothing about her pregnancy and let them believe she was out of shape or lazy.
“Let’s get a champagne cocktail and sit on the deck,” Manolo said.
“We can sit without the champagne,” she said.
“As you wish, ku‘uipo.” He ordered iced tea for both of them. He clicked her glass, gazed deep into her eyes, and said, “‘Okole maluna.”
She toasted him and drank the wonderfully cold tea. “Manolo, did you notice how affectionate they were?”
“Our opponents? They’re newlyweds.”
“Aren’t we trying to recapture some of that?”
“Is that why you were pawing me? We have a baby on the way. We don’t have to be so publicly devoted.”
“Is that what you believe?”
“You relax. I’m going to play tennis with the guys.” He walked away without kissing her good-bye or looking back. When he returned for dinner, his breath smelled of alcohol. Apparentl
y, there’d been drinks after tennis. If there had been any tennis at all.
She wanted to rediscover the magic they’d had when they first married. That, for her, had been the purpose of this trip. So what should she do now? If she argued with Manolo about his drinking, it would ruin the trip. If she said nothing and he drank every day, it would ruin the trip. How could she win? After circular wrangling for several minutes, she shook her head. Ridiculous. She had to speak up.
“Manolo, no wine with dinner tonight.” She didn’t ask. She didn’t plead.
He stared at her. “Feeling unwell, are you?”
“No, I’m fine. You look rocky though. Tennis must have taken more out of you than you realize.” Without pausing, she looked up at the waiter. “No wine, tonight, please. Just tea.” When he nodded and took the bottle away, she felt a burst of pride in herself. She met Manolo’s eyes and didn’t look away. “Join me for iced tea?”
He nodded. “Pregnancy must be making you cranky.” When she took a breath to retort, he held up his hands to protest. “No, I’m sorry. Don’t want to poke the shark. Let’s have a nice dinner.” He reached across the table to take her hand. “So what do you think Carmen did today?”
Dolores smiled, always ready to discuss their daughter. “She would love running her fingers over all the lush fabrics on this ship.” Manolo laughed and all tension dissipated.
After dinner, they walked the deck in the moonlight. Dolores sighed, full of good food and good feelings. As they prepared for bed in their stateroom, Manolo said, “Tomorrow is a big day. Tennis tournament. Want to come watch?”
“Oh, I’d love to, but it’s so bright and hot on the courts. You can tell me all about it at lunch.”
“You and Baby relax.” He kissed her goodnight.
Dolores thought back over the evening and smiled. She needed to speak up for herself more often. It worked.
The next day, Manolo was up and gone before she awoke. At luncheon, she sat alone at the table until the staff told her, with many apologies, that they had to close the dining room to prepare for dinner. Dolores hid tears of humiliation, anger, and frustration until she got back to her room. Then she cried and punched her pillow until exhaustion overtook her.
“Dolores?” His soft voice and touch on her shoulder woke her. The dusk-darkened room disoriented her at first. “Did you sleep all day, ku‘uipo? It’s time for dinner.”
She stretched and sat up. “Dinner already? Where were you?”
“Our team won the tournament! We played hard, and it took longer than I thought it would. Big celebration tonight! All the guys are joining us for dinner.”
She got up and hurried to the closet. Slipping into her dinner dress, she said, “How nice. Congratulations.” She hoped it came across less sarcastic than it sounded to her. “A little lipstick and powder, and I’m ready to go.”
They walked hand in hand to the restaurant, where Manolo called greetings as he guided her to a table full of couples. He introduced Dolores to all the men, and they introduced their wives. The men then took over the conversation as they discussed every play of each tennis game. They emptied two bottles of wine at the table and ordered four bottles of whisky. Dolores sat between Manolo and a large man called Stu. She could not carry on a separate conversation with any of the women. Manolo entertained them all.
“Your husband has a mean backhand,” Stu said to her at one point.
Dolores just nodded and smiled, but thought to herself, if you only knew.
That wasn’t the only night they sat with the tennis group, and it wasn’t the only night Manolo fell asleep on their bed, drunk and fully clothed.
The six-day passage was full of time suspended from reality, as she was sure the shipping line intended. Manolo tested Dolores’s nerves at least once a day by drinking. It was much less than he drank at home. She convinced herself he was trying. Even so, the cuddling newlyweds reminded her what she didn’t have, and the brash tennis group, whisky glasses in hand, reminded her what she had.
On the last day, with their bags packed and ready for the steward to take away, they stood on the deck as they passed under the Golden Gate Bridge. Dolores had read about it and seen pictures, but the reality struck her speechless. The massive steel and thousands of gigantic rivets screamed heft, but the airiness of the cables was delicate. “I can see why San Franciscans want the world to see this,” she said.
“The Bay Bridge is new, too, but not as grand.” Manolo wore sunglasses to hide bloodshot eyes. He saw her shiver and asked, “Would you like your sweater?”
Forewarned by other travelers, they carried light outerwear with them. San Francisco in March was much colder than Honolulu in December! Dolores took the offer of warmth and snuggled into it, not wanting to miss a minute of the docking.
With the suspended reality of the trip behind them, it wasn’t long before Manolo’s temper reappeared. He snapped at the steward as they disembarked and snarled at the delay as lines formed. “You’d think they would know how to do this more efficiently! If my office staff worked this slowly, I’d have them all fired!”
Dolores ignored him, scanning faces for Paul and Sofia. At last, she saw her brother waving, and they made their way to him.
“Welcome to California!” Paul said, greeting his sister with a warm hug.
“It’s cold here,” Dolores teased him. “Where’s Sofia?”
“She’s waiting at home. Shall we collect your bags?”
Manolo nodded. “If we can make it through this blasted crowd.”
Despite Manolo’s grouchiness, they retrieved their luggage and piled into Paul’s car for the drive to his home in Sunnyvale, about an hour south. Paul and Manolo made small talk about the voyage, and Dolores put in a few things about their daughters and the family. She was surprised, when they reached her brother’s house, that Sofia did not come out to greet them. Manolo and Dolores would be staying with them for seven weeks. Dolores would have welcomed them to her home. She followed Paul and Manolo up the walk but hesitated on the porch, blanching when she saw the address. How could she have forgotten his house number was 449? In Hawai‘i, the numbers four and nine were unlucky. She hoped the address wouldn’t affect their enjoyment of the trip.
Paul let them in the house, and there she was. Sofia sat in a large armchair, wearing black, her dark hair twisted into a tight bun. She held a rosary that was yellowed with age.
“Dolores, this is my wife, Sofia. Sofia has just found out she’s pregnant,” Paul told them proudly. “Sofia, this is my sister Dolores.” He waved at Manolo. “And her husband, Manolo.”
Sofia smiled. “Sorry I couldn’t come greet you at the pier.”
“Mahalo for having us in your home,” Dolores told her. She was confused why a newly pregnant woman couldn’t come to the pier. After all, she’d come all the way from Honolulu. Paul’s Sofia was an odd one.
Sofia looked at Paul, who said, “She’s thanking you.” Sofia nodded.
Paul and Manolo took their bags into the bedroom Manolo and Dolores would use, and Manolo returned with two wrapped packages he handed to Dolores. “These are for you, to thank you for your hospitality,” she said, giving one to Paul and one to Sofia.
Paul opened his first. “A real aloha shirt! Thank you.” He held it up for Sofia to see.
Sofia frowned.
Palm trees covered the blue shirt, and hula girls danced across it. Dolores knew that in Honolulu it was a nice shirt, but somehow in California it was too bright.
Sofia opened her gift. “Oh. Thank you,” she said in a flat tone when she saw the shell earrings and necklace. The shells were arranged and painted to look like roses. Sofia pushed the box to the back of the chair-side table and picked up her rosary.
“If you have a girl, I’ll send a little hula skirt for her from Honolulu. She can be the smallest hula dancer in California,” Dolores told Paul.
Paul laughed. “She’ll be cute anyway.”
Sofia’s smile was so fleeting D
olores almost questioned that she’d seen it at all. “I appreciate your intention,” Sofia said, “but my daughter will not grow up to embrace the exotic sensuality of the Hawaiians.”
Exotic sensuality? Dolores just barely refrained from laughing out loud. Behind her, Manolo chuckled. As days went on, though, Dolores realized many Californians saw Hawai‘i that way. Between the radio program Hawai‘i Calls and the Hollywood movies, Dolores didn’t recognize the place of her birth. It gave her something to laugh about with Manolo.
Paul owned a movie theater in Sunnyvale but gave his manager the running of it, so he could come with them to the fair and sightseeing. Sofia was reluctant to leave the house. Dolores didn’t know if she was afraid something would happen to the baby or if she was just afraid to go out. Dolores wouldn’t let it mar her visit even though Sofia seemed to expect her to spend more time sitting at home.
Manolo and Dolores attended the World’s Fair every day. They’d read all about it before they left Honolulu and were eager to see it all. They knew the fair was to celebrate the new Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, but also to showcase all the nations of the Pacific. Dolores much preferred the nickname “Pageant of the Pacific” to “World’s Fair.” It sounded so much more romantic! Treasure Island, the site of the fair, was a man-made island. The Pacific Ocean surrounded it, and there were even palm trees! The gigantic white statue of Pacifica was the first jaw-dropping sight they encountered, but then they saw the Tower of the Sun, over four times taller!
The buildings housed wonder after wonder. They walked across a model relief map of the western United States, watched demonstrations of television and the electric eye, and explored pavilions from forty foreign countries. Some critics said the World’s Fair pandered to women with all the innovations for the future that involved housework. Dolores’s eyes went wide when she saw Bakelite toaster handles, automated cow-milkers, and air-conditioned coaches. She would never be able to afford any of these things, but she scribed every idea into her brain so she could share it with Grandma Jessie and Helen, who would wave it off as foolish, and with Ruth, who would share her longing.
The Aloha Spirit Page 17