The Descendants

by Kaui Hart Hemmings

  Joanie looked at the paper. “Hilo Hattie. They like to represent Asians and hapas and Filipinos.”

  “But the parents are white. They’re not creating a credible family.”

  “Maybe they’re adopted.”

  “That’s just stupid,” I said. “Why not have an Asian mom and a Filipino dad?”

  “They never marry that way.”

  “A hapa mom and an Asian dad.”

  “They like white adult models and ethnic kids.”

  “Well, what about the black man? I mean, why not throw in a black kid?”

  “The few black people here are military. They’re not the target market.”

  I closed the paper, annoyed by the entire conversation. “What the hell are they looking at, anyway?”

  “Their glorious future,” Joanie said in a deadpan voice.

  I started to laugh and she did, too, and when the girls came into the kitchen and asked what was so funny, we both said, “Nothing.”

  THIS WOMAN FROM the newspaper is getting settled on Joanie’s bed, and I don’t know what to do. I want to leave; I generally don’t like being with people here, but it’s too late. She sees us and smiles, then turns on a light with a remote control.

  “Hi there,” I say.

  “Hello,” she says.

  I see her looking at Scottie in a sympathetic way that reminds me of how I looked at Lani. “Mind if we stay and watch?” I ask.

  “Sure. I won’t be long.” She has a tray on her lap, and she picks up various identical brushes before settling on one and going to work on Joanie’s face, working around the tube. She dips the brush into a palette of gloss and dabs at my wife’s lips as if she’s some kind of French pointillist. Though I find this absurd, I have to admit that Joanie would appreciate it. She enjoys being beautiful. She likes to look luminous and ravishing—her own words. Good luck, I used to tell her. Good luck with your goals.

  We don’t treat each other very well, I suppose. Even from the start. It was as though we had the seven-year itch the day we met. The day she went into a coma, I heard her telling her friend Shelley that I was useless, that I leave my socks hanging on every doorknob in the house. At weddings we roll our eyes at the burgeoning love around us, the vows that we know will morph into new kinds of promises: I vow not to kiss you when you’re trying to read. I will tolerate you in sickness and ignore you in health. I promise to let you watch that stupid news show about celebrities, since you’re so disenchanted with your own life.

  Joanie and I were urged by her brother, Barry, to subject ourselves to counseling as a decent couple would. Barry is a man of the couch, a believer in weekly therapy, affirmations, and pulse points. Once he tried to show us exercises he’d been doing in session with his girlfriend. We were instructed to trade reasons, abstract or specific, why we stayed with each other. I started off by saying that Joanie would get drunk and pretend I was someone else and do this neat thing with her tongue. Joanie said tax breaks. Barry cried. Openly. His second wife had recently left him for someone who understood that a man didn’t do volunteer work.

  “Stop it, Barry,” Joanie said. “Get ahold of yourself. This is just how we work.”

  I agreed. When she told Shelley I was useless, I heard the smile in her voice and knew she was pretending to be irritated. Really, she wouldn’t know what to do without my uselessness, just as I wouldn’t know what to do without her complaints. I take it back. It’s not that we don’t treat each other well; it’s just that we’re comfortable enough to know that sarcasm and aloofness keep us afloat, and we never have to watch where we step.

  “You are both so cold,” Barry said that night. We were at Hoku’s in the Kahala Resort, and Joanie was underdressed in jeans and a white low-cut top. I remember sneaking looks at her breasts. She always overdressed at casual restaurants and underdressed at nice ones. I remember she ordered the onaga and I ordered the kiawe pork chop.

  “This is incredible,” she said when she tasted my dish. “So good.”

  I traded plates with her and we continued on, enjoying the food, the view of the ocean, and that feeling of contentment you get when you have picked the perfect restaurant. I raised my glass and she tapped mine, a private moment acknowledging that whatever Barry wanted to call us, we were a team.

  TIA OR TARA has stopped applying makeup to my wife’s face and is looking at Scottie with disapproval. The light is hitting this woman’s face, giving me an opportunity to see that she should perhaps be working on her own makeup. Her coloring is similar to a manila envelope. There are specks of white in her eyebrows, and her concealer is not concealing. I can tell my daughter doesn’t know what to do with this woman’s critical look.

  “What?” Scottie asks. “I don’t want any makeup.” She looks at me for protection, and it’s heartbreaking. All the women who model with Joanie have this inane urge to make over my daughter with the notion that they’re helping her somehow. She’s not as pretty as her older sister or her mother, and these other models think that slapping on some rouge will somehow make her feel better about her facial fate. They’re like missionaries. Mascara thumpers.

  “I was just going to say that I think your mother was enjoying the view,” Tia or Tara says. “It’s so pretty outside. You should let the light in.”

  My daughter looks at the curtain. Her little mouth is open. Her hand reaches for a tumbleweed of hair.

  “Listen here, T. Her mother was not enjoying the view. Her mother is in a coma. And she’s not supposed to be in bright light.”

  “My name is not T,” she says. “My name is Allison.”

  “Okay, then, Ali. Don’t confuse my daughter, please.”

  “I’m turning into a remarkable young lady,” Scottie says.

  “Damn straight.” My heart feels like one of Scottie’s clogs clomping down the hall. I don’t know why I became so angry.

  “Sorry,” Allison says. “I just thought we could use some light.”

  “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell like that.”

  She rummages in her bag, pulling out a round jar, and appraises Joanie’s face as if she’s about to do surgery. She dabs something onto my wife’s cheek, frowns, then puts the jar back and extracts a similar-looking jar and repeats the application, this time smiling slightly with satisfaction. I don’t see any difference. Makeup is one of the most mysterious things in the world.

  “Do you want to talk?” I ask Scottie. I gesture to her mother on the bed.

  She looks at Allison. “I’ll wait.” She turns on the television and I feel bad. I’m running out of toys, ideas to entertain her. I can usually find a toy in anything. A spoon, a sugar packet, a quarter. It’s my job to distract her. It’s my job to make sure she still has the life of a ten-year-old.

  I remember that I brought a banana with me so she’d have something healthy to eat. I get her Roxy backpack to retrieve it and am reminded of a game I made up for Joanie, who also needed to be constantly entertained. This was pre-children, and we were having dinner, drinking wine, and she was giving me a look that said, Look at the boring life we lead. Look how you’ve squashed my magnetic personality. I used to be positively volcanic; now I’m predictable and four pounds heavier, and I’ve turned into someone who sits home on a Saturday night munching on bonbons and watching my fiancé shovel food into his mouth and swallow his burps. That kind of look.

  She had just moved into my house, the one we live in now. She was twenty-two and getting a taste of life in Maunawili—the big beautiful home, the huge, lush property, and all of the work that went along with it. We have breadfruit, bananas, and mangoes, but all of these things rot and bring flies. We have a sparkling pool, but at the end of the day, it’s filled with leaves. The large circular driveway also gets cluttered with leaves and is cracked from the roots of the big banyan tree. We have tea leaves that yellow and need to be pulled, mondo grass and tiare, plants and pikake that need to be watered. We have gorgeous soft wood floors, but we also have flying cockroache
s, cane spiders, termites and centipedes that love these wooden floors and dark rafters as well.

  I told her we had a yardman and a cleaning lady who came once a week, but throughout the week we had to take care of things ourselves. If she didn’t help me, then I’d do what I could in addition to my full-time job, but I warned her that this wouldn’t be enough. She’d have to work, too. She wasn’t happy about this, so she was giving me that look. I got up and grabbed a banana and poured her another glass of wine. I concentrated on my task, trying not to let her death stare penetrate me too deeply. I divided the pieces of banana, then put one slice on a linen napkin. The goal was to trampoline the piece up into the air and get it to stick to the ceiling. My mother and I would play this game after she had a few cocktails and we were finished cleaning up the kitchen. I tossed. It stuck. Joanie looked at me, trying to conceal her interest, but I knew I had her hooked. I knew she’d have to one-up me. She finished her bite, took a long sip of wine, then placed one of her pieces on her napkin, locked herself into a good tossing position, and let it fly. It didn’t stick.

  “Zero to one,” she said, and the game was on. We sat there for hours until the wine and the bananas were gone.

  I show Scottie the game I used to play with her mother.

  She looks at the TV, looks at me, and decides to come over. I watch her toss a piece of banana, the tip of her tongue pointing out of her mouth. She can’t get it to stick, but that doesn’t matter. She’s laughing and using her entire body to launch the small piece of fruit. When she gets one to stay, she yells “Score!” and receives a dirty look from Allison. Now she has the peel, which I stop her from throwing, so she takes the biggest chunk of the banana. She’s getting a bit too excited for my comfort. It’s been happening a lot lately, this spontaneous, deranged elation. She makes a karate sound—“Hi-ya!”—and flings the banana, but her strange energy makes it fly across the room, where it hits the ceiling and then falls. On her mother. Allison quickly moves the makeup brush off of Joanie’s face and leans back. The room is silent. I look at the piece of banana on the white sheet in the center of Joanie’s body. Allison looks at me, then at the banana, staring as though it’s a turd.

  Scottie looks like she’s done something horribly wrong. I give her another slice. “Here, Scottie. Try again. A flick of the wrist should do. No need to get…crazy.”

  She doesn’t take the banana. She takes a step back and holds the end of my shirt. I take her hand off of my shirt. “Here. No big deal.”

  “We can’t just leave that there on Mom like that,” she says.

  I look at the banana. “Take it off, then.”

  She doesn’t budge.

  “Would you like me to take it off?”

  She nods.

  I walk over to my wife’s bed and pick up the mushy banana.

  “There. No problem. Here,” I say, handing it to Scottie. “Try again.” But she won’t look at me. She pushes my hip; I’m in her way. Our game is over. She walks back to her chair and the safety of the TV. I throw the banana at the ceiling, where it sticks, and then I sit down. Allison looks at the ceiling.

  “What?” I say. Fuck her. Allison.

  “You have an odd way with children,” she says. “This whole thing you have going.”

  “What we have going is working out just fine, thanks.”

  She looks at Scottie, zoning out on a show where men are in some kind of competition that involves throwing tires.

  “I see,” Allison says. She goes back to making my wife look vibrant.

  “Parents shouldn’t have to compromise their personalities,” Scottie mumbles.

  It’s something I’ve heard Joanie say to Alex after she complained that Joanie dressed too young. Joanie said, “Parents shouldn’t have to compromise their personalities.” Alex asked if her personality was that of a prostitute, and my wife responded, “Why, yes. Yes, it is.”

  “All right, Scottie. Come on. You have something to say. The doctor’s going to be here soon, and I’m going to need to talk to him alone, so go on. Let’s hear it.”

  “No,” she says. “You talk.”

  I look at Joanie and pause, trying to think of something interesting. “Joanie,” I say. “I just want to tell you some things.” I try to think of what I should talk about and see that it is pretty hard. “We miss you. Can’t wait until you get home.”

  Scottie’s unimpressed.

  “We’ll go to Buzz’s when you get out,” I say. Buzz’s is one of Joanie’s favorite restaurants, and we go there often. Without fail, she ends up at the bar with these spring-break sorts for a drink or ten, and I’m left at the table all alone, but it’s sort of peaceful. I like watching her with other people. I like her magnetism. Her courage and ego. But I wonder if I like these things only because she’s in a coma and may never resemble her old self. It’s hard to say.

  The manager of that restaurant once thanked me. She said that she always livened up the place and made people want to drink.

  I catch a glimpse of Joanie’s face. She looks lovely. Not ravishing, but simply lovely. Her freckles rise through the blush, her closed eyes fastened by dark, dramatic lashes. Her eyelashes are the only strong feature left on her face. Everything else has been softened. She looks pretty, but perhaps too divine, as if she’s cased in glass or lying in a coffin.

  Still, I’m grateful for what Allison has done. I realize my only job now is to make Joanie happy. To give her everything she wants, and she wants to be beautiful.

  “Allison,” I say. “Thank you. I’m sure Joanie is happy.”

  “She’s not happy,” Allison says. “She’s in a coma.”

  I look at her, shocked and slightly thrilled.

  “Oh my God,” Allison says, and she starts to cry. “I can’t believe I said that. I was just trying to sound like you. To get you back. Oh, God.”

  She gathers her beauty tools, dropping a few brushes. I go over to her and pick up the fallen brushes, and she snatches them out of my hand and then leaves, sniffling.

  “Mercy,” I say. “I’m an ass.”

  “Ass,” Scottie says.

  “Yes,” I say. “That’s me.”

  “You’re a dad-ass. Like a badass but older.”

  “Mercy,” I say.

  I look at my wife. I need you, I think. I need you here to help our daughters and me. I don’t know how to talk to people. I don’t know how to live correctly.

  I hear a voice on the intercom: “Mr. King, the doctor should be in to see you in about twenty minutes.”

  Scottie looks at the intercom, then at me. “It’s okay,” I say. “It’s going to be okay.”

  8

  I LET SCOTTIE continue to watch TV. I try to be quiet and calm, but I’m too anxious. I keep hoping she’ll say something to Joanie. I finally speak.

  “You said you had something to tell Mom. I want you to do that now. Can you do that? Now that Allison’s gone? It will help, you know. It will help Mom.”

  She looks over at the bed. “Let me try it out on you first.”

  “Okay. Go for it. I’m listening.”

  “Not here,” she says, shifting her eyes to Joanie. She tilts her head toward the hall.

  I stand up and try not to look disappointed. She was fine the first week Joanie was in here, and I wonder what has changed or what’s going through her mind. The doctor says it’s normal—it’s disturbing to speak to someone who doesn’t respond, especially a parent—but in Scottie’s case, it’s different. It’s as if she’s embarrassed of her life. She thinks that if she speaks to her mother, she should have something incredible to say. I always urge her to talk about school, but Scottie says this would be boring, and she wouldn’t want her mother to think she was a walking yawn.

  We step into the hall. “Okay. Today’s the day. You’re going to talk to Mom.”

  “I think I have an okay story.” She rises up on her toes and lifts her arms in the air so they form an O. She swings one leg back and forth. She takes ballet less
ons because that’s what her sister used to do, but she doesn’t have the same grace or style. Her clog comes down hard on the floor. Slap! She looks at the ground then up at me.

  “Settle down. Tell me your story.”

  “Okay,” she says. “Pretend you’re Mom. Close your eyes and be still.”

  I close my eyes.

  “Hi, Mom,” she begins.

  I almost say hello but catch myself. I keep still.

  “Yesterday I explored the reef in front of the public beach by myself. I have tons of friends. My best friend is Reina Burke, but I felt like being alone.”

  I open my eyes when I hear “Reina Burke,” then quickly close them again and tune back in to the story.

  “And there’s this really cute guy who works the beach stand there. Reina likes him, too. His eyes look like giraffe eyes. So I went to explore the reef in front of his stand. The tide was low. I could see all sorts of things. In one place the coral was a really cool dark color, but then I looked closer and it wasn’t coral. It was an eel. A moray. I almost died. There were millions of sea urchins and a few sea cucumbers. I even picked one up and squeezed him like you showed me that one time.”

  “This is good, Scottie. Let’s go back in. Mom will love this.”

  “I’m not done.”

  I close my eyes. I wish I could lie down. This is kind of nice.

  “So I was squatting on the reef and lost my balance and fell back on my hands. One of my hands landed on an urchin, and it put its spines in me. My hand looked like a pincushion. It hurt really bad, but I lived. I survived. I got up again.”

  I’m grabbing her hands, holding them up to my face. The roots of urchin spines are locked in and expanded under the skin of her left palm. They look like tiny black starfish that plan on making her hand their home forever. I notice more stars on her fingertips. “Why didn’t you tell me you were hurt? Why didn’t you say something? Does Esther know?”