“Did you hear that my cousin in LA was approached about doing a reality show?” Emily says as she pops open a Coke from the icebox.
“What kind of reality show?” I ask, but care very little about the answer. Before this would’ve been exciting news—what is wrong with me?
“Sort of similar to The Hills or Laguna Beach—one of those.”
“Really?” Susanne asks with the enthusiasm I might have had a few months ago. “Is she going to do it? Maybe you could get on, and then we’ll come shopping with you in LA.”
My mind starts zoning out, though I try to pretend to listen to Susanne, Monica, and Emily.
“She’s in film school at UCLA, so they’d do the show about her friends and life in college.”
“That’s cool.”
“Someone said they were talking about doing one set in a prep school—we should try getting it at Gaitlin.”
“They’d probably want one in New York.”
“You never know.”
The conversations continue. I realize that I’ve been checked out of all of this since meeting Caleb. But then, I remember how empty I was feeling even before meeting him. Church and my faith have always filled that emptiness for the most part, but I still lived a mostly meaningless life. Now I want more. What that means, I haven’t figured out—only that I hope it includes Caleb.
“I hate being poor,” Susanne cries while we’re trying on clothes. She stands in front of a mirror, holding one then another coat in front of her.
“What do you mean, poor?” Monica rolls her eyes.
“Daddy will only let me have two credit cards—he made me choose. Before this recession, I could buy whatever I wanted.”
“I would just die,” Emily says, and I nearly burst out laughing.
I haven’t told my friends that the hotel business isn’t doing so well and that probably a lot of their family companies are struggling. I overheard my parents saying Monica’s father has lost millions in real estate in Dubai and in an investment scandal that involved a lot of celebrities and businesspeople. Now Monica stares at Emily with contempt. But none of us really understand what it’s like to live frugally.
“You know, people are losing their houses and living in tent cities around the country.” The three of them turn and stare at me like I’ve lost my mind.
“Yeah, but that’s, like, in the South,” Emily states as if she knows.
“No, in Sacramento.”
Susanne shrugs. “California is the new Katrina.”
“It is not,” Monica scoffs.
“Well, Seattle is the new California.” Emily makes a twirl in a dress she’s tried on.
“It’s been the new California for a decade or so.”
Emily sets her hands on her hips. “Nothing can be the new California. Without LA, our country is lost. Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills, Hollywood. The first Disneyland was started in LA. Everything entertaining and beautiful pretty much starts in LA.”
No one responds to that. It was somewhat true.
“Shoe therapy!” Emily says as we walk into a shoe store.
I’m not planning to buy new shoes, but then I see a pair that would look perfect with a summer dress I ordered from Anthropologie.
By the time we meet Susanne’s father back at the plane, we have a hard time finding space for all the bags.
For some reason, after a day of mundane conversation with the girls, a feeling of insecurity about Caleb rises in me. Maybe it’s all the guy talk, or being immersed in the world of the rich again. But a nagging fear follows me home.
“Never ignore the warning signs,” Susanne said at lunch, when she was telling about her Harvard boy who broke her heart.
The worry grows. What if he wasn’t really meeting his grandfather tonight? What if he meets someone more like him, perhaps even at church tonight? What if Caleb is just one of those guys who has a great line, who knows how to get a girl to fall in love with him—hook, line, and sinker—and then moves on to the next? It doesn’t seem possible, not Caleb, but I knew enough girls who’d believed the same things and gotten hurt.
“I should have known,” Susanne often said, and really, we did all agree with that one. She was in Cancún on spring break—what did she expect? Well, she expected what we all expect—honesty. We crave it as much as we crave love and attention and to be the sole object of desire in a man’s eyes and heart. But was it realistic to expect that?
I decide that it is. I’m just not sure that Caleb will meet my expectations.
Chapter Sixteen
Doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet (Act 2, Scene 2)
CALEB
Grandfather summons me, and it irritates me that I’m answering his call. We’re meeting for dinner at the hotel restaurant where he’s staying in Vancouver, Washington, across the Columbia River from Portland.
The hostess directs me to his table. Grandfather looks up from taking a sip of his drink and sets it down as I arrive.
“Caleb, good to see you.” He stands and we embrace; he pounds me hard on the back.
“Grandfather.” I sit across from him, and I’m surprised to see that he really is getting old.
“Do you know what I drink?” he asks, touching the glass.
“You drink scotch.”
“Yes.” He seems pleased that I answer correctly. “When he and I were friends, Augustus Monrovi introduced me to the pleasures of scotch. Read up on the history of it sometime, it’s interesting.”
“Okay,” I say, wondering why we’re discussing this.
“I ordered for us already. This is a nice hotel, I’ve been happy with it.”
I glance around the restaurant. Candles flicker on the tablecloths and the windows open to the Columbia River.
“I considered staying at the Monrovi Inn . . . but maybe next time I’m in town.”
“I know what you’re trying to do.”
He leans back in his seat. “What is that?”
“You made an offer to buy the inn.”
He nods. “I did. And I was turned down. The first time. I think that Reed Monrovi might be a reasonable man. My second offer is very generous, especially at this time in our economy.”
“You really think he’ll sell it to you?” My stomach contracts and I think of Kate.
“Why not? He needs the money. His other properties are in trouble, deep trouble. It would save his company.”
“And you’d finally get what you want.”
“It does feel rather empty now that it’s on the table after all these years.”
I don’t know what to say. The Monrovi Inn wasn’t just a hotel to the Monrovi family—it was more their home than their house was. Their entire lives wrapped around that particular hotel—the first in their chain, and the only one that they loved. My father loved that land too. He loved it for the memories and the sacredness once bestowed on it. And Grandfather wanted it to win some old grudge that he wanted me to continue.
“What is happening between you and the Monrovi girl?”
I look at him directly. “I’m in love with her.”
Grandfather slams his hand down.
“End it.”
“I can’t. I tried.” I shrug my shoulders. “It’s not to spite you. I tried to stay away and expected to only feel contempt for her. I tried to end it before it began.”
“You are the future of Kalani Corporation. There’s no one else to take the lead.”
“I’m only seventeen years old.”
Grandfather leans back and folds his arms across his chest. “I was nineteen when I opened my first business.”
“Yes, I know. You had already fought in the war after lying about your age and joining up at sixteen. At seventeen, you’d killed more men then you could remember. At eighteen, the war ended and you went home to start a business. That was your life. But I’d like to graduate high school and college before taking o
ver a multimillion-dollar company. I’m not starting it from the ground up, and I’m not prepared to take it over yet.”
“Yet. I am glad to hear you say that. You will take it over, and it’s time that you took a larger role in the company. Now.”
“Grandfather. I’m not leaving.”
He takes another drink of his scotch.
“Because you are in love with a white girl.”
“I am. And someday, if she will have me, I plan to marry her. It must be on the table now. You have always been clear about what you expect of me.”
The waitress arrives with our food. I lean back as she sets the matching plates of sea bass, grilled potatoes, and asparagus before us. Grandfather doesn’t remove his stare from me.
“Haven’t you listened to me all these years? Our blood must be preserved. The Hawaiian tradition has become a cartoon to the world. We are silly hula girls and men with flaming fire batons. We must bring back the pride of our people. Our ancestors demand it.”
“It’s not that, Grandfather. It’s specifically the Monrovi family. Why do you hate them so much?”
His crow-black eyes that once struck fear in me bore into my eyes. As a child, one look like this and I would cower. No more. I clench my jaw. If I am not willing to give up everything for Kate, then what are my words, anyway?—they are nothing. But it’s more than giving up my future, my family business, and being cut off, alone in the world. For all his faults, I do love my grandfather. He is a bitter, angry, spiteful old man. But he is my grandfather.
“Do you know the only thing that can tear apart a friendship between two men who fought a war together?”
I look at him curiously, not understanding what he means. “Augustus Monrovi and I loved the same woman.”
“Kate’s grandmother?”
Grandfather shakes his head, looking down at his food. “No.”
“Nene?” I try to recall the few memories of Grandma Nene. She had beautiful silky black hair and was the best storyteller in our entire family. She was of Hawaiian royalty— a direct descendent from King Kamehameha—and when I was a child, her stories brought the battles and lost loves to life for me.
“No, not your grandmother. This woman was my first wife.”
“You had a first wife?”
“Your father doesn’t even know that,” Grandfather says with a huff of laughter. He waves the waitress over and orders another scotch and a Coke for me.
He doesn’t speak for a long time, and it’s the silence that tells me not to ask more about her right now. I study his face and glimpse a more vulnerable side.
“Grandfather, you’ve told me about the property and hotel and about being proud over our land back home. I’ve heard about it all my life. The land that was blessed. But for a land that was blessed, I can’t understand why it would be fought over with so much hatred.”
He stares at me with his glass midair.
“I need . . .” Grandfather pauses, puts down his glass, and looks at me directly. My grandfather has never used the word need in conjunction with himself in my entire lifetime.
“I have cancer,” Grandfather says, making minute adjustments to the cuff links on each sleeve.
“What?” I set my hands on the table. He appears unfazed.
“I have cancer, and I need you to come home.”
KATE
I’m sitting in a corner at Starbucks, working on the love poem. Ms. Landreth finally called my name, and while once I couldn’t find enough to write about love, now I have too much. I’ve written page after page in my notebook, trying different methods and directions. How can I possibly capture love in words? It is pain and bliss, discovery and death. But in words it reminds me of Elaine’s poem—dramatic and full of analogies.
Leaning back in my seat, I consider texting Caleb, but I tell myself that I can and should and will do something alone. Independent, strong woman that I’m trying to be, I must make myself sit at this Starbucks and work alone. Besides, I remind myself, he’s working and talking with his father, trying to decide what to do. What he chooses has a direct effect on the future of my heart, and perhaps this poem.
There is a couple sitting a few tables over who look like they must live on a farm. I imagine an apple farm. He’s wearing a plaid shirt and she sports something I guess she found at the thrift shop. Her hair is long and frizzy, formerly medium brown, but now so mixed with gray that it looks a shade of light red at first glance. I can see the man’s face better, as he turns it often toward the woman. No one would look much at this man, he’s so plain and unassuming. He drinks a hot mocha with a straw. What captures my attention is that this couple hasn’t let go of each other’s hands the entire time. They talk, sit in quiet contemplation, she sways to the Beatles playing over the speaker, they look at each other—I see admiration in his eyes. He rubs the light stubble on his wrinkled jaw, and there is no one else this man sees but her.
Love. What is it? Why do we need it? Where does it come from?
I want to know this, so I can figure out what to do.
Love is everywhere, in everything. Love is between a child and her mother. It’s there in the joined hands of the apple farmers a few seats away. It’s with the homeless man and his dog that I saw on my drive here.
Rich, poor, American, Middle Eastern—no one is immune to love. It wraps around each of us, changing who we are, shaping us. The lack of it warps us, destroys us, turns us to evil. Perhaps that’s what happened to Caleb’s grandfather?
And love is now between Caleb and me.
“Your love poem?”
It’s Elaine, glancing over my shoulder as she pauses on her way toward the counter.
Instinctively I cover the page. “Oh, hi,” I say and then nod. “Yes. It’s hard. Harder than I expected.”
“Tell me about it.” Usually Elaine expresses her disdain for me up front, but today, it feels like a truce has begun. We talk a minute longer about Ms. Landreth’s final project—a profile of a great woman in literature, then Elaine moves off to put in her order.
On her way out she says, “Good luck with it. I was probably wrong, what I said in mine, but it felt right at the time. But if love isn’t death, what is it? That could be your poem.”
She leaves and I realize, strange as she’s become, Elaine has given me some guidance. Returning to my notepad, I write my thoughts, crossing things out. If love isn’t death, what is it?
I write down words from childhood: God Is Love.
Since childhood Sunday school, I’ve been told that God is love. We colored it on our papers, banners hanging from the ceiling proclaimed it, we sang songs and used hand motions emphasizing the truth.
My pen stops moving. It finally comes home to me. I thought I understood, but now I find a new clarity. It isn’t a simple statement like, “The sky is blue,” and yet it’s exactly that simple—and even more complex. When I think of the intricate science that makes the sky blue, I see how easy it’s been to miss the truth.
God is love.
He was love and will always be love and is love. It’s simple and also the most profound statement on the planet.
Can love, then, survive without God? When people live without God or reject him, love remains. Love pulses through the world because God brought it into being and so the Creator and creation are both infused with love.
I stare at the couple holding hands, and a woman giving her little girl a sippy cup as she waits for her coffee, and a young guy and girl leaning close, laughing together. Love is here.
Perhaps this is the answer to my fears. True love means a true God.
I want to talk to Caleb about this. I pack up my notebook and hurry toward my car. If I really believe in God, as I do, then I can find some measure of peace in this love of ours. Because if God is with us, love is with us. Our love plus his love means forever.
Chapter Seventeen
Banish’d from her Is self from self: a deadly banishment!
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Two Gentlemen of Verona (Act 3, Scene 1)
CALEB
Dad finds me in the maintenance building as I’m fixing one of the lawn mowers. The workday has dragged on today; I just want to get to Kate. Her presence gives me peace and every little thing about her makes me happy. She wants to talk about love and God tonight, and I find that incredibly endearing. Spending time on a lawn mower is about to drive me mad. Then I see Dad’s face.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Your grandfather.”
I stand up and pull off my gloves.
“They’re starting an aggressive chemo day after tomorrow.”
“That fast?” My grandfather had only been back in Hawaii a day.
Dad nods. “I’m booking the flights tomorrow.”
“What should I do? I don’t want to go. Not now.” I don’t need to say why; Dad already knows.
“Do you know why I came here after we lost your mom?” Dad says.
I nod and then shrug. “I know what you told me and what everyone else has told me.” He waits for me to go on. “You needed to get away from the family and . . . because of Mom.”
He knows what I mean without making me spell it out. The loss of Mom nearly broke him. She was his best friend, confidante, the love of his life—to her very last day. Now with Kate, I understand a little more of what Dad lost. To lose Kate . . . I can’t even go there. Yet, here it was on the table: I might have to leave her now.
“So you don’t know why I came here, specifically here to the Monrovi?”
“Not really.”
“I’m a creature of habit for one—and this place is full of memories of happy times with your mother and our vacations here. I have always found this place to be healing. It’s part of our family lineage now, too, since the blessing. Your grandfather is determined to have the land back. He has his reasons, but I find it ironic to fight over a land that brings people peace.”
“Yeah, I’ve thought that too.” Glancing out the open shop doors, I see the perfectly groomed golf course, the towering redwoods beyond and in clusters throughout the course, and farther off, the line of apple trees.
We sit quietly for a time.
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