Belleau, Heidi & Vane, Violetta_Hawaiian Gothic

by Heidi Belleau

  “He’s ‘ohana,” said Anela. “It would be culturally appropriate. You should know this.”

  “I’m sorry.” Dr. Nakanishi fluttered her hands in a conciliatory gesture. “I really am. I’ve had training. I do know. But this whole process, ideally, is not about who has the authority. It’s aboutKalani’swishes and getting consensus on what those would be.”

  “Are you trying to say that I…that I…” Anela’s shoulders vibrated. “That I’m only asking this as some kind of power trip?” She threw a glance at Ori, making sure he got his share of the accusation too.

  “He’d want a fighting chance,” added Julie. She kept her eyes downcast, not wanting to look her mother in the face, obviously. The rift between Anela and Julie had been sucking all the air out of the so-called “family room” even before Dr. Nakanishi walked in.

  Anela looked from Julie to Ori and back again with a glare that spoke of betrayal. “You only say that because Ori’s here. You two— Why ishe here? It wasn’t him who came here every day, talking to Kalani even though he couldn’t hear. It wasn’t him who found Kalani on the side of that road. He ran away to the mainland as soon as he was old enough. Where was all his concern for Kalani then?”

  Under the table, Ori curled his hands into fists, nails digging into his palms. He wasn’t angry at Anela. She was only stating the simple truth.

  “You listed him as Kalani’s closest friend,” said Dr. Nakanishi, in a voice that was carefully, professionally, soft. Ori wondered how many times she’d had to mediate fights like this. Kalani wasn’t the only one on this ward.

  “Yes. Yes I did.” Anela looked down, like her daughter, and repositioned her wavy mass of midnight hair behind the back of her chair.

  “I agree with Julie,” said Ori, trying to match the softness of Dr. Nakanishi’s voice. It came out like a croak at first. He was trying to remain calm, because this was only going to get worse. He hadn’t even been in to see Kalani yet. Anela and Dr. Nakanishi had ambushed him at the door and ferried him here, instead. “I’m sorry, Anela. But I— when he was in the hospital after the shark, I remember him saying he would never give up. I’ve read stories. Articles. There’s this thing called deep brain stimulation—”

  “At this point, Mr. Reyes,” Dr. Nakanishi said, “I do have to reiterate that the prognosis is very poor. He may not have severe brain damage, but his chances of coming out of the coma are below one percent.”

  Ori wanted to shout, If you would just let me see him! But what? He’d sit next to Kalani, hold his hand, Kalani would hear his voice and wake up like Sleeping Beauty, whole and healthy?

  “This is assisted suicide,” said Julie. “If he dies, it should be in God’s time, not ours.”

  “No, Ms. Kaeo, we’re only discussing not taking extraordinary measures to continue preserving—” “What doing, Julie?” shouted Anela, falling into pidgin before she pulled herself out and lowered her voice. “You’re just saying what the pastor told you to say. It’s not about Kalani for you. I know he—”

  “Please,” said Dr. Nakanishi. “I think we may need to reconvene this conference. I’m confident we can ultimately get to a consensus. I’m going to assign a social worker to you who can act as a mediator…”

  Her voice washed away.

  Julie and Anela came to him afterward, in the hallway. Julie was almost a mirror image of her statuesque mother, twenty years younger and heavily pregnant. “My husband’s driving us back to Nanakuli,” she said. “Do you need a ride?”

  “I’m sorry for what I said in there,” added Anela, and she hugged him gently, swaying back and forth with him in a slow, motherly dance. “You know I still love you.”

  She’d said terrible things. He let himself bury his face in her shoulder.

  * * * *

  He didn’t take her up on her offer for a ride, so Julie offered to walk him to Kalani’s room instead while Anela waited downstairs.

  She called it “Kalani’s room” but it was actually a long, quiet ward with ten beds, bright with sunlight and full of machinery. Kalani’s bed was the third on the left. All the curtains in the ward were pulled back; there were no visitors, at least not now, and the patients weren’t in any position to worry about their privacy.

  Ori was surprised that his first thought was, It’s not so bad. Julie clapped his shoulder as she turned and left, and if she spoke, Ori didn’t hear it.

  Kalani’s bed had a single chair tucked into the space beside it and a small bedside table crowded with two picture frames and a teetering stack of books: a big fat Bible smothered under a pile of secondhand romance novels. Anela and Julie had been honest about their long vigils by Kalani’s side.

  And now it was Ori’s turn.

  He’d tried so hard to brace himself for this—looked at pictures of coma patients, read up on treatments, aggressively forced himself to forget the vibrant, athletic Kalani he remembered and replace him with someone shriveled and helpless and dependent on machines—but the memories of last night were fresh in his mind. Kalani, strong and hot and smooth and wanting him just as much as Ori wanted Kalani.

  The reality nearly made him want to capitulate to Anela’s point of view.

  On TV, coma patients just looked like people who’d fallen asleep with an IV in, ready to wake up at any moment. But Kalani looked like a badly made wax doll of himself. His lips were slack and dry and cracked where they weren’t coated with ointment. His coloring seemed…off. Ashen and too pale, no warmth or flush in his face. His eyelids hovered, trapped halfway between waking and restful sleep, revealing the whites of his eyes. Ori couldn’t see many of the tubes coming in and out of his body, but he could sense they were there. He was afraid of touching Kalani for fear that he’d pull something out or tug something the wrong way.

  He sat very carefully in the chair and folded his hands.

  He thought he’d have so much to say after all these years, starting with “I’m sorry” and ending with “I love you”, but staring down at Kalani in the bed, he couldn’t find his voice. It felt awkward, somehow. He cleared his throat, then ducked his head, ashamed at how loud it was, how it disturbed the medicinal rhythms of the humming and hissing machines surrounding the neighboring bed. No such measures for Kalani, not even a heart monitor. As long as he remained in stable condition, Dr. Nakanishi had explained, there was no need for one; the monitors were reserved for patients who needed more intensive care, the ones with machines to breathe for them. Ori understood. The staff here had done all they could, had even given up watching; now they only waited.

  He touched the crisp white sheet by Kalani’s side, wondering if Kalani was trapped in his own body, begging to die. “I don’t know what you want,” he whispered at last. “I thought I did. I—” He covered his face with his hands and breathed into his palms. He felt the presence of death. It lay like a thin film over every surface, contaminating the very air in his lungs.

  I’d do anything for you. But it doesn’t matter anymore, does it?

  Chapter Three

  2009 “We could go out to a club. Have a drink together. I mean, if you want to take it slow…”

  Ori leaned against the wall, unable to meet the eyes of the man sitting alone on the end of the hotel room bed. He’d never paid for sex before. He didn’t even remember how he ended up browsing the profiles on the high-end website, but here they were. The guy was nice: tanned, big body, black-haired, with dark eyes ringed by even darker eyelashes, but he didn’t smile enough.

  But how the hell did you tell someone “smile more” and not sound like a total dick? Maybe he should be more consumer-oriented, stop getting hung up on the morals of what he was doing, stop treating this guy like he had the same easily hurt feelings as a normal one-night stand.

  Ori was a customer, right? So how come a customer couldn’t say “smile more”?

  “No, I don’t think going out would help,” Ori said. “Could you… could you— fuck. I can’t do this. I’ll still pay. I’m sorry.”


  The guy—Angel was the name he worked under—leaned back a little on the edge of the bed. He wore skintight jeans and a black embroidered guayabera, and he wore them very well. “It’s okay,” he said. “You’re not used to this. And you’re military. Believe me, you’re not the only one. But you are one of the good ones. If you met me some other time, I’d be here for free. You’re cute; you can get it whenever you want. It’s just that you’re paying for… discretion. And understanding. I get it. Do you want a boyfriend experience?”

  He wanted the Kalaniexperience, but he couldn’t exactly say that. Well, maybe he could. Angel seemed understanding enough, like maybe Ori could hire him part-time as his shrink on the side.

  “Is that where you pretend…”

  “Yes. You can call me any name you’d like. We’ve been together for a while now”—and there was music in Angel’s voice as he floated to his feet—“but you’ve been gone on deployment. You’re tense.” Angel moved close, close enough that Ori could smell his cologne, some expensive blend of musk and citrus. “And I’m worried about my soldier, so I’m trying to do my best to relax you. A massage, definitely.” Ori straightened and looked into the dark pools of Angel’s eyes. Felt the heat of desire rising to the surface of his skin. “And kissing. Lots and lots of kissing. Would you like that?”

  “Yes,” Ori breathed, tilting forward like he was drunk. Falling in slow motion. Angel guided him down.

  The two hours he’d paid for passed in a languid erotic haze. Toward the end, he took Angel up against the bed, driving into his perfect sleek body over and over again, forgetting which name he was supposed to call, forgetting even his own name.

  Angel kissed him one last time when he left, and Ori smiled and promised to leave him a glowing review on the feedback page.

  He hated himself in the morning, but not as much as he’d imagined he would. At least Kalani would never know.

  * * * *

  2011 “So are you planning on getting a job now that you’re back?” Ori’s mother asked, her Tagalog prim and snappy, making her parental disappointment in him plain.

  “I don’t know if I’m coming back,” he replied in English. He passed her another peeled carrot, and she went to work dicing it.

  The furious sound of the knife on the cutting board was nearly loud enough to drown out her reply: “Well, you’re already back, aren’t you?”

  “You know that’s not what I meant.” He was only here to sort this thing out for Kalani, and then he was gone again. That was the plan. The only reason he was at his parents’ house in the first place was because if he didn’t at least stop by, he felt like Kalani would be unhappy. And wasn’t that the whole point of this trip? Doing what he thought Kalani wanted him to do?

  “Because I know this man who owes your father and me a favor. He owns a garage in Honolulu. He could train you to be a mechanic, I bet. I mean that’s what they do in the military nowadays, isn’t it? Fix machines?”

  “You’ve been watching too many recruitment videos.” She gave him a pot of rice to wash, and he ran it under the tap, swirling the grains with his fingers mindlessly.

  “I know you don’t want to stay in this house. But your father’s going to DC for six months soon. It’ll be easier with him gone.” He’d never understood his parents’ relationship growing up. How she’d lived through decades of Civil Affairs deployments without the slightest interest in following him from base to base. They seemed happy enough the few months of the year they were together, at least. “And your brother’s coming home from Afghanistan in three weeks.”

  Great, just great.

  He hated how his military career had ended. He hated how much it disappointed his family. But what he hated most was how it had made his brother his competition, where once there’d been understanding, a sense that they were in this thing together even if they were continents apart.

  “I won’t ask you why you did it,” she said as she rinsed off the cutting board. “I will,” said his father, who’d stalked silently into the kitchen. “I think you owe us that.” “Fine.” He flicked the wet rice grains from his hands and turned to face the pair of them. They were standing shoulder to shoulder, presenting a united front. His father had one arm tucked tightly around his mother’s waist, as if he was expecting her to swoon when she heard the scandal. Count down from ten? Or maybe five. Hesitation might be read as shame. “I wanted leave to see Kalani after he got jumped. I got Julie to mail me a newspaper. Figured I’d show it to the lieutenant, you know, prove to him it really happened, that it was really serious. But the article headline said something about a possible hate crime. He asked if I wanted to go see my boyfriend.” He shrugged his shoulders. Shrugged off the weight of the story.

  “And for that, you broke his jaw!” shouted his father, his face darkening to an almost eggplant color. “For that? You know what I’ve been through? In the seventies, my squad leader left a dead dog on my bunk with a note that said ‘chow’, and you know what I did? I filed a formal complaint.” If his mother wasn’t there, his father would have been cursing strong enough to wake the dead, but instead he just stood there clenching his forearms, letting palpable waves of anger flood the room. Ori felt curiously disconnected, as if he were watching a soap opera full of furious, evanescent drama.

  “It does seem like soldier talk,” said his mother, diplomatic and careful. “Mean, but not like… I don’t understand.”

  But this wasn’t like some peon fucking drill sergeant throwing out an impersonal “faggot” to humiliate him into obedience. Honestly, it wasn’t about his sexuality at all, when he thought about it. So what if somebody accused him of being gay and meant it? He’d worked hard not to let anything on, and if he failed, then he failed. So he’d be kicked out. So what? It was Kalani. It was the thought of anyone cheapening what he and Kalani shared—no, couldhave shared. What went between them…it should have been too sacred to use for humiliation, especially now—especially now that it had turned tragic.

  He looked to his mother, knowing any sympathy or understanding he hoped of finding here would have to come from her. “I saw the photos of him, Mom. He looked like raw meat. He was half dead and I”—could have stopped it, if I hadn’t fucking run away—“needed to see him, even if it was just one last time. And I was so angry.”

  “You acted like a boy, not a man,” growled his father. He unwound from Ori’s mother and stalked out of the kitchen, shaking his head.

  The explosive bang of a door slamming. Ori’s mother sighed. “You stay for dinner. I’ll bring him a plate in his room. Acting like a boy? Pot calling the kettle black.”

  “Okay,” said Ori. “I’ll stay for dinner. But I’ve got a round-trip ticket to LA. Don’t waste time with this job business.”

  * * * *

  Several hours later, stomach full of adobo and mango pudding, he watched the sun go down from under a pandanus tree. The Nanakuli seashore was only a block away. Sunset struck the darkening waves and broke into bobbing shimmers.

  His little sister, Yvelise, elbowed Ori to get his attention and then tried to pass him the joint. “I can’t believe you’re going to leave again. This is the best place on earth.”

  “No thanks.” He’d lost the habit after joining the army, and now, well, there didn’t seem much point to it. “You’re not smoking anything stronger, are you? You better not be.”

  “Jesus. No, I’m not, lolo. I’m doing fine and my grades are fine. You should be worrying about yourself.” She took another drag and exhaled a fragrant cloud. “Every time I see you, you look more sad.”

  “I saw Kalani in the hospital,” he said by way of explanation.

  “I’ve had a year and a half to let it sink in. I always had a crush on him, you know. And to think all that time, you guys never let me go surfing or hiking with you because I was always too little.” A catch in her voice: and now it’s too late. “It’s hard on everyone. You were like a brother to him. Fucking Leavenworth. I saw this movie where Sata
nists took over a rock star’s plane and tried to crash it into Kansas so they could open a portal to hell. Have you been swimming in the ocean yet?” She looked down at the joint still in her hand and stared at it a moment before pinching it off, then waved it vaguely over her body, searching for a nonexistent pocket in her short rayon dress. “Kalani was special. Always had this glow around him.”

  “You’re talking about him in the past tense,” said Ori. The sun’s fiery rim eased down into the Pacific. If he walked into the water and felt the ocean’s tidal pull, he’d never want to leave the islands again. But Yvelise seemed to have already forgotten her question. She leaned against the pandanus tree’s delicate trunk, and the sword-shaped leaves rustled gently in response.

  “Maybe you should too. He’s dead, Ori. His body just doesn’t know that yet.” The urge to scream shut up shut up exploded inside him, and he felt as if he was ten years old again. But he didn’t want his father to be right about him, so he let out an exasperated breath and stayed silent instead.

  Yvelise rambled on. “The worst was last semester. I had a class on Hawaiian folklore, and we studied all these legends, and there were so many about saving dead people by putting their souls back in their bodies. So many. Children and women and men dying for these dumb-ass reasons and someone stands up and says hell no, fuck that, so they go off to the land of the dead to bring their soul back. My favorite was Hiku and Kawelu. She kind of kidnapped him, but he didn’t think he loved her, and— well, it got complicated. But Kawelu killed herself. So he rowed out to where the sea meets the sky and jumped into the land of the dead on the end of a vine, taught all the dead how to swing, and…” She caught sight of the joint once again, and once again she went on a fruitless search for a pocket. “Wait, what was I—oh, um, then her spirit— Kawelu, yeah, the girl who’s dead, when she grabs the vine to try swinging, Hiku signals, and people in our world tug the vine and pull them out. And then I guess she gets trapped in a coconut or something, but the point is, at the end her spirit returns to her body and she comes back to life again and they get to be together.”