by Mary Wallace
“I’ve been burying dough. It’s where we’ve been putting in the hydrangeas.”
“Where you discovered the kim chee?” She found herself wondering about earthenware jars of pickled cabbage, as though the acidic food could burn away the solidity of sorrow that lingered in her heart.
“No, we didn’t really find any kim chee, I just pretended I did because I knew that then no one would dig up the hydrangeas. They’d be afraid of hitting the unburied pots.” He looked at her with an earnest expression.
“You what?” Celeste shook her head in disbelief. “What money?”
“I told you I don’t trust banks. They’ve sold out the world. And, I’m sorry. I was selling meth in Detroit.”
She felt her stomach clench. Frank had been right.
“Not here. I came here to get clean. It’s the universe’s twisted payback that the store is an old meth lab. But I hired a couple of the guys to do little jobs and I showed them that it’s clean now, and it’s going to stay clean. They’ve moved on to Hana, to a house they operate out of there.”
Celeste looked at him, understanding now the shop’s logo paint job on the front window.
“I need you to believe me. We’re here for a clean slate, you and me. And Rosalinda.”
“The cops want to see my bank account, to see how I paid for Rosalinda’s school bill,” she whispered, “I can’t put any cash into my account, they’ll wonder where it came from.”
His face froze, “What do you mean they want to see your bank account?”
She told him about the run in with Shinoda and Komoko at the shop and he stared intently at the curtain behind her head.
“I think they’re bluffing.”
“Well, so far, I’m clean.” Celeste wrung her hands. “I’d like to stay that way,” she said sheepishly, “for Rosalinda’s sake. That way she can stay in her school.”
“God, I love you. I’ll never be able to thank you for being kind to her.”
She saw tears in his eyes. “It’s nothing,” she waved him off. “Makes me miss my mom less. She’s always doing things that remind me of how happy I was when I was her age. I think I don’t suck as much as I thought I would, taking care of a kid.”
“You’re an angel,” he spoke so quietly that she had to lean in close to his lips. “But you walk around the property, find the new hydrangeas and remember where they are. I buried about fifty grand under each hydrangea.”
She stumbled, trying to stand up. “Where the fuck did you get that kind of money?” she gasped.
“When I got back from my final deployment, after a month of hiding in a dark motel room, I put my nose to the grindstone and sold as much meth as I could so I could start a new life.” He closed his eyes. “It was before I met you.”
“Your walkabouts?”
“No. I was done by then. I left you because I had to get clean. I’d go walking until I could find a place where I could sleep unseen, in abandoned buildings. I felt at home in them. I’d get the shakes and sleep under chairs or desks that had been left behind. No one ever went into the buildings but me, I think, because they were forgotten. I could detox, like in a limbo. I’d lay down and let the shit sweat itself out of me, I’d let the images come too. I figured I’d detox from the drugs and the war, in those decrepit places.”
She nodded.
“And, Celeste?”
“Yes?”
“I always went out of my way to find buildings that had been tagged. When I had no hope, I went into the buildings that someone had painted with the word ‘HOPE’. First, I’d walk around it, reading each letter out loud to myself. Then I’d go in and crumple down, letting it sink in that someone else in the City cared.”
Tears welled up in Celeste’s eyes.
“When I found the stencils in your closet, when you were so wounded by that meth explosion, my heart kind of got cauterized, all the sad and bad shit got cleaned out. I had hope again. That’s why we’re here. That’s why I’m committed to you.”
“Then why are there cops here?” Her voice cracked with sorrow.
“It’s not what you think, babe.”
“Then how did you get so much money?” She found herself touching his face, gently.
He turned and kissed her fingertips. “I touched off a drug war.” He kissed the palm of her hand, taking it into his own.
Celeste’s eyes widened.
“One dealer beheaded another in that old opera house. And I think the other one was killed by someone in the gang. Remember when Frank was telling us that, in that bar?”
She remembered the irony of death on an opera stage, and Frank’s sorrow that they’d defiled the theater in which he’d watched so many Saturday afternoon matinees with his father.
“Those two guys killed each other, a drug lord and a dealer,” he said.
She saw a slight twinkle in his eye.
“But that was after I’d already been there and another couple of guys had killed each other. I came in, I cleaned out the backpacks they each had with them, it was nearly two million dollars. Their gangs think each other stole the money, they came in and cleared out the first five bodies, then the last two guys fought to the death. They’ve pretty much killed each other off by now trying to find the money. But they don’t know I exist.”
“You’ve got gang money?”
“Nah, I gave most of it away. I’ve got about five hundred thousand dollars. I gave fifty grand to every homeless shelter I could find that had my brother vets in them, I found churches that had hot lunches, I spread it far and wide.”
“Is anyone going to come after us?” she asked fearfully.
“Nope.” He smiled. “I told the Kihei cops about it. They think I’m Robin Fucking Hood. They’re wondering if I can be that creative here. Without killing anyone, that is. They say I’d have to make it non-lethal.” His smile was taut. “I told them I’m gifted. The government trained me, I might as well put that training to good use.”
“I don’t want you in a drug war,” Celeste cried out. “I need you. We need you.”
“Aw, you love me.” Eddie put his hands on her face, stroking her cheeks.
“Of course I do, dumbass.”
“Well, I’m retiring. I love you. But the one and only thing that I’ve ever created that will stand for all time is my daughter, and her chances for a future with us. We will live a nice quiet life. Rosalinda will go to school and grow up. I’ll do anything in my power to help you find your heart’s desire job. We’ll have a successful shop.” He held her hands.
“What’s going to happen to you now, with these cops hanging around?” Celeste kissed him on the cheeks, worriedly.
“They’re going to take me away in their car, I’m sure.”
“Why? You just told me that you’re clean?”
“Things aren’t what they appear, Celeste.” He met her lips as she came close to his, kissing her with a sincerity that she absorbed, with the pressure of a passion they hadn’t shared for days.
The two police officers knocked on the doorjamb, walking quietly into the darkened room. “It’s almost sunrise,” one of them said, tapping at the window. “Gotta go. Leave your daughter with your wife.”
Eddie looked at Celeste, pointedly, shocked at the ease with which the cop mistook her for Rosalinda’s mother, fear in his eyes that Celeste would betray the truth and put Rosalinda into danger.
“Where are you going?” Celeste asked.
The tall officer that had spoken with her in the hallway turned to her and said, “We’re taking him in.”
“Why?” she asked, trying not to betray the panic in her voice.
“Celeste,” Eddie said, his voice still raspy, “take care of our baby girl first. I’ll be fine. I’ll see you later.”
She sucked in a deep breath, straightened her spine and raised her shoulders, clearing her throat. “Okay. I’ll see you in a little while.”
“Alright.” How would she tell Rosalinda about her father’s police es
corts, his impending jail stint? She had no answers.
She watched Eddie lean over to gently kiss Rosalinda’s cheeks and her forehead, then watched them walk him out of the room, their hands resting on his shoulders, steering him through the doorway.
She followed them silently out into the hallway, seeing them veer towards a door to a stairwell.
For some reason, they didn’t act like he was really in custody, she thought. She walked back into the room and looked out the window, waiting until they exited from the Emergency Room doors below.
Eddie was walking between them, cuffed. They made their way to a parked unmarked police car and, in a quick move, one of the cops undid his handcuffs, slapped him on the back and opened the back passenger door for him.
Eddie lowered himself into the seat, the cops got into the front seats and the car drove away.
Chapter Forty-Seven
The shovel was heavy in her hands.
The hydrangea by the shed looked newly planted, she thought. She reached down below the lower leaves, pushing aside the woody branches. The ground was covered with a chunky mulch that was easy to sweep aside.
She cleared a circle around the base of the plant and pressed her weight onto the metal part of the shovel, allowing it to dig in a few inches away from the perimeter of the hole created by Eddie’s and Rosalinda’s seemingly innocent yard work. The earth loosened easily and she grasped the trunk of the young plant, pulling it and its root ball out of the soft loam within which it had been cradled.
She looked around, nervous that she’d be seen. The yard was quiet, empty except for her heartbeat, which was deafening.
She propped the plant against the shovel, keeping it upright, not knowing if she’d condemned it to death by pulling it out of its safe spot. She reached down into the hole, digging into dirt that was collapsing to the center. She couldn’t feel enough with his gardening gloves on, the thick fabric disconnected her brain from the sensors in her fingers, so she yanked off the gloves and scratched into the loam with both hands, hoping suddenly that she wouldn’t unearth a mini scorpion or some other frightening creature.
Within seconds, she felt something slow her progress, a cloth that felt different from the breakaway granules of the dirt and fertilizer that Eddie had put into the bottom of his hole. She dug around it and quickly released it, pulling rolled up, ripped up camouflage fabric that was rubber banded around something the shape of a medium sized rock, four inches by four inches. She had wondered why he’d started wearing jeans, finally shirking off the military pants, and now she knew. He’d used the threadbare camouflage pants that had protected him through his deployments to now protect what represented his future, these wads of cash. She removed two rubber bands and stripped the fabric swatch from the wad of money.
The roll was solid, so many bills that they felt like one hefty thing, easily unrecognizable when it was hidden within its wrapping.
She unfolded the bills, which were doubled over in half. $100 bills, so many that she couldn’t count. She looked right to left, expecting to see cops glaring at her, guns pulled on her, no surprise on their faces.
But the only sound was wisps of wind that tickled the leaves of the trees above her.
She pocketed the wad, putting the dirty shred of fabric over the bills. Before standing up, she again held the hydrangea plant in her hands, placing it gently into the hole, digging back the fallen dirt to make room for it. She pressed it in, gently patting the potting soil around at the ground line, making it at home again in the spot chosen for it by Eddie and Rosalinda.
Should she put something on it, so that they’d know it didn’t have its stash underneath anymore? Tie the camo fabric around its base? No, that might identify it for drug dealers or cops that might search the property.
She walked back to the house and stepped lightly up the side porch steps, slipping into the hallway, washing her hands in the bathroom, cleaning the dirt from under her fingernails. She sat on the edge of the bathtub, unrolled the bills and counted them. $15,000. He’d said he’d put $50,000 under each bush. She hadn’t bothered to dig further, once her hands had found this wad. There could very easily be a few other wads buried directly under where she’d found this one. She shook her head at the thought of so many little treasures hidden under plants in this sanctuary of theirs. It was consoling and terrifying. She had plenty of cash in the bank to help them stabilize for a while, but this kind of cash meant a more secure future for them.
There was no way that she would put this cash into her bank account, though. She knew that would jeopardize Rosalinda’s safety.
The voice of her mother’s quiet prayers came to her, the nightly supplications for hope, for protection and courage. She wrapped herself with the audible soothing of her mother’s repetitive entreaties.
Chapter Forty-Eight
“Eddie is missing,” Celeste answered. She felt the words steal out of her mouth, past the tension in her jaw, which she’d clenched as soon as she saw Malia rocking back and forth just inside of the arbor.
She stayed still, seated at the top step of the cottage front porch, willing herself to calm the tornado in her heart. But hearing Malia’s wavering voice, ‘Where’s Eddie?” she had lost her ability to stabilize and her fear tore out of her, in the frantic words that escaped her mouth.
She saw Malia freeze and stumble, her crepe cheeks wrinkled with worry. “What do you mean?” her small voice asked searchingly. “He leave you?”
She shouldn’t have said ‘missing’, she realized. She saw that she’d raised questions in Malia’s eyes.
“So when you see him last?” Malia asked, cannily.
“This morning,” Celeste blurted. “I saw him at the hospital. We found out that his mother died.”
“Aw, so sad. Rosalinda know?”
“Yes,” Celeste answered.
“I see, you love him. I do good marriage feng shui for you when he come back,” there was an almost imperceptible flash in her worried eyes.
“Nah, I don’t think marriage is the solution.” Celeste breathed out with sorrow.
Malia slowly lowered herself to sitting, onto the bottom step. She looked up at Celeste. Her bony knees stuck out of her simple cotton frock and Celeste noticed how pale her little legs were, like matchsticks, with short beige socks and brown comfortable shoes on her feet. “You in trouble?”
Celeste felt a sob escape her throat but she gripped hard, stifling her neck muscles, willing herself to silence. She would not betray Eddie, give the old lady any reason to evict them.
“You hold yourself too tight. I tell you that first time we meet. You need island to relax you.” The lilt in her voice did not match the tension in her small hands, gripping papers that she was crushing in her fragile fingers.
“What’s that?” Celeste asked.
“Eddie asked for them.” Malia’s voice tapered off.
“Really?” Her chest ached. God, he’d been nice to the old lady, she thought. “You can leave them with me.”
“No. I sit here with you a few minutes,” Malia said.
Celeste closed her eyes.
They were silent. The only sound came from the creaking of tree branches in the light wind that buffeted fifteen feet off the ground.
Celeste opened her eyes, surprised to see Malia looking directly at her.
“You know your boyfriend very well?”
Her first response was the truest. “Yes.” She knew him, the depth of his kindness and his brokenness, his deliberate battle to live in integrity, to be a man for her. And his daughter.
She looked at Malia, sensing finally, that Malia was here because she too knew Eddie.
“What do you have there, Malia?” She felt her voice come from a deep place in her own strong soul.
“Celeste,” she said quietly, “I lose my daughter to drugs. My grandson, he live with me, I raise him because my daughter lose her mind. She lose her pretty face,” Malia’s eyes welled up with tears, “she lose her pret
ty teeth, they rot in her mouth, her pretty white teeth. She lose her cheeks,” she tenderly touched her own cheeks. “So young, but her cheeks more hollow than mine.”
“I’m so sorry,” Celeste moved down two steps to sit next to her. “Does she live here on Maui?”
“No, I bury her down the hill with my husband,” Malia waved her hand towards the street. “I feel her here.” Her left hand gripped the papers, her right hand shook.
“I understand,” Celeste said. “You miss her.” She felt a warmth for Malia and she gently palmed Malia’s quavering right hand into her own hands and moved closer, putting her arm around the angular softness of Malia’s shoulders. The repetition in her life of tender elderly feminine energy was not lost on her, she felt the pattern in this moment. And she felt the elder feminine energy in the redwoods that lined the property. She could understand on an unspoken level, how this place was healing for Malia.
With a deep kindheartedness, she reached into Malia’s hands and released the papers, two pages of newspaper clippings. Articles about an influx of methamphetamines on Maui. Her heart clenched. “Why do you have this?” She felt her head clearing a bit.
“This the drug that took my daughter.” Malia turned to her, straightening her back. “I see Eddie has same face my daughter had at beginning. I came to talk to him about it, talk him out of it.”
“Ah,” Celeste said, feeling her own crushing stress.
“And he say he no use meth anymore.”
“He really wants to be a good father to his daughter,” Celeste answered.
“You start to say ‘our daughter’,” Malia admonished.
Celeste felt a full body tremor.
“You going to be family with him? You have to take the child.” Malia pursed her lips in sadness, “Like I take the boy. You no good at mother, but when world stops, you stand up, get world going again.”
Celeste had no answer.
Malia took the newspaper clippings. “Eddie like spy. He go after gang,” she said.
Celeste had only half-heard the small voice.
Malia looked at her. “You no know that, eh? He fight it. He feel how it try to kill him. He see my grandson, he ask about his mother, he see pictures grandson carry in his pocket. One his mother at his age, so precious in college. The other, she have no teeth, wrinkle in her face and neck, at police station when they book her. Eddie understand and he come to me, he ask about how she get drugs. He tell me he broke up gang in your car city.”