She snapped a couple of photos and then stopped to take a bite of the sandwich he had made. He couldn’t watch her eat it now that the jelly was gristled with sand. He turned his head and looked out over the water, closing his eyes slightly to see beyond the glare, and in the distance he could make out a Boston whaler bumping over the crests of the waves. He heard the camera click but kept looking over the water, wondering what else was out there he couldn’t see.
THE OLD PANIOLO WAY
“Dat ting,” Harrison said, reaching to touch the saddle blanket slung over Pilipo’s arm. The cloth was a simple pattern, dark blue waves undulating through a turquoise sea, rough in the way wool can be. Harrison closed his eyes as he ran his fingers along its tight weave. “I wen give dat to yoa mudda when I aks her fo’ marry me. She da best horsewoman I know. If yoa sista eva ride like da momma, ho. I gon hope.”
Before Pili could answer him, Harrison began coughing again, hacking up blood and sputum. He deposited the pink mass as neatly as possible into a paper towel, then dropped it into the wastebasket beside his bed. Though Harrison was careful, Pili still had to take a bit of clean paper and wipe his chin. Harrison frowned impatiently, as if Pili were making a fuss over nothing, but Pili didn’t want to stare at the blood even if his father wasn’t bothered by it.
“Yoa momma, neva shy, her. Not like dem uddeh girls. She wen enta da Kona Stampede an’ she win roping two years in a row. Ho, I proud den. Plenny men in love wit’ her. Plenny like make her dere wife. But only one akamai. Only one say, I neva give you no ring. I promise fo’ give you plenny horses, but. An’ dat one me. Akamai yoa papa, yeah?”
“Yes, Dad,” Pili said. “You were one smart man.”
Harrison closed his eyes then. Pili waited for his father to say something more, but eventually the old man’s wheezing became long and even, and Pili realized he had fallen asleep. Pili wondered what his father dreamt of these days, if his sleeping hours were as haunted by Mahea, Pili’s mother, as his waking hours were, or if he dreamed of the girlfriends he had had after Mahea died. He had taken widowhood hard, but he had handled it in his own way.
Pili stood and adjusted the blankets, pulling them around his father’s neck. Maile claimed their father didn’t like to sleep with sheets touching his face, but really he didn’t like the way she tucked them so tightly beneath his shoulders. Harrison had told Pili that. Actually, Harrison had said, “What, she like strangle me? I no ma-ke fast enough awready?”
Pili left his father’s study and wandered to the kitchen looking for Maile. She didn’t hear him at first—her back was to the kitchen door—but when he coughed to announce his presence, she turned. “Takuan?” she said, holding out a plastic container. They had been her favorite as a teen, after their mom died and later, when each of Harrison’s girlfriends left him. When she divorced five years ago, Maile moved back home to be with their dad and took to eating them again in fevered spurts. Entire plastic tubs of the pickled vegetables could disappear in a single afternoon. Pili gingerly fished out one of the radishes, its exterior dyed neon yellow and the interior white as a cloud.
“How Dad?” Maile asked.
Pili knew she didn’t ask because she was wondering but to fill the silence between them. She, more than anyone, understood their father’s condition. She had cared for him for the past year—from the moment of his diagnosis through the radiation and chemo and through this, the end. Only in the last six weeks, when he couldn’t be left alone at night, did they hire a hospice nurse for the evenings; Maile still dominated Harrison’s care during the day.
“Dad was spry. He was talking to me about Mom,” Pili said.
“He wheezing?”
“Not as much as last night.”
“Good sign, yeah?” Maile didn’t wait for Pili to answer, afraid perhaps he would disagree with her. She plucked another radish from the near-empty container and rose slowly from the chair, making her way to the wall of windows overlooking the summer pasture. The herd had been moved a couple miles away, where a deep ravine provided them some protection from the winter winds, and the field looked flat and empty without their presence.
Maile pressed her hand to the windowpane, and Pili came to stand behind her. Although she never spoke of it, he could feel the barely suppressed panic that had engulfed her since their father’s diagnosis. She leaned into the cool glass as if it could steady her. Pili rested a hand on her shoulder. She was only four years older than him, but she had always treated him as a child, even through his twenties. Now he was thirty-one, an equal to her, and he hoped for once she would confide in him, that they might speak of what was to come and how they could help each other. But she was silent, and after a moment she removed her palm from the pane and shook his hand from her shoulder. “Albert is hea,” she said. “Can see da dust from his car.”
Outside a cloud of red rose up from the dirt road, revealing a blue Civic. Pili sighed. He would receive no confidences now. Maile walked across the kitchen to retrieve a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels from beneath the sink. She wiped her handprint from the glass, scrubbing until the paper shredded, and then returned the cleaning supplies to the cupboard. “Like curry tonight?”
“We had beef last night,” Pili said. “I’d prefer your vegetable lasagna.”
“Ah, selfish, you. I wen defrost beef dis morning. Albert, he like my curry.” Maile reached into the refrigerator and pulled out a paper-wrapped package of beef. She dropped it on the cutting board, the meat’s center still frozen enough for it to make a sharp clapping sound. She cubed the beef quickly, without wasting a single flick of the wrist, and the knife slid easily across the grain of the meat. Pili knew she had timed the defrosting perfectly, waiting until it was no longer frozen hard but still firm enough to cube with precision.
“Since when does someone cook for their father’s nurse every night?”
“Since we lucky get such a good nurse.”
“I hope you aren’t trying to impress him.”
Maile glared at Pili over the cutting board. He felt a small thrill of triumph, but when she looked back down, her hands trembled and he felt cruel for teasing her.
“Aloha kākou,” Albert called to them from the front hall.
“In da kitchen.” Maile washed her hands in the sink.
“I brought you folks some ʻopihi.” Albert breezed into the room, kissing Maile on the cheek and shaking Pili’s hand before unpacking his duffel on the table. “My auntie picked ’em.”
“Where?”
“You know I no can tell you.” He winked at Maile. ʻOpihi harvesting was forbidden since the colonies had been overfished, but certain families still knew where to find the tasty limpets.
Maile laughed, her voice trilling at the top note, and for the thousandth time in the week since Pili had returned home, he wondered if his sister was in love with Albert. She often flirted with him, but she did so gently, as one might a favorite friend or a surrogate sibling, a brother who was actually around when she needed him.
Albert breathed deeply. “Smells ʻono in here.” He patted Maile gently on the arm, then picked up his duffel and left for the study. “Aloha, Uncle.” Albert’s voice echoed through the house, and Pili heard his father grunt sleepily in response. A few minutes later the toilet flushed, which meant Albert had emptied Harrison’s catheter. Next Albert would sponge Harrison’s chest and underarms, then rub lotion into his hands and feet. Albert had a set routine, an order for his duties, and Pili had memorized it. He could imagine Albert moving through each task, his body curving around the hospital bed and chair like water curves around rocks.
In the kitchen, Maile rinsed rice in a colander. She ran her fingers through the translucent kernels, feeling for rotten grains and the occasional rock shard, and when she was satisfied the rice was clean, she poured it into the cooker and added water. She moved without thinking, without grace or artistry, and watching her, Pili was suddenly gripped by disappointment. He wished his sister were extrav
agant in her movements and emotions, in her treatment of him and their father. Instead, the most passion she could muster was for her pickled radishes and a smudged windowpane.
Pili left the kitchen to hover in the doorway of his father’s study. Albert had wrapped a hot cloth around Harrison’s face. Now he lifted it away and slathered shaving cream on Harrison’s skin. Harrison pressed his lips together in a tight smile, and Albert began to shave his face, starting with the left sideburn and working his way down to the chin.
“You’ve got a steady hand,” Pili called from the doorway. Albert smiled and motioned for Pili to join them.
“No distract ’im,” Harrison said to Pili. “He get one razor at my neck. I no can escape.”
“If you like talk when I shave you, you no more have no lips.”
“Auwē! Look, son, he like t’reaten me. I glad you hea fo’ see dis.” Both Albert and Harrison laughed. After a moment Pili joined in, but he had the feeling this was a practiced joke between them and he merely an accidental audience.
Albert touched Harrison’s face firmly, lifting the skin at his jaw to get a good, clean shave on the neck, and then, when the shaving was finished, wiping down Harrison’s face with a cool cloth and patting his skin with Old Spice. Pili was jealous. He wanted his father to laugh with him as he did with Albert. He wanted Albert to touch him as Albert touched Harrison. Pili wanted to be either of them, or both.
“After this shave, you like go holoholo?” Albert teased.
“I’ll go get your good boots,” Pili added. “Make sure they’re shined.”
“Like find me some good-lookin’ woman fo’ dance,” Harrison said. He lifted his arms and held them curved around the air in front of him, like he was holding a woman around the waist. “Hell, like find one māhū if he haf da kine legs and know how fo’ two-step.” He laughed hard at that, and Albert with him, but this time Pili remained silent.
The subject of māhūs always left Pili reeling. Sometimes he felt his father was purposefully aiming jokes at him, and other times he believed Harrison was just a product of his generation and place. The debate over his father’s intentions had plagued Pili since he was twelve and had accompanied his father to Oʻahu. Pili had, until that trip, assumed his father knew everything about him, and that between them no secrets existed.
They had flown to Oʻahu so Harrison could finalize the arrangements for the sale of two ponies to a polo player on North Shore. Pili went along to witness the inspection of the horses, the negotiations, and the gentlemanly airs of the polo men. Selling to them was different than selling to a fellow paniolo.
After the papers were signed, Harrison drove to his sister’s place in Kailua, and in the evening the three of them—Harrison, Pili, and Pili’s aunt Inez—visited Waikīkī. They strolled along Kalākaua Avenue to take advantage of the view of the beach. The waves were small, hardly the kind of thundering mountains Pili had seen on North Shore that morning, but he barely noticed. The few times they had come to Oʻahu, they had never visited Waikīkī. Now Pili was there, with his father and aunt, having been chosen over his sister, and he felt very grown up and important. He would have liked if his mother had been along too, but she had stayed behind to continue training the two-year-olds and a pair of five-year-old stallions she had taken on from another ranch. Later, when Pili reflected back on this trip, he would realize it had occurred just a couple months before his mother’s accident.
In Waikīkī, at the International Marketplace, Pili perused the vendors’ stalls, studying the coconut purses and overpriced shell combs lining the tables. He stepped into the T-shirt shops to feel the air-conditioning chill the sweat on his face and arms, and he stared through the windows of the bathing suit stores with their bikinis and pareos in bright flower patterns. Outside the Moana Surfrider, Pili paused to watch the bellhops as they jumped to open car doors and load luggage on carts made from gleaming brass. The young men were dressed smartly in white coats with matching white gloves to keep the brass from being smudged. They moved with grace, their bodies bending and twisting to lift Samsonite suitcases and to open doors and to prance with their carts into the hotel. Pili watched them as he might a parade of young fillies, captivated by their energy and beauty.
Harrison led them past the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center, which was poorly lit and dank and curved in endless hallways. Inez asked to look at more stores, but Harrison laughed at her for acting like a tourist and they went instead to walk around the grounds of the Royal Hawaiian. The hotel was the pink of a wilted lokelani flower. Pili stared at its high walls and felt that the small, square windows were fifty pairs of eyes returning his gaze.
The bellhops at the Royal Hawaiian were dressed just as well as those at the Moana, but their movements were heavier, less lithe, stiffer. They, too, wore crisp jackets, but in black rather than white, and this, combined with their movements, made them seem older. They were not as smooth-cheeked either. In fact, one bellhop even had the fuzz of a young mustache. Pili watched him the most closely. He was probably in his early twenties, with full lips, brown hair bleached to red from the sun, and fine lines at the outer corners of his eyes. He had a weathered look about him, like a sailor, and Pili wondered if the man’s skin would feel rough or smooth to the touch.
Harrison and Inez walked with their heads bent together, his arm tucked around her waist. Harrison was describing Mahea’s latest feat, breaking one of the five-year-old stallions. The horses had belonged to another rancher, and only Mahea would take them on. They weren’t worth any of the other paniolos’ time. But Mahea loved working with horses like these, taming and calming them, creating a bond where none had existed before. Harrison’s descriptions focused on Mahea’s more daring tactics—Pili knew his father loved impressing other women with stories of Mahea—and when Inez gasped in both fear and admiration, Harrison smiled broadly.
However, Pili didn’t love these stories. They left him dry-mouthed and jumpy. He tried to ignore his father, turning to look again at the rough-cheeked bellhop, and this time the young man noticed and smiled. Pili felt his throat close. All he could think to do was run, but when he caught up to his father and aunt, he immediately wished he hadn’t fled.
They returned along Kūhiō Avenue, which was grittier and dirtier than Kalākaua, with more bars and men in military costume. Pili paused to stare at the front window of a bar, its glass shattered in a cobweb pattern, its fragmented pieces held together with black duct tape, and when he looked back toward the street, he saw his father and aunt had again walked ahead of him. They stopped when the light turned red at Lewers, and Pili dodged two Japanese women with shopping bags in order to catch up. At the corner, he found himself pressed into the crowd, standing beside a tall woman in a black evening gown. Her legs were long and shapely, covered in mesh stockings that drew attention to a deep slit in the dress revealing her left thigh. She had black hair, as black as her dress, hair that was dyed over and over until it was stiff and dry. Her lips were plush, like the lips of the bellhop Pili had admired, and her eyelashes were thickly layered. Pili stared at her without meaning to.
She smiled. “Good evening, sir.” Her voice was like cigarette smoke curling in the evening air.
“Good evening, Auntie,” Pili answered, smiling back at her.
She laughed, clearly delighted, but where Pili had expected the high, floating laugh of his mother, this woman’s laughter dropped low and hovered.
Harrison noticed Pili then. Immediately he tensed, and Pili could tell something had upset him. Harrison nodded politely at the woman and took Pili’s hand, though Pili was far too old to hold hands. When the light turned, Harrison marched them across the street.
Inez had to run to catch up. “Oh, Harrison,” she said, laughing, and rested her hand on his arm. “So country, you.” But Harrison was not laughing, and Pili wondered what had made him so serious.
“Boy, you see anyting diff’rent ’bout dat woman? Da one you call Auntie?” Harrison demanded when they
reached the other street corner.
Pili shook his head.
“Nutting?” Inez asked more gently, a smile prying at her lips.
“She wen dye ’er hair?”
Inez laughed. “Yeah, she wen dye ’er hair. Dat not da only ting she wen do.”
“Dat one māhū, son,” Harrison said finally. “A man like tink he one woman.”
Pili knew what a māhū was, though he had never seen one in person, only on television or in movies. But there was a boy in school—Jesse—who everyone said was māhū. In grade school he used to chase Pili and his friends around the playground, chase them like the girls did, and sometimes he’d catch them and pin them to the ground, sitting on them so his stuff was almost touching theirs. He moved like a girl, he dressed like a girl wearing pants. He even had the skin of a girl, clear and smooth. Pili had little interest in Jesse other than to copy his math homework, but he made fun of him anyway along with the other boys.
Inez led them back to the parking lot where they had left the car. “Funny, yeah, Dad,” Pili said, as Harrison fit the key into its lock. “Māhūs, dey try so hard fo’ look good, but dey neva beautiful like da real ting.”
Pili watched his father’s shoulders relax. Harrison smiled. “Dat, Son, is da trut’. Nutting beautiful like one real woman.”
In bed that night Pili thought of the bellhop, the one at the Royal Hawaiian. I am not māhū, he said to himself. He did not want to play as if he were a girl, nor dress like a woman, nor powder his face as his aunt did. But he did think about touching a man in the way his friends spoke of touching a woman. He wanted to feel the soft hairs on another man’s arm, and press his hand against the smooth landscape of another man’s chest. He wanted to stand so close to a man, he could breathe him in, and instead of a girl’s passionfruit chapstick or coconut lotion, he would smell musk and heat and that peculiar sour of dried sweat.
This Is Paradise Page 13