Mahu

by Neil S. Plakcy

  Uncle Chin smiled. We cracked our fortune cookies, and they were all light-hearted, promising Uncle Chin a promotion and my father great happiness. My fortune said, “You are loved more than you know,” but at that moment I felt that, in spite of my troubles, I knew how deeply those around me cared for me.

  We got up to leave. I said, “What about the bill?”

  “No bill,” Uncle Chin said.

  “Uncle Chin owns the restaurant,” my father said. On the way out the waiters and busboys all bowed to Uncle Chin, who bowed slightly back.

  “How about a little drive?” my father asked after we said goodbye to Uncle Chin. “I’m bidding on a renovation at the Mandarin Oriental and I want to take a look at the room again.”

  “Sure.” We rolled the windows down on the truck and the warm summer air washed over us. My father even turned the radio on and we listened to Keali‘i Reichel and The Pandanus Club and Israel Kamakawiwo‘ole as we drove. He wanted to introduce me to the hotel manager, but I didn’t think the time was right, so I went wandering in the gardens while he went inside.

  Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered Haoa talking about a job at the Mandarin Oriental, but it was still a surprise to me when I rounded a corner and came face to face with him, supervising the planting of a row of yellow ‘ilima plants along a walkway. He was wearing a big chambray shirt with Kanapa‘aka Landscaping on it, and a pair of khaki shorts. “Hey, brah,” I said.

  “É, Kimo. What brings you out this way?”

  I nodded back toward the hotel. “Dad,” I said. “Today’s his turn to watch me. He wanted to take another look at a remodeling job he’s bidding on.”

  “He finished that ballroom two weeks ago.” Haoa looked at me, and then at the work. “Keep going like that all the way down the line,” he said. “I’ll be back in a few.”

  He pointed off toward the pool. “Come on, I’ll buy you a drink.”

  It was funny, but I hadn’t spent much time alone with my brother for years. We usually saw each other at family parties, luaus and christenings and such, and Tatiana was always around, or Lui, or some other relative or family friend.

  I looked at Haoa as we walked through the manicured grounds toward the pool bar, this stranger who was also my older brother. He’s as tall as I am but seemed larger, because of his broad shoulders, big belly and stout legs. Our hair was the same jet black, though his was increasingly shot with gray. In family pictures I could see that we had the same cheekbones, the same eyes. Funny how we almost never talked but I still felt close to him, felt the blood in my veins calling out to his, remembering the time we had both spent in our mother’s womb, however many years apart.

  He ordered us a couple of beers and we sat on high stools around a table with a mosaic tile top. “I don’t know what happened to me,” he said, after we had sat together for a few minutes in silence. “I acted like an asshole. Tatiana says it’s easier for me to blow off steam than to actually confront my feelings.”

  He put the bottle down on the table and it made a hard sound. “Here’s the thing. I don’t like fags. It’s as simple as that.”

  I nodded. “I don’t either.”

  He looked at me curiously. “But you’re a fag.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t get it. You don’t like effeminate men. Guys who flounce all over the place and call you darling.”

  “Like Tico.”

  “Like Tico. But I don’t do that, do I?”

  He hesitated. “Go on, you won’t hurt my feelings.”

  “Once in a while you get like that. I always figured you were acting like the baby.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe I can be a little faggy sometimes. But it doesn’t define my personality, is what I mean. I mean, I’m the same person I was before you knew I liked to sleep with men. Right?”

  “I guess.”

  “So you don’t have to put me in that group of people you don’t like, if you don’t want to.”

  “I just got so mad,” he said. “It was like the fags had come and recruited my little brother. I wanted to go out and bash some heads.”

  “Nobody recruited me.” I took a drink from the bottle. “This is the way I was born, just like you were born big and Lui was born sad-looking.”

  “Sad-looking,” he said, and laughed. “You’re right. He always looks like somebody just ran over his dog.”

  “Remember that dog we had, what was his name, Pua? Mom used to go crazy when he got up on the furniture.”

  “She tried to keep him out in the yard, but you cried,” Haoa said. “You convinced her to bring him back in.”

  “You guys put me up to that! I never would have cried otherwise.”

  We laughed for a couple of minutes and drank our beers. “So do you fool around a lot?” Haoa asked after a while.

  “I haven’t quite gotten it figured out yet. But I think when I was with women, I was looking for ones that wouldn’t tie me down, because I knew deep down it wasn’t what I wanted. Now that I can admit it, I just want what you and Tatiana have, and Lui and Liliha. Somebody to love, to hold onto at night.”

  “I was so jealous of you,” he said. “You know I love Tatiana. I can’t imagine what my life would be like without her. But man, I used to see you with a different wahine every week, and it was like, I want to be there. Just let me be single one weekend, Lord. Let me have Kimo’s life for one weekend.”

  I laughed. “Guess you don’t want it now.”

  “So maybe I was mad because I was wrong about you, too,” he said. “I mean, here you were, living out my fantasy life, and then it turned out it was all a lie. It just kind of made me crazy.”

  We had almost finished our beers when our father came up. “The landscaping looks good, Haoa,” he said. “You should be pau soon.”

  Haoa nodded. He drained the last of his beer and said, “Got to get back.” He looked at me. “Take care, little brother.”

  “You too.”

  My father and I walked slowly back to his truck. “You saw your brother.”

  I nodded. “We had a talk.”

  “Good.”

  “How about the job you’re bidding on?” I asked. “Did you get a look at it?”

  “Nice job,” he said. “We can talk about it sometime.”

  It was almost three o’clock by the time we got back to the office. I spent another hour or so on the electrical drawings, and then my father announced it was time to go home. “Benefit of being semi-retired,” he said. “You can make your own hours.” He looked at me. “Of course, if you were running this business for real, the hours are much longer. I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

  “I won’t,” I said.

  In the newspaper that evening there was a further article on Evan Gonsalves’s death. They had found a fingerprint on the jewelry box that matched Tommy Pang’s, making a strong connection between the two of them. There was speculation that, as a cop, Evan couldn’t live with the idea that he’d killed Tommy, and killed himself over the guilt. I thought it was rotten that the story had to break the same day as Evan’s funeral, and hoped somebody was keeping the papers from Terri.

  After dinner I called Akoni at home. Mealoha answered and we talked awkwardly for a minute, her asking how I was and me saying I was doing okay. “Hey, brah, howzit?” I asked when Akoni picked up the receiver.

  “Okay,” he said. “How’re you doing?”

  “I’m getting by. Yesterday I went shopping with my mother, and today I went to the office with my dad. I don’t know who’s going to get me tomorrow.”

  “You’ll get through this.”

  “I read about the fingerprint match in the Advertiser. You really think Evan could have killed himself out of guilt?”

  “I don’t know. Shit, you were my partner for a long time and I didn’t know you. How’m I going to speculate on Evan Gonsalves? Hey, by the way. We got notification that the girl in that drug bust, Luz Maria, she went back to Mexico.”

 
; “You ever get to interview her?”

  “Nope. Just saw the paperwork. And you know there’s no way we’ll talk to her now. If she knew anything about Tommy Pang she took it back to Mexico with her.”

  We said our goodbyes and hung up. I was edgy, worrying that my case was still going on and I couldn’t work on it. What was I going to do? I ought to go home, I supposed. There wouldn’t be anybody hanging around my doorway, and it was a step toward getting my life back together. It was something. I packed my suitcase and assembled all my equipment—the roller blades, surfboards, all the other stuff I’d brought.

  I carried it downstairs, and walked into the living room, where my parents were watching TV. “I want to go home,” I said. “I think it’s time.”

  My mother looked at my father, and he nodded. “Why don’t you take my truck,” he said. “Your mother can bring me by to pick it up tomorrow.”

  “Okay.” I started for the door, then stopped and turned back around. “Thanks,” I said. “For everything.”

  Then I turned back to the door and went out into the night.

  WHAT HE LEFT BEHIND

  I was happy to be back in my own apartment. It was the first step toward regaining a life of my own. Before we’d left, my mother had plugged the phone back in and turned on my answering machine, and the red light blinked furiously. I left it for the morning light and went to sleep.

  I woke up refreshed, and felt even better after a good long morning on the waves. I came back to my apartment around ten and switched the answering machine to play while I fixed breakfast. Eating my father’s cooking had awakened in me a desire to return to the comfort foods of my youth, and I watched the eggs carefully to keep them runny, so they would soak into the toast.

  Most of the messages were from reporters who wanted to talk to me. There was a call from Harry in there, from Friday, I guessed, before he’d figured out I was holed up at my parents’ house. The last two calls, unexpectedly, were from Terri Clark Gonsalves, and she sounded upset.

  “I need to talk to you, Kimo,” she said. “About Evan. Please call me.”

  The second message was more urgent, and then the answering machine kicked into automatic rewind. What did Terri want from me? I wondered, as I ate my soggy toast and eggs. Maybe I should have gone to the funeral after all. Did she think her friends were abandoning her because of the scandal over Evan?

  I washed my dishes and called Terri. There was no answer, but I left a message on her machine, that I was back, that she could call me any time. I left her my cell number, too. I began putting away the things I’d taken to my parents, and then answering the mail, paying the bills, cleaning the apartment again.

  There was a knock on the door. I walked up to the peephole and saw Terri.

  She looked terrible. Her face was red and puffy, and she’d pulled her hair back into a hasty ponytail. She was wearing a navy t-shirt, white shorts and espadrilles. More than anything else, she looked sad, and beaten down.

  She looked at me and started to cry again. “Oh, Kimo,” she said, and I took her in my arms and we rocked back and forth.

  “I’m sorry, honey. I wish it could have come out any other way.” We separated and I led her to the couch. I went to the refrigerator for some juice, but all I had was a pog—a pineapple, orange and guava mix unique to Hawai‘i. I opened the pint carton and poured it into a glass for her.

  “Have something to drink.” I handed her the glass, and she drank it thirstily.

  “Remember we used to get these at school when we were kids?” she asked. “Always on field trips, too. Danny drinks them now.”

  “I remember.” I sat on the couch next to her. “How’s Danny holding up?”

  She looked like she was going to cry again, but she held herself back. “He’s not talking,” she said. “My mother’s with him now. He cries, and he stays in his room, but he doesn’t talk. I don’t think he’s said a word since Evan died.”

  “Suicide can be pretty traumatic for a kid. You don’t know, he might have seen Evan do it, or at least heard the shot and seen the body.”

  She looked up at me. “I just don’t believe Evan killed himself. I mean, we were getting over our problems. He looked better last week than he had in months. He was home more, he paid more attention to me and Danny.”

  “I guess he’d been working for Tommy Pang,” I said. “When he killed Tommy, it was probably a big relief for him. So he would have felt better for a while, he could have been more relaxed.” I took a breath. “But killing somebody is a big deal. I could see how it could get to him after a while.”

  “I’ve thought about that. Endless hours, all night long, I’ve wondered how Evan could have killed him, and I think I understand it.” She sat back on my sofa, dried her eyes with a tissue, and said, “I think I pushed him toward it. You know, how I told him he had to stop what he was doing. God knows I didn’t mean for him to kill anybody.”

  I put my arm around her and she leaned her head against my shoulder. I could smell her perfume, something light and floral, and her hair was soft where it touched my bare arm. “You can’t think like that,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault. Evan got involved with Tommy Pang all by himself.”

  She nodded. “I know. But I should have made it clearer that the money didn’t matter to me. He never understood that all I wanted was him. I always had enough money for both us.” She balled the tissue up in her hand and sat up again. “That’s something I’ll always live with. I know he made the decision to get involved with that man, and then he decided to kill him. But at least part of the blame is mine.”

  “You have Danny to think about,” I said. “You need to go on from here.”

  “But I can’t, not yet. I understand everything up until the minute he pulled the trigger. I knew my husband, Kimo. I knew his moods and his feelings, and I knew when he was doing something wrong. And I know he loved Danny more than anything else in the world, and he’d do anything to keep him from being hurt. If he was going to kill himself, he’d never do it in the house, and never when Danny was around.” She opened her purse and pulled out an envelope. “He left this note for me. I found it in our safe deposit box this morning.”

  She handed it to me. On the outside was written, “To be opened in the event of my death.” It gave me the shivers to know what Evan had expected had come true.

  Dearest Terri,

  If you are reading this now, then something bad has happened, and I’m dead. I want you to understand why, and to apologize. I only wanted to give you the best, sweetheart. I know I never should have gotten involved with Tommy Pang, but when I first met him, I wanted to get you a great present for your thirtieth birthday, and between my car payments and the money for the house, I was really strapped. He gave me $5,000 just to warn him when Import-Export Control was going to run those surprise sweeps through the airport.

  He always wanted more, though. It was never anything very big, just information. And he always paid me well. Then I had to tell him we were about to intercept a drug deal he was involved in, and I knew I couldn’t go on working for him. I went to his office two weeks ago to tell him I quit.

  I didn’t kill him, though. I left the club after he gave me the bracelet I gave you for your birthday, but I had only gotten as far as the alley when I heard Tommy yelling. Then I heard a crack! like the sound of a bat hitting a ball. I saw somebody—a big guy, I couldn’t see anything clearer than that—drag Tommy down the alley. He drove away and I couldn’t resist, honey. I knew Tommy wore a lot of jewelry and I picked it off his body and took it to a fence out by the Aloha Bowl.

  There’s one more thing I want to do, and that will give me enough money to put aside so I won’t have to deal with scum anymore. If you are reading this, you know that I didn’t succeed. Please give this letter to Kimo—maybe it will help him track the bastard down.

  I love you and Danny with every ounce of my heart, my dearest Terri. Please don’t be angry with me. I only did what I did because I wa
nted to give you and Danny the world.

  The words Love, Evan were scrawled at the bottom of the page. I looked up at Terri. “I know something happened at my house on Friday,” Terri said. “I think there was somebody else there while I was away.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I can’t say for sure. I feel like things might have been moved around a little—I know, the police were in the house for a while, but this is different.”

  She reached out for the glass and I handed it to her, and she finished the juice. “You’re the only one I can talk to, Kimo. I can’t tell my parents anything. It’s already on the tip of my mother’s tongue to tell me it was a mistake to marry Evan in the first place.”

  I remembered the imperious Mrs. Clark. Though I got points for going to Punahou, and even for my haole grandmother, I was still a native boy to her. “Do you think Danny might have seen anything? Maybe I can get him to talk.” We agreed that I’d follow her out to Wailupe and see if I could talk to Danny.

  She got up from the sofa and started for the door. Then I had an idea. “Actually, you go on. I’ll be a couple of minutes behind you.”

  I scrounged around my apartment looking for pogs. I could only come up with a handful. I put them in the pocket of my shorts, grabbed my sunglasses, and walked over to my grocery store. “Hey, Kimo,” the clerk said. “Been out yet today? The surf is awesome.” His hair was just as long and scraggly as usual, and it seemed he was wearing yet another earring, though I couldn’t be sure.

  It was great. At least somebody didn’t see me through the prism of my sexuality, or my job troubles. “I surfed for a couple hours this morning,” I said. “I caught a killer break off the marine stadium. I actually got a full turn in on it.”

  We talked waves for a couple more minutes, and then I saw what I wanted. An economy-sized bag of assorted pogs. There weren’t going to be any spectacular ones in there, but they’d do for my purposes. I paid for the pogs and walked back to my truck.

  On the way out to Wailupe I tried to think of what I could say to Danny. I loved my own father so much, and I was so lucky that he was still around to look out for me when I needed him. How could I help Danny, whose father seemed to have abandoned him in the cruelest way possible?