by Jill Malone
The tarmac slick with rain: I kept slipping, my clothes and boots soaked through and my gloves heavy and useless. A fog had settled over the airport.
“I fell, I think. I have this sensation of falling. And then a jar of peanut butter in a kitchen cupboard, I have a visual of the jar sitting on the shelf.”
There was an accident and a girl. I think about Emily in her garden that summer I came home, her hair light with surf, her arms cut, the danger of everything she meant crossing to me in her tied paisley sarong.
“In your kitchen?”
“No. This kitchen seems more rustic, almost like a cabin, and I had to search to find the peanut butter. I came upon it accidentally, actually. I remember being surprised that it was on a shelf by itself.”
I can still feel myself falling, the jolt and panic of my rabid heart.
“What else do you remember about the kitchen?”
“I was alone in the kitchen in the early morning. Light sort of spilled into the window above the sink, the rest of the house still dark. I crept around, trying to be quiet.”
“You were afraid to disturb someone?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess someone else must have been in the house.”
A flash of red on the pavement like a flag.
“What else do you remember?”
“I took the peanut butter with me, grabbed it on my way out the door. A screen door that didn’t actually fit in the doorframe, I pushed it open and left.”
I don’t tell her my leg hurts every time I think of that door: the dense wire of the screen against my fingertips; the heavy, thwack of the spring; the smooth wooden frame.
“And then?” she prods.
“I remember looking back at the house: a dark, box-shaped house with overgrown hibiscus shrouding the windows in the front yard, a desolate corner.”
“The house doesn’t look familiar to you now?”
“No, I don’t think I’d seen it before.”
“Where do you go after leaving the house?”
“I don’t remember. There’s the peanut butter, and the door, and then I’m looking back at the house and that’s all I remember.”
Dr. Mya leans back in her chair; her body had tensed and relaxed perceptibly. I realize, randomly, that my jaw clenched while I listened to her questions.
“What is your job, Jane?”
“I’m a teacher.”
“What do you teach?”
“Latin.”
Myths, I want to add; Greek and Latin myths with their inevitable violence: murder, curses, and rape. Fragments of poetry and epics and history, scenes of tragedy in a dead language translated by bright, scrubbed twenty-somethings in a classroom like a greenhouse.
“Where do you teach?”
“At U.H.”
“You teach at the Manoa campus?”
“That’s right.”
“Full time?”
“No, I’m an adjunct professor: afternoons, part-time. In the mornings, I work for UPS.”
“Leaving that house is your last memory before the hospital?”
My last memory? No, I have shards of memory from some later point: Emily on the hammock leaning over me. That slow motion lean like Grace Kelly illumined red, sinking into a kiss with Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window. I remember Nick coming into the bedroom, walking toward the armoire, a girl on the bed laughing. I remember Audrey in a yellow summer dress, standing in front of an easel with a hand on her hip. Something has already happened. Something about the way she is standing, how she’s struggling against the painting suggests I’ve already damaged her.
I’m sick of this hospital. It’s like Audrey’s jeep in its noisy, reckless frenzy. I don’t understand how I got here. There was an accident, a girl. And I’m trying to create a whole memory of the accident, a whole memory of the girl. I can’t start with Audrey, though. I have to work up to her. She isn’t clear yet. Not like the Montana dykes; them I get. Their visit fucked me up. Their visit gave Audrey perspective, a context in which to view me. I can’t start with Audrey, but I’ll get there. Trust me. First there were fruit trees and a woman. Her name is Emily and I found her on my way home.
I.
Not the house with its pillared Colonial stylings—white three-story with green shuttered windows, the requisite columns supporting the triangular overhang, the trellises of flowering clematis—not the ornate wrought-iron fence with its memory of city zoos, not even the girl, astonishingly long-legged in a tied paisley sarong, not my own exhaustion, the fifth rental of that Saturday in May—the other four squalid, airless rooms too close to freeway on-ramps or children’s playgrounds—no, I stood on Akahi Street that evening in the rain, with my bike resting against my hip because of the trees: a copse of guava trees in one corner of the sprawling yard, and mango in the other, breadfruit and chinaberry trees, jacaranda with its lavender bell-shaped blossoms. I had not seen such well-tended trees since I’d left the orchard, not in all my long years in the pastures of Ireland. The slender, brown-haired surfer chick stared at me through the iron bars, pruning shears balanced casually on her shoulder.
“Casing the place?”
“I’ve come about the rental.”
She smiled, or it seemed like a smile and nodded, her hair slipped across her bikini top as she opened the gate for me. Barefoot, she wore her sarong like a primitive—high on her thigh, low on her waist—her silver bellyring glared at me as she crossed the sidewalk to shake hands.
“Emily,” she said. Her fingers thin as spider’s legs.
“Jane.”
She headed through the gate and turned half-back toward me for a single, appraising look. Wide and muscular, her shoulders were tanned and lightly freckled; her arms seemed unnaturally long as she gestured for me to catch up. It took two long strides to even step with her as we walked along the stone pathway through the mango grove past a koi pond with fat speckled fish.
“This is the first week I’ve advertised,” she said. “It’s odd for me. A girl came to see the studio this morning—completely bizarre—she smelled of mold. I hope she works in a laboratory somewhere.”
I fell behind, distracted by the sprawling garden. At the lowest tier of the backyard (there were three tiers adjoined by steps), brambles hid the ground and colossal banyan trees crowded out the sky. Within this jungle sat a wood-frame studio, its windows facing the backside of the main house, the garden paths, and a thin, grassy alleyway.
I hurried after her into the vines—dense and prehistoric—with a certain anxiety about centipedes. Upon entering the bright orange front door, the ceiling of the studio arched high above our heads, muting the drum of rain. The large room—hardwood floors, window-box seat, kitchen nook, French doors—had two bay windows that lent the room a light-streaked quality despite the trees as if we were still in the early hours of the morning.
“No one’s ever lived here,” she said. “I used to store my surfboards in here. It was a garage once.”
The furnished room had an inviting pulse: the small round table and two farm chairs huddled across from the cyan-tiled kitchen; the stainless-steel refrigerator and stove; and an oval woven rug cast before a large futon sofa. The strange, comfortable furniture appealed to me, like suddenly assuming someone else’s life. In the long, narrow bathroom, the tub stood on claws. And I knew, the moment I noted the claws, that I would settle in this place.
While I wandered around, she leaned against the front door watching me, her thigh muscles flexing.
“I love it,” I said finally.
She nodded and led me to the side porch where two Adirondack chairs looked out at a laurel hedge and a couple of banana trees.
“There’s a hammock too, on the far side of the studio.”
“You stored your boards here?”
“Seems terribly selfish doesn’t it? God, you’re really fucking white. You don’t look like a tourist, but you must be, yeah?”
I felt myself flush, which, I knew, just made the rest of me look paler.<
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“I’ve been living in Ireland. Not much chance of tanning there.”
“What were you doing in Ireland?”
“I worked at the Linguistics Institute in Dublin.”
“And now?”
“I’ve going to teach at U.H., the Classics Department—a Latin instructor.”
“So is that a promotion?”
A promotion? No, more like a getaway. I thought of the Belfast dentist in her kitchen discovering the note I’d left for her, the cupboards emptied of my clothes, the sneaking lowness of my vanishing act.
“It’s hard to say. At the Linguistics Institute I was a researcher. I haven’t taught since I was at University.”
For something like the hundredth time I thought of the ridiculous position I’d assumed: leaving the challenging, interesting work for which I had trained seven years to return to Hawaii and the unknown of a job which might not give me the slightest pleasure. And leaving the girl—I’d commuted by train to Dublin five days a week to share her flat, her life—after three years, ever since I’d met her at a pub, that night she’d kissed me on a bridge walking back to her flat. Grasped my collar in her fists, our lips numb with cold, our faces burned and wind-whipped. She’d tasted of malt. I’d put my hands under her coat against her belly to keep from shivering.
“You’re an Island girl, though.”
“Maui. Left after high school; this is my first time back in nine years.”
“Will you be comfortable here tonight?”
I looked up at her; a thin white scar at the corner of her right eye dimpled when she smiled.
“So I can have the place?”
“Of course. I’d invite you in for a drink, but I have to be at work in twenty minutes. Come up to the house tomorrow morning and I’ll make you breakfast. Not too early.”
I watched as she hurried toward the main house through several rows of meticulously haphazard and disparate flowers. Moments later, a light on the second floor appeared as dusk sifted over the garden. So I would live here, then. Lightly the rain continued to fall. Leaving the dentist, her wild, crow-colored hair, the job, the meticulous contacts I’d developed, I would live here. Overhead the banyan trees groaned wearily as I turned from Emily’s window, remembering the one-road town in west Ireland where the dentist and I had watched daylight fade across the surface of a creek. A heron had crossed into the reed thicket. Below us water slapped against a wobbly wooden boat. Futility slipped beneath my clothes with her hands then and I knew that the shape we shared was spliced and hopeless as industry in that valley of sheep pastures, heather, the memory of famine.
I had returned to Hawaii to teach Latin at University. Now I would live for ambition and ambition alone. Even as I biked back to the hotel to secure a shuttle for my duffels, I found myself wondering: quarter to seven on a Saturday night, where the hell did this Emily chick work?
In the afternoons for much of that spring and summer, I biked around Waikiki, weaving through the poor suckers stalled by red lights, accidents, the endemic traffic, to watch tourists shop for their sickly pink and green outfits along the blistered shop fronts, or head downtown to Magic Island where Filipino boys caught their low-rider trucks on yellow speed bumps in the parking lot. Sometimes I’d join in a volleyball game, or stare at the thin line of horizon resting at waist height across the cobalt stretch of the Pacific, before winding my way home to the studio through the sleepy streets of Manoa, usually in the rain. I found during those rides that I came to know the city as intimately as I’d known Dublin though Honolulu was by no means as friendly. Most of the people I met were tourists, students on summer break, or retired ancients burning their days running the length of Ala Moana beach, each of whom had her own agenda, her own vision. It was not a city of like-minded and familiar people who wanted to drink in a carousing pub, or venture to plays, or discuss the weather the way old generals discuss strategic military campaigns. Oahu was disjointed and alien, more foreign country than state, and I felt isolated in a way that I had not expected.
But that first morning in the studio, I woke with her name in my mouth: Emily, and something like hopefulness. A long balcony stretched along the backside of the house, with three tiered stairs dropping through shocks of color from the flowering trees to the shadow of the banyans. Later, after I knew Hiromi, the old Japanese caretaker with bald spots who could kneel all day weeding with her wide-brimmed peasant hat and blue-rubber clogs, I’d understand the cultivated wildness of the garden: Hiromi subdued the greedy plants as ably as she encouraged the shy species. But my impression that first morning was that the place had been overrun: the flamelike flower of the heliconia draped beside the yellow ginger; poinsettia flailing alongside the stone pathway to distract you from the spider lily growing quietly near the fuchsia plumes of the bougainvillea. Added to the mix were dozens of rare and exotic flowers like Philippine orchids and orange trumpet vine. Somehow the dappled colors and styles lent a lush random beauty to the place.
I’d slept as dreamlessly as the dead, shrouded in my sleeping bag on the futon, and woke late. Nearly ten o’clock before I sprinted up the last short staircase, through the French doors into a solarium. Inside, the rooms of the main house were painted in Seussian primary colors; the rooms had high-ceilings, wooden floors, and flawless French-provincial furniture.
I tried to smooth my wild hair and rumpled clothes. With a growing sense of unease, I crossed the long narrow hallway to the kitchen, which was easily twice the size of the entire studio, bright and cool with a row of white fans churning silently overhead. In the middle of the room stood a marble island with rows of copper pots suspended above it, and behind the island, a six-burner gas stove with a built-in grill. Cabinets lined the walls on either side of the stove; two dishwashers, a walk-in, and a double stainless-steel monster fridge/freezer combo did not even begin to crowd the room. The walls were painted in two shades of bold yellow like a banana shake.
“Jesus Christ,” I shuddered.
“Good morning.”
Like an apparition she appeared from a little alcove that must have been the pantry, smiling at me hospitably. She wore a green sarong this morning and a hooded U.H. sweatshirt. Her hair wrapped tightly in a bun and secured to the top of her head with chopsticks, she looked the part of the local girl perfectly. Her eyes puffy, her face still glowed from sleep.
“Yes. Good morning.”
“Thought I’d make omelets.”
“Brilliant.”
She handed me a cup of coffee, motioning for me to sit on one of the stools at the bar. Straining my ears for other human sounds from the house, I continued to stare at the splendor of the kitchen, incapable of calculating the price tag for a place like this, miserable that I had skipped a bath in my hurry.
“Cream?”
“Yes, please.”
I stirred the cream into my coffee watching her slice mushrooms, yellow bell peppers, ham, black olives, cheese, and jalapenos. Relieved beyond expression when she took only two plates down from the cupboard, I began to enjoy the rich flavor of the coffee, the aroma of the ham.
“This kitchen’s a dream. Are you a chef?”
“No,” she laughed, “my brother. He’s in San Fran now, unhappy again. Do you know any chefs?”
I shook my head. She had a great laugh; it softened her whole body as if she’d become a child instantaneously.
“They’re never happy. My mother lives in Paris so she tried to get my brother to live there with her and intern at any number of these amazing restaurants. He lasted about seven months. That’s how it is. And then the next restaurant is the one he has always dreamed about and he’s going to have so much more artistic freedom and he really respects the owner, blah fucking blah until his next phone call when he explains why he’s already quit that one and at another place since the owner of the last place was such an asshole and Charlie had no creative license there.”
She smiled and added, “But the new one is always different.”
“Oh, god, maybe ten years? She’s married a publisher there and I doubt she’ll come back. My mother is so into melodrama; Paris is the perfect city for her, you know? All that angst. She was a jazz club singer in Japan and then later here. She’s retired now that she’s got a little gut, but she loves to live in a city that still respects jazz.”
She tossed eggs into one of the copper skillets and added a dash of milk.
“So your accent is Irish?” she asked.
“An amalgam I guess.”
“How long were you there?”
“Nine years. I went to Trinity College in Dublin through my doctorate and then worked at the Linguistics Institute for the last few years; traveled around too.”
“Why Ireland?”
The ham sizzled when she added it to the veggies in the skillet. She turned on the filter fan above the stove.
I always dreaded the “Why Ireland” question, changing my answer every time depending on the person asking. Why Ireland? One of my mother’s favorite films was The Quiet Man; fishermen’s sweaters seemed so rugged; my Australian father had once told me that Ireland was a country like no other; I went to find god.
“I don’t know. It just seemed unnatural not to live on an island and I wanted easy access to Europe without being on the Continent. Ireland was the spot.”
“Never made it to Ireland. I spent several weekends in London, passing back and forth to Paris. Not enough time to catch much besides a couple of plays and the Tate Gallery.”
She plated the omelets with toast, and brought me a glass of guava juice. We ate with impossibly large silver forks. Her skin was fair and delicate beneath the tan and the middle of her nose slightly pink. Later I understood that Emily had been exceptionally nervous that first morning—talking too quickly and telling too many personal details to a girl she had known less than half a day—but at the time I just read her as quirky. Wildly animated, her eyes seemed to punctuate whatever she said: