by Jill Malone
On Tuesday night, Emily took me to catch a funky band at Anna Banana’s. Inside, the club was composed entirely of light-colored wood like a country lodge and seemed coated in a dim yellow light. We entered the heavy double doors to the African beat of drums and footfalls syncopated wildly; half Latin, half Congo and burning through us like fever.
The crowd was twenty-something locals, mostly surfers, and the bartender generous with her shots. On the stage, a twelve-piece band wailed while this fragile, nose-ringed, dreadlocked hippie chick danced just to the right of the main stage. After a long drum solo, she came to the fore and hurled some crazy jazz vocal, stretching her vowels just to the last thread of holding. The crowd held her groove as a tangible surge gripped all of us, our bodies shuddering, bouncing, gleaming on the dance floor like a fresh catch of rainbow trout tossed into the bottom of a boat. We danced until we couldn’t breathe—the taste of blood in our throats.
“This chick is mad, yeah?” Emily said.
“Do you know her?”
“Yeah, she was in an art history class I took at U.H. my last year. Her name’s Selene.”
Emily took a swig of Heineken and grinned. A line of sweat slipped the length of her jaw line and she smothered it absently with the base of her beer bottle.
“What?” I asked.
“I always wanted to fuck her.”
I watched the woman on stage more closely then, her mocha skin and china doll eyes. Her chiseled ab muscles flexed when she riffed. Her body petite and agile like a gymnast, a mischievous impulse curling the corner of her mouth as she bit into the microphone, or cast it behind her head to throb with the bass drum. Sex was thick in the sweat-clouded air, in her voice, on the hum of dance floor, and I looked over at Emily to find that she was looking at me. What follows is all potential.
XI.
All of the striped pool balls herded like zebra to the middle of the table, resisting my cockeyed efforts to insert them into any of the pockets, scowling at me with their black-numbered faces. We were keeping time at Grey’s on a rainy Saturday night in December while Emily worked at the Spark; Grey shooting pool and me trying to keep the cue ball on the table. We’d been debating dancing at Anna Banana’s or checking out some live local music at Duke’s, even catching a movie, but our inertia had so overpowered us that I was actually holding a pool stick (crookedly, but still) with intent.
Grey’s run of the table didn’t help my filthy mood: I’d missed Thanksgiving at the orchard, waited to the last conceivable moment to tell my father I couldn’t come, tempered his holiday voice with disappointment. Throughout the fall, I’d rationalized that my classes were sucking all my energy, that I had not a fucking joule to spare and needed the long Thanksgiving weekend strictly for recuperation. My father would understand. We could spend the entire Christmas break together and I wouldn’t have to grade papers or worry about student conferences since a new semester wouldn’t begin until the second week of January. We’d have the highest quality of time together over Christmas break.
In fact, Dr. Adams had invited me to have Thanksgiving at her home with an intimate group of friends and colleagues. Flattered and swollen as a puffer fish, I had accepted, convinced I might finally breach the inner academic circle. This was the road to teaching graduate-level courses, to tenure. I attended the event in a conservative black dress, sporting a moist batch of pumpkin brownies and an excellent bottle of Bordeaux. During dinner we discussed the role of myth in art; the corruption of the American psyche through institutionalized religion; the hapless mania of the Goth movement; the notable differences in the European (Irish) notion of education versus the American (Hawaiian) one. I had ached to discuss meaningful, beautiful things with a room full of intellectuals, I had expected the sort of inspired exchange I had with Delvo, amplified to a terrific degree, but something false spoiled the evening. Some reserve or artifice that I couldn’t seem to break through in the other guests: there was no brightness to the discussions—the evening had devolved into a rant against bureaucrats and administrators—and I found myself craving the solitude of the trees and the lull of my mother’s story voice.
As we gathered before the fireplace, clutching our cognac, Dr. Adams asked me for the second time that evening how I’d settled in. I must have looked blank or even despondent since she soon asked whether or not I was quite well. Later that night as I’d walked home, I felt nothing more purely than my own cowardice. What a rotten bastard of a daughter I’d become.
With a sharp tap, another solid ball fell into the leather net of the pocket.
“This is lame, Grey.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Don’t start that again.”
“Jesus, Janie. What’s with you tonight?”
“I’m such an asshole.”
“Yeah, but what’s with you tonight?”
He grinned at me, his head cocked, brown curls deliberately unruly around his tanned face. Too beautiful to be upsetting, that was his great advantage.
“I should have made a trip home for Thanksgiving.”
I set my pool cue against the back of the couch, grabbed a beer, and crashed in the leather recliner facing the colossal wall-sized television. Grey’s romper room was a teenaged boy’s wet dream: fully stocked bar, Godzilla television and speaker system, laser disc, pool table, table tennis, leather couch and recliners, and Playstation with racing and sports games. A sort of cultural haven.
“So you’ll go for Christmas.”
He grabbed his beer and sat opposite me in the couch, his bare feet stretched across the coffee table; his toes hairy as a hobbit’s. I nodded at him.
“I don’t get it, Janie. What’s the problem?”
“It’s just, you know, I’m thinking I should have gone back for Thanksgiving or even for the summer. I haven’t been back in nine years.”
“Yeah, so another few weeks won’t matter. You’ll go back for Christmas instead. Where’s the problem?”
“No, it’s just—Jesus, I don’t know. I don’t know.”
He took a long swig, watching me as he drank. He set the bottle on the table and crossed to the recliner. Straddling me, he pinned my arms to my side, reclining both of us backwards.
“What if I came with you?”
“To Maui?”
“Yeah, I’ll come for the weekend. Hell, if I enjoy Maui, I’ll come back the next weekend too.”
“You’ve never been to Maui?”
“I’ve been up Hana before, but never to the country. It’ll be fun. My wife’s going to Boston to her sister’s place, but I vetoed that fucking idea. Let me come to Maui with you. You don’t want to worry about me all alone at Christmas with nothing to do.”
I gestured to his television, the Playstation games, laser discs, bookshelves of CDs. Sure, nothing to do.
“What about Emily?”
“Well, we can’t fucking leave her; she’ll come with, of course. Come on, say yes, say it’s the perfect idea.”
He massaged my shoulders in his massive hands, pressing into my neck. Why not take both of them to Maui?
“I can’t believe I’m considering this. I’m such a coward.”
“What’s to consider? We’ll have a blast, unless your dad’s antisocial or something.”
Not antisocial. No, but my dread had lessened the moment Grey offered to accompany me. I was afraid to go home. I was afraid of all that I’d left.
“You’d really go? What if you hate it?”
“I hate it and I only have to get through the weekend. No trauma. This is perfect.”
His knees rested against my hips. Relaxing his grip on my shoulders, he stretched his hands behind me and rubbed my lower back. Clearly pleased with himself, he grinned—his thin lips stretching across his face ghoulishly, his seal eyes wide with excitement. He was such a boy—such a child in his endless capacity for pleasure.
“This is perfect,” he said again.
I leaned forward and pressed the top of my head in
to the curve of his chest. For a moment, I’d felt an impulse to kiss him, but it had passed. Suddenly I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my evening.
“Eight Fat,” I sat up and looked right at him.
Grey’s eyes sparked again.
“Karaoke, yes, brilliant. We’ll get good and drunk, belt out the disco hits.”
I called Emily from Eight Fat Fat Eight, a downtown bar with killer chicken and poké, multiple dartboards, and decades’ worth of karaoke music. Grey was singing Me and Bobby McGee when I closed the phone booth and dialed the Spark. It was a while before Emily came to the phone. I’d gone back to our table, refilled my glass from our third pitcher, and still made it back before I heard her asking hello.
“We have a plan.”
“Yeah?” She sounded impatient.
“Good night at the Spark?”
“It’s mad here. What’s the plan?”
Definitely impatient; now was not the time to tell her about the trip to Maui.
“Grey wants both of you guys to come to Maui for Christmas—all three of us.”
I was yelling into the phone: the plan too thrilling to relate in a normal tone of voice.
“Ryan wants us to come?”
“Yeah. It was his idea. Perfect, yeah?”
Something wasn’t right. I wasn’t telling this right. There was a long silence on her end; no joyful yelling.
“Emily?”
“I can’t talk about this now.”
“Why don’t you leave the Spark early and meet us at Eight Fat. Grey’s doing Blue Bayou right now. The crowd’s—”
“I’m busy here.”
“Yeah. I just wanted to tell you the plan—”
The phone went silent and my vision had become alarmingly blurred. Concentrating on returning the phone to the cradle, I tried to figure out what had happened. She must not have understood the plan. I hadn’t explained right.
I went back to the booth to wade out the blur; Grey was singing some fucking John Denver song. Holy Jesus, the guy had lungs. I wanted to call the Spark again and explain. I wanted to lie down on the booth or under the booth even. Lie down on the nice cool floor and listen to Grey belt the commune classics.
Grey made me drink two full glasses of iced water before we left. When he dropped me off at home, I washed the film of tobacco from my hair and skin, sober enough to realize what Emily was pissed about, but not sober enough to come up with a solution. Maybe she wouldn’t come to the studio anyway. I pulled the futon out, determined to watch for a light in the main house.
The next morning, I woke with an ax in my forehead.
Halfway through a pot of coffee a couple of hours later, the day looked like it might come off after all. The front door opened and Emily stood on the threshold.
“Coffee?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Coming in?”
She didn’t move.
I stood up and walked toward her. She wasn’t looking at me. She wasn’t coming inside.
“Look, about last night, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make it sound like I didn’t want you to come. Of course I want you to come. I wanted to ask before. That day at Kailua, I wanted to ask about Christmas, and then … I just didn’t know how.”
“You didn’t know how to ask? What the fuck, honey, you had all night to come up with a better excuse than that.”
“It wasn’t exactly a productive night.”
“Really? But that’s when Grey dreamed up this fabulous plan, right? So the night wasn’t completely unfertile.”
Her voice had turned nasty. She bared her teeth at me, her muscles tensed, her face contorted with anger. I moved backwards into the studio. Not High Noon, for Christ sake; I was in recovery. I sat down at the table and looked up at her. She was finally making eye contact—the full fierce stare.
Weren’t we dancing around the obvious? Emily knew exactly why I hadn’t invited her myself, and now she was trying to force me into the most pitiful role of all pathetic clichés: the desperately unrequited. Irritation crushed the last of my hangover like a cigarette; I stood up and crossed to her again.
“Let’s talk about why you’re really upset.”
“We are talking about why I’m upset.”
“Bullshit. You know I want you to come to Maui.” Something in her glare quavered for a moment, but she held. We were really going to do this? I rubbed my forehead with my hand, my final stall tactic. Fine, we could both suffer.
“You know I want you to come to Maui.”
“I know Ryan wants me to.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. I didn’t know what it would mean to ask you. I don’t know what the hell’s going on between us. You know exactly what I want, so spare me the fucking stage production. If you want me just say so, and if you don’t, quit bitching about not being asked first, like some goddam grade schooler.”
I walked into the kitchen to refill my coffee cup. My hands were trembling, temper burning through my head until even my hair hurt. She didn’t say anything, though I could feel her body in the room as acutely as one predator senses another in the darkness. Amped up, I’d made the very speech I’d dreaded for months to the very girl I’d tried to protect; the adrenaline left me shaky and sick. I wanted to kick Grey right in the sack. Behind me, the door closed with a sucking sound like quicksand.
I thought I’d run mad if I stayed in the studio, so I biked to Honolulu Zoo. The monkeys were extremely soothing. Monkeys had stress figured out: you’re pissed, you scream; you’re irate, you smack something/someone; you’re happy, you hang upside down from your jungle bars. It was a hazy states of stickiness dragging their parents along the pathways from the tiger exhibit to the reptile house. Most of the exhibits hosted invisible animals, but just walking through the zoo seemed to settle me. No one would have to endure awkward silences or embarrassingly unrequited and torturous declarations of feeling. The solution was really that simple: I would move.
That evening, the sky broke and I biked home, pelted with rain. I opened all the windows in the studio to avoid that musty, enclosed smell of mildew. The air was cool, but I slipped sweats on and lay in the hammock, cradled in the overhang. It would be a shame to leave the garden. The hammock rocked in time with the rain.
The hammock quaked as she climbed in, nearly toppling both of us. She smelled of cigarettes and gin. I felt her hair against my face, and reached through the dark to brush it back over her shoulders.
“What time is it?”
“Almost three. Sorry I woke you.”
She lay on her side, pressed against me in the casual collapse of the hammock. Remembering the morning, I stiffened involuntarily, dropped my hands to my sides, tried to fathom whether or not she might be an apparition.
The hammock settled with our weight; I felt her breathing against my cheek, her chest expanding into my body almost as quickly as mine expanded into the night. Without speaking, she reached up and smoothed my hair back from my forehead. Her fingers traced my face, softly around my eyes, down my jaw line, lingering on my lips so long that I wanted to open my mouth. And something in me ached.
Her fingers smelled of nicotine. She moved over me and I felt her hair in my face again. This time, I couldn’t bring myself to sweep it against her. Would movement shatter the vision? Her fingertips were light and warm. In my head the child’s rhyme played: going on a treasure hunt, x marks the spot; spider’s crawling up your back; blood rushing down. The air cold against my skin, I stifled the impulse to seize against her in the headlong rush of a wave against reef. In the garden, tree branches groaned.
As her mouth opened against mine, I shuddered the way a child does before sobbing. The taste of gin sudden and sweet; what I felt most deeply was pure hunger and went on kissing her, my fingers slipping the length of her spine, pulling her on top of me. We tumbled from the hammock onto the ground. All that was depraved and weak in me tangled my fist through her hair—this gazelle whose heart fluttered against my chest—pul
led her head back, and bit into her throat. I wanted to get beneath the liquor and cigarettes to taste the salt. I wanted sea and blood. Desire slipped into something feral and terrifying that rolled over us until we tore at each other like leopards. Emily cried out and begged me to fuck her.
XII.
Since I had seen the house last, my father had completely remodeled, led by an impulse I couldn’t even begin to fathom, to update the bathrooms with modern tile; shiny new faucets and knobs in glimmering silver sat inside cream-colored porcelain sinks; the mirrors and modern art (drawings and watercolors) were new; the paint fresh and warm; carpet upstairs in the bedrooms and down the hallways had been removed and the wood floors refinished so that the house seemed young, shiny, and completely alien to my memories. How long can you live in a coffin, my rational self asked. How long can you remain static?
There were skylights in all the upstairs’ rooms and the light shone through with importance. My father walked us through the house and motioned to the improvements, watching for my reaction, gauging my response. Is it all right that I’ve changed the house? Is it all right that we are not as you left us? I wanted to hold onto him in the new rooms, to assure myself that his heartbeat was unaltered, that his smell was still lavender soap and earth. Why had I expected to find him the same? Why hadn’t I hoped that he, too, would have grown?
“It’s beautiful,” Emily said once we’d settled again in the kitchen.
The cabinets and counter tops were new—the colors now oak and sage respectively—and a bay window had been added to look onto the orchards from the kitchen table. Light had changed the feature of the place, and this man, this thinning-haired man whose blue eyes were etched by crow’s feet, his cheeks softened by lines and tiny red flecks like urgent freckles. He had lost weight and held himself less like a rod and more like a tree—he looked stronger in his age than the father I remembered.