The Fortunes of Indigo Skye

by Deb Caletti

  I had previously been trying out wearing the air of an owner of two and a half million dollars, something casual and leaning and not nervous and wary, some sort of new cool, but the bathroom experience has reminded me that I am just one of the masses that must deal with creepy, revolving plastic on toilets. My inability to control an automatic faucet has zapped my confidence, and so I sit back down in a hard plastic chair formed to the supposed contours of my body and look around for possible terrorists instead. Some kid sits on his dad’s lap and pats the man’s head, which the dad puts up with amiably. An old guy in a World War II Veterans cap and a snazzy pair of red Keds high-tops asks me to take a picture of him and his wife, who’s sporting a crocheted cap and a pair of velvety leopard pants. I try to find the big button there she is gesturing toward, as she leans back against the man and smiles.

  “Cool shoes,” I say to the man. More than the shoes themselves, I like the fact that he’s wearing them. He has a cane and some huge elastic band around his waist as if trying to keep his internal organs in. “You two are stylin’.”

  The woman beams. “We’re from New Jersey,” she says.

  I hand back the camera, wait for another eon. I watch a creature emerge from the sea, grow legs, begin to walk upright, and then it’s time to board. The flight attendants flash their credit card smiles and I haul my bag up and take my seat by the window, which is good, because I can keep an eye on the wing this way and make sure it stays on. I watch the line of people sludge past, waiting for the human lottery of who will sit next to me if I happen to die a fiery death today. This turns out to be an older man with a neatly trimmed gray beard and a laptop, which he stows under his seat. Then he lays his head back and closes his eyes, and I’m alone again. The seat between us is empty, lucky me. I read the plastic card and follow along about the yellow evacuation slide and the seat as a flotation device, which we all know is a lie, but okay. Apparently the life jacket has a whistle attached, so that if you crash into the water from thousands upon thousands of feet and still manage to bob along in the sea, you can tweet for attention. People are reading magazines and eating snacks and sleeping while the rest of us are looking around for exit rows and thinking about death.

  After we’ve nosed up and we’re not wavering around and the blond lady starts bending over and fussing with the drink cart, I figure I can stop listening for noises of disaster and smelling for burning plane parts. No one would hunt for ginger ale if we were about to plunge. I turn my inner alert switch to standby, flip through the catalogue of expensive watches and dog carriers and minibars for the office. I read the in-flight magazine and look at pictures of Portugal and try to see if we’re getting a movie.

  I get a Diet Coke and a package of four peanuts and decide not to pay five bucks for headphones. I’ve got a hundred dollars Mom gave me for the whole trip, and I don’t want to waste it. She took it from the envelope of money she keeps in her underwear drawer for emergencies, and I know there isn’t much in there. So instead, I watch the movie with no sound—cars chasing each other and things blowing up and people’s lips moving, and I don’t feel I’ve missed much at all. Finally, we’re about to land and I hunt under my seat for my shoes and accidentally grab the toe of the sneaker of the guy behind me and yank, which cracks me up. I even peek between the seats to see whose shoe I’ve just pulled, and it’s some Asian guy with big glasses, who now has both feet tucked protectively to the side, which cracks me up further. My shoulders are going up and down, up and down in that laugh that tries not to be a laugh. You can see why I am never going to be the type to have two and a half million dollars.

  I can tell the moment I’m off the plane that yanking on some stranger’s foot will be the highlight of my trip. I walk down the airplane steps onto the tarmac, and even though it’s evening, the air is balmy and breezy. The warmth, the strangeness of the climate, is a surprise. It’s always a surprise, a sudden climate change, even when you know what to expect when you arrive. Maybe our mind can grasp the going from one part of the world to another in a few hours, but our body still works on some pre-technology basis that feels the wrongness of this. I almost don’t recognize Dad—he has his hair cut very short on the sides and he’s a lot more gray than the last time. But Jennifer is easy to spot. Her hair is piled on top of her head and she’s wearing a sundress of manic oranges and yellows, and her sunglasses are still on even though it’s dusk. She dangles a lei over one wrist, an oversize flower bracelet.

  “There she is!” Jennifer says. She drops the lei around my head and there’s the sudden bright smell of gardenias. “Aloha!”

  “Sorry,” Dad says. He looks dressed in an outfit not in his control—tan shorts with lots of adventuresome pockets, a T-shirt advertising some band called Dead Center with the picture of a bull’s-eye (Dad’s musical interest, far as I know, gravitates to, say, Elton John). He has a sweatshirt tied jauntily around his shoulders.

  “What do you mean, ‘Sorry’?” Jennifer says to my dad. “It’s tradition.” Jennifer is actually from Portland, Oregon. She met Dad when she came to the islands on a cruise ship with two girlfriends. Now she’s embraced Hawaii as if her ancestors had paddled over from Polynesia in boats made from the husks of a banana tree.

  “Good flight?” Dad says. Dad is funny with words. He can have an economy with language, like his conversation is on a diet. Then it can come spilling out in some dialogue binge.

  We do the bad airport bumbling dance, where unfamiliar bodies and bags struggle for rhythm. Their car is parked in the airport lot. It’s a small convertible, and my suitcase won’t fit into the trunk in spite of a great deal of struggling on my father’s part—various geometric shoves. So it sits beside me, just when I thought we were finally going to have time apart. Jennifer flips down the visor to make sure her face hasn’t changed since the last time she looked. She hunts around in her bag and finds a circle container of lip gloss, smears one finger in a circle and applies it. She makes a gummy smack with now-shiny lips and the car has the limp odor of something fruity.

  “Well,” Dad says.

  “I know,” I say. “Pretty weird, huh?”

  Jennifer takes a breath. “I just think, if this is what he wants to do, then why not just let him? I mean, the guy has obviously thought this over before he did it. I don’t understand why you can’t just say, ‘Hey, thanks,’ you know, send him a note and tell him you understand what he’s doing, what he’s wanting…” She’s shouting a bit, sitting sideways in her seat so both Dad and I can hear. We’re out on the main road now, and the wind is loosening the strands of hair around her face, making a few stick to her shiny lips.

  “Jen,” Dad says. It is only one word; no, not even a whole word, and to me it could mean anything. Jen, can I change lanes or are we about to be hit by a papaya truck? Jen, are you sitting on my sunglasses? Jen, you have hair stuck on your lips. But apparently Jen understands Dad’s shorthand language. She’s got the internal lemon juice that’s rubbed on his words to make the secret message appear underneath.

  “Oh, come on,” she says to him. “Don’t even give me that.”

  This time he merely gives his head a tiny shake. I see it in the rearview mirror. “I don’t believe you, I really don’t,” she says to this. “You honestly find that immoral in some way? Sheesh.”

  Perhaps I am learning the trick to conversing with this man who is my father. It’s like talking to one of the palm trees lining the road where we are driving. You say whatever you want, and when they swish and shush a bit in the breeze, you respond how you please.

  I sit quietly in the backseat, feeling suddenly prim and awkward. I sneak a look over to my traveling companion, who just sits in solid black stodginess. Their arguing, if you can call it that, has brought on a bout of good behavior on my part, the nervous silence of an unwanted guest. I wonder what’s going on at home. Three hours’ time difference, and Mom would be back from work. I picture her hunting under the bed for her second slipper and see Severin clicking
open a three-ring binder to put in his AP Government homework, thoughts of Kayleigh Moore dancing in his head. Trevor would be finishing his last delivery, slamming the rolling metal door on the back of the delivery truck down for the last time of the day, locking it up and saying See ya to Larry Jakes or Vic Xavier, who is half Trevor’s size, but who can lift an Amana Radar Range off the truck by himself, according to Trevor.

  We pull up to Dad and Jennifer’s house, a bungalow just a few steps from the beach, with tile floors and pictures of orchids and birds of paradise that Jennifer has painted in watercolors, and furniture that’s all bamboo and tropical-flower cushions. The doors and windows have been left open and Dad drops his sweatshirt immediately onto a kitchen chair when we come in. Jennifer says she’s tired and goes off into their room, and Dad pours some pineapple juice into a cup in the shape of a tiki man and hands it to me. He makes me a tuna sandwich, puts potato chips inside. It’s just the way I like a tuna sandwich, without even telling him, and I wonder how he knows this. Keiko, Jennifer’s golden retriever, has devotedly followed me around since I arrived and is now sleeping in a half circle at my feet.

  “How’s everyone?” Dad says. “How’s your mom?” He looks toward the bedroom door as he says this, as if the word will seep through the crack under the door for Jennifer to hear.

  “Fine, yeah,” I say. “Good.”

  “How’s Bex? Your brother?”

  “Great. Bex is in this new phase. She’s collecting money for tsunami victims.”

  “No way. No kidding?” He smiles, chuckles. “A school project? That reminds me of you, selling those magazines in the first grade. Remember that? They gave you some prize you wanted, an AM/FM pen radio or something, and we went all around the neighborhood, knocking on doors? I bought, like, four magazines myself. It would have been cheaper to buy you a stereo. I got a yachting magazine, or something, golf…”

  “Better than Cosmo,” I say. I chuckle with him. I crunch into my sandwich. His face looks happy for the first time that night, so I don’t want to tell the truth, that I don’t remember this at all. Actually, I’d forgotten that he knew things about me, things I didn’t know. But a good chunk of our relationship is based on things that happened in the past, and if I decide not to acknowledge his memories, we might be left standing on an empty ballroom floor, not knowing how to dance.

  “We had so many damn magazines coming,” he says, laughing. “But you got your radio.”

  “That made me so happy,” I say, but I’m only guessing.

  “Happy,” he says. He rubs his jawline. “Have you thought about it, In? What it might mean, having that money? The effect of it? Who you might be, with it or without it?”

  “I’d be myself, richer, I guess.”

  “I don’t know, In. I don’t know. Maybe you’d be less of yourself. I worry. A person can rely on what they have, rather than what they are…. Isn’t that what the chorus of voices even tells us? To look away from ourselves and toward things?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “Buy it, have it, get this and you’ll be that? I think this is the world’s opinion, In. And I distrust the world’s opinion.”

  “You rebel,” I say. I ball up my napkin, toss it at him.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment, thank you. It’s easy to go along. But all the great men have been nonconformists.”

  “Get some dreadlocks, Philosopher Dad,” I say.

  “Ha, can you see that? Jennifer would shoot me. Just, In? Listen to yourself. It’s harder than it sounds.”

  “Myself says that potato chips are awesome in tuna,” I say. “Myself says that the thought of you in dreadlocks is hilarious.” He tosses my napkin back at me. We stay up a little while more, talking about Bex and Severin. We make a plan to see the Vespa guy in the morning. It’s not as bad talking to him as I imagined, not at all. We’re clicking along really nicely, as a matter of fact. It’s him and me, which I thought would be bad, but it’s him and me, and that’s what’s actually kind of nice. I’d forgotten that part about Dad, the misplaced dreamer-academic, the human equivalent of a soul walking an empty beach. I’d forgotten that I like those kind of people. And besides, he has lines around his eyes that crinkle when he smiles.

  “Want more juice?” he says. I accept another glass, to bring to my room.

  “I’m sick to death of pineapple juice, you want to know the truth,” he says as he pours. “But Jennifer likes to have it around. Vitamin C, all that. Healthy diet food.”

  We say good night. He gives me a sort-of hug, an arm around my shoulders. “You’re getting so big,” he says.

  “Maybe I’d better start on the pineapple juice diet,” I say.

  “You know what I mean,” he says. “Grown up. A young woman. Well, let me know if you need anything.”

  I pat Keiko’s head, close my door with the abandoned dog on the other side. I can feel her there, her eyes on the door, watching over me. My room is a small rectangle with twin beds that have palm tree bedspreads. There’s a large photo of a sunset on one wall, and a painted sign that says, KO KAUA PALEKAIKO! with OUR PARADISE! underneath. Jennifer’s paint supplies are stacked in one corner and Dad’s books creep along one wall. I set my tiki man on a shiny teak bedside table. I feel like I’m inside a suntan lotion commercial or one of those old Elvis movies where he surfs. The pillowcase smells like no one’s been in the room in a while. Keiko is whining on the other side of the door. I have a pang of sympathy for my dad then. It’s regret on his behalf, something he may or may not feel for himself. It had to be hard, being the kind of person who always thinks. The sad part was, he left one cliché for another—suburban cliché to a Hawaiian-themed one. I wonder then if it’s easier to forgive when the life of the person you’re forgiving seems to not have gone the way they intended. Maybe it’s easier to be generous in that case. But I feel a small piece of something else inside too—I’m a little pissed. If he left us who loved him, he should have at least made sure it was worth it.

  I guess forgiveness, like happiness, isn’t a final destination. You don’t one day end up there and get to stay. It’s there, it’s not there. It’s in and out, like the surf I could hear outside my window as I lay in that bed. Sometimes forgiveness is so far away you can barely imagine its possibility, and other times, surprising times, like when a tiki man is looking at you from a bedside table, it is a sudden, unexpected visitor who stays briefly before moving on.

  8

  The next morning Jennifer emerges from the bedroom with a wide smile; she’s wearing a tiny sarong skirt and a tight white tank top spilling boobs. It’s cloudy out, but they’re the kind of clouds that lack any real ambition other than to temporarily annoy. They’ll blow off soon; you can tell because the air is warm, minus any true marine-cool bite. Dad has already opened the windows again, and you can hear the tick-tick-tick of palm leaves swishing. He’s reading the paper while we drink coffee, and I don’t mind that. There’s no angsty-hollow in our silence, just sleepy morning comfort, which may be in part because I barely slept last night. I had that other-place alertness, where you hear the air conditioner whoosh and the refrigerator buzz; where it’s dark and still dark and still still dark, where the dark hours go on forever, and you think about everything that can’t be solved as you lie in bed until you finally get sleepy when the windows begin to edge with light.

  Even if I’d gotten the best rest of my life, I think I still might be sleepy here, because everything’s sleepy—the breeze, and the sound of the surf, and the warmth. It’s like living in a nap. We’re supposed to pack the car in another fifteen minutes or so to head over to Richard Howard’s house. I’d be nervous, but it’s hard to be nervous where people are usually barefoot.

  “Aloha!” Jennifer says. Her voice is pink and cheery as the inside of a grapefruit.

  “Morning,” I say.

  “You’ve made a friend,” she says to me, and Dad looks up from his paper, his glasses at the end of his nose. “Keiko slep
t outside your door all night.”

  Dad tilts his head back to view her better from the bottom half of his glasses.

  “What?” she says. She knits her eyebrows together. Her voice has slid to a ledge and stopped.

  “Nothing,” he says.

  “My outfit,” she says.

  “It’s fine,” he says. But even I can tell it’s not completely fine to him. Maybe it’s the spilling boobs that bug him, I don’t know. He can be conservative in ways that aren’t Republican.

  “What’s sa-rong with it,” I say. “Ha-ha.”

  “You look great,” he tries again, and this time, I’m convinced too. Whatever bothered him is gone now, and he goes back to his paper, his toes hooked behind him on the rung of the counter stool.

  “I feel bad, just surprising the guy like this. I wish we could call,” I say. I pour another cup of coffee. I’m hoping it’ll work some reality magic on me. My eyes are hot with fatigue and I’m having one of those out-of-body moments when I see where I am but can’t quite grasp it. I’m in my father’s kitchen. I am holding a glazed brown sloped mug decorated with Polynesian flowers, which has a chip in it. We are discussing the return of more money than I might see in my lifetime. There should be music playing behind us, or a laugh track. I should be eating popcorn, watching me, wondering what will happen next.

  “His phone’s not hooked up yet,” Dad says to his paper. “Not much else we can do.”

  “Hopefully he’ll be there.”

  “Five minutes away,” Dad says. “We’ll go back later if not.”

  He turns the page. Sleepy ease is being shoved and bullied from the room by Jennifer’s ice-cave silence. She walks to the kitchen, her feet making soft slaps on the tile. She looks in the refrigerator and brings out the pineapple juice, clanks the can on the counter. You can feel the pissed-off chords playing in the room, so hey, I’m outta here.