Super America

by Anne Panning

  Pay careful attention to Angela’s return home, for upon arriving at work, she finds her two classes canceled, due to reasons of which she is unaware. There is simply a single white sheet of paper taped to the outside door, which reads, “Classes canceled today. Report tomorrow as usual.” This note both angers and relieves Angela. Of course she is happy for the sudden freedom, but irritated at the knowledge that she could have slept in, that she has ridden halfway across town in the blinding heat and is soaked with sweat, that she had spent two hours last night preparing an innovative lesson plan having to do with restaurant menus and job applications. But she steers back toward home, coasting mostly downhill, sensitive blue eyes shielded by sunglasses.

  The first indication that something is wrong is their friend Nate standing right outside their door, up on the second-floor landing. He never comes over in the mornings, and he never looks as sickly in the face as he does now. Angela waves to him, locks her bike, then sees in the lot a police car and knows then, knows for certain, there has been an accident. Her first thought is her family in Montana. Perhaps her father has been crushed by a horse; it has happened to people she knows. Or her mother in a car accident. It has to be her family; Michael seems practically indestructible—so careful, so smart, so beautifully alert and on top of things. She wonders if he is still at the library and how she can reach him in the stacks quickly.

  Here is how Angela approaches the scene, in a way you may not expect: cheerfully. “Hey, Nate,” she says, taking the cement stairs by twos and gasping, out of breath. “What’s up?” She looks him bravely in the face.

  Nate shuffles his feet and looks, for the first time, actually pale, despite his dark coloring. “Why don’t we go in,” Nate says, and Angela, for some reason, resists. She notes the policeman advancing up the other staircase.

  “No, here,” she says, and dumps her backpack, purple and worn, at their feet. “Tell me here. What is it?” She reaches out and touches his arm, which is warm, hairless, and smooth. Nate is their best friend; he is in Michael’s department and a Hawaii local. He has shown them everything, driven them around in his Honda, warned them about dangerous beaches and jellyfish.

  “It’s Michael,” he says, and puts a hand on her shoulder. “I really think we should go inside. I don’t know how to tell you.”

  “Tell me here,” Angela says again, and feels the sharp prickle of salt crystals form as the sweat dries on her face and back. “What is it? Is he all right?”

  The policeman approaches them, introduces himself, and looks down, waiting for Nate to say it. And finally, Nate is able. “Michael was in an accident. It all just happened so fast—on his bike.”

  Angela feels fear rising in her chest, and her ears ring high and spinning. “Is he all right?” The sun makes her head throb, makes all the blood in her fingers and toes and chest pound and pulse and beat loudly inside her ears.

  “Angela, Michael died,” Nate says at last, then immediately opens up his arms and pulls her close to him. He begins to sob dryly, despite his aim at control, but Angela stands immobilized by the news.

  “He died?” she says, patting Nate on the back, soothing him until he pulls away. “He couldn’t have died! I just saw him an hour ago. He was right here.”

  The policeman takes his lead and intervenes as the force of authority and stability. “We wanted to contact you before we called his parents.” He takes a small notebook out of his breast pocket. It has a hard silver cover, which Angela notes curiously. “I’m really very sorry,” he says, pink in the face. “It was a fluke accident. There was really nothing anyone could do. Are you sure you don’t want to go inside? It’s so hot out here.” He wipes his forehead with his hand, then wipes his hand on his pant leg.

  Angela murmurs back at him incoherently and unlocks her apartment door in a blur. Was she in shock? Yes. Was she about the throw up? Yes, to this question, and to all the rest, but she was merely functioning mechanically, as our bodies are somehow able to do in times of crisis. Later she will throw herself on the couch and sob and scream and grab her gut; later she will become nauseous at the mere thought of eating; later she will gather in her arms their stale pile of dirty laundry in the closet and suck in the smell with a terrifying thirst and stay there, stay in the closet, afraid to come out for hours; but for now, she is sedate with miscomprehension, glazed by the confusion of it all.

  Oddly, once inside the apartment, she feels safe and immune, and seeing Michael’s navy blue coffee mug sitting on the kitchen counter settles her somehow. She perches uncertainly on the edge of the couch and puts her hands on top of her head, trying to control the thoughts which are swimming like fish in her brain. “So tell me, I guess, what happened. I need to know this, right? I mean, I need to know.” A slight breeze passes through the open doorway, and she jerks her head up, expecting Michael’s lanky frame to walk in, his familiar, grainy face to lean against the door frame, his deep, kind voice which will laugh and tease and help her get through this.

  The policeman sits on their one good chair, a rose-colored recliner, purchased at the Salvation Army; Nate hovers over the sink, cleaning up some unknown mess. The policeman explains the details of the accident in a calm, respectful manner.

  This is what happened, what was told to Angela and later to Michael’s parents in Boston, and later to everyone who watched the local news: Michael was biking up the tiny road between the library and the medical school, which was also the road to the construction site for the new cafeteria. Large trucks and general campus traffic streamed through periodically. A line of parked cars was on Michael’s right, and a large truck was chugging uphill on his left, going slowly, carrying construction supplies to the building site. Michael, probably in a hurry, decided to pass the big, slow-moving truck; he looked left, to see if any cars were coming, but in doing so lost his balance, ran into a parked car, tipped over into the street, and fell directly under the double wheels of the truck. He was crushed to death instantly.

  More could be said, more fruitless attempts at “But why?” or “I just don’t see how,” but there are no answers, and even if there were, it wouldn’t matter. Whether it’s classified a fluke or a freak accident or bad biking depends on how you, as secondhand listeners, choose to interpret it.

  Angela listens, hearing, head down. The policeman says Michael was wearing thongs, and that might’ve been part of the problem—he lost his footing. Angela snorts at this information; she doesn’t know why. Michael loved his Surfah thongs with the bumpy, black massage soles, and to think of these innocuous $3.99 drugstore slippers causing his death is more than Angela can accept. Then suddenly, it hits her with a striking wet clarity: What is she going to do? What will she possibly do in the next ten minutes, or tonight, or tomorrow, or in a week, or for the rest of her life? Will she leave Hawaii? She thinks she will leave Hawaii, and sits with her own private thoughts, trying to plan and figure it out.

  Nate must see fear mounting in her eyes and comes to sit beside her, to touch her and make her feel real. But another wave of disbelief comes over her, and she knows she will have to go see. It could’ve been her; it could’ve been Nate; it could’ve been her friend Patrice, who bikes Honolulu fast and furious, like a madwoman—they all bike cramped roads all the time, and so does everyone, but nobody gets killed. What could have gone through Michael’s head as he made the short flight off his bike and out of his life? Angela tries to think of it, of what he would feel, but decides there was likely no more than three or four seconds of pure panic to think of anything.

  Angela makes a motion now to go see the street, the exact sight, if she is ever to believe it. She agrees to let the police and the university handle the initial phone calls, since she cannot yet imagine talking to Michael’s kind and loving parents, who were due to visit them in August. His father, Larry, will cry immediately and have to hand the phone to Michael’s mother, Babs, who will stay on the line, pen in hand, notepad to her right, exacting facts and details. But then she, t
oo, will hang up and stand in the kitchen, quaking with shock and grief. She will pray to her lord for strength, and they will slowly begin calling the siblings. Angela will talk to Larry and Babs later, after she has gathered herself, if she ever gathers herself.

  She will also let Nate call her own parents in Montana, which momentarily seems an acutely remote and foreign place, as if, were she there, this death, this horrifying news would not be true. It could be a story told from the outside that they would all gasp and remark over but not have to endure firsthand. She will talk to them later when she actually understands more of what’s happened. Everything, details, will be handled later, as if then it will all be okay, as if then the death will be old hat and yesterday’s news, as if then Michael will be back and she’ll be able to sit on the couch with her feet in his lap and tell him how awful it all was.

  But on she moves through the confusion of the day, the hottest day she can remember since moving to Hawaii: ninety-nine degrees. Grabbing only her purse, though she feels as if she’s forgetting something, she takes a ride in the police car. Nate sits in front; she sits in back. She is happy with it that way, so she can watch quietly out the window, try to discover what is happening to her life. All over Angela sees bike riders cruising slick and speedy between cars, helmets or no helmets, all of them sure footed and positive they will stay afloat. Be careful! she wants to shout. She wants to pound on the bulletproof glass window and warn them. Be careful! It could happen to you! But the big, bloated police car motors forward in air-conditioned silence.

  They reach the accident site. This part may sound like television to you now, for you are used to seeing tragedy up close and immediately. Cops. Hard Copy. Rescue 911. But here, in real life, yellow Do Not Cross the Line tape is wrapped and knotted around trees. Police personnel stand around the sidewalk, taking notes and interviewing people. A fire truck is even on the scene, with one man in street clothes uncoiling lengths of canvas rope. He turns the water on, and—you may not have seen this part on TV—he washes away the pool of blood on the street. It rolls down the curb, watery red on dull concrete, and finds its way into the sewer drainage grate. The huge truck is still in the middle of the street, and a man, apparently the driver, paces the road, explaining, bending down over and over again to look underneath the wheels. He is wearing dirty working clothes—a tan T-shirt, jeans worn out at the thighs, dust-coated boots. You can imagine his guilt, the way that, even though it was no one’s fault, it will always seem like his fault. To him it will. TV news reporters gather around him with microphones, and he speaks, though no one inside the police car can hear what he says.

  “You okay?” Nate asks Angela. “You don’t want to get out, do you?” But as he’s asking, Angela does get out. She wanders, knowing no one will recognize her, feeling as if somehow she will forever share a relationship with this man, this truck driver. He is done with his interview, and she approaches him slowly.

  “How are you doing?” she asks, and tries to meet his gaze, but he is busily looking again from the truck to the curb to the Honda Civic that has a small white paint scrape on its driver’s door. This is the car Michael ran into.

  “Not good,” he mutters, hands on hips, as if, should he continue his investigation of the accident site, he will figure out why this happened. “Did you see it?” he asks, wiping at his nose. She can’t place the gesture as from habit or tears. “I just didn’t know what he was doing. He came from out of nowhere. You know, I got kids. I’m never gonna live this one down. I’m just never gonna get over this. Nope. Makes me not even want to get in that truck again. No, I don’t think I can do it. Ah, Jesus. The poor kid. And his parents.” He flips off his cap and scratches through his hair.

  Angela glances back at the police car, which still houses the officer and Nate, who look back at her warily, as if she might commit murder. “I’m his wife,” Angela says with neither conviction nor blame. “That was my husband.”

  The man reels. “Oh, God. No. I’m so sorry. I’m telling you—I just ... I don’t know what happened! I don’t know what to say—he just ... I saw him, you know, out of my right mirror, but—I guess he just tipped over or something and—and I was going real slow, too. I’m sorry—I’m just—so sorry.” The man starts to cry, but Angela doesn’t. She reaches out to him, sets a hand on his arm, and just then a newspaper photographer captures the moment on film. A woman comes running over with her clunky camera bag and begins snapping, which sets off a chain reaction of other reporters rushing over to get in on the beat.

  “You better go,” the man says. “They’ll be all over you.” He takes her hand away and leads Angela over towards the police car. Nate gets out and tries to shield her from any more people. As she’s getting into the back seat again, the truck driver leans down and says to her, “I’m sorry. I just want you to know I’ll be sorry for the rest of my life.” He grimaces at her as the door is closed.

  As they drive away, Angela looks back out the window. It’s Michael’s Surfah thong lying in the street. Or does she imagine it? The one lost thong—seeing it lying there haphazardly and overlooked finally opens up a well of agony for Angela. It starts in the pit of her stomach, rising, and she can feel it surrounding her heart: a new uncharted pain. Nothing will ever be right again, she thinks, as they deposit her back at the apartment, where friends are waiting. This, so many peoples’ love and concern, must mean Michael is truly gone, and Angela sits for a moment with the thought.

  “I can’t believe it,” she says, to no one. But, for lack of choice, she looks out the window, and starts to believe it. She makes an effort that will have to endure. For you, this is where the story ends. You can go back to your own lives—read and dream, eat and sleep—but Angela starts over, alone. She gets out of the car, squints up at the sun, and feels the heat pressing down like a punishment.

  TIDAL WAVE WEDDING

  Rob had seen it happen so many times since coming to Hawaii, he immediately picked up on the telltale signs: a handsome, sunburned young couple combed the beach hand in hand, the woman in tears, the man determined and morose. A sympathetic group of onlookers helped the two honeymooners search in vain through the damp, sparkling sand: a lost wedding band. Rob, a lean and stylish hairdresser with bleached white hair, waded out of the water with his big blue flippers flapping against the current. His snorkel mask gripped tightly to the top of his head like a small yellow bonnet, and he approached the couple, hoping to help.

  “Did you lose something?” Rob asked, and pegged the man instantly as military. The haircut was undeniable: a closely shaved neck, a half-inch buzz up to the ears, and a gentlemanly, little square patch at the top, parted to the side. Rob removed his flippers and tried to remain steady as the strong waves lapped against his calves.

  “Oh, God. Yeah, my wedding ring,” the man said, and massaged the empty spot on his left finger. He was pale and muscular with small blue eyes and a tank of a chest; every time a new white wave broke against the shore, his eyes searched desperately among the glimmering white sand and nuggets of battered coral. He pressed his hand to his forehead. “God, we just got married, you know, and—shit—it was my dad’s wedding ring—he’s dead. Is that it?” He reached down into the sand with two fingers but pulled out a deceivingly shiny pebble. “Fuck, we’re never gonna find it. Trish is really bummed—you can’t blame her—” He turned to search for his new wife, and Rob noticed the smooth ripple of muscles flexing from his back to his ribs. He was well built and reminded Rob, in a way, of his partner, Jeremy, who worked out every day at the Y and was a beautiful, solid, smooth, toned man.

  “Well, let me help you look for it,” Rob said, and lowered the mask over his eyes. He pulled himself through the soft, silky water, pumping hard with his thighs to propel himself forward to where the water shifted from pastel blue to a hard, rich green. His hands looked pure white and delicate in the water, despite the many nicks and cuts from the small golden scissors he used at work, Society Salon. He didn’t like the name�
�its connotations too sober and aristocratic—but the owners, Claire and Ann-Ellen, had targeted Honolulu’s cream of the crop, the idle rich who could afford the luxury of beauty and glamour. The entrance boasted pale granite columns, and each station was built of custom cut slabs of green marble, special ordered from a small island in the Philippines. It was a heavenly place to work, as far as Rob was concerned: air-conditioning, classical music, cappuccino served in tiny blue cups, a thirty-foot ceiling, and three walls of windows. He was well liked there and made more than his weekly salary in tips on any given day.

  Suspended by the buoyant salt water, Rob hung over a network of purple coral. He saw no wedding ring but watched a small school of yellow-black angelfish swim past coyly like little kids. The parrot fish were much bigger, glummer, and hung toward the bottom of the reef; as usual, Rob wished he’d brought his spear gun. He could surprise Jeremy, who’d be tired and sweaty from working another dinner cruise, with the beautiful blue fish, grilled, belly split, stuffed with lemon and zucchini and tomato. They would laugh, drink white wine, and massage each other’s bare feet, leading them, as always, into the bedroom, painted a soothing mint green—Jeremy’s idea—to help alleviate the heat. Only lately, Jeremy hadn’t been much fun to be with. He was cool and distant and slunk away whenever Rob tried to talk about their future. In the back of his mind, Rob worried that Jeremy was sleeping around, seeing other people in some kind of effort to stay young, attractive, and single.

  Rob turned back toward shore, raising his head briefly like a turtle to get his sense of direction; in doing so, he heard a long, wailing sound, like a fog horn. He looked back toward the ocean to check for boats or helicopters but saw none. Confused, he quickly swam to shore, peeling back layers of ocean to channel his body through smoothly. When he reached the sandbar, he unhooked his fins and yanked off his mask. He shook his head and smacked lightly at his ears with his palms and, indeed, heard the sirens.