by Toby Neal
His big, calloused hands sliding across the silk of her backside, grasping her hips, rough and gentle at the same time.
The way the light shone on his hair as he explored her breasts.
That he shook beneath the smallest touch of her hand.
Tears at the end.
Side by side, they touched the moisture on each other’s cheeks. Zoe was stunned to have been so utterly pleasured and known with so little communication or history. He’d put her across his lap and played her like a cello, coaxing forth a completely new song she’d only imagined might exist. It appeared she’d done the same to him.
She closed her eyes and turned away, stripped naked in every way a woman could be and suddenly afraid.
She felt the lift of the bed as he got up, heard the pad of his feet as he went into the shower, the rush of the water turning on. Her hand stole up to touch her mouth, sensitized by kisses. Had it been a dream? What was this thing that had overtaken them? The fear swamped her.
She had to see him, touch him, know if it was real.
She got up and ran on light feet into the bathroom, cracked the shower door and peeked in.
“I was waiting for you,” he said.
And it was real. All over again.
Zoe wore that metallic robe Adam already loved. She sat in his lap at the little round table, peeling lychees from the bag he’d brought. She felt solid, her weight just right as it rested fully on him, buttocks round and firm against his boxer-clad lap, the heft of her loose breast as it brushed his arm perfect. He rested his cheek against the fragrance of her hair. He kept seeing new colors in it—ash, chestnut, roan, burnt sienna, raw umber, bits of copper, and threads of gold.
“They don’t look like much.” Zoe dug her nails into the golf-ball-sized knobby red fruit, pulling back the brittle shell to expose the white inner flesh. “But they sure taste good.” She bit into the fruit, closing her eyes in bliss. He already thought he knew that expression, had seen it a couple of times in the past hours and wouldn’t mind seeing it again. She opened her eyes, smiled. “Want some? I can’t get enough of these. Hawaii’s best-kept secret.”
“No, thanks. I’ve eaten plenty of lychees. Wouldn’t mind something to drink, though.”
“Sure.” She got up, but he maintained contact by holding the robe’s tie. He didn’t want to let her go. Even tiny separations felt like what they had could evaporate, like they still needed to be connected.
She took a Longboard Ale out, held it up. “Okay?”
“Yes.” She popped the top, handed it to him, and went to the other chair. Adam felt the distance and didn’t like it. He tugged on the tie of the robe. It pulled the bow undone, and the slippery fabric fell open. “Oops.”
She laughed and came back to sit on his lap, closing the robe as she stroked the backs of his hands circled around her waist.
“Is this really happening?” She turned a little so he could see the side of her face and that she was biting her lower lip. “Am I going to wake up and find out I was dreaming?”
“I sure hope not, because I don’t want to wake up either.” Adam took a sip of his beer, feeling a lump in his throat at the vulnerability in her voice.
She picked up another lychee. “I have to see the tree these grow on, see what it looks like. I should do a story on lychees. I’d never heard of them before.”
His phone rang in his jeans pocket by the bed. It was on vibrate, but he could see the angry buzzing making the pants move. He frowned. “I should get that. Got a lot going on right now.”
She stood up. He felt the loss and towed her by the wrist across the room to his jeans, dug the phone out. She lay down on the bed beside him, smiling, as he glanced at the caller—it was Charl.
“Hey, sis.” He sat beside Zoe, playing with her hair. She smiled up at him. Her eyes were bright now, almost as light a green as olivine embedded in black volcanic stones. Maybe it was strong emotions that made her eyes change shade. He looked forward to figuring out all the colors they could be.
“Mama’s gone, Adam.” Charl’s voice sounded hoarse, disembodied. “She died. Where have you been? Why haven’t you answered your phone?”
Chapter 23
Zoe saw Adam’s face go white and rigid as he held the phone. “What? How?” He shot to his feet, reaching for his jeans.
Her throat locked up. Oh God. Something had happened while they were here. She reached for the jeans, trying to help him pull them up as he listened to the phone, his face becoming ever more remote. He pushed her away, tucking the phone against his shoulder and hauling up the pants, buttoning them, reaching for his discarded shirt.
His withdrawal was sudden and total.
She stood and walked to the table, tidied the remnants of their snack as she listened to the one-sided conversation. It was something very bad. She began to tremble. He punched off, slid the phone into his pocket, turned to her. His eyes, alight a moment ago, had gone lifeless as river stones.
“My mother died. While I was here, having sex with you, my mother died.”
Zoe’s hand covered her mouth as her eyes filled. “Oh my God, Adam. I’m so sorry. Let me come with you.”
“No.” Adam’s voice was forceful. “I have to go.”
He strode to the door and pulled it open, startling Sylvester, who yelped and scurried out of the way. At the last minute, he took two steps back to her. She reached for him, wanting to comfort—but the kiss he gave her was a hard stamp of possession that still felt like goodbye.
She was still reaching for him as he turned and slammed back out the door. She heard the roar of his truck starting and backing out, the silence when it was gone. It felt like a silence she would have to get used to.
“It was too good to be true,” she said to Sylvester. “I knew it. He’s going to feel guilty for being with me, and now it’s over.”
And that’s what she said to herself repeatedly, to Michelle, and now to Dr. Suzuki as the days went by with no word from Adam. He didn’t reply to her calls (two, carefully measured out so as not to seem needy) and texts (three, also carefully phrased and spaced out).
“So you must have seen him. What’s going on?” Zoe lifted a streaming face from a handful of tissues in Dr. Suzuki’s office, back in therapy at her usual time. She’d called to request to be scheduled right after Adam’s session. The psychologist had refused and talked about discharging her.
“You know I can’t discuss that with you.” Dr. Suzuki’s fine brown eyes seemed strained, the skin beneath them drawn. “This is why it’s important to maintain boundaries and confidentiality. We can discuss only your side of this relationship and how you’re handling it, what your options are.”
“Well, I’m not handling it. I think I know what happened. We had this amazing connection. The best sex I’ve ever had in my life. I felt like something more was happening. Then his sister called and told him his mother had died while he was with me. And that killed it for him. Literally. Oh my God.” Zoe felt grief bow her over with a wrench. “He’s so family oriented. He was his mother’s main caregiver. He must be feeling guilty for not being with her. I bet he blames me.”
“Zoe. We can’t guess what Adam is doing. What we need to focus on is you. How you can move past this. What you can get from it, learn from it.”
“I’m Plague Mary, that’s what I’ve learned.” Zoe gave voice to her deepest fear. “No one’s ever going to love me. I can meet someone, maybe even begin to fall in love, and they’ll leave me.”
“Listen to yourself. Does this sound logical?”
“Screw logic! It’s what happens to me!” Zoe wept harder. Dr. Suzuki let it go without comment, and Zoe finally blew her nose. “My dad. Rex. Now Adam.”
“Okay. Let’s take a few breaths together, calm down.” Dr. Suzuki led her through a few breaths until Zoe felt her shattered emotions smoothing a bit. “Let me explain something.”
Using a handheld whiteboard, Dr. Suzuki drew a simple circular cycle: Events led t
o Thoughts led to Emotions led to Action/Choices led to Outcomes. “Right now you’re choosing a way to look at what’s happened that reinforces feelings of abandonment and loss. I want you to work each of these important relationships through this cycle and see if that conclusion is merited.”
Zoe could already see that it wasn’t, that her instinctive global reaction didn’t hold up to scrutiny. She sighed, pushed the mass of sweaty hair off her brow. “Doc, you’re right. It was my parents’ bad chemistry that led to their divorce and his desertion, not me, his little girl. Rex and I weren’t really ever in love and had different agendas; his unfaithfulness was the fruit of that. And it was just horrible bad luck that Adam’s mom died while he was with me. I get it, but it doesn’t make this easier.”
“Doesn’t make you Plague Mary either, does it?”
“No. I guess that’s something I can walk away with.”
“Well, you fell hard for Adam. Maybe he can pull out of this withdrawal, maybe not. He’s lost his remaining parent, and he’s grieving. It’s a big deal no matter what, and it’s his personal business to work through. Either way, I think you can be okay and go on to love again.”
“Spoken like a therapist,” Zoe said, but she smiled a little. She felt better for Dr. Suzuki’s bending her boundaries a little to say a few words about Adam.
“The human heart is very resilient, and you’re a loving, lovable, generous woman. Cry awhile, and move on. You had some amazing sex after your divorce. That should count for something.”
“I guess it does. I just wanted it to be more than that.” Zoe stood up. “Can I see you in a couple of days?”
“Yes, let’s do that.” They set a time, and Dr. Suzuki walked her to the door. Zoe braced herself as she opened the door to the waiting room, but it was empty. She felt a stab of disappointment. “See you soon.”
“Be open to new things. Maybe Brad will call,” Dr. Suzuki said.
Zoe thought about that as she drove back down the hill. Brad had already called—several times. She hadn’t returned those calls.
It was still early, so she headed to the beach, Sylvester’s hind end beginning a hula as they pulled up at Paia Beach Park and the little dog spotted the familiar green lawn leading to ironwood trees and the ocean beyond. Zoe also spotted the silver Z4 Brad drove—and she found she wasn’t up to seeing him.
She pulled back out and drove all the way to Kihei on the south side of the island. She took the terrier along the empty expanse of Sugar Beach outside of town. Somehow, by end of five windblown, sun-struck miles of sand and wide-open blue horizon, she felt better.
Hollowed out of tears, empty of dreams, but ready to go on.
Adam wished, for about the ten thousandth time, that his mother hadn’t taken care of everything for her funeral, including her choice of casket. It showed she’d been planning for this, and he hadn’t known it—just like he’d missed so many other things.
He and Charl had hunted down her will where she’d told them it would be, stored in the lower drawer of her jewelry box. Along with the will were instructions for her ceremony and prepaid receipts for everything. He’d known about his parents’ burial plots side by side in lovely old St. Joseph’s Cemetery in Makawao ever since his father’s death. But he hadn’t known that a mere two months ago she’d planned her service and paid for everything, down to the flowers.
And so today he stood stoically, murmuring the right things, shaking hands and giving hugs at the head of the receiving line that began after the casket she’d chosen herself—“plain, but with good hardware,” according to the funeral director.
Maybe she’d had a premonition—but if so, she hadn’t shared it, just tried to lighten the load for her children. That familiar stab of grief and guilt pierced him in the place it always did—right in the gut, making his stomach clench and his eyes fill for the hundredth time at the thought of her quietly paying for the simple, gleaming wood box she lay in only a few feet away.
And how he wished she’d decided to be cremated instead. Glancing over at the waxen figure that resembled Kalia Rodrigues in only the most superficial way made him even sicker, an actual surge of bile rising to choke him.
“Excuse me.” He broke away from the line and jogged down the hall to the men’s room, going into a bathroom stall. He closed the door and stood facing the toilet, gulping great drafts of air and telling himself not to vomit.
In the end he didn’t, turning his gasps into Dr. Suzuki breaths. When the nausea had passed, he turned around, seating himself on the closed toilet lid, his face in his hands.
He just needed a moment. Maybe a lot of moments.
It had been five days since his mother had died, since that unforgettable afternoon he’d spent with Zoe that ended with his abrupt departure and a plunge into the emotional and relationship business that surrounds death.
He missed Zoe with a longing that felt like it originated in his bones—at the same time, the thought of being with her filled him with nausea again.
He couldn’t even think about it long enough to figure out why.
He heard the rustle and swish of someone entering the restroom, a tentative knock on his stall door.
“Adam?” Ben’s voice. Ben had been a huge support, keeping him and Charl on track, doing a lot of the actual work of the funeral and wake arrangements.
“Yes.” Adam stood, flushed the toilet to add veracity to his bathroom visit. He opened the door. “Can’t I take a crap without someone checking on me?” He knew his voice and the crudity came out harsher than he meant them to.
Ben flinched. “Sorry, man. Charl’s just worried about you.”
“She worries too much.” He went to the sink, washed his hands. “We just need to get this part over with and things will get better.”
Somehow, Adam made it through the burial, dropping a handful of rich red Makawao dirt on his mother’s casket. He heard the muffled thump of the clods and felt the sound vibrate in his very soul, echoing as it did at his father’s funeral eight years before.
He’d been enduring the luau-style wake at his Aunty Rosalie’s when Mele had gone into labor, the stress of grief bringing the baby on early. Adam had taken the opportunity amid the drama of her departure to slip away.
Out in the ocean, in the surf, he left everyone else and their clamoring demands and intrusive concern behind. Even his case to get the kids felt empty and impossible—even if he got them, he wasn’t at all sure he had what it took to be a father right now.
When the sun was sliding into night behind the West Maui Mountains and the last surfer had gone in, he finally paddled back to shore. He took a shower in the park facility, changed, and went back down onto the deserted beach with a quart of Jack Daniel’s he’d stolen from Aunty Rosalie’s liquor cabinet. In the lee of one of the boulders near the end of the beach, watching the restless sea in the moonlight, he got deliberately and thoroughly drunk.
Morning came in the form of someone poking him. “Uncle Adam?”
He cracked an eye open into glaring sunlight. “Unh.”
“Are you all right?” The piping voice belonged to Raymond, one of Diego’s little surf buddies. “Did you spend the night down here?”
“Hey, Raymond.” Adam sat up slowly. “Wanted to get an eyeball on the surf first thing in the morning and dropped off a minute. What’s it looking like?”
Raymond turned away to stare at the surf. “Pretty small today.”
Adam glanced over toward the wall of the park pavilion, and sure enough, Raymond’s mom had an eye on him. He lifted a hand, trying to be casual, but she just narrowed her eyes.
“Well, thanks for waking me up. I gotta get out there.” He moved his foot to conceal the empty bottle.
“No problem. See you out there.” Raymond picked up his board and trotted off, jumping into the ocean to paddle out.
Adam’s head thumped like bongos. He moaned aloud, holding it. Whatever oblivion he’d purchased had been bought at a steep price. He got up
and very carefully walked back to his truck. Once inside, he drank a whole water bottle from the stash behind the seat with a couple of aspirin and dug his phone out of his pocket.
“Mele must have had her baby,” he muttered aloud, checking. Sure enough, there was a delighted, exhausted-sounding voice mail from Pat, telling him that Earl Adam Makena had been born, six pounds eight ounces, and mother and baby were doing well.
New life in the midst of death. And they’d given the little guy his and his father’s names.
Another voice mail played, this one in no-nonsense tones: “Adam, this is Dr. Suzuki. You had an appointment yesterday and no-showed. Per our office policy, I’ll be billing for the session. I hope you can make it today as we set up.” Her voice softened. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
He listened to the voice mail again. How would Dr. Suzuki have known his mother had died?
Oh yeah. Zoe had her session on Monday morning. She’d have told Dr. Suzuki. At the thought of Zoe, his gut clenched in exactly the same spot it did as he weathered the waves of grief.
He didn’t want to deal with any of it right now, and yet he knew seeing Coach Suzuki was probably the best possible thing. He glanced at the time on his phone. He had an hour to get himself together before his appointment, or get charged again.
Chapter 24
Dr. Suzuki greeted him at the door of her office with a cool hug that smelled of lavender. “Adam, I’m so sorry about your mother.”
He nodded, sat on the couch across from her. “Yeah. She’d had a second bypass. It seemed to have gone okay, but then she just crashed. Full system failure. They couldn’t bring her back.”
“Are you doing okay?”
“No. No, I’m not.” He pushed his clenched fists against his eyes. “I wasn’t ready for her to go. I pictured a different future, where she was healthy and happy, helping me raise the kids. I’ve got a lot to fill you in on.” He told her about his mother’s collapse, taking her to the hospital, dropping the kids off with their Lahaina grandparents. His showdown with Cherisse.
