“It’s what your sister should have done,” I mumble. “Be back in a flash. Don’t go anywhere. Talk.”
2
I WALK INTO the hall, which is quiet. At the central reception area, there are nurses and receptionists and visitors waiting for the nurses and receptionists to look up and acknowledge them. Every time I pass the other patients’ rooms, I tell myself not to look in, but I can’t help myself; I look in the room next to Joanie’s. It’s the popular patient’s room, and it’s usually filled with family, friends, balloons, leis, and flowers, as though he’s accomplished something by ailing. Today he’s alone. He emerges from the bathroom barefoot and holding his hospital gown together. You can tell that on the outside of the hospital, he’s a tough sort of guy, but the gown makes him look delicate. He looks at a card on the table, then puts it back down and shuffles to bed. I hate get-well cards. It’s like telling someone to have a safe flight. There’s really not a whole lot you can do.
I continue toward the central area and see Joy and another nurse walking toward me. Joy personifies her name beautifully.
“Mr. King,” she says. “How are you today?”
“Wonderful, Joy, and you?”
“Good, good.”
“Good,” I say.
“I saw you in the paper today,” she says. “Have you made your decision? Everyone’s waiting.”
The other nurse nudges her and says, “Joy!”
“What? Me and Mr. King, we’re like this.” She puts her middle finger over her pointer finger.
I continue walking toward the store. “Mind your own business, young lady.” I try my best to sound carefree. It’s embarrassing how much strangers think they know about me, and how many people, my cousins especially, are waiting to see what I’ll do. If they only knew how little thought I’ve given the matter. After the Supreme Court upheld the trust’s distribution structure, making me the largest shareholder, I just wanted to hide. It’s too much responsibility for one man, and maybe I feel a bit guilty, having so much control. Why me? Why does so much depend on me? And what did the people before me do in order for me to have so much? Maybe I subscribe to the idea that behind every great fortune is a great crime. Isn’t that how the saying goes?
“Bye, Mr. King,” Joy says. “I’ll let you know if there’s anything in the paper tomorrow.”
“Great, Joy. Thank you.”
I can tell that other patients are wary of this banter I have with Joy. Why do I get acknowledged? My name probably augments their jealousy—the way it sounds: Mr. King, as if I’ve requested they call me this at Queen’s Hospital as some kind of joke. Patients don’t like that I’m somebody, but don’t they realize that you don’t want to be somebody in a hospital? You want to be nobody, in and out and forgotten.
THE SMALL STORE is filled with things that show we care: candy, flowers, stuffed animals. These are the things that make us feel loved. I go to the fridge in the back to get the diet sodas. I feel proud of my no-sugar-soda rule. I’ve never had a rule so specific with my children besides “No, you can’t have that.”
Before I check out, I flip through the cards. Maybe there’s one that Scottie can give to her mom that will do the talking for her. Get well. Wake up. I love you. Don’t leave me with Dad anymore.
There are postcards, too, and I look at scenes of Hawaii: lava shooting out of rocks on the Big Island, surfers shooting out of a wave at Pipeline, water shooting out of a whale surfacing near the coast of Maui, fire shooting out of the mouth of a dancer at the Polynesian Culture Center.
I turn the wire rack and there she is: Alexandra. It’s a picture I’ve seen before. I look around as if I’m doing something I shouldn’t. A man walks behind me, and I move so that I’m blocking the picture of my daughter. When Alexandra was fifteen, she did shots for Isle Cards, whose captions said things like Life’s a damn hot beach. One-pieces became string bikinis. String bikinis became even smaller, dental-floss bikinis. She and her mother told me about these shots only after they’d been published, and then I put an end to her little modeling career, but every so often I’ll see one of these cards in Longs. Mainly they’re in Waikiki shops where no one I know goes, so I forget the fact that my daughter’s body is still out there being sold and stamped and sent off to people in places like Oklahoma or Iowa—Wish you were here on one side, Alex on the other, blowing kisses or soaking up the sun in unlikely positions.
I look around for the shopkeeper, but I’m the only one here. I look for more cards with her on them, but there are just five copies of this one shot. She’s in a white bikini, straddling a surfboard and getting splashed by some unseen person, using her hands to block the water. Her mouth is wide open, laughing. Her head is tilted back. Her torso is lithe and glimmering with beads of water. It’s actually my favorite, if I had to pick one, because at least she’s laughing and smiling and doing something someone her age would be doing. In the others she looks old, sexy, and exasperated. She looks like she knows all there is to know about men, and it makes her seem pissed off but lustful at the same time. It’s a look that you don’t want to see on your daughter’s face.
When I asked Joanie why she let her do them, she said, “Because it’s what I do. I want her to respect what I do.”
“You model for catalogs and newspaper ads. What’s not to respect?” I found immediately that this wasn’t the best thing to have said.
A CHINESE WOMAN enters the shop and stands behind the register. “You ready?” she asks.
She is wearing a muumuu over navy blue polyester pants. She looks like she has escaped from an asylum.
“Why do you sell these?” I ask. “At a gift shop. For people to get well. These aren’t get-well cards.”
She takes the postcards from my hand, flips through them. “They all the same card. You like buy all the same card?”
“No,” I say. “I’m asking why you sell these at a gift store in a hospital.”
I can tell that nothing will come out of this conversation. It will be a confused and combative verbal, pidgin verbal, match.
“What, you no like girls or something?”
“No,” I say. “I like women. Not underage girls. Here.” I pick up a card that says, Get well, Grandpa. “This is the kind of card that’s appropriate.” I hold up my daughter. “This is not appropriate. It’s not even a card. It’s a postcard.”
“This my store. And people in hospital are haoles, too. They get hurt here, then they get better and want souvenir for mainland.”
“They want a souvenir of their trip to the hospital? Look. Never mind. Here.”
She takes the postcards and starts to walk back to the wire rack.
“No,” I say. “I’m buying them. I want all of them. And these two sodas.”
She pauses. She looks confused, as if she has imagined our entire exchange, but doesn’t say a word and won’t look at me as she rings me up. I give her money. She gives me change.
“I need a bag, please,” I say. She hands me a plastic bag, and I use it to cover my daughter. “Thank you.”
She moves her head but doesn’t look at me. She busies herself at the register. I always seem to get into fights with old Chinese women.
I walk back to 612, to my other crazy daughter. It feels strange carrying copies of Alex in my hand, and strange to think that she has been here all this time and only now have I rescued her.
Joanie and Alex have issues with each other. That’s how Joanie phrases it whenever I ask. “She’ll grow out of it,” Joanie says, but I always thought it was something Joanie needed to grow out of, too. They used to do everything together, and I imagine that Joanie was a fun mother to have because she was young and cool and fashionable, but around the time Alex stopped modeling, their closeness came to a halt. Alex retreated. Joanie became more involved in racing. Alex started to sneak out. Then she started to do drugs. It was Joanie’s idea to send her to boarding school this past school year, but then last January, Alex was going to come home and go back to her
old school. Something happened over Christmas, a fight of some sort with her mother, and all of a sudden she liked boarding school and returned of her own accord. I’ve asked them both what this fight was about, why Alex went back, but they never have a clear answer, and Joanie has always made the decisions about school and everything, really, concerning our daughters, so I let it go. “She needs to get it together,” Joanie said. “She’s going back.”
“This is it,” Alex said. “Mom is out of her mind. I don’t want to have anything to do with her, and neither should you.”
So much theatrics and tension between the two of them, and it’s sad because I miss Alex and the relationship we once had. Sometimes I think that if Joanie were to die, Alex and I would make it. We’d flourish. We’d trust and love each other as we had so easily before. She could come home and she wouldn’t be screwed up. But of course I don’t really believe that if my wife died, our lives would be better—what an awful thing to think—and of course I don’t think Joanie is the root of all of Alex’s problems. I’m sure I have something to do with them as well. I haven’t been the most available parent. I’ve been in a state of prolonged unconsciousness, but I’m trying to change. And I think I’m doing a good job.
I STAND IN the doorway of my wife’s room and see Scottie playing hopscotch on the linoleum, marking her place with wooden tongue depressors.
“I’m hungry,” she says. “Can we go? Did you get my soda?”
“Did you talk?”
“Yes?” she says, and I know she’s lying because whenever she lies, she answers in the form of a question.
“Fine,” I say. “Let’s just go home.”
Scottie walks toward the door, not even glancing at her mother. She grabs her soda from my hands. “Maybe we’ll come back later,” I needlessly assure her. I look at my wife, and there’s a slight smile on her face, as though she knows something I don’t. I think about the blue note. It’s hard not to think about it.
“Say goodbye to your mom.”
Scottie pauses, then keeps going.
“Scottie.”
“Bye!” she yells.
I grab her arm. I could yell at her for wanting to leave, but I don’t. She pulls her arm out of my grasp. I look up to see if anyone is watching us, because I don’t think you’re supposed to aggressively hold children these days. Gone are the days of spanking, threats, and sugar. Now there are therapy, antidepressants, and Splenda. I see Dr. Johnston at the end of the hall, walking toward us. He stops talking to the other doctors and gestures for me to wait. He holds up his hand: Stop. His face is eager yet unsmiling. I look in the other direction then back at him. His steps quicken, and I squint, for some reason pretending I don’t recognize him. And I think: What if I’m wrong? What if Joanie doesn’t make it out of this?
“Scottie,” I say. “This way.”
I walk in the other direction, away from Dr. Johnston, and she turns and follows me.
“Walk quickly,” I tell her.
“Why?”
“It’s a game. Let’s race. Walk fast. Run.” She takes off, her backpack jiggling on her back, and I follow her, walking quickly then breaking into a slow jog, and because Dr. Johnston is my friend’s dad and was a friend of my father’s, I feel like I’m fourteen again, running from the patriarchs.
I remember egging Dr. Johnston’s house as a prank on his son, Skip. The three of us—Blake Kelly, Kekoa Liu, and I—ran off only to be pursued by Dr. Johnston in his truck. He practically ran us down, and when we cut into an alley, he got out and hoofed it, eventually cornering us. He had a Foodland bag in hand, and he said we had a couple of choices: He could either call our parents, or we could help him dispose of his wife’s tofu surprise. We chose the latter, and he reached in the bag and gave us a taste of our own medicine. We walked away, tofu surprise in our hair, ears, everywhere. To this day he calls us the Soy Boys, laughing hysterically and yelling “Boo!,” which still causes me to jump a little. Not lately, though. He hasn’t done that in a while.
I run down the hall with my daughter, feeling like I’m in some other country. All around, people speak pidgin English and glare at the two of us like we’re crazy white fools, even though we’re Hawaiian. But we don’t look it, and we don’t count as true or real Hawaiians because we don’t talk right, either.
Dr. Johnston said Tuesday. That’s when we’ve scheduled our date, and that’s when I’ll show up. I don’t want to know anything just yet. I have too much to take care of right now. I take a good look around. Twenty-three days. This has been my world: the people looking at one another trying to guess what they’re here for, the magazine covers featuring the healthiest people alive. I see the model train in its glass case making slow laps around a model coast with model citizens stiffly sitting on beaches. I run from the diagnosis. I’ll be ready for it tomorrow.
3
I TELL ESTHER she should ease up on the lard. There’s no need to mix lard in with Scottie’s rice, chicken, and beans. I tell her she hasn’t read the blogs. I’ve read the blogs. I know what Scottie should eat.
I’ve gotten the hang of home. I help run the household, help decide what Scottie eats, when she sleeps, what she’s allowed to wear, watch, do. I say things like “time out” and “full circle,” and I tell her to check the Chore Door, an invention of mine: It’s a door in the den that posts her weekly duties. It’s sort of fun, these responsibilities, and I think Joanie will be impressed.
“Is good fat,” Esther says. “She so skinny. This good fat.”
“No,” I say. “Some fats are good, but not that fat.” I point to the white substance in the pan, melting slowly like wax. On parenting websites, I’ve learned that corn syrup, nitrates, and hydrogenated fats are bad and that soy is good, as well as organic produce and whole grains. I’ve also learned that Scottie needs a booster shot for whooping cough, meningitis, and that there’s a vaccine for HPV, which causes genital warts and can lead to cervical cancer. It’s recommended as a preventive measure for tweens before they become sexually active. When I read this, I was so appalled that I participated in the online vaccination chat, only to be severely reprimanded by Taylorsmom. Why not protect them as best we can?! Yes, Scottiesdad, I would give them a vaccine for loneliness and heartache if it were available, TYVM, and it’s not the same! Genital warts are not emotions! They’re warts, and we can put a stop to them.
I had to ask Scottie what TYVM meant, because now that I’ve narrowed into her activities, I notice she is constantly text-messaging her friends, or at least I hope it’s her friends and not some perv in a bathrobe.
“Thank you very much,” Scottie said, and for some reason, the fact that I didn’t get this made me feel completely besieged. It’s crazy how much fathers are supposed to know these days. I come from the school of thought where a dad’s absence is something to be counted on. Now I see all the men with camouflage diaper bags and babies hanging from their chests like little ship figureheads. When I was a young dad, I remember the girls sort of bothered me as babies, the way everyone raced around to accommodate them. The sight of Alex in her stroller would irritate me at times—she’d hang one of her toddler legs over the rim of the safety bar and slouch down in the seat. Joanie would bring her something and she’d shake her head, then Joanie would try again and again until an offering happened to work and Alex would snatch it from her hands. I’d look at Alex, finally complacent with her snack, convinced there was a grown person in there, fooling us all. Scottie would just point to things and grunt or scream. It felt like I was living with royalty. I told Joanie I’d wait until they were older to really get into them, and they grew and grew behind my back.
ESTHER, AS USUAL, is humming. Our kitchen is a good size, yet it feels small whenever I’m in it with her. She’s a short ball of a woman and has no awareness of her body; her stomach is always brushing me on the hip or abdomen. I’m slicing carrots and celery that Scottie can dip into a bowl of ranch. I realize Esther and I are in a sort of food battle, Iron-
Chefing my child’s lunch.
“Have you talked to your family yet?”
“Not yet,” she says.
Just a week ago I told Esther that we won’t need her anymore, even though I feel terrible about this, but she claims her family is away from their home in San Diego and she doesn’t have the keys to her house.
“They still on vacation?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says.
“The Jersey Shore, you said?”
“Yes. Jersey Shore.”
“How lovely.” I bend over to pick up shreds of vegetables I have dropped, and Esther walks behind me. I feel her stomach brush across my ass.
“You’re not ready anyway,” she says. “There’s much I haven’t told you.”
She has been using her years of experience with Scottie as power, dishing it out slowly to extend her stay. I allow it because I can’t deny how helpful she is and how much she loves Scottie. Her method is genius—I truly do need her to teach me more things before she goes. I feel like I’m taking the bar again—I’m cramming, stuffing myself with rules, learning the logic and the language of girlhood. Esther teaches me what Scottie loves: Xbox, dance, SMART magazine, almond butter, hamburgers, Jay-Z, Jack Johnson, making playlists on her iPod, text messaging, and I tell myself I need to know this because Joanie may be weak for a while, out of sorts; she may not be herself mentally or physically for a long time, but I never tell myself that I need to learn the habits of this creature because Joanie may die.
“Should we continue?” I ask.
Esther sighs as though this is tiring, but I know she enjoys our study sessions. She gets to be the teacher of her employer, she gets to show me the girl she knows so well, and she gets to create the girl she wants Scottie to be.
“She like for read Jane and listen to music,” Esther says as she stirs her pot of fat and beans. The kitchen smells like a heart attack. “She used to like MySpace, but now she does the scrapbook. She like Dog the Bounty Hunter. She like back rub.”
The Descendants Page 2
