I see the airport exit and look at the clock on the dash.
“What are we doing?” Scottie finally asks. A jet roars over our heads. I look up because it’s so loud and see its big gray belly, heavy in the sky.
I take the exit. “We’re going to get your sister.”
12
WHENEVER I LAND on the Big Island, I feel as though I’ve gone back in time. There’s an abandoned look to Hawaii, like it’s just been hit by a tsunami.
I drive the familiar road, moving past the prickly kiawe trees and black sand beaches, the coconut palms with their wild parrots. The air gets colder, and there’s a slight vog hanging over everything—a cross between fog and volcanic ash, the smell of it like gunpowder—that adds to the mood of abandonment and destruction. I drive through the black lava fields that glow with the white rock chalk that teenagers use to declare themselves. It’s our island graffiti: Keoni loves Kayla, Hawaiian Pride, and the lengthiest pronouncement, If U R Reading This U R Gay. In the fields of sharp rocks, I see heiaus and stones stacked on tea leaves, offerings to the gods.
“What’s that?” Scottie says. She’s curled against the seat so I can’t see her face.
“What’s what?” I look out at the emptiness.
“It’s a running path,” she says.
I look again and see the corridor of water-tumbled stones through the lava beds. “It’s the King’s Trail.”
“Is it named after us?”
“No. Haven’t you learned about the King’s Trail in school?”
“Probably,” she says.
“What kind of Hawaiian are you?”
“Your kind,” she says.
We look at the wide and endless path, which wraps all the way around the island.
“King Kalākaua had it made. He had it revamped. It’s how your ancestors got around.” We drive alongside it as though it’s an old highway, which it is, I suppose, built by criminal labor, then smoothed by cattle and human traffic. I’ve always remembered that about the trail—those who didn’t pay their taxes were the ones who built it.
“How old is it?” she asks.
“Old,” I say. “Eighteen hundreds.”
“That’s old.” She stares out at the trail and its long rock curb, and when we get to the hills and ranches of Waimea, I notice she’s asleep. In the daytime the green hills are spotted with cows and horses, but I don’t see any animals now. I drive past crooked gray wooden fences and let my window down to smell the cold, the pastures, the manure and leather saddles, the fragrance of Kamuela. My grandparents had a ranch here, and I’d visit as a child, picking strawberries, riding horses, driving tractors. It was a strange world of sun, cold, cowboys, beaches, volcanoes, and snow. Mauna Kea was always visible, and I would wave to it, thinking that the scientists were watching me instead of the silent planets.
I turn onto the dirt road and drive past the lower stable, the school buildings, then up to the dormitories.
I’m eager to see my daughter. And a bit nervous. Last week I talked to her and she sounded strange. When I asked her what was wrong, she said, “The price of cocaine.”
I asked, “Seriously, what else?”
“Is there anything else?” she said.
She claimed she was joking. It was a horrible joke, considering.
I don’t know what I did wrong. It seems there’s something about me that makes a person want to destroy herself. Joanie and her speedboat, motorcycles, alcoholism. Scottie and her sea urchin, Alex and her drugs, her modeling. Alex told me she first did drugs to terrify her mother, but maybe she did them to see what it felt like to be her mother. Alexandra seems to love and despise her mother with equal intensity, but these problems surely must be gone now, or at least they will be. You can’t be angry with someone who’s dying.
I think about Buzz’s, where the manager told me Joanie livened up the place. I’m sure if she died—when she dies—she’ll put her picture up, because it’s that kind of restaurant: pictures of local legends and dead patrons haunting the walls. I feel sad that she has to die for her picture to go up on the wall, or for me to really love everything about her, or for Alex to forgive her for whatever she did wrong.
I drive slowly because there are dips and bumps in the road. I look over at Scottie, who’s still asleep. I like that the school still hasn’t paved the road.
I stop the car in the lot and turn off the engine, and Scottie opens her eyes.
“We’re here,” I say.
13
IT’S TEN P.M. The dorm mother looks at me as if I’m the most irresponsible person in the world. It’s cold outside, and Scottie’s wearing shorts, her legs pocked with stings. I’m in a dorm, fetching my daughter, when I could have done it during regular hours. We stand in the dorm mother’s doorway, and I see a television on in the background. She’s wearing a hideous flannel nightgown, and from what I can see, she was watching American Idol. I’m terribly embarrassed for all of us.
She leads us to a stairwell, and Scottie runs ahead of us, taking two steps at a time. I can hear the dorm mother breathing and slow down.
It’s good to know that everyone is asleep and that it isn’t like a college dorm, where ten P.M. is the time things are just getting started. I tell the woman that I’m impressed. I know this is one of the best private schools in Hawaii, but still, it’s good to see children away from home behaving.
“We try to emulate the home,” she says. “Most kids who live at home are in bed or quietly reading. On weekends it’s a little different, but the curriculum is so difficult that studying and sports keep them busy during the week, and they’re pretty worn out by now. Alexandra’s at the end.” She stands at the top of the stairs, holding the railing, and points to the end of the hall.
Scottie runs. “Which door?” she yells.
“Keep it down,” I yell back, and the woman frowns at our yelling.
She tells me she’ll knock and go in first just in case Alex or her roommate isn’t decent. We wait for her to catch her breath and walk down the hall. I look at my watch. When she finally nears the end, Scottie knocks on the door, and I swear the woman almost hits her.
“That’s the wrong door!” she says.
A girl’s head appears and I look away, just in case she’s indecent.
“Sorry to bother you, Yuki,” the dorm mother says. “We knocked on the wrong door.”
“May I go, then? I was asleep.”
“Yes. Go back to sleep.”
“Good night,” I say, amazed by how smoothly this residence runs. I imagine rows of girls, tucked in and dreaming.
The dorm mother knocks on the correct door. No one answers. My girl is tucked in and dreaming. “I’ll wake her,” she says, ducking into the darkness.
Scottie cranes her head, trying to get a glimpse of her older sister’s room. I think of what I will say to Alex. How will I tell her she is losing her mother? The words are strange: losing a mother. We are losing a mother. My wife will soon be dead.
The dorm mother comes out and closes the door behind her.
“Is she asleep?”
“No,” she says.
I wait for her to continue. “Is she getting decent?”
“No,” she says. Her hand is still on the doorknob. “Alexandra isn’t here.”
WE SEARCH THE bathroom, the study, the TV room. We look into the rooms of her friends.
The dorm mother is panicked, worrying not so much about the safety of my daughter but about how Alexandra’s absence reflects on her. She has been talking endlessly. I feel I’m being sold something.
“The girls are in the dorms by seven,” she says. We are walking to the lower level to wake another friend. “Then they have study hall until nine. No games, movies, heavy chatting.”
Scottie looks thrilled by the situation. Her red sores are bright in the hall’s fluorescent light. Her T-shirt says VOTE FOR PEDRO, whatever that means, and her hair is sticking up in places and matted down in others. In one section near her
ear, the hair is held together by some unknown substance. She had fruit punch on the plane, and her lips and chin are stained the color of raw meat. She looks a bit like roadkill, which makes me try and sell myself back to the dorm mother so that we seem to be in a competition at a marketplace over our abilities to care for our young.
“I’m sure she’s just with a friend,” I say, “doing what girls do.”
“They’re talking about boys,” Scottie says.
“Well, we have a strict lights-out policy, so that would be unacceptable.”
“What will happen to her?” Scottie asks. “Will she lose privileges? That’s what happens to me. I lose TV privileges, but I TiVo my shows anyway. Esther doesn’t know what TiVo is.”
“I use TiVo, too,” the dorm mother says.
“Esther used to help us out,” I explain.
“She still does,” Scottie says. “She cooks, cleans, rubs my back.”
I laugh. “Scottie, don’t be silly.”
“I’m not being silly.”
“Where is this friend of hers?” I ask. We seem to be walking down an endless hall. The dorm mother finally stops in front of a room. She knocks and enters, then shuts the door behind her. We’re left looking at two names, HANNAH and EMILY, which are drawn with purple markers on lavender construction paper and encircled with yellow cutout flowers. I recognize the smell of purple Crayola pen. Someone must have put a lot of time into these name tags, and it makes me happy that Alexandra has this camaraderie of girls. Girls who draw on poster board and make intricate cardboard cutouts of flowers.
The dorm mother comes out, and her expression tells me she doesn’t have good news. “Emily isn’t here, either. We’ll go back to Alexandra’s room. Maybe she’s returned.”
“Or maybe that roommate of hers will let us know what’s going on,” I say.
THE ROOMMATE CAVES. It takes awhile. She claims that Alex will kick her ass for telling, and I assure her that my daughter will do no such thing. Her poor roommate. I can’t think of a more ill-suited match. She’s a mouth breather with scraggly hair and hay allergies. On her side of the room, there are stuffed animals on her navy blue comforter and no posters or pictures or anything, really, illustrating her taste, popularity, or parents’ income. Her side is a testament to her loneliness, whereas Alexandra’s side is beset with tributes to herself and her identity. I can see the gloss of photographs and posters of boys jumping motorbikes over mounds of dirt. I see CDs, makeup, clothes, shoes, and more bags than one girl could possibly need.
The three of us walk to the soccer field. I don’t know what we’ll find, and I think the dorm mother and I are both afraid. She has put a down coat over her nightgown, and I rub my arms to stir up some warmth. Scottie holds my hand in the darkness. Parts of the ground are hollowed out with holes, and Scottie stumbles every now and then. The grass is wet. The cuffs of my pants are wet. I look at Scottie’s bare ankles. She exhales loudly because the air is so cold and she’s enthralled by the look of her breath.
At last, in the distance, I see two people with what look like golf clubs in their hands. Then I see a white ball shoot through the sky, followed by shouts of enthusiasm. My daughter is playing golf in the moonlight on a soccer field with her friend. I become nostalgic for a life I’ve never had: boarding school, girlhood.
“Girls!” the dorm mother yells.
I see the girls’ faces turn toward us.
“Alex,” I call. Her hair has grown past her shoulders, and even from here I can see the beauty in her face, the way her features seem to build off one another, collaborating.
“Dad?”
“Alex,” Scottie yells. “It’s me.”
The other girl takes off running but doesn’t make it very far before falling with her golf club in hand. I go over to see if she’s okay and find her facedown in mud, her body splayed out as if she’s sunbathing. I bend down and put my hand on her back. She rolls over, her mouth agape, her eyes closed. I realize she’s laughing, and then I realize she’s completely smashed. When she is able to speak, she says, “Par me, bitches!”
Now Alexandra is by my side, leaning on me and convulsing with laughter. “What are you doing here, Dad?”
“Mrs. Murphy,” the other girl slurs. “You come out to play a round with us? Eighteen holes?”
The cycle begins again. The girls hold in their laughter for a second until it all detonates. Alexandra falls to her knees. “Oh, God,” she says. “Oh my God.”
Scottie starts to laugh, too, copying her older sister’s inebriated joy.
“Eighteen holes,” Alex’s friend breathes between laughs. “Eight. Eeen. Holes.”
“Girls!” Mrs. Murphy keeps yelling. I don’t know what I could possibly do to make this all stop and get us back to the airport to catch the last flight so I can be back on Oahu to gather all the loved ones and tell them this is it. Joanie, our fighter, has lost.
It’s Scottie who gets them to quiet down. “Alex,” she says. “Mom’s going to come home.”
Alex looks at me to see if this is true, and I look up. It’s a beautiful night. Without the city lights of Oahu, the stars invade the sky. “No,” I say. “That’s not true.”
“What’s happening, then? She’s gotten better or something?” Alex leans against the golf club and smirks.
“I’m going to bring you home,” I say. “She’s not all right.”
“Fuck Mom,” Alex says. She takes a few purposeful strides, then launches her golf club into the night. We all look up and around, but no one sees where it goes.
WHEN WE GET home, Scottie walks from the garage to her room without saying a word. I carry Alex. She is so heavy, her limbs seemingly drenched. I strain to get her to her room. I could stop and let her sleep on the sofa in the den, but I want her to sleep in her old bed, which used to be my bed, and part of me enjoys carrying her, the way she’s curled into my chest like a baby.
I slip off her shoes and pull the covers over her. She looks like Joanie. I watch her sleep for a while. What has happened? This sentence seems to be on rotation in my head. I leave her room without closing the shutters. Tomorrow the sun will rise over the Ko’olaus, and the light will smack her in the face.
14
I TRY TO give Alex space and time to apologize for her behavior of her own accord. We’re in the kitchen, and she’s drinking a Coke and eating cereal that looks like large rabbit pellets.
“How are you feeling?” I ask.
She shrugs and chews and then lifts the bowl to her mouth.
“Does Mom let you have soda at breakfast?”
“She never saw me eat breakfast.”
“Where’s Scottie?” I ask.
She shrugs again.
“Well, nice to see you, Alex. Welcome home.”
She lifts her spoon and circles it in the air, then gets up and puts her dish in the sink.
“Put it in the dishwasher,” I say.
She walks out of the room, and I go to the sink to rinse her bowl and load it in the dishwasher. She reappears, talking to someone on her cell phone. She carries sunglasses, a book, a towel, and another Coke.
“Alex,” I say. “I’d like to talk to you.”
“I’m going swimming,” she says.
“Fine, then I’ll go swimming, too.”
“Fine,” she says.
In the pool, she bobs from foot to foot. She tilts her head back, then wrings her hair out. I dive in, aiming for a big splash, and when I surface, she looks at the water with disgust. The water is cold, and clouds block the sun. On the way to the other side, I swim through fallen leaves from the mango tree and the cinnamon-colored bodies of termites.
“Sid’s coming over,” she says.
“Who’s Sid?”
“My friend. You’ll meet him. I just called him and he’s coming over.”
“What friend? From HPA?”
“No, he’s from here. My class at Punahou. I’ve known him for ages.”
“Oh,” I say. “Okay
.”
“He’s got some issues. He’ll probably stay over, and he’ll be around a lot for me, since all this shit is happening.”
“Well,” I say. “You have it all figured out. Where does he live?”
“Kailua,” she says.
“And would I know his parents?”
“No.” She locks eyes with me.
“Looking forward to meeting him,” I say.
We hear banging on the sliding door that leads out to the pool. Scottie runs out on the brick patio wearing a black negligee. She has dabs of white cream all over her skinny body. She takes a picture of Alex.
“What the fuck,” Alex yells. “Get out of my underwear!”
“Don’t yell at her like that,” I say.
“Well, she’s wearing my fucking underwear.”
“So what, Alex? In the scheme of things, is it really that big a deal?” I look at Scottie. It sort of is a big deal. The negligee sags off her chest and between her legs. “Scottie, get back inside and change into a real swimsuit.”
“Why?”
“Now, Scottie.”
She gives me the finger, the proper way I taught her, and runs back inside.
“Real good job you’re doing,” Alex says.
“I think the bigger deal isn’t Scottie wearing your underwear, or my parenting skills, but finding you inebriated at boarding school, where you’re supposed to be getting your act together.”
“I was just drinking, Dad! I have gotten my act together. I’ve been doing really well, but you guys never even noticed that part. No one has said balls about how I’m doing better and how I was in that stupid play you guys didn’t bother to see. So what if I got drunk on the night you happened to drop in. So what!”
“Calm down,” I say. “Just get ahold of yourself and calm down.”
“Get a clue, Dad,” she says.
“About what?”
The Descendants Page 8
