The Descendants

by Kaui Hart Hemmings

  “Brian,” Mark says. “Brian Speer.”

  I stand up. “Thank you.”

  Kai continues to cry. Her tearful face reminds me of their son, Luke, how he looked when he would cry. I remember when he was a little younger than Scottie is now, he would answer only to Spider-Man. Even teachers succumbed to this whim, and when he raised his hand in class, they would say, “Yes, Spider-Man?” I’m the one who finally got him to drop the phase and answer to his real name. My method was, and remains, our secret. I’m not sure if even Luke remembers.

  I walk out of the kitchen, taking my pastries with me, and I think about how many times I’ve seen the Mitchells in the past year and how they never even hinted at a problem between Joanie and me. It’s embarrassing. Mark walks me to the front door. He opens it and ducks his head, and I walk out without saying anything to him. I don’t think I’ll say anything to both of them for a long time.

  I walk to the car and think about the night I broke Luke’s bad habit. Joanie and I were over for dinner, and I was standing outside, overlooking the Mitchells’ yard. Luke was trying to catch toads. He had the pool net in one hand, his Spider-Man action figure in the other, and was becoming discouraged.

  “Look, Luke,” I said. “Here’s one right here.”

  Luke turned to look but caught himself and stared straight ahead.

  “Luke,” I said again. His parents and Joanie were chatting near the bar. They had just smoked a joint, the three of them, and they were being loud and stupid. I knelt next to Luke. “Let me tell you something,” I said. “Spider-Man has a vagina.”

  Luke looked at me and then at the figurine in his hand. “Look,” I said, pointing to Spider-Man’s crotch. “No bulge. Nothing there, see?”

  He ran his hand along the plastic crotch.

  “Spider-Man is a loser. The other superheroes call him a douche bag. They say, ‘Get out of here, you sticky red douche bag.’” I didn’t know why I was telling him this, but then I heard his parents’ stoned, exclusive laughter, and I knew why.

  Luke looked at his doll.

  “Do you still want me to call you Spider-Man?”

  He shook his head.

  I PULL OUT of the Nu’uanu neighborhood, and as I drive back over the Pali Highway, there are only two thoughts going through my head: My wife is going to die, and her lover’s name is Brian Speer.

  16

  SID IS HERE. He’s lanky and tall. When Alex introduced us, he said, “’Sup,” and took my hand, pulled me in to him, thumped my back, and cast me back out.

  “Don’t ever do that to me again,” I said, and he hiccuped out a small laugh. For some reason we’re all standing on the lawn, and when he got here, I offered him a drink, out of habit from when guests come by. I poured his 7-Up into a glass, and seeing him with a glass and a cocktail napkin feels ridiculously formal, like I’m meeting my future son-in-law, which I hope I’m not.

  Alex is quiet around him, cool, and I’m embarrassed for her.

  “Alex, do you still want to go with me to Racer’s, then Grandpa’s? I’m leaving soon, so…”

  “You know a person named Racer?” Sid asks.

  “I said I’ll go,” she says. “We’ll both go with you.” She leans in to Sid, and he scopes out our home then picks something off her shoulder.

  I look at Sid’s shoes. They’re surprisingly clean and white. “He doesn’t have to come,” I say. “This isn’t something he should do.”

  “I want to do whatever Alex wants me to do,” he says. “I’m just drifting.”

  “Does he know what we’re doing?”

  “Yes,” Alex says. “He knows everything.”

  An unexpected surge of jealousy runs through me.

  “I think this is a family matter,” I say. “This next week, or however long or short, is a family matter.”

  “Dad. I told you he was going to be here. Just let it go, okay? I’ll be more civil with him here, believe me.”

  Sid opens his arms out wide and shrugs. “What can I say?”

  I look at Alex, hoping she senses my disappointment.

  “Don’t you have school?” I ask Sid.

  “I have it when I want it,” he says.

  “All right. Get Scottie. Let’s just go.”

  SCOTTIE SITS IN the front seat, Alex and Sid in back. Scottie has never been so quiet. I notice she has left her camera and scrapbook at home.

  “You know E.T.?” Sid says. “Remember E.T.?”

  I look in the rearview mirror because I have no idea whom he’s talking to. His cheeks are stubbled, and his eyes are dark blue. He’s looking out the window, addressing no one.

  “What did they want?” he asks. “Why did the E.T.’s come to Earth in the first place?”

  “Ignore him,” Alex says. “He gets like this in cars. Stoner Seinfeld.”

  “Who’s E.T.?” Scottie asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. I don’t want to have to explain. I pull into Lanikai and see Racer’s house. Racer is a good friend of ours, especially mine, although not so much anymore. I have to drive around the loop of the neighborhood, since it’s a one-way road. I’m tempted to drive the wrong way on the empty road, but I don’t. I enjoy the quiet street, the white sand blown onto the pavement. The look of desertion makes me feel as though I’ve survived something.

  “What if E.T. was the dork of the planet?” Sid says. “What if all Earthlings went to a planet and, say, Screech or Don Johnson were the ones left behind? They’d get a totally wrong impression of us.”

  “This is fascinating.” I pull into the driveway. “You philosophers stay in the car. I’ll be right back.”

  I walk around to the back door and am startled to see Racer sitting on the small cement terrace. He’s in a bathrobe, has his hands around a mug of steaming coffee, and is staring out at the beach, at the low tide and little curls of waves.

  When he sees me, he gives me a tired smile, not at all surprised by my visit.

  “Racer,” I say. I head to the table and pull out a chair, but the seat is wet.

  “Hey, Matt,” he says. He looks at the wet chair. “We can go inside.” He stands, and I see that the back of his robe is soaked from the chair.

  We go to the kitchen, where he pours me a cup of coffee. “Thanks,” I say. “Got any half-and-half?”

  “No,” he says.

  “That’s okay,” I say.

  He begins to search the cupboards. “We might have that powdered stuff. I don’t know where anything is. Noe. She arranged everything. I’m out of milk.”

  “How is Noe?”

  He sits down at the kitchen table. “I canceled the wedding. She moved out.”

  “What? Are you serious? Why?”

  He drums his fingers on the table. Brown-spotted mangoes rest on a piece of newspaper. “It just didn’t feel right.” He holds his head in his hands. “My parents didn’t like her. They never said anything, but I just knew they didn’t like her, and I couldn’t get past it. She’s a nanny, you know? And a dancer. She’s just from a different place, you know?”

  I think of his family, another plantation family, sugar heirs. Still, his parents are so warm, it seems unlikely they wouldn’t take to Noe. That’s the thing about Hawaii society. There aren’t many snobs.

  “It shouldn’t matter, but it matters, you know?”

  “Sure, sure,” I say.

  “I felt I was making the wrong choice.” He sits up. “But it’s fine. It will be fine. It wasn’t meant to be.” His eyes glaze over and then come back into focus on me. “Did you just come over to say hello?”

  I look at the mangoes and take a sip of my black coffee. “Yeah, haven’t seen you in a while. Thought I’d stop in on my way to…” I wave my hand toward Kailua. His house, I realize, isn’t on the way to anything. It’s a dead end.

  “How is she?” he asks.

  “She’s okay,” I say. I have never seen Racer feel much of anything, and it’s as though I don’t want to intrude; losing his fiancée
is a moment of sorts. I don’t want to interrupt his pain with more pain. I think of his parents not approving of Noe, me not approving of Sid, Joanie’s father not approving of me.

  “Princess Kekipi,” I say. “You know she married against her parents’ wishes. I think we all do. You should do what you want to do.”

  Racer nods. “It’s not too late,” he says.

  “It’s not,” I say.

  He drops his shoulders. I wonder what he will do.

  “Anyway, my kids are waiting in the car.” I stand up to leave, even though I’ve had only a few sips of my coffee. He doesn’t seem to notice how absurdly quick this visit is, the purposelessness of it. He walks me to the front door. There’s a comforter on the couch, a bottle of wine on the coffee table, and an open TV Guide with listings circled in red ink. He holds the door open and shields his eyes from the sun. He waves at my family. “It will be okay,” I say, and he agrees and shuts the door. I walk to my car a little stunned, hoping to God he marries that girl. I don’t know why it matters to me, but it does.

  “I couldn’t do it,” I say when I sit down.

  “Do what?” Scottie asks.

  “Well, the next one you’ll have to do,” Alex says.

  Racer was my warm-up. The next house is the main event. Now I’m prepared to face people who don’t approve of me. I start the car, back out of the driveway, and take us to our next stop.

  17

  WE SIT ON the wraparound deck because that’s where Scott was when we drove up, sitting in a wicker chair with a drink balancing on his knees. I can see Scottie in the lower yard with her grandmother, pointing to the various things they see. “Rock,” I imagine her saying. “Pond.” Joanie’s mother has Alzheimer’s, and Scott has been carrying on with his altered wife and her nurse, doing yard work, swimming laps in the pool. I’ve seen him swimming before, and when he comes up for air, the sight of him in his goggles and swimmer’s cap is heartbreaking, his face slick with water, his mouth drawn out like that of the creature in Munch’s The Scream. Drinking is another one of his hobbies. It runs in the family. I could smell the Scotch on his breath when he saw Scottie and said, “Bingo!,” something he always says when he sees her.

  I have told him the news and given him her living will, which he is now looking over. Sid has been quiet, for which I’m grateful, but then I really look at him in the lounge chair, his black sunglasses on, his black cap pulled down, his stillness, and I realize he’s asleep. Alex sits on the end of the lounger by his legs. It’s irritating seeing her so close to him all the time.

  “This is like some other language,” Scott says, flipping through the pages.

  “I know,” I say.

  “What is this?”

  “It’s a living will. You have one, too.”

  “Yes, but it’s not a bunch of gibber-gabber. This is like reading Korean.” He shakes the pages at Alex and me.

  “I’m sure yours is the same. Do you want me to explain the gist of it?”

  He ignores me and focuses on the pages, probably not wanting to have me explain anything to him. He has never liked me. Early on in Joanie’s and my marriage, he’d try to get me to back these business ideas he had, but I always told him I don’t do business with friends or family. This was just an excuse to get myself out of his grand plans, most of them being theme restaurants. I have endured countless pitches from my father-in-law, many of them purporting that such-and-such town had the potential to become the new Waikiki. I almost bit once just to get him off my back, but I never did, thank God.

  “Gibber-gabber,” he mumbles.

  “I’ll explain it to you, Scott. I know it’s a difficult language. It’s complicated, but this is what I do. I can help you.” I think of the statements, almost like vows from your healthy self to your dying self: If I am in a permanent coma, I do not want my life to be artificially prolonged and I do not want life-sustaining procedures used. I authorize the withholding or withdrawal of life-sustaining procedures, of artificial nutrition and hydration, of comfort care. The way the comfort-care section is phrased always gets to me. I do not want comfort care that would prolong my life. This makes it sound like Joanie doesn’t want to be soothed or held. This is the part of the will that Scott can understand, the part that clearly states she doesn’t want to live.

  “Do you want me to go over it with you?” I say again. “It’s an advanced directive—basically her instructions telling us what medical procedures she wants or, in this case, doesn’t want. No mechanical ventilation, no—”

  “I don’t want to hear it. I know exactly what it says. It says that she doesn’t want everyone waiting around while she spoils like milk. It says the doctors can’t do squat, and she’d prefer to go on to another place.”

  “Gramps,” Alex says. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. I prepared myself for this, and I’m glad Joanie had the good sense to write this thing here and wasn’t a selfish person. She’s a brave girl,” he yells, his voice shaking. “She was always stronger than her brother. Barry whines his way through life. He looked thirty when he was sixteen. He may even be a homosexual, for all I know.”

  “Barry’s not a homosexual,” I say. “He likes women very much.” I think of Barry. He used to be so chubby and warm. Now he does hot yoga and something called Budokon and he’s nimble and tough, like wild game.

  “She’s stronger than you, Matt,” Scott continues. “She lived more in a year than you did in a decade, sitting in your office hoarding your cash. Maybe if you let her have her own boat and bought her some safe equipment or let her go on one of those shopping sprees that women like, then maybe she wouldn’t have engaged in these reckless sports. Maybe if you provided more thrills at home.”

  “Gramps,” Alex says.

  “And you, Alexandra. You fought with your mother when all she was trying to do was instill some drive in you. Joanie had passion! She’s a good girl,” he says as though arguing with someone. “I never told her all this. But I’m saying it now!”

  Scott stands up and walks to the porch rail so his back is to us. His shoulders shudder. He looks up with his hands on his hips, as though gauging the weather to come. He lifts his flannel shirt to wipe his face and coughs, spits, then faces us. “You guys want some rolls? I made rolls. You want a drink?”

  His eyes are glassy and his hands drum in his pockets. I like the way men cry. They’re efficient.

  “Sure, Scott. We’d love some rolls and a drink.”

  When he goes into the house, I look at Alex. “You okay? He’s just upset.”

  “I know. It’s fine.”

  She doesn’t look fine. Her brow is furrowed, her jaw flexed.

  “So what happens when you do that?” she asks.

  “Do what?”

  “Remove everything? I mean, how long does it take?”

  I talked to the doctor this morning, listened as he told me that Joanie could breathe quite well on her own and could live up to a week without help. “About a week, I guess.”

  “When do they do this?”

  “They’re waiting for us to come in,” I say.

  “Oh,” Alex says. She touches Sid’s leg, but he doesn’t move.

  Scottie and her grandmother walk toward us with stalks of white ginger in their hands.

  “It must be hard for Grandpa to handle this without Grandma,” I say.

  Scottie holds her grandmother’s hand and leads her up the stairs. I never know what to say to Alice. Our encounters are similar to when someone shows me an infant and I feel like I’m the one on display, everyone watching to see how I interact with it.

  “Hi, Grandma,” Alex and I sing.

  She glares at both of us. Scott comes out with his rolls and a tray of drinks. Scotch on the rocks. I don’t even bother to take the drink meant for Alex. I know she won’t drink in front of me. Sid suddenly sits up and looks around like a dog that smells bacon. He reaches for a drink, and I stare at his hand around the glass. He lets go and leans back
in the chair. Scott glares at him and Sid salutes.

  “Who are you?” Scott asks. “Why are you here?”

  “He’s my friend,” Alex says. “He’s here for me.”

  Scott still stares at Sid, then turns to Alice and hands her the Scotch. “We’re going to go see Joanie today,” he says.

  Alice grins. “And Chachi?” she asks.

  Sid bursts out laughing and Scott turns back to him, then places a hand on his shoulder, which makes me fear for his life. “You be quiet, son,” Scott says. “I could kill you with this hand. This hand has been places.”

  I shake my head and look at both Sid and Alex.

  Scott lifts his hand off Sid’s shoulder and turns again to his wife. “No, Alice. Our Joanie. Our daughter. We’re going to give her anything she wants.” He glares at me. “Think about what she would want, Alice. We’re going to get it for her and bring it to her. Bring it right to her bed.”

  “Joanie and Chachi,” Alice chants. “Joanie and Chachi!”

  “Shut up, Alice!” Scott yells.

  Alice looks at Scott as though he just said “Cheese.” She clasps her hands together and smiles, staying in the pose for a few seconds. He looks at her face and squints. “Sorry, old gal,” he says. “You go ahead and say whatever you want.”

  “It was funny,” Sid says. “All I was doing was laughing. She has a good sense of humor. That’s all. Maybe she knows she’s being funny. I think she does.”

  “I’m going to hit you,” Scott says. His arms hang alongside him, the muscles flexed, veins big like milk-shake straws. I know he’s going to hit Sid because that’s what he does. I’ve seen him hit Barry. I, too, have been hit by Scott after I beat him and his buddies at a game of poker. His hands are in fists, and I can see his knobby old-man knuckles, the many liver spots almost joining to become one big discoloration, like a burn. Then he pops his fist up toward Sid, a movement like a snake rearing its head and lunging forth. I see Sid start to bring his arm up to block his face, but then he brings it down and clutches his thigh. It’s almost as if he decided not to protect himself. The end result is a punch in his right eye, a screaming older daughter, a frightened younger daughter, a father trying to calm many people at once, and a mother-in-law cheering wildly as though we have all done something truly amazing.