The Descendants

by Kaui Hart Hemmings

  “Calm down, son,” I say. “No need to get creepy.”

  Alex places a hand on Sid’s leg, and I see his leg twitch. She’s got a good grip on him. I wonder what he’s so angry about. I remember, on the way over here, his concentration on the safety brochure. I take the laminated instructions out of the seat pocket, hoping to distract Alex and Sid. I look at the passengers getting onto a raft in an ocean with no land in sight. Their life vests are inflated. An Asian man has a slight smile on his face.

  Alex looks over. “Their clothes aren’t even wet.”

  I tap the picture of the plane floating in the sea.

  “So, is he coming back to see her, or what?” Sid asks.

  “I don’t think so,” I say.

  Weak, vulnerable, pining, used. I wonder if, in Alex’s eyes, these things would make her mother more lovable, more human.

  “I think he still loves Julie very much,” I say.

  Sid scoffs: “Too bad.” He looks the other way as he says this, out the oval window of the plane. “If he loved her, he wouldn’t have fucked your wife.”

  “Sid,” Alex says, and her voice is surprisingly calm. “Please shut up.”

  “Yes,” I say, trying to match her patient tone. “Please.”

  A chunk of Honolulu floats into view, and I can see lights coursing up the hills, then a blank dark space and another long row of house lights. It’s always strange to be reminded of other lives still moving along. For every light I see, there’s a person or a family, or someone like myself, enduring something. I feel the plane dropping, and then a wisp of cloud obstructs the view and makes our speed tangible.

  “I think you should go home,” I say to Sid. “See your mom.” He stares out the window. “Sid. Did you hear what I said?”

  “I can’t,” he says.

  “Sure you can. She’s your mother. She wants you home.”

  “She kicked me out,” he says.

  I try to make eye contact with Alex, but she won’t look my way. Her hand is still on Sid’s thigh, and the two of them together are absolutely impenetrable. The runways stretch out beside us. We’re back to reality, miles and miles away from the slow and easy island.

  35

  I MEET THE cousins at Cousin Six’s house. He’s called Cousin Six because at one point in his boyhood, he chugged six beers and then punched himself in the nose. He is now around seventy, and like him, his moniker is still going strong. He sits in the living room, which is similar to mine—sliding glass doors open to the backyard. Every time I see him, he tells me how he’d give soldiers surfing lessons in exchange for access to his favorite spot, which was blocked off during the war, so I’m out by the pool, trying to avoid him. He tells me about the soldiers as though it’s the first time he has ever told me, and it makes me sad and uncomfortable and a little angry.

  I’m sitting at a table by the pool, with my pen perched over the documents and our statement to the press, but I haven’t signed a thing. My mind is elsewhere, of course. Any day now I will be a widower. The girls are waiting for me at the hospital, making up for our one night and two days away. I haven’t seen Sid since last night. I wonder what he expects from me. I thought of calling his mother, but then there would be another superfluous person in my life. There are so many people in my thoughts who shouldn’t be there. I put Sid and the girls aside. Today I must deal with birthrights.

  A few cousins want to take the highest offer, not caring about the Wal-Mart replacing the taro patch, but the majority wants Holitzer, our only local bidder. I don’t like what’s happening. I want all this land to go to a good home, and I don’t like our decision, or any of the options in front of me, and neither would my father. Holitzer has won. Brian has won.

  Other cousins are walking out to the patio. They wear shorts, Spooners, and rubber slippers and carry celebratory cocktails. Cousin Six’s wife is passing around a bowl of mochi crunch, which makes everyone’s breath smell like soy sauce.

  “Eh, long time no see.” Hugh sits next to me with his documents. He carries a pen in his mouth.

  “I just saw you last night,” I say. “On Kauai.”

  “Was that last night? Boy.” He looks at the chair. “Will this hold me?”

  I look at the well-worn seat made of plastic cords. I’ve sunk into my cords and can feel the impressions on the backs of my thighs. “It should hold,” I say.

  He sits in the chair and I can hear the plastic stretch.

  “It’s like an ass hammock,” he says, then begins flipping through the papers. “Out of our hands.” He smooths the paper and presses the end of the pen so that it clicks.

  It’s all such a fluke, a stroke of luck. I look at the cousins standing around the pool. Their teeth are so white, their skin coloring like walnuts. What happened to me? Why am I not like them?

  “Do you ever feel guilty about it?” I ask. “All of this.” I hold up the papers.

  “No,” Hugh says. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “I know,” I say, and he’s right. It’s like feeling guilty about your eye color. The only thing I feel guilty about is that my wife thought she was going to inherit another sort of life. She should have been with somebody more charismatic than me. Someone more powerful and loud, someone who eats really fast and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. I think of her entering Brian’s house on Black Point, which makes me think of Julie. I can imagine Joanie eyeing their home, making fun of Julie’s knickknacks or the art on the walls, perhaps planning the ways she would redecorate. I want to tell her to stop. It’s Julie’s home. Julie can light a barbecue.

  “Joanie’s not doing well,” I say to Hugh.

  His pen moves across the first page, and I see his childlike signature. It’s perfectly legible. He puts his hand over mine for a moment. His arm looks as though his skin has been pulled back. It’s raw and spotted. “She’ll be okay,” he says. “She’s a fighter.”

  “No,” I say. “She won’t be fine. She’s going to die. We’ve taken her off the machines.”

  I take a sip of Hugh’s cocktail because it’s there and I don’t have my own. Hugh’s the head cousin, the leader of the tribe, and he has always told us what to think and what to do. What we’re building, what we’re tearing down, and in this case, when we’re selling and to whom. I want to hear what he has to say about this, about my wife dying. I put his glass back down on the table.

  He looks at the glass, then at me. “Have some more,” he says.

  “That’s okay.” I stare at the papers, the pen that says HNL TRAVEL. “I can’t sign,” I say.

  He takes his drink and shakes it, then brings it to his mouth. He takes a sip and spits out an ice cube. “He’ll take over our debt,” he says. “Just sign, go to your wife, done.”

  “I don’t want it to go to Holitzer. I don’t want it to go to Brian Speer. We can get out of our own debt. I want to keep it.”

  He frowns. “We need your approval to move.”

  I shake my head. He’s not getting my approval. No one is getting anything from me.

  “I can’t,” I say. “I won’t do it.”

  I’m thinking of the princess. When she died, she wanted the land to be used to fund a school for children of Hawaiian descent. This was her spoken wish that she failed to put into a contract. I have no interest in this wish, in a Hawaiian-only school. There are already a few of them, and they’re completely elitist, not to mention unconstitutional. But now I find myself not wanting to give it up—the land, the lush relic of our tribe, the dead. The last Hawaiian-owned land will be lost, and I will have something to do with it. Even though we don’t look Hawaiian, even though our constant recombining has erased the evidence of our ethnicity, sharpening our flat faces, straightening our kinky hair, even though we act like haoles, going to private schools and clubs and not having a good command of pidgin English, my girls and I are Hawaiian, and this land is ours.

  “Why are you doing this now?” Hugh leans on his forearms. I can see the pores on his
red face, and his wild white eyebrows reach up toward his forehead, which is shiny and surprisingly smooth. A drop of sweat slides from his hairline down his nose and onto the table. Both of us look at the spot where it landed, then he grasps my shoulder in a way that’s both affectionate and painful. “What’s the real reason?” he asks.

  The princess, I think. My ancestors, but no, that’s not it entirely. That’s what I want the reason to be, but there are other, less dignified ones: Revenge. Selfishness. A desire to see my daughters have the land. Let them make decisions about it. A desire to hold on, pass down, clutch something that was given to me. I don’t want Brian to have a part of it. I don’t want his sons to have it. I don’t want their history to mix with mine. Kekipi rebelled, and so will I.

  “It’s just something I want,” I say. “I haven’t wanted something in a long time. This is what I want.”

  He doesn’t seem to believe me, or at least my answer is too ambiguous, too emotional. He lets go of my shoulder.

  “This is our responsibility,” I say. “This guy’s going to come in here and rescue us. We’ve run our assets into the ground. We’re Hawaiian—it’s a miracle we own this much of Hawaii. Why let some haole swoop it up? We’ve been careless.”

  “The hurricane ran our assets—”

  “We did, Hugh. We’ve been paralyzed, and we’re smart people. We can rescue ourselves. It’s our problem.”

  This angle works a little better. I think of Joanie, what she would say. “Don’t be a pussy,” I add.

  Hugh has a delayed smile. “You’re going to make a lot of people angry,” he says.

  “I could also make a lot of people relieved,” I say. “We’ve moved too fast. Just think, I approve this buyer, then tomorrow—gone. Over. End of the line. Believe me, people will be relieved.”

  He nods.

  “Think about it,” I say. “Sure, we’d make money, we’d have it easier not needing to run the business, but…”

  “You want it,” he says.

  “Yes,” I say. “We own this.” I wave my hand in the air. “There’s nothing more powerful than this.”

  Hugh brings his fingers to his mouth and blows. A sharp whistle cuts through the air, and the cousins stop talking and turn to look at me. It’s as if they know.

  I’m sorry, I’ll have to say. I know I wouldn’t have done this if my wife weren’t going to die, but the fact is, she is. She is going to die and she will be gone and my daughters will not have a mother. For some reason, luck of the draw, really, you need my approval. I know you understand the complicated nature of birthrights, how they’re both fortuitous and undeserved. I’ve decided that you won’t be receiving any money, but we’ll all get to keep something, and we’ll get to pass it on.

  I look at these people, my family, and I hope they’ll understand.

  36

  THERE ARE NEW flowers—ginger, gardenia, tuberose. Joanie has had visitors since my cocktail party. Lots of roses, though none of them are red. I could see the husbands saying to the wives, “But she’ll never see the flowers.” It’s something I would say, too. I’m glad we haven’t been here these past two days. Scottie wouldn’t have understood the visitors and their tears, and Alex and I got to avoid the discomfort that goes along with all of this.

  I see an image of myself and my girls walking down the beach. I miss our hotel room.

  “Dad,” Scottie says. “What are you thinking about?”

  “You,” I say. “I’m thinking about you.”

  Alex is off buying bottles of water, the only thing we can stomach, and I wish she would hurry back.

  Joanie looks different. She’s gaunt and pasty, vacant-looking. There is no tube coming out of her mouth. Scottie hasn’t said anything about it, and I’m glad, because I still don’t know how to tell her.

  “What about me?” Scottie says. “What were you thinking about me?”

  “I was thinking about how you’ve grown so fast.”

  “Hardly,” she says. “I’m in the lowest percentile. Reina’s in the lowest percentile, too, though. Reina says—”

  “That’s enough about Reina. Remember what we said about her.”

  “Fine, but I want her to come back to the hospital tomorrow. Alex gets to have a friend, so I do, too.”

  “Scottie. She can’t come here tomorrow.”

  “Why not!”

  “Do you know what’s happening?” Scottie walks to her backpack and rifles through it, taking out various things. “Scottie, I asked you a question.”

  “Yes, Dad, God!”

  “What, then? Tell me why we’re here. Don’t tell me about Reina. Don’t fuss around in your bag. Tell me why we’re here and why you won’t touch or talk to your mother.”

  “Dad.” I turn to see Alex in the doorway. She gives me my water. Scottie is sitting in the chair at the back of the room, facing the wall. I want to hug her, but I can’t. I feel committed to my anger.

  “What are you yelling about?” Alex says.

  “Nothing. Your sister was talking about Reina, that’s all. I got upset. I just want this to go smoothly, girls. I don’t want to have to…manage you. Where’s Sid, by the way? I’d like to have a word with him.”

  “He’s probably with other girls,” Scottie says. “Last night those friends of yours were on the beach, and Sid went off with them while you were up at that house.”

  “What are you talking about?” Alex says, and I see the hurt in her eyes.

  “He probably orgied them,” Scottie says solemnly.

  “I don’t care,” Alex says, though it’s quite evident she does. “Oh my God.”

  I follow her gaze to my wife’s bed. Joanie’s hand is raised as though she’s taking an oath.

  I immediately look at her face, but her eyes are closed. She does this sometimes, moves, but Alex has never seen it. I look at Scottie, facing the wall. “Come here, Scottie,” I say.

  I stare at Joanie’s hand. It’s pale and dry. Her nails are longer. She breathes loudly all of a sudden, as if she’s trying to catch her breath.

  “She can’t breathe,” Scottie yells.

  “Come here,” I say again, forcefully.

  “Dad,” Alex says.

  Scottie walks to my side with her head down.

  “She can breathe,” I say. “The doctor says that’s just a reflex. She’s not struggling, she’s not suffering. Now, why don’t you go hold it. Her hand.”

  I see the faint hair on Joanie’s arm, the wrinkles on her wrist. I take Scottie by the hand and pull her over to her mother. She resists me and Alex yells for me to stop, but I don’t. I unclench Scottie’s fist and stuff her hand into her mother’s and then I make Joanie’s hand grip Scottie’s. Tears begin to march down Scottie’s cheeks. Her face has red splotches on it, which is what happens to me when I get angry or I’m having sex. Joanie continues to breathe roughly. It sounds like she’s struggling. It sounds like she’s suffering. I hold Scottie still.

  “Dad!” Alex yells. “Stop it.”

  “Take the other hand,” I say to Alex, gesturing to the other side of the bed. “Now. Do it now.”

  Alex goes over to the side opposite me and looks down at her mother. She lifts the sheet and reaches for the hand with her eyes closed. Her face is puckered, as though she’s about to eat something really bad on a dare. She frees her mother’s hand and then sets it down and places her hand on top of it. And then she takes it. I see the force in her grip. Alex keeps her head down so I can’t see her face. Scottie is shaking. I hold Scottie from behind, wrapping my arms around her as if we’re going to crash. The girls need to do this or they’ll regret it for the rest of their lives.

  “Say something,” I say to Scottie.

  “No,” she says, her voice full of torment. “You’re hurting me.”

  I look at Alex. Her head is still down, her shoulders shaking slightly.

  “Say something, Alex.”

  “You say something,” she yells, and I see that she’s weeping.
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br />   I bow my head and speak to Joanie softly. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t give you everything you wanted. I wasn’t everything you wanted. You were everything I wanted.” I’m mumbling as if I’m reciting a prayer. My head and throat pulse with heat. I’m trying to think of memories, key words I can say that will trigger entire moments, but I can’t think of anything. We’ve known each other since I was twenty-six and she was nineteen. Why can’t I think of a memory?

  “Every day,” I say. “Home. There you are. Dinner, dishes, TV. Weekends at the beach. You go here. I go there. Parties. Home to complain about the party. Car rides home over the Pali before they put up streetlights.” I can’t think of anything else. Just our routine together. “I loved it,” I say, gripping her hand harder.

  I never speak this way. I feel that she’s smirking at me and glance up and see how uncomfortable Alex looks. Scottie, too, wears an awkward and fearful expression.

  “I forgive you,” I say, and feel Joanie smirking even more.

  Alex walks around the bed and pulls Scottie away from me. I still hold on and look at Joanie’s face, the pleased expression. I try to read her, to understand her; it frustrates me to see her look so satisfied. I bend down so that my face is right in front of hers and say, “He didn’t love you. I love you.”

  37

  WHY IS IT so hard to articulate love yet so easy to express disappointment? I leave the room without saying anything to the girls. To the left of the room is a thin glass wall, and I look through it at the dark husks of palms and the empty park benches. I see the huge monkeypod tree; its canopy seems to hover in space. Something glints from its branches, but I don’t know what it is. I walk over to the row of chairs and sit down, practically collapsing. I close my eyes. When I open them, there’s a young man placing a piece of paper on the seat next to me. He continues to the hallway, where he hands out more of his papers to people walking by. On the paper beside me, I expect to see an ad for a blowout sale or a menu for Chinese delivery. Instead, I see a list of burial options: