The Descendants

by Kaui Hart Hemmings

  “Yes. Did he tell you after we left? Did something happen?”

  “He didn’t tell me,” she says. “Sid told me. He called the house yesterday. My husband and I have been going crazy. You can imagine.”

  “Sid,” I say. “Well.”

  “It’s just that…” She starts to laugh and begins fanning the air in front of her. I feel I should give her a moment alone, so I look up at the ceiling, but then I look back at her and can’t mask my irritation.

  “What are you laughing at?” I ask.

  “It’s all so terrible,” she says.

  “Julie,” I say. “I’m sorry for everything, really, but I can’t do this now. I need to be with my wife now.”

  “I know,” she says almost angrily. “I thought it was awful that my husband didn’t come here. I just came because I didn’t think that was right. I wanted to tell your wife I’m sorry.”

  I wonder if a part of her is satisfied somehow by my wife’s fate. I don’t like the way she looks, standing over Joanie; the contrasts between a healthy woman and a dying woman become pronounced. Julie’s face is tan from her beach vacation. Joanie looks minuscule compared to her. I feel completely protective of Joanie, united with her, madly in love with her. I want to hold her hand and point Julie toward the door.

  “He told me everything,” Julie says, either to me or to Joanie. “I forgive you for trying to take him, for trying to tear my family apart.”

  “Stop,” I say. “Don’t do that.”

  She makes to say something else, something she has probably rehearsed, but I won’t let her fight with a woman who can’t fight back. Her grace and gentleness are gone. She has tricked herself into thinking she is doing something noble, but really, this is all about anger. She is feeling the same things I feel, I guess—the need to guard what’s yours. This is a war. It always is.

  I walk to the door and open it and wait for her to leave. She looks down at Joanie and I wonder if I’ll have to remove her. She glances at her flowers, then turns away from the bed.

  “He didn’t love her,” she says.

  “I know, but he didn’t love you for a while, either.”

  She pauses in front of me. “I came here. I didn’t mean to act this way. I just love my family, that’s all.”

  “This is my wife,” I say.

  She waits for me to continue, but I don’t have anything else to say. I was going to say, This is the love of my life. You can go home to your family. I can’t. But I don’t want to talk to her anymore. These past few days have been about trying to weed everyone out. Go. Everyone, please go.

  She hesitates, maybe wondering if she should shake my hand or hug me, but I make it clear that I don’t want either. I think about how I kissed her, leaving my mark, just as her husband left his. I’m sickened by my trite revenge, and how Julie could be the last woman who kisses me back.

  She walks out and I shut the door once again, and look at her flowers standing tall at the back of the room. And then I go to my wife, who looks like a ghost of a woman. I sit on her bed. I take her hand, which doesn’t feel like her hand anymore. I touch her face, look at her lips, the lines in her lips. I rub my palm over her forehead into her hairline, just as her father did. I ask her silently to forgive me and then realize she isn’t some kind of god and that I need to say it aloud.

  “Forgive me,” I say. “I love you. I know we did something right together.”

  I have picked my moment. I don’t want to hug her because I know I won’t like the sensation of not being hugged back, and I don’t want to kiss her because I won’t be kissed back, but I do kiss her. I press my lips to hers and then I put my hand on her stomach because this seems to be the place where everything comes from, where I feel love and pain, anger and pride, and even though I wasn’t planning on doing it this way, I say goodbye. I lean over so my mouth is on her neck, our heads pressed together. Goodbye, Joanie. Goodbye, my love, my friend, my pain, my happiness. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.

  43

  I FIX THE gin and tonic and look over at the large window framing the mock-orange hedge, and below the window to the sofa, where Sid’s mother sits. She wears slacks and a blouse, and I can tell she isn’t used to dressing this way. She buttons her top button, then unbuttons it once again and fixes her necklace. I look away before she sees that I’m staring at her.

  I figured that if Sid could do it, then so could I. He called Julie. I called his mother. That’s the way it works.

  I take the drink back to her. I like that she’s having one. I’m having one, too, even though it’s freezing and I don’t want to touch the icy glass. It has been unusually cold all around the island these past few days, with hard rain, near-black clouds—the most perfect weather for now.

  Mary cups her drink in her hands over her thighs. I realize I haven’t given her a coaster and she’s afraid to put the drink down on the wooden table. Her cocktail napkin is crushed in her hand, pieces of it pressed to the wet glass.

  “You can put it down,” I say.

  She looks at the long wood table in front of her, the heavy books: Finding Paradise, A Sense of Place, World Atlas, and Law in America. She hesitates and tries to salvage the soaked napkin but stops and puts the glass down. Perhaps she realizes she can do anything and act any way she wants. She doesn’t know my wife died two days ago. She, with her dead husband, her renegade son, is the winner here.

  “I don’t usually drink,” she says. “Especially this early.”

  “I know.” I can see Sid’s resemblance to her: the sharp nose and large eyes that slope downward.

  “Has he been okay?” she asks. “Has he been good?”

  I think of him smoking pot, cigarettes, slapping my daughter’s ass, moping, running his mouth, ruining Brian’s marriage, getting served, as Scottie says, by my father-in-law.

  “Yes,” I say. “He has been surprisingly helpful.”

  “I can pay you,” she says. “For groceries. For whatever he cost you.”

  “Oh, no,” I say. “Don’t worry about that.”

  She looks around at my house then through the screen door at the yard, the pool, the mountain. I look there, too, then ask her if she wants me to find out what’s taking him so long.

  “Did he tell you why I kicked him out of the house?”

  “He told me his dad died. He told me he missed his dad.”

  “His father was difficult to live with,” she says. “But he took care of us. He loved Sid.”

  “I’m sure he did,” I say.

  “You must think I’m a horrible person for kicking him out.”

  Her face looks tired. She looks older than she probably is.

  “I don’t think that. Children are hard. Sometimes doing something like that is the only thing that works. Especially with Sid. He’s no walk in the park.”

  “No, he isn’t.” She laughs, and it’s as though we’re admitting that we have hard children but wouldn’t want it any other way. I see that she has brought Sid one of those magazines he likes, the ones about girls on cars or girls on choppers.

  “I need to tell him I believe him,” she says.

  She looks behind me and I know he must be there, walking down the cobblestone corridor, past the pictures of us on the wall, past the table of sympathy cards, past the black Japanese planter that sounds like a gong when hit with a wooden spoon wrapped in a dish towel, which is the way Joanie would summon us to dinner. “Dinner!” she’d yell after the deep gong. “Dinner!”

  “Hi, Mom,” Sid says.

  She stands but stays where she is, in front of the sofa and behind the coffee table, protected. He’s beside me. I stand and give him a look of encouragement. I can tell he doesn’t want me to leave, but this isn’t my problem, it’s just a similarity we share, the need to come to terms with the dead and the people they truly were. We want to ascend, make our dead monarchs less powerful, stop them from directing our lives, even though I know this is impossible, because they’ve been ruling my life for ce
nturies.

  “Thank you for coming, Mary,” I say.

  I walk away. I hear their voices. I want to think that I hear them embrace, but I’m sure I don’t hear that. An embrace isn’t audible.

  Alex is standing by the gong and I lead her away.

  “Are they speaking?” she asks.

  “I think so.”

  We pass the pictures of Joanie. I don’t look at them, but I know their sequence. Joanie on Mauna Kea with Alex on her shoulders, Joanie and me and friends dining at a rotating restaurant that made us all nauseated, Alex on her dirt bike riding through a banana plantation, Joanie on a boat in her bikini, Scottie leaning over the side pretending to throw up, Joanie in a canoe riding a wave, leaning over the ama to keep the boat from tipping.

  SCOTTIE’S ON THE daybed, under the quilt she has brought from her own bed. She’s watching television; it’s really all we’ve been doing these past two days. I take off my shoes and get into bed with her, and so does Alex. I lie back and watch a beautiful celebrity accept an award for playing an ugly woman.

  I prop a few pillows under my head and pull up the covers. I could stay here forever. I notice that Scottie has taken up scrap-booking once again. Her book rests on her stomach and I pick it up and flip the pages. Time passes. Time passed. I see this from the photos—Troy at the club’s bar on the day of the man-of-wars, Alex in the pool, screaming at Scottie, her first day home. There are countless pictures of Sid doing mundane things. Sid sitting by the pool reading one of his car magazines, Sid eating chips, Sid taking a nap.

  “Is Sid going home?” Scottie asks.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Are you still going out with him?” Scottie asks. “Even though he went off with the skanks?”

  “We’re just friends,” Alex says, but in a moment of honesty, she adds, “I don’t know what we are. I think we’re together now.” She points to the book. “There’s a lot of him.”

  “He’s photogenic,” Scottie says. She takes the book back and flips the pages, mesmerized with her work. She holds the album close to her and won’t let me flip. It’s like she’s the warden of our relics. Our curator.

  Next page. An old picture of me in my office, surrounded by cutouts of the things that define me: a briefcase, a beer.

  I’ll have to be there a lot now, the office, familiarizing myself with my own land, trying to make up for the years of neglecting the gifts bestowed upon us.

  Scottie has placed me under my mother and father. Joanie is next to me, a picture from years ago, after her canoe race from Molokai to Oahu, taken before Scottie was born. It’s a true picture of health—her teeth, her skin, the glow on her face. She is young and pretty, happy, and I realize this was taken before we ever met.

  I ruffle Scottie’s hair and she leans in to me.

  “You’re our keeper,” I tell her. “Our family historian.”

  “Mrs. Chun is going to say it’s not really a scrapbook. I don’t have fabric and words.”

  “I like it just fine,” I say.

  “Me, too.”

  “What time are we going tomorrow?” Alex asks.

  “Early,” I say.

  “What if it’s still raining?”

  “We’ll still go,” I say. “We need to.”

  The ashes are in a box. The box is in a purple satchel, and whenever I see the satchel, I think of expensive liquor and then think, No. They’re ashes. My wife’s ashes.

  I’m still not sure how the girls said goodbye, what their moment was like, and I don’t want to ask because it will hurt me too much to know. They each went in alone. They each said something, then walked out and searched my face for some clear answer. Then we left the hospital and came home. Scottie turned on the TV in the den. Alex went to her room. I went to my room, but I couldn’t stay in that bed, so I went to watch TV with Scottie, and Alex was there lying next to her and I knew this was the best place to be. Joanie must have been waiting for us. After we all said goodbye, she died the next day.

  Images of dead people who have worked in the film business flash on the screen. Some receive loud applause, others receive none.

  Scottie’s toes tap against my shin.

  “Your toes are cold,” I say.

  She presses her entire foot against my shin and I shiver. “Stop it,” I say.

  She lets out a hard laugh and I put my hand over her so that I’m touching the tops of both of their heads. It feels similar to the calculated and bashful move you make on first dates.

  I remember walking with Joanie on the secluded beach in front of the Kahala resort. We’d just had lunch at Hoku’s, and we’d each had a glass of wine. I remember walking close to her, purposefully brushing her hand with my own, hoping that it would stick somehow, and then finally putting my arm around her and feeling so satisfied when she came in closer and stayed. The beautiful hotel was alongside us, and it felt as though we were on vacation, tourists in an exotic land. It’s strange to think that we had ever been shy around each other.

  “I’m glad you didn’t sell the land,” Scottie says.

  “Really?” I ask. “Why?”

  “Because then we wouldn’t have it anymore,” she says.

  “It will be yours one day,” I say. “Both of you.”

  “That’s a lot to have,” Alex says.

  Scottie flips to the last page of the book, and there are the two who started it all, Princess Kekipi and Edward King.

  “Why are they at the end?” I ask. “Shouldn’t they be at the beginning?”

  “I guess so,” Scottie says. She puts her hand on the princess’s portrait. “I’ll do it later.”

  “It’s okay, though,” I say. “I sort of like them at the end.”

  It’s funny that I think of them as the beginning, because they were also descendants of somebody, generations of prints on their DNA, traces of human migrations. They didn’t come out of nowhere. Everyone comes from someone who comes from someone else, and this to me is remarkable. We can’t know the people who are in us. We’ll all have our moment at the top of the tree. Matthew and Joan. We’ll be those two one day.

  I drift off for a while. I don’t know how long, but when I open my eyes, the Oscars are still on and Alex tells me that Sid has gone and this makes me a little sad. Whatever the four of us had is over. He is my daughter’s boyfriend now, and I am a father. A widower. No pot, no cigarettes, no sleeping over. They’ll have to find inventive ways to conduct their business, most likely in uncomfortable places, just like the rest of them. I let him and my old ways go. We all let him go, as well as who we were before this, and now it’s really just the three of us. I glance over at the girls, taking a good look at what’s left.

  44

  I STEER THE small canoe and am doing a terrible job at it; we cut a crooked path through the ocean and the girls are tired from all the extra strokes. My Polynesian ancestors would be disappointed in me, in all of us. I don’t have the gift of wayfinding, of using the sun, stars, and swells to navigate the open ocean. Those skills and instincts have been lost.

  “Should we just put them here?” Alex yells back. She’s in the first seat, and I can see the muscles rippling down her back.

  “Swimmer, Dad,” Scottie says. “Swimmer!”

  I see a white bathing cap bobbing toward us, but then it floats toward the catamarans.

  “Let’s go past the break,” I say. “Out of the traffic.”

  “Go straight, then,” Alex says.

  “I’m trying.”

  “Try harder. You need to predict when it will turn, and don’t overcorrect. You’re too slow.”

  Joanie could steer straight. I’m pretty sure that’s what we’re all thinking.

  I try to use the orange wind sock as my target. I can see the reef poking up in spots like jaws. The sun is a fuzzy glow under gray clouds. The water is dark, and the darker shapes of the rocks on the ocean floor seem to move beneath us. My paddle grazes a chunk of reef that’s pocked like a honeycomb, and I steer to the
right to get us to deeper water. The ashes are in the bag and the bag is in my lap. Every now and then I’ll look down at my lap and experience a feeling of injustice. It isn’t right that she’s in my lap like this. I can barely feel her. I think of those burial options: Be paddled off in a canoe and scattered!

  Large swells move near the wind sock, yet they don’t break. One moves under us, and the canoe glides to its crest, then comes down hard. The nose slashes through the water, and as we approach the next wave, which seems bigger than the last, I push the bag of ashes more snugly between my legs. Scottie stops paddling.

  “Keep paddling,” I say, my voice taking on a nervous pitch. We need our momentum to make it over so that the wave doesn’t take us back down with it. We climb the wave, spray shedding off it so I can’t see, and then we sail down its curved back, landing hard so that we all fly up off our seats.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I say.

  The girls are quiet and I can tell they’re worried. They plunge their paddles in deep, moving as much water as their little bodies can manage. Their wrists are submerged and they take quick strokes. We paddle longer than we need to, so that we’re far beyond the break. The water is even darker, and the rocks at the bottom of the ocean look like sleeping creatures. It seems too dark and cold and lonely to rest here for eternity, but I don’t say anything.

  The girls stop paddling. I look at the stretch of Waikiki. It looks different each time I see it, though it hasn’t changed that much: lots of people, aqua water, surfers sliding down waves, sand white like bone china. It just means something different to me each time I see it. Today it means Joanie. Joanie’s beach.

  I take the bag. It came with a silver scooper and I hold this in my hand, too, staring at it as if it’s a joke.

  I’ve thought about how we should do this.

  “Alex,” I say. “Come closer to your sister. Maybe sit on the ama.”

  She turns around and steps over her seat and stands in the canoe, holding on to the sides for balance. She has piled her wet hair on her head so that it looks like a beehive, which makes me think of the reef.