by Swan Huntley
“What’s your story, man?” Ana asked, glancing in the rearview and pulling the end of her braid.
The guy’s story was that he was Brian from Portland and he was here to sell hats. Like the one he was wearing. He took it off and held it between us so we could see. The I LOVE YOU had obviously been handstitched.
“That’s an incredible idea!” Ana was fervent. She grabbed my arm. “Yes!”
At Magic Sands we said good-bye and good luck to Brian, and watched him greet the hippie girl—also wearing an I LOVE YOU hat—who was twirling in slow circles in the sand for no apparent reason.
Ana smacked the wheel. “That’s what we’re going to do.”
“What? Make hats?”
“No, we don’t have the money for hats. But the idea is good. Saying ‘I love you’ to people. I mean, right? That’s a great idea for a good deed.”
“I think ‘I love you’ might send the wrong message though.”
“I see what you mean. We have to change it a little. ‘You are great.’ No, that’s not powerful enough. You are…you are…”
“You are loved,” I said.
“Genius.” Ana rolled her eyes and sighed, pleased. “Nan,” she said, “we should win the Nobel Peace Prize. I mean, come on.”
We were driving back down Ali’i now, toward Ana’s house, where my car was parked. It was four o’clock already. Time to get home and make dinner.
When she pulled into her driveway, I was all ready to say the good-bye things I had prepared a little: Thanks for the wonderful day; I really enjoyed it. And give her a hug and say, “See you soon,” and maybe stop at Safeway for milk on the way home because we needed some, but then Ana said, “Come in for a sec?” to which I replied, “Okay, but I can’t stay long.”
•
We sat on the edge of the Jacuzzi, our feet in the water. We were both still wearing the same outfits we had worn to yoga that morning. It was unlike me to stay in my workout gear all day, but there was something about being slightly dirty that I liked. And I thought: when I was younger, younger and freer, I would often spend full days in a swimsuit, or in my pajamas, or in whatever because it didn’t matter that much. I was just going with the flow then.
But I was also thinking about Chuck—he’d be getting off work soon—and the boys—they were probably already home smelling of chlorine and looking for the snacks I hadn’t prepared. The orange sun was getting closer to the ocean, and it was probably four fifteen now. “I should leave in about five minutes,” I told her.
“Well, that’s perfect because I think I just figured out what we should do.” She took off her sunglasses. Her eyes, glimmering orange, two little suns. “Okay, just let this sink in before you judge it, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I think we should go get some white chalk from Walmart. Fat chalk, not skinny. And then we should write YOU ARE LOVED on the sidewalks in town.” Ana squealed, delighted with this plan.
I imagined actually carrying it out. “But people will be walking all over us.”
She tapped her finger on her lip. “I know. Obvious! We’ll go at night.”
Then—the noise of a gong reverberating. It was Ana’s phone. She looked at the screen. “Fuck, it’s Eunice,” she said. And then she picked up and said, “Hey, Eunice!” in the cheeriest voice I’d ever heard.
The sun was dipping lower in the sky. Chuck would be on his way home now. I hoped that he’d stop and get the milk because I might not have time. But he wouldn’t think to do that unless I had specifically asked him to, which I had not. When Ana got off the phone, I would tell her I had to leave.
“Uh-huh, uh-huh,” she was saying, her voice still chipper. This was followed by a disappointed “Oh,” and then she put her whole hand over her neck and pretended to strangle herself. “I understand,” she said coolly. “Okay, thank you, Eunice. Good-bye.”
She hung up. “Fuck. She’s fucking selling the fucking house.” Ana slumped out of her straight-backed yoga posture and let her head fall forward. “She’s putting the ad up tomorrow.”
I cringed for her. “I’m sorry, Ana.”
She tugged her braids. She was distraught. “This is bad.” And then—woosh!—she whipped her braids over her shoulders, which changed the tone. “But you know what? I sensed some hesitation in her voice.” She looked up at the clouds, but only for the briefest second because she already knew what she wanted to find. “If she’s putting the ad up tomorrow, that means we need to do the sidewalk thing tonight. It has to be tonight. Maybe that will stop her.”
Carefully, I said, “That seems”—I paused, looking for a gentler word than nonsensical—“well, it seems a little nonsensical.”
“It seems insane, I know. But I’m floundering, Nan. What am I going to do? I feel I need to take some action here.”
“I understand,” I said, though I didn’t, not exactly.
“I’m just—fuck! I just—it just feels like a real need, you know? I need to do some good right now. At least try to change the course of things. Damn. I wish I had thought of this earlier.” She touched her heart and tears welled in her orange eyes. “Like in my twenties.”
It was a little awkward getting to her. I had to take small steps along the Jacuzzi bench so the water wouldn’t splash up on me too much. I sat beside her, put my arm around her shoulders, and that’s when she began to cry. At first it was a slow pulsing sob, and then she cried harder and harder and then it seemed like the act of crying was making her cry and then she was crying so hard I thought this couldn’t possibly be all about the house. It was about everything now, just everything in general.
“Sshh sssh,” I comforted. It took me a second to realize I was rocking her. I was such a mom, even when I wasn’t trying to be.
When she was all cried out, she wiped her wet face on my shoulder. She looked like the saddest woman in the world. In a small voice, with her eyes so expectant, she asked, “Will you please do this with me tonight, Nan?”
•
“The boys aren’t coming home either,” Chuck said over the phone. “Team dinner. I’ll just”—I could see him in the living room, putting his hand on his waist—“stay here. Do we have”—I could see him walking into the kitchen, opening the fridge, noting the vegetables I’d planned to cook for a Thai-inspired stir-fry—“hmmm.”
I was sitting on Ana’s low couch, picking at my toenail polish and watching her do a headstand. “You could cook those veggies,” I said.
“That seems like a lot of work.” I heard the fridge door close. “I don’t think I’m in the mood to cook.”
I am often not in the mood to cook, Chuck, but I do it anyway. “Maybe you could order something.”
“Let’s order in,” Ana whispered.
I nodded.
“Or maybe,” Chuck said, “it is pool night. Maybe I’ll go down there and say a quick hello to the team. I can eat there.”
“You can eat there,” I repeated, not really paying attention. Ana’s face was red now. Upside down, she looked like a different person—still pretty, but her cheeks were in the wrong place. I had chipped a good-sized red piece of polish off my toenail. I told myself to stop chipping. I couldn’t just leave the chip on her couch, so I put it in my pocket.
“I’ll just eat there then,” Chuck said. I could see him walking toward the closet now with plans to change his clothes. “See you later?”
“Yes,” I said, “have a nice time.”
“Love you, Nance.”
“Love you, Chuck.”
Ana lowered her legs slowly to the floor in one piece, which was impressive. “You’re so fortunate, Nan,” she said, adjusting her wig. “You have a husband who loves you and children who adore you and a house with a garden up on the cool mountain. You are constant and dependable and your life is beautifully ordered.”
“You,” I said, “have no attachments and total freedom and you don’t have to cook for anyone.”
“I never cook,” Ana said absolutely.<
br />
“Never?”
“No,” she said, setting her chin on her knee. “Cooking gives me zero joy.”
I laughed.
“Here’s a question: do you like cooking?”
“I mean, sometimes. But I always cook. It’s part of my job. I have to.”
“You have to?”
“Well, I don’t have to have to, but, yeah, I kind of have to.”
“I don’t do anything I don’t want to do,” Ana said. “I follow my instincts.” She squinted her eyes and nodded. “It’s like that Ana Gersh quote. ‘I am a lamp to myself. I am my own confidence. I hold the truth within myself as the only truth.’ ”
13
Chuck poured the coffee. I took the milk out of the fridge. The single-sized plastic bottle of milk that definitely wasn’t organic—it was all they’d had at the gas station.
We had a rule. No talking until the first sip of coffee. I added my milk, and while he added his, I ran my hand over his poufy bed hair. Then we sipped.
“How was your night?” I asked him.
He kissed me on the forehead, wrapped his hand around my waist. “It was fun,” he said. “Dylan is good at pool. So is Brad. Oh, and Brad said Marcy’s waiting for you to call her, by the way.”
“I know. I’ve been meaning to.” I stretched my arms up. My back felt sore. I had known it would. Bent over the sidewalk, writing YOU ARE LOVED for the thirtieth or fortieth time—I lost count—I had thought: Nancy, your back is going to be sore tomorrow. “Did you win?”
“We lost.” He joke-frowned. “I forgot how bad I am at pool.”
This was true. Chuck was terrible at pool. I didn’t respond.
“I want to get better. You should see these guys. I mean, really complicated shots.”
I stretched my neck while Chuck peeled a banana.
“What did you eat?” I asked.
“Mozzarella sticks and chicken wings.”
I would hold myself back. I would not scold him. At least he was eating a banana now.
“What about you? I didn’t even hear you come in. How was your night with Ana?”
“On-a.”
“Right, On-a.”
“It was fun.”
“Yeah? What did you do?”
Writing on sidewalks sounded like lunacy without a long explanation, and I was too achy for that right now, so I kept it simple. “We ordered Thai food and talked. I held her snake.”
“She has a snake?”
“I mean lizard. Shit. Lizard.”
Chuck didn’t seem to care about the difference, which meant he hadn’t come across the no-snakes law in his Hawaii research. “Lizard, huh?” He took a bite of his banana. “What did you two talk about?”
Our plans for writing on sidewalks while Ana played with my hair because she still missed hers so much. “Yoga,” I said, “and just, you know, how to be better people in the world.” I felt a little bad for lying to Chuck, so I reminded myself it wasn’t really lying. A small omission. It barely counted. Later, when I felt less sore and more awake, I would explain the whole thing.
“Better people in the world,” Chuck repeated. “That’s big. Do you have any tips for me?” He winked. “About how to be a better person in the world?”
“Well,” I put my hands around my mug—we needed new mugs, maybe smaller ones like Ana’s, because why were ours so huge?—“yes. My tip is: Don’t do anything you’ll regret later.”
Right after the words had left my mouth, I realized the problem. The problem was that this implicated Shelly. Chuck seemed to pick up on it, too. He shifted his weight and said, “I won’t do anything I’ll regret ever again, Nance.”
“I won’t either, I hope,” I said quickly. And then to make light of it: “I’ll never buy this shitty milk again.”
That made him smile.
“Come here,” I said, and he leaned over the counter and I kissed his banana lips.
•
After he left, I spent a relaxed morning stretching on the lanai and eating oatmeal and watering the garden. One slim green sprout had sprung from the earth, but I couldn’t remember which vegetable it belonged to. That was fine. It would be a surprise. My blog was all about watercress today. “Watercress Peanut Stir-Fry = 2 Die 4 x 8!” I would make that for dinner. Cooking would be fun if I reinvented what I was cooking.
When I had nothing left to do, I called Marcy back. “Oh, I’m so glad you called me today!” She sounded thrilled. “The lei-making class starts in a few hours. Will you come? Say yes.”
I had no plans for the rest of the day. And the empty house, which I’d been happy to have to myself since Chuck had left for work, seemed dangerously empty when I imagined the hours ahead. “Okay,” I said, “I’ll meet you there.”
•
The loud-shirted women and their screaming flowers were a manic outburst in the sterile, air-conditioned room. They sat at a long plastic table in the high-ceilinged Activity Den of the community center. They were all old, and their floral shirts were all different but all the same. The table was covered in mounds of flowers separated by color. Every color of the rainbow was represented. Oranges and purples and yellows and pinks and something fuzzy and green.
Marcy had an outburst when she saw me come in. “Nanceeeee!”
A few women looked up, looked me over. Black spandex crops, black top. I had decided not to change because I had decided I felt more active when I stayed in my active clothes all day.
“I saved you a seat.” Marcy gave me a one-second hug—she smelled like Aqua Net—and pulled the chair out for me.
“Nancy, this is”—and then she said all of their seven or eight names, and the only two I retained were Auntie Moleka (because she was the teacher) and Holly (because she was the woman Ana and I had seen at Longs—the one who probably owned a French bulldog).
“How have you been? It’s so great you came.” Marcy smiled with her whole face. Her teeth were yellow and boxy and very small, and her pink floral shirt brought out the pink in her cheeks.
“Thanks for inviting me,” I said, scooting in closer. I had arrived a relaxed seven minutes late, and the women were already working. Marcy must have arrived early, because she was halfway done with her first lei.
“Here,” she said, “I knotted one off for you.” She placed a threaded needle in front of me with care. “So that’s it. Just add flowers.”
“Thanks.” I sat there for a second, contemplating my choices. Was this something I was going to spend a lot of time and attention making, or was I just going to put some flowers on a string? The red flowers at the far end of the table near Auntie Moleka looked nice, but no, it was too much effort to get up. I would just put some flowers on a string. I picked a plumeria from the heap in front of me.
“Good choice,” Marcy said, tugging her yellow flower down her string in little jolts. “And hey, I like your nails. Purple and sparkles? How fun. Did you go back to the salon?”
Flashback to Ana painting them last night, flashback to Portico wrapping herself around the nail polish bottle and Ana saying, “Portico, you always want what’s mine.”
I settled on a half-lie. “I did them at home.”
“An ancient tradition!” Auntie Moleka boomed in a raspy voice. She had a thick Hawaiian accent—not full pidgin, but almost there, not that I fully understood what qualified as pidgin—and at least four double chins. “There is no replacement for a real Hawaiian lei! Artificial flowers? Nah.” She held up her lei for us to see. “You see this, lei makers? Tight flowers. You gotta make it tight. Pull your flowers all the way down. No loosey-goosey. And color! You see these colors?” Red flowers and white flowers and some of the green fuzzy things. She laughed to herself—until that made her cough, and then she was batting her chest and fumbling for her Sprite. When she had recuperated, she pushed her small wire-framed glasses up her big nose. “It looks like a Christmas lei, yeah?”
Holly the French bulldog owner said, “Festive,” and the woman in p
urple groaned, “The stems are so annoying,” and the slight woman across from me encouraged herself: “Okay, I can do this.”
“She’s a third-generation lei maker,” Marcy whispered to me. “Fan-tas-tic woman.”
Wow, I mouthed, and looked at Auntie Moleka, who was popping open a plastic container of either potato or macaroni salad—I was too far away to tell the difference.
Marcy worked diligently, sitting forward in her chair. I worked in a relaxed fashion, sitting back. Every once in a while, Auntie Moleka offered more gems of third-generation lei-making wisdom. “Stab in the centah!”
Marcy, unprompted, went ahead and told me everything that was on her mind. She raved about Brad’s pool skills—“He’s fabulous at geometry; that’s why he’s so good”—and said Brad was just thrilled that Chuck had decided to join the team. And wasn’t the name Tide Poolers so clever? In other news, she’d found the perfect hat at Hilo Hattie’s—with a floral pattern, of course, “to get into the spirit of aloha.” And she’d discovered a shortcut from the main road to the beach that didn’t even exist on Google Maps. As far as mulberry pie, she planned to bake her own from now on because going down south—it was just too much to ask. On the subject of food, Marcy missed her California burritos and had heard of a Mexican place in town called Pancho & Lefty’s that was supposed to be just “fantastic” and we should go there after this. I was starving and said, “Sure.”
I listened to her and passively agreed with everything she said—“Mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm”—while stabbing my needle through the centah of my plumerias. I’d added a few orange flowers because they were within reach. I liked that Marcy kept talking because it meant I didn’t have to. Her voice was like a distant whir. I could tune in and out as I pleased. The things she was saying and her animated way of saying them—the true delight with which she delivered, “And then I found the perfect hat!” for example—reminded me of Sheila and Donna and the rest of the water polo moms in San Diego, who also found inexplicable pleasure in the minute details of their uneventful lives.
