by Swan Huntley
Other things I was remembering about drunk Chuck: he told you things he didn’t have the courage to say when he was sober, and he made you feel like a single mother of three.
Chuck had rolled onto his side, so he probably wouldn’t die from choking on his own vomit.
“Go to sleep, Chuck.” I flicked the light.
18
Chuck crept into the bedroom before dawn to get his work clothes. I pretended to sleep. He changed quickly. He made coffee quietly. His car engine started just as the sun peered over the horizon and the black leaves turned green in the light.
I got up right after he left. I made the boys lunch, which I hadn’t done for at least a year. Maybe two years. Fat turkey sandwiches and Sun Chips for Cam and Doritos for Jed. Not that this would make up for last night, I thought, as I folded the tops of the brown paper bags. Not that it was my job to make up for anything, I thought, as Cam entered the kitchen. Because it wasn’t my fault, I thought, as I guiltily said, “Good morning.”
“Hey.” Cam frowned. Then he looked down the hall, so I knew Jed was there.
“Jed?”
No answer.
And then Jed appeared. His face was puffy. He’d been crying. He put his sunglasses on. “We’re leaving.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m sorry about your dad. He’s—I don’t know, but we’re going to figure it out, okay?”
Jed wasn’t listening. He was checking his phone.
Cam sighed.
“I made you lunch,” I said, pushing the lunch bags across the counter.
Cam reached for his. He knew it was his because I’d written their names on the front like they were still in preschool.
“Don’t take it, dude,” Jed said.
Cam’s shoulders slumped. He left the lunch and walked to the door. Jed followed him. They slipped on their flip-flops and kept walking.
“Love you!” I called after them.
They didn’t answer. I went out and stood on the lanai, waving good-bye as they drove away. I didn’t expect them to wave back, but I still hoped they would.
•
My morning routine wasn’t working. I tried to push through, but I just couldn’t do it. I kept looking at the driveway like I was waiting for someone to appear. Who? Chuck? My imaginary conversation with Chuck was on repeat in my head: “I am not with my yoga teacher all the time.” / “And who cares if I am.” / “And you need to grow up, Chuck.” / “And make your own shepherd’s pie!” I was spinning. I had to leave the house.
I found myself at the Old Airport walking path, walking in circles. Circles and circles and circles. When I needed water, I kept going. When my legs hurt, I kept going. When it started to rain, I kept going.
Far away across the runway of the old airport was our picnic table. Our initials, pounded by the rain. This was the start of their decay.
Then my phone rang. I expected it to be Chuck with his first of many apologies. I was surprised he hadn’t left a note already.
But it wasn’t Chuck. It was Ana.
“Ana,” I said.
“Nan.” She didn’t sound happy. “Remember how my stomach hurt yesterday?”
I said yes, of course, and she said it had been hurting like that for a little while. Why hadn’t she told me?
Two weeks ago she’d gone to the doctor and taken some tests. “And the results came back today,” she said. “The cancer’s back. Pancreatic.”
I gasped.
“I’m going to die soon. I’m cornered.”
“No.”
“I guess our karma game was bullshit. You can’t bargain with God.”
“But—”
“But you can sure as hell fight her!”
“What do you need? Do you want me to come over?”
“I need a few days to process this alone. But thanks, Nan, you’re a good egg.”
“So are you.”
“No I’m not. That’s why I’m going to die.”
“Please don’t say that.”
“In case anything happens, I want you to know you are loved, Nan. Because I love you.”
“I love you.”
“I’ll call you soon, friend. Good-bye.” She hung up.
I looked up. Where was I? I was standing in front of the drowning dog statue, watching rain pound down on its frantic face.
Fire
19
Two days later the police called. The boys had been arrested for arson. They’d burned down an abandoned shed in the middle of the afternoon. When the battery of their getaway car wouldn’t start, they had called AAA. When the police arrived, they were still waiting. “Just on the street there, watching the smoke,” the police officer said.
I turned off the stove. My healthy snack of mushrooms sizzled in the pan. “Please tell me this is a joke.”
“No ma’am,” the officer said, “this is real.”
•
The police station was a plain, cream-colored building down in the lava fields. It was the only building for miles. Random, I thought, as though fallen from space. Or not random at all, I rethought. If criminals tried to escape, there was nowhere to escape to.
I sat in the car with the AC on high while I waited for Chuck. I turned on the radio.
“This is a civil defense message. This morning’s assessment shows minor advancement of the downslope flow area. Residents and businesses downslope will be informed of any progression in flow activity and advancement, but there is no need for evacuation as of this afternoon.”
I turned off the radio. I felt lonely. I told myself to own my solitude. But I still felt lonely.
Chuck and I had barely spoken since his night at the bar. He had apologized, but his apology was watered down by the fact that he didn’t think he had done anything wrong. “I’m sorry, but it was only one night,” he’d said. Chuck didn’t seem to understand the gravity of the problem. I’d asked him to sleep in the ohana until I could forgive him for breaking yet another promise, and he had complied. But he had not complied in the submissive and guilt-ridden way I wanted him to. He had complied with bravado, as if I were overreacting. I was not looking forward to the moment when he would drive into this parking lot and burst out of the car with his whole body pulsing, ready to scream. Every time the boys got into trouble, Chuck lost his temper. And he’d sounded very stressed on the phone. “I don’t have time for this today.”
I wanted to call Ana, but Ana had said she needed time. Also she’d turned her phone off. I knew because I’d called several times already. But it was probably better this way. I didn’t need to burden her right now. She was dying. In certain moments—like this one, now, in the car—it would hit me again. Ana is going to die. And the air would get trapped in my throat for a second, and I wouldn’t know if I had too much air or not enough, and there would be a soreness in my chest, like now, and I would touch my heart, like now in the car with the AC on, and no more bad news because the radio was off and please please please, and I didn’t even know who I was saying please to, and then there was Chuck pulling his beat-up Honda fast into a spot and braking with a squeak and bursting out of the car with his whole body pulsing, ready to scream.
My initial reaction had also been anger. Well, first surprise, and then anger. But now, seeing Chuck angry enough for the both of us, I would take the role of the calmer parent. I would make up for what he lacked today. Even though he was drinking again. I would do this because it was my job.
I told myself to breathe in and out with intention—focus, focus, you can do this, you can do this. I sighed. I got out of the car.
Chuck was already right there, saying, “What the fuuuuuuck were they thinking?”
“I don’t know,” I said quietly.
He was shaking his head and picking at his skinny black belt and tugging the fabric of his polyester slacks off his legs. His face was like a flaming red balloon. Behind him were miles and miles of dead lava. “We are grounding them,” he said, teeth clenched.
“You know,�
� I said, and waited until I had his attention.
“What!”
My shoulders slumped forward. “Please don’t yell, Chuck. This is already hard enough.”
“Okay, I’m sorry!” He hit his leg. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry”—he smeared his hands down his face. “I just can’t believe them. Why would they do this? They’re good boys!”
This is what the anger was always really about. Chuck wanted his boys to be good boys.
“I mean, really,” he went on, a little more calmly, “what were they thinking?”
“I think they’re trying to get our attention, Chuck. The way they just stayed by the car? They didn’t even try to run away.”
“Well, if that’s true, that makes it worse,” he groaned, smearing his face again. It was so hot and he was so stressed and his pants were so tight, and I couldn’t help but comfort him.
I said, “Come here, Chuck”—he looked confused—“just come here and let me hold you for a second.” I put my arms around him. His body was burning up. His heart was beating so fast. I was doing this for the boys. I was doing this to calm their father down. I didn’t plan on hugging him again for a while after this.
Chuck managed to be semi-decent to the people who worked at the police station. (“Yes, I brought my fuuuuu—. I brought my checkbook, yes.”) But when we got back out to the lot with the boys in tow, the first thing he did was whip around and say, “What the fuuuuuck were you thinking?”
Chuck was being way too intense, but it was a good question. What the fuck were they thinking?
“I know what you’re going to do to fix this.” Chuck shot his pointer finger in the air. “You are going to build us a shed. At home, on our property. So you can understand what you destroyed. That is the answer.”
“Okay, we’ll talk about that later,” I said. “Boys, come with me.”
“And you are grounded, by the way,” Chuck added, and fought his way through the heat toward his sad, dented car.
I took the boys’ hands. “Let’s go.”
•
Why did I take them out for ice cream after that? Was it to soothe my babies or was it because I needed to feel less alone? I couldn’t bear the thought of more fighting. I needed to be getting along with the boys right now. Was this selfish? Was I exploiting the opening Chuck had created for me to be the Better Parent? Or was it none of these things, Nancy? Or was it just ice cream?
We did McDonald’s like the old days and drive-thru because it was too hot to get out of the car. In the bushes below the speakers was a homeless man—he looked really homeless, not half homeless—sleeping in a sleeping bag.
When I ordered a Big Mac, the boys didn’t ask me if I was off my diet. I passed them their soft serves and looped the car around. “One second,” I said, and got out of the car and set the Big Mac by the homeless man’s sunburned face. And then I lingered over him for a second, lingered in the feeling of this. Of being good when I didn’t have to be. Tears welled. I missed this feeling. I missed the sandwiches. I missed Ana.
I composed myself on the walk back to the car.
Cam said, “Did you just—”
“—give that guy a Big Mac?” Jed finished.
“Yes,” I said, “I did.”
“Wha?” Jed asked, his mouth full of soft serve.
The silence told me they were exchanging a look. “Doing good creates good,” I told them, backing the car out. “And doing bad—like burning a shed, for example—creates bad.”
More silence. And the feeling that no one really knew me, no one but Ana. I started toward home.
After a minute, I said, too severely, “Please tell me why you lit this fire.”
“I don’t know, Mom,” Cam whined. “We’re sorry, okay?”
“Yeah, Mom, we’re sorry,” Jed echoed, not very convincingly.
“Did you mean to light the shed on fire?” I made a right onto the winding road that led up the mountain. “Or was it an accident?”
“It’s not like we killed anyone,” Jed said, annoyed. “It’s not even that big of a deal.”
“It’s arson!” I slapped the wheel. “Arson! Hello! Arson? You’re going to have to go to court. And you skipped school. To light something on fire. In the middle of the afternoon.” Just the thought of them doing that—it was so ridiculous. It was so ridiculous that I laughed, and when I thought of how ridiculously bad everything else was right now, I kept laughing.
“You’re laughing, Mom,” Cam said.
My eyes watered. I had to wipe them to see the road. “Because you two are such morons! Who lights a shed on fire in broad daylight?”
Jed grunted. “We’re so stupid, dude,” he said to Cam.
“Yes! You are so stupid! Thank you!”
“Are you really going to ground us?” Cam wanted to know.
“Of course we’re going to ground you,” I said, regaining motherly control for a second.
“How long this time?” Jed asked like a seasoned veteran.
“I don’t know yet. Check with me later.”
As I pulled into the driveway, Cam asked, “But do we really have to build a shed?”
That started me laughing again. I couldn’t stop.
“You’re acting weird, Mom,” Cam said.
“Ah,” I said, “ah,” and I didn’t know what to say to that—I was laughing too hard to speak—but when I saw the house and felt the laughter change, I forced myself to say, “Meet you inside,” and the boys slammed the doors. Once they were gone I heaved and heaved—I couldn’t control it—and then I was sobbing, deeply and quietly, there alone in the car, right in front of my house.
20
I showed up to yoga with flowers and a whole pan of vegan carrot cake wrapped in tinfoil and a bow, but Ana wasn’t there.
“She asked me to fill in,” Kurt said. When he smiled, his veneers reminded me of her veneers.
Patty, who was still wearing her Marbles shirt and busy excavating something out of her molar, took her finger out of her mouth to say, “Maybe she has a new boyfriend.”
“Well,” Sara Beth stretched her skinny arms above her head, “if she does, I understand. It’s harder to come here so early when you’re leaving someone you love in bed, isn’t it?” She looked at me for assurance.
“Uh-huh,” I managed to say, and dropped my mat in the grass. I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay without Ana here, but I couldn’t just leave now either.
“Marbles used to sleep right on the pillow with me.” Patty stroked Marbles’s face on her shirt. “He kept it nice and warm.”
“I don’t think Ana has a new boyfriend,” I said, doing the same hands-up stretch as Sara Beth. It took me a second to notice I was copying her.
“That’s what happened last time she left us,” Patty said. “She fell in love and moved to Hawi for two years.”
“Right,” Kurt said, recalling the time with pursed lips.
“What?” Ana had never told me that. “She moved to Hawi?”
“We didn’t even know she was up there until Kurt ran into her at the mini-mart,” Patty confirmed.
“It’s true,” Sara Beth said. “She disappears sometimes.”
“Well, that’s not what’s happening this time,” I said. “Trust me.”
•
Kurt didn’t even have a gong bowl. He took us through the poses in a mechanical way, saying none of the inspirational things Ana would have said if she were here. He had looked up one quote on his phone, and he read it to us emphatically like we were in kindergarten. “This is from the Buddha,” he said. “ ‘Believe nothing. No matter where you read it, or who said it. No matter if I have said it. Unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.’ ” He set his phone in the grass. He didn’t repeat it, and he didn’t expound. He didn’t tell us what kinds of things we might not believe or where we might read these things. He did not give us one example of how he had used his own common sense, or how we might apply this advice to our lives today. Kur
t was a nice guy, but he was not a relatable yoga teacher. And he forgot so many things, even the simplest things, like “breathe.” He did not remind us that coming to our mats this morning had been a strong choice, or that we were here to cultivate compassion, or that even if nothing was okay, things were still okay because we were here in Hawaii in the morning light with the palm trees and the beach and the birds that never stopped singing.
Kurt’s adjustments were just what you’d expect from a dentist who was not really a yoga teacher. Clinical and tentative. My spine didn’t crack when he pulled my hips back in downward dog. When I hurt my elbow doing a jump back, I wanted to leave. Maybe this injury meant I could leave now. But it would be too much work to explain in the middle of class and it would be embarrassing, so I stayed until the bitter end, when we om’d a hollow om that wasn’t even strong enough to carry over the short rock wall.
•
I hadn’t been to the pink house in over a week. I felt a misty wave of longing as I pulled into the driveway, nostalgic for the past and then nostalgic for the future, when Ana wouldn’t be here anymore. My elbow hurt when I lifted the carrot cake off the seat, and the morning sun cast me in a long shadow when I got out of the car.
I knocked softly in case she was sleeping. I reminded myself to stay present, to stand on both feet equally. The crazy vines had made their way closer to the door, like they were trying to get inside. A green gecko, stilled by my presence, waited on a green leaf, pretending he wasn’t there.
I could leave the cake and flowers by the door; I could do that. But her car was here and she was here, only a wall away, or two walls if she was in the bedroom, and it seemed silly to just leave. I knocked harder, first with my knuckles and then with the back of my fist.
Footsteps. I told myself to remember their sound so that later, when she was gone, I could call upon the memory of their rhythm and compare it to the rhythms of other footsteps and other beats when I talked about Ana to the new friends I would eventually have to make.
