by Swan Huntley
“Do we have to go back to school today?” Jed asked.
“Cam?” I turned to face him. “Are you going to be okay here today?”
Before he could respond, Ana said, “Here, Cam, take this,” and opened the center console. “Nan, will you pass him the Swiss army knife?”
There was no Swiss army knife, but there was another knife, a gold one. “You mean this?”
“Yeah, give it to Cam.”
“This is a weapon.”
Ana took it from me and passed it to Cam. “Cam, if anyone corners you in a bathroom, you cut them up.” She laughed. “But I’m serious.”
Cam hesitated before taking it. “I’m probably not going to use this.”
“No, you are absolutely not going to use that,” I said. “Give it back to me right this second.”
“Here,” Cam said, and gave it back.
“Damn, Mom, you’re a boss lately,” Jed said.
“Cam,” Ana said, “if anyone corners you, you sock them in the trachea, you hear me?”
“No,” I said. “If anything happens, you go to the principal. And you call me. Do not sock anyone.”
“Yeah, call Mom.” Ana slapped the wheel. “She’ll show up and sock them for you.”
I rubbed my eyes. “No more violence. I’m serious.”
And then—“Here!”—Ana was pulling over.
Yes, here were the remnants. A patch of charred earth, ashes in the shape of the wooden slab it used to be.
“This wasn’t a fire-fire,” Ana said. “This was a little cookout fire. I can’t believe they brought you in for questioning over this.”
“What did the sign used to say?” I asked.
“Something about excellence,” Cam said.
“Ha!” Ana hit my arm. “Come on, Nan, that’s funny.”
I didn’t respond. I wanted to go back to sleep.
We drove up to the main entrance, where Ana turned to face the boys. “Gentlemen, I have something to say.” A pause. She was waiting until she had their full attention. “Don’t waste your time being upset. If dying has taught me anything—and this is my second time dying, by the way—it’s to enjoy the ride. You go into this school and you own it today. Don’t let anyone mistreat you. You be you and you be proud. And get good grades. You hear me?”
“Totally,” Jed said.
“Yes.” Cam was laughing.
“And fuck high school!” Ana shouted, her arms up in the air, her fingers spread far apart. “That’s it, boys, kill ’em today.”
They jumped out the sides of the car and walked through the entrance, their heads barely hanging.
•
Ana took me to lunch at the Four Seasons because she wanted to die with her bank account at zero or less. We sat outside. The horizon, how it stretched. The sky, so blue and clear. Soft breeze and the water was calm. We ordered poke and shrimp cocktail and strawberry mango smoothies. “Kama’aina discount,” Ana told the waitress.
“No problem,” the waitress said, relaxing a little now that she knew we were local. “You ladies don’t live in Pahoa, do you?”
“No,” Ana said.
“Good, cuz they’re evacuating. It just came on the radio.”
“Oh no,” I said, imagining all those people having to leave their homes. I pictured it like a movie because it didn’t seem real.
“Hope they make it out in time,” the waitress said.
“They will,” Ana said certainly. “It’s the twenty-first century.”
When the smoothies arrived, Ana took a sip and said, “This is so much better than Ensure. You know that’s what I should be drinking right now.” She touched her wig hair. She was solemn. “I should be drinking Ensure and dying in an institution.”
“It’s amazing you’re having so many good days,” I said.
“Right?” She plucked a shrimp off the side of the martini glass. “But let’s not talk about it anymore. It’s too depressing. I want to enjoy my life while I still have it.”
“Are you in pain though? Does your stomach hurt? Or, I mean…” I trailed off. I didn’t want to say the word pancreas.
“I am in pain. I’m just not showing you.” She chewed her shrimp with vigor and squinted at the sea. The sun glinted off the water in one straight line, straight from the horizon to us. “My flame is going to start petering soon. I can feel it.”
I thought I could feel it, too. It seemed inevitable.
“But I’m not ready yet. I have unfinished business.” She set the shrimp tail on the plate. “I can’t stop thinking about that horse. I don’t know why. I think I had a dream about it last night. That poor horse, being beaten for no reason. Maybe I can relate,” she said, her voice thin. “I just have to free that horse, Nan. It feels imperative.”
“Ana,” I said, pleading a little. “After last night and the boys and the fire and the police station and—it’s too much.”
“Nan, I know you’re upset right now, but I would urge you to ask yourself: Does this stuff really matter? The boys are fine. Liko is fine. Chuck is going to be fine. Yes, you might get a divorce, but you also might not. You don’t know yet. My opinion? Is that you should enjoy your life while you still have it. And use your time on this planet to set things right.”
As usual, it was hard to argue with her. She was dying. She understood things I couldn’t claim to understand.
The sun, the sky, the ocean. The ukulele music playing in the background, and this was the best smoothie I’d ever had. Was I enjoying it enough?
I wasn’t sure. Because I also wasn’t sure who was drinking this smoothie. Who was this woman at the Four Seasons, talking about freeing a horse? And why was she wearing this blue scarf that was kind of ugly?
“Nan,” Ana said, “I think you’ll feel better after you free this horse with me. It’s a good deed, clean and simple.”
The wind blew my scarf into my face. The blue striped pattern covered my view. Yes, I thought, ugly. An ugly pattern. But on the day I’d bought it at Marshall’s, I had loved this pattern. Well, Sheila had loved it, really. She was the one who told me to buy it.
Ana plucked the last two shrimps off the martini glass. She put one on my plate and one on hers. “This is the last time I’ll ask for your help, Nan.”
I looked at the clear, clear sky, and then at the vog in the distance. Was that Pahoa?
“We don’t even know where he lives,” I said.
Ana smiled. Her lips, her teeth, her pearly skin. She looked like a movie star. She looked like someone you would want to be sitting with at the Four Seasons.
“I got his address.”
“You did? How?”
She shrugged. “Small town.”
I sipped my smoothie. This is the best smoothie you’ve ever had.
“Please stop tripping out about Liko, Nan. It’s tiring, seriously. What you did last night was good. You were protecting your child.” Then she burped, which was not a movie star thing to do. “Good,” she said once more.
I stared at the perfect, clear horizon. “My lines are getting blurred.”
“Lines,” she repeated, like that was an interesting word. “Between good and bad, you mean.”
“Exactly.”
Ana sat up straighter, pulled her shoulders back. “When you’re about to die, you’ll see this as clearly as I do.” It seemed like she almost felt sorry for me. My poor brain was in a knot about something that was so simple to her.
“I wish I had your clarity,” I told her.
Gently she placed her hand over mine. I watched my wedding band be covered by her pale fingers. “You can take part in my clarity,” she promised. Her inviting eyes, so full of energy. How lucky she was to be having this many good days, and how soon they would be over. “Please help me. I need you. The horse is the last deed.”
We both already knew I would say yes. Because how could I say no to her? I couldn’t.
“The last deed?” I wanted her to promise.
Ana covered her
heart with her hand. “I swear my life on it.”
28
We left before Chuck got home. If Chuck was coming home. We took Ana’s car. The boys in the back and us in the front. Ana wore a satin periwinkle dress I’d never seen before and she’d put on extra makeup.
“I just want to look pretty right now,” she’d called to me from the bathroom while we were getting ready. I was in the closet, looking for more scarves to donate to Salvation Army. Or to Marcy, if I ever saw Marcy again. “There’s this documentary you should watch,” Ana continued, “about women with cancer who go to this hair salon because they want to look beautiful. It is so inspiring, Nan. And kind of a desperate, vain attempt to avoid the deathliness of death, but still. Very moving. People at the end of their lives—they’re so raw and real, you know? We should all live like we’re about to die.”
“Uh-huh.” I was only half listening. I was too busy looking for more ugly scarves in my closet.
She emerged in the doorway wearing shimmering green eye shadow, lots of blush, and heavy mascara. “You’re beautiful,” I told her.
“Good.” She struck a pose. “Because I don’t want to look like an invalid in front of the boys.”
•
I felt better once we were driving away from the house. I always felt better driving away from that house, just like I always felt better when I was in her car. The wind on my cheeks, the lush jungle rushing past. I liked not having to drive. I liked being the passenger. I could just sit here and watch the world pass me by.
This was the point on the mountain where the lush jungle dried out. In one more minute, it would all be lava. It was dusk. The wobbly horizon line reminded me of rush hour on the 5. The air was thick and gray and smelled like sulphur. The vog—and it was unmistakably vog now—had rolled over all of Kona town. It looked sad, almost. If you took out the tropical ocean, it could have been some bleak boondocks place in central California.
“Out of curiosity, where are we going?” Cam asked.
“Books and Natch,” Ana told him. “And it’s a new moon tonight.”
Cam had assured us twenty times that nothing bad had happened at school, but at the red light I felt the need to ask again. “Are you sure no one gave you a hard time?”
“I’m sure,” Cam said.
“It’s true, Mom,” Jed said. “Nothing happened.”
“I still want you to have the knife,” Ana said, whipping open the center console. She found it quickly, held it up. “A gift. From me to you.”
I took it before Cam could. “Thank you, Ana,” I said. “I’ll hold on to this. Cam, you can have it when you graduate.” This was a lie. I planned to throw the knife in the first dumpster I saw.
“Thanks, Ana,” Cam said, like a polite young man.
“Hey,” Jed said. “What about me? Where’s my gift?”
Ana bit her lip. “I have something else in store for you, Jedi.”
Jed thought about that. “Is it a knife?”
“Of sorts,” Ana told him.
“It’s not a gun,” I said.
“No, Nan. Of course not.” Ana slapped my knee. “Who do you think I am? I would never give your child a gun!”
“I know,” I said, “I was kidding.” But was I kidding?
•
Ana went to New Age and I went to Fiction. Cam and Jed went to the coffee table books about Hawaii. After a while I went to find them.
“Look, Mom.” Cam flipped the book over for me. Two pages, one photo. The volcano spurting lava. “We want to go see it,” he said.
“Wipe out that town,” Jed finished.
Ana’s voice behind us: “You bad, bad boys,” she joke-scolded.
Even the short walk to Natch seemed sadder with all this vog in the air. It’s like a metaphor for your blurriness, I thought. But ignore it, I rethought. And enjoy your life.
We plated up our dinners at the healthy buffet. Ana chose cantaloupe and brown rice. “I need to eat like a baby now,” she said.
The boys piled their plates high with organic macaroni and slices of eggplant pizza. I got what I always got: salad with fish and beets, plus a side of lilikoi dressing. When I looked at my plate, two things occurred to me. One: Chuck had never seen me eat this meal before, and I’d eaten it so many times. Two: I’m not hungry. Oh, and three: Enjoy your life.
Enjoying my life was hard right now, but I was trying.
We went to our old patch of yoga grass to eat as the sun lowered in the hazy sky.
“This is where your mother and I met,” Ana said, laying out two yoga mats for us to sit on.
“This is where Ana taught yoga,” I said, and noted how I had used the past tense. Soon, after she died, I would be saying, “This is where we used to eat with Ana as the sun set.”
The twins sat on one mat. Ana and I sat on the other. I looked at the grass. Maybe I was looking for one of Patty’s dropped earrings, or for some other evidence that we had been here. I found nothing. I picked a blade of grass and rolled it between my fingers.
Ana ate slowly, her hand affixed to her stomach the whole time, as if waiting for the sharp pain to come back. I was waiting for it, too. If she needed to be rushed to the hospital, I knew where the hospital was. It was half an hour south with no traffic, maybe twenty-five minutes going fast. I remembered something the real estate agent had said—“Kona is not a good place to be sick”—and how easily we’d cast that advice aside. “No, we’re healthy,” we’d replied, as if health were a thing you could keep in a box and hold on to forever.
I touched her back. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she whispered. I knew she didn’t want the boys to hear.
As the last bit of sun was being swallowed by the horizon, Jed said, “Wait for it, wait for it.” And then—I couldn’t believe it—there was a flash. A definite green flash. The boys agreed that it had been a definite flash.
Ana rubbed her stomach. “I saw nothing.”
“You must have blinked just like one second off,” Cam said.
Ana’s hands on her cheeks. “Story of my life.”
We lay back in the grass as the sky darkened. “The new moon,” Ana said, “is about new beginnings. It is a blank page. It is a time to set intentions. First, however, you must know what you want.”
The birds, the waves, a guy yelling, “Hey bra!” to his friend.
Ana repeated the last part. “You must know what you want.”
“I want a new iPad,” Jed said.
“I want courage,” Ana said.
“I want courage, too,” Cam agreed.
Ana touched my hand. “What do you want, Nan?”
“A lot,” I heard myself say.
“Abundance,” Ana said. “Good thing you’re married to a guy who works at the most abundant place on earth.” Ana chuckled. “Cost-co.”
She squeezed my hand. I squeezed back. Like so many other times, I thought: Thank God you’re here.
A long silence. The birds, the waves. How this sky, even with the vog, had so many more stars than the sky on the mainland.
“I’m gay,” Cam said.
Tears welled in my throat. “I’m so proud of you, Cam.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Me, too,” Jed said.
“I know everyone knows,” Cam said, “but I still wanted to say it.”
“You are brave,” Ana told him. “My gay husband didn’t come out till he was thirty-four.”
Jed was shocked. “You had a gay husband?”
“I might have had two gay husbands,” Ana said.
“Are you really going to die?” Cam asked her.
“Dude, I was just thinking that,” Jed said. “Like, I can’t even wrap my head around it. You look…I don’t know…you don’t look like you’re going to die.”
She said it with no emotion, but like it was just a fact. “I am going to die.”
The waves, the birds. Waiting for Ana to say something else. She blinked. I thought I saw one glistening
teardrop roll from the corner of her eye and fall into the grass.
•
We found Chuck passed out in a foldable chair right in the center of the half-built shed, his chin pressed into his chest and a flower in his crotch.
“Should we wake him up?” Jed asked.
“No,” I said, “leave him.” Leave him, leave him, leave him.
But then everybody left except for me. I said, “I’ll be right in,” and waited until they’d disappeared through the front door before taking Chuck’s cell phone out of his pocket. The whole time I was telling myself, Nancy, you are not a private investigator. Nancy, you should let this run its natural course. Nancy, do you really want to be in a marriage with someone you feel the need to investigate?
But I had to know. Now she had a name and her name was Brenda, so it wouldn’t be that hard to check.
Of course Chuck didn’t have a password on his phone, although I’d told him to set one three hundred times. He was making this too easy. Maybe he wanted to get caught.
Brenda, Brenda. I looked at his text messages first. And there was Brenda—third one down—right after Jed and Costco.
The exchange had been written the day before and it was short.
Brenda: Do you think we should tell your wife?
Chuck: I can’t tell her yet. Sorry.
I waited for some reaction, but there wasn’t one, not really. The space behind my eyes seemed to be throbbing, but other than that I just felt numb. Maybe that was my reaction: numbness. I was beyond emotions at this point. I was exhausted. And maybe I didn’t want to believe it either. I still wanted to be wrong somehow.
So I read it again. While rubbing my temples, waiting for my head to hurt.
No, still numb.
I could not deal with this.
And I couldn’t talk about it either, because that would make it real. I decided right there that I wouldn’t tell Ana. I just wouldn’t tell her.
I didn’t bother cramming the cell phone back into Chuck’s pocket. I dropped it into his crotch instead, right on top of the flower.
•
Before the boys went to bed, Jed asked Ana again what his gift would be. “What did you mean by sort of knife?”
