TroubleinParadise

by Cindy Jacks

  “Are you kidding? You really think I don’t have to make any sacrifices? I was perfectly happy working at that dive on the North Shore, surfing every day and partying every night. But when we got engaged, I took the job at the steakhouse so we’d have health insurance and a 401(k). I hated working there, but I never complained about it. Then I transferred to the resort—to a job beneath my skills—so I’d be able to make more money in the long run. That plan is finally coming to fruition. I’m tired of hearing what you’ll have to give up if we take the next logical step in our marriage.”

  “Do you hear yourself? ‘The next logical step’. Is that the only reason you want children?”

  “Of course not. I love you, Kala. I can’t think of anything better than a little person who’s half me and half you.”

  When he put it that way, she felt like an ass for not being ready to take the plunge. But they were still in their twenties, granted late twenties, but her eggs had plenty of time to sit unused on the shelf.

  Sione wouldn’t pressure me like this. The thought alarmed her. Wrangling her emotions, she did her best to stay on track with the issue at hand.

  “Baby, I’m not saying I want you barefoot and pregnant. And I wouldn’t mind if you want to work part-time,” Mika said.

  Did he… Did he really just say what she thought he said? “Gee, thanks for the permission, boss.”

  “That’s not how I meant it.”

  “I think it’s exactly what you meant. Well, I’ve got news for you—I don’t need your permission to work. You’re not my father, and even he doesn’t get to tell me what to do anymore.”

  “Yeah, and if you have it your way, I’ll never be anyone’s father.”

  At this she took her napkin from her lap, wiped her mouth and stood. She collected her purse and started to walk away.

  “Kala, where are you going?” he asked.

  An eye roll her only response, she stormed out of the restaurant. At first she considered stopping by home to get the van, but she didn’t want to run into Mika. Too tired and angry to rehash this argument, she found a bus stop two blocks away from the restaurant.

  The bus that would take her near Michelle’s grad student housing pulled up. Its door opened with a heavy whoosh of air, but she shook her head and told the driver she was waiting on the number fifty-two line. He shrugged and gave her an apathetic wave.

  Fifteen minutes later, the right bus showed up. Or perhaps the wrong bus. The number nine ran through Palolo Valley, one stop along its route sat dangerously close to the duplex Sione shared with two roommates. Ignoring her trepidation, Clarissa climbed aboard and paid her fare.

  She’d managed to put Sione from her mind for the last week. Michelle’s outburst had struck a chord, but now too many conflicting urges swirled around her brain. Thus far, devotion to Mika and reason had prevailed, but what had that gotten her? What if she acted on impulse? What if the sun didn’t rise and set by Mika? What if she pretended for just one night that Mika didn’t exist? Her words to Sione echoed in her mind—That’s an awful lot of ifs.

  * * * * *

  Three knocks. Clarissa had banged on the door three times and no one answered. Figured Sione would be out the one night she wanted to see him. Deflated, she turned and walked down the steps.

  The creak of a screen door caught her attention. She looked up to see Sione on the upper deck. He wore only a pair of cutoffs, his hair a tousled mess.

  “Kala, you okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I just wanted to talk. Did I wake you?”

  “Nah. What’s up?”

  She walked upstairs and joined him on the stoop. “Mika and I had a huge argument.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” He picked at the skin around his thumbnail.

  A tense pause hung heavily in the night air, but not born of the usual sexual tension. Something else. His words terse, his body turned toward the door, Sione gave off impatience in waves.

  “Did I catch you at a bad time?” she asked.

  He rubbed his neck. “Yeah, kinda.”

  “I’m sorry. I just don’t feel like going home. Can I come in? I’ll stay out of your way. You won’t even know I’m here.”

  “That’s the thing.” He scrunched up his nose. “I wouldn’t mind you hanging out, but I’m…I’m not alone.”

  “Oh.” The full meaning of what he’d said took a moment to sink in. “Oh. God, I’m an idiot. Serves me right for popping in on you. Sorry. Good night.”

  Clarissa couldn’t hurry down the steps fast enough. She ignored his calls after her. Her cheeks burned with humiliation. Earlier, when she made the decision to see Sione, she’d imagined him home, forlorn and brokenhearted, pining for her. And all his crap about wanting her. If she were free—if he were free… Embarrassment at her gullibility turned her stomach.

  He jogged up beside her as she hurried across the street. “Kala, don’t leave mad.”

  “I’m not mad. I feel stupid. I bought the bullshit you were slinging the other night. But thank you. Really, I’m glad you were otherwise occupied tonight. At least I never actually slept with you, right?”

  “What? You came over here tonight to sleep with me?”

  “No.” Though the thought had crossed her mind on the way here. A lot. Exhausted, she flopped onto the bus stop bench and sank her head into her hands. Her eyes stung as she blinked away teardrops. What a mess.

  Sione sat down and rubbed her shoulders. “What did you two fight about?”

  “You should go back to your date. Don’t worry about me.” Even as she said the words, her voice trembled and jumped two octaves, undercutting her bravado.

  “It’s okay, Kala. Tell me what happened.”

  Wiping her cheeks, she sniffled. “It’s the same thing we always fight about. He wants me to commit to making babies this spring and I want a little more time.”

  “For what?”

  Clarissa shrugged. “I don’t know. To get settled into a job. To work on my art career. The usual stuff.”

  He continued to massage her upper back, his strong hands working the knots from her neck. After a while, he said, “I’m going to say something you aren’t gonna like, but I’m going to say it because I’m your friend and you need to hear it, ’kay?”

  She nodded.

  “Mika’s right. You make excuses to put off what he wants because you’re afraid of the responsibility. And before you bite my head off, let me just say that I see the behavior in you because I do the same thing. We don’t want to grow up, but maybe it’s time we both did.”

  As she looked up at him, her first instinct was to dispute his assertion. But how could she? He’d hit the nail on the head. Every time Mika brought up children, she felt as though a hippo had parked itself on her chest. Scared and cornered, her only recourse was to lash out. How could she tell the man she loved that his hopes and dreams felt like a straitjacket to her?

  Sione planted a kiss on her cheek. “And I’m sorry if I—not ‘if’—that I muddied the waters.”

  Clarissa took a deep breath. “Wasn’t just you. We both did.”

  “Michelle’s here,” Sione said to the ground more than Clarissa.

  “What?”

  “Michelle’s my hot date.”

  “Holy crap.” She clapped a hand over her mouth, giving Sione a pinch on the arm. “You should’ve told me.”

  “Auwe. Sorry, sistah.”

  “Oh God, she must think I’m pathetic, showing up like this. Apologize to her for me.”

  “Nah. She knows you’re going through a rough time. That’s why she came over last night, to rip me a new one. She was pissed after you told her what I did. Yelled at me for like an hour, told me I was messing where I had no right to mess. When she finally let me get a word in, I said she was right.

  “Then we talked about us for a while. There’s something between us, always has been.”

  “Which is why you ran away from her,” Clarissa interjected.

  “Exactly. Afte
r that, one thing led to another…” A sly grin completed his thought. “When she saw you were at the door, she sent me out here ‘to clean up after myself’.”

  Clarissa squeezed the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. “This whole situation is one big, fat, hairy mess. I didn’t mean to interrupt you two. You should be inside making up with Michelle, not playing wet-nurse to me. I feel like an idiot.”

  The weight of her foolishness bore down on her. A few sobs clutched at her throat. Though she fought to keep her composure, she lost the struggle. Fat tears welled up in her eyes and spilled down the bridge of her nose, taking her mascara with it. She swiped at them, leaving black smudges on her fingertips.

  A sheltering arm wrapped around her. He whispered to her, “Sh, sh, sh.”

  Of all the intimate moments they’d shared in the past weeks, this one felt real, felt good. Built not on misplaced affections, but the security of a friendship that had weathered a storm. Sione held her as she cried, the hum of the occasional passing car the only indication the outside world still existed. But one vehicle didn’t drive past, and the slam of a car door drew their attention.

  “What the fuck, man?” A sharp tone of indignation rang out, perhaps more than that—a deep wound. Mika stalked across the street, parking himself in front of his wife and his cousin.

  Sione stood up. “Brah, it’s not what you think.”

  “You.” Mika gave an accusatory jab to Sione’s shoulder, moving the man backward. “You don’t talk to me right now, Sione, or I’ll bash your fucking face in. Let’s go, Kala.”

  “You’ve got the wrong idea.” She rushed to get up.

  “Didn’t I just say I don’t want to talk about this now? Just get in the car, Kala.”

  “Cuz, nothing happened. Nothing happened,” Sione called after Mika.

  Mika spun around, chest heaving. “Who you trying to convince? Me or you?”

  “Don’t worry,” Clarissa said to Sione. “I’ll talk to him.”

  Sione gave her a curt nod, his lips tight against his teeth.

  Her feet weighed down by anchors, body wooden, she trudged to the van and climbed in. Mika tore away from the curb.

  “I get that you’re upset, but could you not drive like a madman?” she said.

  “What were you doing there?” He gripped the steering wheel tighter.

  “Talking, that’s it. I swear.”

  “What you two have to talk about, huh? This is the second time I find you with him after we fight. Is there something going on?”

  Clarissa didn’t reply.

  He turned left onto the main thoroughfare without signaling. His teeth ground against each other. “I’ve been looking all over the place for you. To apologize. But I couldn’t find you anywhere. So I come over to Sione’s to grab a couple beers while you cool off and I find you there, making a fool out of me with my own cousin.”

  “I didn’t do anything but cry on his shoulder.” She set her jaw—it was time to come clean. “But I find him so much easier to talk to than you. He’s easier to be around.”

  Mika flinched “Are you telling me you want to be with him?”

  “No. I just… I have doubts about us. I think we want different things.”

  “Doubts? Why is this the first I’ve heard of you having doubts?”

  She flung up her hands. “Are you kidding me? I tell you all the time, you just don’t listen!”

  “But I bet Sione listens real good, huh?”

  Objections and excuses evaporated on her lips. The hard fact of the matter was she had no good excuse for her behavior. She could protest her innocence all she wanted, but her intentions tonight hadn’t been innocent. By dumb luck, she and Sione had dodged a bullet. If Michelle hadn’t been there… Clarissa didn’t finish the thought.

  Silence stretched into a chasm between them. Clarissa stewed in her own guilt as Mika pulled in front of their apartment building. Reaching across her, he shoved open the passenger-side door.

  “You’re not coming in?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  Sheer anguish colored his face, a harsh, ruddy hue licking at his cheeks. Eyes like granite, he swallowed hard.

  “Mika—” she began, but words failed her.

  She felt dirty, angry with herself, foolish. She couldn’t stand his expression.

  “Nothing happened,” she croaked.

  “You went to another man for comfort, my cousin. How do you think that makes me feel?” He nearly spat the words through clenched teeth.

  She couldn’t think of a response.

  “There’s nothing to say, Clarissa. Just get out of the van.”

  The use of her proper name cut her more than any knife could. It spoke of a distance, gaping and unbridgeable.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not running to another woman if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  Again his words cut her, but she deserved it.

  “Please, go.” He motioned for the door.

  She swallowed hard, nodding. “Don’t do anything stupid, Mika.”

  “I need time to think.”

  “How much time?”

  “I don’t know. Just go inside.”

  Nothing left to do, nothing left to say, she unbuckled her seatbelt and stepped out onto the sidewalk. Mika slammed the door and took off without a backward glance.

  * * * * *

  The sun came up over Diamond Head. Bold brushstrokes of hot pink and deep purple painted another glorious Hawaiian sunrise. Clarissa had come to take them for granted most days, but not today. She stood on the lanai, entranced by the subtle changes in the sky. The coolness heated little by little to a warm orange glow.

  By sunset that evening, Mika still hadn’t come home. Clarissa grew more alarmed the longer he stayed away. Melodramatic absences were more her style. Sione and Michelle had called around seven to check on her.

  “I’ll tell him I was here and that nothing happened. You two really did just talk,” her friend said.

  “But he’s right.” Clarissa’s voice quavered. “I was thinking about—”

  “Thoughts and actions are two different things, Kala. You two didn’t act on what you felt. That should count for something.”

  Sure it counted for something, but she’d still been in the wrong. They ended their call and Clarissa poured a glass of merlot. Panic and fatigue battled for supremacy over her state of mind. Sinking onto the sofa, she allowed the battle to continue with nothing more than a few gulps of wine to calm it.

  A photo album sat open on the coffee table. Their wedding album. One of the few occasions that brought her mother and father to the islands for a visit. Somehow they’d managed to refrain from sniping at each other, a minor miracle in and of itself. Not like their epic arguments from her childhood.

  Most of the time, they’d save the knock-down-drag-out fights for after Clarissa’s bedtime, as if the yelling and door slamming wouldn’t wake her. She’d sit in the dark, frightened, listening to harsh words. Sometimes she tried to look them up in the dictionary, but few of the words they hurled at each other appeared in Webster’s. Not in the Oxford English Dictionary either. Their cruel language was punctuated by dashed coffee cups or dinner plates, which sounded distinctly different from a broken wineglass or beer bottle. Once the words dissolved into her mother’s sobs and her father’s silent retreat, Clarissa would focus on a poster of dolphins frolicking in the Hawaiian surf—a gift from one of her father’s many business trips.

  In the morning, they’d pretend nothing was wrong, though the palpable tension made breakfast her least favorite meal of the day. Dinner was a close second with mouths pinched into flat lines of disgust. Sad point of truth, lunch at the school cafeteria became the only meal she could enjoy in peace.

  Her parents divorced when she was seventeen. With an adolescent disregard for her mother’s feelings, she’d asked Mom what had taken them so long to split up. Her mom replied they’d staye
d together for Clarissa’s sake. At this Clarissa had burst out laughing. Not her finest moment, but she couldn’t fathom how her parents had come to the conclusion that their cantankerous relationship would be a nurturing environment in which to raise a child.

  The divorce settlement took another embattled year to negotiate. By then, Clarissa had run away to Hawaii. Though she found few dolphins playing in lagoon-like settings, she’d found Mika and his family—a totally different experience from hers. Sure, there were squabbles, even long-standing feuds, but ’ohana came first. ’Ohana was everything. She found herself surrounded by more family than she knew what to do with. Aunties, uncles, tutus, great-tutus, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters and a multitude of cousins. The specific relation took on less meaning than the bond of family itself. She’d fallen in love not only with Mika but his entire clan.

  Her gaze fell on the juxtaposed photos, their formal wedding portrait and a snapshot of her and Mika dancing at their reception. Her smile in the portrait, though toothy and brilliant, hinted at her exasperation with the forty thousand shots the photographer had taken. In the candid picture though, her smile showed an unencumbered joy. A joy born of uniting her life with Mika’s.

  Michelle’s words echoed in her mind. Indeed thoughts and actions were two very different things. Was it nobler never to feel temptation or, having felt it, to have resisted it?

  A rattle at the front door interrupted her thoughts.

  “Kala?” Mika called out, squinting as his eyes adjusted to the dim house. She hadn’t bothered to turn on any lights.

  “Hey.”

  He lugged two ten-gallon drums with him and dropped them in the foyer. “Hey.”

  Taking a few tentative steps toward her, he shifted his keys from hand to hand.

  She rushed toward him but stopped short of reaching out. “Mika, I’m sorry. I am so very sorry. I know I screwed up. It won’t ever, ever happen again.”

  Putting a gentle finger to her lips, he shook his head. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

  A shard of ice pierced her heart. No, he couldn’t give up on them. He couldn’t think so badly of her…could he?

  “Mika, I—” She clutched his hand, at a loss for words.