“Go home,” he said around the pipe stem. “Go home before something happens to you. This isn’t a good place for you to be.”
I sat very still under his hands, and after a moment he released me and stepped back. I got up quickly and would have returned to the house, but David came riding in on Ginger just then, and I waited for him in relief. Tom had frightened me a little.
“I’ll take care of her,” Tom said as David dismounted.
“Thanks, Tom. Good night.” David held out a hand to me, and we started toward the house together. “How is Noelle?”
“They’re wrapping her in cotton wool again,” I said, “and everyone’s angry with me, including Tom.”
“Tom?”
“Yes. He’s the one who was listening near the tree last night. He’s made his dislike for me clear ever since I came.”
“Maybe they’re all beginning to open up, Caro. All those pressed-in flower petals are stirring. If you stay with it, everything may come into the open.”
“I’m not sure that’s a safe course,” I told him. “Marla thinks they could turn into dragons and serpents, instead of flowers. Sometimes I think that I don’t even want to find out.”
“You know better than that,” he said. “No matter what comes, it’s better to know. Maybe better for them all. Just give it a little time. You’ve stirred them all up enough for now.”
“I don’t have much time. Any minute Joanna’s going to pack me off home. Only San Francisco isn’t my home anymore.”
“You grew up there. Isn’t there any pull left?”
“For the city, perhaps. San Francisco’s a great town.”
“But not for the people?”
“After I married, I lost touch with old friends.” I didn’t want to explain that Scott had liked only his friends.
We were nearing the house, and David said, “There’s no need for me to come inside. I’ll call you soon and see how things are going. We’ll plan to drive to Hana when my mother comes home from Honolulu.”
“Thank you for dinner,” I said formally. For a little while up there on the rim of the crater, we’d seemed very close, more than old friends. I touched the kukui beads. “And thank you for these.”
“Sure,” he said, and went off in his car.
I waited on the lawn as he turned toward the road, feeling unsettled, unsure. As I approached the lanai, I looked back for a moment at the camphor tree, where David and I had stood talking last night. What sense of guilt had sent Tom rushing off, not wanting to be found eavesdropping? So much so that he’d been angry when I brought the matter up.
At least I knew now who had listened, though not why.
No one was around in the living room, but I could hear voices in the direction of Noelle’s room. I went upstairs and sat on the window seat in my room for a while, trying to sort out my day. One thing I knew. When I had seen that strange spirit shadow cast into a rainbow circle on far clouds, everything had seemed to come into focus. As though I had come to Maui for some special purpose from which I must not be deflected. The word “destiny” had come into my mind, and I found it a heartening word because in a way it seemed to settle everything. Yet it didn’t altogether please me because I couldn’t rely on being “led.” I had to take action about all those things myself, and I still didn’t know what practical steps might help my mother. Or me. All I had was a distant goal—as distant as that shadow on the clouds.
I didn’t want to think of what David might come to mean to me. In that direction might lie quicksand, and I needed no more pain. The thought of Scott could become too quickly urgent, and I wanted none of him—ever again. Yet he still intruded between me and any other man. David mustn’t be used as a protection from my memories of Scott.
I touched the kukui beads again, feeling for an instant the joy I’d felt when he’d given them to me. Then I took them off and dropped them into a drawer. They belonged to my childhood and I couldn’t recover that.
Something had quieted in me momentarily, and I fell asleep easily enough. I didn’t open my eyes until the dark hours of early morning. Some sound had awakened me, and I lay still, breathing the scent of ginger that had come into my room.
The moon had long set, but a silvery shaft of starlight came through the window and I caught the shimmer of a woman’s white garment and the glint of a white flower tucked into her hair. She stood near enough to my bed so that I caught the light sound of her breathing.
There was no telling whether Noelle meant me harm or just wanted to talk to me. I tensed, ready to spring up if she made any threatening move in my direction. Though it wasn’t so much the fear of any harm she might do me that made me afraid, but the feeling that she was being pushed too far over the edge of sanity into a place from which she might never return.
I lay quiet and waited.
Her white garment murmured softly as she moved closer to my bed, and I had to make an effort not to roll away out of reach. First I must know what she intended.
Starlight showed some dark object in her hands, and she moved suddenly, swiftly, to place it on the pillow beside my head. Then she turned toward the door. But now she didn’t move lightly—as though she no longer cared whether I heard her. A board creaked under her foot, and she stood still for a moment—perhaps waiting to see if I’d wakened.
I moved my hand to touch the object on my pillow, and my fingers found the dished-in, angry face of the Pele carving. There could be more than one kind of harm intended. She moved again toward the door, but this time I moved too. I flung back the bedcovers and sprang up to run across the floor and catch her by the arm. The scent of ginger was strong and sweet.
“Wait, Noelle,” I whispered. “Stay and talk to me. Tell me why you brought me the Pele figure.”
Her laugher was wry—and it was not Noelle’s. She turned around and in the light from the window I saw that the woman I’d captured was Marla.
“Okay,” she said, “we’ll talk. Turn on the light, Caroline.”
Angry with her trickery, I switched on a lamp with a sharp click. The night air from the mountain was cool, and I picked up my robe and slipped into it.
“What are you trying to do?” I demanded.
Her plump figure was well covered by the long white gown, and she looked calm and amused as she went to close the casement against the early-morning breeze. She was pleased with herself, and I grew all the more irritated.
“When did you wake up?” she asked me. “When did you know I was here?”
“When I smelled the flower you’re wearing.”
She touched the ginger blossom. “That was a nice touch, don’t you think—just in case you woke up before I could place Pele beside you. Hand me that blanket, Caroline. It’s cold.”
I picked up a blanket from the foot of the bed and flung it at her. “Stop stalling, Marla.”
She wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and dropped into a chair, while I got back into bed, the carving still in one hand.
“I was trying to scare you,” she said. “What else? Of course, I keep forgetting that you’re not the little kid I remember.”
“I don’t think you forget that at all. You enjoy mischief-making. But if this silly trick was intended to make me pack up and run back to San Francisco, it isn’t going to work.”
“I can see that. I suppose I make up too many scenarios inside my own head, and then I’m surprised when someone real walks in and spoils the script for me. I just thought a little scare might help you to decide. It would be a sensible decision, Caroline.”
“I have decided. I’ll stay as long as Joanna will let me.”
“You’ve changed since you went up to the crater. I could feel it when we were driving down in the car, after we found Noelle. What happened up there, Caroline?”
That was nothing I would talk to her about. “You might as well accept the fact that I mean to stay a while longer.”
“A week,” she said. “We’ll give you a week more on Maui.”
“Isn’t that up to my grandmother?”
“Oh, we’ll make it an entertaining week—there’s so much you haven’t seen yet. We’ll keep you so busy you won’t have time for all this pointless worry about Noelle. She’s perfectly happy when you leave her alone.”
“I’m not sure a vacuum is a happy place to be. And I don’t want to be entertained.”
“But of course you must be! Hawaiians are noted for their hospitality. I already have a plan in mind—a special performance to be put on in your honor.”
“Stop it, Marla,” I said. “Just tell me one thing—who carried that tapa beater up to the crater when my father died?”
Her light, rather jolly manner evaporated, though she tried again to put me off. “You mentioned that to Noelle tonight, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m sure you do. Joanna showed me that tool and said Tom found it up there after the accident. Is that my father’s blood on the wood?”
Marla came to stand beside my bed, her eyes very bright in lamplight. “You wouldn’t want to know about that,” she told me, and ran out of the room, leaving the door open behind her.
I got up to close it, feeling as though some new weight pressed heavily upon me. Marla stood in the doorway across the hall, her smile malicious. She was being mysterious again, and I might have closed my door without speaking but she stopped me.
“Wait, Caroline—I forgot to tell you. We’re driving to Lahaina today. We’ll have an early lunch and leave right afterwards. It’s a trip you’ll enjoy. So get some sleep. Good night, Caroline dear.”
She disappeared into her room, giving me no chance to answer. I went back to bed again, but not to sleep for a long while. Birds outside the window were announcing dawn when I finally drifted off. My dreams were threatening, but when I awoke around eight, I couldn’t remember them, and didn’t want to. Only the ominous mood they left behind remained. The vision in the crater was fading, and the day ahead promised nothing but more smoke screens and distractions thrown across my path. A determination to help my mother meant very little until I could find something definite to hold on to. It was impossible to fight with mists that always moved out of my grasp.
Tom, as usual, had breakfasted early, and I was glad not to see him when I went downstairs. My grandmother looked gray and depressed, and anything but pleased to see me. Marla was late too this morning, and she sat eating French toast with pineapple preserve. Beneath her straight, dark bangs her eyes were watchful, even a little cautious—as though, perhaps, she wasn’t as sure of me as she pretended.
“Noelle has a headache,” she said. “She was ill most of the night. So are you pleased with yourself, Caroline?”
I didn’t mean to take guilt onto myself. None of them was entirely innocent when it came to upsetting Noelle. Otherwise, she would never have headed for the crater as she’d done. I dropped bread into the toaster and poured myself a cup of coffee.
Marla, however, meant to leave nothing alone. “Early this morning Caroline had a spectral visitor,” she announced to Joanna. “Maybe she’d like to give you an account.”
I wouldn’t allow Marla that satisfaction and I said nothing. Joanna had breakfasted, but she brought more coffee to the table and sat down beside me without comment.
Marla was not to be put off. “I’ll tell you, if Caroline won’t I put on a white muumuu, stuck a ginger blossom in my hair, and carried that wooden carving of Pele into Caroline’s room. I left it on her pillow meaning to make her think Noelle had been there. But she woke up and caught me.”
Joanna swallowed black coffee and looked at neither of us.
Perhaps our combined silence was making Marla uncomfortable. “I just wanted to give Caroline a good scare. To make her leave sooner than she plans. You’d approve of that, wouldn’t you, Mother?”
Joanna sighed. “Sometimes Marla enjoys tricks for the sake of tricks, Caroline. She probably wanted you to catch her. It would be more dramatic that way.”
“I can never fool my mother,” Marla admitted cheerfully.
There seemed to be only one person toward whom she was genuinely sympathetic—Noelle. Yet her concern for her sister seemed intended only to hold the status quo.
“We’re going to Lahaina today, Mother—Caroline and I,” she went on. “I plan to see Ailina Olivero and ask her to put on a little show for Caroline while she’s here.”
Joanna came to life. “No! That wouldn’t be wise. Especially if Ailina came here.”
“Oh, we can pack Noelle off for the evening, so there’d be no strain for her. Though by this time she may not even remember who Ailina is. I want to do this, Mother.”
“And you’ll do as you please, of course.” Joanna gave up, as she would never have done in the past. It was as though nothing was worth fighting for anymore.
I didn’t like the idea of Marla’s plan, and I didn’t want to meet the woman who had betrayed my mother. “I agree with my grandmother, Marla,” I told her. “I don’t want to see her.”
Marla reminded me of a Buddha figure sitting there—calm and plump, her faint cryptic smile hiding secrets. Whether her secrets were real or imaginary, I could never tell, but I suspected that Marla amused herself by stirring up the very serpents she’d warned me about.
“We’ll leave right after lunch,” she said, ignoring my plea.
In the end, it was easier to give in as Joanna had done. And once I’d decided to go through with this meeting, a certain curiosity began to stir in me. Ailina had told her son that she wanted to meet me, and I still wondered why. How well had she known Noelle? There could even be something she might explain about the past. Perhaps I’d better take the opportunity Marla had offered, even though the meeting would probably not be pleasant.
“All right,” I agreed.
Marla’s smile was sly. She’d never had the least doubt that I would do as she wished.
She went outside before I finished breakfast, and when I left the table I hurried down the hall to Noelle’s room. The door stood ajar, and I tapped lightly on the panel.
“Come in …” It was no more than a whisper.
From an open window the sunny blue morning poured into the room and the air was soft and fragrant. Noelle lay in bed, a breakfast tray untouched on the table beside her.
“Good morning,” I said. “May I help you with your breakfast?”
“I’m not hungry.” Her voice was still faint. “My head hurts. Marla says it always hurts after I do something foolish. Last night I rode out on Ginger, didn’t I?”
“Don’t you remember?”
She shook her head and turned her cheek against the pillow, closing her eyes. I sat on the bed beside her and took one of her limp hands in mine. Her skin was smooth and tanned, soft and well cared for. But hands show age before anything else, and this wasn’t the hand of a young wife in her twenties. Blue veins lay close to the surface and the tendon ridges were marked. I traced the length of her fingers, wishing I could offer her comfort. But not only comfort—escape from the prison that held her.
Suddenly she opened her eyes and looked at me out of gray depths that seemed limitless. Startled, I let her hand go.
“You remind me of someone,” she said. “I keep thinking about that and wondering who it is. But I don’t believe we’ve ever met before you came here—have we?”
I hated this question that I didn’t dare answer. I couldn’t try again until she was ready for the truth that I longed to give her. I stood up and moved around the room. The pretty watercolors, painted for Linny, still lay on her worktable. But someone had removed the angry volcano pictures.
A framed photograph stood on a shelf, and I picked it up. The enlarged snapshot was of a man, a woman, and a child: Keith, Noelle, and Linny.
My father had been as good-looking as Grandmother Elizabeth always claimed, but this was a more recent picture of him than all those boyhood photos she kept on display. This was how I remembered him—vigorous-looking,
strong, charming, as though for Keith Kirby enchanting adventures always lay ahead. Yet here his smile seemed to question and perhaps challenge whoever held the camera. He stood a little apart from my mother, with the small child I’d seen in between. A solemn child that day. I had clung to both their hands, as though I wanted desperately to hold them together. My mother hadn’t smiled. Indeed, she looked angry as she faced the camera. The body language of the two adults seemed to indicate that only the child connected them.
I carried the framed picture to Noelle’s bed. “Do you remember who took this?” I asked.
She looked at the glossy enlargement and then away. “I only kept it because I don’t have many pictures of Linny. I used to have, but they’ve all disappeared. I hated Keith that day, though I can’t remember now what made me so furious with him. It’s funny the way I remember some things and not others. Marla thinks I shouldn’t try to remember. But sometimes I want to—and when it won’t come, my head starts to hurt.”
“Last night you were trying to remember, weren’t you? When you rode off on Ginger?”
Her shrug seemed to dismiss last night. “I’m not supposed to think about that. This picture was taken a long time ago. I know Keith is dead. Though I can’t remember what happened, and no one will tell me.”
“So this picture of Linny is also old. She would be grown up by now, wouldn’t she?”
“I suppose so.” Noelle brushed a hand across her forehead in confusion. “If that’s true then I’ve missed all those years of watching her grow—years that are lost somewhere, so I can’t bring them back.”
“Linny has missed knowing her mother too,” I said.
“Don’t be silly!” That was Marla’s sharp voice from the doorway. “Linny’s gone outside to play, Noelle, and you’ll see her in a little while. So do get up now and eat your breakfast I’m sure your head’s better by this time, and I’ll make you fresh toast and bring some hot coffee.”
Noelle looked uncertainly from her sister to me, puzzled again. Nevertheless, she sat up in bed obediently, ready to get dressed.
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