by Tatjana Soli
She was so lost in her own thoughts that she didn’t register the sound of voices approaching, but as soon as she did, she was irritated. Solitude, the real kind she had here, would soon be gone—couldn’t she have a few minutes more? Even inside her own house, she would not be safe from electronic invasions—rings and pings and vibrations—and even her own betraying self would always be itching to hit the refresh button just in case a life-changing email happened to float into her in-box.
Dex and Wende. Drawn to the camera like moths to flame.
“One last quickie,” Dex said. “It’s our last chance before the plane.”
Again, as in an endless rewind, Dex and Wende were prancing amorously half-naked down the beach. Except now, not only were they annoying, they were family.
“Hey, guys,” Ann said.
“Why are you here?” Wende said, as if she hadn’t followed her.
“Saying good-bye.”
A sudden guiltiness appeared to come over the two of them. She couldn’t blame them really for moving on so quickly. It was who they were. The moment of silence went on a beat too long.
“I’d better go find Richard,” Ann said.
“No, this is good,” Dex said. “Since you’re here, you can witness.”
Now a look of panic was on Wende’s face. Apparently she had taken him at his word that this was just a last roll in the sand before leaving.
Dex held her hand and dragged her in front of the camera.
Ann rolled her eyes. Another spike in viewership for the Crusoe cam. Now people would hang on for months on the off chance of it happening again. She should have pulled the plug.
“I want the whole world to know that I love this woman, Wende…”
“Noooo.” Wende was pulling away with all her might. The skin on her wrist turned bright pink.
“Wende…”
“Snitzer,” she said quietly.
Dex snorted a laugh, and when he let go of her hand, she bolted. He dragged her back on camera.
“Yes, I love her in spite of that stinky last name. Which will soon change. In front of the whole world, will you be my Wende Cooper?”
Wende stood there as if drugged in her anti-Cinderella moment, paralyzed with inarticulateness.
Was she undergoing some kind of trauma where she would fall unconscious any minute and they’d have to stick wood in her mouth to keep her from swallowing her tongue? She looked that bad.
“Yes,” Wende said in defeat.
“All right!” Dex let go of her hand and did a victory dance like after a touchdown in football.
Wende stood forgotten at the side. She was about to get everything she’d thought she wanted six months ago—to be the sixth Mrs. Dex Cooper—but things had changed. She felt as if she was a character in a movie, and she wanted to choose a different path for this girl named Wende. Not all girls dreamed of the white dress anymore, but the pressure against them was enormous. Some girls just wanted to sleep with Prince Charming. They wanted to go off and slay dragons themselves, not be cooped up in the castle all day, tending little princes and princesses.
Dex grabbed her in a bear hug and spun her around, planting a big kiss on her lips for the on-camera finale, but when Wende came up for air, it was the new, improved Wende, 2.0, who had lagged a moment before kicking in.
“But…” Wende said, ducking his arm that intended to wrap itself around her waist and whisk her off camera for good. She stood square in front of the lens now in soap opera fashion and addressed her audience directly, even though the man she should have been talking to stood right next to her.
“But what?” Dex said.
“But not until I’ve made my first top-box-office-grossing film because I can’t put my personal happiness first over the causes I believe in. Just like you. This isn’t the ’90s anymore.”
“You don’t believe in causes.”
“Not true. Women are still shortchanged in the movies. You’re either hot or not … working. My movies will be about empowered, strong women, and they will be made by empowered, strong women.”
“I don’t get it,” Dex said. Clearly he would have given anything for this not to be broadcasting live.
Wende smiled beatifically into the camera. “We’re going to have a prolonged engagement.”
The girl was brilliant, Ann thought. Scary brilliant.
* * *
The nine a.m. scheduled departure for the main resort was delayed. After all the wedding excitement and then the tragedy of Loren’s death, Cooked and Titi had forgotten to make arrangements to buy their own boat.
Since no one made an effort toward getting breakfast, Cooked decided to rustle up his own. Determined to avoid Javi, he snuck along the edge of the compound to the kitchen, but when he opened the door, there Javi was as if he’d been lying in wait for him.
“Sleeping in, big guy? Want me to whip you up some sunny-side-up eggs?” Javi slapped him hard on the shoulder, and Cooked had to resist the urge to slug him. He had to keep reminding himself that he was now the owner of a resort. He had both incredible assets ($$$) and responsibilities, such as not punching out guests on a whim. Already at the wedding, he had been hit up by just about every relative for a loan. They didn’t believe that he had precisely as much cash on hand—none—as he had days before, when Loren had signed the title document over. Ann had warned him of coming liabilities (bloodsucking insects like Javi), who would try to prey on them.
* * *
Late morning they all were gathered at the dock, waiting for the boat, which was hours late. Titi had set up the special viewing telescope Loren had planned to use for the astronomical occasion that happened to fall that morning. This was her first big idea for a recreational activity, yet it wasn’t working.
“It’s the Transit of Venus,” Titi said, goaded by their lack of curiosity. “Come on.”
The Transit was the official reason given for Captain Cook to come to the islands. The English did not want to make their intent to conquer known to the other European powers. When Loren had first bought the telescope and set it up for guests eight years before, it had been a huge success. He had taken self-portraits with a date stamp to be matched with new ones in eight years. A project having to do with the passage of time. Had Loren just lost interest? Titi wondered. Perhaps he wouldn’t have done away with himself before completing his project if he had remembered. Titi had overlooked the fact that all the enthusiastic guests were women who enjoyed Loren leaning over them and directing them in sighting the lens.
The clouds were rolling in heavily—they should hurry for a view—but no one was interested.
“Won’t it hurt your eyes?” Lilou asked.
“Not if you wear your father’s special glasses.”
Lilou looked skeptically at the glasses, wrinkling her nose as if they had an olfactory presence. She shrugged and walked away.
Titi made a show of looking, but all she saw was a grainy, squirming ball, like something crawling with maggots, with a black dot slowly crossing it. This is what caused Loren such delight? Maybe it was just the idea that after the second crossing, it wouldn’t reappear for 105 years? Maybe the fact of lasting long enough to see it twice was victory enough? Except he hadn’t lasted. He’d forgotten. A disappointment. She had so much wanted it to matter, for it to be beautiful, so she could say, He loved this. No one cared. They said they’d catch an enhanced picture of it on CNN in Papeete airport.
* * *
Past noon and no boat. The assembled group now groused and paced. They had already taken leave of one another, exchanged the vitals of email addresses, phone numbers, etc., and now nothing remained but to go. They shut off their senses to the beauty around them, as if the island itself had ceased to matter. How else could you force yourself to go? Everyone except for Ann.
The last half hour they stood in a row, looking seaward like shipwrecks, ignoring the place that had seemed so magical on arrival. All faced the ocean except Ann, who turned and faced inland
. With less enthusiasm they promised one another they would stay in touch, that they’d come back, arrange reunions—why not?
When the hotel boat was finally spotted, each woman eyed her luggage and considered a last trip back to check every corner in her fare, but it was too late—Steve was close enough that they could see his shrimp-pink face. A man of perpetual sunburn and peeling. It was time to go home.
Ann felt sniffly and nostalgic.
Titi was throwing flowers in the water; she had nothing better to do and thought they looked pretty. Maybe they would substitute this for the conch-blowing ceremony?
“Why is she doing that?” Wende asked, pointing with her chin at the waterlogged blooms.
“So the sharks mistake the flowers for us. So we remain safe,” Richard said.
The group turned in unison to look at him.
He blushed. “I just made it up.”
“That was beautiful,” Titi said. “Can I use it?”
The two had grown closer that night outside his bathroom door when Titi had sworn to Richard that she would take care of Piglet as a pet and let him live out his natural life.
Steve cut the motor and glided in. He jumped off as soon as he hit the bumper of the dock and threw the rope to Cooked.
“Gotta take a leak.”
He was gone that fast, and they all had to readjust themselves to delay the dramatic departure yet again. When he returned, he was wiping his hands on a linen towel he’d swiped from the bathroom.
“Any chance of lunch before we push off? I’ve been running since early morning.”
Titi stood mute. Cooked crossed his arms and looked out to sea.
“Sure,” Richard said, not thinking. He was a food-services guy after all. “If it’s okay with you, Titi?”
She shrugged.
“Could you whip something up, Javi?”
Javi smiled, bowed his head at the new pecking order, and left for the kitchen.
* * *
Hijacked for an even longer period, everyone put their stuff down and sprawled out on lounge chairs. Titi came out with a tray of chilled bottled water. You wanted departing guests sober and sorry to leave.
Once Steve sat down to eat, he called Titi and Cooked over.
“I begged the hotel for this boat today. That’s why I’m late. I had to take care of our real guests first.”
Titi nodded her head, but Cooked just looked at Steve with an expression that should have made him uncomfortable.
“They said I could have it this one time because of our VIP, Mr. Cooper here, but after this you’re on your own. And we’ll no longer be able to handle your supplies either.”
“That’s unfair,” Lilou said. “My father—”
“Maybe he and you should have listened to me earlier.”
“Watch it,” Robby said.
“You’ll put them out of business,” Wende said.
Steve dropped his head down to his chest in mock shame, creating a contiguous line of flesh from chin to chest. “It’s just business.”
“Then business sucks,” Dex said.
“I’ll pass your comment on to management. Oh! I forgot—I am management.” Steve looked up, his eyes squinting to their true piggish proportions (in this case not nearly as cute as the real pig, which had rather lovely damp brown eyes). “You can pass on the ride if you feel that way,” Steve continued.
Dex slammed his bottle down on the table. The effect was good, but less than it could have been since it was plastic and merely squeaked and bounced away instead of shattering.
Titi delicately swayed back and forth with her eyes closed. She had known since she was a young girl that the world was simply a veil of pain, but each time its unfairness stole her breath away. Had she prayed for the wrong thing?
Cooked had murder in his eyes.
Clear to all this would not end well.
“I just want you to know I’ve recorded this on my iPhone. It’s going straight on YouTube,” Wende said.
“Nothing I’ve said here is illegal in the least, sweetheart.”
“Don’t call my fiancée ‘sweetheart.’”
Wende frowned for so many reasons. “It won’t exactly make you Mr. Popular. People won’t come to your resort. You’ll be the asshole of the South Pacific.”
“They’ll forget. Haven’t you noticed? People always do.”
Ann stepped forward. “Then the arrangement between the new Mara ‘amu and your resort is severed?”
“You bet it is unless I get some cooperation pronto.”
“I’m sorry, I’m being dense here—just to restate: there is no legal relationship. It was strictly a verbal understanding between the deceased ex-owner, Loren, and your resort, represented nominally by you.”
Steve was changing from shrimp to boiled-lobster hue. “Who are you?”
“I’m legal counsel for the Mara ‘amu. Which, as of this morning, is fully booked for the next five years.”
Ever since Dex’s appearance on the live cam, inquiries to the resort had exploded. There would be initial difficulties finding a regular supplier from Tahiti, but they could be solved.
“You don’t live here—”
“A technicality, as I will soon.” She had not known the truth of it till the words left her lips.
“What do you mean?” Richard asked.
“What do you mean?” Steve said.
But Ann forgot all about Steve now that her intention had blurted itself out. Again, Richard was the last to know. She took her husband aside. “I love it here. I don’t want to go back. Can you possibly understand?”
She was too old at thirty-eight. The world’s injustices could not be turned away from any longer. Surprise of surprises to discover she was a lawyer after all. She saw it then so clearly … She was a scalpel, but a scalpel that could be used for good or bad. She would simply retool her sharp shark teeth.
Everyone turned away, embarrassed for Richard.
“What about us?”
“That’s the thing—it’s a terrible thing to ask … but I can only imagine doing it if you are with me.”
At last Ann thought she had figured it out, even though it involved leaving behind everything and grasping after the unknown. In her case, happiness might be as simple as a beach, a hut, and a man who loved her. Never mind that she would be an attorney for a multinational resort complex; lives in the twenty-first century were complicated. Even the no-nonsense men in white wigs who wrote her country’s founding document understood that happiness—or at least its dogged pursuit—was important enough to equate with life and liberty as their guiding lights. They couldn’t promise its attainment, or even its preservation once achieved, but Ann thought if you pursued the wrong kind of happiness, it eventually grew stale on you, disappointing, like crackers that were already soggy when you opened the cellophane wrapper. You moved on, literally searching for crisper, greener, happier pastures that didn’t involve desires you were brainwashed to want. Eventually, lemminglike, you struggled blindly on and stumbled across it—the you that you are to become—and what other definition of happy could there possibly be?
* * *
Steve, irate, started the boat’s motor, and the remaining passengers paired up as if they were boarding Noah’s ark: Dex and Wende, Robby and Lilou, and, surprisingly, a lone Javi.
Ann, Richard, Titi, and Cooked stood and waved good-bye.
Richard had known his answer before Ann asked the question. He would have gone on his knees and begged to spend the rest of his life with her no matter where. That’s just how it was. And, too, every paradise needs its great chef.
“You guys will take my calls from now on, right? We’ll Skype?” Javi yelled.
A thundercloud of sharks, like a blessing, escorted them out of the lagoon.
They watched until the boat shrank to a small white dot in the universe of blue. Some of Captain Cook’s men stayed behind on the islands. Each ocean voyage took a three- or four-year bite out of their lives back in
England. They knew if they returned, their old lives would not fit as well as they formerly had. On the islands they fell in love, or decided that only a permanent change of venue would suit. They stayed for pleasure, or opportunity, or a dream, or some combination of the three, but not a one of them failed to feel a lump in his throat as his known life sailed away.
Ann squeezed Richard’s hand. They turned their backs on the disappearing boat and ran.
Acknowledgments
A few books were invaluable to my understanding of French Polynesia, most notably Cook: The Extraordinary Voyages of Captain James Cook by Nicholas Thomas; Fatu-Hiva: Back to Nature by Thor Heyerdahl; Representing the South Pacific: Colonial Discourse from Cook to Gauguin by Rod Edmond; Tahiti Beyond the Postcard: Power, Place, and Everyday Life by Miriam Kahn; Daughters of the Pacific and Pacific Women Speak Out by Zohl dé Ishtar; and Poisoned Reign: French Nuclear Colonialism in the Pacific by Bengt Danielsson and Marie-Thérèse Danielsson.
A huge hug to Rabih Nassif for endless patience in reading successive drafts. For the illustrations, I want to thank my husband, Gaylord Soli. I would like to thank Hilary Rubin Teeman and Dori Weintraub for their brilliance and advocacy through three books. Lastly, to Andrew Wylie for his belief in me.
also by tatjana soli
The Lotus Eaters
The Forgetting Tree
About the Author
Tatjana Soli is a novelist and short story writer. Her New York Times bestselling debut novel, The Lotus Eaters, was the winner of the James Tait Black Prize, a New York Times Notable Book, and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Her critically acclaimed second novel, The Forgetting Tree, was also a New York Times Notable Book. Her stories have appeared in Zyzzyva, Boulevard, and The Sun and have been listed in Best American Short Stories. She lives with her husband in Southern California. Visit her online at tatjanasoli.com. Or sign up for email updates here.
