Mahu Box Set

by Neil S. Plakcy

  “You’re such a loser even your wife doesn’t want you around,” I said. “Have to run home to Mommy and Daddy.”

  “You bastard,” he said, and he came at me, swinging.

  I lunged at him. All my anger and fear and desperate sadness welled up in me with a terrible strength, and I remembered every time Haoa and Lui had picked on me as a kid, when I hadn’t been strong enough to fight back. Now he was forty and fat and even though he often did physical labor I was strong and I knew I could take him. I got in first with an uppercut to his chin that knocked his head back. He gave me a strong punch to the solar plexus that had me doubled over, and then we were all over each other, grunting and punching and trying to rip each other’s heads off.

  “Boys! Stop! I’m ordering you!” It did no good. We were beyond paying attention to our father, each of us working out fights that were too strong for reason. Then he waded in to us, trying to separate us, and he was between us and we both hit him, and then realized what we had done, and fell back in horror.

  “My god! What are you doing!”

  The three of us turned at the same time to see our mother in the doorway of the kitchen in her bathrobe, her face aghast. I looked at my father. His glasses hung from one temple, and he looked disoriented. I had opened the wound on Haoa’s forehead again and blood dripped down the side of his cheek. My own jaw ached and I felt like Haoa might have cracked one of my ribs.

  “Go to your rooms,” my mother said to us. She hurried over and sat my father down on his stool “Go on. I’ll talk to you later.”

  Sheepishly we walked up the stairs to our rooms, Haoa leading. I had the urge, which I repressed, to kick him in the ass. We were in enough trouble already.

  I took a shower and got dressed. In the mirror I could see the beginning of a black eye. Great visual for the TV cameras, I thought grimly.

  My father knocked on my bedroom door a little later. He’d repaired his glasses, and had a small red dot of mercurochrome on his right cheekbone, but he’d regained his composure. “I’m sorry, Dad,” I said, looking down at the floor. “I shouldn’t have gotten into it with Haoa.”

  “I thought I could avoid the problems,” my father said. “I’d make breakfast for my boys, just like when you were little. And everything would be fine again.” He shook his head. “I forgot what it was like to have three boys in the house. You were always fighting with each other.”

  “But we’re grown-ups now,” I said. “And I’m a cop. My job is to stop this kind of thing. You don’t know the number of houses I’ve come into where there’s been fighting, and somebody’s hurt, or worse, dead. I ought to know better.”

  “These are difficult times, and we only have each other. I’d like you to apologize to your brother.”

  “Me! He started it.”

  He had only to look at me. “All right. If he’ll apologize too.” He looked at me again and I followed him downstairs.

  I took a small amount of pleasure in seeing that Haoa looked worse than I did. Of course it was his second fight in twelve hours.

  Our parents sat on the sofa and Haoa and I sat in big wing chairs across from each other. No one spoke. I looked at my parents. They had made the first move in coming to get me, to bring me home. I owed it to them to make the first move with my brother. “I’m sorry for what has happened,” I said to him. “I can’t change who I am, but if I could, I’d go back and change the way you all found out. You’re my brother, and no matter what you think of me, or what you do, I’ll always love you.”

  Our mother smiled. We all looked to Haoa. Finally he said, “I have a bad temper. I know it’s my biggest failing—Tatiana tells me that all the time. I shouldn’t have fought with you, and I shouldn’t have gotten into the fight yesterday. I’m sorry.”

  “Good,” my mother said. “Now we can go on. Kimo, you can call someone about this business yesterday? Maybe the charges against Haoa can be dropped.”

  “What?”

  “We’re family, Kimo. We have to look out for each other. You’ll do what you can?”

  “I will not do anything. In the first place, I don’t exactly have a lot of friends on the police force right now, as you might imagine. And second, as a police officer I’m bound to uphold the law, not flout it. Haoa knows he was wrong. Let him admit it and take his punishment.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Haoa asked me. “This is all your fault. You made me do what I did.”

  “Yeah, right, I stood there and forced you to hit Uncle Tico.”

  “No arguing,” our mother said. “Kimo, will you do this for me?”

  I shook my head. “You don’t understand. I can’t. If Haoa gets away with this, then next week someone else will stand outside that bar and wait for someone to come out. And one day it might be me coming out of there, and some other guy there waiting to hurt me, or kill me.”

  “It’s always about you,” Haoa said.

  “Yes it is.” I turned to him. “These are my troubles, and you only make them worse because you can’t control your stupid impulses. Tatiana was right to throw your ass in the street. I hope she never takes you back.”

  “Kimo!” my mother said.

  I stood up. “I’ve got to get out of here. I’m going to the hospital to see Tico. Maybe I can apologize to him for having an asshole brother. I’m not doing any good here.” I looked at my father. “Can I borrow your truck?”

  “The keys are by the front door,” he said.

  “Little faggot wants to run away,” Haoa said under his breath.

  “I’m not done with you yet,” I said to him. “Say anything you want to me. And next time you get the urge to beat up a faggot, you come to me. We’ll do it when Father isn’t around to rescue you.”

  “Rescue me!” Haoa said indignantly, as I walked out the front door.

  Reporters rushed me as I hurried to my father’s truck. “Kimo, do you think you were framed?” one asked.

  “When’s your hearing?” a woman asked, thrusting a microphone at me.

  “Are your brother’s problems related to yours?” another called. “We know he was arrested outside the Rod and Reel last night.”

  “You’ll have to ask him,” I said. I got into the truck and gunned the engine, and started backing down the driveway fast, scattering them in my wake. It felt good to see one of them stumble and fall onto the lawn.

  By the time I got down to the highway I was sure none of them were following me. I drove over to the hospital where they had taken Tico, and got his room number from the clerk at the front desk. When I walked in, Tatiana was sitting by his bed talking to him in a low voice. When she saw me come in, she got up and hugged me.

  “Kimo, I’m so sorry,” she said. “Howie’s an asshole. I think it’s great you are who you want to be.”

  “Mahalo,” I said.

  She stepped back and looked at me. “What happened to you?”

  “Haoa and I spent the night at our parents’ house,” I said. “We got into it this morning after breakfast.”

  She shook her head. “Jesus, the man never stops.”

  “You should see what we did to our father,” I said, and Tatiana gaped, knowing how much we usually respected him.

  From the bed, Tico said, “Tatiana, can you give us a couple of minutes?”

  “Sure. I need a cup of coffee anyway.”

  She walked out, and I took her place on the chair by the bed. Tico didn’t look too bad, though he winced whenever he moved too fast. He was in his mid-fifties, his thin brown hair cut short. His right wrist was bandaged and he looked pale.

  I didn’t know Tico well. I’d met him a few times at parties at Haoa’s house, when he’d always behaved, I don’t know, a little over the top. I didn’t like swishy men, but I recognized in him a kinship that was closer to me in some ways than my brothers. “How are you doing?” I asked.

  “Mezza-mezza.” He shook the good hand from side to side. “How about you?”

  I was about to say “F
ine,” when I stopped. “Well, in the last twenty-four hours I lost my job, got outed in the media, and had a fight with my brother where we both ended up punching our father. I’d say on the whole things are not going so well.”

  “It’s a hard thing to go through.” Tico struggled to sit up a little higher on the bed, and I adjusted the pillow behind him. “It’s why I left Puerto Rico, you know?”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “I was working nights in a bar, still living with my parents. My father came home early from work one day and found me in bed with a boy from down the street.” He shook his head. “He went crazy. I had to leave. I wandered around for a while, New York, Florida, California. I learned to do hair. I ended up here.” He smiled. “Like Tatiana. That’s why we get along so well. Both wanderers washed up on the shore here.”

  “You ever go home?”

  He shook his head. “I wish I could, now, but my father died. About five years after I left. We never talked again, never made up. I still have this empty place inside.”

  “I’ve been lucky,” I said. “My parents have been great.”

  He nodded. “Good. That’s the first step.” He looked down at the bed, and then back up at me. “I forgive Howard, you know. He was angry, he wasn’t in control. He didn’t really mean to hurt me.”

  “He wanted to hurt me,” I said. “You were just a convenient stand-in.”

  “That may be true. But still I forgive him, and you should too.”

  “I don’t think I can. I feel like it would be condoning what he did. And I can’t do that, not for myself, or for anyone else who wants to be free to go to that bar, or be out in the world, without worrying about assholes like Haoa.”

  “There’s a difference between forgiving and condoning,” Tico said. “What you have to do now is educate him. We all have to, you know. One by one, the gays of the world are educating the straights that we’re people too. Your job is to go on with your life, living it in a way that makes you comfortable, and by doing that you show your brother that you’re still a good person, that you still love him, that what you do in bed or who you do it with doesn’t change who you are. And gradually he’ll change.”

  “Do you think he will?”

  “I think each of us has the potential to change,” he said. “Sometimes it’s painful, like what you’re going through.” He took a sip of water from a foam cup on the bed tray. “You’re very lucky to have such a warm and loving family. I look at Tatiana and Howard together and I think, that’s what I want, someday. I want someone who will love me the way they love each other. I can’t bear to think their love will be lost because of me.”

  I knew what he meant. I had often seen Haoa and Tatiana together and envied them the kind of visceral connection they had. He loved her fiercely, with more dedication than I had ever seen him apply to anything, even football, and when he was a teenager he lived, breathed, ate and talked football. It was so much a part of him I couldn’t imagine him not playing. Nor could I imagine him without Tatiana. He would die. It was as if she gave him some essential nutrient he couldn’t live without.

  “And you love him, too,” Tico said, looking at me. “You know you do. So you have to forgive him. Because if you don’t, you’ll have an empty place inside you like I have. And trust me, darling, you don’t want that.”

  I reached out and took his good hand in mine, and squeezed. His grip was surprisingly strong.

  How Did This Happen?

  I sat with Tico for a while, and then as I was leaving I met Tatiana in the hallway. “Howie’s not a bad person,” she said as we leaned up against the antiseptic green wall. “He just doesn’t think sometimes.”

  “I know. And I know some people are going to treat me differently now that I’m out of the closet. But it’s hard when the trouble comes from inside your family.”

  “He doesn’t do well with change,” Tatiana admitted. “I remember when I found out I was pregnant with Ashley I went running out to this job he was working on with your father. I was so excited! I jumped out of the car and ran up to him, screaming ‘I’m pregnant! I’m pregnant!’”

  She laughed. “He had a cow. He was going ‘Oh, my God, how did this happen!’ and I said, ‘It’s sex, Howie, we had sex,’ and all the other guys were laughing, and God, he was mad at me for a month.” Her face got somber then. “And he went on a drinking binge and didn’t come home all night. I know he’s got problems, Kimo, and he really doesn’t drink that much anymore, only when something really upsets him. And you know he does love you, and this has all been kind of hard for him to take.”

  “So you’re forgiving him?”

  “I have to. I was really mad at him when I found out he beat up Tico. I mean, that man is like my brother. At first I thought he knew it was Tico, that he was mad at me about something and taking it out on him. Tico got me to understand.”

  “Yeah, that it wasn’t your fault, it was mine.”

  “It’s not your fault.” She faced me, pushing a big crest of ash-blonde hair from her forehead. “Howie overreacted. That’s his problem, not yours.”

  “But I can’t help feeling it is my problem.” I started to walk down the corridor and Tatiana came with me. “If I hadn’t gone to the Rod and Reel Club none of this would have happened.”

  An orderly passed us, wheeling an elderly Chinese woman with a tube coming out of her nostrils, connected to an oxygen tank on the back of the wheelchair. Her claw-like fingers gripped the arms of the chair, like she was holding on and wouldn’t let go.

  “That man would still be dead,” Tatiana said when they had passed. “And you’d still be investigating his murder. And you’d still be stuck in your closet, and maybe you’d never get the chance for the life you deserve.” She took my arm and I stopped walking and turned to face her. “Everything happens for a reason,” she said. “I believe that. You have to forgive Howie, and you have to forgive yourself.”

  I nodded. “I know. It’s just hard to do.”

  We turned around to return to Tico’s room. Coming down the hall toward us was my big brother. Tatiana saw him and her face lit up, and I remembered what Tico had said, that he hoped someday he would be part of a love like the one Haoa and Tatiana shared, and I felt sad and angry and jealous and I knew that someday I would have to forgive him, but that I just wasn’t strong enough to do it so soon. I nodded to him and walked on past, heading back into the world.

  When I got back to my parents’ house Harry was in their living room, chatting. “Hey, brah, how’d you get here?” I asked. “I didn’t see your car.”

  “It’s at my folks’ house. I came through the woods. We can go out the same way and head up the coast for some surfing. Those news hounds outside will never know.”

  More than ever before, I was noticing the acts of kindness people do every day. I guess when you stop expecting them, each one comes as a small gift. “He brought his boards with him,” my father said to Harry. To me he said, “Go on. Everything will still be here when you get back.”

  I took my long board and Harry my short one, and we went out the back door, sneaking across the yard to the steep wooded slope. No one saw us go, though I did look back for a minute and see my mother framed in the patio doorway. We climbed a narrow, winding trail that led to a higher street, coming out a few doors down from Harry’s house. When I was a teenager we used this path almost daily, and I was surprised at how familiar it remained, twisting past a banyan with hanging tendrils, discovering an orchid flourishing under the shelter of a kiawe tree. It was a road back into the past for me, back to a time when all I worried about was the condition of wind and surf.

  At the edge of the street we peered out and saw no one. Harry’s BMW was parked at the curb, and we bagged my boards and tied them down to the roof rack along with his, and then took off for the North Shore.

  It wasn’t the best time to go north; the winter provided really prime surfing conditions up there. But it was a place we could go to get away from t
he press, where no one would recognize me, and if they did, it would only be as a fellow surfer, not a media target. We put the windows down under a clear blue sky and cruised north, up into the hills, past Schofield Barracks, descending again past fields of pineapple with the glorious blue sea ahead of us.

  We snagged an oceanfront parking space just beyond Haleiwa, stripped down to our suits, and dragged our boards toward the ocean. From then on, all I concentrated on was surfing. I emptied my mind of murders, police, sex and family troubles, and felt wonderfully free as a result. The waves weren’t killer, but then I was accustomed to surfing Waikiki so it didn’t really matter. I practiced my turns for a while, and then just surfed for fun, catching the waves I liked and running them as long as I could hold on.

  Harry had packed a picnic lunch, and after a couple of hours of surfing we collapsed on the beach and ate, then dozed for a bit and then surfed some more, until the sun was beginning to sink over the hillsides. “This was great,” I said, as we carried our boards back up the beach to the roadside. “Mahalo.”

  “I had a good time too,” Harry said. “I’ve been wanting to get up here again ever since I got back from Massachusetts, but you’ve been so busy.”

  “I’m gonna have a lot of time on my hands now.”

  On the ride back to the city, I tried to hold on to the good feelings. I turned the radio up and when I couldn’t find a good station put in a tape of the Makaha Sons, luxuriating in the rhythms of the slack key guitar, the ipu gourds and the pahu hula drum. We stopped on the way back at a roadside diner we’d loved as teens and reminisced about high school.

  “So you were always keeping this secret,” Harry said after the waitress had taken our orders. “All through Punahou, and years after.”

  “I didn’t really understand it for a long time. I mean, I didn’t have any role models, and I didn’t have anybody I could ask questions of. So it was kind of a gradual thing, an awareness that kept growing.”

  “Does it color your memories, when you look back, you think, oh, if I’d only known, I would have reacted differently?”