12 Hours In Paradise (15 page)

“Seriously? This is a dumb question. Don’t they play a role in everyone’s life? There are people you love and people you like, which I guess is affection. And sometimes it happens simultaneously…and it just happens. It’s not like you have to invite it into your life and assign it a role.”

Even though I made fun of the question, I started thinking about the love I have for my family and the affection I have for my friends. What I felt for Arash didn’t fit into either of those categories, but he was carving out his own category in the short time since he entered my life. The role it would play? I feared it would be limited. I hoped for something I couldn’t even envision.

“Next question,” I said.

***

We’d arrived at the beach access, which was really just a narrow alley that smelled a little like urine during the day. I usually rushed through it when I came with my family. But at night the air smelled surprisingly sweet and clean. A row of upright surfboards lined one side of the access. Shackled to each other, and the wall, like a chain gang.

“This is where we rented our boards yesterday,” Arash said.

“
We?
I thought you said you had no desire to surf when you first caught up with me and Chester.”

“I said that? I suppose I did, didn’t I? Well, I was lying. I simply had a greater desire to see
you
than to surf. Look!”

He bent over to pick up something from the ground. One of those flowers they put in the leis so commonly worn by tourists.

Plumeria. Even the name was luscious.

An exotic species that resembled the child of a daisy and an orchid.

“I think we were supposed to find this,” I said.

“I think you’re right. It was laid right in our path.” Arash straightened up, holding the bloom carefully between his thumb and forefinger. “Whoever left it for us just forgot to put it in the
opala
. Smell.”

I took the bloom and held it under my nose. It smelled like what I imagined paradise should smell like. Arash gently pulled my hand away from my face.

“If you hold it so close to your nose, you won’t smell it. Or you’ll smell something like it but not the real thing. You have to hold it an inch or two away and let the smell rise up to meet you.”

“Rise up to meet my nose?”

He nodded.

“You’re funny. And before you ask, I mean funny peculiar.”

But I did what he said, and he was right. When I let the smell rise up to meet me instead of forcing it…heavenly.

***

“Here we are again,” I said once we’d popped out through the other end of the alley.

“It’s always the ocean that beckons us. And we keep responding to its strong signal.”

“Why do you think? I know during the day everyone wants to come to the beach to swim and play in the sand. But why at night? Why do people like to sit and stare at waves?”

“It’s the mystery of what lies beyond. The unknowable. How’s that sound?”

“Maybe. But I think it’s the waves. The steady rhythm. It’s so soothing.”

“Maybe a little of both. Should we sit for a while?”

“Yes, please. My feet feel like they’re about to fall off. Shall we go on to the next question?” I felt an urgency to get through the thirty-six questions.

“‘Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items.’”

“I like taking turns on the same question. It’s more like we’re on the same team.”

“We
are
on the same team.”

“You think? What team?”

“Oh…the Dorothy-Arash team. Team Dorash.”

“Team Arthy?”

“That one too.”

“Arash. Have you heard the expression ‘you come together for a reason, a season, or a lifetime’? I wonder why we came together. Which one of those?”

Looking back, it seems crazy for me to have suggested we came together for a lifetime. Especially considering that in an hour or two we’d be parting with almost no chance of ever seeing each other again. Why did I suggest it? To test Arash?

“I’ve never heard that expression before. But if you analyze it, it covers just about every situation, so I’m not sure it’s all that profound.”

I was deflated. He thought I was an idiot. I
was
an idiot.

“Look, a shooting star!” My gaze followed his pointing finger to catch the last glimmer of the dying light. “Make a wish.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Did you make one?”

“Yes. I wished…”

“Shhh…” He put his finger lightly on my mouth, allowing it to trace the curve of my lips before pulling it away. “Don’t tell.”

But I was feeling stubborn and—honestly—hurt from his previous comment.

“I wished that once this night is over, I can forget everything about it.”

“Does that include forgetting me?”

I didn’t respond. My silence was a clear answer.

I heard a birdsong. And then another. Were the birds waking up? Was it already that time? But then I didn’t hear them again.

“I’m sorry to tell you,” Arash said, finally breaking the heavy silence, “that your wish won’t come true now that you’ve revealed it to me. So that means that you’ll never forget me.”

I stared straight ahead at the dark shapes of the rolling waves. Like the shadows of stumbling beasts.

“And I’ll never forget you either, Dorothy. And I’m not sure why we came together. I don’t know. Nobody does. I think it was because I sensed something in you I had to get more of. And maybe you felt the same way about me. I hope you did. I hope you do.”

He reached over and took my hand, and I surrendered to its touch once again.

“You’re really smart,” I said. “Your turn.”

“You’re very kind.”

“You’re funny…and not just in the peculiar sense.”

“You’re beautiful.”

“You have gorgeous eyes.”

“You’re courageous.”

“That’s six. It said a total of five.”

“Well, you are courageous. So I’m glad I slipped that last one in.”

“What makes you think I’m courageous?”

“Admitting difficult things about yourself takes courage. Mounting one of those wild bucking broncos takes courage.”

“My horse is not a wild bucking bronco. He’s very tame.”

“Nonetheless, it takes more courage than I have.”

“What’s the next question? We must be getting close to the end.”

“Still fourteen to go…‘How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s?’”

“For sure,” I said. “I had the ideal childhood. Technically, I still have another year to go, so hopefully it will stay that way. But my family’s always been there for me, and I know they always will be. I’d say we’re pretty close and loving, even though sometimes I feel like running away from home—at least for a day or two. What about you? How was it before your dad’s stroke?”

“Well, I think you know something of my life. Certainly much different than yours in terms of how much time I actually spent with my family. But, like you, I always had the feeling my parents put me first. And I believe I was very happy until…”

I waited for a few seconds, and when he didn’t continue I asked, “Until your dad’s stroke?”

“Before that. Before my dad’s stroke.”

“Benjamin.” I nodded knowingly.

“No. Something else entirely. Look, I’m sorry to be so evasive. It’s surprising how much unpleasantness has surfaced on what I wholly expected to be the pleasantest of pleasant evenings.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…about a year before my father’s stroke, he began an affair with a woman. Someone he worked with. Someone my mother considered a close friend. A ‘slip of the heart,’ he called it when he came begging back to my mother.”

“He cheated on your mom? And she stayed with him?”

“My mother forgave my father, but I never did. By the time I found out, it had been going on for some six to nine months. I’m sure they never wanted me to know, but my mother was an emotional wreck, incapable of faking it for my sake. A slip of the heart.”

“Why do you call it a ‘slip of the heart’ when it’s clearly cheating?”

“His words, not mine.”

“So that’s how he saw it? Something romantic…almost poetic?”

“I prayed for him to die.”

That shut me up.

“And then he had his stroke,” I added meekly. “And you feel guilty because you prayed for something bad to happen to him.”

“Well, didn’t I? Yes, I did. Yes, I do feel guilty about that.”

“But his stroke had nothing to do with you. And it doesn’t mean you have to forgive him for doing something so wrong just because a terrible thing happened to him afterward. You can separate the two things, can’t you?”

“What if he’s the only father I have?”

“Of course he’s the only father you have.”

“Exactly.”

“If my father ever did that to my mother, I don’t think I could forgive him.”

“Dorothy, we know that your father is sometimes disappointed in you. Have
you
ever been disappointed in
him
?”

I had to think about that one. I’d been mad at my father plenty of times. Righteously angry. Usually those were times when I was forbidden to do something I really wanted to do for a variety of reasons that made sense to my dad but not to me.

But disappointed?

And then it came to me.

“Actually last year. Right here in Hawaii, except we were staying on the North Shore instead of Waikiki.”

“What happened?”

“We were all of us at the beach just sitting in our cabanas reading, snacking. Chester was off doing something or other. Probably snorkeling. All of a sudden we heard someone screaming, and I looked up from my book, instantly scared that something had happened to Chester. But it was a guy on a boogie board on the opposite end of the beach from where we were. He’d spotted a person floating in the water, facedown, and he was calling for help.”

“Was he dead?”

“Well, he was dead, but we didn’t know it at the time. So my father jumped up and ran into the water. The place where the guy was floating was in an area roped off where people weren’t supposed to swim because of a riptide, so I was scared for my dad, and so were my mom and granny. But we all knew that he’s an amazing swimmer. He swam for his college and even qualified for the Olympic trials one year. He’s also a doctor, so I guess we all kind of bought in to thinking of him as our own personal Superman who could do anything and save anyone. So even though I was scared, I knew everything would be okay.”

“But obviously it wasn’t…for the guy. But your dad’s okay, I know that.”

“Yeah, my dad had to swim against the riptide, and it nearly killed him getting to the guy. He managed to push the man close enough to the shore so they could throw out a lifeline and get him out of the water. My dad worked on him, trying to resuscitate him once he was out, but it was too late and there was nothing he could do. The guy’s wife was on the beach near us, and she ran to where they were and she was screaming and crying. She wasn’t even looking at her kids who were hysterically running after her. My mom went over to keep the kids away and try to calm them down. I tried to help her. They were so young. It was horrible.”

“And you? You said you were disappointed.”

“I suppose I thought my father could do anything. That he should have been able to save that man. That the wife and kids should be crying for joy and thanking my dad instead of out of their minds with grief. But that’s not what happened. So I was….disappointed in my father, as dumb as that sounds. And then I felt ashamed of myself for feeling that disappointment. Is that awful of me?”

“No, I don’t think so. We all want to see our parents as infallible human beings. But they’re not. They’re just human beings. Your reaction says more about you than your father.”

“Like what?”

“I think we want our parents to be godlike, but at the same time we don’t want them to have godlike control over us. And yet if we reduce them to just being ordinary humans, we lose some of their godliness that brushes off on us. How can I be so ordinary? How can I come from this? Where is the greatness in me? Our parents are people just like us. No better. No worse. They’ve just lived longer, so they know more things, but they’ve forgotten more things too.”

“Like what?”

“Like…things. Like what it means to live entirely within a night like this. Take a chance. Be alive in the fullest sense of the word.”

I heard the birdsong again.

This time it went on a bit longer.

***

“Dorothy, I want to give you something to remember me by. But all the stores are closed.”