Diamond Head (13 page)

“I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Fine.” My grandma stood up from the table. She pressed her fingers against its greasy surface. “Another disappointment—she’ll be so surprised!”

“What did you tell her?” He leaned forward, concern dawning for the first time.

“I lied.” She paused. “I told her that for once in her life, her father wasn’t thinking of himself.”

My Grandpa Chan was a peculiar man. Stubborn as an ox, to this day he remains unchanged. I realize now that my grandpa Chan’s peculiarities, while peculiar, were not unique. My grandpa was a poor man who resented the fact that he was not born rich. There was something in his blood or in his mind that taunted him, something delusional and entitled based in absolutely nothing.
The noble life
is what he called it, living properly, leisurely, devoting yourself to a fine art, like the children of nobility. When my mom was a child, he used to list the possible paths of her future:
piano
,
ballet
,
cinema
, encouraging her to choose an art from the age of two.

From a young age my Grandpa Chan developed extremely fine motor skills—teaching himself to steady a camera, to make an even stroke with a paintbrush—without learning the first thing about being a field hand or harvesting sugarcane or repairing a roof. Had he not been born to a family of farmers, his skills might have been received differently, but as a member of the working class, he was
barely functional—something I suspect was more a product of choice than ability.

Little is known about my Grandpa Chan’s past, about his parents. How he learned to work a camera, how he even came to possess one, my mother never knew. A single clue to my grandpa’s humble beginnings lies in a black-and-white drawing, a memento he hung above his instruments. An enormous ship sits in Honolulu Harbor, three masts extended, the hull shaded dark with pencil, Diamond Head in the distance. The bottom corner reads 1862. His grandfather was one of the hundreds of Chinese men on board, a contract laborer headed for the sugarcane fields.

In a way, my Grandpa Chan tried to conceal his sense of entitlement, never vocalizing his bitterness with his mismatched life. Most of his thoughts he kept to himself, but that’s precisely what they were: thoughts about himself, his suffering, the injustice of his life. And then the bills would be late while his ten children shared a dinner of kimchi and suddenly, quietly, my grandpa’s inner aristocracy began to show. He didn’t care. He didn’t pick up extra shifts at the cannery or begin to sell valuables like the others in Kaneohe. For him, money was not something worth laboring for. Money was a blessing, a good fortune passed on from virtuous lineage, and the idea of sweating in the fields with the rest of the working class, saving pennies at a time, was a concept lost on him.

Many years ago, before my mom was born, my Grandpa Chan spent the entirety of his savings on a small space in Honolulu, on a busy commercial strip. He painted the walls ivory, he bought stools, he set up a cash register. He was going to be a photographer, something my Grandma Chan was very proud of at the time. She was convinced she was marrying a man of impeccable breeding—an artist, an aristocrat who could afford his own private studio in Waikiki. She never asked, never knew that with the purchase of the studio came the exodus of his money. There was a confidence in his eyes that comforted her, that made her believe recklessly in their future.
Together, they dreamed. He drove her through Waialae, asking her which estate she preferred, criticizing the slopes of their lawns and the colors of the stones that led to their driveways. He bought her plate lunch—her favorite
huli huli
chicken—and took her to the beach, telling her she was more beautiful than every woman who passed by their picnic blanket. He introduced her to cigarettes and showed her how to inhale, blowing luxurious clouds of smoke into the wind. They married quickly, two months after they met, one month after my grandpa purchased his studio. He promised her a ring, a real diamond set in gold. He even brought home a Sears catalog for her to choose from.

It was a genuine shock to my Grandma Chan when the ring never came. She rushed so deliberately into her life with my grandpa that I suppose she never stopped to question its reality, its sustainability. She became pregnant with my mom right after the wedding, which brought both joy and panic. My mother made the marriage real, forever joining them as parents, solidifying their decision to be together, to raise a child. But my grandma was ready, she told herself. Her daughter would have a different life. She would learn
piano
,
ballet
,
cinema
.

I’m told that the first three years of my grandparents’ marriage were cheerful, their young delirium still fresh, my Grandpa Chan still doting on my grandma and my mom. He brought home malasadas after work and took them to see American movies when they were released on the island. He was obsessed with America, with U.S. history and popular culture. His future riches, his rise to greatness, lay in the hands of the young country, a land pregnant with possibility for men like him. So abundant was America that he hardly felt the need to try, as if living within her, knowing her history, was enough to succeed.

The photography shop was a mystery to my grandma. He told her it was doing well, always prepared with a story about a particular client or a job he had secured, depositing a couple dollars into
her pocketbook as the grand finale. My grandma spent all her time with my mom, preparing dinners in their small kitchen, washing the sheets from their two beds, waiting for her husband to come home and make them feel like a family. The first few years of my mom’s life were unlike any to follow, protected by a balloon of optimism, shaped by the chatter of eager parents.

But then came three more girls—arriving faster than my grandma could imagine possible. In the back of her mind, she knew that the structure of her life could not handle this kind of growth, that eventually the walls would burst. But she also knew that more children was a sign of prosperity, so she lied to herself, almost consciously, clinging to my grandpa’s words, repeating them doggedly to herself.

This is just the beginning. The money will come. We must be patient.

So her life became an exercise in waiting. With the few dollars she received from my Grandpa Chan—her allowance never increasing with the arrival of more children—my grandma saved and bought an annual pass to the Honolulu Zoo in Kapiolani Park, taking her four girls there almost every day. She made them each a bento for lunch—still concerned that her children should eat properly—and they would picnic next to the single monkey housed there. Once, in a fit of motherly compulsion, my grandma bought all four of the girls a shave ice, delighted to watch them pick their flavors, licking at the sugary snow as they dragged sticks along the bars of the animal cages. But at the end of the week, the money was short. Their small extravagance made grocery shopping impossible. She scolded herself for almost a month. She never did it again.

My mom was the only one who didn’t understand why she couldn’t buy a treat every time she went to the zoo, why she couldn’t have a candy bar at the drugstore. All the other girls were used to it, being told no, and soon enough, a divide rose up between the sisters; the one who came before, and those who came after.

My Grandpa Chan began to spend longer days at the studio, not to drum up business, but to obsess over the proper light needed to
capture his subjects—of which there were few—to clean his lenses, to flip through catalogs and admire the newest cameras. His studio was his solace, a place where, between the hours of nine and seven, he could feel some kind of higher importance. Within those walls he was an artist. He worked alone; there was no one to tell him otherwise. And when he arrived home at eight, sometimes nine o’clock in the evening with no money to speak of, he made no excuses, he felt no shame.

“My art is not about money, Iris. It’s a process. The greatest artists never made money during their lifetime—Kafka, Van Gogh, Bach—think about it. The money will come.”

“And Kafka let his children starve?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Iris.” He waved away her question. “Kafka didn’t have any children.”

When my Grandma Chan became pregnant with Eileen, her four girls already in hand-me-downs and my grandpa’s photography business clearly failing—finally, she stopped deluding herself. She stopped waiting for what good might come. The intellectual wit that she used to admire, that she used to believe would bring riches and success, was now simply music to the maddening choreography of their marriage. She had been tricked, subdued for more years than she was willing to admit, her ring finger still naked, the Sears catalog yellowing beside her mattress on the floor. She didn’t even have a proper bed, she realized with a wave of disgust, let alone a diamond. But as reality washed over her, so did the realization that she had allowed it. She had been impulsive and naïve. Why hadn’t she asked about the money? Were her in-laws really dead, killed in a car accident as her husband had claimed? Why did she agree to live in a basement in Kaneohe when her husband kept a shop in Waikiki?

The questions hit her all at once, ricocheting, filling the empty spaces and creating a deafening metallic sound. She doubled over, clutching the child growing in her belly, and vomited on the plastic floor. All of it—the picnics on the beach, the Waialae mansions,
the slow, lazy cigarettes—it was gone. Not that she ever had it, of course. She wiped her mouth with a kitchen towel, already dirty from last night’s dishes, and decided at that moment to be satisfied—not happy, just satisfied. With time, she would conquer her mind. She would suppress her expectations and learn to find satisfaction in this life. It was her husband who taught her to desire—to want things she had never before considered. He was the same man who showed her immense disappointment, a feeling of failing at something that was never real.

She wondered if her red string was as brittle as she imagined, understanding in that moment that my Grandpa Chan was not her destined match. He didn’t fight for her love; he deceived her—eluding the truth with his empty flattery. She tried to count how many times they had slept together, numbering the knots she had woven into her own fate, stopping when the number became too high and she was short of breath, imagining her red string wrapped around her neck, tied to her bedpost, knotted to her front door.

It’s a story
, she thought to herself, bringing a hand to her throat, coaxing air through her lungs as she began to think about the fable she was told as a girl, the consequences she now feared would be passed to her children.
They’ll know better
, she whispered to herself.
It’s a fairy tale,
she repeated over and again.

November 1964

H
ONOLULU
, H
AWAII

The walk back to the great room goes slowly. Amy’s hand rests on her hip, her elbow bent into a hook for Mrs. Leong to hold. The women are nearly identical in height, but Amy wears heels, white and leather, which lift her at least three inches. Theresa follows behind them, gauging their pace, studying the outlines of their bodies, the strangeness of their movement.

There is a cautiousness in Mrs. Leong’s step. She creeps down the hall, her knees slightly bent, her feet skimming the floor. Her height, Theresa thinks, is her saving grace. It spares her from looking like a child, hiding from her parents, stepping lightly across the creaky floorboards to avoid detection. On first glance, Mrs. Leong looks simply like an aging woman. Her body has softened from lack of use, but she has remained slender. When she stands, Theresa thinks, there is very little sign of her weakness.

As they draw closer to the mouth of the corridor, the women begin to hear sounds. The echo of voices whispering, the careful, muted footsteps of visitors, the soft scraping of chairs against the wooden floor. It sounds exactly as a funeral should, and suddenly Amy is reminded of why she is here. It rattles her, the fact that she is capable of such delusion—that, for a moment, she really believed that the day’s task had been accomplished. She had found her mother-in-law a proper shirt to wear.

Amy straightens. Her arm tenses and Mrs. Leong halts; her fingers tighten around Amy’s arm.

“Sorry,” Amy says instinctually. “Sorry—everything okay?”

Without looking at her, Mrs. Leong nods once. Her fingers loosen and so Amy continues. She lifts a foot and puts it down. She lifts a foot and puts it down. She repeats it in her head, calming under the structure of the words, able to breathe between the repetitions. Amy is grateful to be entering with her mother-in-law. She had not considered this scenario but now recognizes the way it will look to her guests—like Mrs. Leong chose her, trusted her for this important role. She feels the heat on her arm spread to her face.

As they reach the opening, Amy spots her family. They’re already seated, one after the other in a middle row, her mother and father closest to the aisle. Amy’s first thought is of her sister, who was the first phone call she made upon discovering that Bohai had died. Beverly came to the hospital immediately, and they stood together in the hallway, not speaking, barely looking at each other. It was also Beverly who had made her call Kaipo, six hours later when the shock had subsided. Amy had lied to him. She told Kaipo she had just found out, that he was her first phone call.

Amy’s mother spots her. She stands, about to walk into the aisle, but Amy raises her arm. She extends a finger. One minute, she mouths, and her mother sits back down. Amy’s mother looks to Theresa and offers a kind of smile, her mouth and eyes pulled upward by muscles that resist.

The room has mostly filled, the majority of chairs taken by people holding programs, their mouths busy with lucky candy. There is still time before the service begins and Amy knows that every seat will be taken. Seventy-five invitations and seventy-five acceptances. Amy couldn’t believe it. It became a little joke between her and Theresa, each time the small white envelope appeared in their mailbox, that Bohai had turned out to be the most popular of them all.

Kaipo stands at the head of the room, at his place to the right of Bohai’s casket. He holds his hands in front of him, clasped calmly together as mourners approach to drape flowers and leis across the
coffin. Afterward, the men shake Kaipo’s hand. The women kiss him lightly on the cheek. It looks like a scene from a black-and-white movie, Theresa thinks. It looks like somebody very important has died.

A number of eyes follow the women as they walk to the front of the room. Amy keeps her focus narrow, on the row of chairs to the left of the casket awaiting them, her pace still slow and deliberate. But Theresa looks out into the assembly of faces. She sends her eyes gliding over them, speeding across their features as she searches for his face.

Theresa wonders if she’ll recognize him. Beneath the lights, in a crowd of people, seven months later he’s bound to look different. And doesn’t she? Theresa is enormous, almost fifty pounds heavier than the last time he saw her, the night she collapsed on the toilet, sobbing. Theresa extended the invitation as an olive branch, as a way of making up to her father. The white envelope returned with a check mark beside Attending, small and sharp, no signature. It was in blue ballpoint pen, easily written by his mother.

The women approach the coffin. Theresa doesn’t see him.

“Is that my shirt?” Kaipo whispers to Amy as they help Mrs. Leong into her seat.

“Bohai’s,” she replies. Kaipo nods, studying his mother.

“Brilliant,” he says, and Amy almost smiles.

“I have to go say hi to my mom,” she says. “Are we almost ready to start?”

“Pretty much. I think the last of them are coming in now.”

“It’ll be quick, I promise.”

As Amy walks down the aisle, greeting the seventy-five faces, nodding at a hundred and fifty eyes, she begins to hear an echo. Our condolences, she hears twice, such a beautiful funeral. It echoes three times, then a fourth. To these things she says thank you, sending her voice in their general direction, growing faint and warm as she makes the final steps to her mother’s chair. Say hello now, Amy tells herself,
and the task is through. After this, she can remove her mother from her mind, erase her from the day.

“Hi,” she says.

“Amy,” her mother replies, standing. “You look gorgeous—is this silk? Did you have this made?”

“Mom,” Amy interrupts, her eyes piercingly still. With the smallest, briefest movement, Amy shakes her head.
This
, her mother’s vanity, her inability to act appropriately when met with anything she finds shiny or lavish or new, is precisely why Amy has kept the families apart for eighteen years. Amy’s mother has not seen Kaipo since Theresa was born. She has not entered the great room since before Amy was married. It’s entirely intentional; caught between them, Amy feels her life dialed back to zero. She is twenty again, hanging on the word of her parents, the only two people in the room with whom she has not made her peace. She corrects herself; the only two still living.

“Did you get a program?” Amy asks abruptly, already unsettled.

“Yes,” her mother says, flustered. “Yes, I have it right here.”

“Good,” Amy replies. “Thank you for sending the flowers.”

Amy leans into the row, extending herself to greet her father and siblings.

“We’re about to start, so I have to go back, but I’ll see you afterward,” she says. Amy looks each of them in the eye, starting and ending with Beverly, before returning to the head of the room and taking her seat between Theresa and Mrs. Leong. She looks at Kaipo and nods her head. He nods back and looks out over the mass of chairs. There is a body sitting in every one. He unclasps his hands and straightens the jacket of his suit. He clears his throat.

“Good morning, everyone. Aloha.” He walks to the mouth of the aisle, acknowledging each section of the room. “Welcome.”

The room quiets immediately. In the silence, the lights feel brighter to Amy—somehow intrusive, penetrating her skin in the flash of stillness. She feels like an experiment, something tiny and helpless being studied under a heat lamp.

“I want to thank you all for being here today,” Kaipo says, and his voice is weaker than Amy expects, limper. It’s too hot, she thinks, lifting a hand to the nape of her neck. It’s far too hot.

“It means a lot to me and I know it would mean a lot to my brother to see you all gathered like this.” He clears his throat again. He runs his right hand through his hair and Amy notices that his brow is damp. A sprinkling of mist dots his forehead, and when she looks closer, tightening her eyes, she is certain that the perspiration is accumulating. She is positive that Kaipo is just as uncomfortable as she is.

Amy begins to look for a fan. She thinks of how she could excuse herself, just briefly, so that she might find some air for both of them—for the entire room. She thinks of the relief a fan would bring. She begins to picture the rooms of the house, searching them for a fan that she could use. Bohai never used one, she remembers, so there wouldn’t be one in his bedroom. None in the library. That portion of the house is shaded, she thinks. It always stays cool, even in the warmest months, even in July. There was no need for a fan in there. Amy begins to conjure the study when she realizes she’s hanging off the edge of her chair. She’s leaning forward, fingers clutching the wooden underside, and she is suddenly aware that Kaipo is still speaking.

Slowly, Amy lifts her eyes to meet her guests. All of them are looking at Kaipo. They’re listening carefully to his words, their faces heavy with empathy, every drop of their sympathy real, their grief quiet and effortless. And the longer she looks, unable to look away, rapt by the sincerity of their expressions, the more it feels like an open palm, ripping across Amy’s face. The more it feels like that same hand, reaching into her stomach and twisting, challenging her to feel something real.

And then it comes, something at once enormous and expected. Amy feels betrayed, not by the people before her, but by her own capacity to change. She promised herself, she swore that she would be better, that she would honor her husband in the way he deserved, in a way she could not manage during his lifetime. It’s her failure as
a widow—the same selfish, predictable failure that plagued her as a wife—to be present,
simply present
, at a moment as important as this.

“I’ve thought a lot about what I could say today,” she hears Kaipo say. Amy takes a slow breath and leans back in her chair.
Listen
, she orders herself.
What’s wrong with you?

“As you all know, my brother was a man of few words, and so the task of choosing the right words for him today is not a simple one.” Amy breathes again. It occurs to her that her husband lies ten feet away—that in a way, he is there, witnessing her failure, silent as always.

“And even as I stand here now, I don’t know that I’ll get it right. In fact, I’m fairly certain that I’ll get it wrong. But I also know that my brother will forgive me. Forgiveness was easy for Bohai—I’m sure you’ve all experienced it, the enormous compassion of my brother. It was one of his most honorable traits, and it was something that I have always envied about him.”

Kaipo pauses. His eyelids lower softly to the floor.

“Did you hear that?” he says, turning toward the casket. “I envied you, Bohai. I envied you in more ways than you know.”

A moment passes. It’s followed by a second, and Kaipo has yet to turn back around. His eyes linger on the coffin.

Seventy-five people sit silently, uncomfortably, unsure of where to look. Amy feels the urge to stand. Her legs tighten, compelling her to save Kaipo, to do something decent for her husband. But Amy realizes she has nothing to say once she rises, not a single comforting sentence. She will simply be standing. Her left leg begins to tremble.

“There was plenty to envy about my brother.” Amy flinches with the return of Kaipo’s voice. She exhales downward, slowly breathing into her body, trying to keep the hot air away from the others. She feels Theresa’s hand extend to her lap.
It’s okay
, her daughter whispers, and her face looks just like the others’. It startles Amy—that she may be the only person in the room unaffected by Kaipo’s speech, the only one not listening.

“Bohai was a brilliant man. He saved this family from ruin more times than I’d like to admit. And he never told anyone. Even now, I don’t think anyone really knows how important he was to my father’s business, to what the business is today.”

Amy takes Theresa’s hand and squeezes it tightly. She feels grateful for her daughter, for her gesture, small as it is. To Amy, it feels like an offering. A hand extended, an indication that her daughter will not hate her forever. Amy allows it to soothe her, to lighten her, and it feels like carbonation—rising through her body, lifting her from the inside.
Thank you
, she mouths, still clutching her daughter’s hand.

“But if I had to choose a single trait about my brother. If I had to pick one thing that I admired most, well—that would be easy, actually.

“When we were boys, I never could have imagined that Bohai’s life would turn out this way. He never talked about wanting a wife or a family. He never showed much of an interest. But I think that was the beauty of what happened to Bohai. He met Amy and it was immediate, like lightning. I’d never seen anything like it, and I have to admit, I was a little jealous that it was so simple for them. They met, they fell in love, they married, they lived happily ever after until death took him suddenly. That was the only part that didn’t fit. But I say with confidence, that if I have seen fate in my lifetime—if fate and destined matches and red strings and fairy tales are to be believed—then I saw it in the two of them. I saw it every time my brother was with his wife.”

Kaipo pauses and turns to Amy. His entire face smiles with the exception of his eyes, which continue to grieve. Amy turns her gaze to her lap, to where she holds her daughter’s hand, trying to keep it steady. A dampness presses against the back of her eyes. It is the first time today that Amy is completely aware that her husband is dead, and that she is at his funeral.

“After Bohai met Amy, to say he was overjoyed would be an understatement. It was joy in his own way, of course. He stopped working
fourteen-hour days. He spent more time with us. He went out for drives. He came to the beach. And then they married and had little Theresa and again, my brother was so proud, so
happy
.”

Amy closes her eyes. She doesn’t know what else to do.

“Bohai shared a closeness with his family that I admired very, very much. He loved these girls. He lived for this woman from the day he met her until the day he died. And I suppose that’s what brings me comfort when I think about the fact that he’s gone. And I didn’t mean to get so sentimental, so forgive me all, I’m almost done. But I just wanted to say—I wanted to remind you all, as the people who loved my brother—that he died happy. That he died loved, and that he was in love.”