Diamond Head (17 page)

I dried the rest of the dishes in silence, nodding along with whatever Henry’s mother said, trying to keep myself from crying.
A year.
I thought about saying goodbye to Henry and had to stop myself immediately.
Was this possible?

When the dishes were done, we walked into the dining room, where the rest of the family was still talking. I must have looked terrible, because Henry stood immediately and took my hand, leading me outside to the back patio.

“Is everything okay?” he asked, sitting me on a bench against the outside wall.

“You’re leaving on Friday,” I said. “For a year. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I did tell you,” he replied, putting a hand on my knee, “I said I was leaving at the end of the month.”

“But next Friday, Henry!”

“I know.” And that was all he said for a while.

“Amy,” he said, drawing his lips in to moisten them. “I don’t know how to say this without scaring you, so I’m just going to say it, okay?”

“I’m not scared.”

“I’ve loved you since I was ten, okay? I’ve never stopped thinking about you and I’m certain I never will. A year seems like a long time but we can do it—it’s only a year and I’ll write every day. I know this doesn’t happen for everyone, Amy. I know how lucky I am to have walked into your studio last week. Please. Tell me you feel it too. Tell me I’m not alone in this.”

I looked at him and heard the ocean again. I felt warm and safe and nostalgic. Who was I to deny something that so strongly, so intensely resembled fate? I couldn’t describe what I felt for Henry, wasn’t ready to call it love, not yet. It had been three days, and the progression of my feelings startled me. But despite myself, I knew exactly what it was. It wasn’t three days, it had been three summers. Henry was a constant in my life before I knew I needed one. When my parents went through their difficult time, when there were too many of us to care for and I was sent to Waialua, Henry was there. And he was still here, patient as ever, asking me to wait for him.

“It’s not just you.” I hesitated. I heard the words in my ears.
I love you, too.
So simple, so easy to give away—but I couldn’t. I wanted to save it. “I feel it too,” I said.

He put his hand on my cheek and lifted my head, leaning in to kiss me on the mouth. It was soft and gentle and warm. He pulled me into him, my body pressing into his, the heat between us melting my fear and apprehension.

We sat together on that bench, my head on his shoulder, until the sun began to lower and it was time to take me home. In the car, we kissed again, his hands exploring my body and my body eager to let him. I didn’t want to go home. It was a terrible time for a curfew, a terrible time for a war.

Henry and I saw each other every afternoon until he left—from three o’clock until the sun went down. He would wait outside the studio in his car, always with some snack prepared so he could keep me out until dinnertime.

Except on the last day. On Thursday, he arrived on foot.

“I thought we could walk to the beach today,” he said, taking my hand as we started toward the ocean.

“Are you packed?” I asked, not wanting to talk about it.

“Pretty much,” he replied.

We stopped at a wall overlooking the sand and the water and the families below enjoying the sunny day. Henry squinted at me, the sun catching in his eyelashes.

“Can we sit here for a minute?” he asked. I nodded, putting my hands on the wall and pulling myself up. Instead of joining me, Henry put his hand in his pocket and removed a square black box. He opened it toward me; a small diamond ring sat in the middle.

“This is not a proposal,” he said, taking the ring and removing my hand from over my open mouth. He slid the ring onto my middle finger.

“This is a promise. A promise that I will write to you as often as I
can, that I will be faithful to you, and that when I return, I will work my ass off and trade this in for the ring that you deserve. And then, Amy, if you’ll have me, I promise that I will marry you.”

I began to cry.

“No,” I said, “I can’t accept this, it’s too expensive. I can’t,” I repeated, beginning to take the ring off my finger, but he clasped his hand firmly over mine.

“It’s not expensive enough, but jewelry isn’t exactly simple to find these days and it’s all my car is worth so you’ll have to wait for something better.”

“You sold your car?” I asked stupidly.

“Yes. I sold my car because I don’t need it anymore. If I’m not here to pick you up after work, what do I need a car for?”

“Please don’t go,” I said, wiping my eyes, the diamond on my finger heavy and warm.

“I’ll be back.” His smile was filled with so much hope. “It’s not forever. Remember that. I’ve waited so long already. This is nothing.”

He raised himself onto the wall and sat with me. He took my hand in his. Together, we stayed like this, not saying a thing, until the sun began to turn lilac. I tried to memorize him. I put my face into his neck and breathed. He had a sweet, earthy smell, like grass in the morning, after the dew has settled. I studied the curve of the back of his neck, the soft bend that disappeared into his shirt. I touched it, tracing it upward to his hairline. His jaw, his wrists, his shoulders—I recorded every detail. I felt the warmth in his pulse. We stayed until an officer approached us, telling us to get home. Henry nearly started a fight with him. We’ll leave, I told the officer. We’re leaving right now, I said as I clutched Henry’s shoulder.

In front of my house, he apologized. But he didn’t need to. We both felt it; the anxiety of separation, the weight of the unknown. He kissed me in the pitch black, our fingers pressed into each other’s body, trying to extract the last of one another. Then he disappeared into the dark, the unlit street swallowing him up as he made his way
to his parents’ house. I sat on the slab of cement outside my front door and held myself still, suddenly shivering, suddenly freezing.

The next day, my father let me come in late so that I could say goodbye to Henry at the docks with the rest of his family. He waved to me from the deck of the ocean liner, and when his face became indistinguishable from the rest of the waving soldiers, I turned away.

“So this is the ring,” his brother Paul said to me, taking my hand and inspecting my finger. “It’s nice. Not quite a car, but it’s nice.” I nodded and tried to smile.

On the walk back to the studio, I gathered myself, repeating in my head what Henry had said to me the day before.
It’s not forever.
I could hear his voice so clearly. I could feel his hands on mine.

When I arrived at my father’s studio, pushing open the front door, I found him in unusually high spirits.

“Amy! I have good news!” he exclaimed, not acknowledging my tears or Henry’s departure. “We’ve received a very important job!” He took my hand and led me to the table where he had been taking down notes. I didn’t respond. I was thinking about Henry crossing the Pacific at that very moment.

“It’s the Leongs! A man called this morning asking if we could do a private sitting at the Leongs! Three hundred dollars, Amy! They will pay us three hundred dollars!”

“
The
Leongs?” I asked instinctually. I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly.

“Yes, Amy,
the
Leongs. They saw one of my portraits in the paper. They want me to do a private sitting. A private sitting!”

“That’s amazing,” I said, fighting to keep the excitement in my voice. “Congratulations. Really, Dad. That’s unbelievable.”

And it was. Two weeks ago, this would have been extraordinary news. The Leongs played a hand in everything on the island, especially beloved in Kaneohe for Mrs. Leong’s work in the schools. She raised ten thousand dollars the year I graduated, a record-breaking
amount. Her name was everywhere: along the wooden shelves of the middle school library, above the door in the high school gymnasium, on the benches in the new community garden. Lin Leong threw parties; that’s what I’d heard. She threw parties at their Diamond Head mansion and suddenly we had new textbooks and a water fountain and a white net on our basketball hoop. The Leongs were a private family and there was plenty of speculation about how they lived, about what it might be like behind the massive iron gates that concealed their home. I had read an article about it last summer. There were no pictures, but I remembered a quote:
Public in business, private in family, and victorious in both; the Leongs are living the life you wish you had, but you’ll never know much about it.

I thought of Henry. He’d be happy for my father, excited for my family. This could be what I needed, I told myself, a nice distraction, something to keep me busy as Henry sailed to Europe. And three hundred dollars was nothing to take lightly. It was an incredible fortune for us, I knew that. It was another step closer to a new beginning, another opportunity that I hoped would lead our family to redemption.

“When are we going?” I asked.

“Next Saturday,” my father replied, “eleven o’clock.” He smiled and I did too. I couldn’t help it; it was the most honest show of happiness I’d ever seen from my father. It cut through my misery, a tiny slice of light.

The Leong home was located on the southwestern slope of Diamond Head, secluded within a curved piece of land that cut into the base of the crater, the only one like it. It was one of the first homes to be built there, my father told me as we left the house Saturday morning. While the other wealthy families were building homes in Waikiki, next to the ocean and near shops and restaurants, the Leongs remained within the protection of the volcano. They continued to guard their privacy.

My father and I rode the bus, getting off at Kapiolani Park and walking the remainder of the way south along the water to the western slope. I wore a floral shift dress with a white yoke collar and a lace hem I’d sewn on the day before. My father wore a navy suit—the same one he’d worn when he married my mother twenty years ago. It was the only suit he owned. We walked the final stretch in silence, both of us organizing our thoughts before we arrived.

As we approached the crater, its silhouette growing as we neared, blocking the rising sun, we knew immediately which property belonged to the Leongs. Just as my father said, exactly as I read in the article, a massive iron gate spread before us, longer than a football field, sealing an expanse of the volcano entirely hidden from the street. The gate was made of two layers of iron, one completely solid and flat, the second an overlay of metal rods, long and ornate, extending past the top of the solid slabs. The middle of the gate, where the iron formed an entrance, was flanked by a pair of large bronze pillars and atop those pillars stood two towering stone lions. I stood there, awestruck, taking in its astonishing height. The lion on the left was frozen in play with her cub; the lion on the right was posed with his foot on a ball. I’d never seen anything like it; even in Chinatown, the imperial statues weren’t half as large as these. We paused, my father and I, looking at each other but saying nothing. There was nothing to say. Drawing a final breath, long and slow, my father straightened his jacket and pushed the buzzer.

A minute later, the gates opened automatically and we were greeted by a woman named Hong. Graciously, she ushered us through the entry and into what looked like an oil painting—the third rendering, flawless. A gracefully sloping lawn created different levels, the largest of which housed a silver pond surrounded by flat, oval stones and lavender lotus blossoms. Opposite the pond, on a higher level, was a Chinese pavilion painted red with a green roof, its open interior sheltering a day bed and a table with chairs, a tray ready for tea. A
bridge, an arched stone overpass, reached over the pond and connected the pavilion to the lawn below.

More than the colors, I remember it was the textures of the garden that astonished me. Everything seemed to be so lush yet so precise, each element of the garden complementing the next. From ten feet away I could see tiny hairs growing on the stems of the lotus. I fought the urge to touch everything—the flowers, the grass, the lacquer on the pavilion—to see if it was real. I looked at my father. His fingers were running anxiously along the top of his camera and I knew he was fighting a similar impulse.

But Hong was two steps ahead of us, leading the way to the main entrance. Once again, I tilted my head back and took in the height. The crater, its honey-colored ridges lit with shocks of velvet green growth, soared around the property, gathering the sun like a funnel. Light poured upon the house, which looked nothing like how I had imagined it. In every possible way, it was more magnificent. Long, polished pieces of dark wood met at right angles to form giant windows that rose at least three stories. The windows were perfectly clear, so that I could see the pale, melon-colored walls of the interior—the most remarkable color I had ever seen on something so ordinary. Above, long glass balconies emerged from the walls of the highest floor, one for every room, displaying lounge chairs and sun umbrellas. It was brilliant; total privacy with a pristine view of the ocean, their balconies taller than any structure in front of them, nothing but Diamond Head behind. Below, the double doors of the entrance were painted red, already open. A low, warm light flooded the foyer.

I removed my shoes at the entrance, my nylon sandals looking small and cheap on the hardwood floors. My father did the same. Hong seated us on a low black sofa in the next room, where there was also a piano and an Oriental rug.

“One moment. I tell them you’re here,” she said, and exited the room.

We sat in silence, avoiding each other’s gaze. I feared my eyes would give away the anxiety I was trying to suppress. I did not expect to feel so overwhelmed, but it felt like a secret world, a hidden society within a crater I’d seen a hundred times, never knowing what absurdity lay within. I began to compose my words in my head.
Good morning, Mr. Leong. What a beautiful home you have. The lotuses have bloomed splendidly. Mrs. Leong, what a pleasure to meet you!
It all sounded ridiculous, sitting in their modern living room, but there was no time to come up with anything else.