The Ruins of California (35 page)

“Inez, listen to me,” Jerry said. “Everybody’s going to try to snag you quick. Just take your time, darlin’. Make everybody take a number.”

Whitman endured as much as he could and then, shaking his head, walked me to a bench at the rise of his backyard. That’s when I saw the view: a dramatic stretch of reddish brown volcanic rock and the turquoise-blue sea beyond.

“Wow.”

“I know.” Whitman chuckled. “We’re facing directly west, so the sunsets are really way too breathtaking.”

Looking out over the ocean, across patterns of light green and dark blue, I felt as if I were standing not on the edge of the world but on the edge of time, too. The horizon was infinite, and so far away, so far from anything. Thinking about home was like looking into the sky and trying to imagine visiting another star. “Wow,” I said again.

“I know,” Whitman said. “But you’d be surprised how different Hawaii can seem after a year, or even a few months.” Then he quickly changed the subject. “Hey, Dad said you had a lousy time on Molokai.”

“Dad?”

“This morning. God, it wasn’t even seven. He was so thrilled I don’t think he could wait to call. He’s spent the last year boring me with talk about your love life and what a dead soul your boyfriend is. He calls him Dead Soul, actually. And sometimes it’s the Blond Japanese.”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Tell Dad that.” Whitman laughed. “I’ve been praying you’d break up with that Yamato guy so I wouldn’t have to hear about him anymore. And then, hey, go to college, would you? I’m tired of that screed, too.”

Before I had time to protest, Whitman raised his hand to point where the rocks ended. “You can’t really see it from here,” he said, “but down there, beyond the rocks, is an incredible beach—just made for you. Perfect water, white sand. Great swimming. Not a surfing beach. Doesn’t really break unless it’s already huge in other, better places. But good bodysurfing—you’ll see.”

We had a dinner of white eel, barbecued—one of the local kids had caught it on the rocks and sold it to Whitman for three dollars—and after a few beers we smoked some Maui Wowie. It was sweet and smooth and so oily that the leaf resin melted into black tar at the butt, and, unable to inhale through it, we just let it burn and sniffed the smoke. Immediately afterward Whitman sank down in front of the television, his eyes heavy, and I remember thinking that maybe my arrival had tired him out. Or maybe he was just wasted. In those days you weren’t just stoned, you were
wasted.
And that’s how Whitman seemed to me: enervated, diminished, run out of gas. After all that Maui Wowie, I assumed I’d feel like that, too.

But I didn’t. Surrounded by so many new things to look at, I felt very alive suddenly, and awake to the surface of the world that glittered so glamorously when I was stoned. The dark house seemed full of mysteries and the trade winds full of romance, and the wild lizards clinging to the walls in hopes of catching a mosquito mesmerized me. Getting undressed, I noticed an old scarf pinned in the middle of the ceiling to cover a bare lightbulb. The scarf very thin—made of fine silk—and old, something I knew from all my hours spent rummaging around thrift shops. The burnished colors were from the 1930s, browns and oranges and greens in a print of organic shapes—squiggles and snakes and cones. Who would think to pin a loose scarf over a lightbulb? The more I looked at it, the more beautiful the scarf seemed—the patterns it threw on the walls and ceiling, the way the shapes fell together, the warm colors and cool shapes. Who had found that scarf—and put it there?

The next morning I woke at dawn and pulled out my camera—funny, but I hadn’t taken any pictures while visiting the Yamatos on Molokai—and focused the lens on the scarf. I turned the ceiling light on and off, watching the colors of the scarf change. I took pictures of the windows and the pale curtains blowing over them. Inside the closet golden sunlight had made its way onto the shoulders of a few old bowling shirts. A pair of orange high-top Converse sneakers were glowing in the same morning light. I barely moved anything—the compositions seemed to form perfectly without me.

The rest of the day, the rest of the week, everywhere Whitman took me, I pulled off the black leather casing of the Nikon and squinted into the viewfinder. I went through rolls and rolls of film,
keeping them stashed in my duffel until I had enough money to process them. I photographed unpaved streets, missionary-built churches, the food markets with gorgeously packaged Asian products. I photographed the thick, oily hamburgers at Kua Hina, the clusters of flabby tourists on the big rock in Waimea Bay. A dripping ice cream cone. A pink truck selling Hawaiian shaved ice. At sunset, beyond Whitman’s back door, I photographed the quiet ocean, ablaze in purple and yellow reflections, the moon rising in the tidal pools. The light wasn’t as sharp and strong as San Francisco light. It was softer, freer, and looser. You could almost smell the gentle wind in it and feel parts of yourself lifting and blowing away.

Whitman spent every day with me that first week. When I asked about his gardening business and whether he was taking time from his work, I was met with vague nods and asides, as though I’d wandered into a zone of uncertainty. He had a contract to look after the gardens at a couple of restaurants on the North Shore and was watering the indoor plants at a hotel in Pupakea Heights, but otherwise, he eventually revealed, he was mostly hanging out and waiting for the surfing to get good. “The real waves don’t come until the winter,” he said, “with the storms.” But it wasn’t even the Fourth of July.

I
f I’d been paying closer attention—and not been so focused on myself—I would have guessed that my father had somebody new, somebody major, not just another Laurel or Shanti. Lots of little things would have given it away. He was looking at an old Cadillac limousine to restore. And he was talking about getting Hector from El Bodega to drive him around, since the restaurant was open only two nights a week now. Before I’d left for Hawaii, he told me he’d
decided to join the summer encampment of the Bohemian Club in hopes of eventually becoming a member, and the oddness of this eluded me for some time. He’d ordered new “evening clothes,” as he called them—a tuxedo and a tailcoat—and when he told me the name of the men’s store in the city where these suits were being made, J. Press, he seemed shocked that I’d never heard of it. (“Inez, where have you been? It’s a preppy stronghold.”) Sometimes he answered the phone with incredible urgency. And when he heard my voice, he sounded deflated and tried to hurry me off the line. Most tellingly, though, he hadn’t asked me for “a list.”

Since the beginning of high school, he’d gotten involved in the selection of my courses, insisting that I take precalculus and chemistry, among other electives. Mostly, though, he focused on my English classes. And at the beginning of each semester, he’d ask for a syllabus.

“A what?”

“A reading list.”

“There’s no list. Nothing like that,” I’d say.

“There’s always a list, Inez. A syllabus, for God’s sake. What kind of school are you going to?” When a homework schedule was supplied, he began collecting the books and short stories on the list, pulling them from his shelves or buying them in bookstores. Then he lined up the volumes by his bed at Wolfback.

The Red Badge of Courage
was the first book we read together, when I was in ninth grade. The next year, in tenth, he read
David Copperfield
with me,
The Scarlet Letter
, and
A Separate Peace.
The next semester we read
Huckleberry Finn, Vanity Fair
, and
To Kill a Mockingbird.
(“Too bad I’m not as serious as Atticus,” he said, “You’d love that, wouldn’t you?”) When I was a junior, we read
The Sound and the Fury
(“exasperating”),
The Great Gatsby
(“perfection”),
and so many Ernest Hemingway short stories that he began to complain. (“I’ve had an epiphany reading these stories again,” he said one night. “Papa’s an unbearable bore.”) Toward the end of that year, after looking over the assigned pages of
Moby-Dick
, he huffed, “Forget this abridged nonsense! You can’t just read a few pages here and there. You and I will be reading the whole book—ignore what the teacher says!”

“But there’s so much about whaling,” I whined.

“It’s not about whaling!” he exploded. “For God’s sake, Inez, can’t you see that?”

My senior year came, though, and he never asked about my classes or mentioned “the list.” I remember being pleased, to tell the truth. He was leaving me alone, finally. I could read less and skim more. I’d be free of his meddling—and difficult questions.

It wasn’t until the spring, when I visited him for the last time before going to Hawaii, that things began to come together in my mind. There was a new smell wafting out of his bathroom, a formal fragrance with lots of high notes—more Parisian than herbal and hippie. He’d taken a shower, and I found him with a towel wrapped around his waist and trimming his hair with a pair of unusual scissors.

“They’re made only for hair,” he said in proud tones. “See the design? A friend gave them to me—brought them back from Finland.”

“A new friend?”

He hesitated, and then his voice turned soft, almost a hush. “Well, yes. Somewhat new.”

“Who?”

He looked at me in the mirror. “I can’t say too much,” he said, putting the scissors down. “I’m not trying to be evasive. It’s just very new. We met a couple years ago but didn’t really figure things
out until pretty recently. Over the fall and winter. She’s…well…she’s sort of famous. So we have to deal with that. And she’s been through so much—having such a hard time. At this point I’m just helping her out.”

At the start of his relationship with Justine, he’d talked like that. No brash, sexist jokes like, “I mean,
what a body,
” spoken in ironic tones. Instead he was “helping her out.” So whoever this new person was, it was serious.
She’s been through so much…having such a hard time.
That meant she was married—and her husband was still around.

“The funny thing is,” he said, “she’s very different from my—I don’t know—my usual. She’s very smart, of course, and accomplished. But she’s shorter and rounder. And really not that beautiful. There’s something a little coarse about her face. I’m serious. It’s almost heartbreaking, the way she deals with it. There’s something courageous about her—inspiring. I’m drawn—almost—to her lack of beauty. Can you understand that? She and I, we…we have something. There’s
something there.
Very deep. I just don’t know what.”

A
t the end of my second week in Hawaii, Whitman took me to a party up in the mountains behind Haleiwa. “We missed last Saturday night because you’d just arrived,” he said, “but every Saturday there’s a party somewhere. And it’s really sort of a mandatory night out. Everybody has to show.” He drove the Valiant to an old wooden house with rotting trim and ceilings stained by leaks, where his friend Leftie lived. Funky Christmas lights were strung up in the backyard, and a collection of rusting cars was sitting on the grass—a time-honored North Shore tradition, I was beginning
to figure out. New cars didn’t belong. New cars meant you were new, too. And being new to the North Shore wasn’t cool, unless you were either a really good surfer or a really cute girl. Then nobody minded at all.

The party was mostly outside, on a deck, where people were clustered around a bowl of Maui Chips and a cooler of beer. Some jays were being passed around. Whitman introduced me to a couple brothers from Brazil, Ray and Ricardo, and then sat in the corner of the garden with a surf buddy and talked waves. The next time I looked over, he’d wandered off.

Standing next to the potato chip bowl, I met a nurse named Kate. She was petite, and almost mousy, but had a strong feeling about her—a sense of terrific durability. “You’ve been here only two weeks, and you’ve already found your way to Leftie’s?” she said. “You’re way ahead.” She’d been on the North Shore for three years, she said, had come for a holiday with two other nurses, fell in love with a guy who owned a T-shirt shop down in town, and after a few months “back home” in Nebraska, she returned to Hawaii to live with him. “We’re not together anymore,” she said. “Thank God. He’s a real dick. But I’m sure glad we met. Otherwise I’d still be in Omaha.”

She looked up, over my shoulder. I felt somebody tap me on the back. I turned around to face a guy with a head of dark, curly hair and a welcoming smile. He had a gold hoop earring in one ear that made him look like a pirate. “Hi there,” he said. “I know you.”

“No you don’t.”

“Yes I do. From a photograph.”

I must have looked puzzled.

“There’s a picture of you in Whitman Ruin’s room.”

“There is?”

He nodded. “He must…Did you…? I mean—”

“He’s my brother,” I said.

“Oh, God,” he groaned. “All this time I thought he had a girlfriend.”

Tomas was a garden designer who built patios and waterfalls. He’d once been a theatrical set designer in Florida, and, like half the North Shore, it seemed, he’d come to Hawaii in his late twenties for a visit and stayed. At thirty-two, after living all over Oahu, he had decided to build a house in the hills above Haleiwa. While his house was being finished, he’d lived at Whitman’s—until recently.

“Are those your bowling shirts in the closet?” I asked.

“Are they in your way?”

“No,” I said. “I’ve been photographing them! And your shoes, too!”

The scarf on the ceiling belonged to an old girlfriend—Sugar—who had tacked it there when she couldn’t stand to look at the bare lightbulb any longer. “Oh, I’ve heard about Sugar,” I said, but before I could wonder whether I really looked like her or not, Tomas began asking about my camera, and whether I used a flash, and what kind of lenses. Did I have a good telephoto and tripod? Was I staying around to photograph the big waves? Unlike Whitman’s lascivious neighbors, Jerry and John—whom I was now habitually avoiding—Tomas presented himself as a friend, as another brother and kindred spirit. He didn’t come on strong but rather flew under my radar. I remember watching him, as he described the light in Hawaii and the way the clouds threw shadows on the sea, and thinking,
Who is this incredible person? Where did he come from?
It sounds crazy to say that I fell in love with a guy because “he had an eye”—but it was something like that. Our eyes fell in love, our sense of design. Being with him wasn’t an exchange as much as a confirmation of self. There was something about Tomas that reminded me of me.