This Is Paradise (19 page)

Albert poured himself a glass of water and gazed into it. For a moment, he had a look of vulnerability, a boy lost in his thoughts. Then he lifted the glass to his lips and gulped down the water, and the briskness of his movement undid the brief impression of youth. Albert washed his dishes and dried them neatly. When he was finished, he leaned awkwardly against the counter. “I guess I just wanted to say …” He opened his mouth and closed it again. “I mean, I didn’t want to unload that, but …” He glanced down at his hands and then looked up. “You should know your father’s swelling in the face continues to be severe in the morning. I’m going to raise his bed to forty degrees and see if that helps.”

Albert swept out of the room as silently as he had entered. Pili heard him open the door to the study and close it again. The stars were higher in the sky now, and brighter, and Pili remained in the kitchen for a while longer wondering if Albert spoke to Maile with such candor.

Pili and Albert’s brief conversation seemed to shift the wall that had previously stood between them. Whereas before Pili had wandered to his room after dinner to work or read, now he joined Albert in Harrison’s study. Pili discovered,
to his relief, that with Albert present the study felt less claustrophobic than when Pili was alone with his father, and Harrison seemed more at ease, too. With an audience, Harrison spoke at greater length and with fewer pauses, and he seemed less susceptible to the pain in his arms and legs. Pili began to think company served as a kind of opiate for him.

Maile joined them one evening, and she wore her hair loose around her shoulders. She looked pretty, more serene. She spoke of the riding lessons she gave, and when the subject was broached of how she and Pili had learned to ride, they laughed together and pointed at their father. “Dad put Maile on a sweet old mare, and I was given a stud colt. That’s how he taught us,” Pili said.

“Bulai, you,” Harrison laughed. “He no stay on one toy horse if I go glue ’im dere.”

“Dad’s right,” Maile chimed in. “Pili neva have no balance when he one keiki.”

“In my defense, I had a bad ear infection as a baby, and it affected my balance for most of my childhood.”

“Ah, da momma say dat. Pili jus’ no can ride. I tell you da trut’, but. He take good care da horses. Mo betta dan da sista. Maile, she like ride ’em but neva like train ’em. Das da hard part, yeah. Pili, he stay wit’ dem fo’ long time. He wen clean ’em, curry dem, brush ’em. He like be da firs’ get ’em unda da saddle. Dem horses, dey get so dey need fo’ see him evry day. If Pili stay friend house one night, da horses get restless. Dey know he left ’em. Dey
get like dat, you know. Dey get so dey need fo’ be wit’ da one take care dem.”

“I took plenny care da horses, Dad,” Maile said.

“Nutting much go wata dem, hay dem. Your brudda, he neva haf no balance. He know how fo’ be wit’ dem, but. Mo bettah dan anybody, him.”

Maile didn’t answer, but Pili knew she wanted to. He could see it in the way she worked her jaw. Albert must have sensed it, too. He asked Maile about her students, helped the conversation shift, and by the end of the evening they were all laughing again.

When Pili was a boy, he often followed his father to the porch in the evening, where Harrison liked to sit and drink and take stock of the day. The nights always started the same. Pili would watch his father flip open the top of a cigarette box and draw out a cigarette with his lips like a horse taking an apple from a man’s hand. Harrison smoked slowly, with evident pleasure, and Pili knew not to speak but to wait for his father to settle into himself and the night and whatever conversation Harrison wished to have. As an adult, Pili would credit the patience he learned on these evenings for his ability to build his own marketing firm and to stick it out through the lean early years before success arrived.

Pili remembered how the wood porch remained warm from the day’s heat and the air smelled of dried grass, cow
dung, and sweat, both the pungent animal sweat of the horses and Harrison’s sweat, like sulfur and pine sap and dust. Harrison drank his beer in long, silent pulls, and when he bent back his head to catch the final dregs, his Adam’s apple jiggled. After the first beer was finished, Harrison would lean back and sigh, “Ah, hit da spot.”

As the light bled from the sky, Harrison became a watery outline, a shadow, and if no one put on the porch light, he eventually disappeared from view altogether. This dissipation scared and thrilled Pili, for to lose sight of his father was to be closer to him, to feel rather than see him. Finally, when Pili could barely stand the silence any longer, Harrison spoke, and he talked the way he rode, with the quiet, steady rhythm of a man at ease.

Harrison always started by describing the work he had done that day and what was still to be done the next. He detailed which horses needed to be shod and which might soon be sold, and he told stories about the paniolos and the herd. He also solicited Pili’s advice, asking if his son thought the makai stretch of the bull paddock needed repair or if they had enough hay stored for the winter months, and these questions were what Pili waited for.

On the porch, Pili had Harrison to himself. He didn’t have to share his father with the other paniolos. Harrison wasn’t distracted by the cattle or his horses, and neither Mahea nor Maile were there to interrupt with their opinions. Harrison belonged completely to Pili, and he spoke to him as one man to another. Pili gave careful thought
to all his father’s questions, sometimes even waiting to answer them until the following evening. And on the rare occasion neither Harrison nor Pili had anything to say, they sat in companionable silence, each with his own thoughts, and shared their solitude and the evening.

Pili tried to remember when those evenings had ended, the intimacy faded away. When could he no longer speak to his father? Or had his father stopped knowing how to speak to him? Sometime in his early teens, Pili believed, around the time of their visit to Waikīkī, or just after, when Pili’s mother died.

Now, as his father was dying, Pili was haunted by the desire to re-create the intimacy he and Harrison had once shared. Pili wondered what might bring them back to that kind of closeness, and he began to think that if he could just come out to his dad—and Maile, too—then perhaps he would regain the relationships he missed. In San Francisco, his coming out—along with the honesty and self-realization that it required of him—was cheered and celebrated among his friends, and championed without hesitation. But in Hawaiʻi, Pili was unsure of his desires and of himself.

Here, Pili felt as if he were a child still: doubtful, un-whole, his being as solid as vapor. On the mainland Pili knew who he was: successful marketing magnate, occasional club favorite, excellent dinner companion. On
island he was none of those. He was reduced to simply being his father’s son. He had remained hidden from his father and sister, separated by an ocean and twelve years of living on the mainland. He had carefully crafted his semiannual visits to coincide with the arrival of aunts and uncles so he would never be alone with Harrison or Maile, and though he offered to pay for them to fly to San Francisco, he knew they wouldn’t accept. They had the ranch to run. Now Pili regretted these decisions and wished he had more ground to stand on, more recent history with them.

A warm spell came, and in the evenings, after Harrison had fallen asleep, Albert and Pili would sit in the hot study and sweat. On the third evening of this, Pili suggested they have a beer on the porch. “We won’t be long—just enough to cool off a little.” Albert hesitated at first, but once outside, he released a long sigh of relief. The wind swept down the mountain breathlessly and cooled their damp skin. The sky was lavender, delicate and high, and in the distance, the unfinished skeletons of homes being constructed were black silhouettes. “Don’t you miss being here?” Albert asked.

“Of course. How could I not?” Pili held out his arms as if he might fold the landscape into them. “I love the horses. I love those mountains and the ocean. I love my family. I just also happen to love California.” Pili took a sip of his beer. “What about you? Are you happy here?”

“I like the islands enough.”

“Enough? That’s not a ringing endorsement. Where else would you like to live?”

“Seattle maybe. Or San Diego. Somewhere big but not too big. I hear nurses are needed everywhere. I could find a job easily.”

“Why stay then?”

“My family.”

“Do they need you? I mean, are you taking care of one of them?”

“No, they’re all healthy, and they don’t need my money, though I spoil my baby cousins. But they’re my family, so I stay. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

“I’m just here because my dad is dying,” Pili said drily.

“I don’t believe that’s the only reason. You’re here because you love him, you cherish the time you have with him. It’s not about him dying but about the two of you being together.” Albert tilted his head and pressed together his lips. His expression gave him an air of certainty. Pili didn’t dare disagree, but he wondered if Albert was right. Had Pili come and stayed when his father was diagnosed? Or when he went through chemo? No, he had flown in five months ago for a four-day weekend and then out again, and his father, sick with the protocol, had barely been awake for Pili’s visit. Pili knew Albert’s vision of him was suspect, but he nodded anyway, as if it were true, and Albert smiled with satisfaction.

In another place and time, Pili would have asked Albert to dinner in some quiet Italian restaurant or for drinks at
one of those cozy seafood places on the Bay. After dinner they’d walk to a hotel or Pili’s apartment and they’d find what they were seeking in each other. Albert would be a rudder for Pili, the better part of his conscience, and for Albert, Pili would be—what? Sails? Inspiration to move, to see new places and people, to embrace a life away from these tiny islands?

Albert coughed and Pili’s fantasies drained away, but they left behind a residue of hope and nervousness. He finished his beer. The snow on Mauna Kea shimmered in the moonlight, and the air was so clean and thin the mountain appeared closer than it actually was, so close Pili thought he might skim his fingers along its icy peaks. He glanced over at Albert. “Why don’t you speak pidgin all the time?”

“My grandmother taught English at the high school, so she was real strict about how us kids talked. With your dad and Maile it’s different. It feels natural.”

“Funny, I never speak it anymore. I had to relearn how to talk when I went to college, and I never went back.”

“The mainland that bad?”

Pili laughed. “No, not so bad. But for me … Pidgin was just one more way I was different, you know?”

Albert nodded. He brought his hands to his lap and stared at them for a moment, and then, quietly, he asked, “Are you out?”

So he knows, Pili thought. “Not to my family. Are you … ?”

“My family doesn’t know either.”

“How do you keep things quiet?”

“Honolulu.” Albert rubbed his hand against his cheek. “I’m inconspicuous enough there, you know? The coconut wireless doesn’t stretch from Oʻahu to Big Island.”

“I’d still feel suffocated if I were you.”

“It’s better us feeling that way maybe,” Albert said. “Better than them knowing and feeling hurt or disappointed.”

“I think I’d rather risk my dad’s disappointment than have him die and leave me to regret the distance between us.” As Pili said this, he knew it to be true.

“Just because you feel regret doesn’t mean he does. He’s thinking everything is fine, and you’re convinced there’s a distance.”

“Because there is.” Pili threw his hands up.

“For you but not for him.” Albert tapped his finger against Pili’s chest. “Coming out is only about
you
feeling good.”

Pili pushed Albert’s finger away. “This isn’t just about me.”

“Then who else?”

“It’s about family dynamics.”

“Your dad is dying. Those are the family dynamics.”

“You know nothing about our family dynamics.” Pili heard his voice rising but didn’t stop it. “It’s not like you have the balls to tell—”

“Pili!” Maile had her face pressed to the screen door, her voice strained and high. “Whas dat language fo’?”

Pili and Albert froze, staring at each other, waiting to hear what the other might say. Pili wondered how much of their conversation Maile had overheard. He scrambled for some explanation, but the silence stretched long and taut. Finally, Albert cleared his throat. “Sorry, Maile. We just got worked up about politics.” He looked pointedly at Pili, and Pili understood, but if Albert thought he was protecting her by his secrecy, Pili knew better. Albert’s silence had allowed Maile’s crush to flourish, and Pili was sure Albert’s concealment would eventually hurt her. Either Maile would think Albert’s lack of reciprocity was her fault, or she’d feel betrayed.

Pili was frustrated. He wanted everything out in the open. He wanted to unburden himself. He wanted to tell Maile to stop cooking elaborate meals, to find a different man, to find a different kind of man. Pili felt a hard nugget of purpose forming in his stomach. Maile came to stand behind Albert, the screen door slapping gently against its frame. Pili would tell her everything right now. He would tell her about himself, about Albert. He didn’t owe Albert anything.

Maile rested her hand on Albert’s shoulder. She was wearing a purple tank top and a pair of silk shorts. Her hair was mussed; sleep clung to her eyelashes. Albert watched Pili, waiting for him to say something, but Pili’s determination evaporated. Maile looked so gentle, surprisingly feminine, just like their mother in her nightclothes, and Pili had no words.

There’s always tomorrow, he thought. Tomorrow he’d tell her everything. “Sorry, Mai. We were being kāne. We’ll keep it down now.” Pili forced a laugh.

“Kāne, my ass. Keiki more like it.” This time the screen door slammed behind her.

“Thanks for the chat,” Pili mumbled to Albert. He rose and followed his sister into the house. He was angry with Albert and disappointed in himself. In his bedroom, Pili stripped and turned off the light. Tomorrow.