This Is Paradise (22 page)

Pili took a deep breath. He didn’t want this line of thinking to go any further. “Dad …” Pili searched for the right words, the gentlest way to say what he needed to say. “I don’t know if I’ll be having kids. I don’t know if I’ll marry a woman.”

“Son.” Harrison reached his hand out and rested it on Pili’s. “I know.”

“You know?”

Harrison closed his hand around Pili’s palm and squeezed. His father’s skin was dry and soft as a summer wind, and Pili squeezed back. He felt exhausted with relief. “I know,” Harrison repeated, nodding his head. “You still one young man. You still haf plenny wild in you. Settle down wit’ one wahine? Ho! Tink neva can. But one day you gon change. I neva t’ought I marry and den I wen meet yoa mudda and bam. I neva move so fast! Awready forty, like one old man, me. And young, her. Beautiful.”

“Dad,” Pili said, trying to interrupt. The relief he had felt was turning into panic. He was desperate to make his father stop speaking.

Harrison ignored the intrusion on his monologue. “Find one like da momma. If can, love her. Treat ’er real nice. Do whateva you haftu fo’ make her feel good, yeah? Das de ol’ paniolo way. You lucky find one good woman, bettah keep ’er happy.”

“Dad—”

“Ho, I tired now, Son. Like sleep.” Harrison closed his eyes and folded his arms across his chest. “Can talk story afta dinna.”

Pili sat in silence beside Harrison for a long time, wondering if he should wake his father, or if he should just let his dad live and die with a false promise of Pili’s return, wife and kids in tow. Finally, he lowered the head of the
bed with the hand crank to let Harrison sleep more easily and slipped from the room.

Albert arrived each evening as scheduled and took care of Harrison. After dinner, Pili joined them in the study. Harrison’s energy was flagging now, but he grew animated when allowed to describe the types of grasses the herd ate and how the pastures were rotated and why he was angry about the fluctuating price of beef. Albert asked numerous questions, encouraging Harrison to remain engaged, and the conversation often wound to other topics, such as fishing for ulua or exploring lava tubes or the rumblings under Kīlauea that were all over the news. Eventually Harrison’s eyes would droop or the pain would overwhelm him and he’d fall silent. Albert gave him the painkillers orally, but the time was close when even that would be impossible. Harrison had stopped eating.

As Harrison tried to find sleep, Pili and Albert sat in companionable silence. Sometimes Pili pretended to read and Albert actually read, and just to sit with their chairs side by side calmed Pili. In other moments, Pili wished he could take Albert’s hand in his, or rest his palm on Albert’s leg, or even smile at Albert in that private way a lover is allowed to, but Pili knew that in front of Harrison Albert would tolerate nothing but absolute professionalism.

After Harrison was asleep, however, Albert relaxed. He and Pili would leave the study to sit on the porch and
stare out into the empty space of the night. Maile visited with them for a couple of minutes each evening, and, before she retreated to her bedroom, they spoke pleasantly about the weather warming and when the herd might switch pastures and which grains needed to be ordered for the finishing. While they waited for the light in Maile’s bedroom to turn off, Pili and Albert whispered to each other, describing their boyhoods and memories with a sense of great urgency. Those nights felt coiled, like a towel twisted to squeeze out every last drop of water. Pili was determined to hear all of Albert’s memories, every thought and emotion, every dream and lofty goal. He yearned to know everything about Albert, and for Albert to know everything about him.

When the house was at last dark, Albert checked on Harrison once more. Only then could Pili persuade him to walk down to the barn. Each night Pili showed Albert something new—Harrison’s favorite saddles, the collection of spurs Keo kept in a gigantic wooden crate in one of the unused stalls, photographs of Joe’s eldest daughter from the previous year’s rodeo when she won in her age group for barrels. Eventually Albert would become nervous and push to return to the house. But the next evening, once Maile was asleep, Albert would let himself be lured to the barn again.

One night, Pili at last convinced Albert to climb up to the hayloft. At first Albert was unsure of himself. He was nervous that the old ladder wouldn’t hold him. But when
he reached the top, he breathed the air deeply and sighed. “I understand why you loved it up here as a boy,” he said. Pili hung the electric lamp on a nail in one of the beams, and the yellow light trickled over them. Albert reclined against a pile of hay.

Pili rested his head on Albert’s thigh, and Albert sank his fingers into Pili’s hair to rub his scalp. “Being here, with you, makes me almost believe I could live on island again,” Pili said.

“You are a man with a divided heart.”

Pili kissed Albert’s knee. He wondered if his longing to come out to his dad, yet his inability to do so, was also because of his divided heart.

Albert’s fingers rifled through Pili’s hair again, and Pili imagined Albert was sifting through his emotions like Maile sifted through rice when she was cooking. Pili let his body sink heavily against Albert’s, and Albert’s hands moved from Pili’s scalp to his cheeks and then his lips. Pili unbuttoned Albert’s shirt. They undressed each other without haste. Pili pressed his mouth to Albert’s stomach and sucked softly at the small pouch of belly there. Albert’s pubic hair smelled musty from sweat, and his hands had the blue antiseptic scent of the soap he used after working with Harrison, but despite these smells—or because of them—Pili desired him even more. Finally Albert pushed Pili facedown in the hay and climbed on top of him. He bit Pili’s shoulder, then wound his tongue along the back of Pili’s neck. Albert spread his arms over Pili’s, interlacing
their fingers. Pili stared at the light brown hairs on Albert’s knuckles, and the dust clinging to the back of Albert’s arms sparkled like the snow on Mauna Kea’s peaks.

When they left the barn, Maile’s bedroom light was on. Albert hastened his steps to the house. “Do you think she knows we were gone?” he asked, walking ahead.

“I’m sure Maile is just using the bathroom.”

“I shouldn’t have left your dad for so long.” He took the porch steps two at a time.

“We weren’t far. And we weren’t gone for more than a half hour,” Pili called after him, but Albert had already disappeared behind the screen door. Pili took his time walking up the porch steps. He was not going to indulge his fears. He was sure the light meant nothing. But even as he told himself to remain calm, he heard his sister running across the house to the kitchen phone.

“Nine-one-one?” Maile was crying. “I have an emergency.”

Pili managed to sleep for a couple of hours, waking just after dawn with the scent of Albert’s skin still on his body. He got out of bed hesitantly. Maile wasn’t in her room, and the house was silent and tense. At the study Pili paused, afraid to go inside, afraid of what he might see. Would there be blood? Would Harrison look like himself? Would he be alive?

Albert sat in a chair beside the bed, his chin in his hand
and his eyes closed. He jolted awake when Pili stepped into the room and then, realizing it wasn’t Maile, smiled sheepishly. Harrison looked like he was sleeping, and for a moment Pili forgot his father was in a coma. Harrison had lost consciousness the night before. “His body is shutting down,” Albert had told Pili and Maile.

The EMTs had offered to take Harrison to the hospital—if he had had a stroke, which they suspected, then treatment might buy a small amount of time—but Maile had refused. “Nomo heroic measures,” she said. “He neva want dat.” The EMTs drove away with their lights off.

In the daylight Pili could see more clearly the changes in his father’s body. The corner of his left eye drooped slightly, and his left arm and leg were immobile in a way that went beyond stillness and veered toward lifeless. The EMT had left an oxygen mask to replace the small tubes for Harrison’s nose. The mask covered half his face.

“Talk to him,” Albert said. “He can hear you. He won’t be able to respond, but he can hear you.”

Pili didn’t know what to say. He wanted to both speak openly to Albert and use the right words with his father. He felt stretched in two directions. He would have liked time to think, but Albert was looking at him expectantly, and finally Pili said, “It’s me, Dad. Pilipo.”

“That’s a fine start.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Just keep talking to him. Let him know you’re here.”

“Can he understand me?”

“Scans show there’s activity in the brain even when someone is unconscious like this.”

Pili took a deep breath. “Dad, one of the EMTs was George Kapana’s son. He remembered you. He said he still had the feather lei you made him all those years ago. Nice kid, yeah? He’s getting married in a few months.” Pili stopped. He felt strange delivering this kind of news to his father. After all, why would Harrison care if George Kapana’s son was getting married? If he could hear Pili and think through what he was saying, then wouldn’t he want to hear about his own family? About his present state? Pili felt immobilized. He wanted to say things that mattered.

He rested a hand on Albert’s knee looking for comfort there, but Albert shifted in his chair. “Studies show that interactions such as these with family and close friends can actually prolong a patient’s life.”

Pili folded his hands into his lap. He felt alone. He thought of those boyhood evenings with his father on their porch when words were unnecessary. Pili stared at his father. The sheets were neatly tucked beneath the mattress and the blue and turquoise saddle blanket was folded over the bar at the foot of the bed. Pili ran his fingers along the blanket’s edge where the fabric was beginning to fray.

In the kitchen a cupboard door slammed. “Did Maile sleep last night?” Pili asked.

“She’s been cleaning since the paramedics left.”

“She’s pissed.” Pili rearranged the saddle blanket so it covered Harrison’s knees and feet.

“Can you blame her?”

“Nothing would have changed if we’d been here, right?”

“I doubt it.” Albert paused. “It’s possible, I guess.” He refused to look at Pili, and finally Pili rose and left the room.

In the kitchen, Tupperware lids were strewn across the table. They looked like oversized jewels, red and blue and green, glowing in the kitchen lights. The mop and bucket leaned against the wall, and the room smelled faintly of bleach. Maile was on her knees, crouched behind one of the cupboard doors. “What are you doing?” Pili asked.

“Choke lids but I neva find one fo’ fit my Tupperware.” She threw a handful of lids into the sink and went back to pulling plastic containers from the cupboard. She moved quickly, constantly, like a waterwheel. Pili wanted to wrap his arms around her and force her to be still.

“How about I help you with this?” He gathered the lids in the sink and laid them with the others on the table. “Dad could use some new company,” Pili said, smiling.

“He awake?” For a moment her movement ceased and she looked up at him with hope, but when he shook his head, she returned to the cupboard.

“Albert said we should talk to him.”

“Albert like tell a lot of tings.”

“Maile, don’t be mad at him. I was the one who insisted on going to the barn. I was showing him Dad’s blankets
and the photographs of Joe’s daughter and everything else.”

She pretended to ignore him, but Pili saw her jaw throbbing beneath her cheek and knew she wouldn’t stay silent for long.

“Albert feels terrible. The one night he agrees to go down there with me, and this happens.”

“You like try tell me was one night, Pili?” Maile clambered to her feet to face him. Her hands were clenched around two lids that reminded him of green cymbals, and for a moment he wondered if she would try to clang them around his ears. “You tink I stay blind? You tink I neva see you and Albert go da barn evry night. And evry night, you gon long time. So I go sit wit’ Dad. I wake up, and I go sit wit’ him, and where you?”

Pili was bound in place.

“Tell me, Pili. Where you? You tink I no know?”

Pili tried to speak but faltered. All this time he thought he had hidden himself from her, and she had known. She knew about him. He was terrified, ecstatic, relieved.

“He woke up last night, you know. Dad woke up, and he wen aks where Albert stay and why I dere, and I tell ’im you and Albert go talk story, and he wen frown. ‘Why dey no talk story hea?’ ‘ ’Cause,’ I tell ’im, ‘Dey no like keep you awake. Jus’ on da porch, dem.’ See, I cover fo’ you. But Dad know I no tell da trut’. He say, ‘You look tired, sweetheart. Why you always do tings fo’ Pili?’ Das
what he tell me, and den he wen close his eyes. So I fall asleep and when I wake up his breathing not right, and I tink, Why he look so heavy? And dat was it. He was gone in da coma.” Her voice petered out along with her anger. Her shoulders slumped. Her bare arms, usually defined and muscular, seem to atrophy in front of Pili. He walked to her and pulled her to him. He wished to lift her into his arms and cradle her. She began to cry.

“I cover fo’ you fo’ years, you know.”

“Covered for me? What do you mean?” He could feel her tremble against him.

“When Dad aks why you neva bring home one wahine, I tell him you work so hard no have time fo’ date. Or I say you jus’ broke up wit’ one. Hard fo’ find da right one. Das what I tell ’im.”

Pili pushed Maile away from his shoulder and gazed down at her. “You told Dad those things?”

“What? You tink I like lie to him? Suppostu say what?”

“Say nothing.” He released his grip on her and stepped backward.

“No, Pili. I haftu say someting. I haftu protect you, and him.”

Pili felt his face grow hot with anger. “Protect us from what?”

“Each uddeh.” She held open her hands as if a better answer rested there, and then she closed them into fists. “From hurt each uddeh. Das why you neva wen tell ’im,
yeah? Or me. Das why you neva tell me? Neva like hurt me?”

“No. That’s not why. I was just scared. I was protecting myself. Until this visit, when I began to think it was better if I came out to Dad. Then I wouldn’t be scared anymore.”