Diamond Head (20 page)

I waited. I could feel her getting to her point, and I was fairly certain she had come to the same conclusion I had, if not something similar. I knew my father had been contaminated by our day at the Leongs. He had seen too much. We both had.

“Amy—I can’t promise that you will be happy with Bohai, but you will be provided for, which in hindsight is almost more important than love. You’re a remarkable girl—you always have been. Since you were young you’ve wanted something better, something extraordinary to touch your life. Here it is. I’d be lying if I told you I wouldn’t do it myself—start all over and do it myself.”

“And marry without love?” I pressed her, not believing for a minute what she was telling me.

“I married for love, Amy,” she said slowly. “Or at least I thought I did. But things change. A lifetime is a long time—a terribly long time to give to someone because of something as impractical as love.”

“As impractical as love?”
I repeated, outraged now. I put my head in my palms and I could feel it again. The anger, the overwhelming frustration that this choice had to be made. That if I didn’t choose correctly, I could waste the rest of my life wishing I could go back and choose again.

“Love fades, Amy. The heart, it wants one thing and then it changes its mind. Love is a fickle thing.”

“Do you even know who he is?” I exploded, saving this fact, this bomb for the moment I needed it most.

“Who who is? What are you talking about?”

“Do you remember the boy in Waialua? The fisherman’s nephew, the boy who used to walk me home, who threw the rock at me and gave me this?” I pulled back my hair and pointed to the scar. “Do you remember? Because it’s Henry, Mom. After all these years, it’s Henry.”

My mother’s face softened, but just for a moment. She was too caught up to care; I realized it immediately.

“Yes, okay, Amy, it’s quite a coincidence—but what does it matter?”

“What does it matter?
All the things you told me as a child—about red strings and fated matches and rocks and scars—is what? Something you made up?”

“Of course it’s made up—
it’s a fairy tale, Amy!
I wish my parents would have guided me. I wish I hadn’t clung to some children’s story like it was the truth!
Red strings
,” she spat. “Wake up! Does this look like red strings exist?” She gestured frantically around her. “Tell me, Amy, does this look like a fairy-tale ending to you?”

My mother’s breathing quickened. I could barely look at her. I lowered my eyes to the table and for the first time in my life, and with difficulty, I considered my mother’s pain; the unmistakable regret and heartache clinging to her words. She was not the woman I had known in my childhood, strong-willed and full of life. In her voice I heard a panicked young girl, someone in desperate need of a second chance. I needed her to stop. It was one thing for me to feel this way about my parents on a bad day, when I searched for the worst of them. But to hear it from my mother?

I stubbed out my cigarette, my mother’s words reconfiguring themselves in my head.
Was it true?
I looked at my mother and knew that it was. She had made her choice; she had chosen wrong. Now here she was, twenty years later, still wishing she could go back and choose again.

“These are your mistakes,” I said to her, pushing up from the table and walking to the door. “Don’t make them mine.”

But I couldn’t shake my mother’s words. They clung to me like sand, eroded my confidence like salt water. For ten days, my mind became a hopeless, destructive tangle, as I traced my future with Henry and Bohai, trying to imagine an outcome that wouldn’t end in regret, or poverty, or eternal damnation. For ten days, I shut out the world entirely. I existed only in my head, seeking advice from my parents when I felt on the brink of explosion and then scolding myself, wishing that I hadn’t. Their conclusions were the same, as I should have known they would be. But still, I accused them of being selfish and heartless, slamming the door behind me as I left to roam the neighborhood, the empty hours taunting my every step.

On the third night—my parents’ words howling in my head, reminding me that this decision would not always be mine to make, that the window of opportunity was rapidly closing as I drowned in indecision—I made a deal with myself. I would tell Henry nothing of the Leongs’ offer and wait for a sign. If red strings were based on fate, if they were real and we were connected, then Henry should know that something was wrong.

It was a game I was certain I couldn’t lose. Since Henry’s departure four weeks ago, he had written to me at least three times every week. His words strengthened me. They instilled a confidence in me that what we were doing was right—that we were right. I was convinced it was simply a matter of time before I found the next letter in the mail; his perfect words would comfort me; they would pull me away from a decision that became more difficult with each miserable day. I believed Henry would know, and every morning I waited by the mailbox before work. But for an entire week, one Saturday to the next, an invitation to the Leongs’ extended and politely, regretfully postponed—a letter never came.

I would not take this as a sign, I thought, after nine days passed without a word from Henry. I needed something bigger, a real sign, to push me in one direction or the other. Living with my mother and
working with my father had begun to wear me down. My father had not stopped talking about the Leongs. I could feel his restlessness, his agitation closing in on me as the second weekend approached, knowing we could defer the invitation for only so long, his desire hemorrhaging. He made a point of telling every friend he had, every client he shot, about the Leongs’ hospitality—and everyone agreed. Mr. Leong had a reputation for generosity, donating thousands of dollars toward supporting the war effort, appearing constantly on the front page of the newspaper. The fact that my family
knew
him—had been invited to their house—was already bringing childlike joy to my parents. And every morning, as the newspaper sat shamelessly on the kitchen counter, Mr. Leong’s face staring up at me, I began to wonder if even I knew what the right decision would be.

And then, on a Monday morning, ten days of waiting already passed, my mind warped with agony and anticipation, I received a letter from Henry. I tore it open, eager to read his words and show it to my parents. By then, I felt almost vengeful, intent on shaming them with Henry’s unbreakable devotion. My mother would be jealous—it was a terrible thought, but I wanted it. I wanted her to apologize. I wanted to hear her say that I was nothing like her—that in Henry, I had found my destined match. I read the letter right there, on the empty road next to the mailbox, growing more confused with each sentence.

Amy,

I’m sorry it’s been a few days between letters; I promise I haven’t forgotten about our agreement. I wish I were writing to you with better news and a lighter spirit, but war seems to be disrupting the entire world. What started in
Europe
is spreading everywhere. The people I’ve met in
Italy
are suffering terribly and there seems to be a shortage of everything. Clothes, food, water, clean places to sleep—every day it changes me and makes me think about bigger things. It seems so long ago that we were
in my car, far away from all of this. I miss those days so much, but now that I’ve seen what’s happening
here
, I can’t ignore it. Every day I think of you and hope that you are strong. There is so much uncertainty in the world right now and I pray that you will never be affected by this kind of
tragedy
.

I received a letter from my mother yesterday. She tried to be optimistic but I could tell she’s worried. The pharmacy is not doing well. There were problems before I left, and now she says that every day they lose money by staying in business. I don’t know what will happen, but whatever it is, we’ll get through it. But you might want to stop by if you can. I know they’d love to see you.

We leave
Naples
today and head
south
. I will write to you as soon as I reach the next destination.

All my love
, Henry

I squinted at Henry’s square handwriting, at the holes where the words had been censored—speechless. For ten days I had imagined his words; his confessions of being miserable without me, his plan to return early, his boredom abroad. But here it was; the shortest letter Henry had ever written me, most of the words not even concerning our relationship, every detail and location cut cruelly from the paper. I read it again, and then a third time, trying to extract every bit of meaning from his sparse words, holding the sheet above me as if the sky could fill the blanks. Turning the paper over, I searched for more, inspected the envelope and found the government tape used to reseal it; in my haste, I hadn’t noticed at first.
Opened by Examiner 524
. I gripped the paper at its edges, willing it to fill me with warmth, to remind me of a feeling that was slipping away. But it never did, because it was a flimsy, worthless piece of paper and Henry was on the opposite side of the world, his location in the trash of some government office. I felt like an idiot, the letter now ripped in two places, the indentation of my thumbs proof of my insanity.

For a moment, I considered tearing it apart and burying it in the backyard. I could pretend that the letter hadn’t arrived yet. I could wait for the next one—one that said something else. I wanted so badly to be right about us; I didn’t want to believe that our connection was generic or familiar or anything less than fireworks and destiny and red strings.

But I had already read it—that was the problem—and just as Henry had written in his letter, now that I’d seen what was happening, I couldn’t ignore it. War was real, as were its consequences. Henry and I had been playing in a world of make-believe, I realized for the first time, and reality was changing that. How stupid to think that he would continue to write me love letters while the world fell apart, as cities were bombed and homes destroyed and mothers and children went hungry.

Henry was the brave one, not me. While I wallowed in self-pity, Henry was seeing the world, witnessing its problems, finding solutions. To think he could help an entire country and I couldn’t even stop the suffering in my own home? It startled me. It made the world expand around me until I was just a tiny speck, my love for Henry but a flash in the universe, a trivial occurrence.

I looked down at my middle finger. Henry’s diamond ring—his car, his military bonus—looked back up at me. I thought about the starving families. I thought about Henry’s family, struggling to keep their pharmacy afloat, and my own family, clinging to the hope that I would change things for them; that I would sacrifice my first love for the benefit of everyone.

The stone on my finger could help Henry’s family, and marrying Bohai could help my own. It was disgraceful, I thought, to wear this ring while Henry’s family went without. Henry’s brother’s comment at the docks struck me now.
So this is the ring
, Paul had said as Henry sailed away, studying my middle finger. I was so consumed with grief that I hadn’t stopped to consider that Henry’s family might be suffering too—not just from Henry’s departure, but financially. And
when Henry sold his car to buy me a frivolous diamond ring, I could only imagine how his family must have felt.

I walked back into the house, Henry’s letter shoved into the pocket of my shorts, every crevice of my body lit with intensity. My parents had been right. I had been given a singular opportunity to create change—to combine my family’s tarnished name with the most prominent household on Oahu; to bring my family some much-deserved, long-awaited happiness. If I stayed with Henry, it was only a matter of time before he grew weary of my dreaming. My desire for a life different from our parents’ would seem arrogant; my decision to refuse Bohai and stand by Henry would create resentment within us both. In another life, it might have been different, I realized. Love was a luxury of the rich. They could afford to be wrong; they could change their minds as they wished. Of course it wasn’t fair, but much of life was turning out to be a series of strategic choices. Play the game and perhaps you had a chance. Convince yourself that life was impartial—that we’re all given an equal shot—and you’d drown almost immediately, sucked down the hole with the rest of the ordinary people.

I reached under my bed and found a piece of paper and an envelope. I wrote quickly, not stopping to read it until the very end. I wrote that I had not meant to be so selfish—that it had been a difficult time for me as well and I had realized that now was not the right time for my relationship with Henry. I thanked Henry’s family for their kindness and apologized, several times, for whatever pain I was causing. And then, removing it from my finger for the first time, I slipped off my ring and folded it into the letter, tucking the package into the envelope and addressing it to Henry’s parents.

“Amy?” I heard my name and looked up to see my father drying his hair with a towel as he emerged from his room, fully dressed. “Are you almost ready to leave?”

“Yes,” I said, licking the envelope and sealing it shut. “And you can call Mrs. Leong. You can tell her that we’ll be at dinner on Saturday night.”

My father put his towel down and stared at me.

“You’re sure?”

“I’m positive.”

My father nodded once, disbelief in his eyes, shocked that after all the fighting—all the yelling and tears and terrible words exchanged—I had come around. I had made the decision to save us.

“You know how I feel about it,” he said, suppressing a smile.

I closed my eyes and, strangely enough, I felt liberated. Calmness washed over me with the sealing of the letter. The burden of my indecision was released and I welcomed the clarity that replaced it. It was the right choice, I nodded to myself. I would be a fool to think otherwise. If love did fade, as my mother had warned me, if it was indeed fickle, it was simply a matter of time before my love for Henry became distant and small. Our relationship had been a whirlwind, sweeping me off my feet and leaving me disoriented. But now, with a little space, I realized that the best thing I could do for both of us was to release him. Henry would find someone else, someone better. I was sure of it. He would find a girl who wouldn’t forget his face in five weeks, whose heart would not be tempted so easily.