Diamond Head (28 page)

1942

H
ONOLULU
, H
AWAII

I was alone again, in the backyard, where I had spent the last few days trying to make sense of the wreckage that had fallen upon this house. How everything had gone so horribly wrong, so implausibly wrong, in less than a week since the wedding.

Dr. Lum was here again, but this time it was for Mrs. Leong. Bohai had come to tell me, had called my name from the lanai and found me in my hiding spot, a shaded curve of rocks near the waterfall. His face was sallow and stricken, the whites of his eyes clouded with broken blood vessels. He looked terrible in the light, shading his eyes above me. Pale and thin in a crumpled shirt, he looked like the sun could evaporate him entirely, could cripple him with a single beam. He squatted and put his hand on my knee.

They were in the sitting room, Bohai said. They were meeting with their lawyer when he had told them something terrible. His father had been keeping wives in China, two of them, both with children. There was no will, he said, and his father’s entire fortune would go to them.

As I tried to digest this startling fact, standing, opening my mouth to verify what he had said, Bohai told me something else—something perhaps worse, but who could tell at this point, as disaster trailed behind itself, eclipsing only the one that came before it. Mrs. Leong stopped responding in the middle of the conversation. She got up silently and walked into the kitchen. They called to her, Bohai said, but they hadn’t followed. And when they did, just ten minutes later, they found her unconscious in a pool of her own blood, her ankle slit in four places.

I didn’t know what to say. It had been days of not knowing what to say. I’d been going crazy in the yard alone, hiding within the crater, trying to mourn the death of a man who was more real to me in black-and-white photographs than in reality. When I saw his picture in the paper the day before, in the piles of newspapers Hong had collected from around the island, I had the strangest sensation of nostalgia. Not for Mr. Leong’s life, but for my own, when his picture in the paper brought excitement, or even further back, when it meant nothing to me at all.

It seemed wrong to be with Bohai and his family during this time. Even at the hospital I felt like a fraud, pretending to be part of a family I barely knew and to whom I could offer nothing. I had no words of comfort, no memories, nothing sincere enough to be worthy of saying.

And now Mrs. Leong was falling apart. I had seen her that morning, walking to the sitting room with Hong by her side, her thin body withered beneath a black T-shirt and pants. It was then that I had cried for the first time, seeing how damaged she looked, how shattered and frail. Thinking of her in that puddle of blood, her mind warped, her sadness folding in on itself, growing thicker and denser with each crease, I brought my head to my hands and pulled my knees to my heart.

What had I done? What had I chosen?

Henry’s face appeared in my mind. I hugged my body tighter, held myself closer.
His entire fortune will go to his wives in China.
Bohai’s words echoed in my head and they wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop; even the morning’s tragedy could not displace the dark, stubborn seed attaching itself to my thoughts, poisoning everything.

I tried not to think about the money. I really, really tried. Bohai was a good man, I told myself, and I could still find happiness with him. Despite what was happening to his family, we would manage. But as I watched him walk away, across the yard and back into the house, I knew there had been a terrible shift in my mind. Repulsion
had risen from beneath the water; once calm and impenetrable, a sheet of plastic, that liquid surface was now a sea of bodies floating slowly to the surface. Bohai was one of them, and I could feel the current pulling me as well. Pawns. Hostages. That’s what it felt like, and because Mr. Leong was dead, and because I felt no connection to him at all, I let my repulsion linger on my husband.

My husband
. Another word that inflicted so much pain. How stupid had I turned out to be? How pathetic? I’d sold my life to a man panicked by his own voice, a man with no friends, with no life of his own. I thought of a lifetime with Bohai—his slow words, his tidy bed, his wire glasses—and I began to panic.

I looked up. I imagined myself running; I could even feel it. In my mind I sprinted around the house, out the iron gate, across the island to my bed in Kaneohe, where I could begin my apology to Henry. I’d tell him I had made a terrible mistake, that I desperately wanted him back, that I hated myself for what I’d done. Perhaps it wasn’t too late. It had only been three months since Henry left: a single season, not even enough time for the fruit trees to ripen, for the schools to reopen, for anything to be irreversibly changed. Only three months.

And then, reality. I hadn’t been unfaithful. I hadn’t messed around or had a fling or gotten caught up in a moment I now regretted. I was
married
. To the most prominent family on Oahu, front-page news, fireworks, three dresses, nine courses, all of it a sham. Henry would have to be as stupid as I was to even consider it.

But would he? The question remained.

I let my mind wander, casting a wide, thick shadow with its recklessness. I felt my conscience thrashing on the inside, banging in my ears, begging me to stop. I had chosen this, it screamed, and if the money was gone and I wanted to leave, what the hell kind of person did that make me? What kind of empty, rubbish person would be thinking about money when their father-in-law had just been murdered? When their mother-in-law was lying in a pool of her own blood?

I shook my head, harder and harder until my skin became numb, trying to wipe my mind of its toxins. Who was to say that Henry would take me back? He probably hated me now—his whole family probably cursed the day I had entered their lives. And Mrs. Leong had given me so much. The last three months, I reminded myself, they’d been spectacular. She had treated me as if I were her own, as if I belonged. With her, I’d never looked back, not once.

Thinking of her now, trampled, defeated by her husband’s final secret, I wondered if she’d have done the same for me knowing how it would all turn out. If I would even be here if we knew that Mr. Leong would die, or if she would have made different decisions—not just about me, but in her own life—trading her privilege to avoid the horrific agony she felt now. It was a terrible game to play, a dangerous game. What-ifs. And here I was, twenty-one years old, looking back on my life as if it were over.

Or maybe, I thought for a moment, looking at the waterfall and the fat koi and the perfectly manicured trees that surrounded me—maybe, in the end, looking back on the good years and the bad, it was still better to be a Leong than nobody at all.

I thought of my own parents. How they had suffered a lifetime of mundane sorrows and would continue to live this way, the dice never falling in their favor, until the day they died, their bodies buried in a concrete block of regular people. Mrs. Leong’s life was at least extravagant, and it seemed as if this extravagance would never leave her, even now, as she crumbled under the elaborate lies of a man who lived excessively.

Bohai and I had our whole lives ahead of us. We could learn to love each other and overcome the difficult legacy his father had left behind. The Leong name did not have to die with this man. We could rebuild it. It would take time, but things could get better.

Or maybe they wouldn’t. The thought crept back into my mind like a disease, mutating and expanding, making me wish for things too horrible to say.

If Henry would take me back, would I go? The answer rang in my ears, filling me with self-hatred and hope.

Dr. Lum instructed us to let Mrs. Leong rest. Kaipo called their lawyer, Mr. Lee, and postponed his visit until the next morning, when they hoped Mrs. Leong would be of sounder mind. I told Bohai I needed air—that I’d be back by dinner, I just needed to walk. He insisted that I take his car, which made my stomach wrench with something thick and oily.

“Take your time,” he said, handing me the keys, “and be careful. I can’t lose you too.” He smiled for the first time since his father passed and I nearly changed my mind, feeling caught under the weight of his sincerity. But instead I took the keys. I took the keys and walked out the door.

“I will,” I replied, “don’t worry about me.”

Henry had taught me to drive before he left. Not well, but enough to get me away from Diamond Head and slowly across the valley floor. I came off the hill and passed through downtown, taking in streets that should have felt familiar but didn’t. As hard as I tried to extract its comfort, it refused to come. I should have felt something, back down on the surface where my real life took place, and I grew frustrated as nothing came, just more resentment, more desperation.

The streets were busy, buzzing with people untouched by tragedy. Their days would be easily forgotten, I thought to myself, my chest expanding with envy. A month from now they would not remember where they had been, what they had been doing at this moment; only that it was a regular day, and perhaps that they had been happy.

I drove past my street and thought of my parents. I considered stopping; telling them of the destruction that had swept through the Leongs’ house that morning. But what would that accomplish? I could picture their faces processing my words, attempting to comfort me but really thinking of themselves. My dad would fall silent and my mother would cry, asking questions like:
All of the money? Are you positive?
No. I shook my head, my fingers clamping the wheel. They would find out soon enough.

Behind the wheel of the car I felt free—like if I drove fast enough or long enough, I could leave it all behind. But I suppose that was the problem. I didn’t want a new beginning, I wanted to rewind; to delete the last three months and prove to myself—to Henry—that I was a better woman than I had turned out to be.

I turned onto the final street and slowed, feeling more hopeful than I could possibly justify. As I pulled into the small parking lot, I closed my eyes and said a prayer. I told God that I knew exactly what I deserved, and while it wasn’t happiness, I hoped that it would at least be a chance at redemption. I told Him that I was better for my mistakes. That I was no longer as selfish as I had been three months ago.

But there I was, parked outside the pharmacy, about to make a plea perhaps more selfish than any I had ever made. I opened my eyes and looked through the sunroof, up at the sky, knowing that I had no business asking any god for anything.

I lowered my eyes, about to apologize for wasting His time, when I realized there was someone standing in front of my car, staring at me through the windshield.

I fumbled with my keys and opened the door. Henry’s brother, Paul, stood perfectly still, his dark eyes penetrating me.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“I—” I stammered, closing the door behind me. “I don’t know. I just wanted to say—”

“What, Amy? What did you want to say?” He moved closer, his voice growing harsher as I pressed my back against the car door. “Did our wedding invitation get lost in the mail?”

I was going to cry. It was coming; there was no stopping it.

“I don’t know,” I sobbed, the backs of my thighs burning against the heat of the car. “I mean, no,” I stammered. I willed myself to stop.
Please please please
, I begged myself. This was not how it was supposed to happen.

“You’re pathetic,” Paul said, turning his head and spitting on the hood of Bohai’s car. “You have some nerve, you know that? Coming here in your Mercedes, like we’d have anything to say to you. You mail us some bullshit apology, you don’t even tell my brother. You’re the worst kind of woman—you know that, don’t you?”

“I made a huge mistake,” I pleaded, tears falling down my shoulders.

“Well, look at that!” He kicked the front tire with his foot and I jumped. “You finally got something right.”

He laughed, staring at me with cold eyes. “But guess what? You’re not welcome here anymore. You see, Amy, family means a lot to us Wongs. We may not have a garage full of cars or a mansion with servants or any of the other shit that made you fuck over my brother. But do you know what we do have, Amy?”

I shook my head, feeling so foolish. He was enjoying this, watching me cry, shaming me in my own neighborhood. And why not? Didn’t I deserve it? My vision clouded as he moved closer.

“We have souls, Amy. We have consciences. We have
hearts
.”

We stood there in icy silence, his face so close I could feel his breath on me. For a moment, I thought he might hit me. I lowered my eyes to the ground and tried to breathe.

“We’re done,” he spat. “Get off our property.”

He shoved my shoulders against the car with both hands. I let him. Then he turned around and walked back into the pharmacy, where I could see Henry’s mother watching through the shop window.

She held her hands in front of her apron, her face exactly as I remembered it, but vacant. It was clear that she’d been there the whole time—that she’d seen the whole thing and hadn’t stopped it. My heart broke into even tinier pieces, so small I knew I might never find them again. She was my last hope, but she felt the same way. She wanted me off her property, erased from their life.