Diamond Head (36 page)

I ran into your father at the bar on Kawa Street, a month after I came home. He was drunk, yelling at the bartender when he recognized me. He called me over. I asked about you and he said he didn’t know. He said he hadn’t seen you in a while and we got to talking and he was so drunk, emotional and angry, and I sat there, Amy, just letting him talk, listening to what I had done.

If I had known about your father-in-law’s other wives, I would have never allowed it—it would have been too risky. Believe me, if I knew how much you would suffer, I would have let you go. All I wanted was a minor tragedy, something difficult you could interpret as a sign, a reason to come back to me. But you never did, Amy. You stuck with your husband, and so I’ve been keeping this secret for twenty-one years.

I understand that you must be repulsed by me and that this letter could put me in jail for a very long time—that my penance could come at any moment. My brother moved to Vancouver six years ago; he couldn’t handle being here. His life was crumbling; the guilt was eating him alive. It’s the same for me, Amy. I think about it constantly, morning and night, and I think about you. If we’re telling the truth now, I should tell you that I’m also married, for eight years. It took me twelve to even imagine being with someone else and it all still feels like a sham. She’s a wonderful woman, but I haven’t been fair to her. I haven’t been fair to anyone, especially you.

I need no response. All I can hope is that one day things will be right, be it now or in the afterlife. I still love you. I still think about you. Please, please forgive me.

Henry

Reading that letter was like being held underwater. When it ended I came up for my first breath of air, panting, disoriented.
Who the hell was Henry?
He had murdered my Ye Ye, that part was clear, but he was also in love with my mom. He was engaged to my mom. My mom who read the letter eight times a day, who took it with her wherever she went, who dyed her hair black, who no longer talked about the wedding.
What the hell was going on?

Then, right then, as if God had been waiting the entire time, finger on the trigger for the perfect moment to punish me, Maku walked through the front door from his afternoon jog.

I had a physical reaction. I smashed the letter between my fists and sat on it, practically threw myself on the couch. Maku caught me mid-epiphany, at the worst possible time, as the avalanche of significance was still falling. I had just begun to realize what it all meant and my hands could not keep pace with my thoughts; I was too slow. Maku saw me hiding the letter, and in his newfound mistrust of my decisions, he insisted on knowing what it was.

I bumbled around; I told him it was nothing. I raised my empty hands into the air like an idiot. I could have come up with something better but there wasn’t time. I got trapped. I ran out of excuses and he wasn’t going anywhere. He stood over me, his hand extended.
Theresa,
he said,
now
. I had to give it to him; I couldn’t see another way.

He took it. I watched as he read, the silence between us so large, his hands shaking gently against the wrinkled pages. In my head, I screamed at God. Why the hell would you send Maku in now? What was the point? What the fuck were you thinking?

“Where did you find this?” Maku asked, looking up for the first time. His knuckles were white; everything about him was white, stern, quietly distraught. The look on his face was devastating. I should have ripped that letter apart, should have brought a match to the corner—something, anything to avoid the damage I saw now, so irreversible, unforgivable.

“Maku,” I whispered, too afraid to answer his question. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

Maku nodded at me, once, as if that’s all he had left. He set the pages on the coffee table and walked back out the front door.

The wedding was postponed. It was not canceled, my mom continued to remind me; it was postponed. We told our guests that Maku was sick. I couldn’t believe that was our excuse. Maku, of all people, was not well.

But in the end, I suppose it wasn’t a lie.

At first, in those first few days after he confronted my mom, Maku began to look at her differently. It was as small as that, but I noticed it immediately, the distance and severity in his eyes. It was unsettling in a way that no amount of screaming, no amount of fighting could ever be. My father, who loved my mother more than any big-screen romance, more than any fairy-tale cliché, could no longer bring himself to look at her.

They did not go to dinner that Friday, nor any Friday that followed. The birds of paradise died; they were not replaced.

A month passed like this. My parents entered and left the house like strangers, not speaking unless absolutely necessary. Maku’s pillow stayed on the couch, folded blankets left permanently on the armrests. The folding chairs remained stacked on the lanai; the case of napkins still on the table. When the phone rang, no one answered.

Then there was fighting. Three months of it, my stomach showing by then, my pregnancy unmistakable. My mom would scream, she would cry. The guilt, it was eating her alive; I could see it, but I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t help her—it was larger than that. The whole story, it was enormous, torrential, anger and bitterness and jealousy that I could not begin to understand, buried since before I was alive, before they even knew I would exist.

Why would I have told you? What would it have mattered?
My mom’s defense lacked any trace of sympathy, any sign of an apology.

It would have mattered
. Maku, more solemn than ever, would raise his voice.
You know it would have mattered.

That was the most incredible thing to me. In all their fights, in all their yelling, I never once heard them mention my Ye Ye or his death. Naturally, my mom would not bring it up because it was linked to her, a crime committed in her name. But for Maku, I realized his despair had little to do with his father and everything to do with my mom, his wife, his everything. He waited for her to come to him, to explain that she loved him most, that Henry was simply a man from her past, his crime unprovoked. But she never did. She withdrew; she grew defensive. All these years, Maku believed they were fated, he and my mom, that her love was as fervent as his. But now the glass had shattered and it was clear, at least to me, that he could never again see it the same way. The window was closing; as weeks became months with no resolution, no explanation, it was becoming harder and harder for him to forgive.

Five months passed and I took myself shopping for new clothes, bigger clothes. My mom didn’t offer; she didn’t spare me the shame of shopping in public, a pregnant teenager all alone. The only time I saw her was when we went to the doctor, and even then, we barely spoke. I hated her and she hated me. She wanted to know the sex of my baby, Dr. Ho’s prediction, and I wouldn’t tell her. I held the information back as a punishment; I said I’d tell her when she stopped being such an asshole, when she found a way to apologize to Maku. We blamed each other for everything, for Maku, for my pregnancy, for the wedding, for the lonely desperation that had consumed our house, ripping a hole through our lives.

And then Maku’s hair began to fall out. It collected in the drain of the guest bathroom, limp, spidery piles. He lost so much weight, nearly forty pounds in the final two months. He didn’t shop for new clothes; instead, he quit his job. It seemed that every day he grew weaker, right in front of my eyes; he lost himself in silence, in the dark shadow that had been cast over all of his memories. We ate
meals separately. I talked to my baby by then. Secretly, I had named it. In a way, being pregnant made it all feel less solitary. When I ate, I knew I was feeding the baby, too. As I slept, the baby was right there with me. I told the baby about my day, I read out loud. I told the baby I was scared. I told it I was terrified that Maku would die.

It overwhelmed me, the thought of him dying, the way I couldn’t stop thinking of it, fearing constantly that he would be gone. I was certain that Maku would die. Somehow it felt inevitable, unavoidable that he wouldn’t make it through the year. It was a horrible, destructive thought, but watching him fade like that, watching my father wilt before me, each day a bitter, unbearable battle, I just—I couldn’t see another way. I couldn’t find a solution for my father, the master of solutions, the unshakable rock.

Slowly, excruciatingly, I watched Maku lose everything about him. His hair, then his appetite, his voice, the color in his skin, his smile, his job, his glasses, his love of reading, the movement in his hands, the expression in his eyes, simple pleasures of any kind.

And then, after six months, six long, heartbreaking months of screaming and lies, of miserable, penetrating silences, Maku chose not to stay. He checked himself into the hospital. Of course we went with him, but it wasn’t our idea; we barely knew what was happening. We practically chased him through our front door, trying to figure out where he was going with a suitcase in his hand.

Two days later, he was gone. Just like that, like he’d timed it, as if he’d run the numbers on his death and solved the equation before he left.

I was getting coffee down the hall. The doctor found me, led me back to the room where Maku lay in his medical gown, his eyes shut, his face as pale and thin as ever.

Congestive failure,
a weak heart—
that was the doctor’s diagnosis, his first words, and only then did I understand what we had done.

November 1964

H
ONOLULU
, H
AWAII

From his rearview mirror, the driver watches. Dismayed, he sees what he has done.

In the backseat, Hong sits in rigid deliberation, silenced. Her eyes, blank from the outside, grow narrow. They focus inward as they search. Her lips move faintly, noiselessly, summoning a voice that has yet to arrive.

The strange effect of his words, the disquiet that’s arrived, the driver does not know how he managed it, how his single phrase, his careful proverb finally uttered, triggered such a reaction.

It was out of habit that he said it, from thirty years of repetition. His mother’s favorite adage, he liked it for its simplicity, its ability to touch but not intrude. As he drove from the cemetery, the two women behind him, it had come out.
What is fated to be yours will always return.
He said it confidently, offered it courageously, turning around in his seat. After sprinting up the hill, after delivering Hong to Mrs. Leong, the driver felt somehow worthier of the day. He felt, for a fleeting moment, the importance of his position, the necessity of his presence.

Hong raised her eyes to meet the driver’s. She studied him, taking long, slow breaths as her gaze ripped through his confidence. She frowned.

“I’m sorry,” the driver apologized, steadying his foot as he braked for a light. He said it again, because he could think of nothing else to say. Immediately, he knew he had struck something terrible. His words, his nine words hung miserably on Hong’s face.

The light turns green; a car honks behind him and the driver turns in his seat, back to the road. He is pushed forward with the traffic, his hair damp against his temples.

The fact that it’s Hong makes it so much worse. Hong, who is commanding and dexterous and effortlessly graceful. The white-haired woman on whom the others rely, the keeper of solutions, their steady hand—the driver has done what the day could not. He has upset her. For the first time that day, through his rearview mirror, he sees her hesitate; he watches her panic.

Hong turns to Mrs. Leong. She opens her mouth and turns away without a sound.

She does this twice, then a third time as they leave Manoa. With each failed attempt Hong grows stranger in movement. Her breathing deepens, her lips buzz, her fingers twist slowly together. What she holds lies on the tip of her tongue, on the brink of release, but she holds it in.

Beside Hong, Mrs. Leong waits. She faces her friend. She’s listening.

Hong exhales before untangling her fingers. She peels them apart, extends their wrinkled length.

“Sometimes,” she says, turning to Mrs. Leong, her brow heavy with concentration, “we are distracted by fate. So much, sometimes, that we lose our chance at destiny.”

The driver blinks. It is the last thing he expects.

“This car,” Hong says, interrupting the driver’s thoughts, lifting her eyes to the ceiling. “Fate is like this car, shiny and new, soft on the inside. Some people are born into cars like this and that is their fate. Bohai and Kaipo, your children were born into cars like this one. Brand-new, comfortable, safe.”

Hong lowers her eyes; they settle on Mrs. Leong.

“Others,” she says, “are born into rusty cars. Cars with engines that need time to start. They need attention. You and me, Frank, Amy, our cars had no leather. Our cars had no driver, no radio, no
heat for cold days. That is our fate. This is what we are given. There is no way to trade for a different car.”

Hong’s voice carries no anger, holds no bitterness at the observation she makes. Her thoughts come fluidly in quiet surges; like the stroke of a painter, she glides until she runs short of ink. She dips her brush and the strength returns.

“But destiny has so little to do with fate. If fate is like this car then destiny is the road we take. And this road, it is ours to choose. We make the turns, we speed and slow, we decide when to stop, when to go. This is destiny. No matter what car we drive, the road is open to us all. All of us, we are given the chance to make what we can. With whatever car, whatever fate, we choose the road.”

Mrs. Leong listens carefully. A single line of perspiration glistens on her brow. She makes no sign of acknowledgment but it’s clear that she’s present. Her mind pushes; she wants to listen.

“I have forgotten this,” Hong says. “I have confused them. I have placed too much on fate, on chance, and not enough on destiny, on the difficulty of choosing. To take me into your home, to come to Hawaii, to send you to Waialua—this is not fate. These are choices we made. These things, they draw us closer to destiny. The choices that bring fear, that make us turn to fate . . . this, in fact, is destiny. This, for good or bad, we can control.”

The car has grown warm; it has shrunken in size. Hong’s words are like an ocean’s tide, developing silently in the distance, being pulled by the moon, gathering momentum as she reaches the shore, as she looms just before her point.

“I knew,” Hong’s voice crashes. Her lips press inward as tears form, a glossy dampness along the width of her eyes.

“I knew about Frank. I knew before I met you. I knew, Lin, and I never told you.”

Hong’s eyes overflow; upsetting her speech, arresting her rhythm. She brings a hand to her mouth, containing herself. She stares at Mrs. Leong as she holds herself steady.

A moment passes.

The rumble of the car is the only sound; the shifting of the gears, the gentle revving of the engine. They have begun their ascent to Diamond Head, rising along the hill as the sun lowers. It casts a brilliant glow that slices through the windows, catching in Hong’s tears, lowering her eyes.

“Frank spoke to me,” she whispers. “The week you took me in. Shen knew, so Frank assumed. I promised him I wouldn’t say a thing. He said it was better for everyone, that he loved you best. He said he would take care of it and I saw no other option, Lin. I knew so little of you at the time. I could not imagine how close we would grow, how much like sisters, how heavy a burden it would become. When he died, I told myself it was fate. The way it unraveled, I told myself there was nothing to be done.” Hong shakes her head.

“I couldn’t face you. I let them take you away. I chose again and I didn’t stop it.”

A tear falls, the first sign that Mrs. Leong understands. The driver watches, his foot pressed against the gas pedal, his overwrought limbs fighting to stay steady. Beneath his foot, he can barely feel the metal. He does not understand what he is witnessing. His mind feels like jelly, his bones like cold steel. He thinks of the morning, mere hours before, of his first trip to the mighty crater and wonders if it was really him, awestruck, lit with a desire to pry, to know. He feels none of these things now.

“Every day,” Hong says, reaching for Mrs. Leong’s hand, silencing her tears, “I miss you. Every day I wish you were here. I wish that I told you. I think of you alone, every day alone in a strange place, and I am so sorry,” Hong breathes, both hands wrapped around Mrs. Leong’s. “Every day, Lin, I regret.”

The women stare at each other. Their sadness aligns. An understanding passes like a shadow, dark and cool, and it carries relief. It sweeps through the car, returning the driver’s eyes to the road, replacing the air stale in his lungs.

“I made arrangements,” the driver hears. “I found a room. It’s near the beach, five minutes from you. The house belongs to a nurse at the clinic.”

Ahead, the gates of the great house come into view. The stone lions, atop their mighty pillars, cast long, sideways shadows across the empty road. The car passes through and the light flickers.

“I’m so sorry,” Hong says. “I’m so sorry it took me this long.”

Theresa hears her name. She turns back to the casket and sees her mother, still squinting beneath the lowering sun.

“Theresa,” Amy says again, her voice fainter than she intended. “Stay here.” It sounds like a command; she corrects herself. “Please, Theresa, will you stay?”

Amy is trying. She is overflowing, trying to gather the pieces before allowing herself to release.

“Please,” she says again, fighting against her daughter’s ambivalence. “You deserve to hear this, too.”

As she returns to the casket, Theresa’s expression does not change. Her face holds no sympathy for her mother; she has no intention of easing her task. She dreads being present. If Amy fails, if she comes up empty, Theresa fears her own reaction.

“Go ahead,” Theresa says, nodding at her. “I’m listening.”

Amy feels like she might vomit. The gaze of a dozen onlookers, her daughter’s disdain, her husband’s body, a final moment to do the right thing. Amy fears, once again, that she will choke; her courage will escape her yet again.

Amy closes her eyes.

She sees herself on her thirtieth birthday. She sees the birds of paradise, their thick, shiny stalks, their tangerine blossoms. She sees the card beside the vase, on her mirrored vanity.
Happy Birthday
, it says.
Meet us in the kitchen.
She walks to the kitchen and there they are, making breakfast. Bohai’s wearing an apron; Theresa’s licking a spoon.
Don’t look
, Theresa says.
You woke up too early!
Amy sees them on the
dock, eating pancakes and fruit salad, the three of them, their bare feet, the morning sun. She’s talking to Theresa about mangoes, about how to cut them, how to slice around the stubborn pit. Bohai’s wearing a baseball cap; he’s leaning back, resting on his forearms. It’s a perfect day; she remembers it so. The three of them, they had dinner on the marina, outside on the deck by the boats. Theresa had questions about the boats, the water, and Bohai had the answers. Amy sees her husband smiling, teasing their daughter. She hears his voice.
It’s a bimini top, Theresa, not a bikini top.
She sees their faces above her birthday cake, a single candle flickering between them, lighting up the whites of their teeth.

Behind her eyelids, there is proof of her happiness. There is a glint of how it might have been.

Amy doesn’t open her eyes; she can’t, not yet. She places both palms on the casket and breathes.

“Bohai,” she says, just louder than a whisper. The sound of his name on her lips, on her breath, Amy feels her husband’s presence in the silence that follows.

“It’s difficult to explain how you changed my life. You appeared at such a strange time, when everything was changing. The world was changing, I was changing; I was just beginning to understand the limitations of being myself, of coming from where I did, of having nothing. It scared me enormously, the thought of ending up in that same place. All I wanted was to be better than my parents. They were so unhappy, so broken by the way their lives turned out—and I’ve never told you any of this.” Amy pauses; her arms shake softly against the casket.

“Twenty years we’ve been married and you’ve told me everything and I’ve told you nothing. Nothing at all. You asked, you always asked me and I brushed it off. You let me be. The thing is, Bohai. The truth is that I didn’t want you to know me then. I didn’t want to confirm that I was so beneath you, so changed by your presence, better by simply being around you. Because I was.

“Before I lived in your family’s house, I was cleaning them. Months before, I was wearing the same gloves and the same house shoes as the women who cleaned your house, and all of a sudden, Bohai, I wasn’t anymore. I was
living
in the house. They were making
my
bed. They were doing
my
wash. I can’t tell you how much that ate at me. We were married and I hadn’t told you any of this. You had no idea who I was. And then your father passed and even more so, I felt completely useless, completely out of place.

“The first two years, before we had Theresa, I think I was waiting. I was waiting for you to realize I was a fraud, to see what different worlds we had come from, to tell me it wouldn’t work out. But you didn’t, and so we decided to have Theresa and I was sure that feeling would go away, that I would be somehow more secure, more in control. But again, I was wrong.

“It had become second nature, Bohai, hiding that part of me. I told myself it had been too long; I couldn’t say something now. How would it sound? I knew how it would sound. I was certain you would see me differently, that you would think less of me.

“So I never allowed you to become my real life. I never allowed myself to love you the way I should have. And the absurdity of this whole thing is that you probably knew all of this. Your mother probably told you that I lived in a basement and my siblings ran around like animals and my parents hated each other. You probably knew. But I didn’t want to believe that. You gave me every reason to trust you, to open up, and I chose not to. I chose instead to protect myself and look what happened. I failed us all; I jeopardized our entire family, everything we worked for.

“I have a money box in the closet, Bohai. There’s almost a thousand dollars in it. That’s how real it felt. That’s how deluded I’ve been, how unfair I’ve been to you. I feared, after all this time, that one day you would wake up and leave us. You would go back to Diamond Head. You would see through me.”

“So.” Amy hesitates; she chokes on the word. “So when that letter
arrived, when I read that letter, I felt everything about myself that I never wanted you to know. I married for money. I ruined so many lives. I was responsible for a death, for a
murder
. I was every bit as terrible and selfish and deceitful as I feared and I just, I completely lost control. I’m still out of control. I still don’t trust myself to be honest, to do the right thing, to be the mother that I need to be.”

Amy breathes. She opens her eyes and is met by Theresa’s stare. She looks directly into her mother’s eyes, still as glass. Below her, Theresa’s lips have formed something of a smile, pressed tightly together, the hint of a curve. Amy fights the impulse to reach for her daughter, to pull her in, to apologize for the things she couldn’t say, to retract the words she said instead—but she doesn’t. She searches for strength from within; she finds it.