Gift of the Golden Mountain (45 page)

     They stayed at the table, all interest in the dinner gone, the
balloons and the cake mocking. The door slammed, Dan was gone. Karin wanted to get up, to run after him, but when she put her napkin on the table and started to rise Philip put his hand over hers to stop her.

     She sat down again, angry. She thought he might have let it go, this once. It was the boy's birthday. He was seventeen, only seventeen. She could not look at Philip because she knew he would see how angry she was, and then he would feel betrayed. She looked at Thea instead. The child's head was bowed, and her long, straight hair fell forward to expose the naked curve of her neck. Karin felt her throat go dry with fear. She had never seen anything quite so desperately vulnerable, nothing so exposed and unprotected and so terribly, terribly young, as the sweet pink skin of her stepdaughter's neck.

     
He will want to make love tonight
, Karin thought. It was a pattern. He would know she was angry, would know she blamed him and he would reach for her.
No
, she resolved,
not this time.

January 5, 1972

RAIN MAKES MY old joints ache, it's true. And it has been raining for six days running, great galloping sheets of the stuff, pounding down. The gutters on this poor little house are running over, sending solid waterfalls over the windowpanes.

     Kit calls me everyday to ask, "Had enough?" She wants me to go to Hawaii. Israel is less direct, but not much. "Eighty degrees and sunshiny in Honolulu," he announces every morning when he arrives, subtle as a water buffalo, "says so right here in the
San Francisco Chronicle."

     How can I tell them that I am afraid of the effort it will take . . . a five-hour flight, all my stupid physical problems, the need to avoid dehydration. My plumbing is as faulty as this old house's. If only we could both get brand-new gutters! I cannot go five hours without a trip to the bathroom, and I simply cannot negotiate those tiny airline toilets, certainly not with everybody watching. I haven't had the courage to make this embarrassing
admission to Kit, but I am running out of excuses.

     I lead a paper existence these days, working on the archive, receiving and answering letters. Kit breezes in several times a week, and we have dinner together every Friday night. Karin pops in now and then, but mostly we talk on the phone. I seldom get over to Berkeley any more; I have given up my work at the Peace Coalition office. The reason I gave was my advancing age (I will be eighty this year) and physical complications. The real reason was a kind of beat-down disaffection with this tortuous war in Vietnam. It has been going on so long, so very many boys have been killed, are being killed, and yet our leaders in Washington keep trying to convince us with hollow words. "Peace is at hand," Kissinger tells us, or one of the generals says, "We can see a light at the end of the tunnel," not knowing the French invented the phrase before they were defeated by Uncle Ho.

     The flickering black and white television presence of Nixon, his jowls all aquiver, telling us that Kissinger has been negotiating secretly with the North Vietnamese. They try to cajole us along; we are told "American troop strength is down to 140,000 men." That is 140,000 more than I can bear to think of, risking their young lives . . . for what? The war goes on, but now it seems the majority of students at Berkeley are turning their backs on it. The papers report a "new mood" on campus, and the volunteers for the Peace Coalition confirm it. There is a decline in student activism: Young people are returning to their studies, are more concerned with jobs and careers. Fraternity rushing has reappeared on campus. I suppose you can't blame the young people, their protests seem to have come to so little. All the "standstill cease-fires" that haven't worked, the peace talks in Paris that drone on and on, the "productive discussions" and troop withdrawals and partial bombing halts and "limited" invasions. Nothing works. Perhaps the students are as worn down by the futility of it as I am.

     Only Karin seems to have taken a new, feverish interest in the day-to-day progress of what is often referred to as "that dirty little
war." But Karin has a reason. She is panic-stricken that it will not be over before Dan reaches his eighteenth birthday and can join the Marines. Karin does not want to join the ranks of the parents of those "only 140,000" troops left in Vietnam.

     This is not what I set out to write; I must get on with it, before Israel comes for our morning workout. I am now required to do certain exercises every day. For a while, a physical therapist came to the house to put me through the paces. She was an officious young woman, given to remarks like "Now can we do this?" and "Now let's just try this," as if I were some three-year-old who hadn't an adequate grasp of the English language. I called her Miss Waterson. She called me "Faith." What made matters worse was that Israel insisted on watching.

     Bless him. After she had gone through her whole repertoire twice, he announced that, if I would like, he would be glad to take over as my physical therapist. Oh I liked all right. And it has worked out wonderfully well. Israel is as good a companion as one could want. If I knelt by the side of the bed to give thanks at night, as my dear mother used to do, I would say, "Thank you Lord for bringing me Israel."

     And the Lord would probably answer, "Then how can you deny this good man a trip to Hawaii?"

     I'm beginning to sound like Phinney, I suppose because I had a letter from my son-in-law yesterday. Annie is giving them a rousing run for their money. She is sampling life with a passion; everything, all at once, seems to be Annie's motto. For a time she lived with a young man in a commune in upstate New York, but now she has become part of a women's direct action group. Annie's style has always been confrontational.

     Phinney writes that he corresponds with a boyhood friend who has reached a position of prominence in the Geological Survey. This friend, Phinney says, has been keeping a close eye on the new data being published by Obregon-Mendonez on the Ring of Fire, and he says it is "of major consequence" and "critically important."
Best of all, says Phinney, most of the papers are coauthored by one "Wing Mei-jin." Phinney took particular delight in informing his old friend that "Mr. Mei-jin" was our May.

     This has been a week rich in correspondence. I heard from May in Sumatra, and Hayes in Paris, and I cannot but wonder if their twains will ever meet.

     I hear the van out front. That will be Israel. In a few minutes he will be stamping in on the porch, shaking the rain out of his coat, singing out that it is 80 and the sun is shining in Honolulu.

We are going to Hawaii. Kit has chartered a corporate jet because, she says, she has so much to take over for May's new house. Kit happened to leave behind a pamphlet describing this airplane to me; on page three it says, "enlarged bathroom facilities available on some craft." I suppose I knew that sooner or later she would catch on, but it seems such an extravagance. Still, I have to agree with Kit, the light in Israel's eyes when he learned we were going is worth it. He has discovered a store in the Haight that sells ancient aloha shirts, the silky prewar kind decorated with palm trees and hula dancers and moonlight on the water. He is also learning to play the ukulele.

     We will arrive the day after May returns from a month-long swing through the Southern Hemisphere. She has been working nonstop, she told Kit. She said she is glad we are coming, because if she doesn't take some time off she is going to drop.

We are here, in Hawaii. Correction. Kit and I are in Hawaii, Israel says he has died and gone to Heaven. Walking barefoot in the sand, he is just as happy as a clam. The chartered plane took us directly to the Big Island of Hawaii, where May has her house.

     House is not quite the right term. It is more like a compound. May bought a stretch of property that surrounds a little beach. She had to have a road bulldozed in, part of it through an old lava flow, so we are quite isolated here. The beach itself is fringed with palm trees. The main house is not at all elaborate, but it is roomy, and the sea breezes stir through it all day long, making the heat quite comfortable. The living room and all of the bedrooms open onto a long lanai, or verandah, which is only a few steps from the beach. A smaller house is crammed with all kinds of special telephone and radio equipment, so May can be in touch with her office in Honolulu as well as the Volcano Observatory on the other side, of the island. A young couple—Danny and his wife, Kuulei, have living quarters next to this "communications center." Danny is a big, strong boy who serves as a caretaker-guard on the property while his wife is a housekeeper. The third structure—set back into a grove of trees—is Abigail Penwell's little house which May had moved from the other side of the island. "My fingers wouldn't work over there no more," Abigail explained to me, "too wet, too cold. Time to come home to the Kona coast where it's warm all the time."

     Abigail Penwell has provided this tropical outpost with a lively life of its own. Abigail has raised thirteen children, only three of which are her own, and they in turn have multiplied so that on any given day, at least two or three grandchildren or cousins or nieces will come to visit. A series of pickup trucks makes its way over the rough-cut road. There is always someone ready to run an errand, pull a fish out of the ocean for supper, or spend an afternoon. There is much to be said for the Polynesian way of life.

     Except that we have been here for two days and still no May. She is stuck in Honolulu, trying to resolve some problem. Every few hours she calls, and Danny comes over to the main house to relay the message. The last one was: "I'll be there for dinner. Tell Kuulei to light the fire at six and have mai tais ready."

     But she didn't arrive at six. Her young assistant, Clarence,
appeared with a box of groceries May had asked him to bring over from Oahu, and to tell us not to wait up for her. He is a sweet boy, Clarence. "May feels really bad," he told us, dutifully. "There's a problem with the professor," he started to explain, but then he must have changed his mind because he left it at that, only shaking his head.

     My first glimpse of May was at breakfast, and I was shocked. She is thin, thinner than I have ever seen her. All skin and bones and smoking now, that is something new. Her skin has lost its lovely glow, even her hair seems lank. Worst of all she looks so tired, so absolutely worn out.

     We had breakfast together, the three of us, and afterwards May insisted on taking us on a tour of the place, though we had seen everything the day before. When we got to Abigail's little house, she said to May, "Where you been? Keeping your aunties waiting, that's no good."

     "I know, I know," May said in a low voice.

     "We have been doing just fine," I put in.

     "Sure," Abigail came back, "you do fine, but look at her. All those bones sticking out." She pulled May to her, and against her girth May looked almost emaciated. "I told the boys to make a hukelau tonight. Fatten you up."

     "Good," May tried to laugh, "I promise to stuff myself."

     "You always do," Abigail told her, and then to me, "You come back Faith, have tea with me this afternoon. Let these young ones play."

     Kit laughed. "How wonderful to be called a young one."

     "Young is up here," Abigail told her, putting her hand on her head. "Up here you are young."