Here Today, Gone to Maui (5 page)

My mother, in what she termed sentimentality but what I deemed a refusal to face reality, insisted on shoving every bed, dresser, table, plate, picture, vase, and candlestick into a cramped two-bedroom town house. Let’s just say that no one has ever said that my mother’s town house looks like a hotel. Since she had no real work experience, she wound up taking a job at Home Depot. She’s been with the store almost as long as my father has been with Elise. I’ll say this for my mother: she knows a lot more about drywall grades and plumbing hardware than the average middle-aged woman.

My mother didn’t unload any of the furniture the following year when my sister, Beth, dropped out of nursing school to marry her high school boyfriend, a concrete contractor named Sal Piccolo. They’re still married and living in New Jersey. I have learned not to make Mafia jokes.

Beth and Sal have five girls (Samantha, Savannah, Stacey, Sierra, and—though it pains me to write it—Sindy), but they’re not done. As Sal says, “We’ll keep trying till we get a boy.” He says this in front of the girls. Beth just smiles. Beth lets Sal do pretty much whatever he wants. Most of the things Sal wants involve really big televisions and overstuffed recliners with drink holders. If Beth ever read about the divorce studies—which is to say, if she ever found time to sit down, much less read a magazine—she’d puff herself up and say that the researchers were wrong: obviously, she’d mastered the secret to a happy marriage.

And who knows? Maybe she is happy. Sal hasn’t left her, at least not yet. Among us Shea woman, that counts as success.

 

I hung around with my empty coffee cup and the birds for about a half hour longer than I really wanted to. I liked the idea of Jimmy coming back to an empty condo and maybe even missing me for a minute or two.

Instead, one look at the parking lot told me that Jimmy was still out, so I wasn’t surprised to find the condo exactly as I had left it. After a brief, familiar pang—one part panic to two parts sadness with a dash of resignation—I relaxed.

At home I worried that every time I saw Jimmy might be the last. It’s not anything he did or said. On the contrary, he usually left me with a kiss and a casual “I’ll call you later.” That’s assuming he was awake. With our different work schedules, I often left him sleeping. (“I’m the boss,” he said. “I can be late if I want to.”) At first, I’d searched for a note when I got home. Now I knew that Jimmy does not leave notes.

But here in Hawaii, I reminded myself, I had nothing to worry about. Jimmy would not disappear. Where could he possibly go?

It was almost lunchtime in California. I sat on the rumpled bed and called my office.

“Jane!” Lena said. “Shouldn’t you be on the beach or something?”

“It’s early here,” I said.

“Oh, yeah, that’s right! So, you and Jimmy should be getting all hot and sweaty right about now.”

“We’ve got to come up for air sometime.” I forced a laugh. “Did anyone buy muffins?” I asked, changing the subject.

“Oh, no—ya know what we did? Manny—he’s in production? He lives in LaHabra, and he stopped off at Boston Donuts on his way to work. That’s down on Imperial. I had a jelly-filled one. You ever try one of those?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Manny got all kinds—jelly-filled, cream-filled, chocolate, glazed. Everybody was like, ‘Oh, cool—donuts!’ So, no offense, everyone really likes your muffins and all, but people are really liking the donuts, and Manny said he can pick them up every Friday, as long as he can get money from petty cash to pay for them.”

“So, you don’t . . . people don’t want my muffins?”

“It’s not that! People love your muffins, your muffins are awesome. It’s just that people are really liking the donuts. But you can still bring in muffins, if you want. Maybe we could have both. I just thought it might be nice for you to have a break, is all. I know you’re, like, really busy with Jimmy, and all.”

“Oh, yeah.” I looked around the empty room. “Jimmy keeps me busy, all right. Speaking of which, I’d better go soon. Can you put me through to Mr. Wills?”

“Morning, Jane,” he said. “We sure missed your muffins today.” Since Mr. Wills suffered from high cholesterol, I always offered low-fat alternatives. He was especially fond of my apple-oatmeal scones. “Are you having a nice vacation?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s great,” I said. “Just thought I should check in.”

He made his little humming noise. “I wouldn’t want to interrupt your vacation,” he said finally. “But I just put together some target numbers for the sales force, and I’d love to get your input. Does your hotel have a business center? I could e-mail you . . .”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll get it back to you by tomorrow.” Maui Hi didn’t have hair dryers, much less a business center, but there had to be an Internet café around here someplace.

 

Jimmy came in just as I finished making the bed (which meant straightening the blankets and sheets; the beige coverlet looked and smelled so suspicious, I’d folded it up and shoved it in the closet).

“Hi,” I said, stopping myself before I could ask,
Where were you
?

“Hey, baby—you miss me?” he asked, dropping his key and a white plastic bag on the table.

“Of course,” I said, with just enough of a smirk to make him wonder.

He was wearing faded yellow board shorts, a sleeveless white T-shirt, and a shark-tooth necklace. His hair, which was slightly shaggier than usual and a little damp, was pushed behind his ears. He looked really, really cute.

“I had to make some business calls, and I didn’t want to wake you. So I drove out to a beach and called from there. When I was done, I jumped in the water—felt great.”

I was a little hurt that he’d gone swimming without me, but I was happy about the business calls. Every step toward a more solid business meant a step toward a more solid relationship. Right?

“I’ve been on the phone to my office, too,” I said. (Translation: I have not just been sitting around waiting for you to return.) “I figured I’d catch people before they went to lunch. Who were you talking to?”

“People around here, mostly,” he said. “Trying to set up some meetings.”

I glanced at the clock. “You left pretty early. Did you wake anyone up?”

“Nah—divers get up with the sun.”

“I called my mom, too,” I said. “She wasn’t home, but I left a message. Did you tell your parents we were coming here?”

He shrugged. “They don’t care what I do. I travel so much, it would be hard to keep up with my schedule.” Jimmy had grown up in Lancaster, a desert town about a hundred miles inland from Los Angeles, but his parents had moved to Arizona shortly after he graduated from high school. He’d said, “We’re just not very close—nobody’s fault really, we’re just totally different people,” but I always got the sense that he was hurt by their semi-abandonment.

“I’d like to meet them sometime,” I said casually (and not for the first time).

“Sure,” he said (as he always did). “Next time they’re in town.” He fingered his shark-tooth necklace.

“New jewelry?”

He glaced down at the neckace. “I thought a shark tooth was more manly than a lei. I bought you something.” He reached inside the white plastic bag that said ABC STORES in blue lettering.

“This is for you.” He handed me a string of white shells on a cardboard backing.

I smiled. “A bracelet?” Jimmy had never given me something “just because.”

“An anklet,” he said.

“Really?” The happy feeling spread through my chest. “I’ve never owned an anklet before.”

“I kind of figured.” He dug into the bag again and pulled out a plastic-wrapped muffin. “I thought you’d be hungry.”

“I am.”

“I had one, too,” he said. “It’s not very good. I think your muffins have ruined me for anyone else’s.”

“I think you’ve ruined me for anyone else,” I purred, slinking toward him. He circled me and held me tight.

“I have to leave you,” he muttered.

“What?” I said, too sharply, stepping back and looking him in the face.

“I have a meeting today. Well, two meetings, actually. One in”—he checked the digital clock by the bed—“forty-five minutes. And the other one for lunch.” He bit his lip. “I’m sorry, baby.”

“Oh,” I said, stepping back. “It’s no big deal. I’ll just—swim. And explore. And read. I brought a whole stack of books.”

“You’re the best,” he said, kissing my forehead before heading to the shower.

 

 

As disappointed as I was, there was no point letting the morning go to waste. I could settle in and do some necessary errands.

A quick check of the brown plastic cabinets revealed salt, pepper, rice-wine vinegar, soy sauce (“please refrigerate after opening”), and curry powder. Far in the back was a tin of baking powder, probably left over from the last millennium and presumably inactive. An exploration of the lower cabinets turned up a rusted cake tin and two warped cookie sheets that just might fit in the toaster oven. And, oh—two fondue pots. Because no Hawaiian vacation would be complete without fondue.

The condo office was three doors down from our studio. Jimmy had left me in the car when he’d checked in the night before, so I hadn’t seen it yet. I expected something dark and shabby, and I wasn’t disappointed. The room was deep and narrow, with only one parking-lot-view window to let in light. Hula music gurgled from two wall-mounted speakers, only partially masking the buzzing from the fluorescent lights overhead. Bamboo-print wallpaper covered the walls, while framed posters advertised catamaran rides, snorkel trips, and luaus. In the middle of the room, a bunch of rattan chairs circled a glass coffee table. A long counter overlooked it all from the back wall.

The woman behind the counter had a wide, calm face with perfectly square teeth. Her skin was mocha-colored, her shiny black hair pulled back into a braid. She could have been twenty-five or forty-five. Her blue polyester muumuu was at least two sizes too big. Her name tag said MARY.

“Aloha,” she said when I walked in the door.

Lacking the Hawaiian words for “this place sucks,” I said “aloha” back and wandered to the counter. There was a rack filled with brochures advertising everything from skyline tours to sunset cruises to bike rides down the volcano.

The grocery store was a bit far, Mary told me, but there was a convenience store just down the street. As for an Internet café, I’d have to go into Lahaina, which meant waiting until Jimmy returned.

The road to the convenience store was leafy, narrow, and overrun by rental cars. I jumped into the bushes twice to avoid getting run down. By the time I arrived, I was breathing heavily and sweating profusely. Also, I was starving. It was still morning in Maui, but my stomach hadn’t gotten the memo. Praying I wouldn’t get food poisoning, I bought a chicken teriyaki bowl from a roadside vendor and wolfed it down on the spot.

This was not the kind of morning I had envisioned when I’d drawn up my itinerary.

Fortunately, the convenience store had everything I needed, at only two or three times the price I would have paid on the mainland. I bought cereal, milk, orange juice, yogurt, minibananas, a bunch of tropical flowers, a bottle of sunscreen, and a cheap snorkeling set with flippers ( just so we’re clear, by “cheap” I am referring to quality, not price). Packages of homemade baked goods sat on the counter. I chose pineapple-mango scones.

I barely noticed the condo’s ugliness as I unpacked my groceries and arranged the flowers in a chunky glass vase. Nesting always makes me feel better.

When I was done, I balanced a scone on a square of paper towel and headed to the office. Mary laughed in delight and said
“mahalo,”
which means “thank you” in Hawaiian (eighteen hours here, and I was practically fluent). She took a bite and nodded. “Mm—’s good.”

The door opened, and a couple walked in. They were about my age, maybe a little older, and dressed almost exactly the same, in denim shorts and white logo T-shirts. The woman snagged a whale watch brochure. She had blond hair, stringy at the ends, with about an inch of dark roots.

Her husband leaned on the counter, his underarm hair tufting out of his sleeveless shirt. He smelled like banana mixed with coconut mixed with car grease. Really, he should have spent the extra two bucks on better suntan lotion. “We got a problem with our air-conditioning,” he said to Mary.

“What air-conditioning?” she asked.

“Exactly,” he said.

She blinked at him. “Excuse me?”

“The AC,” he said. “Pfft.” He sliced the air with his hand. “Not working.”

Mary bit her lip. “The units aren’t air-conditioned. Did you try opening the window?”

He stared at her. “Of course not! I didn’t want to let out the air-conditioning! So you’re telling me—oh, man!” He threw back his head in disgust.

“I told ya we shoulda stayed at a hotel,” his wife muttered, slipping the whale pamphlet back into the display.

“We have electric fans,” Mary said. “You want one in your room?”

“What for?” the guy grumbled. “So we can move the hot air around?”

Mary kept a pleasant smile on her face.

“Hair dryer,” the woman prompted under her breath.

“Oh, yeah,” the guy said. “You got a hair dryer my wife can use? She didn’t pack hers ’cause she figured you’d have them.”

Mary shook her head. “Sorry.”

The guy grunted in disgust. “This place blows.”

“Well, that was rude,” I said once they left (even if I did agree with the assessment).

Mary waved the air with her hand. “That was nothing. Some guests, they come here expecting room service, a heated pool . . .” She chuckled. “In-room massages.”

I laughed along with her. (In-room massages? I could totally go for that.)

She continued, “So I say, sorry, we don’t have that, and they get mad.” She shrugged. “Ah—well. It’s a job.”