Sleeping Beauties (19 page)

“It’s already begun,” Steamy said, nodding back at Mr. Chiang. “Dix wasn’t invited, but Claire brought him because it’s her party and she thought she could have anyone she wanted. Like the song. But she never asked Mom and she forgot to tell her. Mom told him he had to leave.”

Clio turned to look for Dix. He was walking angrily away from the house. Burta stood on her toes, smiling, making sure that he did not stay.

“It’s rather like a dream, isn’t it?” Clio said. “It always has been, here.”

Steamy nodded. “Nightmare, you mean.”

Clio saw her father moving among his guests in a ritual of introduction and recollection. He was good at it. No sooner would he start one little fire of conversation than he would be off with his gold flint to spark another.

“It is going to rain,” she said, looking back at the forest.

“I didn’t know Claire knew Tommy,” Steamy said.

Clio was thinking about her father, and did not answer.

“Clio? Have you disappeared already?”

Clio turned back to him. “She doesn’t know him. She stayed with him for a few days in California.” Clio nodded to a woman who owned a hotel on Maui where guests
were taken to their rooms in hay wagons. “Claire’s late, after all,” Clio said, watching Burta gesture impatiently to her guests to come inside.

A woman in a muumuu and a necklace of polished
kukui
nuts stopped Clio as she stepped onto the lanai.

“How is your auntie, my dear?” the woman asked. “I am only in town for a few days. Will you call me? Come to tea. Or cocktails, even better. I am staying at Diamond Head with Chimpy. I was hoping to see Emma tonight.” Mrs. Alexander and Emma had been in the same class at Punahou. She lived on the Big Island, and was not often in Honolulu.

“Emma would never come here,” Clio said. “I’m surprised that
I
am here.”

“I am often amazed that we all still speak to each other in this desolate place.”

Clio laughed. “Desolate?”

Steamy was at the door of the dining room, waving at Clio, trying to get her attention.

“Am I related to Claire Clarke?” Mrs. Alexander asked. “Her great-cousin, perhaps? Please don’t make me work it out.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Clio said. “In fact, I beg you not to.”

“And how is your grandmother?”

“She is very well, especially since Mark Twain came to lunch yesterday.”

Mrs. Alexander nodded. “Alone?”

“The queen may have been with him.”

“How nice.” She paused. “What did they have to eat?”

“Very traditional.
Haupia
, poi,
lomi
. Quite a bit of rum.”

“I’m sorry not to have been asked. Lots of gossip?”

“I should think. Grandmother has been smiling to herself all day.”

“Well, she would be accustomed to it,” Mrs. Alexander said, not unkindly.

“Accustomed to it?”

“To gossip, my dear. Talk.”

They stopped at the door of the dining room. Steamy had disappeared. “Was there much talk about them?” Clio asked. “I’ve always thought there must have been.”

“Your grandmother was fearless. I don’t know if you know that. So was Emma.”

Clio hesitated. “I’ve sometimes thought they were too fearless.”

Mrs. Alexander looked at her in surprise.

“They should have given up,” Clio said. “Their interest in saving the past, or repudiating the past, whatever it is that they have both tried to do with it, has cost them so much.”

“Oh, my dear,” Mrs. Alexander said, her voice full of disappointment—not in Clio’s aunt and grandmother, Clio realized, but in Clio herself. “They had no choice.”

Suddenly Steamy was next to Clio, pulling her aside. She turned back to Mrs. Alexander, but she was gone. Clio looked round for her. She wanted to tell her that she had meant no criticism of Emma and Mabel, but her hand was caught tightly in Steamy’s hand.

“What a nice date you are,” she said with a sigh.

“You’d never go out with me.”

“Steamy, I’m your sister.”

“Half-sister. We wouldn’t have to have children.”

“Oh, in that case.”

“There’s something I’ve been trying to tell you all night, but you won’t let me.”

“I can’t imagine what it could be. You’ve been doing quite well.”

“It seemed like they were, you know, old friends.” Steamy made the local gesture for sexual intercourse.

“Who?”

“Claire and Tommy. Your husband. Your husband, the movie star,” he said. “Remember him? You could have married me instead, you know. But then you might not have remembered me, either.”

“My husband?” Clio was struck by the expression on Steamy’s face. What she had mistaken for nervousness, she suddenly realized, was shame. She grabbed his arm. “He’s here?” She was shocked. “Tommy is here? Tonight?”

“It was Burta’s surprise.” He looked down, embarrassed. “That’s why she’s so excited. Mom can’t stand the idea of losing Tommy. That the family is losing him, I mean. She wants you to get back together. He just arrived this afternoon.” He forced himself to look at her. “I only found out an hour ago when his bodyguard borrowed my hair dryer.”

If she strained to listen, she could hear the stream. The smell of leaf mold and wild ginger was suddenly stronger than the smell of the women’s perfume and the candles. The purple flowers of the
kukui
trees were almost within reach.

As she picked up her skirt in readiness to run, Tommy came into the dining room. Claire was behind him, her hands around his waist.

“Look who I have!” Claire yelled. “Toot! Toot! Here we come!”

Hundreds of white moths had folded their wings and settled tremulously on Claire’s head. Clio was distracted by the loveliness of it until she realized that Claire was wearing a
haku
lei around her head. The slender wands at the center of the white ginger blossoms quivered like the antennae of insects.

“Hi, babe,” he said.

Clio dropped the hem of her skirt.

“Isn’t he great?” Burta asked loudly, looking around.

He wore a black suit and a gray linen shirt buttoned at the neck, and black cowboy boots. He shook his head at Clio in mock exasperation. As Clio saw the envious, pleased faces of the guests, she realized that she was the only one in the room who did not admire him. She saw that he saw it, too, and that it infuriated him.

Burta tapped a knife against a glass. “I want to make a toast,” she shouted. “Sit down, everyone!”

“People! People!
Keikis
! Time for
kaukau
!” Lynott called to those guests still on the lanai. “Clio, find your seat!” Clio saw that he, too, was very pleased.

“Surprised?” Tommy whispered to her. “You don’t look too happy.”

“Don’t touch me,” Clio whispered. It was all she could say.

“I knew he was coming all along!” Claire sang gaily. “I’m not stupid. And I get to sit next to him. And Steamy’s on my other side.” She patted Steamy on the shoulder as an afterthought.

“You knew?” Clio asked Claire in astonishment.

“I said I want to make a toast!” Burta shouted.

“You look great, babe,” he said, relieved that she had finally spoken. “Been working out? Judy and Mimi and everyone, all the guys, say hi. They miss you. I missed you, too.

“I asked the waiter to hide two bottles of wine under my chair,” Claire said to him. “To get us through dinner. Clio, aren’t you thrilled? Isn’t this great? We put you between Senator Yasunabe’s husband, he does something at the electric company, and Robert Siento’s boyfriend. He’s the new Samoan dancer at the Hawaiian Village.”

“That was thoughtful,” Clio said.

Buzz Chun sidled up behind Tommy. “What’s happenin’, brah?” He held out the palm of his hand.

“Yo, Floyd!” Tommy shouted as he slapped Buzz’s
palm. Buzz had done an interview with Tommy for
Aloha
magazine.

“Buzz,” Buzz said, but Tommy had turned away.

A woman, her hand held flat against her stomach, wiggled between Tommy and Clio. She smiled and squeezed Clio’s arm as if they shared a secret.

John Lynott stood in the doorway, arms outstretched, red in the face from vodka and a good afternoon of marlin fishing. “Sit down, everyone!”

“You don’t seem very glad to see me,” Tommy said to Clio, bending his head close to her. “I even brought something for you.” He patted his jacket pocket.

“I picked it out,” Claire said, leaning around him. “You don’t deserve it!” She stuck out her tongue at Clio, pretending to be jealous. Or not pretending, Clio thought.

“Claire—Duchess, I mean! You’re over here,” Burta shouted across the room. “Tommy?” She pointed to the chair next to her own.

Clio listened to the room begin to quiet as the men and women at last found their places. Some of the men stood behind their chairs, waiting for the women to be seated. The Filipino waiters watched patiently from the pantry, small hands clasped behind their backs.

A woman brought her cocktail glass to the table and placed it beside her wineglass, and Burta leaned over the woman’s shoulder and whisked away the glass, handing it to a waiter. The woman looked around in astonishment.

Claire threw a piece of bread at Tommy. Steamy, forgetting himself for a moment, tried to catch the bread in his mouth. It fell onto the table. Burta frowned at him and he quickly picked up the bread and put it in his pocket. Next to the egg, Clio thought.

“You’re just surprised, babe, that’s all. You know you’re crazy about me.” Tommy shook his head as if Clio were a naughty, amusing child. He had forgiven her.

It is a dream, Clio thought. I was right. And as if in a dream, she slowly turned away from him. Away from Burta plucking at his sleeve, away from the waiters carrying in the Portuguese bean soup in honor of Claire, away from her mother’s pretty dining room. Away from all of them.

There was a man walking toward the house. She thought it might be Senator Yasunabe’s driver or one of the waiters. He stopped in the driveway when he saw her.

“Who are you?” Although she had not hurried, she was out of breath.

“I’m going to the pond,” he said. He spoke quietly. She could tell from his voice that he was Hawaiian. He did not speak Pidgin English, but it was not quite English, either. He cut off his words tensely, as if it did not matter to him whether or not she understood him.

She could not see his face. He was wearing a dark T-shirt and jeans and rubber slippers. His hair was long.

“I used to swim here when I was a kid,” he said.

“You must be one of those boys my stepmother wanted to have arrested for trespassing.”

Behind them, the stream moved swiftly under a small bridge. Only the loud rush of water was steady; the other sounds rose and fell without rhythm.

“When did you used to swim in the pond?”

He didn’t answer.

“I ask because I must know you,” she said.

He looked at the big lighted house in its ornamental garden. The incessant cries of small animals grew louder in the silence and there were other sounds, too, of conversation, and knives and forks on china and the thin clang of pot lids.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

She moved closer. She could smell him and the swollen
leaves all around them. Someone opened the back door to throw a bag of garbage onto the kitchen steps, and he reached out and took her by the arm to pull her deeper into shadow, as if they were waiting there to murder Burta and her guests.

The rain Clio had been awaiting all evening still had not come. The air was heavy with moisture. The trees, like Clio, paused in expectation, eager for the mountain winds to chasten the vapor into rain.

“Come with me,” she said.

She led him along the house, across Burta’s stepping stones, and into the forest. She heard him moving quietly behind her.

It did not take long to get to the pond. He sat on the bank. She undressed quickly, without talking, without looking at him, although she knew that he watched her. She took off her underclothes. There was light trapped in the netted vines, and her pale skin looked gray.

She threw herself out over the black surface and dropped deep into the pond. The shock of the cold water made her gasp and she burst out of the water with a cry. She kicked her legs, turning the water to milk.

It began to rain. The plump drops shuddered on the surface of the pond. A bat from the banyan tree dropped low over the water, chasing insects. The rain was warmer than the pond water. She lifted herself onto a rock. The scant light reflected on her wet skin, and the bones running down her back looked like a knotted silk rope.

“I never saw you here,” he said. “When I came to swim.”

She climbed over the wet rocks. “I was here every day,” she said.

“No,” he said. “I’d remember you.”

She realized then that he was younger than she, that he had come to swim in the pond after she went to live with Emma, one of the boys who had infuriated Burta by walking
through her garden. Burta had refused to understand that the pond and the forest had been used, since the beginning, by all who came there. Landowners did not enforce trespassing laws, especially against those whose land it once might have been.

He stepped onto the rock that jutted over the pool and put his hand in the water. He looked like one of the figures in the mural, pulling
taro
or handing in a heavy netful of fish. One of the figures has come to life, she thought.

It was raining harder. She gathered her clothes, holding them in a bundle against her chest, and went up the path into the grove of Norfolk pine. The pine needles were dry under her feet. She heard him behind her on the path, but she could not hear him once he came into the grove. She sat on the pine needles and leaned back against the trunk of a tree. The bark was rough against her bare skin and she sat up straight, away from the tree, her white voile dress in her lap.

He sat down next to her.

“I grew up here,” she said.

“I know.”

His leg brushed against her, and, to her surprise, she felt herself shudder. Cheap thrill, she thought. He lay back on the pine needles and leaves.

The moon had risen, pillowed by clouds. The rain rattled through the forest, slapping onto leaves and rocks, jinking down the stalks of ginger. Now and then, rain found its way through the laced branches of pine to fall on them. He lay beside her, his fingers entwined beneath his head.