The Fortunes of Indigo Skye (18 page)

drawer for emergencies, and I know there isn't
much in there. So instead, I watch the movie with no sound--cars chasing each
other and things blowing up and people's lips moving, and I don't feel I've
missed much at all. Finally, we're about to land and I hunt under my seat for my
shoes and accidentally grab the toe of the sneaker of the guy behind me and
yank, which cracks me up. I even peek between the seats to see whose shoe I've
just pulled, and it's some Asian guy with big glasses, who now has both feet
tucked protectively to the side, which cracks me up further. My shoulders are
going up and down, up and down in that laugh that tries not to be a laugh. You
can see why I am never going to be the type to have two and a half million
dollars.

I can tell the moment I'm off the plane that
yanking on some stranger's foot will be the highlight of my trip. I walk down
the airplane steps onto the tarmac, and even though it's evening, the air is
balmy and breezy. The warmth, the strangeness of the climate, is a surprise.
It's always a surprise, a sudden climate change, even when you know what to
expect when you arrive. Maybe our mind can grasp the going from one part of the
world to another in a few hours, but our body still works on some pre-technology
basis that feels the wrongness of this. I almost don't recognize Dad--he has his
hair cut very short on the sides and he's a lot more gray than the last time.
But Jennifer is easy to spot. Her hair is piled on top of her head and she's
wearing a sundress of manic oranges and yellows, and her sunglasses are still on
even though it's dusk. She dangles a lei over one wrist, an oversize flower
bracelet.

"There she is!" Jennifer says. She drops the
lei around my head and there's the sudden bright smell of gardenias.
"Aloha!"

"Sorry," Dad says. He looks dressed in an
outfit not in his

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control--tan shorts with lots of adventuresome
pockets, a T-shirt advertising some band called Dead Center with the picture of
a bull's-eye (Dad's musical interest, far as I know, gravitates to, say, Elton
John). He has a sweatshirt tied jauntily around his shoulders.

"What do you mean, 'Sorry'?" Jennifer says to
my dad. "It's
tradition."
Jennifer is actually from Portland, Oregon. She
met Dad when she came to the islands on a cruise ship with two girlfriends. Now
she's embraced Hawaii as if her ancestors had paddled over from Polynesia in
boats made from the husks of a banana tree.

"Good flight?" Dad says. Dad is funny with
words. He can have an economy with language, like his conversation is on a diet.
Then it can come spilling out in some dialogue binge.

We do the bad airport bumbling dance, where
unfamiliar bodies and bags struggle for rhythm. Their car is parked in the
airport lot. It's a small convertible, and my suitcase won't fit into the trunk
in spite of a great deal of struggling on my father's part--various geometric
shoves. So it sits beside me, just when I thought we were finally going to have
time apart. Jennifer flips down the visor to make sure her face hasn't changed
since the last time she looked. She hunts around in her bag and finds a circle
container of lip gloss, smears one finger in a circle and applies it. She makes
a gummy smack with now-shiny lips and the car has the limp odor of something
fruity.

"Well," Dad says.

"I know," I say. "Pretty weird,
huh?"

Jennifer takes a breath. "I just think, if this
is what he wants to do, then why not just let him? I mean, the guy has obviously
thought this over before he did it. I don't understand why you

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can't just say, 'Hey, thanks,' you know, send
him a note and tell him you understand what he's doing, what he's wanting ..."
She's shouting a bit, sitting sideways in her seat so both Dad and I can hear.
We're out on the main road now, and the wind is loosening the strands of hair
around her face, making a few stick to her shiny lips.

"Jen," Dad says. It is only one word; no, not
even a whole word, and to me it could mean anything.
Jen, can I change lanes
or are we about to be hit by a papaya truck? Jen, are you sitting on my
sunglasses? Jen, you have hair stuck on your lips.
But apparently Jen
understands Dad's shorthand language. She's got the internal lemon juice that's
rubbed on his words to make the secret message appear underneath.

"Oh, come on," she says to him. "Don't even
give me that."

This time he merely gives his head a tiny
shake. I see it in the rearview mirror. "I don't believe you, I really don't,"
she says to this. "You honestly find that immoral in some way?
Sheesh."

Perhaps I am learning the trick to conversing
with this man who is my father. It's like talking to one of the palm trees
lining the road where we are driving. You say whatever you want, and when they
swish and shush a bit in the breeze, you respond how you please.

I sit quietly in the backseat, feeling suddenly
prim and awkward. I sneak a look over to my traveling companion, who just sits
in solid black stodginess. Their arguing, if you can call it that, has brought
on a bout of good behavior on my part, the nervous silence of an unwanted guest.
I wonder what's going on at home. Three hours' time difference, and Mom would be
back from work. I picture her hunting under the bed for her second slipper and
see Severin clicking open a three-ring binder to put in his AP Government
homework, thoughts of Kayleigh Moore dancing in

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his head. Trevor would be finishing his last
delivery, slamming the rolling metal door on the back of the delivery truck down
for the last time of the day, locking it up and saying
See ya
to Larry
Jakes or Vic Xavier, who is half Trevor's size, but who can lift an Amana Radar
Range off the truck by himself, according to Trevor.

We pull up to Dad and Jennifer's house, a
bungalow just a few steps from the beach, with tile floors and pictures of
orchids and birds of paradise that Jennifer has painted in watercolors, and
furniture that's all bamboo and tropical-flower cushions. The doors and windows
have been left open and Dad drops his sweatshirt immediately onto a kitchen
chair when we come in. Jennifer says she's tired and goes off into their room,
and Dad pours some pineapple juice into a cup in the shape of a tiki man and
hands it to me. He makes me a tuna sandwich, puts potato chips inside. It's just
the way I like a tuna sandwich, without even telling him, and I wonder how he
knows this. Keiko, Jennifer's golden retriever, has devotedly followed me around
since I arrived and is now sleeping in a half circle at my feet.

"How's everyone?" Dad says. "How's your mom?"
He looks toward the bedroom door as he says this, as if the word will seep
through the crack under the door for Jennifer to hear.

"Fine, yeah," I say. "Good."

"How's Bex? Your brother?"

"Great. Bex is in this new phase. She's
collecting money for tsunami victims."

"No way. No kidding?" He smiles, chuckles. "A
school project? That reminds me of you, selling those magazines in the first
grade. Remember that? They gave you some prize you wanted, an AM/FM pen radio or
something, and we went all around the neighborhood, knocking on doors? I bought,
like, four magazines

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myself. It would have been cheaper to buy you a
stereo. I got a yachting magazine, or something, golf..."

"Better than
Cosmo,"
I say. I chuckle
with him. I crunch into my sandwich. His face looks happy for the first time
that night, so I don't want to tell the truth, that I don't remember this at
all. Actually, I'd forgotten that he knew things about me, things I didn't know.
But a good chunk of our relationship is based on things that happened in the
past, and if I decide not to acknowledge his memories, we might be left standing
on an empty ballroom floor, not knowing how to dance.

"We had so many damn magazines coming," he
says, laughing. "But you got your radio."

"That made me so happy," I say, but I'm only
guessing.

"Happy," he says. He rubs his jawline. "Have
you thought about it, In? What it might mean, having that money? The effect of
it? Who you might be, with it or without it?"

"I'd be myself, richer, I guess."

"I don't know, In. I don't know. Maybe you'd be
less of yourself. I worry. A person can rely on what they have, rather than what
they are.... Isn't that what the chorus of voices even tells us? To look away
from ourselves and toward
things}"

"I don't know," I say.

"Buy it, have it, get this and you'll be that?
I think this is the world's opinion, In. And I distrust the world's
opinion."

"You rebel," I say. I ball up my napkin, toss
it at him.

"I'll take that as a compliment, thank you.
It's easy to go along. But all the great men have been
nonconformists."

"Get some dreadlocks, Philosopher Dad," I
say.

"Ha, can you see that? Jennifer would shoot me.
Just, In? Listen to yourself. It's harder than it sounds."

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"Myself says that potato chips are awesome in
tuna," I say. "Myself says that the thought of you in dreadlocks is hilarious."
He tosses my napkin back at me. We stay up a little while more, talking about
Bex and Severin. We make a plan to see the Vespa guy in the morning. It's not as
bad talking to him as I imagined, not at all. We're clicking along really
nicely, as a matter of fact. It's him and me, which I thought would be bad, but
it's him and me, and that's what's actually kind of nice. I'd forgotten that
part about Dad, the misplaced dreamer-academic, the human equivalent of a soul
walking an empty beach. I'd forgotten that I like those kind of people. And
besides, he has lines around his eyes that crinkle when he smiles.

"Want more juice?" he says. I accept another
glass, to bring to my room.

"I'm sick to death of pineapple juice, you want
to know the truth," he says as he pours. "But Jennifer likes to have it around.
Vitamin C, all that. Healthy diet food."

We say good night. He gives me a sort-of hug,
an arm around my shoulders. "You're getting so big," he says.

"Maybe I'd better start on the pineapple juice
diet," I say.

"You know what I mean," he says. "Grown up. A
young woman. Well, let me know if you need anything."

I pat Keiko's head, close my door with the
abandoned dog on the other side. I can feel her there, her eyes on the door,
watching over me. My room is a small rectangle with twin beds that have palm
tree bedspreads. There's a large photo of a sunset on one wall, and a painted
sign that says, ko kaua palekaiko ! with our paradise ! underneath. Jennifer's
paint supplies are stacked in one corner and Dad's books creep along one wall. I
set my tiki man on a shiny teak bedside table. I feel like I'm inside a
suntan

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lotion commercial or one of those old Elvis
movies where he surfs. The pillowcase smells like no one's been in the room in a
while. Keiko is whining on the other side of the door. I have a pang of sympathy
for my dad then. It's regret on his behalf, something he may or may not feel for
himself. It had to be hard, being the kind of person who always thinks. The sad
part was, he left one cliché for another--suburban cliché to a Hawaiian-themed
one. I wonder then if it's easier to forgive when the life of the person you're
forgiving seems to not have gone the way they intended. Maybe it's easier to be
generous in that case. But I feel a small piece of something else inside
too--I'm a little pissed. If he left us who loved him, he should have at least
made sure it was worth it.

I guess forgiveness, like happiness, isn't a
final destination. You don't one day end up there and get to stay. It's there,
it's not there. It's in and out, like the surf I could hear outside my window as
I lay in that bed. Sometimes forgiveness is so far away you can barely imagine
its possibility, and other times, surprising times, like when a tiki man is
looking at you from a bedside table, it is a sudden, unexpected visitor who
stays briefly before moving on.

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8

The next morning Jennifer emerges from the
bedroom with a wide smile; she's wearing a tiny sarong skirt and a tight white
tank top spilling boobs. It's cloudy out, but they're the kind of clouds that
lack any real ambition other than to temporarily annoy. They'll blow off soon;
you can tell because the air is warm, minus any true marine-cool bite. Dad has
already opened the windows again, and you can hear the
tick-tick-tick
of
palm leaves swishing. He's reading the paper while we drink coffee, and I don't
mind that. There's no angsty-hollow in our silence, just sleepy morning comfort,
which may be in part because I barely slept last night. I had that other-place
alertness, where you hear the air conditioner whoosh and the refrigerator buzz;
where it's dark and still dark and still still dark, where the dark hours go on
forever, and you think about everything that can't be solved as you lie in bed
until you finally get sleepy when the windows begin to edge with
light.

Even if I'd gotten the best rest of my life, I
think I still might be sleepy here, because everything's sleepy--the breeze, and
the sound of the surf, and the warmth. It's like living in a nap. We're supposed
to pack the car in another fifteen minutes or so to head over to Richard
Howard's house. I'd be nervous, but it's hard to be nervous where people are
usually barefoot.