4 Kaua'i Me a River (9 page)

“Oh?” Hatch leaned away and
raised an eyebrow.

“The guy had
six
wives. Five
exes and a widow. The widow is a thirty-year-old masseuse who took care of him while
he was dying. There were so many women at the meeting I had to take notes to
keep them all straight.” I grabbed my purse and pulled out the notebook. “Wife
number five didn’t bother to show up. Numbers two and four seemed okay, but number
one was completely full of herself and number three looked like a hooker.”

“Wow. And your dad never married
your mom, right?”

“What are you getting at,
Hatch?” When I was a kid, I’d always feared being called ‘the b-word.’ Now that
I was a grown woman ‘the b-word’ stood for something entirely different. At
least with the second ‘b-word’ I had some control over whether it was justified
or not.

“Don’t get your back up,” he
said. “What I mean is if they’d been married he would’ve had
seven
wives. Kind of a record. But maybe that’s why he included you in his will. He
didn’t do right by your mom, so he wanted to do right by you.”

“Maybe.”

“Did you find out if you have
any newfound brothers or sisters?”

“Oh yeah. He had seven other
kids besides me.”

“Seven? Wow, that’s great.”

“You think?”

“Sure. You’ve finally got a big
ohana
.
Isn’t that what you always wanted?”

“I guess.” I didn’t want to go
into how Phil had set it up so there was zero chance I’d ever be invited to
family gatherings or get to play auntie to any nieces or nephews. My pariah
status would come out soon enough. “The last wife, Sunny, was really friendly.
She invited me to stay with her when I come back for probate court.”

“That’s good. Hey, did you have
any lunch?” he said. “I meant to bring you some pizza but those guys were
animals. Ate every last slice. Let’s go grab something down by the pool.”

At the poolside grill I ordered
a cheeseburger with curly fries. I don’t usually allow myself to eat stuff like
that, but the morning’s events had kicked my self-discipline to the curb.

While we ate, a guy in his late
twenties came to the pool holding hands with a tiny girl in a pink polka-dotted
swimsuit. They got in the water and the little girl clung to the guy’s back
while he hauled her around.

“More, daddy, more,” squealed
the little girl.

“In a little bit,” said the dad.
“But first I’m going to teach you to swim. First, you need to put your face in
the water.”

The little girl looked up at him
and shook her head. Her wet curls threw off water droplets like a dog shaking itself
after a bath.

“Don’t be afraid, honey. I’m right
here,” he said.

After a couple of chin-deep
efforts praised by her father, she finally dunked her entire head under. 

“Good girl,” he crowed, grabbing
her when she popped back up. “I’m so proud of you, Ava.”

I pushed my plate away. “You
know, I’m probably the only kid in Hawaii who never learned to swim.”

Hatch shot me a pained look. “Oh
come on. It’s not like you to play the victim card.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m just
saying.”

“Message received. Your dad was
a jerk. Well, remind me someday to tell you about my old man. If misery loves
company, you’ll love my company when we compare your AWOL dad to my drunk and
disorderly one.”

“Point taken.”

“Hey, look at the time,” said Hatch.
“We’ve got a plane to catch.”

We packed up and headed to the
airport. The flight to Maui was uneventful except for me garnering
stink eye
from the flight attendant when my phone went off during the ‘in the event of an
emergency’ announcement.

I checked the caller ID before
flicking off the phone

“Who was it?” said Hatch.

“Just Farrah. She’s probably
just checking to make sure we made our flight. I suppose when you live your
entire life in one building, keeping track of everyone else’s comings and
goings is a big deal. I’ll call her when we land.”

We retrieved Hatch’s car from
long-term parking. He gallantly opened the passenger door for me before going
around to the driver’s side. “You want to go straight home or stop off at your
shop?”

“Would you mind dropping me at
Farrah’s? I need to tell her about the trip. Since you’re on shift in the
morning you probably shouldn’t wait. I’ll ask Steve to come down and get me
later.”

“I really don’t mind waiting.”

“That’s sweet, but I’ve been
gone three days. Farrah will demand a minute by minute accounting.”

We pulled in front of the Gadda
da Vida Grocery and I leaned over and gave Hatch a kiss. I went for the real
thing, not a little ‘thanks for everything’ peck on the mouth.

“Whoa. Maybe I should wait for
you after all,” he said.

“No, that’s got to keep you
going until this weekend. I’ve got a ton of stuff to catch up on at work. I’ve
got that big Lindberg wedding on the Fourth and I’m way behind in doing my vendor
follow-up calls. If Eleanor catches even a whiff of me slacking off she’ll
probably demand I cut my commission in half.”

“Okay, but we’re still on for Saturday,
right? I’ve got that firefighter awards dinner in Wailea.”

“You never told me, are you up
for an award?”

“Who knows? But it’s at the
ballroom of the Grand Wailea. Award or no award it’ll be first class all the
way.”

“It’s a date.”

I went inside. I was surprised
to see Beatrice working the counter so late in the evening.
Beatrice is an ancient lady who often comes in while Farrah
takes lunch. She occasionally helps out if Farrah has a tarot reading in the
afternoon, but I’ve never seen her at the store after dark.

“Hey
Bea, how’s it shakin’?” I said. I talked loud, since Bea has a hearing problem.
She says it’s only in one ear, but from what I can tell neither ear works any
better than the other one.

“A
snake? You seen a snake?” Bea looked horrified. “We gotta kill it. No good to
have snakes in the islands.”

“No,”
I said waving my hand. I went up to her and talked as if I was in an elocution
contest. “No snake. I just came in to say ‘hi’. Do you know where Farrah is?”

Bea
scrutinized my face. “She say she not feeling so good. I’m working all day. I
gotta sit down sometimes on this little stool. You know, I got the arthur in my
knees.”

I
nodded and pointed at the ceiling rather than ask if Farrah was upstairs in her
apartment.

Bea
nodded.

 “
Mahalo,
” I said. “I’ll
go on up.”

“Oh, good luck to you too, Pali.”

I went out the back door and
climbed the stairs to Farrah’s apartment. A searing blue-white security light
came on when I hit the fourth stair. I knocked and waited for her to scrutinize
me through the peep hole.

As soon as the door opened I
knew something was up.

CHAPTER 10

The
unmistakable odor of ‘baby’—wet diapers, baby powder and milk—was all over Farrah.
She looked like she’d been working in the cane fields all day. Matted hair,
haggard face, slumped shoulders.

“What’s
going on?” I said.

“Come
in. This is going to totally blow your mind.”

In
daytime, Farrah’s apartment is always dimly lit because she’s covered her
windows in fake stained glass contact paper. When the sun goes down she usually
turns on a few lights but there were no lights on when I went inside. But even
in the near-darkness it didn’t take long for me to locate the source of the smell.
A tiny baby, most probably a newborn, was lying on a tattered blanket in the middle
of the room. It wore nothing but a disposable diaper and a benign smile. The
kid was half-heartedly kicking its arms and legs. I’m not exactly a ‘baby
person.’ To me, the little creature looked like a bug on its back trying to
right itself.

“What’s
going on?” I said again. “Can you turn on a light here?”

She
snapped on a table lamp. “You leave for a few days and see what happens?” she said.
 She was positively beaming.

Okay,
this was a first, even for Farrah. Last year she’d mistaken the gender of her
dog, Sir Lipton, and ‘he’d’ had puppies. I’d found that almost unbelievable,
but Farrah not realizing she was pregnant and about to give birth? Not even
Farrah’s ubiquitous billowy
mu’u mu’u
dresses could have concealed
that
state of affairs.

“Farrah?
What the
hell
is going on?”

“Okay,
he’s not mine,” she said. “Well, he’s mine, but not technically. Yet.”

“Have
you still got some of that ‘Awake’ tea?” I said. “I’m gonna make us some. And
then you’re going to tell me everything.” I went to Farrah’s miniscule
kitchenette and filled the tea kettle. Then I rummaged through her bread
box-sized cupboard and found a tea tin with a picture of a guy with sunbeams shooting
out of his head. The label read, ‘AWAKE TEA, Not Your Grandma’s Cuppa’.

By the
time the tea had steeped, the baby had nodded off. I carried two cups into the
living room dodging cast-off clothes, a heap of wadded-up bath towels, and
Lipton’s slobbery dog toys.  

“This
isn’t the most sanitary environment for a baby,” I whispered. “Does the mother
know you live like this?”

“I’m
the mother around here,” said Farrah in a hissed voice. “I’m exposing Baby to
the rigors of this Earthly world. How can he build a strong immune system if
his body doesn’t learn to make peace with normal physical surroundings?”

“This goes
way beyond ‘normal’,” I said looking down at the matted carpet that had never
known the whirr of a vacuum cleaner and the dog hair-encrusted blanket that had
never felt the wet of a washing machine. “This is like a giant petri dish. Remember
that scary stuff we grew in high school biology?”

“I
don’t dig your harsh remarks but I’m going to ignore them because I need your
kokua—
your
help,” Farrah said.

“Before
I’ll offer to help, I need some answers. Where’s this baby’s mother?”

“I
don’t know. Yesterday morning when I went down to work, there he was. Like baby
Moses in the rushes.”

I was surprised
by Farrah’s biblical reference. As far as I knew, she wasn’t one to attend
church, let alone read the Bible. But she was an ordained minister of an online
spiritual community, “The Church of Spirit and Light.” She’d become a minister so
she could conduct wedding ceremonies for “Let’s Get Maui’d”, but no doubt she’d
had to learn at least some measure of mainstream Christian/Judaic beliefs to
pass the final exam.

“This
baby was abandoned?”

“Bummer,
right? Here’s the note.” She handed me a note written in childish block letters
on three-hole notebook paper.

Grocery
store lady—Please take my boy. You can give him a new name if you want. Since
you have lots of food I now he wont go hungary. Tell him his mama loves him
very much.

The
mother had misspelled a few words, but the message was clear.

“Wow, Farrah,
you need to report this to the police,” I said.

“You,
of all people, want to see this little guy dumped in the system?” Farrah picked
up the baby and clutched his damp diaper-clad body to her breast. With
clutching hands the baby rooted around the bosom of her
mu’u mu’u
trying
to figure out how to get to what lay beneath.

 “Look,
Farrah, you can’t just keep a baby because some pathetic woman left it on your
doorstep. There are laws.”

“This
is Hawaii. You weren’t handed over to ‘the man’ when your mom passed. Your
Auntie Mana took you in. No social workers, no judges, no nuthin’ like that. So
don’t go all establishment on me here, Pali Moon. Help me figure out how I can
keep my baby.”

***

By the
time we’d finished the Awake tea, we’d come up with a short term plan. I
offered mother and baby safe haven at my house in Hali’imaile for a few days to
get away from the prying eyes and ears of the customers at Farrah’s store.
Beatrice wouldn’t be a problem because she’s practically deaf, but it wouldn’t
be long before a customer would claim they were sure they heard a baby crying upstairs
and want to investigate.

“I’ve
got to clear this with Steve first,” I said. “He’s coming down to pick me up in
a few minutes. But don’t worry, it’s just a formality.”

Steve
arrived twenty minutes later. On the drive to Hali’imaile I told him about
Farrah’s baby. 

“Are
you kidding?” he said. “How am I supposed to put up with poopy diaper smell?
And waking up to bawling at three o’clock in the morning? It’s just not in my
nature to tolerate stuff like that.”

“Look,
Steve, I’ve heard what sounds like ‘bawling’ coming from your room at three
o’clock in the morning and I’ve never said a word.”

He whipped
his head around and looked at me aghast.

“Okay,
I’m just kidding,” I said. “But seriously, Farrah has to have somewhere to go
while she figures this out. If a customer hears the baby and calls the police,
not only will she get in trouble for having the baby, but she’ll get kicked out
of her apartment. It was condemned, remember? No one knows she lives up there.”

“Oh
bull,” said Steve. “The whole town knows she’s up there, including the cops.
They don’t hassle her because they need her to run the Gadda. If she left, then
the weed-heads would try to bum rides off tourists to get down to Kahului for
their Cheetos or their rolling papers. The last thing the cops want to deal
with is some stinky dope-smokers hassling Dot and Bob from Minneapolis.”