“Well, we’ll leave it to the lawyers then. Always a dangerous thing, it seems to me, but if that is what you want—”
“You don’t get it, Clio, do you? We’re leaving for L.A. Tuesday. I’ve been offered a couple of movies. I have to get back. I’ve already stayed too long.” He stretched on his side on the tatami, his head resting in his hand. “I’m not giving you up, babe.” He smiled.
“Who is there with you, Clio?” Mabel asked loudly. “Is that Mr. Haywood? How astonishing of him to come here!”
“But why?” Clio whispered to him.
“I finally get everything just right and you want to fuck it up,” he said, spinning the saké cup in his hand. She wondered for an instant if he would break the fifteenth-century ceramic cup. “Do you know how much fun the press would have with this? Jesus.”
“You know, the horrible thing, horrible for you, I know, is that I’m not trying to fuck it up. I’m not trying to do anything to you,” she said, sliding her hands behind her knees. She was trembling and she didn’t want him to see it.
“It’s simple,” he said. “Here’s the deal. I’ll send a car.
Someone to help you with your stuff. Better yet, leave everything here. There’s shops at Ala Moana. You don’t need much, anyway. That’s one of the things I like about you. No cotton balls. No electric hair rollers. No makeup in the sink. You’re clean. I mean, besides pissing in the tub.”
She wondered if she should thank him.
“I’ve been staying with your mom and dad,” he said. “I was getting bothered at the Kahala. Too many people knew I was in town, but I’ll move back to the hotel tomorrow.”
“You’ve been staying with Burta?”
“We’re all going to my house at Waimea,” Claire said. “Why don’t you come, Aunt Emma? I’m sure Mother’d be happy to see you. Well, maybe not happy. Mother is never happy.”
Dix carefully rolled up Mabel’s scroll, weary of pretending to make sense of it, and Mabel patted his head contentedly.
“Grandmother has the ugliest hands I’ve ever seen,” Claire said, staring at Mabel’s swollen fingers.
“In Buddhism,” Mabel said kindly, “ugliness is not denied or expunged. It is taken inside and made beautiful.”
Claire stretched across the mat to a tray of sashimi, cupping her hand under the piece of fish so that the soy sauce would not drop onto the mat, and put the fish into Tommy’s mouth. “How can you be a Buddhist, Grans? You’re not Japanese.”
“What kind of fish is this?” Tommy asked, spitting the sashimi into his hand. He dropped the sashimi into his saké cup.
“We’re going to Waimea to work on Dix’s screenplay. It’s really great, but it needs a little work.” Claire held out another piece of fish for Tommy. “Mamie says she’s desperate to see you, Clio.”
“It’s not a bad script,” Tommy said, waving away the fish. “A couple of college kids hide out in the mountains behind Oakland in full combat gear. They can’t deal with our corrupt society. They’d rather hide out in the mountains than live in a country that oppresses them.”
Clio looked at Tommy. “I had no idea you were so stupid,” she said.
“What, babe?”
“How is Mamie?” Mabel asked Claire. “I am so fond of her. Forgive me, but Mamie was always my favorite grandchild.”
Claire made a face at Clio.
“Her school is doing well,” Emma said, speaking for the first time in a long while. “Mrs. Pi’ilima at the museum tells me that Mamie and her friend have sixty children now.”
“Her friend, Frank Harimoto?” Claire asked mischievously. “Her friend the gardener, you mean.”
“Yes,” Emma said.
“I know all about her friend!” Mabel said sharply. “I am interested in her school, not her love life.”
Clio looked at Emma. They had not known that Mabel knew about Mamie and Frank Harimoto. Emma shook her head in admiration, and Clio smiled.
Claire was reluctant to give up. “Did you know that Mamie has sold some of the old things she and Lily Shields used to collect? Remember that junk?” She turned to Emma. “It was very valuable. Can you imagine? She sold some Hawaiian artifacts to keep the school going. Sold them to people from the mainland.” She looked around to see if she were having an effect. “It’s bad enough that she’s living with the gardener; now she’s selling things. Never a good idea to sell. That’s what Nando always says.”
“I’m so pleased that your mother has decided not to sell the plantation,” Emma said calmly.
Clio looked at Emma, wondering if she were up to her own mischief.
“She has?” Claire was surprised. “Mother’s not selling?”
“Following your advice, we thought,” Emma said, sipping her saké. She looked at Claire over the rim of her cup.
“My advice?” Claire asked, frowning. “My advice?”
“You’ll help with the script,” Tommy said to Clio. “It could use some of your spelling. No offense, Dix!” he shouted over his shoulder. “The car will be here in the morning.”
Clio saw the blossoms on the cup-of-gold vine, closing with nightfall. The flowers, like little golden chalices, smelled like ripe apricots. The petals were furling so quickly that she could see them move. She wanted to drink from them. She turned to Tommy and Claire, knowing that they had the greatest gift for harm. They were the most dangerous, the most careless. “I admire what Mamie is doing,” she said to Claire. “Mamie has something that moves her. Like Emma. I think it is clever of her to use the past, to sell the past, for the things that she needs now.”
She jumped up and went down the stairs into the garden. The cup-of-gold flowers had closed. It was too late to sip from them. She could hear the ocean. No longer stricken with light and heat, it was crisp again, and strong. She went into the garden, and stood there, poised, not breathing. “I think it is time that you left,” she called out to them.
“What is it, Emma?” Mabel demanded to know. She began to whimper.
“My mother is tired,” Emma said. She rose and took
the scroll from Dix and rolled it up briskly and tied it with its brocade ribbon.
“Are you tired, Grans?” Claire asked sarcastically.
Tommy stood with deliberate slowness and stretched, striking his hands against the cherry-wood ceiling beams. “Thanks for the saké,” he said, lowering his arms, pretending that he had not hurt himself. It was the first time that he had spoken to Emma. She did not answer him.
Dix said, “We should go, anyway. It’s late.” He was embarrassed.
“You’re kidding, right?” Tommy suddenly shouted into the garden at Clio.
Claire reached out and fixed the collar of his shirt. “Yes,” she said, soothingly. “She’s kidding you.”
Mabel leaned forward, smiling, her head cocked like a wading bird, adrift once again, no longer listening to them.
Claire jumped onto the grass holding a shoe in each hand. Her skirt scalloped around her as she disappeared across the lawn. “Bye, Grans,” she called back. “Bye, Emma.”
Dix gave Mabel an awkward kiss on the side of her head, in her hair, and kissed Clio standing lightly on the grass, and then he, too, disappeared into the darkness.
Tommy hopped across the lawn, struggling with a boot. “Tomorrow, Clio!” he shouted, and he was gone.
“He doesn’t believe me,” Clio said, looking up at Emma.
“They never do,” Emma said.
“They never do?” Clio began to laugh.
“Not even when they’re crazy about you.”
“Not even then?”
“No. Especially not then.” Emma paused. “Thank goodness he’s not crazy about you.”
Emma eased Mabel’s heavy chair down the stairs that the Japanese architect had sent from Nara, and they went
through the hospitable darkness to the house, bumping against each other in their new intimacy, the intimacy of women who have spoken about love.
Clio went early the next morning to the house in Nu‘uanu. She walked through the garden to the lanai. Although the front door was never locked, she did not want to go inside that house.
Clio wondered if Burta and Tommy might be on the lanai, perhaps sharing a papaya, but no one was there.
She saw Steamy. He was on the lawn, crouched over, searching for something in the grass. He was not wearing his glasses. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “You took them off, and when you awoke, both the girl and the glasses were gone.”
Steamy shook his head. His eyes were red and he looked as if he were in pain. “That was the last time, Clio. And that’s not going to happen anymore. Contacts.” He pointed to his eyes. “Only I’ve lost one.”
“You’ll have to change your name. You can’t be Steamy anymore.”
“I can’t?” he asked in disappointment.
“No,” she said. “What is your real name, anyway? I’ve forgotten.”
“Cliome.”
“That’s my name. Didn’t Burta name you something like Earl? Or Junior? I think she named you Buddy.”
“What is my name? I don’t remember. You’ve confused me now. You always confuse me,” he said fretfully. “The lens just popped out. I’ve only had them two days.” He dropped to the wet grass and sat in a tiny circle, his legs pulled to his chest. He was afraid to put down his feet. He looked at her. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m looking for Tommy,” she said.
“How incredibly weird! He’s looking for you! He went to get you. He said he was moving to a hotel. Mom didn’t want him to leave. She didn’t know he was going to get you. She’d have been even more upset.” He shuddered, imagining Burta’s fury.
“I thought Burta was hoping for a reconciliation,” Clio said, teasing him.
“Nope, not anymore. She figures she can have him without you. Sorry. Claire’s looking for him, too. She’s finally going to Waimea. Her husband—is he a king or something?—she said he called and told her he’d stop her allowance if she didn’t go to her mother’s.”
To Clio’s surprise, she felt sorry for Claire. “All these men threatening women. You’re not like that with your girlfriend, are you, Steamy? Do you tell her you’ll stop her allowance? Do you beat her up?”
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” he said, squinting up at her. “I want someone different. Someone like you. I’m tired of girls who say they prefer trees to humans. Or butterflies. It’s so easy to like butterflies. The last girl I went out with believed in unicorns.”
Clio looked back at the house.
“You’re not listening,” he said.
“I was just wondering if I should wait,” she said.
“Are you going back to Tommy?”
“Steamy.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “What’s the matter with you?”
“I told you. You confuse me. You brought me up. I practically lived in your room until you ran away. It was terrible here without you.”
She turned to the forest. “I would have died if I’d stayed. I thought I was dying, here in this house.”
“Why didn’t you take me with you?”
“Oh! How could I? I didn’t know if Emma would even have me!”
“Is it because of Dad? Because you don’t like Dad? Because he is the half that we share? Is that why you left me behind?”
“You think that my own mother was any better?”
“I sometimes think you are like your mother. You know, moving on all the time.”
“I haven’t moved fast enough, or far enough,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “What a terrible thing for you to say.”
“I liked your mother! She was pretty and never paid any attention to us. It makes me nervous when grown-ups pay attention to me.”
“But we’re grown-ups.”
Steamy frowned. “You are, maybe. Not me. Maybe you could adopt me.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Is it against the law or something?”
“I don’t want to adopt you, Steamy.”
“Are you going to stay here? I mean, in Hawai‘i?”
She did not answer him. She did not know the answer.
“I mean, if you did stay, maybe we could get a house together or an apartment or something. I’m about ready to move out of here, anyway.”
“Perhaps I will live on Moloka‘i.”
“Moloka‘i? They don’t even have television, do they? You’d be so lonely.”
She shook her head.
“What do you mean? You met someone? You actually met someone on Moloka‘i?”
She was hesitant to tell him about Henry. She realized that she did not want to tell him because she did not want to forfeit his love. I want all the love that I can get, she thought. I am still in the Love Contest.
“Anyone I know?” he asked stiffly.
“No,” she said.
He let go of his knees and stared at his palms.
“I’ll help you find your lens and then I’ll go,” she said. She took a breath. “His name is Henry Kilohana. He is a fisherman.”
“You don’t have to. Help me, I mean.”
“I want to help you.”
He looked around absently. “I’m named after Father. I just remembered.”
As she bent over to help him look, there was a sudden yell from the house. They both looked up, startled.
“What the hell is going on? Doing some weeding?” Burta shouted.
“He can’t see,” Clio said, straightening her back. “He lost his new lens.”
“You don’t need to tell me my responsibilities! I asked Steamy a question,” Burta said, forcing herself to speak more quietly. “Not you, girlie.” She enunciated with slow precision, her teeth together. She prodded Steamy with the tip of her sandal.
Clio stepped toward her. “If you say one more thing to him, or if you touch him again, I will kill you.”
Burta was so astonished that she could not speak.
Steamy slowly stretched his legs in the grass, and stared up at Clio, his mouth open.
Clio put out her hand. “Get up.” She pulled him to his feet. “I suppose now is as good a time as any,” she said to Burta. “I’ve waited too long as it is. I know now that I’m the only one who can do it.”
There was something so determined, so competent in her voice that Steamy stepped between the two women. Clio put her hand on his chest, and her hand lifted and fell with his breath. She was surprised that he was panting. “I could use Mr. Yama’s mango pole,” she said, looking
around the garden. “There’s a penknife on my key chain. I could hold your head in one of your birdbaths.”
“You’re nuts! That’s why your husband threw you out!” Burta said harshly.
“No, she isn’t,” Steamy said, pushing away Clio’s hand. “She’s not nuts.”
“Oh, you!” Burta turned to him. “You idiot!”
“I wouldn’t, Burta,” Clio said. “Not in front of me. Not ever. I could probably kill you with just my hands.”