Authors: Michael Tolkin
His daughters were together at a frozen yogurt stand.
Easy to walk up to the counter. His daughters smelled of shampoo and something else, not perfume, he was sure, perhaps a scented water, something they'd sprayed on their faces from a sample bottle at the hotel gift shop. Or was it just their sunscreen? It didn't matter at all, but he wanted to know, just to own something precise about his children.
They were talking about music, about a band, the name meant nothing to him, and he was happy for them in the way they shared enthusiasm. They were beautiful, he was sure of it. Their tanned skin alarmed him, but if the vacation was over, why weren't they on a flight to the mainland? So they're tan. No, he thought, they're on a
tour of the islands. They've been here a week. He had a chance, but he didn't know for what. The woman behind the counter asked him what flavor he wanted.
He looked to the girls. “What's a good flavor?”
“Chocolate, I guess,” said Perri.
“Or mango,” said Alma.
“Then I'll have a double scoop, one of each.” Neither girl turned to his voice as though hearing the resonance of an old bedtime story.
The girls didn't care and passed away from his warm, indulgent smile, although Perri studied him for a second because he looked so interesting, so severe, perhaps.
He followed them, which was easy to do in the crowd, and when they joined Rosalie and the new man at a gate for a plane to Maui, he left the terminal and went back to tell the news to his shipmates at the Sheraton bar.
“And you want to go to Maui,” said Eddie.
“Yes, I'll go to Maui and I'll find them.”
“Don't be so sure,” said Eddie. “There's a lot of hotels on that island. And don't forget the condominiums and houses for rent. It may not be so easy to find them. Maybe they're staying with friends. You'll never find them that way.”
“They're at a hotel,” said Tom. “I saw the man's watch. It was expensive and not a common brand. He's used to indulging himself. They'll stay at a hotel and, I'd wager, the most expensive.”
“A bet?” said Eddie. “You don't have the money.” He winked, which meant, We'll take you there, and let's get on the boat now, because we don't have much time.
...
“What will you do once you find them?”
“I don't know.”
“Will you announce yourself?”
“I don't know.”
“You have very little money.”
“Seven and a half dollars. I had ten, but I bought a frozen yogurt. “
“Seven and a half dollars isn't enough.”
“I'll manage.”
“You need a haircut and a shave. After you pay for that, you'll have nothing left. Let us pay for that.”
“Thank you. I will.”
...
The wind blew twenty-five knots on a purple sea of swells running eight feet high. He asked for the wheel and, guiding the boat on a broad reach, with the wind coming from the side, put the boat over the waves. Ahead of him was Maui, the final landfall with his old friends. He pointed the boat towards Lahaina, sitting above Maui's waist, where
the island narrows to a plain between two dead volcanoes hidden in cloud. A fringe of hotels stretched along the coast.
While Tom looked at the place that might, at last, reveal his destiny, a whale broached the surface and slapped the water with its tail. Jan, Eddie, and Alan analyzed the vision; was it an omen? Did they believe in omens?
“Seeing the girls was the good omen, it forecast that we'd see the whale,” Tom said. If luck or chance brought the girls to him once, why not again?
Jan took his binoculars. “Look what they're selling. Printed T-shirts and beach hats to honeymooners and second honeymooners.”
The cheap ugliness of the place, too easy to ridicule, netted surfeits of contempt from the other three that strained Tom's affection for them. I don't want to hear this now, he thought, my children are out there somewhere, and a cultural critique gets in my way. This is how people live today. What would you rather see, slaves in the hot sun? I will not despise or condemn. Let me get rid of my protective shell, let me remove whatever remains of my defenses, let me suffer the various buffetings and impressions that come to me, let me be aware of life without judgment today. He was annoyed with his friends and cold about it. Well, he thought, so there is no constant, single achieved feeling of balance and goodness, only a faster ability to correct one's course and shield one's heart against mindless damage. I am the ship, and I am also the reef.
They lowered the sails, and Eddie brought the
Mimesis
to a mooring.
This was going to be their final good-bye.
“Well, well, well,” said Eddie. He put a hundred-dollar bill in Tom's hand. “You've been a wonderful addition to my life, Tom. Whatever your past, whatever your future, remember that on this little boat, in fair weather and foul, you had real friends, people who knew you and liked you and loved you. Go with peace, and may whatever challenges you meet along the way turn into blessings.”
It was Jan's turn. “I never told you all the many stories that I should have, and now it's too late.” She held him, crying.
“No, no,” said Tom. “Don't do this to yourself.”
“I can't help it. Regrets, regrets, regrets.”
“Why?”
“Because there might be something that I know, something I could have shared with you, that could save you in the future. It's like the fairy tales where someone is given three special gifts that make no sense at the time, a gold ball, a feather, a piece of glass, and then each of those gifts becomes that thing that saves the hero's life at three times in his life and makes his quest a success. And I have so many stories, and one of them might have had the power to rescue my poor Tom, and I call you my poor Tom because of what I can see of your heart. Broken, broken, broken.”
“But I like it this way,” said Tom. “Don't cry for me.
And I'll always remember you, and who knows, maybe one of the stories you already told me gave me the weapons I'll need when everything else has failed.”
“Do you think so?” asked Jan.
“I hope so,” said Tom.
And now Alan offered Tom his hand, and when Tom reached for it, Alan clasped Tom around the neck and hugged him. Tom saw a bad end for Alan, a lonely death, drowned, probably, thrown overboard, but not by the Dodges, by someone else. Alan's gloom would never lift, for all the reasons he had become this wreck so young in life.
So they let Tom off at the end of a fuel dock, to continue on their way around the world.
Tom waved at them as the dinghy returned to the
Mimesis
. “I will never see you again!” he called out, the words bouncing off the sound of the outboard.
With nothing in his hand but a hundred-dollar bill, he walked into the next part of his life.
...
The best remedy for distress is work, sudden wealth, or a beautiful woman. I have none of this, thought Tom, but I will create relief by a kind of parallel agreement. My work: to find my children. My sudden wealth: that I know where to look. My beautiful woman: but here Tom ran against the fence of his reality. He stroked his chin, felt his beard, found a barber, and changed himself once again.
He bought a Maui guidebook, then fruit, cheese, and bread, and ate under an old tree in a park on the Lahaina waterfront. The most expensive hotels on the island were the Ritz-Carlton, the Four Seasons, the Grand Wailea, and The Palace of the King.
What was her name? Was she Rosalie Levy or did she use her maiden name, was she Rosalie Desser? If she was married to the man in the taxi, she would have taken his name, but would the girls have changed their name? Would she have asked them to sever that connection to their father?
He called the hotels and asked for Perri Levy.
She was staying at The Palace of the King.
“May I ask who is calling?” The hotel operator knew the name too quickly for someone who had just checked in the day before.
“I can't hear you,” said Tom.
“May I ask who is calling?”
Tom hung up. Why was Perri screening calls? Why did the operator take no time to look up his daughter's room number? If Perri was a guest, why did the operator guard her with the familiar nerve of a longtime servant?
What defeat awaits me? he wondered.
Do I have a right to seek them out?
Yes. God put us here. What else is one of the names of God but the secret opportunity behind coincidence?
It was two o'clock. The afternoon wind lifted the tops of the palms and the flags along the waterfront, and
there were so many of them, ornamental and national. Away from the
Mimesis
, and his need to take an argument's other side for the sport of conversation, Tom watched the tourists with diminishing compassion, and when he felt his contempt rise, he challenged himself to find a better spirit. However this would end, he would refuse the tragic. His daughters were somewhere in this mob of the mottled, the obese, the oversugared, the desperate for diversion, the alcoholic, the numb. Do not hate anyone, he told himself, at least not yet. Just feel the grief for the lost lessons you could have taught your daughter if only, in Jamaica, ten years ago, your attribute of mercy had suppressed my attribute of rage. The tourists know so little, he thought, and then he beat to another tack, but the thoughts were equally close-hauled, because the tourists were also, if not pure and innocent, certainly less guilty than he of murder, most of them, and he suspectedâbut then changed suspicion to wonder, did the murderers among them keep the same distance from the cheap parade for the same reasons as he? All of this bad taste, this smothering of something that might be real or better, contaminated the world. But now he could ask if he belonged to a negative aristocracy. He summoned his foul mood from the Montego House, and the recovered memory of his disdain for the style of the place cut him with a long, cold blade. As deep as he thought he had gone in his repentance, there was a further revelation and yet another punishment: had mediocre design, bad decoration, and people with no sense of fashion driven him to
murder? What a waste. It was a thought to pursue, but he had his daughters to consider, so he accepted the world as it was given to him.
He walked the six miles from Lahaina to the hotel, not to save money but to let the rhythm and purpose of his stride help find a channel for his calculations. If his daughters were happy, and if his restoration would hurt them, be the death of their futures by the return of a buried past, the embalmed come back to life, he would withdraw.
So he marched on, left and right, left and right, planning with one set of strides how to approach his daughters as though his life would continue with them; and then with the next set of steps, he calmly imagined scenarios of happiness without his daughters, the ways to live out the rest of his time as a life and not a judgment. He would have a specific life if he failed to be his daughters' father again, he would make specific friends, learn a technical skill.
But I don't want to be without them, he thought. That was the truth.
He took the beach path for hotels east of The Palace of the King, along a trail that linked the big resorts and separated them from the sea. The ocean, whitecaps flocking across the channel, offered danger to even the best swimmers. Under a broad, windy sky, the sheltered hotel pools were crowded and easy to invade.
The Palace of the King was the prettiest of all, the hanging gardens of Babylon, three towers joined by
bridges, set above a terraced jungle. The center tower's roof supported a green world all its own. To the left, facing the hotel, the lowest of the pools was built in the style of a lagoon, with a sandy beach and, in the middle, a sunken galleon that held a bar. A long water slide delivered shrieking children from the next terrace. To the right, a wide lawn surrounded a pagoda. And there was a Japanese couple getting married! On the terraces above were more swimming pools, lined by Greek columns. Or maybe Roman. What difference? It was classical, and quiet. Everywhere flowers bloomed, and the air was rich with the scent of gardenia.
He walked through the lobby, all white marble, an atrium open to the sky fifteen floors above. Sheer pastel curtains broke up the space; through one scrim was the reception desk, through another a bar, and there, a gift shop. The effect was instantly calming and exciting, it was playful. It made Tom happy to know his daughters were here.
He returned by another set of meandering steps to the lagoon pool, where Perri and Alma, on submerged stools at the galleon bar, sipped from straws in pineapples, wearing the sunglasses they'd bought on Waikiki. The sunglasses paid for by Rosalie. They looked perfectly content, twisting on their seats, at once pretending to be movie stars and surpassing the intimidating power of movie stars.
Rosalie's new man appeared behind the bar and kissed each of Tom's daughters lightly on the lips. Since
the shipwreck bar was in the middle of the pool, Rosalie's new man must have entered through a hidden passage. The bartenders joked with him with a deferential familiarity, which he reflected back as appreciation, and by the way he restrained himself from an equivalent joviality, and by the command he took when he entered from the submarine passage, Tom understood that Rosalie's new man was either the owner of the hotel or the senior manager. And he was there just to talk to Tom's children, this was not an inspection tour.
Rosalie's new man refilled both of their drinks himself. They adored him.
My wife has married a king. My daughters have become princesses.
Is the marriage new?
They could be living here now.
If they're living here, I have time.
If this is a short visit, if he owns many hotels and they're here for a quick vacation, then they'll leave and I won't be able to follow them home so quickly, although I can find out where they live.