The Descendants (16 page)

Sid opens his arms out wide and shrugs. “What can I say?”

I look at Alex, hoping she senses my disappointment.

“Don’t you have school?” I ask Sid.

“I have it when I want it,” he says.

“All right. Get Scottie. Let’s just go.”

SCOTTIE SITS IN
the front seat, Alex and Sid in back. Scottie has never been so quiet. I notice she has left her camera and scrapbook at home.

“You know E.T.?” Sid says. “Remember E.T.?”

I look in the rearview mirror because I have no idea whom he’s talking to. His cheeks are stubbled, and his eyes are dark blue. He’s looking out the window, addressing no one.

“What did they want?” he asks. “Why did the E.T.’s come to Earth in the first place?”

“Ignore him,” Alex says. “He gets like this in cars. Stoner Seinfeld.”

“Who’s E.T.?” Scottie asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. I don’t want to have to explain. I pull into Lanikai and see Racer’s house. Racer is a good friend of ours, especially mine, although not so much anymore. I have to drive around the loop of the neighborhood, since it’s a one-way road. I’m tempted to drive the wrong way on the empty road, but I don’t. I enjoy the quiet street, the white sand blown onto the pavement. The look of desertion makes me feel as though I’ve survived something.

“What if E.T. was the dork of the planet?” Sid says. “What if all Earthlings went to a planet and, say, Screech or Don Johnson were the ones left behind? They’d get a totally wrong impression of us.”

“This is fascinating.” I pull into the driveway. “You philosophers stay in the car. I’ll be right back.”

I walk around to the back door and am startled to see Racer sitting on the small cement terrace. He’s in a bathrobe, has his hands around a mug of steaming coffee, and is staring out at the beach, at the low tide and little curls of waves.

When he sees me, he gives me a tired smile, not at all surprised by my visit.

“Racer,” I say. I head to the table and pull out a chair, but the seat is wet.

“Hey, Matt,” he says. He looks at the wet chair. “We can go inside.” He stands, and I see that the back of his robe is soaked from the chair.

We go to the kitchen, where he pours me a cup of coffee. “Thanks,” I say. “Got any half-and-half?”

“No,” he says.

“That’s okay,” I say.

He begins to search the cupboards. “We might have that powdered stuff. I don’t know where anything is. Noe. She arranged everything. I’m out of milk.”

“How is Noe?”

He sits down at the kitchen table. “I canceled the wedding. She moved out.”

“What? Are you serious? Why?”

He drums his fingers on the table. Brown-spotted mangoes rest on a piece of newspaper. “It just didn’t feel right.” He holds his head in his hands. “My parents didn’t like her. They never said anything, but I just knew they didn’t like her, and I couldn’t get past it. She’s a nanny, you know? And a dancer. She’s just from a different place, you know?”

I think of his family, another plantation family, sugar heirs. Still, his parents are so warm, it seems unlikely they wouldn’t take to Noe. That’s the thing about Hawaii society. There aren’t many snobs.

“It shouldn’t matter, but it matters, you know?”

“Sure, sure,” I say.

“I felt I was making the wrong choice.” He sits up. “But it’s fine. It will be fine. It wasn’t meant to be.” His eyes glaze over and then come back into focus on me. “Did you just come over to say hello?”

I look at the mangoes and take a sip of my black coffee. “Yeah, haven’t seen you in a while. Thought I’d stop in on my way to…” I wave my hand toward Kailua. His house, I realize, isn’t on the way to anything. It’s a dead end.

“How is she?” he asks.

“She’s okay,” I say. I have never seen Racer feel much of anything, and it’s as though I don’t want to intrude; losing his fiancée is a moment of sorts. I don’t want to interrupt his pain with more pain. I think of his parents not approving of Noe, me not approving of Sid, Joanie’s father not approving of me.

“Princess Kekipi,” I say. “You know she married against her parents’ wishes. I think we all do. You should do what you want to do.”

Racer nods. “It’s not too late,” he says.

“It’s not,” I say.

He drops his shoulders. I wonder what he will do.

“Anyway, my kids are waiting in the car.” I stand up to leave, even though I’ve had only a few sips of my coffee. He doesn’t seem to notice how absurdly quick this visit is, the purposelessness of it. He walks me to the front door. There’s a comforter on the couch, a bottle of wine on the coffee table, and an open
TV Guide
with listings circled in red ink. He holds the door open and shields his eyes from the sun. He waves at my family. “It will be okay,” I say, and he agrees and shuts the door. I walk to my car a little stunned, hoping to God he marries that girl. I don’t know why it matters to me, but it does.

“I couldn’t do it,” I say when I sit down.

“Do what?” Scottie asks.

“Well, the next one you’ll have to do,” Alex says.

Racer was my warm-up. The next house is the main event. Now I’m prepared to face people who don’t approve of me. I start the car, back out of the driveway, and take us to our next stop.

17

WE SIT ON
the wraparound deck because that’s where Scott was when we drove up, sitting in a wicker chair with a drink balancing on his knees. I can see Scottie in the lower yard with her grandmother, pointing to the various things they see. “Rock,” I imagine her saying. “Pond.” Joanie’s mother has Alzheimer’s, and Scott has been carrying on with his altered wife and her nurse, doing yard work, swimming laps in the pool. I’ve seen him swimming before, and when he comes up for air, the sight of him in his goggles and swimmer’s cap is heartbreaking, his face slick with water, his mouth drawn out like that of the creature in Munch’s
The Scream.
Drinking is another one of his hobbies. It runs in the family. I could smell the Scotch on his breath when he saw Scottie and said, “Bingo!,” something he always says when he sees her.

I have told him the news and given him her living will, which he is now looking over. Sid has been quiet, for which I’m grateful, but then I really look at him in the lounge chair, his black sunglasses on, his black cap pulled down, his stillness, and I realize he’s asleep. Alex sits on the end of the lounger by his legs. It’s irritating seeing her so close to him all the time.

“This is like some other language,” Scott says, flipping through the pages.

“I know,” I say.

“What is this?”

“It’s a living will. You have one, too.”

“Yes, but it’s not a bunch of gibber-gabber. This is like reading Korean.” He shakes the pages at Alex and me.

“I’m sure yours is the same. Do you want me to explain the gist of it?”

He ignores me and focuses on the pages, probably not wanting to have me explain anything to him. He has never liked me. Early on in Joanie’s and my marriage, he’d try to get me to back these business ideas he had, but I always told him I don’t do business with friends or family. This was just an excuse to get myself out of his grand plans, most of them being theme restaurants. I have endured countless pitches from my father-in-law, many of them purporting that such-and-such town had the potential to become the new Waikiki. I almost bit once just to get him off my back, but I never did, thank God.

“Gibber-gabber,” he mumbles.

“I’ll explain it to you, Scott. I know it’s a difficult language. It’s complicated, but this is what I do. I can help you.” I think of the statements, almost like vows from your healthy self to your dying self:
If I am in a permanent coma, I do not want my life to be artificially prolonged and I do not want life-sustaining procedures used. I authorize the withholding or withdrawal of life-sustaining procedures, of artificial nutrition and hydration, of comfort care.
The way the comfort-care section is phrased always gets to me.
I do not want comfort care that would prolong my life.
This makes it sound like Joanie doesn’t want to be soothed or held. This is the part of the will that Scott can understand, the part that clearly states she doesn’t want to live.

“Do you want me to go over it with you?” I say again. “It’s an advanced directive—basically her instructions telling us what medical procedures she wants or, in this case, doesn’t want. No mechanical ventilation, no—”

“I don’t want to hear it. I know exactly what it says. It says that she doesn’t want everyone waiting around while she spoils like milk. It says the doctors can’t do squat, and she’d prefer to go on to another place.”

“Gramps,” Alex says. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I prepared myself for this, and I’m glad Joanie had the good sense to write this thing here and wasn’t a selfish person. She’s a brave girl,” he yells, his voice shaking. “She was always stronger than her brother. Barry whines his way through life. He looked thirty when he was sixteen. He may even be a homosexual, for all I know.”

“Barry’s not a homosexual,” I say. “He likes women very much.” I think of Barry. He used to be so chubby and warm. Now he does hot yoga and something called Budokon and he’s nimble and tough, like wild game.

“She’s stronger than you, Matt,” Scott continues. “She lived more in a year than you did in a decade, sitting in your office hoarding your cash. Maybe if you let her have her own boat and bought her some safe equipment or let her go on one of those shopping sprees that women like, then maybe she wouldn’t have engaged in these reckless sports. Maybe if you provided more thrills at home.”

“Gramps,” Alex says.

“And you, Alexandra. You fought with your mother when all she was trying to do was instill some drive in you. Joanie had passion! She’s a good girl,” he says as though arguing with someone. “I never told her all this. But I’m saying it now!”

Scott stands up and walks to the porch rail so his back is to us. His shoulders shudder. He looks up with his hands on his hips, as though gauging the weather to come. He lifts his flannel shirt to wipe his face and coughs, spits, then faces us. “You guys want some rolls? I made rolls. You want a drink?”

His eyes are glassy and his hands drum in his pockets. I like the way men cry. They’re efficient.

“Sure, Scott. We’d love some rolls and a drink.”

When he goes into the house, I look at Alex. “You okay? He’s just upset.”

“I know. It’s fine.”

She doesn’t look fine. Her brow is furrowed, her jaw flexed.

“So what happens when you do that?” she asks.

“Do what?”

“Remove everything? I mean, how long does it take?”

I talked to the doctor this morning, listened as he told me that Joanie could breathe quite well on her own and could live up to a week without help. “About a week, I guess.”

“When do they do this?”

“They’re waiting for us to come in,” I say.

“Oh,” Alex says. She touches Sid’s leg, but he doesn’t move.

Scottie and her grandmother walk toward us with stalks of white ginger in their hands.

“It must be hard for Grandpa to handle this without Grandma,” I say.