The Descendants (18 page)

“What?” She wipes her fingers across her face. “What do you mean? Are you asking me to say something at her…”

Shelley doesn’t want to say the word, and I don’t want to hear it. “No,” I say. “You know how it is. It’s nice to hear what other people know about her, but never mind. Not now.” I stand up. “I’m keeping my visits short. Sorry about that. I feel like I’m wrecking the place and not cleaning up.”

She doesn’t stand to hug me. She’s not a hugger or a person who walks you to the door, and I’m glad to do away with those things right now. I didn’t mean to ask about Joanie, her affair; I shouldn’t be thinking about that.

“I’ll tell Lloyd,” she says. “We’ll go see her today. Please let us know if we can do anything. Please.”

“Thanks, Shelley.”

“Actually, forget it. Don’t ask. I’ll be in touch with you whether you like it or not. I’ll get the ladies together. We’ll take care of everything, the details. You just tell me what you want.”

“Thank you,” I say, remembering the death arrangements, food and flowers, ceremony. She lifts her caftan to her face and then reaches for her cigarettes.

“Shelley?” I ask. “Could you call Racer? Could you tell him for me? I was going to tell him, but I didn’t.”

“Of course!” she says, and I realize how happy it makes people to have a specific chore.

The kids are standing in the kitchen eating chicken lo mein out of an aluminum pan.

“Want some?” K asks. Her expression is full of sorrow and sympathy. “It’s from Lloyd’s fund-raiser. We have sushi, too, if you want.”

I take a pair of chopsticks and eat a few bites, and then I tell Alex and Sid we need to get back on the road.

The kids all kiss and hug and make promises to call. K walks us to the door, then heads up the stairs. We get into the car and I drive away slowly.

“She’s going to write about this,” Alex says. “I know it.”

“She better make me look good,” Sid says.

“What’s there to write?” I ask. A woman lives. A woman dies.

I drive and think of who should be next, whose house we should flatten. Russell Clove is just down the block, but I don’t want to deal with him right now, so I choose Bobbie and Art instead.

I look over at Alex but pretend to be looking at the street signs beyond her. Her face looks so tired. She looks ruined, like something that was grand a long time ago.

As we near Bobbie’s house, she says, “I know where he lives, you know, if you want to see him.”

19

ALEX TELLS ME
to stop. “This is it,” she says.

I try to look at the house, but a coral wall surrounds it. I can see the crests of waves beyond the roofs of homes. His house isn’t far back, which means he’s rich, relatively, but not filthy. At first I like this, but then it seems worse. If we had pulled up to a home with stone lions guarding the entrance, then I would get it, but this home is average, which makes their love seem more real. I pull in closer to the curb and park in front of my wife’s lover’s home.

“I like his wall,” Alex says.

I look at the coral wall. “It’s okay.”

“Are we just going to sit here until he comes out?” Sid asks.

“No,” I say. “We came, we saw.” I make to start the car, but I don’t.

“I wonder if he’s home?” Alex asks. “Should we ring the bell?”

“You should,” Sid says.

“You should,” she says back. He kicks the back of her seat, and she turns and reaches for his leg. He grabs her arm and she laughs.

“Stop it,” I yell. “Stop touching each other.”

“Whoa,” Sid says. “Maybe that’s why your wife cheated on you, if you’re so against touching.”

I snap my head around to face him. “Do you get hit a lot?”

He shrugs. “I’ve had my share.”

I face my daughter. “You know you’re dating a complete retard. You know that, don’t you?”

“My brother’s retarded, man,” Sid says. “Don’t use it in a derogatory way.”

“Oh.” I don’t say anything more, hoping he’ll interpret my silence as an apology.

“Psych,” he says, and now he kicks the back of my seat. “I don’t have a retarded brother!” His little trick is giving him a great amount of amusement. “Speaking of the retarded,” he says, “do you ever feel bad for wishing a retarded person or an old person or a disabled person would hurry up? Sometimes I wait for them to cross the street and I’m like, ‘Come on already!’ but then I feel bad.”

“Shut up, Sid,” Alex says. “Remember what we talked about. And we’re not dating, Dad.”

This seems to work. He’s quiet. I watch him remembering whatever it is they talked about.

“This is completely bizarre,” I say. “Just sitting here. Stalking him.”

“We’re not stalking him,” Alex says. “He’s at work, I’m sure. Man’s got to work to get a wall like this.” She reaches to turn on the ignition and then puts the radio on. “Why do you need to see him? Are you going to say anything to him?” She turns on the air conditioner, and it blows into my face.

“That wastes gas,” I say.

“Oh, please,” she says.

“You think this car just runs on God’s own methane?” Sid yells. Alex and I both turn our heads.

Sid’s sitting in the middle of the backseat now, his legs spread out, staking claim on every part of the car. “What? It’s from a movie.”

“I just want to see him,” I say. I listen to the music, but Alex changes the station, waits, and changes it again and again and again.

“Just find something.”

“It’s all R&B crap.” She continues to run through the stations.

“Turn it to 101.7,” Sid says. He leans forward, his face right next to mine. I smell cigarettes and a mixture of cheap cologne and Twizzlers.

“101.7.” Alex keeps pressing the changer, and with each touch, a hollow beep emits from the stereo.

“Just put it on 101.7,” I say.

A growling voice invades the car. It’s soothing, in a way, to be reminded that other people around the world are angry. It isn’t just me. A breeze comes through my open window, carrying the scent of sea salt and a slight tinge of coconut husk. The radio station muffles the singer’s every other word, which makes me think of the dirty words even more.
Fuck,
I think. What a beautiful word. If I could say only one thing for the rest of my life, that would be it. Sid bobs his head to the right then the left over and over again. He looks like a pigeon.

“Do you know what he does?” Alex asks. “Is he married?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about him.” I say this more to myself than to her. I never even thought about the fact that he might be married, though I doubt he is. His house seems like a bachelor’s, and even his name, Brian Speer, sounds independent and unattached, a solo-flying weapon. It’s such a familiar name. Maybe that’s why I want to see him. Because I feel that I know him. Everyone knows everyone here. I must know him.

“You mean you didn’t ask Kai and Mark?”

“I didn’t get into it with them.”

“Why not?”

“I just didn’t.”

A car drives up the road and we all crouch lower in our seats, which makes me feel silly. The car continues on, then disappears behind the hill that leads to the estates by the ocean. I look at Alex hunkered down, and a feeling of utter incompetence washes over me. I’m soaked in bad parenting. Drenched. I imagine how all of this looks through her eyes. Her mother, who has cheated on her father, is in a coma, and she’s accompanying her father to get a look at her mother’s lover. Her sister prances around in her lingerie and stabs herself with sea creatures. Why have I let her bring me here? Why have I exposed my needs?

“This is stupid.” I start the car, forgetting that it’s already running, and I hear the engine grind.

“If someone messed with my girl, all hell would break loose,” Sid says.

“Whatever, Sid,” Alex says. “A girl doesn’t need a knight.”

It’s as though Joanie is sitting beside me. It’s exactly something she would say. I want to ask my daughter,
Why not? It would be so easy. I’d love to have a knight. What’s wrong with being rescued?

I drive back toward the avenue.

“He has dark hair,” Alex says. “If you just want to know what he looks like.”

We move away from the houses and drive up the wide road to the lookouts below Diamond Head. I slow to let the boys with surfboards tucked under their arms cross in front of us. One boy with long rusty-colored curls does a sort of waddle across the street. His long board is in one hand, and he’s trying to keep his trunks up with the other.

“I used to drop you off here, remember?” I say this quietly, so we can have our own conversation.

“Yup,” she says. She releases a short, almost angry laugh.

“Why’d you stop surfing?”

“Just happened. Why’d you stop playing with LEGOs? Just happens.”

“It’s a little different. You were good at it.”

“You never even saw me.”

“But I heard you were good.”

She looks at me and I give her a wide, supportive, good-parenting smile.

“You were a surfer?” Sid asks. “A cute little surfer chick?”

“Why’d you stop?” I ask again.

“At first I stopped because I got my period and didn’t know how to use a tampon, so I wouldn’t go for, you know, five days or so, and then I just got out of the habit.”

“How do you not know how to use a tampon?” Sid asks.

“Couldn’t your mother…show you how…or teach you, or whatever?” I ask.

“I didn’t tell Mom I got my period for an entire year.”

“Even I know how to use a tampon,” Sid says.

I turn up the volume on the radio.

“The first time I thought I shit my pants,” Alex says. I can feel her staring at me, waiting for a reaction.

“Ew, Alex,” Sid says. “Maybe you did.”

“Well,” I say. “It’s your private personal business.”

“I hid my used pads under the mattress because I didn’t know where to throw them away. Mom would have seen them in the trash. The blood soaked into the mattress. She found out that way. When she flipped the mattress.”

Alex looks at me expectantly, but I don’t face her. I feel a good response is crucial, as though this is some kind of exam.

“Why did you keep it a secret from her? Sounds like a lot of work.” And shame, I want to add. And shame.

“I don’t know,” Alex says. “Maybe it’s because she was always pushing me to look older and act older, and this would have confirmed it. Me being a woman and all. Maybe I didn’t want to be one yet. I was thirteen.”

It sounds as though she has put thought into this. I wonder what else she thinks about, what troubles her. We round the bottom of the dormant volcano.

“Hey, Alex?” Sid asks. “Did you ever get that not-so-fresh feeling?”

“Sid, shut it.”

“Are you sure he knows what’s going on?” I ask. “Because he sure doesn’t act like he knows our family is having a difficult time.”

“Dad,” Alex says, and she says this so abruptly and loudly that I brake and pay attention to the road.

“Go back,” she says.

“Back where?” We’re alongside Kapiolani Park. Joggers are everywhere. One crosses the street in front of me. His shorts are slit up the sides of his legs. I can see his dark leg hair matted down with sweat. An iPod is strapped around his biceps.