Mr. Family. Margot Early
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all at once was a different matter.
The Pacific shifted colors under her eyes, like a quilt being shaken out.
We’ll be fine, she told herself. I’ll get used to him, and he won’t seem so sexy.
The countryside became lush, and Erika could feel the dampness in the air as the Datsun passed valleys planted in taro. Blossoms spilled from tree branches, and the roadside flowers held as many shades as her paint box. In a tree whose limbs stretched out on sweeping horizontal planes, like a bonsai, sat dozens of white birds with exotic plumage on their heads. They reminded Erika of tropical ports of her childhood, and she thought of her parents, especially her mother, who had loved flowers.
What a place to paint.
She subdued the now familiar doubts…that she’d never sell another watercolor.
“Daddy, Eduardo’s hungry.”
Erika glanced into the back seat. Hiialo had one toy with her in the car, the thing Erika had thought was called Pincushion. A watercolor subject. But she must have been mistaken about its name. “Is that Eduardo?”
“No,” said Hiialo. “This is Pincushion.” She frowned, as though puzzled that Erika had asked. “Eduardo is a mo’o.”
“What’s that?”
Hiialo seemed at a loss. “Daddy…”
“Mo’os,” said Kal, “are giant magical black lizards of Hawaiian legend.”
“Giant?”
“Thirty feet long.” The topic was a good icebreaker. “The ancient Hawaiians worshiped their ancestors, who they believed could be powerful allies after death. Actually some people still depend on their aumakua, deified ancestral spirits, to help them out of trouble. In the old days, a kahuna, an expert in magic, would help people transform their deceased relatives into sharks or mo’os or whatever. Mo’os lived in ponds and were supposed to be fierce fighters, protective of their families.”
“Except Eduardo lives in our house,” said Hiialo.
Erika briefly entertained the notion that Maka had become a mo’o after death. It was a silly idea, but it seemed less cruel than death’s stealing her, leaving her husband and baby alone.
There was only a shade of humor in her next thought: I should make friends with Eduardo.
With Maka’s memory.
“We’re coming up on Princeville,” Kal said. “In a minute you can see Hanalei Bay.”
The terrain was changing again. The green hillocks inland had become mountains, rich forested green and draped in billowing shifting mist. Banyan trees grew alongside the road, their roots stretching twenty feet down the earthen embankment to the asphalt. Erika understood why Kauai was called the Garden Island. Everywhere, everything was verdant; plants with sprawling leaves caught the mist and the first raindrops.
A moment later a shower came in a clattering torrent. Through the rain streaming down the windshield, Erika caught her first glimpse of Hanalei Bay. A Zodiac motored across the water, and then the bay was obscured again by a tangle of foliage, trumpet vines, bottlebrush trees, amaryllis blossoms.
In another few minutes they reached Hanalei.
“That’s the gallery,” said Kal, identifying a white building with a wraparound porch.
Hanalei was not the tourist trap Erika had half expected. Despite its galleries and T-shirt shops, surf shops and boutiques, the community had an unpolished small-town atmosphere. Leaving the shopping area, they passed a soccer field set against the backdrop of mist-cloaked mountains. Beside the field was a green clapboard church with dramatic Gothic stained glass, a bell on the roof peak and a side tower with a pointed pagoda roof. In the doorway two women in identical holoku gowns and leis corralled some small children. Other people emerged, and Erika realized it was a wedding.
Somberly she looked away.
Kal was silent.
As they left Hanalei and continued driving west, the road narrowed. Vines and blooms overhung the road, which was broken by one-lane stone bridges. To Erika, it seemed a fairy-tale place—enchanted. They passed the sign for Haena, and soon Kal turned right, toward the ocean, on a gravel road. At its end, amid a jungle of flora—plants with pointed Cadmium Red leaves resembling lobster claws, trees with frilled and lacy hanging blossoms—stood a Private Property sign. Kal turned down the dirt drive.
A stand of mixed tropical trees to the left hid a tiny one-story green house. The dwelling would have blended in with its background if not for its white porch pillars and railing, a faded wind sock hanging from the roof of the lanai and a child’s bright plastic tricycle in the road. Erika recognized the bungalow from the photos Kal had sent.
But he didn’t stop there.
“Where are you going, Daddy?” asked Hiialo.
The Datsun continued down the gravel drive. “I thought Erika would like to see the beach.”
Separated from the bungalow by a forest of trees and shrubs was a vast lawn and a low slate blue house with an oriental roof. Palm trees shaded the beach. The calm summer sea was every shade of blue and green. It took Erika’s breath. When Kal parked beside the beachfront house and she got out, she could only stand and hold her arms about herself as the trade winds cooled her body.
“This house is a rental property owned by my parents,” said Kal, as Hiialo climbed between the seats and out his door. “It’s occupied off and on. When my aunt and uncle from the mainland visit, they stay here. I take care of the place.”
Erika stared at the sea. “I didn’t imagine you were this close to the ocean.”
No longer having to concentrate on driving, Kal studied her face. Prominent bones, smooth planes, a straight nose. He’d already noticed that with different expressions the whole arrangement of her features seemed to change—and that she had a way of looking at things with deep concentration, as though planning to paint them someday. Erika’s was not a boring face.
“Daddy, I want to go home.”
“Burnbye, Hiialo.” In a while.
“We can go,” said Erika. “I can walk back here anytime. This is just beautiful.” I want to stay…She spotted a boat covered by a canvas tarp, lying on some vines under what seemed to be a pine tree. “Is that yours?”
“That’s the outrigger,” said Hiialo. “It was my dad’s wedding present from my mom. She and Uncle Danny made it.”
Maka. “It must be a very special boat,” Erika said. Hiialo was sweet. This would be easy.
Kal moved toward the car. Erika would have preferred to walk to the bungalow, but they all climbed into the Datsun, instead, and he backed up the driveway, spun the wheel and reversed into a gravel space beside a wobbly green gardening shed.
He parked, switched off the ignition and stared straight ahead, out the windshield. Then he looked at Erika. “We’re here.” He lifted his eyebrows slightly, then turned away, reached for the door handle and got out.
He and Erika carried her belongings up to the lanai. Seeing Kal and Hiialo kick off their flip-flops beside the door, Erika bent down to remove her sandals. When she straightened, she saw a gentle smiling expression in Kal’s eyes. He held open the screen door. “E komo mai. Welcome.”
Stepping into the shadows, onto a warped hardwood floor covered with irregular remnants of gold-and-green carpet, Erika surveyed the small front room. The walls were cheap paneling. On the right side was the kitchen, on the left a couch, an old end table and a throw rug. Over the couch hung a framed print of a schooner, a Hawaiian chief in the bow. A hanging lamp with a plastic tiffany shade advertising Coca-Cola dangled above the coffee table, and two pieces of batiked cloth blocked a doorway