Mr. Family. Margot Early
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The glow of headlights cast a long shadow of his body and bicycle ahead of him on the water-running pavement. Kal steered into a roadside ditch, springing off his bike when the front wheel stuck in the mud. As rain streamed down his face, a red 1996 Land Rover whipped past. Kal recognized the vehicle. It belonged to a movie star who used his fifth home, in Haena, two weekends of every year.
Reminding himself to buy a helmet, Kal yanked his bike out of the mud and back to the road before he realized the front wheel wouldn’t turn and the forks were bent. He stood in the rain, and it drowned his voice as he yelled after the long-vanished car, “I hate your guts, malihini! You killed my wife!” He knew it wasn’t really the driver of this car who’d hit Maka—just someone like him. Someone who would never belong.
Kal leaned his arms on the handlebars, his head in his hands.
Erika Blade would be a malihini, a newcomer, too.
He wouldn’t write to her again. He’d said personal things to her. She’d said personal things to him. They were even.
And her advice was sane. Wait for love.
Wait…
He’d waited three years, dated women. They’d made him miss Maka even more.
Kal picked up his bike, slung it over his shoulder and began walking home through the rain. There was nothing to wait for.
She would never come back.
THE OKIKA GALLERY in Hanalei was a renovated plantation-style house with white porch posts and verandas. Next door, separated from the gallery by a wide walk bordered with heliconia, anthurium, spider lilies and ginger, a similar building housed the office of Na Pali Sea Adventures, the outfitter for whom Kal worked. The two buildings shared a courtyard away from the street.
The morning after he received Erika’s letter, there were no Zodiac trips going out, so Kal’s job was to shuttle sea kayaks to the Hanalei River for the tourists who had rented them. At ten-thirty, when he returned from that errand, he slipped out for his break.
It was raining, but the espresso stand in the courtyard was still doing business as he dashed through the downpour to the steps of the gallery. He entered through the open French doors, and Jin, his mother’s champion Akita bitch, stood up and came over to greet him.
“Hi, Jin. Hi, girl.” Kal crouched to pet the dog’s thick red-and-white coat, to rub her back and behind her ears, to look into her eyes in the black-masked face. As Jin licked his cheek, Mary Helen, his mother, abandoned a mat-cutting project at the counter to join him.
Kal had gotten his height from his father. With her neat tennis-player’s body and no-nonsense short blond hair, Mary Helen stood barely five foot two. She always looked at home in shorts, polo shirts and slippers—elsewhere known as thongs—the footwear of the islands. Born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, Mary Helen had first visited Oahu in 1960 and met King Johnson at a dog show, where their Akitas had fallen in love and played matchmakers like something out of One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Or so Kal had been told. His mother had left the Midwest and moved to Hawaii to marry King. Gamely she’d faced the challenges of island life, slowly exploring her new world, learning the social subtleties and embracing the cultural richness of Hawaii. Hawaiian quilting, Japanese bon dancing, foods as unfamiliar as poi and kim chee—Mary Helen loved them all. When she and King had children, they had given them Hawaiian names. Now, in the critical eyes of the locals, Kal’s mother was considered a kamaaina, a child of the land.
Could Erika Blade do that?
“Hi, sweetheart,” said Mary Helen. “No trips today?”
“No. I’m going to go get Hiialo in a minute.” When Kal had no trips to guide, his boss, Kroner, let Hiialo work with him at the Sea Adventures office, doing small tasks her four-year-old hands could manage. Despite her tantrums, Hiialo had a knack for winning friends.
“She can come over here,” his mother said. “I’ll be here all day. I’m changing some prints on the wall.”
Kal had come to look at prints, but his taking a sudden interest in the family obsession—art—would make his mother suspicious. “I’ll bring her over to say hi. I’m going to clean the equipment room next door, so I thought she could help.” His parents gave enough to Hiialo; she spent every Tuesday with them at the gallery.
“Oh, that’s good for her.” His mother smiled approvingly. “And she’ll have fun.”
Kal straightened up from petting Jin, who walked away to keep watch out the front door. Why had he placed that ad, anyhow? It wasn’t as though Hiialo had no female influence in her life. She had his mother and his sister, Niau.
“Your dad took Kumi to the vet,” his mother told him. “And Niau went to Honolulu. She took Leo some prints. Did you know he’s remodeling? He wanted you to help.”
“I know. He called me.”
Kal’s oldest brother—Lay-oh, not Lee-oh—ran a gallery on Oahu. Keale, the next oldest, was a park ranger on the Big Island. Uncles and aunts. What didn’t Hiialo have? If he wanted, they could even get a dog, one of his folks’ Akita puppies. Though he wasn’t home enough…
He wasn’t home enough.
He needed a partner.
Kal sensed his mother looking him over, and he knew she was wondering if he’d wind up in the hospital again, receiving a blood transfusion. Apparently deciding he was going to make it, she smiled and said, “Come tell me what you think of this oil painting. A man from Kapaa painted it, and I think he’s good.”
Where usually he would have begged off, Kal followed her to the counter, surreptitiously scanning the walls. He didn’t need to look that far. When he reached the counter, he saw that one of the prints his mother was putting up or taking down was by Erika Blade.
He tried not to stare, but he recognized the model as the same woman in the dolphin card Erika had sent. In this print, the woman was building a sand castle with a boy.
It was the best of her work he’d seen. The interaction between the woman and child, their absorption in their construction project, conveyed a lot. Motherhood. Happiness. Friendship. Nurturing. Fun.
If Erika Blade had a lot of prints out, she was probably doing well. What Jakka had said weeks before needled him. Marry a rich woman.
Not a pretty notion, but practical. Kal wasn’t looking for a woman to support him so he could play professionally again. But he worked six days a week. Needed to. At least she can support herself.
He dutifully assessed the oil landscape by the Kapaa artist. “It’s nice.” But his eyes drifted back to the print.
Jin left the door, wandered over to them and sat down by the counter. The Akita looked at Kal and so did his mother.
“Isn’t that lovely?” Mary Helen asked, noticing his interest in Erika’s print.
“Yes.” Kal turned away, chewing on unasked questions.
“That’s hers, too, up there,” said his mother. “The girl sailing. We sell a lot of her work actually. Her name is Erika Blade. I think she’s disabled.”
“Oh.”
Mary Helen’s head was tilted sideways, as though she was listening for the akua, the island spirits, to give up secrets. She was staring curiously at Kal, picking up on the anomaly of his looking twice at a piece of art.
“Well, I’m going to get Hiialo,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”
Then he left, before the akua could tell their tales.