One second passed and then Jed was on the phone, saying, “Dad’s passed out in the car and all the doors are locked. Are you coming home?”
“No,” I said sternly, in a voice that reminded me of my mother’s. “Your father has done this many times before. Just leave him there and go to bed. In the morning you will go to school.”
“Seriously?” Jed said. “Where are you?”
I’m almost back to Ana’s, and when I get there I will rip off this stupid sweatshirt and I will make us tea and I will try to forget that you called me, and aren’t you almost eighteen years old? You’re not a baby anymore and you can deal with this, and your childhood has been so much easier than mine. Maybe it’s been too easy. This is not a big deal. Compared to my life at your age, it’s nothing. Compared to cancer, it’s nothing. It’s an eye drop in the ocean.
After I get back to Ana’s, I will make the tea. I will tell Ana everything is okay even though it’s not. And when she falls asleep, I will wonder what I’ll be doing after she’s gone. I will still be trying to forget this phone call. I will still be trying to forget you and your brother and your father and that house and the way I feel when I walk inside it.
When Ana falls asleep, I will look at her face and tell myself to remember it well. Since we look the same, this won’t be hard. In the bathroom mirror, I will see the necklace first. It will glint in the low light. I will dab coconut oil on my wrists. I will look at my reflection in the mirror and then there will be a flash, and in this flash it won’t be my face. It will be Ana’s face, and I will try not to blink.
23
But at 7:00 a.m. I felt guilty, and by 7:30, when the block of morning sun had crept to the edge of the floor, I was silently folding the red silk pajamas and fixing my eyes on the rise and fall of sheets to make sure again that yes, she was breathing. And then I was in the car on the way to Denny’s, where I would buy to-go breakfasts for Jed and Cam and not Chuck.
School started at 8:15. The boys usually left at 8:00, which really meant 8:05. I put on Chuck’s stupid sweatshirt again while I waited for the food. I was cold. It was the only thing I had.
By 7:55 I was speeding up the mountain, imagining that I would just catch them on their way out. I would hand them this food and they would happily eat in the car on the way to school, and with every bite of French toast, they would forgive me a little bit more.
But the blue Honda wasn’t in the driveway. They had left already. Only Chuck’s car was there, parked at the end of the drive in front of what would be the shed. So far it was exactly half a shed—two walls waiting for two more. The boys had done a lot of work.
I grabbed the Denny’s bag, walked to Chuck’s car. The driver’s seat was reclined and empty. Sometimes on his car nights, he liked to spread out in the backseat, but he wasn’t there.
I found him in the kitchen popping Advil in his mouth—probably four pills; he always took too many—and swallowing them with coffee. How many times had I told him you weren’t supposed to do that?
I knew that he’d heard me come in, but he took the time to wash his cup in the sink (which he normally didn’t do—he was proving something by doing that) before he spoke.
“You’re back,” he said, and turned toward me. His bloodshot eyes fell on the Denny’s bag. “Is that for me?”
“Sure,” I said, and set the bag on the counter. “Take it.”
“Thank you,” Chuck said. “I’ll take it to work.”
I sighed as loudly as possible. “What happened last night?”
“If you were here, you would know.” He looked straight at me, his bright blue eyes and all the red veins around them.
I tried and failed to say it nicely. “Do you remember that you passed out in your car?”
The look on his face: he did not remember. He scratched his neck just for something to do. He looked below me, at my chest. I saw him reading the words. Life is good. “Is that my sweatshirt?”
I didn’t answer his question. “You’re ruining everything, Chuck.”
“No,” he said. “We’re both ruining everything.” He took the Denny’s bag, and I listened to his familiar footsteps walk away. The car door slammed, the engine turned on, and after Chuck drove away, all the birds were quiet except for the laughing bird, and it was laughing hard.
?
I opened the fridge. We needed eggs. I didn’t feel like getting eggs. I didn’t feel like cleaning the pizza debris from the living room. Greasy plates on the arms of the couch and the box on the table, and when I opened it, there were still three slices inside that no one had bothered to refrigerate.
I told myself to relax as I yanked my spandex up my legs. I would do some stretching and feel better. I laid out my purple mat. I inhaled the foggy morning air. And then I just stood there like a stranger, looking at this life. Through the windows of the ohana I could see piles of Chuck’s clothes. And a lamp—he’d put a lamp in there. Where had he gotten a lamp?
There was my car, my I-am-not-having-a-midlife-crisis white convertible car, parked askew in the wet dirt. There was the half-built shed, badly placed between the house and the ohana on what I could see now was uneven ground. It seemed to be leaning. There was the lush jungle that surrounded the property and the green grass rolling softly up the hill, and there in the grass was my garden where nothing grew.
I made myself stretch anyway. Because this was who I was now. I was a woman who did yoga in the morning on her porch in Hawaii, and I was a woman who cooked oatmeal the old-fashioned way in a pot on the stove and who ate it while really savoring the taste, or really trying to. I was a woman who owned her solitude in this empty house that smelled like pizza while googling inspirational quotes as though frantically searching for something she had lost.
When the bird started laughing again, I went outside and picked up a rock. But no, Nancy, Nan, whatever your name is, you are not a woman who hurls rocks at living things.
So I got into the car and drove instead. Down the mountain, out of the fog. To the ocean where life was clear and sunny and at least I had a purpose.
?
I didn’t knock. I just opened the door. “Ana?” I said quietly, in case she was still sleeping.
“Nan.” She was standing in the kitchen squashing a ripe banana in her fist. The peel broke and the yellow meat spurted out, and then she threw it in the sink behind her. “Guess what?” she asked, picking up a new banana.
“What?” I said, walking closer.
The pocket of her black kimono was moving, and then Portico’s head slithered out. Ana pushed Portico back inside her pocket without looking. She squeezed the banana. More yellow meat spurting out. It looked like baby food all over her hands. “Guess who called me?”
Gregory telling you you owe him around two hundred dollars for all that Italian food?
“Who?”
She threw the banana into the sink, picked up another. She was almost out of bananas, but the rest of the fruit from the fruit stand was still on the counter. I wondered if she planned to squeeze the mangoes next.