The Goddesses

“It’s true, Mom,” Jed said. “Nothing happened.”

“I still want you to have the knife,” Ana said, whipping open the center console. She found it quickly, held it up. “A gift. From me to you.”

I took it before Cam could. “Thank you, Ana,” I said. “I’ll hold on to this. Cam, you can have it when you graduate.” This was a lie. I planned to throw the knife in the first dumpster I saw.

“Thanks, Ana,” Cam said, like a polite young man.

“Hey,” Jed said. “What about me? Where’s my gift?”

Ana bit her lip. “I have something else in store for you, Jedi.”

Jed thought about that. “Is it a knife?”

“Of sorts,” Ana told him.

“It’s not a gun,” I said.

“No, Nan. Of course not.” Ana slapped my knee. “Who do you think I am? I would never give your child a gun!”

“I know,” I said, “I was kidding.” But was I kidding?

?

Ana went to New Age and I went to Fiction. Cam and Jed went to the coffee table books about Hawaii. After a while I went to find them.

“Look, Mom.” Cam flipped the book over for me. Two pages, one photo. The volcano spurting lava. “We want to go see it,” he said.

“Wipe out that town,” Jed finished.

Ana’s voice behind us: “You bad, bad boys,” she joke-scolded.

Even the short walk to Natch seemed sadder with all this vog in the air. It’s like a metaphor for your blurriness, I thought. But ignore it, I rethought. And enjoy your life.

We plated up our dinners at the healthy buffet. Ana chose cantaloupe and brown rice. “I need to eat like a baby now,” she said.

The boys piled their plates high with organic macaroni and slices of eggplant pizza. I got what I always got: salad with fish and beets, plus a side of lilikoi dressing. When I looked at my plate, two things occurred to me. One: Chuck had never seen me eat this meal before, and I’d eaten it so many times. Two: I’m not hungry. Oh, and three: Enjoy your life.

Enjoying my life was hard right now, but I was trying.

We went to our old patch of yoga grass to eat as the sun lowered in the hazy sky.

“This is where your mother and I met,” Ana said, laying out two yoga mats for us to sit on.

“This is where Ana taught yoga,” I said, and noted how I had used the past tense. Soon, after she died, I would be saying, “This is where we used to eat with Ana as the sun set.”

The twins sat on one mat. Ana and I sat on the other. I looked at the grass. Maybe I was looking for one of Patty’s dropped earrings, or for some other evidence that we had been here. I found nothing. I picked a blade of grass and rolled it between my fingers.

Ana ate slowly, her hand affixed to her stomach the whole time, as if waiting for the sharp pain to come back. I was waiting for it, too. If she needed to be rushed to the hospital, I knew where the hospital was. It was half an hour south with no traffic, maybe twenty-five minutes going fast. I remembered something the real estate agent had said—“Kona is not a good place to be sick”—and how easily we’d cast that advice aside. “No, we’re healthy,” we’d replied, as if health were a thing you could keep in a box and hold on to forever.

I touched her back. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she whispered. I knew she didn’t want the boys to hear.

As the last bit of sun was being swallowed by the horizon, Jed said, “Wait for it, wait for it.” And then—I couldn’t believe it—there was a flash. A definite green flash. The boys agreed that it had been a definite flash.

Ana rubbed her stomach. “I saw nothing.”

“You must have blinked just like one second off,” Cam said.

Ana’s hands on her cheeks. “Story of my life.”

We lay back in the grass as the sky darkened. “The new moon,” Ana said, “is about new beginnings. It is a blank page. It is a time to set intentions. First, however, you must know what you want.”

The birds, the waves, a guy yelling, “Hey bra!” to his friend.

Ana repeated the last part. “You must know what you want.”

“I want a new iPad,” Jed said.

“I want courage,” Ana said.

“I want courage, too,” Cam agreed.

Ana touched my hand. “What do you want, Nan?”

“A lot,” I heard myself say.

“Abundance,” Ana said. “Good thing you’re married to a guy who works at the most abundant place on earth.” Ana chuckled. “Cost-co.”

She squeezed my hand. I squeezed back. Like so many other times, I thought: Thank God you’re here.

A long silence. The birds, the waves. How this sky, even with the vog, had so many more stars than the sky on the mainland.

“I’m gay,” Cam said.

Tears welled in my throat. “I’m so proud of you, Cam.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Me, too,” Jed said.

“I know everyone knows,” Cam said, “but I still wanted to say it.”

“You are brave,” Ana told him. “My gay husband didn’t come out till he was thirty-four.”

Jed was shocked. “You had a gay husband?”

“I might have had two gay husbands,” Ana said.

“Are you really going to die?” Cam asked her.

“Dude, I was just thinking that,” Jed said. “Like, I can’t even wrap my head around it. You look…I don’t know…you don’t look like you’re going to die.”

She said it with no emotion, but like it was just a fact. “I am going to die.”

The waves, the birds. Waiting for Ana to say something else. She blinked. I thought I saw one glistening teardrop roll from the corner of her eye and fall into the grass.

?

We found Chuck passed out in a foldable chair right in the center of the half-built shed, his chin pressed into his chest and a flower in his crotch.

“Should we wake him up?” Jed asked.

“No,” I said, “leave him.” Leave him, leave him, leave him.

But then everybody left except for me. I said, “I’ll be right in,” and waited until they’d disappeared through the front door before taking Chuck’s cell phone out of his pocket. The whole time I was telling myself, Nancy, you are not a private investigator. Nancy, you should let this run its natural course. Nancy, do you really want to be in a marriage with someone you feel the need to investigate?

But I had to know. Now she had a name and her name was Brenda, so it wouldn’t be that hard to check.

Of course Chuck didn’t have a password on his phone, although I’d told him to set one three hundred times. He was making this too easy. Maybe he wanted to get caught.

Brenda, Brenda. I looked at his text messages first. And there was Brenda—third one down—right after Jed and Costco.

The exchange had been written the day before and it was short.

Brenda: Do you think we should tell your wife?

Chuck: I can’t tell her yet. Sorry.

I waited for some reaction, but there wasn’t one, not really. The space behind my eyes seemed to be throbbing, but other than that I just felt numb. Maybe that was my reaction: numbness. I was beyond emotions at this point. I was exhausted. And maybe I didn’t want to believe it either. I still wanted to be wrong somehow.

So I read it again. While rubbing my temples, waiting for my head to hurt.

No, still numb.

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