Big island sunrise, p.10
Big Island Sunrise, page 10
Drowning in white noise, she paced through the dark house like a ghost.
It had been a good day. Full and busy, fulfilling. She’d fallen asleep easily not long after Kai.
Then she dreamt of Adam. A golden, shining nothing of a dream. She could only remember the radiant happiness of being with him, seeing his face, leaning into the sturdy solidity of his body.
Then she woke up.
And she missed him with an excruciating intensity that she hadn’t experienced in weeks. There was no sleeping after that.
The lights blazed on, and she flinched.
“Emma?” Lani stood at the lightswitch, watching her with a worried expression. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said automatically.
Her chin dropped a bit, and she gave her an earnest look. “Really?”
“No, not really.”
She nodded and crossed to the kitchen counter. “Do you want some tea?”
“Sure. Thank you.”
“We have to figure out what all is growing here. Because I don’t know much about herbs, and I still found a bunch of plants growing. There must be others I didn’t recognize. I picked this māmaki and lemongrass earlier.” She put huge green leaves and chopped rounds of grass into a pot. “There’s hibiscus back there too, the kind you use for tea.”
“I’d love to learn more about the plants that are growing here.”
Lani’s voice and the everyday kitchen clatter cut through the haze of her grief, pushing the pain back until her thoughts were coherent again.
The ache for her husband was still there, like a phantom limb that pained her constantly. But engaging with the world, this place, kept it under control.
With the kitchen lights on, she could see puddles on the kitchen floor. She looked up and saw a drop of water fall from a damp spot on the ceiling.
“We’ve got a leak.”
“Yeah, there’s one in my room too. I put a pitcher under it.”
Emma looked out the window and watched the rain flying sideways. “How do the chickens get through these hurricanes?”
Lani burst out laughing.
“What?”
“You think this is a hurricane? This is not a hurricane.”
Another crack of thunder shook the house. “Close enough.”
Lani shook her head, but she didn’t argue. The pot on the stove started to simmer, and she turned it off. Lemongrass-scented steam filled the air.
Emma mopped up the puddle and set a pot on top. The steady ding of water drops was swallowed by the raging storm outside. When she looked back at Lani, she was looking down at her phone with a stricken expression.
“What’s wrong?”
Lani shook her head quickly, like she was shaking herself out of a daze. “My ex.” She turned her phone off and put it in the far corner of the kitchen.
“What about him?” Emma asked.
“More threats.” She pulled two mugs down from the cupboard and filled each of them with tea. “I blocked him on everything. I got a new phone number. Then he made new accounts so that he could spam me on socials. I should just get off of all of them altogether.”
“This is Rory’s father?”
“Not exactly.” They carried their tea into the living room, where the noise of the storm wasn’t quite as loud. Lani blew on her tea, looking off into middle distance.
“We worked on ships together,” she began. “Me and Zeke. Cruise ship culture was very work hard, party hard. It was fun for a while. I was just getting out of college, trying to escape myself. I think that’s why I stayed away for as many years as I did. With my parents both gone and Adam in California, no place felt like home anymore.
“Anyway, we drank a lot. We were only allowed beer and wine on the ship – though of course plenty of people snuck booze on too - but in port we really cut loose.
“Rory’s father was an Italian guy I met in Greece. A one night stand. I don’t even know his last name. By the time I realized I was pregnant, we were long gone. I had no way of finding him again.
“Rory’s ‘Dad’,” she continued with heavy air quotes, “was a coworker of mine. He heard me crying to a friend about it, because I didn’t know what to do. I had only ever worked on ships, and I’d gone up pretty far. Managing my department on the boat, you know? No chance of doing that with a baby.
“I could have come home to Hawai’i, but… I don’t know. Showing up pregnant, no idea of who the father was, it was a humiliating prospect. And I wasn’t ready to give up the career I had dedicated my whole adult life to. I’d never planned on having kids.”
Lani paused and sipped her tea before she continued. Outside, the wind picked up to a frenzied whine as it grazed the side of the house.
“Zeke owned property in Alaska, an old family place. He said I could stay there a while, rent free. I spent a few summers working on ships up in Alaska, and a big group of us spent a week up at his cabin once. It’s so beautiful up there. A friend said she would help me, take time off between contracts and be there when the baby was born.
“I was–” Lani’s voice cracked and she looked down, pulling at a loose thread on her pajamas. “The idea was to have the baby there and give her up for adoption. So I could go back to work.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and took a long, shuddering breath.
“We had the nicest family lined up, this older couple who lived a little ways south of there. I had my doubts the whole time, but I tried to ignore them, to talk myself out of them. I had this whole plan, you know? I was a couple years away from being an operations manager. A decade of that and I could have retired so young. I had it all planned out.
“And then I met Rory.” Tears spilled from her eyes, and she smiled. Emma reached out and took her hand. “She was born at night, at home. The northern lights were going crazy outside, and I stood in front of these huge windows watching them. Then I held her for the first time, and I just… I knew I could never let her go.”
She wiped the tears from her face and grabbed a tissue for her nose.
“And Zeke?” Emma asked.
“He said I could stay as long as I needed. I had plenty of savings for groceries and stuff, so I wasn’t worried about finding work right away. I just spent those first months in this happy little cocoon with my baby. I was so in love with her.”
She sighed, and her expression darkened. “Then Zeke proposed. And I said yes. I’m not sure why, exactly. I wasn’t in love with him. I mean, I was fond of the guy. We had worked together on and off for years. And I was grateful. But I think… deep down, I think I was scared that he was the best I could do. For me, for Rory… Here I was with this baby, and there was this man on one knee offering to be her father, and… I said yes.
“It was okay, for a while. Zeke was at work three months out of four, and I was home with Rory all the time. I loved it. And he was nice enough, when he was home. It felt cozy. Domestic.
“Then he stopped working. More and more, he had been obsessing over what I did when he was gone. He was scared I was seeing someone, which was crazy. I was with Rory literally all the time. She would only sleep on top of me. But he quit his shipboard job and came home full time.
“Things got steadily worse after that.”
“Worse how?” Emma asked.
Lani shrugged and looked away. She was quiet for a while, the sound of the storm outside taking over.
Eventually she said, “I stayed longer than I should have. It got bad enough that Rory was terrified. I couldn’t hide it from her anymore. He would go ballistic at bedtime, screaming at us and slamming doors because Rory wanted me to sleep with her, and he wanted me in bed with him. He would always apologize the next morning. Sometimes he’d cry and beg me to stay.
“Then one night, he dragged me out by my hair. He slammed the door and locked Rory in the dark. She was screaming for me, terrified, but he wouldn’t let me go to her.”
A single tear fell, and Emma squeezed her hand.”
“We left the next day,” Lani continued, “while he was out at a construction job he’d picked up. We stayed a few nights with some old friends in Juneau. I hadn’t seen them in ages, hadn’t seen anyone. Zeke didn’t like it. But they let us stay with them, even drove me down to the courthouse so I could file for divorce. And then they drove us to the airport.”
“I’m glad that you’re here.” Emma put an arm around her and they sank deeper into the old sofa.
“Ditto.”
There was another crash of thunder, so close that it came in the same moment as the lightning and shook the walls. The lights cut out, plunging them into complete darkness.
“Shoot,” Lani said. “Do you have your phone on you?”
“No, but I have a flashlight on my keychain. It’s hanging near the door.”
She stood and walked with exaggerated caution towards the front door, still not familiar enough with this house to find her way in the dark.
Another flash of lightning lit up the house for a second, long enough for her to orient herself. She made it to the door and fumbled along the wall until her fingers found the familiar shape of her keychain.
The little flashlight put out a narrow beam of light that enabled her to find the candles and matches she’d come across earlier that week while she was cleaning the kitchen. Once the first was lit, Lani used the tiny flashlight to check on both of the kids while Emma lit more candles downstairs.
“Both still sound asleep,” she said as she came back down.
“Once Kai is asleep, he’s out. He’ll sleep through fireworks, anything. I still have to wake him up at two in the morning to pee, or he’ll sleep through that too.”
“Rory’s the same way. She’ll sleep through anything. I can’t remember the last time I slept like that.” She was quiet while she poured two fresh mugs of tea. Then she said, “I have nightmares.”
“Me too.”
“He knows I’m from Hawai’i. I keep waiting for him to show up. He doesn’t have our address, but I keep expecting to run into him in town. I’ll see someone who’s the same height as him or has the same hair, just a glimpse, and my brain clicks into panic mode.”
“I’m so sorry,” Emma told her. “I’m sorry that we didn’t stay in touch. We were all wrapped up in our own life, to the point that it became a joke in my family. We lived in the same little town as them and I was still the absent sister, off in my own little world. It was always just me and Adam, and then me and Adam and Kai.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“But we should have tried harder. We should have known what was happening and been there for you.”
“I didn’t want anyone to know. I felt so ashamed. And it happened so gradually that half the time I questioned my own sanity. He made me question my own sanity. Gaslighting, love bombing. Emotional abuse.
“I kept in touch with some of my friends, and eventually I opened up to a couple of them, enough for them to have some idea of what was going on. They sent me memes, videos, articles. It gave me names for what was happening to me, made me feel less alone.
“I could have reached out to family. I could have come home to Hawai’i a long time ago. Or even California; I knew that you and Adam would have taken us in if I’d asked. But I hated that orphan feeling. I didn’t want to be the family charity case.
“I don’t know why I thought that living with Zeke was any better. Maybe because he wanted me there so badly. It didn’t feel like pity or charity, not at first.
“Later, of course, he was happy to lord it over me, everything that he had done for us. But in the beginning, he made it seem like I was doing him the favor by staying there. And I was convinced for a while that we could make a go of it. Be the happy little family, give my daughter the father that I robbed her of by being so irresponsible.“
“Don’t do that to yourself,” Emma said.
“But it’s true. I was reckless. I haven’t had another drink since, not since Rory.”
Emma reached out and took her hand. “You’re an amazing mom. She adores you. And you’re so good with her, with all of the kids.”
“That’s what I did on the cruise ships.”
“You worked with kids?”
Lani nodded and wiped her eyes. When she spoke again, her voice was brighter. “I worked in the kids club. It was a great job, up at the top of the ship with gorgeous views when nearly everyone else was stuck below deck. Just playing with kids all day. Eventually I ran the kids club on one ship after another, all over the world.”
“What about now? Do you want to go back to working with kids?”
She thought about that for a moment. “Not really. Being with Rory every day takes everything I’ve got and then some. I can’t imagine working with kids and being a single mom. That sounds doubly exhausting. I don’t know how ‘Ōlena does it.”
“I hear that. Before I had Kai, I had so much patience. I love kids.” She chuckled ruefully and admitted, “I thought that being a mom would be easy. But the older he gets, the harder it is. I have to work hard to stay patient now, even with other kids. I’m just tapped out. And since Adam, well.” She stared down into her tea as shame seeped through her chest. “I’ve lost my patience with Kai so many times.”
“That’s understandable.”
“Not to him.” She looked back up at Lani and changed direction. “So what do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. I can’t go back to working on cruise ships. It would kill me to go months without seeing Rory, even if I did have someone who was willing to take care of her for that amount of time. There are plenty of similar jobs on island, but not near here. I’m lucky to have a job at all, and serving up shave ice is kind of fun for now. But long term… I have no idea.”
“You’ll figure it out. You have time.”
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“You were a kindergarten teacher before Kai, right?”
“I was.” She had taught a few different grades over the years, and she’d loved it. She loved the kids, their endless curiosity. But fighting for the best interests of her students in a system that seemed designed to crush their spirits had been exhausting. She had been happy to leave it behind for motherhood, determined to keep Kai out of the system that she had worked in.
“Will you ever go back to teaching?” Lani asked.
“I don’t think so. Maybe someday.”
“What’s next for you?”
“I have no idea. I’m still in survival mode. I mean, I have everything that I need. I’m so lucky in that way. I can’t imagine struggling to pay the bills at the same time as I’m navigating this kind of grief.” She paused, thinking. “Or, I don’t know, maybe that would have helped. Having work to do here, just the daily tasks that have to get done like milking the goats and all of that, it does seem to help. It gets me past that crippling inertia that pinned me down at home.
“I still wake up feeling that same crippling grief and anxiety, and I lay in bed thinking that I don’t want to be here. Honestly, the only thing that kept me here once Adam was gone was knowing that I had to keep going for Kai. But now, it only takes me a minute to pull myself up out of that and step out into the sunlight and go milk those damn goats. I don’t think that I could have gotten so far so quickly without that immediate driver of another being needing me. Which sounds terrible, because obviously Kai needed me. And of course I kept him fed and everything. But what he needed was more than I could give. And what this place asks of me is just right. It keeps me moving.”
“So are you going to stay?”
The question surprised her, though it shouldn’t have. Part of the medicine in this place was the opportunity to exist in the present, a string of moments, without worrying too much about the future. The idea had always been to come for a short stay and set things to rights. But now that she was here, she had zero desire to book that flight home.
“My family is still asking me every day when I’ll be back. I can’t stay forever. We have our house there, and I have a nephew arriving any day. But I think we’ll stay for a while. I’m not in a hurry to find someone to rent or run the place, which was the original plan. Of course, it’s yours if you want it.”
Lani rocked backwards in surprise.
“Legally it’s Kai’s when he turns eighteen, but that’s a long way off. We’ll need a caretaker. You don’t have to decide now, but if you do want to stay in the area, you’re welcome to it.”
“This place means a lot to me,” Lani said, her voice hoarse. “I would love to stay here.”
“We can fix up both of the houses,” Emma told her, thinking out loud, “and maybe rent out one or the other. Vacation rental, maybe… or maybe not. Even renting to a local family should be more than enough to pay for property taxes and maintenance. But that’s all a ways away.”
“I’m not sure that I could manage it all on my own. Working and taking care of Rory, plus the goats and all? Keeping the jungle from taking over? It’s a lot.”
“It is.” Emma smiled broadly, though she couldn’t have said what it was about this mess that so delighted her.
She leaned back and sipped the delicious tea that Lani had made. It made her think of her big sister, both the homegrown tea and the comfortable silence. The māmaki tasted similar to the nettle that Toni used as a base in so many of her mixes. She loved her sister’s blends, but this simple pairing fresh from their own backyard was something else entirely.
“Anyway,” Lani said after a while, “I like having you here.”
“Ditto.” Emma took a deep breath of the warm, bright lemongrass steam. “Kai and I will be here for a while yet. For right now, this is where we need to be.”
15
Lani
Hurricane it was not, but the storm did some damage.
The ground was littered with broken branches, and there were huge damp spots on the ceiling. The roof was off of the hen house, but the chickens had gotten through just fine. They’d sheltered in the huge banyan tree near the back of the property, a monster of a thing so thick and wide that the ground around its twisting trunk was barely damp.
