To Paradise (29 page)

“Let’s see,” said Charles, as they stood in the kitchen together, surveying their options. On the counter, there was a loaf of sourdough bread wrapped in brown paper that Adams had set aside for them, and Charles sawed off slices for both of them before holding his aloft. “To your father,” he said.

To Peter, he responded.

“An early New Year’s toast,” Charles announced: “Six more years until the twenty-first century.”

They touched their pieces of bread against each other, solemnly, and ate. Behind them, the windows rattled from the wind, but they couldn’t feel it themselves—the house was too well made. “Let’s see what Adams saved for us,” Charles said after they had finished, and opened the refrigerator, removing a jar of mayonnaise, a container of cold steak, a jar of mustard, a wedge of cheese. “Jarlsberg,” he said, and then, almost to himself, “Peter’s favorite.”

He put his arms around Charles, and Charles leaned against him, and for a moment they were quiet. It was then that he had a sudden vision of the two of them many years later, in some undated time far into the future. Outside, the world had changed: The streets had been overgrown with weeds, and the cobblestones in the courtyard were shaggy with pampas grass, and the sky was a viscous green, and a creature with rubbery, webbed wings glided past them. A car puffed south down Fifth Avenue, hovering a few inches above the ground, hissing air as it went. The garage was a ruin, half decayed, its bricks soft and cakey, and in the middle of it, thrusting its way through the crumbling roof, grew a mango tree, just like the one that had grown in the front yard of the house where he had once lived with his father, its branches bulbous with fruit. If it wasn’t quite the end of things, then it was close—the fruit was too poisoned to eat; the car was windowless; the air shimmered with oily smoke; the creature had settled atop the building across the street, its talons gripping the parapet, its black eyes searching for something to swoop down upon and devour.

But inside, he and Charles were somehow the same as they were: still healthy, still there, still magically themselves. They were two people in love, and they were making themselves something to eat, and there was plenty of food, and as long as they stayed indoors, together, no harm would come to them. And to their right, at the far end of the kitchen, was a door, and if they opened that door and walked through it, they would find themselves in a replica of this house, except in that house would be Peter, alive and sarcastic and intimidating, and in the house to the right of his would be John and Timothy and Percy, and in the house to the right of theirs, Eden and Teddy, and on and on and on, an unbroken chain of houses, the
people they loved resurrected and restored, an eternity of meals and conversations and arguments and forgivenesses. Together they’d walk through these houses, opening doors, greeting friends, closing doors behind them, until, at last, they’d come to what they somehow knew was the final door. And here they’d pause a moment, squeezing each other’s hands, before turning the knob and entering a kitchen just like their own, the same jade-green walls, the same gilt-edged china in the cupboards, the same framed etchings on the walls, the same soft linen dish towels hung on the same ash-carved pegs, but in which a mango tree was growing, its leaves brushing the ceiling.

And here, sitting on a chair and patiently waiting, would be his father, and when he saw David, he would spring to his feet, his face alight, crying with joy. “My Kawika,” he’d say, “you’ve come for me! You’ve finally come for me!” He wouldn’t hesitate, but would run toward him, while behind him, Charles stood and beamed, watching this final reunion, a father and son finding each other at last.

My son, my Kawika—what are you doing today? I know where you are, because Mama told me: New York. But where in New York, I wonder? And what are you doing there? She said you were working in a law firm, though not a lawyer, but you mustn’t think I’m any less proud of you for that. I visited New York once, did you know that? Yes, it’s true—your papa has some secrets of his own.

I think about you often. When I’m awake, but also when I’m asleep. All of my dreams are about you in one way or another. Sometimes I dream about the time before we went to Lipo-wao-nahele, when we were together in your grandmother’s house, and we used to take our midnight walks. Do you remember those? I would wake you up, and we’d sneak outside. Up O
‘
ahu Avenue to East Manoa Road we’d go, and then up Mohala Way, because one of the houses there had a trumpet bush in its front yard that fascinated you, do you remember this? It had pale-yellow flowers, the color of ivory, that grew upside down and looked like the bell of a cornet. At least that’s what people said. You didn’t agree, however. “The upside-down tulip tree,” you used to call it, and I could never see it any other way after that. Then down Lipioma Way we’d go, and over to Beckwith, and then down Manoa Road, and then home. It’s funny—of all the things I was scared of, I was never scared of the dark. In the dark, everyone was helpless, and, knowing that, that I was just like everyone else, no less, made me feel braver.

I loved those walks of ours. I think you did, too. We had to stop them after you told your teacher about them—you were falling
asleep in class, and your teacher asked why, and you told her it was because of our nighttime walks, and your teacher called me in to see her and I got in trouble. “He’s growing, Mr. Bingham,” she said, “he needs his sleep. You can’t be waking him up in the middle of the night to go on walks.” I felt foolish, but she was kind to me. She could have told your grandmother, but she didn’t. “I just want to spend more time with him,” I told the teacher, and she looked at me in the way that people often did, that made me realize I’d said something wrong, something queer, but finally she had nodded. “You love your son, Mr. Bingham,” she said, “and that’s a wonderful thing. But if you really love him, you’ll let him sleep.” I was embarrassed then, because of course she was right: You were just a child. I had no right to wake you and take you from your bed. The first time I did so, you were confused, but then you grew to expect it, and you would rub your eyes and yawn, but you never complained—you would put on your slippers and take my hand and follow me down the path. I never had to tell you not to tell your grandmother; you already knew not to. Later, I told Edward that I had gotten in trouble with the teacher, and why. “You dumbass,” he said, but in a way so that I knew he wasn’t mad, just frustrated. “They could’ve called Child Services and taken Kawika away for that.” “Could they have?” I asked. It was the worst thing I could imagine. “ ’Course they could’ve,” he said. “But don’t worry. When we go to Lipo-wao-nahele, you can raise Kawika however you want, and no one can say anything about it.”

What else do you remember? All I can do is remember. I can see, a little, but just light and darkness. Do you remember how we used to go to the Chinese cemetery and sit near the monkeypod tree at the top of the hill? We’d lie right on the grass, with our faces turned up to the sun. “Keep your eyes shut,” I’d tell you, but even though we did, we could still see a field of orange, little blobs of black flickering across it like flies. After I told you how vision worked, you asked me if you were seeing the back of your eye, and I told you that maybe you were. Anyway, it’s like that—I can see color and those blobs, but not much else. When they take me outdoors, though, they put sunglasses on me first. This is because, according to one of the
doctors here, I should still be able to see—there’s nothing wrong with my eyes, as such, and so they need to be protected. Until recently, your grandmother used to bring pictures of you, which she’d hold in front of me, so close that the paper tickled against my nose. “Look at him, Wika,” she’d say. “
Look
at him. Stop this nonsense. Don’t you want to see pictures of your son?” Of course I did, and I tried, I tried hard. But I could never see more than the outline of the square of paper, maybe the dark of your hair. Or maybe it wasn’t a picture of you at all that she was showing me. Maybe it was a picture of a cat, or a mushroom. I couldn’t tell the difference. The point is that I never see everything new; everything I see I’ve seen before.

But although I can’t see, I
can
hear. Most of it doesn’t make much sense to me, not because I can’t understand it, exactly, but because I’m so often asleep that it’s difficult for me to keep track of what I’m actually hearing and what I’m imagining. And sometimes when I’m trying to figure it out, I fall asleep again, and then, when I wake next, I’m more confused—assuming I can recall what I was trying to sort out before I fell asleep, I by then don’t know whether I really heard what I thought I heard, or whether I had been hallucinating. Your being in New York, for example: I woke with the strong feeling you were there. But were you, really? Had someone told me that, or had I invented it? I thought and thought, so hard that I could hear myself begin to whimper with frustration and confusion, and then someone came into my room, and then there was blankness. When I woke again, I remembered only that I had been upset, and it wasn’t until later that I remembered why. I had no way to ask whether you were in New York or not, of course, and so I just had to wait until someone—your grandmother—came to visit me again, and hope that she would mention you. And eventually, she did come, and said that she’d gotten a letter from you, and that the weather in New York was hot, hot and rainy, and that you wanted me to get better. Now I suppose you’re wondering how I knew that this was actually happening, that I wasn’t dreaming it, and the answer is because that day I could smell the flowers your grandmother was wearing. Do you remember how, when the pakalana vine was in bloom, she’d send you to the side of the house to pick a few clusters, and then
she’d put them in that little silver brooch she had, the one shaped like a vase that could actually hold a few blossoms? That was how I knew it was real, and also that it was summer, because pakalana only blooms in summer. It’s also why, whenever I think of you, and New York, I smell pakalana.

I don’t know how long you’ve been away. I think it must be a very long time. Years. Maybe even a decade. But then I realize that, if that’s so, it means that I’ve been here, in this place, for years, maybe even a decade. And then I can hear myself beginning to moan, louder and louder, and thrash my arms and legs, and piss myself, and then I can hear the sound of people running toward me, and sometimes I hear them say my name: “Wika. Wika, you need to calm down. You need to calm down, Wika.” Wika: They only call me Wika. No one here calls me Mr. Bingham unless your grandmother is visiting. But that’s fine. It never felt right, being called Mr. Bingham.

But I can’t calm down, because now I’m thinking about how I’ll never get out of here, about how my life—my entire life—has been spent in places I can’t escape: Your grandmother’s house. Lipo-wao-nahele. And now here. This island. I could never really leave. But you did. You got away.

And so I keep making the sounds I can, slapping away their hands, wailing over their attempts to soothe me, and I keep doing it until I feel the medication entering my veins, warming my body, calming my heart, delivering me back to a state of forgetting.

I want to talk to you, my son, my Kawika, though I know you will never hear me, as I will never be able to say any of this aloud to you, not anymore. But I want to talk to you about everything that happened, and try to explain to you why I did what I did.

You have never visited me. I know this, and yet I also don’t. Sometimes I’m able to pretend that you
have
visited me, that I’m just confused. But I know you haven’t. I don’t know what your voice sounds like anymore; I don’t know what you smell like. The image I have of you is from when you were fifteen, and leaving me after one of our weekends together, and I didn’t know—maybe you didn’t,
either, maybe you still loved me a little then, despite everything—that I would never see you again. Of course this makes me sad. Not just for my sake—but for yours as well. Because you have a father who is both alive and yet not, and yet you are still a young man, and a young man needs his father.

I can’t tell you exactly where I am, because I don’t know. Sometimes I imagine I must be on Tantalus, high up in the forest, because it’s cool and rainy and very quiet, but I could also be in Nu
‘
uanu, or even in Manoa. I do know I’m not at our house, because this place doesn’t smell like our house. For a long time I thought I was in a hospital, but it doesn’t smell like a hospital, either. But there are doctors and nurses and orderlies, and they all take care of me.

For a long time I didn’t leave my bed at all, and then they started making me. “C’mon, Wika,” a man’s voice would say. “C’mon, bruddah.” And I could feel a hand on my back, helping me sit, and then four hands on me, two wrapped around my waist, lifting me up and setting me down again. Then I was being pushed, and I could feel that we had left the building, I could feel the sun on my neck. One of the hands tipped my chin up; I closed my eyes. “That feels good, doesn’t it, Wika?” said the voice. But then he let go of my chin and my head flopped forward again. Now when they take me around the building or out to the garden, they strap something around my forehead so that my head stays in place. Sometimes a woman comes and moves my arms and legs and talks to me. She bends and straightens each limb, and then she rubs me before turning me onto my stomach and kneading my back. There would have been a time when that would have made me embarrassed, to be lying there without any clothes on and with a strange woman touching me, but now I don’t mind. Her name is Rosemary, and as she massages me, she talks about her day and her family: her husband, who’s an accountant; her son and daughter, who’re still in elementary school. Occasionally, she’ll say something that makes me realize how much time has passed, but then, later, I get confused because—once again—I don’t know if she actually said it or if I just made it up. Did the Berlin Wall fall, or did it not? Are there now colonies on Mars, or are there not? Did Edward triumph after all, and has the monarchy been restored,
and I named king of the Hawaiian islands, and my mother the queen regent, or has it not? One time she said something about you, about my son, and I became agitated and she had to buzz for help, and since then she’s never mentioned you again.

Today I thought of you as they were feeding me my dinner. Everything I eat is soft, because sometimes I think too much about swallowing and then I start panicking and gagging, but if I don’t have to chew I think about it less. Dinner was congee with preserved egg and scallions, which is one of the dishes I used to have Jane make you when you were sick—one of the dishes she made me when I was a child. It was one of my father’s favorites as well, although he liked his with boiled chicken.

I think Jane is dead. Matthew, too. No one has told me this, but I know, because they used to come visit me and now they don’t. Don’t ask me how long ago, or how; I wouldn’t be able to tell you. But they were old—older than your grandmother. I once overheard her telling you that her father had given her Jane and Matthew as a wedding present: two servants from her father’s household that would help her run her own. But that isn’t true. Jane and Matthew were in the house well before your grandmother joined it. And besides, by that point her father didn’t have the money for a single servant, much less two, much less two he could give away. And if he had, it’s unlikely he would have given them to her, when legally she wasn’t even related to him by blood.

I never knew what to do when I heard your grandmother tell you things that weren’t true. I didn’t want to contradict her. I knew better. And I wanted you to trust her, and to love her—I wanted things to be easier for you than they were for me, and that meant having a good relationship with her. I worked hard to make that happen, and I think I succeeded, which means I didn’t completely fail you; I made sure your grandmother loved you. But now you are grown, grown and safe and living in New York, and I feel I can tell you the truth.

I will say this for your grandmother: She took nothing she had for granted. What she had she had fought for and earned, and her life was dedicated to ensuring it never slipped away from her. She
raised me to feel the opposite, and yet there were times I think she felt resentful that I did, even though it had been her intention. She never resented my father for it, and yet she resented me, because I was partially hers, and I should therefore be aware of how precarious my position was, because then her own anxiety would feel less lonely. We often end up resenting our children when they achieve what we’ve wished for them—although this isn’t my way of saying that I resent you, even though my only wish was that you grow up and leave me behind.

About my father I have little to say that you don’t already know. I was already eight, almost nine, when he died, and yet I have few memories of him—he is a blurred, jovial presence, sporty and hearty, swinging me up in the air when he came home from work, dangling me upside down as I squealed, trying and failing to teach me how to hit a ball. I wasn’t like him, but he didn’t seem dissatisfied with me, the way I knew my mother to be from almost the time I had a sense of her opinions at all; I liked reading, and he would call me “Professor,” never sarcastically, even though what I liked to read were just comic books. “This is Wika, the reader in the family,” he’d introduce me to acquaintances, and I would feel embarrassed, because I knew that I was reading nothing important, that I didn’t really have the right to call myself a reader. But it hadn’t mattered to him; if I had ridden horses, I would have been the Rider, and if I had played tennis I would have been the Athlete, and it wouldn’t have made a difference if I had distinguished myself or not.