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“IS THIS THE SONG ABOUT the sentient amoeba? Do we have to listen to this?”
Emma’s criticism of my musical taste was starting to annoy me. I nudged the volume up.
“Anyway,” she continued, raising her voice to compete with the increased noise level, “what’s your plan for meeting Donnie?”
“We didn’t set a specific time. I guess we’re going to play it by ear.”
“He’s coming all the way across the island just to see you and you didn’t bother to make any plans? Molly, you gotta call him right now and figure out when you’re gonna get together. You don’t want this whole weekend to go to waste. Pull over, I’ll drive.”
“Are you sure? It’s not your turn yet.”
“Your lifelong happiness is at stake here,” Emma said. “It’s worth it to me.”
“Wow, okay. Thanks!”
We pulled over. On either side of the narrow strip of road, green-tinged scrub stretched to the horizon, punctuated here and there by skinny, dark green ohia trees. Emma and I climbed out and switched places while Yoshi continued to snore in the back seat. Emma settled into the driver’s seat and plugged her phone into the sound system. Gentle slack key guitar strumming filled the car.
“That was sneaky, Emma.”
“Sorry, I couldn’t take any more of your music, no offense. Every song on your playlist is so angry! It was starting to stress me out.”
She waited until the road was clear and pulled back out.
“It’s not angry-angry,” I said. “It’s satirical, self-deprecating angry. It’s—”
My phone hummed. Donnie was calling.
“See?” Emma said. “Good thing you’re not driving.”
Donnie hadn’t left Mahina yet. He sounded like he wasn’t in a very good mood.
“Are you going to be able to come out?” I asked him.
“Sure. I’ll be there. I just have to take care of some things first.”
I thought of something that might lift his spirits.
“Oh, Donnie, I forgot to tell you. When I saw Davison the other day at my office? He mentioned the new bedroom furniture you got him. He seemed to like it very much. So, success, right?”
I thought that would cheer him up, but it seemed to make his mood even worse.
“Davison only has a short time in Mahina. I thought I’d get a chance to spend some time with him, but I’ve hardly seen him at all.”
“Oh. He’s still in town? Hasn't he gone back to the mainland yet? Well, maybe he wanted to reconnect with his old friends or something?”
“No, I think Davison’s met a girl. At least, that’s what I gathered from the few words we exchanged the one time he stopped by the house.”
“He’s only been home once?”
“After I picked him up at the airport, he went to campus to get some paperwork. Then he came by to get his overnight bag. That’s the last time I saw him. It wasn’t easy to find a flight for him this time of year, with school starting. Fares are really high. And my customers are spending less per order and less overall than they were last year.”
“Oh.” I had no idea what else to say. Your kid’s kind of a jerk, Donnie. Everyone seems to see it except you.
“The competition isn’t sitting still, either, Molly. Merrie Musubis just added a new Mexican food line.”
“I don’t think that’ll last. Once the novelty wears off, I’m sure your customers will be back.”
I didn’t tell him I’d actually tried Merrie Musubis’ new Carlos Spamtana Burrito. It was awful. Whoever came up with the recipe was apparently unfamiliar with the idea of spices. You can’t throw together pasty unseasoned refried beans and Spam chunks and call it a day.
“Davison doesn’t care how hard it was to get him a ticket, how long it’s been since I’ve seen him,” Donnie went on. “He gets distracted by a shiny object, and off he goes.”
“Mm,” I nodded.
“He’s as bad as Sherry,” Donnie said.
“Oh, tell me about it. Wait, what?”
“He hasn’t even had a chance to spend the night in his new room.”
“Did you say he’s as bad as Sherry?” I asked.
Emma shot me a quizzical look.
“Yes, I did,” he said. “Sherry.”
The long silence made me wonder if the call had been dropped. Finally, Donnie said,
“She left on Davison’s eighth birthday.”
“Oh.”
“Did I tell you about this already?”
“No.”
All I knew was that Donnie was a divorced single father. He had never told me anything about his ex. I’d been dying to find out more, but I was never able to figure out a tactful way to ask.
“What happened?” I prodded.
Donnie went quiet again, and for a moment I feared I had pushed too hard. But then he said,
“I never saw it coming, Molly. The day started out perfectly normal. We’d had a disagreement about Davison’s birthday cake. I thought at the time she was overreacting. Now I realize she was looking for an excuse.”
Maybe it was easier for him to open up on the telephone, rather than face to face. Awkward as it was, I could understand it.
“She walked out at eleven-oh-two,” he said. “Just walked out and closed the door.”
“So what did you do?”
Donnie exhaled.
“I let Davison open his birthday presents, and we waited for her to come back. She didn’t. I left Davison with a neighbor and drove around town trying to find her.”
“Her name was Sherry?” I asked, stupidly.
“Yes. It was short for Sherrine. Unusual name.”
“Sherrine?”
I realized I was starting to sound like some not-very-intelligent artificial intelligence program. Maybe it would be better if I stopped talking.
“I always suspected she had a—had someone else. I was working long hours at the restaurant and we didn’t get to spend much time with one another. But suspecting is one thing. I never thought she was going to act on it. I was wrong. And I...she wouldn’t change her mind.”
I tried to picture a desperate Donnie pursuing Sherry all over town and begging her to come back. It didn’t square at all with the Donnie I knew. I couldn’t imagine Donnie being that infatuated with me. Our relationship, I realized, felt a little like Donnie was sizing me up as a potential business partner. Not falling for me. More like assessing me. On the bright side, so far I seemed to be meeting the benchmarks.
“I stopped by the ice cream shop on the way back home,” he said. “I bought Davison the biggest cake they had. It had little orange basketballs on it, made out of frosting. Davison and I ate ice cream cake and watched Davison’s favorite cartoons over and over.”
“Donnie, I’m so sorry. How did you explain all this to Davison?”
“I told him, Mama had to go away.”
I wondered whether I should say something to Donnie about Davison’s new paramour. But what would I tell him? It would all be speculation anyway. No, the best course of action was to keep my mouth shut. It was probably an unfortunate coincidence about the name.
“Do you think Davison still remembers any of it?” I asked. How much had Sherry changed over the years, I wondered? Davison had obviously been drawn to her.
“I don’t know. He never talks about it. Sorry, Molly. I don’t know how we got onto this. Hey. Are you reading anything good?”
Donnie knows I’m usually reading something, and I sympathized with his wanting to change the subject. But of all of the hundreds of books I’d read in my life, the only title I could recall at the moment was Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones.