Richard Howards invites us back to his house after he finishes his lunch. He has rented a motor scooter, not quite his orange Vespa back in Washington State, but he is obviously right at home on it. His shirt flaps as he drives. When we get back to Dan Shugman’s place, there’s a golf cart parked in the driveway, and some old guy who turns out to be Dan Shugman himself.
“Just seeing that you’ve got everything you need,” he says. “And dropping off those extra keys I promised. Hey, William.”
Dan Shugman’s wearing crispy white old-guy shorts and a plaid shirt. He’s got bright blue eyes and silver, straight Republican hair. But his twinkle is nonpartisan. You can tell he thinks the world is a fine place to play within. I like Dan Shugman right off.
“Come on in.” Richard Howards is happy. “Dogs, too. My humble abode.” He steps aside.
“Not too humble,” Dan Shugman says. We step in, and the room is wide and bright. The windows look over a pool, and beyond, the sea. It feels good in here. I could sit and look out this window forever. “Looks so odd without the furniture,” Dan Shugman says. “We had a piano over there.” He points to the large windows. You can see the round indents from the piano legs still in the carpet.
“It’s a beautiful place,” I say.
“Now you won’t worry that I gave away my last dime and am sleeping in a dim room on a thin mattress.”
“I hereby stop worrying,” I say. Keiko sits by my heels.
“You play the piano?” Dad asks Dan Shugman.
“Hell, no. No one played. Stupidest thing in the world, having pianos you don’t play and dining room tables you don’t sit at and china you look at.”
“Big jewelry you never wear, or maybe worse, do wear,” Richard Howards says.
“You’ve got an ex-wife,” Dan Shugman says.
“And ex-jewelry,” Richard Howards laughs. He’s standing in front of the refrigerator. There’s not much in there, I can see. Bottles of Henry Weinhard’s Private Reserve, some cans of 7UP, several Styrofoam containers of leftovers. He hands Dad and Dan a beer, me a 7UP. I crack open the top, take a cool sip.
“I got some ex-diamonds,” Dan Shugman says. “The wife would pick ’em out and I’d write the check.” Dan Shugman’s thumb and forefinger make pen squiggles in the air.
“Ex–exercise equipment,” Richard Howards says.
“Amazing the shit you accumulate,” Dad says. He’s happy here too. “We have a teak hook to hang bananas on. At what moment in your life do you think you gotta have a teak hook to hang bananas on?” He takes a swog of beer.
“Right about the time you buy the ‘I Heart My Pekinese’ golf sweater,” Dan Shugman says. “Sorry, all, but I’ve got to run.”
Out the front windows I can see Dan Shugman drive away in his golf cart. We sit in Richard Howards’s empty living room and talk until Dad finishes his beer and we come to that winding-down place, that feeling of a battery run down, when you know it’s time to go. Dad and Richard Howards are pals now. Dad’s promised to show him the place with the best Scotch in town. Richard Howards shakes Dad’s hand and gives him a clap on the back.
“See, Indigo Skye?” Richard Howards says. “You give it up and it all comes your way.”
I guess it’s true, because the Vespa guy is as light as a soda bubble. You can feel the good air in and around him. He is a wide sky, the same wide sky he can look at every morning and every night now. I nod. He takes my hand and we shake, and then I give up on that and give him a hug. You never know, you see, when or where you will stumble on a sudden connection, a lifelong bond with another human being. A hundred people can sit down in a booth and it will be eggs and toast. And another one, just one, will sit down and will change your life, be monumental with just coffee.
“Thank you,” I say. The words are so small.
“Thank you,” he says. “If it weren’t for you, I might still be ingesting four thousand toxic chemicals.”
“Stay away from those nasty things,” I say.
“Never again,” says the Vespa guy.
The next day, my plane doesn’t leave until late afternoon. There’s one more thing Dad wants to do with me, he says. So we put on our swimsuits that morning, leave Jennifer behind with her magazine and her Special K. Keiko’s got to stay behind, because we’ll be in the water. Dad’s got the gear in his trunk already.
The beach where Dad finally parks is spotted with Dr. Seuss–ish beings with masks and snorkels and flippers, bodies of various shapes—large, bloated stomachs and tiny flat ones, muscled brown chests and bright pomegranate shoulders, noses smeared with streaks of white lotion. It’s an I-don’t-care beach, a beach of equals, a beach with a higher purpose than showing one perfect body to another perfect body. In the water the backs of people float along the surface, the underside of flippers making an occasional showy flap, the curve of snorkels pointing skyward.
I’m a little afraid of snorkeling, I admit. There’s a very rational (I think) fear of trying to breathe underwater, and then the strangeness of oversize feet, and the occasional bursts of salt water in the mouth, and the coordination of all of the above. I did it once before when Severin and Bex and I visited, and even Bex, who’s not the best swimmer, was paddling around fine while I was busy repeating the don’t panic, don’t panic mantra. I could stay under there only awhile before I’d flail around with the sudden splashy realization that I was doing something unnatural.
“So I’m going to give your mom the name of a financial adviser I know over there. He’s a great guy, you can trust him, even if he’s…boring, okay? So don’t give him trouble for being boring, Indigo. We need boring people in the world too, or else no one would be there to do our taxes.”
“Okay,” I say, because I don’t know shit about financial advisers or accountants or banking. Mom set up a savings account for me years ago, and before last year when I started working at Carrera’s, I had all of about twenty-six bucks in there. I’ve got maybe five hundred now, enough to pay for maybe a few college textbooks if I change my mind about going, not enough for college itself. Certainly not enough to interest a boring accountant.
We sit on a rocky beach and Dad puts on his flippers, sliding his thumb under his heel with a thwap of rubber against skin. The mask is stuck on his forehead, so he looks like he’s some kind of a large insect. “And I don’t have any great advice for you, In. I wish I did. I want to say…stay true to yourself, but I know you’ll laugh.”
“Only because you look like a fly,” I say. “I’m not worrying about staying true to myself. I know myself pretty well.”
“Money changes things, In.”
“What’s all the ooh-ahh about money and change? It’s like it’s some voodoo curse. I plan on being me with more money.”
“Okay, In.”
“I don’t see why that’s not possible.”
“I never had a lot of it, okay? But even when I had maybe more than average? It makes you see things differently. Like yourself. What you expect from other people.” He’s tucking his keys and our sun lotion and shoes under three layers of towels, protection against marauding thieves.
“I will stand true against the forces of e-vil,” I say in a superhero voice.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” he says. He’s still tucking and hiding. “Not to say there’s some kind of glory to being poor, because there isn’t. There’s nothing glorious about fear.” Dad stands, brushes the sand off the butt of his swimsuit. “Just that for some reason, money can make you expect certain things, owed certain things. And some people think they’re owed them just by virtue of having, not by virtue of earning. I guess that’s the easiest way to put it. Are you ever going to put your flippers on?”
“Flippers are the most ridiculous thing one could put on their body,” I say.
“Rainbow wig,” Dad suggests.
“Bowling shoes,” I say. I snap the flippers on, and Dad holds out his hand to help me stand. We flap, flap down to the water’s edge, balancing with arms out like tightrope walkers, as everyone around does a version of the same act.
Dad gets there before I do. His feet are in the water, and he turns to wait for me. It’s just another blue-sky day in Hawaii, and the black lava cove we’re in bends around us. “Here’s my great advice,” he says. He reaches out his hand, and I take it, hobbling the last few steps. “When it seems like too much, remember, this is the real world. Nature. Under here, no one cares about money, or about what race you are, or what car you drive. It’s just another day of everyone swimming different directions, looking for food, staying well, being beautiful.”
“One, two, three,” I say, and we dive. It’s the only way to do it, because no matter how warm the water is, diving in is always oh-shit cold.
At first, it’s just murky green, small bits of floating algae, Dad’s legs, the color of someone else’s swimsuit going past. I keep focused on Dad (don’t panic, don’t panic), push my fins against the push back of the water. I follow, and then suddenly, right there below us, is a school of fish, bright yellow, and a few orange striped ones (clown fish, I think), and I remember all this, the unreal National Geographic thrill, the am-I-really-here astonishment, the creepy unease that a fish might swim against your bare legs, mixed with complete, goose-bumpy wonder. Dad’s hair is serpent-wild, and he’s gesturing to the fish below as if I could miss them. I nod, not that he can see me. I hear my own Darth Vader breathing, try to forget that I do, and then, with a few pushes of my legs, there’s another color—blue like you’ve never seen blue, narrow fish with the vibrancy and shine of a first-place ribbon. And then a sad, scary guy, a spiky ugly brown puffer fish, headed right my way. I thrash around in sudden panic, flail my legs around, pop my head from the water. It seems so deep, but it’s really shallow where we are. I can stand. The beach is right there—not a thousand worlds away like it seemed it would be. There’s our rolled-up towels, that kid throwing rocks while his mom lies back on her towel with one eye peeking halfway open.
Dad stands beside me. I raise my mask. “That was amazing!”
He takes the rubber piece from his mouth. “Isn’t it? It is amazing, each and every time.”
“That puffer fish was coming right at me.”
“He’s more afraid of you than—”
“Don’t even try that line on me. Let’s go under again,” I say.
We duck down again, and I follow Dad where he leads. It is up and down again, up and down, through my moments of panicky standing. We go one more time down, and Dad is pointing to sea anemones hiding in the rocks, when I see something round and large, heading past with purpose, wide feet paddling peacefully. I cannot believe my eyes; no, I cannot, because it is a sea turtle. A real, alive sea turtle swimming past in his own ocean home. I want to shout, do my flailing routine, but Dad takes my hand and for a moment we swim behind the turtle, giving him polite distance, paddle in his bubbly wake. And then he makes a right turn and he is gone, faster than us, the speed he’s learned from being ancient.
I paddle back quickly to where I can stand, fling off my mask. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”
Dad’s mask is on his forehead. His eyes are bright. “The real world, In,” he says.
Jennifer stands with Dad at the airport, by his side. She hugs me good-bye, and I know I’ll be taking her perfume home with me as a parting gift. Dad hugs me too. He holds my arms, looks at me hard. This is the first time I’ve been with him by myself, without Severin or Bex. It wasn’t us kids and Dad this time, just me and him, two people. His eyes are wet. I think he might cry. I kiss his cheek.
“I love you,” I say. It’s true, I realize.
“I love you,” he says. And that is true too, I know.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he says.
They stand there together when I leave, and when I look back over my shoulder to wave, they are still standing there. Jennifer is fishing for something in her purse, already moving beyond my visit, back to her own life, but Dad just stands there watching me, one hand tucked under his arm, the other cupping the side of his face. He sees me turn, puts his fingers to his lips, sends a kiss my way.
My eyes are hot with tears. That’s my dad there. See? I am leaving him to go back to his life, of pineapple juice and Jennifer’s paintbrushes and Neal and surfboards and windsurfers and Wade the bartender and the devoted Keiko. This time, I am leaving him behind. And I make a little vow then, to myself. To not let the backs and forths of forgiveness interrupt the steadiness of love. Dogs go on doing their job and we don’t stop to notice, but sometimes, so do people. Maybe I didn’t notice it before, but Dad was there, he was, his eyes never leaving my door. It was time, I guess, to let him in.