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AS SOON AS MEDEIROS left, I went for the wine. Donnie remained at the table, contemplating his folded hands.
“So that went as well as it could have.” I brought my brimming furikake glass and sat back down next to him.
“I think you saved him, Molly,” Donnie said quietly. “Thank you.”
“You can thank me by telling him not to talk to me in that gross way.”
“What gross thing did he say?”
“Doesn’t matter,” I sighed. I knew Donnie had a blind spot when it came to his beloved son. He apparently had a deaf spot, too. “Anyway, happier topic. I have some good news.”
“I know you do.” He smiled for the first time that evening. He stood up and went to the kitchen. I heard a loud bang, like a gunshot. Donnie returned to the table holding the smoking champagne bottle in one hand and two glasses in the other. They were the narrow kind that let the imbiber watch the little bubbles floating up to the surface.
“Real champagne glasses. Where did you get them?”
“Hagiwara’s Specialty Liquors.” Donnie was grinning. “Same place I got the champagne. Congratulations on earning tenure.”
“Tenure was my big news. How did you know?”
“No secrets in Mahina.” He set the glasses down on the table and poured. “This is a very gossipy place. Like you said.”
“Donnie, listen. I have to tell you something. You’ll probably think less of me, but, okay, come sit next to me.”
I selected the picture gallery on my phone and pulled up the photo of the old cartoon. Donnie took out his reading glasses and peered at the screen.
“This was on a newspaper page wrapped around the teapot. In the box of old silver-plate.”
“It’s supposed to be Queen Liliuokalani?”
“The cartoonist was Mary Pfaff, the Beatrix Potter of Hawaii. And the grandmother of our most promising donor.”
I described how I had used this embarrassing information to pressure Marshall Dixon into supporting my tenure bid.
“And that’s how I got tenure,” I said, when I had spun the whole sordid story. “Now you know your wife is a blackmailing fraud.”
“You’re not a fraud. Although the cartoon is, to use your word, gross.”
“The cartoon saved my job. But it’s kind of ruined Alice Mongoose for me.”
“Was this before her children’s books?”
“Yes. The overthrow was in 1893, right? I don’t think the first Alice Mongoose book was printed until after World War 1.”
“Mary Pfaff was young. Maybe the cartoon wasn’t even her idea. Maybe she had to make some compromises to get her career started.”
“Well, that’s a thing that happens, yes.”
“I don’t think you need to throw away the old t-shirt you like. Or those Alice Mongoose refrigerator magnets.”
“The socks, the earrings, my Alistair Rat alarm clock...” I pushed my wine aside and took a sip of champagne. It tasted dry and prickly.
“What is the appeal of Alice Mongoose for you? I always thought it was just popular in Hawaii. Did you get the books on the mainland?”
“I never heard of her until I moved here. You must’ve grown up with the stories, though.”
“I think a lot of kids around here grew up with their parents reading the books to them. I didn’t exactly have that kind of—I’ve seen the characters, but I don’t know the stories too well.”
“Alice Mongoose is based on when the mongoose was brought into Hawaii to get rid of the rats. But it didn’t work out because the rats were nocturnal, so the mongoose were asleep when the rats were out and about.”
“Uh huh. We learned about it in school.”
“Exactly. So the story goes, Alice is supposed to find and kill rats, right? But Alice isn’t cut out to be a killer. She wears pearls and gloves and a print dress and a little cloche hat, and she loves to sit down at a properly set table to a meal of eggs. When she eats, she picks up a whole egg in her little mongoose hands and nibbles on it. It’s cute.”
Donnie refilled my champagne glass. “And then?”
“So the first rat she meets is Alistair. She’s heard all about how rats are vicious and aggressive, but Alistair is very polite and gentle, and he wears a shiny little top hat, and they start to talk, and he invites her to breakfast, which for him is dinner, because she’s waking up at the same time he’s going to bed. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Anyway, they become good friends, and they have a series of adventures and little misunderstandings. They’re kind of like Frog and Toad, have you ever read Frog and Toad?”
Donnie shook his head.
“There’s this really touching illustration of when Alice first arrives on the Hamakua Coast. You see her from the back, standing on the bluff in her little print dress with her tiny steamer trunks and hatboxes piled next to her. The landscape is so vast, and she’s so tiny, and she’s holding one of her hatboxes in one hand and looking up at Mauna Kea. This is how good Mary Pfaff’s illustrations are. You can see it in her little mongoose body, her posture, the mixture of trepidation and courage. It’s such a sweet, innocent little world they live in, Alice Mongoose and Alistair Rat.”
“Alice Mongoose finds herself in an unfamiliar situation.” Donnie nodded. “But she makes the best of it, stays true to herself, and ends up finding friendship and happiness. I can see why you like her.”
“Alice Mongoose never has to threaten anyone in order to keep her job. Oh, Donnie, you must be so disappointed in me. It’s just, I didn’t know what else to do.”
“I’m not disappointed at all. Anyway, I already knew about it.”
I set my half-full glass down and stared at my husband. He did, in fact, look completely unruffled.
“Everything I just told you? You already knew?”
“Well, I hadn’t seen the cartoon before, but I heard about it.” Donnie placed his hand on mine. “Look, Molly, sometimes in business you don’t have the option of making the right decision. All you can do is make the less-wrong decision. And that’s what you did. You deserved tenure. The process wasn’t working, and you did what you had to do.”
“Oh my gosh. How many people know about this? Everyone must hate me.”
Donnie laughed. “I don’t think so. They appreciate you handling things discreetly. You didn’t make a big fuss when things weren’t going your way.”
I exhaled with relief and drained my champagne glass. “Hey, as long as we’re being all honest and everything. Why were you sitting in an empty classroom with Nicole Nixon? And being so secretive about it?”
“Ah.” He took a sip of champagne. “I didn’t want to tell you right away in case it didn’t work out.”
“But now you will tell me, right?”
“I’m taking an English literature class.”
“Really? A class with one student?”
“No, there’s about twenty students.”
“I happened to walk by the classroom Wednesday, and it was just you in there with Nicole Nixon.”
“That must’ve been the twelfth. All of us have been meeting with the teacher individually to talk about our annotated bibliographies.”
“Is that why you were in the library?”
“Yes. I’m a registered Mahina State student now, with full library privileges. You have some good databases there. I wish I’d known about them earlier.”
“The movies, then? Were they for the class, too? Henry the Fifth, and Becket?”
“Yes. They were homework. But it was fun to watch with you. Have you eaten?”
“No, I haven’t. And I’m getting a little lightheaded from the champagne.”
“I made some chicken cacciatore.” Donnie got up. “I’ll heat it up for us.”
“Thank you. So, why are you taking an English literature class, of all things?”
“I don’t like it when someone uses an expression, or makes a reference, and I don’t understand it. So I’m fixing that. Becoming a better-rounded person. How hungry are you? Should I heat up the whole thing?”
“Just one piece for me. I’m already well rounded enough.”