For starters, they’re not moving to a brand new place. It’ll be old home week for Little Dog, with familiar scents and the old haunts. Skinny had a couple months there and did fine. She’ll do better on a slower regimen, now that she’s pushing sixteen.
Not only that, she got the Waikiki hooker treatment leaving LA, not exactly an ass reaming, but every groupie in LA sure as hell wanted to kiss her tuchas. Well, maybe not every groupie — that could chap a cat’s ass — but everyone in wishing distance.
Packing up one more time is a challenge. It’s different than a duffle, a camera case and some snacks. Now it’s boxes, crates and kid stuff. Then again, most of it is still packed. The reasons for not fully moving into and absorbing the new home are multi-layered. It’s hard to finger the difference between the Hawaii place and the old place in upper LA, each with its marble, granite, glass and steel. But the context has changed. LA has constant audio backdrop, freeway noise in the near, middle or far distance. The Hawaii place sounds like surf in small, medium or large. Maybe surf sounds like traffic.
Or maybe shallow friendliness in LA was better than growing pains in Hawaii.
Call it what you will. Minna’s family had gone along through the aloha motions, trying to fit in and connect as true ‘ohana should, talking goo goo to the kids, teaching them da kine platitudes and pidgin meaning or non-meaning, playing with the dog and admiring the indomitable cat. And it had gone well enough, which wasn’t enough, leaving a guy recently from LA to ask his wife, “Okay. Now what?” Well, it’s a tough question to a modern woman also immersed in pop culture, fast pace and stimulation, a woman willing to adapt to the needs of her family, a woman recently burdened by a major move — a woman left with no better answer than a question of her own.
“What, you think Tahiti would be better?”
“Yes. It’s French.”
“Why didn’t you go to France in the first place?”
Well, he didn’t go because it wasn’t tropical, and he didn’t have the visa or enough money to risk failure in a place with so little tourism compared to Hawaii, and he didn’t speak French and on and on, till he trumps her resistance with, “And because. I wouldn’t have met you.”
With minimal loss on a quick resale, because he bought it right, they off the beachfront monolith. It doesn’t feel like home. For hardly over a million they get a much smaller place on the island of their convergence, a high-ceilinged fare of native stock, lashed in primitive beauty, with two boudoirs, two salles de bains et un bureau pour Ravid.
Calling it pas mal feels French and safe. Ravid watches residents use the shallows to cool in the heat of the day. He picks up their trash to no avail, so he picks up when they can watch, to some avail, so he speaks to those who throw stuff on the ground or in the water. This too is French; he tells them to stop, to love their sea as readily as they would use it.
A month or so in, on the shallow bluff next door, he sees elderly Tahitians greeting men who carry clipboards and blueprints. He walks over and overhears the elders inviting the men to a feast there, later that day, to better express ia orana and thanks for the opportunity the men offer: money, jobs and security. Then they offer regrets: but no, you cannot build here.
Ravid wants to offer money for legal defense or any expense but on second thought introduces himself with a pledge of support for their efforts.
He stops shaving. He sets buoys to block the reef from anchoring boats and pedestrians. He gets a jaundiced eye aimed his way but no complaints. He watches the coral recover as his babies turn into children, as his dog trades the fear of separation for the confidence of a stable home. The cat sleeps more, plays less and watches her man.
Old friends come again, drawn nigh for company and comfort into next phases. Monique and Cosima are an item but live separately, to better stand each other. Moeava works his boat and gets occasional counsel from both women, and sometimes from Monique alone, when she’s feeling uncertain or experimental or nostalgic. Who can tell?
Hereata becomes tutu to the children out of love and defense against solitude. She cares for them as she has cared for her own. Yet she pines, as if her chevalier may still arrive. Minna is grateful again for a babysitter, and tolerant if Ravid takes longer than he should in seeing the sitter home. Hereata is sixty-five, or six, and doesn’t mind rubbing his shoulders, and who knows what else, or cares?
Ravid sees more and reacts less; no vehicle proclaims Born & Raised, and nobody asks, How long have you been here? With no development or social resentment to taint the natural beauty or him, he wonders: now what? Well, there’s the more perfect shot, for starters As if reading his thoughts Minna shows him what else for finishers, with natural aptitude for intensive care. She works four shifts a week in Papeete.
She likes to cap the week with a lively distraction, an outing to Taverua reef or the motus — or to the Tuamotus or Papeete for shopping and late lunch, where Ravid will go whole frog on a bifteck frites et une bouteille du vin blanc. He’ll savor the decadent repast, hoping the donor cow died quickly and never fed on fishmeal strip-mined from the oceans, depleting the base of the food chain and thereby reducing all marine species. He’ll smother it in ketchup and watch the kids screaming in and out of vendor stalls, their frites and sammies half eaten. He’ll wonder who they’ll become, and when.
He’ll catch his wife watching him and wonder why and how and if not. She’ll rest her fingers on his arm and whisper, nearly playfully, “This is what became of us.”
He’ll lie down on a bench on the ferry ride home and dream of milestones: surely he’ll still dive at fifty-five and sixty, and he should still be fit at seventy, barring unforeseen illness or weight gain; neither seems likely.
Eighty?
He’ll ponder open ocean, sailfish and a vegetarian diet.
And so a story ends again on a satisfied note, with a primary character dreaming of who his children might grow up to be. He sees Moeava at the helm, following bubbles and a bird frenzy over sailfish working the bait ball from below. Awaiting capture in the foray are several compositions of alertness and curiosity. A billfish flashes in the electric moment, sail arched, lateral line shimmering, body aglow in a rainbow of emotion, electrons, sunbeams and an eye to the lens.
He’ll rise on a discordant note requiring two aspirin, some bicarbonate and a determination that he may one day need to seek a more prudent path.