“Did I?” said Amé, scratching the side of her nose. She stared off into space thinking it over, like a scene out of Hitchcock. Reality recedes until you can’t tell who’s sane and who’s not.
“Well, it doesn’t matter. I’m incredibly hungry,” she said. “You don’t mind if I’ve already eaten, do you?”
“No, I don’t mind,” laughed her poet lover. “It’s your stomach, not mine. And if you want to eat, I say you should eat as much as you want. Appetite’s a good thing. It’s always that way with you. When your work’s going well, you get an appetite. Shall I fix you a sandwich?”
“Thanks. And could you get me another beer?”
“Certainly,” he said, disappearing into the kitchen.
“And you, have you had lunch?” Amé asked me.
“I had a sandwich en route,” I repeated.
“Yuki?”
No, was Yuki’s terse reply.
“Dick and I met in Tokyo,” Amé spoke to me as she crossed her legs. But she could have as well been explaining things to Yuki. “He’s the one who suggested I go to Kathmandu. He said it would inspire me. Kathmandu was wonderful, really. Dick lost his arm in Vietnam. It was a land mine. A ‘Bouncing Betty,’ the ones that fly up into the air and explode. Boom! The guy next to him stepped on it and Dick lost his arm. Dick’s a poet. He speaks good Japanese too, don’t you think? We stayed in Kathmandu a while, then we came here to Hawaii. After Kathmandu, we wanted somewhere warm. That’s when Dick found this place. The cottage belongs to a friend of his. I use the guest bathroom as a darkroom. Nice place, don’t you think?”
Then she exhaled deeply, as if she’d said all there was to say. She stretched and was quiet. The afternoon silence deepened, particles of light flickered like dust, drifting freely in all directions. The white pithecanthropus skull cloud still floated above the horizon. Obstinate as ever. Amé’s Salem lay burning in the ashtray, hardly touched.
How did Dick manage to make sandwiches with just one arm? I found myself wondering. How did he slice the bread? How did he keep the bread in place? Was it a matter of meter and rhyme?
When the poet emerged bearing a tray of beautiful ham sandwiches, well-made, well-cut, there was no end to my admiration. Then he opened a beer and poured it for Amé.
“Thanks, Dick,” she said, then turned to me. “Dick’s a great cook.”
“If there were a cooking competition for one-armed poets, I’d win hands down,” he said with a wink. And then he was back in the kitchen, making coffee. Despite his lack of an arm, Dick was far from helpless.
Amé offered me a sandwich. It was delicious, and somehow lyrical in composition. Dick’s coffee was good too.
“It’s no problem, you with Yuki, just the two of you?” Amé picked up the conversation again.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m talking about the music, of course. That rock stuff. It doesn’t give you a headache?”
“No, not especially,” I said.
“I can’t listen to that stuff for more than thirty seconds before I get a splitting headache. Being with Yuki is fine, but the music is intolerable,” she said, screwing her index finger into her temple. “The kinds of music I can put up with are very limited. Some baroque, certain kinds of jazz. Ethnic music. Sounds that put you at ease. That’s what I like. I also like poetry. Harmony and peace.”
She lit up another cigarette, took one puff, then set it down in the ashtray. I was sure she would forget about it too, and she did. Amazing that she hadn’t set the house on fire. I was beginning to understand what Hiraku Makimura meant about Amé’s wearing him down. Amé didn’t give anything. She only took. She consumed those around her to sustain herself. And those around her always gave. Her talent was manifested in a powerful gravitational pull. She believed it was her privilege, her right. Harmony and peace. In order for her to have that, she had everyone waiting on her hand and foot.
Not that it made any difference to me, I wanted to shout. I was here on vacation. I had my own life, even if it was doing you-know-what. Let all this weirdness reach its natural level. But maybe it didn’t matter what I thought? I was a member of the supporting cast.
Amé finished her sandwich and walked over to Yuki, slowly running her fingers through the girl’s hair again. Yuki stared at the coffee cups on the table, expressionless. “Beautiful hair,” said Amé. “The hair I always wanted. So shiny and silky straight. My hair’s so unmanageable. Isn’t that right, Princess?” Again she touched the tip of her nose to Yuki’s temple.
Dick cleared away the dishes. Then he put on some Mozart chamber music. He asked me if I wanted another beer, but I told him I’d already had enough.
“Dick, I’d like to discuss some family matters with Yuki,” Amé spoke with a snap in her voice. “Mother and daughter talk. Why don’t you show this gentleman the beach? We should be about an hour.”
“Sure,” the poet answered, rising to his feet. He gave Amé a loving peck on the forehead, donned a white canvas hat and green Ray-Bans. “See you in an hour. Have a nice chat.” Then he took me by the arm and led me out. “We’ve got a great beach here,” he said.
Yuki shrugged and gave me a blank look. Amé was about to light up another Salem. Leaving the women on their own, we stepped out into the afternoon sun.
As I drove the Lancer down to the beach, Dick mentioned that with a prosthetic arm, driving would be no problem. Still, he preferred not to wear one. “It’s unnatural,” he explained. “I wouldn’t feel at ease. It might be more convenient having one, but I’d be so self-conscious with it. It wouldn’t be me. I’m trying to train myself to live one-armed. I’m limited in what I can do, but I do okay.”
“How do you slice bread?”
“Bread?” He thought it over a second, as if he didn’t know what I was talking about. Then it dawned on him. “Oh, slicing bread? Why sure, that’s a reasonable question. It’s not so hard. I use one hand, of course, but I don’t hold the knife the usual way. I’d be useless if I did that. The trick is to keep the bread in place with your fingers while you move the blade. Like this.”
Dick demonstrated with his hand, but for the life of me I couldn’t imagine how it would actually work. Yet I’d seen his handiwork. His slices were cleaner than most people with two hands could cut.
“Works perfectly well,” he declared with a smile. “Most things I can manage with one hand. I can’t clap, but I can do push-ups. Chin-ups too. It takes practice, but it’s not impossible. How did you think I sliced bread?”
“I don’t know, maybe with your feet?”
That drew a laugh from him. “Clever,” he said. “I’ll have to write a poem about that. The one-armed poet making sandwiches with his feet. Very clever.”
I didn’t know whether to agree or not.
A little ways down the coast highway, we pulled over and bought a six-pack, then walked to a deserted area of the beach. We lay down and drank beer after beer, but it was so hot the beer didn’t seem to go to my head.
The beach was very un-Hawaiian. Unsightly scrub bushes, uneven sands, somehow rocky, but at least it was off the tourist track. A few pickup trucks were parked nearby, local families hanging out, veteran surfers doing their stuff. The pithecanthropus cloud was still pinned in place, sea gulls going around like washing-machine suds.
We talked in spurts. Dick had nothing but awe and respect for Amé. She was a true artist, he repeated several times. When he spoke about her, his Japanese trailed off into English. He said he couldn’t express his feelings in Japanese.
“Since meeting her, my own thinking about poetry has changed. Her photographs—how can I put it?—strip poetry bare. I mean, here we are, choosing our words, braiding strands to cut a figure. But with her photos it’s immediate, the embodiment. Out of thin air, out of light, in the gap between moments, she grabs things just like that. She gives physical presence to the depths of the human psyche. Do you know what I mean?”
Kind of, I allowed.
“Some
times it frightens me, looking at her photos. My whole being is thrown into question. It’s that overwhelming. She’s a genius. Not like me and not like you … Forgive me, that’s awfully presumptuous of me. I don’t even know a thing about you.”
I shook my head. “That’s okay, I understand what you’re saying.”
“Genius is rare. I’m not talking about talent, or even firstrate talent. With genius, you’re lucky just to encounter it, to see it right there before your eyes. And yet—,” he paused, opening his hand up in a gesture of helplessness. “And yet, in some sense, the experience can be pretty upsetting. Sometimes it’s like a needle piercing straight through my ego.”
I gazed out at the ocean as I listened. The surf was rough, the waves breaking hard. I buried my fingers in the hot sand, scooped some up and let it drizzle down. Over and over again. Meanwhile, the surfers caught the waves they’d been waiting for and paddled back out.
“But you know,” Dick went on, “even with my ego sacrificed, her talent attracts me. It makes me love her even more. Sometimes I think I’ve been drawn into a whirlpool. I already have a wife—she’s Japanese too—and we have a child. I love them, I love them very much. Even now I love them. But from the first time I met Amé, I was drawn right in to her. I couldn’t resist her. And I knew it was happening. I knew it wasn’t going to come my way again, not in this life. That’s when I decided—if I go with her, there’ll come a time that I’ll regret it. But if I don’t go with her, I’ll be losing the key to my existence. Have you ever felt that way about something?”
Never, I told him.
“Odd,” Dick continued. “I’d struggled so hard to have a quiet, stable life. A wife and kid, a small house, my own work. I didn’t make a lot of money, but the work was worth doing. I was writing and translating, and it was a good life, I thought. I’d lost my arm in the war, and that was pretty traumatic, but I worked hard at getting my head together and I found some peace and I was doing all right. Life was all right. And then—” He lifted his palm in a broad flat sweep. “In an instant it was lost. Just like that. I have no place to go. I have no home in Japan anymore, I have no home in America. I’ve been away too long.”
I wanted to offer him some words of comfort, but didn’t know what to say. I continued scooping up sand and letting it fall. Dick stood up, walked over to a bush and took a leak, then walked slowly back.
“Confession time,” he said, then smiled. “I wanted to tell someone. What do you think?”
What was I supposed to think? We weren’t kids. You choose who you sleep with, and whirlpool or tornado or sandstorm, you make a go of what you choose. This Dick made a good impression on me. I respected him for all the difficulties he overcame with only one arm. But this difficulty probably cut deeper.
“I’m afraid I’m not an artist,” I said. “So I can’t really understand what it means to have an artistically inspiring relationship. It’s beyond me. I’m sorry.”
Dick seemed saddened by my response and looked out to sea. I shut my eyes. And the next thing I knew, I was waking up. I’d dozed off. Maybe the beer after all. The heat made my head feel light. My watch read half past two. I shook my head from side to side and sat up. Dick was playing with a dog at the edge of the surf. I felt bad. I hoped I hadn’t offended him.
But what was I supposed to have said?
Was I cold? Of course I could appreciate his feelings. One arm or two, poet or not, it’s a tough world. We all have to live with our problems. But weren’t we adults? Hadn’t we come this far already? At the very least, you don’t go asking impossible questions of someone you’ve just met. That wasn’t courteous.
Cold.
Dick rang the doorbell when we got back, and Yuki opened the door with a totally unamused look on her face. Amé was seated on the sofa, cigarette at her lips, eyes peering off into space as if she were in Zen meditation. Dick walked over and planted a kiss on her forehead.
“Finished talking?” he asked.
“Mmm,” she said, cigarette still in her mouth. Affirmative, I assumed.
“We had a nice relaxing time on the beach, looked off the edge of the earth, and caught some rays,” Dick reported.
“We have to be going,” said Yuki flatly.
My thoughts exactly. Time we were getting back to the real world of tourist-town Honolulu.
Amé stood up. “Well, come visit again. I’d like to see you,” she said, giving her daughter a tweak on the cheek.
I thanked Dick for his hospitality and had just helped Yuki into the car when Amé hooked me by the elbow. “I have something to tell you,” she said. She led me to a small playground a bit up the road. Leaning against the jungle gym, she put a cigarette to her mouth and seemed almost bothered that she’d have to strike a match to light it.
“You’re a decent fellow, I can tell,” she began earnestly. “So I know I can ask a favor of you. I want you to bring the child here as often as you can. I don’t have to tell you that I love her. She’s my child. I want to see more of her. Understand? I want to talk with her. I want to become friends with her. I think we can become friends, good friends, even before being parent and child. So while she’s here, I want to talk with her a lot.”
Amé gave me a meaningful look.
I couldn’t think of an appropriate reply. But I had to say something. “That’s between you and her.”
“Of course,” she said.
“So if she wants to see you, certainly, I’ll be happy to bring her around,” I said. “Or if you, as her parent, tell me to bring her here, I’ll do that. One way or the other. But other than that, I have no say in this. Friends don’t need the intervention of a third party. Friendship’s a voluntary thing. At least that’s the way I know it.”
Amé pondered over what I’d said.
I got started again: “You say you want to be her friend. That’s very good. But before being Yuki’s friend, you’re her mother, whether you like it or not. Yuki’s thirteen. She needs a mother. She needs someone who will love her and hold her and be with her. I know I’m way out of line shooting my mouth off like this. But Yuki doesn’t need a part-time friend; she needs a situation that accepts her one hundred percent. That’s what she needs first.”
“You don’t understand,” said Amé.
“Exactly. I don’t understand,” I said. “But let’s get this straight. Yuki’s still a child and she’s been hurt. Someone needs to protect her. It’s a lot of trouble, but somebody’s got to do it. That’s responsibility. Can’t you understand that?”
“I’m not asking you to bring her here every day,” she said. “Just when she wants to come. I’ll be calling regularly too. Because I don’t want to lose that child. The way things are going, she’s going to move away from me as she grows up. I understand that, so what I want are psychological ties. I want a bond. I know I probably haven’t been a great mother. But I have so much to do before being a mother. There’s nothing I can do about it. The child knows that. That’s why what I want is a relationship beyond mother and daughter. Maybe you could call it blood friends.”
On the drive back, we listened to the radio. We didn’t talk. Occasionally I’d whistle, but otherwise silence prevailed. Yuki gazed out the window, face turned away from me. For fifteen minutes. But I knew something was coming. I told myself, very plainly: You’d better stop the car somewhere.
So that’s what I did. I pulled over into a beach parking lot. I asked Yuki how she was feeling. I asked her if she wanted something to drink. Yuki said nothing.
Two girls wearing identical swimsuits walked slowly under the palms, across my field of vision, stepping like cats balancing on a fence. Their swimsuits were a skimpy patchwork of tiny handkerchiefs that any gust of wind might easily blow away. The whole scene had this wild, too-real unreality of a suppressed dream.
I looked up at the sky. A mother wants to make friends with her daughter. The daughter wants a mother more than a friend. Ships passing in broad daylight. Mother has a boyfriend. A
homeless, one-armed poet. Father also has a boyfriend. A gay Boy Friday. What does the daughter have?
Ten minutes later it began. Soft sobs at first, but then the dam burst. Her hands neatly folded in her lap, her nose buried in my shoulder, her slim body trembling. Cry, go ahead and cry. If I were in your position I’d cry too. You better believe I’d cry.
I put my arm around her. And she cried. She cried until my shirt sleeve was sopping. She cried and cried and cried.
Two policemen in sunglasses crossed the parking lot flashing revolvers. A German shepherd wandered by, panting in the heat. Palm trees swayed. A huge Samoan climbed out of a pickup truck and walked his girlfriend to the beach. The radio was playing.
“Don’t ever call me Princess again,” she said, head still resting in my shoulder.
“Did I do that?” I asked.
“Yes, you did.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Driving back from Tsujido, that night. Don’t say it again.”
“I won’t. I promise I won’t. I swear on Boy George and Duran Duran. Never, never, never again.”
“That’s what Mama always calls me. Princess.”
“I won’t call you that again.”
“Mama, she’s always hurting me. She’s just got no idea. And yet she loves me. I know she does.”
“Yes, she does.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
“The only thing you can. Grow up.”
“I don’t want to.”
“No other way,” I said. “Everyone does, like it or not. People get older. That’s how they deal with it. They deal with it till the day they die. It’s always been this way. Always will be. It’s not just you.”
She looked up at me, her face streaked with tears. “Don’t you believe in comforting people?”
“I was comforting you.”
She brushed my arm from her shoulder and took a tissue from her bag. “There’s something really abnormal about you, you know,” she said.