Laurie should have a lei to wear around her neck for her birthday tomorrow. Every woman who turns forty needs a garland of hosannas! I wonder if I can get one tonight in the gift shop? I could hide it in our little refrigerator and surprise her in the morning.
Feeling sneaky, I slipped out of the room and took the elevator. I was joined on the next floor down by a young Japanese couple who looked as if they were ready to go out on the town. I’m not sure if I imagined it, but they seemed to be taking turns staring at my belly and then staring at my white legs. I couldn’t do much about the belly, but starting tomorrow morning, the goal was to toast my legs a nice shade of golden brown.
That reminded me. I needed to buy some suntan lotion at the gift shop. Funny thing, the grocery store at home in Connecticut seemed to be out of suntan products last week when I was shopping for my trip. However, they were having a special on snow shovels.
Snow shovels. Imagine.
I stepped out of the elevator with a grin so smug I felt positively snooty.
Before I made it all the way through the lobby to the hotel gift shop, I had to go to the bathroom. I was convinced there was something scientific about elevation and compression and the effect gravity had on a pregnant woman’s bladder. In the hotel rest room, I overheard two women talking.
“It’s a wonderful luau,” one of them said. “We went two nights ago and loved the show. They give you lots of food, but look out for the tiki punch. My husband had more than he should have, and when they asked for volunteers to do the hula, he was a little too eager to get up onstage.”
The other woman laughed and said, “Been there, done that, lit the tiki torch.”
I decided I would gather a bunch of event brochures in the lobby before going back to the room so Laurie and I could chart out our week. Originally she had a long list of activities that started with horseback riding on the beach. After Emilee joined the party, Laurie crossed that activity off as well as parasailing. Whenever we talked about specifics after that, Laurie said we would figure it out when we got here. She also said she would be content with a hammock strung between a couple of swaying palm trees, but I knew she was pulling back on my account. There was no reason she couldn’t go parasailing or whatever she wanted without me. I wasn’t going to let my condition hinder Laurie’s adventure. Especially on her birthday.
The hotel gift shop had a nice selection of leis. They hung in a row beside the soft drinks in the refrigerated case. I chose one made from purple orchids and white tuberose because it seemed to shout, “Hosanna!” The others merely peeped a subdued, “Cheers.”
Finding my way to the back of the store where the personal items were stocked, I scanned the choices of sun care products. As I reached for a tube of suntan lotion, I knocked over a bottle of coconut oil. Several boxes on the lower shelf became drenched with the fragrant, sticky stuff.
Tightening the lid on the coconut oil, I gathered up the ruined boxes and took them to the register, placing them on the counter along with the lei and the suntan lotion. Emilee did a little flutter, and I instinctively placed my hand on my rounded belly.
Just then I heard my name.
I turned to see Laurie, my Laurie, approaching the register holding an orchid lei, fresh from the gift shop refrigerator.
“I can’t believe you’re here!” she squealed, as we threw our arms around each other. I’m afraid I squashed her when our middles collided.
Pulling back with an expression of unabashed surprise, she said, “Hope, look at you! I can’t believe it! Look at you!”
The irony was that she wasn’t actually looking at “me.” She was gawking at Emilee’s bunker.
“I told you I was big.”
“No, no, you’re not big at all.” She quickly looked up at my face. “You’re just …”
“All out front?” I suggested.
“Yes. Just, all … right there.” Laurie started to move her hand toward me and then pulled back and used her itching fingers to tuck her professionally lightened blond hair behind her ear.
“It’s okay.” I grinned. “Go ahead. You can pat the baby, if you want.”
Laurie cautiously pressed her palm across my tummy. “Hello, little Emilee Rose. It’s your Auntie Laurie. How are you, sweet baby girl?”
Looking up at my smiling face, Laurie said, “You look great, Hope! Seriously, you look glowy.”
“You look great, too.”
“Oh, my hair came out way too light this time.” Laurie brushed a few silky strands away from her face. “And I’m about ready to pop these contacts out. My eyes are so—”
“You ready to pay for this stuff?” The young man at the register obviously didn’t understand how important it was for women to first do an inventory and evaluation of each other before they can turn their attention to spending money.
“Just this.” Laurie held up the lei.
“You can put it back,” I said. “I came down here to buy one for you.”
“Are you kidding? Hope, I was buying this one for you. When I got off the plane and the greeters were there with all those beautiful leis looped over their arms, I—”
“I know! I wished we had ordered the lei greeting, too. I wanted to surprise you with this one for your birthday tomorrow.”
“Hope, you’re so good to me.”
“Here.” I reached for the garland of hosannas and tossed it over Laurie’s neck. “Happy birthday, my friend.”
Laurie teared up and started to leak and squeak as she placed the other lei over my neck and kissed me on the cheek. We acted like we were experts on Hawaiian greetings. “Aloha, my friend,” she squeaked out.
“Aloha! Happy birthday.”
“Happy birthday to you, too!” Laurie dabbed at her eyes and reached for her wallet. “Here, we better pay for these now. I’ve got it covered.”
“No, I’m buying them. Both of them.”
“You don’t have to. Save your money, Hope.”
“No, I’m getting some other stuff, so I’ll buy the leis.” I pushed the money back into her wallet and turned to the young salesclerk. “You take Visa, don’t you?”
He nodded.
“Don’t use your Visa,” Laurie said. “I have enough cash. Here.”
“You know,” the clerk said in a low voice, “it’s none of my business, but I’m thinking you might be wasting your money.”
“Excuse me?” we said in tandem.
“I’m just saying that if you want to save some money, I’m pretty sure all of these will come out positive. At least for you.” He nodded toward my belly.
Laurie turned the three coconut-soaked boxes so we could read the packaging. “Hope, why are you buying three home pregnancy tests?”
I laughed so hard I had to go to the bathroom again.
“I spilled a bottle of suntan oil,” I managed to finally say. “I was going to offer to pay for the damage.”
Laurie cracked up.
“Oh, gotcha. Okay.” The young man reached for the boxes and slid them under the counter. “Don’t worry about it. You don’t need to pay for these. And, hey, what I said earlier was just, you know, a little joke.” He was turning red from the neck up.
“Don’t worry. That’s exactly how I took it.” I handed him my Visa and tried very hard to keep my legs together and not look at Laurie’s face. I knew if I started to laugh again my bladder wasn’t going to cooperate any longer.
Bedecked with the chilled purple leis, Laurie and I trotted to the rest room and laughed some more.
“How’s our room?” Laurie asked. “The bellman is probably up there waiting with my luggage.”
“I like it. But you might want to think Beach Blanket Bingo when you walk in the door.”
“Annette and Frankie.” Laurie slipped into her movie trivia mode as we headed for the elevator. “Remember when they showed that one on the outdoor screen during orientation week our freshman year?”
I had forgotten.
“Are you hungry?” s
he asked. “I ate already, but I didn’t know if you were waiting for me before you got something.”
“No, I’m fine.” I told her about the fruit salad and cookies and the incredible sunset. “Do you want to walk on the beach or unpack or what?”
“Part of me would love to go out on the beach, but part of me wants to flop. It’s been a long day.”
“It has. Hey, what happened with you and the delay? Why were you on a later flight?”
Laurie sighed. “Gabe and I looked at another house outside of San Francisco. It took longer than we thought. We got caught in traffic, and I missed the flight. I was not a nice person to be around.”
“Well, you’re here now. That’s all that matters. And what about the house? Do you like it?”
Gabe and Laurie had been talking about moving closer to the city for several years. None of the previous leads on houses or property had suited them well enough to prompt them to uproot from the Napa Valley, where they both had lived all their lives.
“It’s a fabulous house. The entryway is breathtaking—Italian marble with a fountain—and it has enough acreage for Gabe to build the studio of his dreams.”
“Sounds gorgeous.”
Laurie gave a shrug. “I suppose. It’s just that I’m not too excited about the whole idea of moving. I’ve told you that before. This house has plenty of potential, so I’m trying to be open, but I’m still not convinced we should move. I can’t believe our Realtor has been so patient with us. We have to be the pickiest clients she’s ever had.”
The elevator door opened, and we headed down the hall to our room. I hoped Laurie wasn’t still in a “picky” mood when she saw the room because the decor definitely wasn’t for those with more discriminating taste.
“So, what do you think?” I asked after Laurie had a moment to stand in the center of the room and absorb the full impact of the flower-power ambience.
“Audacious!” she exclaimed with a sparkle in her tone.
I laughed. “Now there’s a descriptive word I haven’t heard in a long time.”
“I love it! I think they used this exact room to film one of the scenes in Blue Hawaii.”
When I didn’t respond, she said, “You know, Elvis.”
“Right! I thought the same thing.”
Laurie looked at me with a patronizing grin. She knew I’d never seen an Elvis film in my life. “I have to take a picture.” Laurie pulled several cameras from her shoulder bag.
“How many cameras did you bring?”
“Three. They’re all different. This one is digital, the one with the yellow tape has black-and-white film, and the one with the big lens has color film and is the one I use the most.”
“You’re becoming serious about photography.”
“They each serve a different purpose. You’re welcome to borrow any of them, whenever you want. Now, stand over there by the wall, would you?”
“Me?”
“Yes, of course you. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Only if you take it from the neck up.”
Laurie laughed. “Wait. I have an idea.” She pulled the red and white hibiscus-dotted bedspread off the bed. “If you wrap yourself in this and stand against the wall just right, you’ll blend in. Your head will be the only thing showing.”
Don’t ask me why this seemed like a good idea or why I so willingly went along with it. Laurie could be persuasive when it came to stage direction. I complied as she wrapped little Emilee and me in the gaudy bedspread cocoon. She kept moving me, trying to match the hibiscus on the fabric with the hibiscus on the wallpaper. The purple orchid lei was distracting, so it came off.
“I can’t believe I spent an entire day flying to Hawai’i only to spend my night allowing you to turn me into a human wallflower.”
“This is going to be hilarious.” Laurie took a shade off one of the end table lamps and moved the lamp this way and that until she got the lighting the way she wanted. “Now don’t move.”
The thing about digital cameras is that you never know if the person is done with the shot or not because you don’t hear a click.
“Just a second.” Laurie stepped over to the doorway.
I thought she was turning on more lights. Instead, she opened the door and let the bellman in with her luggage.
“Hello?” I called out.
Like a mummy come back to life, I frantically twisted and turned my way out of the bedspread wrap. The floral prop puddled on the floor. I stepped away from it as if the wild thing had simply sprung from the bed on its own, and I was trying to get out of the way.
“No, that’s fine,” Laurie said. “You can leave the luggage right here by the door. Here you go. Thank you. Good night.” She shooed off the bellman before he could step far enough into the room to see what was going on around the corner.
“Sorry about that,” Laurie said to me. “Do you want to see the picture?”
I looked at the screen on her digital camera, and my longtime suspicion was confirmed. Laurie had a gift. A quirky gift, but a gift nonetheless. My head looked as if it were floating in a sea of garish hibiscus. Laurie said my head appeared to be tacked to the wall by the ends of my flippy hair.
I couldn’t help but admire her natural, albeit peculiar, talent. “You are amazing. With you, a camera could be a deadly weapon, if you wanted to ruin your friends.”
“Not ruin them. Capture them for one moment of life.”
“You can erase it now.”
Laurie gave me her best pout. “Do I have to? This is too fun, Hope. Please? I won’t show it to anyone unless you say I can.”
“Well, okay. You can keep it. E-mail me a copy. But don’t turn it into screen savers or mouse pads or anything.”
“I promise I won’t.”
An insightful woman would have seen all the signs after such an encounter and realized that Laurie was on the brink of something. I, on the other hand, was simply on the brink of exhaustion. It was almost one in the morning back in Connecticut.
Assuming pardon and grace would be extended to a cheeky pregnant woman, I nodded toward the disheveled bed next to the wall and said, “Do you mind if I take the bed by the window?”
The pleasant, lulling sound of the endless ocean rocked me to sleep while Laurie took a bath and unpacked. Wrapping my arms around my middle, I lay still, waiting to see if Emilee might start her midnight butterfly dance. The boys did the same dance. As soon as I stopped moving, they would wake up and flutter around inside. Tonight, however, Emilee slept deeply, and so did I.
When I woke, it was still dark outside. The clock radio showed me three blurry numbers: 5:32. I closed my eyes and did the math. East Coast time was five hours ahead: 10:32. If I were at home, I would consider this sleeping in. I felt rested and energetic.
Laurie appeared to be sound asleep. In the stillness, I stretched out on my back with a hand on my tummy. Emilee greeted me with a tickling flutter, followed by a definite push of a hand or foot.
Good morning, little princess. Did you sleep as well as the runaway princess in the bed beside us?
I padded to the bathroom, changed into shorts and a T-shirt, and tiptoed back across the room in the silence of the predawn darkness. Slowly opening the sliding glass door, I ventured onto the lanai. Below me, the thundering ocean gleamed like obsidian in the artificial light cast on it from the hotel. I held on to the railing, bracing myself as the damp wind raced up my bare legs and puffed out my T-shirt. This was a completely different world from the one I’d watched in this same spot twelve hours earlier.
What a difference light makes.
I wanted the day to come. I wanted to see it come.
Standing straight, I felt like the only human on guard, like a sailor who was exploring the ends of the earth. I would stay right here, in my elevated crow’s nest, scanning the horizon while the rest of the crew slept below deck. I would be the first one to spot the dawn.
I thought of my boys. My men. All four of them had been at school no
w for a few hours. Had they managed to find clean socks and pack their own lunches? My thoughts turned into prayers, which I whispered reverently like a simple morning song sent out across the waters.
As if a returning echo to my prayers, I heard a faint, melodic call sent out by a single bird in the darkness. A breath later, an echo came. This song was from a different bird with a different pitch, resonating a glad response. As I stood in a pocket of holy stillness, there rose on the softening winds a symphony of exultant twitters, chirps, and calls. The birds were welcoming the new day with me. Or perhaps it was I who was joining them in their morning worship.
I knew I had to go down to the water. I had to be there, front row, to see this day come.
“Laurie.” I gently touched her shoulder. “I’m going to walk on the beach.”
“What time is it?”
“Early. The sun hasn’t come up yet.”
“Then what are you doing up?”
“I’m not tired. You don’t have to get up. I wanted to let you know where I was going.”
Laurie pulled the covers back up to her chin. “Have a good time. And take your cell phone.”
“Okay. Call me if you want anything. Oh, and happy birthday, Princess Laurie.”
She smiled and went back to sleep.
It took only a few minutes to collect what I needed. I was down the elevator, through the lobby, past the pool, and onto the sand in what felt like one swift, unbroken motion.
The instant I stepped onto the beach I was shod with a custom-fit pair of sand booties for my bare feet. In front of me, at the water’s edge, a wavy line as white as chalk traced the waves. I moved closer, wedged my feet into the wet, and waited for the cool salt water to push the sand up to my ankles.
I shivered and drew in deep breaths of the salty air. Twisting my feet deeper into the wet sand, I waited.
First light came from behind me.
“Mauka,” I murmured. “From the mountains.”
Then the sun rose, feeling like a warm hand on my shoulder, on my neck, on the top of my head. I fixed my gaze on the ocean and watched as rows of rising clouds lifted their gray nightshirts and shamelessly fluffed up their ruffled petticoats.