Now the tables were turned and I was healthy (well, reasonably) and he was sick. I couldn’t get over how frail he looked in the loose hospital gown. When had he lost so much weight? How come my brothers and I hadn’t noticed?
My mother saw me in the doorway and got up. I hugged her and hoped she wouldn’t notice me wince when her hands touched my back. I smiled over her head at Aunt Mei-Mei. “I’m so glad you’re here, Kimo,” my mother said. “Haoa was here this morning, but he had to go out and look at a job. Tatiana and Liliha just went for some lunch.”
“How is he?”
Her eyes were bright with tears but she made no move to wipe them away. “They’re doing tests. All kinds of tests. He was coughing so bad from the smoke when they brought him in, and they put him on this machine, it said his heartbeat was irregular, so they wanted to monitor him.” She looked over to him. “At least he’s sleeping now. He’s not very happy to be here.”
As if on cue, he woke up and looked around. When my mother and I walked into the room, he said, “Goddamn it, am I still here? When are they going to let me out?”
“Hey, Dad.” I walked over to him, then leaned down and kissed his forehead. His chin was grizzled with gray and black stubble. “Howzit?”
“I’d be doing a lot better if they let me out of here. Hospitals are terrible places. People die in them all the time.”
“You know why they have fences on cemeteries, don’t you, Dad? Because people are dying to get in.”
“This is no time for jokes. Maybe now that you’re here your mother will listen to reason. Lokelani! Kimo agrees with me. I should go home.”
“I don’t agree with you at all,” I said. “You belong right here in bed, where the doctors can keep an eye on you.”
“Useless! You’re all useless. I raise three boys and I can’t get one of them to stand up for me.”
“Well, he certainly doesn’t act sick,” I said to my mother. She and Aunt Mei-Mei exchanged grins. I sat on the edge of the bed next to my father. “Now Dad, you know we have to figure out what’s wrong with you.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me except an ungrateful family.”
“Yeah, and that’s what makes those squiggles on the heart monitor. You might as well face facts, pal, you’re not getting out of here until the doctors say you can, and until that nice lady over there in the chair agrees to let you back into her house. You got that?”
He stared at me, and I stared back. I won, of course. I mean, I’ve been to the police academy, after all. If I couldn’t outstare one sick old man, even if he was my father, then they ought to take away my badge. “Maybe another day,” my father said. “But tomorrow, I want to go home!”
“We’ll see. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got a job I have to do.” I told them all about the progress of the investigation so far, and asked if they had seen anything suspicious.
“I was too busy watching what your father ate,” my mother said. “And your father, he was too busy eating.”
“Dad?”
“I don’t know that woman. I don’t know what she’s doing here.”
I had to laugh, and he didn’t appreciate it. “Can you imagine? This is what I do all day. Interview cranky witnesses.”
My mother smiled. My father said, “I always wondered what it was you did.”
“Dad.”
“I didn’t see anybody suspicious. Between your mother and your brothers, nobody let me alone for a minute.”
I sighed. “So, Aunt Mei-Mei, how’s Uncle Chin? Is he as disagreeable as this one here?”
“Uncle Chin a little better,” she said. “Jimmy with him. Make him smile.”
“That’s good.” I looked down the hallway and saw my sisters-in-law approaching. “Hey, here come Tatiana and Liliha.” I felt this funny pang then, seeing my brothers’ wives. Lui and Haoa couldn’t be here with my father, but they had wives who could. Partners in the world, who would stand by them and their families, helping out when things got tough. I wondered if I would ever have that. Somebody to be there for me, to hold me when the big storms came.
FAMILY HAPPINESS
I walked out into the hallway to intercept them. I knew otherwise it would take forever for the room to settle down so I could ask my questions. Tatiana kissed me on the cheek, her long, ash-blonde hair rustling, and said, “Let me give this magazine to your mother and I’ll come right back out.”
When she’d gone in the room, Liliha said, “Well, you’re finally here.”
“Excuse me?”
She was wearing a crisp suit I was sure was by some famous fashion designer, the kind of solid-color thing with brass buttons and epaulets that Nancy Reagan used to wear. Her black hair was perfectly coiffed and her makeup immaculate. It was hard to remember that when Lui first brought her to meet us she only owned one nice dress and lived with her family in a trailer on Hawaiian homestead land on the windward side of O’ahu.
“It’s all your fault that your father is here in the hospital, and you didn’t even come to see him last night. And here it is almost one o’clock before you’re here today. Tatiana and I have been here since early this morning.”
I was flabbergasted. “I was investigating. That’s what I do, remember? I’m trying to figure out what happened.”
“I can tell you what happened. You were indulging yourself in this perverted homosexual marriage business and you dragged all of us into it. You know what you’re doing is wrong but you just won’t face up to it. And now see where it’s gotten you. Your father is in the hospital because of you.”
“How dare you say that, Lili?” Tatiana said, coming out of my father’s room. “Al is in the hospital because he’s sick, and you know damn well Howie and Lui and Kimo have been trying to get him to the doctor. This is not anybody’s fault. Shame on you for saying that!”
“You always defend him!” Liliha said. “You and your silly hairdresser friend. It’s sick and perverted, and this is God’s punishment on all of us for tolerating it.”
I finally found my voice. “Liliha, when you married my brother I took you in like a sister, and I’ve loved you and put up with your eccentricities and your temper for fifteen years. Because my brother loves you, I love you. I always assumed it was the same for you. That because you loved Lui, you loved me-and Haoa and Tatiana and Mom and Dad, all of us. Isn’t that what your religion teaches you, love thy neighbor?”
“Obviously not when your neighbor is gay,” Tatiana said.
“I don’t have to take this kind of abuse. I’ll come back later when things aren’t so upset.” Liliha turned and walked out of the intensive care unit, leaving the double doors swinging in her wake.
Tatiana looked into my father’s room and saw my mother and Aunt Mei-Mei watching Liliha leave, and she led me over to a bench out of earshot. A big-boned woman, she was a cross between a suburban mother and an unreformed hippie, Reeboks and jeans with a tie-dyed blouse and a necklace of big, clunky stones. Her hair, which had been piled up the night before in a fancy do created by her hairdresser friend Robertico Robles, now cascaded around her shoulders. “Lily’s just upset,” she said. “You know how she is. She feels everything Lui does, and if he feels bad about Dad being in the hospital, he just transfers that to her.”
I remembered seeing Lui and Liliha at the Church of Adam and Eve, and I was pretty sure her feelings went deeper than Tatiana wanted to allow. “I never knew she resented me so much.”
“Lui keeps her on a pretty tight string. I know she’s mad that Howie lets me get away with a lot. She’s just jealous. You and I are both a lot freer than she’ll ever be.”
“I don’t feel free most of the time. Sometimes I wish all I had to do in life was get dressed up and talk to the servants once in a while.” Lui and Liliha had a maid, a gardener, and a nanny for the kids; sometimes Tatiana and I got together and wondered what Liliha did all day, besides her nails and makeup. I was beginning to get a better idea.