I looked at him. I was twenty-four years old, and I had just given up my hopes of being a champion surfer to go to the Police Academy. I was scared, and angry that I hadn’t been able to succeed, and I was wrestling with the knowledge that I was sexually attracted to men, though I didn’t want to be. I felt like I’d been knocked off my board, swamped by a huge wave that I couldn’t get around, and I still needed some things to hang onto. One of those things, I realized then, was the belief that my father was a good and honorable man who could have passed those traits to me. I said, “You get a nice view from up here, don’t you? You can see the whole city.”
My dad looked at me and smiled and said, “Yes, you can, can’t you?”
I pulled into Uncle Chin’s driveway. Aunt Mei-Mei came to the door, crying. It was the kind of thing I’d done hundreds of times before, walked into a house where someone was dead, family members crying around me, and I’d always been able to shut my own feelings off and do my job.
What if Jimmy Ah Wong had been responsible? I’d delivered him to Uncle Chin and Aunt Mei-Mei, asked them to take him in and look after him. How could I live with myself if I had been the instrument that caused Uncle Chin’s death?
The only answers I would find were inside.
PILLS ON THE FLOOR
Uncle Chin was slumped in his easy chair, out on the lanai where he had spent so many of the last years, surrounded by orchids and African violets with their delicate flowers, bright red anthuriums and the lush succulence of jades and aloes. His head was down, his chin resting against his lavender silk robe. Small yellow birds in cages twittered nervously as I prowled around. Since their cages were uncovered, I knew that Uncle Chin had been sitting out there with them, not ready to go to bed yet.
The table next to his chair had been knocked over. Without touching anything, I squatted down to look at the items that had fallen: his glasses, and a Charles Dickens book in hardcover he had been reading. In his old age Uncle Chin had taken up nineteenth-century English literature in a big way, working through Jane Austen, George Eliot, Thackeray and Dickens. I also found a small prescription bottle of nitroglycerin tablets on the floor, the cap a foot away, a couple of tablets spilled out of the mouth of the bottle.
I took a tissue from a box on the other side of the room and used it to pick up the bottle. “Did Uncle Chin take these for his heart?” I asked Aunt Mei-Mei. I could see where the tears had streaked her makeup, and there were uncharacteristic strands of black hair hanging loose from her bun.
She nodded. “Sometimes he have to put one under tongue, when his heart go fast.”
I could envision the scene all too well. Uncle Chin feeling his heart race, reaching out for the bottle of pills, and knocking over the table. But where was Jimmy? He was supposed to be with the old man in case of just this sort of trouble. He should have been there to jump down, pick up the spilled bottle, and hand Uncle Chin a tablet. If he had, then Uncle Chin might have still been alive.
“It looks like he reached for a pill but he didn’t get one,” I said gently to Aunt Mei-Mei. “He probably had a very severe attack, maybe the pills might not even have helped.” I had a thought. “Maybe he even took one, but it just didn’t work.” I pulled a stool up next to Aunt Mei-Mei, who had dried her eyes. “I have to call the medical examiner now. Whenever someone dies without a doctor present, it’s the law.”
She sat in the chair next to her husband, and I went back to the lanai to make the call. Then I walked down the hall to the room where Jimmy had been staying. He had made his bed that morning, not quite as expertly as Aunt Mei-Mei might have. I had brought him there with almost nothing, just the clothes on his back, a Walkman, and the money I’d given him. But he had left nothing behind, either. I stood there in the doorway of the room for a while, thinking about Jimmy and wondering where he was.
Then I had a bad idea. I walked back to the kitchen and asked Aunt Mei-Mei, “Did you or Uncle Chin have any money lying around?”
“You think Jimmy stole?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I think we should look.”
She got up and walked over to the counter, where a cookie jar in the shape of a grinning hula girl sat. I remembered that jar from my childhood. Uncle Chin used to empty his pocket change into it, and then when we kids would come over he’d fish around in there for the shiniest quarters to give us.
With her tiny, delicate hands, Aunt Mei-Mei lifted the hula girl’s torso. “I not sure how much money here,” she said. She tilted the jar enough for me to see there was still a pile of change inside, even a couple of dollar bills wadded up. She put the girl’s torso back on her body. “Come, we look jewelry too.”
She led me down the hall to their bedroom, and opened the drawers of an elaborate mahogany jewelry chest that sat on the lacquered bureau. Every drawer was filled almost to overflowing with rings, bracelets and chains. “Look like all here.” Aunt Mei-Mei sat on the bed and started to cry.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Mei-Mei,” I said. “I had to ask.”
“He such nice boy. He so nice Uncle Chin.” I sat next to her and took her hand. “What I do now?” she asked. “This morning, I wife. I have boy take care of, too. Not my son, my Robert, but nice boy, need home, somebody take care of him. Now what I have? What I do?”
I squeezed her hand, and put my other arm around her. Aunt Mei-Mei leaned against me, crying softly. After a while, when she felt better, we went back to the kitchen to wait. I remembered stories about Uncle Chin and told them, and we both laughed, and eventually one of Doc Takayama’s assistants arrived. He and I did a quick survey of the room and he directed his techs to remove Uncle Chin’s body. Aunt Mei-Mei cried again as they carried the stretcher out, the sheet pulled up over his face, and I held onto her and stood by her side and tried to pretend I was just a cop.
My mother had been busy on the phone, and soon after the coroner left, Haoa and Tatiana showed up, followed quickly by Lui and Liliha.
We greeted each other somberly, everyone focusing on Aunt Mei-Mei, and Liliha and I studiously avoided each other.
After a few minutes, Haoa pulled Lui and me to the kitchen, leaving Liliha, Tatiana and Aunt Mei-Mei in the living room. “So has anybody told Dad about Uncle Chin yet?” he asked.
“No,” Lui said. “I don’t think we should.”
“I think we ought to tell him, but we ought to wait a couple of days,” Haoa said. “See if he starts to get his strength back.”
I said, “I disagree. I think we ought to tell him. I’d certainly want to know.”
“Not everybody is as strong as you are, Kimo,” Lui said.
“He’s our father. I think he’s plenty strong.”
“Lui’s right,” Haoa said. He opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of water. “You looked at Dad lately? It’s like he’s fading away. None of us are as strong as you are. Maybe we ought to wait a day or two, see how he feels.”
I looked at my big brothers. I’d always felt the weakest of the three of us, the youngest, the one they picked on. Even as adults, sometimes they ganged up against me and I bowed to their will. “You really think I’m stronger than he is, or than either of you?”
They shared a glance. “Of course,” Lui said. “Look at everything you’ve gone through.”
I was surprised, but I plowed on. “You guys remember all the stories Dad told? About when he was building his first house, and working nights for other contractors to make money, and then weekends doing jobs he couldn’t afford to hire anybody for? I mean, imagine how scary that must be. You’ve got a wife and three kids, and you’ve staked everything you have to this one project. Think of the pressure.”
“But he’s old now,” Haoa said. “Weaker. Maybe he can’t take as much.”
“That’s what he’s got three big sons for,” I said. “I’m going to tell him. You guys want to be there?”