“No,” I said.
I stood up, and my father glared at me. “You don’t know what’s best for you right now. We do. You’re coming home with us.”
I felt as if all my will power had drained from me. Too much had happened to me in too short a time, and I couldn’t process it anymore. I said, “My suitcase is on the top shelf, in the back. I’ll pack it.”
“Good,” my father said. “Do you have any brandy?”
I nodded toward the kitchen. “In the cabinet over the sink.”
While I packed my suitcase, my father poured brandy into juice glasses for the three of us. When I was finished we lifted our glasses together and my mother said, “You are our son, and you always will be. We love you.”
My father drank his brandy in one shot, and so did I.
YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN
I randomly picked out aloha shirts and polos, shorts and khakis, and bathing suits I would probably not get to wear to the beach. I took my uniform, and the one suit I owned, a simple navy one that served for funerals and weddings and family command performances.
I scooped a haphazard pile of books I hadn’t yet read into a knapsack, and placed it by the door with my short board and my long board. I always carried extra books with me when I traveled, afraid of landing in some distant place without something to read. What else to take? My roller blades? The half-eaten box of chocolate-covered Oreos from the kitchen? My pocket knife, camera, a deck of playing cards for solitaire? I took them all, without discrimination. By the time I was finished there were four bags by the door along with a pile of sporting equipment.
“I’m ready,” I said finally.
My mother went around the room, turning off lights, checking the windows and the burners on the stove. “The reporters will still be there,” she said.
I took a look around my apartment. It was only one big room, with the kitchen off to the side, but it was my home, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave it, even though I knew it would be easier to stay at my parents’ house, where at least I could move from room to room, talk to people when I wanted to, even sneak out into the backyard when I wanted to feel the sun and the wind.
Iacta ilea est, I remembered from some long ago history class. The die is cast. I slung my knapsack over my back, put my boards under one arm and grabbed my roller blades with the other. “I’m ready to go,” I said, and walked out into the glare of flashbulbs.
My mother drove us home in her Lexus, and I knew the TV crews would find us soon enough. It was just sunset and the day had turned beautiful, as it often does on this island of microclimates. You could start in Honolulu, head Diamond Head and beyond, to the windward shore, travel along the coast as far as Laie, land of Mormons, ride along the North Shore, then head back through the central valley and pass a dozen different types of weather along the way. Stay in one place, and the weather changed around you, often gorgeous, but with passing showers, winds, and clouds alternating with brilliant sunshine.
If I hadn’t been dogged by reporters, I might have spent the afternoon at the beach. The morning clouds and rain would have brought stronger waves; I remember often waking, when I was surfing in earnest, hoping the morning would bring rough weather and with it rough surf, and being disappointed at another gorgeous day.
The weather seemed to me also to symbolize people’s lives. Somewhere on the island people enjoyed the sun, baking away the troubles of the week on the beach or washing them away in the cool Pacific. It happened every day in Hawai‘i. And somewhere someone was having a bad day, like me, full of emotional storms and cloudy thoughts. Microclimates, both natural and emotional.
I wondered what kind of day Tim had experienced, if he’d seen my name in the paper, on the radio or the TV. Would he try my phone, not realizing I had unplugged it? When would I find a few private minutes to call him?
Once home, my mother took a casserole out of the oven and we had dinner, all the time not talking about anything that mattered-a job my father was bidding, some antics by Ashley and her sister, even, God help us, the weather forecast. My troubles were like an unwelcome guest at dinner, one we had to feed but tried hard to ignore. There was no word from either of my brothers.
Finally we were finished. I stood up to help clear the table, then paused. “I don’t know how this is going to end,” I said. “I’m gay. I can’t change that. But I don’t think I did anything wrong, and I don’t deserve to be suspended. I want to fight, but I don’t want to do anything that will hurt you.”
“I think you should give this up,” my father said. “There are other things you can do where they won’t care about you. Be a decorator. A hairdresser. Something like that, that mahus do.”
“I don’t want to be a decorator. I want to be a cop.”
“Well, you can’t be,” my father said, yelling. “They don’t want you. They can’t be any clearer than they have been.”
“I won’t back down,” I yelled back. “What I do on my own time doesn’t make a goddamned bit of difference when I’m on the job!”
“Please, no more yelling,” my mother said. “Now, Kimo, bring those dishes to the kitchen. Al, go into the living room and sit down.”
We watched a couple of silly sitcoms together, the tension between me and my father simmering, my mother always ready to jump into the breach between us. The occasional calls that evening were from family friends, some close, some merely curious. My mother or my father would answer, give a brief explanation, and then beg off.
We watched the eleven o’clock news together in the living room, Lui’s station, of course. The reporter who had harassed me did a live shot in front of the Waikiki station, all professional and business-like. All he had to say, really, was that the department had uncovered improprieties in my handling of an important case, the murder of a prominent Honolulu businessman. The official department statement said that was the cause of my suspension. “But our own inside sources say Kanapa‘aka was suspended because of the discovery of his homosexuality,” he said. “Starting Monday, a new series will investigate gay cops, here and on the mainland. Stay tuned!”
My parents and I went to bed soon after the news, still without hearing anything from Lui or Haoa. I thought it was very strange, though I imagined Lui might be working. Haoa ought to be home with Tatiana and the children, and even if he didn’t want to call I was sure Tatiana would make him.
I was back in my childhood room, Town and Country Surf posters on the wall, long forgotten books on the shelves. I picked up a few-a couple of Punahou textbooks, some Ursula K. LeGuin and Ray Bradbury from a brief flirtation with science fiction, two dozen paperback Agatha Christie mysteries, a handful of novels by second-rate writers I’d stumbled on in the course of trying to discover my own literary tastes. Even a half-dozen oversized children’s books, bright colors and not too many words. I remembered Babar, King of the Elephants, his monkey friend and the withered old lady who was his teacher.
I slipped under the covers with Babar, trying to lose myself in the innocence of childhood. I read all the way through the book, smiling at the rhinoceros in his three-pointed hat and the monkey Arthur dressed up for skiing. When I started yawning, I put the book down, but I still could not fall asleep for a long time. I kept going over what I had done, trying to see if I could have done anything differently, and how that might have affected what happened. No matter what I thought I could do, however, the end was always the same.
My room was right over the front door, and I woke to the ringing of the doorbell, adrenaline coursing through me. I looked at the clock; it was almost three a.m. Who could it be? Surely even the television crews went home to sleep at night.
I put my robe on and walked down the hall to my parents’ bedroom, where the light was on. My parents both had their robes on, and my father led the way out into the hallway. “Who do you think it is?” I asked.