As a police officer and then a detective, I always had a sense that my work mattered. I was protecting the people of Honolulu, the office workers, hotel maids, and visiting tourists from bad elements of the population. Then as a detective, I was righting wrongs, bringing society back into balance. I supposed that building houses mattered too, though I wasn’t sure about strip malls and malasada shops. Then again, maybe part of my problem was looking for meaning in everything. Maybe all that really mattered was supporting your family, living a good life, having a little fun on Saturday nights, and not treating your fellow man in a way you wouldn’t want to be treated.
So I thought and counted switch plate covers, and around noon my father got me and we drove into Chinatown to meet Uncle Chin for lunch. We ate in a luncheonette with dingy windows and a long row of booths with peeling vinyl. The food was only mediocre, but they knew Uncle Chin there and we were served without even ordering, steaming platters of chicken and shrimp and sticky white rice in chipped porcelain bowls.
Uncle Chin poured us tea and said, “You know my grandson, yes?”
I nodded. “Tell me what he like.”
I didn’t know what to say at first. Did I say he was learning the family business? That I wasn’t sure what role he had played in his father’s death? Finally I said, “You read about me in the newspaper?”
Uncle Chin nodded. “Derek is like me. He lives in an apartment downtown with a guy he went to Yale with. Derek and his friend will probably take over the Rod and Reel Club.”
Uncle Chin cupped his hands around his teacup, and I noticed how old and frail they seemed. He looked down at the table and spoke softly. “Tommy not tell me much about Derek. I knew something between them but I don’t know what.”
“Derek loved his father, I can tell you that,” I said. “Even though I don’t think his father ever accepted him.” I paused to scoop up some sticky rice with my chopsticks. “I can’t tell you much more about Derek, because I didn’t talk to him much. I know he’s intelligent and well-educated. He likes art. He wants to open an art gallery, and his apartment is filled with paintings.”
“I want know him,” Uncle Chin said. “To become man, boy needs much guidance. Took so long know his father, give him what I could. Maybe I start earlier with Derek.”
“I know he met you once. He mentioned you by name. I don’t think he knows you’re his grandfather.”
He nodded. “Sometimes easier learn such information from third party. Easier for me, sure. You make arrangements?”
I wasn’t supposed to be involved in Tommy’s death anymore. But did that prohibition reach to contact with his son on a family matter? My father and Uncle Chin were both looking at me, and to deny this request would disappoint them both. I decided I had disappointed my father enough. I said, “I will. I’ll call him.”
Uncle Chin smiled. We cracked our fortune cookies, and they were all light-hearted, promising Uncle Chin a promotion and my father great happiness. My fortune said, “You are loved more than you know,” but at that moment I felt that, in spite of my troubles, I knew how deeply those around me cared for me.
We got up to leave. I said, “What about the bill?”
“No bill,” Uncle Chin said.
“Uncle Chin owns the restaurant,” my father said. On the way out the waiters and busboys all bowed to Uncle Chin, who bowed slightly back.
“How about a little drive?” my father asked after we said goodbye to Uncle Chin. “I’m bidding on a renovation at the Mandarin Oriental and I want to take a look at the room again.”
“Sure.” We rolled the windows down on the truck and the warm summer air washed over us. My father even turned the radio on and we listened to Keali‘i Reichel and The Pandanus Club and Israel Kamakawiwo‘ole as we drove. He wanted to introduce me to the hotel manager, but I didn’t think the time was right, so I went wandering in the gardens while he went inside.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered Haoa talking about a job at the Mandarin Oriental, but it was still a surprise to me when I rounded a corner and came face to face with him, supervising the planting of a row of yellow ‘ilima plants along a walkway. He was wearing a big chambray shirt with Kanapa‘aka Landscaping on it, and a pair of khaki shorts. “Hey, brah,” I said.
“E, Kimo. What brings you out this way?”
I nodded back toward the hotel. “Dad,” I said. “Today’s his turn to watch me. He wanted to take another look at a remodeling job he’s bidding on.”
“He finished that ballroom two weeks ago.” Haoa looked at me, and then at the work. “Keep going like that all the way down the line,” he said. “I’ll be back in a few.”
He pointed off toward the pool. “Come on, I’ll buy you a drink.”
It was funny, but I hadn’t spent much time alone with my brother for years. We usually saw each other at family parties, luaus and christenings and such, and Tatiana was always around, or Lui, or some other relative or family friend.
I looked at Haoa as we walked through the manicured grounds toward the pool bar, this stranger who was also my older brother. He’s as tall as I am but seemed larger, because of his broad shoulders, big belly and stout legs. Our hair was the same jet black, though his was increasingly shot with gray. In family pictures I could see that we had the same cheekbones, the same eyes. Funny how we almost never talked but I still felt close to him, felt the blood in my veins calling out to his, remembering the time we had both spent in our mother’s womb, however many years apart.
He ordered us a couple of beers and we sat on high stools around a table with a mosaic tile top. “I don’t know what happened to me,” he said, after we had sat together for a few minutes in silence. “I acted like an asshole. Tatiana says it’s easier for me to blow off steam than to actually confront my feelings.”
He put the bottle down on the table and it made a hard sound. “Here’s the thing. I don’t like fags. It’s as simple as that.”
I nodded. “I don’t either.”
He looked at me curiously. “But you’re a fag.”
I shook my head. “You don’t get it. You don’t like effeminate men. Guys who flounce all over the place and call you darling.”
“Like Tico.”
“Like Tico. But I don’t do that, do I?”
He hesitated. “Go on, you won’t hurt my feelings.”
“Once in a while you get like that. I always figured you were acting like the baby.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe I can be a little faggy sometimes. But it doesn’t define my personality, is what I mean. I mean, I’m the same person I was before you knew I liked to sleep with men. Right?”
“I guess.”
“So you don’t have to put me in that group of people you don’t like, if you don’t want to.”
“I just got so mad,” he said. “It was like the fags had come and recruited my little brother. I wanted to go out and bash some heads.”
“Nobody recruited me.” I took a drink from the bottle. “This is the way I was born, just like you were born big and Lui was born sad-looking.”
“Sad-looking,” he said, and laughed. “You’re right. He always looks like somebody just ran over his dog.”
“Remember that dog we had, what was his name, Pua? Mom used to go crazy when he got up on the furniture.”
“She tried to keep him out in the yard, but you cried,” Haoa said. “You convinced her to bring him back in.”
“You guys put me up to that! I never would have cried otherwise.”
We laughed for a couple of minutes and drank our beers. “So do you fool around a lot?” Haoa asked after a while.
“I haven’t quite gotten it figured out yet. But I think when I was with women, I was looking for ones that wouldn’t tie me down, because I knew deep down it wasn’t what I wanted. Now that I can admit it, I just want what you and Tatiana have, and Lui and Liliha. Somebody to love, to hold onto at night.”