Referred Pain: Stories Read online

  “No, but see? You pass by the houses …”

  “I’m sure nothing’s going to happen to us. And if it did, we certainly wouldn’t sue any of the homeowners.” Jim gave a winning smile, a new smile she was not familiar with. He probably used it on new women. Sunny, guileless, quite unlike the sky, which darkened as they spoke.

  The man regarded them kindly. “You like go—go. If you see any locals, you tell ’um you understand the situation, ’kay?”

  “Thanks very much.” Jim took her arm firmly and led her back to the chain.

  “Don’t you feel it?” She rubbed drops off her bare arms. “Didn’t it say crossing the stream is dangerous in the rain?”

  “After a heavy rain. This is nothing.” And he beckoned from the other side of the chain.

  The first house, on the left, was a ramshackle wooden cottage with a refrigerator outside the front door and cut-off jeans hanging on a line. A rusty pickup stood moldering in the front yard. No people in sight. As they neared the second house, it began to pour. They turned and ran, leaping over the chain and making a dash for the car, where they waited briefly until the outburst settled into a dreary patter. At the car rental window four days ago, a man ahead of them had complained, “With the kind of rain you get here, you need wipers that work. You ought to check them out first.” Lois started up the winding road into the mountains, praying that the wipers would work. Her prayers were granted.

  “I’ll sleep in the cottage. I’m used to it,” she said that night when Jim invited her to join him in the empty main house. But she went over for breakfast the next morning. As they ate papayas from the orchard, he urged her into a second attempt at the falls. “Why not, Lo? It’s a perfect day.” He drove so Lois could enjoy the views. Enduring his last-minute hesitations at each curve and then his heart-stopping dashes forward was almost worth it: the mountains, remains of ancient volcanoes, were deeply scored as if by the tines of a giant fork. A lacework of surf spread out on the shore below, and the neighboring islands appeared untouched, sparkling, mythical. No hints of rain—they’d have to go through with it: muddy, slippery stones, perilous stream crossing, voracious mosquitoes, shockingly cold water.

  Again they stepped over the chain. “Ready?” he asked with the new smile.

  The shabby houses and yards along the road were brightened by jasmine and plumeria, whose mingled scents rose like a fragrant mist. After a few minutes Lois could see where the dirt road ended and the narrow path began. Good. Anything was better than her anxious anticipation. Suddenly from the yard of the last house came ferocious barking. Three large black dogs leaped about, then bounded toward the open fence.

  “Dobermans,” she said.

  “One of them is lame. Look, he can’t run very fast.”

  “Fast enough. They’re heading straight for us. This is too much.” She wheeled around. “They can keep their falls.”

  Jim didn’t put up a fight. He’d been bitten by a stray years ago and needed a series of rabies shots. “Okay, but don’t run. If we go slow, they’ll stop chasing.”

  They took long strides, trying to cover ground while appearing casual. At first the dogs were close behind, then they must have slackened—the barking grew less intense, but Lois was afraid to look back and check. By the time they stepped over the chain, the barks were intermittent. She turned to see the panting dogs some yards off, standing poised, on guard, then slinking away as if disappointed.

  “Do you think we gave up too easily?” she asked from a safe distance. “They might have backed off.” Other people, she did not add, might have known how to calm the dogs, even befriend them.

  “Dobermans? No! What a nerve. It’s one thing to discourage tourists, but this is an outrage.”

  He was still fuming as Lois drove back. Going round the bends, they met several pickup trucks with young Hawaiian men piled in back, laughing and talking loudly. Perhaps they lived in the ramshackle cottages. One of them might even own the Dobermans.

  She headed for the café at the town’s single hotel, where they sat facing the sea. Lois studied the horizon. Somewhere out in that vastness were Paul and Kalani. Even farther, Eric. But where, exactly?

  “There was a meeting last night about closing the road.” Jim was leafing through the island’s thin paper. “Exactly what the fellow told us—they claim they’re in danger of being sued and can’t take the financial risk. Nothing about setting dogs on people, though.”

  “All right, look, it’s over. It’s just one sight we didn’t see. Like the fjords.”

  Oh, those magnificent fjords, she wanted to hear him say. Unforgettable. The wind in our faces, the rushing water, the raw fish we ate on the boat. Instead he said, “It’s the principle of the thing. It’s all political, you know. The liability issue is just a front.” He rattled the paper. “They don’t come right out and say it, but it’s there between the lines. They don’t like tourists, they don’t like whites traipsing over their land. You can hardly blame them after the atrocious history.” He reminded her of how Hawaii came to be a territory—a gruesome account of missionaries turned exploiters and entrepreneurs, of brutal plantation owners, culminating in a sneaky takeover by the Marines a century ago that rankled more, not less, as years passed. “Paradise—hah!” he grumbled. It was a story of trust betrayed, of bitter disillusion, of promise turned to ash. The facts were vaguely familiar to Lois from a few pages in the guidebook, but Jim obviously knew more than could be learned from a guidebook. He had read up about the fjords too.

  “With all that,” he wound up, “we still have a right to see the falls.”

  “Right or not, it doesn’t look as if we will. Jim, that waitress. Over there.” The waitress was navigating between tables, balancing a heavy tray on her upraised arm. “You think she could be a man?”

  “Oh, the drag queens.” He took off his reading glasses.

  “Please. Cross-dressers.” They both grinned. Eric, who worked at a left-wing magazine, could be relied upon to teach the latest in proper terminology. He had told them months in advance about Oriental becoming Asian and black becoming African American. Even “queer” was being resuscitated, but he said they needn’t go that far.

  The waitress was striking, tall and slender, with a strong tanned face and shoulder-length dark hair. She wore a long print dress slit up the center that showed off her legs.

  “She has very narrow shoulders, though.”

  “Lots of men have narrow shoulders.” Jim scrutinized with the air of a connoisseur. “And she’s kind of flat-chested.”

  “Lots of women are flat-chested.”

  Their eyes were following the waitress serving a group of Japanese tourists when just behind her appeared the Hawaiian man of the day before, who had encouraged them to take the path. He spotted them too and headed over.

  “You keep following me or what?” he said with a broad smile. “This must be one small island. So how was your trip? You wen hike through the valley and see the falls? One nasty storm, eh? Lucky wen stop fast.”

  They told him about the Dobermans and he offered to call the dogs’ owner and see that they were locked up the next day, if they cared to try again.

  They exchanged a private glance in the old language. “Thank you,” said Lois, “but we’ll be leaving tomorrow. Anyway, twice up and back on that road is enough.”

  “Okay, then. I hope your stay stay good.” He turned away to hail the waitress. “Hey, Tiny. What’s up?” They shook hands energetically.

  Instead of going out for dinner, they cooked together in Paul and Kalani’s kitchen, then watched the local news. After the weather and surfing reports, Lois heard herself saying, “Listen, what the hell? The giant lizard welcomes visitors.”

  Jim looked surprised but not baffled. He remembered. His face changed—not mere courtesy, she hoped. No, it modulated to a familiarly dreamy, subtle expression, while his body grew more alert. “That’s a terrific idea.” He stood over her, extending a hand. “Your place or mine?
”

  “Yours. Since I’m here already.”

  But in the morning she was sorry. He was an adroit lover, always had been. After years apart they made love with the excitement of strangers, the tantalizing sense of discovery mellowed by trust. Strangers who knew their way around. Some frozen place in her, shockingly cold, had thawed a bit, and its tenderness was not welcome or comfortable.

  A twelve-seater plane skimmed low over the sea to bring them to the Honolulu airport. They would fly to Los Angeles, where Lois would change for Seattle. A long time together, she’d thought when she made her plans. Still, it wasn’t as if they didn’t get along or couldn’t bear each other’s company.

  “The wedding went well, didn’t it?” he said, settling in for the long trip. Lois agreed. Here was a new and better litany. How happy the young couple appeared. How beautiful the island was. How lucky Paul was to have found the orchard, to have found Kalani. There was a rich satisfaction in their words, which they felt equally and could feel only with each other. It was as if, in reciting Paul’s good fortune, they were congratulating themselves: yes, they had done this part of their task well. And yet they knew—they had been over this ground so often—that pride was as misplaced as guilt. They had labored in the dark, through a mystery, their part in it infinitesimal. Far more potent forces laid claim to their children. To themselves.

  They knew, but knowing could not erase—and why should it?—that rich satisfaction, so fine and pure it might even be called love. Why could it not be enough? she wondered. Along with the night before, in bed. Did others, the ones whom pain brought closer, have something more? Know something more? Were she and Jim weak not to hang on? Or strong, seeing the inevitable and yielding with grace?

  “A good visit, all in all.” His voice, sly and intimate, penetrated her musings. “But I think the most memorable part was the trip to Halawa Valley.”

  “Halawa Valley? That fiasco?”

  “The one-hour walk up wasn’t really too strenuous, even though it was muddy. Luckily we had sturdy old sneakers with us.”

  It was a moment before she could respond. It had been easier to take him into her body. “The path was pretty hard to follow …” She hesitated while his eyes held steady, urging her on. “But we kept alongside the water pipe. You were a good guide.”

  “Those stones crossing the stream were deceptively slippery too. I’m glad we decided to wade across instead. And we chose our footing carefully.”

  “It was scary when the water went from ankle-high to knee-high in one step. It was almost impossible to cross safely. But we managed.”

  “And remember the fruit? Wasn’t it delicious?” he asked.

  “Yes, though I didn’t care much for the voracious mosquitoes.” She laughed and scratched her shoulder, even as she felt the tears rising.

  “Well, me neither.”

  “The falls were even more beautiful than we expected.”

  “Yes,” he replied. “Eric would have loved it. A pity he couldn’t come.”

  “But that water! I still shiver when I think of it. Shockingly cold.” The mystery of it all did make her shiver, right there in her seat.

  “And red,” he added. “Don’t forget, red. I’m glad the ti leaf floated, though, aren’t you? So we could swim.”

  “The giant lizard welcomed us.”

  “The mo’o. Yes, often she wants no visitors, but I guess she was in a good mood. Or she just liked us.”

  The plane landed with ease in Los Angeles. They kissed good-bye lightly, then Jim went to find a cab and Lois hurried off to make her connecting flight. The airport was shockingly cold, especially after the warmth of the island that had seeped into her skin. Again she shivered, and again.

  Note: Quotations about Halawa Valley are from Glenda Bendure and Ned Friary, Hawaii, A Travel Survival Kit (Berkeley: Lonely Planet Publications, 1990), p. 417.

  The Word

  I’VE FORGOTTEN THE WORD, the word that was so crucial I promised myself I’d jot it down as soon as I got a chance—I was on the street at the time, walking from the bank, where I’d made a deposit, to the drugstore, or maybe it was from the drugstore to the dry cleaner’s or the copy shop—anyway, the word was a reminder of the idea for a story that came to me in the bank or drugstore and I vowed to write it down as soon as I got to the library, after I’d picked up my necklace at the jeweler’s; it did occur to me to stop right there on the street and get out a pencil and paper—how I wish I had, but I was so sure I’d do it later. There happened to be a scrap of paper in my pocket with a few words on it for another story I was planning, about a writer going blind who hires an assistant to help with his correspondence and then begins to suspect the assistant is lying about what’s in his mail, making up fan letters to cheer him up or possibly for some more sinister motive … (The words for that story were “writer going blind.”) That would have been an appropriate scrap of paper for the new word, the two notations forming a little list of ideas for when I got to my desk after my errands, but no, I thought I couldn’t possibly forget once I got to the library since the word was so perfect, summing up or representing or by some idiosyncratic connection clear only to me bearing the germ of that excellent, memorable (ha!) idea for a story, maybe even a novel—I can’t remember now how far I thought the idea could take me—a word that would suffice to make the idea flower in my mind, or rather re-flower since it had already flowered in the drugstore or wherever, generated by I can’t remember what. Certain words can do that, can bear that weight, at least they’ve done so in the past if I write them down fast enough—but once in the library I did forget, distracted by whatever insignificance took place at the dry cleaner’s or the jeweler’s or by something I saw on the street or some new thoughts intervening on the way; I don’t think it was any kind of self-sabotage since I’m not usually so inclined, and besides, I wholeheartedly liked the idea as well as its word and was eager to take it and run with it.

  But now that the word is gone there’s no use trying to recall it since, as we all know, that only drives lost words farther away. I’ve tried to remember what led up to the idea (if anything at all—sometimes ideas appear out of the blue, in which case such efforts are even more fruitless), tried to reconstruct my train of thought in that painstaking, frustrating way one does; I’ve tried to reconstruct what I might have seen on my various stops that could have triggered it, but no luck, all I come up with are useless details (a man in the dry cleaner’s trying on a sports jacket, the tailor with a tape measure around his neck pinning up the sleeves, or the jeweler’s long fingers curved around the new and more secure clasp on my necklace), while the word itself and the idea it stood for recede like a tumbleweed in the desert in the wind, and my only hope now is that it might return as unaccountably as it came, some propitious wind blowing it back in my direction so I can write whatever it was I had in mind. But I have no real faith that this will happen. I could try physically retracing my steps of that morning—it’s common knowledge that a return to the setting or, figuratively, the context, will often resurrect lost memories—but for one thing, I don’t remember the exact sequence of my steps, which might be important, and moreover, if the idea came from something I witnessed on the street or in the bank or wherever, it’s unlikely, in fact impossible, that the same events would repeat themselves, and even if by some wild quirk of fate they did, who knows whether they would have the same impact, that is, whether I would be identically receptive; a different state of mind could override the potency of context.

  So the story or novel that might have blossomed from the word a few months or years from now will never exist, and maybe it wasn’t meant to. But wait, what does that mean, wasn’t meant to exist? That’s just some rationalizing claptrap. I used to think stories were meant or not meant to exist, and therefore remembering or forgetting their key words was a sign of their preordained destiny—a kind of literary Calvinism—which makes sense in a way: if you forget, then the idea simply wasn’t vital enough. Bu
t nowadays I think you can forget very vital ideas indeed by being distracted, though of course this can never be proved since the evidence has disappeared. Everything conceived has a potential existence, in theory at least. Its actual existence depends on whether it’s feasible and whether one takes steps to make it actual. And while some people are too lazy or passive or otherwise unwilling to take such steps, I’m quite willing, but how can I if I’ve forgotten the word? Of course the story resulting from the word might not have been any good, but under the circumstances I’ll never know, and so that’s not much consolation. Anyway, that’s not the point, how good it would have been; the point was to take my chances and do it.

  And even if the word does come back, days or weeks from now, it might well come without it’s idea; the idea might have detached from it like something the tumbleweed was dragging along but that fell off and was left behind in the desert, and then the word would be just a word, maybe very ordinary, maybe one I hear and use all the time. But if it comes back announcing itself as the crucial word in the unmistakably portentous tones such words have, it’ll be baffling, hollow instead of dense with potential, and while I might recognize it as the word and remember murmuring it in front of the copy shop and planning to write it down, at the same time I’ll wonder what on earth was so intriguing or crucial about it. What was that density that evaporated, leaving it so hollow?

  Intrusions

  IT WAS A WARM June day, maybe four o’clock, four-thirty. I was wearing a navy blue and white striped sleeveless mini dress, more like a long tank top actually, and in my right hand I held a slotted spoon, and in a small room off the hall was my eighteen-month-old baby standing up and rattling the bars of her crib the way they do at that age. I was stirring chicken and chunks of pineapple in the electric frying pan—sweet and sour chicken, which I didn’t particularly like but it seemed festive—when I heard footsteps. I went to look. Approaching from the end of the long hall was a thin, sallow kid in droopy jeans and a windbreaker and a porkpie hat. My first thought was what a long reach it was from the fire escape to the bedroom window and what a long drop. He’d taken quite a risk. Next I thought he would rape me because of the mini dress, or kill me, or maybe both, and if not for the baby in the crib I would have preferred, at that moment, just to be killed.