And so they left the Sandwich Isles. Heading up the broad Kauai channel from the port of Nawiliwili, the SS Oahu Princess rounded Kuhuku Pt. on the north coast of Oahu and steamed toward the mainland.
On the way out to the islands, Solitaire had set their various timepieces back an hour each night, a ritual she found gratifying, as though the Gods, in their careless fashion, had inadvertently granted them a daily dividend of discretionary living.
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| Freya: Goddess of Eternal Youth |
"One of Freya's Golden Apples," Solitaire gloated. "Free!"
“There are no free apples,” Em said.
Now, as they turned towards California sometime after midnight on the 30th, they set their clocks ahead and Solitaire begrudged the Gods the loss of that hour.
The nights, though technically shorter, were still sufficiently long and harrowing, and Em was by no means in the clear. He was now on daily prednisone and while his lungs seemed slightly less congested, his body still moved in a curiously heavy way, as though his arteries were lined with lead.
Solitaire, herself, felt both enervated and jittery. Dr. Craig was good enough to remind her that the Hawaiian Islands were the most remote land mass on the planet. There was, he remarked, a midway point where a passenger in extremis could not be rescued by helicopter. A point of no return! Jesus! Just thinking about it made her heart race. She opted to bag her exercise classes on the homeward-bound journey and focus instead on Swami Derek’s “Mid-day meditation” series.
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| Swami Derek: AFTER Meditation |
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| Swami Derek: BEFORE Meditation |
She decided, further, not to tell Em about the no-rescue zone, or the meat locker. But then, during another sleepless night while she was pumping Albuterol up his nose and taking his blood pressure every five minutes and begging him not to die, he said he might as well die here as anywhere, and anyway, he added ruminatively, he’d always found burial-at-sea aesthetically appealing – so clean, so unencumbered, so … well, so Shakespearean –
“Shakespearean?”
He squinted at her suspiciously, as though she were already deep in the throes of Alzheimer’s. “Surely you get the allusion …”
“I assume you mean Ariel's song: ‘Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes…’
... and so forth ...”
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes…’
... and so forth ...”
“Right,” said Em, more amiable now that she had redeemed herself.
So then she felt compelled, honor-bound in effect, to tell him what Dr. Craig had divulged to her, namely that the cruise ships didn’t do burial-at-sea anymore and that there would be no lovely flags and leis and buglers, but they would just toss him into cold storage along with enough meat for 20,000 meals, give or take a few thousand – and only his body bag to keep him warm.
“Cold storage?”
“I could have it wrong – maybe it’s the freezer.”
“Freezer? That can’t be right. You can’t just willy-nilly perform cryogenics –
“It’s hardly that.”
“—however primitive -- without prior permission. They’d have the pants sued off them.”
“By whom?”
“By youm. You. I hope.”
In the event, this news flash changed Em’s outlook dramatically. He now said that were he to die at sea– God forbid -- Solitaire would have to give him her solemn oath that she would throw him overboard because he damn well did not want to be stowed for the duration of the voyage in the meat locker, let alone freezer, with a slew of short ribs, fat backs, pork bellies, slabs of beef and mutton chops.
When Solitaire rashly (and not without malice) related this ghoulish exchange to her mother, Lavinia replied, “Don’t be ridiculous, darling, no one eats mutton anymore. Not even the Aussies.”
Solitaire told Em that she would do her damnedest to carry out his wishes, but she didn’t see how to accomplish it.
“You could push me off our verandah and no one the wiser.”
“Easy for you to say.“ She pointed out the existence of a protective barrier that ran along the deck half way up to the railing.. “There’s no way I could possibly lift –“
“… a dead weight over it?”
“Are you trying to be amusing?” she asked.
"Probably."
“Well, stop it.”
Em thought. “You’ll have to find someone to help you.”
“Great. How about the Captain?”
“How about the steward? “
“Maynard?”
“ Naturally, you’ll have to pay –“
“And pay … and pay … and pay … for the rest of my life. Are you daft?”
“You’ve got a point.”
She wished to God she had insisted that they disembark in Honolulu. They could have stayed with the Baxters at their beautiful home in Kahala. Especially since the Baxters were going to be traveling in India for a month. It would be heavenly. Like being in Heaven without God, as someone had once said to her.
A GOOD PAIR
On the day the Oahu Princess docked in Honolulu, Solitaire left the ship and, with Em safely tucked up with a little light reading (The Collected Plays of Henrik Ibsen; the Complete, Annotated Edition),
took a faux trolley car from the Matson Lines’ Pier Seven to the Aloha Clock Tower.
There, in the small Maritime Museum, she looked at old picture postcards of Duke Kahanemoku and his huge wooden surfboard on Waikiki beach; pretty haolis from California driving through sugar cane fields in big Packard touring cars; King David Kalakaua and Robert Louis Stevenson sitting in wicker rocking chairs on the Iolani Palace verandah; and press photos of arriving movie stars and other celebrities -- Cary Grant and Doris Duke, Bing Crosby, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, Shirley Temple and her parents.
She bought numerous postcard replicas and then took a taxi up to Makiki Heights where her friend Nicole Baxter worked two days a week as a volunteer docent at the small but elegant Museum of Contemporary Art. Solitaire had known Nicole in an earlier incarnation as the wife of a dentist in Newport, Rhode Island. They had since divorced and Nicole had married a professor of South Asian history who taught at the East-West Center.
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| Ibsen completes 27th play |
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| Gertrude and Alice enroute to The Islands |
She bought numerous postcard replicas and then took a taxi up to Makiki Heights where her friend Nicole Baxter worked two days a week as a volunteer docent at the small but elegant Museum of Contemporary Art. Solitaire had known Nicole in an earlier incarnation as the wife of a dentist in Newport, Rhode Island. They had since divorced and Nicole had married a professor of South Asian history who taught at the East-West Center.
They strolled around the terraced gardens beneath pale poincianas and dark green and copper-leaved mango trees, the verges splashed with scarlet and yellow hibiscus and red ixora and the city lying at their feet and beyond it the glittering Pacific. From there they drove to the Manoa Valley in the old part of Honolulu, passing the Punahou School where Lavinia and her sister Lilibet had boarded (Lavinia hating every minute of it) and St. Clement’s Episcopal Church where her grandparents had been married and both girls baptized and confirmed.
Over lunch, Nicole told Solitaire that Bill would be retiring from his teaching position at the end of the year and that they would, with regret, probably leave Hawaii and move to Switzerland where her family lived and where she had a condo.
Switzerland? To live? Solitaire gazed around her. The Waioli Tea Room was an old white frame bungalow built up off the ground in the tropical style with sagging floors and overhead fans, and a wide verandah that looked out into a lush tangle of ferns and impatiens and elephant ears, blue ginger and birds-of-paradise that grew in the Manoa Valley in glorious profusion. She could hardly believe that anyone of sane mind would trade this Eden for the crag-bound, snow-blasted, wind-whipped wintry torment of the Swiss Alps.
Barely stifling a gasp of incredulity, she bleated “But why?”
Barely stifling a gasp of incredulity, she bleated “But why?”
“Because,” Nicole replied, “we’re so far away from everything.” By “everything,” of course, she meant France. In fact, Nicole had grown up in Algiers; nevertheless, and geography notwithstanding, she seemed to Solitaire the very quintessence of French chic – the cut of her clothes, her hair, her figure, her throaty voice and discerning taste. On the way to her house, they stopped for a walk in Kapiolani Park and Nicole told Solitaire that she walked through the park with her husband, Bill, to his office every morning. On the weekends, they hiked and sailed. They were completely compatible and she was happy in a way that she had never been during her first marriage.
While they were walking a man approached them, wanting to know the best way to get to the Bishop Museum. When Nicole told him, he did not depart, but lingered, chatting them up. When the two women strolled away, he stood looking after them. Observing him with a quick sideways glance, Nicole tossed back her head in her flirty way and laughed.
"You see," she said, "age doesn't matter. Trim ankles and a good pair are all a woman needs.”
Solitaire thought this might well be true of Nicole; but, as a general rule, she rather doubted it.
"You see," she said, "age doesn't matter. Trim ankles and a good pair are all a woman needs.”
Solitaire thought this might well be true of Nicole; but, as a general rule, she rather doubted it.
Around five o’clock, they picked Em up at the ship and the four of them dined on the terrace of the New Otani overlooking the beach at the base of Diamond Head. But what should have been an idyllic evening was a disaster. Em, morose and puffy, scarcely spoke; Solitaire, anxious, chattered nervously; the Baxters, so obviously brimming with health and happiness, did their best to play the role of convivial hosts, but failed. Even Nicole with her sophistication and savoir faire was non-plussed; she kept gazing at Em, searching vainly for the urbane diplomat she had once known in Newport. When the Baxters took them back to the Matson pier, Em immediately turned and in the unforgiving glare of the security floodlights trudged slowly back into the ship; but Solitaire stood at the foot of the gangplank for a final false moment, merrily waving goodbye as the Baxters drove off in their snazzy Mercedes convertible. She did not begrudge them their joy; she merely envied it.
Solitaire had occasion to recall that day in Honolulu when, about a year later, shor before she and Em moved up to Tucson, she had a telephone call from Nicole. Bill had just died from a malignant brain tumor. It had happened with terrifying speed. One month he was there -- handsome, fit, content; the next month he wasn't. "I didn't even have time to help him," she sobbed. But there was one thing she had been able to do for him: in the week before his death, she had called some of their friends and they had come over and carried Bill out to the pool and eased him into the water. "I don't know if he even knew where he was, but he looked so happy there, floating on his back and smiling like an angel."
Solitaire had occasion to recall that day in Honolulu when, about a year later, shor before she and Em moved up to Tucson, she had a telephone call from Nicole. Bill had just died from a malignant brain tumor. It had happened with terrifying speed. One month he was there -- handsome, fit, content; the next month he wasn't. "I didn't even have time to help him," she sobbed. But there was one thing she had been able to do for him: in the week before his death, she had called some of their friends and they had come over and carried Bill out to the pool and eased him into the water. "I don't know if he even knew where he was, but he looked so happy there, floating on his back and smiling like an angel."
MAUI
The island of Maui, where the ship anchored offshore the day after their stopover in Honolulu, had to make do without their presence. Em never left his bed, while Solitaire spent the major part of the day in a deck chair, reading William Boyd’s ravishing The Blue Afternoon whilst peripherally eyeing a parade of orange tenders plying back and forth between the ship and Lahaina town , the old whaling port with its backdrop of lime green hills.
KAUAI
In Kauai, Solitaire decided to get off the ship. She and her late father had once lived on their sailboat in Nawiliwili harbor for nine months, a gestation period sufficient to produce considerable discontent on both sides. Still, she loved her father and in his memory she would once again traverse the old stone pier and walk the dusty path beneath the casuarina trees where they had lugged fifty-pound blocks of ice and wrestled them into their borrowed dinghy. A purist, he had abominated the use of electricity aboard sailboats. Also suitcases, printed fabrics, fire arms and plants. It was like dealing with U.S. Customs.
Leaving Em in bed reading Das Kapital, she walked down to the departure lounge and signed up for the bus tour to Waimea Canyon. Imagine her amazement when she discovered that the rustic old stone pier had been hideously transformed into a mile-long slab of concrete upon which three elderly wahines in muu-muus danced a listless hula to the accompaniment of a loudspeaker blaring, "Lovely Hula Hands."
Leaving Em in bed reading Das Kapital, she walked down to the departure lounge and signed up for the bus tour to Waimea Canyon. Imagine her amazement when she discovered that the rustic old stone pier had been hideously transformed into a mile-long slab of concrete upon which three elderly wahines in muu-muus danced a listless hula to the accompaniment of a loudspeaker blaring, "Lovely Hula Hands."
Several hours later, Solitaire said to Em: ”Guess who was on the tour today?”
“Elvis Presley? Leon Trotsky? Amelia Earhart?
Do his initials begin with Adolf Hitler? Is he smaller than a bread basket? Bigger than a biscuit? Madder than a March –“
“Oh shut up for heaven’s sake! … Gerald!”
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| Amelia Gets Lei'd |
“Gerald?”
“The Weird Widower from West Vancouver.”
He mulled it over briefly, then fairly shouted with elation. “That's it! That’s it! Your accomplice.”
“My accomplice in --?”
“In body disposal. Land fill, you might say."”
“But … but he’s a complete dunderhead.”
"But what about blackmail? Will he want money? Sex?”
“Both, I should think. “
Already, Solitaire could feel the steel grip of manacles around her wrists and hear the clang of the cell door at Tehatchepi State Women's Prison. Like Lizzie Eustace, accused of stealing her own diamonds, Solitaire would be accused of a crime she didn't commit; only in her case she would be tried for murder and executed. And no one would ever believe that her husband was already dead when she dropped him in the drink.
“No, she said firmly, “I’m not doing it – not even for you. Anyway,” she said, “you don’t look to me like someone who’s going to die imminently--"
"Don't give up hope -- there's still time."
"-- therefore I think the question of Gerald is entirely academic.”
"Don't give up hope -- there's still time."
"-- therefore I think the question of Gerald is entirely academic.”
Em regrouped, gathering his forces. "‘Oh time enough,’” he intoned in his Welsh-bard sing-song, “’when the blood runs cold and I lie down but to –‘ That reminds me – I haven’t had a nosebleed since we’ve been on this cruise. “
“Must be the salt sea air.” In Arizona, the air was so dry that Em, who was on blood-thinners, was subject to frequent nosebleeds.
“Ah, the sea, Anna – the sea!” Em moaned. Of course, no one younger than 108, with the exception of Solitaire, would know that he was doing his impression of the actor George F. Marion as the Swedish captain of a coal barge discoursing on the perils of the deep with his daughter, the hard-drinking, threadbare, but still gorgeous prostitute, (Greta Garbo), in Eugene O'Neill's tedious melodrama, "Anna Christie."
When they hit the open sea, however, they were energized. During those last few days and nights at sea, they read, went to lectures, watched an auction of atrocious pictures, and walked for miles around the deck. Two and-a-half times round, she learned, equaled one mile; and passengers were expected to promenade in the same direction –clockwise? Counter-clockwise? She couldn’t remember. “It’s like intermission at the Vienna Opera,” she said to Em.
On their last evening they put into port for three hours just south of the U.S. border on the Baja peninsula. They were only there because of some legal technicality and passengers were not allowed to disembark. Em and Solitaire stood at the rail and watched as a huge wobbly red sun sank into a carmine sea and a white moon climbed out of the Mexican particulate (dust, burning garbage, old tires, marijuana) to rise over the black Ensenada hills.
Early the next morning they arrived in San Pedro, docking at the same pier from which they had sailed two weeks earlier. While Em was disbursing gratuities to Manley, Diosdado et al, Solitaire stood on deck watching the ship tie up and various personnel come aboard, among them a vigorous matron of middle age and strapping proportions who was greeted by various members of the crew. As she watched her, Solitaire was stunned to realize that she had arrived before at this same pier in San Pedro. It was 1945 and she was standing on the deck of the troop ship on which she had crossed the Pacific, waiting to disembark -- an undersized skinny child with blonde pigtails, dressed entirely in hand-me-downs -- dress too big, jacket too tight and high-top tennis shoes with the toes cut out -- when a broad-girthed woman walked up to her and handed her a package. A present from the Red Cross, she beamed, a pair of new shoes. Solitaire sat on the deck then and there and put them on -- brown, lace-up Oxfords that were a little too large (but everyone agreed she would soon grow into them) and very ugly. Solitaire, however, did not think they were ugly; had they been Cinderella's glass slippers or Dorothy's red shoes, she could not have been more thrilled with their beauty. She saw them now in her mind's eye, and smiled.
"What are you smiling about?" Em asked.
"Oh nothing much," she said. "Just happy you're alive, I guess."
He put his arm around her and they left the ship and took a cab to the car rental office, where they set off in a Honda Civic and, venturing at high speed onto the San Diego Freeway, immediately went in the wrong direction. Solitaire tried to meditate as Swami Derek had taught her, but she had not yet attained that state of grace on her path to Enlightenment.
"What are you smiling about?" Em asked.
"Oh nothing much," she said. "Just happy you're alive, I guess."
He put his arm around her and they left the ship and took a cab to the car rental office, where they set off in a Honda Civic and, venturing at high speed onto the San Diego Freeway, immediately went in the wrong direction. Solitaire tried to meditate as Swami Derek had taught her, but she had not yet attained that state of grace on her path to Enlightenment.
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