Mr. Family

During the three years I spent in a wheelchair, I lived on my brother’s ship with him and his son, Christian. Chris was three at the time of my accident; he lost his mother soon afterward. For three years, I helped my brother look after him, and this experience shaped who I am today. I love children.

Eventually I decided to move off David’s ship and into a place of my own. Shortly afterward, I regained feeling in my legs. With the help of therapy, I have been walking for about eighteen months, but because of knee injuries in the accident I still walk with a limp.

Because my parents are dead, my family consists of my brother, his wife, Jean, and my nephew, Chris. However, they are seldom in Santa Barbara anymore; David’s work takes them all over the world. In any case, I want a family of my own. And, like you, I prefer celibacy. The arrangement you have suggested appeals to me very much. I think it would be good for me. I’m less sure it would be best for you and your daughter.

So, Kalahiki, I leave you to your thoughts. I would always be glad to hear from you again.

In friendship,

Erika Blade

The last line was her phone number.

On the front of the card, Kal found her name. No wonder she could paint the sea. Christopher Blade’s daughter.

Did his parents have her prints in their gallery?

Erika…

When he’d placed the ad, it was with the hope that there was someone like her out there. Someone who wasn’t interested in sex—but who still seemed capable of a meaningful relationship. Someone who loved children and would love Hiialo.

But Erika Blade didn’t know Hiialo. And he didn’t know Erika.

Can’t do this.

Kal replaced the photo and the card in the envelope, put them in his day pack with the other mail and stood up. Pushing open the glass door of the post office, he went out into the rain and the scent of wetness and grabbed his ancient three-speed Indian Scout from where he’d leaned it against the siding.

The downpour pelting him, Kal flicked on the headlight on the handlebars and pedaled out to the road, his T-shirt and shorts immediately drenched anew. He crossed a long stone bridge, riding as though he could escape the rain, and his heart raced. His mind replayed the contents of the letter, and he knew he would read it again that night when Hiialo was in bed.

Christopher Blade’s daughter. Three years in a wheelchair.

He could hear his tires on the wet pavement and the sound of the violent winter surf just a block away, a sound that once would have called him to the breaks at Hanalei Point, to Waikoko or Hideaways. Freedom…

Don’t even think about bringing her here, Kal. You never really planned to do it. It just seemed better than having your daughter in day care.

To temper tantrums and moodiness.

To trying to do it alone.

To messing up.

But he couldn’t go through with this. It wouldn’t be right.

Why not? Riding through the rain, Kal tried to remember exactly what Erika Blade had said about sex. Hardly anything.

Painful thoughts came.

Loneliness.

The glow of headlights cast a long shadow of his body and bicycle ahead of him on the water-running pavement. Kal steered into a roadside ditch, springing off his bike when the front wheel stuck in the mud. As rain streamed down his face, a red 1996 Land Rover whipped past. Kal recognized the vehicle. It belonged to a movie star who used his fifth home, in Haena, two weekends of every year.

Reminding himself to buy a helmet, Kal yanked his bike out of the mud and back to the road before he realized the front wheel wouldn’t turn and the forks were bent. He stood in the rain, and it drowned his voice as he yelled after the long-vanished car, “I hate your guts, malihini! You killed my wife!” He knew it wasn’t really the driver of this car who’d hit Maka—just someone like him. Someone who would never belong.

Kal leaned his arms on the handlebars, his head in his hands.

Erika Blade would be a malihini, a newcomer, too.

He wouldn’t write to her again. He’d said personal things to her. She’d said personal things to him. They were even.

And her advice was sane. Wait for love.

Wait…

He’d waited three years, dated women. They’d made him miss Maka even more.

Kal picked up his bike, slung it over his shoulder and began walking home through the rain. There was nothing to wait for.

She would never come back.

THE OKIKA GALLERY in Hanalei was a renovated plantation-style house with white porch posts and verandas. Next door, separated from the gallery by a wide walk bordered with heliconia, anthurium, spider lilies and ginger, a similar building housed the office of Na Pali Sea Adventures, the outfitter for whom Kal worked. The two buildings shared a courtyard away from the street.

The morning after he received Erika’s letter, there were no Zodiac trips going out, so Kal’s job was to shuttle sea kayaks to the Hanalei River for the tourists who had rented them. At ten-thirty, when he returned from that errand, he slipped out for his break.

It was raining, but the espresso stand in the courtyard was still doing business as he dashed through the downpour to the steps of the gallery. He entered through the open French doors, and Jin, his mother’s champion Akita bitch, stood up and came over to greet him.

“Hi, Jin. Hi, girl.” Kal crouched to pet the dog’s thick red-and-white coat, to rub her back and behind her ears, to look into her eyes in the black-masked face. As Jin licked his cheek, Mary Helen, his mother, abandoned a mat-cutting project at the counter to join him.

Kal had gotten his height from his father. With her neat tennis-player’s body and no-nonsense short blond hair, Mary Helen stood barely five foot two. She always looked at home in shorts, polo shirts and slippers—elsewhere known as thongs—the footwear of the islands. Born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, Mary Helen had first visited Oahu in 1960 and met King Johnson at a dog show, where their Akitas had fallen in love and played matchmakers like something out of One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Or so Kal had been told. His mother had left the Midwest and moved to Hawaii to marry King. Gamely she’d faced the challenges of island life, slowly exploring her new world, learning the social subtleties and embracing the cultural richness of Hawaii. Hawaiian quilting, Japanese bon dancing, foods as unfamiliar as poi and kim chee—Mary Helen loved them all. When she and King had children, they had given them Hawaiian names. Now, in the critical eyes of the locals, Kal’s mother was considered a kamaaina, a child of the land.

Could Erika Blade do that?

“Hi, sweetheart,” said Mary Helen. “No trips today?”

“No. I’m going to go get Hiialo in a minute.” When Kal had no trips to guide, his boss, Kroner, let Hiialo work with him at the Sea Adventures office, doing small tasks her four-year-old hands could manage. Despite her tantrums, Hiialo had a knack for winning friends.

“She can come over here,” his mother said. “I’ll be here all day. I’m changing some prints on the wall.”

Kal had come to look at prints, but his taking a sudden interest in the family obsession—art—would make his mother suspicious. “I’ll bring her over to say hi. I’m going to clean the equipment room next door, so I thought she could help.” His parents gave enough to Hiialo; she spent every Tuesday with them at the gallery.

“Oh, that’s good for her.” His mother smiled approvingly. “And she’ll have fun.”

Kal straightened up from petting Jin, who walked away to keep watch out the front door. Why had he placed that ad, anyhow? It wasn’t as though Hiialo had no female influence in her life. She had his mother and his sister, Niau.

“Your dad took Kumi to the vet,” his mother told him. “And Niau went to Honolulu. She took Leo some prints. Did you know he’s remodeling? He wanted you to help.”

“I know. He called me.”

Kal’s oldest brother—Lay-oh, not Lee-oh—ran a gallery on Oahu. Keale, the next oldest, was a park ranger on the Big Island. Uncles and aunts. What didn’t Hiialo have? If he wanted, they could even get a dog, one of his folks’ Akita puppies. Though he wasn’t home enough…

He wasn’t home enough.

He needed a partner.

Kal sensed his mother looking him over, and he knew she was wondering if he’d wind up in the hospital again, receiving a blood transfusion. Apparently deciding he was going to make it, she smiled and said, “Come tell me what you think of this oil painting. A man from Kapaa painted it, and I think he’s good.”

Where usually he would have begged off, Kal followed her to the counter, surreptitiously scanning the walls. He didn’t need to look that far. When he reached the counter, he saw that one of the prints his mother was putting up or taking down was by Erika Blade.

He tried not to stare, but he recognized the model as the same woman in the dolphin card Erika had sent. In this print, the woman was building a sand castle with a boy.

It was the best of her work he’d seen. The interaction between the woman and child, their absorption in their construction project, conveyed a lot. Motherhood. Happiness. Friendship. Nurturing. Fun.

If Erika Blade had a lot of prints out, she was probably doing well. What Jakka had said weeks before needled him. Marry a rich woman.

Not a pretty notion, but practical. Kal wasn’t looking for a woman to support him so he could play professionally again. But he worked six days a week. Needed to. At least she can support herself.

He dutifully assessed the oil landscape by the Kapaa artist. “It’s nice.” But his eyes drifted back to the print.

Jin left the door, wandered over to them and sat down by the counter. The Akita looked at Kal and so did his mother.

“Isn’t that lovely?” Mary Helen asked, noticing his interest in Erika’s print.

“Yes.” Kal turned away, chewing on unasked questions.

“That’s hers, too, up there,” said his mother. “The girl sailing. We sell a lot of her work actually. Her name is Erika Blade. I think she’s disabled.”

“Oh.”

Mary Helen’s head was tilted sideways, as though she was listening for the akua, the island spirits, to give up secrets. She was staring curiously at Kal, picking up on the anomaly of his looking twice at a piece of art.

“Well, I’m going to get Hiialo,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”

Then he left, before the akua could tell their tales.

CHAPTER THREE

Malaki: March

TO ERIKA’S DISAPPOINTMENT, Adele expressed misgivings about Poofie and Free Kittens. Good work, she said gently, but not enough universal appeal for a print series. How about something with people in it?

Erika was painting people now, but nothing she could sell: Six similar paintings, not just in watercolor but also in acrylic and oil. Two of the subjects had come from an incomplete photograph. The third eluded her and stood ghostlike on the side.

Maka, she thought, who are you?

She had shaped each different Maka using pictures of hula dancers from Hawaiian travel magazines, which now lay all about her studio. She had used no one model but had combined different characteristics.

What had Maka been doing? Was her other arm behind Kalahiki, holding him? Was her face turned up to his? What was she wearing? How tall was she? Her right arm was medium-size and well-toned—

The phone rang.

Erika had trained her heart not to leap at that sound, and now she debated letting the machine pick it up to prove her self-control. Ever since she’d received Kalahiki’s letter—and answered it—she’d been unsteady. She shouldn’t care so much. But she did. About a broken-hearted man she didn’t know. Twenty times a day, Erika laid those feelings aside, put them in the place where she put her reaction to his picture, a reaction that was all wrong.

Kal’s grief was his business, not hers.

That he looked like an engraved invitation to come to Hawaii and fall in love was irrelevant.

A celibate marriage was exactly what she wanted. A husband. A child. And no physical complications, no difficult intimacy.

She could keep her head, not get involved. It was easy when she remembered what doing otherwise could mean. Sex.

Yuck.

So he was hung up on his dead wife. Good. He could have his hang-ups; she’d keep hers.

The telephone rang again. She should answer. Adele was back from Hawaii. This might be something about work. Like what? She’s already rejected all my paintings.

The phone rang a third time. Erika set down her brush, dropped down to the shadows of the galley and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

There was a silence, like a punctuation mark. Then, “Hello. This is Kal Johnson calling. Is Erika there?”

She sank down on the steps of the companionway. With a slight breeze from the open hatches blowing her oversize T-shirt against her back, she clutched the receiver. His voice was low and resonant. Masculine. Unique.

God help her.

Sexy.

“This is Erika.” She was in a vacuum and her insides were being sucked out of her. She heard the engine of a cabin cruiser crawling past in the harbor, and a slow wake rocked the junk at its berth.

“I’m not sure if you know who I am, but—”

“I know who you are. You’re Kalahiki.”

Across the Pacific, in the sun-dappled morning shadows inside the bungalow, Kal heard her say his name for the first time. At the same moment he saw Hiialo outside beating Pincushion against the porch. “Bad Pincushion! Bad! No talk stink!”

What had Pincushion said?

“I thought we should talk on the phone.” Brilliant, brilliant, keep it up, Kal.

Erika bit her lip. There was a bellows stuck in her throat, and it was opening and closing with each beat of her heart. Talk, she thought. Say something that will make him…

Oh, she wanted it. They could settle into permanencepermanent celibacy, permanent family—and her life would not change again. Safe.

“Your daughter’s beautiful.” The ensuing pause was so long that at last she asked, “Are you still there?”

“Yeah. I…Erika…”

Silence surrounded her name. Silence…and feeling. It was so dark in the galley she didn’t know why her eyes burned that way, why she felt so—

“I just wanted to tell you some things,” he said. “I’ve thought a lot since I got your letter. Are you serious about this?”

Erika swallowed. This. As though he couldn’t say it himself.

“Yes.”

“My house is small. It’s a bungalow. I could fix it so we’d have our own rooms, but it’s still cozy. It’s not right on the beach, either. Close, though.”

Erika tightened her fingers on the phone. Was he saying he wanted her to come?

“I don’t make a lot of money. I’m buying the house from my folks. They have a gallery, by the way. Actually they have three. I went into the one in Hanalei and looked for your prints. They have some.”

Parents. Did his parents live near him? The thought was reassuring. Mr. Family.

She asked, “What’s the name of their gallery?”

“The Okika. It means ‘orchid.’”

His voice was both warm and sandpaper rough. It made her want to hear him talk more.

But he was quiet.

Erika asked, “What does Hiialo do while you work?”

“Um…she goes to a day-care center.” Actually, she’d been to a few. One in a church basement with forty other kids. One with an elderly woman who had made the mistake of saying Hiialo needed a firm hand. The latest situation was a home with an unhappy dog tied up outside.

“My nephew used to be with me while I worked, when he was Hiialo’s age.” As soon as she’d said it, Erika wished she hadn’t. She sounded too eager. Desperate.

But an opportunity like this wouldn’t come again. Normal people wanted sex. Kal and his grief were her only hope.

“Hiialo is…” His voice startled her. “Well, she’s moody. In fact, she can be a bugger sometimes.”

“All kids can.” The dock made its endless aching cries.

“I’d like to…” On the lanai, Hiialo was making Pincushion and her stuffed lion, Purr, shake hands. Kal remembered proposing to Maka. At Waimea Beach. Kissing. I love you…“You could come over here,” he said. “I’ll buy your ticket. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll buy you a ticket home, too.”

“I’ll buy my own ticket.” Somehow. Her hand was deep in her hair, tearing at it. She felt like crying. What if he didn’t like her? What if he didn’t think she’d be a good stepmother for Hiialo? What if…“When do you want me to come?”

“Not right away. I have to figure out some things. About the house.” About how to tell his parents.

How to tell Hiialo.

“I’ll call you again, yeah?” he said. “And I’ll send pictures of the house. Maybe you could come in June?”

“That sounds great. I’m boat-sitting for my brother’s business partner. He’ll be back in June.” Oh, she sounded flaky. Practically homeless.

“Good,” said Kal.

Her worries evaporated. She was wanted—by a stranger. Why was he doing this?

He said, “Let’s get off the phone for now. I’ll call you again soon. Do you have any questions before we hang up?”

“Yes.” With a presence of mind that astonished her, she asked, “What’s your phone number?”

Moments later she set the receiver back in its cradle. Still sitting weakly on the steps, she leaned against the side of the counter and wept.

“DADDY, PINCUSHION’S stuffing is falling out.” As Kal hung up the phone, Hiialo appeared before him, bringing everything into immediate and demanding focus.

“You beat the stuffing out of him. That’s why it’s falling out.”

Hiialo started to look tearful, and Kal reached for Pincushion, who was made from a faded gray-blue sock and wore a turban. In addition to a split seam on the side, one of his felt eyes was coming off. Repair time.

“I’ll fix him.” Sewing up Pincushion would calm him.

A picture bride. Danny’s analogy was accurate, and since the night he’d said it, Kal had stumbled upon two accounts of Japanese picture brides from the turn of the century. One was in the newspaper, the other in a book sold in the office of Na Pali Sea Adventures. And he’d remembered that his parents’ next-door neighbor, June Akana, who had taught Japanese bon dances to him and his sister and brothers when they were kids, had been a picture bride, too. She and her husband were in their nineties, still going strong. Best friends. People could be happy.

But the picture brides of old hadn’t come to Hawaii for celibate marriage.

Oh, shit, what were his friends going to say? They all knew what he’d advertised for. He’d told them why, because of Hiialo, because he was never home and she needed someone who could be. He needed someone who would be. He killed a useless yearning. Not for love—for life. His own.

The Stratocaster in his hands. Playing…

But he was doing this for Hiialo.

“You’ll be all right, Pincushion,” said Hiialo, patting the toy in Kal’s hand. She trailed after him as he went to the kitchen drawer where he kept needles, thread, extra guitar picks, junk. The scissors were missing, as usual.

“Hiialo, I need your scissors. Could you please get them for me?”

“Yes, Daddy. Thank you for fixing Pincushion.” She went over to the couch and looked underneath it, then went to her room to find the scissors.

Sunshine. Hiialo was like sunshine now, but she was changeable as the north-shore weather. And sometimes as wild.

Would Erika Blade, a thirty-six-year-old childless woman, really be able to handle it?

Dear Erika,

I’m glad you’re coming to Hawaii. I’ll try to call you once a week. Here are the pictures I promised you of my house. You can see what Hiialo looks like now. She is holding Pincushion, who is her favorite toy…

I mentioned my family on the phone. My folks live in Haena, and my sister, Niau, lives in Poipu, on the south side of the island. My brother Leo…

MIDAFTERNOON sunlight shone through the open hatch and the windows of the Lien Hua. Lying in her berth, Erika read Kal’s second letter and studied the photographs he’d sent. At four, Hiialo was sturdy, with thick, wavy, medium brown hair cut in a pageboy. Even in the photograph, in which she was crouched on the lanai of the green bungalow with the thing called Pincushion, she seemed full of energy, ready to leap to her feet and race away. Not like Chris…

That’s okay, thought Erika. I know I can love her.

If she was certain of anything, it was her ability to love and care for children. Chris had been exceptionally good, exceptionally bright. Exceptionally quiet. But she could love Hiialo. It would be easy.

Another photo showed Kal with his brothers and sister and parents and their three dogs, all Akitas. His father—King, said the corresponding name on the back of the photo—was tall and white-haired. His mother, Mary Helen, seemed compact and athletic. And Kal and his siblings all had a look of radiant good health and of energy and power—not unlike the dogs. One brother was bearded, the other clean-shaven. His sister had shoulder-length light brown hair. They were a handsome family. Kal was the youngest.

The photo and letter, the proof that he really was a family man in every sense, reassured Erika. Since his phone call, she’d had doubts. Kal was a stranger. With David so far away, no one would really know if she got into trouble.

She ought to write to him, tell him.

She ought to tell someone what she was doing.

But she knew what her brother would say: Kal will get over Maka’s death.

For the hundredth time, Erika tried to quiet her qualms about that. She had advised him to wait—for someone else, someone he could love.

She should send him photos of her and David and Chris and Jean to give him the same kind of reassurance he’d given her. But she had no photos of herself with them, only with Chris, when she was in a wheelchair.

Not an option.

She looked back to the letter.

…I haven’t told anyone our plans. June is a long way off. Before you come, I’ll explain to my folks and Hiialo. Also, my in-laws. Maka’s folks live on Molokai, but her brother and her cousin live in Hanalei and they’re like family. In Hawaii, ohana, or family, means more than just your immediate relatives. It can extend to all your loved ones—

The telephone rang, and she went down into the galley to answer. It was Adele, calling to ask how the painting was going. Did she have anything else yet? Had she tried placing those “other pieces” in a gallery?

“Ah…I’m just experimenting right now.” Erika thought it through at light speed. “Actually a friend has invited me to Hawaii in June. I’m going to do some work there.”

“Oh, great! Which island?”

“Kauai.” Belatedly Erika recalled that Adele had seen Kal’s ad. But surely it wouldn’t occur to her that Erika had answered the ad.

It didn’t. “Wonderful. I think it’s recovered a lot since Iniki. The hurricane in ‘92? Try to get up to the north shore…”

Erika listened to Adele’s suggestions and chewed on her bottom lip.

Yes, it was good that David was in Greenland and no one really had to know what she was doing. She would write to her brother and tell him who she was staying with and where. But why say more? If it turned out that Kal didn’t like her, no one would have to know the truth.

“Erika? Are you there?”

“Oh, yes, I’m sorry. I’m spaced out today, Adele. What is it?”