They all laughed, because it was absurd—he wasn’t wasting his life. He would go on to write the Greek paper, and then pass the class, and then graduate, and years later, when he was seeing his own son off to college, he’d say, “Have fun, but not too much,” and he would tell him the story of when he was in college, and the day he’d wasted sledding in the snow. But there’d be no real suspense to the story, because they would both know the ending already.
I, however, had wasted my life. Aside from you, the only thing I had ever accomplished was not leaving Lipo-wao-nahele. But not doing something is not the same as doing something. I had wasted my life, but you weren’t going to let me waste yours as well. So I was proud of you for leaving me behind, for doing what I was unable to do—you wouldn’t let yourself be seduced or fooled or spellbound; you would leave, and not just leave me, and Lipo-wao-nahele, but you would leave everything else as well: the island, the state, history, who you were meant to be, who you might have been. You would discard it all, and when you had, you would find yourself so light that when you stepped into the ocean, your footfall wouldn’t even sink but would instead skim atop the surface of the water: There you’d begin walking, east, toward a different life, one where no one knew who you were, not even yourself.
* * *
You know what happened next, Kawika, perhaps better than I do. It was some months after you left—Uncle William told me it was seven months—that Edward drowned, and while his death was declared an accident, I sometimes wonder whether it was intentional. He had come there to find something, but he hadn’t had the strength to find it, and neither had I. I was meant to be his audience, and yet I hadn’t been able to, and without me, he had given up as well.
It was Uncle William who found his body on the beach on one of his visits, and it was that same day—after the police questioned me—that he had taken me back to Honolulu and to the hospital. When I awoke, I was in a room, and I had looked up and had seen the doctor, who was repeating my name and shining a bright white light into my eyes.
The doctor sat next to me and asked me questions: Did I know my name? Did I know where I was? Did I know who the president was? Could I count backward in increments of six from one hundred? I answered, and he wrote my answers down. And then, before he left, he said, “Wika, you won’t remember me, but I know you.” When I didn’t reply, he said, “My name’s Harry Yoshimoto—we went to school together. Do you remember?” But it wasn’t until that night, when I was alone in my bed, that I did remember him: Harry, the boy who had eaten rice sandwiches, and to whom no one had spoken; Harry, the boy I was grateful not to be.
And this was the end. I never returned to our house in the valley. After a while, they brought me here. Eventually, I lost the eyesight that remained; I lost the interest, and then the ability, to do anything. I lay in bed and dreamed, and time blurred and softened, and it was as if I had never made any mistakes. Even you—now, I was told, at another school, on the Big Island—even you, who never visited, even you I could conjure nearby, and sometimes, if I was very lucky, I could even fool myself into pretending I had never known you to begin with. You would be the first Kawika Bingham not to graduate from the school—who knew what else you would be the first Kawika Bingham to do? The first to live abroad, maybe? The first to be someone else? The first to go somewhere very far away, somewhere so far that it made even Hawai‘i look close to someplace else?
I was thinking about this when I woke today, to the sounds of someone crying—crying, but trying not to, her breath coming out in hiccups. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Bingham,” I heard someone say. “But it’s as if he’s willing himself to go—we can only keep him alive if he wants to be.” And then the sound again, that desperate, sad sound, and the voice once more: “I’m sorry, Mrs. Bingham. I’m sorry.”
“I shall have to write my grandson—my son’s son,” I heard her say. “I can’t tell him this over the phone. Will I have time?”
“Yes,” the man’s voice said, “but tell him to hurry.”
I wished I could have told them not to worry, that I was getting better, that I was almost well. It was all I could do to keep from smiling, from shouting with joy, from calling your name. But I want it to be a surprise—I want to see your face when you walk through the door at last, when you see me jump out of bed to greet you. How surprised you’ll be! How surprised they’ll all be. Will they applaud for me, I wonder? Will they be proud? Or will they be embarrassed, or even angry—embarrassed that they’d underestimated me; angry that I had made them into fools?
But I hope they don’t feel that way, for there’s no time to be angry. You are coming, and I can feel my heart pounding faster and faster, the blood thrumming in my ears. For now, though, I’m going to keep practicing. I’m so strong now, Kawika—I’m almost ready. This time, I’m ready to make you proud. This time, I won’t let you down. All along, I had thought that Lipo-wao-nahele would be the only story I could tell about my life, but now I know: I’m being given another chance, a chance to make another story, a chance to tell you something new. And so tonight, when it’s dark, and this place is quiet around me, I’ll get up, I’ll retrace my route to the garden, and this time, I’ll let myself out through the back door and into the world. I can already see the treetops, black against the dark sky; I can already smell the ginger all around me. They were wrong: It’s not too late, it’s not too late, it’s not too late after all. And then I’ll start walking—not to my mother’s house, not to Lipo-wao-nahele, but to somewhere else, the same place I hope you’ve gone, and I won’t stop, I won’t need to rest, not until I make it there, all the way to you, all the way to paradise.
book iii
ZONE EIGHT
PART I
Autumn 2093
PART II
Autumn, fifty years earlier
PART III
Winter 2094
PART IV
Winter, forty years earlier
PART V
Spring 2094
PART VI
Spring, thirty years earlier
PART VII
Summer 2094
PART VIII
Summer, twenty years earlier
PART IX
Autumn 2094
PART X
September 16, 2088
PART I
Autumn 2093
Normally, I catch the 18:00 shuttle home, which drops me off at Eighth Street and Fifth Avenue somewhere between 18:30 and 18:40, depending on disruptions, but today I knew there was going to be a Ceremony, so I asked Dr. Morgan if I could leave early. I was worried the shuttle would get stalled near Forty-second Street, and then who knew how long I would be delayed, and then I might be too late to buy dinner for my husband. I was explaining all this to Dr. Morgan when he interrupted me. “I don’t need to hear all the details,” he said. “Of course you have permission. Take the 17:00 shuttle.” So I thanked him and did.
The passengers on the 17:00 shuttle were different from the passengers on the 18:00 shuttle. The 18:00 passengers were other lab techs and scientists, even some of the principal investigators, but the only person I recognized on the 17:00 was one of the janitors. I even remembered to wave at her, just a second after she passed me, turning in my seat to do so, but I don’t think she saw me, because she didn’t wave back.