Moloka'i (53 page)

She hung up, staring at the address and phone number for so long that they nearly lost their meaning, becoming a set of random letters and numerals signifying nothing. Should she dial the number? What if it wasn’t her Sarah? Almost as bad—what if it
was
her? The two of them had hardly been close. Perhaps, like Aunt Florence, Sarah would prefer not to be found.

She thought of nothing else for the rest of the day, and when the weight of it became too much to bear she took herself to the new Bob Hope picture,
Sorrowful Jones
, playing at the Hawai'i Theatre. She lost herself in laughter for an hour and a half, then browsed in the shops along Kal
kaua Avenue before strolling home; and by the time she woke the next morning she had made her decision.

If she called her sister on the phone, it would be too easy for Sarah to hang up; too devastating for Rachel if she did. Perhaps if Sarah saw her, saw the lengths to which she had gone to find her, she wouldn’t be as quick to turn her away. Perhaps she might even invite Rachel inside to talk for a little while; to reminisce. That was all she wanted really—some touchstone to her past, her family. And if Sarah did turn her away, as Aunt Florence had, at least she would have seen her sister, however briefly.

But what if by some wild chance the Sarah Kaahea in the phone book
wasn’t
her sister? Making one concession to practicality, Rachel took a deep breath, picked up the phone, and carefully dialed LAH 7–9–3–9. It rang twice, and then a woman answered.

“Hello?”

Rachel dropped the receiver into the cradle as if it had become electrified. There was no doubt in her mind: she had just heard her sister’s voice. And she knew for certain now that she could never be satisfied just to hear that voice; she had to see her, no matter if Sarah wanted to be seen or not.

A

irfare from Honolulu to Pu'un
n
Airport on Maui was sixteen dollars, and Rachel’s purse bulged with another fifty for incidentals. The Hawaiian Airlines DC-3 was a larger aircraft than she had flown on from Moloka'i, and a good deal noisier; but you couldn’t beat the flight time, barely an hour and a half from Honolulu. From the air Maui appeared to be everything that Honolulu no longer was: lush, green, sparsely populated. It almost appeared to be two islands, connected by a narrow isthmus—one capped like Kalaupapa by a dormant volcano caldera, the other ridged by some of the most magnificent mountains Rachel had ever seen. Terraced farm fields covered most of the island; a sprinkling of towns clustered along the coasts. The plane banked over one of these on its way to Pu'un
n
a short way down the narrow neck of the isthmus. The DC-3 touched down at what used to be a naval air station; abandoned by the military after the war, it now serviced commercial flights.

Rachel carried no suitcase; she expected to be back here by five P.M. to catch the last flight back to Honolulu. Looking for a bus she was told the only one on Maui ran only within Wailuku, and she would have to rent a car or hire a taxi to get to West Maui. Car rental was out of the question—she had no driver’s license, none being needed at Kalaupapa—so she approached one of the few taxis dawdling at the airport. “I want to go to Lahaina,” she told the Filipino driver, who whistled and said, “Helluva trip, rental car cheaper,” but finally quoted Rachel the dizzying fare of fifteen dollars to West Maui.

“I flew here for sixteen,” she noted in mild protest.

He asked her, “You ever drive the Pali Road before?”

“No.”

“After we drive it, you think fifteen is too much, I’ll knock it down to ten. Fair enough?”

She agreed and got into the cab.

“No bags?” the driver said, puzzled. She shook her head. He shrugged as if to say,
Not my business
, and pulled away from the curb.

Soon they were making their way down a two-lane road winding lazily through fields of spiked pineapple crowns and jungles of tall green cane stalks.

“You a tourist?” the driver asked, curiosity apparently getting the better of him.

“No,” Rachel said.

“Been here before?”

She shook her head. “I’ve come to see my sister.”

The driver nodded, satisfied now. “Makes more sense. Maui don’t get enough tourists to field a softball team.”

Near a sugar mill on their left a column of brown smoke twisted like a
maile
vine in the gentle wind; Rachel inhaled the sweet pungent smell of burning cane almost as a treat. “It’s beautiful here,” she told the driver.

“Yeah, nice. My father came over in nineteen-nine to work for Wailuku Sugar. Didn’t pay worth a damn, but he liked the island; left the mill, worked the docks at Kahului, after a few years bought a cab. Mine now.” He laughed, gestured to the outside. “This don’t pay worth a damn either, but hey, look at the office I got.”

When they reached the base of the isthmus and turned right onto the Pali Road, Rachel understood why there were no buses to Lahaina. The Pali Road was a narrow single lane clinging to a sheer cliff. On their left was a steep drop-off, a view both hair-raising and spectacular: ocean surging around black lava coastline. The road on which they traveled was paved, and wider than the
pali
trail at Kalaupapa, but Rachel still anticipated it crumbling under them, the cab plunging down the
pali
to be impaled on lava daggers. And it was just as switchbacked as the one she’d climbed years before. Rachel stopped counting the zigzagging curves after she’d reached a hundred, and for the first time in her life started getting carsick.

“They call this the Amalfi Drive,” the driver said, “ ’cause the view’s supposed to look like Amalfi, Italy.”

“Stop the car,” Rachel blurted.

The driver hit the brakes. Rachel opened the rear door on the driver’s side and sent her lunch hurtling down the steep face of the
pali
just half a foot away.

“Whoa,” the driver said, looking down, “plenty of food for the fishes today.”

When she’d finished Rachel closed the door, wiped her mouth and said, “You don’t charge enough for this trip.”

The driver laughed and continued on.

They drove for close to an hour, encountering only one other vehicle, a truck for which the cab had to back up two hundred feet and squeeze itself into a narrow turn-out as the truck passed. Rachel provided lunch for the fishes a few more times. Then, sometime after the car passed a sugar mill at Olowalu, scattered houses began to appear on either side of the road.

“Lahaina,” the driver announced. “What was that address again?”

In minutes they were pulling up in front of a small white bungalow standing in the green shade of a banyan tree, its garden aflame with helliconia and anthuriums. Rachel gave the driver a nice tip—“Combat pay,” she said—and asked hesitantly if he would wait here a minute. “I might need a ride back sooner than I’d like.” He asked no questions, just said “Sure.” Rachel worked up her courage and walked up the narrow footpath to the little house. She took the porch steps slowly, trying to extend the moment as long as possible . . . then stepped up and knocked on the door.

Thirty seconds later the door opened and a woman in her sixties, wearing a bright floral sundress, looked at her pleasantly and said, “Yes?”

Rachel stared at Sarah, completely recognizable even beneath a patina of age and distance.

“Sarah,” she said softly.

One word, and Sarah’s whole body jerked as if shot. One word and she knew.

She whispered, “Rachel?”

Before Rachel could respond, Sarah’s eyes rolled up in her head like a snapped windowshade, her knees gave out—and she fainted, collapsing in a heap on her own doorstep.

Oh, God!
Rachel thought, dropping to her knees.
I killed her!
“Sarah! Sarah!” She cradled Sarah’s head with her bad hand and fanned her face furiously with the good one. “Don’t you dare go and die on me, Sarah Kalama!” she cried.
“Oh
, this is so like you!”

The cabbie had gotten out of his car and was hurrying to join Rachel, but now Sarah’s eyes fluttered open and she found herself staring up into Rachel’s panicked face.

Her eyes registered shock, then disbelief. She whispered again, “Rachel?”

Suddenly unable to speak, Rachel nodded.

In a hushed voice Sarah said, “You’re
alive
.”

Exploding into sudden laughter, Sarah reached up and looped her arms around Rachel’s neck. “My God! Rachel! You’re alive!”

She squeezed Rachel in a bear hug, her laughter now joined by tears of obvious joy. And all the tension, all the fear that had been building in Rachel since seeing Aunt Florence—all of it melted in a moment’s laughter, and she returned Sarah’s embrace just as fiercely.

“Sarah,” she said, tears flowing down her own cheeks. “Oh, God, Sarah.” She held fast to the warmth of her sister’s body, and realized happily that she might not be taking that five o’clock flight to Honolulu.

The cab driver had figured this out as well, and with a smile and a wave he returned to his car and drove off. Rachel and Sarah laughed and cried another minute, maybe two; then Sarah drew back to take in Rachel’s face.

“But how is this possible?” she said softly.