Mr. Peanut (18 page)

“Tell me again that you’re sure,” David said.

“Of all the thoughts we think, it’s only those that actually manifest themselves that seem significant. But the thoughts just before the event are like the fortune in the cookie. The fortune’s as random as the thought.”

“Promise me.”

“Think of all the thoughts we think. Think of all the ones we don’t remember.”

“Please.”

“It was nothing you
did
, David. I promise there was nothing you could’ve done.”

David laid his other hand over Harold’s and pressed his forehead to their clasped hands. It was like a sculpture over which his tears ran. “Why couldn’t I have been a better man?” he said.

“You will be.”

“Why didn’t I think something else?”

“You already have.”

David sobbed. More than anything, he wanted to see his wife, to hold her.

“Ease her down now,” Harold said, “ease her down.”

Dr. Ahmed put Alice on a program of blood thinners and kept her under observation for the evening. The next morning, she and David agreed to have their son cremated.

The boy’s ashes were presented to them in a white rectangular plastic container the size of a small Thermos, along with a death certificate that specified David Pepin. The dates of birth and death were the same, of course. The remains felt somehow heavier than the child had, which David found utterly mysterious.

Alice received the urn without any noticeable reaction, having become more and more withdrawn. At the same time, David sensed within her a gathering anger, though he was strangely unafraid. He knew this was due to his conversation with Harold.

Just as David had felt that her pregnancy cleaved Alice from him, it seemed the child’s death had as well. There was nothing to be done about it, however. He’d already accepted it somehow. But what came afterward was something else entirely.

While Alice was in the hospital, he made several calls to Harold, and the comfort he enjoyed from these talks was immeasurable. Of course, his first concern was Alice and how to help her down as well. When the doctor indicated she’d probably be discharged that afternoon, he called Harold immediately, unsure how to proceed. Harold’s advice, albeit cryptic, made a kind of higher practical sense that David couldn’t comprehend until he made use of it. “Be firm with her, but flexible. You must listen carefully for any opportunity either to take charge or to acquiesce. The more carefully you listen before taking action, the more gently she’ll land.”

A few hours later, when Dr. Ahmed confirmed that Alice would be discharged immediately, David asked her what she wanted to do. The question angered her.

“What do you mean?” she said.

“Would you like to go home,” he said, “or would you like to stay?”

“Here?”

“Yes.”

“You mean take a vacation?”

“No,” David said. “I mean just be here. The two of us. I don’t know what to call it. But I’m not ready to go home. I spoke with Mr. Sobel at Trinity and told him you’d had a medical emergency—that we weren’t sure yet when we’d be back.”

Alice smoldered visibly over this. “Did you tell him what happened?”

“Of course not,” David said.

She crossed her arms and stared out the window. In the morning light, the weight she’d gained from the pregnancy was more apparent: a roundness to her arms, the hint of belly pressing out of her gown. He turned to see what she was looking at. Palm trees waved in the parking lot below. In the distance, mist snaked through the volcanic mountains.

“What would we do here?” she asked finally.

“Why don’t you let me handle that.”

When she didn’t reply, he took her silence as a decision.

He promptly informed Harold, who sent them a car. When she saw it, Alice asked, “Why all this?”

David balked, or trusted his gut—he wasn’t sure which. But he was certain she must not know they were being helped. “I just thought it would be easier,” he said, though he had no idea what to do next. He would consider the hotel a kind of home base until he had a clearer plan.

In the car, Alice placed the urn in her lap and held it there. If she was waiting for David to mention it, he didn’t say a thing.

The Mandarin Oriental was located at the dead end of the Kahala neighborhood, where houses were built on real estate of impossible value, and blocks and blocks of walled-off, Spanish-style stucco homes ran parallel to the ocean. The hotel’s gorgeous modern design stood in stark contrast to the residences around it, with two adjacent towers of white and ocean blue, its structural lines built out with white girders from each window, so the various wings appeared to be surrounded by stacked, transparent cubes, a kind of scaffolding that somehow lightened the structures, made them seem as if they could, like a pair of gliders, ride the air. The towers backed up to the Waialae Country Club at the base of the Ko’olau Ridge, a house-speckled mountain lush with trees that climbed like a slow-building wave into the distance, all the homes facing the ocean, though it was impossible to see the water until you entered the hotel itself. The high walls of a third, perpendicular structure—a giant porte cochere—blocked all sightlines, making the strand beyond it seem even more private from the other side. David and Alice were treated like royalty upon arrival—Harold’s doing, David knew. One of the managers, a Japanese man named Murahashi, gave them a personal tour after they checked in, showing them
five restaurants on the premises, several shops, the pool, spa, and gym. He then walked them through the porte cochere that led to the beach. Two long jetties enclosed the reef-calmed waters, the long, private strip of sand demarcated by a dense web of palm trees. “This is a very popular place to marry,” Murahashi said, and as if on cue, a handsome Japanese bride and groom appeared, walking toward a white gazebo that faced the ocean, the bride clutching her train happily, the two of them leaning into the breeze, their families seated in chairs on grass as immaculate as a fairway. Murahashi walked David and Alice through the restaurant off the beach, the Plumeria, an airy room filled with mahogany, its floors of cool slate. Alice seemed unfazed by the beauty of it all.

“Of course,” Murahashi said, leading them into a gigantic courtyard, “our permanent residents are what make the hotel so famous.” Before them was a giant man-made lagoon, walled off at its far end by two-story suites, the lagoon itself in two discrete pools that formed a figure eight. Here a pod of dolphins played, tended by trainers—all young women in blue bathing suits—who stood on a floating platform that bisected the main pools. The women were so uniformly beautiful, the creatures so wondrous, it was as if the dolphins were shape-shifting gods attended by nymphs. People were watching from everywhere on the lagoon’s circumference: the wide terrace off the porte cochere; the gated, surrounding walkways; the swimming pool near the beach. Joy seemed to radiate from the water. A large blue mat was set up on the floating platform—four of the women kneeled around it, holding it by the edges—and when one of the trainers held her hand up over the surface, a dolphin appeared, then nosed her palm and chirped: a piercing sound that reverberated through the cove. When the woman quickly flicked her hand, the dolphin slipped from the water in a silky leap that didn’t even ruffle the surface and landed on the middle of the mat, its entire body curled up into a crescent, and much larger than David had imagined. A trainer positioned near its head wrote something down on a clipboard.

“What are they doing?” Alice asked.

“They’re checking her weight,” Murahashi said.

“Why?”

“To make sure she’s progressing well.”

From the corner of his eye, David saw his wife smile.

Their suite—enormous, airy, plant-filled, with honey-colored hardwood and teak and rattan furniture—hovered over the dolphin lagoon and the Pacific. The king-size canopy bed was covered by a goose-down duvet and sheets of Egyptian cotton so soft they made David lust for sleep. Exploring,
he opened the sliding plantation shutters and stood on the lanai. The palms below bent in the trade winds, the clatter of their blowing leaves mixing with the dolphins’ whistles and the
whoomps
—like depth charges—they made when they landed from a flip. Applause followed from the ever-present crowd. He let the hissing breezes fill his ears. He closed his eyes, then opened them. In the water, out in the lagoon, snorkelers floated in pairs, drifting, their bodies motionless, as if they’d been shot out of the sky. The reef they hovered over—mottled blue-green—was visible from this height. Farther out—many hundreds of yards—fishermen stood on a distant sandbar before a line of breakers that roiled but never reached them. Due East was Diamond Head, as majestic and immovable as some ancient craft. And everywhere the contained, humbling feeling of being in the middle of the ocean. The place was so beautiful that for a moment he forgot.

“Alice?” he said when he came inside.

On a small end table, she’d placed the urn next to a stunning bouquet of white roses. Water was running in the bathroom.

He knocked; when she didn’t answer, his heart caught in his throat, and he let himself in. She was lying in the large soaking tub, its jets on full, her mascara running down her cheeks. Was it from her bath or had she been crying? The longer they were together, the harder he found it to say anything to her.

“It was nice of you to send flowers.” She looked up at him and mustered a smile, this seeming to exhaust the little energy she had.

He stood waiting, again, for what he wasn’t sure.

“This is the most beautiful bathroom I’ve ever seen,” she said.

He looked around. The room was all gray marble and teak, with vanities and closets at either end with luxurious robes neatly hung on wooden hangers. There was a large, glass-enclosed shower, its spout the size of a Frisbee. The toilet, inset between shower and bath, had a door for privacy as well as a phone. “It is,” David said.

“If I had a bathroom like this, I’d feel like we’d truly made it.” She looked around as if seeing the place anew.

“Maybe we will one day.”

Alice said nothing.

“You never know,” he said.

“No,” she said, “you don’t.”

There was nothing more to say, so he left her alone and called Harold from the bedroom. “I can’t talk to her,” he said.
“We
can’t. It’s like a black hole.”

“That’s all right, David. That’s fine for now.”

“No, it’s horrible.”

“It’ll pass.” His voice, as always, was calm.

Dying for a drink, David opened the wet bar. “Thank you for the flowers,” he said, and looked at the note. It read
Love
.

“You thought of them,” Harold said, “not me.”

This was true. When they’d entered the lobby, a bride was having her pictures taken, holding an enormous bouquet, and he’d thought: If I could fill the room with flowers for her, I would. “Are you saying you’re a telepath?”

“I’m a good listener.”

“What are you hearing now?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

In his mind, David saw his wife cradling their child in the airplane bathroom. As much as he wanted to forget that, he never would. And there was something else.

“I need to confess something.”

“What?”

“It’s like a crime. But it’s not something I did. I don’t know how to say it.”

“You will when you’re ready.”

It was akin to love, David thought, to trust a person so immediately and completely, a feeling as real as being hungry, which of course he was.

“Have you made dinner reservations?” Harold asked.

David looked at his watch: just after six o’clock. “No.”

“When would you like to go?”

“In an hour, but I might have to cancel. I want to see how she’s feeling.”

“All right.”

“What should we do?”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“What would you
like
to do?”

“I don’t know. When we travel, Alice usually makes all our plans.”

“I understand.”

“I’m not very curious.”

“That’s fine.”

“I only travel for work.”

“We’ll take care of it.”

“She does everything.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“I never do anything.”

“Easy, David.”

For a moment, he wasn’t even sure if Harold was real.

“Go on,” Harold said. “Ask me.”

“It’s the wrong thing to be thinking about.”

“No it isn’t.”

“What
is
Diamond Head?”

“It’s a dead volcano. Though in Hawaii, it seems that none of the volcanoes are truly dead.”

Later, at dinner, Alice asked the same question. If she was impressed that he knew, she didn’t let on. It was just background noise, a brief pause between their respective engorgements, the only thing they’d paused to speak about. He ate relentlessly and had never seen her eat so much either. She ordered calamari to start, a large plate meant for sharing that she consumed without coming up for air. She ordered tuna tartare and then the sea bass, the last served on a bed of risotto; finally, for dessert, a cheese plate. Throughout the meal, he listened to her breathing through her nose.

“What will we do tomorrow?” she asked once the last plate was emptied.

“It’s a surprise,” he said.

“What if I don’t like your surprise?”

“Then we won’t do it. You can just tell me what you want to do instead.”

“What if I want to go home?”

“That’s fine.”

“I mean
now
. Tonight.”

“That’s fine too.”

“Don’t keep fucking agreeing with me, David. Stop being so goddamn compliant.”

He waited. Her anger was so barely containable that he was afraid to move.

“Don’t try to turn this into
fun,”
she said.

“I won’t.”

She sighed, then folded her napkin disinterestedly.

“I think we should stay here for a while,” he said. “I just want to wait.”

She said nothing after that.

Later that night, he woke to her sobbing, at times wailing so loudly he was sure security would start pounding on the door. He tried to hold her, but whenever he did she flung her elbows and arms at him, so he finally gave up and left the bed, their physical distance seeming to calm her ever so slightly. She lay there, her back heaving in the dark, piled in the sheets,
mumbling something into the pillow, and he stepped out onto the lanai and shut the door, her grief twisting his lungs.