For you, my long-awaited one, I observe the opening scene: A wide screen of solid black dissolves into infinite white. An opaque universe without boundaries, landmarks, features of any kind. A blank slate with no surface, nothing on which to carve the story that waits to be written. But the story will come. You know this, and it is all you know. In the invisible depths of your own inner space, you have no choice but to believe that out of nothing, something will emerge.

Your mind’s eye is blank. You see nothing, for there has never been anything to see. Your only memories are of sounds, though your ears have yet to discern a single clear note ringing through the great open stillness that enfolds you. You recall instead the feel of sounds: the murmuring caress of soft undulations, the sharp sting of staccato sounds, and, always, the slow shudder of heavy waves tumbling over you like surf, though you have never felt surf. And the taste of sounds, their salty ebb and flow as they wash through you. You do not hear these sounds. You drink them, draw each rippling note into your small, perfectly formed mouth, down your throat into your stomach, and let its fulsome substance nourish you. You breathe sounds, fill your lungs with their astonishing din, their labyrinthic structures, their invisible, incomprehensible forms.

And now, breaking through the unending white I picture for you, a sound you don’t remember: a soft, melancholy tone. Then another, and another. You cannot know these sounds emanate from the plucked strings of an instrument called a harp. Nor can you recognize the even lonelier strains of the violin that follow. Nevertheless, you drink and breathe their slow, sad music until out of the unending white something finally does appear: two faint dots, whiter than the whiteness they penetrate. You might recognize their twin radiance, but you have never seen light. For you, I observe the twin dots grow and brighten in the brilliant gloom, until more shapes appear: a black bird, fluttering above a crystallizing roadway. The bright dots expand like swelling stars until the shimmering corona of an approaching automobile materializes around them. A drum beat rises to a full-orchestra crescendo as the automobile, towing a second vehicle, plows directly toward us both through powder white, and the name of the white world before us is revealed:

F           A            R           G          O

As the letters on the wide screen fade away, I think of your name: Rachael. Of the Book of Genesis. Rachael Lehualani, "blossom of the heavens." You float beside me in your own dark universe, the universe of your mother’s womb. I turn to my left to observe her belly swelling to its fullest capacity beneath the gray bubble of the maternity dress whose true color cannot be discerned in the shadows of the old Varsity Theater in Manhattan, Kansas.

"Are you all right?" I whisper as the opening credits fade in and out of the white.

"I’m fine," your mother-to-be says. In the dim light reflecting off the screen, she looks exhausted, as if the effort of watching the white world materialize before us takes all her available energy. Like me, she’s forty-six. "Do you know what this is about?" she asks.

"No. All I know is it’s supposed to be funny."

"Good." She arches her back and releases a deep sigh. "I’m ready for something light."

"Hush," David, our oldest, scolds from the row of seats immediately in front of our own. Michael and Daniel sit on either side of him in the nearly empty theater, staring at the white screen in respectful silence.

The date is April 30, 1996. In two days you will join the rest of us in the wide, white world, where a long journey awaits us all.

Two more days.

I thought I made myself perfectly clear.

You’re right: That doesn’t sound like your mother and me–and it isn’t. It’s dialogue from a TV soap opera one of the kidnappers is watching in Fargo, a scene even hardcore Coen brothers fans might not recognize. What you need to understand, my long-awaited one, is the simple fact that in my mind the story of your first summer is inextricably linked with the film I pictured for you when you were still swimming in the lightless world of your mother’s womb. I don’t know why, but the scenes I recall most vividly are moments when the characters are watching television. In my mind’s eye I can picture almost perfectly the tall, blond kidnapper whose trademark phrase is "Pancakes House" as he leans forward on the ratty sofa in the lakeside cabin where Mrs. Lundegard is held hostage, bound and gagged with a bag over her head. I see him gaping at the snowy black and white TV, his lips parted in astonishment as the soap star delivers the stunning news of her pregnancy.

When your mother told me she was pregnant with what turned out to be your oldest brother, the news produced no such surprise. After all, we’d been trying, finally, after nine years of talking about it. If talk alone did the job, your mother and I could have replenished the human race all by ourselves. I was the one who’d dragged his feet, the one with doubts, the one who "didn’t understand what it means to have children." Conventional middle class life didn’t interest me. I was going to be a writer, I proclaimed with funereal gravity, and go wherever the writing life took me. Which turned out to be Bowling Green, Ohio, for an M.F.A. Then Manhattan, Kansas, "the Little Apple," for a university teaching job.

For nine years your mother listened and argued. Then, finally, demanded.

And so: David Francis Heller, August 26, 1981. Small and skinny, like his father. For more than a year I called him Moose.

He wasn’t like you.

Though, like you, he was a revelation. Some men, stupid men like me, cannot imagine the way the world of light can change us. No matter from what angle light happens to shine on our undiscerning faces, nor how brightly, we just can’t imagine ourselves as different. Then one day, we are. On a small bookcase in what was once my private study sat a black and white photograph of David when he was almost two, wearing a baseball T shirt and a sweet grin, nestled in the lap of his father, the middle class dork: perfectly combed hair parted over my right ear like a volunteer 3rd base coach running for City Commissioner on a Republican ticket. Neatly trimmed mustache failing to conceal a toothless, goofy grin. A picture of happiness, of a kind I’d never wanted nor even imagined. I was living the writing life, all right, like hundreds of other dorks just like me.

Nevertheless, I remained convinced I was different. I would have a life beyond this one, beyond the front porch swing where the picture was taken, beyond family and school and the Little Apple. Beyond the blank page itself. I would not sit at home and write about worlds only others had seen. I would go, I would see, I would do.

May 11, 1984: Michael Stephen, the Terminator.

June 28, 1987: Daniel Gordon, the Elf.

Through these years the writing life occasionally took me away from the Little Apple, sometimes to distant and exotic-sounding places like Hawai`i. But mostly I remained. I sat, I thought, I wrote. In January of 1990 I walked out of Denison Hall past two students examining a booklet of spring semester course offerings. "Steve Heller," the tall one said to the short one. "Who’s that?"

"Oh, him," the short one replied, oblivious to my passing. "He’s the English Department’s Daddy of the 80s."

In that moment I knew exactly who I’d become: I was George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life.

Later on I’d joke about it, but the truth was the thought galled me. Like George Bailey, I appeared to be living a wonderful, an enviable life. I had a good job, a decent career, a loving wife with a successful career of her own, three healthy male sons who displayed the blessed grace of the nonviolent, all of us living together in a big old crumbling but comfortable parkside house, which we perpetually dreamed of renovating. Like George Bailey, though, I was dissatisfied, ungrateful, relentlessly opposed to the life I was living, the life I was good at.

Unlike George, I had no angel watching over me. No Clarence to show me the roads untaken, nor the differences that lay at the end of each. No one to confirm my life except the people in it.

I began to screw it up. The writing, good for a long time, went bad. The relationship with your mother, always difficult despite good intentions on both sides, grew strained. Arguments ended without resolution, without making up. You don’t appreciate me, we said to each other. You don’t appreciate what I do. The boys began to whisper among themselves: What’s the matter with Mom and Dad?

No one outside the walls of the big old crumbling parkside house saw any of these things, though they festered for years. Only one thing was clear to me: Despite what others saw in the daily rushes, the movie of Steve’s life was not a sentimental drama directed by Frank Capra. It was another kind of film altogether, a kind I hadn’t seen before and couldn’t categorize. I tell you this, my long-awaited one, because, since you can now read these words, you have a right to know. And because it was into this kind of film–strange and dark and ambiguous, despite so much white, white light–that you were cast.

OK, now, for those of you who just joined us, Katie here is going to show us this morning how to make holidazzle eggs, ourselves, at home. Wow, Katie, I gotta admit I was a little bit surprised when I first picked this up. This is an empty egg.

Perhaps you recognize that one: the local daytime talk show Mrs. Lundegard is watching when the kidnapper with the dark ski mask appears on the snowy deck outside her living room. The glare of the white, white world shines on Mrs. Lundegard through broad panels of glass, filling the entire living room with light, moments before the kidnapper himself crashes into it.

The house we’ve rented here on the Hawaiian island of Lāna`i on this, your very first summer, is also full of light. That’s the only thing your mother likes about it.

"There’s no carpet, no rugs," she tells me the moment our landlord, Ron, has left. She’s standing in her new white sneakers on the landing of the rough, unfinished plywood stairway that leads to the second floor. "The boys are going to get splinters."

Our suitcases are piled on the vinyl tile floor at the base of the steps. I’m standing in front of the blue sofa in the small adjacent living room, awash in white morning light from three different windows. Nestled in my arms, you glow a brilliant pink. After only four weeks in the wide, white world, you must be shielded from its direct glare, which your exposed skin drinks the way it used to drink sound in the darkness of your mother’s womb. My face eclipses the source of most of this light, but not all, and your blue eyes squint as they gaze up in my direction. Do you see me yet? Or am I just a blurry satellite orbiting the drifting center of your liquid universe?

"They can wear thongs," I suggest.

She sighs. "There’s no furniture upstairs except the beds. We’re going to be living out of suitcases for two months, Steve. Two months."

Maybe we can rent a couple of dressers from Lāna`i Family Store, I start to suggest, but don’t. I really can’t argue with her about how rough it’s going to be. Instead, I carry you over to the stairwell and climb to the landing, where your mother waits for us with arms folded. On the wall above the landing, the head of an axis deer gazes down on the three of us in solemn submission. The house was built to accommodate weekend hunters who fly over from O`ahu: four bedrooms, four bathrooms, vinyl tile on the main floor to make it easier to clean away mud and blood. No frills. As I reach the landing, your mother’s eyes lock on my own and ask: Why are we here?

For myself, I can answer this question well enough: I’m here to do field research for a narrative history of the island, a project already three years in the making. Lāna`i: sixth largest of the Hawaiian islands, population 2,400. Once known as the Island of Ghosts; later, the Pineapple Island. Now, after the closing of Dole Plantation and the opening of two world-class luxury resorts, the Private Island.

That’s why I’m here. You and your mother and brothers are here for a different reason: I’ve brought you all with me to try to save our family, save my marriage.

Despite the grim skepticism on her face, your mother doesn’t appreciate how serious our situation is. I’ve explained it to her, but she doesn’t hear. While I’m at it, I must admit there are things she tells me that I also do not hear. I don’t know what they are. What I do know is that we have divided our individual lives into separate worlds–work and family–and in neither of these worlds have we made sufficient room for the other. To make room for your mother in my life, I’ve attempted to merge the two worlds, to thrust our family into the midst of my own work. I’ve forced the issue, brought us all to this remote island so unlike the Little Apple, despite the distance, the cost, the realities of postpartum stress. I’m insensitive. I’m desperate.

"Our bedroom has twin beds," your mother says.

"We’ll push them together." Then, in a softer voice, I add: "Let’s make the best of this, OK?"

Your mother slips an arm under your bottom and takes you from me. As you pass from my hands to hers, your eyes widen for a moment, as if the white, white light has suddenly dimmed enough to allow you to gaze directly upon its source. Or perhaps it’s merely wonder at the spectacle of one planet replacing another, the cosmos constantly reorganizing itself, the mysterious music of the spheres as they spin in and out of sight before you.

"Of course," your mother replies. "What else can we do? I’ll give her a bottle while you set up the crib."

From Hollywood, The Tonight Show starring–

Pancakes House and his accomplice, the funny-looking fella, are working class kidnappers with working class tastes: Budweiser, sweaty sex, Johnny Carson. On Lāna`i there are grim men, former plantation workers and their sons and grandsons, with similar tastes. But there are other kinds of men here as well.

Once upon a time, when you were very young, a near-sighted man wished to own the entire world. His name was Bill Gates. If you do not recognize his name, it means he has gone the way of other near-sighted men who wished to own the world before him. Nevertheless, not long before you were born, this man, who already owned much of the world, was married right here on Lāna`i. Because he was obsessed with privacy, he rented every hotel room on the island so no one but his personal guests could witness the ceremony, which was held on a wide green lawn beside a tall cliff above the sea, on the edge of a golf course designed by the great Jack Nicklaus. The cliff was so tall no one could view the wedding from a boat. To prevent being observed from the sky, the near-sighted man rented every helicopter in the State of Hawai`i with the range to reach Lāna`i. When reporters from all over the world arrived on commercial flights, they were detained at the aiport by security men, who explained that Lāna`i was "a private island" and they were trespassers. The grand wedding was performed without a hitch. As the near-sighted man and his fiancé exchanged vows, former pineapple workers, called pension men, squatted on Old Man’s Bench in Dole Park and told each other stories, while their wives and children and grandchildren fluffed pillows, cleaned bathrooms, and trimmed hedges at the new resorts.

These are the people, the pension men and their families, I have come to this island to interview. Not the Oprahs, Dennis Rodmans, and Heather Locklears one occasionally spots hiding behind dark sunglasses on Hulopo`e Beach. The voices of the pension men are as lilting and musical as the voices of white, white world of Fargo: How you doin’ there, Margie? . . . Pretty darn good, Norm . . . Well, yah!

You won’t remember them, but the working class voices we hear on this island each day are even more musical: You know dat kine puka-head guy, Cliff? Drive dat Toyota-kine fo-wheelah? Yestahday, up by dat curve KÇ`ele, he go so fast, give skinny way for pass. Run me off da road like one chicken!

Each day begins at 6:30 a.m. on the tiny patio in front of the Blue Ginger Café, where I am usually the only one hungry or brave enough to order the loco moco breakfast: two fried eggs piled atop a hamburger patty sprawled on a bed of white rice, the whole thing swimming in thick brown gravy. I’m sitting at a small table with four of the early morning regulars: Wally Tamashiro, who owns Richard’s Market on the downcamp side of the park; Ken Sabin, the Lāna`i High School volleyball coach; Masashi "Mustache" Tusumura, a pension man; and Pat Reilly, a high school counselor. Wally, Ken, and Mustache speak the old plantation-style pidgin, once the main music of the islands, which these days often sounds corn-doggy to their kids. Pat sounds more like me, although I mostly just listen. This morning we’re talking about the recent controversy that has divided the island.

"Da high school students," Wally Tamashiro informs me, "dey went vote for change da name of da mascot from Pinelads to Ka-ulu-la`~u Warriors because no more pineapple Lāna`i."

According to local legend, Ka-ulu-la`~u was a young prince from Maui who rid Lāna`i of hundreds of evil man-eating spirits five hundred years ago, and made the island safe for human habitation.

Ken Sabin shakes his head. "Da students today, dey forget who dey are, where dey come from." Ken is a former Pinelad himself.

"Dey forget dere parents, dere grandparents," Mustache Tusumura adds in a sadder voice. Mustache is barely five feet tall. He has no facial hair, but in every other sense, he’s authentic. He shakes his head with a conviction earned from half a century in the pineapple fields. "Forget dere family, dere heritage."

Back to top

"On Lāna`i, family is everything," Pat Reilly explains to me. I can’t help noticing the difference between Pat’s voice and the others. I’ve known both Pat and Wally for two decades, since my second trip here. On Lāna`i Pat is a minority within a minority: an unmarried white man with no children.

Wally shrugs and takes a sip of coffee. "Some of da students, dey say it embarrassing for be call Pinelad, Pinelass."

"Why for be embarrassed?" Ken objects, his voice rising. "Embarrassing for wear da green and gold your fadah wear? Embarrassing for eat brown rice your granfadah buy with sweat from fields?" I stare at Ken’s muscular bare brown forearms. I’ve heard some of the high school kids refer to Ken as FBI: Full-Blooded Ilocano, the region of the Philippines from which most of Lāna`i’s contract field laborers came in the 1930s and 40s after immigration from Japan had ended.

"In any case, it’s not going to happen," Pat says. "When the students announced their intention to change the name, the council of teachers and parents who make policy for the school had to approve it. They put out the word and called for public testimony."

"Get plenny too,"Mustache adds. "From aunties, alumni, pension men, everybody who grow up Lāna`i. Nobody like change da name."

"The community didn’t support the students," Pat confirms. "We’re still Pinelads."

"Less pain dis way," Wally observes. "Change your name like divorce your wife." Ken and Mustache chuckle at this.

Wally is my age, with a wife and two daughters. Except for a little gray sprinkled through his hair and about ten extra pounds, he looks exactly the same as the day I met him in the lobby of the old Lāna`i Lodge two decades ago. I can’t be certain, but I think he’s wearing the same faded blue and white aloha shirt. I have to admit I envy his constancy.

Ken gives us all a victory salute. "Pinelads forever!"

As we raise our cups in response, I notice your mother approaching, crossing the park from the downcamp side. She’s pushing you along in the blue and green Evenflo delux stroller with the detachable car seat your grandmother Heller gave us. Your brothers are nowhere in sight, which means they’re still sleeping. Nevertheless, plenty of people are already moving around the park: custodians, clerks, maids, and landscapers heading for the tiny post office where the Company bus will take them to the resorts. From where we sit we can also see pension men easing their way toward Old Man’s Bench and the stories of the day. On Lāna`i things move constantly, but never swiftly. The island’s slow rhythm seems to carry your mother and you toward us like the tide. But the two of you make your own ripple through the rhythm. As you pass, everyone turns, waves, or smiles in your direction. Nothing draws attention on Lāna`i like a baby. Da haole from Kansas bring his whole family, including da baby, I’ve heard more than one local voice declare. Stay in Ron’s renthouse instead of da resorts. These two facts have made my job here much easier. But the main reason is you, I realize as your mother wheels you toward us across 7th Street, your shining pink face finally visible as she pulls back the hood of the stroller. You can see it in the welcoming body language of Wally and Ken and Mustache and Pat as they scoot their chairs aside to make room for your stroller on the small concrete patio.

"Don’t move," your mother assures them as she wheels you to an adjacent table. She wears a grimly cheerful Let’s make the best of it expression. "We’re fine right here."

I pick up my cup and plate and join the two of you. Your blue eyes take in my sudden presence, then drift upward toward the dappled morning light bending through the tall Cook pines.

"How can you eat all that?" your mother asks, staring at the remains of the loco moco I shrug. "I’m starving."

. . . number 25 leads the Badgers in goal production with five this year . . .

In Fargo the characters turn to television–soap operas, talk shows, sports–to escape the grinding realities of their lives. On Lāna`i we go to the beach.

"She doesn’t like it here," your mother observes as she offers you her breast in the shade of the big kiawe tree near the edge of the blue-green water. "It’s too hot."

She’s right: I can see your pink cheeks sweat from the heat as you suckle her breast. Our house up in Lāna`i City sits about 1,500 feet above sea level, amid a planted forest of Cook pines at the base of the mountain, and has the feel of a cabin in a cool mountain village. Down here on Hulopo`e Beach, the tropical sun bears down on the golden sand, which returns the heat with a vengeance, even in the shade. If you happen to go to sleep, your mother will slip you into the tiny blue nylon tent resting right here on the weathered picnic table, and unzip the side flaps so the tradewinds can waft through the screens and keep you tolerably cool.

A greater problem is time. Despite my attempt to merge the professional with the personal, our days are still divided. Your mother and I have made the following deal: Mornings for interviews, afternoons for the family, and evenings (whenever your mother and I can manage it) for ourselves. Though of course you are never out of earshot.

Michael and Daniel are playing on the edge of the water, building sand forts and splashing around in the low, lapping surf. Daniel is ecstatic because Michael is sticking close to him, including him in their play. Daniel skips and bounds around the sand fort, like the elf he was born to be. Seeing Daniel happily involved in something, anything at all, gives your mother and me a tiny thrill, a rush of hope.

I turn my attention to the bay. About a hundred yards out, over by the southern, rockier side, David is perched on a bodyboard. The waves are bigger, rideable there. Scattered around David, half a dozen chocolate brown local kids float on their own sleeker, slimmer surf boards, watching the ocean behind them breathe. They know when and how to catch the waves; David is simply trying to imitate them.

Our table is on the southern half of the crescent-shaped beach, the part reserved for local residents. The northern half is reserved for the high-paying guests of the Man‘l‘ Bay Hotel, nestled on the rise just above the top point of the crescent. The hotel guests have a luxurious bathhouse and combination bar/concierge station where they can check out towels, robes, beach chairs, umbrellas, surfboards, snorkeling equipment, whatever they desire. The locals have a cinder block public toilet and changing room. Lāna`i has few accessible beaches that are sheltered from wind and blowing sand. Hulopo`e is by far the best, so the division is the result of lengthy, sometimes rancorous negotiations between the Company and working class residents. Only a handful of hotel guests grace the golden beach this afternoon. The young man sunning himself next to the perfect blonde in the hot pink thong bikini might be Matthew Broderick, which would impress the boys–Hey, Ferris! Ferris Bueller!–but I don’t mention the possibility. The boys are having a fine time on their own.

The same can’t be said for your mother and me. We should take advantage of quiet moments like this to discuss the things that divide us like the invisible line on this beach. But we don’t. We let the moment pass in silence. I think of another scene from Fargo: Norm the duck painter and Margie the pregnant cop staring glassy-eyed at their small bedroom TV as they drift off to sleep.

If your mother and I could manage even their rudimentary conversation, maybe things would improve. Earlier, I slipped your green and yellow hat over your fuzzy pink head, shielding you from the hot sun, and dipped your bare toes into the cool foam of an ebbing wave. You cried at the shock of it, the way the liquid world transformed itself so quickly as it swirled around you. Perhaps you thought it might swallow you up altogether. Or perhaps you sensed, for the very first time, that nothing in this dazzling new world of white, white light is permanent. Before I could speak to you of these things, your mother swept you out of my arms into the comfort of a dry towel.

Back to top

The sea has gone flat now, the entire bay becalmed. I gaze out at the still water. Beyond David and the line of waiting surfers, the ocean, like our future, is vast, inscrutable.

"Mary."

The black oval sunglasses turn my way. "What?"

"Let’s talk."

You’re dozing now. Your mother uncouples you from her breast and slips you inside the safe blue universe of the baby tent. I watch your lidded eyes flutter with the flight of a secret dream. What fantastic story is shaping itself inside your head, with your belly full and your eyes dancing?

"Well?"

I have too much to say. Or too little. In any case, the right words, the words that need to be said, do not come. "Do you like it here?" I ask finally.

She frowns. "It’s too hot for Rachael this afternoon, that’s all. You know I love this beach."

"I don’t mean here on the beach; I mean here . . ." I gesture toward the upper island. ". . . on Lāna`i. Do you like all of us being here together while I do the interviews? Is this helping us? Or is it just making things worse?"

I watch her remove her sunglasses and rub her eyes, then gaze out at the calm water as she contemplates her answer. The glasses have left red marks on each side of her nose. Long before she was your mother, long before David was born, I used to notice the same marks whenever she removed her distance glasses, the glasses she wore when she drove. I used to try to kiss the redness away. Once, after she’d driven us somewhere in her green Kharman Ghia, I leaned across the space between the bucket seats and touched one of the red spots with my tongue. She pulled away. What’s wrong? I asked. Nothing, she replied. You got salt in my eye.

"Steve."

Her eyes are locked on me now, red marks blazing.

"See? You don’t listen, even for the answer to your own question."

"Sorry. I just–"

"You’re off in your own little world somewhere, same as usual. What difference does it make that you brought us with you to this island? We might as well be back in Kansas."

"Sorry," I repeat. "I didn’t mean . . ." I don’t finish.

She reaches her hand across the picnic table and takes my own. "The timing could be better, you know."

I return the gentle squeeze. "I know."

A series of cries and shouts along the beach draws our eyes back to the water. The sea has awakened; waves are rolling in. We watch David squat on his board and begin to paddle furiously toward the beach, gathering speed to catch the first big one. "Go, David!" Michael shouts from the edge of the water. Daniel watches in rapt silence. When the wave reaches the line of surfers, the local boys spring up on their boards like pop-up toys. Effortlessly, they ride the face of the crest toward the beach, a couple of them crouching low to zig-zag across the curl, showing off. I see all this on the periphery of my vision, for my eyes remain on David. The wave seems to roll right through him, swallowing him up for a moment until his pale head reappears behind the crest, only his head, as simultaneously his black and red bodyboard shoots straight up out of the blue water behind him like a Trident missile launched from a submerged submarine, only to be instantly aborted, falling back harmlessly onto the undulating blue. David treads water for a few seconds, watching the local boys finish their rides with tumbling grace. Finally, he turns and swims slowly to retrieve his board.

On the beach, Daniel turns to Michael and spreads his arms in a Charley Brown gesture of why? Michael shrugs in reply, and they both turn back to their sand fort.

You don’t see any of this. In the cool safety of your blue tent you begin to snore like an intoxicated honey bee. Your mother shakes her head as David climbs back onto his board and gazes determinedly at the next wave. "Too bad."

I nod. "At least he’s trying."

The bark beetle carries the worm to its nest, where it will feed its young for up to six months.

As Margie the pregnant cop lies beside Norm the duck painter on a deep Minnesota winter night, staring bleary-eyed at the Nature program on their bedroom TV, she’s trying to solve a murder mystery. On Lāna`i, we’re trying to solve the mystery of how to live our lives together.

As the summer wears on, no one tries harder than Michael, who turned twelve a couple of weeks before we flew out here. A casual observer might mistake Michael’s preference for solitude for the grim brooding associated with classmates he refers to as "Goths." But from what I can tell, Michael’s private thoughts are seldom grim or selfish. Most of the time he seems to be worrying about the rest of us, particularly Daniel. Michael is reluctant to talk about personal things; nevertheless, not long after Independence Day I begin to sense he has something he wants to say.

On a cool evening in mid-July I take advantage of the fact that your mother is feeding you, and ask Michael to go for a walk. We take the northern route through town, upcamp, through long pine shadows stretching across the park, past tiny tin-roofed plantation cottages, up Ke-o-muku Road on past the elegant Lodge at Ko`ele. We don’t say much until the magnificent copper roof of the Lodge is behind us. Then Michael says simply: "Dad?"

I don’t reply, just keep walking along the edge of the gray asphalt road, waiting for Michael to find his own way to his question. Around us, the white, white world is changing once more. To the west, above the abandoned pineapple fields overgrown with weeds, the sun sinks toward the aluminum blue surface of the sea. The low, bending light is golden, laminating the open plain with a honey tint. In the gilded light Michael’s face looks bronze but soft, as the brave but frightened young prince of Maui might have looked when he came ashore here half a millennium ago, banished by his father to the Island of Ghosts for uprooting breadfruit trees.

"What kind of life do you think Daniel’s going to have when he grows up?"

I draw a deep breath and think about this before answering. "An independent life, I hope. With a job and a place of his own to live. That’s what your mom and I want for him."

Michael’s brow tightens as we climb a rise toward the point where Ke-o-muku Road bends east over the backbone of the mountain. "But what kind of job could he have?"

"I honestly don’t know. It depends on who Daniel turns out to be."

I can tell Michael isn’t satisfied with this response, but I’m not finished.

Back to top

"For some kids like Daniel, the Army used to be a good career. The Army gives you discipline and takes care of you."

"Why used to be?"

"The Army’s different now. More technology. You have to be smarter, better educated to be a soldier these days."

Michael nods. "Forrest Gump wouldn’t make it in the Army today."

I don’t want to say this, but I have to. "Actually, the people at Menninger’s who tested Daniel claim he’s not nearly as smart as Forrest Gump. They say Daniel’s IQ is lower."

"Lower?" Michael’s features twist into a look of near-horror.

"By about 30 points, according to their tests."

Michael’s eyes grow moist before he speaks again. "Do you believe them?"

I shrug. "IQ tests measure only certain kinds of abilities. Your mother and I both believe Daniel’s more capable than those tests show. All I can tell you is Daniel’s going to have the best chance in life we can give him."

We’ve reached the lookout at the bend in the road. Below us, the former pineapple plain stretches all the way to the gilded horizon, where the sun is disappearing behind a pinkening cloud bank. Together, Michael and I turn and look back at the pine tree-studded oasis of Lāna`i City. I can’t help but think of the pension men and their families I’ve been interviewing for the last six weeks, and the waves of settlers–Hawaiians, Americans, Japanese, Filipinos, and the rest–who built and rebuilt this island community over its history. In this way they weren’t unlike your own great grandparents, who came to the New World from Germany and Czechoslovakia, propelled by the dream of a shining new life in a faraway land across a great sea. As the sun sinks behind us now, the earthy colors of the tiny plantation town glow and fade and blaze up again, as if we were watching the evolution of the community through a kaleidoscope.

"In the life of a family, there’s always a lot at stake, Michael."

He sighs. "Is that why you and Mom work so hard?"

"Yes."

"Is that why you’re both so sad all the time?"

I turn and look at him. "We’re not sad all the time."

He doesn’t blink. "You know what I mean, Dad."

Sometimes Michael is wise beyond his years. Together we turn our gaze back to the golden-green tree tops of Lāna`i City, fading now to a russet brown. "Yes, I know what you mean."

In the spring the larvae hatch, and the cycle begins again. Here it is, throwing off the larval envelope . . .

I’m still not sure why the scenes I keep recalling from Fargo are moments when the characters are watching television. Perhaps it’s because in the intervening years my memories of Lāna`i have grown flat and opaque, like decaying reels of acetate shelved in some forgotten vault in my mind. But the images of that summer don’t appear flat when I replay them now, when I picture you snoozing in your stroller next to our table in the Blue Ginger two evenings before our departure from the island, drinking up the dim yellow light of the small dining room, absorbing the admiring gazes of the other diners: Jennifer Hera, Junior Miss Hawaiian Island Beauty 1995; Bobby Amaral, a retired fisherman who once used his boat to ferry rice and other foodstuffs to plantation workers and their families during the great pineapple strike of 1951; and a round cinnamon-colored Hawaiian woman whose name I can no longer recall. Your brothers are sitting around the table with the red and white checkered cloth, finishing up their burgers and fries. Your mother is at the Lāna`i Laundrette three doors down, putting a load in the dryer.

"Oooo, da keki, she a good sleepah, yeah?" the Hawaiian woman says, giving me a wink.

Behind her, a whoosh of steam escapes the curtain behind the register counter, followed by the clatter of plates and pots from the kitchen. I look down at you before replying.

A bubble swells on your slightly parted pink lips, then pops like an interrupted dream. The small violence does not disturb your slumber. "Most of the time," I say.

The truth is, you slept through most of what happened that summer. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

"Can I drive tomorrow?" David asks, swirling a french fry in a mound of catsup. He says this just loud enough so that Miss Junior Miss Hawaiian Island Beauty, finishing her own burger at the next table, can overhear.

"Sure," I reply, careful not to smile. David is fourteen, just a few weeks short of the minimum age for a Kansas learner’s permit. Over the summer I’ve given him lessons in our landlord’s battered four-wheel Bronco, sitting in the passenger seat beside him as he raised clouds of red dust on the old plantation roads crisscrossing the Palawai Basin. In just a few weeks David has become a skilled, confident driver. Yesterday, in the ultimate gesture of trust, your mother allowed David to drive the entire family part of the way back from our picnic ground at the abandoned fishing village of Lopa on the windward side. With six of us, there was no room in the Bronco for your infant’s car seat. Your mother clutched you securely in her lap, strapped between Michael and Daniel in the middle of the bench seat in the back, as David guided the Bronco around rocks and bumps on the dirt road that snakes its way along the seashore. When she urged him to slow down as we approached the old church at Ke-o-muku, David replied in his lowest, most adult voice: Relax, Mom. I’m only going fifteen miles an hour.

"When can I drive?" Daniel asks now, his mouth full of fries.

"As soon as your feet can reach the pedals."

Daniel merely nods at this, but Michael lets a thin smile stretch his lips as he rests his elbows on the checkered table cloth. He knows I mean it.

On the other side of the screen door it’s twilight, the sharp green silhouettes of Cook pines dissolving into gray air–the same blurred, ambiguous light that erased the day two evenings ago as your mother and I strolled you along the narrow sidewalk on Fraser Avenue, past Sacred Heart Catholic Church. You won’t remember it, but Sacred Heart is the largest church on the island, a steepled, unimposing white woodframe structure about twice the size of a plantation cottage. I realized that although none of us went to church, we’d all been baptized Catholics. Except you.

When we stopped so your mother could adjust the pink blanket covering your bare feet, an idea came to me.

"You know, if you want, we could have Rachael christened right here at Sacred Heart. They have a priest, and lots of people on this island know us now."

Your mother understood without explanation why I had proposed this. Baptizing you here would bind us all to this place in a way your Hawaiian middle name cannot. Her brow furrowed, she took longer than usual to tuck the blanket around your toes. I waited.

By the time you read these words, you already know that your mother grew up in a large Catholic family, the oldest of seven children, with religion a part of her daily life. You also know I was an only child. You might not know that your grandma and grandpa Heller were married in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Kansas City and later had me baptized there. They fell away from the church soon after I was born. Surely you know all about the small bedroom community of Yukon, Oklahoma, where your mother and I both grew up, where many of your aunts and uncles and cousins still live. But you may not realize that until I was seventeen or so I was fair game for Yukon’s Catholics, evangelicals, and fundamentalists. I tried each of them and rejected them all. Bullshit, I concluded with adolescent existential glee. The Big Lie.

Nevertheless, when your mother and I were twenty-two, I acceded to her desire for a church wedding. I listened politely to the parish priest’s instructions about raising the children Catholic. Soon after the wedding, though, trouble. I couldn’t bear your attitude, your mother told me years later. It drove me away from the church.

In the decade prior to our summer on Lāna`i my attitude toward religion mellowed, partly because of a few devout but nonproselytizing friends whose lives had earned my respect, and partly because of writers like Flannery O’Connor who engaged religious issues seriously in their work. One undeniable truth about Lāna`i: Almost everyone on this island, including the native Hawaiians, is Christian.

Back to top

At last Mary finished arranging your blanket, then stood erect and faced me. "I don’t think so, Steve. We’ve never even been in that church."

Your mother has always been beautiful. Especially her eyes: large, round, and direct, yet somehow also expressing the appealing shyness that first drew me to her the summer after we graduated from Yukon High. As she stood before me two evenings ago, strong and certain in the ambiguous gray light in front of Sacred Heart Church, I couldn’t help but think of another twilight, almost three decades earlier, in the driveway of a forgotten classmate’s house, the reedy voice of Davey Jones of the Monkees singing about daydreams and prom queens from the pulsing depths of a crowded garage party. From the middle of the driveway I called to her, drawing her away from the safe huddle of her giggling girlfriends, coaxing her to turn and face me in the gray light, her eyes glowing back at me like twin memories of the vanished sun behind us, as I offered the following prayer: Tomorrow night, how about you and me . . .

You have your mother’s eyes.

"We could look it over right now," I said, gesturing toward the darkening silhouette of the church. "Meet the priest, if you want."

Your mother thought about this for a long moment, then finally shook her head. "We do know people here, but they’re your friends more than mine. For a baptism we need family, godparents, our very closest friends. I don’t want to have Rachael christened here . . . I’m sorry."

"I’m ready to go," Daniel announces, popping the last french fry into his mouth.

"Me too," David says. Miss Junior Miss Hawaiian Island Beauty has already finished her burger and left. Michael pushes his chair back. With only two days left before our departure, I can tell the boys’ thoughts are already turning toward Kansas and home.

"OK, let me pay the check."

Outside, the gray light has dissolved into the tranquil dark of a cool Hawaiian night. Above our heads, above the cathedral-like spires of Cook pines, the blue-black sky is laced with stars. There’s no hurry here, and we seem to drift more than walk along the sidewalk, away from the fading clatter and din of the café toward the shadow of the launderette, toward whatever future awaits us. When your mother’s familiar slim silhouette looms up out of the gloom before us, I can’t help but think: Keep trying.

She walks into the cone of white light from the street lamp in front of Art of Lāna`i, and I notice she’s frowning. "Where’s Rachael?"

David is the swiftest. He reaches the door of the Blue Ginger before the rest of us can cut across the grass. Through the screen door I spot him nodding red-faced to the round Hawaiian woman, who sits beside your stroller like a stern sentry. When she sees me coming through the door, she shakes her head and says: "You forgot your keiki!"

The Filipino girl who runs the register, the middle-aged Filipino cook, and the other half dozen diners all stare at us as David grabs the handle of the stroller and begins to push you–still snoozing away, traveling your own uncharted dreamscape–toward the door.

I say it before they can: "Stupid haoles."

"I can’t believe you left her behind," Mary says when we’re all outside again.

"You left the laundry," I reply.

No one laughs. The night settles on us heavily as we trudge toward the launderette. Even Daniel walks with shoulders sagging. When we reach the dimly-lit launderette, I see from the brown wicker basket that Auntie with Quarters has the good dryer, as usual, though she’s nowhere in sight at the moment. The launderette is deserted except for the whirring drone of the two melancholy machines. Like exhausted hounds after the chase, the boys settle themselves on the grass lawn outside while Mary pushes you through the open doorway. I follow.

Later tonight, when the moon peaks over the mountain, you’ll begin to fuss in your port-a-crib, waking your mother and me. Can you get her this time? she’ll whisper, having nursed you to sleep only an hour or so earlier. Without a word, I’ll climb out of bed and carry you downstairs and warm a bottle for you in the microwave. While you take it, I’ll rock you gently in the straight-back kitchen chair, sing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" in my softest daddy voice, and ask you to forgive me.

But now, in the gray light of the launderette, somewhere behind your fluttering eyelids the wide, white world of the future is slowly spinning itself into existence, becoming blood-warm, ready to engulf you like the pink jammies with feet your mother will slip on you later tonight. Meanwhile, as Margie the pregnant cop might say, it’s a beautiful evening right here. If only we could all see it. As I write these words, you are barely three. How old you are as you read them now, I may never know. Your brothers will have read them before you, and they will have their own stories to tell of that summer.

Believe whatever life teaches you is true.

What I recall is this: the primordial cosmos of a rusty dryer spinning its damp payload in a dark orbit around an invisible star. As I watch this small universe slowly form, I settle myself on a mute washing machine and dream of the world that awaits us when we return to Kansas. Not the world I remember, the world as I would like it to be. Somewhere in the revolving drone I hear the closing lines from another Coen brothers’ film: If not Arizona, then a land not too far away . . . where all parents are strong, wise, and capable, and all children are happy and beloved . . .

I shift my weight on the cool metal and gaze back through the open doorway. A pension man and his wife stroll arm-in-arm on the edge of the park. David and Michael are still sprawled on the grass, lost in their own private dreams, but Daniel is up now, bounding along the sidewalk like a sprightly elf. Finally, I turn back to your mother, still working hard to make the best of it, the back of her blue T-shirt spotted with sweat as she bends over the foot of your stroller, once again rearranging the pink blanket that protects you from the brisk island night. The crystalline glow that seems to radiate from your small face might be the cosmic energy of your own personal universe forming behind lidded eyes. Or it might just be my imagination. The truth is, this is not Arizona, nor even Utah. This is Lāna`i, where the nights are calm and cool, where children are safe, and families somehow endure.