Dreamer of Dune (46 page)

During the day, Mom liked to sit in the “vee” of the sectional couch, which gave her commanding views of the home's interior and the ocean. Jan helped set her up each day, providing pillows, bringing books and knitting materials, and placing the cordless telephone nearby.

Jan prepared all the meals and performed other tasks my father normally did, making her realize the full extent of the time-consuming chores he performed out of love. Prior to Jan's visit Mom hadn't allowed anyone but him to help her, so he was her medical attendant, masseur and personal chef. He cleaned the house, did her laundry, made and changed her bed, performed her bookkeeping chores, wrote letters for her, and bathed her. In caring for a person this ill, he was forced to reach deep for the strength he needed.

The fatigue showed on his drawn face, with dark circles under his eyes. He had gained a lot of weight, more than fifty pounds at one point from nervous eating, from the stresses of building the house at Kawaloa and not knowing from day to day if the woman he was building it for would survive to see it completed. He had more wrinkles, more gray hairs. His beard and hair, usually neatly trimmed, were long and unkempt.

In recent weeks he had begun losing weight, having lost his appetite and enthusiasm for food. Ten of the fifty pounds had fallen off. Jan tried to make certain he ate a balanced diet each day, but often he wouldn't finish what she put in front of him and she would have to remove it. At times he seemed listless.

Each morning, Mom had to take her medicine, but once while Jan was there, she resisted, saying it didn't taste good. She was seated in her usual place on the couch, with the medicine on the black slate table in front of her.

Dad came up behind Mom and started rubbing her neck and shoulders. He pushed his hand inside the back of her sweater to massage her upper back, and as he did so, said, “I'm not getting fresh.”

“I wish you were,” she said, with a winsome smile.

Jan wanted to paint the glorious Hawaiian countryside around her. One very special afternoon, with warm, gentle trade winds blowing in from the sea, Mom followed Jan out on the deck. Barely able to walk, Mom went six feet, held on to something, and then struggled another six feet. They sat by the pool, where Jan sketched and painted. Adding to what she had taught Jan before, Mom described more of the techniques her mother had used, this time in the mixing and matching of watercolors and in brush strokes. And, while she did not have the energy to paint, she enjoyed watching Jan spread colors and shapes on paper.

“Yes, that's it,” Mom would say. “You're very talented.”

Inside the house, my mother showed Jan a number of sketches and paintings she had done when they first moved to Kawaloa, when all the excitement of the tropical scenery was new and fresh in her mind. One painting was of the house and garden, a happy production full of bright flowers. Another was a potted flower drawn in black ink.

Mom gave Jan a set of Japanese watercolor paints, with colors in little porcelain dishes. While Mom was napping one day, Jan went out on the deck by the stairway that led up to the caretaker's house and painted a picture of a lacy Coral Hibiscus and a bright red Ostrich Plume Ginger. Looking around the side of the main house, she had a glimpse of the water, but most of that view was blocked by the house.

Mom awoke and saw her out there. Slowly, painstakingly, she worked her way outside, and came up behind Jan to admire her work.

Jan set up a chair for her, and ran back inside to get my mother's favorite wool shawl for her shoulders. In one of their conversations, Mom told Jan she was sorry she hadn't spent more time with her grandchildren but that if she kept her distance it wouldn't hurt them so deeply when she passed away. Jan had suspected as much. Sadly, she thought of how much Kim resembled her grandmother as a teenager, with baby fat that would soon melt away, revealing hidden beauty. They shared an interest in astrology, in sewing and knitting, and had many other similarities of personality, especially in the subtle ways of obtaining what they wanted.

Still, Jan held out hope for future closeness between Bev and the girls, and found it hard to accept that my mother was dying.

Dad also spent time with Jan. He alternated between depression and optimism, refusing to believe his wife of nearly four decades might not be able to continue. Proudly, he showed Jan his computer system. From his nonstop nursing duties and trying to meet a writing deadline, he had let his personal appearance slip. So he asked Jan to neaten him up, with a haircut and beard trim.

While cutting his hair, Jan noticed a large mole on his back and said, “Frank, this looks like it needs taking care of.”

“I'll have it looked at,” he assured her, “when I get back to the mainland.”

During Jan's visit the swimming pool was finally completed and filled with water. The solar heating unit was not functioning yet, so the water was too cold for Mom. Dad and Jan swam, however. The pool was large and beautiful, just off the master bedroom. Partially completed redwood decks surrounded it, and on one section, in a chair beneath the shade of an Italian umbrella, Jan often gazed out over the magical, shimmering sea.

To pay for the remaining construction he wanted for Mom, Dad took out a large bank loan. “I'm expecting movie money soon,” he told Jan. He then sought interior design advice from her as to how they might decorate the main house and the apartment wing.

At 3:30 one morning Jan awoke to noises. From her futon bed on the mezzanine floor, she heard someone walking around, and a sliding door opening and closing. She went in Dad's study, and through an open skylight heard a splash and someone swimming in the pool. It was my father taking a wake-up dip before going to work in his study. This was his daily routine, rising earlier than ever so that he could have precious writing time alone while Mom slept. After swimming his “lengths,” he squeezed fresh orange juice and prepared a light breakfast for himself.

Jan discovered that Dad was taking No-Doz tablets to stay awake…to work through intense fatigue as he sought to keep the writing deadlines that were so important to him.

At times Jan needed to get away alone. Sensing this, Mom told her to take the Blazer and drive to nearby Hamoa Beach, owned by the Hotel Hana Maui. From dues they paid, my parents had the right to use the recreational area, described by Dad as the most beautiful stretch of white sand beach he had ever seen.

Jan sat on one of the lounge chairs provided by the hotel and cried for Bev, hardly noticing a famous actress who was seated nearby, Julie Newmar. A man in his forties approached Jan and introduced himself as “Smitty.” Friendly and compassionate, he said he was a preacher and that he lived in a cave nearby. He wore boxer shorts and a faded Hawaiian shirt.

Jan told him about my mother.

“Let's say a prayer for her,” Smitty suggested.

And for long minutes they prayed together, silently.

Later Jan learned he was quite a well-known personality in those parts, known as “Born Again Smitty,” a man who had saved many swimmers from the dangerous surf and undertow just offshore. Tragically, Smitty died a short while later when the cave in which he lived collapsed on him. He was one of many people living off the land around there, in shacks or caves, fishing and picking fruit from the jungle. No one starved, not even people who didn't fish, because of the abundance of bananas, papaya, guava, breadfruit and other fruit that grew readily in that climate.

When Jan arrived home from Hamoa Beach, she came in late, having lost track of time.

“Where the hell were you?” Dad demanded. “I was just about to call the police! I had people driving around looking for you!”

She apologized for causing concern, and hurried in to prepare dinner. Later, during one of her visits to Hamoa Beach, Jan made these notes:

A short while afterward, Jan asked my father if she could leave a few days earlier than expected, so that she could get back to Margaux, who was only two, and take care of other obligations. She said nothing about her real reason. If my father sensed anything else he didn't comment, though his eyes were filled with pain. Jan knew as well that my sister, Penny, would arrive soon to help out. Bruce had wanted to come afterward, but Dad was delaying in giving him a time that would be convenient. My brother wondered, but did not say so to Dad, if this had anything to do with his homosexuality, which our father had never accepted.

A couple of days later when it was time to leave, Jan said good-bye to Mom, who was too weak and fatigued to rise from the gray sectional couch. Mom wore her colorful Missoni shawl and her favorite red cotton muumuu with pink and white flowers. Jan had ironed the dress for her that morning.

“Thank you, dear.” Beverly's face was a mask of sadness and pain. “You've been a big help.”

Jan leaned over, kissed the frail woman on her cheek and hugged her. Then she turned quickly to leave, because she didn't want my mother to see her crying. From the front entry, she looked back at the woman who had become a mother figure to her. A mounting fear filled Jan, a terror that it was the last time she would ever see her, and she saw in Mom's face that she sensed this as well.

The leaving process was like slow motion to Jan, a terrible pulling and wrenching. She didn't want to go, wanted to look upon Bev just a little longer, wanted to be with her for just a few moments more.

On the way to the Hana airport, Dad said, “You know she's dying.”

Jan couldn't respond. It was why she needed to leave. She didn't feel she had the strength my mother saw in her, and was torn between wanting to help and fearing the imminence of death.

My father was torn as well, in different ways.

One moment he believed Mom might die, and the next moment he didn't believe it. Whenever the terrible reality of her fragility hit him, he tried to overcome it with his powerful sense of optimism—his knowledge of what the human spirit, particularly my mother's, could accomplish. She had survived so many close calls that it seemed to many of us that she would continue to beat the dread disease that afflicted her body. Like my father, we always held out hope.

His optimism was contagious, and I hung on the slender thread of hope that he spun, without realizing how tenuous it was. Or how fragile he was himself. Of course I was spinning my own threads as well, my own illusions.

Shortly after Jan left, he wrote to me on Kawaloa stationery:

Mom had my father's fighting abilities and his sense of determination, and he had hers. They were, as each of them often said, “one”—different parts of the same organism. At times Dad tried to intellectualize her condition, and these were the worst times for him, when he had to face stark, cold medical facts. He was the most optimistic when he permitted his heart full rein, when he
believed
she would pull through and convinced himself she would.

He convinced her of this, I am sure.

Curiously, though he, like my mother, never accepted any formal religion, he was basically a man of faith, and this made him good and true and strong. It made him capable of writing books that inspired millions of readers. It enabled him to become, at long last, a father to me.

Over the decade that the precious human cargo known as Beverly Herbert had been fighting for her life—first against cancer and then against heart disease brought on by radiation treatment, all of us grieved for her. We expected the worst at any moment, but hoped for the best.

When Jan arrived home from Kawaloa, she couldn't talk about all of the sadness. She didn't show me what she had written at the beach or fill me in on all the details, such as the oxygen my mother had to take to get through each night. Jan looked numb, lower than I had ever seen her, and just said, “Your mother is dying.”

I couldn't believe it, didn't want to believe it, didn't want to talk about it. I didn't ask probing questions, things hindsight tells me I should have asked. But I had a terrible, ominous feeling. For weeks I had been battling a bad case of the flu; I was tired and really depressed.

For the first time in my life, I called the airport and made a reservation for a flight on an airliner—to Hawaii.

Then I reread Dad's recent letter, in which he said Mom was slightly improved, and I deluded myself. The swimming pool was almost ready, and soon she would be in the water, resuming the exercise program that had worked so well for her in the past. My terrible fear of flying returned and overwhelmed me. I couldn't go through with the flight after all and canceled it, without ever having told my parents I'd made it.