Unburying Hope (30 page)

Eddie asked her to drive them down to Kihei,
to a small space in a strip mall that might work for a dive shop, but the
building owner wanted 6 months rent up front.
 
She was surprised when Eddie said he’d think about it,
because she didn’t know why they would come up with that much cash for a store
that could close in 6 months.
 
At
least their home rental was a place they’d use every day and she had the money
to keep them there for a long time without an income.
 
But she didn’t want to move house money into a storefront,
she thought, shaking her head at him when he looked her way.

She could feel his rising anger, but she
didn’t know what had triggered it.
 
Each place that they visited still had the bones of the previous closed
business, the lost dreams of the shop owners, and she wondered if Eddie was
feeling helpless.

He was up at dawn each day, out for a run on
the lush hills.
 
She joined him but
couldn’t keep up, which was fine because he was short tempered anyway.
 
He insisted that one of them had to
stay home with Rosalinda.

Celeste had thought that the girl would be
fine by herself for an hour or two.
  
“I grew up being by myself a lot,” she huffed, trying to keep his pace
one morning when she joined him.

“No, you were with that old lady.
 
Your mom made sure you weren’t alone.”

That was true, Celeste realized, and she
slowed her pace.
 
“Well, I got
myself home from school every day.
 
And sometimes if there was a creep on the bus, I’d get off and walk
home, so I was alone then.”

“You hate to be alone now.”

Celeste felt cornered.
 
“Yes, but I’m 26.
 
I’ve been through a lot.”

Eddie slowed down and came back to her, “She’s
9 and she’s been through a lot, too.
 
Celeste, Rosalinda and I are a package deal.
 
I got up early so I could get a short run in.
 
As soon as I get home, you can go for a
run.
 
We can take turns for the
early time, if you want.”

“Alright,” Celeste said, grudgingly, and she
peeled off the trail, reversing course, running back to the house at a slower,
more manageable pace.
 
She wondered
what Frank was doing.
 
Was it lunchtime?
 
Would he be sitting at their
restaurant, alone?
 
Did he cash his
escrow check and get on a flight to South Carolina?
 
She wished she knew a way back to their friendship but she’d
never needed to reconcile with someone and didn’t know how to take reasonable
steps.

So, to be with Eddie, she would have to
calculate in Rosalinda.
 
It helped
if she could be civil to the girl.
 
She noticed Eddie was warmer if she smiled at her and occasionally asked
how she was doing.

Surprisingly, the little girl always answered,
so Celeste learned the quickest way to engage her, a half conversation so to
speak.

Until a day later, sitting on the sofa with
her feet curled up under a quilt, she noticed that Rosalinda wasn’t moving
much.
 
She put her newspaper down
and looked over.

The little girl was curled up on the sofa, a
mirror of Celeste’s position with comics in her hand.

“You’re awfully quiet.”

Rosalinda looked at her quizzically.

“Are you happy here?”

Rosalinda shrugged her shoulders.

“I mean here on the sofa, but I guess I also
mean here in Hawaii.
 
You don’t
want to be outside the house exploring?”

The girl shook her head, no.

Celeste put the newspaper off to the side and
put her feet on the ground.

Rosalinda did the same.

“Do you want to go somewhere?”

“Dunno.”
 
The little girl shrugged again.

“I don’t know what we could do.
 
What do you like to do?”

Rosalinda pursed her lips.
 
“Dunno, really.”

“What did you do at your grandma’s?”

“Behave, mostly.”

Celeste paused.
 
“Were you pretty naughty?”

“Oh no,” Rosalinda shook her head adamantly,
“I behave.
 
I couldn’t move much,
it hurts my grandma’s hips.”

“You run into her?”

“No, if we sit and watch her shows.”

Celeste remembered sadly the terror she felt
when her own happy bouncing caused the old lady to cry out in pain.
 
“Ah, I used to do that too.”

“What?”

“I went home to an old lady neighbor every
day.
 
And if I bounced on the sofa,
I hurt her.”

“Yep, I gave Grandma the cancer by bouncing.”

“What?”
 
Celeste looked at her in alarm.

“I squirm too much.
 
She worried about what I was going to be good for.”

“I’m sure she had cancer before.
 
She must have gotten it because her
immune system was down.
 
That’s
what old age will do to you.”

“She shouldn’ta had to have me.
 
It was too hard on her.
 
She rested all the time and the cancer
keeps getting stronger and she keeps getting weaker.”

Celeste took Rosalinda’s hand, pulling her to
the spot on the sofa right next to her.
 
For a moment, she worried that Rosalinda would sit on her lap, so she
twisted herself sideways so the girl would land on a seat cushion.

Rosalinda plopped down and looked at her
expectantly.

“I’m not an old lady, like my old lady or your
grandma, so you can bounce around a little bit with me.”

Rosalinda looked stricken and she sat
unmoving.

“Like this,” Celeste said, and she pushed
against the sofa cushion with hands on either side of her hips, giving herself
a bounce into the air.

Rosalinda let out a surprised giggle.
 
“You look silly.”

“I’m sure I do.”
 
Celeste pushed herself into another bounce, then another.

Rosalinda took one of the bounces and used it
for momentum, bouncing herself into four or five exuberant takeoffs, each time
scanning Celeste’s face for any sign of anger.

“Okay, let’s do something else.”

“What?”

“Let’s go pick up your daddy early.
 
We can see what spaces he’s looked at
and then maybe get some ice cream.”

“Vanilla?”

“Oh no,” she said, hearing Frank’s shred of a southern
accent in her own voiced endearment, “if you are in Hawaii, you have to eat
Hawaiian food.
 
Maybe coconut?
 
Or pineapple?”

Rosalinda skewed her face up, trying to keep
it clear.

“Or maybe vanilla,” Celeste said, “with taster
spoons of a new flavor each time we go, until you find a new flavor you like.”

Rosalinda relaxed in relief.
 
“Okay, let’s go.”

Celeste reached for the car keys and
unexpectedly felt the softness of the child’s hand in hers.
 
She walked to the door, not letting on
her own conflicted reaction to the small fingers clutching hers.

“My girls,” Eddie crowed, hugging each of them
when he saw them walk towards the vacant storefront he was surveying.
 
“This place isn’t going to work
either.
 
It’s got a bad reputation
and has been empty too long.
 
I
might have to go out to Hana.
 
I
met a guy who runs a shop there.”

“Why won’t this work?”
 
Celeste looked down the street.
 
“Right next door to a surf shop?
 
Seems like a perfect fit.”

“Nah, it’s not going to work,” his voice grew
hard and he led her a few feet away from the store.

Rosalinda tensed up, Celeste noticed.
 
“Why not?
 
There’s a snack shop on the other side, you could sell
‘Picnic Dives’.
 
People could get
lunch, rent a surfboard, scuba dive.
 
They’d have the whole day planned right here on this block.”

His brusqueness subsided for a moment, as he
scanned the two storefronts Celeste was pointing to.

The front door of the vacant store was broken;
it looked like a crowbar had been used to jimmy it open.
 
Celeste looked through the window and
saw blankets and trash lying under empty sales racks.
 
“It needs to be cleaned out.”

“Someone’s squatting in it, I think.
 
I don’t want it.”
 
Eddie’s face clouded.
 
“It’s got a foul chemical smell, it’s
not safe to be in.”

“Come on, it’s the best situated that we’ve
seen.
 
It’s probably just rancid
from not being cleaned out.”
 
Celeste cajoled.
 
She wanted
him to get going so they could have a routine, Rosalinda starting in school, Eddie
going to work.
 
Then she could find
a job herself for their future, the future she still wasn’t sure was solid.

“It’s going to be my business.
 
I have to trust my instincts.”
 
He crossed his arms.
 
“It smells like a bomb factory in
there.”

She was stunned and watched as Rosalinda’s
eyes strayed downward.
 
She
couldn’t undo his wartime paranoia, she thought.
 
She walked towards the door and picked up the tangy scent of
ammonia.
 
“Probably someone has
been in there cleaning?” she asked.

Eddie abruptly turned and walked away.
 

How suddenly the area changed, she thought, as
soon as he turned his body away from her.
 
The storefront looked foreboding, unwelcoming.
 
She pulled out her phone, though, and logged in the
landlord’s phone number in case Eddie changed his mind, then followed him.
 
He had Rosalinda by the hand and was
not looking back for her.

She rushed to catch up, “What’s going on, Eddie?”

He stopped and raised his voice.
 
“I pictured this every single day while
I was lying on my bunk against chicken wire in Afghanistan.”
 
His voice shook for a moment.
 
“It’s my dream, I have to do it.
 
If you can’t let me make the decisions
to avoid spots I think are dangerous, you should fly back home.”

“I don’t have a home, remember?”
 
She froze.
 
“I gave it up.
 
I don’t have an apartment to go back to.”

Rosalinda shuffled her feet and Celeste
watched as Eddie crouched down to her, “No tears, Rosalinda, man it up.”

Celeste stood, staring at the bit of
tenderness in Eddie’s eyes as he fought inside himself to find a way to soothe
his daughter.
 
“It’s going to be
good, all good.
 
Daddy’ll get this
business going.”
 
He looked
backwards at the row of windows, and a trace of fear crossed his face.
 
He shook it off, “Maybe I’ll have to
take this place.”

Celeste turned back to see the storefront in
the distance.
 
There was a raggedy
looking man hovering in the doorway.
 
That’s what happens, she thought, when places are shut for too
long.
 
It might be good to take the
space and bring some life to it, scare off the street element.

She saw Eddie was following her gaze and his
expression wavered again, a fast mask of hopelessness, then she saw
determination emerge.
 
He stood,
letting go of Rosalinda’s hand.
 
Celeste sensed worry, memories, dark thoughts clouding his mind.
 
His eyes looked lost and confused.
 
She got a chill on her neck, and then
looked down to the vacant storefront, now cleared, then back to Eddie who wiped
his face with his hand.
 
He turned
away, took her hand and began to walk.
 
Celeste put her other hand out and Rosalinda slid silently over to take
it.

Chapter
Thirty-Two

The clatter of metal tools falling onto the brick
walkway brought Celeste off the lounge chair on the front porch.
 
She raced around the exterior of the
house and down the side steps towards the small shed tucked away under a grove
of macadamia nut trees.
 

She saw Eddie flinch when he registered her coming
around the corner of the house and he shooed her away from the pile of rakes,
shovels and pick axes that had fallen pell-mell on the ground around him.
 
The shed door was open a foot and a
half and he was cursing, ‘Who would pile crap up like this?’
 
He lifted a rake and a pick axe and
walked them into the shed, came out and picked up more tools until he was left
with only one axe and a shovel.