*****
Charlotte awoke to the sound of a cellphone ringing. For a moment she forgot what day it was. She had slept through much of yesterday, and her memory was a bit of a muddle.
It was still dark outside. The phone chimed cheerfully three, four, five more times.
Still half-asleep, she rose sluggishly, groping about for her purse on the floor. She retrieved the phone and put it to her ear.
“’lo?” she said huskily.
“HEY CHUCK!”
She almost toppled off her bed. “Liv?”
“Oh man, were you asleep? I forgot about the time difference. It’s my lunchbreak over here.”
“It’s okay.”
“Hey look. Sorry I missed your call the other day. It’s been a madhouse around here. Andy hurt his back, so he’s off work and I had to pick up three extra shifts. My feet are killing me. ”
“Oh,” Charlotte said, still somewhat groggy. “Is Andy badly hurt?”
Liv made a scoffing sound over the phone. “He’s fine. It’s the muscular equivalent of man flu. He lies around all day while I wait on him and hand and foot, but he was miraculously feeling good enough to go to the football game yesterday. Go figure, right?”
Charlotte got up and went to the couch by her window. All was still. Not even the first rosy glimmer of light had touched the edge of the sky.
“So Chuck, you’ve been good?”
Charlotte thought about the question. “I’m doing better.”
“Hey, I went to see your moms this weekend. She’s good, Chuck. She misses you. I gave her your number. I hope that’s okay. She says she’s getting help with the drugs and stuff, and I think she’s telling the truth this time. You know, she seemed real solid.”
Charlotte’s heart sang at the news. She wanted so much to believe it was true. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. It took me a while to track her down. She got a new place. Hang on, let me get you her cell number.” Some scuffling noises came from the phone before Liv returned with the ten digits. Charlotte grabbed a pen and scribbled them onto her hand.
“Ah, this place is freaking busy. I gotta go,” Liv said. “You stay on the journey, Chuck. I’ll see you on the other side.”
“Bye, Liv. Love you.”
The phone clicked off. Charlotte fell back onto the couch feeling a warm rush of joy spreading through her, end to end. That was the world’s best wake up call.
She had slept so much yesterday that she was sated and clearheaded, though it was not yet daybreak. She pulled a sweatshirt over her nightie and went downstairs, pinning her hair into a loose ponytail.
The lights were off in the kitchen, but she found two chocolate croissants waiting on the counter. She knew they were meant for her. Uncle Eddie must have bought them at the bakery last night, knowing they were her favorite.
She took one, poured a glass of milk, and tiptoed around the kitchen, enjoying her solitude and the chill morning air and the buttery flesh of the croissant.
When she had finished, she went to the door and looked out at the ocean. Her eyes moved inevitably to Mr. Kerrigan’s house. It still held a special significance for her, even though her longing had been the source of so much heartache.
A flicker appeared in his window. She thought she saw his figure flutter the window curtains. She looked closer. Sure enough, there he was.
She unlatched the back door and stepped outside, hesitating only a fraction of a second before knocking.
He appeared almost instantly.
There was so much distance between them in that instant, she had never felt it before so starkly. But she still loved his face. The kind, sensitive lines in it, and the saddest eyes in the world.
“You’re here,” she said.
“So I am. I’m moving some boxes out to my car. It’s surprising how much I’ve accrued over the past year alone.”
He hefted a box from his foyer and out into the front step. “These are art supplies. I was going to give them to your uncle, but I wondered if you might like them? For your own work?”
She peeked inside and found an assortment of brushes and ink pens and paints.
He smiled. “You have real potential as an artist, Charlotte. And I mean the word ‘potential’ in its most original usage – full of potency. Your art has a power that blows me away.”
“You really think so?” she asked shyly.
“Yes, I do,” he said. “You take dark things and you turn them into something beautiful. As a teacher, I could not have asked for a better pupil. I will very much miss the privilege of seeing you develop as an artist.”
She crouched down to the art box and poked around the brushes, mostly to avoid looking him in the eye. “I wish you could stay,” she said softly.
“There’s a lot I will miss about living here,” he said. “But I need to go home. There’s so much waiting for me there. I wouldn’t have recognized that without your help.”
“You mean getting you fired,” she said sullenly.
“No, not that,” he said. “It was the bravery you’ve shown here. Your willingness to start over, after all you’ve been through. To face things straight-on. Seeing you do that gave me the strength to do the same.”
It pained her to say it, but she knew it was true, so she said, “It’s good that you’re going back to Maryland. It’s your kuleana.”
He nodded slowly. “Yes. It is.” He looked back over his shoulder. “Do you have a minute? There’s something I’d like to give you.”
She nodded and he ducked back into his apartment, appearing a moment later with something large. She recognized it immediately. The canvas that had been sitting blank in his living room the last time she’d visited. But now it was filled with color, with such presence it seemed to enlarge the space of the canvas.
“This is for you,” he said. “I call it Ke Au Hou. A new life. A new beginning.”
She took it into her hands. “This is amazing.”
“I had this canvas for the entire time I’ve been here,” he said. “But I never had anything to fill it with before. I felt that my career as an artist had died.”
“When did you paint this?”
“Yesterday. The paint’s not entirely dry. Be careful.”
She nodded, knowing that she would betray her sadness if she spoke. She looked back towards the Kapono’s house. The lights had turned on in the kitchen, and she could see them there by the breakfast nook. Emi was reading the comics section of the newspaper, and Aunt Sheena was laughing at something that Uncle Eddie had said. Behind them, over the roof of the house, past the ancient contours of the Ko’olau, the sun touched the silent earth.
Standing there, she felt strong for the first time in a long time. She knew somehow that she would survive this, that there was some hope for her yet. Ke au hou. This was a new beginning.
END
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