“If you can’t manage to go on this trip,” he said, “you shouldn’t consider yourself part of this family. Lis …” He paused, as if about to say more, then pinched his lips and shook his head.
“Okay, I’ll go,” I said, quickly, to stop him from elaborating.
The following day I lied to my teachers, who were required to sign a form for my absence, saying I was going on an extended trip to visit colleges. The chemistry teacher, Ms. Lawrence, shook her head, but signed. The history teacher, Mrs. Warren, looked at me with surprise, but signed nonetheless. How would I be able to visit colleges, I wondered, now they thought I’d already been? How would I report on towns I had never seen, when they asked? How would I hide freckles and suntan?
I’d have to figure out how to spin it once I got back. Maybe I’d stay inside.
The day we arrived in Hawaii, I followed my father down to the beach, the sand flecked with lava crumbs and hot under my bare feet. Beneath a few palms was an open structure with a thatched roof called the Beach Shack, where you could borrow equipment and sign up on a clipboard for activities: snorkeling, catamaran rides, scuba lessons.
Here the sand was cool. In the shade beside the shack, standing on a pole between two beams, was a bright green macaw with a black tongue. My father had saved a piece of a roll from lunch, and now he held it out to the parrot. The bird leaned forward, jutting out its neck and chest, black-skinned talons gripping the pole. It arced forward as if on a hinge, stepping and clutching the pole and opening its black beak to reveal a stub of tongue shaped like the topmost joint of a pinkie. The tongue lifted in anticipation, and then—my father pulled the bread away. The parrot swung back and stood straight on the pole, closed its beak.
“Hey,” I said. “Let him have it.”
“Wait a sec,” he said.
Again, my father presented the bread, just out of reach; the parrot leaned forward, slowly opening its hinged beak, the black space inside large as a pillbox. Again, my father pulled the bread away before the parrot could reach it.
“This is boring,” I said.
He kept going, developing a rhythm. The parrot leaned, he withdrew, the parrot straightened again, ruffling his green feathers. Each time, I worried the bird would tip and spin down around the pole—its wings were clipped.
“It’s not nice. You’re torturing him.”
“It’s an experiment,” he said. “To see if he’ll learn.”
I waited to see if my father would listen and stop or get tired of the game, or if the parrot would wise up. Neither thing happened so I left.
I saw him later, smiling and looking refreshed. “Isn’t it wonderful here?” he said. All around us the birdsong was continuous and varied, the trill patterns overlapping.
Dinner took place in the same hall where breakfast was served. We were seated at one of the round tables at the front of the hall near the door and the big windows that were mirrors in the dark. Hawaiian music was piped in from a small band of three outside, sad-happy harmonies. Our waiter, a petite woman with long, dark hair flecked with gray, came to take our order. I’d seen her earlier, walking with a little boy I thought must be her son.
My father ordered a carrot salad. “I’d like it shredded into pieces this size”—he held his fingers an inch apart—”with half a lemon on the side. Can I also have a large glass of orange juice, fresh squeezed? Not those little glasses. The big one.” He gestured the shape of the glass, the top and bottom. He lisped when he enunciated carefully.
“We’ll do the best we can with that, sir.” She’d said it kindly, dismissively, looking down and writing on her notepad. My father leaned his chair so far back that his chin was almost level with his knees. I sensed danger.
She looked up at Mona, ready for the next order.
“I’d like a white fish,” Mona said. “What would you suggest?” Mona was polite, her voice small and sweet.
“There’s the ono, a white fish like snapper,” the waitress said. “Or the ahi, also fresh today, although that’s a denser fish.”
“I’d like the ono please. Could I have it poached, with no butter and just a tiny bit of olive oil? And a few steamed vegetables on the side?”
Fish and vegetables, no butter? It was as if she’d peeled off from my contingent to become one of the adults; as if she would be less my friend on this trip, more theirs. Laurene ordered simply too, a salad. I ordered the fettuccini Alfredo.
“I did a little experiment on the parrot,” my father said. “The one on the beach. It turns out they are just so dumb.”
“He tortured it,” I said.
“They can’t really learn,” he said. “They just have this set pattern. It’s fascinating.”
The waitress returned with the food, his salad a pile of matchstick carrots cut by machine and set on a side-salad plate like a sloppy garnish. The carrots were oxidized, raspy white at the edges. The surface of the lemon—a wedge, not a half—pulled in at the rind and would crack when squeezed. The waitress handed out the rest of the dishes. I showed my contentment more than I might have at another time, as compensation for whatever had changed in the air.
My father was looking at the carrots. He touched one of them, then pulled his hand away as if repelled. “Wait,” he said, as the waitress walked off. “This isn’t what I want.”
“But you said—”
This woman with her kind face and her tired eyes—she should not have argued back. She wouldn’t see the difference between what he wanted and what she’d brought; you could tell she found his request tiresome and extravagant. I knew she’d have to appear interested in what might please him. Walk away, woman, I thought at her.
“I can try to change it, sir,” she said, too formally.
She pulled the plate away, and while she was still within earshot, my father said, “It’s too bad the dinner is crap here. Everything else is so great. And then this shit.”
“Steve, try the fish,” Mona said. “There’s no butter.” She pushed her plate toward him. He looked but didn’t taste. I could tell, by his tight half smile, that he was preparing for an attack.
Near him was the safest place to be when he attacked someone else.
I wanted to move permanently across the invisible line between being in danger and being safe, from the outer to the inner circle—and the price of the possibility of safety was having to watch him attack this woman. Suffering did not diminish or grow but was allocated, redistributed from person to person. If I leapt out to defend her, he might turn on me. An attack on one person had the effect of lifting the others up; for me, the relief of being safe in the midst of danger created a floating sensation.
On the first trip to Hawaii with Laurene, he’d pointed to my bathing suit and said, “Why don’t you get one like hers?” comparing us, and I’d felt, despite myself, like the best person for having the right thing.
Later I thought of how each of us at the table had, at some point when we were young, lost our father. He was the patriarch, and he’d paid for all of us to be here. The mood was tense.
The waitress returned with a bowl, more carrots—fresh and old, combined. She brought a new lemon wedge and the orange juice.