Turtle Bay

Hawaiian rain is nothing to fear. In fact, Hawaiian anything is nothing to fear. The presence of rain in a weather forecast is much like the appearance of dice on a casino table. Both bounce in and out of the picture at regular intervals and mean as much or as little as one cares to wager. Marlou and I had been walking, if that is the term for a person advancing on two legs and another on four wheels. The Turtle Bay Resort may be laden with all the ersatz Polynesia a sane person can swallow...obligatory tiki torches flaming to life at dusk, the $85 luau on the side lawn, small floral arrangements atop large cocktails...but never mind. It has views and trails, real paths that lead you on a paved journey through the tropical interior. The latter, it turns out, is dotted with holes, sweeps along mild ridges with pennants left mistakenly by Sir Edmund Hillary, dips into dales so perfect that they seem ready for aftershave. While the occasional human figure with a metal club seems more decorative than essential. Thus, golf. The trails skirt the course, perhaps provide non-fairway access to it for gardeners and golfers. Never mind. We were covering ground.

The ground, of course, does a splendid job of covering itself. Hawaii. Less than a mile down the path, a mechanical jungle smasher came at us, knocking back errant foliage with metal rollers mounted on a side arm. The Polynesian driver smiled and waved. Jungle branches crashed to his right. They would be back soon enough, and so would he. Us? Hard to say if we would be back at all. With Marlou's cancer, everything seems tentative and precious. The walk seems like the most important event of the day. Marlou's doctor has recommended regular aerobic workouts. We are on a mission.

The jungle gives way to our left, and the remnant of a World War II airfield dries in the sun. Marlou is no friend of rain, but here she is making little fuss. Squalls move off the ocean, spit and spatter over the ground, and move on. Puddles shimer on the expired runway, piles of landscape clippings line the edges, and a couple of giant aluminum Matson shipboard containers hold their secrets behind padlocks. What's in there? Fertilizer, lawn mowers? Or the last surviving Japanese kamikaze pilot, housed and protected by the victorious hotelier? Through the Matson wall, you can almost hear his ice machine inside. Probably a plasma TV too, which accounts for the exhaust vents near the ceiling. Netflix, room service, and one can get by in the jungle.

Marlou occasionally takes my hand. She does this as naturally as she has always done it. Though one must acknowledge that there's nothing natural about reaching for a paralyzed limb. But then there's nothing natural about Hawaii either. No, that's not true -- it's just that the natural life and that introduced by centuries of seafarers has become hopelessly mixed up. Mainland tourists are mixed up too, having never seen anything like these paradisiacal sands and palms and lava flows. It's too much to take in. Sorting out its origins is impossible. The one touchstone, the thing that is indisputably authentic and shatters the soul with its primal light, silences all at 5:45 p.m. Even the most venal and heathen among us cannot resist wandering out to the edge of Turtle Bay, the ice of his mai tai dully clinking in a plastic cup, to watch the day's sun descend into a tropical sea. A vast orange orb all but hisses into the ocean, clouds glowing, rays an artist's conception, air by Steuben. No one says a word. Hawaii.

Marlou smiles at me. Her look has roughly the same effect as the setting sun, and I glance away. At one point, I would have assured myself that this response was wise and cautious. Watch out for these ebullient types, for their radiance is groundless. And at the receptor site, misdirected, not to mention undeserved. Better be on the safe side. But now nothing is safe. An entirely different interpretation makes me turn away. I don't understand. I don't understand where love comes from, or hope comes from, and though I know where Marlou is coming from, the experience somehow shames me into silence. How can she smile at a time like this, apropos of nothing, and at me? I know the answer, and for me it is as painful to absorb as a sunset without photo gray lenses. Love is like the sun. It comes out of fusion and helium and pressure and expansion and keeps glowing and throwing parts of itself off which, despite the occasional solar flare, sustains life. It is a miracle. One gives thanks and holds hands.

I have not learned to conquer fear, only to mistrust it. We don't know what's going to happen. That's what I keep telling Marlou. Cancer is scary. A spreading cancer is terrifying. But I've been through enough terrifying things to know that dread is the real enemy. Life's surprises are horrid and wondrous and impossible to predict. Meanwhile, Marlou's smile emanates the same energy that drives photosynthesis, solar cells and if one is terribly lucky, marriage. My parents weren't so lucky, but that was their problem. Smiles don't burn. They're even fairly predictable, appearing like the dawn. I have always dreaded the future and feared the moment. Neither is necessary. I wedge my paralyzed right hand against Marlou's back. The left stays on the wheelchair control.

We stay on the path, pretty much, but as the afternoon unfolds we have to shift strategies...the hotel map is more whimsical than accurate. Eventually we emerge from the surrounding ironwood groves and wander straight across the golf course. Ahead, Marlou spots a knot of players and shushes me. The people are distant. They seem to be leaning on their clubs more than batting with them. Still, Marlou freezes like a hunter who was spotted the last dodo bird. We are to tiptoe, to the degree this is possible in a wheelchair, over the Norelco-trimmed lawn, down a rough slope and back into the forest. I doubt the necessity of this. My doubts do not arise from any base of knowledge, but more my own knowledge of the base. Raised by a self-absorbed, endlessly distracted and doubtless miserable mother, I am naturally suspicious of women. They have an agenda, it seems, and I'm not a part of it. Still, because the moment has become louder than the past, I rumble my wheelchair over the stones and off the course. I don't know why we have to be so quiet. But, then, I can't tell if the golfers are batting at the ball, putting at it, swiping at it or slicing at it. Furthermore, I don't really know if there are multiple balls. They could be driving -- that is the other thing they do with balls. Which is funny, because balls have been driving me for much of life. Another thought which, I know, is stimulated by Marlou.

And, when you come right down to it, what isn't? Which is why instinctively I keep telling Marlou that I regret nothing about our relationship. The illness. Even a shortening of our time together. Marlou has helped me become who I am. Whatever we face, we face together. The fact that we can discuss such matters, dire and fateful, says it all.