Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Jenny called Jasmine on a beautiful day in late October.
Jasmine hadn’t heard from Jenny in a week, not since Jenny’s spontaneous threat about her marriage and Jasmine’s perceived involvement in that marriage, but at the sound of her daughter’s voice, Jasmine immediately melted with happiness and forgiveness.
As a mother, it was impossible to remain angry with your only child.
Especially given the fact that Jasmine had always done everything for Jenny.
“Mom,” Jenny began, her voice wavering, “I was wondering if you could do me a favor?”
Jasmine was on the back porch of her apartment, reading an adventure novel that she’d borrowed from Cynthia. She was expected at the convenience store in half an hour, but she was caught up in the story and considered bringing her book to read behind the counter.
It was rare to get a reprieve from the difficulties of real life, but a good book could always save her.
“What is it, honey?” Jasmine asked.
Jenny sounded tentative. “Walton has a surprise for me. He wants to take me on a romantic retreat. You know, things haven’t been easy for us lately.
But we’re still really in love, and we want to work on it.
” Jenny sounded like she didn’t want to reveal all of this to Jasmine.
Maybe she didn’t have a choice. “Alyssa and Jade have school, obviously. Could you stay with them for a few days? Just to make sure everything’s okay?
I know they’re older. They’re teenagers.
But I don’t want to put too much pressure on Chase to take care of his sisters, especially because he has to work so much right now.
So many tourists, calling and calling him.
And it’s such short notice. I’d need you to come today. ”
Jasmine wondered if Jenny had been holding out for another option, if she hadn’t wanted to ask Jasmine for this favor.
It was either that, or Walton had sprung this surprise on her that very day, without thinking about their teenage children, what they needed, or that it wasn’t so nice to leave them at home overnight alone.
At the idea of spending more time with her grandchildren, Jasmine perked up. “Of course! I can come after work tonight. I’ll be there around seven.”
“They’ll be thrilled,” Jenny said. “And Mom? Thank you. Really.”
Jasmine’s throat was tight. “Any time, honey. And…” She wanted to tell Jenny that she needed to talk to her, that she wanted to either apologize or express why she was so worried about her. But Jenny told her she had to go.
“My bags aren’t going to pack themselves,” Jenny said. “Love you. I’ll text with more info about where we’re going.” She hung up. Jasmine was breathless. Was this really happening?
Jasmine went to work with her adventure novel in her back pocket, a few changes of clothes, and her toiletries in her bag.
As she sold sodas and bags of chips and candy to tourists, she smiled extra wide, happy to have something to look forward to.
When Cynthia texted her to ask if she wanted to come over for dinner, Jasmine told her that she was spending a few days with her grandchildren.
Cynthia was happy for her, but guardedly so.
Cynthia didn’t trust Jenny—Jenny, the little baby she’d helped raise so many years ago.
The little baby who’d become a forty-nine-year-old woman willing to do anything for that “evil” man, Walton.
Cynthia was clear that she loved Jenny, but that didn’t mean she always knew what to do with that love. Cynthia had never had children of her own.
When Jasmine appeared on the front porch of the little condo where Jenny, Walton, Alyssa, Chase, and Jade lived together, Jade swung open the door and hugged her grandmother hello. Upstairs, a speaker played a horrible rock song that made the windows shake in their panes.
“That’s Chase’s music,” Alyssa said, appearing in the foyer. “Mom always tells him to turn it down. He thinks because she’s not here, he can blare it and ANNOY EVERYONE!” Alyssa yelled those last few words. Jasmine winced.
“Let’s go out to eat,” Jasmine suggested. “Go tell your brother.”
Within five minutes, the four of them were walking through the evening, headed for the kids’ favorite burger place. Jasmine was grateful that their favorite place was also one of the cheapest in the area.
“Where did Dad take Mom?” Alyssa asked, twirling her hair around her finger.
“He took her to Kauai,” Chase announced, presumably because he’d been home when their mother and father had packed up and left. He had more information than anyone else.
“Fancy,” Jade said.
“I don’t know how he’s going to afford it,” Alyssa said snidely. “Every other day, he’s telling us that he can’t afford our food or our clothes or whatever.”
“And he’s always telling me I need to get my own place,” Chase said, scuffing his shoe against the sidewalk. “I buy my own food! Like he told me to!” Chase cackled, as though it didn’t bother him to buy his own groceries in the house where he’d grown up.
Jasmine’s heart skipped a beat. But she told herself not to ask too many questions and not to lecture her grandchildren about their sinister father and his sinister habits. It wasn’t her place.
At the burger restaurant, Jasmine ordered a burger with blue cheese and a big platter of french fries and onion rings for the table.
The kids got their usual orders: a veggie burger for Alyssa, a bacon cheeseburger for Chase, and a burger with extra onions and no cheese for Jade.
They opted for milkshakes because it felt like a vacation.
Jasmine felt like she was floating. It was hard to believe she’d ever avoided such decadent food to look better in a bikini. It was delicious.
“I think we should go for a hike tomorrow,” she announced.
“What about school?” Jade asked.
Jasmine considered this. Back when Jenny was a girl, she’d let her play hooky every now and again, if only to celebrate the beautiful world around them and the fact of their freedom.
But she was worried that Jenny wouldn’t let her spend time with the grandkids anymore if she found out that she’d let them skip school.
“We’ll go on Saturday,” Jasmine said, which was the day after tomorrow. “I’ll swap shifts with someone. We’ll go to Diamond Head. Wear your athletic shoes!”
Chase laughed and admitted he was curious about going as well. “I have to teach a surf lesson in the morning, but I’ll be finished by eleven or so.”
“We’ll wait for you.” Jasmine grinned as she selected a crunchy fry from the pile.
Miraculously, Jasmine was able to swap her Saturday shift for a Friday shift, which left her Saturday free and clear for a gorgeous hike with her grandkids.
Friday, she was extra joyful with customers, commenting on the weather and asking where they’d come from.
Most of them were on fall break. They were from Indiana, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Wyoming.
They all said Hawaii was paradise, and Jasmine agreed.
“But I could never live here,” a guy from Illinois told her.
“It’s like living in a postcard. I can’t imagine I would get anything done!
” He looked at her with a mix of confusion and curiosity.
Probably, he assumed that she’d wasted her life out here, that that was why she didn’t have enough money to retire and had to keep working at the convenience store, brewing coffees and chatting with people she’d never see again.
Maybe he was right. She grinned back at him, almost as a challenge to tell her what he was thinking. But he packed up his supplies and left.
At eleven fifteen on Saturday, Chase returned to the house for the hike.
Jasmine, Alyssa, and Jade had spent the morning making sandwiches, packing up water, and making homemade trail mix with M&Ms, peanuts, and raisins.
Chase high-fived them and said that the tourists he’d been teaching that morning “didn’t manage to stand at all.
Not even once!” He said he felt like a failure.
“But they signed up for another lesson tomorrow,” Chase explained as he put on his hiking shoes, pulling the laces taut.
“I guess they had a good time getting swallowed again and again by the waves.”
Jasmine mentioned that she was due for another lesson.
“Grandma, I don’t know,” Chase said. “You’ve been living in Hawaii for how long? And you still haven't learned to surf?”
“Fifty years,” Jasmine said wistfully.
“I think it’s too late,” Chase said.
Alyssa swatted her brother. “It’s never too late!” she declared. “Don’t be stupid. I’m going to learn new things throughout my life. I’m going to ski down a mountain when I’m eighty-five and write the best American novel of all time at one hundred.”
Jasmine giggled. “That’s the spirit, honey.”
Jasmine drove the four of them out to Diamond Head, where they slung their packs over their shoulders and set out on the trail.
It was seventy-eight degrees, and they’d slathered themselves with suntan lotion and protected themselves with baseball hats.
As they went, Alyssa and Jade gossiped lightly about high school and people they knew, while Chase remained quiet, his eyes to the horizon.
Sometimes Jasmine could find her husband’s face in Chase’s face, which made her feel strange and hollow.
How she’d loved that face! How she loved Chase’s face now.
Time was a strange thing. It always found a way of making you feel misplaced.
“Grandma.” Chase interrupted her reverie. “How come you never go back to the mainland?”
“My family lives in Hawaii,” she said. “You, Jenny, and your sisters. You’re all here.”
“Yeah, but you must have had family before us,” Chase pointed out.
“You had Mom here in Hawaii, but you came from somewhere. How come you never go back to see them?” He paused and wet his lips.
“I mean, I’m from Hawaii. If I ever left Hawaii, like on vacation or something, I would miss Hawaii all the way down in my bones.
I would count down the days till I get to come back. ”
“I would miss Hawaii, too,” Jasmine said.
“But you’re not from here.” Chase looked at her quizzically.
“I am now,” Jasmine said.
Chase looked vaguely annoyed but ready to laugh it off. “All right, Grandma. Keep your secrets.” He ran up ahead, leaving Jasmine’s heart churning. Was it so obvious that she’d drawn a boundary between this life and her past life? Was it obvious that she refused to say?
When they’d been hiking for nearly two hours, they took a break on a hillside overlooking the ocean.
The girls removed sandwiches, waters, and more trail mix from their packs and passed them out, looking dutiful and pleased with themselves.
Jasmine took a bite and told them the sandwich was sensational, and they giggled.
“Chase says you won’t tell us about the lower forty-eight,” Jade said, her mouth half full of sandwich.
Jasmine’s stomach fizzed. “That’s not true.”
“What are they like?” Alyssa asked, leaning forward, her eyes catching the sunlight. “I mean, what are some of the states we should go to when we finally get over there?”
To her grandchildren, Jasmine realized, the lower forty-eight were mysterious stretches of mountains and river-veined lands, plains and cities, and millions and millions of people they’d never know.
“I didn’t go to all of them,” Jasmine admitted.
“But I traveled a bit before I came out to Hawaii. That’s how I knew I loved to travel.
I knew how easy it was to start over, to pretend you were someone you weren’t.
When you go somewhere new, nobody knows your backstory.
Nobody knows if you’re telling something that isn’t true.
You can invent anything you want to. You can start again.
” Jasmine felt carried away, her chest heavy with the pressure of what she knew and what no one else ever would.
Her grandkids continued to blink at her, their sandwiches poised in front of unmoving mouths.
Jasmine forced a smile and gestured vaguely toward a bird watching them from a fat old palm.
“They don’t have birds like that in the lower forty-eight,” she told them, surprised that tears felt so entirely near.
“Your life in Hawaii is unlike any life the other Americans live. Your life is more like a fantasy, more like a fairy tale. You have the water and the sun and divine food and the mystical stories of Cynthia and her native Hawaiian family members. You have so much. Tell me. Why are you curious about that dark world we left behind?”
Her grandkids exchanged glances. Finally, a spell was broken as they chuckled.
“We want to travel like you, Grandma.” Jade rolled her eyes.
“You can’t hate us for being curious,” Alyssa affirmed.
Chase threw a peanut into the air and caught it on his tongue.
He threw his hands in the air in celebration, and Alyssa and Jade immediately tried to copy him, throwing M&Ms and raisins until the ground was scattered with them.
When they urged Jasmine to try, she caught an M&M on the first try and grinned as her grandkids celebrated.
It was remarkable to see herself through their eyes: an older woman with secrets, an older woman who still wanted to give surfing a try.
She wasn’t dead yet. She still felt the story of the next years of her life, shaking at the tips of her fingers.