7. Akemi
Akemi
“We can’t go on like this,” Akemi said in her most tragic voice. She lay flat on the floor, limbs sprawled. “Mine mortal body cannot endure.”
Kaleo grinned and babbled back at her.
“Have mercy. Please. I must rest, lest I lose my mind entire.”
“Sounds a bit late for that,” Anne said from the stairs.
Akemi sat up with a start. “What are you doing up?”
“It’s morning time.”
“Is not!”
Anne just smiled and moved towards the kitchen. “How about some coffee?”
Akemi stood and peered out the kitchen windows.
The sky was a deep, pre-dawn blue. As she watched, the sun edged slowly into view over the horizon. She groaned and put her hands over her eyes.
“This doesn’t even make sense. It’s like midnight in Thailand right now. Why isn’t he asleep?”
“You guys are all mixed up,” Anne said sympathetically.
“I’m not mixed up. I can sleep any time. It’s this child. He’s possessed.”
“Do you want to take a nap?”
“No, not again. Then I really will be mixed up. I need to stay awake until his naptime, at least.”
“Which will be any time now, at this rate.”
“You say that like he hasn’t developed a sudden utter disdain for sleep. I don’t think he even needs it anymore. He’s evolved beyond the need for sleep. I’ll never rest again. I’m doomed.”
Anne looked at her for a long moment. “Maybe some breakfast before coffee.”
“Sure.” Akemi sat on a kitchen stool and slumped forward onto the island. “Sounds good.”
She dutifully spooned up the food that Anne put in front of her, though she was more exhausted than she was hungry. Kaleo gobbled up a plate of eggs and then fell asleep in his high chair.
“Now you can rest too,” Anne encouraged her.
“No.” Akemi sighed. She felt less loopy now that she had some food in her belly, at least. “If I keep sleeping first thing in the morning, I’ll take forever to get past this jet lag. I need to power through to his second nap.”
“If you say so.” Anne’s tone was dubious, but she supplied her with coffee all the same.
“You’re an angel.”
Anne snorted and looked at Kaleo, crumpled in his high chair with his face in the remnants of his scrambled eggs.
“What are you going to do with him?”
“I’ll put him in his stroller,” Akemi decided. “Maybe some morning sunshine will help get our circadian rhythm back on track.”
She transferred Kaleo to the stroller and cleaned him up with a wet wipe. He slept soundly through the whole thing.
Once she was out and moving, Akemi felt better.
The morning sun was warm on her back as she walked up the road towards town.
She refueled at Pualena café with a macadamia cornetto and another cup of coffee – but when Kaleo woke up, she clutched both items awkwardly in one hand and steered her screaming baby across the street before releasing him near the playground.
Even at the park, she had to trail a few inches behind him to make sure he didn’t give himself a concussion by diving face-first off the big kids’ playground equipment. His climbing skills far outstripped his balance, and he had absolutely zero sense of self preservation.
“This is why babies your age aren’t supposed to walk yet,” she informed him.
He just smiled and threw himself through one of the many gaps in the second-story walls of the climbing structure, cackling as she caught him.
“I didn’t realize that toddlerhood involved quite so much throwing yourself off of buildings,” she told him solemnly.
Kaleo grinned, pointed, and wiggled to get down.
She set him free, having learned by this point that retaining her hold on him once he started wiggling would result in a frustrated shriek right in her ear.
It was a couple of hours before he allowed himself to be strapped into his stroller again, at which point Akemi drank the last of her tepid coffee and tossed the smushed end of her pastry.
“Auntie Laurie should be at the bookshop by now,” she told her son. “Should we go say hi?”
He responded with a lilting string of sound that she took for agreement.
Laurie was quick to pull him out of his stroller, and for her he behaved like an angel. She read him one board book after another, and he was entranced.
Akemi loaded a whole stack of them into the bottom of the stroller, hoping that they would have the same effect if she read them to him at home that night when the rest of the house was trying to sleep.
When Laurie refused to let her pay, she dropped the cash into Mia’s tip jar instead.
Eventually, Kaleo’s patience waned. Laurie went back to work on her laptop, and Akemi let her baby loose in the backyard.
A few wild chickens scratched in the dirt near the fence. Kaleo shrieked with excitement and ran towards them. Not easily startled, they stayed just slightly ahead of him as he continued to chase them around as fast as his tiny toddler legs could carry him.
Akemi snapped a photo and sent it to Lorenzo.
The chickens moved around the side of the building and into the next lot.
There was an old wooden plantation-style house next door, with no fence separating it from the bookshop. It was a cute place, if a bit run down, with an overgrown backyard and a big covered lanai out front.
It didn’t look like anyone was living there; two of the windows were boarded up.
As Akemi herded her toddler away from the street, wheels began to turn in the back of her mind.
“Does anyone live next door?” she asked when they eventually wandered back into Paradise Books.
“No, it’s been empty a while now.” Laurie closed her laptop and looked at her with curiosity. “Why? Are you looking for a place to rent?”
“Maybe… Do you know who owns it?”
“Auntie Kua. She owns this building too.”
“And you don’t want to live there? That’s a real short commute, and it’s a lot bigger than the ‘ohana you’re in right now.”
“I like where I live now. It’s the right size for us. Anyway, it’s nice to have some separation between work and home.” She tilted her head to one side. “Do you want me to put you in touch with Auntie Kua?”
“How do you think she’d feel about a café?”
“A café?” Laurie repeated. “You want to turn it into a coffee shop?”
“Maybe. What do you think?”
“Are you kidding?” Laurie grinned. “A coffee shop right next door, run by my little sister? I would love that.”
“They would be good neighbors,” Akemi said, encouraged by Laurie’s enthusiasm. “A café and a book store.”
“It’s a match made in heaven. Just about everybody who came to one place would want to pop into the other.”
Akemi grinned, relieved that her pragmatic sister hadn’t shot her down.
“Does this mean you want to stay a while?” Laurie asked.
“I guess I’d have to. Long enough to get it off the ground, at least. Eventually I could hire a manager and employees to keep it going while I travel.
But yeah, I think I’m ready to be here again for a while.
I’m not sure how much more solo travel I can handle with Kaleo at this age.
I know it’ll get easier again eventually, but man.
Solo travel with a toddler is grueling.”
“I’d love to have you home again. We all would.”
“I want to set it up so that Kaleo can come to work with me,” Akemi said, thinking aloud. “So that other moms could bring their babies too. We could put a play space outside. Maybe a soft play space inside too.”
“There would definitely be a market for that.”
Akemi went through her photos and found some of the playspaces and family-friendly cafés she had visited in Bangkok. Behind her, Kaleo pulled board books off the shelves one by one, dropping them on the wooden floor with a clatter.
“Like this,” she said, handing the phone to her sister. “Scroll through these and tell me what you think.”
She went to put the board books back, replacing them at roughly the same rate at which Kaleo was pulling them from the shelves.
“This is brilliant,” Laurie said as she flipped through. She came around the counter and handed Akemi’s phone back. “Local moms would love this. Maybe include something for older kids too?”
“It depends on how much room we have, I guess. Older kids have the park down the street and the bookshop next door, but there’s really nothing in town for toddlers.”
“That’s true,” Laurie said thoughtfully.
“Do you think the owner would go for it?”
“She’s all about keeping things local. It’s certainly worth a try. Here, I’ll send you her number.”
Akemi trailed Kaleo through the bookshop, her mind on this new dream of a family-friendly coffee shop. She imagined her son playing with other toddlers while she pulled espresso shots for tired moms. The image gave her a cozy sense of community that warmed her heart.
She caught a heavy history book just before Kaleo could pull it down on his head.
“You need a padded enclosure,” she told him.
He laughed and ran away.
Akemi chased him down and caught him up in her arms, covering his face with kisses while he shrieked with laughter.
She felt reenergized.
This could be their next chapter. It felt right.
This was something she could do.