Chapter 21 Anne
Anne
“Here you go.” Anne set the last couple of plates down in front of her guests, a group of college kids on summer break. They had requested a pre-dawn breakfast to get a jump on their day, and she was happy to oblige.
It was still dark outside, so early that she could hear the co-qui co-qui of the invasive frogs that chirped all night long. Soon the coqui-frog chorus would give way to birdsong. Always underlying both was the sound of crashing waves.
“Thank you so much,” said one of the girls.
“It’s my pleasure,” Anne replied. “I love being done with work for the day by the time my kids wake up. It gives us time to do some exploring of our own.”
“Aren’t you from here?” the girl asked.
“I am, but my kids were born on the mainland.” She poured herself a cup of coffee and joined them at the table. “We just moved back a few weeks ago.”
“Oh! Very cool. So after this, you’re done for the day?”
“I have a couple checking in tonight – but yeah, pretty much. I might take my kids down to the hot ponds for sunrise.”
One of the guys gave her a weird look. “Hot ponds?”
“Like hot springs?” a girl asked.
“Yeah, exactly.”
“Ooh, we should do that!”
“We’re all booked up,” her boyfriend said.
“Come on, we can make time for hot springs! I didn’t even know they had those here!”
“Of course they have hot springs.” He reached across the table and grabbed the last two pieces of toast from the platter in the center of the table. “The whole island is an active volcano.”
She rolled her eyes and turned back to Anne. “Where are they?”
“Pohoiki, a ways south of here. I can show you if you have time.”
“I thought all the hot springs got swallowed up in that big eruption a few years back,” another girl said. “The one that burned up a bunch of houses?”
“Some did, yeah. The twenty-eighteen eruption took out that whole neighborhood, and some of my favorite beach spots from when I was a kid are covered in new lava rock. There’s still one good spot left, though.”
“We could go tonight after our hike,” the girl said happily. “Soak our tired bones.”
“Where are you headed today?”
“Volcano National Park! We’re going before dawn to get a good look at the eruption before we start our hike.”
“Pele’s sure been putting on a show lately.”
“Is it safe?” asked the quiet girl at the end of the table.
“Sure. I just took my kids the other day.” Anne had taken them the week before, a last-minute trip to see the massive fountain of lava that was erupting down in the crater. “Even my teenager was impressed.”
Claire was finally warming to Hawaii. Running what was essentially a small bed and breakfast gave Anne plenty of time to explore the island with her kids, helping them to experience the magic of the place in a way that they’d never had time for on their short trips to visit family.
With each extraordinary place that they visited, Claire’s ire at being uprooted just before high school faded a bit more.
“We should get going if we want to get there before sunrise,” said one of the boys. They wolfed down the rest of their breakfast, and then they were out the door.
Anne cleared the table at a leisurely pace and then washed the breakfast dishes as the sky outside shifted from black to indigo. The horizon cut through the darkness as stars faded into the brightening sky.
“With a view like this,” she murmured, “who needs a dishwasher?”
Anne was halfway through the breakfast dishes when Zoe walked out of the ‘ohana unit out back.
She paused halfway across the backyard when she saw her mother through the window, and for a moment Anne thought that she would veer around the house and avoid her altogether. But after a brief pause, Zoe continued across the yard and up the back steps.
She walked in without looking directly at Anne, but she did give her a quiet “Good morning.”
“Hey Zoe!” Anne’s voice came out so loud and bright that she was instantly worried she might scare her away. She tried to tone it down as she continued, “Are you hungry? I made steak and eggs.”
When Zoe didn’t reply right away she added, “Island grown.”
“Yeah, okay. Thanks.” She grabbed a bowl from the cupboard and served herself a large portion of steak and eggs. “Hey Auntie.”
Anne spun around and spotted her baby sister at the far end of the dining table. Akemi looked half awake, but she was already tapping away at her laptop.
“When did you come down?”
Akemi shrugged and yawned. “A few minutes ago.”
Anne scraped the last of the steak and eggs into a bowl and brought it to her sister.
“I’m not hungry yet,” Akemi protested.
“That baby is, though. Feed him breakfast, or he’ll eat your bones.”
Zoe snorted a laugh. “That’s pretty gruesome.”
“It’s true!” Anne pulled a half-gallon jar of goat milk from the fridge and poured a tall glass for her sister. “If you don’t get enough nutrition, your body will pull the minerals it needs from your bones and teeth to build a healthy baby.”
“Reason two-fifty-six why I will never reproduce,” Zoe muttered.
“Never say never,” Akemi said as Anne set the glass of milk down in front of her. “I didn’t think motherhood was in the cards for me either, but look at me now.”
“Never,” Zoe muttered rebelliously.
“You’re not old,” Anne said at the same time.
Akemi rolled her eyes. “I’m pretty old. It’s literally a geriatric pregnancy.”
“That’s such a stupid term,” Anne said with a laugh.
“Younger doctors say ‘advanced maternal age’ instead. Same difference, though.”
“You’re healthy, and so is your baby. Anyway, you basically won the genetic lottery as far as aging is concerned. You don’t look a day over twenty-five.”
“Tell that to these eggs I’ve been carrying around for forty years.”
“Gross,” Zoe muttered.
“You’re not even forty yet!” Anne protested.
“Yes, but those eggs are older than I am,” Akemi said primly.
“What are you talking about?”
She typed something into the search bar on her laptop and then read aloud, “In a baby girl in utero, eggs begin to form around eight to twenty weeks of gestation. By the time the baby is born, all the egg cells that will be released during her reproductive years are already present in her ovaries.”
“Barf,” Zoe said under her breath.
“It’s the miracle of life,” Akemi told her. “The egg that you came from formed when Anne was still in Dawn’s belly.”
Zoe poked listlessly at her scrambled eggs. “You’re ruining my breakfast.”
“Okay, change of subject,” Anne said. “I’m going to wake the kids up in a minute and drive down to the hot ponds for sunrise. Come with us?”
“I have to work.”
“This early?” When Zoe looked uncertain, Anne pushed a bit harder. “We don’t want to hang out at the hot ponds in the heat of the day. We’ll just take a quick dip while it’s cool and then head home.”
“I guess I could go.”
That small concession felt like a major victory to Anne.
“Are you coming, Auntie?” Zoe looked at Akemi like she needed backup.
Akemi frowned and looked at Anne. “Aren’t hot baths and jacuzzis on the no list for pregnant women?”
“Warm baths are fine, and the main pool’s not too hot. Just don’t go into that boiling-hot one back in the trees.”
“Okay,” Akemi agreed. “A warm soak sounds nice.”
“Great! I’ll pack something for the kids while you finish eating, and then we’ll head down.”
The sun had crested the horizon by the time she managed to get Claire and Pete out of bed, but it was still low in the sky as they drove south into Puna.
Years had passed since the lava covered Kapoho, but it was still surreal to drive along the smooth new road that cut through the drastically altered landscape.
The vast lava fields that they were passing through had been vibrant neighborhoods for most of Anne’s life. Here and there, she could still see the remains of metal roofs and catchment tanks sticking up from the new rock.
Enough time had passed that patches of green were beginning to overtake the undulating expanse of black lava rock. Native ferns, young ohia trees, and other pioneer plants were bringing life back to the area, bit by bit.
“Isn’t that where your friend Pili grew up?” she asked, pointing out a lonely house out in the lava field. It was on a slight rise, a green strip of land that had been spared from the lava that overtook the rest of the neighborhood. But it was abandoned now, cut off from everything.
“I think so,” Akemi said. “What a trip.”
Black gave way to green in a sudden burst of color as they drove past the edge of the lava fields, and suddenly their surroundings were more familiar.
The huge warm pool where the Aloha sisters had spent countless hours of their girlhood was gone now, filled in by the eruption that had destroyed seven hundred homes, but new hot ponds had been left in their place.
“What the heck, dude?!” Claire’s voice rose suddenly, right behind Anne’s head. “How did you sneak that thing into the car?”
“His name is Rikki,” Pete said grumpily, “And he was napping in my pocket.”
“In your pocket?”
“In the front pocket of my hoodie. See? It’s like a little den.”
“You are so weird.”
“Children, children,” Zoe said in a deep voice. “Kind words and indoor voices, please.”
Claire stuck her tongue out at her big sister.
“I think he’s cute,” Akemi said, twisting around in the front seat.
“Pete or the weasel?” Zoe quipped.
“He’s not a weasel,” Pete grumbled. “He’s a mongoose.”
“Same difference.”
“They are not the same!” He perked up a bit, warming to the subject that he’d been reading about for weeks. “Did you know that mongooses are more closely related to hyenas than they are to weasels?”
“You’re really not helping your case,” Claire said.
“How can you be so mean to someone so cute?” His voice took on a tragic note. “He’s just a sweet little pup! He never hurt anybody or did anything wrong! Why does everyone hate him?”
“I don’t hate him,” Akemi said.
Pete smiled at his aunt. “Thanks.”
“What are you going to do with him when you swim?” Zoe asked.
“He just waits for me at the edge of the water,” Pete said brightly. “Like a puppy! Or sometimes he swims!”
“When does he swim?” Claire asked suspiciously.
“Um… never mind.”
“Pete, where does he swim?”
He hesitated another moment, looking at her sideways. Then he said, “In the bath.”
“Ew! You took him in the bath with you? In our bathtub?”
“What’s the big deal? He’s cleaner than you. Smells better too.”
“Enough,” Anne cut in before Claire could respond. “Both of you. We’re almost there. Stop needling each other.”
They faded into a grumpy silence, with Claire staring tragically out the window and Pete cuddling his illicit pet in the middle seat. When Anne parked a few minutes later, Claire flew out of the car as soon as it stopped.
Near the parking lot was an old boat ramp that was now stranded a long way from the ocean. The eruption had created over eight hundred acres of new land and pushed the old coastline out a considerable distance.
Now, where there used to be seawater, there was a warm freshwater pond: a natural pool in the rock filled with rainwater that had been warmed by magma as it traveled underground, running downhill on its way to the sea.
Claire went straight to the edge and dove in. Pete came up alongside Anne.
“Will you hold Rikki?”
“I thought you were taking him with you.” Anne couldn’t help but smile at her son and the fuzzy little pup he held in both hands, curled against his chest.
“I just want to do one cannonball,” Pete pleaded.
“Go on, then.” She held her hands out for the mongoose pup and freed Pete up for a running jump into the pool.
Holding the mongoose felt strange, like a kitten but not. Despite his genetic connection to hyenas, Rikki was basically shaped like a ferret – long and skinny with short little legs. She wound up cradling him in one arm like a baby, supporting the length of him with her forearm.
Unsurprisingly, Pete forgot about his pet as he splashed around with his aunt and sisters.
Rikki was content to relax in the warmth of Anne’s arms for a little while, but eventually he got restless and started to squirm.
She didn’t trust the pup not to wander into the parking lot or disappear into the jungle if she set him down, and so she waved her son over.
“Your turn,” she told him.
“Sorry!” Pete pulled himself out of the water and ran over. “Come on, Rikki. You want to go for a swim? The water’s so warm!”
Anne waded into the pool, relaxing into the easy warmth of the water, and Pete was right behind her.
She was shocked to see the baby mongoose take to the water as naturally as a river otter. Not only could he swim, but he was fast. Rikki swam circles around Pete before finally climbing up the back of his head to perch on top, eliciting peals of laughter from the whole family.
“Still think he’s a pest?” Pete demanded.
“Definitely,” Zoe said, but she was grinning.
“He’s a pretty cute pest,” Claire acknowledged. “Kind of like you!”
“I think he’s a good boy,” Akemi crooned, holding her hands out for the wet mongoose. Pete handed her the pup, which curled into Akemi’s lap like a tired kitten.
Anne hoisted herself out of the pool and sat beside her sister. They left their feet in the warm water and let the morning sun warm their backs. Her heart was full as she watched her three children swimming together.
Suddenly, she felt deeply grateful both for her divorce and her failed business back on the mainland. Those failures had freed her and sent her home – and there was no place on Earth she’d rather be.