Free The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings Page B

bottles of liquor, trying to make noise.
    I wonder how often Joanie sang this little song. If it’s her standard way of asking for tequila.
    “Give me two of everything,” Scottie yells, caught in the fantasy of being her mother. I want to relieve Jerry, but I don’t. I let him deal with the discomfort because I can’t right now.
    “What other songs do you like?” he asks. “Maybe sing another one.”
    I watch the ceiling fans shuffle the air. The sun hits the right side of my body and makes me sink a little farther into my chair. I zero in on the paper I have been pretending to read and look at the weekly feature called “Creighton Koshiro’s Kidz.” The column highlights the lives of the island’s children—those who embody the aloha spirit and have a good GPA, those who have done something remarkable like run a marathon with no left leg, or something charitable like donate all their Bratz to girls in Zimbabwe. I don’t like this feature in the same way that I don’t like bumper stickers that boast an honor student is on board. Neither of my girls will ever be one of these Kidz.
    I hear Scottie’s voice and lower the paper and see her looking over her shoulder at her butt, which she’s shaking back and forth. She’s singing, “I like it like that. Keep working that fat.”
    That’s it. I start to get up, but then I see Troy walking toward the bar. Big, magnanimous, golden Troy. I quickly pick up the paper again and hide behind it. My daughter is suddenly silent. Troy has killed her buzz. I’m sure he hesitated when he saw her, but it’s too late to turn around.
    “Hey, Scottie,” I hear him say. “Look at you.”
    “Look at you,” she says, and her voice sounds strange. Almost unrecognizable. “You look awake. Smile.” I hear the sound of the camera.
    “Uh, thanks, Scottie.”
    Uh, thanks, Scottie. Troy is so slow. His great-grandfather invented the shopping cart, and this has left little for Troy to do except sleep with lots of women and put my wife in a coma. It’s not his fault, but he wasn’t hurt. It was an annual race Joanie competed in with Troy. They raced a forty-foot Skater catamaran and Joanie was the only woman on the circuit. Troy told me that on turn #8, they were right on the tail of another boat, and he tried to make a pass. He ran out of room and had to quickly move left to maintain course.
    “What do you mean you tried to pass?” I asked Troy.
    “I was driving,” he said. “Joanie was the throttle man this time. I just really wanted to drive.”
    Rounding a mile marker while Troy tried again to pass the other boat, they launched off a wave, spun out, and Joanie was ejected. She wasn’t breathing when rescue divers got her out of the water. When Troy came in from the race, he kept saying, “Lots of chop and holes. Lots of chop and holes.” It was his first time driving. Joanie always drives.
    “Have you visited her?” Scottie asks.
    “Yes. Your dad was there.”
    “What did you say to her?”
    “I told her the boat was in good shape. I said it was ready for her. I told her she’s brave.”
    What a Neanderthal. I hate when people say how brave someone is when really they’re just surviving. Joanie would hate it, too.
    “Her hand moved, Scottie. I really think she heard me.”
    Troy isn’t wearing a shirt. He never wears shirts. The man has muscles I didn’t even know existed. He’s athletic, rich, and dumb, with eyes the color of a hotel swimming pool. The exact kind of person Joanie befriends.
    I’m about to lower the paper until I hear my daughter say, “The body has natural reactions. When you cut off a chicken’s head, its body runs around, but it’s still a dead chicken.”
    I hear Jerry coughing and then Troy saying something about life and lemons and bootstraps.
    When I come out of hiding, Troy is walking away and Scottie is running out of the dining room. I get up to follow her. She runs toward the beach wall; I catch up to her before she jumps