Joy Enough by Sarah McColl

Author:Sarah McColl
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 2018-11-29T16:00:00+00:00

The windward side of the island was dense with water-thick rain forest foliage. In the rental car, my husband turned the radio to a pop station. I dangled my hand out the window on the highway, and examined my face in the side-view mirror. New pimples. We had three agenda items that day: visit a Buddhist temple; attend the Polynesian Cultural Center; and see the beach at Kailua, which he remembered from the last time he was on the island and in love with another woman.

We parked in a bleached, palm-lined lot, the sun-soaked pavement hot as a range, then walked a narrow sandy path past lush, low-growing sea lettuce and down to the waterline. I picked up a kalanchoe flower that had fallen onto the path and tucked it behind my ear.

The pale sand of Kailua Beach rings a turquoise bay, bookended between the high volcanic peaks of the Ko’olau Range. The sky arches to the water, the convex curve of blue meeting blue and then our bare feet sliding into the hot sand. I wore a black string bikini under a white linen dress, the skirt made of widening tiers like a cake, swirling fiercely around my legs. His hair stood on end in the wind, his eyes squinting in the brightness. We walked up and down the beach, its beauty like an impenetrable wall. We never seemed to arrive. I looked for a break in the landscape, for a loophole, something set askew. The sound of the wind at my ears was like traffic. I reached to rearrange the flower.

“Congratulations!” warbled through the wind to us. A man with a naked torso, as tan as a nut, his hulking hand holding a black ribbon leash that led to a perky Chihuahua, was beaming at us.

My husband shouted back, confused. “What’s that?”

“I said, ‘Congratulations!’ You’re in this long white dress, you got the flower behind your left ear like a wedding band. And you,” he looked at my husband knowingly, as if they shared a secret language. “You’re newlyweds, right?”

We looked down at our clothes, and then back to him, laughing.

“Look at that,” my husband said. “You’re right.”

Was that all it took? A plane ride, frozen drinks, a wide white expanse of beach unspooling to the horizon? One of us thought it did, more present in paradise than in our days making the bed, clearing the table, rinsing the dishes in the sink. The other preferred the ordinary hours, felt here in the tropical sunshine as empty as an abandoned shell.

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