Part 7 (1/2)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

Mango Madness

AS I SETTLED MORE into Kauai, I became involved in the lives of new friends. So when the coconut wireless telegraphed the news that John Rapozo had throat cancer, I worried, even more when I heard that his doctor wanted to removed his vocal chords. The image of Big John without a voice struck me as impossibly unfair. His rough island pidgin, the authoritative commands leveled at other men, the sentences that grew quicker and tumbled together when he was excited - they were as much a part of John Rapozo as his calloused fingers.

I telephoned his home that night.

”John, what's going on?” ”The doctor said he's going to cut. He said if he don't cut, it's going to be all over for me.”

As I walked into Garden headquarters the next morning, Dr. Klein was bent over his secretary's desk, arranging flights to Honolulu. He had gone into his memory banks of all the hundreds of people he had charmed over the years. He remembered a prominent cancer research scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. Magically, John Rapozo had an appointment tomorrow with the best cancer doctor in Honolulu. Dr. Klein quietly paid for John's airfares.

After a week of tests in Honolulu, John announced that there would be no surgery. He now spoke in a scratchy whisper, as radiation treatment had begun. ”The doctor, he laid down the law,” he said. ”No more smoking. And he said I've got to lose weight and eat right. I'll never sing again. But I'll talk.”

As often happens in crisis, our friends.h.i.+p deepened during the hard coming months.

THE TRADE WINDS had arrived from the northeast Pacific, exhaling their soft, welcoming breezes, blowing out the recent humidity, and tempering the hot tropical sun with puffs of clouds. The trades transform summer from unbearable to paradise, and bring a lightness and sparkle to the air, particularly on Kauai.

One Sat.u.r.day morning, I walked into the clear morning air to join James outside the cottage. He seemed to have realized that I would not change his routine or duties, so he had relaxed and started showing me the treasures in my yard. James plucked a couple of low leaves from the lollipop-shaped ”Autograph Tree.” Using a blunt pencil, he scratched my name on a s.h.i.+ny leaf. A half hour later, the letters developed bright and clear, like a print in a photo lab. The macadamia trees had started to drop dark brown, globe-shaped nuts. When their thick husks split, they revealed hard marbles. My trusty Wise Encyclopedia of Cookery, source for solving all cooking conundrums, warned that the hard sh.e.l.l would crack an ordinary nutcracker. When I told James this, he laughed. ”You got to find a rock with a little dent in it, put it in, smash it. Don't eat too many, you get trots.” The lychee trees now bore cherry-sized pink b.a.l.l.s with a hard rind covered with spikes. Their cloudy white flesh resembles a peeled grape. The mango trees grew thousands of elongated oblong fruit of dark jade that blushed yellow, bronze, and reddish. James sniffed dismissively at them. ”Water mangos. Watery inside,” he said. On Kauai the prized mangos are Haydens. The gardening staff carefully monitor the Hayden trees in Allerton Garden. When the mangos turn into a red ripeness, the fruit mysteriously disappears.

But plenty of people liked my mangos. My friend Jeanie came over with her own bags and took away dozens. She sent some of them back, in the form of Mango Betty, made just like the apple version, although tangier. Rick Hanna picked a year's supply to freeze for mango smoothies. Not content to reach the lower branches, he used a picker on an extension pole to go after perfect specimens at the top. We peeled them with potato peelers at my kitchen sink, then sliced and bagged chunks until our hands were almost raw.

Sometimes locals came and asked for permission to cut some of the bamboo shoots that lined the hill drive. I had pestered James several times to dig up some shoots so I could see how to eat them myself. He disapproved: ”Shoots are bamboo keikis (babies). Dig up all the keikis and pretty soon, no more bamboo.”

All the same, today he went to the tool shed and came out with a machete. We walked up and down the bamboo tunnel, searching for young stalks. James kneeled by a thick, pointed spear that looked as tough as a rhinoceros horn. He whacked it off near the ground and handed me a two-foot shoot. Not satisfied, he sheared off a more tender, one-foot spear. I boiled and boiled it, until it turned a translucent pink and tasted awful. Later, John Rapozo counseled that I should have frequently changed the cooking water.

I continued to ask James questions about the Allertons, feints and advances which he usually resisted. Despite a growing obsession with unraveling the Allerton story, I could find few clues about them or their lives. Robert and John Allerton lived guardedly. I began tracking down Garden scientists, employees, friends, and others who knew the Allertons in their later years but found that the two Allertons left little evidence of their interior lives. Their only record was a material one, of their elegant possessions, many now in museums. Scholars in the tiny, growing field of gay and lesbian history say h.o.m.os.e.xuals who lived through eras of prejudice or banishment typically destroyed incriminating diaries or other records. Gay history must be written by inference and a.n.a.logy, pieced together from slim hints and clues.

I tried James again. To my surprise, he returned the next day bearing a stack of sc.r.a.pbooks.

James began working as a gardener for the Allertons in the mid-1950s. After two years, the Allertons called him to work in the house. ”They wanted me to start immediately, serving lunch to guests that day,” James remembered. ”I told them I had to go home and get my fancy clothes. John said, 'No, no,' and took me into his room and gave me s.h.i.+rt and shoes. They were so big on me, I look like a clown. Then they show me, 'Do this, do that, take the dishes this way.' They had these tiny little coffee cups - what you call them, demita.s.se? I had never seen them before in my life. So I serve them, so nervous the spoons rattle on the plates.” James's wife, Sarah, started doing laundry for the Allertons, and then Robert said she had better come inside, too. In those days, the house was often full of houseguests, mostly men, creating undercurrents of jealousy.

”James, what did you all think about all that?” I asked.

”Whatever they do, they do,” he said. James had tremendous admiration for Robert and John Allerton.

Anyone of import who could get the right introduction w.a.n.gled a visit to Lawai-Kai. Jackie Kennedy alighted from a helicopter on the beach, just in time for a tour and c.o.c.ktails. Robert showed her his collection of ballet books. James met John Wayne and other stars who filmed movies at Lawai-Kai. When Richard Nixon stopped by, John asked James to take pictures of him talking with the president, and James showed me his photo alb.u.ms to prove it.

”I've seen poor and I've seen rich, and I like poor better,” was James's conclusion. ”The rich, all they talk about is money, money, money. I seen. I served them all. They would be invited for nice meal, nice time, and then they would want something, ask them for something. That's how it works.”

James drove off, done reminiscing for the day. I walked down to the giant mango tree. Rick had left his fruit-picking basket, and I extended it to its longest length. Above my head dangled a prize specimen. If I stood on my toes, I just might reach it. With a jiggle of the pole, the mango plopped into the basket. It was a moment of sweet happiness. I couldn't explain it, but even though I had few close friends yet, and grieved the deaths of my parents, I felt more alive, more healthy, and less lonely here than I did in Philadelphia. The insomnia that racked my nights in Philadelphia had disappeared, and I slept soundly through the night. Even my allergies had improved.

Isabella Bird had also sampled mangos. ”The mango is an exotic fruit,” she wrote, ”and people think a great deal of it. . . . I think it tastes strongly of turpentine at first, but this is a heresy. The only way of eating it in comfort is to have a tub of water beside you. It should be eaten in private by any one who wishes to retain the admiration of his friends.”

Now I spent much of my time outside the office in a bathing suit and flip-flops. Even the elastic strap of a swimsuit sometimes felt too restrictive, so alone on weekends at the cottage I'd wear only a pareo, a beach scarf, as a sarong. The scented breezes and easy lifestyle made me want to shed my old skin along with my clothes.

I was totally alone. I took off the swimsuit I wore for gardening and ate the mango naked. Why not? No one could see me. Juice ran down my arms, but I didn't care. I tentatively started a forgotten ballet step. Then it came back to me in a surge of remembrance, and I danced a waltz, spinning around the yard in leaps and pirouettes.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

Last Tango in Paradise

ON MY MORNING JOGS, I kept running into the overs.e.xed Poseidon with whom I had shared the outdoor shower at Poipu Beach in my early days on Kauai. In my mind I called him ”The Surfer.” His name was Cal. One Sunday morning after a swim I confided to him that I wasn't quite sure about my snorkeling technique. ”I float on the surface and look down, but I haven't figured out how to dive,” I confessed. ”I'm afraid that water will go down the tube.”

”That's not so hard to learn. You want me to show you?”

”Yeah. That would be great.”

”When do you want to go?”

”How about right now?

”Okay. I'll get my gear from the car.”

I watched as he returned carrying a surfboard under one arm and a net bag of masks and snorkel tubes in the other hand. Barefoot, he wore only a faded pair of surfing jams. He carefully laid the board on the sand and dug one hand down the front of his swim trunks, pulling out a small plastic bag of bread crumbs. ”Fish food,” he explained.

He waded into the water, floating the surfboard. ”Hold onto the board while you gain confidence,” he instructed. Underwater, through my mask, I watched as he dove with powerful strokes, his hair floating around him in a nimbus, like an angel's. He released handfuls of food, drawing toward him mobs of fish. Small fish twisted and scattered in zigs and zags. Bigger ones raced to his hands, grabbing crumbs in dazzling antics.

Diving together, gesticulating underwater to a companion, and allowing myself to be pulled into deeper water reminded me of slow dancing. Our heads broke the surface at the same time and we reached for the board, breathing hard. One of his hands grazed mine as he grabbed hold, and the touch was warm, flush from the cold water that brought the blood to the surface.

”That was great,” I said. ”Can you show me how to blow the water out of the tube when I come up?”

”That's more advanced,” he said judiciously. ”You're getting tired. Do baby steps. You've had enough for today.”

I nodded meekly. We got out of the water and toweled off, our bare skin close and salt-kissed. ”Thanks a million,” I said as I walked away. I had become accustomed to the order of my life and didn't entirely welcome the reentry of s.e.xual antic.i.p.ation. It generated fear as well as excitement, as it was both certain to be fulfilled if I wanted it to be, yet uncertain enough to be unpredictable, the kind of taut l.u.s.t that gathers force and speed until it becomes unstoppable. I remembered the febrile blood rise that could spill into a headlong, risky, full-speed-ahead torrent. Let loose, it could fly me to the moon or break me on the rocks below. Perhaps the only thing more dangerous would be to say no. I was aging. Sometimes I worried that I had forgotten how to do it anymore.

I turned and called out, ”Come for lunch sometime.”

THE NEXT WEEK he telephoned. ”I'd like to take you up on your offer for lunch,” he said.

”What do you like to eat?” I asked, immediately imagining luscious tropical fruits, a composed salad.

”Sandwiches,” he said simply.