Day 2: 10:35 PM

You cannot be on Maui for very long without being introduced to the goddess of fire and volcanos, Pele.

Born in Tahiti she was sent away because she got into a fight with her sister, Namakaokahai, the goddess of the sea. She made her escape with the help of her brother Kamohoalii (the king of the sharks) who provided her with a canoe in which she her brothers used to sail to the island of Kauai. There, her sister, apparently still peeved over the affair with her husband, attacked her and left for dead.  But Pele wasn’t dead. She made her way to Oahu where she dug fire pits.  When her sister found her alive, she attacked. Their epic battle, fire versus water,  created Diamond Head. Again, Pele fled. First to Molokai, and then to Maui where another battle created Haleakala volcano.

Again, Namakaokahai left her for dead, but Pele survived and made her way to the big island of Hawaii. There, now fully in control of her powers, she dug her fire pit in the Halemaumau Crater at the summit of the Kilauea volcano where many say she now resides.

I love origin stories. When I was a kid, I used to love hearing how my parents met each other on a blind date and how my father “neged” (it wasn’t called that then) her into loving him. (He, an immigrant kid who fought in WW2 and just earned a degree from Syracuse University, teased her about growing up the only child of a Park Avenue physician.) Origin stories help provide an understanding of how cultures view themselves. The muses of Rome chose to have Romulus and Remus suckled by a wolf. It made their people far more fearsome than if they had been suckled by a cow, a goat or sheep.

I am also a romantic. I find it easy to imagine storytellers, before the days of ubiquitous content creation we currently live in, sitting around a campfire or hearth telling legends that were told to them by their ancestors.  Each narrator attempts to make the story a little bit more engaging and fantastic. Giving details that made the story more compelling to their audience.

The myth of Pele appeals to me for all those reasons. I love how organic it is. It explains the volcanic nature of the islands and explains it in a way anyone can understand. Two mighty sisters having a quarrel. Quarrelling siblings are universal. Everyone knows a pair of siblings who quarrel and no matter what life brings to them they can’t quite seem to put it behind them. Look at Levi and me. It also suggests that balance was important to their culture. Water balances fire. Our world can only be stable when there is balance.  Or said another way, without balance there is chaos.

Or maybe Covid has given me too much time to think about things like this.

I am contemplating all this sitting on a stool at the Alaloa Lounge. It is a small bar in a secluded corner of the Ritz Carlton with a long granite covered bar with teak wood framing and comfortable leather backed bar stools. The lighting is dim and indirect. Playing in the background is the omnipresent Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, Iz, singing “In This Life.” The lounge is empty except for an old woman with a cane nursing a drink in a Poco Grande glass with an umbrella. Me, I am  staring into the depths of Pau Vodka Martini with three olives and a twist.

This session of olive therapy has me thinking about the beginning of the sister’s trouble. Pele has an affair with the husband of her sister. This is a huge personal betrayal. I cannot think of anything bigger than that. It caused Pele to be cast out by her father, and massive destruction whenever the two confronted each other. But in the end, like Yin/Yang, the Ouroboros or the Medicine Wheel, they balanced each other. It is the battle for that harmony that created this paradise.  There is balance where there was none before. The universe craves equilibrium.

I plop an olive in my mouth. If this is a universal constant, then why can’t Delilah understand that everything that brought us to this point is what it is. There is no need to relitigate past grievances, to tear open wounds that are on their way to healing. Let go of the lies, the righteous and not so righteous indignation and find the gifts this “new” harmony provides you.

Tonight was the first time our merry band of travelers were together as a group. We had agreed to meet for dinner. I had not been looking forward to it. The last time I saw Del was in court during her and Conor’s divorce hearing. Then, she had called me names her pastor would have been shocked by, using fuck as a noun, adjective, verb and adverb. She had her reasons. I shared with the court personal emails that revealed her motives in the dissolution of marriage were more about revenge than an equitable distribution of assets. Since then, I had only received two emails from her. One was shortly before Conor’s death. She wanted to visit him and make peace and asked me to intercede. I had reluctantly brought the subject up with Con who had not just said no he said fuck no. I didn’t agree with his decision, but I understood. She was the cause of all his problems including the cancer that was slowly destroying his brain. I did not have the will to argue with him, especially as I thought he was right.  The second was to invite me on this trip which I felt obligated to join. Someone needed to stand up for Conor.

But I had no stomach for eating with her. I knew her well enough to know that she would want to unbury the past, rehash old grievances and find fault with everyone but herself in the divorce. As much anger, hurt and bitterness I held in my heart I wanted to let it go. Wasn’t that the point of this trip? Cast the past to the wind and let it drift away with the breeze. Which is why when Liam had suggested we eat dinner as a group I had said yes in the hopes that I was wrong about Del and we could find our version of harmony. I suggested we eat at Plantation House Restaurant. I had dined there years before with my parents. It overlooked a golf course, the Pacific and Molokai, had superb food and an elegant modern dining room clad in native wood and accordion glass doors that were kept open, allowing the outside in. Those doors and the constant breeze would make us feel more Covid comfortable. Hopefully a beautiful, subdued environment would encourage polite conversation and discourage the rehashing of past grievances.

I told them I would meet them there. I didn’t want our first meeting after so much had transpired to be in a closed vehicle. Putting combustibles in a tight space always heightens the effect of the explosion. Should the ignition come, I would prefer it to be in the open where the blast would cause less damage. As further insurance against unpleasantness I made a point of showing up late for our reservation.  An Irish entrance if you will.

Man plans, God laughs.

When the maître de showed me to our table I could see instantly that my plan had gone off the rails. On one side of the table sat Liam and Hadley, on the other side sat Del and her newly minted husband Sam. There was only one chair left at the head of the table with Hadley on one side and Del on the other. Much to my chagrin the restaurant, as a part of Covid protocols had a QR code invoked menu. There was no printed menu in which to hide behind.  I was not a coward. Given the right time and place I would not hesitate to butt heads with Del. I wanted to move on, and I knew me: if Del lit the match, it would take very little for my anger to explode.

Honestly, a confrontation was inevitable. Nature craves balance and Del and I were nowhere near that. There was too much hurt and animosity for homeostasis. It was just a matter of time before something leaked out that inevitably led to an explosion. However, I was determined it would not be me who set us on that path. I would not be the breaker of the peace. I give Del credit. She held out until I had been served my first Pau Martini before she said anything. Her opening salvo: “I just want you to know that I forgive you.”

One of Del’s great gifts is she can use terms of forgiveness and blessings as condescension. Where a phrase like “Bless your heart” means “that is the most ignorant stupid thing I have ever heard of” or “You look healthy” means “wow have you put on weight” or the famous “Isn’t that special” means “I am totally judging you and not in a good way.”

Del’s telling me she forgave me was just another way of saying “You were and are an asshole, but I am better than you and as I am a Christian and I bless you with forgiveness.”  I guess I could have smiled and let it go. Let it roll over me like water on a duck’s back, but I hated the condescension and more importantly, I had never done anything to her that required forgiveness. Trying to show restraint I replied “Thank you, Del. I appreciate your forgiveness. But I was unaware that I had done anything to be forgiven for.”

Instead of responding to my question, she took a different tack. She said “You know he cheated on me. Not just once. But throughout our marriage.”

Liam, who from his seat adjacent from his mother said sharply “Mom…”

Del shot Liam a withering glance and replied, “Let Danny and I talk.”

I took a beat and said, “Del, what does it matter. He is gone. You are remarried. You are in a better place. Why beat a dead horse? Let the past be the past. Also, what went on in your marriage to Conor is nobody’s business except the two of you and he’s gone…”

“But you always said that you didn’t think he had an affair.”

“No. That is not what I said. What I said is that I didn’t know if he had any affairs. It is not something we talked about. He told me that he didn’t and whether I believed him or not was never relevant. At least not to me. What was important was whether or not you two wanted to stay together. If you did, great you had some work to do. You don’t want to stay married? Also, okay. Figure out a way to move on and get on with it. I told you that from the very beginning.”

“You know I trusted him. Right up until the end. But when he started having all that “work” done, the hair transplant, taking HGH, I got suspicious and started looking through his computer. There were so many inconsistencies. Times where he told me he was going to be at a client meeting and instead he was at a hotel screwing someone.”

Through a clenched jaw I replied. “Del why are we doing this here and now. It is so unimportant all things considered. Let’s just move on. We have been through this. You don’t know, I don’t know, what Conor was doing at that hotel.”

“Why doesn’t it matter?” Del demanded.

I replied with anger born of frustration “It doesn’t matter because he is dead.” I should have stopped there. But my anger removed the chock blocks on my tongue.  I continued. “It doesn’t matter because if he was having an affair there was a reason he was having an affair. And perhaps, just perhaps one of the reasons he was doing that was something had gone awry with your relationship. No doubt that he bears a large burden for your relationship going to hell in a handbasket, but he was not in it alone. You have to take some of that responsibility. You can’t put it all on him. I don’t see you owning up to your mistakes. What I see, what I have seen since this cluster fuck of a divorce started is each of you blaming the other for why your marriage fell apart instead of each of you accepting you fucked up. That it was too far gone to fix. And instead of saying we had our time, we have two great boys and some good memories, you both went about trying to destroy each other. A divorce that could have been over in months didn’t end until it killed Conor.”

I could have gone on. I could have said “And it made you a millionaire. The person whom he despised most when he left this earth benefited the most. That is not just unfair, it is revolting. You could have had a civil divorce but instead you both declared war on each other, and we both know the result of that. Your divorce could have been a peace treaty but both of you created mutually assured destruction. But you survived and he didn’t and that will never ever seem fair to me.”

But I didn’t. Part of that was Des’s advice. Always the good angel sitting on my shoulder “Forgive don’t forget.” Part of it was fatigue. Over the past year, alone in my apartment I had waged this conversation so many times that having it again, live and in living color, seemed redundant and pointless. There is no way that Del would ever accept her role in Conor’s death and me bringing it up would only frustrate me and delight her.

“Del, Conor was my best friend. What real friends do is show up. They don’t ask why. They ask where and when. They know that somewhere down the line there will likely be an explanation, but you can be patient and wait for it. I showed up. I was there for him from the beginning until the very bitter end. I did not always agree with him. Sometimes adamantly and with anger. Those conversations were with him and me and they are going to stay that way. What I will tell you is that he was an imperfect as any other man, but I loved him despite his, and sometimes because of, his faults.”

Delilah opens her mouth and is readying a retort when I hold up the index finger on my left hand and say “I am not going to talk about this anymore. I understand and appreciate that you want to, but you will not enjoy where I take this conversation if it continues. I am not threatening. I am just saying. I am begging you in the spirit of what brought us all here, may we please change the subject. “

This quiets Del.  But I can tell from her twitching lips and flared nostrils she wants to say more. Before she can, Liam interjects “Mom and Danny, the sun is about to set. Let’s see if we can see the green flash.” We place a pause on our argument and are silent as we watch the sun, now a golden yellow orb with a crown of orange, make its terminal descent into the sea. Experience suggests that there is no chance of us seeing the flash, yet I hope to see it anyway as a sign from beyond the horizon that my message to Delilah is on the side of the angels.

It is a magnificent sunset. with pinks, oranges and mauve but no green flash. Regardless the restaurant still bursts into applause when the last arc of our star dips from view.

Just like that the conversation evolves into our excursion tomorrow. It is as if some internal switch has been shut off within her. I am grateful. She prattles on about all the work she has done to coordinate our efforts. How difficult it was to find a boat, but she persevered and found us the perfect boat for our ceremony. I barely listen. Just nodding and smiling when it seems appropriate, as I am seething inside. My mind is caught up in one of those thought whirlpools that grabs hold of you, will not let you go and threatens to drown you.

Del is a destroyer. She set out to destroy her husband of twenty-eight years and succeeded. No gun was fired. No knife barred or hit man hired. It was lawyers, guns and money, without the guns and with Con’s money. She savaged him and their family with no regard to the consequences of her actions. There were consequences. Awful, terrible world destroying outcomes that no doubt hurt her too but also solved some of her biggest challenges. Conor holds his share responsibility for what happened. He did not cover himself with glory. He had fallen into mortal combat California divorce style and had lied, cheated, obfuscated, and done what he could to destroy Del. He had lost. In that way he is responsible for his own fate, but I have not forgotten that he offered her a settlement. One that was fair and equitable. But she wanted more, and they went to war. That part is on her. Would always be on her. And it did so much damage.  Destruction that could not be imagined or repaired.

Dinner ends. I am sure it was a wonderful meal only because I have eaten here before, and the food has always been good but I cannot remember eating nor much of the conversation. Getting lost in my own drama, being trapped in my head, is a byproduct of Covid. Not the disease but the isolation in which I spent the last year. Spending time alone, when most of your conversations are with yourself and those that you can conjure, gives you full allowance to drift into a different reality and let the world go on without you. We say good night with handshakes and hugs, Del even whispering in my ear “I am glad we talked.” as if our conversation had resolved everything and wiped away the last few years. I am not entirely surprised. Her obliviousness, her inability to read a room, is an integral part of the destruction she has reaped.

Olive therapy was Conor’s dad term. A phrase he would use after coming home from a day on Wall Street as he mixed his favorite cocktail. He would, as he poured a healthy measure of Stolichnaya vodka into a cocktail shaker full of ice, provide us with the perfect recipe for a Martini. “You take three parts vodka and whisper the magic words “Noily Prat” and sim sala bin you have the perfect martini.” He would always garnish his Martini’s with pickled onions which I would learn much later technically made it a Gibson. I never favored the onion. For me the perfect garnish for a Martini is a blue cheese stuffed olive. I have told people for years that it is the perfect accoutrement for Martini Therapy as it provides sustenance along with your therapy. Which is why I am so pleased that the Alaloa Lounge stocks them. I had not eaten much at dinner and could use some nourishment, emotional and otherwise.

“Olive Therapy?”