Chapter 11: Day 3: 5:47 AM
The goddess of Haleakala, the ten-thousand-foot dormant volcano that dominates the eastern part of the island of Maui, is Lilinoe. Among her powers is the ability to hold in check volcanic eruptions. She is also the goddess of dead fires, fine mists and has been known, on occasion, to wear a cloak of snow. That is not a typo. Snow on these islands is not an image that readily comes to mind but apparently Lilinoe and her sisters used to have sledding contests with the God Pele on Kilauea just like my brother and our friends used to have down our street when we were kids.
I have gained all this knowledge second hand from my guide, Marisol Kobayashi whom I have hired to take me to the top of Haleakala to watch the sunrise. She has also shared with me that she is descended from the Gannenmono, the first 150 migrant workers from Japan who came to Hawaii 1868 to supplement the native workforce which had been devastated by the diseases brought to the Islands by the Christian missionaries.
She is chatty, which no doubt is an occupational requirement for guides. She has been doing the majority of the talking since we left the Ritz Carlton at 2:30 am. Despite the fact my internal clock is still on east coast time, where it is 8:30 am, getting up that early was a challenge. The multiple rounds of olive therapy the previous evening and the ghost wrestling I had done all day meant that I was asleep before my head hit the pillow. But it was not a peaceful rest nor a long one. The olives may have contributed to my mental health but were contraindicated for good sleep; a tactical error considering I had to get up at the crack of early to drive a couple of hours for the 5:47 am sunrise.
I am Marisol’s only client today. This is by design. When I decided to make my pilgrimage to view the Haleakala sunrise a few weeks ago I paid extra for a solo tour. I have little tolerance for stupid tourist questions. There is always one person who asks two more questions than need to be asked. Who needs that at a time of day when even owls are sleepy? Considering how chatty Marisol is this might have been a miscalculation on my part. Another person might be able to deflect some of her conversation but being alone this morning is paramount. Watching the sun rise over Haleakala is more that watching the the birth of a new day. This morning is a nexus. A place to say goodbye to all the darkness and sadness the last sixteen months have flung at me. I want to embrace a “new day” literally and figuratively.
The inspiration for this Sol searching trip is my nephew, Duke. Three years ago, I was eating a late lunch at my desk when my phone blew up with a series of text messages from him. This was not unusual. Duke was never someone who let a single text do when a dozen or so were possible. I ignored them at first as my hands were lousy with Russian dressing from my sloppy joe. When I finally did look there were image after image of a sunrise. The pictures were other worldly. In the foreground was a barren, lunar type landscape with shimmering clouds in the distance. It was labeled “new day from the perspective of the gods.” Along with the images was an explanation. He was on Maui at a scientific conference where he was presenting a paper he had written as a part of his doctoral defense. His message, written with the passion and urgency of someone with bipolar disorder said, “it was the most beautiful sunrise he had ever seen” and how it “had changed his life.” He said, watching dawn from there had helped him understand god.
A month before my departure for Maui I was organizing my eight bookcases. I had never had the time or the motivation to arrange them properly. Now with Covid and Mom’s departure I had both. All non-fiction books would be arranged by subject then by author. All fiction books are arranged alphabetically by the author. This meant taking all the books off the shelves and arranging them in piles before reshelving. I was deep into this task when I came across a hard cover edition of “Stranger in a Strange Land” by Robert A. Heinlein. It was not a first edition, just a well-loved copy. But it was special. It was a gift from Duke. When my nephew was about eight or nine years old, he developed a voracious reading habit that rivaled mine. I had introduced him to Heinlein’s juvenile books. He had been my favorite author as a kid, and I thought I would see if he would like his books as well. It turned out he did. It became one of our “things.” He found this copy of the book at the Angel City Bookstore in Santa Monica and sent it to me. His note said, “It is not a first edition, but I “groked” you would like this for your collection.”
Finding the book felt like I was getting a message so instead of continuing with my project I sat down in the well-worn green leather club chair that had been my grandfather’s and began to re-read the book. Hours later I came across this quote “Each sunrise is a precious jewel…for it may not be followed by a sunset.” It gave me pause for all the obvious reason, but it also made me recall Dukes rave about the Haleakala sunrise. I made a reservation for the tour that afternoon.
There is a guard post at the entrance to the Haleakala National Park where we are required to stop. Marisol shows the Ranger our paperwork proving we have a reservation and are one of the fifty cars that are allowed up the mountain to view the dawn. The Park Service limits access to the Summit for the sunrise as they are concerned that an unlimited number of cars entering the park at that hour had the potential if not the likelihood of creating an atmosphere not conducive to a reverential greeting to the first light of day.
It is 4:40 when we reach the parking lot at the summit of the mountain. We are the third car there. Marisol tells me that the first light will be at 5:23 with sunrise following at 5:47. If I like I can stay in the car until then or brave the 43-degree weather outside. I tell her the cold does not bother me. I went to school in upstate New York where temperatures in the forties were shorts and polo shirt weather. Besides, I am well prepared with a fleece sweater. I tell her I am going to go “walk about” and if I get cold, I will come back and sit in the car. She volunteers to escort me, but I politely decline saying I would rather be alone for right now. She does not object.
It is cold outside. The type of cold that wakes you, even after olive therapy, activating all the neurons you have not ruthlessly murdered the night before. I climb the arcing path to the circular Summit center and make my way along a fence that guards its observation deck. There is little to see in the darkness despite a waning “fingernail” moon high in the sky. Just an impression of a barren landscape and Halloween clouds down below.
Nine years ago. I am in my apartment on the upper west side of New York. It is not a large apartment. I do not work on Wall Street. But it is comfortable and large enough to have room for a desk at one end of my living room where I often spend my evenings working or futzing around on social media. I am sitting there when my phone beeps letting me know that I have a text message from Duke. It is a picture of a nude, slumbering, south Asian woman. I am surprised and shocked. Why would my nephew be sending me a picture of a naked woman? We do not have that type of relationship. I do not have that type of relationship with anybody. It was more than inappropriate. It is weird. What possessed him? I do not have to piece this puzzle together by myself as my phone begins to ring almost immediately. It is Duke. He is hammered. Through slurred speech and frequent tangents, he shares with me the woman is a fellow graduate student who works in his lab. They had been working on their master’s thesis when they decided to blow things off. He laughs hysterically when he tells me this, amused by his own joke. He wants to tell me all about his sex life. I have no appetite for this conversation, so I make an excuse to end the call. Oddly, just before we say goodbye, he begs me not to share anything about this call with his parents.
The first thing I do after hanging up with him is call Con. I tell him what prompted my call. There is silence and then he says cryptically, “Let me think about this and get back to you.” Odd had just gotten odder. He called back minutes later. He says he owes me an explanation.
Two years earlier Del and Con had been called by the President of Duke’s fraternity, Zeta Psi. His “brothers” were concerned about him. They loved “Duke” but had been alarmed at some of his behavior recently. Specifically, the night before he had gotten spectacularly drunk and had decided to parade around the party naked proudly sporting an erection. The brothers and his girlfriend tried to get him to put on some clothes but to no avail. When they insisted, he fled the party. An hour later he was picked up by the MIT police running naked on Memorial Drive. Normally, that would have been the end of it, but the police had judged him a danger to himself and placed him on a 48-hour psychiatric hold. Which was the reason for the call. The fraternity wanted them to know their son was confined at McClean Hospital in Belmont, MA and he would not be released until the physicians had consulted with his parents.
Con and Del had flown to Boston that afternoon. After consulting with the doctors who were treating him, all agreed that withdrawing him from school and having Duke undergo a full evaluation was needed. Duke was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and alcoholism. Six months of intense therapy and treatment ensued, and he had been released with the hope a regimen of medication, talk therapy and AA meetings would allow him to live a healthy, productive life.
The story stunned me. Not because of Duke’s diagnosis. Our body chemistry is not something in which we have a choice. Sadly, he was burdened by his parents’ DNA: three out of four grandparents were alcoholics. What bothered me is this had been going on for years and my best buddy had deliberately kept me in the dark about it. Wasn’t I entitled to know. Not just because I thought of Con as my brother but because I had such a close bond with Duke.
It had been clear since Duke was old enough to ask questions, he had a rare intelligence. His memory was eidetic. If he saw or read something he remembered it. Not just recall, but fully understood it. His questions were incessant to the point of annoyance. Whenever I came for a visit, his parents were more than happy to point him at me and say “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask your Uncle Daniel.” I was happy to answer as many of his questions as I could. As he got older and began to read, I began to share my love of reading with him. He would tell me about a book he was reading such as “A Wrinkle in Time” and because more often than not I had read the book, we would discuss it more like friends than uncle and nephew. As I had no children of my own to share my favorite books, I often gave him reading suggestions including starting him on Robert A. Heinlein’s juvenile books. As he got older, I introduced him to Steinbeck, Hemmingway, and Hunter Thompson along with Heinlein’s adult novels including Stranger in a Strange Land. He told me, years later, that it was reading the books I suggested that created his love of science and his eventual career.
Why did my best friend not share my nephew’s diagnosis and challenges with me? I blew up at him. “For Christ’s sake Conor, why didn’t you let me know? I am his fucking Uncle.”
He hesitated before responding, then said “ It was Duke’s story to tell. If he wanted you to know he would have shared it with you. I wanted to give him the opportunity for privacy.”
It sounded reasonable. Logical. Even kind. But it was a lie. He knew the stigma the word “alcoholic” carries with it. He did not want Duke to be viewed in the same way people always looked at his mother who spent his entire childhood in and out of institutions in futile attempts to achieve sobriety. He also knew how people viewed those with brain diseases such as bi-polar disorder. Most, including me, before I educated myself on the diagnosis, thought of people who suffered from this affliction as “crazy.” Only after doing a deep dive into the disorder could I accept that bi-polar disorder was no different than diabetes. Your body chemistry is altered, and both could be treated by drugs and if you stuck to your regimen of care, you could live a normal life.
What my friend was not telling me, what he was hiding, was his own personal sense of shame and guilt. Clues to his son’s alcoholism had been virtually everywhere. From the stories he would tell of his drinking exploits to unexplained car accidents. He also knew alcoholism was an inherited disease. His mother and father and Del’s Dad had all been alcoholics. He could have done more to educate his sons on the danger drinking posed for them. He also felt he should have noticed the bi-polar sooner. The clues to it had been in plain site as well. From childhood, he had always had an “ants in his pants” quality to him. As if he always had something else to do, something more to say. He was hyper competitive albeit in a friendly way. When he decided to study or figure something out, he went for hours and hours without taking a break. Yet despite all these clues he and Del had never thought to have him evaluated.
Finally, there was the special bond between Con and Duke. The constant refrain between each other was Duke saying to his dad “I have the best dad.” To which Con would reply “No, I did.” Dukes’ dual diagnosis made my friend feel like he let down both his father and his son. He had confessed all this to me at dinner at Arthur J, a steakhouse in Manhattan Beach, shortly after Liam’s wedding. I was in LA on business and had asked him to dinner without Lil. We needed to have an honest conversation about the wedding and Lilith’s presence would have made honesty impossible. After we had been served, I said, “Did you know that Duke is drinking again.”
I hoped that this bombshell would have the same effect as a slap in the face. Your son is in trouble. And you were not there to help him. His response shocked me. He said, “I figured as much.”
Surprised, I responded, “How is that?”
He took a sip of his Martini and said “I know my son. He is a lot like me. Willful. Self-righteous. Flashes of anger. Me.”
“And”
“And, after I got through being pissed off by his text, I realized that the only way he would have sent a text like that was if he was drinking.”
Annoyed I replied, “And you still didn’t come.”
He gave me a look which said be real and said “I couldn’t. When Lil saw that message. All bets were off.”
“You know how I feel about all that. You never should have showed her than message and she should never have put you in that position in the first place. What I want to know is what you are going to do about Duke? He thinks he can handle the occasional drink and that text is proof positive he can’t.”
The waiter came and we ordered a Porterhouse for two along with creamed spinach, and baked potatoes. Alone again, Con said “Have I ever told you about the fight that Del and I had about Duke’s treatment?”
“You know you didn’t tell me shit about anything when this was going down.”
He ignored my comment and said “When Duke got out of McClean’s he came home to Atlanta before heading back to MIT. The idea was to give him a little bit of time to adjust to his new normal before heading back to the stress of school and finishing his degree. He had been home about a month when he fell off the wagon. He began drinking in secret and stopped taking his meds. We woke up one morning and found him passed out on his bathroom floor covered in puke.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah, it was horrific. Del was furious. And adamant. He had to go back to rehab. If he didn’t want to go, then he needed to find someplace else to live. Period end of sentence. Tough love. I told her that she was wrong. We had a huge fight over it.”
I was confused. I knew Con’s history. I knew how many times his family had piled into their Country Squire for a purported family outing only to end up at Fair Oaks sanitarium to drop his mom off. The message “Either you get treatment, or you find a new place to live.” I said, “Why didn’t you want to do that to Duke?”
He replied “Because I know him. He is me. If you gave me an ultimatum of going to rehab or find another place to live, I would find another place to live to spite you. Duke would have done the same and I knew he would drink himself to death. He and I talked about his rehab experience. He had gamed the system while he was there. McClean has one of the best reputations in the country and he had figured out how to get booze and dope there. Rehab, or at least traditional rehab would not have worked for him. We needed to find another way.”
“Did you?”
“Yes. And no. We had a talk. I told him that I loved him. Would never abandon him. But I needed him to do a couple of things for me. First, he needed to take his medication in front of me every morning. Both his Antabuse and his bipolar meds. He also needed to be honest with me. If he fell off the wagon, he needed to tell me. If his bi-polar meds weren’t working for him he needed to tell me. If he did that, we would be cool with each other.”
“Did it work?”
“It did when he was living at home. Probably not so much when he went back to MIT and then CalTech. Some of that was not his fault. The anti-bipolar drugs they had him on originally made him feel, in his words, stupid and less than.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Think of it this way. Remember what a hit of cocaine feels like. Especially that first bump. You feel like you can solve any problem. Conquer any obstacle. That is what Patrick’s brain feels like when he is on a bipolar high. Taking his meds made him feel less smart, less alive and with an addictive personality it is even worse. You are always going for that thing that makes you feel good.”
“Okay. It is hard for me to imagine what it must be like for him. But I get it. What I do not understand…”
Just then the waiter showed up with our order and we paused as he placed the perfectly cooked medium rare Porterhouse Steak and sides on the table and then doled out portions to each of us. It all looked and smelled so good and I was ravenous as it was three hours past my normal dinner time. I tore into my food as if it had been a year since my last meal.
Finally, when I came up for breath I said “I don’t want to shit in your cornflakes, or the creamed spinach as the case may be but I have to say something.”
Con, cutting a piece of the steak, looked up at me and with a bit wariness said with a half full mouth “Go ahead.”
“Who is going to make sure Duke stays on course if not you? You know that Del can’t do it. I have no doubt she loves him, but she doesn’t understand him. Not the way you do. She won’t give him the leash he has to have to find his own path to mental health and sobriety. Liam would walk over red-hot coals for his big brother. He wants to do the right thing by him, but do you think he has the tools to help him? Did you at twenty-three? I sure as shit didn’t. “I moved the steak around my plate for a second and then continued. “You are his best chance to get him and keep him on the right path and like a stupid fuck you just pissed it away. “
Con started to speak but I would not let him “I am not as rude as Duke. I won’t say you through it all away for a little bit of pussy even though he had a point. I will say what I have said before if anyone asks you to give up your family for them, there is something wrong with them for asking. If you want to love someone like that so be it but you need to fix your relationship with Duke. If you aren’t there who knows what will become of him and you will never ever be able to forgive yourself and you know it.”
Con’s face flushed with anger. I interjected. “Don’t you dare get pissed at me. I have earned the right to tell you the truth. It may not be the truth as you see it. And feel free to tell me to fuck off and I don’t know what I am talking about. But remember for forty years I have had your back. Always. Still do. But that makes it my responsibility to do right by you. Not to be nice and tell you what you want to hear but be kind enough to tell you the truth as I see it.”
The anger drained from his face. Then he laughed “You couldn’t wait to tell me this until after dinner?” I smiled and said, “I thought my timing was perfect” and spearing a couple of slices of the filet portion of the steak “More steak for me.” He laughed again and said, “I will take care of it.” He knew that I knew what that meant. Nothing more needed to be said. “You say what you mean and do what you say.”
I flew home to New Jersey the next morning. Three nights later I received a text from Con. It was a selfie of him in Duke together in a dark movie theatre. Both had huge shit eating grins on their faces. They were up to some mischief as I am sure Lilith knew nothing about this meeting. It delighted me. The photo now has a place of prominence on a table I keep for cherished pictures. It touches my heart in a way only loss and sorrow do. A reminder of how you can be right and wrong at the same time.
Blame it on Rio 