In a rented Jeep Wrangler, they drove Hawaii Highway 360, their matching herringbone suitcases in the back, wedding gifts that had seen a decade of travel. One suitcase had a wobbly wheel and a broken zipper that caused the husband to mutter words he didn’t normally use when he sealed them up and loaded the car for the airport. But the suitcases matched like their wedding rings, so they brought them both, and after the trip they would smell of salt air, coconut, and sour rain. There was no cell phone service, so they couldn’t distract themselves from saying what they needed to say, their eyes heavy with the achiness of too much red wine on the lanai the night before. They each stared out a window, the flapping of the Jeep’s fabric top drumming like the pelting rain at Hana Bay that had kept them shackled in the beachfront shack for days.
The road might not be passable, the concierge had said, when they insisted they couldn’t stay in this place (in this marriage). The single-lane road prone to gushing mudslides, the mountains loosening their dirt like saltshakers after a rainfall, the way husband and wife had brushed off the infertility diagnosis before the trip, had tried to shed it from their bodies. But they told the locals they had to go, had to chance it, had to flee the mai tais and the mahi mahi, had to go and meet the slick road as if they weren’t stuck in place.
They had thought that coconuts bought at the roadside, trimmed with machetes and punctured with straws, would wash away the itchiness of staying together, that they could sunbathe it all away, the rich Hawaiian sun warm on her bikinied skin, the flesh that housed a uterus with not enough follicles to make his babies. They thought maybe the perky youthfulness of the Jeep would zip them around bends in the road so quickly that he’d be able to forget how he’d said he wasn’t ready all those years ago, how he had made her wait past the ripeness of her eggs.
And they were right, the locals: the road wasn’t passable. The earth poured muck and trees and roots down the mountain’s steep walls, and it was too underwater-dark in the storm to see the limbs raining down, but they could hear them crashing into pavement, feel them crunching under tires, and she hoped Maybe he’ll lose me to a tree slicing through the Jeep’s cover, maybe he’ll find a new wife, a wife more fertile. Maybe that would be OK.
The tire treads accumulated mud, thick like her tears in that fertility clinic, with the aspiring mothers seated in chairs clutching purses and the partners pacing nervously, and that doctor with the graphs and the data and the hopelessness. The night before, he had told her he didn’t marry her for children, that he would stay with her anyway/despite/regardless of what the doctor had said. He could tell she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, believe him. He drove on and he thought, Maybe she will never forgive me for saying there was plenty of time, maybe I should let her go, scrape her from my shell like muck from the tires, maybe it was all my fault, if only we had, if only I had. . . .
And the tree did come, finally, the one that was meant to slam into the disjointed lovers, careening down the mountain like a sledgehammer, spinning the Jeep sideways, backward, into guardrail and metal and the bark of a banyan tree. But to the tree’s surprise, they did not lean into the chaos, into the branches or the cliff’s edge, but into each other, grasping for hands and whispering, Where are you, I need you, I’m sorry, please don’t let go. Not yet. The edges of the road were chipping away, the black tar dripping down the mountain like honey.
Another car was just behind them, having also narrowly avoided the tree. A man got out to see if he had cell phone service; he did not. “The highway is blocked in the other direction too,” the driver shouted to the couple through the rain, gripping the hood of his raincoat. “I think I saw a dirt road just this way.” He pointed behind the Jeep. The couple nodded and followed him. When they saw the dirt path they turned the Jeep gingerly onto it, to begin the slippery descent toward a thin and flat stretch that jutted out from the island towards the center of the ocean. There were no houses, the base of this mountain too impossible a spot to live on, but there was a local campground with a community center. Travelers parked in a field swamped with rainwater where other travelers were assembling, all trapped between the two mudslides.
Inside the large structure, a woman introduced herself as Maggie, doled out pillows and sheets, and told the travelers that the last time the road had crumbled into the sea, it had taken weeks before it was repaired. The rain pummeled the roof for hours, and travelers passed the time playing solitaire with a found deck of cards—missing the king of spades and the four of diamonds, but it was enough. The couple traded some tampons and a sweatshirt for a loaf of banana bread. Finally, the rain let up. Maggie said there was a beach just past the field with a good view of the mountain above; they could probably see where the road had washed out.
They crossed the field holding hands, mud sucking at their feet until they left their shoes behind. At the beach they saw Maggie’s mountain looming over them and over the murderous tree, its branches cantilevered over the guardrail, pointing toward nothing. “Look,” she gasped, one hand over her mouth and the other reaching for his. At the base of the mountain, just below the shredded highway, lay a blood-red sports car. A helicopter’s thumping blades buzzed nearby.
“Look, we’ll get a second opinion, OK?” he said, squeezing her hand. She whimpered as if the squeeze had hurt her, but it had been gentle. “We’ll find another doctor.” She nodded but said nothing, just leaning into him.
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