Sheepishly we walked up the stairs to our rooms, Haoa leading. I had the urge, which I repressed, to kick him in the ass. We were in enough trouble already.
I took a shower and got dressed. In the mirror I could see the beginning of a black eye. Great visual for the TV cameras, I thought grimly.
My father knocked on my bedroom door a little later. He’d repaired his glasses, and had a small red dot of mercurochrome on his right cheekbone, but he’d regained his composure. “I’m sorry, Dad,” I said, looking down at the floor. “I shouldn’t have gotten into it with Haoa.”
“I thought I could avoid the problems,” my father said. “I’d make breakfast for my boys, just like when you were little. And everything would be fine again.” He shook his head. “I forgot what it was like to have three boys in the house. You were always fighting with each other.”
“But we’re grown-ups now,” I said. “And I’m a cop. My job is to stop this kind of thing. You don’t know the number of houses I’ve come into where there’s been fighting, and somebody’s hurt, or worse, dead. I ought to know better.”
“These are difficult times, and we only have each other. I’d like you to apologize to your brother.”
“Me! He started it.”
He had only to look at me. “All right. If he’ll apologize too.” He looked at me again and I followed him downstairs.
I took a small amount of pleasure in seeing that Haoa looked worse than I did. Of course it was his second fight in twelve hours.
Our parents sat on the sofa and Haoa and I sat in big wing chairs across from each other. No one spoke. I looked at my parents. They had made the first move in coming to get me, to bring me home. I owed it to them to make the first move with my brother. “I’m sorry for what has happened,” I said to him. “I can’t change who I am, but if I could, I’d go back and change the way you all found out. You’re my brother, and no matter what you think of me, or what you do, I’ll always love you.”
Our mother smiled. We all looked to Haoa. Finally he said, “I have a bad temper. I know it’s my biggest failing-Tatiana tells me that all the time. I shouldn’t have fought with you, and I shouldn’t have gotten into the fight yesterday. I’m sorry.”
“Good,” my mother said. “Now we can go on. Kimo, you can call someone about this business yesterday? Maybe the charges against Haoa can be dropped.”
“What?”
“We’re family, Kimo. We have to look out for each other. You’ll do what you can?”
“I will not do anything. In the first place, I don’t exactly have a lot of friends on the police force right now, as you might imagine. And second, as a police officer I’m bound to uphold the law, not flout it. Haoa knows he was wrong. Let him admit it and take his punishment.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Haoa asked me. “This is all your fault. You made me do what I did.”
“Yeah, right, I stood there and forced you to hit Uncle Tico.”
“No arguing,” our mother said. “Kimo, will you do this for me?”
I shook my head. “You don’t understand. I can’t. If Haoa gets away with this, then next week someone else will stand outside that bar and wait for someone to come out. And one day it might be me coming out of there, and some other guy there waiting to hurt me, or kill me.”
“It’s always about you,” Haoa said.
“Yes it is.” I turned to him. “These are my troubles, and you only make them worse because you can’t control your stupid impulses. Tatiana was right to throw your ass in the street. I hope she never takes you back.”
“Kimo!” my mother said.
I stood up. “I’ve got to get out of here. I’m going to the hospital to see Tico. Maybe I can apologize to him for having an asshole brother. I’m not doing any good here.” I looked at my father. “Can I borrow your truck?”
“The keys are by the front door,” he said.
“Little faggot wants to run away,” Haoa said under his breath.
“I’m not done with you yet,” I said to him. “Say anything you want to me. And next time you get the urge to beat up a faggot, you come to me. We’ll do it when Father isn’t around to rescue you.”
“Rescue me!” Haoa said indignantly, as I walked out the front door.
Reporters rushed me as I hurried to my father’s truck. “Kimo, do you think you were framed?” one asked.
“When’s your hearing?” a woman asked, thrusting a microphone at me.
“Are your brother’s problems related to yours?” another called. “We know he was arrested outside the Rod and Reel last night.”
“You’ll have to ask him,” I said. I got into the truck and gunned the engine, and started backing down the driveway fast, scattering them in my wake. It felt good to see one of them stumble and fall onto the lawn.
By the time I got down to the highway I was sure none of them were following me. I drove over to the hospital where they had taken Tico, and got his room number from the clerk at the front desk. When I walked in, Tatiana was sitting by his bed talking to him in a low voice. When she saw me come in, she got up and hugged me.
“Kimo, I’m so sorry,” she said. “Howie’s an asshole. I think it’s great you are who you want to be.”
“Mahalo,” I said.
She stepped back and looked at me. “What happened to you?”
“Haoa and I spent the night at our parents’ house,” I said. “We got into it this morning after breakfast.”
She shook her head. “Jesus, the man never stops.”
“You should see what we did to our father,” I said, and Tatiana gaped, knowing how much we usually respected him.
From the bed, Tico said, “Tatiana, can you give us a couple of minutes?”
“Sure. I need a cup of coffee anyway.”
She walked out, and I took her place on the chair by the bed. Tico didn’t look too bad, though he winced whenever he moved too fast. He was in his mid-fifties, his thin brown hair cut short. His right wrist was bandaged and he looked pale.
I didn’t know Tico well. I’d met him a few times at parties at Haoa’s house, when he’d always behaved, I don’t know, a little over the top. I didn’t like swishy men, but I recognized in him a kinship that was closer to me in some ways than my brothers. “How are you doing?” I asked.
“Mezza-mezza.” He shook the good hand from side to side. “How about you?”
I was about to say “Fine,” when I stopped. “Well, in the last twenty-four hours I lost my job, got outed in the media, and had a fight with my brother where we both ended up punching our father. I’d say on the whole things are not going so well.”
“It’s a hard thing to go through.” Tico struggled to sit up a little higher on the bed, and I adjusted the pillow behind him. “It’s why I left Puerto Rico, you know?”
“I didn’t know.”
“I was working nights in a bar, still living with my parents. My father came home early from work one day and found me in bed with a boy from down the street.” He shook his head. “He went crazy. I had to leave. I wandered around for a while, New York, Florida, California. I learned to do hair. I ended up here.” He smiled. “Like Tatiana. That’s why we get along so well. Both wanderers washed up on the shore here.”
“You ever go home?”
He shook his head. “I wish I could, now, but my father died. About five years after I left. We never talked again, never made up. I still have this empty place inside.”
“I’ve been lucky,” I said. “My parents have been great.”
He nodded. “Good. That’s the first step.” He looked down at the bed, and then back up at me. “I forgive Howard, you know. He was angry, he wasn’t in control. He didn’t really mean to hurt me.”
“He wanted to hurt me,” I said. “You were just a convenient stand-in.”
“That may be true. But still I forgive him, and you should too.”
“I don’t think I can. I feel like it would be condoning what he did. And I can’t do that, not for myself, or for anyone else who wants to be free to go to that bar, or be out in the world, without worrying about assholes like Haoa.”
