Paul Theroux - Hotel Honolulu

"She's an exceptional child," I said. "And she's mine."

"'Faces' sounds like 'feces," Rose said, and gave a throaty laugh. "I'm not making feces!"

"Dysfunctional kids like that have a terrible time at school."

This irritated me, but because Madam Ma was a long-time resident, I was obligated to defend her right to free speech in my hotel. I didn't mind when journalists pontificated in the daily paper; it was a newspaper's role to be a theater of the absurd, where morality was a masquerade, a pretense, just shtick. But when such views were solemnly repeated to my face, as if I were obligated to listen and accept them, I found the whole business too laughable to be insulting. What I wanted to tell Madam Ma was that even in her banal column of trashy and insignificant news items, the only true flavor was of moral squalor.

"Didn't you ever teach her about boundaries?" Madam Ma said.

True, when we were shopping Rose would slip items into the grocery cart — gum, cookies, Froot Loops, a frog-shaped potholder. Her doing so delighted me. She was a lovely little girl, precocious but obviously bright. She asked all those unprompted questions, offered so many insightful answers, or quoted me as a way of pleasing me — as, I suspected, another

child might be sulky and unresponsive in order to punish the neglectful parents. Rose's vivid talking and word-perfect quotation were joyous and generous.

"She is so infantile," Madam Ma said one day at lunch. "She is just seeking attention."

Madam Ma was at her usual table on the lanai, facing the entryway so she could see and be seen; she was smiling at a person entering, someone who recognized her, as she spoke to me. My back was turned to her in my hurry to clear a table for the next diner — Trey's job, but he was at the chiropractor's for the knee he'd twisted while surfing. Bent over, harassed, and surrounded by the impatient lunch crowd, I had a glimpse of myself alone at a desk and thought, I used to be a writer.

"Did you hear me? She simply wants attention," Madam Ma said. "You're just like her. You never listen."

The bland submissiveness and tact that were necessary to the smooth running of a hotel were qualities I had never possessed and found difficult to acquire. But there were rewards for being patient. At this stage of my life, on these distant islands, where everything was new to me and books did not exist, I was learning unexpected skills. I was middle-aged and more attentive. I could not be an uncompromising writer here, or a writer at all. I had to be social, one of the bunch; I had to be a good monkey.

"I agree with you. That's why I didn't say anything, Madam Ma," I said, balancing an armload of dirty plates.

"Your daughter is watching me eat. I can't stand that."

Rose had crept onto the lanai, and with her head cocked to one side seemed to be mimicking Madam Ma's frozen shoulder, as though recreating the posture might reveal what the ailment felt like.

"She wants to see whether I will finish my ice cream."

Without relaxing her neck, keeping one shoulder rigid, Rose denied this with a jerk of her head and a serious face.

"But you see, there will be none for her."

Madam Ma finished the bowl of ice cream, ostentatiously licked the spoon with her gummy tongue, and glanced in triumph at Rose, who straightened her head again, looking cheated.

Though she had a large head — my Panama hat nearly fitted her — Rose was small, even for a five-year-old. Most of the guests took no notice of her. And I resented Madam Ma's unkind attention, yet I would not have understood Madam Ma if it weren't for Rose. She threw the older woman into relief, like a known object placed next to a weird artifact.

People tell you about your child and conceitedly think they are saying something that you have never heard before. Some guests stated that Rose ate too fast, or not enough, or preferred cereal to vegetables, or went barefoot when she should have been wearing shoes, or that she

interrupted adult conversations. But I knew this. I knew much more: she remembered everything, she was impressionable and wished to be older, she was brighter than her mother, and raged at her as a result. "But why do chickens have scaly legs!" she shouted, grasping Sweetie's face to get her to listen. Afterward she lectured everyone with the answer I had supplied: "It's because they were once reptiles, like scaly snakes."

I wondered why Madam Ma's mealtime so fascinated Rose. Why did this small girl stand and gape? Rose told me in confidence: "Her teeth aren't real." Rose stared at the woman's mouth; she enjoyed watching her laboriously masticate. It was the pleasure of seeing an old machine clumsily operating, for the possibility of witnessing the mechanism falter; at some point those false teeth would fail or fall out of her mouth. That Madam Ma was a sourpuss made the failure not only more likely, but all the more welcome.

"I'm going to be naughty," Madam Ma said, holding the dessert menu. She was sitting with Chip and Amo.

Chip clucked, as though at a child, and Amo said, "You know what happens to bad little girls?"

"I'm going to be sinful," Madam Ma said.

"They get spanked," Amo said. He was a broad-shouldered man with a neatly trimmed mustache and close-cropped hair. A gold chain around his neck held a locket. I wondered whose picture it contained.

"As if I care," Chip said, and just then realized that Rose was staring. He made a horrible face at her, monkey cheeks and wicked eyes.

Madam Ma was fumbling with the glass beads of her necklace, holding them against her neck. She was vain about her breasts, vain about her legs, vain about her body generally. "Not bad for an old girl," she'd say. Playing with her beads was a way of covering her scrawny neck and calling attention to her legs. Her dresses were shorter than they should have been, her necklines so deep they showed her sun-freckled cleavage. She put the menu down, let go of her beads, and as she took Amo's hand in her right and Chip's in her left she gave a girlish sigh.

"I'm going to have a chocolate mousie," she said.

Hearing her, Rose said, "It's not 'chocolate mousie,' it's chocolate moose."

Sweetie had crept up behind Rose with the intention of tugging her out of the dining area, but holding Sweetie's hand seemed to give Rose more conviction.

"Isn't it, Mummy? It's 'moose.'"

Lifting her son's hand, and Amo's — like a playground gesture — Madam Ma said, "What is that child doing here? Isn't there a house rule about that?"

"Just playing," Sweetie said.

"Go play with your doll."

"It's not a doll," Rose said. "It's an action figure."

Chip said, "Oh, Ma, give it a rest. She's just being a brat."

"She upset your mother," Amo said.

"Oh, we're going to make a scene, are we?" Chip said.

"He said 'mudda,'" Rose said.

"You see, Amo? Chip doesn't care if I'm insulted," said Madam Ma. "Children are fundamentally intrusive."

"Thunder mentally," Rose said.

"Take that kid out of here," Amo said.

"A kid is a little goat," Rose said.

"Hey, listen up."

"Hay is for horses," Rose said.

"I'll smack your ass."

"That man said a bad word!" Rose cried out, pretending to be shocked. He said 'ass'!"

She scuffed her feet on the rush matting as Sweetie coaxed her to leave. But Rose's eyes were on Madam Ma, who had narrowed her own eyes at the child.

"I brought you something," Amo said to Madam Ma. "It's a surprise."

"I love surprises."

Madam Ma's eyes teased Rose as Amo handed over the gaily wrapped box. Madam Ma plucked at the silver ribbon, peeled off the tape, and removed the bright paper slowly so as to torment Rose. She fondled the red velvet box for a while, holding it up to admire while glancing at Rose from time to time with gloating eyes.