Our table is on the southern half of the crescent-shaped beach, the part reserved for local residents. The northern half is reserved for the high-paying guests of the Manele Bay Hotel, nestled on the rise just above the top point of the crescent. The hotel guests have a luxurious bathhouse and combination bar/concierge station where they can check out towels, robes, beach chairs, umbrellas, surfboards, snorkeling equipment, whatever they desire. The locals have a cinder block public toilet and changing room. Lana`i has few accessible beaches that are sheltered from wind and blowing sand. Hulopo`e is by far the best, so the division is the result of lengthy, sometimes rancorous negotiations between the Company and working class residents. Only a handful of hotel guests grace the golden beach this afternoon. The young man sunning himself next to the perfect blonde in the hot pink thong bikini might be Matthew Broderick, which would certainly impress the boys—Hey, Ferris! Ferris Bueller!—but I don't mention the possibility. The boys are having a fine time on their own.
        The same can't be said for your mother and me. We should take advantage of quiet moments like this to discuss the things that divide us like the invisible line on this beach. But we don't. I think of another scene from Fargo: Norm the duck painter and Margie the pregnant cop staring glassy-eyed at their small bedroom TV as they drift off to sleep.
        If your mother and I could manage even their rudimentary conversation, maybe things would improve. Earlier, I slipped your green and yellow hat over your fuzzy pink head, shielding you from the hot sun, and dipped your bare toes into the cool foam of an ebbing wave. You cried at the shock of it, the way the liquid world transformed itself so quickly as it swirled around you. Perhaps you thought it might swallow you up altogether. Or perhaps you sensed, for the very first time, that nothing in this dazzling new world of white, white light is permanent. Before I could speak to you of these things, your mother swept you out of my arms into the comfort of a dry towel.
        The sea has gone flat now, the entire bay becalmed. I gaze out at the still water. Beyond David and the line of waiting surfers, the ocean, like our future, is vast, inscrutable.
        “Mary.”
        The black oval sunglasses turn my way. “What?”
        “Let's talk.”
        You're dozing now. Your mother uncouples you from her breast and slips you inside the safe blue universe of the baby tent. I watch your lidded eyes flutter with the flight of a secret dream. What fantastic story is shaping itself inside your head, with your belly full and your eyes dancing?
        “Well?”
        I have too much to say. Or too little. In any case, the right words, the words that need to be said, do not come. “Do you like it here?” I ask finally.
        She frowns. “It's too hot for Rachael this afternoon, that's all. You know I love this beach.”

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