Aloha Ē

“So,” asked Miss Dunn, our choir teacher, “do you have a class song yet?”

Our prison sentence would end in just under two months.  We, the mighty seniors, would break free from the bonds of high school and run screaming for joy into who knew what, but we all were convinced it had to better than the life of anguish we’d been forced to suffer through for all these years.

“Yes,” announced Peggy, proud chair of our class song selection committee.  “We have two, actually. ‘Hawai‘i Aloha,’ and ‘Makalapua.’”

“Ah,” said Miss Dunn, “very good.  But what I mean is, have y’all written a senior class graduation song?”

Silence.

Then, “What do you mean?” Peggy asked.

“I mean, have y’all written a song for graduation?”

This was Miss Dunn’s first year of teaching high school.  At least at our school.  I raised my hand.  “You mean compose a song?”

“Yes, don’t you folks do that here?”

We all shook our heads, a sea of bewildered looks.

“Ah,” said Miss Dunn.  “Well, at my high school, we always wrote a class song.  Wouldn’t y’all like to do that?”

Silence.

“You mean like we come up with the words and the music ourselves?”  Sean asked.

“Why yes.  Doesn’t it sound like a fun thing to do?”

Silence.

But Miss Dunn’s enthusiasm could not be dampened.  “Good.  So, here’s what we’re going to do.  I’m going to pair y’all off.  You come up with the lyrics and some idea of the music, and then we’ll vote on which song we choose to polish and sing at graduation.”

“What?” said Peggy.  “So, ah, like we’d have three songs?”

“Well, yes, three.  The ones you’ve already chosen, and the one you write.”

Peggy looked a bit ruffled.  She, after all, had chaired the grueling process of navigating us through whittling down the million suggestions we’d all made at the beginning of the year.

Miss Dunn took out her grade book.  “Okay, good.  I’m going to randomly pair y’all off.  A week from today, we’re going to read through whatever you’ve come up with, and if you’ve come up with some kind of melody as well, that would be even better.”

Whether any of us wanted to do this or not, Miss Dunn forged ahead.  As she read out our names, I prayed for a good partner.

“Lanny,” she said, “you and Cleo.”

My heart jumped a few gears.  Not only was Cleo Chang the hottest babe in our class, but she was the girl with whom every male in the entire school was in love.

I wanted so badly to ask her to prom. I looked over at Cleo, who was not looking over at me.  My mind raced through writing this song, to going to prom, to our imminent marriage.

“Okay, let’s meet with our partners right now, and I want y’all to decide your strategy for coming up with your song.  If writing the music worries you, don’t.  Do the best you can.  We all can do that together.”

Leaping out of my seat, I tripped over toward Cleo.  She was looking at me now, and it was not with the beaming expression of affection I’d hoped.

“Lanny,” she said, the warning in her tone, “I don’t want any of your lame jokes, okay? We have to take this seriously.”

I did have that reputation.  One of the premiere class clowns, I could make lame jokes with the best of them.  But like all good class clowns, I could also tell some pretty good ones, too.  No matter to witty old me. I loved the groan reactions as much as I did the laughs.

“So, you want my a-list funny stuff?” I asked, smiling, thinking about us riding together to the Kāhala Hilton in a big black limousine.

“You see?” she said, giving me some minor stink eye. “That’s what I mean.  You’re already doing it.”

I laughed.  “Okay, Miss Chang,” I said, “I promise to get serious about this.”

As luck would have it, not only was Cleo gorgeous, but she was also a wonderful pianist.  Between my gift with words and her classical music background, we were going to kill in this competition. And down the road we’d have some really good-looking kids.

Cleo shook her head.  “Eh, Lanning Lee, I mean it, man.  No goofing around.”

I crossed my heart.  “I promise,” I swore, although I hoped I could control myself.  Prom, Lanny, think prom.  Think. Prom.

Cleo said, “How about tomorrow we see what each of us has come up with.  An idea, at least.  That’s a good first step, okay?”

I gladly agreed.  That night I wrote like a fiend.  My prom date was riding on this.  But the process was harder than I’d hoped.  Rhyming line endings is not as easy as one might think.  I cursed frequently.  My goal was to blow Cleo’s mind with my prom-partner-worthy genius.  Just before the sun came up, I arrived at what I though was a dynamite draft.  With just a tiny bit of an exception to my promise.

Cleo and I sat in the cafeteria before first period.  She read what she’d come up with first.  It was solid.  What you’d expect.  Commencing a journey toward a good life ahead, all the possibilities the future held, how we were going to make our way forward.  She’d also struggled with rhymes, she said, so for her this was a “very rough draft.”

“Wow, I love it,” I said.

“Yeah, right,” she said smiling.  “Now you.”

I could see it in her eyes.  The suspicion. The expectation of no funny stuff.  Period.  And I’d done that.  With that one exception.  Despite my promise and not wanting her to be so pissed off at me that she would turn down my prom request, I read through my draft, until . . . I hesitated when I came to the last two lines.

“Well,” she said, “what is it?  What’s wrong?”

I saw the possibility of our prom picture fading away into the sunset.   Man, I would have looked good in a tux.

Yup.  Sometimes I really cannot control myself.  I read the last two lines, expecting the not-so-good news to come calling down on me, like a piano, or a safe.

“What?” said Cleo, bursting out laughing.  “You rhymed class with ass?  That’s exactly what I meant about you, Lanning Lee,” she said, still laughing.  “You know there is no way on earth Miss Dunn is going to go for that.”

But Cleo was laughing.  Genuinely laughing.

“Sorry,” I said, “I just had to throw that in there.”

Cleo kept going, wiping the tears from her eyes.  “Man, Lanny, can you just see our parents faces if we sing that?  My mom and dad would keel over.”

Now I was laughing just as hard as her.  I wondered if I should buy a traditional pin-on corsage or one of those wrist jobs?

“So, what do you really think?” I said.

Cleo shook her head.  “I love the whole thing, Lanny.  You really are a good writer.  I think we should use yours.  The rest of it has that whole graduation sentiment down, but maybe you better find another word to use instead of ass?”

She started laughed again.  I could see her in her satin prom grown.  I pictured puffy sleeves, but strapless, pray to God.

I nodded.  “Okay, I’ll come up with something.”

There are writers who talk about how they can struggle for days over the choice of a single word.  This, it turns out, is truer than I could have imagined.

Every day I thought about asking Cleo to prom.  Every day Cleo would ask me if I’d come up with that one perfect word.  She said she couldn’t think of anything, but she had been noodling with the music side of it.  When she hummed the tune for me, it sounded pretty good.  Not too much pomp and circumstance.  More along the lines of a decent pop song.  It reminded me of Carole King’s “Tapestry.”

Finally, the night before we had to read the drafts in class, I decided to use the word ‘surpass.’ But what that meant for the last two lines was to have them make sense I had to rewrite many times.

I sat down with Cleo before class the next morning.  “Okay, here’s what I got,” I said.  I read through the whole thing for her.  When it came to the last two lines, I was kind of disappointed.  They sounded phony to me, but Cleo seemed satisfied.

That afternoon, we listened as people read what they’d come up with.  Lots of them only had ideas for what they wanted to say, but no lyrics yet.  Few had any music worked out.  Many of us, it appeared, were suffering from senioritis. 

“Wow,” said Miss Dunn.  “Y’all have put some super effort into this.”  I could tell from the way she said it, the touch of disappointment, that she was actually depressed by what she was hearing.

“Okay, Lanny and Cleo, you’re up next.”

Cleo said, “We’ve got something for both.  I worked up the melody, and Lanny did the lyrics.  We haven’t quite put the two together yet, but we’re close.”

“Okay,” said Miss Dunn, brightening up.  “How do you want to do this?”

“I was thinking,” said Cleo, “how about I play the melody I’m working on, and then Lanny can read the words after that?”

“Excellent, Cleo,” said Miss Dunn, beginning to shine with reviving optimism.  “The stage is yours.”

Cleo went to the piano and played what she’d written.  When she was done, Miss Dunn stood there speechless.  Finally, after taking a deep breath, she said, “Cleo, that is outstanding.  Thank you so much for that.”

My piano goddess prom queen beamed.

Miss Dunn turned to me.  “Okay, Lanny, let’s hear what you’ve got.”

I began to read.  In my mind everything sounded okay.  But it was those last two lines.  They sounded phony.  When I came to them, I hesitated.  The original lines were still there along with the new lines.

Looking over at Cleo again, I saw her smiling.  “The original, Lanny” she said.  “I love it.”

When I hit the last word, when I said “ass,” Cleo burst out laughing again.  So did the rest of the class.  Even Miss Dunn laughed, slapping her knees.

After we’d all calmed down, Miss Dunn said, “Well, I can see by the reaction, Mr. Lee, that you and Cleo are going to be a tough act to follow.  But y’all know we can’t sing it as is, right?  If we choose your song, we’re going to have to change the last word.”

Cleo spoke up.  “We tried to do that, Miss Dunn, but nothing works.  Lanny even came up with a word that sort of fits the piece, ‘surpass,’ but he doesn’t care for the way he has to change the last two lines all around to make surpass make sense.”

Miss Dunn nodded.  “Lanny, do you have those lines there?”

I nodded.

“Can you read those, please?”

I did.

Miss Dunn nodded.  “And you don’t think that works?”

“Well, I – no, I think it sounds kind of phony.”

Miss Dunn nodded.  “Can you find another word?”

I shook my head.  “I don’t know.  I tried hard.  All week I couldn’t find one,” I said.  “There’s nothing that works.  And having to change the last two lines so ‘surpass’ makes sense, it just sucks, Miss Dunn.”

“Well, okay, how about let’s all think on this.”

She turned back to the class roster.  “Let’s see, Tricia and Dale, you’re up.”

Cathy came back from the piano.  When she sat down, she reached over and squeezed my hand.  Like being hand in hand at the prom.  I had to ask her soon.

Choir was our last class of the day.  As we walked back to the cafeteria, I worked up my courage.  Finally, just as we reached the senior lockers, I said, feeling like I might pass out, “Cleo, ah, would you like to go to the prom with me?”

She turned to me, but she didn’t say anything.  My heart was racing like crazy.  Why wasn’t she saying anything?

“Lanny,” she said finally, “I’m going with Robert.”

I was crushed.  Like some obsolete robot being crushed at a recycling plant, like the car crunched into a cube in Goldfinger.

Then Cleo said, “Why didn’t you ask me sooner?”

I had no comeback for that.  So, she would have gone with me if I’d only asked earlier.  Man, that both made my day and ruined it completely.

I didn’t go to senior prom.  But tonight, I would hold Cleo’s hand.  I’d snuck in after visiting hours were over, hoping that anyone in her room had left.

The security guard barely paid attention, nodded me through as I lied to him about having left my cell phoned in the patient’s room.

Our class had been very small.  40 students total.  Even after all these years, most of us had remained tight.  Some of them I saw all the time for lunch or beer drinking sessions.

So, word spread fast.  Even though Cloe was not one of our get-together class gang regulars, she always did come to the scheduled reunions, and she was always beautiful, aging well.

I’d actually seen her only a few weeks before, ran into her at Kincaid’s, just before her stroke.

Tommy had called to tell me about it.  Cleo had not felt well.  Her husband had taken her to Queen’s emergency.  The stroke had happened in the emergency room, and even though that meant she could be treated immediately, the stroke had been so severe that there was nothing they could do for her.

Cleo was on life support.  Tommy said her family was struggling to decide whether to take her off of it.

Only immediate family is allowed in the ICU, but I was ready with a lie for that, too.  I’d tell then that I was her brother, and that I’d only just now been able to fly in from the continent to see her.

But the ICU desk was unmanned, so I went straight to her room.  My timing prediction was good; there was no one else in the room.

I gripped the railing beside the bed as I watched Cleo breathe with the aid of a respirator.  She’d truly had aged so well.  I admired that she’d let herself go gray.  Nothing artificial about her, ever.

In the end, our class had voted not to sing an original song.  I know Miss Dunn had been disappointed, but she’d bucked up and told us that she’d make sure we sang “Makalapua” and “Hawai‘i Aloha” like champs.

The two weeks before graduation, she had us practice the bejesus out of those two songs.  When we sang them at the end of the graduation ceremony, with Peggy conducting us, we sounded like the winners of the annual Kamehameha School song contest.

I don’t know if it’s true that people in comas can still hear you when you speak to them, and although I no longer remembered the words of the song she and I had written, I did remember the melody.

“Cleo,” I whispered, “you wrote one hell of a song.”

I hummed the melody, dropped in the few words I could remember, and made it to the last two lines.  Those I had down cold.

“And with the world of possibilities that face our class, we pledge to you now to strive not to make ass.”

I laughed softly.  I wished she was laughing again, too.

I squeezed her hand and said goodbye.

“Aloha ē, Cleo.  Aloha ē.”