2006 ADULT DIVISION WINNER, ADVERTISER FICTION CONTEST

Judges gave these stories the prizes in the 2006 and 2005 Advertiser Island Life Holiday Fiction contest:

There's a time in life for scaling down, pulling in, selling off, giving away. Then in the midst of the shrinking and wrinkling, something happens, some small wondrous thing that expands the heart and vivifies the world yet again with ridiculous hope.

A recent widow who had sold the big house in Manoa where she had raised four children, all of whom had moved to the Mainland in pursuit of money and/or love, now found herself in a one-bedroom condo in Makiki. Even though buying down had always been part of Helen Cabral's retirement plan, she was nevertheless surprised, just as she was astounded to actually be of retirement age.

So there she was, children raised, husband buried, looking at four unfamiliar walls, she and her old dog, Scarlet. "Scarlet," Helen was fond of saying, "is the only one older than I am— if you count in dog years."

Scarlet had taken to sighing deeply and curling up near the door, as if aggrieved by smaller quarters and no more yard. Being a compulsive pleaser, Helen, three times a day, took the dog on ever longer walks around the new neighborhood.

She tried different combinations of streets, going uphill and down, past tidy little houses engulfed by mango, lime and papaya trees, stately old homes intimidated by new high-rise apartment buildings, and older low-rise buildings like her own with greenery and a pool. She got to know which blocks yielded plumeria blossoms and Tahitian gardenias she could reach out and pluck, just one, to pin behind her ear.

She thought of the abundance of her Manoa yard with an entire hedge of pikake, a huge gardenia bush and three plumeria trees — strong yellow graveyard plumerias, evergreen Singapores, and the vibrant pink Duvachelle — and she sighed as deeply, profoundly as Scarlet. The time was 9 a.m. She had become a clock watcher, noting the slow ebb of the enormous hours that make up a day. Dinner seemed such an elusive goal.

She was still not reconciled to the distance of her children, and recalled with wry regret their clingy childhoods when she would have given her teeth for an hour by herself. Widowhood, with its unsavory little victory, had come somewhat more easily. He had been a petty, precise man.

Walking and ruminating one morning, Helen ventured down a dead-end street and saw before her, in the middle of a small patch of grass in someone's yard, the most beautiful plumeria tree she had ever seen. The tree itself was small and the branches hung down heavily. They didn't burst with flowers so much as they were festooned in huge pale pink blossoms, possibly Guinness-record plumerias, vaguely sexual in their silkiness and languor. She hesitated, then boldly stepped onto the perfectly cropped grass, reached up and pinched just one plumeria. It was strong in her hand, full of life in every pore of its oversized petals. She sniffed deeply of its sweet melancholy fragrance, then carried the flower home as carefully as if it breathed.

She placed the small stem in water in a blue and white sake glass on her dining table where she could gaze at it from any angle in the open kitchen/dining/living room. The flower seemed to illuminate the room. She'd walk away, pretend it wasn't there, only to turn back, gaze upon its beauty, the depth and sheen, the delicacy of hue, and be enchanted all over again.

She dug out a family photograph from a box as yet unpacked, and stood it on the table beside the giant blossom. It was hard to look at the familial happiness mocking her solitude, but the picture seemed right beside the plumeria.

In the days after, Helen and Scarlet walked to the little plumeria tree with the giant blossoms, and each morning, with a mixture of happiness and guilt, she crossed the small lawn and plucked just one pearly flower from the pendulous branches.

Then the inevitable morning came when, just as she was reaching for a blossom, Scarlet snapped to attention. Helen turned to see the owner of the house standing there, an old man, bare chested, with pale, sagging pectorals covered in gray Brillo, and a scowl on his face. He had obviously been lying in wait to catch the plumeria predator.

Before he could speak, Helen chirped in her sunniest voice, "Good morning. Oh, I've been hoping to meet the owner of the most beautiful plumeria tree in the world."

There was no response. The man might have been stuffed.

Blithely Helen proceeded, "I just moved into the neighborhood and I've been admiring this tree so much. I was wondering, the next time you prune it, would you save me a little cutting?"

"It's a small tree," he said without shifting stance. And a slow grower. "Don't know when I'll prune it."

"Well, if you ever do ..." she said, backing away from the tree, tugging at Scarlet. "I walk this way every day with my dog just to see the most beautiful plumeria I've ever seen."

"If I cut it, I'll leave the rubbish by the curb."

"Oh thank you. I'll be on the lookout. Have an aloha day." She hurried away, mortified, guilty, grinning as if deranged.

At home, yesterday's plumeria was still strong in the sake cup. She couldn't bear to think that tomorrow there would be no huge blossom to light up the condo. She put the flower carefully in a paper bag and, with Scarlet, drove out to Hawai'i Kai to the nurseries. The lady at the first nursery said she had never seen a plumeria so big and beautiful. She had no idea what kind it was and didn't have anything like it. The man at the second nursery just down the road said immediately, "Wilcox. It's a Wilcox. Where you get 'em?"

"From a neighbor's tree."

"Best ting — ask 'em for one cutting."

"He's a mean old man."

"Go night. Snap 'em."

Helen left, slightly disappointed to find the plumeria was a known variety and not some wondrous exclusive, perhaps accidental one-of-a-kind hybrid. Scarlet was panting in the backseat, so she decided to drive to the end of the road where it confronted the wild valley and let the condo-bound dog run without a leash.

She drove slowly, sadly, the Wilcox plumeria sitting limply on the dashboard, expiring. Suddenly from the side of her eye, in front of the last house on the street was an explosion of plumerias — luscious, huge, pearly Wilcox plumerias. She stopped immediately, counted three enormous trees draped over the street, blooming madly.

Her heart beating with happiness, she parked and walked to the front door of the house. She knocked, she rang, she listened. No one was home. She returned to her car. "Well, Scarlet," she said, "I believe there's an overhang law — you can cut anything hanging out of the yard."

With a guilty glance up and down the road, she quickly reached up and snapped a small, inconspicuous branch from each tree, then sped away with her contraband, shouting with glee, "We got 'em, Scarlet. We got the most beautiful plumeria in the world."

On the way home, she bought a big Chinese flowerpot and potting soil. Her balcony faced the rising sun. She stuck the three oozy branches in the dirt, and was so grateful she almost wept.

The next morning before setting out for her walk, she plucked one flower from her cuttings and placed it reverently in the sake cup beside the family photograph. It was so luminous and lovely, and it was hers.

She walked to the cul-de-sac just for the luxury of not needing the mean old man's plumerias, and there, beside the curb, was a tidy bundle of cuttings, neatly tied with brown cord knotted into a handle. She stood a moment, transfixed, then bent to pick it up. She walked home slowly, thinking about human nature, life, gifts, how you can never be sure of anything or anyone.

The Chinese pot was large enough to accommodate the new cuttings, although she'd have to get more pots as the cuttings rooted and grew. Her lanai would be a jungle of enormous creamy plumerias.

On her afternoon excursion to the store, Helen bought chubby apple bananas, bursting with flavor. In the evening, she baked banana bread, destined for the nice old man's mailbox.

Last year's Holiday Fiction Contest winner is a veteran Hawai'i writer: Rita Ariyoshi. A travel writer who founded Aloha magazine and edited Hawaiian Airlines' in-flight magazine, she turned to fiction some years ago.