“So what?” Karen said again. “It takes two years for the dissolution to come through. Does anybody wait that long? Why would you? Sometimes, you just have to throw the whole man away and start over. It doesn’t sound like much of a marriage, and he was cheating, right? When you were pregnant? That’s extra low. Emotional divorce, when you can tell, deep down, that they’ve moved on already and you’re in the relationship by yourself, but you haven’t let the thought surface yet.”
Wow. Once again, she’d hit much too close to home. There was a silence, and she said, “Sorry if I’m not supposed to know all that. Jax heard from his mom. Your mom. I wanted to come down right away, but he said I should wait for you to ask. What an asshole, though. Seriously, Poppy. You’re better off.”
“Right,” I said desperately. “So. Here’s my question. Not really along those lines at all. Totally different. I, ah, you heard that Matiu delivered the baby. I just saw him again, ran into him when I was taking Hamish to school, and I was wondering—why? Dunedin’s small, but it’s not that small. Did you or Jax give him my address? Talk to him about me? About Hamish starting school today?”
“Wait, what?” she asked. “Matiu? All right, you’ve managed the ‘absolutely improbable’ part. And no. I wouldn’t do that without asking you, and I didn’t know Hamish started school today. That’s bound to be cute. I tell you what. I don’t need to have a baby at all. I’ll just adopt Hamish, because he’s adorable and already toilet trained. Send me a first-day picture. But Matiu? He could’ve looked your address up on the hospital database, I guess, since you were a patient, but that would surely violate some ethics rule. He’s pursuing you? He does have a thing for unavailable women. He’s kind of famous for it. Still ... at three weeks? That’s some serious unavailability even for him. You’re not close to being able to have sex yet, and I’m guessing you wouldn’t much want to anyway. I remember Hope saying six weeks, and even then, I’ll bet Hemi has to ease her into it every time, because she doesn’t exactly feel sexy. Plus, she has people grabbing at her body all the time, so she has to be convinced that she wants somebody else grabbing at her body, you know?”
I knew.
She added, “And if you want to know how I know all that—let’s just say that I’m so glad I don’t share an apartment with them anymore.”
I’d stopped walking, and Isobel made a protesting noise. I took up my circuit again. Kitchen, lounge, dining room. Fortunately, it was an open floor plan. “He is? Matiu? Famous for going after unavailable women?” I asked, trying to tell my stupid heart not to sink, and not even bothering with the second half of her conversational flow, because it was preposterous. Also too much information, except maybe not. People said women shared too much, but in my experience, they didn’t share enough. Not the things you really wanted to know. Like whether their husbands still wanted them, afterwards, or seemed ... almost repelled, and whether that made them feel hollow and ashamed inside. Also, at the same time, whether having yet another person want to touch their body, wanting anything physical from them at all, just made them want to run away screaming. Which would make your separation not entirely the other person’s fault. Which was pretty bloody depressing.
“Well, yeah,” Karen said. “Matiu had a thing for Hope when she was pregnant the first time, when she was over here staying with Koro, separated from Hemi. Oh, you don’t know about that, probably. Well, yeah. They had a rocky time, because Hemi was being evil, big surprise. He was evil a lot back then, until she tamed him with her magic extra-feminine powers. Don’t ask me. I don’t have them. Anyway, she was in Katikati, pregnant, with the whanau, and I think Matiu fell in love with her. I was sixteen, and out here with her for a while. Hope told me the idea was ridiculous, but I’d have bet anything. I was there. And then Matiu flirted with me some, a while back. Nothing serious, but try telling Jax that. So—yeah. He’s not a serious guy. Not a bad guy, but not like Jax or Hemi, at least not current Hemi, or ... Well, you know. He’s a player. Sorry. Recreational flirting, just for fun. A whole lot of recreational sex, too, I’d bet anything. Ten to one he’s already got somebody down there, or more than one somebody. He never lives with anybody, though, and he’s never been married, though he’s got to be over forty, and he’s Maori. You’d think he was gay, except that it’s not possible. Definitely heterosexual, and more than definitely gorgeous. Just not the committing type. Come to think of it, he’s probably exactly like pre-Hope Hemi, except less evil and ruthless. Huh. Why is that? Tane isn’t one bit that way, and neither is Koro. Must be a recessive gene.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well ... thanks. Thanks for your help. The baby’s waking up. Got to go.”
I knew how to pick them, that was for sure.
I rang Matiu anyway, on a very early Saturday nearly a week later. I needed to ask somebody, and it was ... I checked my phone. One-fifteen. I couldn’t call my mum or my grandparents or a mum-friend at one-fifteen. Normal people were all asleep now, but Matiu might still be working the evening shift. That was why I called him. That, and medical knowledge.
12
Chasing the Demons
Matiu
I shoved myself up on the side of the pool, empty at one-forty-five in the morning, and heaved myself out. It had been a busy Friday night in Emergency, as Fridays tended to be. The worst had been a road accident, in which a group of teenagers joyriding in somebody else’s car had left the road and hit a tree without any seatbelts on. All but one of them were in hospital now, recovering from surgery. The other one had been dead on arrival.
You didn’t feel for the person, not really. They were dead, past pain and fear. Past your help. Telling the parents that their teenage boy, their little girl, was never coming home again, though—that was something else. The anguished sound a mum made when she heard that news, the blank, frozen look on a dad’s face ... you never got used to that.
The swimming had helped. The wavy, dreamy blue patterns of underwater light, the echoing sound of my body cutting through the water, the rhythm of my breath and the repetition of the motions. After forty minutes, my muscles were tired but relaxed, my brain waves in the alpha zone again, my heart rate well and truly lowered. My second shower of the night helped some more, and by the time I was pulling on jeans and a jumper, ready to walk home in the storm-coming, branch-tossing darkness of two A.M., to eat some eggs and fall asleep as I’d trained myself to do on command a long time ago, I was calm again, the endorphins doing the business.
I glanced at the phone out of habit, that was all. One good thing about being an emergency doc: you didn’t get the middle-of-the-night calls, unless the city got hit by a true disaster. When your shift was over, you were done and could switch off. But I checked anyway.
I’d missed a call during my swim, and not just any call. Poppy, ringing me back at last. In the middle of the night. My heart gave an almighty thud, and then started galloping, swim or no, as I sank down onto the wooden bench in the empty locker room and returned the call.
She picked up on the second ring, her voice breathless. “Matiu?”
“Yeh,” I said. “What’s happened? You OK? Kids OK? Isobel?”
“Yes. No.” My heart did some more of that thudding, and she said, “It’s ... I’m separated now, you know? Legally, I mean. As I mentioned. And it’s ... Max has the kids for the weekend. And he has ... he has Isobel overnight, because it’s in the plan. And I can’t stand it. I can’t. I know I have to. There’s no getting out of it. I tried. But I can’t stand it anyway.”
Her voice was shaking, and I was grabbing my gear and heading out of the gym. I said, “But the baby’s breastfeeding.”
“They said I could pump. Send milk. I did. I am. But ... can I take an anxiety tablet? Something like that? I wouldn’t bother you, but I think I’m going a bit mad.” She tried to laugh and didn’t succeed. “Can you prescribe me some? There’s a twenty-four-hour chemist downtown, and I don’t have kids with me for once, so I could go get it now, if you’d phone it in
or write it down on a pad for me to come and collect, or whatever. I just need to know how long the drug takes to leave your body, so I’m not feeding it to Isobel when she’s back. So I can pump and dump, you know. Sorry, I know the thought of pumping breast milk isn’t all that appealing, but I’ve already talked about worse with you. And I need to know.”
I said, “I’m not sure. I could look it up, but I’d be happier if you talked to your gynecologist or your midwife about it before you took anything like that. It would be safer, and it’s inappropriate for me to treat you anyway.” Geez, I sounded stuffy. “Is anybody with you?” I asked. “Helping you?”
“No,” she said. “I thought I’d be all right. I thought I’d sleep, because it’s overnight, and I have a sleep debt so enormous, it should lower my taxes. I’ll see Hamish and Olivia when Max brings the baby back, at least for a moment, though he’ll have them tonight—tomorrow night—as well. Until Sunday afternoon. He’s their dad, though, and this was my choice. I know that. Mothers do this all the time. But my body just ...” Her voice wavered some more. “It wants her, you know? It wants all of them, but she’s so tiny, and my house is empty. My arms are empty. And I can’t ... I can’t stand it.”
Poppy
The doorbell rang before I’d thought it possibly could. Barely twenty minutes since I’d made the call, and there Matiu was, his back blocking out the darkness, his body an oasis of stillness against the rattling sound of the storm-tossed fern trees and flax plants. The wind had picked up, the early-spring rain was already starting to spatter against the windows, and it was after two in the morning. And he’d come anyway.
The oasis idea was the last thing from the man I knew him to be, but it was how he seemed to me anyway, every time he turned up. Like when you were out in the storm, and then you ran up the walk, barely able to breathe through the wind and rain, slammed the door behind you, and shut out the dark and the cold.
If I’d drawn him, I’d have drawn him like that. Like a rock, but not. Like something solid and breathing and sheltering and alive. Like a tree.
He didn’t say anything. Instead, he lifted his arms a fraction, and I walked straight into them. And he wrapped those arms around me and held me tight.
He smelled so good up close. Fresh as new-mown grass and cotton sheets on the washing line in the sun, and a bit of spice, too. He smelled like Christmas Down Under, was what it was. I noticed that, fuzzily, but mainly I noticed that he knew how to hold somebody. Close and strong and steady, and not one bit eager to move on. Like he could hold you forever, and you could absorb his strength and face life again. The doctor feeling, maybe. Or that tree.
It lasted a minute, and the power of it rocked me and comforted me all at once. Finally, I stepped back, tried to laugh, and said, “You didn’t have to come.”
“Well, yeh,” he said. “I did.” He stepped across the threshold and closed the door, because I’d forgotten all about that little detail. “When you have a middle-of-the-night crisis, you want somebody who’s awake in the middle of the night.” His tone was light, and it wasn’t.
“But you didn’t bring me drugs,” I said. “And you probably need to go to sleep yourself.” I was wearing my pink flannel maternity PJs again, too. I’d thought about changing them when he’d said he’d come, but I’d been too distracted, and besides, the effort was pretty hopeless. I’d started to comb my hair, and then I’d started wondering if Max would remember that you changed the baby before you fed her, so she didn’t wake up again and cry all over again after the feeding was done, and had ended up walking my circle again. Lounge, dining room, kitchen, my arms wrapped around myself, because they weren’t holding a baby. I was glad to be interrupted in that obsessive cycle, my thoughts skittering, barely landing before they took off again. Like the butterfly house all over again, only less beautiful.
“Ah,” he said. “Sadly, no, on the drugs. Didn’t seem like a good idea. I thought I’d come keep you company instead. Hold your hand. Metaphorically speaking.”
“Bedside manner,” I said, trying for a lightness I wasn’t close to feeling.
“Listening skills, that’s all,” he said. “I could come in and sit on the couch with you, and maybe we’ll be able to lose the demons and fall asleep. Or I can check that you’re OK and leave. Your choice.”
He’d said that on Hamish’s first day of school, too. What was it about that calm way a man offered you the choice? Or rather, the way that Matiu did, because I wasn’t sure I’d ever encountered it before. Because he was older, maybe. Because his manners were beautiful. Or ...
Because my body thought he was special. I didn’t want to have sex with him, not exactly. Not now. Besides, I might be separated, but a dissolution took two long years, and whatever Karen said, I wasn’t sure what you did and didn’t do during those years. When did you start to feel un-married? When did you get to act un-married?
So that was a “no” on the sex, but I still wanted to look at him. I wanted to sit beside him and feel his warmth. I wanted him to smile at me, and maybe hold my hand. I wanted to feel like a woman. Preferably a desirable one, but I’d take what I could get.
I didn’t say any of that. “Oh,” I said instead, brilliantly. “Come in. Please. We could ... watch a movie, I guess. I realize I’m not the best company.” I was, suddenly, fully aware of the pink PJs. He was wearing a chocolate-brown merino hoodie with the neck of a T-shirt showing at the top, jeans, and brown suede sneakers of the more fashionable sort. The hoodie was faded and thin from washing, and the jeans were along the same lines. They looked years old, molded to his form by long wearing.
Matiu looked heaps better doing “casual” than I did, but fortunately, despite the hour, this was the last thing from a date. If he’d wanted glamour, he could’ve found somebody better. Almost any other woman in the world would have been better, so whatever he was here for, it wasn’t that.
That nurse, Daisy, for example. Her hair had been shiny, her stomach had been flat, and every other part of her had been toned to the moon and back. I’d noticed, because she’d been wearing shorts.
I said, leading the way upstairs into the lounge—the one attached to the master bedroom, because it was smaller and cozier, it was better to be in an adult space, and I had the gas fire lit up here—“You could tell me about your demons. I could at least do that for you.” I might be falling apart. I didn’t have to be selfish.
“You’re on demon overload, I’d say,” he said, having paused to kick off his shoes in the entryway like the family-focused Maori man I kept forgetting he was—except that he wasn’t that at all, according to Karen—then following me through the house and, eventually, lowering his gorgeous self onto my cream leather sectional and leaning back. Faded, snug jeans and whisper-soft hoodie, both of them offering up the goods. Except that, again, he wasn’t. Was he?
“It’s a friend thing, though,” I said. My breasts tingled, and I half-rose, thinking I’d heard Isobel cry, then remembered she wasn’t here, and got a lurch of panic, the same one I’d been feeling all night.
“Ah,” he said. “A friend thing.” He looked at me more closely. “Suppose you tell me what you’re most worried about. That your husband—what’s his name, again? I’d rather call him by his name. Not quite your husband anymore, is he. That he’d do—what?”
“Max,” I said. “Too much like ‘Matiu.’”
“Nothing like ‘Matiu,’” he said. “Nothing at all. What’s Max, then? Maximilian? Maximus? Means ‘The greatest.’ Who’d name their kid a thing like that? Whereas ‘Matiu’ is completely different.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, feeling inexplicably better. This thought-butterfly was pretty, or at least comical, not a huge, menacing black moth. “What does it mean, then?”
He smiled sheepishly. “Gift of God.” And when I laughed, he did, too, and I got to linger with my funny butterfly a wee bit longer.
“How do you know about names?” I asked, because it was better than thinking about the wors
t big black thought-moths. Hamish, worrying about his baby sisters, wishing he could talk to me and I could take the worry off. Olivia, waking up and climbing into bed with him “because my feet are too cold,” though that was a slightly happier thought, because that might make both of them feel better. Isobel crying, not wanting the bottle, and Max being too rough with her.
Max being too rough with her. She didn’t even weigh nine pounds. I wanted to put my head between my knees and breathe. I didn’t. It wouldn’t happen. He wasn’t a terrible father, just the kind who wanted to hand the baby over. If he couldn’t hand the baby over, though, he’d care for her. Surely he would.
“I don’t know about names,” Matiu said, and I tried to remember what we’d been talking about. “I know about Latin. And I know that ‘Poppy’ means ‘Poppy.’ Exuberant, you could call a poppy. Vital, eh.”
“Flower name,” I said. “You seem to like those.” He looked confused, and I reminded him. “Daisy.”
“Ah.” His smile was slow, and the skin around his eyes had lost some of the strain. “You remembered that. She’s a friend.”
“Like me. Although it’s none of my business, of course.”
“More or less.” He looked at me more closely. “Talk? Or movie?”
“Movie,” I said. “My thoughts are ... silly, too extreme, or they’re not. Even if they’re not, I can’t do anything about them now, and I know it. I have to get through this first time. My kids have to get through this first time. Never mind. Movie. But first, tell me. What’s your demon? What happened to you tonight? Something did, didn’t it?”
“Too late at night for that,” Matiu said. “Herbal tea? If you’ve got it, I can make it. Kitchen’s one level down, I’m guessing. You find the film. I’ll watch anything except horror. I reckon we’ve both had enough horrors for one night.”
Stone Cold Kiwi (New Zealand Ever After Book 2) Page 9
