“I want to go with Matiu, please,” Hamish said. “Because he’s nice, and he likes Isobel.”
“I do,” I said. “I like you too, mate. Let’s go inside and take care of your sister and have a lamington. I could need my strength. Getting angry’s hard work.”
“Yes,” Hamish said, “and it makes you thirsty. At least it makes Mummy thirsty, because when she’s angry, she always drinks wine.”
Poppy was still standing up. Pity, because she looked like she wanted to bang her head on the table. She was also flushing red. “Not when I’m pregnant,” she managed to say. “Not ...”
“And we’re off,” I said. “Come on, Hamish.”
Poppy
Wonderful. Now I wasn’t just a chaotic, oversexed mess, I was an alcoholic, chaotic, oversexed mess. And all of that Matiu had said? Had he meant it? It seemed like it. He’d lost his temper. He’d shouted. How often did that happen?
I’d taken three steps toward the house when I stopped. Wait. What had my dad said? I told Jax, “You’re joking. Dad didn’t.”
“He did,” Jax said. “How d’you think I know? Not from Matiu, because from what I hear, he walked out of there without even trying to defend himself, other than to say it was rubbish. Mainly, the narrative is that he walked out. Mad as fu— ... as fire. Will he go back, is the question. And what will he do if he doesn’t?”
I sat down with a spectacular lack of grace that didn’t do much credit to Karen’s beautiful dress or my new shoes and said, “How ... how do you know?” I was a bit lightheaded, suddenly. It was hard to feel like you were getting your life together if you were making somebody else’s fall apart.
“Mate of mine,” Jax said. “Orthopedic surgeon, works with some of the fellas who come back wounded. He’s not on the committee, but he heard about the suspension, and as it was about my sister, and my parents ...”
“Speaking of ethical breaches,” Karen said. “I can’t believe they’re allowed to talk about it.”
“Ah, well,” Koro said. “People do talk. Good job they do, sometimes. Better to know. Better to have it out. Does no good held inside, everybody thinking something different.”
“For example,” Karen said, “thinking somebody doesn’t want to jump your bones, when they so clearly do. I could see that he does. How could you not know? I just thought—well, you know, it’s Matiu. Sure, he wants to, because Matiu always wants to, and you’re so pretty and feminine and all, and have that hair. Also boobs, so—obviously. But who’d think he’d be so noble?”
“I don’t think you’re helping nearly as much as you think you’re helping.” That was Jax.
“All right.” I had both my palms on the table as if I were chairing a meeting. As if I were the kind of person who would be chairing a meeting. Well, that was what this was about, right? “Let’s go back to Dad, because obviously, this is Dad, not Mum. No. Let’s ring Dad. Right now.”
“Golf,” Jax said. As in—standing Saturday-afternoon golf game that one did not interrupt. Ever.
“I don’t care,” I said, showing how far I’d fallen. “Oh. I don’t know where my phone is.” Scatty again. Wasn’t it normal to lose track of things when you were in the midst of emotional upheaval, though? I decided the answer was “yes,” and when Jax took his phone from his pocket and handed it to me without a word, I accepted it and punched the number. And then I put it on speaker.
The familiar voice, all lower-register notes and air of command, came booming out. “I’m assuming this is an emergency, Jax. Otherwise, I’m not amused.”
“It’s Poppy,” I said. At his words, at his voice, the red tide of rage had swamped me, and my voice wasn’t one bit steady when I said, “How dare you threaten Matiu’s livelihood. How dare you.”
“Watch your tone, miss,” he growled.
“No,” I said. “I won’t. I found out fifteen minutes ago that he’s been suspended. I found out five minutes ago that it was because of you, and I’m not having it. I won’t watch my tone, and I won’t be diplomatic.”
“But then, of course, you never are, really,” Jax murmured from beside me.
“Maybe you should take some of that energy,” my dad said, “and put it into your marriage. Stop making a fool of yourself with a man who’s never going to care for you, or he wouldn’t have done what he did. Anyone could see that, but instead, I had to take care of you, as you don’t seem to be able to care for yourself. If you want to talk about it, though, talk to your mother. Talk with her about your choices. Talk about developing some impulse control before you smash up even more of your life. Maybe she’ll have an idea of how to do that, because I don’t. I do know that you’re thirty-three years old and a mother, and it’s time to start acting like it.”
At least I wasn’t about to cry anymore. I was much too far gone for that. I said, “You can’t use Mum to get out of this one. This has nothing to do with her. This has to do with you. You know what’s inappropriate? Doing what you did, that’s what. It’s so inappropriate, I don’t have words, except I do. I have words, and I’m saying them.”
“I’m with a foursome,” he said. “Unless you want them hearing even more of your private business and embarrassing both of us, you’ll ring your mum instead. You’ll get nothing else from me. As for Te Mana’s suspension—what’s done is done, it was done for the best, and that’s all I have to say about it.”
“No,” I said, having a hard time getting the words out. “To all of that. Just—no.”
I got a series of beeps in reply.
I didn’t want to look up at the others, but I did anyway, because what else could I do? He’d rung off.
24
Inner Animals
Matiu
I didn’t take the kids into Ari’s bedroom. Poppy had enough to deal with just now with without Olivia waking up and demanding her attention, and besides, I needed a calm spot myself. I took them into the lounge instead, where I set Isobel into her carrier and fastened the strap. Her eyes opened, and she waved her fists in a sleepy way and uttered a little mew of protest. As I’d already discovered, she was one who wanted to be held. I told Hamish, who was standing first on one foot, then the other, his hand on the dog’s head, “Come sit with me, mate. We’ll give her a rock or two, help her stay asleep, and give your Mum a chance to think things through.”
Better to address it. That way, Hamish would know he could address it. He sat on the couch, but when the dog lay down at his feet, he slid onto the floor instead. Hamish would always need somebody to love. Maybe being born first made you more protective, or maybe it was that nature of his. Who knew?
I was quiet a minute, using a hand on the bouncy carrier to soothe Isobel. She stared into my eyes, then smiled, a sleepy thing, and showed me her dimples. She couldn’t have been smiling long, I thought stupidly, but she’d smiled at me. I said, “Eh, little one. I’m here, and so is your brother. Go to sleep, now.”
“She’s just a baby,” Hamish said. “She can’t really understand.”
“You’re right,” I said. “But I think babies do understand some things all the same. The tone of your voice. The way your hands feel on them. If you’re impatient, or if you’re not.”
“Oh.” Hamish considered that. “Like how Mummy comes in at bedtime and puts her hand on your head, even when it’s Livvy, and she’s saying how she doesn’t want to go to sleep and making a fuss. Mummy’s very good at hands, I think.”
“I think your mum’s just very good at being a mum,” I said.
“Yes,” Hamish said. “She’s almost like a kid, because she likes stories and drawing and swinging on the swings and noticing things, like floating leaves in the street when it rains, and making them be boats and have a race. But she’s like a mum, too, because she takes care of us.”
“Yes,” I said, “I’ve noticed that.”
“But she was very angry at Uncle Jax today,” Hamish said, not looking at me. “She kind of shouted.” He had both hands in the black fur of the li
ttle dog’s neck, was stroking him. The dog was stretched out on the floor, his head in Hamish’s lap, looking blissful.
“She did,” I agreed. Isobel’s blue eyes, with those tiny flecks of gold, were still staring into mine, so I gave her a few more rocks. “Sometimes you can get angry at somebody even when you love them. It happens, eh.”
“Like Livvy,” Hamish said. “She’s always messing up my structures that I build, and sometimes she colors on my books. When we were at my dad’s, she wet my bed and he got angry, and she didn’t have any other PJs to wear and she was crying, and I wanted to go to sleep. I try to remember that she’s just little, but sometimes I can’t.”
“Sounds like your mum and your Uncle Jax,” I said. “They were kids once as well. You don’t stop being somebody’s brother just because you grow up. Though they probably don’t wet the bed anymore, so there’s that.” I smiled at Hamish, and he giggled, so that was better.
“You were angry too,” he said after another round of dog-patting. “And you’re not her brother.”
“I was,” I said. “I don’t lose my temper much. More like you that way, I guess. Sometimes it surprises me and comes out anyway. That’s what happened out there.” I had to decide what else to say. I wasn’t one bit sure I was going to get it right. “I like your Mum,” I finally said, “but her life’s complicated just now. Confusing, maybe, and it’s hard for her to tell how other people are feeling. So I got frustrated that she couldn’t tell that I like her, and I lost my temper.”
“Mummy says a temper is like your wild animal that lives inside you,” Hamish said. “Most of the time, your animal is all tame and listens to what you tell it, but sometimes it gets wild. That’s why she says to punch a pillow or lie down in your room and kick the floor when you get too angry, because your animal doesn’t always listen to words. Well, my animal listens more, I think, because I only need to punch the pillow sometimes, but Livvy’s animal hardly ever listens.”
“Your mum’s a clever lady,” I said.
Hamish said, “She likes it best when she draws, though. I think her wild animal comes out more if she can’t draw. She says her animal lives in her fingers most. Her animal is a mongoose. They’re very clever and brave, and they have heaps of energy. Mum has heaps of energy too, especially for drawing, and she’s never scared of things like spiders or thunder or big waves or talking to the teacher, so I think a mongoose is right.”
“Oh,” I said, and considered that. “Do you have an animal as well?”
“Yes. It took a long time to decide, because your animal’s special, and it’s for your whole life, but I think my animal is a budgie.”
I blinked. “The parakeet?”
“Yes, because a budgie likes to play, but he also just likes to look and be friendly, and those are the things I like to do too. I saw a program on TV about them, and I asked Mum if your animal could be a bird, and she said yes. And I think I’m a budgie too,” he went on, getting more animated, “because of what happens when my wild animal comes. A budgie wants to fly away if there’s danger, or probably if he’s sad, and I want to fly away too. I don’t like shouting and loud things. Livvy wants to fight if she’s angry, and she likes shouting, so I think she’s a tiger or something, but Mum says you don’t know when you’re little. You have to wait until you can decide for yourself.”
There’s a thing some people have. Emotional intelligence, it’s called. Recognizing body language, maybe, picking up on the shifts in people’s posture and tone and facial expression, or something more than that. A sixth sense, like you can actually register other people’s vibrations. An extra dose of empathy. You see it sometimes in doctors, and more often in nurses, but it’s as much a curse as a blessing. You can end up constantly bombarded by other people’s emotions, and if you can’t find a way to put up some barriers or let it go, you burn out.
Poppy clearly had it, because that idea, of giving your kids that sort of framework for their emotions and their reactions, letting them study and choose their animal for themselves and finding their own way to deal with hard feelings, was the sort of intuitive leap that wouldn’t have occurred to many people. Not to me, for example. Hamish, though, clearly had it, and, yes, Hamish’s boundaries could so clearly be overrun. I said, choosing my words, “Sounds wise, to wait until you can choose. I can see the budgie. A budgie might get pretty sad, I’d think, if people in his house were angry. Especially if it was his mum and dad. He might want to fly away and hide.”
“Yes,” Hamish said. “Mummy says it’s better for your family to live in two places if they can’t get along, so you can stay with both of them sometimes, but I don’t think so. I think it’s better for your family to be in one house. Especially for Livvy. She doesn’t like to change.”
I gripped his shoulder. How could I not? I said, “Yeh, mate. That’s rough. You may need to talk to your mum about that. She’s a mongoose, after all. Clever, eh. She may be able to think of some ways to make it easier.”
Emergency docs are good diagnosticians. That’s the job. We find the problem, and we patch the patient up if we can. If they need more than that, we send them on their way to get fixed by the specialists. We aren’t much chop at the long term.
“OK,” Hamish said. “But can we have lamingtons now? Because I think they might be done, and maybe we could test them.”
“Yeh, mate,” I said. “I’m thinking we could.”
We went into the kitchen with the dog prancing along behind, wagging his tail like mad, as if Hamish was the boy he’d always hoped for. And I thought—why would any man think he could do better than this kid? How could he walk away from this family?
He wasn’t doing it, was the answer. He was doing his best to walk back to them. And I didn’t want him to get there. He didn’t deserve Poppy, and he didn’t deserve Hamish. He didn’t deserve any of them, and I wanted to make sure he didn’t get them.
Possibly not the most elevated response, morally. I might not want to know what my own inner animal was. It might be something much less tame than I’d always imagined, because one thing was for sure. My wild animal didn’t fly away if there was danger. My animal stayed to fight.
25
Night Bloom
Poppy
I was all set to have a further series of confrontations. I was ready to step into the ring against all comers. But then, of course, Olivia woke up, and we had to go. Story of my life. Which was why I didn’t get to say anything more to Matiu than “Thanks,” when he buckled Isobel into her car seat for me. I also said, “Thanks for looking after them, and maybe I’m a bit sorry about all of that. All those things I said. Or maybe not. I can’t decide.”
He turned from the car and looked at me. Measuringly, I’d call that, and I thought, The hair, the dress, the shoes, the bloody waxing. How ridiculous do I seem? My father’s words still rang in my head, and I couldn’t quite control my face. My expression kept slipping, like my face was made of rubber. All Matiu said, though, was, “I said a few things to you, too. Maybe they needed to be said, because I find I meant them. So you know. Are you coming tonight?”
“Yes,” I said. “Though I’m not sure what I’ll bring.”
He slammed the door. “Bring yourself. That’ll do.” He went inside the house, and I thought, What? He was still narky, it was clear. Still keyed up, and something in me, when I stood there beside him—next to my baby—set up a vibration in response to his. Humming, that was what was happening. In my body. In my head.
Karen said, when the kids and I walked into the house on the beach again, “So. Poppy. Jax and I thought—pick your own strawberries? There’s a farm not far away, and I make a strawberry pizza that’s the best thing you have ever tasted. I’ll bet Hamish and Olivia would love to help with all of it.”
“You can’t have strawberries on pizza,” Hamish said.
“Wanna bet?” Karen asked. “Because you totally can. Just you wait, and you’ll see. Sugar cookie dough made with best New Zealand b
utter for the crust, spread with soft goat cheese and honey, and strawberries arranged in a beautiful pattern on top. Strawberries you’ve picked that day? Even better. Tangy and sweet and tart and absolutely amazing. I promise you’ll want seconds. Want to help me?”
“Yes,” Hamish said. “Because I like things with sugar.” Winning me another Bad Mother award, probably.
“I like things with sugar too,” Olivia said, compounding my offense. “But Mummy says no more cookies, and I’m very, very sad.”
“Right,” I said, trying to generate some enthusiasm. “Give me fifteen minutes to change, then.”
“Oh, no,” Karen said. “You’re not going. This is aunt and uncle time. Jax and I are test-driving the concept, remember? You can keep the baby, but Hamish and Olivia are coming with us.”
“I shouldn’t—” I started to say, fairly half-heartedly. At the moment, for some reason, I felt like I could sleep for about three days. Emotion. Also—haircut. Why do grooming sessions make you feel like you’ve run a marathon? Maybe because you get all that dangerous relaxation and pampering, and it’s hard to pull yourself out of it. And then there were all those tiny hairs sticking to my skin.
A shower and a nap. I longed for them like they were diamonds and roses.
“Can’t hear you,” Karen said. “We’re already going. Then we’re going to come home, make special Auntie-Karen pizza, and draw pictures, and you don’t get to be part of that either, since you aren’t drawing right now. Guess you’ll just have to lie down with the baby and watch TV or something.”
I started to do that. It’s just that I fell asleep. Possibly that was why, at eight o’clock that evening, I was still wide awake. We were sitting around on the patio of Matiu’s brother Tane’s house, beneath tiny white fairy lights hanging from the beams of a vine-covered pergola. There was a Thunk. Thunk. Thunk as a basketball smacked against the backboard fixed to the garage wall nearby, and muffled shouts and exclamations from the players. Five men and one woman—Karen, of course. Jax was acquitting himself well. Not as nimble as the others on his prosthetic leg, but a better shot than most.
Stone Cold Kiwi (New Zealand Ever After Book 2) Page 19
