by Nicky Webber
‘Yup. I’m replacing the old legacy software systems with a bar code transfer system,’ explained Fred. ‘So when the guards pick up the money from the banks, they scan the barcode, and all the info is immediately Wi-Fi’d over to head office so reports can immediately run. It’s slick and is going to take me about six months to develop. The design’s approved, and I think I can make the whole operational and transporting the cash side of the business hum.’
Hawke grinned and leaned forward, clinking his beer bottle with Fred’s. ‘As they say in good old Kiwi land. ‘Good on ya, mate!’ They both smiled happily.
‘You know, Dad, on a completely different topic, and you have to swear on a stack of Bibles not to tell anyone. Not even Logan or Mom.’
Taking in a deep breath, Fred braced himself. Within seconds he worried Hawke was ill again. The lymphoma had returned. It was an ever-present fear, but surely that was impossible given how happy and healthy Hawke appeared.
Hawke’s face fell into solemn contemplation.
‘Well?’ asked Fred, already suppressing growing anxiety.
‘Do you promise? Seriously?’ Hawke asked.
Fred’s eyes narrowed. ‘Of course! What do you take me for?’
‘Well, Sacha and I have sorted started dating… We realize…’
Fred stood up from the sofa. ‘I knew it!’ He said as if he had just won first prize at Bingo.
‘What ya mean?’ frowned Hawke. ‘How could you know it?’
‘Um,’ Fred pursed his lips and stalled for time to gather his thoughts. ‘It just kinda seems obvious when the two of you are in the same room. It fleetingly crossed my mind when we all had that BBQ last Sunday. The two of you look a little too cozy.’ Fred raised his eyebrows, tilting his head at Hawke, and gave a knowing grin.
‘Come on,’ responded Hawke. ‘We specifically agreed not to be obvious.’
‘We'll just make sure you never apply for a job with the CIA.’
‘Does Mom know?’ Hawke asked.
‘Nah. I don’t think so. Logan’s been away in Japan since then on one of his marketing workshops, so was pretty oblivious that day. Had packing and passports on his mind,’ smiled Fred.
‘Well, remember, neither of you says a word. Sacha insists we talk to you all when we feel we’re good and ready,’ Hawke said.
‘No big deal,’ grinned Fred. ‘A few dates are a long way from marriage. What the hell, have fun.’
‘That’s so unlike you,’ said Hawke, slightly taken aback. ‘I thought you would blast us both as being part of the family and friends for our lifetimes, blah blah?’
‘Please. Who the hell am I to comment? Look around. There are so many unhappy couples. If you get the communication and trust right, you’re in with a flying chance,’ said Fred. ‘Both those sisters are blonde and gorgeous. What is there not to like? Besides, I would’ve thought you going out with one of them would’ve happened years ago. You all seem close and know one another so well.’
‘There’s something else I want to talk to you about,’ Hawke said with a severe tone in his voice.
Fred tilted his head, listening.
‘It’s just an option. Something I’ve been thinking about, but I’ll need your help to have any chance of success.’
‘Go on,’ blurted Fred, intrigued by Hawke’s conversation.
‘I’ve been thinking and doing a lot of basic planning. I think I’ve come up with a brilliant business proposal,’ Hawke stated, watching Fred’s expression. ‘It could really make a ton of money for us…’
They both twisted their heads at the sound of the front door opening. Maddy had returned home laden with grocery shopping. Both men leaped up and helped her carry the bags into the open-plan kitchen.
Fred poured his wife a red wine and offered Hawke another beer. ‘Or do you want wine? It looks like dinner will be awhile.’
‘Well, about an hour,’ chimed in Maddy. ‘I’m shoving the beef in the oven now and will join the party. She smiled as she glanced at the empty glass beer bottles on the counter-top. ‘Looks like you two are enjoying it on your own, anyway.’
CHAPTER 14
Fumbling for Words
In the early evening, several days later, with Logan safely back home, the three adults sat listening to music on a new UE Boom he had purchased in Tokyo. They played all their old favorites, The Eagles, Bread, Carole King, several songs placed on repeat, and they laughed and talked about Logan’s trip and Fred’s new job.
‘We missed you,’ Fred said to Logan. ‘So, I for one, feel fully compensated for your six-day disappearance and consider this UE to be the penance necessary to compensate for the crime of your abandonment.’
They chuckled out loud and continued with musings and smart, one-line banter. Most of it was referencing past details of their relationship and shared roller-coaster lives.
The tipsy trio happily consumed a delicious roast and salad as they continued chatting. The food seemed to sober them up a little, and the conversation grew more serious. Fred turned the volume of the music down.
‘Hawke was here a few days ago and wanted to chat. We had an excellent talk. The best one we’ve had in years,’ Fred started.
A furtive frown crossed Maddy’s face, anchoring her into Fred’s words and their subtext. Where was this conversation going?
‘That’s great,’ Logan said. ‘I think the youngest of the kids has finally grown up!’
‘Yeah!’ said Fred. ‘Initially I thought he was going to tell me his cancer symptoms had come back again.’
Both Logan and Maddy’s expressions dropped in shock, concentrating all their attention on Fred’s restless eyes.
‘No. NO. Not that. It was me wondering out loud about what the hell Hawke could talk about.’ Fred tried to retrieve the mood which he had, with his usual ineptitude, killed with one sentence.
Without warning, Fred experienced a flood of adrenalin as the full collision of his promise to his son swung into sharp focus. He frowned and looked down with a frantic heart, grasping at straws to avoid breaking his word to Hawke. He swore under his breath, further alarming the other pair sitting opposite.
‘Guys, I promised Hawke I wouldn’t repeat what he told me,’ Fred started, fumbling for words and increasing the tension of the other two on the sofa.
‘What is it?’ asked Maddy, alarmed, with the color draining from her face. ‘Please tell me his health…’
‘It’s really nothing, nothing at all.’ Fred tried to reassure with limited success.
Maddy fell back against the couch and gulped from her glass.
Logan held Fred’s gaze, trying to use ESP to figure out what they had agreed between Hawke and his best friend.
‘Okay. Let me level with you two, but you have to look surprised when Hawke or Sacha tell you themselves,’ Fred said.
‘She’s not pregnant?’ Maddy shot back in horror.
‘No, nothing like that,’ Fred said. ‘It’s nothing major. It’s just that Hawke told me in confidence, and I usually have a tough time communicating with him. So I don’t need to be accused of being the damn snitch.’
‘Come on, Fred, spit it out,’ said Logan, exasperated at Fred’s inability at cutting to the chase. ‘We will not blab to anyone.’
Maddy butted in, her face a mask of disenchantment. ‘We all know Sacha and Hawke are involved, to put it mildly.’ her understated words stung Fred with bitter sarcasm.
Logan looked uneasy, fearing the worst.
‘Yes, I know.’ Fred’s words saturated with irritation, as if he was in checkmate before the game had started.
Maddy leaned forward and placed her glass on the low coffee table. ‘Is there something else?’ she said.
‘What did Hawke have to say?’ asked Logan. ‘After all, we’ve not told a soul about this.’
‘No one wants to put Sacha in the proverbial,’ Maddy stated. ‘She swore me to secrecy, worried it would get out before they were ready.’
‘What’s that m
ean?’ Logan interrupted, annoyed, feeling he was being singled out. ‘Don’t you think they wanted to keep it from us all?’
‘Sure,’ Maddy said. ‘She called last night to chat with you, Logan, and you weren’t back from Japan, so we started talking on the phone. I asked her straight up about the living arrangements in the apartment and she confessed to having hooked up with Hawke.’ She looked from Fred’s face to Logan’s as the men sat in stunned silence. ‘I’m not sure exactly how deep the hook goes but am assuming it’s full-throttle if you get my meaning.’
They greeted this with collective disquiet. Maddy was confident she could almost hear the machinations of both men’s minds working through the implications and permutations of a relationship between their shared offspring.
Maddy was the first to break the hushed stillness in the room.
‘They’re consenting adults, and we just need to respect their arrangement,’ she stated with authority, pulling her chin down and looking directly at both men. ‘Tolerance and acceptance, guys,’ she said, raising her gaze to challenge their response.
‘Really? It’s just crazy.’ Logan said firmly, and his voice strained with tension. ‘It’s like sleeping with your sister! They’ve been family and friends all their lives.’
Fred shrugged it off. ‘He’ll get over it soon enough. She’s nearly five years older than Hawke. It’s just a holiday romance thing. They obviously got together since New Zealand.’ He hesitated. ‘It must’ve been going on while they shared the beach house in Whangamata.’
‘You think?’ smiled Maddy. She paused and continued. ‘Yeah, the whole Kiwi experience was the perfect place for a holiday romance with her surrogate brother.’
‘So we’re talking about almost 12 months? Are we?’ said Logan with growing concern. ‘So it’s not just a one-night stand or a short-term thing?’
‘A year does not a marriage make,’ Maddy quoted back to the men.
Early the next morning Fred had left for a securities meeting in the CBD. Logan remained behind to express his concerns to Maddy privately. They stood in the kitchen, drinking coffee and eating toast, discussing their fears of a long-term pairing between Sacha and Hawke.
‘Sacha is Hawke’s half-sister,’ Logan said. ‘It’s a real problem.’
‘Well, they don’t know that, of course,’ Maddy said.
‘That’s exactly the point, Maddy!’ Logan said, exasperated that he had to spell it out. ‘If they ever had children, there’s a risk of genetic defects through inbreeding. I think it’s probably illegal in the US to marry your sibling. Don’t you?’
‘You’re getting a bit carried away,’ she said. ‘No one’s talking a long-term relationship like a marriage or having children. Aren’t you going over the top? This is simply a love affair. It will blow over, I’m sure of it.’
‘Are you?’ he looked steadily at Maddy. ‘Do you mean it will blow over as our minor affair did? Not!’
‘Like Shakespeare once said in one of those plays of his; this too shall also pass.’ She began counseling him against any interference. ‘I’m pretty confident these young lovers will burn themselves out and move on.’
They stood staring at one another in silence, waiting for the threat of anger to ease before either spoke again.
‘Of course, there’s Fred, your very closest friend who knows nothing, Loggy,’ Maddy said. ‘If we discuss the sibling connection, we are going to have to tell Fred about Hawke being your son and explain to Hawke about you being his biological father…’
‘Oh, what tangled webs we weave, Maddy,’ Logan interrupted, his words bordering on sarcasm.
How many times had they been down this narrow, dark path and arrived at this same dead end?
The following day, Logan met Hawke for a quick lunch at a local diner during his work break. They placed their order with the server, and Logan launched into the reason for his contact.
‘You know, we all understand about you and Sacha…’ Logan folded the paper serviette while he talked, anxious about Hawke’s response.
‘I knew Dad couldn’t be trusted.’ Hawke said in a clipped tone, heavy with anger. ‘Damn it. I should’ve listened to my own instincts.’
‘I’m listening to mine,’ Logan said. ‘It wasn’t Fred that broke your confidence. Sacha had mentioned it to Maddy, so a few off-hand comments ended up in revealing the full picture. Why the hell keep this thing under wraps? What’s the purpose?’
‘No point in going there now, is there?’ Hawke retorted, annoyed with Logan.
‘Hey Bud, don’t shoot the messenger!’ Logan responded as a slightly disheveled-looking server delivered their food to their table, with tendrils of curly hair escaping from her headscarf.
‘Just answer me one thing,’ Logan asked as they both shoveled the fast-food into their hungry mouths. ‘Are you really going out with Sacha? Is it serious? Don’t you think this thing has happened because you were both thrown together on the Kiwi holiday?’
Hawke looked up at Logan and considered his answer. ‘You know, Uncle Logan, that sexy young blonde was giving me the come-on for months, long before I left for New Zealand.’
Logan jolted his upper body back. The words slammed him from complacency and left him with a weird sense of being offended and impressed at the same time. But he didn’t want to let on to Hawke.
‘So come clean.’ Logan said. ‘How serious are you both? How long has it been going on?’ He paused, assessing his son’s body language before continuing. ‘Is it really serious?’
Hawke nodded. ‘We both think so, and that’s why we wanted to be sure before we told you all. We want to get engaged.’
‘Whoah, Bud, that’s a big step.’ Logan rested his burger on his plate to inspect Hawke’s face. ‘You only broke up with Tracy a year ago and, all that drama leading up to that, over your illness and recovery. You’ve hardly given yourself a chance to get back to base before you’ve already got yourself embroiled with Sacha.’
‘Are you saying I can’t think for myself at 28 years old?’ Hawke challenged.
‘No, of course not,’ Logan replied. ‘You’re an adult having a grown-up conversation about your relationship with my daughter.’
‘Well, then. Let’s keep it private,’ Hawke said, regarding his Uncle’s expression closely. ‘I respect the privacy of your relationship with my parents, and I expect the same level of respect for mine with your daughter.’
CHAPTER 15
Beyond the Memories
Maddy turned to Hawke, holding her hands up in dismay. ‘I just can’t believe how much junk your grandmother collected over the years.’
‘Hold up. We’re talking about your mother when you say that.’ Hawke rolled his eyes. ‘Or is that a little too close to home?’
This was the second round of cleaning and clearing out of Maddy’s mother’s house. The funeral for her mother, Vida Hawkins, a tall, dignified woman with scant regard for reality, had taken place the previous week. At 87, Vida had lost her grasp on certainty and inhabited a twilight zone where memory failed and imagined characters lived. Maddy and the Geriatrician caring for her mother had a duplicitous familiarity. They both navigated around the vast gaps in Vida’s veracity. It was with some relief to all, when she slipped into a deep sleep and remained there for two long days before her heart got the memo, that enough was enough. Maddy’s GP pronounced her dead at 4 pm on Wednesday 14th July.
Vida’s house was a rambling shiplap timber double-story home. The elongated wooden sash window frames were in various states of disrepair. Some opened half-way, and others welded shut after decades of neglect camouflaged with thick layers of enamel paint slapped on the frames over the past one hundred years.
It was an impressive home when the Victorian house emerged from its foundations in 1918. Over 100 years later, the property had deteriorated, pared back to a shadow, a husk of what the home had once been. Like Vida, the building conveyed a proud, elegance resistant to change but hamstrung by its decrepitude. T
he Victorian structure with wrought-iron railings on two upstairs balconies exuded a past soaked in charm and deference, two attributes surplus to requirements in the contemporary world. So it was little surprise that Vida also found her later years bewildering, misguided and frustrating.
While Hawke loved his grandmother, most of his connection revolved around childhood memories when she read stories to him and took time to talk about his life, his interests and filled his head with exciting adventures from her own past as a young child and teenager growing up during WWII.
‘Are you actually doing something or just gazing at the dust motes, hoping this phase of your life will pass?’ asked Maddy, jolting Hawke out of his daydreaming.
‘Just thinking about Nana,’ he said. ‘It seemed such a waste to see her retreat into some faded shadow of her former self.’
Maddy nodded sadly and grabbed Hawke, hugging him as they both took in the gravity of the elderly woman’s passing. She pushed her son back, with her hands still resting on both his shoulders, and she peered more closely at him.
‘You okay?’ she asked.
He pulled a face, not trusting himself to speak until the emotional wave ebbed away from his heart.
‘Why don’t you go upstairs and start sorting out those boxes of papers. Most need incinerating. We’ll make a pile on the landing, and get Dad to help us over the weekend, load them into the incinerator in the yard.’
‘Sure,’ he said, smiling weakly, and spun around to leap up the stairs two at a time. He felt relieved to be out of the living room and kitchen, where so many wonderful childhood memories still haunted him.
It was thirty minutes later when Maddy heard Hawke calling her from the upstairs landing. ‘Mom. Mom!’
She walked into the entryway and looked up.
‘Check this out,’ he called from the upstairs railing, waving a neatly folded tan leather wallet, more substantial than a standard billfold and well-worn, with no domes or zips. He held something else in his hand behind his back, too. This soft leather pocket designed in the 1930s with small folds for ID cards had larger compartments that ran the length of the seven-inch bill-fold where relevant documents could slide easily between its leather pouches. He scuttled down the stairs and thrust the cracked leather wallet at his mother.
