Just Come Over

by James, Rosalind

  He’d said to stay there, and she’d had no choice but to mind him, even if it meant sitting in a puddle with her jeans soaked, feeling like she’d failed, knowing he was mad, and wondering if he was going to throw her away.

  It was right there: the memory of Dylan, his shorts wet and the pee still dripping into the grass, standing in the middle of the yard and crying, while the cousins laughed and Rhys raged, hot with frustration and embarrassment, “Why do you have to be such a baby? You’re useless. Go change before Nan sees. You aren’t playing with us anymore, either. Stay in the house, baby.” The satisfaction and the shame when Dylan had run away, and the hollow spot in the pit of his stomach.

  You could always do better. Time to start. He said, “Here. Let’s get that wet kit off,” then crouched down and stripped her T-shirt and jeans off her, the ones she’d been wearing for two days now. In Chicago in the winter snow, and in Auckland in summer. At a foster home, at a restaurant being questioned by the police, at an airport, on a plane, at her aunt’s, at a new school where she’d be the newest of all and had the wrong accent, and in the not-halfway-unpacked house of a strange man who wasn’t really her father, and who knew it. She was looking over his shoulder now, for once not meeting his gaze, trying to suppress the sobs, and failing. Like somebody who’d been pushed too far, and was finally giving up.

  He’d never been able to stand giving up, and he couldn’t stand watching her do it, either. He got his hands under her arms, pulled her to her feet, and said, “No worries. It happens. Everything washes the same whether you pee on it or not.”

  Her undies were blue, with dots on, and on the front, they said Friday. Just as wrong in New Zealand as they’d have been in Chicago, where it was now Tuesday. There’d been nobody to tell her which ones to wear, he guessed, or nobody who’d cared enough to do it. Her mum had probably helped her pick out her clothes. At night, maybe, before she’d read her a story.

  “Next time,” he said, knowing his voice was too gruff but unable to keep it from being any other way, “ask me about the toilet. That’s a Dad job.” He got a towel wrapped around her. That was better. She looked safer. Warmer.

  “You won’t . . .” She’d stopped crying, but she was looking down, like she didn’t want him to see her face. “You won’t be there. Because you have to go to . . . work.” A sniff. “And then you’re going away.”

  “You ask Auntie Zora, then, or your teacher. You ask Isaiah. He’s your cousin.” And kinder than Rhys had ever been, because he had Zora in him.

  “What if I wet my pants again at my new school, in Year Two, though? Everybody will laugh.”

  She looked at him at last. Those eyes. Too scared, and too tired. He should probably get on her level to answer, so he crouched down, kept a hand on her shoulder, and said, “Fair point. Let’s think about it. First of all, you won’t do that, because you’ll ask your teacher when you first need to go. And if it does happen, and somebody laughs, you say, ‘So what? Bet you lot have all peed your pants as well. I don’t have to go anymore, anyway, which means I can kick your arses.’ They can try to embarrass you, and they probably will. That doesn’t mean you have to show it. You turn it around onto them, that’s all.”

  Her expression could only be called skeptical, but that was an improvement over “defeated.” He lifted a corner of the towel and wiped her face, and that was better, too.

  “That’s not the right thing to say, I don’t think,” she said. “You’re not supposed to say to do fighting.”

  She was probably right. Zora would no doubt have offered up something better. He tried to think of what it would be, blanked, and gave up. “That’s because I’m the dad,” he said. “That’s the dad thing to say. Never let them see you’re scared.”

  “Oh,” she said. “What if I am scared, though?”

  “Then you tell me, and we’ll make a plan, like we just did. We’ll strategize, eh. Because, again, I’m the dad. That’s my job, to help you when you’re scared.”

  She looked more dubious than ever. “It is?”

  “Yeh. It is.” At least it should be. He was in guessing territory here, because he’d never had much of a dad himself until he was a teenager, and there hadn’t been heaps of sharing of feelings going on. Well, other than anger. His dad had been good at that one. “Come on. Let’s get you into the bath.”

  One thing at a time, mate. He didn’t have to wash her hair tonight, or if he did have to, he was pretending he didn’t know that. Four more things, then. Shower. PJs. Plait hair. Put sheets on bed. Ten minutes, and he’d be done. He got her into the shower, stuffed her dirty things into the washing machine and started it, then found the PJs in one of Zora’s carrier bags and the Thursday undies—pink with white stripes—in Casey’s suitcase, and took them into the bathroom. He could at least make sure she had the right undies.

  See? he told himself. You don’t know how to do it, but you’re doing it anyway. Parenting. More or less. Not too unlike sharing a hotel room with a nineteen-year-old kid when you were thirty-two, and letting him watch you and follow your example, except that Casey was younger. And a girl. And his daughter.

  But other than that.

  She was standing directly under the tap, her eyes screwed shut and her hair and face soaking wet. He poked his head around the glass partition and asked, “What are you doing? You weren’t meant to wash your hair.”

  “I couldn’t help it,” she said. “The water comes from on the top. It’s getting in my mouth. I don’t think showers are very nice.”

  He turned the tap off, getting fairly wet himself in the process, grabbed the towel again, rubbed it over her face and hair, and said, “You keep your head out. You don’t stand directly under it.” He thought about what she’d looked like when he’d turned the tap on and told her to get in. Hesitant, he’d call that. “Have you taken a shower before?”

  She shook her head. “Tomorrow,” he said, “I’ll show you how.” He was over the am-I-supposed-to-see-her-naked part of the question, at least. Clearly, there was no choice.

  He’d be fixing her hair again tonight after all. Which was fine. They were fine. Two-a-day trainings were normal.

  By the time she’d got herself dressed, he had her clothes put away from the various boxes and bags and was getting the sheets on the bed. “See?” he told her when she came in from the bathroom. “They have flowers on. Nice and girly. I’m going downstairs and getting a blanket for you now.” From off of his bed, since everything else was still in boxes. “And then we’ll comb your hair and I’ll practice my new plaiting skills.” After that, he could get to bed himself. His eyelids felt lined with sandpaper, his muscles felt like he was dragging them along, and his focus kept wavering, which was what happened when you’d managed maybe six hours of sleep out of the past forty-eight.

  “OK,” Casey said. “Maybe I could go with you.”

  He was almost out the door. “I’ll be back in a second.”

  She stood planted there, her damp hair already frizzing around her face and Mickey and Minnie dancing on her PJ top, all of her looking tiny against the too-large bed. There wasn’t even a carpet in here, and he hadn’t asked the decorator to hang any art on the walls. For good reason, he’d thought. Decorator-chosen art was always something rubbish—a mass of intertwined driftwood fastened, for some unknown reason, to an open wood frame, or a red “X” covering a sloppily painted white background. If somebody had painted your shed as messily as that, you’d have refused to pay him, but if they did it on a painting, you paid extra. Go figure. He’d had both of those in his house in France, and had never been able to work out why. The driftwood had looked like a giant spider crouching on the wall, especially in the dusk. Casey’s walls might be bare, but at least they wouldn’t give a person nightmares. So why did she look like she’d be having nightmares anyway?

  “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  He crouched down beside her again. “What?”

  “It’s kind
of scary in your house. Because it’s a jungle outside of it, like Jumanji. Are there wild animals?”

  He held out his hand. “Come on, then. We’ll go get the blanket together. No wild animals. Nothing but birds. It’s New Zealand. Very safe place. We’ll have a look around in the morning, and I’ll show you. It’s called, ‘Prime hillside property, your own slice of heaven, set amongst native bush.’ Means there are trees, that’s all, and that you pay extra for them.”

  “Jungly trees. Like in dinosaur times.”

  “Fern trees and palms, but no dinosaurs, and nothing else scary, either.”

  Which was all fine. But when she was in bed at last, and he was standing by the door, about to turn off the light and wondering whether he’d manage to get his own clothes off or just fall in a heap across his bed, she clutched Moana closer and asked, “Could you leave all the lights on?”

  “You can’t sleep like that, surely.”

  “But if it gets very scary, I could find where you were. Your bedroom is a very far ways away, and your steps have holes in them. My mommy’s bedroom is next door, so if I have a bad dream, I can go find her.”

  “Right,” he said. “I’ll read you a story from the dinosaur book for the bad dreams. After that, I’ll turn your bedroom light off, but I’ll leave the door open and the light in the passage on. If it gets very scary, you can come find where I am.” She had to be at least as tired as he was. Surely she wouldn’t wake up.

  Also, what were the builders thinking, putting a floating staircase into a house where people might have kids? The steps looked flash enough, each riser carved out of pale-gray wood, the bottoms shaped like waves. The acrylic panel was more secure than your average railing, too, even if it didn’t look it, but Casey was right. There was open space between every riser. You might not actually be able to fall through, but you’d feel like you could. It was a stupid design.

  “OK,” she said. “But maybe I could sleep on the couch instead, so it wouldn’t be so far and there wouldn’t be holes, and I could find you.”

  When he finally allowed his eyes to close, at a point where he couldn’t have held them open five more minutes, he was wrapped in his duvet on the floor beside her bed, with her arm hanging over the side and the tips of her fingers brushing his hair. Making sure he was still there, that he hadn’t left her.

  It was better for her to be in her own bed than on the couch, that was all. He was helping her get used to things, and it was just for tonight. After that, they’d be fine. One day at a time.

  I need to get a carpet down here, he thought. But no rabbits in the house. Absolutely not. Hard line. And fell asleep.

  Rhys was always first to training. How would the players care if the coach didn’t care more? On Thursday, though, Finn beat him in, and so did almost a dozen of the players. The skipper, Hugh Latimer, was amongst them. Hugh and his wife had twin babies, as well as two other kids, yet here he was.

  Rhys was beginning to get the idea that just getting to work on time, when you had kids, was an accomplishment, what with checking a forest of jungly trees for lurking wild animals, plaiting hair, helping a six-year-old into all the pieces of her new school uniform, cooking breakfast, checking that you’d filled out various pieces of paperwork and she had them in her backpack, and having to wait for her to run back inside, when you’d finally made it into the car for the short drive to Zora’s house, for her sparkly trainers.

  “You can wear your school shoes for today, surely,” he’d said.

  “Not with my unicorn shirt,” she’d said. “Because it has sparkles, and the shoes have sparkles, so they match. You have to match.”

  Needless to say, he was late. The gym resounded with the clank of metal plates, the soft thuds of impossibly fast feet running intricate patterns marked onto the floor with tape, and the driving beat of the music that kept the adrenaline pumping. He headed over to Finn, who was casting an eye over the squad, each of them going through his own individualized workout routine, and asked, “How’re they going?”

  “Not bad,” Finn said, making a note on his clipboard. “Give me a minute, and I’ll fill you in.” He took in Rhys’s appearance, which probably wasn’t anything to write home about, and decided to add, “You look like hell. Family troubles not sorted, then?”

  “Not quite.” Rhys passed a hand over his jaw. He’d meant to shave. He hadn’t had time. He had time to say this, though, and he needed to. To everybody, and soon. Why hadn’t he told Finn before, at least? Some kind of magical thinking, maybe, believing that it wasn’t really happening until it actually did. Not a mindset you encouraged, if you were a coach. Or if you wanted to be any kind of man. He said, “I went to Chicago to get my daughter. Her mum died, so she’s with me now. It’s been a bit of an effort to get things in order.”

  Finn didn’t actually stare slack-jawed at him. It just felt that way. After a moment, he asked, “Where is she now?”

  “School. At least she will be soon. She’s six. Staying with Zora, Dylan’s wife, before and after school. Going to the same school as Dylan’s boy, which is handy.”

  “Her first day there?”

  “Yeh.” Finn was still looking at him too sharply. “What, I should’ve taken her? I thought that, after.”

  “Maybe. Not easy being a single dad, though.”

  “You’d know, I reckon.” Finn had been a widower with two kids when he’d met his wife. Now, he had four.

  “I’ll ask this,” Finn said, and Rhys braced for it. “When was your last workout?”

  Not the question he’d been expecting. He tried to remember, and blanked. Too many travel days and time changes. “A while back.”

  “After training, then,” Finn said, “we’ll run ourselves through.”

  Rhys said, “I’m guessing that reminding you that I’m meant to be in charge here isn’t going to stop you. Or saying that it’ll have me collecting Casey even later.”

  Finn gripped him by the shoulder and shook it. “Nah, mate. It’s not. Also, you’re stiff as iron. How are you going to think like that? There’s no problem that a good workout doesn’t help you solve. You’re not going to be much chop as a dad if you let yourself get unfit and grumpy, and you’ll be even more of a bastard as a coach.”

  “Right,” Rhys said. “Fine.” He’d text Zora and tell her six-thirty, and he’d pick up a takeaway for himself and Casey, and something for Zora and Isaiah as well. That would make up for the lateness, he hoped. He hadn’t expected this parenting thing to be so . . . all-consuming, and it had been, what? A few days?

  Spontaneity, he was beginning to realize, was a thing of the past. He’d never thought he had much of that. In fact, though, he’d had heaps. If he’d had somewhere to go or something to do, he’d just gone, or had done it. He hadn’t realized that was unusual.

  On the other hand, when he’d crouched down to say goodbye to Casey this morning in Zora’s kitchen, she’d asked him, “Are you coming back?”

  He’d said, “Yeh, I am. You live with me now, remember? If you aren’t sure what to do at school today, or if anything bothers you, you can make a note in your mind and tell me tonight, and we’ll make a plan.”

  “A statagee.”

  “Strategy. That’s right. A strategy always helps.” He’d smoothed a hand over her hair, which wasn’t quite as lumpy today, and given her a kiss that barely felt awkward at all, and she’d put her arms around his neck and pressed her cheek to his. And he’d thought fuzzily, That’s all right, then, and ignored the way his chest had tightened.

  He definitely needed a workout.

  Nobody pushed you harder than Finn. At nearly six that evening, when Rhys was sweating freely and doing his third set of pull-ups with an enormous weight chained to his waist, everything else was gone from his mind but this fairly extreme moment. And when he dropped to the ground at last, unclipped the weight, and put it back on the stack with arms that shook, he said, “That’s why I retired, you sadistic bastard.”

  “Nah,
” Finn said. “Good for you. Last one.” He headed over to a set of inclined benches, hooked his legs under, and started doing crunches, and Rhys wiped his face on the bottom of his T-shirt and followed suit.

  “So your daughter’s six,” Finn said, curling his upper body off the bench yet again. “From Chicago.”

  “Yeh. Casey.” Rhys didn’t feel like talking, and not just because he didn’t feel like explaining. He didn’t feel like talking. It must be all the pizza. It felt like every slice had settled in his abs and was burning to get out.

  “Didn’t realize you’d been to Chicago seven years ago,” Finn said, not even sounding out of breath, “other than with the ABs.”

  “I wasn’t. That was when.”

  “What was when? What happened?”

  Rhys curled back down, breathed a moment, and said, “With the ABs. What d’you think happened? It wasn’t a bloody romance. I was with Victoria. It was a night.”

  “Before or after the game? And you’re three reps behind. Keep up.”

  Rhys laced his hands behind his neck again and grimly pressed on. “What does it matter? She’s here. She’s six. She’s mine.”

  “Maybe you forget,” Finn said, “that I was your roomie in Chicago. I remember a hockey game, a couple nights before ours, maybe, because we were pretty relaxed. I remember a curfew the night before, and having a few beers after the game in some bar. And I remember walking back to the hotel with you. It was bloody cold. Windy, too. It may have been snowing. I even remember you ringing Victoria, because I went and took a shower I didn’t need and wished she wouldn’t talk so long. I wanted to go to bed. So unless you hooked up in the toilets somewhere in there, or became a different man from the bloke I’d known for ten years . . .” He swung his feet out from under the bar and stood up. “I don’t think so.”