Turbulence

by Maggie Rainey-Smith

  As he passed the window and before he opened the door, he could see Judy bent over the paper doing the crossword. Whenever he saw her, his feelings for her coalesced into delight if she looked delighted to see him, or guilt if she looked anything else. He struggled with this, hoping some day for an easier relationship. But delight or guilt, he still knew love, or some version of it.

  ‘Adam — what are you doing here?’

  As if he was the right person, but this was the wrong place. Judy looked perplexed, then delighted, and invited him to join her. She moved over so he could join her at the table, patting the soft squab of seat beside her and pushing the crossword towards him.

  ‘Eight down. Help me.’

  The clue was innocent, two words, and of course it wasn’t difficult, but he pretended to struggle to find the answer. And he couldn’t tell if it was deliberate or not, but Judy stared intently at the clue and frowned, so he was forced to tell her.

  ‘Not guilty.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said and looked at him, not the newspaper. ‘Not guilty.’

  She pushed the transparent top of the blue ballpoint down and the nib popped up out of sight. And then she folded the newspaper away in her bag.

  ‘Another coffee,’ she called across to the waiter, who seemed to know her well because he called back, ‘Flat white, no sugar’ and tilted his head as if to include Adam.

  ‘Long black, double strength, two sugars,’ Judy responded, and then looked at Adam affectionately. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’

  There was a sudden draught as a group of people entered the café and then the hiss and whack of coffees happening. Judy hugged herself and rocked back and forward momentarily, watching Adam, smiling. Less delight now and more curiosity.

  Where to start? He checked his watch again.

  ‘White Rabbit,’ said Judy — it was their old joke but a new watch. She used to chastise him for always clock-watching: watch-watching, as she called it, was the purest form of contempt for whoever’s company you were keeping at the time. He would be watch-watching as he kissed her goodbye in the mornings leaving for work — and she would insist he start again … kiss her without looking at his watch and make him run even later. And then she even stopped caring about that.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to phone you. I’ve got something to show you. It’s in my car. I can go and get it now, if you like?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t want to ruin the surprise.’

  ‘Surprise?’ Judy loved surprises. Well, she used to. She had chosen not to ask David the sex of her baby, believing that birth was the most sacred of surprises.

  ‘I’ve taken away the surprise now, haven’t I?’

  ‘Oh go on, tell me what it is, and I’ll decide if you need to go and get it once I know.’

  The waiter placed two coffees in front of them.

  Adam sipped his coffee first, burnt his upper lip. Even now, after all these years, Judy had this effect on him. He felt responsible somehow for her happiness and yet he was more responsible for her unhappiness. But she didn’t look unhappy. In fact, she looked amazing. And that annoyed him too. It meant Phillip was doing a better job of looking after her than he had. And why did that matter? He didn’t know, but somehow it did. He didn’t want Judy back — not that. It was about his chosen role of being Mr Responsible. Why did he feel responsible for everyone? Why indeed? It wasn’t such a difficult question really but it was one he preferred to shelve.

  ‘It’s a reunion thing. Overland Adventurers: they’re having a reunion next month … in Australia. I’ve had an invite, and I presume from the package I received that you’ve got one too.’

  ‘Nineteen down, nine letters, a region in Croatia, starts with “D”,’ and Judy leant down towards her bag to grab the paper to show him, but she didn’t have to, he already knew what the answer was.

  ‘Dubrovnik.’

  They both smiled. Memories of sunshine and what used to be Yugoslavia always made them smile. Treading water as they negotiated a kiss in the Adriatic, treading water … At least they could still share the good memories. It didn’t always mean inhabiting the past; it was a way of negotiating a future, separately, without recrimination — a way of letting go. Hey look, haven’t we done well sort of thing, but not smug and never sentimental … they couldn’t afford that.

  It turned out Judy knew about the reunion, but she hadn’t received an invitation.

  Driving back towards the Hutt mid-morning meant less traffic. Sunlight bounced off the harbour, splashing light like a mirror ball in a dance hall. Even the sky grinned. A container ship edged out from the wharves, moving with the charm of a barge and the grace of a train (wheels under water), smoke billowing. Adam planted his foot and shot over a hundred and twenty kilometres an hour (his demerit points for speeding had just expired, giving him a clean slate). He knew which bend by the BP station would matter and where a speed camera might be lurking. His luck was in, though not before he eased off just in case and checked the grassy verge where the mufti van often sat with its camera.

  Martin was in top form this morning. He had chained his bike to the new sign outside the factory. Galatea in yellow. The sign was part of a rebranding exercise Adam had agreed to, not because he believed in it but to pacify Martin — keep him otherwise occupied. According to Martin, this might be a factory, but that didn’t mean it had to be dull and grey.

  The rebranding exercise had taken three weeks. First they had to drink coffee with the creative people and talk about their feelings. Adam had ducked out for a few quick ciggies during the touchy-feely moments and missed, he realised, some of the important nuances of feelings and factories. If they had been really serious about feelings, they would have invited the men from the factory floor to participate — but that was peevish. So, here it was. A make-over. Red as a colour was too confrontational, blue was boring and predictable and so the new corporate logo for Galatea was yellow — yellow being the new black and environmentally friendly. Yellow it seemed created balance in both mental and emotional responses. Balance. The books needed balancing. But bugger me … Martin had turned signage into science. It had cost an arm and a leg, to not change the company name (something about the irreplaceable currency of nostalgia) but to change the colour and the shape of the words. In essence, nothing had changed. None of them (particularly Martin) actually got the Galatea reference. Not really. They didn’t understand Adam’s dream, the Pygmalion myth, and how he saw himself fashioning works of art, the factory a labour of love.

  Nowadays people thought of the Pygmalion myth as Educating Rita (even Eliza Doolittle had been forgotten, replaced by Julie Walters or Sandra Bullock); but Adam in his short time at university had fallen passionately into the classical tale — not the re-education of anyone, but something intensely personal — the fashioning of an inanimate object into a live figure of passion, Galatea. There were many versions of this tale and one he particularly enjoyed was the Nathaniel Hawthorne story in which a Yankee mechanic carved a beautiful woman from lifeless oak. Adam recognised too the sad fact that admiration for such a myth would warrant the scorn of modern women, in particular his very own Louise. No, none of them got it.

  What was more, since hiring Martin, Adam had discovered there were endless ways to waste money. The bottom line had not changed dramatically and was still not immune to the vagaries of foreign exchange, the up and down of it all. It was all about cycles, he had told Martin, and once you learned to understand the business cycles, you could plan. That was it. Bloody Martin was poking the borax: all about cycles — and so there was Martin’s cycle chained to the new corporate sign.

  In reception, Paris had gone from mousy brown to spiky red overnight. She was wearing a padlock around her neck and goddamn keys for earrings. So, Martin’s make-over had extended beyond the signage and it looked like Paris was one of the casualties. Adam made eye contact in an attempt to ignore the dangling keys. Too much mascara and an eruption (blind zit) on her fo
rehead, but he had to admit the spiky red did lift her more into Eiffel Tower territory than mousy brown had.

  Heather had his hot tea in one hand and a courier pack in the other. She was shifting from one foot to the other, her you’re late gesture, and she didn’t relinquish either the tea or the courier pack until he was seated and suitably apologetic. Heather would have him clocking in and out if they still had a clocking-in-and-out regulation.

  ‘Another urgent courier pack.’

  Heather spoke in her specially cultivated neutral tone, except that on the word urgent her impartiality wavered just a little. The neutral tone had developed since Martin’s arrival at Galatea. Cultivated neutrality actually implied the exact opposite; Heather and Adam both knew this. They hoped Martin didn’t. On this occasion it meant she wanted to know more about these mysterious urgent courier packs. It was better than whining.

  Adam powered up his PC, opened his mailbox and scrolled through the hundred or so unopened emails as a way of avoiding the issue with Heather. He switched to his calendar and twelve reminders unravelled towards him like a jack-in-the-box. Some of them were overdue and some of them new. The first and most relevant one was about this morning’s production meeting, but opening and dismissing and pushing postpone gave him time to think about his day. Normally he asked after Heather’s chinchilla or her mother, or something she’d seen on television the night before. Martin promoted the idea of small-talk. He urged Adam to keep the names of all of his staff in the database and to update constantly with names of new babies and pets. It all seemed rather contrived to Adam, who had always taken a genuine interest in his staff — and now, with the aid of technology, he felt burdened. The more he was reminded to be genuine and caring, the less genuine and caring he felt. The bottom line was supposed to improve, miraculously, in direct ratio to Adam’s enquiries about the health of Heather’s chinchilla and perfect recall of people’s names.

  Having a predominantly Polynesian workforce meant remembering a variety of melodic yet difficult names. On the factory floor, Adam was known as Atamu (the Samoan version of his name). The Samoans struggled with their p’s and b’s, and the t sound romanticised his own version of himself. Ajax and Mt Albert Bus Stop, two of his most talented and loyal staff, had worked for him now for over ten years. Mt Albert’s real name was Alesana, but when he told the story of how he had been born at the Mt Albert bus stop (his mother was on her way to the hospital), the nickname had stuck. Luckily for Mt Albert Bus Stop, no one called him by his full nickname, except in jest, and luckily he had a strong sense of self as well as a good sense of humour. Anyway, they’d all agreed at the start that three names starting with ‘A’ made one too many.

  On the screen in front of Adam, another reminder was activated, smack in the middle of the production team’s latest spreadsheet and forecast. Prostate check-up. Been there, done that!

  Heather had dumped his tea and the courier pack on the small table by the window, walking out without a single word. He knew he would have to do some grovelling later to win back brownie points, but in the meantime he was late for the production meeting and he hadn’t even looked at the courier pack. Then he noticed it was addressed to Judy, not him.

  Judy’s courier pack was flat, not squishy. He wondered what her invitation would contain: would there be some reminder from the tour? He could just redirect it, but instead he decided to call Judy. Maybe she wouldn’t even want to attend the reunion. And if she did, well, best she knew that Louise might come too. Oh hell, what if Phillip wanted to join them? Bugger and bugger again.

  The production meeting looked like a picnic now, so he abandoned the tea and the courier pack and braced himself for another of Martin’s eloquent ties. As he walked down the corridor, he vowed that he wouldn’t under any circumstances comment on the tie or the bike chained to the new sign.

  And as he neared the meeting — a training session for the factory staff — he heard Sergio yelling. Sergio was a Russian immigrant who had lived in New Zealand now for five years but somehow never conquered the ambiguities of English. No one offered to help him, because the Pacific Island staff struggled with the same issues — and, in the pecking order, this kept Sergio at the back of the queue in spite of his impressive qualifications.

  The production office was littered with spreadsheets and screens (one directly monitoring the factory floor — though all of the factory workers were in the production office in front of the monitor showing the empty factory floor). At least four cell phones were scattered across the tables; one landline and one cell phone rang simultaneously. Sergio was throwing his arms about and trying to explain something to Martin, who was fiddling with his ‘Big Tongue’ tie, while the rest of the team had their heads bowed but smirks on their faces. Sergio’s fury and humiliation reached boiling point and he exploded as Adam sat down.

  ‘You guys think I know fuck nothing: you’re wrong.’

  His rolling Russian ‘r’ came out with a roar that would shame even a lad from Gore.

  Then, with as much pomp as he could muster in the circumstances: ‘Actually, I know fuck all!’

  As he thumped his fist on the production table, three cell phones leapt at the impact and one slid on to the floor. There was silence as Sergio waited for the impact of his protestation, unaware of his mistake. Then the knowing smirks erupted into full-scale laughter, led by Ajax. Even Mt Albert, who was often the butt of jokes over mistranslations, enjoyed Sergio’s humiliation.

  With that, Sergio ran, barking like John McInroe after a bad line call — out of the office and through the reception — pursued half-heartedly by Martin.

  Martin attempted empathy with the factory floor but it was usually misdirected. Adam knew from experience that what most of them wanted were more hours please (and sometimes airline tickets for family members in Samoa who might like to work at the factory). But Adam also knew that the last thing you did after you hired a production manager was to undermine him … unless half your staff had left because of him. He realised that Sergio might well have summed up how he felt about Martin — that he practised all his theories on the business but he knew fuck all about running a factory.

  Sergio had left for the day. A grand gesture that included skid marks on the damp grass beside the new yellow Galatea sign — narrowly missing Martin’s cycle (according to Paris). The production meeting was over and Adam retreated to his office.

  Judy’s courier bag was there waiting on his desk. He was tempted to open it but decided against that, instead placing it in a new courier bag and readdressing it. He was about to write an accompanying note when Heather appeared, brandishing letters to be signed.

  ‘I’ll organise that.’

  And, without waiting for his reply, she swooped on the courier bag, removing the transparent tape from the back and sealing the bag.

  ‘Oh, you’ve forgotten to write your return address. I’ll do that.’

  But Heather wasn’t looking at the back of the bag, she was looking intently at the address on the front.

  Chapter Four

  ‘Adam.’ Louise avoided endearments.

  ‘Louise.’ Adam responded. It was easy. Words like honey or sweetheart didn’t suit Louise. Although they sounded romantic, he and Louise both knew they were the first step towards complacency.

  ‘I’m working late this evening. Can you pick up Frankie from dive school?’

  ‘Of course!’ (Again he thought, but didn’t say, because Adam worshipped the ground Frankie walked on.)

  Frankie, almost sixteen and still in a state of grace that some young girls managed to keep longer than others. Her actions and interactions were without any provocative pretext. She and Adam were mates. His relationship with her sister Vanessa was another matter. Vanessa, four years older, was more affected by the loss of her father. At the time he disappeared from her life and Adam entered it, she was seven. Old enough to adore her daddy; and old enough to resent Adam trying to replace him.

  They got on well
now, but Vanessa had never surrendered her heart to Adam and he respected that. She was saving it for her dad, who had in recent months started communicating again: postcards from Australia and the odd phone call. Vanessa had manoeuvred through puberty by focusing on study and aiming for university as soon as she finished Year 12. Frankie was less academic but eager to know things through experience. She was learning to dive, because Adam was a diver. He hadn’t encouraged her — hadn’t felt it was his place to do this. But Frankie had chosen it. Louise encouraged everything the girls considered. She wanted them to embrace every opportunity. It was what she did herself. Adam often thought perhaps he had been one of those opportunities.

  Frankie was tall for her age with almond-smelling hair, widely spaced eyes and skin the colour of her mother’s: multi-flora-with-manuka honey colour … not full density … the honey found on the lid when you opened it. Frankie was fearless for all of them. Her self-belief was irrepressible and it opened up possibilities for anyone in her orbit. Frankie helped Adam to believe in himself, to be a good replacement dad to both her and Vanessa. In the early days, he felt Frankie helped to heal the wound between Louise and Judy — her affection knew no boundaries.

  Frankie called him Dam and the name stuck. They were never certain whether she meant to call him Dad, and got it wrong, or if she had been trying to say Adam. But Dam he was and Vanessa called him Dam too at first though it felt more like, damn you, you’re not my dad. Now she was older, she called him Adam but with more affection.

  In turn, Adam had a nickname for Frankie — he called her Mudface. Frankie was three and Adam had just officially joined the family. She had fallen from her tricycle, head first into a puddle of mud. Too astonished to cry, her wide eyes peered out at him through the mud. Indignation, and something else that stole his heart: an appeal for help. Complete faith that Adam was there for her. He’d stifled his laughter, lifted her into his arms regardless of the mud and carried her to the bathroom, where he had tenderly washed her face with her soft bunny flannel. He’d had to rinse the bunny flannel six or seven times under strict instructions from Frankie to ensure that not a trace of mud was left on it. Her face had been all shiny innocence and trust.