Turbulence

by Maggie Rainey-Smith

  Up until that moment, Elena had just been the blonde on the bus, the one who wore make-up. Oh, he’d noticed her right at the start of the trip, queuing at Dover, passport in hand. She’d stood out in a hefty blonde sort of way, but nothing else. It was in Athens that they became friends: Judy, Adam and Elena.

  Elena had scorned the attention of three seriously uncouth compatriots: overweight Ash from Tamworth; Yanni (the Greek) from Melbourne and Alan, who was on temporary leave from a Sydney seminary, making up his mind about the priesthood. The three louts (as Elena called them) were working their way through all available single girls on the tour, and so far the only stumbling block appeared to be Elena. She wanted shelter; Judy and Adam were happy to offer it. They had hoped to make more friends on the tour, but had ended up leaning on one another because Judy looked down her nose at some of the drunken, loutish behaviour of a number in the group (including some couples whose company Adam enjoyed), especially after a spectacular row of brown-eyes at the back of the bus when they were in the middle of Paris.

  So, Elena it was who they turned to for company. They saved her from the louts and she saved them from suffocation. Elena intrigued them. She was a funny mix of Australian and European and her accent was neither one nor the other. Her eyes were emerald on first impression but turned out to be the palest blue, hiding under coloured lenses.

  She loved the Greek gods. Adam’s foray into the Classics was rewarded with Elena by his side exploring the Acropolis. The Greek myths leapt to life with her beside him. And then in Turkey, they visited Troy. (Ah, Helen: the most beautiful woman on earth, Elena enthused, but he didn’t need telling.) In return he was able to protect Judy and Elena in all their blonde glory from the over-enthusiastic attention of the Turkish men in the markets.

  It puzzled him a bit, Elena’s aloofness from any male interest, but it worked well for the three of them. Judy felt (or so he imagined) no rivalry and he earned grudging envy from Ash, Yanni and Alan (along with a fair bit of unrepeatable banter out of earshot of the girls).

  He couldn’t recall, now, exactly where it happened. Figs and weevils in the cook tent, these he remembered. Elena and Adam had stood together afterwards, picking through figs infested with weevil. Figs bought, with great expectation, from a village market. But she had been determined to have figs on the cheeseboard and so together, painstakingly, as if their lives depended on it and in direct contrast to their own coupling, they uncoupled weevil and figs.

  Judy had woken up and flung herself out of their small, airless tent; dishevelled, grumpy and parched. She’d headed straight for the cook tent looking for water, a cup, and found Adam and Elena arranging cheese and figs. As she passed Adam, she had planted a stale afternoon kiss on his right jaw. It was a proprietary gesture that he’d chosen to ignore (she’d think he was being discreet, but she wouldn’t know on whose behalf he was exercising discretion).

  After that he erased all memory (well, almost) of Elena, with the most romantic moment of the journey: Judy and him in the Adriatic off Dubrovnik, nude — yes, everyone else from the tour as well — swimming in the clearest blue water he’d ever known.

  They’d continued on the tour as if nothing had happened. Elena gravitated towards another couple somewhere in Spain — perhaps Madrid at the Prado, where her knowledge of art history proved useful. He wondered if she was working her way through the couples, just as Ash, Alan and George were working their way through the singles, but chastised himself for the thought. She was obviously embarrassed (so was he) and it was easier to remove temptation. Or so he told himself. Not that he was tempted, not really — God, why was it so complicated?

  It had been curiosity, not love, and not a grand passion. It was this that excused him. He’d not been disloyal in his heart, he told himself. And it was true. Not for a minute did he stop loving Judy.

  Years later, the things he recalled most vividly were the angles, the awkward entry (so different from the comfort of Judy), and that she came before he entered (a whimpering noise, almost fright) and how much it had turned him on … still did, if he dwelt on it.

  Finally it struck him just who might be behind the reunion: Elena. It fitted really, because in the end she had befriended everyone (except the louts) and they’d all promised to stay in touch, though of course they hadn’t. Had Judy? He didn’t think so.

  Perhaps that was how Michael the kiwi had been saved. Elena had several bags (one entirely dedicated to make-up), and she hadn’t purchased lots of souvenirs — unlike Adam and Judy (weighed down with carpets, glassware, onyx ashtrays). She’d offered space in her H-frame’s side pockets when they’d boarded the boat at Calais, heading back to Dover. Maybe Michael the kiwi had been stuffed in a side pocket, forgotten, and now Elena had returned him.

  Adam pondered fidelity. He tried out the word philanderer to see if it fitted. Asked himself: could you stay true in your heart and have sex with someone else? Or worse, stay faithful sexually and give your heart away? Which would be worse? He was guilty on all counts and so he couldn’t be objective. He’d loved with his heart and body (Judy), his heart only (Louise, at the beginning) — and Elena, was that lust? It hadn’t seemed like it then. More like curiosity. Oh, he’d done lust (eventually) with Louise; still did, when she was in the mood. Then there were back-seat, back-beach encounters while Judy was at university. How did you rate those? They hardly counted and were quickly discounted. Not even memorable (cramped mostly, quick mostly, and almost always drunken).

  Chapter Ten

  Three weeks until the reunion. Hagen had not made contact since the dinner party. Louise was still brooding. Martin was reinspired since his return from Tahiti, and eager to implement drastic changes on the factory floor. Heather had been diagnosed with OOS and needed to work part-time, pushing administration costs through the roof as they needed two temps again — one when Heather was here, and one when she wasn’t, for quite different reasons. Paris (according to Heather) was having an affair with Martin. Adam refused to believe this. Martin was surely not that daft, although Paris did seem to have a certain aura that women got when these things were happening. Adam didn’t have time to worry about it.

  Mt Albert and Sergio had formed a front to block Martin’s proposed changes. They were threatening to stand on the overbridge, in full view of all commuter traffic, with placards to express their views. If he supported Martin he would have a strike on his hands, and if he didn’t support Martin he would have a factory on his hands — the very factory he was trying to offload on to Martin. What was more, he had no idea what he was going to do once he’d offloaded the factory.

  Adam’s enduring Pygmalion dream had moved from technicolour to something greyer, less dramatic and more ordinary than he had imagined. Instead of creating works of art, inspired by passion, he was trying to carve a living from a failing factory. Was this middle age? How strange that you could lurch forward to this moment with every clichéd warning in every newspaper headline, and yet somehow you imagined you would be immune, you would be different. Of course, his life had tragedy, but not of mythical proportions, much smaller, more real; and it didn’t inform or propel as he’d imagined. It would be easier, he thought sometimes, if he felt suicidal. But he didn’t. It would be easier if he felt anger — but towards whom? He couldn’t even be angry with Judy and yet he thought she might have liked that. (What had she wanted?) And then there was sadness. He didn’t feel the sort of sadness that inspired poetry, although he had to admit that that poet, Heaney, had touched some raw nerves. In his younger days, free of any sort of sadness, Adam had imagined great sorrow, but he’d only observed it in others. Even losing his mother and not particularly liking his stepmother hadn’t been the sorrow he’d expected. He’d been too young and full of hope to really know or taste great sadness.

  Then with Michael, the sadness was too awful to contemplate, too terrible to dwell on, and so he had moved forward — and now he had this life of everyday ordinariness, which was far more than he d
eserved and far less ordinary than he admitted.

  Heather appeared in the doorway. She had her arms in splints: carpal tunnel syndrome, either a direct result of the OOS or a complication. It meant she couldn’t deliver his coffee, so instead she supervised the temp who made the coffee. The temp followed behind, a mousy sort of girl with a stud in each nostril. Why was it that the plainest girls drew so much attention to their plain little noses with studs? She was thin and her skin was grey. He was certain that under the long-sleeved blouse there were puncture wounds from a serious habit — but he wasn’t about to ask Heather; she had taken a motherly interest in the temp and in turn the temp had become fond of Zeus.

  Martin had hired the second temp, who was a part-time student in political studies. She conducted herself with complete disdain for everything and everyone. Adam suspected she was writing a thesis about Polynesians in the workforce and that Mt Albert was being secretly groomed at tea breaks for radical action.

  Meanwhile, at home, Louise was refusing to discuss Judy’s sudden confession or her own outing as the ‘other woman’, and was focusing with fierce professional pride on her Why Not Wellington? campaign. She was seeing an awful lot of the pinkish-blue mouth, who turned out to be on the grants committee supporting the campaign. Vanessa was bursting with confidence thanks to her Creative Writing class and was spending time with Phillip (for God’s sake), who was critiquing her latest short story. Frankie had gone quiet and was spending a lot of time in her bedroom, texting someone — Louise had threatened to confiscate the phones (Frankie had two, one for each pay plan to maximise free texting) or at least to read her messages, but Frankie slept with the phones under her pillow. She had shadows under her almond eyes and as Vanessa’s life grew, so Frankie’s seemed to shrink. Tonight Adam would talk with her. They were falling apart, he knew the signs, and if Louise wasn’t going to face up to it, then he would. All he had left was the girls, and he wasn’t about to abandon them.

  The phone rang. It was Hagen.

  ‘Fancy a wine tonight?’

  Adam certainly did. And he didn’t so much forget Frankie for tonight as park the idea for later …

  He’d waited for Hagen to make contact. God knew what Hagen thought but at least he wanted to catch up. He both dreaded and looked forward to it. Had Hagen been avoiding him? It seemed like it. But possibly he was being polite, offering Adam space. After all, what was there to say? What could you say?

  Yes, I was having an affair with Louise.

  Yes, I had a row with Judy the morning Michael was killed.

  Yes, I heard Judy … she told Michael to run after Daddy.

  There it was, the truth, lodged like a scratch on a CD, something you tried to ignore but couldn’t. He should have felt some sense of relief, some lifting of the burden. Instead, he’d been numb with the shock of it. The information didn’t absolve him: he’d still run over his son. But the reason Michael was outside in the driveway was that Judy had said …

  Go, Michael, go with your daddy.

  Screamed actually, she said, she’d screamed at Michael to go with his daddy. Admitted in front of unwilling witnesses at a dinner party that she had hated Louise for years, wished the worst for Louise, wanted Louise to know about death in the way Judy knew about it — the death of a child. Even now he couldn’t repeat even to himself the things Judy had said. Frankie and Vanessa were his world. He couldn’t believe that Judy would be capable of such venom. Nor that after years of harbouring the venom, she had released it over all of them. There was no antidote. They had all been sprayed. It was only Judy who felt better.

  There was something to be said for harbouring grudges, holding on to them, even if they ate you up. It wasn’t that he wished Judy eaten up, just that after being the bad guy for so long and wanting so badly to make up for it, he wasn’t ready to be relieved of this burden.

  Hagen had chosen a new bar on the waterfront. It was busy, light-hearted, and it lacked the intimacy of the Beaujolais. It was just right. The view was a kaleidoscope of the best of Wellington: wharves and water; wind-ruffled waves; commuters, suits on scooters; beautiful women with bare shoulders — and Hagen across from him, light-hearted, laughing, good company.

  It started out well. They avoided all topics that might land them in meaningful dialogue. Beer flowed, paunches expanded to accommodate the warmth and, like the true gentleman he was, Hagen made no reference at all to their last encounter.

  Two beers …

  ‘Skål!’

  … became three …

  ‘Skål!’

  … became four …

  And then they needed food. It might have been a miscalculation to wait so long for the food. Adam found his initial comfort and relief turn to an overwhelming desire to confide in Hagen. He’d been bottling this stuff up for two weeks now, juggling work and family, and the beer had undone him.

  ‘How’s Nakita?’

  ‘Godt, godt …’ (which was good, good, but sometimes, when distracted, Hagen slipped into Danish).

  ‘The other night …’

  There, he’d done it. The beer had done it.

  Hagen looked uncomfortable, shifted in his chair from lounging to upright.

  ‘Forget it.’

  That wasn’t what Adam was about to do. Who else could he talk to?

  ‘I’ve spent years with this guilt.’

  But Hagen was determined to move on.

  ‘Forget it. Relax, Adam. Let’s just have a beer.’

  To show how determined he was, Hagen tipped back his head and drank the last quarter of his bottle of Corona, thumping it on the table.

  ‘Another?’

  And before Adam could answer, he was up at the bar, buying more beer, chatting to the barman, doing his Hagen-from-Copenhagen thing — anything, it seemed, to avoid talking with Adam about the other night.

  But Adam, who had spent years filtering his thoughts, moving forward, being good, was unable to help himself.

  ‘Nakita meant well, I know she did.’

  It wasn’t a platitude. Oh, he’d mocked Nakita in the past (privately and often), but he knew she had meant well, getting them together before the reunion, not knowing what she was unleashing.

  ‘Judy meant well.’ A low blow from Hagen.

  But it didn’t put Adam off. Hagen was right. Judy meant well. She’d unloaded her own guilt but she hadn’t known how much guilt meant to Adam, how attached to it he was.

  ‘You must think I’m a bastard.’

  Hagen sighed and then shifted up a gear, tried distracting Adam with humour.

  ‘You are a bastard, you old bastard.’

  For a moment Adam was distracted, revelling in friendship where a man called you a bastard and it was a compliment. He allowed himself a lapse into laughter, to Hagen’s relief. But it was short-lived.

  ‘Yes, the sort of bastard who cheats on his wife and runs over his son.’

  Hagen was a moderate man; he enjoyed the odd scandal and envied the people involved. But this, this was different. He looked away, unable to respond to Adam’s self-denigration.

  ‘A thud as if I’d hit a sack of spuds.’

  Adam had never thought it before, let alone said it. But that was how it had been: as if he’d hit the groceries left abandoned on the path.

  Sometimes, when he was a child, he would imagine inhabiting the life of another boy he’d seen across the road, in the park or at school. Then he would panic, in case he had already moved from his own existence to that of someone else. He’d recall his mother reminding him when he pulled faces that if the wind changes you’ll stay like that. What if the wind changed, and he was suddenly this other boy in another life?

  He wondered how it would be to be Hagen, without children, carving out a new life in New Zealand as an immigrant. No regrets.

  ‘Nakita is grief struck.’

  Hagen was talking now. He was leaning towards Adam as if to shake him from his self-indulgence.

  ‘You don’t know what it�
�s like to be an outsider.’ Hagen didn’t wait for a response. He was angry.

  ‘We come out to New Zealand wit our funny accent and we build a new life. Each odder — dat’s all we have. Each odder. And now dat’s all we have. Look at you Adaam. Look what you’ve got. You’ve got everything. Louise, Vanessa, Frankie and Yudy and Michael.’

  Adam was perplexed, startled. How could Hagen say he had Michael?

  ‘You’re so goddamn blind!’ Hagen’s voice was raised and his accent had become blurrily more Danish, as if he was eating a hot boiled spud. ‘At least you have your tragedy, your memories, your losses. What have we got? Nakita and I … just each odder and it’s not enough now. Not enough. Nej, nej, nej … Forstår du det?’

  He raised his fist as if to hit the table, but stopped short and instead threw his open hand towards Adam in a gesture of friendship.

  ‘Don’t you see, Adam? You have this life. You’ve made mistakes. But look at us, Nakita and me: we’re so afraid of mistakes. We’ve tried so hard to fit in, to be successful, and now it’s all we have. I’m angry you fucked Louise while you had Yudy. I’m angry, don’t you see? I’m angry you had Michael and you lost him. I’m not blaming you, but I’m angry. My own life in comparison seems so empty. Nakita thinks you are brave, Adam. All the women seem to want you.’

  Adam was dumbstruck. Hagen’s pain was raw and it made Adam ashamed and embarrassed for him. How could Hagen have hijacked this moment and turned it into his own tragedy?

  Was that how it worked? You waited years to talk about something and when you did, its significance remained yours. All that caring and sharing that Nakita had trained for, was it worth nothing? In the end you buried your pain or it buried you. Only those weighed down with it could measure it. Pain could not be compared. Hagen needed consolation as much as he did.