by Paula Boock
‘It’s yours. There’s about a thousand bucks there. Do whatever you want.’
‘Bob, don’t be daft.’
‘Honey, what you need is some time. You’ve got a lot on your plate. You’re what, seventeen years old? Go to Auckland, see your boyfriend, have a real holiday. After a few weeks you’ll see things more clearly.’
That crazy father of mine, after all these years, he could still floor me. We hadn’t had a maintenance cheque for nine months and here he was handing me his bankcard – well, one of them. I took it.
When we left the cafe, he took me downtown and we bought an air ticket to Auckland for Monday morning and some records for Bob. He always asked my advice on music – he liked to be ‘with it’ he said. What a giggle. Then he tried on about 15 pairs of jeans and spent a lot of time trying to convince me that I should let him buy me this horrendous necklace thing. He had this dippy woman trying it on me, while I stood rolling my eyes, until he burst out laughing and gave up. That’s one thing I like about him, he loses graciously.
On the way home, we called into the supermarket where Bob bought the most expensive ingredients possible and then insisted on cooking me this gourmet meal, despite the fact that he didn’t have a clue how to work his own oven. Huh.
It was nine o’clock before we were finished. Luckily I had Benny’s latest letter with me because he’d just moved flats. I rang the new number and told him I was coming up on Monday. He wanted to talk for ages but Bob was standing over me with this goofy ‘I’m the great generous father’ smile, so I kept it short. We had a nice evening watching an old western and I went to bed wondering what it would have been like for my mum when Bob was taking her out. ‘Charming,’ she had once said to me when I asked her for a nice word to describe him for a school exercise.
‘My father is a charming man,’ I wrote in my school-book, and the teacher had stamped it with a bright red smiling face.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUNDAY WE WENT TO NEW BRIGHTON. It was so hot we had to walk in the shade so as not to burn our bare feet. We shopped again of course, Bob hooting when we were asked to leave a shop because we had icecreams. We bought Christmas presents for the twins – he went berserk in the toy shop – and I bought an antique brass sun-dial for Stef and Davy. It would look classy in our backyard by the river; it even went with Stef’s colour scheme. Bob arranged for the shop to send it to Dunedin, though he thought it was a weird thing to buy.
We had time for a swim before Bob had to go to his tennis club for a function that evening. He invited me but I told him I’d pass. I hate sports clubs, especially swanky ones. Bob reeked of aftershave. I picked up a pizza and sat reading a book I’d brought with me. It was Mary Renault’s The Last of the Wine. It was brilliant, I kept reading for hours, stopping only to chuck out the remains of the pizza and turn on the light. At about midnight I walked around the apartment, book in hand, turning things off. I took it to the bathroom and forty minutes later I was still there, sitting on the edge of the bath bawling over the last few pages.
The key turned in the door. Voices. Damn it, he’d brought someone home. Bob’s towelling robe was hanging on the door. I put it on, dried my face and tidied the bathroom a bit. There was a woman’s tiny squeaky voice, then Bob’s, then her tiny squeaky laugh.
Bob’s bedroom was next to the bathroom, with a connecting door. I heard them approach and for some reason, turned out the light.
‘And this, is the BEDROOM!’ Squeaky laughter.
Now I know this was a jerky thing to do, but I couldn’t help it; I crept up to the bright keyhole and looked into his bedroom.
She was blonde (what else?), skinny and in this very ugly pink halterneck affair. They were kissing. When they stopped and she turned, I got a hell of a shock. Underneath the mountains of make-up and gash of lipstick, she was just a baby bimbo: she looked hardly any older than I. My menopausal father was making it with an infant, f’chrissake.
I crept out the other door to the hall and into my room. I felt ill. I could hear him tiptoeing to the kitchen and the clink of glasses. He came back whispering incredibly loudly, ‘My little daughter’s here on holiday. She’ll be fast asleep in the other room.’ And I’m all of five years old, by the sound of it. His door clicked shut and I heard a muffled shriek.
I picked up The Last of the Wine again. It fell open in the middle:
“As the gods hear me Alexias, your good shall be mine and your honour shall be like my own to me; and I will stand to it with my life.” I felt more than myself and answered, “Don’t be afraid, Lysis, that while you are my friend I shall ever come to dishonour; for rather than be a shame to you I will die.” He put his right hand on mine and his left about my shoulders and said, “May it never be less than this with us.” With these words we kissed.
It was weird to read about these two guys in love. Though not as weird as seeing my father with that bimbo. The Strange thing was, I had never been able to imagine him with my mother. I’d asked him about it in the early days. He’d tell me some gushy story about going out somewhere trendy and having a great time, but he could never remember what she’d been wearing or what she said about things. It was like looking at a photograph – I could only ever see the outside. Davy said all he could remember were arguments. The day after Mum left, Bob had another woman living in our house.
The earliest I could remember was being at Helen’s, but Davy told me about the time in between, when we lived in this dingy flat in Maitland Street. He used to catch rats and sell them to his friends as pets. He was eleven, what can you expect.
Now Helen, she was different. We liked living with her; I had this white furniture all my own size and a big colourful rug she had made herself with bits of sheepskin. I remember watching my feet land on it every morning and curling my toes into the fur. Funny, it was Helen who later told me that my feet and hands were exactly the same shape as my mother’s. I was about twelve at the time and we were at the beach together. I felt pleased, but a bit suspicious about Helen then. She could remember everything – Mum’s favourite colours (purple and green), the clothes she wore (flamboyant), whether or not she liked seafood (she didn’t), what books she read – everything.
I hadn’t ever written to Helen since she went to Australia. Davy did, he loved her. But she still wrote to me occasionally, and always sent both of us birthday and Christmas presents. Stef told me angrily last Christmas that it was ‘about time you got your sheet together and forgafe thees woman for luffing your mother!’ I hadn’t.
I heard some moans from the other room. Oh, god. I turned and pulled the covers over my head.
The bimbo was gone in the morning. I woke to the sound of Bob making breakfast and singing:
There is a house in New Orleans
They call The Rising Sun
It’s been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God, I know I’m one.
So that’s where I got the lousy voice from. I wandered through, surreptitiously checking his bedroom and the lounge. She must have left ‘after’ How seedy.
‘Ah, that’s where my dressing gown is.’ He’d already showered and was in a pair of shorts, nothing else.
‘Yeah, sorry.’
‘No problem, I’m warm enough. Now, breakfast for the traveller. Do you want eggs or just toast?’
‘Coffee.’ I’m a caffeine freak.
‘Help yourself, the jug’s hot. There’s real coffee if you want.’
‘No thanks, I’m used to instant.’ I liked that he didn’t try to force me to eat breakfast.
I sat down at the smoky glass table with my coffee. Bob was happily bouncing around, laying out marmalade and butter, plates, salt and pepper, knives. Very chirpy.
He was in good shape for his age, I decided. Good strong legs, broad chest, only the slightest overhang above his shorts. He was tanned and his dark, wiry hair was just turning silvery at the temples. He looked very like Davy, except that Bob moved like an athlete, conscious always of his body.
There was something distasteful about it. It used to be a kind of joke – Davy would call him ‘the old dog’ and we’d snigger. I didn’t feel like that anymore. I tried not to, but I kept seeing him in bed with the bimbo. Ugh. And yet here he was this morning, positively crowing.
He brought his eggs and toast and fruit juice to the table and sat opposite me.
‘Is Benny meeting you at the airport?’
‘Yep.’
‘That’s good. He’ll be pretty pleased to see you, eh?’
‘I guess so.’
He ate fast, hungrily. Huh. I leaned back and watched him, wondering how my mother had left him. How many mornings had she sat here, sipping coffee (or was it tea?) and watched him eat breakfast like this. How had she left? Had she waited until he finished breakfast one morning and coolly told him? Or had she just gone and left a note? Or did she have to flee in the middle of the night during one of those arguments? I hoped not. I wanted to ask him.
‘What are you thinking, honey?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You look serious.’
‘I was thinking about Mum.’ His eyes flicked up.
‘You’re starting to remind me of her.’
‘How?’
‘Looking at me like that!’ He finished his juice, looked at me for a second, then slapped both hands on the table, rattling the dishes. ‘Come on, we need to get moving.’
We drove to the airport in a Porsche sports Bob had in his showroom. He drives fast but safe, and we got there in plenty of time. I felt a jerk travelling in a Porsche, especially in my Docs, patched jeans and old felt hat. As we pulled up, Bob said, ‘Okay if I don’t wait with you, Mel? I’m a bit pushed.’
‘It’s fine.’
He parked expertly between a taxi and a bus. I looked at him. He was super smart now, in his sunglasses and white silk shirt.
‘How did she leave you?’
‘What?’
‘Mum. How did she tell you she was leaving?’
He looked at me, puzzled. ‘Why?’
‘I really want to know.’
‘I don’t rightly remember, sweetheart,’ he answered in a mock American accent.
‘Come on, Dad.’ Dad. I saw his eyes flick for the second time this morning. He studied me, chewing on the inside of his cheek. Then he looked away and sighed.
‘I was the bad boy. I’d said I was going to a conference. She found out that in fact I was at – someone else’s place. When I arrived back on Saturday, the house was bare. She’d sold everything to a dealer and taken off. The phone was the only thing there and it was ringing incessantly. She’d put an ad in the classifieds – ‘to exchange, 1970 Mazda RX7 for a bed.’
He reached over the seat and lifted out my pack, handing it to me. ‘That’s how she told me, Mel.’ He was sort of smiling. ‘She had style, your mother.’
* * *
The 8.30am Monday flight is known as the ‘businessman’s flight’ Apart from the air hostesses, I was the only woman on the plane. I recognised some MPs. I wondered if the ‘Minister’ would be there, but I didn’t see him.
I like flying, I get a real buzz out of it. I like the dinky little trays and cups you get with the sugar in sachets and the cheese and crackers in cellophane wrap. It’s like living in a miniature world, to match the miniature world of play farms and roads and cars on the ground. I felt a lot better having 10,000 metres between Bob and me. We climbed through the cloud and I leaned back in the soft seat.
I’d only been to Auckland once before, with Davy and Stef and then only for a couple of days. Wai had been lots of times – she had relations north of Auckland. She’d talked a lot about Cape Reinga, about how spooky and mystic it was. ‘You can feel the spirits, Mel, you can feel them all around.’ She freaked me out when she talked like that, looking like her grandfather on the marae.
I wanted to go to Cape Reinga. It had something to do with my mother, I guess. I kind of liked the idea of standing there and imagining her flying off the tip of the country into the air with the other spirits. Corny, I know, but it’s better than standing over a slab of stone in a cemetery and constantly imagining the state of her body underneath you. I mean that’s morbid.
Maybe Benny would like to go with me to the Cape. No, he’d told me he was working most days (that would surprise Wai). He’d also told me that his band were playing a gig at a local club that night and that I could come with his flatmates. He flatted with two women in Devonport.
I decided to go to the Cape by myself. There were plenty of cruisy bus tours and anyway, I wanted to spend all Bob’s money.
I thought about Wai. She’d have come with me to the Cape – she loved it there. Maybe she would have come with me from Dunedin if I’d asked. But then I remembered her tossing her head and walking away from me. I screwed up my face. It hurt to think that Wai might still be angry with me. I don’t really have many other friends you see, not ones that I don’t have to pretend to.
* * *
The heat was hot, as Wai said. The smell of pine mixed with the paint, the only noise the squeak of iron as Wai moved about, her feet brown and bare. We were painting her Uncle Rapata’s roof.
Wai was wearing this crazy sailor’s cap that she’d scored from an old chest of Rapata’s. It was faded and tatty, but the badges sewn on it said Lisbon, Trinidad, New York, Port Said – I’d kill for that cap.
We’d done the dumbest thing alive. We’d painted the side of the roof the ladder was on and now couldn’t get down until either the paint dried or Rapata came home from the shops. Well, we could if we had to – it wasn’t that far to the ground from the verandah. Instead, we stretched out on the hot iron, ignoring the knobbly nails digging into our backs. Below us, beyond the macrocarpas, the harbour was for once almost still, a few yachts drifting idly, the hills beyond them shimmering in the heat.
I felt like one of those yachts, stationary amidst the blue, my sail slack. For once, for the first time it seemed, I had no fear of drowning if I relaxed completely, no distrust of the blue. I was safe, and at peace.
After a while Wai turned to me, her face so close I could see the usually invisible freckles across her cheeks.
‘There are times, when I want everything to stop, now,’ she said, lightly slapping the iron, ‘because it’s all so – perfect.’
‘Yes.’ How was it that Wai always understood? I looked up at the sky. ‘Half the time I can’t wait for the future, just to know, to be there, and half the time I don’t ever want it to happen.’
Wai raised herself onto her elbows. Her arms were spattered with green paint. ‘The future’s weird, isn’t it? Have you noticed how it’s easy to imagine some people old but not others? I can’t ever see myself old, but I can you. You’ll be a really grumpy old woman, a bit crazy still.’
I laughed. ‘I hope so. It’s middle age I can’t imagine. What’ll we be like at 50?’
Wai snorted. ‘Yuk. You can shoot me if you ever catch me wearing those dumb hats or carrying a handbag.’
I looked at her, smiling, but then I imagined her face changing in front of me, disintegrating into an old woman’s, like in some tacky horror movie. It’s one of those dumb things I do just to ruin things for no reason. Then, before I knew what was happening I was crying all over the place, at the same time thinking, ‘What the hell am I crying for? What is it?’ It was awful. I’d die before I cried in front of anyone else, but Wai didn’t make a big thing of it. She just took off her sailor’s cap and fiddled with it, saying, ‘Cut it out, Mel, you’ll get me going.’ And when I stopped she smiled this grown-up smile and put the cap carefully on my head. ‘I know how you feel,’ she said. ‘I always do.’
I closed my eyes then – on the sun, the blue sky, Wai’s face looking so strange – and tightened my stomach until I had it under control. Then I said quietly, ‘I’m scared, Wai, of growing up, of leaving this behind. I don’t want anything to change, but it is already. We’re changing. You’ll stop liking this cap because it’s silly
and we won’t mean as much to each other – god, we’ll go all suburban and formica.’
‘Give me a break, Mel. Listen, it won’t happen to us, because we’ve got each other. I’ll look out for you and you for me. We won’t let things take over.’ She counted off on her fingers. ‘No dumb hats, one. No handbags, two. No formica. Anything else?’
‘Electric can openers.’
‘No electric can openers. Okay?’
Incredibly high up, a seagull circled. ‘Shaved legs. Woodchips. Jazzercise.’
‘Christ, Mel, woodchips? Okay, okay. Hats handbags formica electric can openers shaved legs woodchips jazzercise. Deal?’
I shut my eyes. ‘Deal.’ Wai remained sitting up. It was so quiet for a time that the smell of the paint seemed to take on a high-pitched whine. Once I heard the tiny ticking sound of flesh moving and I knew without looking that Wai was reaching behind her neck to lift her hair away from her shoulders in the heat. Eventually somewhere, maybe across the harbour, a motor-mower machine-gunned into life and beside me Wai shifted.
‘Mel.’
‘Mmm?’
‘I can promise you one thing.’
I opened my eyes. She was resting her head and arms on her knees, her face turned towards me.
‘I won’t ever forget this afternoon. I just made a memory of it.’
She lay back down and I felt her hand reach for mine and hold it lightly.
* * *
We were coming in to land. Auckland was murky but looked hot. It was massive. The engines throttled back and I was suddenly feeling freaky as hell. I’d never stayed with Benny like this before – only on holidays with all of his and Wai’s family, and that was different.
I filed off the plane and through the tunnel into the main lounge. The place was full of suits. I stood still and looked everywhere. He wasn’t there. He promised me he would be there and he bloody wasn’t.
Someone touched my shoulder. I swung round and he was standing, arms outstretched, looking as beautiful as ever.
