Dinner at Rose's

by Danielle Hawkins

  ‘For a cigarette?’ I asked, deeply sceptical.

  ‘Well, actually it was a joint. But still . . .’

  ‘What?’ said Aunty Rose, fingers gripping her whisk so tightly that her knuckles went white. She drew herself up to her full six foot two and glared at her niece. ‘You took marijuana to school? Have you lost your mind?’

  ‘Aunty Rose, it was just one tiny little joint –’ Kim started feebly.

  ‘I don’t want to talk to you,’ said Aunty Rose. ‘I might say something I’d regret.’ She removed a dog roll from the fridge and stalked outside into the dusk, slamming the door behind her.

  There was a dismayed silence, and then Kim said, with a slightly shaky attempt at bravado, ‘Well, that wound the old girl up.’

  ‘Shut up,’ I said flatly, putting away the last of the groceries and shutting the pantry door.

  ‘It’s not like you can talk!’ she cried. ‘I don’t believe you’ve never smoked a joint.’

  Actually, in my sheltered life I’d only ever shared one with Chrissie, one night when Graeme was working late, and it had sent us both to sleep. Not really a prime example of living life on the edge. ‘In my stupidest teenage moments I’d never have taken drugs to school,’ I snapped. ‘You might be expelled, you moron – then what’ll you do?’

  ‘School’s a waste of time anyway. I might chuck it in.’

  ‘Brilliant. You can go and pump petrol for the minimum wage. And if you’re really lucky you can find some dropkick – that one you’re going out with would do – to get you pregnant. You might as well fuck up your life completely while you’re at it. But don’t worry, if you smoke enough dope you won’t really care.’

  Kim burst into tears, threw her half-eaten apple at me and ran out of the house.

  I found, as I bent to pick it up, that my hands were shaking. Well done, Jo, I thought. You couldn’t have handled that worse if you’d tried – now you’ve lost any influence you might have had over the poor kid. I waited until I heard her roar down the drive in her mother’s car before going outside.

  ‘What did you say to her?’ Aunty Rose asked, straightening up from where she was attending to the itchy spot between Percy’s ears. He grunted indignantly, sighed and waddled off.

  ‘I stuffed it up completely,’ I admitted. ‘I told her she was an idiot and asked why didn’t she just drop out of school and get herself pregnant while she was at it.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘Huh?’ I asked blankly.

  ‘That child thinks you’re the most marvellous thing since sliced bread.’

  ‘Not anymore, she doesn’t.’

  ‘Let me finish,’ said Aunty Rose. ‘She thought you’d be amused and instead you came down on her like a tonne of bricks. It might actually shock some sense into her.’

  ‘Or she might rush off and mainline some heroin,’ I said.

  ‘Of course she won’t.’ Rose sighed. ‘Well, I hope not. I do hope we can get her through the next few years. Matthew had his moments, but at least he had a useful father.’ She added as she turned back towards the house, ‘And then, of course, you don’t have to worry about boys coming home pregnant.’

  Chapter 16

  KIM’S DISCIPLINARY HEARING was held on Monday afternoon, after school. According to Matt she had been threatened with suspension and reduced to a small and pathetic heap before receiving her sentence of recataloguing every reference book in the Waimanu High School library. She would tackle this task every afternoon from three-thirty until the cleaners finished and locked up at five.

  ‘I’ll bring her home,’ I offered. Matt had wandered into the physio clinic during Amber’s lunch break and was leaning against the front counter digging thistles out of the pads of his fingers with his pocket knife. Getting out prickles is such a satisfying pursuit – I was itching to have a go but since the unhappy day, about fifteen years earlier, when I lanced his infected toenail and hit a fairly major artery, I had never been allowed anywhere near him with a sharp instrument. ‘Although she’d probably rather walk than go anywhere with me just at the moment.’

  He grinned. ‘Poor little sausage,’ he said. ‘You yelled at her, I yelled at her, Rose yelled at her, Mum sobbed broken-heartedly for about an hour last night about the shame she’s brought upon the name of King . . .’

  ‘Poor Kim,’ I said with feeling.

  ‘She’s not allowed to go to guitar practice anymore and Mum’s banned her from spending time with Jonno the dropkick.’

  I rubbed my nose thoughtfully. ‘You don’t think that’ll just encourage her to rush off and sleep with him?’

  ‘Probably,’ he said morosely. ‘Rotten little bastard. I bet he gave the stuff to her in the first place.’ He sighed. ‘It was bloody thoughtless of Dad to go and die just as she hit her teens.’

  ‘You’re doing a good job,’ I said. ‘She’s lucky to have you.’ I felt my face getting warm and added hastily, ‘When does she start her detention?’

  ‘Today,’ said Matt. ‘I’ve already told her she’d better come round here afterwards and grovel until you give her a lift home.’

  ‘I hope she turns up.’

  ‘She will,’ he said. He straightened up and put his pocket knife back in his pocket, evidently satisfied with his thistle progress. ‘Hey, Jo – thanks.’

  ‘I’m going that way anyway,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Not just for that. For – well, everything.’

  I barely stifled a sigh. Being viewed by Matt as Good Old Jo, although undoubtedly better than Jo the Interfering Pain in the Neck, was profoundly depressing.

  KIM APPEARED AT ten past five, cloaked in gloom. Amber had gone for the day – she’d even shut down her computer, which was little short of miraculous – and I was sorting through a box of ancient tag ends of Elastoplast rolls. Why Cheryl felt that keeping the last two inches rather than wrapping it around the client’s ankle was a useful saving was beyond me.

  ‘Matt said you might take me home,’ Kim muttered, looking at the ground.

  ‘Of course I will.’ I put the box back in its cupboard and shut the door. ‘Hey, Kim?’

  ‘Don’t!’ she said hysterically. ‘Just don’t lecture me anymore – I can’t stand it.’

  She looked so small and so miserable that I hugged her before it occurred to me that I probably wasn’t high on her list of potential comforters at the moment. However, she buried her head in my shoulder and burst into tears. I patted her soothingly for a while, and when at last she stopped sobbing and began to hiccup I passed her the box of tissues I had strategically placed on the front counter to encourage Amber to stop wiping her nose on the backs of her hands. (It hadn’t worked; Amber used the tissues solely to remove polish from her fingernails. Clients of Waimanu Physiotherapy waited for their appointments in a haze of acetone fumes.)

  Kim took the tissues and blew her nose. ‘Sorry,’ she whispered.

  ‘Me too. I had no right to yell at you – sometimes I forget you’re not actually my sister.’

  ‘I wish I was,’ said Kim.

  ‘That may be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,’ I told her. I fished in my bag. ‘Here, I got you something.’

  She unwrapped the little package, looked at the pair of silver hoop earrings I had purchased that afternoon during the ten-minute lunch break Amber had allowed me and began to cry once more. ‘They’re b-beautiful,’ she sobbed. ‘And they’re real silver – oh, Josie.’

  ‘Steady on there, Kimlet. Come on, let’s go home.’

  HAZEL, ACTING LIKE an early Christian martyr, took Aunty Rose to Waikato Hospital for her mastectomy. The rest of us were strictly forbidden to visit.

  ‘What an incredible waste of your time,’ Aunty Rose said. ‘I’ll only be there a day or two. It will be a pleasant change to have a little time to myself, rather than having to constantly try to instil a little decorum in you three hoodlums.’

  Matt grinned at her. ‘If I were you I’d give up on Jo and me,’ he said.
‘We’re far too old to discipline properly. Concentrate on the toad.’

  She stayed in hospital three nights, and Hazel brought her home again on the Saturday – it transpired that Hazel’s new bedroom curtains were finished by then and waiting in Hamilton for collection. I was finding it very hard to look at Hazel’s motives with anything approaching charity these days.

  They arrived at around six, having waited hours to be discharged, and Aunty Rose made her way shakily across the gravel and up the kitchen path. She was surrounded by an anxious retinue of four dogs and one pig, all of them needing reassurance that she wouldn’t leave them again.

  ‘I see you’ve mistreated the animals in my absence, Josephine,’ she said.

  I crouched down to help her off with her shoes. ‘Spud slept in the kitchen in front of the stove last night, and I scratched Percy’s stomach for about an hour. Don’t believe a word they say.’

  Aunty Rose touched my head lightly. ‘Of course your flaws are too numerous to count, child, but you do mean well.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Cup of tea?’

  ‘Does the Pope wear a funny hat?’

  Hazel sank into a kitchen chair with an air of exhaustion. ‘What a day,’ she murmured. ‘And now who’s coming to bother you, Rosie?’

  Aunty Rose was lowering herself carefully onto the chaise longue. I heard the familiar splutter of Matt’s decrepit ute through the dogs’ chorus and said, ‘It’s just Matt.’

  ‘Where is Kimmy, dear?’

  ‘At home,’ I said. ‘I dropped her off about half an hour ago.’

  ‘How is our young miscreant?’ enquired Aunty Rose.

  ‘Bowed by remorse,’ I told her. ‘I hope it wears off in a day or two. It’s pitiful to see.’

  ‘I hope it doesn’t,’ said the young miscreant’s mother tartly. ‘How she could be so insensitive as to worry us all at a time like this – and think of the repercussions for your health, Rosie dear.’

  ‘Good God,’ said Aunty Rose. ‘I hope you didn’t say that to Kim.’

  ‘Well, she needs to know how her thoughtlessness affects others.’

  ‘Oh, for Pete’s sake,’ Aunty Rose muttered. ‘Josephine, remind me to ring the poor child. Hello, dear boy.’

  ‘Yeah, g’day,’ said Matt in a low, flat Kiwi drawl specifically designed to provoke his aunt. ‘It’s nice to have you home.’ He came across the kitchen and kissed her cheek, Farmer Barbie at his heels. This evening Cilla was wearing a snow-white top and a delicate primrose cardigan over her jeans. Her hair was loose down her back and she looked, I thought bitterly, like a little porcelain doll.

  I was a bit taken aback by the intensity of my resentment, and to make up for it said, ‘Hi, Cilla. You look beautiful,’ far more warmly than was really necessary.

  ‘Doesn’t she just,’ said Hazel. ‘What a lovely little cardigan. And such flowers, dear.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Cilla demurely. ‘Miss Thornton, it’s so nice to have you home.’ She handed Aunty Rose a bunch of chrysanthemums, yellow and cream – they went delightfully with her cardigan.

  ‘They’re very nice,’ said Aunty Rose. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘So thoughtful,’ murmured Hazel. ‘Such a dear girl.’

  For Christ’s sake, she got them at the petrol station, I thought, as sour as a whole vat full of acid. It’s not like she grew them from seed. ‘Anyone else for tea?’

  ‘No,’ said Hazel. ‘I must head home. I’ve a shattering headache from the driving.’

  Cilla looked sympathetic, which made one of us. Matt merely smiled faintly on his way to the peanut jar and I turned away to fetch a vase for the flowers. ‘Aunty Rose,’ I said, ‘can I possibly interest you in a scrambled-egg sandwich?’

  ‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘You know, Josephine, what I would really like is a very soft boiled egg with toast soldiers.’

  As I made dinner according to Aunty Rose’s precise instructions – ‘Butter to the very edges of the toast, love,’ and, ‘Leave them in for four minutes and twenty seconds from when the water comes to the boil’ – Matt vanished outside with the empty wood basket and Cilla made extremely polite conversation.

  As soon as he reappeared she tucked a hand into his and murmured, ‘Honey, your aunt will want to rest.’

  ‘I’ll be over tomorrow morning,’ Matt said. He kissed Aunty Rose, smiled at me and went out with Cilla still clinging to his hand.

  I blinked hard once or twice, said silently, Don’t even think about it to the lump in my throat and asked, ‘I don’t suppose you should have a glass of sauvignon blanc with your egg?’

  ‘Probably not,’ said Aunty Rose, ‘but I can’t think of anything nicer.’ She was silent for a moment as I carefully sliced the tops off our eggs and retrieved the wine from the fridge, and then she said gently, ‘Josie, my love, come here.’

  I went, sinking to the floor beside her and leaning my head against her knee. I wasn’t sure whether Mum had told her or if she’d seen it herself, but I was unexpectedly comforted that she knew. She stroked my hair while the griffon stared over our heads in a bored fashion, and at length she said, ‘I suppose it might get us in trouble if we put those flowers straight onto the compost heap.’

  I gave a little gulp of laughter, got to my feet and poured us each a glass of pale, crisp wine to go with our eggs. ‘Matt would never notice,’ I said, ‘but his mother would.’

  Aunty Rose got slowly and painfully to her feet to take her seat at the table. ‘They’re almost exactly alike,’ she said. ‘Cilla and Hazel, I mean.’

  ‘Mm,’ I said thoughtfully. They were indeed. Soft and sweet and clingy, just like fragrant pink leeches.

  Chapter 17

  I HAVE NO doubt that mastectomies are painful and unpleasant, but compared to the hideous crippling nausea of the chemo, Aunty Rose said, a mere surgical wound was an absolute doddle. She had a little stash of pain medication and drove herself down to the medical centre in town every afternoon for a change of dressing, but as early as Sunday morning she was better than she had been since the chemotherapy began.

  On Monday night after work I met Andy in the supermarket, pushing a trolley containing two boxes of beer, a wide range of frozen pies, hash browns, chips and fish fingers, and a token bunch of bananas.

  ‘Howdy, stranger,’ I said. ‘That’s a health-giving and nutritious selection you’ve got there.’

  ‘All the food groups,’ said Andy. ‘Alcohol, fat and protein.’

  ‘You forgot sugar.’

  ‘I haven’t got to that aisle yet,’ he explained.

  ‘I see. Hey, I’m coming home in a day or two.’

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ he advised. ‘The bush pig has found herself a boyfriend.’

  ‘Crikey,’ I said in surprise. ‘Who?’

  ‘Some dickhead who drives for Hayden Judd.’ Hayden ran Waimanu Transport, a small down-at-heel trucking company that operated out of a grotty shed next to the sale yards.

  ‘Huh. Well, good on her.’

  ‘Just you wait,’ said Andy. ‘They have long showers together and lie on the couch groping each other and making sucking noises.’

  ‘I can hardly wait. Long showers, did you say? What about the power bill?’

  ‘It’s disgusting,’ Andy continued. ‘Having to get in that shower knowing they’ve been having sex all over it. I can’t take it anymore – I’m moving in with Chris.’

  ‘Gee, thanks,’ I said.

  He grinned. ‘You can come and hang out there if you want,’ he offered.

  I ENTERED AUNTY Rose’s kitchen half an hour later hung with bags of groceries like a Christmas tree and found her sitting at the table.

  ‘It’s a lovely evening,’ I announced. ‘Full moon, and lots of little tattered clouds streaming across the sky – you should go out and look. It would be a perfect night for witches.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Aunty Rose in a tight little voice.

  I turned and looked at her properly and saw that she was clasping her h
ands together so firmly that the knuckles were white.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘The hospital called,’ she said. ‘They want me to have another CAT scan tomorrow before they start the next round of chemo.’

  Oh, God. ‘Another one? Why?’

  She sighed and pushed herself up to stand, palms flat on the table. Her knuckles were far too big for her hands now, and the old-fashioned amethyst ring she wore slid freely between the joints. ‘The margins weren’t clear,’ she said. ‘And they want to find out where else the bloody thing has popped up.’

  I was appalled – they’d already taken her right breast and several lymph nodes. It had seemed horribly drastic but Matt and I had told each other that at least they’d be sure to have got the whole rotten thing, and that would be that.

  ‘Oh,’ I said weakly.

  Aunty Rose sighed. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I can only think of one thing to do, and that’s to have a glass of wine. Might as well make the most of it while I’m not feeling like total poo.’

  Several glasses of wine later, curled in one of the big overstuffed armchairs in the living room, I asked, ‘Would you like me to move back into town for a bit and let you have your house to yourself?’

  ‘Josephine,’ said Aunty Rose with the slightly pompous solemnity that descended on her when she was tiddly, ‘the reason is almost impossible to fathom, but I would actually miss you if you weren’t around.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Then I’m around.’

  She looked at me, suddenly serious. ‘My dear, is it too hard for you?’

  I wasn’t sure if she meant my housekeeping duties or the proximity to Matt, but I shook my head. ‘Nope. I’m very grateful, to be honest. I ran into my nice flatmate Andy this evening and he told me the dread Sara had found herself a boyfriend and they’ve been lying all over the lounge sucking each other. He can’t take it anymore – he’s moving out.’

  ‘That does sound fairly dire,’ Aunty Rose agreed.