Huia Short Stories 11

by Неизвестный

  . . .

  Patrice thought back over her meticulous planning. She was sure she’d been thorough, dropping hints about domestic life, letting Nathan in on the seemingly menial but important things in the kids’ lives.

  ‘Honey, could you sneak into Emmy’s room and get her snuggle rug? I have to get it washed and dried overnight. It’s filthy but if I dare try to do it in her waking hours, I’ll never hear the end of it,’ she had said one night as he was sitting in front of the television.

  ‘Sian was telling me about the babysitting service she uses, apparently they’re wonderful!’ she’d thrown in while he was helping her unpack the groceries.

  Patrice had never considered it an easy decision. In fact, she never would have made a decision at all had the desperate need not arisen. She would have continued to live with the deceit. The blissful betrayal of one part of herself to liberate another, more vital part. How could she return to her drab and monotonous life of pure domesticity after this awakening? No one would expect her to turn her back on this type of ecstasy; God Himself wouldn’t deny her this. Once she’d been given the ultimatum, though, she had ceased to function. This time it was real.

  Patrice had always been a strong woman, and fiercely independent. But over the years she’d lost her autonomy, drop by drop. First it was marriage, then the baby. And then it was the next baby and the next. As the months and years ticked over, she’d been robbed of almost every ounce of independence. Almost. It turned out that she hadn’t lost it all.

  Nathan had floundered in his newfound role as sole provider and caregiver. He had rejected his widowed status and fought to move forward only once it was clear to him that Patrice was gone for good. He had eventually found some solace in a new friendship. A tiny sliver of relief. Glenn and Alison had been their neighbours for years, but when Patrice had disappeared Glenn had been far more understanding than any of his life-long friends. Glenn’s wife, Alison, had left him a few months earlier. She had told him she was in love with someone else and that she couldn’t go on living a lie. It was a relatively tidy separation, but Glenn was devastated.

  Nathan had been envious of the closure Glenn had had. At least he knew what had happened to his wife. At least he knew she was still alive. At least he hadn’t ever been interrogated by cops, friends and family alike. Plus, they didn’t have children, so Glenn didn’t have to deal with their heartache alongside his own.

  Their stories weren’t the same, but at least he and Glenn could commiserate together in the knowledge that they had both lost the women who had meant the most to them. No one else in their lives knew that pain.

  . . .

  Even though it wasn’t an easy decision, there had been no doubt in Patrice’s mind – no doubt in her heart – that it was the right one. Kids were resilient. That was a well-known fact. It had been proven time and time again that it was true. Kids could recover from almost any trauma far more easily than an adult could. Men walked out of their kids’ lives every day. It wasn’t so common for a woman to do it, but it wasn’t totally unheard of. If fatherless children could survive and turn out okay, so too could a motherless child. It was pure logic.

  From the beginning, she knew she’d never be able to go back. Yes, because once she made up her mind, it would be permanent. She was not one of those weak-hearted fickle women. No, when she knew what she wanted, nothing would get in her way. Even in her frailest moments she wouldn’t allow even a shadow of regret to inch its way into her heart. Ever. Because a passion such as this only happens once in a woman’s life, and if she doesn’t embrace it then she has no option but to mourn it for the rest of her life, and Patrice was not prepared to do that. Even the idea of the looming loss of her newfound love had her breaking out in a cold sweat. Once she had realised that, she accepted what she must do completely.

  She looked closely at Nathan and noticed the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. The dark shadows below them, far darker than they should be on a man his age. You are responsible for your own happiness, Patrice, she reminded herself. And everyone else is responsible for theirs. She had discovered it was impossible to hold on to the illusion that one person must forsake their happiness to bring joy to others. You live your own life for yourself, and at the end of the day you must do things that make you happy. After all, isn’t that what life is about?

  There was a time when it would have been the most unthinkable act she could have committed. Leaving her family? Her children? No way. There was no way she could have left her sweet children in their early years. But then they had gotten older and more independent; she was confident they would be okay. She had chosen a good man in Nathan. Sure, he was a little absent as a father, but that was because of the demands of his job. If his priorities changed, then the children would become his number one focus and he would excel, just as he had with everything else he’d ever attempted. Yes, she had been right not to worry about them. Nathan would have stepped up to the plate and hit a home run.

  She had toyed with the ethics of her choice, consulted text books and the masters of morality in the form of ancient philosophers, but resigned herself to the fact that she was the only one in a position to judge herself and deem what was right for her life. She couldn’t go to her friends – no way! – because she could have no witnesses to her parting. If she were to go through with it, it must be on her own terms. And her own terms considered it imperative that if she were to leave, no one would know. Sure, they may have their ideas, their theories and their hindsight, but they would never know for sure.

  . . .

  Nathan wanted her to know he had been on her side. When the cops had told him there was no sign of struggle, and no evidence to suggest foul play, he told them they were wrong. When they asked whether his wife had been unhappy in their marriage, he had told them, no, of course not, he would have known. When they finally closed the case and left him with their cold conclusion that his wife, the mother of his children, had walked out and left him, he was dumbfounded and angry that they could be so blind and so damn wrong. He wanted her to know that he had had faith in her. He also wanted her to know that, in this moment, he just wanted to scream.

  Instead he took a breath and a small step forward.

  ‘You abandoned us?’ he asked. His voice was quiet, almost flat. It didn’t really sound like the question it was meant to be. He was trying not to attract his kids’ attention, so he kept his voice quiet, but even to his own ears he sounded menacing. Even he could hear the restrained anger just below the surface. Her eyes darted and she shifted her shoulders as if her shirt was too tight. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but then shut it again and took a step back, leaning towards the door.

  . . .

  ‘You abandoned us?’ he said. What was there for her to say? She dropped her head and felt her shoulders round. What was the point in denying what was so obvious now? Then she spotted them. Her kids were right there, they must have just walked through the door. They were talking to each other and they hadn’t seen her, but in a few short steps she could reach out and touch them. In that moment there was nothing she wanted more. It would be so easy to have them in her arms. They looked happy.

  The moment passed quickly as she realised it would undo everything she had set in place. She had made it so easy for him to pick up what slack there would be. She had planned it carefully. Withdrawing small amounts of cash over a period of months. Once she left she wouldn’t be able to use her cards, she just had to disappear. She had thought it would be easier that way. Wouldn’t it? For the kids and for Nathan. Wouldn’t it be easier for them to believe that something had happened to her? That she was taken from them, kicking and screaming? Wouldn’t it be so much harder for them to recover if they knew that she had walked away willingly? She never wanted them to know that she had forced this situation upon them all. That she had chosen to leave them forever. This is what had been and still was most important to her. She had had to make sure her family would be okay once she had d
one the unthinkable.

  It had taken her a long time to acknowledge the notion that once she left there was no turning back. But accept it she did, and time had trickled slowly away so that the weeks disappeared and she was left with a mere seven-day block of time in which she had to say her farewells. Every time she bathed her baby girl, still only in her infancy, it was in love and in parting. She adored bubbling her up and making facecloth bubbles in the bath for her. She said goodbye in the way she kissed her son on his way out the door. He who was stumbling awkwardly into his teenage years and dodging gawkily from her loving lips. Another adieu in the mending of a favourite yellow dress of her eight-year-old daughter, as warm and free as the sunny-coloured dress she lived in and had torn falling out of a tree. She said goodbye in the last grocery shop, stocking up on the comfort food her family loved. Crumbed chicken nuggets and Watties sauce for her baby Emmy, chocolate fudge cookie ice cream for her sweet-toothed husband, two-minute mi goreng noodles for her eldest boy, Chris, and lamingtons for Janey. She knew they would need comfort food when their mother and wife vanished. Who wouldn’t?

  Looking at the smiles on her kids’ faces, she thought that maybe she had been right. But looking at Nathan’s face, she realised he had needed more than a few sweet treats to move on. All of a sudden there was not enough air or space for her.

  . . .

  You selfish bitch, he wanted to tell her. Her face suddenly lost all colour, and he wondered abruptly whether she could read his mind. He saw a shudder run through her body; a fine vibration that travelled over her skin like a current. She blinked once, then blinked again and her eyes lost all trace of recognition. She looked at him – no, not at him, through him – as if he were a stranger or not even there at all. He looked right at her, hard, daring her with his eyes to acknowledge him. But her eyes just swept away. She looked back at the book, forgotten in her hands. She twisted it awkwardly and put it back on the shelf. He heard the sound of the book shuddering on the metal ledge as she failed to replace it with the poise she was aiming for. His wife turned her back towards him, paused for a beat as if deciding, and then walked out the door. Other than his name, she hadn’t spoken a word to him. His eyes followed her through the window as she walked away. At the corner she crossed the street. He didn’t take his eyes off her. As she reached the other side, he saw a woman who looked familiar. Was that … Alison? It was. Alison took a step towards Patrice and gave her a kiss on the cheek. No, not the cheek. They joined hands, interlacing their fingers, and continued on their way. Patrice never looked back.

  Kata and Kāpō

  Aimee Tapping

  Sacha’s incredibly amazing journal:

  My list of interesting ways to look at sucky things:

  Suckage #1; the worst thing about having fat thighs is that you occasionally splash wee on them.

  Suckage #2; people think that having glasses isn’t cool because you look different and you can’t see without them, but I’m more worried about the fact that if the sun hits them at just the right angle, they might set my face on fire.

  Sacha chewed on the end of her pencil until she had completely flattened the metal shaft that once held an eraser tip, the pressure on her teeth sending a metallic ping through the nerve. She would only do this once the eraser was completely used up, of course, she never wasted the pack of pencils she received each year for Christmas like her brothers would. Last year she watched her eldest brother, Jonathan, lose his whole packet in one day, making a shangai from three of them and a rubber band, then flinging the rest of them over the neighbours’ fence like arrows. Sacha supposed he was hoping to attract the attention of the girl staying there for the holidays, their niece. But the day before New Year she heard her neighbour over the fence swearing and saw him through a crack kicking his broken lawnmower.

  Another year, her younger brother, Sam, split all of his pencils down the middle. He explained that he was trying to extract the lead because he heard that lead was very valuable. Sacha sidled up next to him and said, ‘Well, you’ve rendered them useless,’ placing very deliberate emphasis on the ‘render’ and chuckling at how clever she was. Sam didn’t get it. In fact, only Whaea Ali seemed to get Sacha’s jokes. Either that or she was just laughing at her.

  Suckage #3; the pencil always lasts longer than the rubber on the end. But if you don’t have another rubber, you have to get the next pencil out to use the end of it, and then you are always one pencil ahead of the rubber.

  Sacha’s best friend, Ngata, was always getting nice, new, glittery pencils. Sometimes she would have a Barbie pencil or one with Scooby Doo on it. She would always give Sacha a new pretty one whenever she was given a pack. They were too precious to Sacha to use, so she hid them away in her ‘cool stuff’ box under her bed. Ngata told Sacha about how she was named after Sir Apirana Ngata, because he was a great man. At kapa haka, Whaea Ali said, ‘You know if you were Kāi Tahu like me, your name would be Kata,’ and then she erupted into laughter, but it was all by herself because no one understood her joke. Sometimes Sacha felt like Whaea Ali was her long-lost twin. Sacha and Ngata decided they absolutely had to understand Whaea’s joke. During lunch, they were allowed ten minutes each on the library computer; that was a whole twenty minutes if they sat together and whispered. They decided to use the Ngata Dictionary for obvious reasons. That is how the list of secret nicknames was born. Sacha was often called ‘Four Eyes’ by her brothers, so they took that as a starting point.

  Our secret list of names for everyone:

  Ngata: Kata. Thanks to Whaea Ali, very funny.

  Sacha: Kāpō. Because it is better than ‘Four Eyes’.

  Then they decided it would be a good idea to make a name for their secret nicknames club. Sacha said, ‘Kaka would be cool because it’s the start of both of our names.’ But then they looked it up in the Urban Dictionary and changed their minds, closing the webpage just in time before the librarian came over to see what they were giggling about. They also agreed that a native parrot didn’t have a lot to do with them, so they would leave the secret club name until something really magical came up.

  Suckage #4; the problem with having a secret language is that you can’t remember it without writing it down, and once you write something down, you risk exposing the secret.

  The notebook with the names in it was to be kept in the ‘cool stuff’ box under Sacha’s bed. When Ngata saw the collection of pencils she had given her, each one perfectly unused, she smiled to herself. She wasn’t upset that her friend had never used any of the pencils, she knew why. School holidays had arrived and the girls had made the most of the first week. For the second week, Sacha had to go to Timaru to stay with her aunty and uncle because her mum couldn’t afford to take two weeks off.

  Ngata had a fast computer at her house so they spent the rainy days there. Her dad worked at home on his own fast computer, so the girls were allowed to use the internet as much as they needed to. Mr King liked to cook or bake when he was taking breaks, so the girls knew to drift into the kitchen around lunchtime. Usually it was pizza or toasted sandwiches, but sometimes it was chocolate muffins. Ngata’s dad made the best chocolate muffins in the world.

  Whaea Ali: Hari, because that’s how she makes us feel.

  Dad/Mr King: Tiakarete, because of the muffins.

  Jonathan: Tiko, because just because.

  The second week of the school holidays felt like a month to Sacha. Their parents wouldn’t let either of them have a cellphone, so there would be no texting each other. No contact. Sacha decided to write Ngata a letter and give it to her when she got back.

  Dear Kata (hehe)

  I am writing this because it is too long to wait until I speak to you again and I might forget to tell you some things I’ve been thinking about. I think you would like it here. There is a pet budgie that lives in the kitchen and squawks every morning to wake everyone up. That sounds annoying but actually it’s nicer than my alarm clock at home. So anyway I’ve been thinking about a
good name for your brother Heemi and I’ve been thinking that since he is so much older than us and so nice to us all the time we should give him a nice name. What do you think of Pakari? I kept thinking about the time we went to his rugby game and we were being silly and thinking we would embarrass him because we’re his little sister and her dorky friend. Do you remember? He just laughed so hard and smiled and gave us the biggest wave. It made me feel so happy. Tiko would never be that nice to us. Also, your aunty Molly is always around eating all the biscuits so I thought we could call her Pihikete. I think she’d think it was funny. I just realised we don’t have one for Sam. We could be nice and go with Pōtiki, but I think he should be Hōhā. I’ll let you decide. I hope you are having a nice time.

  Love Kāpō

  p.s. you are my best friend and I love you.

  p.p.s. in a friend way.

  Ngata wasn’t at school the following Monday. As soon as the bell rang at three, Sacha raced all the way home and lurched at the phone. Ngata’s mum answered. ‘Sacha, hi honey.’

  ‘Kia ora Mrs King, will Ngata be at school tomorrow?’

  ‘Not this week, darling.’

  ‘She can’t talk, can she?’

  ‘No baby, do you have any questions?’

  ‘I’m okay, honestly. Can I drop a letter off in the letterbox, and can you please tell her I delivered it myself?’