by Gigi Fenster
Worse even than the lollipops was the doctor. ‘Call me Doc, everyone else does. Doc Doc Doc Doc.’ He’d come booming out of his surgery to greet young Morris, my most regular patient. Sitting so quietly, so patiently. Morris, my most patient patient. Have you had a lollipop? Such a good boy deserves two. Pearl, give him an extra lolly from me. Open your mouth wide, Morris, say ‘ah’ for Doc Doc Doc Doc. No, no, I’m only joking, you’re not sick are you? Look healthy as an ox to me. Eating well? Treating your mother well? How’s school? Who’s your teacher? Pretty, is she? Such a good boy doing his homework. Give him two lollipops. No, three. From me. Doc. Doc Doc Doc.
Morris would try to peer around the doctor’s bulk to catch his mother’s eye. Mum, help me. But she’d be talking on the phone, ‘Four o’clock this afternoon,’ or writing in a book, or might have her back turned completely away from him to open the filing cabinet. Sometimes Morris wondered whether she was ignoring him on purpose.
Once, when Morris was about fifteen, the doctor gave him a job painting the outside wall of the surgery. It took Morris the whole school holiday and every day, around mid-morning, the doctor would come and sit outside with him, lean back in the sun and say something like, ‘So, my boy, tell the doc how things are with you.’ Morris complained about the doctor’s questions to his mother and was surprised when she raised her voice in anger. It seemed he ought to be thanking the doctor, not complaining about him.
So the job was important. The doctor was good to his mother. But still, fifteen hours was only fifteen hours and women weren’t paid much in those days. There must have been another source.
Like I said, Morris, there must have been another source.
My father could have left money. You haven’t considered that possibility, have you? He must have made plans for us. A nest egg for us. Just in case.
Or Norman helped.
Or my father left money.
Okay, okay, let’s think about it. Picture your father. You’re sitting next to him in the front seat of his car. Watch him carefully. Take your time. He’s speeding along a busy road, driving in time to the music, weaving when the music soars, going even faster when the drums roll. He’s singing and beeping his horn. Is this a man who saves a little nest egg, just in case? Is this a just-in-case man?
He wasn’t always like that.
Granted. Okay, here’s another picture of him. He’s sitting in the lounge. In the dark. He’s kind of curled up, folded in half in his chair …
You don’t know anything.
Okay, try this one: he’s not there. You’re only just five and your mother’s sick and who’s there? Not your father.
Shortly after Morris’s fifth birthday he woke up early one morning to find Uncle Norman asleep on the sofa in the lounge.
‘Your mum’s gone to the hospital. Nothing to worry about, but for a few days it’s going to be just you and me. That’ll be fun, won’t it? What do you like for breakfast? I make a brilliant scrambled egg.’
A few days later his mother came home.
A few days after that, his father.
You’re five years old and your father isn’t there.
All right. I get it. My father wasn’t there. Norman was.
And your mother was in hospital. Why was your mother in hospital?
I don’t know. I was only about four years old at the time. How was I supposed to know?
Five. And your father wasn’t there.
Okay, all right. Maybe my father didn’t leave a nest egg. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.
Oh Morris, of course it matters. And if Norman was helping to support you, that matters too. All of it matters.
I did what my mother asked. I took the girl tramping.
And that certainly mattered, didn’t it?
I guess.
You guess? Okay, so, you’ve agreed to take the girl, that Natalie without an h, tramping. You’ve organised to fetch her. You get there and she’s already waiting outside.
Waiting outside at 6 a.m. because that’s what time Morris told her to be ready. She was sitting on the step in the dark. When his car headlights caught her, she stood up.
Morris thought, Oh great, she’s overweight.
So not a great figure then.
She’d be unfit.
And her pack was way too big for a day’s tramp. She’d packed as if she was expecting a week in Antarctica. He’d end up carrying it.
He tried to explain that they should leave some things behind. She nodded and smiled and he thought she’d understood, but when he opened the boot she lifted the pack in and went to wait at the passenger door. He studied the pack for a moment before shutting the boot. It probably held a picnic basket and a bottle of wine wrapped in tea towels.
When they’d been walking for a while, Morris offered to swap packs with her. She smiled and shook her head and kept on walking.
They stopped for lunch near a swimming hole.
Natalie was sweating. She walked a bit away, and when she came back she was wearing a long T-shirt over swimming togs.
Morris hadn’t thought to pack swimming shorts. He turned his back to her and stripped down to his underpants. He kept his singlet on.
Oh my God, stop. I’ll die laughing.
It’s not funny.
Of course it’s funny. Hysterical. This was what? 1967, ’68? Dammit, Jim. It was the summer of love probably. Of hanging loose and being cool. And there you were, in the prime of your youth, worrying about your underpants and your vest. My God, even my father used to run around naked in those days, and God knows he wasn’t in the prime of youth.
You were in England.
Ah, yes, that will be the difference then. England, free love. New Zealand, worrying about the size of a backpack. Oh, and don’t forget to keep your singlet on.
When he turned back he couldn’t see Natalie. There was silence. Then her face broke through the water and she grinned at him. He followed her in.
Her swimming togs shone blue through the T-shirt.
Morris looked away but she must have seen him noticing because she crossed her arms over her chest and said, ‘Brrr.’
He ducked under the water. When he lifted his head she was a flash of blue behind a tree. His penis had shrivelled with cold before she came back, fully clothed, to the bank and he could leave the water.
She started a little fire and put a billy on.
Morris had not thought it necessary to bring a billy on a one-day tramp on a hot day. He was surprised that she owned one.
She had cocoa, powdered milk, a little bag of sugar. She had hard biscuits like the ones Craig took on tramps. His girlfriend baked them for him. Morris tried to ask Natalie where she’d got those biscuits, had she baked them herself? She shrugged and smiled.
He held the biscuit in front of his face, said, ‘Tararua biscuit.’
He pointed to the billy and said, ‘Billy.’
‘Tararua,’ she repeated after him. ‘Tararua. Billy.’ When she turned to get something from her pack he noticed, in the flicker between fringe and forehead, a sprinkling of acne.
It was the acne that did it, wasn’t it? More than the weight, or the fact that she didn’t expect you to understand. More even than the wet T-shirt. It was the acne. You like a girl who’s not quite pretty, don’t you?
It’s not that I like—
I mean, after all, you liked me
You were pretty, you were—
Too late, Morris. Way too late to tell me that.
Sadie was almost beautiful. Almost but not quite. It was as if God had taken all the features which make up a beautiful person—the high cheekbones, white teeth, clear skin, little snub nose, even the pouting lips—and messed with them. They were all there, and in some lights, at some angles, they could come together with a symmetry that almost took your breath away. But they were for the most part almost but not quite right.
Morris would notice people looking at Sadie, looking away, then looking back, as if to trick them
selves into seeing her correctly. Sometimes he thought he could see their disappointment, could hear them thinking, I don’t know why I thought she was pretty. She’s quite plain really.
There was something cruel about God doing that to a person. And something grand too. Witness Sadie, proof that God has all the know-how to create a real beauty and all the spite to twist it into nothing, into worse than nothing, into ordinary. Proof that God can always mess with you. Proof that a miss really is as good as a mile.
A miss is as good as a mile—Sadie’s words, those.
They’ve just kissed for the first time. Morris is glowing with surprise. Stop grinning. Say something nice. About her eyes.
‘I like your eyes.’
‘Oi, don’t get me started on my looks. Nice eyes, sure, but they refuse to sit on top of the cheekbones. Not that there’s anything wrong with my cheekbones, but they’re so damn close to the nose. Do you see how one is closer to the nose than the other? Do you see that? And as for the nose. Of course the nose is well and good, but why does it sit to the left of the mouth? I mean, up and left, not on the side and left, but not in the middle, not symmetrical. And the mouth—well, not bad, you might say, but can you see how it tilts, as if to draw attention to the wonkiness of the nose?’
Kiss her, Morris, lean in and kiss her.
‘Sure there’s nothing wrong with my mouth. It’s a lovely mouth. Lovely. But why won’t it stay underneath the nose?’
Tell her she’s beautiful and kiss her.
‘I think you’re …’
‘Almost beautiful. But let’s face it, when it comes to beauty, a miss is as good as a mile.’
Morris never mentioned her looks again.
So now it’s my fault you couldn’t say something nice.
Well, you wouldn’t let me. You—
Always my fault. You couldn’t say anything nice but, let’s face it, you didn’t waste any time in getting my clothes off me.
It was the T-shirt I wanted off.
You certainly did.
No, I mean—you’re taking it out of context.
Out of context. What are you? Some doddery politician complaining about the media? You want context? Here goes: You have finished your final year at Canterbury. Your mother is safely tucked away in the old-aged home in Levin. You return to Wellington without even attending your graduation.
Morris moved back to Wellington soon after his final exam. He had a job lined up. He’d written to the Wellington Tramping Club. They’d said they’d be glad to have him join. He didn’t stay for graduation.
Years later he attended David’s graduation and found the ceremony surprisingly moving. He enjoyed its orchestrated movement, its repetition and sense of history. David said it was boring, but he was wrong. David thought that predictable and boring were the same thing. He didn’t understand that it’s consoling to do what others have done before, what others will do in future.
Morris was sorry then that he hadn’t listened to Joan when she said he should attend his graduation. He was sorry that all he had to look back on was a dinner with his aunt and uncle.
Even if it did turn out to be a pretty important dinner. Let’s not forget it was a pretty important dinner.
Norman insisted that they take him out for a celebratory dinner. They were so proud of him—their nephew with the degree and the letters after his name. Their nephew who had secured a job before the final results were even published. Joan started crying when she told how proud his mother would have been … was … is.
Norman said, ‘Now Joanie, this is a happy day. Morris has made us all so happy.’ He handed her his handkerchief.
She said, ‘So happy. So proud. Oh Morris, you have made us all so very proud.’
‘Joanie wanted to tell the whole world. She wrote to her family in Australia and to all her friends. There’s no one she hasn’t told. Even Natalie’s mother in France has been advised.’
‘I’m so proud,’ Joan sniffed. ‘Natalie’s mother says she still talks about the lovely day you two had together. You were so nice to her.’
It was enough to make one feel proud of oneself. Enough to make one smile, maybe even direct a smile at the English waitress in the ugly T-shirt.
Again with the T-shirt. What ugly T-shirt?
It had lips on it. And a huge tongue.
I know. I know. It was my Rolling Stones T-shirt. I loved that T-shirt.
It was awful.
It was a Rolling Stones T-shirt. The most recognised image of our generation. Probably.
It was awful.
Joan flirted with the waitress. Turned out she was can you believe it? Jewish! And travelling, all alone. Well, with her sister. Come all the way from England! What brave girls! What bold girls! What almost pretty Jewish girls.
Joan invited Sadie to join them at the table. ‘This is an important occasion. Morris here has just returned from university. He’s graduated! He’s an electrical engineer, which is not the same as an electrician. We’re celebrating. And he’s got a good job already.’
Sadie apologised. Much as she’d love to join them, her boss would go mad if she sat at the table with a customer.
‘Well, never mind, you can stand and tell us about yourself. Have you attended synagogue since you got here? Where are you staying? There’s not much of a Jewish community, you know. And it’s Pesach coming up. Where are you going for the Seder? Please, you must come and join our Seder. You and your sister both.’
Morris listened, horrified and hopeful, wanting the waitress to accept, terrified that she would. If he kept looking at her T-shirt she’d think he was looking at her breasts.
He was both relieved and disappointed when it transpired that she couldn’t make Pesach. She’d met up with some other young people. They were having a Seder at someone’s flat. Joan knew the parents of some of the Seder kids. They were good kids. Morris might know some of them.
‘Didn’t you used to be friends with the Kahn boy? I’m sure you used to be friends with the Kahn boy.’
Morris didn’t remember any Kahn boy. The English waitress was looking at him like there was something wrong with him. Like he had a huge tongue sticking out from his chest.
‘Get her number,’ Joan urged him when the waitress went off to serve some other table. ‘Ask her out. You can bring her to our place for lunch. This Sunday.’
‘Can’t,’ said Morris, ‘I’m going tramping this weekend.’
‘Well then, next weekend.’
Norman put his hand on his wife’s.
‘So, Mr University Graduate,’ he said, ‘how does it feel to be finished with your studies? How many letters is that after your name?’
‘Should I get her number?’ Joan whispered on their way out of the restaurant, with Norman out of earshot.
Morris pretended not to have heard her.
As it turned out, Morris didn’t need Joan’s help. About a week later he found himself being hailed in the street by two girls in summer dresses.
‘I know you,’ one of them said, bold as brass. She turned to the other one and said, loud enough so that Morris could hear, ‘This is the guy I was telling you about. From the restaurant.’
The restaurant—it was the waitress. Wearing a swirling dress. The other one must be her sister.
‘Wendy, this is … what’s your name again?’ Sadie said.
‘Morris.’
‘Morris, Wendy. Wendy, Morris. Morris has just graduated. He’s Jewish. And his mother is such a sweetie.’
‘My mother …’
‘And your father is the kindest man.’
‘My father? No, no, those weren’t my …’
‘Your dad left me a tip. First one I’ve got at that restaurant.’
Then she asked how Morris had spent his week and he said he’d gone tramping. She nudged her sister and said, still loud enough for him to hear, ‘What’s the bet he went with some girl?’ and Morris, flustered and blushing, admitted that he’d gone alone.
This seemed to impress her.
‘Isn’t it scary to be all on your own in the wilderness like that?’
‘I have to go. Sorry.’
‘I’ll walk with you. Wends, you do your shopping and I’ll meet you back here in ten minutes.’
And so Morris Goldberg, recently graduated and newly employed, found himself walking down Cuba Street with a girl in a summer dress at his side. She gave him her phone number before they parted and he asked her to go with him to a movie.
It would be childish to phone Joan and brag that he didn’t need her to find his girlfriends for him. He’d organised a date all on his own. It had been easy.
He bought a new shirt and checked the times for the cinema in town.
It was a pity that Sadie and Wendy had been invited to a party that Saturday and Wendy didn’t want to go alone. A pity that the host didn’t mind if Sadie took Morris—there’s no limit to the number of people you can fit in a student flat. A pity that the place was dark and noisy and Morris didn’t know any of the music. A pity that Sadie wore that T-shirt which leered and smirked, reminding him of the hairy hippies on campus. Wanton like them.
Or maybe it was not such a pity.
Morris could have refused to go to the party. He could have done it in a way which didn’t seem cowardly. He could have said something cool like, Big parties do my head in. And it’s you I want to get to know.
He went to the party and pretended to smile and drank too much, and after his third cigarette looked at that awful tongue and thought he might be sick. ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t feel well. Have to get out of here.’
Sadie took his hand and led him out into the cool night and didn’t even say goodbye to their hosts.
She took him to her flat, which was quiet and clean. She gave him sweet tea and asked again about the tramping, about being alone, all alone, in that wild wilderness.
Morris told her, and she leaned in, quiet as a spy, and kissed him.
