A House Built on Sand, page 13
Jasmyn can’t spoil that memory, Rose decides now, on her knees with the stink of coffee and musty carpet in her nostrils, because it happened. It lives in Rose’s mind as a true memory. All that is safe in the past, where it belongs. Jasmyn is safe with Aaron—Rose doesn’t want him.
‘Rose…?’
She looks up to see her mother framed in the hall doorway, hands clutched at her waist and still wearing those ridiculous trackpants—they now have some kind of stain down one leg—and her loose black coat.
‘I heard voices,’ puzzles Maxine.
‘It was nobody.’
Rose gets to her feet and takes the tea towel back to the kitchen where she rinses it out under the tap. Maxine has followed her and hovers at Rose’s elbow.
‘I’m sure I heard voices. It’s not the shadow man, is it?’
Rose looks at her mother, seeing fear in her eyes—from a woman who is usually fearless—and takes pity. ‘It was a girl I knew from around here, nobody special.’
Maxine’s relief is palpable. ‘All right then.’ She goes to pick up the kettle, as if to fill it, then puts it down again. ‘Did she come about the vegetables?’
‘Vegetables?’ Rose frowns.
‘You know, the vegetable delivery.’
‘Ah, no.’ She takes the kettle from Maxine’s weak grasp and fills it. ‘What shadow man, anyway?’
But her mother turns away, shuffles towards the lounge. Stops beside the dining table and pulls out a chair. ‘Come and talk to me, Rose.’
Reluctantly, she joins her mother, pulling out the next chair and thinking of all the meals eaten at this dented family table. At her hand, anonymous words are etched in biro: ‘Life is a dream and then we wake up’. It sounds like something Renfrew might have written.
‘You should travel, Rose,’ she says, ‘see something of the world.’
Rose snorts. ‘Yeah, right. That’s not that feasible these days, Mum.’
Maxine waves her hand in the air. ‘Whatever. I mean…’—one of her new, uncharacteristic pauses—‘broaden your horizons.’ She peers at Rose with her rinsed-blue eyes. ‘It’s all very well being with whatshisname and working at that—place—I won’t always be around, you know, and there are things you could be doing with yourself.’
Soft fear runs through Rose. ‘I’m perfectly happy with my life.’ But it isn’t exactly true, not anymore.
Maxine doesn’t seem to hear. ‘I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I made…like any parent would.’ She starts to wash her hands together on the table as if trying to rinse away her cares.
Rose puts her hand on top of her mother’s and feels the coolness of bones and flesh. ‘Is something bothering you, Mum?’
‘I—I’m not sure.’ Maxine gives a tiny head shake. ‘Maybe there is, something bothering me? There’s a lot going on,’ she admits. ‘People are talking outside. I hear them talking about me. I thought it was just at home, that it would stop if I came over here, but it’s happening here as well. At Kutarere.’
Rose huffs out a breath. ‘Well, there’s nobody talking outside, really. I’d know if there was.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’ Maxine doesn’t seem reassured.
‘Look, would it help if we went back to town this afternoon? It’s not that late. We could be back by dinnertime and you could stay the night at our place.’
Maxine shakes her head again. ‘It won’t work. There’s something I have to do…it’s right at the tip of my brain.’ She jabs a finger at the side of her head, as if to pin the thought in place, inadvertently making the sign for a vaccination jab. ‘Right there, I can feel it, if I can just…’
Rose studies her mother in alarm. She looks terrible—worn out. It doesn’t help that her hair is a bird’s nest. No, best not to drive back today. It’s actually too late anyway, she realises, glancing out to see grey clouds bunching ominously and the sun low in the sky. They will need somewhere like Sunset Vista for Maxine soon, it’s obvious now. Something in her mother is slipping away. Maybe she couldn’t really see it before, preoccupied with her own stuff.
The last time Douglas visited they met for dinner at the Pearl Garden and he went pale when Rose walked in with Maxine.
Afterwards he bailed Rose up outside the car to quiz her about Maxine. What does the doctor say? Is she on medication? How is she still managing on her own? Rose felt inadequate in the face of his shock, and angry. You haven’t been here, she wanted to say. But instead of venting, she made a time to see him the following day.
‘Okay,’ Rose says brightly, in the voice she uses at work when a child has skinned a knee, ‘here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to tidy you up, then I’m going to get us something to eat, because you didn’t really have any lunch.’ God, Rose is useless, letting her mother go for so long without eating any proper food. ‘And then we’ll watch some TV and get an early night.’
Maxine smiles faintly, though her mind seems to be elsewhere, and perhaps that’s exactly where it is.
‘All right, Rose,’ she says meekly.
Unable to face the blinding reality of her mother’s illness any longer, Rose bustles out of the room to find some spare clothes and a hairbrush.
IT’S AS CLEAR as muck. Like it’s yesterday. I can practically stretch out and touch the memory. It’s like reaching your hand into the shallows to scoop up a starfish. There I am, a slip of a girl running along a dirt road. It’s the height of summer, panting-hot, and the road is full of pale dust that shrouds the gorse, the gold-bright flowers poking through, spots of brightness in all that dust. Dad came in late every day from the farm with a dent between his eyebrows. And Mum in her apron turning away from the bench where she was chopping vegetables for tea to meet him as he came in the back door.
We’ll have to start reducing stock numbers…I don’t know how long this drought is going to last and there’s not enough feed to see us through.
Even Mum was at a loss, and that was unusual. Lingering in the hall doorway, I saw him lean into her and his shoulders started to quiver like the little earthquakes we were used to getting…he was darkening the shoulder of her print dress with his tears. It’ll be all right, she told him, her hand going to his shaggy head, though the look in her eyes as she met mine told a different story.
I could help—I stepped into the kitchen, a slip of a girl, with some undefined heroic notion in my head, maybe riding around on the quad bike sprinkling water crystals from the back like feeding out the hay. My father summoned up a smile, and I pretended not to notice his wet eyes as Mum turned back to her vegetables, the sliced carrot heaped on the board like gold coins.
You can help with the potatoes, for a start.
Dad held out his arms. Come here, Maxie. And as I stepped into the hug, It’s not the first time we’ve had a drought, and it won’t be the last.
Doug came in then, bits of hay sticking in his thatch of hair.
Douglas, boots! My mother pointed to the gumboots he was still wearing and he backtracked to shuck them off at the door. Where’s Ren? But none of us knew where he’d got to, probably painting in the shed again, though I didn’t like to say. There was something shameful about it, embarrassing. Real men didn’t hide away and paint weird pictures.
Right then, I’m going to order some feed. Dad was back to his normal practical self, as if the crying on Mum’s shoulder had never happened. Maybe the government will help us out.
And the government did help out with some kind of relief package, and we got through that drought, so the low hills blushed green once again and I’d ride Buckley up to the highest point to gaze out at all that land rolling away to the coast, a sea of green.
*
A sound brings me back to the here-and-now. I creak over to the windows to look out the front (or the back, depending which way you’re facing). A figure is standing in the trees, watching the house. He’s found me, the shadow man. I know what I told Rose, but here he is again. Well, enough’s enough. I march to the door and fling it open, ready to yell at him, to scare him off, when something stops me. I shield my eyes to ward off the slanting light and try to make out what I’m seeing.
Well, I never.
Mum’s out there in the trees, digging. Not the shadow man at all—my mother, long dead, yet still wearing her practical print dress. She had a stack of them she sewed off the same Simplicity pattern, making a new one every few months from the bolts of cotton she picked up in town, it was a kind of uniform, something she didn’t have to think about. She wanted to make them for me too, but I flatly refused to look like her. I preferred light and floaty, hippy-dippy, slips for a slip of a girl. She hated how transparent they were—People can see your underthings, Maxine! She even bought a petticoat specifically for me to wear under the dresses, and wouldn’t let me go to town with her until I put it on.
Despite the petticoat battles, I’m pleased to see her now and set off across the buffalo grass towards the trees. So, okay, I know she’s not real…but maybe she’ll speak to me anyway, and I might find out why she didn’t like me.
Halfway across the lawn, I bleat out: ‘Mum?’
Light is spearing down at me, and I need my dark glasses. Never mind. I’ll ask her about the bloody marmalade.
She raises her head. I stutter to a stop. It’s not my mother at all.
‘Maxine…?’
It’s that neighbour…Bole. Staring at me, their hand on a spade that’s stuck in the ground.
‘You shouldn’t be digging,’ I say faintly. Sucking in courage, I approach gingerly, the way you’d approach an unknown animal, because you don’t know what’s in a person’s head when they’ve got hold of a spade. The light is making my eyes go wobbly, which isn’t very helpful. Then, hey presto, another figure steps out from the shadow of the trees. What is this, comedy hour at the Apollo?
‘It’s all right,’ says this person. What a relief, it’s Renfrew. He comes forwards with one hand extended, as if to that unknown animal, not knowing how they’ll react. ‘Noel’s all right,’ he tells me, ‘she’s just, well,’ and he glances back over his shoulder at Bole who is still standing there watching everything. ‘She’s burying her pet.’
‘Her pet?’
Bole speaks up then, and about time. I was starting to think he, she or whatever was the shadow man after all.
‘Yes, my dog, Leroy,’ she says.
‘Ah.’ Things clunk into place. ‘The dog that shits on our lawn.’
Bole goes a bit pink and pulls out the spade like she’s ready to chop at the ground again, while Renfrew takes me by the elbow and steers me back to the house. ‘Noel was very attached to her dog,’ he confides.
‘People do, get attached.’
‘That’s true.’ We reach the veranda steps and Ren turns to look at me. ‘You look done in, Max. Could you use a rest?’
It’s an odd phrase, though typical of Ren’s pedantic way. I don’t know about ‘using’ a rest, though suddenly I am very tired. ‘It’s been a long day,’ I admit, casting my gaze over the house.
Dear old Kutarere, with its gable roof and knowing front windows that see so much. The pastel-blue paint is peeling in places and the white trim could do with some freshening up. Maybe I’ll ring about a quote. There’s a local painting guy who works around the harbour, been doing it for years, Dad got him out to do the roof one time, he’d come. Yes, that’s what I’ll do.
‘Thanks, Renfrew,’ I announce, letting him off the hook and going up the steps to the door (front or back). ‘I’ll catch up with you later.’
Inside, the house is pleasantly cool and I find myself heading to my old room and the double bed that’s been made up with fresh sheets. Who did that, I wonder? I lie down and link my fingers over my ribcage to feel each breath making things inside rise and fall, rise and fall, a rhythm as soothing as the lapping sea on a hot summer’s day. Rest, he said.
I’d like a rest, said Sandra. We were sitting at her kitchen table with mugs of coffee and the house was quiet for once, the kids were in the front room watching TV, sound of cartoons sawing away, and no sign of her current bloke. It’s hard work, she was saying, being a working mum, with all that involves, and I’m having trouble keeping up with the bills. It was one of her good days, she’d recently come out of rehab and so far it looked like she hadn’t got back on the meth, small mercies.
Have you asked the father for some financial help? I asked.
That bastard, she huffed, holding her mug between two hands, looking cold.
We’ll get your benefit reinstated for a start, then we’ll see about the father, he has a legal obligation to contribute to his kids’ upbringing.
Sandra snorted. Yeah, right, as if that’ll happen. Her eyes narrowed. Look, Maxine, I want what’s best for my kids. I looked up from the iPad where I was making a few notes. You’ve got kids, right? she asked.
Just the one.
Then you know what it’s like. She looked out the window. The yard was overgrown, a tip, weeds growing out through the broken windows of a rusting Valiant, it’d probably be worth good money if somebody could be bothered fixing it up. Her eyes were dark marbles. I don’t want them anymore.
That pulled me up. Sorry, what?
She turned her hard gaze on me. The kids. They’re better off without me. You could fix them up in care, or something. That place they went last time…She means when she went off her head and took a hammer to my car and her kids were put in temporary care. They liked that place, can you send them back there, like, permanently?
Unbelievable. I put down the iPad and looked her straight in the eye. Your kids are everything to you, Sandra, you’re talking through a hole in your head. You’ve just got to get back on your feet and everything will be fine, you’ll see.
That was when we noticed the little girl standing in the doorway, her dirt-blonde hair hanging loose and wearing pink onesies that looked as near to clean as I’d seen her. How much had she heard? Go back to your telly, said Sandra, not even looking at the poor kid, like she had already hardened herself against them.
You’re not my mother, huffed the girl, turning on her heel and leaving.
My heart was cracking. Look, how about you make us another cuppa, eh Sandra?
She glared at me. I’m serious, she warned as I left the room.
In the lounge, the three kids were lined up on the beaten old couch, their puny legs sticking out. The little boys were riveted to the cartoons while the girl, face of stone, was combing her fingers down her hair. I plonked down next to her, wanting to stop that relentless hand and give her a hug, but of course we’re not supposed to touch the children. Or anybody really, unless there’s no choice in the matter, like having to defend yourself if you’re being attacked, which is some kind of rude irony. I longed to take this little girl home with me, raise her alongside Rose, I could do that, anything was possible…At the end of the day, though, you couldn’t save all of them. There were thousands of kids out there just like this one.
Look, your mum only wants what’s best for you kids, I started to try and explain away Sandra’s hurtful words. The little girl didn’t even bother responding to that, so I tried a different approach. How can I help? Is there something I can get you guys? That got the attention of the boys. Can we have a Happy Meal? asked one of them, little opportunist. The girl snorted, but at least stopped stroking her hair. Shuttup about McDonald’s, she told them. We want to stay here, with her, she said sullenly. God knows why, I was silently thinking. Surely even this tough kid must be weighing up her options after what she heard in the kitchen. She and Rose could go to the same school, maybe even be in the same class, it’d take time, but she would come right, time the eternal healer of broken girls. First thing, I’d take her shopping for some decent clothes, Rose could help her to choose some nice gear. She’d even have her own room, the spare downstairs that was only full of junk. I’d make up fresh curtains to match what Rose had in her room…
She’s not really my mum, she said now, jolting me out of my fantasy.
Sorry, what? And what was it with the women in this household and their revelations? The girl’s expression was mature beyond her years.
Yeah, she got us from somewhere, but I don’t care about that. Can you tell her to keep us?
I had to take a few seconds to get with the play. Of course I will, it’s my job to do that—and to keep you safe. Because you are, aren’t you, safe?
The girl simply blinked at me, then went back to combing her fingers through her hair.
One of the little boys leaned forward to ask me, So you’ll get us Happy Meals?
Hell, and why not? Even if it came out of my own pocket. Yes, I’ll get you Happy Meals. But just this once, all right? I’m not a home delivery service, you know.
The two boys grinned at each other and high-fived, while the girl stared stoically at the television screen. I’d like chicken nuggets, she said quietly.
Chicken nuggets it is, I said, leaving them to it and going back to Sandra. This family have got a chance, I told myself—it was my daily mantra and I had to keep believing that, otherwise I’d lose my mind. Baby steps, is what I was thinking.
HER PHONE RINGS while Rose is in the back room looking through the boxes of spare clothes that are kept for emergencies. There’s bound to be some old things of her mother’s in here.
‘Hello?’ Rose tucks the phone under her ear without checking the caller ID as she holds up a blue tie-dye maxi dress. She found it at the op shop in Whakatāne about five years ago, but it turned out to be too small.
‘Hi Rose,’ says Marius, ‘I had some free time between appointments and wanted to check in to see if you’re all right? You ended our call rather suddenly…’
She drops the dress back into the box. ‘I’m sorry Marius, that was rude.’
‘Not at all,’ he says, as if used to rudeness.
‘It’s just that I got a fright,’ she admits, gazing out the window at the harbour. ‘The memory was so real.’
