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“February 1,1963
Dear Rob,
This is my anniversary day of coming to the United States. There is no commemoration in my family, I am the only one who celebrates such things, but only in my mind. Genowefa, my mother-in-law, is the same way, because if I mention it, Genowefa will exclaim, ‘I too remember when I came to this country,’ and tell me once again about the steerage journey she went crook, and the confusion of Ellis Island, and following her stubborn, funny husband to a place where they knew no one. They have been here over forty years, for they came before World War I, and yet sometimes I think they are still not completely here at all. Their hearts and their thoughts are sometimes still in Poland, as, I confess, mine are still in New Zealand. Will I be that way, too, as an old lady? I’m not sure I want that.”
Rose folded the letter back in the envelope as Nora came in the room. It had been the bedroom of Edwin’s and Susan’s daughters. They were grown now, they had gotten on with their lives. They were not emotionally or physically entrenched in the lives their parents had lived. Good on them. Was that what it was to have an Overseas Experience? Did self-imposed distance from one’s homeland create young people better fit to live in a diverse world?
There were no posters on the walls or anything to indicate two girls grew up here. Sue had begun to pack pictures and wall hangings, and family mementos. All over the house there had been systematic dismantling of their decorations and belongings. Sue had started slowly at first, and now that Rose and Nora had arrived, she plowed forward, emboldened, and left more and more boxes, labeled with a marker and sealed with masking tape, in her wake.
Nora sat on the other twin bed and stared at the floor.
“I can’t talk to him. I don’t know what she expects of me. Crumbs, she’s his wife, if she can’t reason with him, how will I? The stubborn fool.” Nora said, “He just gets angry, we can’t even talk.”
“Could you ever?”
“We had managed to communicate once. We were never terribly close friends, Ed and I, but we always got along. I realize now it was more that he went his way and I went mine.”
“I shouldn’t be here, Nora.” Rose said, “This is God-awful personal for your family and I’m really, really in the way.”
“Bollocks.”
“What is that?”
“Rose, how do you get on with your sisters?”
Rose’s expression turned to one of guilt, though not exactly remorse.
“I...punched my sister Linda.”
Nora waited for Rose to finish her pause, but she did not.
“Sorry? You what? You punched her?” Nora asked, suddenly squinting at Rose, as if that would help her understand better.
“Yes. I belted her in the chops.”
“Disagreement?”
“Punched her right in the face.” Rose said with nervous solemnity. It took her another moment to realize Nora was teasing her.
“What, when you were children?”
“No, a few days ago.”
Nora struggled not to laugh. She stared at the ceiling and her eyes began to water with the effort of not laughing. “And, so you had to leave the country? Are you a fugitive from justice?”
Nora tried to keep her voice from shaking, and was not entirely successful. Rose looked up at her.
“Honestly, I never hit anybody in my life.” Rose said, “Except in dodgeball. I can’t even believe I did it.”
“So, normally you’re slow to anger?”
“Well, no. Normally I’m slow to understand I’m being insulted.”
Nora scrambled off the bed and went to look out the window to focus on something other than the current slapstick picture in her mind. She kept her back to Rose and her grin to the front lawn.
“What happened?”
“It was the day before I left to come here. My sisters were over the house. My mother’s house. I had moved back in with her during her final months. Linda, and Darlene, that’s my other sister, and Linda’s husband Jim. I had been trying to get them to come over and help me sort out our mother’s stuff, and they could take whatever they wanted. There wasn’t much they wanted, except for a few family photos. We never had any nice furniture or anything like that. My mother had nothing of value of her own. They weren’t really interested and they weren’t much help. Jim was a lot of help, though, he took some stuff to the dump for me. Old paint cans and stuff.”
“Did you tell them about your plans for your trip?” Nora was able to turn around at last.
“They told me I was being an idiot. They said I shouldn’t be traveling anywhere when I didn’t have a job. They said I was crazy to be flying because it was too dangerous now, or leaving the country at all because the rest of the world hates Americans. They said Mother had left New Zealand well behind her and there was no reason for me to go there. They said I was too close to Ma, that I was foolishly clinging to her memory and this trip was another example at how idiotic and childish I could be. Darlene said, ‘What do you want to go there for? There’s nothing there. That’s why Ma came here.’ And Linda said, ‘It’s time you realized life goes on.’”
“What happened then?” Nora asked, no longer with the urge to laugh.
“I heard myself saying, ‘I came back from Boston to care for my mother so that her life could go on for as long as possible. I stayed with her in her last days, having lost a job and fiancé, because life goes on. Despite the fact that she died in my arms moments before, I talked to the hospice person, and helped her lay out my mother’s corpse for the funeral director to pick up. I began making arrangements for the disposition of her body and her personal property, almost immediately, because life goes on. With a giant tear in my soul, I called you on the phone, as the hospice nurse took vital signs that weren’t there, knowing you wouldn’t come but figuring you want to know and need time to make room in your own busy schedules for her funeral, because life goes on. I arranged her funeral, took care of her insurance, and finances myself without any help from either of you two lazy, self-involved bitches because LIFE GOES ON! And now, now I am going to my mother’s country, by MYSELF because LIFE GOES ON!!!.’”
Nora looked at Rose, marveling, feeling the anguish in this odd, clownish woman for the first time.
“And then,” Rose muttered. “I hauled off and belted her in the nose. She dropped like a bucket of wet cement, right to the kitchen floor. Out cold. Darlene kind of gave a shriek and flapped her arms, and ran out the front door. Jim, Linda’s husband, came up from the cellar because he heard the commotion. He looked at Linda on the floor, and then at me, and said, ‘I wondered for years when you were going to do that.’”
“How nice of him not to mind.”
“Jim was always a good guy. I always liked him.” Her pale blue eyes teared. “He tried to revive her, but she was really out. She was breathing okay, but she was really dopey when we tried to sit her up. Like a rag doll that drools. He wiped the blood from her nose with an old Santa Claus potholder. My mother would have killed him. You don’t use the Santa Claus potholder for anything, not even pots. He called the ambulance. I started to lose it. He told me to go upstairs, that he would handle it. When the EMT guys came, he told them that Linda walked into a door. That she was always doing things like that. They probably thought he did it. Poor guy’s probably under investigation for domestic violence as we speak.”
“Was she all right?”
“Yes, Jim said she came to in the emergency room. She was really mad, but Jim made her promise not to say anything to the doctors, so that I wouldn’t be arrested for assault and battery. They cleaned her up. Took X-rays. Her nose was broken. She had a kind of ugly nose anyway. I have no idea what happened to Darlene. Probably still running all over the hills of western Massachusetts, flapping her arms.”
“That’s quite a story.”
“I’m a fool, I know it. My sisters are sixteen and eighteen years older than me. There was never any real relationship. Never any chance for one. They were always very distant, critical, very bossy. Something about me always irritated the hell out of them, perhaps something they felt threatened by, and rudeness was their first line of defense. By the time my mother’s health began to decline and I was left doing everything myself, with no help from either of them, I guess things started to get to me, build up in me, that I should have let go of long before.”
“No matter, luv,” Nora said, “It’s done.” Rose began to cry.
“My mother always called me ‘luv.’”
“I don’t really mean anything by it.”
“I kno-w-w-w. It’s just a colloquial mannerism, like it was with her. That’s all.”
Nora walked over to Rose, smiling again but trying not to show it, and patted Rose’s back.
“I’m sure it wasn’t just that with her. Steady on, there, matey.” Nora said, “Let’s go down to the kitchen. I won’t ask you for any sibling advice again. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s people getting up my nose.”
Rose burst out laughing in a particularly hearty and nose-wiping, messy way.
“Up your nose?”
Rose let out a deep sigh and wiped her eyes, and marveled that self control returned with surprisingly little effort.
“It was the last thing I could think of to do for her.” Rose said.
“What?”
“Coming here. And the first thing I had to do for myself before life could go on.”
“I see.”
“So, how is life supposed to go on for your brother?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s anyone he’d like to punch. He might want to take a swing at me if I stay here much longer. Or I might want to belt him.”
***
Rose sat down at the kitchen table. The phone rang, and Sue handed it to Nora. Not listening was impossible, but appearing to listen was impolite, so Rose reached across the table for the cereal box and began to read it automatically and without comprehension.
“Then, would you just ring the matron back and ask her for an appointment on Friday?” Nora said into the phone, while distractedly reaching into the cereal box, and dropped a couple of bricks into a bowl and put it in front of Rose.
“No, we’re lucky to have run into an opening this soon, I just hope Mum qualifies. Does she know? Peter, did you tell her? Oh, thanks very much. Oh, never mind. Of course not, I know she’s my mother....”
The bricks appeared to be made of some composite building material like chipboard, and looked like something the ancient Egyptians might have used on the Pyramids.
“What’s Tristan doing? Why? Why ever for? Utter bollocks. Can’t he wait?”
Rose looked up at Nora, and then down quizzically at the bricks in the bowl. Nora put a spoon down in front of her, poured milk into the bowl, which made the bricks sort of float, and then she gestured with a firm, no-nonsense pointing direction for Rose to attend to what was in that bowl. Rose squinted at Nora uncertainly, then at the bricks, then back at Nora.
“Is this food?” Rose asked, with some embarrassment at her own ignorance.
Nora glared at her and pointed silently at the bowl with the bricks in it again, then put her face to the wall and her back to Rose in a futile attempt at seeking privacy.
“He won’t get his marks back for weeks! Oh, Peter, don’t encourage him. This is not the time to go vaunting off on some stupid pleasure trip. He should stay here and put some money aside for the beginning of term. It’ll be here before he knows it. Doesn’t he know, haven’t we tried to tell him what a yoke those school loans will be and he can’t count on the student allowance to keep him going? Does he think we have that kind of money?”
Rose dubiously dislodged a corner of one brick and scooped it into her mouth with the spoon. She resumed reading the box. Weetbix.
Edwin came into the room, and seemed somewhat startled that it was full of them all. He would have turned on his heel and left immediately, except Sue thrust a cup of coffee at him, and he took it, not looking at her, but shooting a wary glance between Rose, who smiled at him with a mouth full of Weetbix and nodded to him. Nora turned back from the wall with a louder voice, scratching her head and barely acknowledging Edwin’s presence. That seemed to make him feel somewhat better, for he looked into his cup and took a sip of coffee.
“Tell him not to make any decisions or to make absolutely any promises to Rewa before I get home and we can discuss this, right?” Nora said into the phone, and hung up before saying “goodbye” let alone “I love you,” Rose noted.
“Mum’s doing better, and I’m to have an interview with the matron of the rest home I hope to place her in.” Nora said, by way of a brisk greeting to Edwin, and with undisguised irritation, “Do you have any opinions or thoughts on that at all? You do have a share in the decision, you know.”
Edwin licked his lips, and took another quick sip of coffee. He shook his head quickly, and put the cup down and nearly stumbled over his own feet in an effort to leave the room.
Sue said nothing, did not attempt to call Edwin back, but gave Nora a look of cold anger.
***
Rose took her letters outside and continued reading them under a tree. A car pulled into the drive, and Rose looked up. A mostly still-yellow car, with a broken antenna, a missing back window, and a lot of ingenious repairs, the car stopped in front of her, long before reaching the house, and Trevor John got out. He hopped the fence and trotted up to her tree.
“Having a read?” He smiled, gesturing to the spread of envelopes across her lap and spilling over onto the grass.
“These are some old letters my mother and Nora’s father wrote to each other.”
“Quite a treasure.”
“I think maybe I should stop reading them, though.” Rose said. “It’s like picking at a scab.”
“Lovely analogy.” he said, “Still, a fine day for reading out here like this. Can I sit with you a minute?”
“Sure.”
He dropped himself onto the grass. He was wearing a jacket and tie over his khaki pants.
“You look nice,” she said.
“Ta,” he said, “I’ve been to the auctioneer’s office, and to the solicitor to carry some paperwork to Ed.”
“He’s still on the back porch.”
“Is he?” Trevor John scratched under his chin, then leaned back on his elbows, his legs stretched out in the front of him on the grass. His hair grew just over his collar in the back, covered the tops of his ears on the sides, and was full in the front, curling over his forehead from a center part, the way she remembered boys from high school having worn their hair when she was in school over twenty years ago. Their sideburns were short then and they were clean shaven, as was Trevor John. No goatees then or concentration camp-type haircuts to make the boys look severe, dirty and brutish. Back then their hair was abundant and boyish. That was how Trevor John looked to her: boyish, but his thick, dark curling hair was laced with gray. She noticed the shirtsleeve cuff pulled up by his leaning on his elbows, that he even wore a very old digital watch with a black rubber wrist band. She smiled.
“How do you like New Zealand?” he asked, catching her smile.
“Of course I like it.”
“What do you mean, ‘of course?’”
“Do you think I could feel any other way? Besides, do you think there’s any other polite response to that question?”
“I reckon I’m expecting the typical polite response, but looking forward to the possibility of ugly honesty.” He said, “It’s the Kiwi in me. We love a good argument.”
“I’m not clever enough to argue,” she said, “It takes me too long to think of a really good reply.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Oh, yes. And I admit to hating arguments of any kind.”
“How dull.”
“That’s me. Conflict gives me stomachaches.”
Edwin appeared around the corner of the house. He had been pacing and had not seen them at first and looked startled. Rose watched him, saying nothing at first, and was about to bring him to Trevor John’s attention, but glancing over at him, she saw that Trevor John was also watching Edwin, watching them. Trevor John’s gaze was blank.
“I guess he’s waiting for you.” Rose said.
Trevor John did not answer, but he sat up, and brushed the grass off his jacket sleeves. Edwin about-faced, and disappeared behind the house again.
“He’s not waiting for me,” Trevor John said, standing. “He won’t want to see the papers.”
“You really don’t like confrontation after all, do you Trevor John?”
He glanced deprecatingly down at her, but seemed determined not to answer.
Trevor John turned and walked back to his car. It started on the second try. He drove it around back to where he usually parked it in front of his trailer. She wondered if she had sounded like she was taunting him, but taunting would never bother this man. Not like a little impromptu and inexpert psychoanalysis would, which was what she had done. Sometimes analysis could be more impertinent than rudeness, if only because it also searched out weaknesses and aimed for them.
Rose gathered her letters carefully, and put them into the plastic bag, and scratched her back against the tree. She felt utterly content to do nothing, now that nothing was asked or expected of her. A bee hovered near the lilac bush by the house. A lilac bush like this grew against her parents’ house, on the sunny southward-facing side. There were no lilacs on it now, and its leaves were on the ground because she had not raked them. It stood, it’s bare branches beating against the house on the slightest cold breeze. It was not dead. It was only sleeping on the other side of the world.
Rose went into the house, hating to leave the springtime outdoors, but suddenly feeling as if it were not really time for spring, and she was cheating.
Sue carried a large box down from upstairs and plunked it onto the floor with a wall of others as if she were intending to barricade the front door. Red-faced from the exercise, she smiled from the satisfaction of it.
“Can I help you with any of this?” Rose asked. “Are they too heavy for you?”
“Oh, no, I pack only one at a time and never too heavy,” she replied, “and I’ve made quite a bit of progress. This lot will go on the truck this weekend. My son will be here down from Wellie to help with this first phase of the move. The rest can wait until the end of the month.” Sue said, “I hope Trevor John can induce Ed to go out with him before Steve arrives. He doesn’t know about his father, yet. I’ve not told him. Oh, he knows his dad’s feeling down over selling the property, but I’ve not told him anymore than that. Partly, I suppose because I don’t really know what to call it, and partly because I had hoped Ed would have pulled out of it by now. This is so unlike him, sitting and staring. Doing nothing. The sense of panic. You don’t know him. This Ed you’re seeing here is not one we know.”
“Are you still trying to have him see a doctor?”
“I’m still hoping of course, but with Nora here, I’ve let up on Ed a bit. I think he needs a rest from me and my worrying. He’s got enough of his own. Nora will do what she can.” Sue smiled and wiped her glistening forehead with her sleeve.
“Coffee?” she called over her shoulder as she headed for the kitchen.
“No, thanks,” Rose answered, and went to the back door, peering through the sheer curtains at Edwin and Nora out on the back porch. Neither were saying anything, it was either a lull in the conversation or a stand-off. They both brooded on the green hills beyond, that led to the white-capped mountains visible on the far side of the island.
Rose heard Sue’s footsteps behind her and pulled away from the curtain because she did not want to be seen spying. Sue did not see her. She strode with her coffee cup down the hall and up the stairs for more adventures in organizing her life, and the first sense of self control she had felt for a long time.
Rose turned back to the window, but then the phone in the kitchen rang. She let it ring a moment, then realized Sue might not have an extension upstairs. Rose went into the kitchen and answered the phone.
“Hello? Fitzmichael residence.” Rose said.
“Cheers, Rose, this is Peter. Have they got you answering phones now?”
“Peter, hey! I’m so glad it’s you! How did you know it was me?”
“I reckon you’re probably the only one there at present with an American accent, Rose.”
“Oh, what an idiot.”
“How is everything?”
“Not great.” She said, “Nora’s trying to work on her brother, but so far the place is pretty tense. Everything okay there?”
“Oh, fine. Nora’s mum is quite stable, there’s no worry there for now.”
“How’s my boy, Tris?”
“Struggling to make plans of his own, but won’t let us help much. We have a lot of talking to do when his mother returns, if we can manage that at all, which I doubt.”
Nora had faintly heard the phone as well, and reached the kitchen as Rose turned her back to her, leaning against the wall, the phone cupped under her chin, while she folded her arms in a self hug and her voiced became warm and animated.
“Not to get your hopes up, but I’m working on a surprise for you, Rose, when you lot come back,” Peter said.
“Really, what?”
“I can’t tell you. I don’t want you to be disappointed if I fail.”
“Oh, come on,” she giggled, “tell me.”
“No, absolutely not.”
“Tell me,” she pleaded playfully.
“No.” Peter laughed. “You have to wait.”
Rose rolled her back against the wall, and noticed Nora in the corner of her eye. She immediately colored, despite desperately not wanting to and not knowing why she did it.
“Oh, Peter, Nora’s here. I’ll let you go now, okay?”
“Righto Rose, cheers.”
She handed the phone to Nora, silently, who took it like a sword being relinquished to her in defeat, and Rose left her in privacy. She walked out the back door onto the porch, forgetting the porch was Edwin’s place. He stood sentinel at the far end of the walkway, jerked at her presence, and walked away in disgust around the corner of the house, in the direction of the shearing shed.
After a moment, Nora came out of the house and joined her on the porch, looking around for Edwin.
“He’s gone to the barn...uh, shed.” Rose offered.
“Just as well,” Nora answered, stepping off the porch and began to march across the back paddock, “come with me for a drink?” she called over her shoulder. Rose, as unaccountably relieved as she had been unaccountably embarrassed, trotted after her. Her curiosity increased as she saw that Nora was leading her to Trevor John’s trailer.
Nora knocked on the door, and Trevor John opened it wide, looking down on them in bewilderment. He immediately looked up across the paddock toward the house.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Nora anticipated him, “We’re just looking for a drink.”
His jacket was off, his tie was unknotted, but he clearly was in no hurry to change out of his business clothes and back into his clothes for working on the farm. He stepped aside and let them in.
Rose immediately took the trailer in without wanting to appear nosy. Compact, neat, and without decoration save for a calendar taped to a cabinet door. She had expected a calendar with photos of women, or cars at least, but the photo was of a sunset off Coromandel. The calendar dates were well-marked with notations of things he had to do.
“All right?” he pulled cans from the small refrigerator and waved them.
“Yes,” Nora said, answering for them both.
Trevor John handed them each a can of beer, and motioned for them to sit down on the seat by the table like a restaurant booth that was his lounge, his kitchen, his dining room, and his office. Rose squeezed in first on one side, and Nora slid in after her. Trevor John sat opposite them, put his beer down and folded his hands on the table, as if they were all here in the railroad car to arrange the Armistice and divide up Europe.
Nora’s drive seemed to have run out, however, for she only quietly sipped her beer and did not seem to want to discuss anything. Rose gulped her beer, reading the can that said Speights and all its ingredients, excited to be here, and her eyes wandered less discreetly over the interior. There were a few books piled up at the far end of the table just beyond her reach, but she noted the top one was a narrative history.
“You’re reading about the Halifax explosion of 1917?” Rose asked.
“You know about it?”
“Terrible thing, what a story.” Rose said, “I went to Halifax once, beautiful city. There’s a fort on the top of the hill where you can look...but you probably know since you’re reading the book. Do you know, that every year they send a Christmas tree down to Boston, because Massachusetts was one of the first to send medical supplies and helped organize the relief effort.” She smiled proudly, as if she had something to do with it.
“Really?” He returned her smile, but continued to sneak concerned glances as Nora. “I’d like to see where it happened myself, now that I’ve read about it. Of course, it’s a modern city now, obviously.”
“Something like two thousand people were killed,” Rose said to Nora, who did not appear to be interested, “two munitions ships collided in the harbor. Thousands and thousands more were injured. Unbelievable devastation.”
“Are you interested in history?” Trevor John asked her.
“Yes,” she said, “Some stories transcend time. You can’t help but be pulled in.”
“It’s always devastation that fascinates,” Nora responded to no one, taking another deep swallow.
“What fascinates me,” Trevor John said, “isn’t the disaster, but how people cope. How they survive. And move on.”
“Yes.” Rose said.
“I don’t know what I would do,” he said.
“Depends on where you were standing when disaster struck,” Nora offered, looking at neither of them, “if you were in the middle of the disaster you might be dead. Then your problems would be over.”
“You do maudlin real well,” Rose said. Nora shot a look of disgust at her that was meant to be a prelude to the invariably crushing reply, but instead she lifted her can for Rose to tap hers against it.
“Cheers.” Nora said without enthusiasm, and Trevor John touched his beer to theirs, gently, and without comment.
“I was telling Rose how all the girls were mad for you when we were young. How is it you’ve managed to escape capture all these years, Trivuh John?”
He drank his beer, and at last said, “I dunno. Once was enough.”
Nora quietly put down the can of beer, “Sorry.”
“Not a problem.”
Nora nudged her hip against Rose’s as a signal to leave, and said they scooted out of the booth, “Ta, Trevor John.”
“Thanks for the beer,” Rose added, watching him looking down at the table.
“Not a problem.”
As they walked away, Nora muttered to herself, “I’m such a cow sometimes.”
***
Rose woke suddenly, and listened intently without a bit of grogginess, but rather with an acute sense of awareness as if she had never been asleep. Her eyes adjusted and then drank in the darkness. The breeze sifting through leaves and grass, and a hollow, lonely sound from night creatures she would not find at home. They had exotic-sounding names, and she did not know them. The distant hooting bird was a morepork, but she did not know that.
She heard Nora’s deep breathing across the room, just shy of a snore, and heard the soft, rhythmic pad of feet from downstairs. She knew it was Edwin. She could imagine him pacing anxiously by himself in the dark hours. She lay in his daughter’s bed for a while, thinking about what to do or if to do anything, and decided on impulse rather than reasoning to go.
She slipped on the soft, new robe she had bought in Auckland, and descended the stairs lightly in bare feet, so lightly that Edwin did not hear her. He had seated himself at the kitchen table, exhausted, with his head in his hands, in the hard glare of the single kitchen ceiling light. Then he abruptly sat up, leaned back and threw a searching, miserable glance with frightened, glassy eyes at the ceiling. He occasionally rubbed his eyes with tremulous hands. His shoulders shuddered, and Rose could perceive now that his whole body shook with weariness and the agony of his anxiety.
She wanted to go over there and hold him. He certainly would not want that. He did not want her here, and would be mortified to know she had been watching him. She decided she had nothing really to say to him that would be appropriate, or would be accepted as anything but intrusion, and was about to turn back up the stairs when Edwin saw her.
He started in his chair and immediately stood, as if he had been caught doing something wrong rather than caught in equally shaming throes of his own psychological pain.
“Sorry,” Rose said, “Uh, sorry...please let me know if I can help.”
Edwin said nothing, but anger replaced embarrassment, and he turned his back to her quickly, and stared out the window, waiting for the sound of her fading footsteps, demanding it. She knew this, and walked away without trying to muffle the sound, hoping that would reassure him, and closed the bedroom door at the top of the stairs so that he would at least have the small comfort of knowing he was alone again.
***
He suffered their united presence in the lounge the next day for a long as he could stand.
“If all that’s to be done is for Trevor John to move a small flock, he can do that in a day and be back. Let him talk to the agent and handle the auction,” Nora said.
“Yes, Ed,” Sue agreed, “We can just go now. Why wait? Let’s just go.”
Edwin cursed them both, squirming in his chair, yet undecided as to whether to leave the room, or wondering if perhaps he had the strength left even for that.
“I’m sorry,” Susan almost whispered, wanting to touch her husband but hesitating, “I’m sorry, luv. Never mind about all this. We can talk about it later.”
“Oh, what absolute shite!” Nora shouted, and Edwin, Susan, and Rose all lifted their heads in surprise. Edwin glared at her, gripping the arms of the chair as if he were holding himself back.
Susan stood quickly, saying nothing, and darted for the kitchen as if sensing that if there were one less person in the room Edwin might be able to relax, and neither Nora nor Rose had the sensitivity as she had to know that, or to do it.
Rose swallowed and looked out the window, at the walls, noticing there were a few less photos on the wall today, and then sneaked a side glance down at Edwin in his chair not really fearing he would ever look back at her. He looked hard enough at Nora to vaporize her.
Nora stood her ground, somewhat maniacally.
“You’ve got her bloody afraid of you, walking on eggshells for your benefit!” Nora hollered, exhibiting a temper Rose had never seen in anyone but herself, and she marveled that this is what it must look like.
“Well, don’t count on me for that, matey!” Nora continued, “I’m not going to creep about on eggshells!”
“Shut up, Nora.” Edwin said.
Her voice continued to rise, “I’ve come down here at Susan’s request to help in God knows what way, while your mother is in hospital and waiting for the rest home! I have enough on my list without you falling to filthy pieces over your problems. I’m telling you, Ed, get back on your way, or better yet, help me out a bit! I’m the one that’s always tended to Mother, where were you?! The noble son, on his fat, noble arse getting more and more superior and self-satisfied every year, until somebody’s kicked the stool out from underneath you and you’ve gone and panicked your life into a right bloody mess!”
“Shut the hell up, you stupid cow!” He stood and shouted back into her face, with a kind of growl he might have used for the sheep.
They stood face to face for a bitter moment, and Nora was about to speak again, just drawing her breath, when she felt a pair of arms embrace her from the back, and she suddenly felt herself pulled snugly against Rose’s body, and lifted off the ground.
Rose quietly carried her out of the house and into the back yard with ease and decorum, a cross between an honor guard and a forklift, catching Nora’s head in some of the laundry on the clotheslines. Nora shouted obscenities and began to kick, but Rose held fast and when they reached the barn, Rose gently put Nora to the ground. Nora’s four-letter expressions of irritation were muffled by Edwin’s undershirt until Rose plucked it off her face.
“Such a potty mouth you have.” Rose muttered, frowning.
“What the hell do you think you were doing?” Nora spit a sleeve out of her mouth, “You keep your bloody hands off me!”
“I’m sorry. I was uncomfortable.”
“You?! You were uncomfo...look, you can just sod off! That was goddamned embarrassing, and what’s more, you were interfering in something that was none of your bloody business!”
“It’s hard to believe you’re in Human Resources,” Rose said, “You really don’t seem the type. Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Tell me, Nora, why exactly am I here?”
“It’s not to dangle me around the bloody paddock!”
“I beg your pardon, really. I didn’t think. You blew your stack and I got flustered. What’d you have to yell at the poor guy like that for?”
Nora took on a moment of silent, neck-vein-bulging apoplexy fed by her anger, and Rose held up her hands in the traditional bank robber’s surrender.
“I’m just saying he’s over-stressed and you’re pushing him right over the edge.” Rose said.
Nora took a deep breath and rubbed her face furiously, yet amazingly leaving it intact once she put her hands down, “Look Rose, I’ve never belted anyone in the chops, but there’s always a first time, right? Keep out of this. You most certainly will not tell me how to talk to my own brother.”
“You’re out of control.”
“Piss off.” She turned on her heel.
“He’s having a nervous breakdown.” Rose said in a louder voice that seemed to reverberate off the barn, and the hills behind the house. Nora stopped sharply and turned.
“Keep your voice down.”
“I think he already knows it.” Rose said, “He needs a counselor, and it sure better not be you. He doesn’t need you in his face. Susan’s probably thinks that herself, otherwise she wouldn’t have been looking into the idea of him getting a physical, instead of debating his problems with him. She’s not as meek as she seems. She’s pretty smart. It’s just Ed’s got her on an emotional tightrope.”
“He certainly does, the black-hearted bastard.”
“He’s sick.”
Nora sighed, and glared at Rose, “Evidently asking you to remain at a respectful distance is entirely useless, then?”
“Respectful distance it is.”
Nora shook her head in disgust and marched back into the house, for lack of anything else to say or any other way to say it.
Rose heard a polite but emphatic throat-clearing, and turned to find Trevor John appearing from the dimness of the barn.
“What’s all this about belting in the chops?” he asked seriously, but there was warmth and humor in his eyes.
Rose sighed. “I made her mad.”
“Did a fair job of it.”
“How do you feel about women throwing themselves at you?”
“Sorry?”
“They said you’re off to move some sheep. If you want company, I’d like to help.”
“It’s a bit dirty. I’ll be gone the whole day.”
“Sounds swell. Show me what to do. Really, I’d like to. Can I come?”
“Yes.”