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Rose placed the bouquet of lupines at the headstone of her uncle and knelt on one knee as her right hand moved to bless herself with the sign of the Cross. Nora took a stiff, discreet step back, startled.
She wondered again what it must have been like to grow up, as this woman apparently had, unselfconscious, unconcerned and unashamed. Feelings which went deep for Nora were on the surface for Rose, and this easy access to showy supports of faith, prayer, patriotism and emotion Nora had been accustomed to equating with at best, silly, and at worst, shallow. She could not help but be fascinated by Rose, and reluctantly embarrassed for her.
Nora looked harder at the headstone with her father’s name. She knew him better now, but also that knowing him better made it less likely she’d ever be finished with him. That had been her goal for years.
***
Rose finished her prayer and stood.
I’m here at your brother’s grave, Ma, Rose thought to herself.
Her mother last saw him marching down to his ship with his regiment and never saw him again. She had stood at the railway station waiting for her train to Auckland in January of 1946, when it was hot on the Reikorangi farm of Mr. Fowler, and read a poster that said, “Is your journey really necessary?” Rose wondered if her mother wondered if it was.
Her mother probably would not have left the country if circumstances did not give her a decision to make.
Rose looked at Nora, who stood in defensive posture again with her arms folded, the breeze ruffling her short, businesslike hairstyle, as she frowned at the maze of memorials to the dead.
Rose’s mother had spoken proudly to her of the Maori, but her mother personally never knew any Maori people. The Maori migration to urban areas did not happen until after the war, after she had left the country. Nora not only knew Maori as acquaintances, workmates, and friends, her son’s girlfriend, whom he obviously hoped to spend the rest of his life with, was Maori. Rose smiled. Nora knew the words pounamu and koru, words which Rose had never heard her mother use.
“Are you very religious, Rose?” Nora asked.
“In my way.” Rose said. “Would you like to...I could head back to car and wait....”
“What? No, no. That’s all right. It’s my own father’s grave and yet I think you’ve mourned him more properly than we have.”
“Thanks for taking me here. This would have meant a lot to my mother.”
“Yes, I understand. Did you ever find what you were looking for? Why you came here?”
“I found a few things I wasn’t looking for.” They headed back toward the car. “But my mother isn’t here. The only place she still exists is in my heart, my memories, and, as it happens, in my sisters. They may be jerks, but they are the only two other people in the world who remember her as I do. We can tell the same stories. We remember the sound of her voice. I see her in their faces. Yours, too.”
“Oh?”
“You look a lot like her.”
“A legacy from my old dad. So, will you make up with your sisters?”
“Guess I have to try. They’re all I’ve got left from my mother. She would have wanted me to. I have a long flight ahead of me. Several long flights, God help me. Plenty of time to think about it.”
As they walked out to the car Rose said, “My mother never became an American citizen.”
“No? Not after so many years there?”
“She wouldn’t.” Rose smiled. “And I think it made my father angry.”
“He wanted her to become a citizen of the us?”
“I’m not really sure. I know he thought it was a bother for her to keep having to register with Immigration and Naturalization. I think the real reason was that it hammered home to him that he might have made a mistake.”
“In marrying your mother?”
“When he was growing up he had two parents from Europe who never stopped being European. As a boy that bothered him. He didn’t want to keep hearing about the old country, how good it was there or how bad it was there and how lucky he was to be going to school instead of having to work in the fields. He was tired of being puffed up with pride and at the same time flattened with guilt for being an American child, and that he’d better eat up his spinach because the people in China or Africa or Poland were starving. He became distanced from his parents while still very young. They were European, he was American, or more specifically, he was a New Englander.
“See, if you were to plop yourself down in the us right now and ask the first person you see, ‘What are you?’, he’s not going to say American. He’s going to say, I’m a New Yorker, or I’m a Texan, or I’m African American or I’m Presbyterian. American is not the first thing to pop into our minds. The first time I ever felt like an American was the first time I ever left the country. I grew up identifying myself as a New Englander.”
“As was your father?”
“He certainly was. He had that stereotypical cold and closemouthed reputation of the New Englander.”
“You don’t seem cold and you’re certainly not close-mouthed.”
“I’m on vacation.”
Nora laughed. “I see. Off the clock.”
“His European parents were on the outside looking in, locked in the culture within the culture to which their son was born and belonged,” Rose said, “He just wanted to be young and free and...American, if you will, without the burdens of the previous generation. Then the war and he’s shipped off to the South Pacific and meets my mother. I have no doubt that when he brought her home he was happy. She was lovely, and intelligent, and the love I think he felt for her was matched by a kind of pride that she was different and exotic and would impress his parents who would not have been much impressed by an American girl.”
“What happened?”
“Over the years their differences stopped being a cute game and started being obstacles. He discovered what he wanted after all was not somebody different, but somebody the same. Somebody to help him fit in. I think he discovered that he really did not want a foreign wife after all, just as he did not want foreign parents.”
“What was your mother’s reasoning for not becoming a us citizen?”
“She just couldn’t, I guess. There was something in her that made her feel, I think, that it was traitorous to New Zealand if she ever took up us citizenship. She could have done dual now, of course, but at the time it was all or nothing. In her mind it would be like swearing off a preference for the happiest of the simple times from her childhood, and the place where she lived that childhood, and her parents’ memory, her brother.”
“Did she think she would ever return to New Zealand. Or plan to?”
“No, I’m sure she didn’t. As I got older, I used to tease her about it, and try to get her to think about coming with me for a trip to New Zealand. Especially after my father died when she was alone and had so much time on her hands. She wouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Partly because there was nobody here for her to visit, not other than your mother...and that link was broken.”
“By my mother.”
“Mostly, I think she was just scared. By that time, I think she sensed herself that she had become Americanized and would not find New Zealand as she had left it.”
“Well, of course not.”
“But that’s exactly what she wanted. Not finding the New Zealand of her mind would have been heartbreaking for her. She wanted New Zealand exactly as she left it in the 1940s. BBC radio shows, and a time when being part of an Empire meant discovering your own national identity under safer and less caustic circumstances.”
“Less caustic than Gallipoli? Discovering national identity always comes at a price.”
“I mean, I think her memory of New Zealand was what my first mental impressions were too, that led to my being shocked that it wasn’t an old black and white photo. She knew it wouldn’t be, but she was afraid of what it might be, something unrecognizable. The day she left, she boarded a ship in the harbor at Auckland, a band played on the wharf, a chorus sang, ‘Now Is the Hour’ and people joined in, and she watched her country fade away over the horizon. That was all that would ever be of her life in New Zealand.
“You know, not too long after my dad had returned from the service and they moved in to the first floor under my grandparents, maybe a year or two later, my father found ‘Now Is the Hour’ on a record, a 78-rpm record, by Bing Crosby and he brought it home and gave it to my mom. He thought she would get a kick out of it, but she never played it. I think it was bittersweet for her. I don’t think she could bear to hear it.”
“Especially in an American accent.”
Rose frowned at the carpet, then stole a quick, suspicious glance at Nora to check if she had rattled on too much, said the wrong thing, or just was not getting through. Nora looked directly into her eyes, pensive, and without judgment. Rose decided she could finish.
“She could not envision hopping on a plane and being there in twenty hours. That made the trip too casual and maybe even mocked what had been a momentous excursion that changed her life when she went to the us Ultimately, I think, she couldn’t stand that she might be faced with the heartbreaking realization that New Zealand had changed, and so had she, and she might not belong anymore.”
Nora said, “My Mum always referred to the U.K. as ‘home’ when she spoke of it, and yet neither she, nor her parents had ever, ever been there. How’s that for irony? In the past fifty years or so we’ve all learned to think of ourselves as part of the South Pacific and not part of Great Britain. Except for Mum.”
“How did she take the news about going to the nursing home?”
“Exactly as I thought she would. With an embittered, resentful, stiff upper lip.”
***
The next day Nora and Peter moved her mother to her last home. Her mother withdrew emotionally, giving brief, low responses to brief, low questions, and looking quite sad. Nora had a fleeting flashback to leaving Tristan on his first ever day of school, and the look of utter abandonment he gave her. Her mother would not look directly at her, but she cast her increasingly nervous expression on every passing aide and resident, on the paper Father Christmas heads dangling like a mobile from the hall chandelier, and on the matron who came to welcome her and tell her the rules.
Peter carried her suitcase, and when they were brought into her room, Nora was relieved to find that her new roommate sat in the lounge and that she and her mother could have a few private moments to adjust. Her mother took in with wide, searching eyes the bed that would be hers and the side of the room that would be hers, and the side of the room that would not. It was Peter who made comforting small talk, and who actually sat down on the bed, testing it, and pronouncing it fine, coaxing her mother to do so as well. Nora turned her back on them, and began to unpack her mother’s suitcase.
***
Rose finished packing slowly, tucking folded clothes into the suitcases as if by the very act of it she were trying to preserve the memory. The bathing suit, light and colorful, the fabric smooth and cool in her hands became gently wadded into a small space. The few books and maps were swaddled in her new robe, that the sales clerk had called a dressing gown.
Rose put her winter coat aside, not putting it in the suitcase. She would keep it ready for when the plane touched down in the frigid air of early December in Massachusetts, close to midnight the same day as she left because of the International Dateline making a present to her of an extra day.
She had saved the bundles of letters for last. They would be carried in the deep pockets of her coat, next to her body. One for the road, she thought, and the last of her mother’s words.
“Dear Edith,
Please accept my condolences on the loss we both share. I wish more than anything that Rob and I had gotten to see each other again. I treasure the letters he wrote to me. I miss him very much.
I would like us to continue to write to each other, if you would like to do so.”
She heard the car in the driveway, and Tristan’s slamming of the screen door, impatient trotting through the kitchen and calling,
“Are you ready, Rose?”
“Yeah.” She stood up and tucked the letter back into the yellowed envelope that was printed Air Mail.
“Let me just get something from my room,” Tristan called.
“Okay.” Rose looked over her open suitcases on the floor once again. Tristan came into the lounge, gingerly stepping around her packing.
“I’m glad I’ve caught you before you finished tucking it all away. I’ve got a prezzie for you.” he said, grinning, and handed her a flat, square object in colorful wrapping paper. It looked like it might be concealing a 45-rpm record, but Tristan probably didn’t know what that was.
“You didn’t have to do this, Tris.”
“Go on.” He looked very pleased with himself. She grinned back at him, and tore the wrapping paper. It was a white square of cardboard with a blue wheel inside peeking through a cutout hole in the cardboard. On the blue wheel were printed constellations of the night sky.
“A star finder,” Rose read the directions.
“It’s called a planisphere,” Tristan said, taking it from her and turning the wheel so that the Southern Cross showed. “It’s just for the Southern Hemisphere. There’s your Southern Cross.”
“Well, this is too cute. You can find the constellations in whatever direction you’re facing.”
“It’s so you can take your mother’s sky back with you.”
She gasped without meaning to, then kissed his cheek and gently held him while her eyes filled with sudden tears, wishing again he were hers.
“Let’s sod off, then,” she said, clearing her throat and pulling away.
“What?”
“Is that how you say it?”
“Let me set you right with your lingo.”
***
Rewa met them at the Chinese restaurant, and they shared a table, and shared their food. Rewa’s evident excitement to travel, while possessing as well a placid maturity that would get her through any predicament to come impressed Rose. Rewa would be a good traveling companion for Tristan, that was the main thing. She and Tristan clearly adored each other. Rose wondered with nagging jealousy if they would look at each other like that when they were old, or at least as old as she was.
“I’m really looking forward to your staying with me.”
They showed her their list of things they wanted to do. She added to it with suggestions of her own, things they did not know about, places they did not know about, things they did not know were possible. Things that she could make possible.
“Now I have a favor to ask,” Rose said, “I’m putting together a hamper of goodies for your mom and dad, your grandmother and you, as a thank you. Suggestions from the board?”
Rewa and Tristan sent her on a scavenger hunt, and went back to their Saturday jobs.
Rose took a cab to the nursing home.
***
A loud television in the common room announced sale offers and reminders to put purchases on lay-by for Christmas. A small ceramic Christmas tree with tiny colored electric lights stood sentinel on the hall table, with cotton snow placed at its base, nestling its trunk and covering the electric cord.
“Snow?” Rose said, pointing to it as a young aide passed down the hall. The young woman smiled, stopped a moment with linens in her arms and after momentary confusion said with a smile,
“It is what one thinks of as Christmas, isn’t it?”
***
“It’s not the same after one loses one’s parents,” Edith said, looking absently at the lamp by her bed.
“No, Ma’am.”
“My father was a digger on the Western Front in the Great War,” Edith said, still talking to the lamp. “But he never spoke of it. Only once, and that was to my brothers Henry and Graeme. Graeme told me. It was just before the war, the second war I mean, and my father took them out for a long walk across the paddocks and told them what he did in the Great War, and told them how awful it was and told them not to enlist. He said for them to keep out of England’s wars, as he should have.”
Edith smiled, and turned her head towards Rose.
“But they did enlist anyway, eventually,” she said, “And Brother Henry was killed, you see. In New Guinea. Graeme came home, he had been in North Africa, but by then Father had died, so he never knew either that Henry was killed or Graeme had come home to us. Isn’t it funny, looking back? Most of the chaps I knew were called into the army, and most went to Europe, and then the Yanks came and we had to feed them and provide a base for them, and then they fought with the Australians and some of our boys like my brother Graeme in our part of the world. It was as if all the people of the world were getting all shifted about. Nobody was where he belonged. And we felt such responsibility. It was all up to us. Rationing. Tinned sardines, and a new cardigan impossible to find. Were the cardigans in some mysterious place helping the war effort? Still, the Yanks complained about our mutton. They’re never satisfied.”
Rose said nothing, but listened to the small electric alarm clock tick with a curious hesitancy, it’s thin arm shifting slightly momentarily backward before resolutely ticking forward at each stroke.
“My mother was a Land Girl.” Rose said to the wall.
“What did you say?”
“My mother. She was Land Girl during the war.”
“We had a few land girls,” Edith said, “My mother didn’t want them in the house at first. We didn’t know what kind of girls they were. Eventually, she could see that they helped replace the men off our place that had been taken into the army. I missed my chance at boarding school in England, you know, because of the war. I was eleven when the war broke out and Father did not think it was safe anymore. I had to be content with boarding out in the area, until about 1943 it was when my parents insisted I come home and continue under a governess at home. They wanted me home you see. Graeme and Henry were gone, and I was the baby of the family.”
“The land has been in your family for a long time.” Rose said, “Ever since your people came over from England.”
“Oh, yes. Well, my grandfather, Arthur Bates came from England and bought this land, but he wasn’t the first of my family in this country.” Her voice became conspiring, “My grandmother, Abigail, his wife, was actually the daughter of an American named Hardwyck who came for the gold prospecting and married a Maori.” She sighed, “Think of that.”
Rose said nothing, but felt ruefully as if a joke had been played on them both. Edith knew it and laughed.
Outside, the spring sunshine illuminated the crimson blossoms of a pohutukawa tree, sometimes referred to as New Zealand’s Christmas tree. There was no cotton ball “snow” around its base.
***
Rose looked at her bottle of Lion Red, which she had bought knowing nothing about local beer, but seeing a rather tough-looking man in black leather and a skull earring buy a case, she returned his leering smile at her by the counter and decided to show she was a better man than he, and bought some for herself.
She assembled her hamper gift back in the lounge room at Peter and Nora’s house, and left it with a card by the window. The phone rang, and she went to the kitchen to answer it. It was Sue.
“Hullo, Rose,” Sue said breathlessly, “I’ve got some news for Nora.”
“She and Peter aren’t here right now.”
“Can you tell her for me that Ed has been to the doctor with me and we’ve started a prescription and have an appointment with a therapist next week. All’s well, I think.”
“I’m so happy for you. Nora will be very relieved.”
“Yes, I wanted her to know straight off. The move is going along, as well.”
“How’s Trevor John?” Rose asked, immediately ashamed of herself for doing it.
“Trevor John? Oh, he’s Trevor John, that’s about all I can say, you know,” Sue laughed, evidently feeling much happier and chatty, “Yesterday your name came up in conversation, and Trevor John rolled his eyes, threw his head back and laughed until he was actually shaking. I’ve never seen such an outburst from him. You’ve certainly amused him.”
She answered ruefully, “Yeah, well. Tell him I have a good laugh when I think of him, too.”
“He was putting on a show for us, imitating your antics droving sheep!”
“Yeah, well, what kind a guy brings a condom to go sheep droving? Tell me there’s not a joke in there somewhere.”
“What?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing.”
“He sold his caravan today and moved it off the property. He’s got a new position arranged. He’s leaving us tomorrow.”
“Should I have Nora call you?”
“No, not unless she really wants to.”
“Okay.”
***
When Nora came home, she found Rose sitting on the floor in the kitchen, her back against the cabinet where the pots and pans were stored, her knees tucked against her chest, and her second beer held with a firm hand.
“Are you all right?” Nora asked, rigid with surprise, as if she had found a dead body in her kitchen.
“Yeah.” Rose said matter-of-factly.
“Why are you on the floor?”
“Felt like it. Tired of the carpet. Thought I’d try linoleum and see what that does for me.”
“Honestly, what is it? What’s happened?”
“Nothing, nothing. Sue called. Your brother’s gone to the doctor, got some medication, and has an appointment with a therapist next week. Sue sounded really happy, really relieved.”
“Crumbs,” Nora said, hands on hips, “Good on Ed.”
“I went to see your mother.”
“Oh. How is she since we left her?” Nora pulled out a kitchen chair for herself and sat down, tossed her purse on the table, and her keys, which slid across the tabletop and fell to the floor. Rose picked them up and fingered them in her hand, examining the keys and the worn key chain with Nora’s initials on it that had been a present from Tristan when he was a boy.
“Okay.” Rose said, “A little sad, I guess. A bit annoyed. Not a bit pleased with you.”
Nora rolled her eyes. “That’d be right.”
“But other than that,” Rose continued, “she’s fine where she is. She’ll have more company and conversation there than she would in her home. You made the right choice for her, Nora.”
“Thank you. It’s nice to hear somebody say that.”
“But I don’t think she likes Land Girls.”
“What?”
“My mother was a Land Girl.” Rose said, “My mother. She was a Land Girl. Do you know what that is? She was in the Women’s Land Service. While you mother was dodging lessons from her governess, my mom was herding sheep on horseback and milking cows and plowing on a tractor. She didn’t know a damn thing about farming. She grew up in the city and when the war broke out and your father was gone, she decided to volunteer with that typical masochistic fervor of home-front patriots everywhere, and drop-kick herself into an entirely new set of unpleasant circumstances for the greater bloody good.”
Peter came home. They both heard the front door open and shut, and Rose held her peace until Peter’s tall frame filled the doorway. He looked at her on the floor, then over to Nora, who shrugged.
“Siddown, Pete,” Rose said, “I’m telling Nora about my mother and the war, that one I think I won all by myself.”
Peter dropped his briefcase in the hall, grabbed a beer for himself from the refrigerator and waved one at Nora, but she shook her head. Peter sat at the kitchen table next to her and peered over the bowl of fruit down at Rose.
“Everybody cozy? Good,” Rose said, “So, my mother, Miss Ruby Fitzgerald of Auckland, comes down to Reikorangi on a train to work at some guy’s farm. Mr. Fowler. He had a wife but no children, and he had been gassed in World War I, so his health was not so great. His workers went off to the war, so he gets two Land Girls to help him. Shirley was the other girl, became good friends with my ma. They were all like family, she said. She needed that then. Her own mother had died the year before, and her brother was missing in action, so she had nobody. Nobody. And she didn’t know anything about farming. Absolutely nothing.
“She told me the first time she had to cut a sheep’s throat made her sick, but she did it, because she had to. Sheep was food, for them and the dogs. Sheep was income. Sheep was wool for the uniforms and meat for the soldiers. She woke before dawn and rarely had a day off. She worked like a dog. And she loved every minute of it, or so she said. That kind of slavish self sacrifice put some meaning and purpose into her life. She was keeping her brother alive, or honoring his memory. One or the other, she didn’t know which, figured time would tell. Hey, you know how my parents met?”
They shook their heads. Peter began eating an apple from the bowl on the table. He silently offered the bowl to Rose, who looked at it blankly for moment, then shook her head.
“Well, my dad had been fighting in Guadalcanal and was shipped to New Zealand in 1943. He was a Marine. Spent months there at Paekakariki training and stuff. Am I saying that right? On a long march his unit sits by the side of the road, Route 1 actually, and my mom rides by on her horse with her dogs and her zillions of sheep. The Marines all start whistling at her and hollering hellos, but my dad doesn’t say a word. A few days later a buddy of his invited him to go with him to visit a girl he met. It was Shirley. They go to the Fowlers and have tea, and my mom walks in, in her dirty old work clothes and her hair down, and my father recognized her, and I guess saw something he liked. He came to visit her on his own after that. She took him out into the hills and the paddocks, and they walked around and talked about everything, I guess. My mother was struck by his compassion. That’s how she put it. She had felt lonely and isolated, and warmed up to the novelty of human contact again.
“He was very sympathetic when she talked about her brother, evidently she talked about him a lot, and my father never had any siblings and always wished he did. He admired my mother for cherishing her brother. She said he was very gentlemanly and courteous, and sweet. He became someone she could care about, when she had no one else. I don’t either of them were looking for a spouse, but by the end of the year they couldn’t think of anything else. Both of them in uniforms. They married in October. A week later, my dad was shipped out to Tarawa. At first he couldn’t even write his parents where he was because nobody was supposed to know the Americans were in New Zealand. Now he’s got to tell them he’s gotten married to a New Zealand girl.”
Rose glanced up at Nora and Peter. They were looking down at her with serious expressions that she could not read.
“They were there for training and to be a base for the coming attack on New Zealand by the Japanese. That’s what everybody thought was going to happen. Can you imagine if that had happened?”
“Rose,” Nora said, “What is it?”
“And then after Tarawa, she searched the newspapers for his name among the dead, wishing she hadn’t married him because not having someone to care for was not having someone to worry about. It was so bad that hundreds of us troops were mowed down, so bad that he would never talk about it with her afterwards, when they could discuss any fear or heartbreak before that, and did. The first break between them, when they were in their new home in the apartment below my grandparents in Massachusetts. They were married in 1943 and didn’t see each other again until 1946. Was it the passing of so much time without each other, or was it Tarawa? I don’t know.”
“Rose.”
Rose stopped, looking momentarily confused.
“What is it, Rose?”
“He was protecting her country, and she was feeding him. They needed each other.”
Rose drained the bottle. “Tell me this. Just what frigging traits are American? Suppose I act like a paranoid, defensive jerk. Is that American, or is that just me feeling sorry for myself? What happens when you do it? Is it okay when you do it? What is national pride, and when does it become chauvinism, and when does that turn to nationalism or something worse? Is there a country in the world that from time to time does not adopt a self congratulatory tone? That is well pleased with itself? Please. Get real. There’s no such thing as national traits. There are only two kinds of people in this world, nice people and shitheads. And there isn’t a nation on earth that doesn’t have an ample supply of both.”
“What is it?”
“What it is, is that the day those shitheads hijacked those planes and attacked my country, my mother was in bed, laboring to breathe. She had only a few more months to live. She looked uncomfortable and I noticed and said, ‘What is it, Mom, what do you want?’ And she said, pointing at the TV, ‘We can’t let them do that to us.’”
Rose’s eyes filled suddenly with swift, heavy tears, but she smiled, sardonically, and rolled the empty beer bottle between her palms as she whispered, ‘We can’t let them do that to us.’ To us. Only time I ever heard my mother identify herself with the us Her patriotism from sixty years ago found its way to the surface again in her tired old body.” A spasm of crying escaped her, though she tried to stifle it.
“I think she would have gotten out of bed and sheared some sheep if that would have helped the U.S.A. I’m not half the woman she was. I don’t even know what that kind of commitment is.”
She wept now, openly, heartbreakingly, and Nora wondered if Rose had chosen the floor to sit upon because she had a feeling this was coming. Peter swallowed his apple with difficulty and glanced at Nora, questioning her with his eyes.
Nora knelt on the floor in front of her, “Sure you do. You gave up everything to look after her, didn’t you? Look there, Rose, we know you miss your mum.”
“Oh, shut up!” Rose said “You’re so damned emotionally constipated, what do you know? Your son is about to embark on the adventure of his life and all you can do is stifle him with your own suspicion, resentment, and prejudice against anything not New Zealand. Your mother is part of the most self-sacrificing generation and you barely spend any time with her. Your husband is one of the best people I have met in years, and all you can do is shut him out. You make me sick.”
Nora stood. “Nice chatting with you.”
“Oh come on, you’re waiting to see when the Ugly American is going to pop out, you’ve been waiting for that all along. Well, here she is. Happy? What is it with people like you that have such a bug up your ass.”
“Arse.”
“I said ass and I meant ass, dammit!”
“Are you afraid to go home, Rose?” Peter asked.
“Why?” Nora asked, though she knew. She wanted to hear Rose tell it.
“Homeland Security crap. Goddamn color-coded bars and suspicion and my library books are nobody else’s business. But hell, there’s no place else that’s safe, not really, for anybody. The murdered Indonesians and Australians sure weren’t safe in Bali last month, were they? This world has gotten to be place where people can barely stand each other, but now there’s no way to divorce. We can’t even separate ourselves from each other. Confrontation is all that’s left. And I happen to be from a nation that’s addicted to happy endings.
“You know what really scares me? That in a few years, all the horror, and the sick sensation of 9/11 is just going to fade away, that we’ll all just forget about it. I don’t mean the world will forget, I don’t expect anything from the rest of the world. I mean the us I mean we’ll forget about it and move on, because that’s what we do. That’s what we’re good at. William of Orange may have crossed the Boyne nearly nine hundred years ago, but Irish Catholics and Protestants are still killing each other. That would never happen where I’m from. The American Civil War was as grisly as it gets, and we got over it. You name it, whatever injustice, calamity or struggle, we just get it the hell done and move on. Yesterday’s news. It’s a good thing, and sometimes it’s not a good thing.”
“I don’t think you’re an ugly American, Rose,” Nora said, “A bit thin-skinned.”
“I know. So what if that really is an American trait, and not just me? I wonder if it’s going to be like Halloween, where if a house runs out of candy, they just shut off the porch light and pretend not to be home. What if we do that to the world? What happens to the world, and what kind of people does that make us? We’re already self involved and materialistic. I suppose we’re the only nation that ever stamped ‘the pursuit of happiness’ into our culture. It’s in the Declaration of Independence. We’ve been pursuing our own happiness from the very beginning. We’ve gotten good at it, to the exclusion of other things, sometimes.”
“Did you ever shut off your porch light on Halloween?” Peter asked, only partly joking.
“I made damn sure I never ran out of candy. I always had enough.”
She put the bottle on the table. “So much so I made myself sick on it for days afterward. What else does that tell you?”
“That you’re a pig.” Nora raised her hand as if she were on a game show.
“I’m trying to make an analogy, and you’re not having any of it, are you? I’ve been hypersensitive and humorless for months over this, and I just thank you so much for not taking me seriously.”
“I do take you seriously, Rose. I....”
“Tell you though,” she said, wiping her face, “I think one of these days I’m going to drive across the whole United States and see everything for myself. It’s about time I did that. I’m gonna put on a CD of Allison Krause and the Union Station, and just drive everywhere I can. I’ll really be able to shepherd your travel clients, Peter, because I’ll know everything, first hand. You know what I love about the us? Diners where the waitresses call you ‘hon.’ And maybe buy a shitload of refrigerator magnets at every tourist trap I find.” She left the room to return to her packing.
Nora and Peter stood silently in the kitchen, alone and together.
“Jet lag and Lion Red obviously have the same ridiculous effects on her,” Nora said. “Look, have I been avoiding you?”
“Of course you have,” he answered.
“Right. Well, you’ve been keeping your secret too, haven’t you.”
“Yes. I wanted to wait until I had something solid to say, something to show you.”
“I’ll try to take you more on faith. You deserve that much from me. Thanks for visiting Mum in hospital whilst I was away.”
“You’re welcome. Tristan joined me most times.”
“Did he?”
“He only wants to take a break before coming back for university.”
“He’s coming back for uni, is he? We’ll see. He knows what he wants then?”
“Always did, even if he changed his mind from time to time.”
“How long is this break really going to last?”
“I’m not sure even he really knows.”
Rose came back into the room.
“I’m sorry,” Rose said.
“Well, you certainly got over that quickly. If I had thrown a temper, I’d still be sulking.”
“I don’t have a very long attention span. It’s a national trait.”
Nora playfully pushed Rose in the shoulder. “Stop looking so miserable. I really wasn’t looking for you to turn into the Ugly American.”
“Yes, you were.”
“Then forgive me.”
“Yeah, okay. Listen, you guys kissed yet?”
“Twit!” Nora said.
“Fine. I’ll come back. Jeez-Louise, you guys are tight-assed.”
“Tight-arsed.” Nora bellowed. “And we’re not!”
“Sod off.” Rose said, then stuck her head back around the corner, “Like that, right?”
“Yes.” Peter laughed. “Wait, Rose, come back in here.”
“She’s already full of herself, Peter, she doesn’t need any more encouragement.”
“I have something for you, if you want it,” he said, smiling. From his shirt pocket he handed Rose a slip of paper.
“Shirley Hinton...what’s this, an address? Hamilton?” Rose read the paper and Peter watched the minute detail of her perplexed expression grow warm on her clear, oddly young face as she gradually became aware of the memory gnawing at her. Nora looked from one to the other.
“What is it?” Nora asked, and Peter winked at her. Then Rose lifted her face and its enraptured, still not quite believing expression to Peter’s happy gaze.
“Peter...this is Shirley? Shirley Omstead?”
He grinned triumphantly.
“Get out!” she shrieked, rushed forward and pulled Peter into a quick, deep kiss. She released him to equal parts laughter and surprise, and Nora looked incredulously at them both, yet finding herself enjoying their obvious sense of fun with each other.
“Rose, that wasn’t very cousinly. You’re really going to have to stop doing that sort of thing. At least with my husband.”
“Nora!” Rose said, shaking her, “This is Shirley! My mother’s Shirley! Shirley who used to be a Land Girl with her. Oh, jeez, Peter, how did you do this?”
“Nothing to it, really,” he folded his arms across his chest like a champion.
“However did you track her down?” Nora looked at the paper.
“Rose mentioned her name in one of her emails. A few years back there was a fiftieth anniversary celebration of the Women’s Land Service here in Auckland. Lot of stuff of printed about it around that time. There was a study that interviewed the old Land Girls and gave updates on what happened to them in the intervening years. Shirley was interviewed,” he said. “I rang her and told her about you. She wants to meet you, if you are willing.”
“My flight leaves at 6:30 tomorrow night. Do you think I have time to make it to Hamilton and back?”
“You will if I drive and we leave fairly sharpish in the morning.”
“Oh Peter, thank you.”
“Seriously, Rose. You’re quite welcome. Don’t you know that by now?”