HER VOICE WHEN she came in was like a fresh breeze on a day when you stick to yourself. Hi, Mum. Music, in just two words. How different her fate — future — was, this woman striding into adulthood with all the confidence of her biological father going into a brawl. (And why am I making that comparison? Well, Jake happens to be her father, that’s all.)
They hugged. Polly moved too quickly away for a mother’s better comfort. She liked to indulge herself every once in a while. Polly’s image moved along the windows above the sinks — top-of-the-line European taps. Same brand stainless-steel fridge and freezer, black granite bench top, double dishwasher. The child of twenty-two was mature for her age, serious, focused, had clear goals. She stopped at the last window, the light reaching in and painting one side of her face gold. Made a statement that this one belonged to herself. No man nor situation would own her unless she chose. Beth saw Jake in her now: that inner hardness, the fighter he was. Though Polly was about looking for opportunities, always talking about different businesses she could get into. She scanned the businesses-for-sale ads in the papers, was interested in money matters that her mother knew nothing about. The girl was hungry, she was ambitious, and no one was going to stop her.
Beth smiled. How’s the new car?
The new car’s fine. I want to trade up, Mum. Beth wondering, does she mean just cars or everything?
I always wondered why you never put that fine body of yours to sporting use.
Like what? Polly didn’t like her mother’s direction.
Oh, netball, golf. Athletics.
Because I discovered early, Ma, I was no champion. I was good, but not good enough. And as I like winning, why would I enter a game I couldn’t compete at? So, anyway, how’s your day been, Mother dear?
Well, I’ve been to my stretch class. Gail says she could be on for golf this afternoon. Charlie’s up walking his tribal land, reconnecting with nature instead of the wretched humans his work throws at him Monday to Friday. And yours?
Nothing much so far. But it’s a Saturday, so the invites should start rolling in around five. Same old boring, heavy drinking stuff though, not —
I know it’s not you, Polls. Never has been.
Hardly never has when I’ve only been legally allowed to drink, what, four years. But you’re right, it doesn’t appear to be a behavioural pattern of Polly Bennett.
A mother smiling at her daughter proudly taking Charlie’s surname. Sounds good to me.
Now Polly was twiddling with a strand of hair darker than a good night out with stars — oh, she’s something all right, this one, with her prime sitting there like a promised long, queenly reign.
The phone rang.
That’ll be for me, this chap I met, Beth joked, immediately aware it might be a Freudian slip. (No, how could that be? I couldn’t be more happy. What chap could possibly interest me?)
Send him back to the old-folk’s home afterwards, eh, Mum?
That brought reality back, even if she was speaking from her subconscious. Middle-age. Too old for hanky-panky even if I wanted to, not even to fantasise about. After what? Beth couldn’t resist asking the question.
After whatever, Ma. Gave a look, then went unhurriedly, languidly, for the phone down the end of the kitchen, screwed to the wall by Mr fix-anything, Beth’s man of ten good solid years. Charlie. Whom she loved. (I adore.)
Down there out of reach of the sunlight, Polly was a silhouette, a strong pencil drawing in thick lead. A prime young woman in the telephone world, making the spontaneous changes of pose that conversation creates. Her non-stop flowing movement was like she’d got oil for blood, she was some kid. (An adult, Beth. Let her grow up.)
She wouldn’t have a bar of throwing a big twenty-first bash. That was for the peasants, she told Beth and Charlie. To drink humungous quantities of booze, end up in a mass brawl. Real good Kiwi fun — not. The event passed without celebration, much to a mother’s disappointment. (I gave hard birth to you, girl. Your father never came once to the maternity to see us. His drinking was more important. He never got close to any of his children; I think now because no one had got close to him when he was a child. The cycle repeating itself, as Charlie keeps seeing in his social work, behavioural cycles, violence breeding violence, ignorance cloning itself — well, this positive young woman had broken one cycle.)
Polly was advising a friend to drop her boyfriend, describing him as a loser, a worse than possessive Greek. Get rid of this emotional retard, Soraya.
Beth left Polly to it, went to the living area of this open-planned house, the first she’d ever seen, never knowing they existed before. (Never knew so much of my present world existed. I was in prison, along with the rest of them, and didn’t know it. Yet kind of intuitively I did.) She sorted through some CDs, remembering when they used to be dinner-plate, long-play vinyl recordings that took the household’s fingerprints better than a police file, a scratched record of the rough drunken hands in charge of the music. Different music, utterly different times. God, but those were not the days.
These were now her surroundings: one wall floor-to-ceiling bookshelves; two leather sofas; Charlie’s chosen oil paintings; fabulous curtains; a bit of the old in an antique sideboard, two lovely, well-worn (well-loved therefore) Persian rugs. She was middle-class without realising it, and feeling quite comfortable with the part at that.
Sitting there on the sofa was a woman supposed to be more than content and deliciously so. Yet something was missing. A nagging, a yearning. But what was it? I have a lifestyle I never could even imagine; a good marriage; no violence; no drunks; no incidents; not a whiff of tragedy. They had more than enough money to live well and save quite a reasonable sum between them, his salary nearing seventy thousand, hers as a legal secretary just under half that. It was a job she loved, especially the language they used, the precision, the complexity of concepts the law threw up, of human affairs and their disorder and dispute, seeking some kind of resolution, which only language could give clarity to. I have interesting, stimulating friends, my children have mostly done pretty well for themselves and even if a son or two doesn’t quite cut it, I’m mature enough not to blame myself. I’m happy. Yet at the same time with this wanting for something.
In winter we go to the beach once or twice a month, we’re going to buy a bach. To think, in my entire years with Jake, we never once went to the beach, not as a family or any of us individually, except my kids on school visits or with their friends. I meet my friends for coffee on weekends, or during my lunch breaks; fancy, me, Beth of Pine Block, who only knew instant coffee from a chipped enamel cup, making it a social event. Dinner parties on our circuit of friends’ homes are so normal I’d feel deprived if they ever stopped. Same as restaurant dining and all my other very pleasant lifestyle options. (So why this void?)
A picture formed in Beth’s mind, a family portrait of her and her four children: Polly, Boogie (Mark), Huata and Abe. Grace and Nig were missing, and absolutely so was Jake’s face. But so, too, was Charlie. My husband? Yes, your husband.
Good, wonderful Charlie Bennett, head of Two Lakes District Child, Youth and Family Services, whose recommendation put my son Mark into custody of a child welfare home. That was his turning point and now look at him: a lawyer practising in Wellington; even if he doesn’t make much contact. Made your own life, haven’t you, Boog. Lawyers are busy people.
Charlie, who took my kids as his own. He asked them for nothing except to love him as he loved them. The terrible times Huata gave him, carrying the baggage of Jake, all that violence he witnessed. Yet Charlie’s love never faltered.
Polly entered the room. You look far away, Mum. You okay?
More than okay, thanks, honey. I won’t bother asking if you are. Polly kissed her mother goodbye, things to do. Beth sat there, staring into her thoughts and that space of Charlie’s missing face. The sound like faint hammering, of someone wanting to be let — or put — in. How very odd. It might be menopause.