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Rose lit candles in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which had been built in 1848, the same year her hometown of Chicopee, Massachusetts, broke off from neighboring Springfield and became a town. None of her family had lived in Chicopee at the time, nor even in the United States, nor in New Zealand. Her father’s family were all still in the area of Poland that had been partitioned by its conquerors to Russia, and her mother’s family were all still in Ireland, struggling through the Famine.
She did not know what county in Ireland her ancestors had lived. Her mother did not know. They had arrived in New Zealand in the 1870s, Padraig and Hannah Fitzgerald, according to Peter’s notes, and lived in hopeful poverty for the remainder of their lives, which at least was better than living in certain squalor, which was all Ireland could offer them at the time.
Why New Zealand, she wondered? Why had they not emigrated to the us, or Canada, or Australia as millions of other Irish had done? What was it about this place that lured them so far, on such a long, probably sickness-filled journey over the ocean? Had they family or some other connection already here? Had Padraig sold himself to a company agent as a gamble on a better future? She did not know. Her mother had not known.
Her mother had mentioned only St. Patrick’s, so Rose felt here at least there was some connection with family history. There were few others. She did not know in what cemeteries her grandparents and great-grandparents were buried, or even if they had a plot marked by a stone. Perhaps they were buried in an unknown potter’s field. Rose visited locations Peter had been able to document for her, the sites of old buildings with cold-water flats long torn down, old neighborhoods that were now only a ribbon of freeway.
Her mother had never described her life in Auckland except in the minutiae of being a child. They went to “the shops” but Rose did not know the names or locations. They went to school. Her mother remembered the names of teachers and a few classmates, but had never thought to document locations or dates, and left Rose only the most generic impressions of a childhood spent in a faraway land. They played at jumping rope. The neighbor girl had a lisp. They wore Panama hats with brims that became frayed by the end of the school year. They moved to new flats a lot. Grandparents died but the occasions were but dim memories because her mother had been so young. It was not then an age to keep alive a personal time-line with the conceit later generations would apply to every fad they had succumbed to and every memory one of self importance.
Rose walked the same streets, but there was no orientation for her beyond a tourist’s map. She walked around the Central Business District again, and then took buses from Parnell to Ponsonby and decided to relinquish her feeble grip on the past. She admitted defeat and allowed herself to simply be a tourist for this day. The new kept clashing with the old, until it won out. Rose stood looking out over the Viaduct Basin towards the America’s Cup Village. The harbor dotted with a forest of masts. A golden afternoon, with a stiff, steady breeze off the ocean, created a timeless effect that must have evoked nostalgia for someone, but not for Rose, not even second-hand nostalgia borrowed from her mother’s memories, for she had never related a similar scene to her daughter.
It was only barefoot summers in January and the time a new boy came to class wearing braces on his legs because he had polio. For Christmas they had a bit a lamb or a sometimes a goose, and Christmas pudding. Gran’s brother was a bachelor and he always had Christmas with them and always brought prezzies. He said the same joke over and over, that little Ruby was his favorite gem.
Rose’s grandmother went to work after her husband died in 1930, as a cleaning woman at the hospital. The Depression was rough. What hospital?
The more Rose tried to imagine her mother as a child, as a young woman, standing here or walking there, the more she was unable to picture her. She kept seeing her mother in their own backyard in Chicopee, patiently pottering about in her garden, flicking a Japanese beetle off a rosebush, a woman who was middle-aged, and then a frail old lady, who had been a child only in photographs.
Rose stood on the observation level of the Sky Tower and looked down on a modern city her mother did not know and would not have recognized much of since she had seen it for the last time in 1945 as she was passing through to catch a ship to the United States. The diverse, cosmopolitan city, the largest city in Polynesia would have fascinated her mother, but she would have looked it in much the same way as her daughter: through tourist’s eyes.
When her mother had been angry with her father, her mother would make resentful accusations on the quality of food in America, the debasing influence of rock n’ roll, the impracticality of suburban sprawl, the inefficiency of the Postal Service and how the lack of school uniforms was breeding a generation of rude children, who were unable to go barefoot in the summer because there were minefields of broken glass on playgrounds. She used these as her most convenient defense against provocations large and small. Rose found herself actually smiling at the memory. She had hated when her parents were snippy with each other, but dragging in the Postal Service, and why did hot dogs come in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight, was just funny.
Geopolitics had not entered her mother’s list of resentments at the time. Life was inferior in the United States, and Americans were inferior people, but then she was only having a spat with her husband, who would not stop ranting that the Red Sox had blown another Series.
Rose stepped back away from the guardrail, too engrossed in her memory to be dizzy at the height, and left the observation level to the other tourists, all taking photos of the city below and pointing at landmarks they recognized from guidebooks. Rose roused herself, took one more step out to the edge and pulled the disposable camera from her pocket, to take as much of the scene as possible home with her.
In the lift to the ground, she recalled the time her mother laughed at her for writing in a school essay about ethnic heritage, in which she claimed that she was part New Zealander. She was most certainly not a New Zealander, her mother said, scoffing at her impertinence. Perhaps New Zealand was not something she wanted to share.
“You are Irish and Polish,” her mother corrected her.
“And American?” Rose asked.
“Yes, but that’s not your ethnic heritage. Babci and Dziadzu are from Poland, so you have your Polish ancestry from them. The Irish side went to New Zealand....”
“And you’re a New Zealander...” Rose had said, scribbling spirals on a book cover.
“Yes, but I’m Irish. That’s my ethnic heritage. I’m a New Zealander by nationality, just as you’re an American by nationality.”
“What’s Dad?”
“Well, he’s Polish, of course.”
“But he’s an American, too, right?”
“Of course he’s an American. He was born here. So are Babci and Dziadzu, he took his citizen test years ago.”
“But they’re really Polish, right?”
“Yes,” she sighed.
“And I’m Polish, and Irish, and a New Englander, and an American.”
“And you’ve also made a mess. Never mind what you are, and look at what you’re doing.”
***
Rose arrived back at her motel just as Nora drove up. Nora stepped out of the car and nodded to Rose, but Tristan and a friend remained in the back seat. They were in school uniforms.
“Hey, Tris.” Rose said, leaning into the window.
“G’day, Rose,” he said, “This is Rewa Smith.”
Rose extended her hand into the car, and the girl warmly took it, with a stunning smile.
“Nice to meet you.” Rewa said, “Welcome to New Zealand.”
“Rose, could we step in for a moment? I’d like to talk to you, just briefly.” Nora said.
“Sure.”
Rose and Nora went into Rose’s room and Rose stopped momentarily at the window to look out on the kids.
“They’ll be glad to be rid of me for a few moments.” Nora said.
“Is that his girlfriend?” Rose asked, “My lord, Nora, she’s beautiful.”
“Yes.” Nora smiled, “Smart, too. She wants to be physician. Pediatrics.”
“When I was seventeen, I had acne and no ambition. I blame television.”
“Rose, last night...”
“I have to hand it to you,” Rose turned from the window, “I didn’t think you’d be standing this soon.”
“Yes, well. Alcohol may divert a Kiwi’s attention for a bit, but hardly ever stops us for long. Actually...I got out of bed only a couple hours ago. I had to pick up the kids. I want to thank you for taking me home.”
“Taking you home? Girl, I hauled your drunken Kiwi ass over my shoulder like just so many pounds of potatoes and removed you from any further public embarrassment you might have brought on yourself.”
“We prefer ‘arse,’ actually.”
“Arse? Okay, arse it is. It’s your country, I’m the guest. I saved your drunken Kiwi arse.”
“Yes. Well. You’re a big woman, with a big sense of responsibility.”
“Damn right.”
“I regret I was not blessed with that hail-fellow-well-met charm New Zealanders are supposed to have when drinking to excess. I only become a rather ugly sod. Thank you again.”
“You’re welcome. What’s a sod?”
“I want you to know that is not my usual form of recreation.”
“We’re all sinners.” She grinned.
“Stop it, Rose.” Nora took a seat at the table, suddenly looking as shaky as she was supposed to feel.
“Seriously, you okay?”
“Rose, I have to tell you something.” She pulled a bundle of letters from her purse.
“Oh, I know about those. I mean, these.” Rose retrieved the bundle of her mother’s letters from the shopping bag. “I took them from your pocketbook last night. Sorry, I shouldn’t have done that. Impulse, after a very goofy night. I thought they were the ones I’d brought over. I was shocked when I saw they were from my mom. You cannot believe how shocked I was. This is utterly fantastic.”
Nora closed her eyes.
“Thank God,” she said, “You’ve no idea....I thought I’d lost them. I searched for them frantically this morning, I had intended to give them to you last night...but when I couldn’t find them...oh, hell, I was in panic. I debated whether or not I should even tell you. You have no idea what a relief this is.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, last night about the letters?”
Nora said, “I meant to. I was dealing with some other things. Mum and all. Lots of things. Never mind.” She handed the bundle of her father’s letters back to Rose.
“Look, why don’t you take these back,” Nora said, “and keep both sets of letters. You seem to be the family archivist.”
“With Peter’s help.”
Nora did not answer. Rose did not pick up the letters, but left them on the table where Nora had placed them. She sat on the edge of her bed, still holding her mother’s letters in her lap.
Nora frowned. “Pocket book?”
“That.” Rose pointed to Nora’s purse.
“Really? Hmm.”
“I can’t tell you what these letters mean to me.”
“My father kept them in his old kit from army days,” Nora explained, “I don’t think my mother knew he had them. I didn’t know myself until sorting through the mess in that house over the past few weeks.”
“Thank you so much,” she whispered.
“No, you’re welcome to them.” Nora drummed her fingers on the table.
“Rose, I need to ask you a favor. A rather huge favor, I’m afraid,” Nora said, “My brother Edwin runs a farm in Canterbury. On the South Island. He’s been having a rough go of it for some time. He’s losing the property. They’ve already been making arrangements to sell, for some time, actually. My sister-in-law called, very urgently, today. She’s afraid he’s having an emotional breakdown. It’s hard to believe, if you knew him. She’s asked me to come down.”
“I’m sorry. I hope he’s okay.”
“Peter tells me you’re driving down to Wellington to do more research on your parents.”
“Seems like all you and Peter do is give quick updates to each other about me.”
“Yes, Rose, that’s pretty much all we do. You’re about the only neutral topic in our conversation these days. We’ve been having some difficulties.” Nora said. “Last night was the first night in weeks we’ve slept together, and I don’t remember any of it, worse luck.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean....”
“Neither did I. The favor I’d like to ask you is, would you consider meeting me in Wellington, and flying with me to Christchurch? I’d rather not go down there alone. This is just one too many family crises. I’m being pulled in too many directions...Mum, Tris and his bloody OE, Peter...well, enough of that. You see what I mean.”
“Fly to Christchurch?”
“I know it’s an imposition, and please don’t bother about it if you can’t. But you haven’t really seen New Zealand until you seen the South Island as well. Since you carried me like just so many kilos of kumara...”
“Very funny.”
“...I know your jet lag is over. I also sense that you’re one of those rare people who seems able to adjust wherever she goes. The fact is, I just don’t want to do this alone, and I would rather like your company.”
“Okay.” Rose said, after what seemed to Nora to be an interminable pause, “Thank you for inviting me.”
Quickly, she stood and walked to the door. “Thank you very much, indeed.”
***
Rose looked at the bundle of her Uncle Rob’s letters on the table, with which she had become so familiar. She put the bundle of her mother’s letters on the table with his, and looked at them both. They were inanimate scraps, but they contained lives and stories, and her affection for them was mingled with the knowledge that they would also likely cause her pain.
She knew she had to proceed with caution. This was a moment. She had always been a person to look for moments, here was one booting her in the rear.
Rose grabbed a can of Coke and a Violet Crumble candy bar from a shopping bag that contained an assortment of Minties, Jaffas and, a couple Picnic bars, and an apple that looked very out of place. She sat at the table, pulling up her chair and sitting up straight, as is she were about to take her SATs. She sorted through the bundle of letters to put them in chronological order, oldest to newest. Her mother’s handwriting was what it had been when Rose was a child and her mother signed her report cards and wrote notes excusing her from school on sick days, before the later years and a series of strokes reduced the vibrancy of her deliberate penmanship to a helpless scrawl. Rose lustily chomped into the Violet Crumble for courage, instantly certain she had just cracked a filling in one of her left lower molars.
Good job, idiot.
She began with the first, from Rob, who was her mother’s brother, and Nora’s father, and her uncle.
“30 November 1946
Dear Ruby
Or should I say, ‘Dear Mrs. Chleb?’ Now when did you manage that, my girl? I hope this letter finds you, I don’t know if it will, but I’ve been stumbling in the dark for so long now I’ve gotten used to taking my chances. Here I am, the bad penny.
Likely, you’d thought the worst, didn’t you? Poor thing.
I’m here in Auckland staying with Rod Byrnes and his mum, until I can find a place and whilst I was searching you out. Rod had a packet of letters from you that his sister Eleanor kept, and that’s how I came by your address, if this is indeed your address. I don’t know if you know this, but I must tell you if you don’t, that your friend Eleanor has passed on. Rob says she had cancer, and if you didn’t know that, I’m sorry. Her husband has gone off to a job somewhere else and left their boys with Rob’s other sister, Kay. Do you remember her? She was the baby of the family with the ginger hair. Write to me here at Rob’s address, for even if I manage to get a flat of my own, I’ll still be in touch with him.”
“22 February1947
Dearest Rob,
I received your letter this morning, and I am grateful to God for this miracle. I really thought you were gone, Rob. I knew I would never see you again. I’m crying as I write this. I can’t believe it.”
Rose took a hard gulp from the Coke can and ran her fingers through her thick, blonde hair. She knew Rob’s letter’s well, having read them over several times in the last years. Having her mother’s letters in answer to them gave the effect of a conversation between the brother and sister, and seemed to give a larger perspective to the letters she had already known so well. Her mother was speaking to her brother, as a woman still a young bride, long before Rose was born. A different person in this letter, who bridged the New Zealand child and the war bride, and her elderly mother.
“21 April 1947
Dear Ruby,
I wrote that letter as soon as I came back to Auckland. This one mayn’t reach you until June or July. We’ll always have to work to catch up with each other, my dear. Don’t worry about me, let me assure you again that I’m well. My mate from Canterbury, Graeme, I wrote you about him I think early on in the war, I stayed with his family, but have finally left them. His sister Edith will soon join me. We’re to be married.”
The letters were yellowed, brittle at the creases. She unfolded them carefully.
“17 July 1947
Dear Rob,
I am writing this from hospital, but don’t worry. Nothing’s wrong, it’s just a girl, that’s all. Her name is Linda. She says Cheers to her Uncle Rob.
Hank and I send your our very best wishes on your coming marriage, and the enclosed by way of a wedding present.
It is very hot here now, not the best time to choose to a have baby, but she doesn’t seem to mind.”
Rose stood and walked around the room. She peeked out the window at the black night sky. She walked to the kitchenette and turned on the tap for no reason, and turned the water off again. She lay down on her bed and stared at the ceiling for long time, allowing the easy indulgence of tears one more time.
About 11 o’clock she called Nora.
“I woke you up.”
“Not really,” Nora answered in a low, soft voice.
“Then I really did interrupt something.” Rose said, “I won’t be long. I have to know some things. You have to tell me some things, Nora. Before I go any farther I have to know.”
“Are you all right?”
“No. The last letter my mom received was in 1976. She never got any more after that. She became very sad. Very depressed. Things got even worse between her and my dad. I really think the only thing that saved her was that I was getting to be old enough by that time for her to talk to. She would tell me about her childhood in New Zealand. I was interested. My father and my older sisters were not. That made a special bond between my mom and me. Nora, I loved my mother. During her last illness, I took care of her like she was my child. Can you tell me at all why the last letter she ever received from your family was so frigging long ago, and by a complete stranger?”
“Graeme Bates wasn’t a stranger, Rose, he was my maternal uncle.”
“He was stranger to my mother,” she suddenly shouted, and started, hearing her own voice reverberate off the walls, “How on earth could you shut her out?!”
“Slow down, Rose, nobody shut your mum out. Well, honestly, how can I answer an accusation like that? In the first place, I was fourteen years old in 1976, so don’t chuck any blame at me.”
Rose exhaled, struggling to think and forcing herself to calm down.
Nora paused a moment. Rose listened hard.
“Well then.” Nora said, “Not that I really think it’s any of your bloody business, but the simple truth, Rose, is that my dad was an alcoholic. That one truth had a way of complicating the rest.”
Rose stayed quiet. Nora waited for her.
“I haven’t gone through all the letters yet. I had to stop,” Rose answered.
“I don’t know how much your mother knew about that. I don’t imagine my dad made any grand confessions. You would know better than I. I didn’t read all his letters, but I glanced through enough of them to know he softened things a bit here and there. He could be very sensitive to proprieties at times, my dad. When he was drunk he could be absolutely bloody charming. When he was sober, however, he was rather more difficult to be with. He was angry a lot of the time. I came to look forward to weekends when I knew he would be drinking. He was approachable then.
“My mother was naturally very upset by this, and even more resentful, you could call it, that he showed so much devotion to his sister in America. He talked about the letters he’d received, to us, to his mates. I can remember being quite young when he pulled me into his lap and showed me a photo of my American cousins, he’d said. Three girls in front of a snowman. I can remember that was the first time I’d ever heard that word. One of them, the smallest, must have been you, Rose.”
“Yeah.”
“My mother was resentful because he could write letters to his sister far away describing his satisfaction with yet another new flat, not telling her it was because we kept having to move to cheaper lodgings they were lucky to live in the transit housing camp behind the War Memorial Museum, for quite a while as it turned out and of encouraging prospects of yet another new job, because he could never keep one for long. He was either sacked or else he felt restless and walked out. Boasting of the school accomplishments of the son and daughter with whom he otherwise spent very little time. My mother displayed no interest in the letters he received in return. That was her defense. I think she was very put out, the way wives are, when they discover they are unable to change their husband’s faults. I think she blamed the war and also your mother’s leaving the country while my dad was gone, for his drinking. Her not being here when he got back, having no family when he got back seemed to have affected him a great deal. Probably more than any of us ever realized at the time. Probably even more than he realized, I reckon. Mum never wanted to hear about either subject.”
“My mom thought he was dead. He was taken captive by the Germans, and she never had any word of him after that. She thought she had no family remaining here, that’s why she frigging left.”
“I understand, luv. I’m very glad she was able to start her own family and get on with her life. I’m sure she loved you very much.” Nora said, listening to her tight breathing as Rose fought to suppress tears.
“When she received the last letter from your mother,” Nora continued after a moment, “after my father had died, my mum was apprehensive lest she be required to take up a correspondence with this woman with whom she’d felt such resentment and did not even know. She asked her brother, to whom she turned after my father died to help sort out financial things, to write on behalf of the family announcing my father’s death. My mother received a letter of sympathy from your mum in return after that. My mother, for good or bad, or reasons best known to herself, did not continue the correspondence. That was the end of it.”
“No, it was just the beginning.”
“Then I’m sorry for your mum’s sake.”
“Contact from somebody, anybody in this country would have meant so much to her. She was so lonely for this place. She couldn’t let it go.”
“I understand.”
“I don’t think you do.”
“Let’s just leave it, Rose.”
“Fine.”
“Wait a bit, Rose, can I tell you something else?”
“What?” Rose sighed.
“It’s along the same lines, really.” Nora said, “My brother Ed, he came to be particularly angry at my father. Just disgusted by him, that Dad was always letting us down. He decided, while still very young, I think, to be everything my Dad wasn’t. He became the man of the family and my mother’s rock of support. He doesn’t drink at all. Never did. He took up a place on my Uncle Graeme’s farm with a kind of zealot’s devotion. He works like a bloody machine. Uncle’s own kid’s weren’t interested in carrying on the place, and Ed was, so he gradually took over. He always claimed he was more Bates than Fitzmichael, anyway. Or perhaps that was just something he wanted to convince himself. He’s the most hard-working, no-nonsense bloke you’ll ever meet, Rose. Really, really tough. That’s why it’s so hard to believe he’s having a breakdown. He’s not the type. If he were on a sinking ship, with people panicking all around, he’d be the one to tell them to stop bloody whinging and start swimming. He’s got no time for fears and weaknesses, almost to the point of being brutal about it. This isn’t like him. I hope Susan’s wrong.”
“You’re really having it rough lately. I sure picked a good time to come down here, didn’t I?”
“I reckon you did.”
“Say goodbye to your mother for me. I’d rather not.”
“It’s all different now, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. I’m leaving tomorrow first thing for Rotorua. I’ll see you in Wellington.”
“I’ll book the flight and let you know, right?”
“Peter has my email.”
“Does he?”
“Um...he’s still working on some directions for me.”
“Directions? What sort of directions?”
Rose hesitated, getting again the uncomfortable feeling she had crossed forbidden territory.
“Oh, bugger it,” Nora said, “Right, have a good trip, Rose. Friday, then at the airport?”
“I’ll be there,” Rose answered, realizing, always belatedly, that perhaps she should have not mentioned her email correspondence with Peter. “Oh, oh, Nora, one more thing. I meant to ask this sooner. Too much on my mind. Can you tell me where your father is buried? I want to leave some flowers on behalf of my mother. That would have meant a lot to her. She would have wanted me to.” Tears were very near the surface again.
Nora sighed. “Look, when we come back, I’ll take you there myself.”
“Thank you.”
“Cheers.”
“14 September 1949
Dearest Rob,
Another little cherub has entered our lives. We are calling her Darlene....”
Rose put the letters carefully back into their bundles, and held the two bundles tightly against her chest, as if bringing the brother and sister together at last. She let herself cry now, as she had the last time she held her mother, at the awful but inevitable moment when her mother had just lost consciousness in her arms, and Rose knew it was forever. The ache drove in just as profound as it had been months ago, further hard proof of reality. You just had to take it.
Then she finished packing to leave early tomorrow, her candy and her clothes in order of importance, and sat looking out the window at nothing for as long as she could stand it. She snapped on the television briefly, but the inevitable us-imported hospital drama was on, followed by the inevitable us-imported cop show on the next channel, and Rose pounded the remote button as if it would turn the television off forever.