Transformation of Minna Hargreaves, The (13 page)

‘Are you sure?’ I wanted to ask about the baby, but there was Dad doing a major thundercloud act. The words popped out anyway. ‘The baby?’

Cara squeezed my shoulders then sat down beside me. ‘Everything’s going to be fine.’

Dad made an exasperated noise somewhere deep in his throat. ‘I’m sorry you had to come over. Liv was ill with both her other pregnancies. She survived them, she’ll survive this one.’

Cara eyed him and I wondered if she was reassessing his potential as husband material, because she for sure wasn’t all over him like she’d been last time. ‘The doctor says we’ve caught her in the nick of time — another few hours even and she would have been very seriously ill. She’s got her on a drip for the dehydration.’

Noah dropped the apple he’d just picked up. ‘You mean — she nearly died?’ His voice rose, his mouth sagged open and most of the colour disappeared from his face.

I wanted to feel savagely pleased but all I could think was thank goodness today wasn’t windy, thank goodness the doctor had come so quickly — and thank goodness Noah looked stunned and scared and all the things I’d been feeling for the whole of this hell-long day.

Dad’s butt plopped on to a chair. It looked like his knees wouldn’t hold him up suddenly. He put his elbows
on the table and shoved his head in his hands, running his fingers through his hair over and over again.

Cara said nothing but I bet all the money we were supposed to get from her that she’d already changed the film in the cameras and therefore they’d be whirring away catching every single atom of drama.

Dad stopped the head massage. He looked at me. ‘Sorry, Min. Very sorry.’

I just nodded. Mum was going to be all right.

The doctor stayed for four hours. She came out and spoke to us in between trips to Mum’s room, telling us what to do. We were to make sure Mum had plenty of fluids during the day.

‘But she can’t drink more than half a cup of tea,’ I whispered. She was going to get sick again, I knew it!

The doctor smiled at me. ‘I’m leaving some bottles of electrolytes and some anti-emetic pills. She should soon be feeling much better.’

‘Why’s she so sick?’ Noah asked — a very subdued, low-key Noah.

‘It’s a severe form of morning sickness, which she had to some extent before the chopper ride,’ the doctor said, looking at Noah and not anywhere near Dad. ‘She
had it with both her other pregnancies.’

‘But she wasn’t sick before the chopper ride,’ Dad said.

The doctor gave him a very level look. ‘Yes. She was. Not quite as bad as this, but bad enough.’

Images flickered through my head of her pale, strained face and of how she hadn’t eaten with us because she said she’d eaten with her friends, or she wasn’t hungry. ‘What about when the baby comes? She can’t have it here.’ Not with bird-shit water and nobody to help her except me. ‘How will we get her to hospital?’

The doctor smiled at me. ‘Don’t worry. I think now we’re getting her rehydrated the worst of the nausea will go. Then we’ll give her time to build up some strength before we fly her out.’

‘When’s the baby due?’ Dad squeezed the words out the way you’d squeeze the last dribble from a tube of cleanser.

The doctor gave him a look that had a lot of stuff behind it that she could have said but chose not to. ‘Mid-February. We’ll need to have her off the island by mid-December at the very latest.’

That meant we only had four more months here. I could survive four months. Mum could and I could.

The two women stood up. Dr Hunter said, ‘I’m coming back a week from today but if you’re at all worried, call Cara and she’ll get hold of me immediately.’ She looked at me as she spoke, not at Dad.

They headed for the door. Dad went with them, but I didn’t have the energy. Cara gave me another hug. ‘You did well, Minna. Very well.’

Yeah. I guess it wouldn’t look too good in the headlines if Mum had died:
Reality TV series goes tragically wrong. TV company and husband to be charged over death of artist.

Noah and I watched them go, then we turned and went to Mum’s room. She was asleep, but she looked better already. We tiptoed back to the kitchen.

‘Sorry I ate all the chocolate,’ Noah said.

We heard the chopper lift off and spin away over the sea. Dad came back. He walked over to me and gave me the hugest hug. ‘I can only say I’m sorry, Min. Very, very sorry.’

I let him hug me and I cried into his jersey.

He sat me down on the sofa and said, ‘Noah and I are on canteen duty tonight.’

I went and checked on Mum, and then again five minutes later. After that, I just curled up under the duvet on her bed. She’d nearly died. She might be a bad mother, but she was the only mother I had. I didn’t want to lose her.

I stayed there till Noah came and whispered that dinner was ready. Mum slept on.

We ate and it was good. Dad had made the pork crackle and he’d made gravy. Nobody talked much and they didn’t make me do any of the dishes.

I woke Mum up before I went to bed to see if she wanted to go to the toilet. I helped her, and she didn’t need to lean on me as much as she had before. ‘I feel so much better. Love you, Min.’

I kissed her cheek and tucked her up. She loved me, I loved her, she didn’t love Dad — well, I guessed she didn’t any more, Dad for sure didn’t love her but he did
love me, and I loved him when he wasn’t totally pissing me off. Noah was somewhere in all of that and it was all too complicated. I wanted ordinary life back again and I wanted it so much I ached with wanting, or maybe I just ached with tiredness.

I went to bed. I slept. I didn’t want another day like this one in a hurry.

The next morning got off to a lively start with a weta in Noah’s boot. He was heading out to use the facilities, shoved his bare feet into his gumboots and encountered the weta which wasn’t friendly.

Life trundled on.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I had a hope that all this would make Dad realise how much he really did love Mum, that he’d forgive her, she’d cry and say how wicked she’d been and they’d get back together and we’d all live happily ever after.

Dreams are dangerous.

Dad was different but it was still bloody awful and actually I preferred pissed-off Dad. It was much harder to yell at polite Dad. He cooked breakfast. ‘Morning, Min,’ he said when I yawned my way into the kitchen. So far, nothing was different. ‘Will you go and check on Liv please?’ I noted the use of Mum’s name.

I considered a conversation with him, but he didn’t exactly look in that frame of mind. I went and checked on Mum. She smiled at me — a proper smile — and she sat up, kept still for a minute, then said, ‘Can you find my dressing gown, Min? I’m going to get up, have a cuppa and then a shower.’

I gave her the sort of hug you’d give a fragile doll.
‘That’s great Mum. But you’ve got to eat something too.’

She patted my hand. ‘I will, darling. But in an hour or two I think.’

So. She still felt sick, but I could see she was a major heap better. I found the dressing gown and walked beside her out to the facilities.

‘Check your boots,’ said Noah.

When we came back, I hoped Dad would say something to her. Anything.
Slut
and
why did you do it?
would have been better than the empty look he ran over her from top to toe, and then he turned back to the bacon.

Mum caught a whiff of the smell, turned green and headed back to her bed. ‘Mum, the smell will be all through the house. Here, look, we’ll put a chair on the verandah and you can sit there. It’s sunny. It’ll be nicer than the bedroom.’

Dad didn’t comment. Maybe he didn’t hear because that’s for sure what it looked like. Noah wrestled the armchair out on to the verandah and wonder of miracles, he then scurried off and came back with a blanket all on his own initiative. We got Mum settled, brought out our breakfast and sat where the smell wouldn’t get to her. Dad stayed inside which meant that he missed the birds hopping up to chat with us, and the little lizards scurrying around — they were skinks according to Mum. Dad did the listening watch while we stayed outside.

Then Dad and Noah went off to do their chopping and digging. Mum and I stayed at the house. I did the dishes. Mum had a shower while I hung about outside
the bathroom door in case she fell over. She didn’t, but she lay on the sofa after that and slept for ages.

I took the camera and fed the chooks. ‘What do you think of The Situation, chooks? Have the latest dramas changed anything? Will there be tearful reconciliations? Maybe Mum will have the baby here. Dad will have to deliver it, because I’m telling you, chooks, I for sure aren’t going to, and what with all the excitement and worry, they’ll both see how stupid they’ve been.’ I threw in another handful of wheat. ‘What’s your opinion, Tizzie?’

I held the camera low to catch a shot of a line of beaks, feathers and combs bobbing up and down. ‘You think yes? You’re all agreed? A unanimous decision?’ More nodding. ‘But what say I ask you: is it curtains for Liv and Wes? What if I ask: is this marriage doomed? What do you say to that?’ I recorded more nodding, plus Fizzie looking straight at the camera for three seconds, her head on one side.

I stood up. ‘And there we have it. The opinion from the chook run.’

I collected seven eggs.

A couple of days wandered on past with Dad being screamingly polite but locked away in don’t-talk-about-it land and Mum getting stronger, looking better but not trying to initiate chats about the tough stuff either.

What was different was Noah. He’d look at me and roll his eyes, or draw a finger across his throat. ‘Parents! Remind me never to be one,’ he said after one of Dad’s polite enquiries about Mum’s health.

Three skinks, a clutch of penguins and two days later the Drama of the Hargreaves Family came up with a whole new twist. It was of the kapow-boom variety.

It was dinner time. Dad, Noah and I sat at the table eating the delicious spaghetti and meatballs carefully crafted by me with the last of the meat. Mum lounged
on the sofa with a cup of Dr Hunter’s magic brew beside her. Dad had his back to Mum.

Noah: (sucking up a string of spaghetti and thus flicking tomato sauce all over his face) Does getting a vasectomy hurt, Dad?

Me: Wow! You are serious about not becoming a parent!

Dad: (casting a speaking look at me) Don’t know, son.

Noah: (fork poised in mid-air) But you’ve had one. Haven’t you?

Dad: (shaking his head) No. What gave you that idea?

Noah: Thought you must’ve. That’s why you’re so sure that the baby (glances at Mum) isn’t yours.

Dad: (giving far too much information) We haven’t had sex for nearly a year is how I know.

I stared at him, then at her. Neither of them said anything, but why would they? Situation normal. ‘But every magazine I’ve ever read says sex is important in a marriage.’ I glanced at Noah and he rolled his eyes. This was definitely too-much-info territory.

Dad got up and busily clattered empty plates. He strode to the sink and dumped them down. ‘Your mother went off the whole idea.’

Noah and I kept quiet. This was not stuff we wanted to hear. I glanced up at a camera — oh, great.

Then Mum spoke. Her voice was quiet but all of us heard every syllable. ‘You were never home and when you were, you wouldn’t talk about how I wanted you to be around more, for me, for the kids.’

Well, that sounded ever so slightly familiar.

Dad spun around. ‘How hard did you try? Tell me that, Liv!’

She held his gaze which was pretty brave seeing as how it was a burning, scalding one. ‘Not hard in the end. I admit it. I gave up on May the eighteenth.’

‘But Mum! That’s your birthday.’ What was going on here? I looked first at one, then the other of them.

Dad’s not always good at keeping the granite face, like now. A whole circus of expressions was dancing over it. ‘Your birthday. Just because I forgot your damned birthday.’

Mum stood up. ‘I’m going to bed.’

She went out one door, Dad marched out the other. Noah and I stared in one direction, then the other.

‘Looks like we get to do the dishes,’ Noah said.

He washed, I dried. ‘Has Dad talked to you about any of this stuff?’ I asked.

‘Nope,’ said Noah.

From which succinct reply I assumed he hadn’t asked either. ‘Don’t you want to know what’s going to happen when we go home? Don’t you want to know where we’re going to live and who with, and that’ll be Mum so will we ever see Dad?’ I caught him a slick flick with the tea towel. He splashed me with bird-shit water and suds.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said, sounding just like Dad. ‘He’s our father.’

‘And exactly how much of him did we get to see before this little adventure?’ I asked.

Noah let the water go and watched it suck down the
plughole. ‘Yeah. I guess.’

I poked his arm with my longest fingernail. ‘What about you? Are you getting back on the weed once we get home?’

I thought he’d yell, but he grinned. ‘Time will tell, dear sister mine. Time will tell.’

‘You and Dad can stay here,’ I said. ‘And I’ll leave with Mum. You can do detox for a whole year.’

I needed to get out of the house. I grabbed a torch, checked my boots for wetas and took myself outside to where night birds called and chatted. I heard a morepork over the noise of the blue birds — their racket sounded like
stop the bus, stop the bus
. Or maybe
talk to me, talk to me.

No sex for a year. That one was up there on the serious-o-meter. Was this whole mess Mum’s fault or Dad’s? I’d ask the chooks, their opinion was as good as any I’d find round here right now.

I stepped down from the verandah on to the path, and trod on something that grunted a protest. I leapt a couple of metres in the air. ‘What?’ I shone the torch at whatever it was. Oh my god, it was a lizard. I crouched down, keeping the beam steady and maintaining a wary distance. This lizard was no ordinary little skink. ‘You,’ I told it as it sat there on the concrete path, ‘are a tuatara. Have I killed you? Damaged you?’ But right then it opened its jaws and snaffled a passing moth so I figured I hadn’t. ‘Wait there!’ I told it. ‘I’m going to get the camera.’

I raced inside. Maybe not much would come out, but a tuatara was worth a shot. ‘Noah!’ I yelled. No answer.
I tore into his room and ripped the headphones off him. ‘I’ve found a tuatara. Come and look.’

He looked mildly interested. ‘Dad reckons there aren’t any here. He said there were before it was farmed but not now.’

I ran out, toting the camera. ‘Well, this guy doesn’t know he’s not here. Come on — before he takes off.’

Mum heard too and the pair of them ambled along in my wake. ‘Dad!’ I yelled. He had to get a look at this, if it was still there.

It was. ‘Look! Now tell me that’s not a tuatara!’

Noah and Mum knelt down. Noah stroked a finger along the spiny back. ‘Hello, old fella. How’s it hanging in toot-land?’

Mum sat cross-legged on the cold concrete, a sketch pad in her lap, and with a quick pencil she made him come alive on the page. Man, I wished I could do that. ‘Where’s Dad?’ He’d be gutted if he missed this.

‘Dunno,’ Noah said. ‘The shed?’

I jumped up. ‘I’ll go and get him. Don’t let the old guy vanish.’

‘Min, it’s dark,’ Mum protested, but she didn’t look up from her drawing.

‘I’ll watch out for bogeymen,’ I said. ‘If I meet one, I’ll bring him back. Be nice to have somebody else to talk to.’ I ran off down the path and out on to the track that would take me past the bush, over a low ridge and into the valley where the shed was.

The night was busy and full of the sound of the sea and the blue birds who were courting and deep in lovey-dovey land. Funny, I’d never noticed the night noises
before on my quick dashes out to the facilities.

I ran past the trees. What were those birds called? Must ask Dad again. A trio of them floated towards me, I ducked but they swooped and landed on me, hanging on to my shoulders and my chest with skinny little feet. ‘Hey! I’m not a perch — or a bus. Use your wings, you lazy things and god help you if you shit on me.’ I kept running. I figured they’d jump off when they’d had enough and they did, just before I got to the shed, although maybe it was me hollering ‘Dad!’ that scared them off.

He came running out of the dark interior, an old-fashioned lamp in his hand. ‘What? Min — what’s wrong?’

‘Calm down. Nothing’s wrong.’ I skidded to a stop. ‘Dad, we’ve got a tuatara sitting on the path by the house. Come and see.’

He shook his head. ‘You must be mistaken, Min. There aren’t any left on Motutoka — haven’t been seen here for years. The cats probably wiped them out.’

Stubborn, pig-headed man. ‘Suit yourself,’ I said, turning away. ‘But it’s a lizard, it’s about this long.’ I held my hands the width of my shoulders apart. ‘It’s got spines on its back and it grunts when you stand on it.’ I left him there in the darkness.

He caught me up before I got to the bird trees. ‘Is your mo … is Liv there?’

I sped up. ‘No — she jumped off a cliff.’

He kept pace with me so I was able to hear the sharp intake of breath. ‘Don’t get smart, Min. Your — Liv’s — infidelity is just too hard to cope with.’

‘Whatever,’ I said. Jog, jog past the birds where we collected a couple each. ‘But from where I’m standing, you don’t look so damn perfect either, so get over it.’

Dad brushed the birds off. I carried mine till they left of their own accord. ‘What are they?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘Look them up.’

Okay. Pissed-off Dad again.

We got to the house. ‘Is he still there?’ I called, but since Noah and Mum were both crouched on the path, the chances were that he was.

He was.

Noah looked up and grinned. ‘What about this, Dad? Cool, eh!’

Dad, carefully ignoring Mum, squatted on the path. ‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ He stroked the tuatara with a finger, just like Noah had done. ‘Last sighting of a tuatara on Motutoka was 1979. The farmer’s cat caught it.’

‘He must have been living in the rocks down a cliff somewhere,’ Noah said.

Dad was shaking his head as though he still didn’t believe what he was looking at. ‘I guess. But the island’s only been predator-free for eighteen months — it’s a long time to live on a cliff.’

‘It’s amazing what you can do when you have to,’ said Mum, and I guess that was a deep and meaningful comment, but Dad chose to not hear it.

He stood up. ‘I’ll get a ruler.’

The tuatara kept on sitting on the path, happy with his adoring audience. Dad came back with the camera and a ruler. The tuatara stayed put while Dad measured him and he didn’t run away when the camera flashed.
We sat there, watching a prehistoric reptile do absolutely nothing for another half hour or so. What a cosy scene — the Hargreaves family united by nature.

When the tuatara ambled off, Mum said, ‘I think I’ll make some pikelets. Anybody feel like a pikelet?’

Noah: Yep.

Me: Real food!

Dad: (silently walking away in direction of shed and lonely, dim lamp)

So much for the uniting power of nature.