Just Come Over

by James, Rosalind

  Isaiah was running his thumb along the smooth, cool surface, up and down. “I think I can feel it.” He looked up at Zora and asked, “Can you feel it, Mum?”

  She laid her thumb onto the narrow shape beside his, put her other arm around him, and said, “Yeh. I can. Feels strong.”

  “It’s not magic,” Isaiah said, “because there isn’t really magic. There’s only science, and the things we don’t understand yet. It’s just a symbol.”

  “You’re right, mate,” Rhys said. “But symbols have power.”

  Fifteen minutes, Rhys thought. You could always do fifteen more minutes. If you couldn’t, you could do one more minute, and then you could do another one, until the whistle blew.

  He tucked Casey into bed and kissed her goodnight, and she wound her arms around his neck and said, “I’m very glad you came home.”

  “So am I,” he said, and meant it. Then he stood up, put a hand on Isaiah’s arm, and said, “Night, mate.”

  “Goodnight, Uncle Rhys,” the boy said. “Thank you for my pendant. I feel like it’s a little bit from my dad.”

  One more minute. He could do it, even with his throat closing up and the tears too close. “That’s because it is.”

  Finally, he was shutting the door quietly behind him, going out to the lounge, and finding Zora. She was turning the gas stove on, which was still just pressing the rocker switch, and turning the overhead light off. Even though it wasn’t really cold enough for that, it felt good.

  “Did you get dinner?” she asked.

  “Had a burger with my cousin. Te Rangi. I’ll get some eggs at home.”

  “You went to Motueka.”

  “Yeh. I did.” He checked her out. “You look tired.”

  She laughed and pushed her hair back with a weary hand. “So do you. Do you want a beer? Or want me to fix those eggs?”

  “Already had a beer. With the burger. What I want is to sit on the couch with you.”

  “You’re cold, though. When did you get wet?”

  “When didn’t I? Nah. I’m good.”

  She put a throw over them all the same, when she’d curled on the couch beside him. When he had his arm around her, and she had her hand on his chest, and it was what he’d told Isaiah. When you could fly for hours on a single flap of your wings, because the weight had shifted, and you were perfectly balanced again. He stroked a hand over her hair, then did it again, felt the softness between his fingers, and thought, It’s good to be home.

  “Do you want to know about it?” he asked.

  “Yes. I do.”

  So he told her. About Victoria, first, about her anger, and her pain. “I hated it,” he finished.

  “But you did it.”

  “I had to.”

  A movement against his shoulder that was her laugh. “No, Rhys. You didn’t. And you did it anyway. There was no good way to say that. No good way to hear it. You did the best you could.”

  His throat closed a little more tightly, and his chest ached.

  “And then you went to Nelson,” she said. “And to Motueka.”

  “I needed to know who else Te Rangi had told about Casey.”

  Tension in her shoulders, now. “And who had he told?”

  “Nobody.” He felt her relax, like it mattered as much to her as it did to him. “So that’s good. He didn’t know that Dylan hadn’t taken care of Casey. He’d promised he would.”

  She sighed. “I wish I could be surprised. I wish he would have, except that if he had—would we ever have known about her?”

  His hand stopped moving. “You’re right. When the wheels finally lifted off tonight, I thought, Thank God. Going home. And I meant it. It was a . . .” He blew out a breath. “A hard day.”

  “Yeh. For me, too.”

  That took him a second. “Because I didn’t tell you. Shit. I just thought . . . I wasn’t sure . . .”

  His hand was shaking on her shoulder. He tried to hold it still, and he couldn’t. Not even close. It was a leaf hanging on a tree, long since turned brown, about to fall, and you could no more stop the leaves from falling than you could stop the tide from going out. Than you could stop death. He got a hand up to his eyes and squeezed them shut, and that didn’t work, either. His chest was too tight, and the tears wouldn’t stay inside.

  An ugly, ragged sound that was a sob, painful, feeling like it was piercing his chest. Another one, and there the tears were, forcing their way past his eyelids, past his hand, and down his cheeks, like he had no control at all.

  The dam burst. He wrenched his arm from around Zora’s shoulders, got his elbows onto his knees and his hands over his face, and cried some more. Washed away in the flood, and not even able to swim. Going under.

  Darkness. Panic. And something else. Zora’s gentle hands on him. Zora’s voice, calling to him.

  “Rhys. You’re OK. That’s OK. You did so well.” Her hands cradling his head, her lips on his forehead. Seeing his tears, and letting them fall. Nothing frantic in her. Nothing but peace. “I’m so proud of you,” she said. “I love you so much, and I’ve got you. It’s going to be OK.”

  Zora, weaving a net for him with her hands and her voice, her softness and her strength. Giving him a place to catch himself, a place to land.

  Bringing him home.

  A couple weeks later, a few things had happened.

  The Blues had drawn a game against the Hurricanes, then won one against the Rebels in Canberra, and were lying third on the New Zealand table, one point below the ’Canes. Not the spot you’d choose. On the other hand, Rhys had left Casey with Zora and Isaiah again, and they were all in his house, which made him feel about a hundred percent better.

  Also, as of today, he was divorced.

  You didn’t have to be present for it to happen, which was fortunate, as he was in Brisbane, preparing for the game against the Reds in two days, and he couldn’t afford to be distracted.

  He wasn’t thinking about either thing right now, because he was reading with Casey. On this trip, he’d come up with the somewhat brilliant idea to get himself an electronic copy of The Runaway Bunny, so he could read it to her last thing at night, and they could turn the pages together.

  He finished the story, and she said, “I like the part where the mother bunny is the wind the best, because the little bunny’s ears are the sails on a sailboat, but they’re still pink, because they’re the inside part.” She was sitting cross-legged in her PJs on her princess bed with Marshmallow in her lap, and she lifted the bunny’s ears gently to show him. “See?”

  “Mm,” he said. “The little bunny in the story looks like Marshmallow, a bit.”

  “Except Marshmallow’s cuter.”

  He considered saying, “He ought to be. He cost a hundred dollars,” but he didn’t. Instead, he said, “Time to go to sleep, then, and you can imagine being the sailboat, with your bunny ears being blown across the harbor by the wind.”

  “Because you’re the wind,” she said. “But if I get a bad dream, you’re very far away.”

  “Good thing I’ve got heaps of breath,” he said. “Enough to reach all the way across the Tasman.”

  Yes, it was silly, but she’d like to hear it.

  “And you have a very loud voice.” She did want to hear it.

  “I do. Right now, it’s telling you to give the phone to Auntie Zora so you can go to sleep. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  She got off the bed and put Marshmallow back in his cage, her hands gentle, giving each of the bunnies a stroke, and then she headed out the door and down the stairs.

  He needed to get that staircase replaced. If he and Zora had a baby, the open steps wouldn’t be one bit safe. He didn’t even like watching Casey on them.

  A regular staircase, definitely. With carpet. Not just for the baby. What if Zora were pregnant, awkward with it, and she slipped?

  Finn would know a builder. Sure to. That was how Rhys had found the roofer. He was going to get it done straight away, pulling strings if he ha
d to. If you wanted your life to change? You changed it.

  “Can you read the Horton book tomorrow?” Casey asked. “Not the one where he hears a Who. The one where he sits on the egg. Maybe you can get it on your phone, too, and we can read it together.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. If you go to bed now.”

  “I am,” she said.

  He had to smile. “Night, monkey.”

  “Night.”

  He lost the image of her, and saw Zora’s face instead.

  “Hey,” she said. Just that one word, and the churned-up pieces of him were settling again. “I’ll come kiss you goodnight in a minute,” she told Casey, and he waited while Casey said something inaudible.

  “OK,” Zora said. “I’m back. Hi.”

  “Hi, sweetheart. Good day?”

  “Not bad at all. I got another customer for tomorrow. Good news, eh.”

  “It is. What flowers are you doing?”

  “Have to see what looks good at the market, but I’m thinking dahlias and roses in shades of apricot, maybe, with eucalyptus. Autumn colors.”

  “Send me a photo.”

  “I will.”

  She hesitated, and he said, “You want to ask me about the divorce, and you’re wondering if it’s sensitive. You don’t have to be sensitive. It’s me. And, yeh, it’s done.”

  “Oh. Good. I don’t know how you do that, and from a distance. It’s very scary. I don’t know why in the world you think you aren’t sensitive, either. How are you feeling?”

  “Honestly? Wondering how Vic’s doing, I guess, mostly.”

  “Relieved, probably. Sad that it didn’t work. Hating you. In proportions I can’t guess. If it were me—eating ice cream from the carton or drinking wine, or quite possibly both at once. She’s probably not doing either.”

  “Probably more along the ‘hating’ lines. And you’re right about her with the wine and ice cream, though the night of your divorce could be an exception.” It was odd that he could talk to Zora about this, but he was glad. “It’s strange not to be able to ask her. To know I’m the last person who could make anything better. It’s been two years, and I’m no part of her life anymore, other than the part she’s leaving behind, but it’s strange anyway.”

  “To go from sharing a name and a house,” she said, “having your ring on her finger and hers on yours, sharing—whatever you did share with her, to her not wanting to hear your name at all.”

  “Yeh. It’s odd. Seeing the document on my phone was . . . I guess I’ll stay with ‘odd.’ Hollow, maybe that’s the word. I was thinking that I can’t afford to be distracted, but there you are. I’m distracted anyway.”

  “Rhys.” She laughed, but it was gentle. “Of course you are. How could you not be? Maybe let yourself be sorry tonight. You can go back to not being distracted tomorrow.”

  Which wasn’t exactly how it happened.

  It came from Finn, first.

  Rhys was in the hotel gym, getting in a quick workout before breakfast, and Finn was suddenly standing over him as he lay on his back on the weight bench, doing triceps extensions.

  “Hey,” Rhys said, lifting the heavy dumbbells overhead, then lowering them behind him as slowly as he could, welcoming the effort.

  “You may want to sit up,” Finn said. “Here, I’ve got these.” He disappeared behind Rhys and took the dumbbells from him.

  Rhys sat up. You knew in a voice when it was bad. In a face.

  “What happened?” he asked. This wasn’t somebody’s injury worsening overnight, or somebody coming down with the flu. This was bad news from home. Somebody’s dad, or worse. Somebody’s baby.

  Finn held out a newspaper. Oh. That meant it was the other thing: A scandal. Nothing like the Aussie media for that, and Friday, the day before the game? Yeh, that was the timing.

  Well, a scandal wasn’t the worst. Nobody would have died. Somebody’s marriage might take a turn for the worse, though.

  He looked at the headline, and then at the photos.

  Not the worst, he told his sinking heart. The other shoe dropping, that’s all. Sooner it’s done, sooner we’re moving past it.

  Four photos, laid out as a sort of “This is your life” in pictures. The first, cropped from a shot of the All Blacks lined up for the national anthem, showed Rhys beside Dylan, their arms around each other’s backs. Rhys was looking unshaven and brutal, and Dylan was looking handsome and noble. Which was fine.

  The second was Dylan and Zora with a two-year-old Isaiah. Isaiah sitting on Dylan’s shoulders, Dylan with his arm around Zora, and Zora laughing, shoving her hair back with one hand, looking pretty and happy and extremely short.

  Also fine. Except not.

  The third was of Rhys with both kids at the Blues’ Family Day, before the game with the Hurricanes. He was standing with a hand on Isaiah’s head, and with Casey on his hip, her arms around his neck and both kids wearing Blues jerseys.

  Newsworthy, maybe, but not in the Crisis Zone.

  And the fourth? That was an image from seventeen years ago, the one they’d probably print with his obituary. Coming out of a door plainly marked Ladies, tucking his shirt into his trousers.

  Thou shalt not covet? the headline said, and in smaller letters beneath, Family ties: Rhys Fletcher comes home to the Blues, a long-lost daughter, and his brother’s wife.

  Brilliant.

  He read the first lines, wondering as always why anybody cared. Better than watching Neighbours, he guessed, because the people were real. More or less.

  Rhys “Drago” Fletcher, the 72-cap All Black newly appointed to coach the Auckland Blues after stints in Japan and France, comes to the job with baggage. Fletcher, who rocketed to early stardom and a Grand Final win with the Brisbane Broncos, saw his NRL career marred by numerous sex scandals, culminating in a drunken incident in a restaurant toilet with Poppy Harburton, then married to his teammate, Gerard Ailes. The ensuing drama saw Fletcher returning to New Zealand and the Crusaders the following year, where his storied career . . .

  “Blah blah,” Rhys muttered. “And so forth.” He scanned down the column to see what else they had. Fletcher, whose divorce from Christchurch beauty Victoria Carrington was final yesterday, has long maintained that his drinking, and his exploits off the field, are in the past. When he returned to his New Zealand roots this year after the dissolution of his seven-year marriage, however, he brought with him a six-year-old daughter who had previously been living in the United States with her mother, a Chicago waitress whom Fletcher encountered during a brief stay in the city with the All Blacks.

  In addition to his newly acquired family, Fletcher appears to have taken on yet another one, being seen in recent weeks at various Auckland eateries with his brother Dylan’s widow, often holding hands across the table.

  Dylan Fletcher, a Blues star and All Black himself, was often overshadowed in life by his elder brother. Even after his death, it would seem, the rivalry continues.

  And on in the same vein. “Right,” Rhys said, and handed the paper back to Finn. “About what you’d expect.” His heart was beating harder, but he’d been working out.

  “Aiming for distraction before the game, that’s all,” Finn said.

  “What else is in there?” Rhys asked. “I need to finish this workout and get a shower.”

  “Rubbish piece with a psychologist. Headline is Sport, drink, sex, and poaching on your teammate’s turf: When does cheating cross the line? And another one called, Role models? Why sportsmen aren’t always the best choice. Which either of us could have written. ‘Because they’re young, dumb, male, and paid too much,’ is the answer. You need to add a few hundred more words to sell papers, though, I reckon.”

  “Has it been picked up in En Zed yet?” Rhys asked.

  “Not yet, mate. Too early in the morning. It will be, though. You may want to ring Zora after breakfast.”

  “You think?” Rhys tried a smile.

  “Better if it had come out while you were home,�
�� Finn said. “And not on the day before the game, as far as the team’s concerned. It was always going to come out, though. I can’t think it’s news to Zora, either.”

  “No,” Rhys said. “We’ve discussed it. Only a matter of time. Anyway, she knows about sport, drink, and sex.”

  “Except,” Finn said, “that they’re talking about the wrong brother. And that you can’t tell them so.”

  He faced the squad the only way he knew how. Head-on.

  He waited until everybody had turned up to breakfast, then stood at the front of the room and said, “Right, then. Some of you will have seen the papers, and some won’t. Short version: I have a daughter, Casey. You met her at Family Day. Her mum was American, and she wasn’t my ex-wife. I’m also seeing my brother Dylan’s widow, Zora. Some of you played with Dylan. I expect you’ll be asked about him today, and about me. You can say whatever you like in response. I loved my brother, but he’s been gone for two years. Zora and I are planning on getting married, though I’d rather you didn’t mention that one to the press, as we’ve got a couple of kids to think about. Otherwise? Whatever you want to say—go on and say it. To whoever asks.”

  About loyalty, he didn’t say. Or betrayal.

  He’d slept with his teammate’s wife. Well, not “slept” with. Hooked up in the toilets with. Not his proudest moment.

  In fact, his lowest moment. When his dad had been dying, and he’d gone well and truly off the rails. The bad year. The reason he’d left the NRL, and Australia. The reason he’d changed his life. How did you look your teammates in the eye after something like that? Worse—how did you look in the mirror?

  With difficulty, that was how. With shame. And the knowledge that your life had to change, because you couldn’t stay where you were. The moment when you knew for sure that all you wanted to be from here on out was a man to be respected. A man with some mana.