‘I’m driving,’ Frankie insisted.
‘I’m wearing clean underpants, will they be okay?’ Adam was feigning alarm.
‘You’ll need disposable-Dam-diapers.’
‘No wetsuit if you muff any moves.’
‘Muff, muff, you old duffer … that’s not a word, that’s oldie-speak, fatso — get with the programme — the word is stuff up, not muff up.’
Louise opened her mouth to disapprove, but changed her mind. Instead she hugged Frankie and slipped some money into her hand. Adam realised his plan had been second-guessed by Louise. He was glad. They were colluding. That was what parents did.
Frankie was already in the garage, revving the car, but it wasn’t in gear and by the time he joined her, she’d stalled the engine and the garage stank of exhaust fumes. Not a safe thing to do, he realised, but decided not to lecture her on the dangers of carbon monoxide. Why mention death, when there was so much living to do. They bunny-hopped down the road, graunching a gear or two. Adam tried hard not to think about the impact on the clutch or the gearbox and instead to focus on fun.
‘Where to?’ Frankie was looking at Adam.
‘Rule Number One is you never take your eyes off the road.’
‘Where to?’ repeated Frankie, eyes now facing ahead in fierce concentration.
‘Factory, dive shop, The Warehouse. Whatever order you wish — you’re in charge today, madam.’
‘Okay, sir, The Warehouse it is.’
He knew this was a concession to him and Louise … starting at The Warehouse was Frankie’s way of warming him up and showing good will. They would go through the motions: he had a feeling that there was a wetsuit hanging at the dive shop with Frankie’s name already on it.
They stopped at the Bordeaux Bakery on Thorndon Quay for custard-filled croissants dusted with icing sugar. He shouldn’t eat one, but it pleased Frankie to see what a pig he was. So he ate two, to please her. His stomach groaned and he scorched his throat with a black coffee to wash down the pastry. Frankie ate her croissant by starting at the sharpest edge and savouring each little nibble until she found the custard. By the time she bit where the filling was, it was spilling out on to her plate. She grabbed the spoon from Adam’s coffee and scooped up the lost custard. He pretended to swipe some with his outstretched index finger, and she swatted it with the back of the spoon.
When they left, Frankie had icing sugar on her nose and he decided not to tell her — to see how long it took before she realised. He would rescue her before they reached The Warehouse, he decided. But immediately on getting back into the car, Frankie adjusted the rearvision mirror (good girl) and saw the white smudge on her nose.
‘Oh … oh … you could have told me!’
‘Ah, but I knew, didn’t I … a smart girl like you was always going to check in the rear-vision mirror. It’s not just for lipstick and stuff, you know, it’s there to check on traffic.’
‘Yeah, right!’
‘Prettier than Marmite.’
‘Pig, fatso — you ate two!’
How he loved to be called a pig. He even loved being called fatso. There was something wonderful about insults from a fifteen-year-old going on sixteen who looked up to you as her Dam.
Anyway, he looked down and he wasn’t really fat: it was a middle-aged thing, and you couldn’t take it seriously. It was inevitable; comforting, really. A tight, flat stomach on a man his age could only mean two things: vanity or a wheat allergy … and who’d want either of them?
Where the Old Hutt Road intersected with the motorway, they waited in the right-hand lane for the green light. Trucks rolled out of the tunnel and across, and a cyclist shot through against a red light. Frankie watched with absolute concentration. He could see by the way her hands gripped the steering wheel that she was taking no chances, and it would be a fast ride across when the lights did change. They sat watching and waiting, and when the lights turned green, Frankie roared across the road as if her life depended on it, leaving the other cars behind her. He decided not to speak until they had merged successfully with the traffic on the Hutt Motorway. Trust was required.
George is your father.
He didn’t say it aloud, but it was a mantra he repeated to himself all the way along the motorway, hoping the words would leave his head, form sounds in his mouth and somehow find their way into the conversation. But instead Frankie sang along to Vanessa’s new CD — Live at Bats, by Fly My Pretties. Their songs were catchy and the titles hit him right where it hurts. ‘Lucky’, then ‘All the Goodness’, and by the time they were singing ‘We Can Make a Life’, he felt the CD had been compiled in order to disturb him. His George is your father mantra was interspersed with enthusiasm for the chorus, which was about having a life that was worth living. He loved that line: it was worth repeating, and he did. It both cheered and saddened him to enjoy Vanessa’s album. Weren’t you supposed to become less sentimental? Weren’t you supposed to scorn young people’s music? Why was it he was so affected? The CD was simple, nostalgic — the words had been written for him.
He must remember to talk with Ness about this. He was spending so much time with Frankie and her diving that he was overlooking Ness. Phillip, he recalled, had offered to read some of Vanessa’s writing. In spite of his feelings about the man, he would try to remember to ask Vanessa about it, probe a bit and even (if he had to) ask what Phillip thought.
Fatherhood. You needed your wits about you, that was certain. And that was without taking into account his relationship with their mother. Louise was a whole other complicated landscape requiring an atlas, GPS and radar detector. The boundaries were forever changing, closing in and then disappearing.
He liked this song. He was certain they could all make a life. Hadn’t they already done that?
Outside The Warehouse, a sports team was holding a sausage sizzle. Two dads were supervising two lads in the frying of sausages and onions. Adam fought off hunger pangs. There was nothing quite like the smell of budget snarlers frying in the morning sunshine. He watched Frankie watching as someone squirted tomato sauce the length of a split, cooked sausage on white bread.
‘You’re not really still hungry?’
But he knew she was, and he was too.
‘We’ll get one on our way out.’
There was a box beside the barbecue table, filled with pale-skinned, processed-looking sausages.
‘Don’t worry, they won’t run out.’
Frankie followed him into the store, glancing back at the sausage sizzle. She could eat anything at this stage of her life. All she seemed to do was grow taller.
Inside the store they got distracted at the CD counter and again at the Easter egg aisle. Easter eggs already! Creme eggs were his favourite, and it seemed they were Frankie’s too. They bought one packet each and two extras for Louise and Ness. Then they had to find a staff member to direct them to the wetsuits.
In the end there were plenty of wetsuits, but nothing in the in-between size that would fit a young woman in the making. Adam did point out that the boys’ wetsuits might fit, but that was a no-no. He couldn’t see a lot of difference between the designs, but Frankie could. To prove her point, Frankie tried on a boy’s wetsuit and he had to agree: it wasn’t to be.
On their way back to the car, they stopped for a sausage. Onions, sauce, mustard — the whole shebang. He knew he would pay for this (he did pay for it: four dollars, and his belt felt tight). Tonight, he and Louise had a dinner party with some near-strangers (part of the Why Not Wellington? campaign) — now that things were sorted, Louise was maintaining relationships. He’d have to make the gym some time this weekend.
You know George is your father.
Between The Warehouse and the dive shop, he struggled for a way to say what was on his mind. He was certain Frankie knew, and she was very quiet. They drove past the motel where the man who was supposed to have murdered his wife and child had stayed on the night of the crime. It struck Adam with acute sadness and disbeli
ef. There were two scenarios really, each as awful as the other. He imagined being that man in jail, knowing he had killed his wife and child. And then he imagined being that man in jail, knowing he hadn’t killed his wife and child. In the end, you still had a dead wife and child, and nothing else could be as awful. He knew, because he’d killed Michael, though not in cold blood. It was a kind of jail sentence, and it would never end.
George is your father, you know.
By now they were outside the dive shop, and Frankie was out of the car before he could get the words from out of his head into his mouth.
She found the wetsuit (yellow and black) almost immediately. He’d guessed right. No doubt she had already been in and tried it on. She was holding it up and swinging around and checking the label, reading the instructions for care, but he could tell that her mind was made up. The young man looking after the shop was pointing out the super-stretch, extra-light fabric, and that all the seams were double-glued. Actually, this wetsuit looked a lot better than the one Adam owned. Wasn’t that how it was meant to be? You got the best for your kids, didn’t you? He fingered the fabric, saw the delight on Frankie’s face, and almost forgot to read the price tag. But in the end, it wasn’t about money. He’d buy the wetsuit and they’d go for a coffee and he would definitely talk about George. He’d made up his mind. The young guy selling the suit must have sensed Adam’s mood, because he began up-selling accessories, the must-have extras, but luckily Frankie knew when a good deal had gone far enough and she was happy with her suit.
‘You have to wash them after wearing them,’ Adam told her.
‘Especially if you pee in the sea!’ she joked.
‘No peeing in this suit, madam.’
‘You’re such a retard.’
It was over coffee around Eastbourne that he found the courage to speak his mind. They’d stopped at the factory in Gracefield and he’d picked up his paperwork. The factory wasn’t the right place to talk about it. Frankie needed to practise gear changes, so he challenged her to get around all the bays without braking and just using gears to slow on the corners. It was a hair-raising journey and he pitied the cars behind them, but they made it. Once parked, they found a sunny courtyard at the back of a coffee house and even Frankie knew she couldn’t dodge this. They both knew this was coming up — right before leaving home. The wetsuit was his pretext for the outing and the driving was hers. But they still had to face George is your father.
‘Okay Mudface, you know how much I love you …’
There, that wasn’t difficult.
Frankie looked down, not up at him. She lowered her lashes — one day such a move would be seductive, but right now it was heartbreaking.
‘Who told you?’
‘No, it’s not about who told me, Frankie. It’s about you. You’re angry with George, aren’t you?’
‘I don’t care about George. It doesn’t matter what he thinks. You’re my dad.’
‘Yup. I’m your dad, Frankie, and I’m proud to be, but George is your dad too. Whatever you tell people, that’s your choice, but in the end the truth is that George is your dad, your real dad.’
‘No, Dam, my real dad is here. This isn’t about George, this is about me. I get to choose. Ness can have her dad all to herself. What’s biology got to do with it, anyway?’
Ah, so she did understand. She knew George was her dad; didn’t believe what Caitlin had said. Well, it wasn’t such a big deal. Grown-ups made their decisions, and mostly the kids had to accept them. He guessed in this instance Frankie had made a decision. She knew the truth. It didn’t matter what other people knew or didn’t know.
‘Your choice, Mudface!’
They lightened things up with a high-five. Fatherhood verified by immediacy. He was there and George was not. As Hagen would have said, he and Frankie were roock solit.
Wellington wore its grey overcoat as they drove back to town. It was a southerly front passing through, sudden, chilling and sending the sea choppy. Water splashed over the car on several corners and they stopped at a safe shoulder so he could take over the driving. He was tempted to cross the double yellow lines to avoid the waves, but being a dad meant setting a good example, so he ploughed his car through the salt water, cursing silently while Frankie squealed delight.
Driving back, he remembered dinner tonight: he needed to buy wine. He pulled into Pak ’N Save, and at the turnstile just before the electronic doors he noticed a fridge full of roses. On impulse he decided to buy some for Louise. The woman pointed out the sign advising that all the flowers were pre-sold. But he’d made his mind up. He applied his fading charm and it turned out he hadn’t completely lost it, as the woman relented and allowed him ten long stems, dusty pink with cream throats half open. She wrapped them in silver paper and tied them with a black ribbon. He found two Chilean reds on special and a really good sauvignon blanc from the Hawke’s Bay. The reds were for him and the sav blanc would do for Louise tonight. Frankie threw in a bag of corn chips. He grabbed a Bounty Bar for Ness.
A text came through while they were on the motorway; Louise, asking them to divert and pick up Ness on Lambton Quay. Ness had taken her creative writing project to Phillip for his opinion before she handed it in. Adam nudged out nasty little envious thoughts and tried to be grateful that Phillip was showing an interest. He wondered why Phillip was working on a Saturday. When they pulled up outside Phillip’s work, Phillip and Ness were on the pavement, waiting.
‘Hello, old chap.’
(Old chap indeed. Phillip was the same age as him.)
‘Phillip.’ (He was tempted to say ‘you prick’ but Phillip wouldn’t understand that it was an endearment.)
Frankie was holding up her wetsuit. Ness was clutching her project. There wasn’t a lot Adam and Phillip could say to each other that was worth saying, so they shook hands as both hello and farewell.
‘Thanks, Phillip.’ Ness had wound the window down in the back seat and was waving goodbye.
‘So, how did it go?’ Adam kept looking straight ahead as he pulled out into the traffic, but he leaned back and, with his left hand, handed Ness the Bounty Bar.
‘Great. Phillip was so useful. He helped me enormously with editing and tone. He reckons I’ve found my voice, and now I need to experiment.’
‘And I’ve had a French pastry, a sausage, and lunch in Eastbourne,’ Frankie chipped in, ‘and Adam’s bought Mum flowers.’
She’d called him Adam. He preferred Dam but perhaps this meant the George saga had sorted itself out. Ness agreed with Frankie that pink roses were dead romantic and they invented scenarios all the way home as to the best way for Adam to present them to Louise.
Louise was very pleased with the flowers. She’d forgotten to buy a gift for the hostess tonight. Adam wouldn’t mind (and she had a way of saying this), would he? Frankie and Ness watched his face; their own faces fell on his behalf, so he was forced to be cheerful.
‘That’s a great idea! I knew when I went to buy the wine that I needed flowers.’
And he was so jolly positive that he convinced himself he had been buying the roses simply for Louise to give them away. That was what Louise could do; she could turn being practical into an attribute. And for his efforts, she kissed him. A soft, loving kiss. What was a man to do?
Louise smelled lovely. When he’d bought her perfume all those years ago, at the start of their affair, she’d refused it. Recently, she’d told him why: perfume was a dead giveaway. George would have noticed her wearing something new, and Judy would have smelt it on Adam. He’d believed he had miscalculated, that she didn’t like perfume.
‘Mmm …’ and before he could exclaim how nice she smelt, he sneezed.
Louise laughed.
‘You’re allergic to me.’
Too late now, he thought (but he didn’t mean it).
‘You smell divine.’
She knew it. She shifted closer to him, rubbed the back of his neck with thumb and forefinger, a pincer movement, both re
laxing and the usual, and she knew that, too. Nice one, Louise, get him onside before dinner and then abandon him no doubt. But he’d be waiting, something else she knew.
Chapter Fourteen
Their hosts lived on a hillside with views across houses, motorway and sea to St Gerard’s. Panoramic, or some such word he’d heard from another PR consultant, throwing flattery around like fly spray. He’d convinced himself he was going to make an effort tonight. But immediately he saw the suits, the pink shirts and the clutch bags, he felt his resolution fading.
At dinner, an overweight suit with serious rosacea (or could it be eczema?) made a big fuss about a bottle of red whose cork popped when it came out. He sniffed the wine, swirled it, tasted it and, while everyone else was drinking, made a loud statement.
‘I think it’s corked.’
The hostess went slightly pink and sniffed the bottle. Her husband rushed to open another.
‘Carbonic maceration,’ someone suggested.
Adam took a defiant swig from his own glass of red and exclaimed how nice it was. He even went so far as to identify the rich, jammy flavour, while the rest of the table (bar a quiet chap at the end) held their wine glasses uncertainly, sniffing, not sure which way to leap.
Louise winked at him and drank her wine (but hers was white, so she wasn’t implicated).
Actually, after the second defiant swig, Adam could taste oxidation, something bubbly in the red that ought not to be there, but he could be pig-headed when he wanted to be. When the host attempted to retrieve his glass, to pour the contents away and replace them, Adam put his hand over it.
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