Sophia's Dilemma

by Bowes, K T

  “Can I take six of those?” the woman’s voice asked and Sophia nodded, turning to smile at her. The smile froze on her face and all efforts to rejuvenate it were an epic fail. “Oh, hi Sophia,” the woman intoned pleasantly. “I didn’t realise you were working here. Maddie and I were gardening and just realised the time. We’ve nearly finished but need more bark chippings. Maddie can help you load them into the car and I’ll just nip in and pay.”

  With that, the woman was gone, dashing through the sliding doors in a tearing hurry. The girls were silent and uncommunicative as they loaded the heavy bags into the back of Maddie’s mother’s car, not even getting eye contact in their labour. The woman bustled out of the shop looking considerably happier. “That lovely man was telling me what a good worker you are,” she smiled at Sophia. “He also gave me a sizeable discount because I said you and Maddie were best friends.”

  Sophia put her head down and Maddie looked away, possibly both feeling guilty at the innocence of the lie. The mother looked from one to the other, seeing herself inadvertently blundering into something unpleasant. The pretty dark haired girl in front of her had been absent from her home for some considerable weeks. “How are Sally and Edgar?” she asked, floundering to find safer ground and relieve the tension.

  Sophia looked her in the eye and something snapped inside her. “Mum went missing just after New Year. We thought she was dead, but the cops wouldn’t look for her. Dad found her recently and she’s been on a cruise with her new boyfriend and lives just round the corner from us. She jacked her job in and set up with him. Apparently she’s not ready to face me yet.” Sophia kept her expression neutral and put her shaking hands on the trolley to stop their jittering.

  Maddie and her mother stood gaping like stunned mullets. Telling the truth was releasing for Sophia. It felt good. “Bye then,” she said and walked back to the remaining bags, leaving the women stood in the same spot. Eventually they climbed into their vehicle and left.

  Hearing the engine race as the car turned into traffic on the main road, a dreadful feeling of anti-climax overcame Sophia and tears dripped off the end of her nose and onto the bags. She wiped them away with the back of dirty, soil encrusted hands, making herself look as though she had war paint on. Harold found her still working twenty minutes after her finish time and shooed her away. He also tried to hand her some cash, but she refused, shaking her tired head and telling him she would be back on Tuesday night to pot up the rest of the seedlings.

  Harold watched her leave, saddened by the plight of the young people. She was an excellent worker, but so was Dane. They were both knowledgeable and willing, but Dane had the edge, being exceptionally attractive for the ladies. Harold sighed and then thought about the much healthier bank balance today brought about and smiled to himself, raising his hands to heaven and thanking his generous God.

  Sophia drove herself home, running a hot bath and sinking into it until only her face poked out. The hot water was soothing on her aching muscles and absorbed her tears as though they were just a part of the whole.

  Edgar and Bob had managed to spend a few minutes with Dane and made the lawyer’s representation of him official. He groggily asked for Sophia, astounded when her father told him where she was and what she was doing.

  “Dane seemed a little better today,” Edgar smiled.

  “Oh yeah.” His daughter seemed listless and out of sorts. Edgar withheld from Sophia how Dane cried at her kindness, hugely embarrassed by his show of weakness. It was hard for him to remember that Dane wasn’t yet seventeen, but had already lived the life of a much older man.

  Bob always seemed to know what to say to people. He rubbed Dane lightly on his muscular young back and told him to pack it in, saying kindly, “You’ll start me off otherwise.”

  Dane was recovering quickly from the surgery and his head seemed less foggy, although the banging headache remained. He stayed in the hospital under guard. The cops gave nothing away, baulking as Bob insisted they left the room so he could speak to his ‘client.’ Edgar tactfully went outside into the corridor and heard the cops complaining. Robert Robertson asked the boy a few questions but mainly encouraged him, giving hope that was mainly fake and partly optimism. “Your mother,” Bob told him, “is drying out in a women’s shelter. I don’t suppose you know the name of the other man at the property? Only you and Sophia mentioned him as far as the cops are concerned. They have no idea who he is.” Bob was privately worried they didn’t much care either, perhaps assuming the kids cooked him up from nowhere.

  “I met him a few times. Real hairy dude but no, I don’t remember his name.” Dane rubbed at his head and Bob pulled his hand away from the tape holding the wound closed.

  “Hey, don’t worry. It might come back. Don’t force it.”

  “Would you tell Soph something for me?” Dane asked, concentration on his face.

  “Yeah sure.” Bob waited patiently.

  Dane gulped and hesitated. “Na, it’s ok. I need to tell her myself.”

  “Ok.” Bob smiled and shook Dane’s bruised hand. “If you’re sure.”

  Dane looked awkward as the police officers returned and he gave Bob a small smile of dismissal. “Thanks, for everything,” he said. “In case I don’t get another chance to say it.”

  The lawyer and the car salesman drove north together. The former was buoyant as usual, but the latter was disconsolate and depressed. Edgar noticed the failing light in the boy’s eyes and it struck a chord deep within himself. It caused him to relive old nightmares, a desperate and misguided youth coming back to bite him hard.

  “You thinking of Sal’s dad?” Bob asked with his customary astuteness and Edgar nodded. “Well, stop it. He loved you like a son.”

  “Yeah, some son.” Edgar shifted uncomfortably in the passenger seat. “He saved me from prison, Bob. That gang turned on me, beat me up and left me to take the blame. He got me off burglary charges and gave me hope. I want to do that for Dane but I don’t know how. Alan Simpson was a powerful man and I’m not. Did you know he paid for my schooling and everything? I owed it to him to turn my life around.”

  “And you repaid him a thousand times over!” Bob argued. “He adored you and the kids. He told me, many times.”

  Edgar thought about his parents, who arrived in New Zealand and then hated it. They turned tail on their emigration, returning home with their dreams in a suitcase. They were still there, happy in the life that sucked them back in like a sinkhole. Alan parented Edgar in their absence, recognising in him a little of his own immigration struggle perhaps. “Thank God the old man isn’t around to see me now,’ Edgar said out loud as Bob dropped him off on the driveway.

  “Stop fretting, Ed. I can see your brain steaming!” Bob shouted and drove away with a roar of his expensive exhaust.

  “Well, drive that bloody car nicer!” Edgar yelled. “I sold you that!”

  Sophia listened politely to her father’s account of seeing Dane but was strangely silent. “How was your day?” he asked and she shrugged.

  “Not much point describing it. It’s not like I’ll be doing it much longer. It’s only temporary, isn’t it?”

  Edgar watched her carefully, aware she was slipping into herself again like when Sal disappeared. It seemed as though she came alive in the company of the young man, but his arrest had affected her almost disproportionately. “Bob will sort it out,” Edgar told her reassuringly, pulling her into a hug as she sat on the kitchen stool, sipping a drink he made for her. She had lost too much weight since New Year and he felt her bones sticking through the pyjama top. It bothered him and he wondered if he should mention it. Girls and food were a tricky subject, even he knew that. Not for the first time he wished he could ask Sal how to manage his concerns, but he only saw her twice in almost three months and neither occasion was pleasant.

  Sophia ate the toast and jam Edgar rustled up, but her mouth chewed mechanically, her mind elsewhere. After a while, she made her excuses and went to bed early, cit
ing her very physical day for the greyness of her face and the exhaustion which seemed to come from her soul.

  Chapter Eight

  A knock on the front door around three o’clock Sunday afternoon disturbed Edgar and Sophia as they sat cuddled up on the sofa in the living room, watching an old rerun of a Stallone movie Edgar loved. They enjoyed the morning, visiting the showroom where Edgar worked and sorting out a cheap car for Sophia from the part-exchanges in stock. Picking out a small red saloon being spruced up to go to auction, the showroom owner did her a good deal on it. Sophia emptied her bank account and Edgar fronted up a small amount, just to make it possible.

  The owner winked at Sophia as Edgar did the paperwork. “Gotta take care of my best salesman,” he joked. “Fifteen years next month. Don’t let him leave, hey? I’d be lost without him.”

  Sophia smiled with pleasure at the compliments showered on her father. Edgar looked embarrassed.

  “Put that sale down as your own,” he told Edgar. “And throw in a three year warranty on it. Nice little runner that.” He waved as he turned to leave and Sophia managed to shout her thanks at him. He winked over his shoulder and limped away, his age beginning to drag him down finally in his eighth decade.

  “Nice sales technique, Dad,” Sophia laughed. “Is that how you manage to be the best salesman in the company - by buying them yourself?”

  Edgar pretended to clip his daughter round the ear and they went for lunch before driving home to watch the movie. Thinking it might be Bob, Edgar threw open the door to find two teenage girls standing awkwardly on the porch. He recognised them, but couldn’t quite remember their names, “Er, hi.”

  The girls tittered childishly, batting long eyelashes at the handsome middle aged man, practicing their budding femininity. Edgar felt awkward. “I’m guessing you’re here to see Soph?” he said, inviting them in and leading them upstairs.

  Politely offering drinks and finding them declined, Edgar beat a hasty retreat and watched the rest of the movie on an old television in his bedroom. Instinct told him something was definitely going on, but it needed a woman to work out what. “I’m better at being the garbage man,” he muttered, “picking up the debris afterwards and clearing the area of all possible trace.” He waited a moment for shouts or screams and hearing none, settled down.

  Maddie and Heather stayed stood in front of the sofa where Sophia sat, looking shifty and a little afraid. Remembering her manners, Sophia offered them a seat. To her surprise, instead of sitting on the other sofa, they both piled onto hers, bunching her up into a corner and forcing her to put her feet down on the carpet. With a silent look at one another, obviously deciding who would go first, Maddie began. “We had no idea about your mum. We just thought you didn’t want to be friends anymore. Then when you started hanging with Dane McArdle, we just assumed you were dumping us. We’re sorry.” The apology was a collective one, meant sincerely twice over and Sophia looked at her old friends, a host of emotions clouding her view. When she said nothing, Heather chimed in, reiterating the apology and Sophia recognised a bone-tired ache in her soul and capitulated.

  Forgiveness was a two-way street, offering healing on both sides. “It’s ok,” she said, so softly both girls leaned forward to hear her. “It’s just been a really crap year.”

  Both girls did what girls do best, uniting in a messy group hug, offering comfort and solidarity as Sophia sniffed and cried on their designer clothes. Eventually, when the healing process was well underway, they went to the kitchen and raided the fridge and pantry for fizzy drinks and snacks. The girls hadn’t heard about Dane, so Sophia cautiously filled them in, missing out any mention of Louise’s pregnancy. She was aware as she thought about the lady vicar that she seemed to have gone from one extreme to the other - not telling anyone her mother was missing for months - to spilling her guts to everyone.

  “That’s radical,” Heather said, swinging her long auburn hair over her shoulder. It was a new colour and very dramatic. In an extreme kind of way, it suited her. “I wish we could help.”

  “I know!” Maddie said, excitement taking hold. “Why don’t we investigate? Oh my gosh, we could so do that.”

  “Where would we start?” Sophia asked, feeling tired at the thought of it. Maddie chewed a hang nail and worked on a plan.

  Edgar was asleep on the bed, disturbed by the sound of the door opening. He thought for a moment Sal was stood over him and held his arms out to her. “You’ve come back,” he said sleepily.

  “Dad,” his daughter whispered and he focussed his eyes to take in the vision of loveliness. Sophia stroked his hair back from his damp forehead. “Dad, I’m just nipping out with the girls. Heather’s driving her mum’s car. Yes, she’s got her full licence and Maddie and me are going with her.”

  Edgar nodded slowly as he came to the surface more, his face a mask of sadness. Sophia sat down next to him, nudging him along so she could squeeze on. “Are you all right Dad?” she asked and stroked his fingers gently. He nodded and looked around the bedroom.

  “Will you help me decorate in here?” The question surprised her and Sophia nodded. “It’s too feminine now. It reminds me of how inadequate I am. I want something more...male.”

  “Oh, Dad. Don’t be daft.” His daughter kissed him on the side of the cheek, brushing her face against the Sunday stubble and wishing life was different for both of them. She remembered the words of the wise lady vicar and repeated them for his sake, “This too shall pass, Dad. It’s for now, not forever. It’ll all be ok. We’ll look back this time next year and we’ll have got through.”

  Edgar smiled and nodded as his pretty daughter left the room. She turned in the doorway and looked hard at her father. “You’re not inadequate, Dad. You’re a great father and I love you. You’re the one who stayed for me. Don’t forget that. I certainly won’t.”

  A minute later he heard the front door slam and for the first time since his wife disappeared, Edgar’s tears fell in torrents. It was silent crying, the very worst sort because it came from his soul and not his empty heart, already destroyed by loss and shame. He relived the nights of sitting up waiting for the sound of her key in the lock, poised and ready to tell her nothing mattered as long as she was back. It was a surprise to realise he no longer felt the same. Her disloyalty poisoned something deep inside him and he didn’t think he would ever trust anyone again.

  The crying seemed to last for hours, leaving Edgar exhausted and physically drained. But giving in was cathartic and he felt emotionally revitalised. It was as though he reached the bottom of himself and discovered it wasn’t so bad down there. He touched ground zero in the pit of despair and began to float back up again, normality and sanity calling to him from the top of the well. It felt like miles away, but he knew he would get there.

  Edgar stripped the bed and dismantled his bedroom, pulled up the carpet and exposing the rimu floorboards. He roared off in his SUV to the decorating superstore on Te Rapa with a spring in his step and a budding sense of optimism, his vibrant blue eyes twinkling for the first time in months.

  Chapter Nine

  “You knock!” Maddie urged Heather, stepping behind her at the last minute and cowering low in a display of cowardice.

  “No! You knock!” Heather announced and dashed behind Sophia. They looked like a human whirlpool, swirling and churning around one another. The door opened suddenly and a little boy of about seven peeked out.

  “What ya doin’?” he asked quizzically. He looked so adorable, the girls let out the kind of sigh females do in the face of extreme cuteness. He was like a very small, even blonder version of Darren, with the same extremely cheeky grin and look of feigned innocence.

  “Is Darren in?” Sophia asked while Maddie and Heather let out combined ‘aahs’ in her ear. They looked like a shabby dance troupe with Sophia in front and the others lined up behind her, poking their heads out on either side.

  The little boy turned on the spot, cupped his mouth in both tiny hands and yelled
, “Darren!” like a displeased rugby coach bellowing from the sidelines.

  “What? Stop yelling you stupid little...” Darren halted abruptly at the sight of the visitors, hastily cancelling his tirade. He stood in the doorway in jeans and a rumpled tee shirt which actually made him look marginally handsome. His face was one of disbelief and he swore without shame.

  “Om er!” said the little boy, aghast. “Tellin’ dad you said that!” The child darted off at a run but before his little bare feet could head off in the direction of trouble, Darren caught him by the shirt collar and gave him a look of pure menace.

  The moment was intense and Sophia spoke into the awkwardness, her voice wobbling. “Er, we just came to look at the crime scene. We thought you lived around here and might like to come with us. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “Oh, but...” Heather began and let out a squeak as Maddie kicked her in the ankle. Sophia turned and glared at them both. There was no need to explain how they searched the phone book for Darren’s house number.

  The small boy interrupted, “I don’t mind you comin’ round,” he said happily. “I like girls. Can I sit on your knee?” He pointed at Heather, who gave an embarrassed smile and nodded. Sophia was impressed with her friends. After a shaky start, they were expertly playing the game. The little boy took Heather’s hand and led her to a battered sofa outside the front of the porch. He waited for her to sit down and then plonked himself heavily on her legs. The others watched, feeling a little voyeuristic. The small boy was very forward. “I’m Toby,” he said matter-of-factly, “will you be my girlfriend? My other one dumped me yesterday.”

  Heather made sympathetic noises, but her first mistake was in asking why.

  “Well,” the child launched into his saga, “I asked Miss if I could go to the toilet before sports but she said no. I got all the way to the top of the wall bars and couldn’t help it. Peter Brockenhurst said it was like a shower and he’d never seen anything like it. I’m going to try and do it again next week and he’s gonna shout ‘tsunami’ really loud and pay me five bucks. It was cool. And the teacher couldn’t tell me off or nothing, cos I did ask her if I could go toilet.”