One Heartbeat

by Bowes, K T

  He nodded and touched her shoulder again, his fingers making a gentle stroking movement. Without warning, he kissed her, his lips soft as they pressed over Hana’s. She gasped and took a step backwards, stumbling over the curb. “Sorry, sorry,” he said, catching her under her elbows. “I forgot how beautiful you were. You were my first major crush.”

  Hana peered into his face, desperate to remember this intriguing male. Something familiar screamed out at her and she opened her mouth to ask him where they’d met. When he dipped his head to kiss her again, Hana obeyed her pounding heart and escaped, ducking under his arm and breaking into a run. She felt his eyes raking her outline in the darkness and sped back to the unit. Hana didn’t feel like going home but with nowhere else to go and Phoenix there, she had no choice.

  Outside the semi-detached units which were hers and Amanda’s, Hana saw lights on in her friend’s. At least it meant that she’d left Logan alone. The thought of walking in on them kissing or worse made her feel ill. “He wouldn’t!” she told herself but the nagging thought pestered her psyche and convinced her otherwise.

  Hana sighed and tried the laundry door, tripping over the step and landing on her knees. The door’s locked status meant her husband had been looking for her. Fantastic! She walked round to the front on leaden feet, finding that door also locked. Hana stamped her foot crossly. “He’s deliberately making me knock to get in,” she fumed, remembering her keys in the pocket of her coat in the hall cupboard. Feeling stubborn, she sat on the steps of the unit, not wanting to concede anything by knocking on the door and giving Logan more power than he already had over her. She sat for twenty minutes and decided that she might sleep there too. The stars were pretty overhead and reminded her of her baby’s birth underneath the Milky Way six months ago.

  God had different ideas though, turning the thermostat down to below zero. Hana’s light pullover offered no help as she shivered on the door step, her foolish tantrum becoming more ridiculous as the minutes went by. She sneezed loudly, clapping her hand over her mouth but it was too late. She heard footsteps inside and Logan yanked the door open. Hana tumbled backwards into the hallway, catching herself at the last moment and banging her sore wrist on the door jamb. For a second the pain was excruciating, dulling to a faint throb as she got control. “Bloody hell!” she breathed, gripping either side of the scar to numb the ache.

  Logan helped her up and led her inside, looking at her strangely. Hana recognised his scrutiny from the look he gave his mother when searching for signs of insanity. “Can you not?” she bit at him. It drove her mad, the way he examined her as he had his poor Bi-Polar mother, for signs she wasn’t medicating.

  Hana pushed him rudely out of her way and clomped along the hallway with her trainers on, deliberately ignoring her own, shoes-off-at-the-door-of-this-tiny-shoebox rule. She stripped off her clothes in the bedroom, uncomfortable as the sweat from the tennis practice dried in the cold night air and made her skin tight and sticky. Her hair was mussed and fluffy and she stomped into the bathroom for a shower and hair wash.

  Logan followed, looking both worried and confused. The bathroom was tiny and it irritated her, his proximity when she needed room to breathe and think. Logan sat on the edge of the bath, getting wet as his wife washed her hair behind the shower curtain.

  “Amanda was waiting to see you,” Logan risked saying, hearing the snort of derision from behind the curtain.

  “Whatever!” came Hana’s curt reply.

  “But she was. She’s your friend, not mine.”

  Hana gave a nasty laugh, prompting Logan to whip the curtain back and get a face full of water. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he spluttered.

  Hana felt torn between wanting him to leave so she could calm down and wanting him to stay so she could argue. The latter desire won. “I don’t have friends, Logan. I can’t have friends around the Du Roses. Every time I get someone I can relate to, one of you screw it up for me. So, no she isn’t my friend. Not anymore!”

  Logan wiped his face on the hand towel, looking bemused. His confusion lit the blue touch paper on Hana’s bomb. “Remember, my good friend of fifteen years, Anka? Tama’s affair with her ended that for me. And now, Amanda, friend of four months seems to have a thing for you. How would you feel, arriving home and discovering me cuddling up to a man on the sofa? You’d go loco and don’t bother denying it; you attacked a man for talking to me a few months ago. Double standards, Logan! So clearly, it’s not safe for me to have friends but that’s ok. I don’t need other people. I love being lonely and miserable and not having a soul in the world to share my hopes and fears with, in case they make a play for one of you boys. It’s wonderful. My life is awesome!”

  “Hana!” Logan’s face looked ashen as he reached out for her, her words cutting into him like a blade. She stepped over the side of the bath and slapped his hands away, nearly breaking her neck on the slippery floor. Managing to retain some dignity, she shrouded herself in one towel and balled her hair into another. The thought of sleeping with wet hair made Hana even grumpier. It was the worst feeling in the world; apart from childbirth, a broken arm, a shard of glass sticking out of her vein, or being told her husband just died under a truck. Maybe wet hair wasn’t so bad.

  Logan eyed Hana warily as she dried, her flesh pink and mottled by the heat. He ducked as she swung the towel to cover herself. He studied her through his stunning grey eyes, the long dark lashes swishing against his cheeks when he looked down.

  “Please, stop staring at me,” Hana hissed with exasperation, “you make me feel like a zoo animal.”

  “Well, you’re behaving like one,” he retorted, a veiled attempt at humour.

  Hana spun round on the slippery floor and faced him. “Just stop it!” she shouted, raising her voice in the screechy pitch she hated. “Stop looking at me like you expect to see some kind of mental disorder! What will you do? Get me pills, send my children away....oh yeah sorry, you already did that!”

  “Hey!” Logan got to his feet. The floor was soaked and his socks wet. As he reached out, he slipped and in trying to save himself, grabbed the metal towel rail on the wall. He swore as he pulled his hand away and blood dripped from a sliced index finger. He put it up to his mouth, trying to contain the flow.

  “I’m sorry,” Hana said, her rage instantly abated. She looked shamefaced as he ran it under the cold tap but when she tried to help, he pulled his finger away and turned his back on her.

  “Just leave me alone!” he said, his eyes as grey as an angry sea. He left Hana to tidy the bathroom, her heavy heart weighing her down every time she leaned forward.

  She wiped up the blood and mopped the water off the floor, putting off her return to the bedroom and the argument. Finally readying herself to placate her husband, she opened the door but found no sign of Logan. He wasn’t in the unit.

  Hana sat on the bed and cried, pressing her face into her palms and groaning from the pain of the heaviness in her chest. The cut to Logan’s finger and subsequent blood loss rendered the factor eight infusion futile, as it leaked from his body so soon.

  Phoenix woke for a feed and Hana welcomed the distraction of the smiling little girl, who beamed as her mother lifted her from the cot despite the late hour. Hana tried not to torture herself with thoughts of Logan, imagining him seeking comfort next door with the voluptuous and eager Amanda. “I hate how he makes me feel insane,” she sobbed over her suckling child. “Maybe I am. Maybe I’ve caught it just by being married to a Du Rose.” She thought of Miriam, upsetting herself with her last memory of her mother-in-law, screaming and dodging her sons to get to the fire and what? Save Reuben, or be with him in death? Her face resembled a ghoulish mask of insanity and mania as she fled into the flames and died with her lover in his inferno.

  Hana felt the heat and heard the rushing whoosh of the fire as she sat on the bed, alone in her sadness and feeding the child born a day later. She stroked the little girl’s delicate fingers and let her tears plop on
to the baby suit. Phoenix only needed a top up and to say hello and Hana returned her to her cot with a full tummy and clean nappy.

  Hana Du Rose didn’t like the woman who stared back from the bathroom mirror as she washed her hands. Logan wasn’t having an affair, even if Amanda wished he was. It was the threat of it which ate away at Hana’s security and probably always would, thanks to Vik and his secret mistress. She’d been oblivious to his late nights and early mornings and the jobs which took him away from home in their final year together. Sometimes she hated Vik for dying because it denied her justice, not finding out until the day after his funeral when his tearful girlfriend turned up at her home. Hana felt livid at Amanda and furious at Logan and even more aggrieved with herself. “You sent him round to hers,” she chastised the woman in the mirror. Red-rimmed eyes peered back at her, dark circles under the vibrant green eyes. “He didn’t want to go, but you were so damn lonely and pleased to have friendship, you made him! Opening pickle jars, fixing light bulbs, bolting loft hatches.” Hana sneered at her reflected self. “You’re too bloody trusting, Hana Du Rose. When will you learn?”

  Hana slapped moisturiser on her face and went to bed, grovelling around in her drawer for another novel. She fought the manic desire to rip it in two like a strong man ripping a telephone directory. Slender fingers stroked the cover and knew she wouldn’t do it. Hana willed Logan to come home so she could look at his finger and finish the argument. The issues floated in the air, still unaddressed. She wanted a chance to say the clever things she’d thought of.

  She fell asleep, lying diagonally across the double bed so Logan’s return would wake her. But when she struggled from sleep the next morning, he wasn’t there and she’d given herself backache.

  Chapter 11

  “I’m spending a few nights with friends,” Tama informed her, biting his lip and furrowing his brow.

  “Why?” Hana’s face looked troubled at the thought of her only ally disappearing.

  Tama rolled his eyes. “Because living with you and Uncle Logan is like being in a mine field, Ma. He’s not talking to you and you’re not talking to him. It’s stupid.”

  “But I told you what he did!” Hana said. “I came back to find him sprawled on the sofa with my friend; what would you do?”

  “No, Ma.” Tama shook his head. “The story gets worse every time you tell it. If I didn’t know better I’d think you were sabotaging your own happiness. Logan kept telling you he didn’t want to help her out with her stupid problems but you wouldn’t listen.”

  “I thought she was my friend,” Hana sulked.

  “No-one’s your friend, Ma,” Tama said, sadness in his eyes and his shoulders slumped. He hefted his bag over his shoulder and reached out a hand to stroke her red curls. “All we’ve got is family, babe. Don’t you know that yet?”

  A car honked in the lane and Tama left with a wave. “I don’t even have family,” Hana muttered to herself. She imagined herself crawling back to Bodie. “Hey, son. You were right; my husband’s a jerk.” Hana shook her head, choosing loneliness instead.

  Bodie stayed away from his mother and Izzie never returned her call. Logan remained distinctly absent; always busy over at St Bart’s, leaving Hana isolated and lonely. She rang the rest home and asked if she could visit Father Sinbad, yearning for the sound of his voice. Matron answered. “Hello, Hana,” she said, sounding jovial. “He’s not back from his holiday yet.”

  “But it’s been two weeks,” Hana said with surprise. “He only goes for a week.”

  “Usually,” Matron replied. “The Catholic charity paid for ten days this year at another rest home in Russell just for a change of scenery for him.”

  “That was kind of them; he always loves going somewhere new and meeting other priests.”

  “Yes, he does.” Matron’s tone became serious. “He took a funny turn so they’ve kept him there for a bit longer. It’s caused a problem for me because the lovely chap we’ve got in exchange really wants to go home now.”

  “Oh, dear. If you’re talking to Father Sinbad, please give him my love, won’t you?” Hana said. “Tell him I’ll visit as soon as he’s home and I hope it’s nothing serious.”

  “It won’t be,” Matron promised. “He’ll go on forever.”

  Hana avoided contact with her next door neighbour, hoping Amanda got the message without them needing to have a messy confrontational showdown.

  Seeing her loneliness, Pastor Allen persuaded Hana to attend a Thursday mother and toddler group at church, but she found it compounded her isolation. Most of the women were in their twenties and Hana found no common ground, apart from the chubby babies each had on their hip. The women were related to one another or part of such a tight little friendship group, they didn’t need Hana. The first meeting was a lonely, soul destroying experience, driving Hana deeper into herself and wrecking her confidence.

  Escaping to the car while the other yummy mummies sang nursery rhymes, more for their own benefit than their drooling offspring, Hana started the engine and suffered a small crisis. “I don’t know where to go,” she told her smiling daughter. “Everywhere sucks!” Hana brushed away a tear from her cheek and bit her lip to distract her.

  She listed her options on her fingers, finding none satisfactory. There was the empty Culver’s Cottage, requiring work to open up and light a fire whilst juggling her baby. Or there was her scintillating life at the school site where the excitement was damn near killing her. Robert and Elaine, happy now they’d found Hana and mended their relationship, had headed off to see more of New Zealand than just Hamilton. Hana resented the days spent away from her, realising time was precious and she wanted more than they could give. She selfishly wanted twenty-six years of quality time squashed into the short few weeks before they left for England.

  Hana pulled up to the intersection with the main road, sitting on the white line without indicating. “Where should I go, Phoe?” she asked her daughter. “Where do you fancy?”

  Phoenix yawned and closed her eyes, leaving Hana to make the decision. “Fine,” she said turning the car north. “But don’t blame me.” She cut across country until she met the junction with State Highway 1 and then headed towards Auckland. “I might not like my husband much at the moment, but I dislike myself more,” she said to the sleeping child. Hana recognised she needed time to think and not worry, to get away from a former life which pulled and snagged at her like barbed wire. She was wise enough to see temptation in the sweet man with the tennis racquets, knowing she felt companionship with him in a dangerous way. The sensation of the strings pounding the tennis ball was exhilarating and Hana knew her reaction to Logan afterwards had channelled the pent up emotions released by the game. Hana saw how easy it was for Anka to bed the willing Tama, bored and stagnant in her own life and attracted by the excitement of his. The blonde man was sweet and kind and Hana sensed he had a vacancy for good company.

  “What am I doing?” Hana groaned, making the turn towards Rangiriri. “I’ve just left my husband at the mercy of Amanda and her desperate DIY requirements. Tama’s not even there to protect him.” She tossed her red hair in defiance and decided if her marriage was in that much danger, it wasn’t worth hanging around to watch it unravel. Her cheeks flushed at the memory of the gentle touch of the tennis player on her shoulder and guilt pricked at her. Logan would kill him. Yet somehow her husband believed it was ok to cuddle up on the sofa with the next door neighbour.

  Hana arrived at the hotel at afternoon teatime, the bell sounding as she pitched in the front door carrying the car seat and change bag.

  “Hey, Mrs Du Rose,” the receptionist called. “Would you like help with your bags?”

  Hana gave the woman a watery smile and looked at her belongings. It was then she realised she had nothing else with her and her face crumpled. The receptionist buzzed the kitchen for Leslie, dismayed by the level of Hana’s upset and the Māori housekeeper waddled along the corridor at warp speed, seizing Hana in such a genuin
e embrace it left her bones rattling and her tears falling freely. “It’s all gone wrong,” Hana wailed and Leslie patted her back and waved away the other staff who came to watch.

  The renewed contact with Robert reminded Hana of what she’d lost and she missed her mother with an unremitting ache. Leslie’s maternal embrace was a painful proxy for Judith’s absence and seemed to make Hana’s hysteria worse. “Let’s get you upstairs and out of the way of pryin’ eyes,” Leslie whispered, sensing the atmosphere of gossip descending. She took the car seat and change bag, letting Hana regain her dignity and leading the way up the spiral staircase to Logan’s childhood room. Leslie pressed the numbers for access and pushed the door open.

  As the door clicked behind them, Hana realised she didn’t want to be there either; in the centre of more Du Rose territory. “I can’t stay,” she sobbed, while Leslie sat the car seat on the rug and returned for the child’s distraught mother.

  “Whatever’s wrong, child?” the old woman asked softly, stroking Hana’s arm with gentle brown fingers.

  Hana began wailing like a five-year-old. “I’ve got no friends; I’m so lonely. Logan hates me.”

  Leslie sat on the bed with Hana enfolded in her comely arms and let her sob. It felt to Hana like mere minutes but it was actually forty-five of them. Three-quarters of an hour of sobbing, sniffing, nose blowing and then sitting with tears coursing silently down her face. If it gained credit as an Olympic sport, Hana Du Rose was a silver medal winner at crying. Leslie’s uniform blouse was saturated with salt water and Hana felt cowed by exhaustion. As soon as she thought she might be ok to let go of the housekeeper, some other sad thought assailed her brain; her poor mother, her poor father or her even poorer brother and she started crying again. “I’m sorry,” Hana managed to say eventually. “You have other places to be. It’s ok if you need to go.”