The Predictions

  “Don’t be. The other women thought they were doing me a favor too.”

  Zachary was full, and I sat him up and patted his back until he made a froglike noise that made us both laugh. Elisabeth reached out and timidly patted the top of his head, the downiest part, just beyond the soft, pulsing fontanel.

  “Would you like to hold him?”

  “I’d love that.”

  I stood up with the baby, and Elisabeth took my place on the lounge chair, settling in and smoothing her clothes to make way for Zachary. She formed a cradle with her arms, saying, “I was never very good at this.”

  Her hands, when I lowered Zachary into them, were trembling.

  “He’s so warm,” she said, sitting very still, and staring, awestruck, at the human in front of her. Zachary stared back intently, then reached out to try to swat her face. She leaned a little closer, letting him touch her nose. He looked very serious for a moment, his little brow creased in a comic-­book frown, then broke into a smile that was so ecstatic and so guileless that it made Elisabeth gasp with delight.

  “Who needs teeth with a smile like that?”

  Elisabeth nodded, and I noticed she really was crying this time.

  “He’s so much like you were at that age,” she said, wiping her eyes. “It takes me back to those early days, holding you for the first time—­before I realized I would have to share you.”

  “Didn’t you want to share me?” Growing up, I couldn’t remember a single time when Elisabeth had tried to hug me. Out of all the mothers, she was the least warm, the most detached. “I thought you all agreed to raise us in a group.”

  “It’s what we agreed on before any of us were pregnant,” said Elisabeth. “But once you were born, and I held you in my arms, I changed my mind. I felt so much love for you—­and I couldn’t bear to share you with anyone. Every bone in my body told me it was wrong. I thought we were making a terrible mistake, and I said so. But Hunter, and the others, they’d made up their minds and I had to go along with it—­or leave the commune.” She paused. “And maybe I would have done that if I’d been able to breast-­feed.”

  “But you couldn’t—­so you stayed?”

  Elisabeth looked wistfully at Zachary. “Once I stopped breast-­feeding, I didn’t know how to bond with you—­or any of the other babies—­and I suppose, after a while, I stopped trying. All that love—­it h/ad nowhere to go, so it dried up. When Fritz came along, I didn’t even try to feed him. I just let the other women get on with it and pretended he wasn’t my son.” She smiled. “It was around that time I took over all the cooking. It kept me busy—­kept my mind off you and Fritz.”

  “You couldn’t love us the way you wanted to so you stopped loving us at all?”

  “I know what it sounds like.” Her voice cracked. “The other women seemed to be happy to love all of you to the same degree. Maybe feeding you created that bond. But I didn’t feel like that. I loved you and Fritz with all my heart but I wasn’t allowed to show that I preferred you to the other children. Whenever I comforted you, the other women told me off. ‘You can’t do that, it isn’t your turn.’ Of course, they were just keeping me to our pact. But I couldn’t love you and share you at the same time. It tore me in half.”

  So that was Elisabeth who tried to comfort me when I fell off the fence post. “But growing up,” I began, not knowing if I should continue, “I thought you didn’t even like us.”

  “I regret that,” said Elisabeth. “Deeply.”

  “And even after we knew who you were—­you didn’t try to get close like some of the other mothers.”

  “I saw how you looked at us. You didn’t want that. Not anymore.”

  “And when Fritz disappeared . . . ?”

  “I was broken. I am still.” Elisabeth struggled to go on. “To lose my son when I had never been able to show him how much I loved him . . .” We sat for a few moments in silence. “It was the same for Hunter but he couldn’t admit it to himself. He was a stubborn, bloody-­minded fool. And then, when you all started leaving—­well, I knew you hated us and hated the commune, because of what we’d done to you.” She handed Zachary back to me. The sudden movement unsettled him, and he started to whimper. When she spoke again, she sounded annoyed.

  “Do you know how I know that?”

  I shook my head, listening to her and soothing Zachary at the same time.

  “Because I hated the fucking commune too. I couldn’t stand to be there. So I left.”

  “Except that I don’t hate it.”

  “Well, you should,” said Elisabeth. “After what we did to you.”

  “You didn’t mean to hurt us.” Only a few days earlier, I’d read in the newspaper about the leader of a commune, north of Auckland, who had been arrested and charged with molesting his own children, and worse. “You didn’t abuse us or anything.”

  “But we did,” said Elisabeth. “We emotionally abused you.”

  It was the same phrase Lukas had used.

  “I don’t feel abused.”

  “You probably can’t feel anything much.”

  My first reaction was to refute her, followed by a jolt of recognition. She was right. And then I cried.

  “I’m sorry,” said Elisabeth. “I didn’t mean to be cruel. I’m angry with us, not with you.” She paused. “It’s taken a lot of therapy for me to be able to say this to you but man, we were such fucking hypocrites.”

  I blew my nose on Zachary’s burp cloth, a piece of damp, sour-­smelling muslin that needed a damn good wash.

  “You were?”

  “Big-­time. We all believed in free love—­Hunter especially. It was why we started a commune. We tried it but we couldn’t make it work. Everyone was consumed with jealousy, and before we put a stop to it, quite a few of us were badly hurt, myself included.”

  “You never told us that.”

  “It almost destroyed the commune. So we decided to stick with monogamy. But Hunter and some of the others got it into their heads that free love was the ideal, the way forward. He thought that if you children were raised outside the nuclear family—­if you were taught from the beginning to love without being possessive—­then you would grow up to be less selfish.”

  “He thought we would be better at free love than you were?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s insane.”

  “I know.” Elisabeth frowned. “Everyone has the same need for intimacy, to love and be loved, and I think all we did is destroy your trust—­not just in us but in love itself.”

  A queasy feeling came over me and I felt sure I’d made a terrible mistake, but I didn’t know what it was yet—­only that it was bad.

  “This whole time,” I said, “I thought everything that went wrong between Lukas and I was happening because of my prediction.”

  “Your prediction?” Elisabeth was staggered. “That was another crazy thing we should have put a stop to.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “We were under Shakti’s spell, I guess—­and it was the seventies. There was nothing we wouldn’t try. Nothing.”

  Elisabeth cleared away the tea things and carried them into the kitchen, where she stood at the sink with her back to me, washing up. She wore pink rubber gloves, and jabbed at the dishes with jerky, irritable movements, like she wanted the task, and our visit, to be over with. I took it as a signal to leave, though it may not have been—­she had always washed dishes like that, and hadn’t I, after all, just learned that her behavior did not always reflect her thoughts? Even if she had not been allowed to show it, and had since forgotten how, it was comforting to know that the same all-­consuming love I felt for Zachary, Elisabeth had once felt for me. I had not been aware until now of how badly, growing up, I had wanted someone to love me like that, as theirs, and theirs alone, not passed around, but held close to the heart and cherished
beyond reason.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER 19

  Auckland/Gaialands

  1989

  AFTER THE LIGHTNING VISIT with Elisabeth, Zachary and I drifted around the streets of Freemans Bay, resting awhile in a small park, drinking water from a fountain, until I started to feel like a homeless person. Somewhat reluctantly, we arrived on the front porch of the lesbian house, where a women’s symbol, with a clenched fist inside it, had been woven into the doormat.

  In the middle of the front door was a letter slot, and after I had knocked, the metal flap covering it swung open, and a pair of wary eyes peered out. Despite this initial caution, the owner of the eyes turned out to be a cheerful woman with a buzz cut, and after she had let us in, she ushered us into the hallway. I recognized her from the protest. “I’m Pat,” she said, stepping out onto the porch and glancing up and down the street before bolting the door behind us. “There’s only women in here, and we like to be safe.” She pointed down a long, dingy corridor, crowded with cardboard boxes, piles of leaflets and posters stacked on top, a few suitcases too. “Susie and Katrina are in the kitchen.”

  At the back of the house was a narrow room with a sloped roof, not much more than a lean-­to with walls. The carcass of an old coal range comprised the bulk of the kitchen, and the gappy wooden floorboards sloped ever so slightly toward the garden. A graying, emaciated woman stood at the sink, peeling a mountain of potatoes. “You made it!” exclaimed Susie, bounding over from the Formica dining table and peering into the sling at Zachary. “Bloody hell, I am sorry about the protest. I got carried away. Pat and Linda gave me a right telling off when we got home.”

  “Technically, he isn’t even your grandson,” I said, chiding her, but smiling, so she would know I had forgiven her.

  “I don’t know about that,” said Susie. “We love him like one. Same as we love you like a daughter.” She pulled me into a no-­nonsense hug. “How was Elisabeth? Does she miss us? Is she dying to come back?” She laughed—­not wanting an answer, only to be facetious.

  “She looked good. Didn’t say anything about coming back . . .”

  “Imagine it,” said Katrina. “Elisabeth and Shakti in the same room. Hunter wouldn’t know where to look.”

  “Is Shakti coming to the commune?”

  “Apparently,” said Katrina. “But her movements are always mysterious. She likes to keep Hunter guessing.”

  “When are we heading back?”

  “Tonight,” said Susie. “After a quick meeting.” She turned to the emaciated woman at the sink. “Linda? Do you mind taking care of my daughter and grandson?”

  Linda put down her knife. “I’d be delighted.” She had finished peeling the potatoes and was slicing them into thin, shiny ovals. “How old is the wee fella?”

  “About five months.”

  She came over and squeezed his cheek. “He’s a bonny one, isn’t he?” I had learned that “bonny” was the word ­people used to describe a baby with fat rolls and no neck. At his age, it was a compliment.

  “He’s got a big appetite, always hungry.”

  “Maybe he’s ready for solids.” Linda held up a teapot. “Chamomile, peppermint, or gumboot?”

  “Gumboot, thanks.”

  The partition walls of the villa were thin, especially the one behind my head, which separated the kitchen from the lounge, where the women had gone to have their meeting. Through it I could hear Susie’s voice, not muffled but clear as a whistle. I tried not to listen but when she mentioned Gaialands my ears pricked up. Linda had been giving me advice on how to start Zachary on solid food, but I was not much interested, and my ears kept tuning in to the meeting next door. They were definitely discussing the commune, something about there being enough of us to reach a consensus.

  “Be careful mixing Farex and banana,” said Linda. “It turns to concrete in their stomachs. Really bungs them up. When your little one gets constipation—­boy do you know all about it!”

  Thanks to Linda, I had missed the crucial part of the conversation next door. “Do you have children?” I asked Linda, trying to be friendly. She looked too thin, almost wizened, and it wasn’t unusual for the childless to give screeds of advice.

  “Four,” she said. “All boys.”

  “Four?” I was so taken aback I forgot to censor my thoughts. “No wonder you ran away to a house full of dykes.”

  Linda smiled proudly. “They’re all grown now. The youngest, Stephen, just finished school.” She told me about each of them in turn, their accomplishments, her hopes for their future, but as I tried to listen, I was distracted by the increasingly impassioned conversation through the wall. I heard Hunter’s name mentioned several times, then Paul’s and Sigi’s, before someone exclaimed, “After thirty years, they won’t just pack up and leave, you know!”

  I wondered if Linda had heard this too, but when I turned to look at her, she had gone back to arranging the potato slices in a roasting dish, still wearing the proud smile. The meeting in the next room fell silent for a moment, before starting up in a more muted way. Whatever they had been discussing, the heated part of it was over. A few minutes later, Susie appeared in the kitchen. Her face was flushed, but she gave nothing away about what had gone on in the room next door. “That smells great,” she said to Linda, before asking if I needed a break from Zachary. “It’s been a bloody long day. You must be knackered.”

  “Yeah, I am.” I was grateful when she picked him up and dandled him sweetly on her knee. Susie was so unpredictable. Explosive one minute, kind and thoughtful the next.

  Whatever Linda had made for dinner, we would not be eating it. The women wanted to hit the road, and had procured hard-­boiled egg and stringy silver-­beet sandwiches to keep us going on the journey. A third woman had materialized at the house, and when I went out to the car with Zachary and my rucksack, she and Pat were already seated in the back.

  “This is Barb,” said Pat. “Want me to hold the baby while you climb in?”

  “Sure.” I handed Zachary over, and Pat and Barb clucked above him. They were much younger than Susie and Katrina, perhaps in their early thirties. The boot, their laps, and every available leg space were crammed with crates and duffel bags and pillows, but the ­couple had left a small wedge of the backseat free. I slotted into it, molded by the gear all around us, and settled Zachary on my lap. We set off, Susie at the helm and Katrina in the front passenger seat. No one explained the presence of Pat and Barb, or their worldly belongings, and the first hour of the trip passed in near silence, as though everyone was holding their breath until we had left the city limits behind. A little way after the Thames turnoff, Susie loudly cleared her throat. “Pat and Barb are coming to live at Gaialands,” she said, seeking eye contact with me in the rearview mirror. “The commune needs new blood. It’s becoming like an old folks’ home.”

  Katrina turned around in her seat to face me. “It’s been heading that way since you kids left. No one under the age of fifty.”

  I could see her point, but I didn’t know what to say.

  “We’ve heard so much about the place,” said Pat, who seemed to be the spokesperson of the ­couple. “We can’t wait.” She laid a hand on Barb’s stomach and beamed. “Barb’s expecting.”

  I wondered how the news would go down with the others on the commune, not just the addition of two residents but in a few months’ time, a third. Did they already know, or was it a surprise? I suspected the latter.

  Susie shot me another glance, either daring me to say what I was thinking or warning me not to.

  “I’m sure you’ll love it there,” I said, thinking what a shock they were in for if they had always lived in the city.

  We still had a long way to go, and shortly after
ward, Barb fell asleep on Pat’s shoulder, and Pat tucked a pillow under her neck and leaned against the window. Katrina stared vacantly out the window, while Susie kept her eyes on the road. It was unusual for the two women not to chat. Something was up, that was obvious, but I had other things to worry about. Since the visit to Elisabeth, I had been thinking a lot about Lukas, about our relationship and what it would take to save it. I could see very clearly how we had arrived at this point, the fracture, and faults on both sides, but I was less clear about whether, going forward, we could make it work. Would Lukas always wonder if I loved him enough, and could I ever prove to him that I did? What if Elisabeth was right and we were too damaged to know how to love? The prediction, in its way, had been a far simpler obstacle than this.

  On the winding road from Thames to Tairua, I dozed off once or twice, though with Zachary rolling around in my lap, I could not fall properly to sleep. I had tried, with the seat belt, to tether him to me, but it wasn’t an especially safe or reliable setup. We made a toilet stop at a ser­vice station in Tairua, then wished we hadn’t. Getting out of the car had displaced all our gear, and we could not fit comfortably back in. For the rest of the journey—­still another three-­quarters of an hour—­Pat’s guitar case was jammed into my leg, and a renegade suitcase kept nudging me in the head, threatening to escape from the boot.

  For the last twenty minutes of the journey, with no clue how close to our destination we were, Zachary thrashed his little arms and legs and screeched about being cooped up in the car for so long, giving voice to how we all felt. I had tried to put him on the breast, but the car was bouncing too much to get a proper latch. It was dark when we arrived at Gaialands and we parked up by the chook house and got out and stretched our legs. I didn’t realize how cramped, airless, and downright stinky it had been in the car until I got out and breathed the virgin night air, pure and fragrant. I had forgotten how vital this place smelled.

  The lights in the mess hut were on, and through the window we could see everyone was still around the table, waiting for us to get back. “Let’s go and introduce you—­and see if there’s any food left,” said Susie. “We’ll unload the car later.”