‘Sorry, I only asked, don’t get upset. You know that your father and I only care about your happiness, nothing else. You say “fine, fine”, but what does it mean this “fine”? If only you would talk to us.’
At last I had the door shut. I heard her walk away. Safe for the moment, eyes squeezed tight, I sat on the toilet and breathed deeply.
Back in the sitting room, my parents would be searching for something to talk to Douglas about. Something impersonal, like the economy or the drains. They would be doing most of the talking while he chewed on his pipe.
I could not stay any longer in the bathroom.
‘Let’s play gin rummy. Can we play gin rummy?’ Janet asked when I emerged.
‘Just a short game,’ I said.
Douglas filled his pipe.
‘Are you and Janet coming to the synagogue on Friday? It’s Kol Nidre, you know,’ my father said.
‘I know,’ I said. Why bring this up now? Why ever bring it up? Weren’t there enough divisions in the family?
‘It’s just one day out of your life and hers. Our holiest day.’
‘What’s Kol Nidre?’ Janet asked.
‘I don’t want her head filled with mumbo-jumbo.’ Douglas’s words were slurred.
‘The child needs…’
‘Gyuri, Gyuri, don’t…’ my mother made anxious ‘shut up’ signs to my father.
‘It’s late; we must go.’ I stood up. ‘It’s Janet’s bedtime. We really have to go.’
‘I want some more matzo balls,’ said Janet.
I could hear Douglas grinding his teeth as we waited while my mother wrapped up matzo balls in wax paper for Janet to have later.
As we were at last putting on our coats, my father started to tell me about visiting Vera Farkas. When Rudi had died of a heart attack last year, Joe had moved back home to help her cope. Joe, Joe, how can you stand it?
‘How is she?’ A mistake. Why did I ask?
‘Not too well,’ my father said. ‘She is bedridden, her heart is bad and her kidneys are in poor shape, but… Joe is a good son. He takes care of his mother.’
Once, when I was a little girl, my father found me sitting on my bed, crying.
‘Tell me about it,’ he said. ‘What are you so sad about?’
When I hesitated to say what was wrong, he said, ‘You can confide in me, you know. I am an expert on being miserable. I have been afflicted with this malady since as far back as I can remember.’ We met in one of the aisles at New World supermarket.
‘How are you?’ I asked, noticing for the first time the streaks of grey in his black hair and the slight stoop of his upper body.
‘Fine, fine. Fine is the English way, isn’t it? Always say you are fine.’
‘So what’s the matter?’ I sneaked a glimpse at my watch.
‘I want to go back again to search the waste ground. I want to see my mother’s face again before I die. Kati says it is foolishness. She doesn’t want me to continue with the nonsense. She says she won’t come with me.’
I squeezed his hand.
‘I went to the synagogue today, but did not say Kaddish for my mother because Kati called me out early, worrying about the parking.’
‘How is she?’
‘You know, Eva, it is for her that I am trying to stay on the surface…’
‘Surface?’
‘Do you know what I mean?’ He grasped me by the arm.
‘On top of the water?’
He was breathing heavily.
‘On top of the water?’ I repeated.
‘I lie to your mother and say I’m fine … but…’
‘I have to go now,’ I hugged him. ‘I must go now. Janet and her friend…in the car… They are…’
Several days later we met again at the supermarket. This time – my trolley overflowing with balloons, chippies, chocolate bars, jelly, icecream and saveloys – I was shopping for Janet’s seventh birthday party.
‘How are you today?’ I asked him.
‘I’m all right, truly… It is my duty… She does not want to be left. She is afraid… Of being…alone.’
Enormous tears rolled down his cheeks.
‘Everything is bad around us,’ he whispered. ‘They killed the little boy, my sister’s son. Eva, I don’t even have a photo. He was a thin little boy with bright dark eyes. The last time I saw him he was so sleepy he could hardly sit up. The family were in their third apartment since the occupation, forced to abandon the other two in a hurry. The boy kept trying to sit up straight; he fought against going to sleep. He was looking fixedly at his father’s face. What would be in the mind of a small child when the adults in his world, who were supposed to be all powerful, were as helpless as the little children to prevent the catastrophe?’
When I said nothing, he said, ‘Don’t worry, Eva. Dr Steiner is helping to make me feel better. And Kati won’t let me out of her sight. She thinks I could cut my wrists at any time, but I will not. I have to keep on. I’m not allowed the end yet.’
I have to listen, I told myself. I have to stay and listen to him.
‘Ah, you don’t want to listen to an old man.’
‘Yes, I…’
‘Anyway, I have to go too. I have work to do.’
‘Work?’
‘To prepare for my journey.’
‘What journey?’
‘To the waste ground.’
I stood looking at him as other shoppers bumped us, loading up their trolleys with supplies for the week.
‘I must go now or your mother will be worrying about me.’
I watched him walk away. There was a dull ache in my stomach. They devoured me with tragedy They couldn’t help it, but I couldn’t help them. Especially not now. Now that my own life with Douglas was coming apart.
I continued on around the supermarket, filling up my trolley with things for Janet. I still needed Mellow Yellow and Fanta for the party, and hundreds and thousands – for that child who had everything.
‘When are we going to get there?’ asked Janet. It was almost an hour to Daphne’s house at Waikanae and we had been in the car about five minutes.
‘Just round the corner,’ Douglas said.
‘You always say that,’ said Janet.
‘How about a game of sleeping lions,’ I suggested.
‘That’s for babies,’ said Janet.
‘How about Nebuchadnezzar?’ said Douglas. ‘That’s for people with very good general knowledge.’
We swept down the hill until spread beneath us was the wild familiar coast. The sea was calm today, as pale blue as the sky. The sheer beauty was still as shocking as the first time I saw it.
‘My first New Zealand beach,’ I said, as we hurtled past Paekakariki Station.
‘At Paekakariki the girls are cheeky,’ said Janet.
‘My father tried to cheer us up as we sat on the beach, trying to stop the sand blowing in our eyes. I was just a bit older than you are now, Janet.’
‘At Paekakariki the girls are cheeky,’ said Janet.
‘At Wainuiomata the boys are smarter,’ said Douglas.
My father. He was the one who needed cheering up now.
And Douglas’s mother too. A shrunken person dressed in bright flapping garments greeted us under the apple blossom tree.
‘Hello, Grandma,’ whispered Janet.
Daphne Simpson was dying of cancer. She was home again from the hospital. The disease was incurable; there was no point in her staying in hospital any longer.
‘Cup of tea,’ offered Daphne.
Janet practised her ballet routine round and round the living room. She stumbled and knocked over Daphne’s cup.
‘Careful, Janet, careful.’ I wiped up the spilled tea.
‘Grandma used to dance with me when I was little,’ said Janet. ‘One, two, three, four; around you go.’
‘How about a swim?’ Douglas stood up. His voice was cheerful but his face looked worn out.
‘There are crabs,’ said Janet at th
e beach. ‘I’m not going in the water.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Douglas. ‘The water’s great.’
‘There are crabs. I can feel them. I hate the beach. I want to go to the pool,’ said Janet.
Back home, the fish and chips were a hot sodden lump in the newspaper.
‘I don’t like fish,’ said Janet. ‘I want a donut.’
‘Who would like some lemonade?’ asked Douglas, looking past the croquet lawn with blank eyes. We drank the gritty lemonade in silence.
Daphne hardly ate anything, only a bit of steamed fish and broccoli. She turned on the TV to cheer up the little girl with frightened eyes.
‘I don’t want her watching junk,’ Douglas said.
‘This is not a dress rehearsal, Douglas,’ said Daphne. She was sitting in a little pool of lamplight. ‘This is it you know.’
The phone rang. It was for me.
‘How is Daphne?’ asked my mother. But it was my father she was phoning about.
‘Eva, you wouldn’t believe what he said to me last night: “Go, go. You’ll be better off with him.” “With who? Go where?” I asked. “Paul,” he says. “Your admirer.” “Paul? Paul Szép?”
‘Believe me, I was shocked. This was so ridiculous. “He can give you a better life,” he said. “Your mother was right about me. I can’t give you what you deserve. He is good at making money. He always has plenty of energy – for business, for women. I’m finished; it is over for me.”
‘All he wants to do is go back again and dig the waste ground in Óbuda. To see again a photo of his mother before she dies. This is how he goes on, Eva. He is sick. Digging the waste ground indeed. Paul Szép indeed. That boring old philanderer! Your father knows I have never, would never, look at another man.’
‘I have to go. I can’t talk now. I must go,’ I said.
‘Don’t treat me like your mother; I’m not your mother,’ Douglas accused.
This again. What did he mean? What was it now? What had I done?
Daphne was in bed already, though it was only seven o’clock. Janet, in the corner, clutched her book with both hands. She was watching us and listening with wide, sad eyes.
Douglas walked away, not looking at me or at Janet.
‘I’m going out for a while,’ he said.
‘Why is Daddy always going out?’ asked Janet, swinging on the hammock.
Daphne was back in the hospital.
‘It won’t be long now,’ Douglas said. He drove off each morning to varsity and, afterwards, visited his mother, returning at night to Waikanae.
‘Go to bed,’ I said to Janet who wanted to stay up late until her daddy got back.
When he comes in he will need a cup of tea,’ said Janet.
‘Go to bed, it’s late.’
‘I want to make my daddy a cup of tea when he gets back,’ said Janet, her voice rising.
‘Its after ten already. Go to bed. I’m going to bed; I’m not staying up for him.’
‘I want to make my daddy a cup of tea.’ Janet stamped her feet. ‘Someone has to make him a cu…
‘Go to bed – now,’ I yelled at her. ‘Right this minute.’
‘You’re a loser,’ said Janet, looking at me with her father’s large accusing eyes.
‘So what’s been happening?’ The counsellor looked first at me, then at Douglas.
She had a wide, beaming smile. She kept an enormous box of tissues and a large clock between herself and her clients.
A week after Daphne’s funeral, Douglas moved in with another woman. Her name was Vicky. He said she was cheerful and easy to be with. She wasn’t irrational, nor did she make unreasonable demands on a man. Instead, she was good for him, a balm for his wounds.
‘Why have you ruined everything?’ I turned to Douglas, ignoring the counsellor.
‘Ours was never much of a relationship,’ he replied. His voice was cold and he didn’t mumble or suck his pipe. When he shifted his clothes, books, paintings and records to Vicky’s, his pipes got left behind. He said I could put them in the rubbish bin if I wanted, along with anything else of his still in the house.
‘I’m not going to stay here – I’m going. There’s no point in this…counselling. There’s no point in my being here.’ Douglas was already on his feet.
‘No, don’t go, tell me, tell me how I can change?’ I grasped his arm. There was a wrenching pain in my stomach. ‘Tell me what I’ve done wrong. Tell me how I can be the sort of person who would please you?’
‘There’s no point. It doesn’t matter what you do; there’s nothing you can do.’
As Douglas shut the door behind him and I sat down again, the clock showed that there were fifty-five minutes left of the session.
‘When are you going to decide to take charge of your life?’ the counsellor asked.
I started to cry.
‘Are you looking after yourself?’ She pushed the box of tissues towards me.
I took a tissue.
‘Your condition has a name – abandonment panic.’
She recommended that I read a book to help me cope with my condition. Thirty minutes remained of the session. After a lengthy pause, she asked, ‘When are you going to tell yourself that you deserve something better?’
I was remembering one of our last evenings together – Douglas, as usual in his corner armchair, I, on the other side. He was immersed in one of the Barchester Chronicles, I was pretending to read another book by Trollope. Douglas did not look up at me. Not even when he stopped reading and wished me goodnight before retiring to the spare room, did he look at me.
Ten minutes remained of the session. I took another tissue.
‘I want to learn self-control. I don’t want to be blown around helplessly… I don’t want to be like my mother and father.’
‘You have to choose,’ said the counsellor. ‘Are you going to be victim or survivor?’
Enough. Grabbing tissues by the handful, I blew my nose briskly and wiped my eyes. I rushed out the door, past the next waiting client who was hunched over with worry and sadness, wrapping myself tightly in my winter coat.
When the phone rang, I picked up the receiver. It was the counsellor.
‘How are you?’ she asked. She was anxious for my healing process to remain on schedule. I had missed my last appointment and had not bothered to let her know. She was running past me the possibility of billing me for the missed appointment. I hung up.
The phone rang again. I picked up the receiver and covered the mouthpiece so she couldn’t hear my breathing. But this time it wasn’t her, but Douglas.
‘Hello, hello, is anyone there?’
I put the phone down and went to bed. I fell asleep almost immediately and dreamed that Douglas had asked me to come to him at last. He would be waiting for me in a room on the ninth floor of Shell House in the city. He asked me to bring the book about amorphous semi-conductors that he had left behind in the house. When I got to the apartment, I realised that I had forgotten the book. I left, telling Douglas I’d be right back. I began to go down the numerous flights of stairs – there seemed to be no lift – and when I finally got down to the street, I realised to my surprise that I wasn’t in Wellington but in a part of Budapest unknown to me. I woke up and looked out of the window, expecting to see the park across the road from the apartment building of my childhood. But there was nothing there except the unmown lawn of our Karori house.
I phoned my mother to tell her I couldn’t go for tea.
‘Listen Eva,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t a happy marriage. Stop looking back on it as the golden age.’ When I didn’t say anything, she told me she was looking at old photos.
‘Your birth certificate is here too. You were born four years after him, your brother, at half past nine. I looked at the clock. It was very cold.’
I put the phone down and went back to bed.
When Douglas came to pick up Janet, he gave the lawn worried looks. Have the roses been pruned? Has the cabbage tree been shifted? H
e told me that he and Vicky had a relaxed relationship. They sat together in the evening, watching the sun set, drinking wine and listening to music. They went skiing together. I had never wanted to go skiing because I was afraid of snow. It reminded me of being a refugee. Vicky had no insecurities.
The counsellor had prepared me for the question ‘Why did Daddy leave us?’ I was ready with the answer: ‘He didn’t leave you; he left me.’ But Janet didn’t ask. She didn’t ask anything. We didn’t talk about Douglas. His name was not said in the house.
I happened upon my face in the bathroom mirror. Someone who looked almost like my mother stared grimly back.
Only Janet anchored me.
‘Be careful, be careful,’ I said to her whenever she left the house to stay with Douglas or play with her friends.
‘What about?’ she asked.
I did not know, except that without Douglas I was as exposed as I had been as a young refugee child. Exposed and ashamed.
The counsellor had suggested Douglas and I meet on neutral ground to talk about arrangements for Janet over Christmas. She said to keep in mind our daughter needed quality time with both parents. By the creek in Wilton’s Bush (Douglas’s choice), we decided Janet would spend this Christmas with him and Vicky. Next year it would be my turn.
When that was done, I asked him, ‘Do you miss being together – as a family?’
‘Not so very much,’ he said.
‘At all?’
‘Not much.’
‘So tell me, what was so wrong for you in the marriage?’
‘What’s the point in telling you?
‘I want to know.’
‘What for?’
‘I want to know the truth.’
‘And I want to move on. I don’t have time for this autopsy, this dissection.’
‘Why don’t you have time?’
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