by K T Bowes
“It was an emergency!” I protested. “And Uncle Mark knew him.”
“What’s his name?” Blonde cop poised his pen over the notepad and I held my breath. Dumb seemed like a viable option so I maintained the slumped posture and the irritation at my own lack of care for a drunkard.
“Poor Uncle Mark,” I sighed, staring at the back view of my front door. “He called the man Foxy, I think. Yes, that was his name; Foxy. Mark definitely knew him.”
“So, you dropped Mark Lambie at his house, rang the bell and then what?”
Then what indeed? Oh the glorious benefit of hindsight in spotlighting the errors of one’s conduct and the playing out of consequences. I tried not to think of Teina’s luscious olive skin or the sweep of his fingers across my thighs in the big double bed. I swallowed. “He dropped me here and left.” I wondered if condensing the truth counted as lying and kept my wince as a virtual expression, firmly on the inside of my head.
“He dropped you here and left?” Blondie scribbled in his pad and the dark haired man eyed me with veiled suspicion. “What time was that?”
I shook my head realising I didn’t know. We hadn’t turned the TV on or timed ourselves at any particular activity. “I have no idea.” I sounded surprised even at myself. “We left as the main course finished and drove for maybe twenty minutes to Uncle Mark’s place. It took five minutes to get him out of the car because he kept barfing and then five more minutes for him to stagger up the front steps.” I raised my eyes to meet blondie’s gaze. “Someone in the street must have noticed us. He was pretty obvious and quite loud.” I closed my eyes and added up the minutes alone with Teina on the drive home. “Probably another twenty minutes and we were here. Foxy saw me inside and that was it.”
“Was it?”
My heart took a tumble as colour flushed into my face and my slow burning temper came to my aid. I stood, not wanting my sluttiness to go in that notebook in the crabbed left handed script. “You want to know why I left the wedding so early?” I asked and both men watched for cracks in my armour, part training but mostly instinct making them stare at the freak show. “I got married in that club house,” I spat, raising my voice. “My husband died six months ago and you lot scraped his body off the bonnet of his car.” I took a huge breath inwards. “Mark Lambie asked me to go outside while he smoked and I went because I’d had enough of all the congratulations and false smiles. When he needed help I gave it and yes, I didn’t go back and eat wedding cake and drink Jack Daniels with a fake grin on my bloody face. Are we done here?” My fists balled by my sides and I strutted to the front door, swinging it wide open.
With a look of mutual acceptance, the police officers mobilised and strolled through the door. Blondie turned, opening his mouth to speak and I jabbed a finger in the general direction of his chest, somewhere above my head. “And you know what? Next time someone’s rolling around on the floor because they’ve had too much alcohol, I’ll step over them and call you. How about that?” I slammed the door in a single fluid movement and enjoyed mild satisfaction at the way the sound echoed around the whole lobby and bounced off the metal doors of the lift.
Behind the door I thumped my forehead with the heel of my hand and chastised myself with each and every one of my mother’s stock phrases.
“When first we practice to deceive, what a tangled web we weave.”
I couldn’t admit to my night of passion with Teina, not because I knew he was a referee and a member of the third team on any pitch. Not because my father hated all referees and judging by Saturday’s performance, Teina Fox in particular. I couldn’t admit it to two serving police officers because I knew it made me look like the usual Friday night slapper who decorated the insides of their cars with puke and took up space in the drunk tank, slinking out with a hang-over and an apology in the crude light of day.
“Yeah, I’m ashamed!” I admitted to the empty flat and to myself. My mother’s other favourite phrase chased me into bed that night and I cringed under the weight of her voice.
“Your sins will always find you out.”
Chapter 14
I caught Vanessa on Tuesday morning as soon as her heels tapped into the front reception. “I need to speak to you about one of my boys,” I said, standing in her way and forcing her to deal with me. She nodded me into her office, her big hair wobbling on her head and dumped her bags on the visitors’ chairs, denying me a seat and daring me not to hang around too long.
“Lawrie Hopu is showing signs of significant difficulties with social interactions and learning. He gets angry and confused and doesn’t seem to know what’s going on half the time. I’d like him assessed.”
“Join the queue!” Vanessa scoffed and I saw the frustration in her face. She was as much a victim of the system as Lawrie. “Unless his parents can pay, I’m afraid he’s stuck in the line, same as the rest of the poor little buggers.” She ran a hand over her eye, smudging her impeccable makeup. “Perhaps we should start a donations page and keep it running for the duration of the school’s existence. I can’t touch the operational budget for things which are clearly operational and then the ministry ties my hands behind my back in all other matters.”
I nodded in sympathy. “I know. But Lawrie’s urgent. I don’t have his kindy notes yet, but his behaviour is escalating and yesterday he terrified some of the other children with the level of violence he exhibited. Physically restraining him opens up a raft of other problems.” I bit my lip and prayed none of the other children mentioned to their nice parents at tea time how Helen picked up the flailing child and squashed him into her wobbling boobs until he couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t in the operational handbook and forcing a five-year-old to choose between fighting and gasping for air was probably illegal. In Helen’s defense, she’d been trying to cuddle him but her large appendages got in the way.
I stepped backwards towards the door and narrowed my eyes at Vanessa. “You’ll end up with him and his whānau sitting in here while you suspend or expel him,” I said, certainty in my voice. “I’m just trying to head it off.”
Vanessa sighed and sank her well-shaped bum into her office chair. “Ok, thanks. I’ll get him put on the list for the educational psychologist and talk to someone at the ministry.” She shrugged and her neat suit jacket shuddered up and down on her shoulders. “And I’ll get Julie to ring the kindy. They know the rules.”
I opened my mouth to tell her I’d already asked and then closed it again. Julie would think I’d complained about her but it couldn’t be helped. “Thanks.” I left Vanessa to her frustrations and sorted out my classroom before school. The deputy principal’s role opened up a few weeks ago but the thought of applying made me shudder. I suspected they’d bring someone in from outside; someone who didn’t mind no longer having their own class of children, someone happy to push paperwork around a desk and play with the bigger picture view. The management points on my salary and the kudos for a job title of that magnitude failed to sway my opinion. I’d stick with the Lawries, the Jennies and the Carls; children who’d hopefully left my care better than they entered it.
My cell phone rang in my handbag as I sorted out paint pots and water for the morning’s activities. “Sorry,” I winced with a glance at Helen. “Forgot to mute it.”
“Just answer it,” she said with a furtive look at the door. “We were both half an hour early; if they can’t let you answer the phone for a second, it’s a poor show.”
I darted into the stock cupboard, phone in hand and hissed a reply into the handset. My father’s expletives bit into my ear drum. “I’ve run out of bloody medication,” he rasped. “Get it for me.”
“I’m at work, Dad.” My tone betrayed my discomfort as Helen clattered around in the classroom.
“Fine! I’ll just bloody die then.” He let off a stream of other unpleasant works and I clasped the phone to my collar bone in embarrassment.
“Your place is two bus rides away from here, Dad. Isn’t that why you employ May-Li
ng?”
Silence.
“I’ll get it after work. I don’t want you to die, ok?”
He disconnected, leaving me with the consequences of his frustration. I sighed, knowing his bad-daughter label would stay lodged in my chest all day. Not fair, especially when I had better things to worry about.
“That your dad?” Helen asked, knowing the drill.
I nodded. “Yeah. He gets his prescriptions faxed to the pharmacy just up the road from him and then expects me to take two buses over there and walk it round. He asked before the weekend but it slipped my mind.”
“A smack to the head can do that.” Helen continued slapping wooden paint brushes onto the table, the splayed bristly ends well past their usefulness. She picked one up and eyed it, attacking the pigs’ hair tufts with scissors to make them more uniform. “We need new ones,” she commented and I rolled my eyes and turned away.
“No money for that,” I sighed. “No money for anything.”
“Doesn’t that home-help lady live at your dad’s?” Helen asked with curiosity in her pudgy face.
I nodded with deliberate slowness. “Yes. She moved in before Christmas. The place is a permanent mess and I keep meaning to phone the company and complain, but he likes her. I pick up the phone to ring them and then end up bottling out. The lady who cleaned and picked up after him before was efficient and got everything done. But he didn’t like her as much because she wouldn’t let him upset her.”
Helen chewed her bottom lip in concentration and trimmed another brush with the rounded scissors. “I’d ring the company. She might try to con him out of his money.”
I nodded. “That occurred to me. I’m a coward. Taking May-Ling away would unleash the beast and I’d be over there every night on the bus, tidying and making his dinner. He’s so mean and he ran through over ten carers before the last lady told him to wind his neck in. I wish they hadn’t moved her on.”
“Maybe she left,” Helen suggested.
“Nope. She’s still with the same company. I’ve seen her in the supermarket near me with her children and she wears their uniform.”
“Weirder and weirder,” Helen chirped, snorting as Colin strolled past my door. “Speak of the devil and he shall appear.”
I laughed and plopped water into the jugs on the table, knowing as thirty-one children washed their brushes and turned the liquid varying shades of brown, there would be at least two major spills and one catastrophe with a painting. Sometimes it felt like predicting a car accident but driving the same route, anyway.
The children exhibited excitement beyond the extreme as they made thank you cards for the firemen who’d visited the day before. They wore old shirts over their uniforms to mitigate the damage and made a peculiar sight. I’d cut the sleeves off most of them and the body reached the backs of the children’s knees. The shirts came home with me in a carrier bag once a month to wash, reminiscent of the days when Pete wore them and the worst spills were spaghetti juice or coffee. I knew he’d be disgusted at what I’d turned them into; it’s probably why I did it.
“This is the fire engine!” screeched a child with glasses and carrot orange hair. He gritted his teeth in excitement and the brush shook his hand as he clenched every muscle in his body.
“Lovely Kane,” Helen intoned. “Inside voice. Watch what you’re doing with that brush, oh now look what’s happened. Go to the sink and wash around your ear, Meredith and wait a minute your shirt’s caught in the...” She supervised the first crisis of the morning while I mopped up the second. I’d got the grounds man to make up blocky wooden holders for the water jugs but still the children managed to knock them over. At least it reduced the disasters to under twenty per session.
Helen moved off to deal with Meredith’s paint filled ear and I helped Kane redo his fire engine, his chest hitching in grief at the version crumpled into the dustbin. “I like this one better,” he announced eventually, his face breaking into a smile.
“Mine’s got zombies,” Kevin said, huffing and puffing as he scratched the scrubby brush across his paper.
“I don’t remember any zombies in the fire engine,” I said, keeping my voice level. I’d spoken to his mother about the games she allowed her son to play and the effect it had on his view of the world.
“It keeps ‘im quiet!” she’d replied with indignation. “You should try havin’ eight kids, missus.”
“I don’t want to see zombies in your picture,” I said with determination. “I want a proper thank you for the lovely firemen before the end of this lesson, otherwise you’ll have to stay in and do another one with Mrs Morris at playtime.”
“Ar, no!” he exclaimed. “She’ll push me into her things and Samuel couldn’t breathe last week!”
“I liked it!” Samuel shouted from across the room. “Them’s is squishy like a cushion.”
“You said yer didn’t! Liar!” Kevin yelled and I quelled the noise and the disruption with a well-placed raise of my eyebrows.
“Kevin, get rid of the zombies. The firemen will be offended because none of them looked like they were starving.”
“They had big muscles!” crooned a pretty little girl with long, brown pigtails which swished into her painting every time she moved her head. “My mum asked me all about them.”
“Did she want to know about the fire engine?” Kane chirped, scrubbing the brush across the dodgy rectangle with green paint.
“Nope, just the firemen.”
“What colour’s that?” I asked Kane, keeping my voice level as he worked hard to keep the green separate from the red, avoiding the diarrhoea colour of the zombies on the artwork next to him.
“This one?” He shoved his finger into the middle of his fire engine leaving a fingerprint. “Ooh, windows,” he mused, beginning to make it look like a cruise ship instead, using all ten of his digits to create holes in the paint.
“Yes, that one.” I forced him back on task with my question and he looked at me as though I might be simple.
“It’s red, innit!” he scoffed and I glanced at Helen in despair. Colour blind. I added a visit by the nurse with her psychedelic chart to my list of requests and walked around the classroom for the next hour. I righted toppling water jugs, overflowing pallets and doled out poster paint like there was a national shortage.
Helen joined me in the staffroom for morning tea and we sank into the sofas with relief. “Those firemen were jaw-droppingly hot,” Helen snorted, “but they’ll see their pictures and have a crisis.”
“You didn’t think they were! You said they were old and crusty.”
“They weren’t as luscious as last year but they looked tastier than my Bert in his boxer shorts with his belly hanging over the top,” Helen sniggered.
“And the green fire engine,” I groaned, pushing Bert’s semi-dressed image from my mind and wanting to wash my eyeballs. “What will they make of that?”
“That explains heaps,” Helen sighed. She slapped my thigh in camaraderie. “Not bad though, love. One poked ear, two poked eyes, only four major spills and one minor one. It’s getting better.”
“You forgot the fight.”
“Ah, yep. Paint brushes at dawn. Parents in, or do we deal with those two ourselves?”
“Ourselves.” I gnawed on my bottom lip and contemplated the scary father who came to pick up one of the paint brush jousters. He’d stood over me at the meet and greet during the first week and stared down my blouse without shame. I glanced sideways at Helen with her wobbling boobs of destruction and decided in the interests of health and safety, I should keep her away from him.
The day continued through basic mathematics, more alphabet learning, colouring in alphabet letters, writing our names and a story. I often looked back on the day’s achievements and wondered how such basic tasks could seem so exhausting. My father punctuated the lessons with abusive texts which I mainly ignored. I responded to the last one, ‘I’m effing dying,’ with, ‘Then do it quietly.’
He didn
’t respond again, but I smiled at his misspelling of the ‘f’ word for most of story time. Short sighted old men should be banned from texting. He remained silent for a while and then as I cleared up ready to catch the bus home, he sent his most damaging one of the day.
‘Cops been. Said you killed Mark Lambie.’
Chapter 15
“You don’t have to do this.” I sat in Helen’s car feeling awkward as she negotiated the traffic towards my father’s apartment in Mangere.
“It’s fine,” she replied, grinning and waving at an aggressive male who honked his horn at her and passed over the centre line to zoom by.
“You know him?”
“Nope,” she said with a grin. “But now he’s wracking his brain over that nice wave and worrying I’m from his workplace, a friend of his wife’s or someone who can damage him later.”
The driver settled into the traffic in the right hand lane and gave Helen a beautiful if somewhat fake smile as she went straight ahead.
“I might try that,” I said with a giggle and she looked at me sideways.
“From the bus?”
I sighed. “Yeah. From the bus.”
We said our goodbyes and she dropped me outside Dad’s place. The entrance to the warden controlled apartments displayed local artwork donated by bored local teens. The graffiti truck parked on the verge and the council worker used a power blaster to remove it. I gave him a pleasant smile and he stopped his hose long enough to let me pass. “Spray paint costs a fortune,” I said, my expression confused. I pointed towards the fading block capitals depicting someone’s wonky name and the man nodded and shrugged.
“So do drugs,” he said. “And they still do that an’ all.”
I went inside wondering about the relevance of his answer and felt glad I was only educating future graffiti artists and not clearing up after them. The lifts smelled of disinfectant and the carpet on Dad’s corridor bore some horrific stains. I let myself in using a key and heard a strange noise coming from the lounge. It sounded like someone pumping up an air bed. “I’m early,” I said, walking into the dim room with the prescription bag in my hand. “Helen waited for me at the pharm...”