Shooting Stars

by Brian Falkiner

Word of the day:

  FOUR Qs

  I still don’t know what this means.

  Moma’s Code #10

  Forgive people when they do bad stuff to you.

  They will. Not everyone lives by a code of honour.

  Forgive them, not for their sake, but for yours. It will eat you up inside otherwise.

  January 10th

  Today I got to see Simon Kavanagh at last.

  I have been in Auckland for more than a week and am no closer to finding Moma, so first thing in the morning I tied Jack to a tree, gave him the silent sign, left him some dried meat and a plastic bowl of water. (I found an old plastic bowl in a trash can. I think it used to have ice cream in it.)

  Then I caught a bus to Avondale.

  A sour-looking woman answered the door of the address that I had been given. Two children who looked exactly alike, both girls, were standing behind her in matching clothes with the name of a school on it. They were about thirteen years old. They were looking angrily at each other as if they had just had a fight.

  “Yes?” she asked. I sensed that she was in a hurry.

  “Gidday,” I said. “I am looking for Simon Kavanagh.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  I found her very abrupt.

  “That is a private matter,” I said.

  “I’m his daughter,” she said. “You can tell me.”

  “No I can’t, I’m sorry,” I said. “Is he here?”

  “No he isn’t,” she said. She seemed angry with me. “He only stayed for a couple of weeks.”

  “He’s moved to a home for stupid old people,” one of the girls said, earning a dirty look from her mother.

  “Can you please give me the address?” I asked.

  “Only if you tell me why you want it,” she said.

  I thought for a while about what to tell her and eventually settled on: “He’s like my grandfather.”

  What I meant by that was that he was like a grandfather to me, because he married the lady who was like a mother to Moma. She seemed to take it completely differently. I think she thought I meant that he really was my grandfather.

  “Of course he is,” she said. She went to a little table in the hallway and fished around in a drawer. Then she handed me a piece of paper. “Good luck.”

  She closed the door before I could say anything else, and I heard her yelling at the two girls, something about school.

  The paper had the address and phone number of the retirement village. It was in a different part of Auckland, which meant another bus ride and it was nearly midday when I finally walked up a long, curving driveway between some pretty gardens to reach the front door.

  There was a big roof over part of the driveway where people could get in and out of their cars without getting wet if it rained.

  I don’t think people in Auckland like the rain. I guess they can’t run around with no clothes on when it rains, so I understand that.

  Two glass doors slid open all by themselves when I walked up to them. I don’t know how they knew I was there, or maybe someone saw me walk up and pressed a button.

  A lady behind a counter smiled at me when I walked up. I told her who I was looking for.

  “And you are?” she asked.

  “Egan,” I said.

  “Yes, but who are you to Mr Kavanagh,” she said. “I need to put it in the visitors’ book.”

  “I’m like his grandson,” I said.

  She interpreted it the same way as the daughter had. I hope it wasn’t lying to say it that way.

  “Please take a seat,” she said, and picked up a telephone.

  I went to sit on a large sofa in the waiting room, and looked up at a painting of horses running along a beach for a few minutes.

  While I was waiting, a man and woman came storming out through a door at the back.

  “Tight old prick,” the woman said. She was nearly in tears, but they were tears of anger and frustration, not sadness.

  “I’ll talk to them,” the man said. “They can’t be that unreasonable.”

  Then they were gone out through the sliding glass doors which opened all by themselves.

  The lady behind the counter waved me over. “Down the hallway, room one-one-three on your left,” she said, pointing to the door the couple had just come out of.

  Simon Kavanagh was older than I thought he would be. Or maybe he just looked older. I don’t really know how to tell the age of old people because I don’t know any of them.

  His first words when he opened the door were, “You’re not getting anything.”

  “I don’t want anything,” I said, which seemed to confuse him.

  “I don’t care who you think you are,” he said. “Some illegitimate brat thinks he deserves a piece of the pie, you can get away with you.”

  “I quite like pie,” I said. “I found a whole one in the dumpster. Not even touched. But I don’t want your pie. You can eat it all by yourself.”

  He seemed flabbergasted, but stepped backwards and allowed me inside. He followed and sat down in an armchair.

  The room was small and decorated with photos – of his family, I presume. One of the pictures was of Moma and the old lady.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed because there was nowhere else to sit.

  “Who are you again?” Mr Kavanagh asked.

  I pulled the letter addressed to Acacia Kavanagh out of my rucksack and handed it to him. He stared at it without opening it.

  “I’m looking for Moma … I mean, my mother,” I said. “I was hoping you could help.”

  “This isn’t addressed to me,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “It’s addressed to my wife,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “She died a few weeks ago,” he said.

  “I know, I was at the funeral,” I said.

  He looked sharply at me. “No you weren’t,” he said. “I didn’t see you there.”

  How he would recognise me, with all the hundreds of people who attended, I did not know, but I just said, “Moma and I were there. We stood up on the hill and watched.”

  He seemed shocked. He dropped the letter. I picked it up for him. “That was you?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “I may be old, but my ears are still good,” he said. “I heard her singing, and when I looked up there was a woman and a boy up on the hill. I wondered why they didn’t come down and join us.”

  “That was me,” I said. “And Moma.”

  Something seemed to click inside his brain. “Moma is Moana,” he said. “You’re Moana’s boy.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You know that the police – and your father – have been looking for you for years,” he said.

  I nodded. “Please don’t tell anyone that I came to see you.”

  “Like hell I will,” he said. “Your secret is safe with me. What do you mean you are looking for your mother?”

  “She disappeared,” I said. “Just before Christmas. She didn’t come home. I looked in her lockbox and I found this letter. I know that your wife has passed over, but I hoped that you might be able to help.”

  “Why didn’t you just open the letter?” he asked.

  “It’s not addressed to me,” I said.

  “It’s not addressed to me, either,” he said.

  “But it is addressed to your wife,” I said. “So I think it’s okay for you to open it.”

  He looked at it for a moment, then pulled it slowly open. He read it. More than once, I think. Then he looked at me. “When your mother was younger she used to come and stay with us at the shop,” he said. “She’d help out a bit, and take off for long hikes in the forest. She loved the forest.”

  “She really did,” I said.

  “You�
�re really not looking for anything from me,” he said.

  I shook my head. “I only want to find Moma.”

  He nodded. “All the rest of them, they … I’m not dead yet and they just seem to see me as some kind of buried treasure. Except instead of digging me up, they’re going to bury me.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “I don’t think I can help you,” he said. “You can read the letter for yourself. Your mother wrote it in case of an emergency. She asked Acacia, my wife, to take you in, and hide you until you were eighteen. But she is gone and I’m in here, and all that’s left for me is to endure the squabbling over my few pieces of silver. I miss her terribly, you know.”

  He was staring at a photo of her as he spoke.

  “There’s nothing left for me,” he said. “I am just waiting to die so those rabid dogs I sired and their grasping, manipulative bitches can fight over my bones.”

  It was then that I sensed the true extent of his grief. This was true love, I thought. This was what writers wrote about. A love so powerful that when one person was taken away, the other did not want to live.

  “I can’t help you,” he said. “I don’t have any clue where your mother might be, and I can’t even give you any money without lawyers for both my sons jumping over every last cent.”

  “I don’t want any money,” I said. “I just want to find my mother.”

  “I know,” he said. “You are a good soul. I can see it in you. My wife used to disappear at night sometimes. She wouldn’t say anything, and she wouldn’t tell me where she had been. I think she went to see you.”

  I remembered the old lady’s face disappearing into dream shadows.

  “I think she only went in an emergency,” he said. “She was always afraid of being watched. She said he – I mean your father – had spies everywhere.”

  “She was a special lady,” I said.

  “Go and find your mother,” he said. “She will be out there somewhere. I don’t know why she left you and I don’t know why she hasn’t contacted you. Try the hospitals. Perhaps she is ill or injured. Try the local newspapers. They usually know if there has been an accident or anything like that. Go and find her, Egan. And tell me when you do. I want to know how this story ends.”

  “I will,” I said.

  “And for now, leave an old man alone with his misery,” he said. He looked at me, then looked at the door.

  I didn’t move. “Can I ask you another question?” I said.

  “If you like. I don’t promise to answer it,” he said.

  “Moma always said that I should live a good life. That I should never do anything I would be ashamed of,” I said.

  “Good advice,” he said.

  “She said that life was about making memories to keep you happy when you are old,” I said. “She said I should be able to look back and be proud of the way I have lived my life, and to remember all the good things that happened.”

  Mr Kavanagh was silent.

  “You are the first old person I have ever met,” I said. “Is that really what it’s like?”

  He said nothing for a long time, and then he didn’t answer my question. He just said, “I think you should go now.”

  When I walked back down the driveway, it took me past his window. I could see him, still sitting in the same armchair. He was staring at the photos that lined his table and his wall.

  I think he was remembering.

  Moma’s Code #25

  Respect your elders.

  They know more than you think they know, but they’ll let you make the same mistakes they made if you don’t want to listen.

  Word of the day:

  FLABBERGASTED

  This means surprised and confused. Today was the first time I have been able to use it in my diary.

  January 11th

  I went back to the freeway cave today with Jack.

  All four of them were there. They were just lying around on the cardboard boxes looking bored.

  “Here he is,” Reggie said. “I told you he’d come back. He saved my arse and I give him a kiss. Now he thinks he’s getting a squeeze.”

  They all laughed.

  “Not going to happen, wild man,” Reggie said.

  “Not going to happen, wild man,” Allan echoed.

  “I was hoping you might help me,” I said.

  “Help him get a squeeze,” Junior said, and they all laughed.

  “Help me find my mother,” I said.

  They all went silent.

  “Why you want to find your mum?” Mohawk asked.

  “She went missing,” I said. “She left home and didn’t come back.”

  There was a sudden quiet in the little concrete cave and I had the feeling that they all had stories like that. Mine was no different. Why should they bother helping me?

  “Bet your old man gave her the bash,” Junior said. “Can’t handle the jandal, eh.”

  The only old man I knew was Mr Kavanagh, so none of what he said made sense.

  “Shut up, youse fellas,” Reggie said. “It’s really stink when that happens.” She stood up and put a hand on my arm. “I’ll help you.”

  “I think she’s hot for him,” Mohawk said.

  “Four Qs,” Reggie said. “He just lost his mum. Have some feelings, man.”

  “Have some feelings, man,” little Allan echoed.

  Mohawk looked away.

  “I was told to try hospitals and newspapers,” I said.

  “I’ll take you to the library,” Reggie said. “You can check newspapers all over the world there. And they got phones, free for local calls. We can ring the hospitals. Can’t take your mutt though.”

  I apologised to Jack as I tied him up to a post and gave him some dried pork. The three boys edged a little further away and looked at him nervously.

  Reggie took me down the main street of the city, which is called Queen Street. We turned up a side road and there was a big building with the words ‘Auckland Public Library’ on the front.

  Inside were more books than I imagined existed in the world.

  There were thousands of them, all lined up in big metal book cases. Row after row of them.

  We went up a moving staircase and there was another floor and it too was filled with thousands of books. And there was another moving staircase that went up again!

  I didn’t see how anyone could ever read so many books.

  We didn’t read any books. We used a computer. It is the first time I have seen one and it was nothing like I imagined from what Moma told me.

  I told Reggie that we had lived on the Coromandel Peninsula and she checked a newspaper called the Peninsular Post, and another one called the New Zealand Herald.

  I still don’t understand quite what she did, or how, but she was able to show me pictures of the newspaper as if I was holding it in my hand, but it was in the computer. It was very confusing.

  We checked all the newspapers going back to Christmas Eve for any stories about car accidents or anything that might explain Moma’s disappearance, but we didn’t find anything.

  I thought that was good. If she had been hurt in an accident, that would probably be in the paper. Reggie thought that if she had been arrested that would be in the paper also. So that was good news too.

  Then she rang the Thames hospital, which is at the bottom of Coromandel, and asked if a patient called Moana Bailey had been admitted. (After my mum left my dad, she went back to her maiden name, which was Bailey. But because my birth certificate says Egan Tucker, I am still Egan Tucker.)

  She also tried two more hospitals in Auckland.

  Nobody had heard of Moana Bailey.

  Then she rang all the hospitals back and gave a description of Moma, which I gave her, and asked if any unnamed patients had been admitted mat
ching that description, but none had.

  Reggie is really clever at this stuff.

  But after a couple of hours, I still didn’t know anything more about what had happened to Moma.

  We gave up at two o’clock. I know this because there was a big clock on the wall. Moma taught me to tell the time when I was very young, but it never really meant anything to me until I came to the city. Before then it was just night or day. I ate when I was hungry.

  I was hungry.

  “Are you hungry?” I asked Reggie.

  “Yeah, heaps,” she said. “I ain’t had nothing all day. But I had some sniff this morning so I was okay.”

  She hadn’t eaten all day? I had at least had breakfast.

  I thought of taking her down to the dumpster where the restaurant threw all its food, but usually they did that at night. After a hot day I thought anything in the dumpster would be really disgusting by now. Anyway, that wasn’t the place to take a young lady for a meal. And I had money now.

  “Do you want to go somewhere and eat some lunch,” I asked.

  She turned her head to the side and looked at me carefully.

  “You looking to get something from me?” she asked.

  “No, I’m just hungry and I wanted to thank you for all your help,” I said.

  “Oh, chur bro,” she said.

  “Where do you want to go?” I asked.

  “You’re paying?” she asked.

  “Yes, of course,” I said.

  “Then Maccas,” she said.

  So we went to Maccas, which turned out to be a restaurant called McDonalds where they sold beef sandwiches called hamburgers, and fried potato strips called fries. They sold some other stuff too, but that was what we had. I also had an ice cream, which they called a ‘soft-serve cone’ but I know it was ice cream. It wasn’t like I expected.

  The food was really nice, and they even gave me a plastic toy for free!

  We talked while we ate. “Why do you live here, and not with your family?” I asked.

  “Home was real stink, eh,” she said. “Didn’t like it there. On the street I got my crew to look after me.”

  “What was wrong at home?” I asked.

  “My stepfather was always wanting the squeeze,” she said.