‘Sam,’ said Paddy.
He found Paddy next to him and took a sudden step back. What sort of trick was this? He opened his mouth. He stared at Paddy, his mouth hanging. He had so much to say. For a moment Paddy felt the full weight of that temptation, the voice held there, ready to break. He was on the verge, the teetering brink. Then the boy dropped his head.
Paddy said his name again but he didn’t respond. It was crushing. Paddy was overwhelmed at having come so close, and now he could sense the boy’s shrinking, the practised retreat, the rehearsed deadness. The boy turned a great lever within himself and came to a halt. It was maddening. Finally too it was boring.
‘I’m looking for my mother,’ said Paddy. At this, Sam’s head shifted a tiny bit. It was if Paddy was speaking to a dreaming dog. ‘It’s very important that I find her. Did you see her? Did you see her come out of our building? If you were waiting outside there, maybe you saw her. You remember my mother, you kissed her cheeks.’
Sam stayed beside Paddy and didn’t move or speak. His hair had fallen forward and through it Paddy saw his ear. It was a small ear that might easily have belonged to a young girl.
‘I’m asking for your help,’ he said. ‘I’m asking because I need it. I’m not asking as your speech therapist. Sam, I’m not your therapist any more. That’s finished. I’m offering your parents a full refund. It didn’t work. It’s over. You win. You get to stay this way, Sam. Congratulations. Now I’m just asking whether you saw my mother. We’re worried. She’s not well and she walked out of her apartment. Maybe you saw which way she went.’
Paddy looked at this delicate little ear for ten or twenty seconds. A few shoppers moved around them but they stayed in their pose. They might have appeared as two store dummies, modelling some very average clothes. This season’s father and son, in greys and blacks.
Paddy leaned very close to the ear and said, ‘Can’t you say something?’
He lifted his thumb and forefinger until they rested alongside the boy’s little ear. ‘Speak,’ he whispered into it. He waited longer, another forty seconds maybe, a minute. It seemed an age to keep his hand in that position. His hand had a slight tremor. When he couldn’t hold it any longer, he took the ear in his fingers, gripping the lobe lightly with no more pressure than an earring. It would have taken nothing to bring the kid to the floor, to have him at his feet in pain. Experimentally, Paddy gave the ear a few gentle tugs, again without any force. He waggled the ear and stroked it with his thumb. Good dog. Good boy. In holding the ear, his hand was relaxed and steady. It was very tempting. He let it go.
Throughout all this, Sam hadn’t moved. It might have been a plastic ear Paddy had in his fingers, a fake ear. It had been temperature-less.
Paddy walked at a normal pace towards the Mall exit. Sam Covenay waited. Was this particular game over? At the doors, he looked out into the street. And he saw her. Teresa was walking past, very close to where he stood. She carried shopping bags. She walked upright, or rather with the slight forward lean they’d all inherited, a pressing forward. What are you all on the hunt for, Bridget had said. He assessed her. Teresa wasn’t dissolute, unkempt, bag lady-ish in any manner. If she was inward-looking, that was normal too. His mother appeared to be walking home for lunch.
He considered joining her at once.
Paddy turned so he was facing the perfume counters where young women in nurse-style white coats moved around offering samples to those entering the store. They pressed strips of card to women’s wrists and offered the wrist back to its owner to smell. Sam had come to stand beside him. Paddy kept staring at one of these women until she looked across and saw him. He made her watch them. He acted nervous, shifting from foot to foot, glancing around. She was curious at first. Did he want to try a perfume? But no, this pair was up to something. She’d started to look around for someone to tell. Then Paddy said to Sam, ‘Are you ready for this?’ The boy didn’t look at him. ‘Are you ready?’ Nothing. ‘Right, go!’ and Paddy ran from the store.
He heard the perfume girl shouting after them, moving to the doors, and, glancing back, he saw a white-shirted security guy going past her, running and speaking into his walkie-talkie. He was after them.
Of course Paddy had seen these running figures before in Cuba Mall and Manners Mall and Lambton Quay. Young guys mainly, a little older than Sam usually. White guys, Maori guys. Two Asian kids once. No one as old as Paddy. He’d seen it in their eyes as they went past, that mix of panic and fun, it looked like. A few were even smiling as they pumped their arms and raised their knees, spitting sometimes. Only seconds before they’d set all this in motion, they’d crossed the line, done their bad thing, and this was what it came down to: a foot-race. This?
To watch it was to share some of that mixture too. It did seem absurd, two people chasing each other through the streets. Often you heard it before you saw it. The amazingly loud noise of two figures running as fast as they could; their sudden size, since in the natural bounce and uprightness of the running, their bodies grew taller. They were the mightiest things on the street these runners and they made everyone who was walking seem small and tired and uninteresting. Because condemnation wasn’t automatic. It wasn’t a stretch to think of them admiringly.
For the length of the street, before they disappeared around some corner, even while running through crowds, their pace never altered. With always this difference, the runner who was being chased never had problems with getting past people; the chaser usually did. The chaser, for one thing, wasn’t dressed for the chase. He wore heavy black shoes. He had a tie on. He had things on his belt to deal with. Often he ran holding some piece of equipment. And he ran apologetically. He had to say sorry to people and excuse me. He had to be careful. The chaser was corporate fundamentally, and was running further and further away from his work, to which he’d have to return soon. The chaser was running home.
Paddy had never seen the runner caught.
Now they were the runners. They headed up Cuba Street as fast as they could, almost shoulder-to-shoulder. They made that noise on the pavement and they spat and pumped their legs. Paddy’s heart was hurting—with adrenaline?—and his stomach was sore almost immediately from being knocked up and down. People got out of their way. They crossed Vivian Street without slowing, somehow finding a gap between cars. Horns sounded behind them but they kept going. Sam went ahead of him slightly, his bulky frame lengthening. The boy had abandoned his hunch, his lumbering strides, his tripping heaviness. Had all that been an act? He was truly fourteen years old and now ran with a terrifically erect posture, shoulders back. There was another round of car horns which must have been the security guard crossing Vivian. Paddy had hoped he might have given up by now.
And running was different from biking. Different set of muscles. A new pain.
Sam pushed on, taking a sharp right turn down a side street, vaulting a recycling bin that had been left in the middle of the footpath. When Paddy tried to do the same, his toe clipped the bin and he almost fell on his face. Somehow he managed to stay upright though he’d lost a lot of speed. Up ahead Sam turned round, waving at him to get going. It was the first purposeful gesture Paddy had seen from him and one not prompted by anyone.
The security guard was still coming. Paddy glanced back and saw his tight determined mouth, the fierce flush. But he also saw the wayward movement of his shoulders, as if he were running into a strong headwind. His hands clawed the air. The day was still and the guard was tiring. He was putting everything into it and Paddy understood why. It’s me. He’ll never catch Sam but it’s become a point of pride to lay his hands on some sorry, saggy middle-aged guy who thought he could do a runner under his watch.
He’d abandoned the rules of the chase. That was the problem.
Paddy saw Sam take another turn, this time down a narrow lane between two old houses. Again he slowed a fraction to make sure Paddy had seen where he was going. Further example of thoughtfulness!
The other option was
to run through the small park and head off along the more open streets leading either into town or in the direction of Aro Valley and Brooklyn. Did they stand a better chance if they split up? Sam, in reality, was gone, safe. Paddy looked towards the park. But he didn’t have the puff to keep it up for much longer. There was a slight curve in the road so that if he could get to the lane before the guard saw him, he might run on. He sprinted as hard as he could and went down the lane. It was a dead-end. Ten metres away, there was a chain-link fence sealing it. He had no choice but to run to it. Was he supposed to jump it? But it was topped by barbed wire. He looked to his left and there was Sam crawling through some broken boards under the veranda of a derelict house that seemed to be full of car tyres. Paddy followed him.
They stayed under the veranda for several minutes, panting like cats, lying on their stomachs in the dry dirt. There wasn’t enough room to sit up. Paddy picked up a nail and it crumbled in his fingers. Light came through the gaps in the weatherboards. Earthy air that also smelled rubbery, perhaps from the tyres. They could hear traffic and snatches of people talking, shouting, but no one came down the lane. They listened to their own breathing. The blood was beating in Paddy’s right ear. He shut his eyes but his father wasn’t there. He opened his eyes. The beating in his ear slowly faded.
The security guard might have realised they were hiding somewhere, that they couldn’t have just vanished, and he might search for them. But searching was different from chasing and Paddy’s guess was that, in spite of his need to get the old guy, the guard wouldn’t want to become involved in a situation where he found them down some deserted lane, cornered. It was two against one and he’d already done his best. You ran until you stopped and then you went back to the store to fill in your report sheet.
His phone rang. It was in his pocket and impossible to get out. It rang until it stopped.
Paddy couldn’t bear the discomfort any longer, and anyway the phone had given up their position. He moved his legs out the opening and backed awkwardly into the daylight. His whole body was stiff and sore and he slumped against the side of the veranda, watching Sam emerge from the hole.
Once he was out, he stood up, staring down at Paddy with a look of annoyance, disgust even. There was, for the first time, a directed emotion. He looked capable of lashing out, or running off. His sweatshirt and his trousers were covered in dust. He seemed to hate Paddy.
Good.
‘What did you take?’ said Paddy.
Sam recoiled. Held his hands up. Me?
Say what you liked, the Covenay kid was good. All this and still no speech.
‘What did you steal from there?’
He was filled with disbelief. He mimed it with genuine horror, taking a step back, flinging his arms around. Search me, if you want.
‘You take a bra or something?’ said Paddy. ‘Panties?’
He put two fingers to his brain. You must be mad, what are you talking about?
Paddy took out his phone and checked for messages. There was one from Pip saying his mother was home. He looked at the kid again. ‘I don’t care what it is, just tell me. You a panty thief, Sam Covenay?’
He was shaking his head. I pity you, you’re sick.
He was sick. Sick of this. Paddy stood up so they were facing each other and pointed a finger against the boy’s chest. ‘I think you have female items on your person, Covenay.’
Sam looked at the finger and smiled, baring his braced teeth, still shaking his head.
It was Paddy’s first real look inside the mouth. He thought, It’s me. I was like this too. Age fourteen, I was on this path. I was this. The Year My Father Died. Same age. Same mouth. But wait on. Did I stop speaking? No. Did I draw stuff on my hand? No. Did I get or seek help? Hell no. So they were different too, he thought.
The Covenay kid was not sui generis, nor was he generic. Okay then, that established it: he was human. The search for Sam had narrowed.
The boy’s head-shaking went on. You’re a lame fucking therapist, man. You think this will work? Then Sam gestured towards his pockets. Paddy could look if he wanted to. He didn’t care. He was clean.
‘Why’d you run then?’ said Paddy, suddenly losing any playfulness, speaking earnestly, accusingly even. Hating him too. Hating his blackness, his cowardice, his foolish confidence in an act that would have been insupportable without the indulgence of the people who loved him. ‘Why are you with me? I don’t get why. And I’m not sure I need you here right now. I have serious things to think about.’
Sam stared at the ground for a moment and moved his foot around in the dusty grass, considering. He flicked at some of the dirt on his trousers, brushing half-heartedly at the knees. Then he looked up and said right to Paddy’s face, ‘I didn’t see your mother come out of the building. But then I wasn’t looking for her. Maybe she did and I missed her. Or there’s a back way.’
‘There’s no back way!’
He flinched at Paddy’s harshness then recovered. ‘Okay.’
‘Wasted a whole lot of time here.’ Paddy tapped a knuckle against one of the tyres on the veranda. Through a grimy double sash window he could see a workbench, a chain winch above it coming from the ceiling and the parts of an engine. It triggered easily an image of his mother, when she was hardly much older than Sam Covenay, working in the dark in the forest to prise the part from the car that would disable it. In fear of her life. Those were stakes, true stakes. He wanted to be at the lunch.
‘So can I ask something?’ Sam said. ‘Why’d you run?’
‘Why’d I run?’
‘You didn’t steal anything that I saw.’
Paddy looked at the boy who was now talking. It didn’t seem strange at all that he had this power back again. His voice showed no obvious signs of its captivity though Paddy wasn’t the best judge of that. Sam needed to stand in front of his parents and say things to them for everyone to know whether he sounded different from before. He didn’t croak, he wasn’t husky or hoarse. Of course he might have been chatting away in private all this time, keeping the voice in shape. He wasn’t aphasic.
‘Why’d you run?’ he said again.
‘I don’t know. Wanted to see what it was like,’ said Paddy.
‘Okay,’ he said doubtfully.
They walked into the lane, both brushing vigorously at their clothes. Dust rose up and made Sam sneeze loudly. Again the noise was novel. At once Paddy knew he’d been able to suppress even this. Sam gripped his mouth and looked shocked; as if he’d said something he shouldn’t have but was pleased it was out.
‘But you know what, I really wanted to see the guy give up, the security guard,’ said Paddy.
‘He did though.’
‘To be aware of him pulling up, stopping in the street, waving his hand after me in disgust.’
‘That guy would be pretty disgusted with you right now.’
‘You think?’ The kid was even experimenting with kindness.
They’d come to the end of the lane and Sam went ahead, checking the street was clear before Paddy emerged. ‘I just thought,’ said Paddy, ‘I’ll never be able to go to Farmers again. I’m a wanted man.’
‘Wanted for not stealing anything,’ said Sam. ‘By the way, you checked the basement, right? For your mother.’
‘What would she be doing in the basement though?’ He didn’t yet want to tell him the truth, that his mother was found, was never lost. He wanted a pressure maintained. The kid was speaking, a miracle, but that didn’t make him likeable. He was likeable but that didn’t make Paddy disposed to like him. That didn’t make him, despite the braces, the unaccountable sadnesses, the unreachable desires, a frère.
‘I don’t know. That’s where you keep all the junk though. Stuff you should have thrown out. All of those things of Dora’s. Plus it’s where you keep your bike.’
Paddy stopped him. ‘All this time, you’ve been listening.’
‘Never said it was my hearing that was wrong.’
‘Never sai
d anything.’
‘That’s true.’ The smile he gave was wry, slightly remorseful. Was he considering what he’d lost over these last months of self-imposed silence? Did some image of his parents’ pain come to mind? That was probably stretching it. He was after all a devious vandal, the kid who’d not only changed the face of his folks’ lives but the face of Paddy’s cartoon. The smile may have been more smug than anything else. He was speaking again but was he better?
7
Paddy stood just inside the door of the apartment and listened. This pair was having lunch, behaving as if nothing had happened—not in the last hour, not in the last week, not ever. Cutlery knocked against plates, there was laughter. For a moment he thought nothing had happened and that everything was back to normal. Except that category had been banished. Then he heard the voices: Southern African English and French Kiwi. The huge oddness of it made him happy and just a little nervous, as if it all might collapse at any moment when the oddness was recognised, the terror of it acknowledged, and he waited. They’d not heard him come in.
Terror? Surely nothing as bad. It seemed like they’d taken in foreign boarders, or that Helena was home with some pupils. He heard his mother laughing, or guessed it was Teresa, or Thérèse, since the laugh followed the low, insistent, smiling sound of Pip who, it seemed, was playing host. His mother’s laugh was new, higher-pitched than before and it trailed off shyly, almost as if a third person was in the room with them. Yet the flow between the cousins was completely natural, marked by habits formed decades ago obviously, the patterns relaxed, spirited.
Somebody Loves Us All Page 33