by Gigi Fenster
You liked visiting them. You told me so. You said that it was nice to have family to visit, since your own family was so far away. You said—
I said a lot of things. Okay, so I’ll grant you I liked going there well enough. It was quite nice to be spoiled by them. But every weekend? Give me a break. And we weren’t even engaged when I started going with you. Come to think of it, you probably asked me to marry you for fear that I’d stop accompanying you. Leave poor little Morris to visit his family alone.
You think that’s why I asked you to marry me?
No, I don’t think that, but you could have thanked me for going with you.
At first Morris didn’t want Sadie to go with him to Levin.
He didn’t want her seeing Joan’s house with its walls of photos and its huge furniture. He didn’t want her stepping over dogs’ toys to get to Joan’s open arms. He didn’t want Joan squeezing her or Norman being kind to her. And he certainly didn’t want her going to the retirement home and seeing his mother. Sadie did not belong in Levin and she did not belong to his family. She was his Sadie and she belonged in Wellington.
She had other ideas.
They were walking to town when he told her where his mother lived. It was after their first night together, and Morris would have preferred to stay on at Sadie’s flat, having sweet tea and biscuits for breakfast. If he couldn’t be at her flat, he would have chosen to be alone at his. He could have sat at his desk and thought about the night before. He could have let his mind run through all the things she’d let him do. He could have planned what he’d say to her next time.
Sadie wanted to go to town. She wanted to have tea in a tearoom—the new one with the nice cream cakes—and she wanted to ‘show my new boyfriend off to the world. Well, at least to Wellington.’
You don’t refuse to be shown off to the world. Not when you had sex the night before. Not when she’s calling you her boyfriend. You smile and say you’d like that, and when she takes your hand in public you don’t pull away. Not even when she swings your arm and asks you how come you had your graduation dinner with your aunt and uncle? Where were your parents?
Sadie’s arms stopped swinging when Morris told her that his father died when he was a child and that his mother was in an old persons’ home.
When he told her that he visited his mother on Saturdays she stopped walking altogether, turned to look him full in the face and said, ‘You know you can judge a man by the way he treats his mother, don’t you? You are a good man, Morris Goldberg. I think it’s the sweetest thing on earth that you drive all that way to visit your mother every week.’ She stood on tiptoe to kiss him. Full on the mouth on a public footpath.
The sweetest thing. ‘My mother’s not … we’re not …’ he tried to say, but she silenced him with her mouth.
Three weeks later, on a Saturday morning, she arrived at his flat unexpectedly. ‘Wendlet and I were supposed to go out and about today but she’s cancelled on me. How about I come with you to Levin?’ Morris must have hesitated, because she said, ‘Or are you getting bored with me already? Need some time on your own already?’
So he agreed that she should accompany him. Sadie confirmed that he was the sweetest thing on earth, and went home to change and pack food for the road.
‘My aunt will want to feed you,’ he called to her retreating back, but she was already out the door.
Morris spent the next hour worrying about what Sadie expected to find in Levin.
Would she want to go to Pearl’s home and also to have tea at Joan’s?
She might change her mind about him being the sweetest thing on earth if she saw where his mother lived.
Was it even a good thing for a girl to think you the sweetest thing on earth?
Was it normal for a girl whose been dating a man for less than a month to want to visit his mother in an old persons’ home? In Levin?
No, Morris decided, it was probably not normal. Not something you see people do in movies when they’re in love. And it was not something he wanted.
He would insist that Sadie stay with Joan while he visited the home. Bad as his aunt’s furniture, photos and dogs were, they were preferable to the old persons’ home. Overpowering as Joan was, she was at least responsible for herself.
The decision to leave Sadie with Joan brought new doubts. Would Joan attach special significance to his bringing his new girlfriend to visit? Would Sadie? Should he? Was Sadie actually his girlfriend? They’d had sex a few times and she kept referring to him as her boyfriend, but her tone seemed mocking when she did so and he’d seen enough at university to know that having sex with someone didn’t necessarily mean you were in a relationship.
Morris could, literally, tear his hair out. He could grab a clump near the front and pull it really hard. He gave an exploratory tug and, like a bell on the end of a rope, the phone rang.
‘Are you one of those people who can’t bear the thought of cheese and jam?’
‘Cheese and jam? I don’t know. I’ve never—’
‘Well, do you have a treat in store for you! A new taste sensation. I’ll be ready in ten minutes. I’ll wait outside.’
Before leaving to fetch her, he wet and combed his hair.
She was standing on the footpath in her good dress, bought for a job interview. When he pulled up, she opened the back door first, to place her basket carefully on the seat.
‘You’ll have to wait until Raumati before you enjoy the new taste sensation. It’s the rule.’
‘The rule.’
‘That you can’t eat your sandwiches until you’re a decent distance from home.’
When Raumati was safely behind them, she poured tea into a plastic cup and held it out for him. ‘Your reward for having stuck to the distance rule without complaining.’
He found the combination of cheese and jam strange but not unpleasant.
As they drew up at Joan and Norman’s house he said, ‘I’d prefer it if you stayed …’ The rest of his words were drowned out by dogs yapping and Joan calling for them to be quiet. It was just Morris. Just Morris and … ‘My, it’s the English girl from the restaurant. Sadie, that’s your name, isn’t it?’
Joan was full of praise for Morris’s parking, for Sadie’s dress, full of apologies for not looking better herself but her forgetful nephew neglected to tell her he was bringing a friend. Not that she didn’t want Sadie there. Of course she wanted Sadie there. ‘When this silly nephew of mine told me that he’d gone to a party with you, I thought wow. Wow is all I thought. I’ve been wondering and wondering when he’d bring you to visit us. Now here you are and here’s me in my Saturday schmutters and all the time I’ve been wondering when Morris would bring you to visit us.’
‘Oh my goodness,’ said Sadie. ‘Did Morris not tell you I was coming? I am sorry.’
She pulled a funny face which Joan couldn’t see.
‘We’ve actually come to visit my mother,’ Morris found himself saying. ‘Sadie’s coming with me to—’
Sadie got herself between him and Joan. ‘But I’d really like to get to know you,’ she said. ‘Morris won’t mind visiting his mother on his own. You and I can have some time together.’ She opened her eyes wide at Morris. ‘You don’t mind if I stay here with Joan, do you?’
‘Of course I don’t mind. It’s just that I forgot to tell—’
‘Oh, I knew you’d understand, Morris. You really are the sweetest thing.’
Joan clapped her hands like a little girl. ‘I love the way you say “mother”. It’s so English.’ She brought her hands to her lips as if to kiss them, and clapped again before saying, ‘Morris is the sweetest thing, but he’s also the naughtiest.’
‘I couldn’t agree more.’ Sadie wagged a finger at Morris.
Joan put her arm around Sadie. ‘Come and see Norman. He’ll be so happy to see that Morris has finally brought you to visit us. You won’t mind if Norman pulls your leg, will you? He’s a bit of a joker, you see. Then we’ll have some tea and yo
u can tell me all about yourself.’ They turned together towards the house.
‘I always wanted to go alone,’ Morris, following, told the slowest, oldest dog.
If they’d given him time to formulate his words, he might have managed to make up a story about wanting to surprise Joan. But it’s hard to think of the right words when the woman you’ve had sex with is pulling funny faces and raising her eyebrows like someone in a silent movie who’s trying to scare the villain off just by looking at him.
In the lounge Sadie picked up a dog, faced it eye to eye and said, ‘Who’s a pretty boy then?’
Joan’s eyes shone. ‘Oh, oh, I am overjoyed. Simply overjoyed to have found you hiding away in that restaurant. Had silly shy Morris taken any longer to ask you out, I would have done it myself.’
‘And I would have gone,’ replied Sadie. She had a dog on her lap and another on the cushion beside her. She scratched their ears and tickled their tummies, and when one of them jumped up to lick her face she made a joke about the prettiest boys being the most forward.
She was a dog person. She’d be wanting a pet. Morris could see it.
Joan and Norman smiled. At Morris. At Sadie. At each other.
When they left the room to fetch the tea things, Sadie pushed the dog off her lap, stood up to brush the hairs off her skirt and whispered something about that being the grossest thing she’d ever experienced. Morris wondered whether it was possible to be relieved and insulted simultaneously.
Driving back to Wellington, Sadie apologised for not going with Morris to see his mother. She said that her preference was to be with him but there was something so sad about Joan. ‘Did you see how disappointed she looked when you told her we’d come only to see your mum? I couldn’t leave her. I just couldn’t. You didn’t really need me to come with you, but she … she needed me to stay, don’t you think?’
Morris didn’t answer. He was relaxing into the possibility that Sadie both recognised his aunt’s needs and was able to separate them from his own.
As if to confirm his thoughts, she said, ‘You didn’t really want me to go with you to the home, did you? Even though you told Joan that I was coming with you. Tell me the truth now, Morris.’
This time her wagging finger made him smile.
‘You’re right. The truth is I didn’t really want you to come.’
‘I knew it. But then why did you say I was coming with you to your mother?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know. Sometimes words run away with me.’
‘I think you mean without you. Words run away without you.’
They were silent for a while, then she said, ‘Can’t you picture it?’
‘Picture what?’
‘Your words running away without you.’
‘My words—’
‘Bear with me. Don’t laugh. Picture it. You’re standing in front of Joan and Norman’s house. The dogs are approaching. So are your aunt and uncle. All around you are your words—everything you could possibly say to them gathered in their front garden. Your words are jumping up and down around your feet. They’re waving their little arms in the air, beckoning to you, shouting in their tiny little voices, “Quickly, Morris. Quickly. There’s no time to be lost. Run away with us. Run away.”’
Morris grinned. ‘There are red words and green words—’
‘Even a few grubby little blue ones, and they’re all shouting—’
‘My words are all shouting—’
‘Run away with us, Morris. Quickly.’
‘The problem is they do run away and I can’t keep up.’
‘Of course you can’t. They’ve got fast little legs, those words of yours.’
Sadie stopped grinning. ‘You know what?’ she said at last.
‘What?’
‘I think I’ve got the opposite problem.’
‘The opposite?’
‘My words hang about. They won’t leave me. Even the ugly ones that should never be spoken just won’t go away. They’re always following me about, trying to trip me up, clamouring over each other, hanging on my skirt, waving their little arms and saying, “Speak me. Speak me.”’
‘Speak me. Speak me.’
‘So I do. I speak them and then I regret it.’
She turned to look out of the window and was quiet for a long time. He thought she might be dozing, but then she said, ‘I’ve been thinking about your mother and I think it might be kind of, you know, confusing for her to be suddenly introduced to me. Also Joan seems so—well, she seems to like me. Maybe I should stay with her next time. If you don’t mind, that is.’
She put her hand on his thigh. ‘Damn it, Jim, but aren’t those dogs something?’
‘D’you think you’ll ever want to have a pet?’
‘Oh God no. I most certainly do not want a pet. It’s bad enough that I’m going to have to be nice to the royal corgis every time we go to Levin.’
She was talking of a next time and she didn’t want a pet. Morris chose relief over insult.
She rested her head against the window pane and was silent. When he looked again, she was sleeping.
Her hand felt warm and heavy on his thigh. He fell into the rhythm of the drive.
Years later Sadie arrived home with a kitten in a box. ‘It’s for you, Morris, a gift.’
He tried to remind her of her car-drive declaration.
She said she didn’t care what he thought he distinctly remembered, she’d never said she didn’t want pets and, even if she had, she could change her mind. It was a woman’s prerogative. Besides, David loved animals and everyone knows that a child needs a pet. Morris had gone and spoiled her surprise with some ancient conversation which didn’t matter anyway.
After that first visit to Levin, Sadie seemed to assume that she would always accompany him. Joan did too and, once, when he arrived alone, Morris saw Joan’s smile drop and something that looked like fear flit across her face.
Every Saturday Sadie went with him. So did her thermos flask and sandwiches. ‘I know it’s a case of coals to Newcastle but I eat sandwiches on a journey. That’s what I do.’
Every Saturday she brushed her hair when they pulled up outside Joan’s house, joking about the need to be both mentally and physically prepared when you’re about to face a pack of killer lap dogs. Every Saturday she threw herself at the car door, at Joan and Norman, at the killer lap dogs.
A quick hello was all Morris had to give before turning the car towards his mother’s home. Sometimes Norman would drive with him to see Pearl and sometimes not.
It was a good arrangement. Everyone seemed satisfied with it. It lasted until they got engaged, when Sadie suggested that it might now be appropriate for her to meet his mother.
Morris’s first inclination was to make up some excuse. They weren’t married yet. She could still leave him. She could return to England on the pretext that her own mother needed her. There was probably an ex-boyfriend who’d be happy to have her back. She could tell him how Morris was a liar who’d misled her into believing he looked after his mother when actually, actually, he’d left his mother to get sicker and sicker in an old persons’ home. In Levin of all places. They’d laugh about what a backwater Levin was, how the closest it got to culture was a Jewish-sounding name. She’d run her hands through his long hair and thank God she’d escaped all that.
‘Sadie, I don’t know if—’
‘So you know Jen?’
‘Jen?’
‘Jen, my friend with the daughter.’
‘With the daughter.’
‘Yes, Jen, my friend. The one with the long hair and the big tits.’
‘Big—’
‘Tits. I knew you’d noticed them. So, anyway, you know how Jen’s divorced?’
‘Um, about going—’
‘And then she started dating other men. Remember how there was no shortage of men? There was that Geoff and that weirdo, what was his name? James. So what I’m saying, Morris. Morris, are you listening to me? Mo
rris.’
‘Yes, yes, I’m listening.’
‘Okay, so what I’m saying is Jen didn’t introduce a single one of those men to her daughter, even though Shelly isn’t even two years old.’
‘Two years old.’
‘Not even. So Jen didn’t let any of them get to know Shelly because … here’s what I’m saying, Morris. The thing is, Jen didn’t know if any of those guys would work out. She didn’t know if any of them would be permanent.’
‘She didn’t want too many changes for her daughter.’
‘That’s it. Morris. That’s the thing. But then she met Brian, and after they’d been together for months she thought he would be permanent and then, only then, did she introduce him to Shelly.’
‘She must have been nearly three by then.’
‘I guess. But anyway, you get my point.’
‘Your point?’
‘My point is that I’m, well, I’m permanent.’
‘You’re permanent.’
‘I’m permanent. You can’t hide me away from your mother any longer. She’ll be expecting your fiancée to visit her. Well, maybe not expecting, but still, still I think I should, don’t you?’
And so Morris thought he could risk taking her the next Saturday. If she was going to leave him, let it be before the wedding rather than after.
‘We’ll go together to my mother on Saturday.’
Sadie was beautiful when she smiled.
It was cramped and hot in Pearl’s little room.
Morris stood when he introduced Sadie. ‘You remember, Mum, that Joan told you I’d got engaged?’ He kept standing as he tried to explain that Sadie came from a good family, a Jewish family. ‘They were travelling, Sadie and her sister. Then they got here and, well, I guess they decided to stay.’
Pearl’s good eye was fixed on something behind Morris’s head.
From the next room came the sound of a children’s television programme.
Sadie shifted her chair close to Pearl’s. She leaned forwards and stroked Pearl’s bad hand. Then she started chatting about how lovely the English countryside was at that time of year.