The Intentions Book

by Gigi Fenster

  It’s not David’s fault he let Sadie’s words into the car. Not David’s fault he listened to a pretty girl with a gap-toothed smile saying, Let me tell you about your grandfather. I know a thing or two about your grandmother.

  Morris could give Sadie’s words a bit of a shaking. He could use some words of his own. He could say to David, That’s your mother’s story. It wasn’t really like that. You know how she used to exaggerate. He could say, Your mother was in pain and on medication. She was rambling. I’m sorry you had to listen to it. He should say, She shouldn’t have told you all that. It wasn’t fair of her to tell you. Not fair on me and certainly not fair on you. She shouldn’t have dumped all that on you.

  He says, ‘D’you want more coffee?’

  David shakes his head.

  Sadie’s words sprawl out on the back seat and sigh with contentment.

  Not fair of me? Not fair? I had to tell him the whole catastrophe. I couldn’t rush off and die without putting things in place.

  Putting things in place.

  Look, Morris, I’m a talker. I use words. So sue me.

  Post-traumatic stress. Hysterectomy. Was there anything you didn’t tell him?

  I didn’t tell him they never told you when your father died. I didn’t tell him that.

  You didn’t know. You didn’t tell him because you didn’t know.

  Look, it doesn’t matter what I told David. What matters is that you both know it wasn’t genetic.

  Wasn’t genetic.

  Not even slightly.

  Fighting in Europe and losing family in the holocaust. I didn’t even know that.

  Oh, Morris, of course you did. Just because no one told you doesn’t mean you didn’t know it.

  No one told me.

  But you knew it anyway.

  You told David.

  Your mother should have discussed it with you. She should have sat you down when the news came of his death. She should have explained about post-traumatic stress. She should have explained that he wasn’t coming back. I still can’t believe she didn’t talk to you about it.

  She wasn’t. We weren’t …

  You know, I could smack the woman.

  Enough talk of smacking her.

  Morris has a sudden image of Sadie advancing on his mother. ‘I’m terribly sorry, Mrs Goldberg, but it seems I’m going to have to put you over my knee. You know you deserve it.’

  Sadie would find the image funny. But Sadie would be wrong. It’s wrong to blame Pearl for not discussing it with him. Pearl was quiet. They were quiet together. That’s the way they were, Morris and his mother. Quiet.

  David turns the radio on in time for the weather report. It’s rain, rain, rain.

  Some of Sadie’s words reach over from the back seat to tap Morris on the shoulder. You may be right about us dumping all that on David, but we meant well. Doesn’t it help you now, knowing it was the circumstances which killed your father rather than some ridiculous aberrant gene?

  But don’t you see, Morris wants to shout into the empty back seat, Rachel’s circumstances are not so great either. I too can make a list of awful things for David: Rachel’s exhausted. She’s lonely. Her fridge is just white. Her boyfriend’s girlfriend is pregnant. Her career has exclamation marks, loud music, passion. Her ballet’s been replaced by strobe lights and her mother’s dead. Honestly, Morris could shout into the empty back seat, something’s gotta give.

  He looks over and sees that his son is crying.

  David cries like he did as a child—quietly, as if he didn’t know that his face was crumpled and wet, his nose running. As a child he could cry for hours. Without noise, without drama, his activities uninterrupted.

  When Sadie died he cried for days.

  Morris hands him the tissue box. David takes a few but doesn’t use them. Morris feels a flash of irritation. And fear. Don’t you start weeping on me now. I kept my awful list to myself.

  Sadie used to tell the children stories to distract them from their crying.

  ‘I suppose I should tell you why I hate the Tararuas,’ says Morris, ‘because really, the mountains are okay. It’s not the mountains’ fault.’

  David is quiet. Morris wants to lean over and wipe his nose.

  ‘Well, I started tramping round Christchurch, when I was at Canterbury …’

  When the story’s done, he looks over to see if his son is still crying. ‘That club was my mulberries,’ he says, ‘like when your mum—’

  ‘Poor Mum. I’ll never forget her and those mulberries. It’s like she was trying to recapture a childhood she never had in the first place.’ David sniffs, then blows his nose.

  ‘Never had in the first place.’

  ‘You know, the storybook English childhood.’ He blows again. ‘If anyone was carrying nutter genes it was Mum.’

  ‘Nutter genes.’

  ‘You know, nutcases. Like Mum’s parents.’

  ‘Sadie’s parents.’

  ‘And Wendy’s. Talk about nutters.’

  ‘I suppose they were a bit—’

  ‘A bit? A bit! There was nothing “a bit” about Mum’s parents. They were raving nutters, by all accounts. I mean, all that stuff about becoming gypsies when they were well into their forties.’

  ‘Buying a caravan.’

  ‘Leaving their house to some hippie friends who turned it into a commune.’

  ‘Wendy coming home from university to find someone living in her bedroom.’

  ‘A smelly druggy living in her bedroom.’

  David and Morris are telling Sadie’s how-we-came-to-live-in-New Zealand story.

  After a while David says, ‘It was funny when Mum told it.’

  ‘Well, not really.’

  ‘But it had a happy ending.’

  ‘Happy ending?’

  ‘She met you.’

  Morris turns his face to the window.

  It’s not the full story. There’s an addendum to the how-we-came-to-live-in-New Zealand story. Sadie’s secret pain. Morris imagined Sadie’s pain to be like a pebble—shingle-grey like the beaches of England, with a forked white bolt that looked as if might split the stone in three. It had a sharp point. It could wound her if she handled it too much.

  Sadie kept her pebble to herself, but Morris watched her closely. In unexpected moments he’d see the loss of animation, the frown. He’d recognise in her hunched shoulders the movements of someone who is reaching into her pocket to pull out her pain and feel it in her palm.

  He kept close to her in those moments. If they were alone he’d take her hand, as if by holding it tight he could stop it from reaching for her ache.

  If they were in company he might catch hold of the cuff of her sleeve.

  She’d brought the pebble back from a trip to England. She’d gone on her own before they were engaged.

  Morris didn’t go to work on the day she was due back. He didn’t go to the airport either. He stayed close to the telephone. If she didn’t call him within twenty-four hours of returning, he’d know it was over. Within forty-eight hours. Twenty-four. Thirty-six.

  An hour and a half. From touchdown to telephone. He wanted to weep when he heard her voice.

  She said he should come to the flat. He said he’d be right over.

  But after he put the phone down he paused and thought their conversation through. She hadn’t said she’d missed him, and she’d sounded flat as if steeling herself to give unpleasant news. Morris could guess what that news was: she was going to break up with him. Well, if she wanted to break up with him, let her come to his flat and do it. Let her be the one to close the door behind her and walk away.

  Ten minutes later the phone rang. ‘I’m so pleased I caught you. Would you mind getting some milk on your way? I could really, really have a cup of tea.’

  He took his jacket out of the wardrobe and went to her flat.

  She was in her dressing gown. Her eyes were red, her face creased. She smelled of cigarettes and alcohol. She had her hands in
her dressing-gown pockets as if they were full of marbles, as if she was rolling them round between her fingers.

  He kept his fist closed over the door handle, his hand cramping with the knowledge that she was leaving him. For good.

  She’d been gone for two months. Eight weeks. Morris knew how many days. He’d counted them off on his calendar. He’d drawn a little cross to mark the last time she wrote to him.

  In the beginning she wrote often. When the first aerogramme arrived, he felt a joy like reaching the top of a mountain. He ran his letter opener through its folds as if opening a present. Her handwriting was clear and consistent. She hadn’t written in huge letters to be sure of using up the whole page. Neither had her writing become smaller and smaller as she got near the end.

  An aerogramme was more than a dashed-off postcard. More than a long rambling wad of papers (both of which Morris had feared). An aerogramme folded up around itself. An aerogramme said, I know exactly what I want to say to you.

  Sadie’s letters were surprisingly formal and restrained, like an itinerary in retrospect. She’d visited an aunt, had lunch with a cousin. She took a bus to friends from teachers’ training college but couldn’t stay long because she had to get the bus back on the same day. She was invited to a music festival but didn’t go (‘I’ve never loved music festivals. Not ever’). She stayed with her mother but not in the house. She was going to Brighton.

  ‘I’ll tell you the Brighton story when I see you,’ wrote Sadie, and Morris felt a gush of camaraderie.

  At the end of that aerogramme, right up close to the folded part, in cramped, tiny script, she’d written, ‘Don’t worry if you don’t hear from me for a while. Things are a bit crazy here.’

  The camaraderie was short lived.

  A silent week later he woke up certain that she was not returning. She’d met an old boyfriend. Or found a new one. He took her to music festivals which, actually, she’d always loved. Very much. Why else the detour from her itinerary to explain that she didn’t like them? Why else the underlining of the word ‘loved’, the repetitive ‘Not ever’? The boyfriend had sideburns and long hair. He rode a motorbike. Maybe they took drugs. They were going to rent a hotel room in Brighton. Across from the pier. They’d lie on the beach and smoke. She was considering how to break the news to Morris. That last aerogramme was just buying time.

  She was never coming back.

  It took three more aerogramme-less days before he brought himself to phone Wendy.

  ‘Oh Morris, it’s good to hear from you. I’m missing her so much.’

  ‘—’

  ‘It’s not like her not to write for so long.’

  ‘—’

  ‘Morris. Are you there?’

  ‘I miss her too.’

  They continued to call each other every few days, though they didn’t have much to say. ‘Just checking that you’re still there,’ Wendy said the first time she called Morris, and he knew he was not the only one looking for reassurance that Sadie would return. He and Wendy had become each other’s insurance. She’d never leave Wendy on her own, thought Morris. As long as Wendy is here, she’ll come back.

  Joan phoned too. ‘Has she written? Has she phoned? Remind me when last you heard from her.’ Once she said, ‘Married women don’t go off on their own for weeks on end. Well, they didn’t in my day.’

  She did come back. She brought pockets full of marbles and a pebble with her.

  When Morris saw her in her dressing gown, all weighed down, he gripped the door handle and thought, Tell me now. Don’t make me come inside. Don’t make me sit down and look at you. Tell me now and close the door behind me.

  She took her hands from her pockets and fell into him. ‘Oh Morris. I missed you so much.’

  ‘Sadie, will you marry me?’

  She slid down as if going on one knee to him.

  He pulled her close.

  The marbles fell from her pockets and rolled away.

  There was just the one pebble after that. When she fell pregnant with David, she threw it away.

  The day after Sadie’s return, Wendy made one last call to Morris. She said, ‘You’ve made Sadie happy. Hell, you’ve even made me happy. Well done. Brother-in-law.’

  The insurance phone calls were Morris and Wendy’s secret.

  The pebble was Sadie’s secret, though she shared parts of it with both of them. Different parts, Morris suspected.

  She had to tell Wendy the facts of it, but he knew she softened them, protecting her younger sister from the cutting edge that didn’t have to be revealed. To Morris she handed the sadder part, the bit that made her cry. She handed a piece of her pebble to each of them, but kept a part, maybe even the largest part, to herself.

  Morris is sure that Sadie didn’t discuss her pebble with Joan over a hot drink on a Saturday afternoon. She didn’t mention it to David or touch on it with Rachel. It was thrown away by the time they were born.

  He looks over at David’s profile. He could tell him now.

  But Sadie wouldn’t want it. And Wendy wouldn’t want it. And what would it achieve?

  If Morris did tell David Sadie’s pebble story, he’d keep it short, like parents’ stories are. It would go like this. Before your mother and I got engaged she went to England. When she arrived there she was surprised to find that her father (your grandfather) had left the family home and his wife (your grandmother) to go and live with a young girl in Brighton. The girl had twin sons. Your grandfather was playing at being their dad. He said (and these are the words your mother used in the telling of it) that he’d had to ‘shrug off the claustrophobia of his first family in order to find out who he really was’. He said (again your mother’s words) that he’d been ‘stifled and suffocated for all his married life’, first by his wife and then by his daughters. He said they were a pack of witches. He said they could all go to hell.

  And what about his wife, your grandmother? She was still living in the old family home. The house had been taken over by squatters. She had one little room. The house was filthy. The power had been cut off and there were rats. She said the squatters were her friends.

  They weren’t so friendly when your mum suggested that they might need to move because she was considering selling the house.

  Your mother travelled to Brighton to ask her father for help in getting rid of the squatters and selling the house. He told her she was materialistic and grabbing, and who was it hurting if the crazy old bitch wanted to share with a few friends? Or was Sadie worried about her inheritance? She could go to hell.

  Your mother had to deal with lawyers. She had to deal with policemen. She had to sell the house and help her mother move in with a cousin. She had to protect Wendy from the really bad parts. She had to leave her mother and return to New Zealand because ‘Wendy and I owe it to ourselves to make our own good, better lives. And to be honest, I can’t deal with all that. I’m not strong enough.’ She cried about the materialistic, grabbing comment. She felt guilty about leaving her mother, but not guilty enough to go back.

  That’s how Sadie’s pebble would go, if Morris told it to David. But he won’t. There’s no point and Sadie wouldn’t want it. Wendy neither.

  Joe was suffering and Pearl was quiet. That’s all.

  Morris and Pearl were quiet together. That’s how they were.

  Morris and Rachel could be quiet together for hours.

  Or, better still, quiet and not together. But not apart. Somewhere close. In the house. Alone together.

  Sadie is teaching one of her Saturday afternoon classes which she really didn’t need to take on but, ‘Oh Morris, if you saw how those students improve from week to week, you’d know why I do it,’ or she’s out to lunch with a friend or Wendy, or Wendy and a friend.

  David has rushed out in a flurry of sports gear and bus tickets, wheedled money for movies and a bit extra for a friend who’s always broke.

  Morris is in his study overlooking the washing line.

  At the other end of
the house, behind her bedroom door, is Rachel.

  The front door is complacent in the knowledge that no one will knock.

  Morris has pulled the telephone plug out at the wall. This is his secret from Sadie. He does it every time David and she are both out of the house. Rachel once saw him doing it. She nodded and continued on her silent way down the carpeted passage.

  Sadie’s radio has been turned off. David’s tape recorder is silent. The house creaks and Morris wonders whether he should make himself a sandwich.

  Rachel’s in the kitchen. She looks up and he says, ‘I thought maybe a sandwich.’

  She’s got bread and cheese on a board. Morris cuts the bread and she fetches a tomato.

  They sit at the table and Rachel passes him the newspaper. She keeps the weekend magazine section for herself.

  Soon the day will come when Rachel doesn’t pass on the newspaper but takes it and her sandwich to her bedroom. Morris won’t mind. He can get the news online, and his office is warmer than the kitchen.

  Honestly, Sadie, he wants to say. I didn’t mind. That’s how Rachel and I were … are.

  And that’s when David’s phone rings.

  The phone is ringing and David’s pulling the car over and saying, ‘Oh my God. Oh my God.’

  He takes hold of Morris’s face again. ‘They’ve found her, Dad. She’s … she’s … she’ll be okay.’

  David is crying. His hands drop. Morris’s seatbelt pulls tight as he leans to hug him.

  There are more phone calls and talk of hypothermia. Rachel’s been taken to a hospital in Palmerston North. She’ll be discharged in a few hours. Molly says it can take a while to warm up those who have got profoundly cold.

  Wendy’s voice is both loud and small as she shrieks and sobs through the tiny cell phone.

  David laughs and cries, first to Wendy then to Debbie.

  Morris hopes they won’t discharge her before she’s warmed up completely.

  It has all been arranged. David will drive to Rachel’s car, which has a hidden key in a secret place beneath the bumper that David knows about because he put it there. He will then drive Rachel’s car to Palmerston North and fetch her from the hospital.