by Ana McKenzie
‘Striking is good,’ Naomi replied. Then shook her head. ‘Don’t look so worried. I haven’t traded in my usual classic styling for this nostalgic seventies get-up.’ She leaned back in the chair, sticking out one white high-booted leg.
‘It all fits extraordinarily well,’ Merren said, suspicious. ‘Especially the boots.’
Naomi nodded, a smile of smug satisfaction on her face. ‘Yes indeed,’ she said. ‘I haven’t put on a single pound.’
Olivia smiled and shook her head. ‘I can’t believe the things you’ve kept, Naomi.’
‘I can’t believe you won’t give me Suzette’s room once she’s gone so I can have space for these things you can’t believe I’ve kept.’
‘I gave you Merren’s room – what are you on about?’ Olivia stood up, but she was grinning, and Merren knew the two women were simply having fun with each other. She also knew that Naomi would end up with Suzette’s room if she wanted it. Her mother only really cared about the kitchen and garden.
‘I’m going to make some tea,’ Olivia said with a wave of the hand. ‘Anyone thirsty?’
‘Yes please,’ both Merren and her grandmother chorused like a pair of good little girls, and Olivia slipped into the house.
‘So, Merren,’ Naomi said, leaning forward over the wrought-iron table that matched the chairs and resting her head on her hand.
Merren grimaced. ‘Yes, Grandma?’
‘You were about to tell your mother what you and this older woman of yours are up to.’
Merren folded her arms, even though she was fully aware that this conversation was why she’d come here – or almost why. Not quite this part, but she definitely wanted to talk about Bianca.
‘Actually, if you didn’t overhear the last part, I distinctly said that I don’t know what I’m doing with her.’
A solemn nod. ‘It’s probably best that way.’
That was a surprise. ‘It is?’
‘Oh yes. Who goes into the adventure of a relationship knowing exactly what they’re doing? That’s what makes them so delightfully unexpected.’
‘I’ve never found them to be all that unexpected, Naomi,’ Merren said.
‘That’s because you’ve never really got your hands dirty yet, my girl.’
‘I’ve had girlfriends before.’ Merren tightened her arms across her chest and wished she had stopped at home to shower before coming here. She could smell Bianca on her skin and couldn’t banish the irrational fear that her grandmother – the most astute woman Merren had ever met – could too.
‘Yes,’ Naomi said, still with her chin resting on her hands, bright blue eyes looking at Merren with and interest that Merren thought looked both pointed and amused. ‘Yes, you’ve had girlfriends before. You’ve even slept with more than one of them.’
‘Gran!’
Naomi shrugged. ‘We all know it’s true, and there’s nothing wrong with it.’
Merren looked away. ‘So, what’s so different this time?’ she asked, gazing at the neighbour’s apple tree.
‘This one’s not a babe in the woods. And nor are you, anymore.’
‘A babe in the woods?’ Merren lifted her eyebrows and got a complacently calm look in return.
‘She’s a grown woman, which will do you good at this stage of your life. You’re busy, you’re establishing yourself in your work and studies – you’re ready for someone who is sure of themselves and who they are and what they do.’ Her grandmother sat back and stretched, the turban making her look like a wise, if psychedelic, fortune-teller.
Merren chewed on her lip for a minute. ‘Except Bianca isn’t sure of herself at the moment.’
Naomi reached her hands over the table and Merren slotted her own into their soft, wrinkled grip.
‘Sweetheart,’ Naomi said. ‘At the moment, she’s wandering around in the darkness. She thinks she’s losing everything.’
‘She won’t let me set her up with a system to make things easier for her.’ Merren could hear the surprised hurt in her own voice as she recalled the conversation with Bianca from that morning over the breakfast table.
Her grandmother laughed and squeezed Merren’s fingers. ‘Oh my dear,’ she said. ‘Don’t you understand?’
That made Merren shake her head. She guessed she didn’t.
Naomi didn’t let go of her hands. Not even when Merren’s mother came out with mugs of tea for each of them and sat down silently.
‘Where do we start?’ Naomi said, and Merren forced herself not to roll her eyes, reminding herself she’d come here for exactly this lecture.
‘I don’t know, Grandma,’ she said meekly.
‘Well, you probably do, actually,’ her grandmother said. ‘But I imagine you’re feeling awfully close to the situation at the moment.’
Merren flushed at the thought of where the hands her grandmother was holding had been just a short while ago. She was glad at least she’d washed them.
‘Perhaps you ought to just tell me,’ she said, shifting uncomfortably on her chair.
Naomi let go of her hands at last and sat back to sip at her tea, still eyeing her granddaughter. Merren endured the weight of the gaze.
‘Imagine, if you like, that you were losing your sight,’ Naomi said after a moment.
Merren shrugged impatiently. ‘I have – I do, I try to. It would be awful. So many things to have to find ways around. Everything would take longer until I got new systems worked out.’
Both her mother and grandmother were shaking their heads at her. She shied away, picked up her mug of tea and held it protectively in front of her.
‘What?’ she said defensively.
‘Merren. You can do better than that,’ Olivia said.
‘You’re stuck in your problem-solving mind,’ Naomi added. ‘Go deeper into the experience.’
Merren swallowed. ‘I don’t know what you mean!’
‘Of course you do,’ her grandmother soothed. ‘Empathy is one of humankind’s greatest gifts. The ability to see the world from another’s viewpoint.’
‘Close your eyes,’ Olivia said. ‘Let’s try this in a different way, shall we?’
Merren found herself shaking. She put her mug down on the table. And closed her eyes.
Her mother spoke. ‘Have you seen Bianca’s work?’
Merren nodded. Beside the paintings in the Public Art Gallery, it was all throughout Bianca’s house.
‘It’s exquisite,’ Olivia carried on. ‘In detail, depth, technique, vision. Imagine being the person who sees all that in their head – and has the drive, determination, and skill to be able to translate that vision onto the canvas.’
The two paintings in the gallery were amazing. Merren had no trouble picturing them. She took one of them off the gallery wall and put it on the easel in Bianca’s studio instead. The light hit it just perfectly, and Bianca stood before it, wearing her painting smock, her hair curling over her face. Merren imagined the look of concentration on Bianca’s face, and saw it was luminous with inspiration, effort and pleasure.
She opened her eyes. ‘Bianca has such a gift,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Naomi answered. ‘She does. Now take that away from her.’
Merren could imagine it. More than that, she could feel it. The sudden chasm of darkness, of a whole career and identity being sucked down into it, ripped away.
‘And it’s not just her art she fears she’s losing.’
‘No,’ Merren agreed, her voice low. ‘Her independence – everything is so difficult for her at the moment. Doing the simplest things.’ Which brought her right back to the beginning. ‘Which is why I wanted to help. The phone, the watch – small things, but they’d help so much. Setting up her computer for her. I can help with that, but she’s so resistant.’
‘Of course she is resistant,’ Naomi crowed. ‘Why is she resistant, Merren?’
‘Because she has never liked technology – computers and the like – and now she is going to have to use them.’
Merren looked across the table at her mother and grandmother, both shaking their heads.
‘No?’ she asked. ‘Why then?’
Then she answered her own question. And sighed. ‘Because she’s afraid.’
‘Yes,’ Naomi replied gently. ‘And when people are afraid – and Bianca has every reason to be scared – what happens?’
Merren shook her head, but she was thinking about it. This was all stuff the older women in her life had been teaching her since she was just a kid.
‘Because when we’re afraid,’ she said at last, ‘it’s harder to know which voice in our mind to listen to. The one that says we can’t, that we’re going to lose everything, it gets too loud.’
Naomi reached back across the table and patted Merren’s arm. ‘You’ve got it now, darling. Got it in one.’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Merren kept taking deep breaths, blowing out the air in great puffs, telling herself to calm down. Everything was going to go just fine.
It certainly wasn’t going to help matters if she was jumpier than a cat on a hot tin roof.
Not that the roof was hot today. It was overcast out there, everything muted and brooding, the air heavy with the promise of rain. The roof wasn’t tin, either, she reminded herself, then puffed out another breath, screwing up her nose at her own jittery thoughts.
The oil sticks were all set up, ready, and Merren stepped back, hands on hips, to survey her handiwork. The holders for them were genius, she decided, even if they were made from plastic. Maybe at some stage, she’d get her friend Robbie to make a set from some sort of renewable wood. That would look amazing. She tugged her phone out of her pocket and scrolled through her contacts list until she found Robbie’s number. He would be just the ticket, and if she offered to pay well enough, it might be a nice break from making bentwood chairs in his backyard workshop.
She texted him a short message and photograph, then stuck her phone back in her pocket and looked around the room again. Her throat was dry, and her heart beat too fast. If she was a bird, her feathers would be all a-flutter, she thought, then shook her head, took another of those deep breaths, and this time let it out slowly, easing the tension from her body.
The lamps were set up. She’d even brought in the screen from the studio, so she’d have somewhere to shuck her clothes in relative modesty.
This would be work, after all.
That made her shake her head. She liked the screen, that was really the thing. She’d also found a gorgeous chaise longue in another of the rooms and persuaded Bianca to let her drag it into the new studio.
Bianca had been reluctant at first, claiming they would get paint on it – and what did they need it for anyway?
That was easily answered, and if today went well, Merren planned to show Bianca exactly what they needed it for. In great tactile detail. She shivered pleasurably at the thought, then felt slightly guilty. If today went well…
She looked out the window, even though she’d checked it already and couldn’t see Bianca down there.
The cotton canvas had been cut to length and Merren had pinned it up on the wall. Ready. It was all ready. The table with the oil sticks, gloves, cloth for wiping the wax coating from the sticks, everything Bianca could possibly need. Mee-Yon, Ji, and Dave had done an excellent job. Merren couldn’t see a single thing they’d missed.
She shook her hands, trying to get rid of her nervousness, then decided to go down to the kitchen and make a cup of chamomile tea. Really, she’d rather coffee, but that was probably part of the problem. She’d already had a few cups of that stuff.
Passing the open front door on the way to the kitchen, Merren spotted Rita perched on the wall in her usual spot, a book tucked under her arm.
Rita, as though she’d been waiting for just cause, hopped down from the wall and came scuttling over to Merren, trailing her into the kitchen.
‘What’s going on?’ Rita asked. ‘Who’s the old lady?’
Merren picked up the electric jug just for something to do. She filled it up at the tap before answering.
‘My grandmother,’ she said, setting the jug on its base and flicking the switch on to heat the water.
‘Your grandmother?’ Rita’s eyes widened. ‘What are they talking about?’
The question made Merren sigh. ‘I’m not sure, exactly.’
‘They’ve been out there for ages.’
‘I know.’ Merren hugged herself and leaned against the counter.
‘Well, you must have some idea. Is it like, some sort of intervention, or something?’
‘What makes you say that?’
Rita shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I guess because Bianca isn’t really coping. She’s not painting.’
‘No, she’s not,’ Merren mused. So far, she’d only been able to coax Bianca as far as the studio doorway, where she’d stood twisting a curl around her finger, a look of painful yearning on her face. Before turning away and going back to bed, or downstairs to the kitchen to sit staring at nothing at the table.
‘She needs to paint, I reckon,’ Rita said. ‘I looked it up – there have been other blind painters. So, it’s not like it’s impossible or anything. They’re still pretty good too. Their stuff is different from what it used to be before they lost their sight, but it’s still good.’
‘And it’s still painting,’ Merren added.
‘Yeah.’
Both of them stood in the kitchen, gazing out at the grey sky glowering over red brick fence and neighbouring houses. The jug gurgled, steamed, came to the boil, switched automatically off.
‘So, what’s she saying then – your grandmother?’ Rita’s face was pinched with worry, and Merren found herself in sudden kinship with the twelve-year-old.
‘Words of wisdom, I hope,’ Merren replied.
‘She got lots of those?’
‘Yeah.’ Merren ran her fingers through her hair and sighed. ‘Quite the collection, as it happens.’
‘Cool. Can she come and talk to my Mum after she’s fixed Bianca?’
Merren turned to Rita with a question on her face. ‘What’s wrong with your mum?’
That got an awkward, one-shouldered shrug and a red face in response. ‘I don’t know. Nothing, I suppose. She says she’s just an introvert, but I think she’s still kinda lonely.’ Rita stared down at the floor, scuffing her feet on the wooden boards. ‘She says it’s a lonely world out there.’
‘It can be,’ Merren agreed. ‘What sorts of things does she like to do?’
‘She reads a lot.’
Merren pointed her chin at the book Rita carried. ‘You take after her, then.’
Rita pulled the book out from under her arm and gazed at it like she hadn’t seen it before. ‘I guess so.’ She looked up at Merren. ‘But I like getting out and doing stuff too, you know. I don’t think it’s a lonely world.’
Merren didn’t know what to say. She turned around and grabbed a couple mugs. ‘Want a cup of tea?’ she asked.
Rita shrugged. ‘Sure.’
Teabags were easy to find. ‘What are you doing for Christmas?’ Merren asked.
‘Nothing. We don’t have any family here or anything. And it’s just Mum and me, so we kind of blow off the day now I’m older.’
Merren nodded. ‘How about you and your Mum come along home for Christmas lunch? My mother always says the more the merrier – let’s take her up on it.’
Rita looked dubious. ‘Your mother?’
‘Yeah. Seriously, Bianca and I will be there. I can pick you two up at the same time I collect Bianca, who has already promised me Christmas at Mum’s. It’ll be fun. Mum will be happy to see you.’ She poured the hot water into the mugs. ‘In fact, give me your Mum’s number and I’ll get mine to call and invite her.’
‘She might not come,’ Rita said.
‘Or she might. We won’t know until we ask her.’ Merren passed the girl her cup of tea. ‘That’s if you’d like to come, of course.’
‘I do,’ Rita said. ‘I want to, I mean.’
Merren held up her mug. ‘Cheers, then.’
Rita smiled and held hers up, then took a sip of it. ‘You were awesome at the council meeting,’ she said.
‘Thanks,’ Merren replied and settled back to lean against the counter. Here at least was a subject she was confident of. ‘I looked for you there but didn’t spot you. Mind you, I was waylaid after the thing for a bit, talking to some people.’
‘It’s a fantastic plan,’ Rita said, nodding her head seriously. ‘Do you really think that one day Dunedin will be all electric?’
‘All electric vehicles, you mean?’ Merren leaned back against the counter and thought about it, although in truth she didn’t have to think at all. She’d spent months putting together a proposal on the subject, projecting it all out, showing just how viable the idea was. ‘Yes, definitely, and within ten years, if the council decides to really get behind it.’ She couldn’t help the dreamy smile. ‘Can you imagine it – how quiet the city would be? No traffic sounds?’
‘What about people from out of town?’
‘They’d go away thinking about getting themselves an EV, I’m sure,’ Merren said, then rubbed her neck. She hadn’t slept well the last few nights. Not that she was entirely complaining – she’d spent most of them in Bianca’s bed, in Bianca’s arms. Whatever else Bianca was feeling, it wasn’t making her want sex any less.
In fact, Merren suspected Bianca was using it – just a little – to keep herself from going completely under. It made Merren feel a disconcerting mixture of things.
Rita was snapping her fingers. ‘Hey, Earth to Merren, anyone home?’
She stood up, shoving the thought away for later, and put the mug down. She didn’t want the tea after all. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Sorry. What did you say?’
‘You were a million miles away,’ Rita said severely. ‘I was trying to give you my phone number. Mum’s texted me – I have to get back home.’
‘Right. Sure. No problem.’ Merren pulled her phone out of her pocket and clicked to add a new contact. ‘Hit me,’ she said, and typed in the numbers as Rita recited them. She nodded when she was done, lifted the phone and snapped a quick picture of the red-haired girl. ‘Okay?’ she asked, thumb hovering on the save button.