“Look.”
Legs braced, Dad points at the shore, to a totara, way bigger than its shoulder-hugging brothers, a tree protest of what green can be. I hold my breath, like it’ll notice, like I’ll make a difference. Laying a hand on the cold metal seat, I will the dinghy to stillness, because we’re drifting barely 50 metres from an emerald-necked kererū.
Tilting, the bird launches, every flap an audible squeak of wings pushing air, over the living cloak of bush, every beat an effort before it crash lands nearby. Eying the invisible, the wood pigeon takes off one more time – a corpulent mass of bruise-colored feathers that disappears into a wall of trees.
“Far out! You could see everything.”
Dad smiles, “Be good on a stick. Chubby little bugger.”
“Gross.”
Small waves slap the aluminum side as we listen to twigs snapping, birds calling and the wind passing through. I inhale this lake, and it’s easy to smile because Dad and I are okay out here. We might even catch something.
The motor on our nine-footer takes a hefty yank to start. As we putt along, Dad strong-arms the tiller, redirecting the prow against the insistent sou’wester. I gaze at the wake, at the three-tier tackle box balancing on metal ribs, and then I check over my shoulder to see if the knapsack’s getting wet. Stowed under the bow with our life jackets, it’s got the all-important goodies: a thermos of milky tea and a Tupperware container of rock buns that Mum always bakes when we go fishing. They’re dry as hell, but Dad loves them.
After a bit he looks to a headland, scans to a dock across the way and cuts the engine. Triangulating, he calls it.
“Well, Rach, I reckon we found our spot.” He stretches to lift my rod from a sawn-off PVC pipe. The boat tips indecently with his weight. I grab at the rail.
Except for the tiniest smirk, he ignores my panic as he lays the rod along the seats, opens the tackle box and selects a sleek silver-green lure.
“Here. Tie it like this.”
The fine nylon thread gets lost in those big, engraved outdoor hands. But they work the line with a precise calm, like when he plays tennis – or anything, for that matter. In one go, he bends the stiff line through the eyelet, pursed lips dropping a gob of spit on the weave, bubbles clinging to the symmetry. Slowly pulling the two ends, balancing line on multiple fingers, he controls the tension. Another perfect knot.
“Can I do the next one?”
He grins, pleased. “Yup.”
I want to show him I have remembered, can do it, can be like him.
He hands the rod to me, “Throw ‘er in.”
“Zzzzziiiiiiiiiiizzzzzzzzzzzzzz …”
A gutsy “Woohoo!” slips out of me as it unspools, jigging the rod and my hand with each rotation, and I stare into the deep, kicking myself over trout zigzagging away to the black parts of my mind.
I’m in my red jacket and the woolly jumper Nana knitted. He wears a knee-length Swanndri that makes me realise what true grey is. Warm as hell, wool so thick it’s hard to manoeuvre in.
The lake is in that kind of absolute evening stillness now. The kind that makes me feel like I have to say something ‘cause it’s too quiet.
“You caught many here before?” I ask.
“In this arm? Yeah, a couple. With Roy. More over there,” he waves an arm. “Where the rocks are.”
“This isn’t much of a fishing lake. Better at Okataina or Rotoiti, eh?” That’s me being knowledgeable.
Him laying out how it really is: “Oh, there are fish here. No doubt. Just a bit leery of the old rod. Here fishy, fishy, fishy,” he sneers in that malicious little voice I can’t stand, and my eyes get stuck on the brown grooves of his teeth.
Oh, he notices my shifts. Got her knickers in a twist, he’ll be thinking.
It takes me a few minutes to come back. But I do. Because apart from the fucked-up fishy, fishy bit, I like that he knows how things are. There is nothing to doubt. Don’t get me wrong, it’s hard to speak when I’m still annoyed. I just wait until the ache in my throat subsides.
“So, did you come here much when you lived up the farm?”
“Oh yeah. Road had a lot more potholes and not as wide. Took about an hour, probably.
“We’d come down after haymaking. Hot and filthy. Covered in crap – feel it in your lungs, all that dust. But boy that water felt great … and not a soul around.” He pauses, looks at the shadowed bays, the still. “Huh. Not many here now. But it’s different, when you know it’s only you and the land and all that water … and whatever’s down there,” he nods, “… and up there too, by jingo.”
“Where?”
“There, see that old pā site?” He shudders and makes the weird sound only him and Uncle Roy make – a cross between a squeal and a horse neighing, “Eeeeooo-hooo-haa!” His heebie-jeebies sound.
“Y’know, there’s lots of kehuas around here.”
“Bull.”
He shrugs, “They’re around alright. Go digging up there, you’ll find all sorts of things.”
My bum tightens on the seat, and I check the water by the boat. He grins and we sit that way for a while.
Dad gives his line a few small jerks, “Yup, quite amazing really, this place.”
“Roy taught me how to water-ski here. We’d drive up after milking, spend the evening, have a barbie. His girlfriends’d come sometimes and Martin, when he was around. We had a good time.”
“Before Mum?”
“Yup. And when she came along, she enjoyed it as much as we did.”
I like the way he talks about Mum. There’s this sweet neutrality in his voice that tells me how much he got out of doing things like this with her. How much he liked her.
And Dad is really good at water-skiing. He can still get on to one ski no problem. Skids across the wake, knees bending like the water’s in his veins, part of the lake, sucked up in human form, just while the boat’s moving. God, can’t believe I’m saying it, but he’s graceful, you know? Like one of those movie stars, all wavy blonde hair. Not my cup of tea, but I’m sure Mum thought he was great. I prefer the dark look, probably ‘cause of him. He calls me “ante”. I know I am. Can’t help it. I just get, I dunno … shitty about being stuck with them, wanting to be different, someone else, anywhere but with them. It takes me over.
And there’s the calendars. One for the bach and one in the garage. Bare-chested women, courtesy of some local panel beater, that he refuses to take down. Talk about shame-oes, especially when my friends see them. He just laughs and tells me not to be silly.
And now there’s the maybe stuff. The cheating on my Mum. Did he? Didn’t he? Aunty B told me. But she doesn’t know for sure, she said. But Uncle Karl thinks so. Then again, Mum always says he’s full of shit.
Anyway, I hate all that skin, breasts, busting out of torn clothes or just there, in some skimpy bikini bottoms, hanging above our toaster. He’d be standing there, next to the sink, showing one of my uncles Miss July. They’ll be hooting and snorting, and I’m not even six feet away, reading on the bunk. I’d curl tighter and whisper the words in What Katy Did until I drowned them out. If it didn’t work, I’d leave; shove feet in jandals and go down the beach, wishing I’d grabbed a peach or something. A bit thirsty. Tears would creep, a wind would pick up, the sea would be a disappointing grey, and as I walked the rocks, boredom would transcend the hate, and I’d start to notice things like the urchin’s shrugging quills in the waiting pools. Reminding me of me. Might take an hour, but I’d settle and hunch back up the hill. Mum might ask where I’d been, how the water felt for swimming later. Dad would’ve already gone fishing, and Mum would’ve washed all the dishes, given the long drop a wipe down, sliced tomatoes and laid out a whole spread.
I am angry. Now. At him. Why can’t he think about someone else for a change? Don’t ever see him make dinner. Nope. Boots kicked off at the door, a vigorous hand wash and to the La-Z-Boy, stopping to make a rum and coke – ooh, and one for Mum. Gee, that’s nice of you. And there’s Mum, finishing off the harder parts of the ironing I can’t do, washing out the tub because he always has his bath at night, putting the spuds on, screaming ‘cause the peas boiled over again, “I turn my back for a minute and every bloody time …!”
The wardrobe. What about the wardrobe? His side, his salty, male smell, filled with work shirts and ties in all kinds of blues Mum chose for him. Push the wad of clothes aside and there, in the shelves, below the Wilbur Smiths, a stack of magazines. Go on, pull one out, you’ll see what I live with. Twats, splayed. Women, mouths hanging open, wanting it. Forums where people write in I have compulsively and horribly consumed, hating myself but going back for more, after school, when it’s just me and a bowl of ice cream in the silent house. Every sound might be a car coming up the drive, snapped, eyes finding me guilty. It’s his fault, and I feel sick and shitty, and why does he have these if he’s with Mum, and why doesn’t she throw them away? I try to put them back in the exact order I find them, even the angle of how much one edge sticks out. I always memorize the stack before sliding one out.
Mum’s side of the wardrobe smells like perfume. I like to sink my face into her clothes. Silky shirts, red coats, all smelling of Mum. Her wooden shelves have an old cheesecake container of buttons that’s good to shake, her hairdryer she lets me use, photo albums of their trip to Fiji, and what I also tell no one about – the small box of letters. Love letters written when Dad was on the farm and she was a big city girl, head teller at the Taupo BNZ – beat all the old timers to get the job and only 18, a grin that made everyone smile back. Mane of dark hair. She’s shy as, but there are even a few photos of her modelling (“Look at my awful thighs! God!” but still a little bit proud), dimples, flushed, green eyes sparkling. And the letters are Dad going on about how he can’t wait to see her this weekend, telling her about the farm, tailing the lambs, about the pheasant he shot, about water-skiing, every word aching with hope that she’ll want to be part of it.
The wind has turned, and I hear Dad move. He’s standing, a deep grey silhouette above me and the small, shifting dinghy. He twists and lifts his arm, “Better head back over there or we …” and a scudding wave hits the side of the boat, and I feel how big he is, how unforgiving the boat’s metal edges, and his ripe head tips, falling, my guts drop away and I’m moving towards him, but he’s so heavy and already the sound of hollow boat thudding into him, wool, Swanndri, flesh, he’s down by the motor. Sick fear rising. I grab the rail (he’s drummed into me don’t move in a boat unless you’re holding onto something) and step over the middle seat to him. He’s crumpled in the corner, and my heart is exploding as we bob towards the shore, wind dropped, glassy calm, like some smart-arsed punk saying, “What? What?”
His Paul-Newman-blue eyes stare at me, scared. I notice the folds of pink around them.
“Give me a hand, love.” He’s shaky, quiet. And I grab his hands and haul on him with everything I have. Everything. He grunts, jerks, releases my hand and levers himself onto the closest seat. His pants are wet down one side, and his face is the red it goes when he hasn’t taken his blood pressure pills.
“Are you okay?” I sit next to him. He laughs a little, rubbing his hip, shaking his head.
“Yeah, silly old bugger. Wasn’t expecting that. Jesus, thought I was gonna go over the side for a second there …”
And I remember how once Dad and I helped a neighbour’s cow give birth, and how the calf wouldn’t get up and couldn’t reach the udder ‘cause its legs were munted somehow. We got in the pen and tried to get the animal to stand, forgetting to watch for the mother. All her instincts powered up, and she attacked. Dad had swung around, buried his shoulder into her tonnage and screamed, “Get out! Now!”
I did. Then the old girl backed up and fair charged him. Nailed him. Sent him sailing over the fence. Landed flat on his back. Didn’t move for a while, and I got this gaping terror. The same feeling. Like I might lose him.
I put my arm around him now and squeeze on what I can of his shoulders.
“Youawright, Dad?”
“I’m alright. Just a bit of a fright, eh.” I could tell by his voice he heard me.
So we settle, share a cuppa from the thermos lid. The wind drops so the water is a canvas for slow circles where the trout are rising. Under the lavender indigo sky.
Dad sits, jigging his line sometimes, staring across the lake. We don’t talk for ages. I pull my hat low, nice and slow – it’s getting bloody cold. And I breathe slowly to not interrupt. This perfect moment, this high place, this sun a sinking fire melting to kiss the green.
“We’re pretty lucky, eh?” says Dad.
He reaches out a hand, hoping I’ll take it. “You and me, eh?” He’s tearing up. God, he always does that.
“My girl.”
My line drags on the rail as I reach for his hand and my chest fills, tight with love and anger as he squeezes and smiles.
My eyes are tears so I look at the bank, where the rocks are a wall that goes down into the muck, where the big trout wait.