31. Superhero Moves
Roman
It took me most of the drive from Tauranga Airport to Katikati, peaceful as the setting was, to shake off what Summer had told me. It was a good thing that bastard was in prison, because if I’d met him, I wouldn’t have answered for what I’d do. She was so much more than the hair and the body and the eyes and the voice, but I’d bet that was all he’d seen. Of course, the hair and the body and the eyes and the voice were still there as well, and they were still knocking me out.
Complicated.
Nothing like descending on dozens of members of your not-actual-family to refocus the mind, though. I followed the GPS up a winding road from the sea toward the foot of steep hills for a few kilometers, and Delilah said, “So does this guy live on a farm, or what? Because these look like farms. Or orchards, I guess. What is that?”
“Kiwifruit,” I said. “Grown on vines and trellised.”
“Oh.” She still sounded dubious. “I thought Hemi Te Mana was a billionaire.”
“He is,” I said. “Doesn’t mean his granddad is.”
“Your granddad, you mean,” Delilah said. “You’d better practice. I thought Kiwis were family-focused, though, and that Maori were even more that way. Wouldn’t he have bought something fancier for his grandfather?”
“Dunno,” I said. “You could ask him.” And wondered how that conversation would go. Delilah confronting Hemi Te Mana … fireworks ahead for sure.
“Is it going to be all, like, excessively Maori, too?” Delilah asked.
“How would he know?” Summer asked, at the same time I asked, “What’s excessively Maori?”
“I don’t know,” Delilah said. “I’m a tourist.”
“So am I,” I said. “More or less. We’ll have to find out.”
There were so many cars parked along the road, I couldn’t get close. I said, “I’ll drop you, then find a carpark.”
“Oh, that’s hardly awkward at all,” Delilah said. “Two total strangers who aren’t anybody’s grandkids showing up.”
“We can walk,” Summer said.
“Shoes and all?” I asked.
“I didn’t think you noticed,” she said.
“I noticed,” I said. “Pretty.”
“Bet you didn’t notice mine,” Delilah said. “And I told you, Summer was a WAG. She wore stilettos. I couldn’t walk in those heels, but never mind, because I’m not wearing them. I’ve decided not to feel awkward about this, by the way. I’m going to observe. Ask questions. Maybe take notes. Journalists are never awkward. Do you have a notebook and pen? I didn’t bring mine.”
“No,” I said. “Take notes in your head.” But she’d succeeded in distracting me, and when I did park and we climbed out, Summer took my hand.
“Time to start pretending,” she said, when I looked down at her.
I said, “You realize I’ve done heaps of hard things,” and she said, composedly as you like, “That doesn’t make them easy,” and didn’t drop my hand. I felt her touch in more than my palm. I felt it in my body. It felt good, and it wasn’t close to enough.
I wasn’t a misfit, I reminded myself as we headed down the hill. I wasn’t looking in through lighted windows at happy families laughing together, at fathers lifting baby sons into the air. I was a competent, successful man. I’d even been married. Of course, I wasn’t married now, but never mind.
Our actual arrival was a bit of an anticlimax. Yeh, I could hear music and that laughter and chat from somewhere behind the house, and I could smell roasting pork, too, but the living being that greeted us was a duck. A very small white duck, waddling forward in that self-important way ducks do, quacking its head off and wearing, for some reason, a little black vest fastened around its middle with a button.
“It’s like a butler,” Summer said. “Well, that’s completely charming.” She let go of my hand, then, because she was bending down and giving the duck a pat, which made it shake its tail feathers in delight and made me smile. When she stood up again, the duck started waddling and quacking its way around the back of the house, and Summer said, “I guess we follow it,” and took my hand again until we came to a gate at the side of the house.
“Duck in, you think,” Summer said, “or duck out?”
“Out,” I said, “as they’ve had it out.”
We closed the gate behind us, and the duck quacked indignantly and waddled back and forth along the gate as if it were patrolling the perimeter. We turned to head toward the party, which was when I heard a whirring of wings and the duck flew in front of us, landed, and kept leading the way.
“That is one determined duck,” Delilah said. I didn’t answer, because I was distracted by the crowd. Adults of all ages chatted and laughed in little groups on the grass and on a concrete patio edged by a low wall and a little orchard and green lawns beyond it, nothing flash about any of it. Teenage girls perched on the wall and chatted, teenage boys slouched around looking cool, and little kids ran amongst them all. At the moment, a little girl with curly ginger hair was running hard toward us and waving a long strip of birthday banner behind her like a kite. Black letters on a gold background, saying 100 years loved over and over again. She was being chased by a littler girl, maybe three or so, with darker red curls, and the duck, on seeing them, abandoned us and waddled after them as fast as its little legs would carry it. A barely-walking baby boy with skin about my color and some coppery red in his own dark curls staggered past in a futile attempt to keep up, until he fell hard to his hands and knees in front of us and hesitated a moment, screwing up his face, before letting out a wail.
Summer didn’t hesitate. She scooped up the baby, cuddled him, and said, “That was some good walking. You’re a big boy, aren’t you?” Upon which he gave her a beaming smile, showing four pearly white teeth, and said, “Walk!”
A woman with, yes, ginger curls rushed up then, reached for the little boy, and said, “Thanks. Olivia! Isobel! Come back!” The littler girl turned, but the older girl kept running, banner and all. The ginger woman said, “At least she keeps me fit,” and set off after her, scooping up the younger girl with the arm that wasn’t carrying the baby.
I said, “Let me,” and ran to catch up with the banner-waver, who was at the gate now and determinedly attempting to work the locking mechanism. I only realized that I’d never picked up a kid until I did it. She was maybe five or six, and when I grabbed her and swung her around, she squawked and said, “No! I was running! I want to run in a circle around the house, because circles make you dizzy and I like being dizzy. And I’m too big for picking up.”
“Odd,” I said, “as I’m picking you up right now.”
She looked at me indignantly. “That just means you’re bigger. That doesn’t mean you’re s’posed to pick me up!”
“Oh,” I said. “I could put you down and we could hold hands instead.”
“I don’t like to hold hands and walk slow,” she said. “I like to run by myself. I’m a very fast runner.”
“I noticed,” I said. “Right, then. We’ll compromise. I’ll put you down, we’ll walk back very fast, and we can both hold the banner. I’m guessing that’s your great-granddad’s, eh.”
“No,” she said. “It’s Koro’s. OK. But I get to walk in front.”
“Done.” I set her down. She wasn’t wearing a party dress or whatever a person might think. She had on a sort of blue costume with a hood and blue wings on her back, but they weren’t fairy wings. “What are you being?” I asked. “With that thing you’re wearing?”
“Blue Beetle,” she answered. “Because he can fly and he can also fight, and he’s very strong, and I’m very strong and I can fight and I wish I could fly. There are superheroes who can only fly and only fight, but that’s stupid. I want to do both things.”
“Obviously,” I said. The ginger woman was still standing with Delilah and Summer, so I went to join them, but somebody else got there first. Matiu.
The little girl asked me, “What superpower do you want best? Flying or fighting? You can have other things too, but they’re boring, except making fire, but Mummy and Matiu won’t let me make fire. They won’t even let me light a match.” She sighed.
I said, “I have to think about it. Mmm … swimming, maybe.”
“That’s not a superpower,” she said, swinging around to look at me and frowning mightily. “You could have invisibility, maybe. Then you could listen to everybody’s secret plans.”
Matiu said, “Roman. Hi. Glad you came.”
“I’m talking to him,” the girl informed him. “You aren’t s’posed to interrupt.”
“Excuse me,” Matiu said. “My daughter Olivia. Olivia, this is Roman. Thanks for catching her. She likes to run.”
“Especially if I’m being Blue Beetle,” she said. “People can’t actually fly even in a costume unless they have a jet pack, so running’s the closest. I asked for a jet pack for Christmas, but I didn’t get one. I got a special sliding thing that is wet and you can put it on the hill and go very fast down it on your stomach, but that’s not flying. It just feels a little bit like flying. Mummy says jet packs aren’t real things you can buy, but I saw it on telly and the person was flying, so I don’t think that’s true.”
“They’re real,” I said. “But they’re very expensive. They cost as much as …” I tried to think what comparison would register with a kid her age. “About ten cars,” I decided on. “And you can’t fly very far at all, because the jet pack can’t carry enough fuel.”
“Then they should put more fuel in it,” she said.
Matiu said. “That’s probably a battery, or whatever makes the thing go. If there’s not enough power in the jet pack to keep you off the ground, there isn’t, full stop.”
“Because magic isn’t real,” Olivia said. “I thought it was real, but now I know it’s not.” She sighed.
I said, “Fortunately, science is almost as good as magic. What science says is, if you made the jetpack carry more fuel—a bigger battery—it would be too heavy to wear. Too heavy to stay aloft. It’s an engineering problem.”
“What’s that?” Olivia asked.
“How things work,” I said, “and how to make them work better. With science.”
“I could make them work better,” she said. “I would try and try until I did it.”
“You probably could,” I said, “as that’s exactly what it takes. Trying and trying until you find an answer. Maybe you’ll be the one who figures out how to help people fly.”
She said, “I have to, because Matiu says it’s not good to fight, especially because it means he has to be a doctor and fix them, so running is about all there is.” She sighed heavily. “And swimming is a silly superpower, because people can already swim.”
“Not under the sea, they can’t,” I said. “Not without scuba gear. And not with dolphins and whales and sharks.”
“If you swim with sharks,” Olivia said, “they will eat you. Obviously.”
“The reason for the superpower,” I said. “Obviously. I’d have a … a protective suit.”
She nodded. “Like Blue Beetle, except if the suit is heavy, you couldn’t get up out of the water, since magic isn’t real and you need science instead. That’s how bad guys kill people. They tie concrete blocks to their feet, and then they can’t get out of the water unless they can get untied. Maybe your superpower could also be untying things.”
“There you are,” I said. “Another engineering problem. I’d need a very strong suit that was also very light.”
“Or you could have knives that would come out of your suit,” she said, “so you could cut the ropes. If you had knives, you could also fight. Even though Matiu might have to fix you.”
“I would,” Matiu said. “No knives.”
Olivia sighed. “I know. You already told me about one million times!”
“Right,” I said. “Engineering it is, then. Pound it.” I put out my fist, and she smashed hers into it with all her force, then said, “I need to go see Koro now. He always has lollies, and he says he has extra today, because it’s his birthday. But the lollies are only for kids, so you can’t have any.”
“And neither can you,” Matiu said, “as we’re going to eat soon.”
“Matiu,” Olivia said, putting her hands on her hips, “I can eat lollies and eat dinner. I have a very big stomach. Look.” She took a breath and shoved it out.
Matiu inspected it, only the twitch at the corner of his mouth betraying his amusement. “It’s big, all right,” he said. “Room in there for dinner and cake and lollies. But we’ll eat the dinner first.”
She said, “You’re very interested in rules. Like Mrs. Hobbes. She’s my teacher,” she told me, “and she’s always talking about rules. Rules, rules, rules. Over and over.” She waved her hand to emphasize her point. “I don’t like rules.”
“I see that,” I said.
“I need to go find my sister,” she told me next. “Because she wants to hold the other end of the sign and sing the song I made up for Koro, and Koro will want to hear the song, because he likes singing, and he likes singing from his mokopuna best of all.”
“He does,” Matiu said. “Off you go, then.”
He watched her run off and said, “She can’t actually get far, as long as the gate’s locked and her fingers aren’t strong enough to unlock it, but you never want Olivia out of your sight. Slippery as an eel and twice as determined.”
“I noticed,” I said. “She calls you ‘Matiu.’”
“I’m her stepdad,” he said. “Unfortunately.” When I stared at him, he smiled ruefully and said, “Unfortunate because I’d rather be their dad, but he’s still around. Bit of an arsehole.” He paused, then added deliberately, “Like yours.”
“Is he here?” I asked.
“Oh, yeh. Whinging about the place somewhere. He’s borrowed money from half the crowd by now, I’m sure. Don’t give him any. Hemi will pay them back, but …”
“Bridge too far,” I said, “Hemi paying me back, but no worries, I won’t be doing either thing. Giving money to Daniel, or asking for it from Hemi. I also won’t be calling him ‘Dad.’”
“Neither would I,” Matiu said. “Come on. I’ll introduce you. And your … girlfriend, of course.”
“You’re thinking that changed fast,” I said. I wanted to tell him that Summer wasn’t my girlfriend. I wasn’t used to lying, and I wasn’t enjoying it. But otherwise, why had I brought her?
“Nah, mate,” Matiu said. “Fast works. Let’s go. And if you’re worried, don’t be. You’ll be the birthday present Koro wants most, and as far as what anybody else wants? I don’t care, and neither should you. Koro’s what matters today, and almost everyone here knows it. Other than your sister and dad, of course.” He gave me his charming white smile again. “There are ants at every picnic. Pity these ants happen to be yours.”