51. Down to the Roots
Summer
The duck was out in front of the house again, nibbling grass. As Matiu and I approached, it started quacking excitedly and pounced. Ah. A slug. An enormous one, but no match for that determined little duck. I was learning something, I guessed, as I winced and looked away. I wasn’t sure, though, that I wanted that much information.
The old man wasn’t in the house as I’d expected, although the daylight was fading fast. He was sitting in the front yard instead, under a big tree with shiny leaves. Karen was beside him, and for once, she wasn’t talking. They were just sitting.
“Hi,” Karen said, and stood up. “This is a surprise. Where’d you find her, Matiu?”
“Most of the way up Mauau,” he said. “Brought her back for a bit of quiet.”
“This is the place,” Karen agreed. She didn’t look or sound nearly as perky as she had yesterday, though, as she leaned down, did the hand-on-shoulder, forehead-and-nose-touching thing with the old man—the hongi, that was called—and told him as she rose, “I’ll see you in a couple weeks.”
“Ma te wa,” Koro said.
Karen said, “I don’t want to hear that. I want to hear ‘Hei te ihu.’”
The old man smiled. His face was a map of wrinkles, and his smile was missing half its teeth. “Whichever it is. Go well.” He watched her walk to her car, then said, “Haere mai, Matiu. Come to say goodbye as well?”
“Yes,” Matiu said. “And to give you one last check after all the excitement.” He was unzipping a black backpack as he spoke, pulling out a stethoscope that he slung around his neck, and then a blood-pressure cuff.
Koro said, “You and Karen, eh. Still trying to keep me alive.”
“Illusion of control,” Matiu said, his tone light as ever. “I’m not always as logical as I’d like. Humor me.”
The old man did, and when Matiu was unfastening the blood-pressure cuff again, said, “Ticker’s still going for now, anyway.”
“Yeh,” Matiu said. “I promised Summer a sammie and a cup of tea. Sun’s setting. Want me to take you inside?”
I realized for the first time that the blanket in the old man’s lap was covering a wheelchair. “Nah,” he said. “I’m better outside, with the breeze and the birds. I’ll sit with Summer a wee while.”
“Five minutes,” Matiu said. “For the tea. And then—” He broke off.
“And then,” Koro said, “I’ll take a bit of help getting ready for bed. Make you feel better, eh.”
“It will,” Matiu said. His hand gripped the old man’s shoulder for a minute, and then he headed off the same way Karen had. A little blindly, maybe.
I sat beside Koro, and he said, “Getting harder for them to say goodbye.”
“Yes,” I said, and then, because if anyplace was safe, it was here, “If I’d known I wouldn’t see my mother again … I wish I’d said more. I wish I’d said everything.”
“I reckon she knew,” he said.
“I hope she did.” I had to swallow past the lump in my throat. “I hardly even felt it at the time. I was numb, I think. There was just too much. Too much pain. Too many … surprises. Now, though—it’s like it’s just happened, even though it’s been almost a year. Feeling again sounds good, but honestly, it just hurts, and I want to shut down, or I do shut down, because I’d rather be numb again. Which is weak. I know it’s weak.” When he didn’t answer, just sat there, I asked, “What was it that you said to Karen, and she said to you?”
“Ah,” he said. “She wanted me to say, ‘Until the next time we breathe together,’ and I said, ‘In time.’”
“Oh.” I considered. “Aren’t those the same?”
“Maybe not.” He leaned his hands on the knobby stick he held despite the wheelchair, looked up at the mountains, glowing pink in the sunset, and said, “You have some sadness, eh. It’s Roman, maybe.”
I said, “I didn’t come here to?—”
“Hard, not having much whanau around you,” he said. “Hard to be far from home. Hard to feel alone.”
“Have you ever done that?” I asked. “Been far away?”
“In the war. The second great war, that was.”
“You fought.”
“I did. A long time ago now. So many good men dead. So many buried far from their ancestors. A brave time. A sad time.”
“I sometimes forget that,” I admitted. “I think I’m the only one who’s suffered, and I know it’s nowhere close to true.”
“It’s no contest,” Koro said. “Pain comes to everybody. And when you feel what you feel, maybe you understand better how somebody else feels. Ki te kore nga putake e makukungia, e kore te rakau e tupu. If the roots of the tree are not watered, the tree will never grow.” Which meant … what? That you had to go deep? That you had to cry? What?
Because he didn’t ask, because he never would, I told him. Or maybe because I didn’t have a choice. The words just tumbled out. “Roman told me he loved me today. He said that scared him. And I ran away and hurt him. What made me do that? Somebody else hurt me, but that person wasn’t him. He was nothing like Roman. And I can’t stand …” I had to stop, look up at the mountains, and breathe. “I can’t stand that I did that. That I took his vulnerable heart, because that’s what it is, and … and stepped on it. But I didn’t feel like I could do anything else. I’m scared. I’m so … I’m scared.” Saying it was that thing again. Raw. Like all my nerve endings were exposed, and I had nothing to coat them with. I longed for the numbness, for the distance, but it wouldn’t come.
“Mm,” Koro said. “Reckon you’re still watering the roots of your tree, though. A vine clings, but it isn’t a tree. Roman isn’t one to want a vine. He may know a thing or two about being a tree.”
“He’s a strong man,” I said. “If I want a man again, he’s going to have to be a strong one. And a good one. I’d have said that I didn’t know what that meant. That none of us is really strong, or really good. That we’re all imperfect. It’s true, but …”
“But life is easier with a partner at your side,” the old man said. “One who’s trying as hard as you. Harder, even, sometimes. My wife, now … when I married her, my heart settled. Too much pain, and too much death, but when she sang …” He sighed. “The world was better. Not easy. But better.”
“You were ready for her,” I said.
“I was,” he said. “And I’m ready again.”
“No,” I said, the word bursting out of me.
“E tata mate, e roa taihoa,” he said. “Death comes closer every day, but by and by never comes nearer. Waiting too long, eh. Hoping to understand, hoping to know. There’s no knowing, only trying. Trying is hard, but trying is the only way.”
“I thought,” I said, doing my best to laugh, “that the wise saying was, ‘Do or do not. There is no try.’”
“No,” he said. “There’s always trying. Trying your best, eh.” He sighed. “Doing your best.”
I wanted to say, “So what’s your advice in my situation? Can you spell it out for me? Because I don’t understand.” But maybe there was no such thing as advice, either. Maybe the secret was that there was no certainty. Maybe there were just the thoughts, swirling in my head like the breeze that was picking up again as the day cooled. The wrinkled skin of the old man’s hands on his stick, fragile as tissue. The understanding that could only come from a heart that had bled and wept. A heart with some scars. And Matiu saying, “Come in the house, Summer, and have a bite to eat while I help Koro to bed.”
All of that was love, wasn’t it?
Murimuri aroha. Love that knows that everything ends.
Afterward, I drove home with Matiu again, and he asked, “Did it help, then?”
“Yes,” I said. “No. I don’t know.”
He smiled. I saw it in the dashboard light. “We chase wisdom,” he said. “But wisdom only comes when it’s ready to. The rest of the time, we have to blunder through.”