60. Stars
Roman
Outside my windows—in Dunedin or in Auckland, because I didn’t have time for the Catlins house just now—autumn turned to winter. I didn’t much want to say it, cheesy as it sounded, but in my heart, it was all about Summer. Still not living with me, but with me more nights than she wasn’t. Cooking dinner with me, and, every time she could, driving me to and collecting me from the airport. She never waited in the car. She came inside every time, and when I came down the steps from the plane and found her waiting in the terminal, her face lighting up at the sight of me before she broke into a run and leaped into my arms—that was a thrill every single time.
I’d been married twice, and this felt nothing like the same. It was quiet, and it was peace. It was understanding. It was, in fact, joy. My life was the same, and it wasn’t the same at all. And, yes, I wanted more.
Accept the things to which fate binds you, Marcus Aurelius said, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart. I was finally doing the second part. I wasn’t so sure about the first.
Oh, and Esther? Esther, as far as I could tell, had no opinion. She also never accepted a lift. If Summer drove me to the airport, Esther drove in her own car. An island unto herself, Esther. An enigma.
The end of June came, and Matariki with it—the middle of winter and the Maori New Year, when the constellation rose and became visible. The days would get longer from here on out, and the spring would come again. Something to celebrate. Matiu and his family invited Summer and me to a dawn ceremony, and we traipsed down a steep, sandy track on the Otago Peninsula in the cold and dark, Poppy carrying the sleeping baby, Kai, on her back while Matiu carried the next oldest, Isobel, and looked happy to do it. As for me? I held Summer’s hand and was glad to be here. Not really part of Matiu’s whanau, but accepted into it all the same.
But then, the three older kids weren’t Matiu’s, either, except that they were. Life was complicated like that. At this moment, we were arriving at a sandy beach, joining a small crowd of other people, visible in the starlight. Whanau and friends, I guessed. I wrapped Summer and me in the blanket I’d brought and surrendered to the cold and the dark, the sound of the wind and the waves, until Matiu said, “Look to the northeast,” and pointed, and we did.
“There,” he said, “the Southern Cross,” and, yeh, I knew that one. Just over the horizon. “And to the east, Orion’s belt,” he said, and Hamish said, “I see it.”
“Good,” Matiu said. “Can you tell us how to find Matariki, then?”
Hamish studied the sky for a minute, and Matiu didn’t jump in. Finally, the boy said, “It’s to the left and down a bit, I think. It’s all those bright stars, all in a group. Like a family.”
“Well done,” Matiu said, and put a hand on Hamish’s head. “They’re clear and bright, eh. That means it will be a good year.”
“Is that true?” Hamish asked.
“Yes,” Matiu said. “It’s a good year, because we’re all here together, and we’ll make it good for each other. That’s what whanau does. And up there in the sky—those are our ancestors. That’s part of this day, too.”
“That means people who are dead, Livvy,” Hamish said.
“I know,” Olivia said. “I always know, and you always tell me anyway!”
“Idon’t always know, though,” Poppy said. “I want to hear more, Matiu. Tell us.”
“When somebody we love dies,” Matiu said, “somebody in our whanau, we may say we lost them, but they’re not really lost. Their spirit, their wairua, lives on in us, and we can see it at night, shining from the sky. We can see their wairua in the stars, and remember them. Because when somebody dies, their wairua goes all the way to the Far North, where it slides down the ancient pohutukawa and across the sea. That’s why one of the stars in Matariki is called Pohutukawa. She connects us to those who have gone before. The stars are like a blanket, you could think. Your ancestors watching over you, keeping you warm.”
“Only if you’re Maori, though,” Hamish said. “You can go live in the stars after you’re dead, Matiu, and so can Kai, but Mummy can’t, and Livvy and Isobel and I can’t, and Grandad Charlie can’t. He’s very sick, but when he dies, he’ll just be dead.”
“No he won’t,” Olivia said. “He’ll be a star, too, because he is very special.”
“He can’t,” Hamish insisted. “He’s not Maori. So this makes me sad.”
“He can too!” Olivia’s voice was rising now.
“I think,” Matiu said, “that we all live in the stars in the end, Maori or not, because we all have a wairua. That’s not only for Maori.”
“Yes,” Poppy said. “That’s the special light that shines from us. We have a body, but we have a spirit, too, and our spirit never dies. Grandad Charlie will be in my heart forever, and he’ll be in yours. Why can’t he be in the stars?”
“You can’t just make something be true because you want it, though,” Hamish said.
“Yes you can,” Olivia insisted. “If you want it very, very much. If you want it forever.”
“You’re both right,” Matiu said. “But your spirit is a true thing. Your feelings are true, too. When you look at the stars, you can remind yourself to feel the people you love in your heart. You can touch their wairua with your heart, and it can make your own wairua shine brighter, because we’re part of everyone who made us, and they’re part of us. That’s the way life works. We’re only one little piece of it, the same way a thread is only one piece of a weaving, but the whole thing together makes the picture.”
“If you’re Maori,” Hamish said.
“If you’re anybody,” Matiu said. “And here comes the dawn. That means it’s time to sing.”
I listened to it all, not that the knowledge was new, and didn’t take much from it, other than guessing that the kids were about to lose their great-grandfather and this was as good a way as any to start thinking about it, and being glad that Summer was here with me to hear it, too. She needed to feel that Delilah was still with her, and her mum as well, though she almost never spoke of her. She and Delilah texted nearly every day, and Summer never cried again, but I knew she felt Delilah’s absence. And, I was sure, her mum’s. It’s not easy to be alone.
So that was the way I looked at it. Until the daffodils bloomed.
Summer
On a Sunday in late August, I was cooking dinner in Daisy and Gray’s kitchen. Daisy had a whole four days off from the hospital, and she and Gray had flown the coop. To Fiordland, in fact. “Best time to see it,” Gray had told me the week before. “No crowds, less rain, and best of all—no sandflies.”
“We’re running the Milford Track,” Daisy said. “Fifty-three kilometers. Should be brilliant.”
“Brilliantly horrible,” Frankie muttered. “You have an odd idea of recreation.”
“True,” Daisy said serenely. “Fortunately, Gray and I have the same odd idea.”
Later, though, Daisy had come down to the caravan and said, “If you were around a bit next weekend, it would be good. Frankie gets wrapped up in her work, Priya gets wrapped up in her play, and Dove … I worry a bit about Dove. And Xena, of course. Somebody has to give Xena some love, or she’ll pine away missing Gray.”
“No worries,” I said. “I’ll make dinner for them, shall I? And make sure Xena gets fed.”
“Perfect,” Daisy said. “You can ask one of the girls to cook, but do eat dinner with them if you can. Invite Roman if you like. It’s odd,” she went on, sitting down for once—Daisy was normally busy as a fantail—and accepting the cup of tea I offered. “I’ve never liked very masculine men. In the past.”
“I can imagine,” I said. “After Mount Zion. As Delilah would say, the cult of the patriarchy. But then there’s Gray.”
“Yeh,” Daisy said. “Gray. He was a surprise to me all the way. That he’d want to help, and that I’d let him. I think it’s because he’s so bloody secure in his masculinity. When you’ve been an All Black, you don’t have much left to prove.”
“He’s a comforting person,” I said. “I can see that. And not … overbearing. Or a baby.”
“Exactly,” she said. “And Roman’s the same way. Solid, I’d call it. Quiet strength, maybe. Doesn’t feel the need to push a woman around just to show he can.”
“That’s one reason I fell in love with him, you’re right, although at first—he was pretty insistent at first, after our accident.”
“Well,” Daisy said, “that doesn’t really count. Of course he was, when you and Delilah were both injured.”
I hesitated, then said, “OK, I’m not used to talking about my feelings, but I was numb for a long time and now I’m not, and I think I need the practice expressing my thoughts. Do you mind?”
“I’m not especially expressive myself,” Daisy said with a wry smile. “Go for it.”
I put my hands between my thighs, dropped my head, and thought a minute. “I think,” I said slowly, “it’s that he hides as much of himself as I do, and for the same reasons.”
“That he’s been hurt,” Daisy said.
“Yes. Like you and me.” I looked up, then, into her eyes. “I’ve felt at times, with you, that I can’t share, because you’re so strong, you won’t understand. Before, that is, when I was more fragile. But that’s exactly the way Delilah says she feels about me, and it’s not true. Just because I don’t express it, that doesn’t mean I never feel it.”
“Scared,” Daisy said. “Lonely.”
“Yes. Afraid I can’t do it anymore. That’s what I found in Roman, I think. He understands it, and it doesn’t weaken me to share it, because he needs the same thing from me.”
“That’s it,” Daisy said. “So why are you still here with me?”
“Ah.” I smiled, and felt the twist of my mouth. “How long were you alone after you left Mount Zion?”
“Over a decade.”
“Well, that would be it. I was married all that time.”
“I was married, too,” she said. “That didn’t mean I didn’t have to be strong.”
“Oh.” I considered that. “OK. Huh.”
“When you’re ready,” she said, “I think you’ll know. At a certain point, I just didn’t want to go back to my own bedroom again. When I finished work, I wanted to see him, even if I was working nights and he was working days. When I had a hard shift, I wanted him around afterward. Not to talk, necessarily. To go for a run. To hold me. Like that.”
“Right,” I said. “Well … thanks.”
She stood up. “We’re both making progress, I reckon. You asked to rent the caravan, and I’m asking you to help with the girls next weekend. Baby steps, dependence-wise.”
She and Gray were due back tonight, though, and, yes, I’d missed being with Roman. He’d been in Wellington all last week, had come to dinner on Friday and down to the caravan with me afterward for some very constrained and silly lovemaking—the bed was tiny, and Roman had kept bumping his elbow—but had canceled on dinner yesterday, and I wasn’t sure why. It was the first time he hadn’t wanted to see me in all these months. Part of me thought, It was bound to happen sooner or later, and the other half tried not to read too much into it.
He hadn’t even called me. He’d sent a text instead. Heaps going on. Going to stay in and work tonight. I’d planned to go over there this evening to spend the night with him, since Daisy and Gray would be home, but was this one of those times when you held back instead? I didn’t know how to do this.
I was still pondering it when my phone buzzed. I stopped tenting my rack of lamb with foil and picked up. The gate.
“Hello?” I asked.
“It’s Esther,” I heard. “Can I come down?”
What the heck? I said, “Uh … sure,” pushed the button, told myself, You’ll find out when she’s here, and mechanically straightened the jonquils in their vase on the breakfast bar. “Mash the potatoes for me, will you?” I asked Dove.“Oh—the green beans.” I pulled them from the oven. Roasted, not burnt. Right. Focus.
This didn’t feel right, though. The cold was seeping into me, and I couldn’t make it stop. It hadn’t been nearly enough time to feel the way I felt with Roman, and I’d been so … so unguarded. So careless.
Cease to hope, and you will cease to fear.
As always, I’d fallen short on that one. How could you ignore that golden bird, right there beyond the window? Or those stars in the sky, telling you they could be your blanket? Telling you that you were loved?
How?