Chapter 3
A YEAR ONE FAILURE
Jade’s article appeared in the Herald the following Wednesday. He didn’t know that because she told him. He knew because he heard about it. All day long. Even the hardest training day of the week, full of high-intensity runs and match simulations, couldn’t quell the merriment.
Who’d Be a Hooker? the headline read. The subhead was even worse. My All Black Brother Fails the Speed-Dating Test.
Jade was sparkly, all right. She sparkled all over the thing.
Think you could outpull an All Black? it began.
If you can’t imagine it, you haven’t met my eldest brother, Blues hooker and skipper Zane Mahuta.
If you aspire to greater things than poor Zane, at least off the pitch, here’s a Dos and Don’ts list for you lads as you venture out into the wonderful world of Speed Dating.
DON’T:
Dress in pale-blue Mum jeans (in fairness, possibly the only kind that fit a hooker’s thighs), and trainers. And remember: showing ankles is out! Dig out those crew socks your granny gave you for Christmas.
Scowl like you’re facing South Africa in the haka. This is not an attractive look.
Show all the social grace of a rhinoceros as you bark out either, “What do you do for fun, then?” or, “Do you meet blokes online mostly, or just do things like this? You get to see how they look here, of course, which I reckon could save time.” No, Zane. Just no.
Speed dater Jasmine, 28, fit and blonde, who did not turn up in Mum jeans, told me, “Honestly? Worst eight minutes of the night, other than the bloke who asked if I wanted to skip all this and go to his instead. I couldn’t decide if Zane was just here looking to hook up, but then why the fake name?
Seems like he could pull easily enough after the match with the other boys on the team, and all parties could head home happy.
Or do you think that’s as good as he gets? ”
Ouch.
DO:
Show some actual interest. Smiling could also be an idea. Work those facial muscles!
Watch the grooming, facial-hair-wise. A haircut wouldn’t come amiss, either.
Looking like you just came from the sheds after a hard workout doesn’t do much for us ladies.
And all right, I’ll go there: a bit of manscaping is always appreciated.
Do I know whether Zane covered that base? Bite your tongue. He’s my brother.
Have a wee peek in the windows of Rodd & Gunn for inspiration, if your wardrobe hasn’t evolved within this century. And no, your polo shirt monogrammed with the name of your engineering firm (or your sponsor-provided Adidas T-shirt) is not catnip for the ladies.
I ran a poll on that facial hair in order to be even more helpful in your search for love.
First place: neatly trimmed heavy scruff (not just one single missed shave!) Second place: short, neat beard.
Third place: clean shave, assuming you have a chin.
Coming in dead last: Neckbeard that makes a woman wonder whether you clip your toenails.
It’s scientific, because I wrote down the number of votes and everything.
Heavy sigh. Honestly, my brother is a prince of a guy—well, at least a jack of a guy. He’s agreed to let me pass him along to you as a bad example, hasn’t he? But alas, it’s all too obvious that he hasn’t had to work to land a woman in much too long.
Me? I came away happy with three matches (coffee dates to come!), and let’s just say that I probably look too much like my brothers.
(They grow us tall and sturdy in Hawke’s Bay.) The All Black?
No matches at all. Of course, I’m not sure if that’s because nobody liked him, or because he refused to check “Yes” on any of his dates and missed out on any matches from less choosy ladies.
Better luck next time, bro.
So far, Zane had had five sticks of deodorant left in his locker.
Also three combs and two razors. Which was fine.
He’d be set for months, and some of the boys had pretty good taste, deodorant-wise.
He was willing to bet, though, that a good half of those items had come from his two younger brothers, who’d fallen all over themselves laughing and reading the story aloud in the sheds.
He was sure the deodorant supply would have been even higher if he hadn’t been the skipper, and if he hadn’t had such a quelling stare.
“Why didn’t Jade ask me?” his brother Jack had asked. “I’m the best-looking. Practically a metrosexual. I can dance and everything.”
“You wouldn’t have been as funny,” Gordon, the middle brother, had answered. “Whereas Zazza’s a natural. A natural because he’s so not a natural. You and I have some poise. Grace, even. Charm. Like that. We’d have slayed, and what would Jade have written about then?”
Marko Sendoa, the glowering flanker who tackled even harder than Zane, said, “Jealous of our manly natures, that’s what you boys are. Never mind. When you mature a bit more and actually have to shave, you may hit the mark yourselves.”
“What he said,” Zane said. “In the Rural Games, now, Marko and I would rule. The coal-shoveling comp? Gumboot throwing?”
“Speed fencing,” Marko said.
“You’re joking,” a center named Basil—nickname Bonzo—said. Australian. “You can’t know how to fence.”
“Building fence,” Marko said. “What d’you think we are, sophisticates? We’d have our pick of the girls after those events for all that. They wouldn’t care if we were wearing the right deodorant, either.” Which caused heaps more sledging, and some jokes about sheep.
Zane drove home not thinking about his hair, his manscaping choices, or his conversational abilities, because he didn’t care. He thought about playing the Reds in Brisbane on Saturday instead, running through the match-day plan in his mind. In other words, he did his job.
The minute he stepped inside the house, he had to shift gears again, because Scarlett met him at the door with a determined look on her face. He was very familiar with that look, which usually accompanied the words, “Dad, you need to …”
“Dad,” she informed him before he’d even got his trainers off, “you have to do something about Georgia.”
“What’s the problem?” he asked, which was the moment Georgia came running up and threw herself into his arms. He lifted her up, and she clung to him, buried her face in his neck, and said, “You smell very nice. I love you so, so much, Daddy.”
See? One woman approved of his grooming standards. Unfortunately, she was five years old. “I love you too, Georgie girl,” he said. “What’s happened, though? Somebody kill another rat?”
Georgia gasped. “I didn’t kill Gladys! I didn’t! I didn’t!” Working herself up again.
Scarlett sighed. “Dad. You’re hopeless. Maybe you should read about emotional intelligence. I could share the lessons from my Social and Emotional Learning class.”
“Or,” Zane said, “I could see where I’ve gone wrong and adjust my strategy. That works, too. The rat was a joke, Georgie. A bad one. What’s the trouble, then?”
Duncan wandered in chewing on an apple. “Hi, Dad.” He came close enough for Zane to ruffle his hair, and that was all. But then, he was eight. “I had an idea today. Brilliant, I think.”
Zane took a better look at him. That had come out a bit too casual. “And what was your brilliant idea?”
“Dad,” Scarlett said. “Georgia was first!”
“But, see,” Duncan said, “this is for Georgia. My idea is, we should go to Brissy with you tomorrow. Well, not with you, but we could go when you do, and Nan could go with us. We’d miss two school days, but it would be educational, because it’s Australia.
We could study the wildlife, and it would take Georgia’s mind off her problems.”
“You’ve been back at school less than two weeks,” Zane said. “That’s a no. You can read about Aussie wildlife, how’s that? Watch a film. There you are. Sorted.”
“It’s not immersive,” Scarlett said. “Doing things in person is more immersive. Like, you could read about rugby and watch it on TV, but you won’t learn how to actually play rugby from that.”
“I’m sure that’s all true,” Zane said. “And yet you still have to go to school. Suppose somebody tells me what Georgia’s problem is.”
Georgia said, “I had another stomachache. My stomach hurts all the time.”
“Maybe it’s her appendix,” Duncan said. “Except Nan took her to the doctor today, and he said it wasn’t her appendix.”
“It’s probably something mysterious,” Scarlett said. “A rare disease.”
Zane’s Nan was here now, wiping her hands on a tea towel. “It’s a not-rare disease, is what. Called the I-Don’t-Want-To-Go-To-School-Today Disease. That’s what I think, and that’s what the doctor thinks, too. She works herself up, that’s all. Tea’s ready. Steak and Guinness pie.”
Zane had finally got his trainers off, anyway.
He didn’t say, “My meal plan doesn’t include meat pies,” because, (a), saying it hadn’t made any difference so far, and (b), complaining to the grandmother who was spending her golden years looking after your kids was a dick move.
He thought, I’ll eat the insides and feel noble about skipping the crust, and said, “Five minutes. I need to talk to Georgia a minute.”
It took a couple of false starts, once they were on the couch, to get to the issue. When Zane had a problem, he identified it, and then he addressed it. Unfortunately, not all kids came in that model. Finally, though, he came up with something that might work.
“When you think about school,” he said, “does your tummy hurt?”
“Yes,” Georgia said, nodding for emphasis. “It hurts so much.”
“When does it hurt most when you’re actually at school? At lunchtime?”
“Noooo,” she said, pausing to consider. “Lunch is good, and recess is good, and free learning time is good, in the morning, because I can do puzzles or play with bricks and things. My tummy doesn’t hurt then.”
“Aha,” Zane said. “When does it start to hurt?”
“At reading time.” She stared at him with big brown eyes, her mouth drooping in tragic fashion. “At reading time, it hurts very much. I think I must be allergic to reading. When you’re allergic, you feel sick, and that’s how I feel. And sometimes with maths, when it’s on the big board.”
“Hmm,” he said. “How’s your reading going, then?”
An enormous, gusty sigh. “Terrible.”
“Terrible how? D’you have to read about the … the building of the Egyptian pyramids? Quantum mechanics? The life cycle of the roundworm?”
“I don’t even know what those are,” she wailed.
“I’m s’posed to be able to read easy things, and Caitlin can read some of them, and Francesca can read all of them and bigger books, too, and even some boys can read them, but I can’t!
I can’t read at all! I’m going to fail Year One, because it’s too hard, and I can’t do it! ”
“Well, to be fair,” he said, “you’ve only been there a few months.”
“You don’t understand,” she said. “I don’t get a star!
I don’t ever get a star, except four times, and Francesca gets a star almost every time!
And we’re s’posed to read a book along with the computer with our parent every night, because Ms. Fairburn reads them into the computer and puts a beep to turn the page, and you’re s’posed to follow the words with your finger.
I have to do it with Nan instead of you because of work, except sometimes Nan can’t and Duncan helps me—but I still can’t read, and it makes my stomach hurt very much.
So I think I should stay home with Nan instead.
I’m not clever enough for school, and it makes me too sad, and my stomach always hurts.
” This last part came out in a burst of trembling-voiced honesty.
“Have you talked to Ms. Fairburn about this?” You encouraged your children to solve their problems in a mature way. Proactive. Calm. Direct. All that. Rather than, for instance, solving their problems on the playground with their fists, which had been more his own style.
“No,” Georgia said. “Because then she’d know for sure that I can’t read, and I can sort of pretend to read now, because I remember what the books said. The ones on the computer. But if I told her I can’t read, maybe she’d say I should stay home instead.”
“Sounds to me,” he said, “like we’d better go talk to Ms. Fairburn together. You can explain the problem, and I’ll be the moral support.”
“What’s the moral … sport?”
“I nod at you and say, ‘Go on, Georgia, and explain how you’re feeling,’ and you say all that, and Ms. Fairburn tells you …
whatever she tells you. Which I don’t think will be that you’re not clever enough for school and should stay home.
I expect she’ll say that some kids are ready to read sooner than others.
” The teacher had certainly sounded reasonable when he’d talked to her, husky voice and all, but was she pressuring the kids too hard?
Was she giving out those stars to everybody else, but not his daughter?
Why? His blood started heating at the thought—nothing could make you as irrational as anything affecting your kid—and he cooled it down with some deep breathing.
“That’s what we’ll do,” he told Georgia.
“Soon as I get back from Aussie. Meanwhile, you’ll do your best, and know that I’ll always be happy with your best. OK? ”
She snuggled into his side and sighed. “OK. But I wish you weren’t going away.”
There you were. The guilt, as per usual. But what else was he meant to do? This was the job he knew, the job that provided for his kids. “I know,” he said. “But I’ll be home on Sunday.”
“OK,” she said with another sigh. “Maybe my stomach feels a tiny bit better now.”
“Better enough for steak and Guinness pie?”
“Yes,” she said. “Because my stomach likes meat pie.” Then jumped up and hopped on one foot a couple of times. “And after dinner, I can show you my hopping, because there’s hopscotch at school, and I learned how to do it.”
“After dinner,” he said, “I’ll be glad to watch. I’ll read with you, too. How’s that?”
See? He knew how to talk to women. Five-year-old women, anyway. Five-year-old women who actually liked him.
A narrow market.