Chapter 3 The Bends
the bends
When the world feels wrong, like stepping off a boat and still feeling ghostly waves. Like surfacing too fast, lungs tight, head spinning.
My brain stops. Full stops.
Then my mouth opens without warning. A short, misplaced laugh slices through the gravity. “Surely your grandfather would notice I don’t look like him?”
Take it back.
Especially the laugh.
How did he die?
A question I won’t ask.
I need a man to play my dead brother.
The table rattles. The coffee sways. And I can’t stop laughing.
I feel sick.
Trent murmurs, “If someone fits the shape of a memory, Grandpa fills in the rest. He thinks my brother is still . . . that he’s just travelling. And he wishes he’d return home. He wants him home.”
You can’t bring the dead back to life with lies. Can’t bring the dead back to life at all.
My throat hurts.
I’m still laughing.
My reaction is too much. I see it on his face, the way he holds my gaze. At first like a hand of offered support, like he’s saying ‘it’s okay you’re shocked’, but then his frown deepens. Like he’s wondering why I’m still shaking, still laughing, still outraged.
He can’t know why.
He doesn’t know why.
The idea of playing that part. Taking that place . . .
Trent’s gaze grows limper with every passing second. Disappointment. Deflation. I’m not right for the job after all.
I don’t want to be right for such a job! My stomach is heaving now at the thought. I can taste the bile. I can taste regret.
And I can taste the sourness of rejection. I felt it earlier, and it’s back again. A tighter tug this time. My chair screeches as I stand.
His hold on my gaze tightens again and through it I feel a fiery pulse. From limp to relentless. His gaze pierces, hooks, promises to pull. But I don’t want to be caught.
I shake my head and rock on my heel. “We shouldn’t do lies like this.”
“Why?” His paper comes up and down against the table. Not angrily. Like a judge’s hammer. “Why can’t I want him to laugh again? Why can’t a lie be worth those smiles? Why can’t I make his last dream come true?”
His voice is steady, unwavering. I’m not.
I walk away, but I feel his gaze following me. Or is it a line he might yank to flip me back towards him?
How can a fleeting moment, such a fresh connection, have such force already?
I ball my hands to stop the shake and force myself away from that strange, unwanted pull.
The improv studio is a small, functional space. There’s the hallway reception with cubbyhole storage, and the theatre room with large windows covered by long thick curtains.
I’m buried under wigs and foam swords and sequined costumes as I wade through the props cupboard, looking for feathers for the class Moana’s about to teach.
I push aside a sparkly vest, the sequins catching the dim light like the gleam of a pāua shell under a ripple of water.
The feathers should be here. Somewhere. I tossed them in here last week.
I touch something silky in the dark. It tickles my palm, slipping through my fingers when I try to catch it.
Then I hear it—
“They might shut this place down?”
The feathers crumple in my grip. I don’t move.
The kids’ voices ebb and flow, their concerns rising like gentle waves lapping the shore, some fading into the tide, others lingering. And then this one, sharp and sudden.
“Hey, psst. Why is Holly sad?”
A pull of the current, inescapable.
“‘Cause if they shut here, she can’t do it anymore.”
“She can come to the other improv with us!”
I swallow a lump in my throat.
“She can’t. She got a certificate to practice here.”
“Certificate? You mean scholarship.”
“Whatever. It came in the post. A letter. She got to come here.”
“Holly! Holly? Please come with us if this place shuts down?”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. I’m fine. I said I’m fine!”
She’s not fine. When I pull myself out of the cupboard, the kids and Holly have already gone into the studio.
Moana catches my eye as I hand her the feathers. Her fingers curl around them, but her gaze stays on me.
What she’s asking is: Can we save this place?
What she’s really asking is can we save their moemoeā, their dreams?
The curtains are open, letting in the bright afternoon light, and I look over at Holly practicing her lines. Her eyes are red, where she might have rubbed at stinging tears.
His voice again. Why can’t I?
It presses at the back of my throat.
My stomach jerks, a sharp tug at my centre.
But from where? From him? Or from me?
Ten-year-old Holly. Dancing makes her smile. She’s young.
Her moemoeā are still alive.
Unlike other moemoeā . . . the ones you can never get back.
Moana grips my elbow. A smile for the class, hushed words for me. “You look like you swallowed a live fish.”
And its bones are choking me.
I could save this studio. Them. Their dreams.
If I take on that job.
My breath catches around all those fine bones.
To take on such a role . . .
But isn’t that the sort of suffering I deserve? An apt punishment. One I should bear.
Attempt to fix the unfixable. And maybe, finally, save some moemoeā.
A girl hops before Moana, asking to use the wharepaku. “Well, you can’t act holding it in.” Moana catches me escaping the room and raises her voice. “You should never hold it in.”
The door shuts. I find my phone and grip it tight. I’m still holding it when the kids have finished, and when they’ve left, and when—through a gap in the curtains—I glimpse Holly’s mum and a flash of red-painted nails opening the passenger door for Holly to jump in.
I’m still holding my phone when I’m the last one left in the failing improv studio.
I look at the screen. The words are waiting. The words are already there.
Why can’t a lie be worth fifty more improv sessions?
My fingers tighten. Shift.
The screen darkens.
A whooshing sigh.
Yet, an insistent pulsing: don’t ruin any more dreams.
I grit my teeth and the screen lights up again. And then. I tap and send.
Can I still be your man?
Grandpa is out at daycare. Grandpa’s house only has Trent in it.
Come around now, his response said.
Unless you decide to run again.
I grit my teeth on that as I climb the stairs to a narrow path above the street.
Unless you decide to run again. It feels mocking, like he half expects me not to turn up.
Like he’s goading me into proving he’s wrong.
He is wrong! I’m a professional. I can act. I don’t have to like a role to play it.
Unless you decide to run again.
In the middle of the overgrown path, I stop with a small stomp that squashes a prickly weed.
I’m in a position to judge here, not him.
In fact . . . I turn back. I won’t rise to his goading.
I shouldn’t be here. I really, really shouldn’t.
If there were heavens, they’d strike me down right now.
That I could even think about actually doing this . . .
Unless you decide to run again.
I halt on the last step, hand gripping the peeling white railing.
He expected it and I’m doing it, and that .
. . feels like a deeper failure. Like he knows.
Running is muscle memory by now, the only thing I’ve been good at when my past mistakes claw too close, and he’s seen through me. I don’t let anyone see through me.
I square my shoulders and return to the path.
Houses are peppered on this hill with few fences and messy overgrown bushes.
And, there. That should be Grandpa’s. This cottage looks lived in.
Very lived in. Loved, a lot. Too much, perhaps.
It has a gate, and its groaning as it shuts behind me sounds wounded. Ominous.
There’s movement behind a bush and I inch around it—
Feathers. Flapping. Squawking. Absolute, unhinged chaos.
It’s a blur of movement and—wham—a chicken is in my face.
Not the welcome I was expecting. Neither is Trent’s deadpan, “Catch it.”
Beyond the flapping that has descended to the crotch of my shorts, through raining feathers, Trent catches his breath.
Gardening-gloved hands press against solid thighs.
Sweat dribbles down a sunburned cheek. Sunglasses are nudged back into place while blood runs down a grazed knee.
He looks like he’s been at war with this chicken, and he’s not on the winning side.
I don’t know what makes him think I stand a chance.
But his “catch it” . . . his cool command, his voice. I’m quickly hugging armfuls of air in an awkward dance. I lunge again, chasing the chicken, and Trent swoops in and catches her like she’s a rugby ball.
“We’ve had this conversation before, haven’t we?
” Trent murmurs as though to a misbehaving child, gripping the chicken.
“In one ear, out the other.” He looks at me.
His sunglasses reflect my face and a stray feather in my hair.
I quickly pull the feather free and stare at the chicken instead of bearing witness to any heat hitting my cheeks.
I grind my teeth and wag my own finger at the chicken, but my gaze keeps slipping upwards. “You can’t just fling yourself at people.” I shake my head. “There are such things as boundaries.”
Trent huffs. “You’ll be out of luck if my zucchini is anything to go by.”
It’s an absurd leap, and yet it’s a leap my mind takes. Before I can stop myself, my gaze drops from the chicken, lower.
Trent freezes.
I rip my focus away. Bite my tongue. This is a job. I’m here to do the job. And keep it in mind: he’s a man of very dubious decisions. He’s making light of death. He does it completely unfazed. This is a man who should be easy to dislike.
Trent turns. He’ll put the escape artist back into its pen.
“Scrambled? Or fried?” he asks as he comes back with a few eggs. He scrapes the mud off his workboots before toeing them off at the door. I fling off my jandals and follow him in. “This is scrambled alright,” I mutter under my breath.
“My favourite,” Trent says, and plods down a hallway choked with so many family photos I feel dizzy.
I have to shut my eyes to get through it.
The kitchen at the end opens onto a dining area.
It’s all pockmarked kauri and mismatched teasets, and there’s an entire wall dedicated to postcards.
It’s the width of my arms if they were wholly outstretched and runs from the cornice at the ceiling to the skirting at the floor.
At least these pictures have no faces. Just places; distant, unreachable, and waiting.
From tropical islands to snow-capped mountains to busy Parisian streets. The whole world might be on this wall.
I turn away from it to Trent, who quietly looks away from me, back to the pan. He cracks eggs. Stirs. Adds cheese.
It’s served up on chipped china. At the counter, I lift a forkful of eggs only to stop at Trent’s quiet look, and I follow him to the table, waiting for him to add cups of water before we start.
At home, I never eat at a table. I haven’t for over ten years.
I typically eat over the kitchen sink or on the sofa in front of some YouTube. Sometimes even in bed.
I don’t know what to do with myself, and each shift has the chair’s legs protesting this heathen upon it.
“You were fine at the café,” Trent says. His glasses have been tucked into his shirt and it’s at least a relief not to see myself. Feeling myself is awkward enough. I toss out a laugh. “This scramble . . .” I jerk a fork towards the small mountain of cheesy egg. “Yum.”
He watches me carefully, takes another forkful of his own, and murmurs, “You’ll get used to it.”
I grip the seat under me so tight a little bit crumbles at my fingers. If I can act a dead brother, I can act through this. I lean back in my chair, kicking my feet forward against a table leg, and nod towards the more ornate chair adjacent to us. “Is that Grandpa’s?”
He pauses a moment, and suddenly I feel a pressure moving away from beneath my sole. My smile almost wobbles, but I keep it up.
Trent nods. “Your name’s Mikael.”
A quick, fleeting shiver.
“He goes by Ika.”
I shift in my seat, gripping my fork tighter. It feels heavier than it should. “I-ka, not Mika?”
“He insisted on it. He loved fish. It’s te reo for fish. So . . .”
Right. Ika. I’m to act a dead fish.
His voice softens as he tells me more about his younger brother Ika, and it’s the only clue he might not be completely in control.
He’s composed; he’s calm. But these tiny tells.
Like the stilling of his hand mid-beat, like the quiet pauses, and the subtle stirring.
I might be a dead fish, but he is an iceberg—no.
He is a message in a bottle. One waxed so much, not a drop of water could seep in—not a stray cry could seep out.
But inside, he’s full of them. Cries. Feelings.
Maybe that’s why I suddenly lean in. Maybe that’s why I say it again. Some kind of weird reassurance this act is something we’re in together. That—in this brief moment—I got it. “I can move in next week.”
Trent’s dark eyes hit mine and hold and once more I’m surrounded by the scent of the ocean and of something coming. He pulls out his phone and opens a postcard app. I recognise it. I used it once to send my acting buddies Christmas cards. He uploads a picture—a palm against a tropical sea.
My stomach clenches. I dart a gaze to the wall behind me. “What are you doing?” I whisper. I can’t say it louder than that.
Trent doesn’t answer right away. His thumb hovers over the screen . . .
And then he sends it. “It’s time to bring Ika home.” He looks at me and then to the wall. “He’s been gone long enough.”