Page 79 of Just Say (Hell) No
“What about Ella?” she decided to say.
“Making you tea and toast.” He was lying on the bed, leaning against the headboard in a navy blue T-shirt, jeans, and bare feet, his ankles crossed, his dark eyes amused, and every single bit of him absolutely oh-yeh-baby-touch-me-like-that sighworthy. “Suitcases are in the boot, and Cat’s… well, not in her carrier, but she’s considering it.”
She headed into his bathroom. Fast. She was washing off the smell of sex, at least, before she met his father. And hisgrandmother.She didn’t need makeup, but there was a limit. Before she shut the door, she said, “I’m calling theHeraldand telling them you won’t travel without your kitten.”
He laughed. “You do that. I’ll tell them you sing show tunes in the shower.”
“I’m Maori,” she said. “It’s practically required.” Andthenshe shut the door.
Four hours later, she wasn’t laughing. Two hours’ drive out of Christchurch Airport, and ever since they’d passed through the tiny town of Geraldine and turned inland, they’d been winding their way upward, closer and closer to the majestic march of the snow-capped Southern Alps that stretched all the way across the horizon, the tallest peaks lost in cloud.
Marko glanced across from the driver’s seat. “All right?”
“What? Yeh. Of course.” She gave Cat a stroke. That helped. The kitten had wanted to ride in Marko’s lap, of course, but had eventually settled for the inferior substitute.
“Are you nervous?” Ella asked from the back seat. She was sitting behind Nyree, because, as she’d pointed out, “You can push the seat all the way up, and I want to sleep anyway. Plus, people always want to see the mountains.” Now, apparently, she was awake. “You don’t need to be nervous. You’ll see.”
“She will,” Olivia said from behind Marko. “But of course she’s nervous.Weshould be nervous. I wonder why I’m not? How many years has it been since you’ve brought somebody home, Marko?”
He groaned and swung the car around another curve. “Mum. Please don’t share.”
“No, really?” she asked, sounding nothing but curious. “Why would that be a secret? You invited Nyree home because you like her better than you’ve liked anybody else in the past ten years or so. That’s not a secret, and it’s wonderful. What’s the point of games? We’re only here for a little while. Why not put your heart out there?”
Nyree told Marko, “I can actually see your jaw bunching. So you know.” He shot her a glare, and she laughed out loud.
He said, “I’ve shared my cards of the day with Nyree, Mum. She knows all about the Fool and the Two of Cups and taking the leap. About hiding behind your barriers, or shooting from behind them, or whatever it was. You can’t embarrass me any more than that.” He pointed to a spot off to the right. “There you are, Nyree. Those are merino.”
She said, “Oh.” They were in the foothills, heading up to the high plateau. Alpine vegetation, short and scrubby. The air outside, she’d bet, would be thin and chilly. Like Dunedin, and not. More wild, and more open. Stark. Primeval. And a herd of merino sheep, their fleece dirty-gray and winter-thick already, wheeling like a flock of starlings. Moving as one, impossibly synchronized.
She could almost see Marko’s chest expanding with the space. Not an easy land, nothing at all like the lush greens and abundantly providing seas of Northland, but the place he knew best, and the place he fit. The place that had formed the man he was.
The road dipped, rose, curved, and curved again, and he turned off just before the junction for Tekapo and headed up a road marked with a B&B sign. Driving with one hand on the wheel, as if the car could get there by itself, or he could get them there with his eyes closed.
A left turn onto a tarsealed road with a sign.Tekapo Farm Stay.Another curve, and the lake appeared beneath them like a sapphire, or maybe more like an opal, a saturated blue almost the color of a robin’s egg. And the contrast of the snow-capped mountains that cradled it, holding it like cupped palms.
“You need to come back in the spring,” Olivia said from behind them, “when the lupines are in bloom around the lake. On the plus side, we don’t have any visitors right now, so we can focus on you.” Which might be a plus and might not. She could have hidden in a crowd.
Slowing down, now. Sheds, outbuildings. A dog barking, then another. Two Border Collies, black and white, feathery tails waving, running to meet the car as it came closer to an enormous, rambling, three-story house made of dark wood, its green metal roof settling it into the landscape. A figure appeared on the porch that ran halfway around the house, moving slowly, with the aid of a cane. A long dress, and an apron around her waist. Stooped and thin, tall and gray.
And dark.
“My Amona,” Marko said. He pulled the car up, opened his door, and was covering the ground in giant strides, then taking the steps three at a time.
The sight of him wrapping his arms gently around her hunched-over body, holding her close. The old lady dropping her stick and putting her palms on his face, saying something to him, and his dark head bending to hers as he kissed her cheek. At last, though, he stepped back, steadying her along the way, picked up her cane, and put it in her hand.
Olivia said, “Well, there you go. Makes me choke up every time. One thing you should know about the Sendoa men, Nyree. They don’t love easily, but they love hard.”
That evening, Nyree was stretched out on the carpet in the spacious lounge, comfortably furnished with slightly shabby couches and armchairs, and the kinds of mismatched end tables you wished for, so you always had someplace to put your mug. She had her back against one of those couches, this one upholstered in green velvet, with her head against Marko’s knee and Cat in her lap, listening to music. Or more like—feelingmusic.
Marko and his father Ander on guitar. His dad had turned out to be, not much to her surprise, a six-foot-four, older, more silent version of his son, the lines in his face reflecting a life spent out of doors, his body lean, hard, and dark as iron, and his fingers even more skilled on those strings than Marko’s. Olivia, her silver hair shining in the lamplight, playing the mandolin, a woodier, brighter sound to it than the guitars. Ella with a tambourine, and Jakinda, to Nyree’s astonishment, on the violin. And Marko’s sister Caro with a flute, its silvery tones darting in and out like a fantail, then soaring above the stringed instruments with piercing beauty. No tunes Nyree recognized, but beautiful anyway. She guessed they were old, and that this family had been playing them forever.
She let the music slow her heartbeat and seep into her bones, and watched Marko’s Amona, his grandmother, whose actual name was Mary, doing exactly the same thing. Sitting in an armchair set close to the wood stove, her dark face relaxed, her feet in their sturdy shoes and thick stockings not tapping, but looking like they’d used to.
Earlier today, Marko had taken Nyree for a walk around the lake. An easy track through the bush, the liquid notes of bellbirds reminding her of home, the thin, cold air doing anything but, and Marko content to walk in silence. And then emerging into the open, headed towards a tiny stone church sitting all alone on the shore, surrounded by nothing manmade at all, looking like part of the mountains. Nobody around but a few young people, backpackers most likely, and nobody else at all in the church. The Church of the Good Shepherd.
They sat in a front pew for a few minutes without speaking, Marko’s fingers threaded through hers, both their hands resting on his hard thigh, and Nyree gazed out the clear window and let the quiet and peace fill her. Clear windows, she guessed, because there could be no stained glass as beautiful as the lake and mountains. Maybe, too, because that was where the builders of this church had felt God most.
Finally, Marko said, “My granddad used to bring Amona here like this. A few months before he died, we took a wee walk and ended up here, same as today, and he told me about it. It was their church, he said, because it belongs to this place. He knew it was hard for her to feel like anyplace was home. And when he brought her here from Australia, the parish priest at the Catholic church was a bigoted old fella. I don’t know what he said, but my granddad left the church and didn’t go back. My mum and dad did, eventually, when the priest changed, and Jakinda as well. But my granddad wasn’t a forgiving sort of fella. He’d had too much to forgive, maybe.”
