Page 14 of Just Say Christmas
It was interesting, Tom Koro-Mansworth thought, taking his ticket at the entrance to the carpark of the domestic terminal at Auckland Airport, that the more you got in your life, the more work it seemed to take to hold onto it.
He was used to that in rugby. If you didn’t want to compete for your spot every single week, if you were going to sulk because somebody else was starting, or because you weren’t named to the match-day twenty-three at all, you’d get tired of the whole thing pretty smartly. You did what you were asked, even if that was just training with the boys to get them ready. No point burning yourself out with bitterness and doubt because you were sidelined with an injury or somebody else was in better form. You were lucky to be there, and if you wanted to stay there, you made more luck for yourself. Starting with your head. He knew that, because he’d done it wrong enough times to see the result.
He manako te koura i kore ai,his dad would say.There are no crayfish as you set your heart on them, but you went out spearfishing the same way every time anyway, and accepted the result. Sometimes you came home with your limit, other times you came home with nothing, but you wouldn’t find any floating on the surface. You had to be at the bottom, feeling under the rocks, holding your breath and trying again.
Which was all good, but they didn’t make up proverbs for things that were easy, did they? He wasn’t in the development squad anymore, he had the best job in the world and knew it, and he might not be paid like an NBA player, but he was still earning more money than a poor Maori boy from the Far North had ever dreamed possible. Unfortunately or fortunately, though, life wasn’t just about rugby.
In other words, he thought as he slammed the car door and headed over the crossing at a run, because why walk if you could run?—you also couldn’t necessarily make your love life work out the way you wanted. People changed, especially from sixteen to eighteen. He knew that. He did. He just didn’t want to accept it.
Ella had been odd on the phone the past couple weeks. Reserved, you could say. Things could be hard to decipher if your relationship was perennially long-distance, even with somebody as forthright as Ella. He needed to find out why. And after that, he needed to figure out how to deal with it. How to accept it, if that was what it meant.
And then she came through the gate with her cousin, both of them still dressed in their school uniforms. She was pulling a little suitcase behind her, her hair its natural deep brown again and her skin darker than his own and glowing with health, all of her looking fit and strong and confident, and he knew he wasn’t going to be able to accept it.
Just not possible.
* * *
ELLA
With ten minutes left before landing, Ella’s cousin Caro had told her, “You should probably breathe.” Ella had thought,Breathe. Right,then turned her gaze from the corrugated lines of wavetops below, loosened her grip on the armrest, and done her best.
She wasn’t afraid of flying. Nothing that simple. She had a plan, though, for all the parts of this. Maybe it would be easy, who knew? Nothing ever seemed to be as easy as you imagined, but maybe this would be the exception.
“It’s the right thing,” she told Caro. “No matter what my mum would say. I know it is. I know what I feel, and what I need.”
“You have to tellhimhow you feel,” Caro said. “That’s all.”
The journey hadn’t taken long this time. Caro’s mum, Ella’s Aunt Olivia, had driven them to Christchurch Airport after school, kissed them goodbye, said, “Have fun. Be safe. Don’t do anything you can’t recover from,” and left, and two hours later, here they were. The impossibly blue sea beneath them turned at the very last second to scrubby green grass and gray tarmac, the wheels bumped down with a jolt, the engines reversed and roared, and the commuter jet braked, turned on the runway, and rolled slowly to a stop near the gate. A chime, the click of a hundred seatbelts unfastening, people standing instantly, grabbing bags, bent over under the overhead bins as if they needed to get off one second faster and start their weekend, or join their family, or whatever it was.
Ella knew how they felt, and she didn’t, and she didn’t stand up. She was here for Nyree, though, no matter what else happened, because Nyree had been there for her. It was meant to be a fun weekend, a girls’ weekend, and a chance to show Nyree that she was happy for her, wedding and baby and all. Never mind that this was where her sons lived, and that they weren’t actually hers. Or that it was where Hugh Latimer and Josie Pae Ata lived, who were Noah and Hunter’s parents, forever and ever, because that was the choice she’d made.
Next weekend, Hugh and Josie would be at the wedding, and Josie might be therethisweekend. As in—tomorrow. She didn’t know if they’d bring the boys to the wedding. She hadn’t wanted to ask.
She’d done the right thing. She knew it in her head and her heart, then and still, but she hadn’t wanted to come this weekend, and she definitely didn’t want to come next week.
On Saturday night, she and her mum had had dinner at Aunt Olivia and Uncle Ander’s house, and her mum had said, when the topic of the wedding came up, putting her finger exactly on the sore spot as she always did, “You don’t have to go. Nobody will fault you for staying home. Marko will understand. Heaven knows it’ll be easier for me if you do.”
“Marko won’t understand,” Ella said, flushing with heat even as she reminded herself of her New Year’s resolution, which she’d formed a bit early, because she needed to practice.Be adult.She wasn’t quite managing it, because her temper flashed up anyway as she said, “Or he would. He’d understand that I’m a coward. And how would it make my life better to run away from this anyway?”
“Oh, I think he’d understand better than you think,” Auntie Olivia said. “He understands more than he gets credit for.”
Ella’s mum sighed and said, “You know he doesn’t, Olivia. Always been fond of his own way, has Marko.” Olivia’s blue eyes flashed with a temper that wasn’t like her at all, but Ella’s mum must not have seen, because she went on to say, “And whether he understands or not, that still doesn’t mean Ella has to go, this weekendornext. It can’t be easy for her, with Nyree pregnant and getting to keep her baby, all happy about it and all. And what if that Jocelyn Pae Ata brings the boys to the wedding? It’d be just like her to do it, never sparing a thought for Ella’s feelings. That’s how stars are, though. Entitled.”
The words were stuck in Ella’s throat, and she couldn’t get them out. She wanted to stand up and fling herself from the room, but she’d turned eighteen, hadn’t she? And then there was that resolution. She tightened her grip on the napkin in her lap instead and thought,What do I say that’s true?
Amona said it instead. Amonaneversaid anything, but now, she did. “Reckon Ella’s old enough to make her own choice.” Her voice was like dark water over rocks. “Whatever it is. And we’re all old enough to know how to stand by her. Life isn’t easy. Could be Ella knows that as well as any of us old ones.”
“Too right, Mum,” Uncle Ander said. “You don’t get anywhere you want to go by running away.” He didn’t normally talk, either, but this time, he had. And Ella thought,Thank you,and didn’t say it.
“You are where your feet are,” Amona said. “No place else to be. You can’t be in next week even if you wanted to. You can’t be in tomorrow, and you can’t be in yesterday. Being here now is enough.”
Olivia said, “I haven’t heard that one. I’m writing it down.” Her composure back, her hand squeezing Ella’s under the table, and the moment passed.
Now, though, Ella’s feet were shuffling their way into the aisle, then following the backpack-covered body in front of her. Her feet were here, and so was she.
No time like the present.
8
