Page 5 of Kiwi Gold
“It doesn’t feel happy to get sick, though,” Yasmin said. “So I don’t think that’s true.”
“Itis,”Amira began hotly.
I needed to get control of this. I told Deirdre, “Go lie down on my bed for now, please, and we’ll talk when I’m finished here.” Then I told the girls, “Go play in your room. We’re on working rules now.”
“Can we get a snack?” Amira asked.
“And a drink,” Yasmin said. “Not an alcohol drink, like for hangovers. Just a regular drink. Like juice is a regular drink.”
“Lemonade is a regular drink, too,” Amira said. “But we don’t have any lemonade. Deirdre was going to buy us lemonade ice blocks at the dairy, which is like juice except frozen, so it’s healthy, but then she got sick and spewed on the pavement and we came home instead. If you gave us some money, Yasmin and me could go to the dairy now and get ice blocks. I could carry the money in my pocket so it was safe, and we could hold hands and cross very carefully.”
“Working rules,” I said again. “And you’re not to cross that busy road alone. You’re six. You know where the kid-snacks are. You can have those.”
“We wouldn’t bealone,”Amira said. “We’d betogether.And we’re almost seven.” They weren’t. “We could—” As if she were about to suggest that she could cook them both lunch while she was at it, or possibly borrow my EFTPOS card and board a bus to a café. Which was entirely within the realm of possibility.
Celeste, the baby-mum, said, “Maybe we should just go.”
I said, “Let’s sit down and talk about it,” decided that turning my back on the girls was my only option here, and led the way to the studio, so Celeste would have to follow me. This time, I closed the door behind me.
Baby Dad was out there on his phone, and Celeste said, “Honestly, David, how can you justignoreall this? I thought you’d be getting the baby!”
Oriana had the newborn in a rocking chair now. Ava’s little cheek was against Oriana’s chest, and her eyelashes lay against that cheek like feathers, her skin nearly translucent in the soft, filtered sunlight from the enormous Gothic windows in the church that was my home.
The photos were going to be lovely. If her parents would let me take them, that is. Ava was a sensitive little thing, and I could catch that. Not in a bowl. In a nest. With a tiny cream-colored headband scattered with an extra-small replica of Pohutukawa flowers, which I happened to have, among many, many other headbands, and a few more of the red-blossomed Kiwi Christmas branches in soft focus at the side, from the bunch Oriana had brought in this morning. I’d planned on roses, but when you met the actual baby, you sometimes had to change the plan. All of my best shots had come from changing the plan, and Ava was a Christmas baby. It was going to be perfect.
Babies were the easy part of the job. The fun part, too. But I wasn’t at the fun part just yet, so I said, using every bit of steady decision I possessed, “Please. Let’s sit.”
Celeste hovered another moment, and I stared at her with calm expectancy until she sat. I told her, “We can try this again another day if you like, after the New Year.” I wouldn’t be paid for today, because I hadn’t even taken a photo yet, and they might very well not come back, but that was how it went, working for yourself.
You could roll with life, or let life roll you. I’d read it on a poster, and I was rolling.
All right, I was possibly falling. But I was rolling along the way. Falling with style.
Celeste looked doubtfully at me, then at the baby, then at her husband. He didn’t appear exceptionally invested in the outcome. She finally said, “Can’t you do it sooner?”
“I’m booked until the holiday,” I said, “and shut down until after the New Year. I’m pretty fully booked that first week back, too, but I can find a slot for you somewhere.” It wasn’t quite true, but if you wavered once, you were lost. Clients were like sharks. They could sense blood in the water. Besides, people wanted things more that were in demand. Social proof, they called it, and limited space was social proof. I’d read that one in a magazine.
“She’ll be too old by then, though,” Celeste said.
I smiled. “Too old to pose quite as easily, maybe. But not too old for some lovely photos.”
“Do you still think you can pose her in the bowl?” Celeste asked. “And the flowerpot?”
“Darling,” Dad—David—said. “Maybe it’s best to leave it. We did say it was an indulgence, with all the expense we’ve already been to.”
Celeste said, “I’m sorry, did you make a human being? Did you givebirthtoa human being with a head the size of a grapefruit? Did you tear the most sensitive part of your body open without an anesthetic? Are you squirting water on your horrible mess of stitches and dreading taking your next poo?”
“Hang on,” he said. “I didn’t say that I—”
In the back of the flat, I heard thebangthat was the outer door closing again. That had better not be the girls. It hadbetternot. Amira poked her head around the screen, though, her mouth open to say something, and I nodded decisively at her. Which meant,Deirdre left, obviously. I’ve got it.Which, fortunately, she seemed to understand.
Now I just had to find a new babysitter. Today. One week before Christmas. Easy-peasy.
“You think it’s silly,” Celeste was telling David now, completely ignoring me, fortunately. “Really? It’s silly that I want a photo of how beautiful and perfect she is, after the miscarriages? After I had to go on bed rest to keep her? It’s silly that I want a reminder of how lucky we are to have her?” She was tearing up, and I thought, first, that it was easy to misunderstand somebody’s anxiety, somebody’s pain, because only they knew their whole story. I also thought that if I could get Celeste calm and relaxed, I could get a lovely photo. Put her in a white shift, cuddling the baby close, their fine, red-gold hair the only splash of color? That would be gorgeous.
David, to his credit, put an arm around her and said, “Of course not. Sorry, darling.” And I thought that “I love you” could be overrated as a woman’s favorite phrase. Surely, “Sorry” ranked higher. It had the value of scarcity, for one thing.
Did I say that? I did not. I said, “We’ll get lovely photos, I promise. She’s pure sweetness, and that’s what we’ll show. And I’d like to do a shot with you holding her, Celeste, as well as the family shot. I want to show that tenderness you have for her, and that gratitude. If she’s a miracle baby—let’s show that.” After that, I got up and started moving screens and lights, because hers had been a winning argument if I’d ever heard one. They were going to be staying.
