Page 35 of Kiwi Gold
“Whatever works.” We walked back up the driveway to the back of the old church, and I said, “You work for yourself, eh. I’d assumed you were … well, a mum.”
“Iama mum,” she said, somehow composed once more, maybe because she knew she had me on the back foot. “And I work. I’ve had to since the girls were new.”
“Oh. I thought—”
“That Kegan had sponsorships,” she said, still composed, but with that fine-wire tension underneath, like it was a sore subject. “He did. Not a stable income source. Not one you could count on long term.”
“Not with twins,” I said. “And you need to meet my mum.”
* * *
Laila
I shouldn’t have been laughing. This wasn’t my favorite subject, and it definitely wasn’t my favorite memory, but I was laughing anyway. He was so funny, grabbing both wheelie bins, spinning them into place like it was a sport, and talking about his mum. With that long red scar from the bullet still on his cheek. I said, “Whoa, boy. That’s moving fast. Don’t think we’re ready to meet the parents yet. Quadruplets, though. That’s a lot.”
He grinned back at me, fortunately. “She said that if she’d had quints, somebody may have been interested from the start, but as it was? No joy. Practically invented social media in New Zealand instead, once my stepdad checked out. Let’s say that I’ve been photographed a fair few times, but not as many times as my sisters. My mum’s a survivor, like you. She knows about sponsorships, but she knows about cobbling together a living from nothing, too. She’s got a social media firm of her own now, and she’s good at it. Nothing like learning the hard way, because you have to.” After which he deposited the wheelie bins and said, casually-but-not-casually, “You went back to work straightaway after the girls?”
I didn’t stop to wonder why he’d asked. Not then. I said, “At fourteen weeks. Fourteen weeks of leave, that is. They were thirteen weeks old. That was the max paid leave back then, and I’d used the rest of my leave during the pregnancy. As they were twins, and it wasn’t … easy.”
I wasn’t laughing now. This part wasn’t funny.
The tears I’d shed, that first day and on so many others, driving to work to do a job I’d never loved, after carrying the girls into the cheerfully decorated building, with all those primary colors, all those toys and cots, and putting them into somebody else’s arms. Three months old, and still so tiny. I could still feel my hands gripping the steering wheel, the itch of my hot tears on my cheeks, the tingling in breasts that needed to be feeding them right now, the ache in my belly from the C-section, and the pain in my chest as I tried to hold back the sobs. So exhausted already that I was nearly lightheaded with it, the scent of the girls lingering in the car as if they were still here with me, looking in the rearview mirror and only seeing Monk, Yasmin’s little orange lovey, on the rear shelf, his fur matted with drool even then. Wanting to turn around and check on my babies, and telling myself,If I could do the job a few months ago, eight months pregnant with twins, I can do it now. I’m used to being tired, and it’s not hard. It’s just a job.
He said, “Ouch. So no paternity leave, then.”
I had to stop and breathe. This was too intense. It was too much. But nobody understood leavingtwolittle babies. Nobody. Except, maybe, him. I said, “It never … came up.”
There. I’d admitted it. That it hadn’t even been an option, in my mind or, I was sure, in Kegan’s. He was capable of intense focus, nobody better, but only on a few things. The things he really wanted to do.
I couldn’t sort out the emotions that flooded me at the memory. Pain. Shame, again, that he hadn’t loved us enough, or he hadn’t loved us that way. Frustration, that he couldn’t do it, or that he wouldn’t.
I tried again. “He’d have been losing his edge. Losing the spotlight, and it’s hard to stay in it. Marketing himself was half the job, and he had to be climbing something in order to broadcast it. He wasn’t all that domesticated anyway, and it’s heaps of work, caring for twins. Not all fun work, either. Drudgery, sometimes.” I glanced at him. “You know that, though. Or it could be I didn’t trust him to care for them well enough even if he’d wanted to, and he knew it. We had a traditional marriage, which was me as much as him, and anyway, nothing’s all one-sided. There’s my side, your side, and the truth.”
Lachlan’s mouth wasn’t good-humored now. “A traditional marriage where you were the one going out to work and the one taking care of the kids. Sorry, but why did you marry this arsehole?”
I should have winced. Instead, I laughed. “You can’t imagine how jealous all the other girls were, though.”
He didn’t smile. He said, “Did that help?”
“Well, no. Not so much. Are youtryingto depress me?”
Now, he laughed. Reluctantly, but still. “No. That wasn’t the plan. I was trying to make you feel better, because you looked tired.”
“Brilliant job, then,” I said, and he laughed again. “I have an awesome career now.” Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t, but he didn’t have to know. A woman hadsomepride. “And an awesome flat.”
“With a bathroom like a sack of lollies,” he said.
“What, our lovely pink? And amazing church windows, and a complicated ceiling that makes my heart happy.”
He said, “What’s the job? You know mine. I don’t know yours.”
We were still standing at the curb. At any moment, one of the girls was going to run out to find me, because it was bath time, and they still liked me to be there. I said, “Save me something for tomorrow night. I already don’t have enough conversational topics for this … roleplaying, or whatever it is we’re doing. Now you’re taking away my getting-to-know-you chat. Do youwantme to freeze like a bunny?”
As it turned out, though, we had enough conversational topics.
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CONVERSATIONAL TOPICS
