Page 55 of Kiwi Sin
Other than that, the first thing was that my dad rang the doorbell at seven-thirty in the morning.
I was awake. The flatmates weren’t. Somebody yelled, “What thefuck,”as the doorbell rang again.
I ran down the stairs to open the front door. It was my dad. Not entirely surprising. Who else would ring your doorbell at this hour on New Year’s Day? He looked at me, then looked at my hand and looked at me again, and I said, “Yeh. Cut it. Come up,” tried to feel less stupid about it, and led him upstairs to the flat.
When we got inside, Rowan was just coming out of the bathroom to the sound of an emphatic flush. He glanced at us and said, “Keep it down, will you, mate? It’s bloody New Year’s, and I just got to bed bloody three hours ago,” shambled back into his bedroom, and slammed the door.
My dad gave me what I’d call an expressive glance, and I shrugged and said, “Yeh. Well. The rent’s cheap, and they’re pretty good blokes.” Rowan had lent me his power drill a couple of weeks ago to put a cupboard door back on after it had come loose from its hinges—the landlord was pretty useless—and when I’d gone on to replace a faulty electrical outlet, had actually decided to fix the tap on the kitchen sink himself. So hedidhave skills, which was interesting. Last week, we’d both helped Duncan transport a new mattress home with the aid of my ute, and he’d bought pizza for all of us. So—not so bad.
Unfortunately, when I led my dad into the kitchen, I realized that (A) my hand was bandaged, and (B) the washing-up wasn’t done from last night, or yesterday morning, for that matter, which meant the sink was full of dirty dishes, and it wasn’t going to be easy to clean them. I said, “I was going to suggest a cup of tea. And breakfast, because I haven’t made mine yet. Reckon I could fasten a plastic bag around my hand and give it a go.”
My dad didn’t say, “I’ll do it,” which wasn’t a surprise. He also didn’t say, “Let’s go to a café,” which either of the flatmates would’ve said in a heartbeat. Instead, he said, “Come home with me. Your mum will fix you breakfast.”
I wanted to say the “café” thing myself, because honestly, it made me a bit uncomfortable to have my mum cook a separate meal for me, but … it was my dad. So we went downstairs, and I said, “Oh. I forgot that the ute’s at Matiu Te Mana’s place. You could drop me there, afterward.”
“Why?”
Ah. Why, indeed. I climbed into his car, he put it in gear and headed out through the oddly deserted streets toward his own flat, and I said, “I went to his house to have him stitch me up, but he wasn’t there. Oriana drove me to hospital instead, as I was bleeding pretty badly. I thought it would be best to collect the ute this morning, so she drove me home afterward.”
Dad said, “Is it serious?”
“No. Cut it on a can lid. Ten days until the stitches come out.” I may as well tell him the truth. What else was I going to say? “I was practicing with my chainsaw”?
Dad grunted. I wasn’t sure what that meant, and I didn’t have anything cheerful to say about the ten-day thing, so I was silent. Always my go-to move.
My mum said, “Oh, dear,” about the bandage, and, “You look thin,” in general, after which she and Patience produced a breakfast of eggs, bacon, baked beans, fried tomatoes and mushrooms, and toast. They’d have done sausages as well, but I asked them not to. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever want to eat sausages again. As I was getting outside of all of it, Dad asked, “Why did Oriana drive you to hospital? What was she doing there, at that house?”
Mum stood up and told Harmony and Patience, “Come help me with the washing,” and I thought,Ah. Here we go, then.I said, “The answer’s not a secret, Mum. You can hear it.”
She said, “Men’s business,” and headed out of the kitchen with the girls.
Dad said, when they were gone, “Why are you questioning your mum?”
I didn’t answer for a minute. I needed to gather my thoughts for this. I said, “We do live here now. I’m trying to adapt.”
“Adapt in your home,” he said. “Not in mine.”
“Fair enough,” I said, and, when he looked up sharply again, “I’m a man. I’m going to answer you as a man, not a boy.” Half of me wondering, inside, why I was pushing this, and the other half saying that I had to. I added, “Oriana was minding the kids while Matiu and Poppy were out. Prudence—Priya—was with her, so Oriana left her there with them and took me to hospital, as I was bleeding pretty freely. She sat with me in the ED, and then she drove me home.”
He stared at me, brown eyes on blue, and I looked back at him and willed myself to be calm. He said, “That’s what I came to talk to you about, but this puts a different complexion on the matter.”
My heart had started to thud again. Stupidly. I said, “What was, exactly?”
“Relations between the families,” he said. “Gray asked if we’d like to come to a New Year’s barbecue today. Heaps of people, he said, not just the family.”
“Time to try again, he reckons?” I said. “Now that we’ve settled in, got used to things? He wants family relations between us for Daisy’s sake.” That wasn’t hard to suss out. The house we were working on, from early morning to night, six days a week? It was for Gray, but really, it was for Daisy. I didn’t know that because she was involved. I knew because she wasn’t. She’d said what she wanted for the bath and kitchen, and Gray had said the rest would be a surprise, but that it would be the best.
That was why we were the crew, my dad had told all of us. Because we’d give Gray our best.
“Yeh,” Dad said. “About the family thing. Reckon he’s right at that. Family’s more important than ever, out here. Those girls are our family as well, and what example do they have, without us?”
That was one way to look at it. I’d bet it wasn’t the way Daisy was looking at it, but I wasn’t about to say it. I said, “A barbecue sounds good.” Cautiously.
“Second thing,” Dad said. “He wants me back on the university job as soon as the rest of the crew gets back from their holidays. That means we need a new foreman at the house.”
I waited. It was hard to breathe. Dad said, “I’d like you to do it.”
I said, “OK,” and couldn’t think of anything to add.
