Page 55 of Catch a Kiwi
“Me. Wise, eh.”
I had to laugh. “Very wise.”
He said, “Your hand’s not stitched anymore.”
I held it out and turned it, then pulled the skirt of my robe back and showed him my legs. “Matiu took them out. Kind, like I said. I saw Daisy again, too. The nurse. They really are friends. You can tell.”
“Mm,” he said, which wasn’t exactly encouraging. Still looking at my legs in a sort of absent way.
Time to say what I needed to. “So I stayed the week, like you asked, but your mum didn’t come back, so I didn’t have to kick her out. The rugs were the final task. I wanted to get them put back today, but obviously, the plan changed.” I longed to ask him about the DNA results, just as I’d longed to ask Matiu, but it wasn’t my business. “Delilah does need to lie down for a few days, though. I know we said two weeks, but Ican’t put her in a tent. If it’s a problem, I’ll find a motel room. I’m not actually flat broke, just?—”
I had to break off, because he’d started to bang his forehead against the table. I barely rescued my wine, and I was laughing. “What the heck?—”
He sat up again. “You done? Good. I told you. I’m not even here most of the time. What’s it to me if you stay another week or two?”
“Maybe I think so,” I said, “because of the way you threw your mother out. Admit it, you don’t always come across as Mr. Hospitality.”
“You’re not accounting for my ulterior motive.”
“What? I told you?—”
He sighed. “You may need to get over yourself. Needed you to clean my house, didn’t I. I’ll help you put those carpets down tomorrow, and don’t tell me you can do it yourself. You can’t do it yourself.”
“Excuse me? I can?—”
“No,” he said. “And I heard from Matiu Te Mana myself yesterday.”
I forgot everything else. “You did? What did he say?”
“That I’m out of luck in the parent department.” A twist of his mouth. “It’s Daniel. Bugger.”
“I’m trying to think of something encouraging to say here,” I said.
“Tough, isn’t it. And here’s the kicker. They’re celebrating the old man’s hundredth in a couple of weeks, and he apparently wants me to come, because Matiu mentioned it again. Urged me, in fact. If it’s possible to have a negative desire to do something, that’s me with this. I said no.”
“Oh.” I tried not to be disappointed in him. “Aren’t you just a little curious, though? Or at all … well, that’s probably not fair.”
“What?” When I didn’t answer, he made a beckoningmotion with his hand and said, “You dissected all of us happily enough last week. What’s holding you back?”
“Politeness?” I suggested.
“If I wanted to talk to somebody polite, I’d ask somebody who works for me. Wait. You haven’t met my assistant, Esther. Not that polite, but she doesn’t discuss personal issues, so I can’t ask her. Here I am, stuck with you.”
“OK, then. It seems pretty unkind not to go if you can, if he’s turning a hundred and he wants to see you. All you’d have to do is meet him and talk to him a little and then leave. You’re perfectly capable of telling your mother to get out of your house, so don’t tell me you can’t set your own boundaries on this. Why would younotdo it? And if you say that some people could be hostile—you don’t seem like a shrinking violet to me. Unless … oh, I get it.”
“Can’t wait,” he said, but he didn’t exactly seem disturbed.
“That you’ll feel like an outsider. That they’ll make you feel like you don’t fit, and you’ve felt that way too many times and have fought your way out of it and can’t stand to be reminded.”
“I’ve never felt that way,” he said, but his face told another story.
“No?” I asked. “Never felt like you can’t ask anyone over after school, because you live in a crappy mobile home and they have nice houses with stairs, and you’ve never been in a house with stairs or matching furniture, and the one time you asked somebody over, she wrinkled her nose? Like you get free breakfast and lunch and they all know it, and in the first grade, the mean girls told you that you stank, because your mom smoked and you didn’t have a washer and dryer, so your clothes were never clean enough? And like in sixth grade, you wore your new pink dress to school for Valentine’s Day and felt so happy about it, and Selena Craig told everybody that it was her old dress that her mom gave to Goodwill because itwas so out of style, and it looks stupid with your old tennis shoes anyway, and they all laughed? And you know all of that is in the past and your life now is the only life that matters, but you can’t stand to feel that way again even for a minute. Like you don’t belong. Like they have any power over you when they tell you that you’re not a part of them and you never will be.”
He said, “None of that happened to me. And if it did, Ihavefought my way out of it.”
“I’ll bet you did, and I’ll also bet it felt lousy. Aren’t you tired of wearing all that armor? Doesn’t it weigh you down? Your … your grandfather thinks Daniel did wrong by you, and he wants to make it up to you, or maybe just to apologize. Just toknowyou. You can’t even give him that? You want to stand tall, to stand strong, to be the person you are with no apologies. So do that. Go there and be that. This is chickening out, and it’s beneath you.”
He stood up, ignored his nearly full wine glass, and said, “Thanks for the suggestion. You could be right.” Voice level, face closed down. “I need a swim before bed, and I’m going to get nude to take it. Unless you want to join me, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
