Page 90 of Catch a Kiwi
Hemi said, “Want a beer, cuz, before I round up my cousin Tane to help me get rid of Dad? This one’s going to be a team effort.”
I said, “Well, yeh. I do.”
“Let’s go, then,” he said, “because I want one, too. You good to drive?” he asked Hope.
“Of course,” she said.
When Hemi and I were sitting on that same section of wall, drinking beer from the bottle, I said, “That’s an idea. I could have Summer drive us to the Mount. Got a place there for the night.”
“If you need to drown your sorrows,” Hemi agreed. “She seems pretty competent.”
“She is. At everything. Quietly competent, I’d call it. Independent, too. Fiercely. And more determined than anyone I’ve ever known.” I stopped myself, because why the hell would I unburden myself about my non-love-life to Hemi Te Mana, famous hard man? “And I don’t need to drown anything,” I said instead. “I want this one, that’s all.”
“I don’t much care for getting legless myself,” he said. “For obvious reasons. My mum’s an alcoholic as well, since we seem to be sharing parenting stories, and I wouldn’t put too much money on Ana’s sobriety. Or, God knows, her partner’s.”
“But you escaped,” I said. “How?”
“Dunno. Anger, maybe. Blind resolve not to end up like Dad, too. But mostly anger. How did you?”
“Didn’t feel like a choice,” I said. “I wanted money, that’s the bottom line. I wanted choices. It should’ve been about family, maybe, but?—”
“Can’t miss what you haven’t had. So you went for the money instead.”
“And doing something interesting,” I said. “That first thing …”
“Bargains.co.nz,” he said. “Started it when you were twenty, in university.”
“Yeh,” I said. “Started small and built it up. I couldn’t think why somebody else hadn’t done it, because it was deadobvious. It was exciting, and university was pretty dull in comparison. Anyway, it worked, so I kept doing it. Since then, it’s been more of the same. Not that I knew exactly what I was doing. I made heaps of mistakes. Surprising it worked out, really.”
“It worked out,” Hemi said, “because you didn’t give up when you made a mistake. You learned from it and moved on. And you weren’t afraid to jump.”
I considered that. “You’re right. People are so bloody terrified of losing what they have, they don’t even look at what theycouldhave. They hang onto that partner or that job with everything they’ve got, even if they’re not suited. No confidence they can get another one, maybe. I always thought …” I shrugged. “That if it didn’t work out, I’d do something else, a regular job, maybe try again later. Even if the thing cratered, it was experience, and I’d know better another time. And I liked the idea of my destiny being in my own hands. Nobody to blame if it went pear-shaped, but nobody to hold me back, either.”
“Mm.” Hemi drank his own beer in silence for a minute, then said, “Odd that we’re alike.”
“That’s what I thought,” I said. “Not sure where the business thing comes from. Seems like it should come from somewhere.”
“Koro had a shop,” he said. “Mechanic. Maybe that’s where, because Koro’s no fool. He’s old now, so you won’t be able to tell, but he still sees enough. I lived with him for a while as a teenager.” He smiled grimly. “A pretty angry one. Mum in Aussie with Ana, Dad dead drunk and nasty with it. I was lucky to have Koro. Taught me to fish, to fix things that broke, to careabout things that broke. To be a good Kiwi bugger, not just another angry drunk Maori kid hooning around South Auckland, getting himself arrested, going nowhere.” He paused a minute, then added, “How to beMaori, too. Not that I learned any of those lessons easily. Resisted them with everything I had, usually.”
I said, “I didn’t have all that, the bad stuff. Single mum, yeh, but she was there, at least, and she’s not a big drinker. She worked, too. Don’t want you to think she didn’t. She had man friends, but she mostly kept them away from me, or me from them. Hard to convince a fella you’re twenty-five when you have a twelve-year-old son. She wasn’t that bad, though.” Now I was the one hesitating, but here I was, and when I had my chances, I took them. “You’ve done better than me on the family thing, too.”
He glanced at me sidelong, amusement on the tough face. “Know how old I was when I married Hope?”
“No,” I said. “I haven’t followed you that closely.”
Another bark of laughter. “A fashion designer? Bet you haven’t. I was thirty-seven, and to say I stuffed up, that year before I married her … that’s understating it. I did everything wrong. Fortunately, Hope’s tougher than she looks. Forgiving, too. She was only twenty-five, but she knew more than I did about how it should be, though there was no reason she should. I needed humbling, and I got it.”
“I’m thirty-nine,” I said. “Married twice. Divorced both times. I’m not much chop at marriage.”
“Not good at being married,” Hemi said, “or not good at choosing?”
I considered that. “Dunno,” I finally said.
“You don’t drink too much,” he said, “so that’s not it. Do you cheat?”
“No. I wanted to be a man who—” I stopped.
“A man who sticks,” he said. “A man who doesn’t give up. And so far, you’re not.”
