Page 40 of Catch a Kiwi
Summer said, “You think that’s convincing me.”
“No,” I said. “I think it’s convincing Delilah. Maybe I’ll make pizza for her. You can have some when you get home. It won’t be as good then, of course, but?—”
“He built it for a wife,” Summer told Delilah. “Some wife. He doesn’t care about pizza ovens and two kitchens. Though that’s a butler’s pantry, where the main storage and cleanup is out of sight behind the ovens and stove and fridge. Because you’re supposed to have a butler to do the hard part.”
“Maybe they’ll use the guillotine,” Delilah said.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Do you see a butler?”
Delilah said, “Andsomewife? Dude …”
I told Summer, “I’m ignoring that. It’s beneath you. You’ve lost the moral high ground with strop like that.”
“I will endeavor to support myself through my disgrace,” she said, and I laughed. Which was when the phone rang.
“Shit,” I said, glancing at the phone I pulled from my shorts pocket. “Ah … bugger. I have to take this.”
“Fine,” Summer said. “Hand me the nail gun.”
As I was walking out of the room, Delilah said, “See? Roman can’t stop swearing, either. Because it’s normal, here in the twenty-first century.”
I punched the button and said, “Hi, Mum.”
“There you finally are, darling,” she said, as if I’d been ignoring her for a month, and I did not grit my teeth. “Going well? Lovely. I have such exciting news.”
I braced myself. Usually, that meant, “I have a wonderful opportunity to invest in a new marketing program, and before you say anything, no, it’s not dodgy. And doesn’t everybody need vitamins? My friend Samantha is already doing it. She says the money’s justpouringin, and the investment is only …” Or, possibly, “I’ve met a man.” My mum had always met a man. That was why I owned her car and the mortgage on her house and paid the utilities myself, too. I’d learned. My mum? Not so much.
I said, “I was in the midst of some cleanup on the Catlins place from the cyclone, so I only have a few minutes.”
“You’ll want to hear this,” she said. “I’ve found your dad.”
If she was expecting a thunderclap or my excited astonishment, she didn’t get it. “How, exactly?”
“Well, I was in the city,” she said, by which she meant central Auckland, as she lived in its western suburbs, “doing a bit of shopping—I’ve lost weight, and everything justhangson me now, so lucky—and I saw a man on the street. Just glanced at him, as you do, but then I looked again and knew Icouldn’t be mistaken. It was him. You could’ve knocked me over with a feather.”
“You saw him after nearly forty years and decided he could be my dad,” I said. “Well-dressed, was he?”
“Of course not. Hewasyour dad. I knew I couldn’t be mistaken, and I wasn’t.”
“You had one name,” I said. “Daniel. How many Daniels are there?”
“Not many Daniels with that tattoo, though,” she said. “I wouldn’t have known him, he’s changed that much—he was twice my age, because as you know, I was very nearly achild—but so exciting, such fun. He’s an old man now. Life’s been hard, he says, and I said, don’t I know it.Notwell dressed, and doesn’t even have all his teeth, so whatever you’re thinking, it’s not that. I couldn’t mistake the tattoo, though, or his beautiful brown eyes. Soulful, you’d call them. That sadness in them, even when he was charming your knickers off. You could tell he knew what suffering was, even though he’d put it behind him and was determined to go on. When I first met him, in that bar—well, I told you, I fell head over heels. His eyes and the tattoo, though—that was why I stopped him and asked. Just stopped there, bang in the middle of the pavement, and said, ‘Daniel?’ And I was right, itwashim. He remembered me as well.” She paused, and when I didn’t say anything, because I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to want to know any more about this, she added, “And when we started talking, he was lovely. So regretful. I told him we’d had a son, and he couldn’t have been more gobsmacked. Said he couldn’t believe he’d missed all that time with you. ‘My son,’ he kept saying, and that he’d never got over me, either, that he still thinks of me after all this time.”
“Pity he ran off and left you, then,” I said.
“I never thought he really could’ve done that,” she said happily. “I always thought there must’ve been an accident.Something. And I was right, because he explained it all. He’d heard his ex and daughter were having trouble in Aussie, couldn’t even afford to come home, and he decided he needed to put aside his own happiness and help them, even take her back if that was what needed to happen. ‘It was my whanau,’ he said. ‘My duty. No choice.’ He couldn’t bear to tell me, couldn’t even bear to say goodbye, it hurt him so much to leave me, and when he realized what he’d done, how he’d thrown away our happiness, he was too ashamed to come back again, because of course it didn’t work out with her, not when she’d left him for another man in the first place. He was sure then that he’d lost any chance he’d had with me, ‘young and beautiful as you were, and too good for me’—that’s what he said—but if he’d known about you, he’d have been back like a shot. He said, ‘All this time lost. I wish I could have it back.’ He was so glad to hear that I’m doing well, and he was so proud to hear about you, too. Isn’t that lovely?”
I said, “I think I preferred my illusions.”
She said, “If you’re thinking I want him—well, I don’t. He was a wonderful-looking man then, so tall and strong, so manly, but now, like I said, he’s old and he looks it. I’ve been luckier there, but then, I’ve always had good skin and watched my figure, and, of course, I’m still young”—my mum was sixty-three—“but honestly, I could only feel sorry for him. We did drink a bit in those days, I’ve never hidden that from you, and I think he went on doing it, because he’s had to give up now. It was just a whirlwind, though, that courtship. People nowadays say ‘hookup.’ So nasty, when that wasn’t it at all. It was all so exciting and so romantic, and you know, I wasn’t always as careful in my younger days.” She wasn’t all that careful now, if you asked me. “We caught up over coffee,” she went on, “and this is thereallyexciting bit. You have that sister, like I said. I never knew. She’s in Aussie and doesn’tsound like she’s amounted to much, but you have a brother, too, and d’you know who he is?”
“Half-brother,” I said. “And he can’t be all that flash, with a dad like that.” Wait. If she was right, he wasmydad, too.
I definitely preferred my illusions.
“You’d be wrong, then,” she said in triumph. “Hemi Te Mana, that’s who. You know. The fashion designer, lives over in the States now. The billionaire. I never dreamt! Just imagine what Hemi Te Mana could do for you.”
“Imagine,” I said, “what he wants to do for me. Which is nothing, and why should he? Luckily, I’m doing OK for myself. And what’s he going to do, dress my windmills?”
