A few of the boys on the team started inviting him to the food court on Sunday afternoons. It was where they hung out with girls from their sister school. Danny went along, unsure about girls, other than Clare; how to look at them, what to say to them. This girl already had a boyfriend, one of the guys from his team, a mate from the year above, but he was relaxed about it, already looking for someone new. He didn’t seem to mind Danny and her sitting together sharing music. It might have even helped. Danny discovered he knew what to say to her. All that Clare had taught him paid off. She was not so foreign.
She lived in Birkenhead and sometimes at the end of those Sunday afternoons they caught the bus home together. The windows fogged up so you could draw shapes. They shared headphones, took turns choosing songs. She had good taste. Sometimes, their hands grazed. That was all.
*
It was autumn when he realised he might have it in him. The thing his mother saw. It was autumn and he was walking down the road beside the girl. It was early, getting dark, all the windows glowed, the street was empty; he wanted to capture it, the loneliness, their white puffing breath, the smell of smoke, the fire he would lie in front of afterwards; he would lie there for hours, ignoring his family, remembering this. He would like to invite her over, but it was too soon for that. It was too soon for so many things. It was their first afternoon.
They talked and walked and drank coffee. That’s all they did. They bought burnt coffee from the Italian restaurant beside the cinema. He paid. It was autumn. She told him about her family. He watched her tongue search for the hole in the coffee cup lid. She was watching him rather than the cup and her tongue missed. Eventually she found it. He would remember her tongue lost, searching, for as long as he lived.
“What are you going to do next year?” she said.
“Elam, I think.”
“Really?”
“Maybe.”
“Brave.”
“Or dumb.”
“Or dumb,” she agreed.
She had come to see him. She was a year older and had her licence and her name was Bridie and she had come to see him. She was in her first year of university, studying business; he was in his last year of high school. She had ended it with her boyfriend, the guy from his rugby team, months ago, then one day she’d sent him a message. You heard of Cat Power? He had. Of course he had. Clare had shown him years ago.
He walked her back to her car. It was only 7pm but it was dark now and he did not want her to go. He thought, is it always like this? Will I always feel this way? And after, as her lips left his mouth, as she smiled and got into her car, he thought I will never be this happy again.
And he was not entirely wrong.
*
She liked coffee so coffee became their thing. They drank it across the city, sitting or walking, always talking. He had never been able to talk to anyone the way he could talk to her. His years of silence were over. They walked through the rose gardens. He told her his grandmother had a plaque somewhere; she wasn’t interested. She wasn’t interested in anything except him. They walked through Newmarket. They climbed Ohinerau and sat against the trunk of a tree above the motorway. That afternoon, their talking turned to kissing; the kissing might have gone further, but it started to rain and they ran down the hill to her car. A few weeks later, sitting in the cinema, she pushed his hand into her pants, gasping when he did what she wanted. She ground her pelvis against his hand. His fingers came back soaked. A few months later, they were lying on her bed watching TV. Her eyes stayed on the TV as she unbuckled his belt. He did nothing. She pulled him on top of her. He said nothing. She held him in her hand, “Jesus,” she said. “I don’t know if you’ll fit,” and she guided him in. He was not ready.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “You’ll know what to do.”
And he did.
*
All that he cared about and all that he saw and all that he remembered was because of her. He had spent years sketching, painting, taking photos, because they were things to do, because it made his mother happy, but for all those years it had been tentative, as if he was hoping to catch something and every now and again he did, whereas now he wanted to do it.
He told her was going to art school so he applied for art school.
*
“Where is he off to all the time?” Clare said.
She was dicing vegetables in the kitchen. Their mother was sitting with a glass of wine at the bench, watching the news. It was a Thursday night. In a few months Clare would be moving to Wellington and their mother had decided her children needed to know how to cook before living on their own. She had instigated a new rule: both of her children would cook one night a week.
‘I think he’s found himself a girlfriend.’
‘You need to be able to speak to get a girlfriend.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure.’
After dinner, Clare slammed the dishes into the dishwasher. Then, on her way down to her room, she followed a whim. She opened his door. She knew he wasn’t home but even so she treaded softly. It was dark, the bed was made; his discarded rugby bag made the whole room smell of mud. She opened his window. She told herself that was why she was here.
She switched on his desk lamp.
They were sketches mostly, a few watercolours. In the first pile, she found sketches of a woman, their mother, hanging washing. A tree above moved in the wind. He had sketched the wide back of a man, their father, standing on their deck; city lights aglow. A different man, skinnier, bald, reached up to grab a little boy’s dangling legs. A tiny white cat fell from a tree. A whale, with an eye nearly as large as its body, lay beached on golden sand. In another pile, perhaps a more recent pile, he had sketched a row of dark houses with small, glowing windows; a fire with dark blue flames; a woman sitting in long grass under a tree; it was raining and she had a blanket over her head; you could not make out her face.
She was surprised at how good her brother was. She was even more surprised she felt no envy, no jealousy. She had no desire to do what he did.
*
It was November and still cool so early in the morning. School was over. Their exams were done. Results would not appear until January. They cut across the park. Their shoes were wet from dew. She wore a red jersey over her dress. They hurried. He thought, I need a cup of coffee, then he thought, I wish we didn’t have to hurry. Their appointment was for 9.30am. The office was in Parnell. The bus had dropped them off on Victoria Street. They were late. Bridie looked beautiful. Her cheeks were pink from exertion.
Tonight, they were staying at a motel on Shelly Beach Road. Tomorrow, they were driving north.
The ceremony took no more than a minute. Each mumbled the words then signed their name.
The woman checked their IDs again, beamed, wished them luck.
“Could you, do you mind, taking our photo?”
Bridie pulled off her jumper. Danny put his arm around her. Their smiles were lit up by the flash.
Eight hours later, they sat across from each other at the steak house on Jervois Road. They felt ridiculous. Exhausted. No different.
“We should have gone to the food court.”
“No, this is good.”
Still, his eyes bulged when he saw the price. Getting married had been his idea. No one was getting married anymore so that’s what they would do, he said. Bridie had been unsure so he convinced her. They were eighteen, no one could tell them what to do. No one needed to be there. It was about them. He never mentioned his grandfather. Not once.
She said, “It’s not like I’m pregnant.”
“We can fix that.”
“Fuck off,” she said, laughing. “I don’t want to get pregnant.”
He wanted nothing less either, but acted nonchalant. “If it happens, it happens.”
They drank champagne on the balcony watching the traffic.
“This stuff is meant to be quite good.”
“Yeah, it’s nice.”
They finished the bottle in the bath. Legs between legs. He ran his toe along her vagina, but it was playful; they were too drunk, too exhausted, to have sex. They went to bed early, slept deeply and away from each other. When they woke intertwined again they weren’t sure where they were or why they felt anxious.
Their destination was the very top of the country. He drove them in her Rav-4. They bought groceries—chips and nuts and bread and peanut butter, bananas, instant coffee, bottled water, blocks of chocolate—at the Pak’nSave on the northern edge of the city. He wanted to see where the two seas met. He had a desperate urge to see it and he wanted her to be there with him and for some reason he wanted her to be his wife when he saw it. He did not know where this need came from. But it was important.
It was windy at the top. The car park was empty other than a tourist bus. Chinese tourists milled about laughing, taking photos by the lighthouse. He felt full of something. He struggled to breathe, to talk. Bridie took his hand. She pointed out the spirit tree. ‘That’s where they say the dead leap into the sea,’ she said. She made him stand on top of the wall, with nothing but cliff and weeds below, unbalanced by the wind, and she took his photo and his photo and his photo. Then he approached a tourist, reluctantly pointing at the camera and at themselves. The man clicked once and it was, they discovered later, a poor photo. They were all out of focus.
*
Two years later, he was lining the baking dish with pastry. His mother sat across from him drinking wine, watching the news. He was twenty years old.
The phone rang. She handed it to him. “Hello?”
Clare said, “What’s this I hear about you getting kicked to the curb?”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Have you broken up for good then?”
“We’re taking a break.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“Tonight I’m making mince pie. Who knows what tomorrow holds.”
“Come on Danny. You need to get out of there. Come stay with me.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
*
He took the overnight bus to Wellington. His sister was waiting at the bus stop when he got off. “You look like shit.”
“I feel pretty grim, too.”
She had moved flats and lived in Mount Victoria with two others, both bureaucrats. He was to sleep on her couch. She would pay for his dinners.
“What happened then?”
“I honestly don’t know.” What could he tell her? That the talking had stopped, followed by the sex, finally the friendship. That everything had spluttered out so quickly it had taken him by surprise. And yet they could not just throw it all away.
“Come on. Spit it out.”
“I’m not sure we’re cut out for the whole thing.”
“Mum said you’ve stopped taking pictures.”
“So what?”
“How can you be a photographer if you’re sick of taking photos?”
He laughed. “I have never said I want to be a photographer. Not once.”
*
The next night was Friday night and they went out with Clare’s friends. They started at a Japanese BYO, each with an $11 bottle of wine, ending up at a gay nightclub down the bottom of Cuba Street. Few of the people he had met two years earlier when they helped Clare move to Wellington were still in her orbit, but he recognised one: Nina. She remembered him. She told him he hadn’t said a word the whole night last time they met. Every time after that when he looked at her she was watching him.
She was different from Bridie. Shorter, heavier. Light where Bridie was dark. Relaxed and easygoing. He thought different could be good.
They were standing at the bar downing shots when she took his hand. He thought they were going for a smoke but she led him back to her flat. To her bedroom. She turned on the light. He sat on her bed. He told himself, don’t think and he watched her roll down her tights. She was proud of her body and he thought: so she should be. Halfway through he got up and switched off the light. Other than that, did he think about anything? Did he know what he was about to do? It was like being in another city meant none of it was real.
“I thought you were running away,” she said after he’d sat back down. She pulled his t-shirt over his head.
“No,” he said. “Nothing like that.”
*
In the morning, he was on Clare’s couch staring at the ceiling when she got up. His bag was at his feet. His boots were on. She said, “Let’s get breakfast.” At the cafe, she did not know where to look. She felt responsible. She liked Bridie. Nina did this all the time, she took home different guys most weekends, and she liked Bridie.
“You didn’t get kicked out, did you?”
“I needed some space.”
“Why’d you do it? With Nina of all people?”
He was quiet. She thought, why have we never spoken about our girlfriends and boyfriends, our wives and husbands? Not once.
Finally, he said, “A few months ago, damn it’s longer actually, more like a year ago now, anyway someone asked how Bridie and I were and I said we were great and I meant it, I really meant it. But as soon as I said it I felt this dread spreading through me and I realised we were always going to be great, nothing was ever going to change, that would be it. I was seventeen when we got together. First and last? I don’t know. I just couldn’t. I just can’t.”
“You got married to her! That’s how it’s supposed to work.”
“I know. I know.”
*
He messaged Bridie to say he was back and needed to see her. She asked to meet in public. So he sat in the little park in Takapuna by the roundabout, across the road from the mall where it all began. He watched the afternoon go by. When she saw him she smiled. She was pale. She had not been to work. She already knew he had done something silly. Something irrevocable. They had been on a break and he had gone and freed himself, and in doing so, without meaning to, he had freed her too. And somehow he only realised it then. He only realised it as he stood up to say hello.
Asked what was on his mind when he wrote his story, the author replied, “It stemmed from a walk home after rugby practice one evening in autumn years ago. It was magic: the sky was getting dark, the air cooling, I was cold and muddy and hopeless at rugby, but I also knew the fire would be going at home, that I would soon be warm and dry and fed and there was a girl I would be seeing that weekend. It was an overwhelming, hopeful feeling and yet somehow I knew it was fleeting.”
