Etiquette for a Dinner Party (7 page)

He starts chuckling, quietly at first, then Colleen joins in and they are laughing. June joins in, little giggles, and soon everyone except Mrs Harrison is gasping for air, giggling, then collapsing into mad laughter again. The children too.

'Gran smiled,' says Hannah, excitedly. 'Look, she's smiling.'

Mrs Harrison's mouth has changed shape, the corners twitch. She sleeps on.

'Someone once told me that the hearing is the last thing to go,' says Colleen.

They settle down again, thinking carefully now about their words. They watch the white sheet.

An hour passes, then another. The adults doze and wake, talk quietly. They take turns at watching the sheet. The children come and go between the room and the field. .

Mrs Harrison begins to tear at her clothes, at the sheet. Her eyes are still shut, but she picks at the right shoulder strap of her nightie, as though it has fluff or something objectionable on it. She pulls the strap down, exposing her bare, thin shoulder.

June reaches over and pulls it back up. With her other hand, Mrs Harrison pulls the white sheet to one side. Her nightie has ridden up and her legs are exposed to her thighs. They too are thin, the skin a blue-grey colour.

She is restless, muttering words that make no sense. Names no one knows, places she has never been to. But her eyes stay closed.

June sends the children outside, then talks quietly to her mother.

'It's okay Mum, it's June. I'm here. I'm with you.'

Mrs Harrison pulls and grabs, agitated, eyes closed. As soon as June rearranges the bedclothes, they come off again.

Colleen goes out into the corridor and comes back with a nurse. It's the loud one.

'Oh Mrs Harrison, what are you doing?' the nurse says, quietly this time. 'I think we'll give her something to calm her down.'

She disappears.

June tucks the sheets in around her mother, and Ewan moves into the seat on the other side to help.

'It's okay Mum,' he says, softly. 'We're right here. It's okay to go.'

Mrs Harrison is fighting hard now; she has pulled the shoulder strap of her nightie down, right down to her elbow.

Her breast, a flat and wizened fold of skin, is on display.

She tears, frantic, as though she is a child opening a wrapped gift. Her eyes are closed, her breathing shallow and the strange words keep coming.

Ewan senses a presence at the French doors. When he looks up, Reg is stepping into the room. Ewan gently pulls the strap of the nightie up again, covering his mother's breast.

Reg stops, his eyes turn away, his face scarlet.

'Sorry, mate. Sorry,' says Reg. 'I was just . . . town . . . sorry.'

'It doesn't matter Reg.' Ewan repositions himself in the chair, protecting his clawing, agitated mother from Reg's line of sight.

'It doesn't matter,' Ewan says again, as Reg disappears and the last of the day's sunlight comes back into the room.

Colleen has taken the empty food cartons and all the other rubbish from the room. The children have gone home with her.

June finds a cloth and disinfectant and wipes down every surface in the room.

It is clean and warm and quiet.

June and Ewan sit at Mrs Harrison's bedside, listening to her death rattle, watching the white sheet. Rise and fall. Rise and fall.

It moves up and down quickly now, and there are moments when it doesn't move at all. June holds one of her mother's hands, and Ewan the other. They watch the white sheet rise and fall. It falls and does not rise again. Mrs Harrison has died.

It was just after midnight when Jim arrived at his mother's. It had been a fast trip from Wellington, six and a half hours. He'd chucked the Wiggles CDs on to the floor of the car and found his own at the bottom of the glove box. Nick Cave, The Cure — he'd forgotten they were there. He grabbed blindly at the silver discs as he drove, shoving them into the player one after the other. The songs had taken him back to parties, old friends, girls.

Julie had wanted to come too, bring the babies. Your mum loves seeing them, she said. She loves making a fuss. But he wanted to go alone. Julie gave him a look. He hung in there, gave her a look back. I want to spend some time with Mum, he said. I want to make a fuss of her for a change.

He was not worried about his mother. His mother was fine; he rang her once a week to check that this was so. It was the business that was niggling away at him. He'd been thinking about franchising. Others were doing it — every day he read the headlines. Each time, he felt a prickle of resentment, as though he'd just missed out on a prize. So he'd taken the first steps, had a brochure made up. It was on the seat beside him.

He'd had the brochure for a while. More than a while, a few months. He'd spent hours flicking through it, imagining the hard work already done. Branches of McKnight Finance everywhere. Australia. Asia. Television ads, magazine features on the self-made man. As he'd driven through the little towns on State Highway One, he'd pictured how his offices might look from the street.

He sat in his car in his mother's driveway for a moment, window down, wide awake in the dark and the quiet. There was a big orange moon; he felt a sand-dune heat from somewhere in the past. He wondered why the moon looked so close in Tauranga, so far away in Wellington. There'd be some theory, boyhood dreams versus the responsibilities of adulthood. Shit that he didn't subscribe to. Besides, it was real, the difference. It was there, right in front of him.

He would make the franchising decision this weekend.

Jim let himself into the house. His mother usually waited up, made a cup of tea no matter how late it was. But he could hear snores coming from her bedroom. He threw the brochure on the kitchen table for her to ooh and ah over in the morning, and felt his way to his old bedroom. .

'Hello Jim love, what time did you get in?'

Rose put a cup of tea by his bed and pulled open the pale blue curtains. At least he thought it was her. It was her voice. But her hair was cut in a sexy-mature-woman sort of a style and she'd lost weight.

'Just after midnight. You were out cold — snoring the place down,' he said, squinting at her silhouette against the window.

'I was exhausted. Spent all yesterday visiting vineyards, and I think I overdid the tasting.'

Then again, not so sure. Steam curled up from the cup and she leaned over him, kissing his forehead. He smelled perfume just before she moved away.

She picked up his socks from the floor. 'And that wasn't me snoring. It was Roger. I'll throw these in the wash.'

It was clearly not his mother. Roger. Roger. What was a Roger? A Roger was usually a man. Jim's stomach tied itself into a knot. He tried hard to move, but every muscle refused.

Over breakfast, Jim took a good look at her. It had been how long since he'd last seen her? Three months . . . maybe a little longer? Her hair had been coloured a nice sandy blonde and yes, it was definitely a Helen Mirren-in-
Prime-Suspect
sort of a cut. And she was wearing make-up — at least lipstick, the only makeup he ever noticed. The rest might have been natural.

However she had achieved it, the effect was amazing. She was fifty-three but everything about her shouted forty-five. A very attractive forty-five.

He found some initial comfort in the familiar collection of spreads in the middle of the table — Marmite, peanut butter and strawberry jam. But then he saw the margarine was on a butter dish. He never knew his mother had a butter dish; margarine didn't look right on it. And there was the third breakfast plate, covered in crumbs.

'Wine tasting — since when did you start drinking wine?' He had practised this sentence as he'd lifted his heavy body out of bed and pulled on jeans and a shirt. Practised it in his head, making it sound casual, mature. They came out okay, the actual words. Considering.

'Since I met Roger. Roger Greerson. You know — the vineyard Greersons, out at Te Puna? I've got some news, Jim.'

His mother's smile went all the way to her ears. Which he now noticed had diamond earrings in them.

'Roger and I are an item, I suppose you'd say.'

He picked up the jam jar, stabbed at its contents with his knife, and spread the thick blend of dark red fruit across his toast. It looked like road kill.

'Mum. That's great. How long have you . . . you know, been . . .'
Been what? Don't take your mind there . . .

'Oh, not long, probably about six months now.'

The beige slipper on Rose's right foot jiggled up and down like an oversexed rodent.

'I was going to tell you over the phone a couple of times, but we always get sidetracked talking about the kids. He was here last night, but he shot off to the vineyard early this morning; he's got stuff to do.'

Like avoiding being smacked over in bed, Jim thought.

'Though he said he'd call in later, say hello. He's keen to see you again.'

'Excellent,' said Jim. He finished jamming his toast. Blood and gore. One big accident.

His mother poured more tea. Endless cups of tea were a part of his coming-home ritual and he believed, sincerely, that no one made a cup of tea like his mother. The first cup of tea he ever had was with her and his father, when he was twelve and on holiday in Auckland.

This cup of tea tasted weak. As though not enough time had been put into it. He was sulking now, in a pathetic sort of a way. Although he recognised this, he didn't rise above it. He just didn't feel like it.

Jim remembered the brochure. He looked around and saw it poking out from a pile of women's magazines on a chair in the corner of the room. He put it back on the table while Rose prattled on.

'Yes. Now. Roger. Well, Mary, his wife, she passed away about six years ago . . . Do you remember her Jim?'

'Um yes, vaguely . . .'

'Well, Roger joined the Bridge Club, that's where we met. Properly, you know . . . I mean really got to know each other . . .'

She went on about Roger, the vineyard, sauvignon blanc and how much Roger looked like Vince Martin, the guy off the tyre ads. And had Jim ever noticed that, Rose wanted to know.

'Who?' Jim asked.

'That Vince Martin. The one that's been on the Beaurepaires ad for such a long time. Or is it Tony's Tyre Service. No, it's definitely Beaurepaires. That's the other tyre ad, isn't it. The one where he says, Hi, I'm Vince Martin and this is a bald tyre.'

'God . . . I mean . . . I, I don't really know Mum. I wouldn't have seen Roger Greerson for ten years, probably.'

'Well you know who I mean, don't you. Roger does a
fantastic
impersonation of him. It's his party trick. That Vince Martin guy. Beaurepaires. He's never changed his looks, never really aged.'

Vince Martin, or Roger Greerson? Who had bought his mother new diamond earrings, evidently. To replace the ones she'd always worn, the ones he'd bought her back from overseas.

Jim needed to get out. Away from the little kitchen table, from the third breakfast plate covered in Roger Greerson's crumbs. This was how the three bears had felt after Goldilocks' home invasion.

'Mum. Let's go out. Into town. Let's go shopping.'

'Oh . . . that would be lovely Jim, but no . . . Roger's taking me out for lunch. You're coming too, of course.' Rose fiddled with her left earring. .

It wasn't that Jim didn't want to see Roger, or have lunch with them. He just needed to go for a run. He went most weekends, on Saturday morning. So this had nothing to do with Roger, or Roger and his mother, or Vince Martin.

He ran hard for half an hour, around the boundary of his old primary school with its sturdy brick buildings and spawn of prefabs. The gates were locked, the property off-limits outside school hours. Where did boys go now to smoke their first cigarettes, steal their first kisses?

The wooden bungalows gave way to a new subdivision of brick houses. It was impossible to tell one from another. Sprinklers flicked at brown lawns and dogs slept in shrinking pockets of shade. The repetitive pattern carried Jim along and he lost track of time and place. He was surprised to find he had reached the edge of town, the road leading up to the old cemetery.

The hill and the heat sucked the last of his energy but he kept up the pace. A pulse inside his brain accompanied the thump of his feet on melting tarseal. He came around the final corner and saw row after row of white headstones catching the sun. Before he remembered not to think about it, he thought about it. .

He and Julie were five days into their honeymoon. They were in Greece, on the island of Paros. Their beach had long lines of white deckchairs. They were getting the hang of beating the Germans to the chairs each morning — putting their towels on the best ones, reserving them for the day.

Jim got a message to phone his mother.

'Don't come home,' Rose said, when he rang, sweaty and sandy, from the foyer of the hotel. He remembered cold tiles under his feet, and how his whole body chilled.

'You won't make it back in time to say goodbye to him,' she said. She was sobbing. 'Don't ruin your big trip, Jim.'

But how could he not come home? They sat on planes for twenty-six hours. His mother was right: they were four hours too late. Instead, he organised a funeral. Managed his mother and sisters through the heartbreak.

He and Julie had promised themselves they would go back and finish the trip. They never did. He'd started the business, then she'd got pregnant. After a while, they stopped talking about seeing the world together.

But that's what the headstones reminded him of. The deckchairs. Every time.

Jim jogged into the cemetery and walked to his father's grave. His mother had always kept it looking beautiful: flowers, little notes. He bent down next to a fresh bouquet and picked up the card: