The Forrests (28 page)

With clumsy thumbs Dorothy turned the pages. Who were these people who had their hair set especially? What kind of project was this, portraits of the well-to-do? There were numbers in silvery graphite on the top of the pages. They might have been dates but her glasses were not strong enough to decipher them. Out the window the hedges cast a deep-angled shadow half the length of the garden. When she looked back at the folder there was another photo that Hank hadn’t shown her, and a fond, warm feeling suffused her. It was Daniel. She glanced at the doorway as if someone might come in, and carried the book closer to the window to get more light on his face, there, touched a finger to the digitally removed scar, his crooked inward smile, the huge black irises. There he was. She peeled the corner tabs from the page and lifted the photograph out leaving the page empty, dotted
with residual glue. Abruptly, the hallway went silent – the television switched off – and she put the portfolio down, tucked the stolen photograph into the folds of her skirt and quick-stepped from the room.

Rainclouds enveloped the hills, promising the lightning storms of deep summer evenings. Dot was bunching up sheets from the washing line when Hank stumbled into the garden, gasping, a hand glued to his side.

‘You look like a stabbing victim about to utter your last words,’ she said.

‘I like your friend Dennis,’ he said when he’d recovered his breath, sweat still budding from his skin. ‘I dropped in on him. He’s very grand.’

‘I don’t know if he’d describe us as friends. He’s our landlord. I do his garden.’

‘But he came here for dinner.’

‘He’s lonely.’

‘So be his friend.’ He cocked his head and smiled at her. ‘You’d be welcome company, I’m sure.’

God, was she blushing? Hank reached for the corners of a king-size sheet and together they shook it out and folded it, coming together as though in an Elizabethan dance.
Dance lessons –
when was that? Early girlhood in America, prehistory – and she raised her heels stepping forward, sank her feet down slowly in their house slippers into the dewy grass and bent as far as her knees would allow into a curtsey. In the trees the birds were raucous.

‘You know what I’d really like to do here?’ Hank said. ‘Go scuba diving.’

She twiddled through the wire basket for the warm wooden pegs. Like a box of dolls. ‘Hank, has Ruth talked much about our family?’

He nodded. ‘Oh sure, that whole thing about your father. Not for a while now.’

‘What thing do you mean? The accident?’

‘Ah … no. I feel weird I said anything. It’s nothing.’

‘OK.’ Together they looked into the shrouded hills. ‘You know I think I would like a photo taken. If that’s all right?’ She wondered whether he’d looked in his vandalised portfolio. If he would say anything. How she would respond.

‘Hold still –’ He turned to face her, removed something from her collarbone. ‘Bit of grass. Let’s see your hands?’

She looked away as he examined them, traced his fingers over the calluses and pragmatic fingernails, her heart banging. Nerves all over her body hummed. Hank took a step closer, eyes full of evening light, his body smelling sharply from the run, and it was ridiculous how much he reminded her of another time, and she said, ‘I have to go inside.’

The dive centres up north had either closed for the season or were fully booked. Hank and Ruth announced a plan to head south for whale watching, ‘while they still could’. They were going to drive and take the ferry, and even Andrew snorting and saying, ‘Overrated,’ couldn’t dampen their enthusiasm. The screenwriter friend would join them, a last fling before the baby
came. Dorothy promised to call in on his wife. ‘It’s gone so quickly,’ she said, ‘your visit.’

‘We’ll be back.’ Her sister smiled. ‘I’ve got to see your kids.’

On the day before the departure, Ruth and Dorothy dropped Hank at the screenwriter’s house for a swim and drove on to the sculpture park. An elevated wooden path extended between rimu and kauri trees. They passed a set of human figures that stood in a large half-shell, like a giant conch. Away from the sun, the air was cool and moist.

In silence they walked slowly down the side of the hill, abstract red shapes and bronze beasts rising from the first layer of bush, resembling deer or giant birds, not so much modelled as gestured at. Dot thought of the sweat welling on Hank’s skin, in the hollow of his throat. The unseasonal cold ached in her joints and she didn’t mind that Ruth seemed to be passing through the experience too quickly, ignoring the atmosphere, consigning it to recollection,
doing the sculptures
.

‘Incredible,’ Ruth said when they were out in the sun again, crossing an immaculate lawn towards the road. ‘So what, those are someone’s private collection? Is there any information, is there a shop?’

‘Over there,’ said Dorothy, pointing to the building that housed a gift shop and café. She had wanted to – what, to
keep something
of her sister but now Ruth was leaving and she was once again glossy, so controlled, and since the mention of the will they hadn’t had a meaningful conversation and she felt stupidly scared of sitting in a café with her, of ordering watery quiche and attempting to introduce the real things, the state of her marriage, the hole left by Eve,
her fear that she lived her life on the inside, ruled by the fantasy that someone out there knew her, held her true self.

‘Any good?’ Ruth asked.

‘Not really, just smaller versions of the sculptures, maquettes, models.’

Ruth was halfway to the shop. Dorothy tugged at her sleeve. ‘No, don’t, Andy’s girlfriend might be there.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘She’s not really his girlfriend. I don’t know. Just this local arty type, she’s everywhere.’

‘But not his girlfriend.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Can’t you ask him?’

The door was locked; a sign read
Open After 12
.

‘I heard him last night, having a rant to you about the art world. “Gate-keepers”. You know,’ Dorothy said, ‘it’s funny that all that time ago I thought Andrew was so different from our father. And now he’s kind of becoming him. Ruth –’ quickly before they reached the car, before the outing tapered to a close. ‘Hank said something about Dad, and I just wondered. What he meant?’

Her sister frowned. ‘What did he say?’

‘Nothing, but – was there …’ It was stupid to feel of all emotions embarrassed in this moment, that she should already know, was exposing her ignorance, but she did. ‘Was there some
thing
about Dad?’

Ruth was very still, squinting in the late-morning light. ‘You know he liked men, don’t you.’

‘Men?’ Dorothy blinked. The word hopped the boundary of her known world. ‘Dad was gay?’

‘Yeah, I guess you could say that. I thought.’ Ruth shrugged. ‘I mean obviously he wasn’t out, but Mom knew, and some of their friends, it was a kind of side thing, but, you know – why did you think he left New York?’

‘I don’t know. I thought. Money. But what about Mum?’

‘Well, she loved him. And they had us, and you know, they wanted to stay married.’

‘Jesus.’ The morning really was extremely bright. Dazzled, she fished in her bag for her sunglasses, wiped them free of dust and put them on, the ordinary movements happening at a distance. ‘How did you find out?’

‘Mom told me.’

She felt made of raffia, like she might float away in the sun. ‘Is that why they left here, as well?’

‘I don’t know – there was that inheritance, remember – but it wouldn’t surprise me. If there was someone Mom wanted to get him away from. She kept a damn close eye on him when we were back here for Eve, despite her beautiful Valium haze.’

Dorothy had never imagined Ruth talking about their parents like this. She felt so grateful suddenly, that Ruth had been able to live alongside them, be a daughter. ‘But what about in the States, all those years, I mean you don’t just relocate to change who you are. Surely there’s always going to be someone.’

‘I never met anyone. I think there were a few times Mom got jealous. But it was mostly only sex. At least, that was their story.’

‘God. It’s like seeing him as a person.’

‘Yeah, I thought you knew.’

How odd that Eve never would. Dot felt a tug inside, the need
to share it with her older sister, hear her incredulous voice on the end of the phone. ‘Poor Dad,’ she said. ‘Not able to just be himself.’

‘Yeah.’ Ruth looked away, into the wooded part of the garden, where the walkway stretched under the canopy they had just emerged from. ‘But I kind of think it
was
him, to have the two lives. Or it became him. He wasn’t unhappy.’

The sisters walked to the gravelled parking bay, Dorothy still weightless, two-dimensional, held in place by Ruth’s arm around her waist. Hers was the only car. She came round to unlock the passenger door, and pushed the sunglasses up onto her forehead. Up close you could see the reassuring wrinkles in Ruth’s face. ‘What about Daniel?’ she said. ‘How is he, where did you see him?’

‘Yeah, about a year ago. Barcelona? We had dinner. He seemed well. Had a nice girlfriend. Think she was an architect.’

‘I stole his photo from Hank’s portfolio.’

‘Yeah. He told me.’

‘Does he want it back? I should pay him for it.’

‘Don’t worry.’

As she passed the front bonnet towards the driver’s door Dorothy said, ‘Now you know all my secrets.’

‘Oh, I’m sure that’s not true.’ Ruth slid into her car seat and jumped up again, stung by the hot vinyl.

The rental car was electric, completely quiet, Hank and the screenwriter waiting behind its milky windows for Ruth to get in. ‘Sorry to miss Andrew,’ Hank called, winding down the glass. ‘International man of mystery. Tell him thanks.’

‘Sure.’ Her basket was laden with baby squash and rocket and she
wanted to give Ruth something for the trip, a memento, but she couldn’t take vegetables, no.

‘OK.’ Ruth unhooked the basket from Dorothy’s elbow and placed the basket on the gravel at their feet. They hugged. Dorothy felt her sister’s body against hers.

‘Have a great time,’ she said.

‘Thank you,’ said Ruth. ‘I’ll miss you.’ She drew away.

Dot nodded. ‘Miss you too.’ Ruth folded herself into the back of the car and the screenwriter backed down the drive, drove out of sight. The edges of the silence filled with a tinselly buzz of cicadas. Dot’s sandals crunched on the gravel as she took slow steps back round the side of the house, towards the garden.

The photograph that came a few weeks later, from the States, had caught both sisters unawares through a soft-focus crinkle of peach-tree leaves. Amy stood at Dot’s side, studying the picture. ‘You do look alike,’ she said.

Donald walked through the kitchen, carrying paint-splattered dustsheets from the girls’ room. He followed their gaze to the picture and said, ‘Who’s that?’

‘Auntie Ruth. I’ve met her,’ said Amy in the airy tone of sibling one-upmanship.

‘Why haven’t I?’

‘Come on, Donald, you didn’t want to leave the beach.’ She should have insisted that the kids come back early from camping. It hadn’t even entered her mind, which now seemed inexplicable. ‘OK, give me a hand to clear the table, it’s dinnertime.’

‘Where’s Dad?’ said Donald. In her peripheral vision, Dorothy
could tell that Amy was giving him a look. ‘What?’ he said. ‘I just asked where he is. I need the key to the shed.’

‘It’s in the door, you fool.’

He humped the dustsheets out there, calling, ‘Your face is the fool,’ over his shoulder.

Out of habit Dot slid her hand into the card-backed envelope that Ruth had sent the photo in, to check it was empty before it hit the recycling pile. Her fingers met paper edges: she reached in and drew out a cheque. The skin up her back tingled as she made sense of the amount. It was a lot. She turned it over and read scrawled on the back, in her sister’s handwriting:
Your share
.

After she’d washed up and everyone had gone to bed, in the creaking, darkened house, Dorothy sat in the pool of light cast by the kitchen-table lamp and wrote five cheques, one for each of her children and one for Lou. She finished and put the pen down, rubbed at the ink smudge on her index finger. On the table lay a disc Ruth had left behind, a little silver moon. She put it on the stereo and listened.

IT SAID HE
was in a relationship. He listed himself as ‘retired’, a joke, and ‘spends most of his time travelling’, which might also have been a joke except for the photographs from a recent trip to Rio, for the carnival. The same elfin-featured girl was in most of them, looking to be about twenty-one, long brown limbs draped over Daniel, her short blonde hair catching the light. That would be right. She’d have been the one to design this page. Although Daniel had known how to use the Internet to his advantage, it only operated for him as an old-fashioned Rolodex might. Follow Daniel on Twitter! Poke Daniel! Send Daniel a gift today!

Daniel’s page showed a photo of a man who looked older, but not old.

Dot left the tablet on the bench and paced the room.

Across the dry garden, between the house and the road, wisps of dirt rose as if the earth was smouldering. There came a sudden rattle of rain. Hannah and Destiny ran towards the house from the
cruddy old car, towels tenting their heads, shrieking. It was crazy at the beach, they said, the wave-tips ultraviolet through the storm light, the sky so dark it looked like an eclipse.

The kids went round the house shutting windows and putting lights on, and the wind noise picked up, and from her bedroom Dot watched distant cars driving with headlights on, grass flattened on the hills, trees trembling. Andrew lay on the bed watching rugby. A battle long lost, the screen on the chest of drawers, and the truth was she didn’t mind, enjoyed late-night cop shows and documentaries, a replacement for sex or conversation. If she wanted to read there was the living-room couch and sometimes she woke in the small hours of the morning under the thin woollen throw, neck stiff, the gadget hot on her stomach.

‘Going to be a storm,’ she said. Andrew hummed acknowledgement. She patted his foot before she left the room, and he twitched away, a reflex.