Rebecca K Reilly
Put a straw under baby
In the middle of October, my eldest son turns thirty-four and I wonder if I should feel like I’ve achieved something. ‘Do you feel as if you’ve achieved something?’ I ask my wife, who isn’t really awake and prefers not to be asked anything before nine.
‘Not today, no,’ she says, turning away from me without opening her eyes. I decide to get up. I walk around the house opening all the curtains. This has turned into a job that needs doing every day, now that there’s only two of us living here. It feels temporary though, one of our children is always on the verge of financial or mental collapse. I worry that this is my fault, that I’ve done something wrong to cause this, but at the same time I’ve supervised enough students at the university to understand that their whole generation is on the brink of ruin. I think myself lucky to be a part of the generation that was just really into rave music.
In Casper’s old room, I sit on the bed and allow myself a short interlude of nostalgia. I recall the day, thirty-four years ago, when we brought him home from the hospital and put him on the floor here. Not because we didn’t have any furniture, we had bits and pieces from an estate sale we saw advertised in the Trade & Exchange, but because people kept telling us it was highly likely that our baby would choke on a foreign object and die. I didn’t know that term, foreign object, when the first person approached us to warn us about the probable death of our unborn child, in the Foodtown, as we searched for reduced-price baked goods after having promised all our money and future money to this house. I just thought she was being racist. I thought she heard my accent and thought, this man has a house full of babushka dolls and Fabergé eggs and they will surely be his downfall.
Betty told me on the walk home, our hands blistering under the strain of all the plastic bags, a foreign object is just something where it shouldn’t be, like a fifty kopek coin in our child’s mouth, or later the child himself, on the floor of our house suddenly, at constant risk of perilous danger. We sat in front of him, not knowing what to do. Whether it would be all right if we went and watched the end of our Blue Velvet video, which we’d had to stop watching because the baby came. ‘I’m not sure I like babies,’ Betty said as we watched to check he was still breathing.
‘I don’t think I do either,’ I said. ‘But if he doesn’t die, he’ll get bigger.’ I was twenty-two and I was doing my best.
*
‘What are you doing that for?’ Betty asks when she happens upon me wiping down the bannister.
‘I didn’t want to vacuum the stairs while you were still asleep.’ I look up at her on her higher stair, in her spring robe, her hair recently undone from its plaits. ‘Do you remember that estate sale we went to, when we first moved here?’
‘Yes. The house with the orange carpet and the woman with the orange perm.’ She thinks, drumming her fingers in the air just above the clean bannister. ‘Her husband had left her for a younger woman he met at a pool tournament, but it didn’t last and he called begging her to be allowed to come back. She said no and then he died a month later of an undiagnosed illness. That’s why she was selling all his things. She felt very sorry for me, that I was stuck with you because of the baby. She was going to take all his money and move to Adelaide.’
‘What did you think about that?’
‘That if I were going to take a dead man’s money and begin a new life I would pick somewhere a bit more exciting than Adelaide.’
‘Like where?’
She shrugs. ‘Maybe New Orleans. I let her think I was trapped though, she gave me the dressing table with the mirror for twenty dollars.’ She briefly puts her hand on mine. ‘Stop cleaning the stairs so meticulously, it’s a birthday lunch, not a Home & Garden photoshoot.’
*
Betty is in a new dress, taking a Madeira cake out of the oven, when the first child returns home, the middle child, wearing a pink shirt with a number of buttons undone and looking at his phone. ‘Dad, have you heard about this?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say, truthfully, sitting at the kitchen counter, putting down my crossword pencil.
‘It’s bullshit, why would the university fund Brendan Cape sixty thousand dollars for further research on whether or not dark matter really exists? So many people at so many research centres are studying that right now, why would we need to as well?’ He bites his lip and grips his phone and I think for a second he might throw it through the glass of the French doors. ‘He shouldn’t get any funding, he’s a fucking numbskull.’
Betty sighs as she runs a knife between the outer edge of the cake and the tin, which she holds with a sage-coloured tea towel. ‘V, why can’t you enter a room with a, “Hello Mum, hello Dad, how have you been, I’ve missed you”, why is it always, “Brendan Cape’s a fucking numbskull who doesn’t deserve sixty thousand dollars because his research on dark matter is of no use to anyone”?’
He turns sharply towards her, ‘Mum, if you’d met Brendan Cape you’d be entering every room with an announcement about what a fucking numbskull he is.’
She flips the cake easily onto a cooling rack without looking up at him. ‘I’ve met enough numbskulls in my life that it would be a never-ending endeavour to name them all every time I entered a room.’
‘I actually have met Brendan before,’ I say. ‘He had some helpful suggestions about paper recycling at an inter-departmental waste reduction meeting.’
‘That’s because he’s a goddamn bootlicker,’ V says, looking at his reflection in the microwave door. ‘Do you think I can pull off a shirt like this or do you think people will see my scar and think I’m making a brave statement about body positivity?’
‘Is that the worst thing that people could think about you?’ Betty asks, stirring a bowl of lemon syrup. ‘And where’s your sister?’
‘No, but I don’t want anyone looking at me understandingly.’ He starts fussing with his hair. ‘I don’t know where Greta is, I don’t track all her movements.’
‘I just thought you might have arrived together, since you live together and you were both coming to the same place. Or was she out?’
‘No, she was at home when I left. I didn’t even think about it, I just saw about the funding and shouted, “Fuck you, Brendan Cape!” and walked right out the door. Greta was in the kitchen, she shouted after me that the only Brendan she knew was Brendan Foot.’
‘Who is Brendan Foot?’ I ask.
‘It’s the name of a car dealership in Wellington,’ Betty says. ‘So you don’t know when Greta will be here, then?’
‘Why do you care so much about this funding?’ I ask, watching my son rearrange the fridge magnets. ‘You don’t even work for the university anymore.’
‘When you leave a workplace your rivalries don’t instantly disappear,’ he says.
I wouldn’t know, I’ve always worked at the same place. Except when I spent a summer sorting apples for export, so that I could buy my first computer. That must have been thirty-six years ago now. I didn’t have any rivals there, we all got along famously. All my rivalries have been personal, not professional.
‘Did you not bring anything with you, V?’ Betty asks him as he leans on the bench and watches her pour the syrup over the cake. ‘You must be feeling supremely confident about the spring weather to arrive without a jacket.’
‘I left it in the hall, I wanted to get your impression of this shirt. And of course I brought something for Casper’s birthday, I don’t want to hear through the grapevine that he’s been moaning that I only care about myself and my hair and the plot of the new season of Real Housewives of Atlanta and my personal research on Neptune again.’
‘What did you get him?’
He wipes up a spot of spilled syrup with the tea towel. ‘I got him a cake.’
*
As I polish the taps in the upstairs bathroom, I think about a recent conversation I had at a fundraising event. The event was raising funds for a new building at the school I went to a long time ago, when I first arrived in this country, and I was at the event because I saw a sign about it walking home from work and Betty had gone to a play. One of the men there I had been at school with, his youngest son was there now and doing very well with BMX racing. I told him about my three children, none of whom I imagine would be particularly good in a BMX competition, but who did other things. My eldest son teaches experimental film and performance, my middle son has just given up a career in astrophysics, and my daughter is about to begin a master’s in literary studies, I told him. I thought this was suitably interesting, but the man reacted in a way I didn’t expect. He furrowed his brow, leaned in, and asked me how they were going to get a foot in the door on the property ladder with lives like that.
I tried to imagine a ladder that somehow had a door, and my poor children desperate to put their foot inside of that door. The man said that was all he wanted for his kids, for them to become first home buyers. I thought that what I wanted for my children was for them to feel fulfilled and not have any breakdowns on my basement floor, crying over the exploits of the housewives of cities all over the world. I hoped I wasn’t wrong for having such aspirations. I hoped I wasn’t still doing things wrong, thirty-four years after I first laid the baby on the floor. I continued to sip my cask wine from its plastic cup and said how times had changed. I told the man my eldest son does own a house, but I didn’t tell him it was only because my brother’s husband is a shipping magnate and he employed Casper to restructure all twenty of his offices. He’s good with people and he had two young children he wanted a stable living situation for. He got rid of all his office clothes afterwards.
Downstairs, I hear Greta shouting at V, for leaving without her, and for somehow not noticing that when he left her there in their apartment kitchen, she was in the middle of baking a cake.
*
‘He’s literally the worst,’ Greta mutters as she trails behind me, limply and half-heartedly dusting the leaves of the plants in the living room. ‘He didn’t even make his own cake, he just bought it at the bakery on the way here. You know the real reason why he’s been complaining about this Jonathan Cape character all day, right?’
‘Brendan Cape.’ I pull the couch back to check the skirting board behind it is clean. ‘And no, but I assumed he’d done something to personally wrong V to make him exclaim this much.’
‘He told him he was bad at Sudoku.’
‘What?’
She sighs and waves the duster generally in the direction of a monstera. ‘V loves Sudoku, he does one every night for his treat for getting through the day. But one time, I think two years ago, he was doing one at work and...’ She looks at me with her face scrunched up, one eye shut.
‘Brendan.’
‘Yeah, Brendan, he came up behind V and told him that his strategy was bad and asked him if it was his first time doing Sudoku. And that’s why V thinks that he should be prevented from receiving funding for the rest of his life.’
‘Ah, I see. I should have guessed, really.’
Greta sighs again and puts her hands on her hips. ‘Dad.’
‘Yes?’
‘Does my cake just look like a shit version of Mum’s cake?’
I look at Greta, who herself looks a lot like Betty did when she was her age, with her bone carving around her neck, waist-length black hair and a familiar look of resignation. I don’t think she would like to hear this at this time, though. Young people become anxious when they think they might fall victim to the pre-determined fate of their parentage.
‘No,’ I say. ‘It bears no similarities at all.’
*
V stands next to me quietly with his arms folded, as I take strips of marinated eggplant and haloumi from a ceramic dish and place them on the barbecue. I think I should have swept the patio, the neighbours have a very present jacaranda that hangs a branch partway over our fence. I shouldn’t be concerned about this now. Inside I can hear Betty and Greta discussing the best way to scoop out a pomegranate.
‘I’m sorry I was being hectic before,’ V says suddenly.
‘It’s okay. Greta told me about the Sudoku treachery.’
He scoffs. ‘I forgot about that. It was something else Brendan said.’
‘What?’
He shrugs and looks around the garden. The gardenias are blooming, the yellow ones. It takes a long time for gardenias to start producing flowers that deep in colour. ‘Just, you know. Last year, when I had my break up, he said it made sense. That I must know I’m a difficult person. That it would be hard to be with me.’
‘Oh, V, I don’t think that –’
‘It’s okay.’ He shakes his head. ‘I know that what happened wasn’t anyone’s fault. I was just thinking about it because I haven’t been having any luck meeting people lately. No one ever has any idea what I’m talking about, it makes me feel like maybe it’s never going to happen for me again.’
‘You aren’t going to go the whole rest of your life without ever meeting someone who knows what you’re talking about.’ He takes the tongs from me and moves the eggplant around. ‘I used to feel like that, though. I used to stay up late and fret about the idea of being crushed by a pile of falling textbooks and not being discovered for several days. Or accidentally marrying someone I didn’t like and being too afraid to admit it. Wishing I had been crushed by a pile of textbooks in my youth.’
‘I have this terrible thing going on with someone I don’t like at the moment.’
‘Do you?’ I ask.
‘Yeah. He doesn’t like me either, so it balances out, but then he sent me a dick pic and I clicked the wrong window and accidentally sent him back a video that was just Dancing Queen on repeat for 24 hours. I don’t know what to do.’
I hold out a teal plate and he transfers the first pieces of haloumi onto it. ‘I can honestly say I have never been in such a situation,’ I say.
‘It’s okay, I’ll get through it. I always do.’ He smiles a funny half-smile as he turns his attention back to the barbecue, having somehow taken over the operation without me noticing. ‘I just think it would have been nice if no one decided to give Brendan Cape sixty thousand dollars today.’
*
I feel a hand on my shoulder while I’m drying my hands in the kitchen. ‘Dad,’ says Casper and hugs me. ‘What’s going on, what’s all this?’ He puts a foil-covered plate on the bench and gestures to the rest of the food, laid out and ready to be taken to the table Betty and the others have set up outside.
‘It’s not every day you turn thirty-four,’ I say. ‘Where’s your family?’
He shakes his head, ‘At a fiftieth birthday lunch for someone else. Well, Freya and her mother are, it’s a favourite colleague of hers. They’ll come by later. Tang’s almost on the way back from his school exchange, he’ll be back Sunday night.’
‘Are you looking forward to seeing him?’
‘Oh, so much, you have no idea,’ he says, looking more closely at the food. I don’t say anything about his suggestion that I have no idea what it’s like to miss your son. Of course I know. ‘You didn’t have to do all this.’
‘We wanted to.’
‘V turns thirty in a couple of months, you could have saved your efforts for then.’
‘Ah, no,’ V says, coming in from the patio. ‘My plan for turning thirty is to simply stop mentioning my age. Cas, you didn’t wake up and notice your hairline dramatically receding today, did you?’
He looks at his reflection in the microwave, ‘No?’
‘Thank God,’ V says. ‘That’s not part of my five-year plan.’
‘Happy birthday,’ Betty says, hugging Casper. ‘V, you’re supposed to be bringing that salad outside, Greta’s standing there poised with the bottle of dressing like a sad rusted Tin Man.’
‘Oh for God’s sake, she was always desperate for a promotion to lead ensemble cast in my productions,’ he says, taking the bowl of salad back out the door.
‘It would have been hard for her,’ Betty says. ‘Spending most of her young life receiving poorly formatted cast sheets and seeing she’d once again be playing the role of Yellow Brick Road.’ She takes a platter of raw fish and follows him outside.
‘What’s on the plate?’ I ask Casper.
‘Oh,’ he says, turning towards it. ‘I made a cake for myself and then Freya decided she wanted to ice it for me without any help.’
He pulls off the tinfoil to show me a cake that says simply, in thin blue icing, bAd.
Rebecca K Reilly (Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Wai) is a writer from Tāmaki Makaurau. She won the 2019 Adam Foundation Prize. Greta and Valdin, forthcoming with VUP in May 2021, is her first book.
You can read more of her work at rebeccakreilly.com.