I smiled at her and thought how proud my mother would be of a daughter who was kind to people in distress. I counted out the money. ‘It’s a nice pool, isn’t it girls,’ I said to seal the deal.
‘Can we swim right now?’ Bonnie asked in her most grown-up voice, and her sister echoed her.
‘Room’s other side of the pool,’ the woman said, and handed over the key.
Standing in front of the motel door, assailed by the smell of chlorine, I looked around. It was a beginning.
The woman called out across the courtyard. ‘Mrs.’ She flapped a scrap of paper. I winced. I was too young to be a Mrs. I let the girls into the room and dashed around the pool.
‘He said it was important.’ She handed over the note. ‘I didn’t catch what he was saying.’
She’d written Bruce’s name in lower case as if a capital letter was more than a man deserved.
I had no intention of calling him. ‘Too little too late,’ I said and smiled and the woman’s face softened in our complicity.
In the room, the girls were fighting over the beds. I thought about calling home, to let him know we were safe. But I didn’t want to hear the accusation in his voice, the blame in the gaps between his words. I would call him later. After a swim, after I’d unpacked the car and made dinner with the food from home. He could wait.
The promise of a swim sent Bonnie and Rachel careening around the room. But Ruth pulled her legs to her chest, refusing to let me change her. I loved how determined she was, so resolute, even at fourteen months old.
The phone rang as we went out the door. The girls were already near the gate, dragging their towels over the hot concrete. It will just be him, I thought, and remembered how he’d saved my life. He’d given me children who kept me afloat. He had given me reason and purpose. And now I was leaving him. I picked up Ruth and let the phone ring on in the empty room.
8
The opposite of Easter
The girls finished their swim and we went to Piko Wholefoods for fresh fruit. The weather report played on the radio behind the counter. ‘A foehn wind, warm and dry, has formed to the west in the Zone of Calms.’ I smiled. The Zone of Calms was perfect for this day. It felt like the weather reporter was speaking only to me. ‘But don’t forget,’ he added, ‘all winds are liars: they never blow from the exact quarter whence they come.’6
‘Did you hear that?’ I asked the man waiting behind me. He was large and round with sparse hair. ‘I did.’ He had the kindest smile. ‘Typical National Radio. Even the announcers think they’re actors. That part about the wind is Greek philosophy, I think.’
He had a lovely voice. ‘You sound like an actor. Or you could be on the radio,’ I said.
He inclined his head, and his eyes crinkled with warmth as he helped put the fruit on the counter. ‘Nice girls,’ he said and patted their heads.
They clamoured for lollipops. I planned to break that habit now we were away from the postmistress. But I gave in and we drove back to the motel in peace.
I could hear the phone as we walked past the pool. The girls wanted to swim again. Anger at Bruce’s persistence welled up.
But it was Jeannie. ‘I found you. Bruce gave me the name of the motel.’ She sounded as though she had been running.
I laughed. ‘We decided to come a couple of days early, to be on the safe side, in case the car broke down.’ I could hear an echo in my voice. Something was wrong. I wanted to keep talking, to fill up all the gaps so she could not speak. The girls were in the next room, fighting over the towels, and I could hardly hear over their screams.
‘Hold on.’ I closed the door to the bedroom and lay down on the couch and cradled the phone against my ear.
‘Let’s start again. Hi, Jeannie.’
‘Bad news.’
I remember my fingers spread over my chest. The yelling from the bedroom intensified and then fell silent. My mother had changed her mind. She did not want me after all. I had no right to expect anything else.
Jeannie began to cry. Breathless sobs that drenched the gravel in her voice. I could not understand why she was crying. This was my loss, not hers. My brain switched to organisation mode. The curse of resilience, of glossing over emotion to ensure survival. I was never sure if it was flight or fight. Or perhaps it was freeze mode. The stagnation of all emotion.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Maybe next year. Or the year after. It was probably too quick for her.’
‘No,’ Jeannie whispered. ‘That’s not it. Her plane. It was on the news. On the radio. There was fog. On the runway. Her plane was taking off.’
All winds are liars. ‘There’s been a mistake. It must be a mistake,’ I said. But the weather report I’d read at the Greymouth Library had mentioned unseasonal fog over Madrid. A kata cold front favouring the development of low stratus clouds. Persisting until dawn.
‘Her poor girls,’ Jeannie said.
‘What girls?’
I could hear Jeannie’s footsteps as she walked away. She blew her nose and came back.
‘I’m here,’ she gulped. ‘Her daughters. I was going to tell you. They’re eleven and fourteen. Oh god, and her husband. That poor man. Those poor girls.’
I put down the phone. I had two sisters. My mother’s plane had crashed on take-off.
People talk about shock as mind numbing. But an image of a burning aircraft came to me. The smoke that filled the sky was indistinguishable from the fog, as acrid
