I would start again. Because how you start is the most important thing.
Ruth knocked over the dish of tomato sauce, the red spraying like blood across the table. I wiped up the mess and smiled at my girls and we settled into silence, devouring our food as if we’d always been hungry.
9
You are an electromagnetic field
The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of … We know the truth not only by the reason but by the heart. — Blaise Pascal8
We drove home the next day, through Arthur’s Pass, over the mountain and into a storm. Gale-force winds whipped at the car. I felt my mother’s presence. As if she were sitting beside me, holding the wheel steady, ensuring I would not veer left to plunge over the gorge. I imagined the vehicle sailing high for a moment, silent in the rain. The children too surprised to scream. The long tumble as the car disappeared, curtained from the road and devoured by the bush. And there we would remain, nestled in trees too dense to give up their secret.
When we came out onto the grassy flats, the sun appeared. You cannot underestimate the miracle of sun in a place that rains all the time. We were safe, and my mother’s spirit disappeared.
Bruce was not home. The chickens were loose and came running toward us. The goat was gone. It was almost Christmas but the house was damp and cold. The fire in the wood burner had gone out. Apart from a few weeks during mid-summer, we kept it ticking over. Warming the bones of the house, Bruce had said as the wind whistled through the window frames.
He came home a few hours later, a little drunk, which was unusual for him. Jeannie had called him first. He’d known about my mother’s death before I did.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and held me for a moment. ‘We should pray about it.’
I stood stiffly while he intoned the magic words. Tomorrow I would go to the welfare office and find out what benefits a single mother of three could expect.
In my rational mind, I am agnostic. But imagination escapes such limits. The visions began that evening as I slid into the bath. Although her face was a smudge, I was sure the woman in the car was my mother. They arrived at an airport. She applied red lipstick without a mirror. As she strode across the car park, the idle luggage boys blew into their chilled hands. Their pushcarts were no more than disembodied shapes in the fog.
I was in a trance in Runanga, topping up the bath with the last of the hot water. At the same time, I was shadowing the misty woman in Madrid.
I followed her into the terminal and waited beside her in line at the check-in counter. When it was her turn, the attendant spoke to a supervisor. There was no sound, but it was clear there was confusion over her seat. My mother took a fax from her bag, pointing to her reservation. The attendant inclined her head towards a group of Japanese couples. My mother smiled and they waved at her. Later I learned they were honeymooners on the first leg of their long flights home.
She stood in a queue at the glass doors to the tarmac. The fog blotted out the view. She was nervous, radiating a tension I could feel in my bathwater.
An overweight man in front dropped his tickets. He wore a camel-hair coat, the remnant of an elegance long since consumed. My mother helped him as the passengers behind shuffled in frustration. When the doors opened, they pushed through, out onto the milky tarmac to the plane. She pulled her jacket tight against the damp. Her clothes were too light. She had dressed for a New Zealand summer. She followed the large man up the stairs. He shuffled sideways down the aisle, the strap of his bag hidden in a furrow across his shoulder. The fog seemed to have followed them on board, glazing the cabin with apprehension.
She glanced at her ticket, unused to sitting in the middle of the plane. The man lowered himself into the embrace of his seat with a knowing smile. They were sitting together. The doors closed and the plane began to taxi.
‘Mind if I lift the armrest?’ The sound barrier had disappeared. His voice was syrupy and oddly fragrant, and it occurred to me that he was God. Or perhaps an angel, an oversize cherubim sent to escort her.
I was afraid to move, to even ripple the water in case the gap in time closed up. Desperate to know and terrified at the same time.
My mother lifted the armrest and looked out to the shrouded runway. The man leaned across, his arm doughy against her.
‘Dense fog,’ he said, and I could smell chocolate.
I heard the thunder of engines. Another aeroplane with its flashing lights split the fog. The fuselage was close enough to touch. The mist surrounded them, billowing like smoke, as it dissolved the edges of the man’s coat.
The hot water ran out and the bath was cold. I got out, my head pounding. Bruce was asleep on the couch. I gazed out the window at the trees thick with new summer leaves and saw a child waving her arms. She stood on an observation deck and pointed to a patch of blue above the hulk of the dismembered plane.
Two weeks later I found a copy of Time magazine open on a table at our local pizzeria. Someone had turned the pages back to an article on a plane crash in Madrid. One photograph showed the ribs of the fuselage flat on its belly. In another four men carried the corners of a plaid blanket. They leaned away from the sagging
