Mavis and Max shared so little of themselves or their families. I knew the poverty of the West Coast of the South Island formed them. Their forebears were immigrants and settlers. Max’s father died young in a hit and run, his mother was taken by an asthma attack. He grew up Catholic in a town divided by religion. Mavis’s parents were farmers after the war. Their allocated land was so stony they walked away with nothing. She had wanted to stay at school but her father made her leave at fifteen. But even in writing these brief descriptions I feel like an intruder, with no right to connect their stories with mine.
There’s a little darkness in every family. But family secrets are inheritance too. We hear them or intuit them, and they become ours to tell or keep as we see fit. I’ll never know if Mavis and Max would have shared themselves with their own children.
When Max told his workmates they were planning to adopt, the men cautioned him. ‘You don’t know what you’re getting,’ is how Mavis later relayed the wisdom of the Railway Workshops of Invercargill. Was that one remembered comment enough to cause Max’s relentless frost? His unconscious fear of the ‘other’?
‘But he made you a doll’s house,’ Mavis said when I once tried to broach his coldness with her. ‘What more evidence of his love do you need?’
I had forgotten about the doll’s house. There was a time when hobbies mattered. Max did paint-by-numbers. He painted a rocking horse. And assembled kitsets. I see him in the shed, late into the night, his dark hair slicked back as he bent to paint the tiny furniture. I wonder if he was making it for the other child? The invisible one whose shadow I carry, the one he might have had, the one I should have been. I loved that doll’s house and played with it for years. By the time I had my own children, Mavis had given it away to another family. ‘They love rugby,’ she’d said when I asked why.
Being with my grandfather that day, I felt comfort in his Manchester accent. I could have held his hand forever. Sitting beside him, I’d felt strangely normal. I learned more about Fred, his remorse, his heart and his life in that one visit than in all the years with my adopting father. And then it occurred to me. There was another father out there, just as there was another mother.
The next morning I took my damaged photograph and started my journey back to Runanga. This is good, I thought. They’ve revealed their hand. I can absorb this blow because it is the lowest point of my life. We can only rise above ourselves now.
Ah, my foolish optimism. We never did speak of that night again.
13
How many times can you change your name?
With three small children, nothing ever goes to plan. It took months to wind up our joint affairs, to sell our house and move from Runanga to Christchurch. I’d stopped tending the garden and the lawns were already too long for the push mower. Vines were consuming the chicken coop. As we drove away it began to rain and I could hear the distant ocean sucking at the gravel beach.
We had fought over the stupid stuff. The girls’ beds, the weaving loom he’d made me, the kitchen table. In his mind, it all belonged to him. My place in our family was through our children. By taking them away, I forfeited everything, including his financial support.
The Baptists came to his rescue. He forgave his parents their sins, and they took him back into the fold of family and religious support. They found him a manse on a sunny corner next to one of their empty churches. The world loves a single father. Especially after the devastation of a runaway wife. The Christian ladies brought him cooked meals and furnished his house. He started teachers’ training soon after, so could only look after his children on weekends.
We moved into a concrete block of flats. One bedroom, a tiny kitchen and a toilet that leaked. I lugged second-hand mattresses up two floors. The previous tenant left behind a sofa and a coffee table with a cracked glass top.
We fell into a routine. I cared for the girls during the week. We walked everywhere and made friends at kindergarten. There was a beauty in our rhythms. We talk about the hardship of the single mother, but not the freedoms. I loved caring for my children alone. I felt my heart relax a little. When they are young, your children do not judge you. They look into your eyes and see only the good. We laughed a lot.
Bruce picked the girls up on Friday evenings. He’d kept the car as he needed it to get to training college. When they were gone, I would take a bath, my head above the water, my breath even. At around 10 p.m. I walked and bussed to my new job at a private musicians’ club. We opened late and closed early. I ran the bar, serving drinks to wired musos till three in the morning. I walked home beneath the willows along the banks of the Avon River. The pre-dawn mist smothered the stink of cigarettes and beer that clung to my hair and clothes. Hunched inside my coat, I kept to the shadows, imploring the sun to rise above the horizon.
The separation caused another issue. My name.
My adopted name had always felt inauthentic. It was an ill-defined feeling that took years to comprehend. Barbara McG was perfectly serviceable. But even now, as I type, it makes me uncomfortable.
On marrying Bruce at eighteen I became Barbara White and was happy to be someone else for a time. But what name could I use now?
I waited till late on a Saturday
