She frowned and looked away. ‘This would be very good in your compost,’ she said.
I left with a bag of shredded names, drove away and parked around the corner and laughed till I cried.
My history, my family, my mother and my name were erased. Mavis replaced my mother’s name with hers on my birth certificate.
First names are more personal, a friend said. She felt I should soften the blow by changing my name gradually. Start with Sumner, she said. They won’t be quite so antagonistic. So I went ahead and changed my surname by deed poll.
While I waited for my new identity, the police raided the bar at the musicians’ club. The patrons scattered. A cop went to put me in handcuffs but thought better of it and held the door of the car. ‘I’ll drive you home,’ he said. We stopped outside my flat and he took his time writing down my details. I gave him my new name. He asked if I knew we lacked a licence. I explained we’d recently moved from the West Coast. I was a single parent, working weekends to support my kids.
‘It’s a good defence,’ he said.
When my court date arrived, I dressed the girls in their best clothes and we waited in a pew until they called my name. Barbara Sumner. I stood in the dock, and the judge looked at my girls and then at me. He read his notes and asked the same question. Did I know I was selling alcohol illegally? I shook my head and wiped a tear, and Rachel broke from the others and ran towards me.
The judge smiled. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘I apologise for putting you through this, Miss Sumner.’ He discharged me without conviction.
As we left the courthouse, we passed the arresting officer. ‘Nice performance,’ he said, and slow-clapped me out the door.
14
A cosmological view of time
The musicians’ club shut down and I was out of a job. Bruce came to pick up the girls. Our agreement no longer suited him.
‘I need more time to myself,’ he said. We were standing at the bottom of the concrete stairs to my flat. ‘I can do the day and overnight on Saturday only.’
I was not in a placating mood. ‘It’s interesting,’ I said, ‘how resources and opportunity concentrate around the father.’ Both of us were smiling to fool the girls we were still friends.
‘You took away my children, so you took away my responsibility. Your choice.’ We watched the girls in the car, fussing over their seat belts. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘I have a girlfriend. Can you return that bag of raw wool you took? She’s learning to spin and weave.’
I’d left behind almost everything. The loom on which I’d made rugs to cover the cold floors, the spinning wheel and a half-knitted jersey.
‘I hope she likes waterbeds,’ I said.
‘You’ll never be a nice person,’ he replied.
He brought the children back the next day. They reported his girlfriend had already moved in and was wearing a skirt I’d made. She had my sewing machine, too. I wondered what it would be like to step into another woman’s shadow.
I went back to Piko Wholefoods where the same large man was waiting in line. He saw me and smiled. ‘No foehn winds today?’
‘We’re in the Zone of Calms,’ I replied, repeating the unusual weather report from the day of the motel. The day Jeannie called.
I was wary of men, but David exuded kindness. ‘How about lunch?’ he asked, and paid for my groceries. The older girls were at kindergarten. He squatted in front of Ruth in her stroller and laughed when she patted his bulging stomach. We went for toasties at the bakery nearby. David was an actor’s agent. He was warm and funny and generous. It felt like I knew him already.
And then I realised I’d seen him before. The vision I’d had in the bath in Runanga, the plane crash clear as day. He’d dropped his tickets and my mother picked them up. He’d shuffled on board and held her hand as his camel-hair coat dissolved in the heat. When I explained it to David, he smiled in the same syrupy way and did not question the madness of it.
The next time I saw him, he brought a photocopy of a New York Times article.
90 ARE KILLED AS JETLINERS COLLIDE ON MADRID RUNWAY IN HEAVY FOG
I learned how the smaller plane landed in the murk and missed a runway sign. It turned too soon and ploughed into the middle of the Iberia aeroplane, tearing it in half. A few survivors walked away with minor injuries. Much of the luggage remained intact. The fog was so thick a survivor running from the burning wreckage had to show rescuers where to go. Charred clothing and debris were everywhere. They covered the burned and mutilated bodies with blankets. Captain Carlos Lopez Barranco crawled from his damaged cockpit, shouting: ‘The runway was mine!’
That summer in Christchurch, the days were sticky, the nights cool. I carried the article everywhere, feeling its presence in my pocket or bag. One Sunday we went to a concert in the park. We lay on the grass, the sky filled with mares’ tails, those high, trailing cirrus clouds. The girls danced in front of the stage as the Topp Twins sang ‘Untouchable Girls’. Ruth curled up beside me with a blanket over her face. She disliked loud noises and crowds. My vision wavered and I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.
It was not a hallucination exactly. More like an occulism with reality twisting away until the park became an airport. Two girls, young teens, stood on a viewing platform overlooking the runway. I knew without knowing they were my sisters. A man I assumed to be their father stood with them. The image was so clear I could see the younger one had smeared lipstick over the
