Baby Read online

  Cynthia watches Anahera’s face. She’s not thinking, it’s all scrunched up. Neither of them says anything.

  ‘I am not even mad, you see? I am a friendly German man. But only a little stuck here, on this island.’ He shrugs, and shoves another big spoonful in his mouth.

  Cynthia laughs now, a hideous gulping noise she’s been holding in since the boy fell. She laughs and she can’t stop. Gordon watches her patiently. When she’s done laughing she touches Anahera’s arm, to show she’s thinking of her. Then, ‘You seem friendly,’ she tells him. ‘How much money do you have?’ Anahera wrenches her body away from her hand.

  ‘What are you girls?’ he laughs, and looks down at Anahera, who’s making a deep, hateful noise through her nose.

  When he’s finished his lunch and licked the edges, the corners and the lid of his Tupperware container, he moves towards Anahera, bashfully, with his hands.

  ‘Under her knees, maybe? And her back?’ Cynthia suggests.

  But he picks her up instead so they’re facing each other, and her legs are twisted around his stomach. ‘Suck onto me like a mollusc,’ he says, laughing. Cynthia can’t see Anahera’s face because it’s pressed against his chest, but her nails are digging hard into his sides, and there’s a rough, muffled noise coming from his torso, where her head is. ‘You take my bag,’ he tells Cynthia, and she does. It’s big and heavy. She waits for him to start and walks behind.

  They arrive on the beach directly in line with the dinghy, and stop next to it. He puts Anahera down on the ground, and she half falls, half sits in the sand. He turns to her kindly and asks, ‘This is yours, yes?’ pointing at the dinghy. She glares up at him, and Cynthia stands quietly alongside, out of sight.

  ‘I am an abandoned man,’ he says. ‘I only want to help.’

  Anahera spits again, in the sand, and tilts her head to one side. She makes a gurgling sound, and struggles to turn it into speech. In a dull voice she says, ‘You only want to help.’ Cynthia squats down next to Anahera and holds her face in her hands. Anahera looks right back at her, and says, ‘I know this man. He only wants to help.’

  Gordon laughs over them, good-naturedly. ‘It’s true!’ he says.

  Cynthia looks up at him, and sees he’s begging like a dog. She’s nearly waiting for him to get on his knees. He’s lonely and lost, just like them. His face looks solid, as if beneath his skin are foundations of concrete, or carved wood. The skin under his eyes is baggy, but lifted by the hard muscle of his cheeks. There’s a tough small line above his nose, and his forehead’s another slab on top of it. His chin’s divided into two parts. Above it his lips are fat, completely unlike the rest of his face, jutting out as if the wind would shake them; they protrude sweetly. His body’s muscled, full, and strong. Cynthia estimates him to be about thirty-five. She stands up, and prods him in the sternum. ‘What will you do for us?’

  Anahera laughs cruelly, and bursts into tears on the ground beside her, but Cynthia thinks, I am doing what’s best, and keeps looking at him.

  He doesn’t step back from her finger. ‘Ah,’ he says, ‘I am a good company, yes, or you can tuck me away in a small place. I will give you a thousand dollars if you show me about to this beautiful environment.’

  One thousand dollars! The man in sandals enjoys a moment of beauty in the sunlight, with the sea lavish and tumbling behind him. Then it’s too long since Cynthia’s spoken. ‘Alright,’ she says. Anahera will thank her later. She nods at him and says, ‘Paddle us back. Our boat’s over there.’ She waves at it, pats him on the arm, and smiles comfortingly down at Anahera. He smiles too, then strides off and drags the dinghy down the beach.

  Cynthia squats down to rub Anahera’s back and listen while she says, ‘He’s a fuckhead.’ The rubbing is light and smooth, but Anahera shrugs her hand off and says, ‘Look at him.’

  She looks, and he’s just the back of a man, heaving their dinghy down the beach and to the sea. ‘Try and be nice,’ she says, and lays her hand back down, still, on Anahera’s back. He’s near the water now, and he turns and flashes a thumbs up. Anahera stands, and Cynthia holds her. It’s a slow hobble, the leg is heavy and weak, and balance is difficult in the sand.

  He jogs back to them, laughing. Cynthia steps aside so he can pick Anahera up. She doesn’t fight, but he seems to anticipate it in the loose way he moves at her with his arms, then the tight way he holds her.

  ‘Be gentle,’ Cynthia tells him sternly, and he laughs and adjusts his hands. Anahera snorts. Cynthia wonders if she should carry her, or make Gordon put her down. But she doesn’t, she runs ahead and pulls the dinghy into the water, then holds it still while he puts Anahera in.

  26.

  Anahera shuts herself in the cabin, and Cynthia speaks with Gordon in hushed tones in the larger room. ‘We’re going through a difficult time,’ she says. He nods sympathetically, and his kindness ruptures her. She’s acting normal, she must be—he thinks she’s normal, and that her problems are to the scale of a normal person’s.

  She pushes forward further, in relief. ‘I was going to be on TV, announcing the news, probably. That was my dream, but I don’t know if it will come true now,’ she says. She’s not as embarrassed saying this as another girl might be, she knows she’s got a mostly stunning face and body, and that her elocution’s good. The boy fell and hit the ground, but it makes her so happy to think of something else.

  He nods. ‘A worthy ambition.’

  ‘I left everything for Anahera, we’re in a real relationship. My father and I no longer speak,’ she tells him, then realises Anahera can probably hear her through the cabin door, and rushes to change the subject. ‘We could use some groceries.’

  ‘Alright!’ he says. ‘That will be the first thing you show me of your beautiful land: the supermarket!’ That isn’t so funny, but they both laugh and laugh till there’s no air left in either of them, and still laughter falls out of her. This is what she was waiting for in the forest, when she couldn’t cry. She doubles over and bangs her head on her knees. He stops laughing first, and waits patiently while she continues to splutter.

  She pats the cabin door, and whispers through to Anahera that they’re off to the supermarket, and won’t be long. There’s no reply.

  Gordon paddles Cynthia across the sea, grinning. His lips keep moving, as if he’s silently practising to say something. She wonders if he’s going to ask what they were doing on the island, but he doesn’t. Instead he looks across at her suddenly, with his eyes clear, and asks, ‘This water, do you look at it?’

  The ocean is glimmering all around them, and how odd that Cynthia forgot all about it. She shuffles and peers over the edge of the dinghy, into the shifting murk. It must be in so many layers, like a pile of shadows, each with their own push. He nods when she looks back at him. He understands the water; he’s an attentive sort of man, and his presence is comforting.

  The beach is ugly, a lethargic expanse of grit speckled with bodies. Cynthia doesn’t love everybody in the world, and certainly not in the way people at beaches expect to be loved. One of them gets up and strolls, then sits back down in a different place. She and Gordon share a look.

  They arrive and the closest bodies are facing away from them: a middle-aged woman in a bikini with a bob haircut and man of the same age sagged onto his towel, asleep beside her. Gordon walks around so he’s standing over her, but not too close. ‘Hello,’ he says.

  She squeaks a little with fright—she was reading—but laughs.

  ‘Will you be here for another hour? It is just, will you watch our dinghy?’ He nods at it.

  The woman looks at him oddly, and Cynthia almost explains: He’s German. But she smiles. ‘Sure.’

  Gordon shakes her hand and they move along, up the beach.

  ‘I know this one, my girlfriend showed me the way.’ His walk is big and confident. Cynthia hasn’t been here before. She walks sometimes behind him and sometimes alongside, depending on his speed and the size of the footpath. ‘You ca
n take anything you like,’ he tells her. ‘Budget unlimited!’ He’s loud, but his snortle is cute. Before crossing the road they have to wait for a pair of police cars. ‘Oh!’ Gordon says. ‘The justice system!’ She makes sure not to turn to look at his face.

  He takes a big family trolley, and Cynthia fills it right up. He drives it fast and zany, darting between people and around corners, and she jogs behind him, biffing things in. It makes her thankful to see his huge body jogging along in front of her, pushing the trolley and grinning, it makes her feel like she’ll be alright. She punches him in the arm and he doesn’t notice, he just keeps jogging. ‘You have to try this! It’s New Zealand’s best stuff!’ she tells him, dropping in a tub of hokey pokey ice cream, then two more.

  ‘But,’ he says, ‘it will melt.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ she tells him. ‘We’ll drink it.’

  ‘You are a fun, adventurous girl!’ he says. ‘You are just getting everything!’

  At the checkouts, they see four kids Toby’s age smacking each other with Zombie Chews. One’s been hit particularly hard, and he tries to make the others stop and look at the red on his leg. ‘It’s a welt,’ he says, while the other three keep hitting each other. He’s pulled his pant leg up around his hip, and he keeps saying, ‘It’s a welt. It’s a welt, see,’ but from where she’s standing Cynthia can’t see any discolouration in the private white of his thigh, and the other boys won’t stop to look.

  Their queue moves, and Gordon’s hand grazes her shoulder. Remembering him, and herself, she looks away, and back at the old man grimly swiping groceries.

  Gordon wheels the trolley right out of the parking lot, and down the footpath to the beach where he spoke to the woman. They take their bags in trips to the dinghy, and Cynthia walks behind, wondering if she’s being too quiet; if she seems guilty. Before they leave he thanks the lady, and gives her a packet of Afghans. Cynthia waits with a foot in the dinghy, and thinks he might be flirting. The lady’s beach partner is still asleep.

  Anahera’s on the big bed, with her foot raised high and a damp cloth over it. She doesn’t watch the groceries as they unload them, or listen while they tell her what they bought. Instead she looks at Cynthia’s hands, and at Gordon’s big feet. Her eyes make it impossible for either of them to move properly in the small space between the bed and kitchen cupboards. Cynthia holds up the ice cream to tell Anahera how Gordon hasn’t tried it, and Anahera says, ‘Put some new water on this,’ shaking her foot with the cloth on it. The foot, when it’s revealed, is a blue-black mess with a mound at the front of her ankle, valleyed where the metal clamped down.

  Cynthia comes back with the cloth, and Anahera’s looking at the ice cream. ‘Put it in the low cupboard,’ she says. ‘It’ll be cooler there.’

  Cynthia does so quietly, and Gordon moves apologetically to the cabin. He has to pull his shoulders forward and duck his head down to get through the door. Cynthia and Anahera sleep very early, at seven thirty. There’s nothing left for either of them to say.

  Cynthia wakes in the night, into musky hot air and Anahera’s breathing. The blankets feel heavy, so she gets out and lies back down on top of them. Gordon shifts against the wooden walls in the cabin, and she’s thinking about the boy. The weights move in the roof, and the water shifts below them. She never noticed Toby’s eyes, but she remembers them now, blue, and in her memory peculiarly serious. She wishes, just for tonight, that she could lie alone, somewhere other than their boat.

  27.

  It’s afternoon, and Cynthia’s talked to Gordon. They’re taking him on an island boat tour. They’re going to show him a lot of good things. First he gives her a lot of money, happily. He takes it in wads from different pockets on his pants and sections of his bag. It might be two, or eight hundred dollars. Certainly there are a lot of fives and tens. Cynthia takes it inside to Anahera, who makes a near-smile, and props herself up on her elbows to count it.

  ‘The rest is, ah—digital,’ he says, and having shed his cash, he gets down to just his underwear and into the sea to wash.

  Cynthia sits on the edge of the boat, and looks down at him. ‘You must have seen her before then?’ she asks, gesturing back towards the bed, with Anahera on it.

  ‘Nope.’ He blows a lot of salt water out his mouth, then looks at her properly. ‘Oh, who? No, nope—I was only on there for three days! How long do you think a man can survive!’ His chest lifts and falls in the water, and she can see his legs green-tinted and kicking like he’s running on the spot. They’re like a frog’s, thrusting out and bent. He’s got long hairs on his chest, but not many of them. Cynthia makes sure not to stare. He’s looking up, blinking from the sun behind her head. He chuckles at her imagining he’d been on the island for weeks; lived there. ‘Also,’ he says, still with laughter in his face, ‘I would be so frightened at being alone with such a woman—I would shift my tent backwards, in terror, to the island’s other side.’

  He paddles with his hands and feet, and watches her face. After taking a big breath he says, ‘I wandered in the forest all night, with my broken heart for my girlfriend. Then in the morning the light resumed with you two in it. I must now admit, I saw something beautiful, but oh, she was crying.’ He shakes the water from his hair, and looks up at Cynthia shyly.

  The tour’s scheduled to begin tomorrow, when Anahera’s better. They all sit at the table and pass around the last of the ice cream, which is a nice sugary slop. The gulls continue shitting and squawking, and Anahera’s weights are gentle noise above them. ‘These are things I will fix,’ Gordon says quietly. He gets up and pours a little pile of peanuts in front of Cynthia, then Anahera, steps back with a flourish, and sits back down with the bag. ‘Okay,’ Anahera says. Then she turns to him. ‘What do you know?’

  He’s caught, with a peanut only halfway between his lips, still supported by the finger he was using to put it in. It falls. ‘Hey?’ he says. ‘Nothing.’

  They’re all of them reduced to their spit then; the almost-sound of it held in their mouths. Anahera and Cynthia share a secret look. Gordon’s stomach makes a noise. He’s clean after washing, and he’s joined their pool of scent—he smells like peaches. Anahera separates her lips.

  That night he goes to his little bunk again, and Cynthia sees briefly as he leaves the room that he’s sad. He hasn’t asked where he should sleep, just understood that the cabin’s the only place available to him. Anahera’s in bed, in the blue satin pyjamas, and Cynthia joins her.

  ‘We can deal with him,’ Anahera says. They’re in sleepiness together. She touches Cynthia’s hair, and throws an arm over her waist.

  28.

  In the morning Gordon makes them porridge at the stove and they stay in bed. ‘This boat is love music at night,’ he says, sombrely. ‘I couldn’t sleep, I feel it all night.’

  ‘No,’ Anahera says.

  ‘You do not think we are all in a big love?’ He looks hurt.

  Cynthia shuffles forward and touches his upper arm. ‘It’s just water, just lapping.’

  ‘It’s noise,’ he insists. He’s standing with a glass of milk and trying not to spill it. He puts it down and stirs the porridge. Cynthia’s a bit miffed with Anahera. This is deep; this is a man sharing his feelings about the wide open sea and the silent noise of it. There is his heart and soul, displayed right there in front of them. That idea of music must have meant a lot to him; he must have been planning all night precisely how to phrase it, and Anahera’s being very uninspired. Gordon inserts his thumb into his mouth and puckers his lips around it.

  ‘What did it sound like—the music?’ Cynthia asks.

  He’s confused by her English. ‘Noise, I said.’

  While they eat Gordon stands on their romance novels, and lifts the trap door in the ceiling up and aside. ‘I will still those,’ he says, gesturing up to where the weights are. Then, on his toes, he puts his head through the gap. Cynthia passes him her cellphone and he twists it back and forwards, trying to see them.
r />   ‘It’s probably very dangerous,’ Cynthia murmurs to Anahera. ‘One could just roll and knock him out.’

  ‘Well, he doesn’t need to be up there. I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ he says, muffled above them. ‘I see, they have all rolled against that side, because of the tilt, and they are making the tilt.’

  Cynthia looks at Anahera and shrugs, What tilt? Anahera grimaces back. It’s like they’re being accused of something. ‘How’s he going to get hold of them?’ Cynthia asks, quietly.

  Anahera answers loudly. ‘He’s going to catch them with his head, when they roll and hit his skull.’

  Cynthia looks at her and she’s unwavering. Has the boy’s falling changed her? But it doesn’t matter, if anything Cynthia loves her more. Gordon lowers himself back onto his heels. ‘Pardon? What? Never mind,’ he says. He steps carefully from the books to the floor, although they are only four and not high, and leans back against the kitchen cupboards, holding two by their small knobs.

  ‘Cynthia! I know what you will do! You stand here, under the hole and wait for the weights to roll through it, then you catch them!’

  Cynthia laughs, she won’t do that.

  He chuckles too. ‘No, no, no. I am just funny. But you are very light, I will hold you up into the roof and you retrieve them.’

  Cynthia’s still laughing, she won’t do that either, when Anahera interrupts. ‘Gordon, how much money do you have?’

  He shrugs, and laughs now at his own joke even though he didn’t before. Anahera rolls her eyes and says she’ll go swimming. She asks them to do the dishes. If they do remove the weights from the ceiling, she requests that Gordon put them back exactly as they were before she returns. They both nod, Gordon with his head right down, Yes, of course they will. She thanks them and sends them both outside so she can change into her togs. When she’s done that she says it’s cold, so could Cynthia find her wetsuit? It doesn’t seem so cold to Cynthia, but she finds the wetsuit in a cupboard above the kitchen sink.