Trilemma (29 page)

I go to bed exhausted yet night after night I jerk awake in the early morning and don't seem to be able to fall back to sleep. There are so many things that could go wrong, and we have so little time to fix anything. In the darkest hour, the one before dawn, I feel a sense of unease. I tell myself it's just the effect of blood sugar levels being low and I turn and face the other way hoping to get more comfortable. But when I do manage to fall asleep, it seems only minutes pass before I wake groggily from deep unconsciousness to the sound of my cell phone's alarm and I crawl out of bed to once again face the day's trials.

And so the days pass until the weekend arrives, and each Friday night I tell myself I'll sleep in tomorrow, but every Saturday I wake at five and stay awake, mulling over the week's problems and wondering if I should have made different decisions.

I tidy the house and do the laundry and pay the bills and shop for groceries I won't eat, then fall asleep trying to read the latest Kate Atkinson. I wake early and toss until it's light outside then spend Sunday preparing for Monday and telling myself I'll catch up with friends the following weekend and so it goes on.

Four weeks out from the launch date, I have to cancel my trip to see Ben again because the Board is in town and they want an update. When I arrive home that Friday night, I step in the door
and trip over a pack. Ben? Ben! But no, I don't recognize this pack.

Someone has hung a gauzy green dress on my bookcase. Someone has been sitting in my chair at the table, which is pulled out and has a jacket thrown over the back, and someone has been drinking from my favorite orange-and-black mug, which sits on the kitchen counter.

A slip of paper is lying on the table. “Hey Auntie Lin, Max and I got tickets to the rugby. Hope it's okay if we stay? Jess.
”

It is the weekend of Wellington's premier sporting event—the International Rugby Sevens contest—when all the spectators dress up and parade the streets. I'd been offered tickets, but I had expected to be in Queenstown with Ben, now canceled, so instead I watch a sad movie and drink a bottle of wine and fall into bed shortly before they stumble home, giggling, young, life all before them, not yet disillusioned when all their dreams come true and they find it wasn't what they wanted after all.

“Shh, shh,” they whisper, the giggles stop, and we go to sleep, me in my big double bed, them on their separate sofas.

In the morning, I emerge when I hear Max making coffee. Max's face breaks into that beautiful, wide smile, and Jess manages a small, restrained smirk, and they seem happy to see me, happy to claim me as their aunt.

These kids are my family, my
whanau
.

The cloud lifts a little, and I smile and pull open the fridge and make the traditional gifts that aunts make: food, followed by spending money.

When Max heads downtown to buy something they need, ear extensions I think he said, Jess curls up on the sofa and lets me cook breakfast for her.

“Mum's driving me round the bend!” she says. “She's like, that's a nice dress, Jess, but don't you think you should wear a sweater with it? And Dad is so embarrassing. He made some really
stupid comments on my Facebook page about how cute I was. I was
so
embarrassed and my friends were saying, ‘like what's with the dude? Is he into you or what?'”

I laugh. “Parents should keep off their kids' Facebook pages.”

“Yeah!” she says. “I had to defriend him. You know what I mean? And I get the hard nag from Mum on helping around the house. Not that I do anything right. I had to get Max to bring me here to get away from her.”

“Have you decided what you're going to do now you've finished school?”

Jess looks down at her eggs. She pushes a fragment back and forth across the plate and then forks it and puts it in her mouth. Her eyes flick toward me and away again.

“Spit it out. And I don't mean the egg.”

“I want to study fashion design, Auntie Lin. In Wellington.”

“And your parents aren't keen?”

“Mum wants me to go to the tech in Hastings. But Wellington's program is the best in New Zealand.” She plays with her egg again. “I submitted my portfolio in October, and they've offered me a place.”

Jess reminds me so much of myself at the same age. Mom wanted me to go to the local college, but I applied to schools far, far away and eventually took up a scholarship in England.

“If it's what you want, then you should go for it. Go for the best you can.”

She looks up with a shy smile. “You really think so? I mean, I can get a student loan and all that, so I can afford to leave home. Of course, I'll go back from time to time.”

I never did go back.

“What about Max? Does he want to leave too?”

“Not Max. Ngatirua is all he's ever wanted. And he won't leave his mother to look after the place by herself, nor Wal without help on the farm.”

“Your parents seem to love him.”

“Yeah, more than me.”

“Rubbish, Jess.”

“I suppose so. I don't mind that they love him so much. It means I'm free to leave because he'll be there for all of them.”

“Poor Max!”

“No, it's lucky Max. Lucky it makes him happy to be needed.”

I doze in the sun and dream I am trapped in a dark place, but then Sally arrives to rescue me. Sally is wearing scrubs, and slung over her front is a large playing card depicting the Queen of Hearts.

“You too?” I ask.

“We're determined to win this year,” she replies.

Soon we're in the city sitting at a table watching groups of revelers in fancy dress on their way to the International Rugby Sevens tournament.

“Here comes the rest of the pack.” I wave to the crowd.

A gaggle of medics wearing cards, talking and laughing and jostling for position, sweep up to our viewpoint on the side of the road.

John is amongst them. As I watch, he looks at Sally, and she looks back at him. John's face relaxes into a tentative smile. He stops.

Sally doesn't move. The pageant seems to flicker around us, and everything seems to narrow to Sally and I sitting in a café, while a man waits for her to make a decision.

“Go on,” I tell her. “Go for it.”

Sally's face breaks suddenly into her gay smile and she rises and leaves me sitting there, watching, as she takes John's arm and the pack carries on down the road and vanishes in the distance.

A group of hobbits caper up the street, brown jerkins pulled tight with ropes around their middles, and purple hoods on their
heads. When they see me, they cheer and wave and I wave back. Tom is leading them, Marion is in the middle, and I think I can see Helen arm in arm with Fred. “Come with us,” they call, but I shake my head and raise my glass to toast them. Ian and Deepak bring up the rear. Ian waves at me, a smile lighting up his freckled face, but Deepak turns away.

I heave a sigh and look down at my empty glass. A half-empty bottle sits on the table so I refill my glass and look back out at the street.

A motley collection of reptiles is chasing the hobbits, I think they're supposed to be dragons, or maybe
Taniwha
? I recognize the one with the large bottom and the long, white tail. Sure enough he angles his serpent head toward me and it is Scott Peake.

“I can't tell if you're a snake or a leech,” I say, but I don't think he hears me. He turns away and slithers on down the road.

A breakfast wanders past—eggs, bacon, sausage, and something red. The man in red looks a bit like Nicholas. Perhaps he is supposed to be stewed tomato or maybe a red herring.

Finally, I watch a small group of Chinese men walk past. They are dressed as Chinese businessmen. Quon Dao sees me and comes over to where I sit.

“Lin,” he says with a smile, “you're not going?”

“I was supposed to be somewhere else,” I reply.

“Everyone is wearing fancy dress. We don't know what to do about our clothes,” he gestures at their plain gray garb.

“I'll help you.” I cross the street to a tourist shop and beckon Dao and his three assistants inside. “Hawaiian shirts!” I tell them, “Pick out the color you like and throw them on over your clothes.” Then I grab four leis from the stack hanging on the rack. “And wear these around your necks.”

The Chinese are now all smiles as they, too, head on down the road.

When the elf king and the elf queen arrive back, I am dozing on the sofa.

“How was it?” I ask.

“Brilliant!” says Max. “Especially the final.”

“Fantastic!” says Jess. “Especially the parade. Next year we're going to get a bigger group together,” she adds excitedly. “Next year I'll have my own retinue of elves.”

“So who won?”

“New Zealand,” says Max.

“The pack of cards,” says Jess, like many of the attendees: more interested in the fancy dress than the game.

I get up and go to the kitchen. “Tea? Or, something stronger?”

“I drink herbal tea, Auntie, do you have any of that?”

“Call me Lin. Auntie is so aging.”

“Sure, Auntie Lin. And I'm hungry. Do you have anything to eat?”

“Omelet?”

“I had eggs this morning.”

“Sorry. Um, foie gras?”

“What?”

“Pâté.”

They settle for foie gras on toast followed by Stilton and crackers.

Max tidies up and puts the dishes in the dishwasher, and Jess curls up in the quilts on her sofa.

“I bet you get lonely. Maybe I could stay here and be company for you,” she says. “At least until I find a flat.”

“There isn't much room.”

“You're at work most of the time, aren't you?”

I laugh. “We'll see. First, you have to talk to your parents and persuade them to accept you going to the course here.”

Then I tuck them up and turn out the light and go to my room, smiling, because I have some children to look after now,
and I promise myself I'll get back to Ngatirua and see the rest of my family soon. Maybe next month, after the launch.

When Ben rings I promise him, after the launch, we'll see each other then.

That night I sleep better. Sally's face was happy. Jess and Max are happy. And the end is in sight. I just have to stay focused and stay on track. In four weeks' time, I will get my life back.

In four weeks' time, we will have launched or failed.

Three weeks from launch, Nicholas comes knocking at the door. When I open it, his eyes stare at me out of tiny pupils.

“What do you want?”

“You should be more polite,” he says and pushes past me into the room.

“I didn't invite you in,” I say. “I'd like you to leave now.”

He sits down on my sofa. “I've got a business proposition for you.”

“I'm not interested in doing any business with you, Nicholas.”

“That winery I own part of up in the bay?” he says. “I need some money to pay the costs this quarter.”