Trifecta Read online

  There’s an aircraft’s vapour trail creeping across the blue sky, cicadas are creaking somewhere over by the back fence, on the nearest neighbour’s deck which overlooks our back lawn with its carefully patterned lines of close mowing there’s a loud lunch getting under way with clinking glasses and skiting about overseas travel, over the fence the paediatrician’s wife is yelling ‘Christufuh!’ at her sullen son belting something with a stick, and Martin Klepka chucks the warm dregs of his glass of beer on to the freshly mown lawn and gets to his feet with a saucy hitch of his scrotum back into his shorts.

  ‘Time for a nap!’ says my father with his particular kind of relish and walks past his own grinning reflection in the French doors and into the darkness inside his house. She’s old, in profile her head tilts back a bit as if to compensate for the heavy droop of her big eyelids, her large nose follows their downward plane as does the deep crease that runs down her cheek from the inner corner of her eye and under her neat chin. There’s a small dewlap there but I can still see the elegance of her young neck. Her hair is a thick tangle of white and silver and half of a surprisingly large ear shows from under it. I see from the uprightness of her head that her back is straight, as it always was, and her mouth with its long top lip and sad chevron shape is open in speech or to yawn. She’s wearing a simple pale blue woollen cardigan with a ribbed collar folded up under the back of her hair. When she turns around the cardigan’s gone and I see the breasts of a young woman who has had babies, they are full with large dark nipples but lean apart from each other on the bony frame of her chest beneath wide shoulders. The yawn of speech is for me but I can’t hear it and though I want so much to get closer to her I can’t make my body move. Hers rocks towards me and away as if encouraging me to try harder. Her tongue comes in and out as if pushing the words towards me. I’ve seen this before. Sandy’s beard is grey and clipped short with a silly shave line under his chin. He’s crying and turning away from the bed, no, he doesn’t want to help clean her. Then we’re in a train moving along inside a mountain with many layers of tracks in complicated networks on top of and under each other. It’s the movement of the train that’s rocking my old mother’s young breasts towards me and away again but it’s also her urging me to make more effort, which I can’t. I hear her yawning voice from time to time when the train moves between one noisy tunnel and another but the words are slowed down into a grinding, echoing, incomprehensible bass. Her tongue goes in and out. The heavy droop of her eyelids means she’s looking down at her own breasts as if to make them the subject of her groaning sounds. Then there are green fields outside the train window, they’re moving along beside us at the same speed as the train, we don’t pass the landscape, we travel inside it. My father is there outside the train window next to which my mother is once again sitting in profile, her pale blue cardigan up under the silver curls at her neck, her sad mouth still talking silently. She’s not looking at her husband’s crazy grin turned towards us where he’s pushing a mower along a neat grass strip that seems to be attached to the train. Then I see it’s not a mower he’s pushing it’s his own big cock that my mother’s not looking at, it’s her averted profile I see even though I’m facing her, she’s not going to look out the window where Marty’s waving and waving with one hand while the other hand steers his dick. When we go back into the tunnels he disappears and many stations pass the train’s windows. I’m facing my mother again but this time she’s covered up and her eyelids have lifted. Her dark eyes are looking not at me but at the space between us and her mouth is making words I can’t hear. Where’s Sandy? He didn’t come back. Then at last I rock forward into the place where she’s sitting, I’ve succeeded, I’m going to be completely where she is, but she’s not there anymore. We’re at a station but I can’t see her out the window, she’s gone, and I need to pee, I need to pee so badly that I start to.

  The little blueys always leave a foul bitter taste in your mouth but this time it’s worse than usual and my tongue’s sore as if I’ve bitten it. There’s plenty of cold beer in the fridge but I stick my mouth under the bathroom handbasin tap instead and sluice the foulness out. Then I stand and piss into the toilet for a long time, it’s slow these days, while the dream image of Marty’s madly grinning face outside the train window and glimpses of my old-young mother break up and re-form as I turn the TV on and get the racing channel. Then I dress in clean underwear and a fresh shirt while the clock ticks down to 5.45. The odds have hauled in a bit but I’m still looking at something like thirty grand in take-home.

  Some more or less horizontal rain is whacking against the glass doors to the deck and I push a towel from the bathroom against the leak-that-can’t-be-fixed there. Marty was defiantly proud of the design flaws in his house, the results he said of uncompromising experiment, which was bullshit. They were the results of bad design, period. There are places on the outside walls where the oxide streaks have almost integrated themselves into the reddish character of the place. Inside, some of Marty’s vaunted double-glazed windows can’t shut properly anymore. I have to stuff the cracks with builder’s bog and keep them closed. There’s a spindly tree that’s blocked one of the guttering downpipes by growing up it and erecting a small, optimistic baldachin of leaves at the top. It looks more like a creature than a plant. It doesn’t go away, i.e. die. The grey moss patches on the southern wall are matched inside by shadows of mould, especially in rooms where the windows no longer open.

  This dark mould began to appear in the months after Marty died. It spooked me then but was just the result of Agnes sacking the housekeeper, even though she had a little boy. I remember the girl trudging down the hill from our house as I was coming up it. She had her boy by the hand—he was yelling blue murder. She turned her head over her shoulder and said something but I couldn’t hear it.

  Now these mould patterns look like the wraiths I had a thing about during my Kraftwerk phase. I shaved my hair off and wore an orange vinyl coat to wind my father up, which was also why I played Ralf und Florian at full volume. This had nothing to do with rebellion. I liked the music and the coat but I also liked Marty’s inventive ways of objecting. Once he opened my bedroom door and hurled a bucketful of cold water at me. We stood opposite each other screaming with laughter, though I was the only one who was wet. He enjoyed these clashes, as he enjoyed denying me the seaward position when we stretched our legs.

  ‘Nazi shit!’ he would yell. He meant Kraftwerk as well as Somes Island.

  He also complained when Agnes played Victoria de los angeles singing Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne.

  ‘Coucou-coucou!’ He turned his hands into stubby wings and flapped out of the room. ‘Folklorsick shit!’

  My mother ignored him.

  She often sat in the big downstairs room with a glass of wine, reading a book and listening to music. Her responsibility in the business was the textiles. The drapes and furniture coverings in the house were Klepka showpieces. After she sacked the housekeeper the place wasn’t aired or cleaned much and the curtains in the upstairs rooms began to turn black. She took them all outside and burned them in the incinerator. She chucked a lot of other stuff in there too, Marty’s mostly. If I’m haunted by anything it’s the memory of Agnes standing straight-backed by the forty-four-gallon drum of the incinerator, her head tilted to watch the flakes of burning fabric and paper lift and scatter over the neighbourhood.

  That’s not true, about the haunting. Though all the upstairs rooms are empty now the one that Marty and Agnes slept in is emptier than the others. This is because it’s the biggest room and therefore has more emptiness in it. But it’s also because so much used to fill it. Not stuff, there wasn’t much of that. It’s them, Marty and Agnes. There was so much of them. Now they’re gone there’s so much not-them.

  The face in the bathroom mirror has awful teeth in it, it hurts to brush them. Stranger are the tear tracks that have overflowed the lines in the face and disappeared into its whiskers. Were they chalk and cheese, my mo
ther and father? Was Marty the crazy obsessive and Agnes the sensible pragmatist? He got the work done and she never cleaned the house. Was he the desperate prankster who sometimes made her scream? I don’t remember her screaming often. I remember the tilt of her already greying head as the glowing fabric ash floated away across the dark bulk of Mount Victoria.

  Trouble with my teeth is, the same cash prize that will fix them will buy what makes me grind them. About the time we flagged our sibling discussions about trust funds Sandy lectured me that the stuff used to be known as ‘Hitler’s drug’. That’s the kind of useful information he’s got at his fingertips. Vero didn’t bat an eyelid. Back in the day she used to hide her jar of Obetrol from me. Now she’s a Chardonnay matron in best Hawke’s Bay style and her husband’s a bottle-of-vodka a day moron. Pretty normal when you take the wide view. And Sandy?

  Smitten students, he can’t stop himself. The smug arsehole.

  Racing steward’s time.

  I fill a tall glass with chilled India Pale Ale and take the first judicious mouthful. Next thing there’s beer and broken glass all over the floor and I’m out the door.

  Not much point asking me to check my coat nor if I’d like to ‘take a bath’, what about a spot of ‘lovey dovey’, don’t think about it too hard, NB, or would that be Bushy Park this evening (‘Not very funny, Micky . . .’). Never mind that ‘Native Bush’ always sounds like a bad joke nor that what she’s up to is against the Honeysuckle’s vague house rules. There’s a beautiful cloud inside the pipe and I suck it back. NB gets the last bit for herself. The birdcage gate clangs open again high in my chest, they’re racing, it’s been a long, long day, but hey, shit, worth the wait. The weight, the wight.

  ‘Jesus fucking Christ.’

  ‘Don’t talk bad like that, Mister Big Winner Micky-stick. Sticky-mick.’

  ‘Be quiet,’ I say and mean it. ‘Just give me a minute. I need a minute or two.’

  ‘Take all the time you want,’ she says. She glows from head to foot, a tawny candle lit from within. ‘No hurry, Micky.’

  But here it comes, the speed gallop along the mesolimbic pathway. It’s like a hard-on in the brain, let alone the one that springs out into the incensey fug of the room as NB wiggles my pants down.

  ‘Ready to win big time, ride my horsey, what you say, Mick?’

  ‘Whoa, steady,’ I say.

  ‘Whoa, whoa!’

  ‘Ride ’em!’ I’m going with the jockey thing, spur of the moment ha ha, as NB slides the condom on and lowers into the saddle.

  ‘Micky, you’re a big winner tonight!’

  ‘Hot to trot!’ I like NB but she won’t understand why I’m suddenly weeping and laughing or laughing and weeping, can’t tell. It’s not the whorehouse patter, not winning the horse race, not the what-the-fuck look on the girl’s face, not . . .

  ‘Whassa matter, Micky, you okay baby?’

  ‘I’m okay, I’m okay, don’t fucking stop!’

  ‘We’re gonna win, Micky! Not stopping. You’re the best . . .’

  She doesn’t know what I’m the best.

  ‘Jockey!’ I laugh sob, helping her out. ‘Jockey!’ The tears and snot’s running down my face. ‘The best jockey is what they’re called, for fuck’s sake!’

  But NB’s off me quick as a flash, pretty athletic when necessary, and wiping at my face with a wet towel, no mistaking her expression now. ‘Enough, Micky, this is no good, you getting weird. You calm down now.’

  . . . it’s not, what?

  I don’t know.

  ‘Or I call somebody.’

  ‘I don’t know what it is,’ I say. I should be in heaven but I’m not. I should be triumphing but I don’t give a shit. I’m trying not to laugh because it seems inappropriate but I don’t know why. The speed is still making clods fly around the fast track that hooks my stiffy up to my brain.

  Native Bush looks at it, the stiffy. ‘You take it easy, all right, Micky?’

  I lie back and we start again where we left off. I keep my eyes shut and let the girl unhalter me in a quiet paddock. It’s just her job.

  I took him to a lovely fresh grass paddock and he walked to one side and introduced himself to the horses in the adjoining paddock then introduced himself to the horses on the other side then mooched to the middle of the paddock and started grazing. He announced that he was in town and left it at that.

  I hear Native Bush giving herself a sluice in the alcove.

  ‘Let’s leave it at that,’ I say.

  ‘Whatever you say, Micky.’ Her hesitation says she cares about Michael Klepka a little bit. Just a little bit. At least I think so. Or she’s scared. Enough to say, ‘Maybe you take it easy, Micky. Know what I mean? No more yaha for a while, what you say?’

  Then there’s the way she’s holding her dressing gown shut.

  To my brother Sandy I say, I manage. Do you? I ration myself. Do you? There’s a time and a place. What’s yours you smug prick. Keeping in shape for you know what.

  ‘Come on, NB, one more little toke. It’s been a long day.’ I mean one more bath, one more yaha, one more meow, call it what you like. I don’t mean.

  She knows what I don’t mean.

  ‘Come on, Micky, you know.’

  I know.

  ‘What’s the matter, Micky? You so uptight. You gotta chill.’

  I gotta chill.

  These are my rules. She’s a good kid.

  ‘Did you ever,’ I say, and stop. Her expression says, ‘Me cunt you client.’ Or it says, ‘You wanna talk? Take me out for a nice dinner.’ Or it says, ‘Wanna get weird, the doorhandle wear your face.’

  NB’s face is a mirror I see myself in. The fear and anger are from me. The sadness is too. I put them in her face. What do I know about Native Bush? Not her real name, no kidding. She’s got a daughter, Jessie. Real name, I’ve seen a cute cellphone picture. She’s studying management at Massey. Her family back home think she works in hospitality. She doesn’t like talking about herself. She does it to humour me but only a little bit. Jessie’s hair’s in sticking-up pigtails.

  She’s good at her job, Jessie’s mother is.

  ‘Did you ever,’ I say, trying to drain my reflection out of her face, suck it back into me and seal the poison there, ‘did you ever wonder what would happen if someone gave you a whole lot of money?’

  ‘Money don’t matter, Micky, no weird shit anyway.’

  I’m still there, in her face. ‘That’s not what I’m talking about.’

  ‘Like I said, you gotta chill. Or maybe time to go home.’

  Time to go home. What will thirty grand-plus do to my life? Make it go on the same a bit longer. What will it do to NB’s life?

  ‘Micky, stop doing that!’

  ‘Doing what?’

  She points at her teeth.

  ‘Listen,’ I say, gritting mine. ‘I’m going to give you a whole lot of money. A whole fucking lot. I’m collecting tomorrow. You listening? You don’t have to do anything. Yes you do. You have to get the fuck out of here. Promise me.’

  NB’s a smart girl. What she’s hearing is begging not threatening. Earlier in our evening the money thing was all fun and games.

  ‘Mister Big Winner Micky-stick,’ I remind her. ‘Sticky-mick.’

  She was lining up the door but now she stops. When she laughs my reflection flushes from her face. She stamps one bare foot on the floor. She’s got one hand in front of her mouth to stop it being rude. The other hand’s clutching her hair up as if to say, Good joke!

  ‘What, you want me to come live in that stupid house?’

  In the mirror of her face I see this weird old fucker.

  The air outside is damp and there’s a crack and fizz of blue ozone as a trolley bus accelerates out of the tunnel. I left my coat behind and the rain feels good soaking through my nice clean shirt. What the fuck was I thinking. Not what the silly little cunt thought I was. The dairy’s still open and the kid’s doing his homework. His moustache lifts automatically w
hen he sees me but then shuts down again when he takes in how I look. That mirror thing. I get three big bars of chocolate from the rack, a milk chocolate with hazelnuts, a dark, and another with nuts and raisins. My coat’s up the hill with my wallet in it. Big decision time for the kid.

  ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Tomorrow. Morning.’ My smokes are in the jacket too. ‘Okay,’ he says. His expression says, Does that mean you won’t come in for your cigarettes tomorrow morning?

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I say. ‘It could be a lot worse. I could be asking for the till.’ I smack the top of it. ‘And a Bic, thanks.’

  He hands me the lighter with an adult frown that’s like a rehearsal for the future. For a moment I’m tempted to say, ‘Did you even wonder what would happen if someone gave you a whole lot of money?’ but I don’t. Once is enough. Right now the natural order of things is fucking up. I’m standing in the rain jamming chocolate in my face and opening the cigarette packet at the same time.

  I get a glimpse of the kid’s face inside behind the counter and there I am again, reflected. This time what I see is just another regular nut-case from around here somewhere—the place is crawling with them and he’s not going to be one of ’em, no sir, not likely, no way.

  A few stoners are standing in the street outside a party at the tinnie house on the corner. A small girl in a big parka says, from inside the hood, ‘No I’m not fuckin’ going back in there you fuckin’ ape.’

  ‘That’s the story,’ I say, pushing past the guy. The girl’s taking off down the hill.

  ‘What did you say, cunt?’

  But she’d turned her hooded head over her shoulder and said something that sounded like ‘Luck of’ but wasn’t, so he’s likely talking to her not me.

  Up the hill. Back up the hill. How many times now? Once when the housekeeper girl came down with her little boy yelling blue murder and yanking at her hand. He’d have been about six, funny little squirt, not quite right. She looked over her shoulder too and opened her mouth. She didn’t have a hoodie on but her white face was small inside her dark hair.