A respected kaumātua has died in this take on "The Garden Party" by Katherine Mansfield, set in modern Mt Roskill
At first people thought Uncle Jack had been killed in a hit-and-run, mowed down crossing the road near the May Road dairy. That was what Lorenzo heard in the first delirious phone calls from his mother: Uncle Jack had been mown down, and it was a brutal, heartless and sadistic act, no doubt perpetrated by someone twenty-one and Chinese in a brand new car with a learner's license and no insurance.
In fact, Uncle Jack had just collapsed while crossing the street and died from a heart attack. This was explained in the second wave of phone calls. Cigarettes killed him, and cream on his porridge, and old age. He was eighty-six, and on his way to buy a Lotto ticket.
"Thinking of us," said Lorenzo's mother, "right to the end."
"What do you mean?" asked Lorenzo. He imagined murmured last words, overheard by Good Samaritans kneeling at the side of his great-uncle's frail, crumpled body.
"Well, he didn't need the money, did he?" said Lorenzo's mother. "What would he have done with it, if he'd won?"
Gone to Bali, Lorenzo suspected. Last year one of Uncle Jack's RSA friends had gone to Bali for the first time, aged seventy-eight, and returned with news of a much younger girlfriend. He'd sent her and her family almost ten-thousand dollars before his grown-up children got wind of it, and changed his mobile phone number so the girlfriend in Bali had no way of tracking him down.
"Uncle Jack was always thinking of us," said Lorenzo's mother. She was ringing Lorenzo from the big New World because they would be needing food, huge amounts of it, when the undertakers brought Uncle Jack back to the house. He would lie there in his coffin for three days, and people would need to be fed.
"Why was he walking all the way to the May Road dairy?" asked Lorenzo, because part of him still wanted to believe there was something suspicious about all this, something needing investigation and possibly a visit from TV3 News.
"We'll never know," said his mother. "This trolley squeaks. Why do I always get the bad trolleys? They spend all this money on a big new supermarket, and the trolleys are already useless."
She seemed to be crying, or else holding the phone to the trolley so he could hear it squeaking. Lorenzo did what he always did when his mother – or anyone, really – started to cry during telephone conversations. He'd tell her that her voice was breaking up, or that he was walking or driving through a tunnel. Then, mid-sentence, he'd disconnect the call. That way it would seem as though they'd been cut off. His mother never rang back, as though she knew the truth, that he'd hung up on her. Hung up on himself, really. Lorenzo often hung up on himself.
He'd never hung up on Uncle Jack, or hung up on himself while talking to Uncle Jack, and this was a relief right now. He wouldn't have to go through life tormented with guilt because he had betrayed Uncle Jack with phone-call deceit. This was mainly because Uncle Jack was too deaf for phone calls. Even if he'd won Lotto and gone to Bali and found himself a much younger girlfriend, she'd never have been able to ring him in New Zealand to arrange a ten-thousand-dollar money transfer.
Lorenzo reported his mother's side of the conversation to his cousin, May, who was driving him home from the airport. He'd been down in Wellington for two days of meetings and he could have paid for a taxi home on expenses, but May had insisted on picking him up.
"Your mum's in an emotional state," May told him. "It's a very emotional time."
"What does that even mean?" Lorenzo asked. All times were emotional for his mother.
"You know she always gets anxious when lots of people are coming over. Death is much worse than a marriage, say, or even a new baby. Everyone turns up pretending to pay their respects, wanting a massive feed. And there's no garden anymore, so everyone'll be squeezed into the house, getting on her nerves."
This was true. Lorenzo's mother had rented the small brick-and-tile house in Mt Roskill for five years, ever since his father had moved to the Gold Coast with a woman named Vicky. Relatives over sixty referred to Vicky as Lorenzo's father's Fancy Piece, but she was, in fact, his Life Coach and now – as Lorenzo's father insisted on calling her – his Life Partner.
Two years ago, the owner of the Mt Roskill house subdivided the garden so another, bigger house could be built at the back. This new house was "Tuscan," according to Lorenzo's mother and her landlord, maybe because it was painted the colour of an apricot or an orange or a peach – naming colours wasn't Lorenzo's strong suit – and because its roof was flat, as though the weather in Mt Roskill was sunny and dry like the weather in Tuscany. It was a stupid and stupidly expensive house, in Lorenzo's opinion, with a big garage and high walls. The looming presence of the House Behind, as they called it, meant that Lorenzo's mother only got sun after three in the afternoon, and her back garden was barely deep enough for a washing line.
"Speaking of babies," said May, though nobody had been speaking at all for several minutes. "I went to see the doctor again about why we're not having them. You know, me and Tony."
"You don't have to tell me anything personal," said Lorenzo. This was not the kind of anecdote he wanted to hear from anyone – not a cousin or sister, not a girlfriend. No woman at all needed to confide such a thing in him, at any point. He knew he should have caught a taxi home.
"Because there's nothing wrong with me and there's nothing wrong with Tony," May continued, changing lanes in her usual erratic way. "According to the specialists."
"It's a very emotional time," Lorenzo said, and hoped that would be the end of it. Agreeing with people, he found, sometimes shut them up.
"Well, this has been going on for two years," said May. "So I went back to see my doctor, and you know what he said? That I may have a womb that repels sperm."
Lorenzo said nothing. He'd remembered, too late, that agreeing with women just encouraged them to divulge more.
"I kind of like that," May said. "A sperm-repelling womb! I've had a superpower all these years and never realised it."
Lorenzo still said nothing. You couldn't hang up on yourself when you were sitting next to the other person in the car. For the first time in his life, he wished he was in a meeting in Wellington.
"A sperm-repelling womb," May said again, lingering over every word, and he realised she was saying all this to wind him up.
"I guess I'm still really preoccupied with Uncle Jack," he said, looking straight ahead. "I'm just really . . . sad."
"Liar," said May. "Uncle Jack had a good run. It was amazing he lasted as long as he did, with all that smoking and drinking. Not to mention the dairy products."
She swerved into Lorenzo's street, and he gripped the handles of his bag, ready to leap out.
"He looked pretty good, really, all things considered," May was saying. "According to Mum, it's because he never had children. Children age you, apparently. Not that we'll ever know, eh? Me and you. Though it's not too late for you. Biologically, men can go on until – "
"Thanks for the lift!" Lorenzo said, opening the door even though the car was still in motion. "See you tomorrow."
"I'll be dressed as Wonder Woman," May called after him. Her voice was clear and loud, so she must have buzzed the windows down. That was always the thing with May: she didn't care who heard things. If Uncle Jack were still alive, she'd be shouting away at him tomorrow about her sperm-repelling womb, determined that he heard every word, not content until she made him choke on his tea.
*
Uncle Jack was lying in his coffin on the spare bed, looking small and spindly. He didn't smell of smoke anymore, and he didn't look anything much like the framed old pictures of him arranged around the spare room. He'd looked so wily and nimble, once upon a time, Lorenzo thought. He'd looked like a man of the world. In three of the old photographs, he had slicked-back hair and was wearing tennis whites, in the manner of some European playboy. Lorenzo tried to imagine the photos they'd pick if Lorenzo himself were laid out on the spare bed. He'd be dressed in a rumpled suit in most of them, pictured with long-forgotten colleagues while attending a product launch or strategic away-day. His shoes would be unpolished. He'd be wearing a lanyard or name badge. He'd probably have red-eye.
May was talking to someone in the hallway, offering up her car as coffin transportation on Monday. A hearse was unnecessary. A rip-off, she announced, and Lorenzo agreed. It was bad enough that the undertaker appeared to be holding the coffin lid to ransom. Lorenzo wasn't sure why. Couldn't their family be trusted with the lid? Hadn't they paid a large sum of money for it?
"He'll bring it round on Monday," said Lorenzo's mother. He'd sought her out in the kitchen, where she was rearranging the freezer to accommodate a tinfoil pan of lasagne from Mrs Devich across the road. "We don't need it until then. You always worry about the wrong things."
What he should be worried about, according to his mother and the huddle of hairsprayed aunties monopolising the kettle, was the party going on that day at the House Behind.
"They've got a sign up on the driveway! With balloons!" This was Auntie Joan, May's mother. She was morally opposed to the subdivision of sections, and had written various letters to the Herald advocating a high-speed commuter train to Whangārei and/or Hamilton, effective immediately, to relieve the housing crisis in Auckland.
"It says “This Way to the Garden Party”," said Auntie Sila, who wasn't a relative but had lived two doors down from them in the street where Lorenzo had grown up. "While we've got a funeral on here, the curtains drawn. It's disrespectful."
"The funeral's not until Monday," Lorenzo pointed out, and the aunties rose up, bristling like furious sparrows, and told him not to split hairs. They were all getting smaller as they aged, he'd noticed, but they were also louder and fluffier, inflating with every new small outrage.
"You need to go up there and tell them that we've had a tragic loss here, that a respected kaumātua has died, and that –"
"Yes, yes," said Lorenzo. "It's an emotional time."
"It's Wellington that's done this to him," one of the aunties complained to the others, and he left the room.
Lorenzo stood for a while on the front steps, blinking in the sun. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to say to the people in the House Behind. He couldn't ask them to cancel their garden party because Uncle Jack had keeled over en route to the dairy, in an unsurprising and non-tragic way, and was lying in the spare room until Monday, being visited by everyone they'd ever known, as well as a Rātana minister and a cluster of watchful Mormons. Probably the House Behind people – not neighbours exactly, not yet – had planned this party for weeks or even months. They would be happy that the weather was so good, that it was as sunny and cloudless today as it was, presumably, in Tuscany all the time.
But the aunties were right, in a way. Lorenzo saw the new houses of the neighbourhood, hidden away like citadels at the end of long, secretive driveways, as inhabiting an entirely different place. Those people drove different cars, ate different food, sent their children to different schools. They weren't so much joining the community as colonising it. Soon all the little houses would be bulldozed and a new Tuscany would rise up in its place, dreamy pastel townhouses encircling the scrubby green maunga like some medieval hill town. And all the aunties and uncles and cousins, their superettes and fabric stores and takeaways, their schools and churches and mobile health centres, would be packed into the high-speed trains to Whangārei and/or Hamilton, where land cost less and people were still allowed to have gardens and low wages.
May emerged from the open front door, pulling on her shoes. She wasn't dressed as Wonder Woman after all; she was all in black, the clothes she wore every day.
"If you're going up there, I'll come with you," she told him. "I'd like to have a nose around that place."
"It's not an Open Home," he said, but he didn't really object to May coming along. When they were growing up, she'd always been the tough one, protecting him from the attacking battalions of other cousins. Recently she'd started studying part-time to get a Legal Executive Diploma, and he'd tried a couple of times to talk her into going to university instead, to become an actual lawyer. It was too much money, May said; she and Tony were saving to buy a home unit like the one they lived in now, except in a neighbourhood that was even scruffier and further away.
"We could rip down their sign and the balloons," she suggested. "Or I could cry. Do some keening and wailing. Collapse on their doorstep."
"No crying," Lorenzo said, though he had no better ideas. He stepped out of the way so eight members of the Tigafua family could make their way up the stairs and through the front door. His mother would be pleased, because they were carrying a large amount of food, because they'd left the smallest children at home, and because their presence here today, a delegation from all the way around the corner, was a sign of respect to Uncle Jack.
Someone else was lingering in the wake of the Tigafua family: a tall blonde girl clutching a fabric shopping bag from Nosh.
"Hi," she said, looking from Lorenzo to May. "I live – up there. Round the back."
The House Behind, Lorenzo wanted to say, but he said nothing, and neither did May. The girl was in her twenties, he guessed, but she was dressed like someone from a World War II movie, in a tailored floral dress, her fair hair in smooth waves the shape of sausage rolls. Her lipstick was bright red.
"We heard about your – uncle, is it? The undertaker was blocking our driveway. I mean, it wasn't a problem."
"Great-uncle," said May. "Our great-uncle Jack has died."
The tone of her voice made it sound such a dignified thing. Lorenzo was impressed.
"Really, so sorry." The girl was flushed. "It's awful. Very sad. And I just wanted to say, I'm sorry that today of all days we're having a party. A stupid garden party. Themed. You know, vintage."
She gestured at her hair. Lorenzo still said nothing. Women's hairstyles were not something he liked to discuss. In his experience, they were a minefield, like height, weight, the use or absence of make-up, and all items of clothing.
"I'm Laura," she said, still pink-cheeked.
"I'm May. And this is my cousin, Lorenzo. This is his mother's house."
"Lorenzo?" Laura seemed startled. "Are you Italian?"
"From Tuscany," said Lorenzo.
"He's Māori and Dutch," May told her. "And maybe a bit of French as well, going back."
There was something doll-like about Laura – her pink cheeks and red lips, her dress – and Lorenzo almost felt sorry for her, venturing down from the House Behind into the low-lying, dank marshes where the peasants still lived. But why had she wandered in here with her Nosh bag and her fancy dress? To let them know that the undertaker had blocked her driveway? To explain to them what the sign and balloons had already announced?
Inside, the Tigafua family was singing a hymn. Lorenzo remembered it from school: "Pe a Faigata Le Ala, Taumafai! If the Way be Full of Trial, Weary Not". He wasn't sure why the Samoan version had an exclamation mark and the English version didn't. It was just one more unanswered question in a life of small, niggling anxieties.
Uncle Jack's way may or may not have been full of trial: Lorenzo wasn't sure. Uncle Jack never seemed to weary, at least, but Lorenzo felt exhausted most days. He'd wanted to fall asleep on the plane yesterday, coming back from Wellington, but the flight was too short: by the time the shouty All Blacks safety video was over, and someone had demanded he choose between a savoury or a sweet snack, it was time to land. He wouldn't mind lying down on the spare bed next to Uncle Jack's coffin right now, just to close his eyes for ten minutes, though people kept trooping in and out, telling stories about Uncle Jack's exploits and rude sayings.
May stood on the steps humming along with the hymn. The Tigafuas' voices rose, rich and swaying, above the sound of distant traffic and the whining lawnmower down the street. Laura, the Nosh bag clasped in her arms, stared down at the cracked concrete of the path. When the hymn ended, she looked relieved, and something else as well. Trapped, maybe.
"It's a very multicultural neighbourhood, isn't it?" she said.
"It was," said May, her tone pointed, and Lorenzo folded his arms, suppressing a smile. This was so much better than the two of them creeping along the driveway, knocking on the other front door like salesmen, like service-providers. Laura had come to them. They could have their way with her, whatever their way might be. "I brought you some food," Laura said, squeezing the Nosh bag. "Some things from our party. Just little sandwiches and cakes. It's not much. I'm sorry."
She looked defeated. And she was quite right, Lorenzo thought; compared with the formidable vats and trays borne by the Tigafua delegation, this bag of fancies wasn't much at all. Once Lorenzo had brought Uncle Jack some miniature croissants, leftovers from an office lunch, tucked with limp triangles of ham and lettuce. Uncle Jack had laughed so much, he'd started coughing. He'd spat out one of his fillings.
"It's just a little, you know, a koha," Laura continued, and this seemed to soften May.
"You better come in." She reached out to take the Nosh bag. "Pay your respects."
"Really, I don't want to intrude."
There was panic in Laura's voice, but if May heard it, she was ignoring it. Lorenzo followed them inside, lingering on the doormat because Laura was blocking the narrow hallway, straining to unbutton the straps on her shoes.
"These are Mary-Janes," she told Lorenzo, sounding apologetic, and he shrugged, as though she was speaking a foreign tongue. He walked her to the spare room and May disappeared to round up aunties. Lorenzo's mother came in, dabbing at her eyes with a tea towel.
"I find that hymn very moving," she said.
"I'm so sorry," Laura said, and she certainly looked very sorry. "I don't mean to intrude at such a private family moment."
"Nothing private about it," said Lorenzo's mother. She glanced up and down at Laura, at her strange floral dress and sausage-roll hair, and then at Lorenzo. He was leaning against the candlewick cover, one proprietary hand on the coffin. He still couldn't understand why they couldn"t be trusted with the lid. It was their lid. What if the undertaker brought the wrong lid on Monday? Uncle Jack would have a two-tone coffin. "Lorenzo didn't mention anything about a girlfriend."
"She's not my girlfriend," he said.
"You met at work, I suppose. Are you the reason He's always going down to Wellington?"
"She's not my girlfriend."
"I live here," said Laura, pointing at the floor. Lorenzo's mother frowned. "I mean, up the back. The house behind yours – you know, sixty-two A. We're having a garden party today. My parents."
"Lorenzo never mentioned he knew you," said his mother.
"He's a dark horse," said Auntie Joan, who had materialised along with other aunts and female cousins, all crowding around the narrow bed, dislodging pictures, giving Lorenzo long, accusing looks. "Just like his uncle Jack."
"Not one word," said his mother, addressing Uncle Jack in his lidless coffin. "He tells me nothing about his life."
"Well, it's a very emotional time," said May, slinging an arm around Lorenzo's mother. She winked at Lorenzo, which he didn't appreciate at all. No doubt she'd been spreading misinformation in the kitchen.
Laura had started to cry.
"I'm sorry," she said in a small, high-pitched voice. Lorenzo tried to edge away from the coffin and the bed, but the room was a thicket of bristling sparrows. "I didn't know your Uncle Jack, but he looks so peaceful here, doesn't he? So still and calm. Surrounded by everyone who loved him."
"And the Mormons," said May, sidling close to Lorenzo. He wanted to think she was coming to his rescue, but experience told him the opposite was almost certainly true.
Laura was sobbing now, her thin body shuddering.
"Ah, your little girlfriend is crying," said Auntie Sila, and lines from the All Blacks' safety video pounded through Lorenzo's head. All lighted signs and placards too. His mother was crying and Laura, who was not his girlfriend, was crying. In the living room the Tigafua family was cranking up another hymn.
"Please stop crying," he said to Laura, but she just gripped Uncle Jack's coffin and sobbed.
"Shall I tell her about my superpower?" May whispered. "Not now," he said.
Laura turned to him, her cheeks even more pink, her eyes blurry with tears. "Isn't life just . . ." she began, and Lorenzo wanted to tell her that her voice was
breaking up, that he was entering a tunnel. "I mean, isn't life –"
"Isn't it," said Lorenzo, and he pushed his way out of the room, hanging up on himself the way he always did, just as Uncle Jack had done by dropping dead in the middle of the road, so people would think it was someone else's fault. Taken with kind permission from the new collection Hiwa: Contemporary Māori Short Stories, edited by Paula Morris, consulting editor Darryn Joseph (Auckland University Press, $45), available in bookstores nationwide. ReadingRoom is running three stories from this excellent anthology. Last week: "Work and Income Gothic" by Jack Remiel Cottrell. Next week: a fantasia about Kiri Te Kanawa, by Pamela Morrow
