Home Again

I have a memory of walking into a house. It’s after school, I’m maybe eight years old, and I’m meant to head straight home. I go up the drive and on in. Observation, I guess, was not my strong point – maybe I was distracted – or escaping from bullies? – anyway it’s a few minutes before I realize that there are certain distinct differences between this kitchen and the one I should be in. I hear footsteps elsewhere in the house, and I instinctively cower behind the nearest counter. A woman walks in who is patently not my mother. I don’t see her face.

It becomes obvious I’m not going to be able to conceal my presence for even another minute, so I decide to take a straightforward approach. I stand, make a half-stammered, half-mumbled statement confessing my mistake, and flee back out the front door. Never knowing what reaction I might have elicited from the strange woman.

Actually, I can never be sure whether this incident happened in reality or dream. Another memory suggests to me I was at the place I should call home, and didn’t realize. As time goes by, it’s not just my childhood memories that begin to blur in this way. I awaken to a strange house every day, while I move about the rooms of a still stranger one, which nevertheless has a greater force of reality, in those times when I am supposedly in REM sleep.

I’m lying on my bed in shorts, looking down on myself. The bare lightbulb’s in the way, but I can see myself, spreadeagled. It’s only for a moment in the cool light of morning and then I’m looking up at the eye of the bulb. A minute earlier I had been somewhere else, but that memory’s fast fading to a dream. But there was a house, I know, with a familiarity that brings no comfort.

I pad on bare feet to my kitchen. There’s coffee, no sugar, I know not when I made it. I’m alone here since Laurie left, in bitter realization of truths about both me and us. It was only two weeks ago (I think), but already seems like a few lifetimes. Back in the open living room, there’s a picture of her still, next to one of the kids – my kids. From the earlier marriage, let’s not mention her name yet. And another, my grandparents, who might have raised me.

Memory Lane’s not an easy place to dwell at the moment, when the present seems so indeterminate. Anyway, there’s a desk piled with blueprints and a phone with two messages, which will perhaps be a better use of my attention. So I start leafing and scanning the blueprints; floorspace, columns, embattled colonnades, specs, they fly past my eyes. Phone in the crook of my neck. Message one:

“Andrew. Andy, are you there? Talk to me buddy, it’s been days. I’ve got the old man and the Operatic Society breathing down my neck so here I am breathing down yours.” Ha ha. “I need draft two by – yesterday really, but if you can get in touch today I can keep ‘em at bay till Friday, okay?”

What day is today? I punch up message two. It’s Tuesday. A second, a click. You have no more messages.

The blueprints are meaningless hieroglyphs today. Hanging up, I take my coffee back to the bedroom and dress. I don’t know when I last showered, but I don’t seem to reek. Could do with a shave maybe, but hey, I’m not going to the opera today. I go out to the back deck and blink in the early sun, locking the door behind me.

The house and grounds are expansive. Open plan, a grove of shade down the back, just like Laurie wanted and I designed. That it was almost over by the time we moved in didn’t seem to diminish her enthusiasm for moving in and creating a home. That smile which still made me feel like a co-conspirator, flashed round every room, with every addition of homey goodness.

In the car, indiscriminate pop radio makes thought less necessary as I drive without conscious direction. I know and I don’t know what I’m looking for. Cresting a hill verging on dunes, there’s one of mine: sprawling, railed decks overlooking the sea, already seasoned with salt and sand, sun and rain. It’s close, but not it. There’s a rest stop a hundred metres down, just rest my eyes for a minute.

I know this place. Sea air. There’s a big trestle table in the middle of the room, white linen cover, laden with party food. Outside, the sound of people, lights. Dogs, not barking, but I know there are dogs. There always are. I feel the beams fall down, lightning crashing outside. I’m picking at the food, nice platter of roast pig, bare handed, when people start to enter and I feel that same embarrassment as in that quiet suburban home I invaded way back when? They care not for my mumbled protestations, they know me and smile, talking away. One man, Phil? – takes out his phone as it starts ringing –

And I’m awake, the ringing in my car, my carphone. I’m disoriented, I pick up but forget to say anything.

“Hello?”

“Hello, you there Andy? Where are you?”

“Hi Bri, I’m on the road. Uh, parked up.”

“Have you gotten my messages?. What are you doing, man? Are you gonna have something for us by Friday?”

That’s three too many questions right now. “Listen, uh, Brian –“

“Listen. Andy, if you’ve really bitten off more than you can chew with this one, you’d better let us know before it goes any further. What’s happening with you?”

There’s a whirlpool in the middle of my vision. A big dog moves through it, eyes me like a tiger.

Exhale. “Bri, look, I’m not making headway with this, sorry. Maybe you could give it to Gareth? He knows as much about it as I do really.”

“Shit, Andrew.”

“I need to take some time out.”

Long pause. Brian’s a gentleman, but if he’s not cursing me under his breath, I’d be surprised.

But he knows, not the full story, but close enough.

“Andy, I don’t know what the old man’s gonna say, though I’ve got an idea. Look, I’ll try to make it smooth for ya, okay. I know I owe you one for the Gravatt House project.”

“Thanks Bri. Be in touch.”

I know he’s probably got more to say, but I hang up, check behind me then swerve out onto the road. It’s lunchtime traffic already. How long was I out?

“You’ve been out half the night. And you’re drunk.”

She’s right, and pouring myself a scotch from the sideboard, I appear intent on getting drunker.

I have nothing to say, so, coolly sipping through the rocks, I listen as the litany grows longer. She’s in her room now (her room), and still going through the closed door. As I pace by for the fourth time, we’re on to the subject of kids now, again. And something in me snaps.

“We will not have children, you and I. Never. I would not wish this on a child, to have us as mother and father. It will never happen. It would not be a good thing.”

I probably said more, but - there, in a few words, the shattering of dreams. Her last chance, she thinks; my last chance to say no, I think. And the torrent of words ends.

She’s gone a couple days later. No big hoohah, no more fighting, just a sick realization that a line has been crossed and a point passed. I’m sorry I meant the things I said.

So that’s why she left. That and, I was drinking too much, to smother my dreams. And when I wasn’t drinking I was dreaming too much. To say nothing of the affair.

Any way really, I just wasn’t there.

All around the outskirts of town, the same neo-colonial villas, the same cappuccino lifestyle plots, like mushrooms, flat brown, white tops. Vineyards beyond, reisling high, as we used to joke in the office. I see time and again, my design, easy family living, new subplots – sorry, subdivisions. I’m on autopilot again.

So, it’s no surprise when I find myself back at my darkened door.

I seem to have left my kitchen light on for days so don’t bother in the living room as I sit with instant noodles. The phone blinks - one message: silence, a click. I’d turn on the TV but it’s news time, so I lean back.

I think I’m about fourteen, twelve. The house’s labyrinthine hallways and rooms keep changing on me, grownups everywhere, but there’s a way down to the dunes, where I see one little, two little, three little Indians sneaking up on the campsite.

Back at the homestead, there’s food, it’s twilight, someone’s beating a drum. A feast, ritual: I’m standing at the rails as the procession goes by. A bearded man, naked, spreadeagled on a frame, carried by; feathers, torch bearers before and after. Dogs nipping at the heels.

I don’t have time to wonder ‘cause I’m down at the beach, wind whipping sand across the world while waves come crashing down in the night. There’s a light and shadows, but no sound of revelry coming across the dunes. Just crashing.

In the morning, Fran comes to take the kids home. Our home, theirs now. We exchange formalities, not pleasantries, and James and Jen wave goodbye as they pull out.

James rings me from Auckland, Jen from Wellington – it’s my forty somethingth. I pad through the house, lingering in their old, empty rooms, speaking to them in turn. Ice chinks in my glass as I assure them I’m happy and well. Laurie had wanted rooms for them (as had I) and was cut up when it turned out they’d never be staying (as was I). Check on them, all good - J in law, J in event management. I’ll remember which is which when I wake up, which I do from an unusually dream free sleep.

On the couch. I get up, throw myself into my work in the scant hours I have before Laurie wakes up. I know what I want this place to look like, but somehow it keeps changing itself around in my head. As the sunlight starts creeping past the coffee table, I give up and get out, keys in hand.

Driving out past the new subdivisions, Northeast, the railway crossing brings me to a halt. A dog runs past and glares at me. I check the time, it’s 8:53. The train horns by, clanging, barking on long after. A smiling child, white teeth shining against dark skin, offers me a platter of meats.

The horns get louder, the dog still barking at me, it’s 8:58. I charge across the vacant rails, angry cars like hornets veering the other way as I head North, through the oldest part of town..

As I carry on through this end, I don’t see any of my work. Not sure why I’m here. State houses, dogs, a Four Square. There’s an empty lot, between two houses, which for some reason catches my attention. Long grass, nothing else. Either side, weatherbeaten board, 24 and 28 Raukawa Road. The creek, trickling close, the library across the road. Then it hits me:

WAIMARIA PUBLIC LIBRARY

I don’t have to go into the library – although I do - to know the story of Waimaria. 1858, Joe Cornell, small time poet and manslaughterer, ran as far away from civilization as possible, which was here at the time. He was heartbroken, of course, by the woman, his love, who had sold him out and caused him to break from his less than comfortable hideout up North and run. He made himself a clearing in the deep of the woods but near enough the river, a little whare, and gave himself up to solitude and madness. The local Maori heard his anguished cries to his mistress and named the area after them, and tapu once they came across his bones.

Course, tapu didn’t mean a damn thing to the Pakeha settlers when they finally came through and found a dry creek in Summer with flakes of gold in her bed. And in the disappointment of a deceptive gold rush, in which a very few got wealthy and many more were co-opted into building the railway, Better Days was born, between the river and the sea.

The library has the old blueprints, and, lo and behold, here’s 26 Raukawa Road, a small bungalow, bed, living and bath rooms in a compact thirty foot square. I’m staring at it, turning the flat lines into three-dimensional spaces in my mind, and it all comes flooding back to me with the force of a wave.

My grandfather, my father’s father: a stern, troubled man, in the sombre living room, 30-watt bulb. Talking low-voiced with my granma, sweet and demurely grey. It’s serious, I can glimmer that much at about three years old, but when they’re not too quiet to hear I don’t understand a word anyway.

The upshot at any rate was that I was staying there. For the next few years – three, I guess. Years of a small quiet home with basic food and a small section to play in (no quarter acres here), streets with few cars but plenty of dogs and kids, running feral in packs to and from the kindergarten, then school. I was six I believe, when I was met at the school gate (or maybe in the office) by a man and a woman.

My gramps had died when their car stalled on the railway track. They were on their way home, to be there when I got back. Of course, that’s not what I was told then. Just, they wouldn’t be coming home.

From then on I was a ward of the state.

Those years are a patchwork to me: interwoven memory, dream, events I can’t even be sure of belonging to either, neither or both. Strange houses and parental figures, ever-changing rooms and hallways. New siblings, sometimes pleasant, sometimes hostile - I took to sleeping more and longer hours, to avoid interaction with unpredictable strangers. I took an interest in the places themselves: at night I would pad silently on the balls of my feet, examining the bannisters, the skirting boards, with their scuffs and nicks, evidence of a life lived before and after me. The deco and nouveau fireplaces, alcoves and pantries (of course), making maps in my mind so I could walk around in the dark.

If you’ve watched children’s cartoons, well, the grownups, you rarely see their heads, just the main details of their lower figures – man shape, woman shape, clothes, from a child’s perspective. The only heads I think I recall now are those: My gramps, and two others.

My parents – I don’t know what became of them. I was repeatedly told they died, but I seem to recall the word “unfit” spoken more than once through closed doors.

At one stage I thought maybe I was from Centrepoint, the fucked up hippy sex commune up North, but no, you’d think I’d know.

I have a memory - I think - of the beach, and sand, and laughter. But it’s not an idyllic one. It’s not sunny, it’s grey, windy. I must be two or three, and I’m playing in the sand, trying something but it’s not working right. I desperately want to play with the dog that’s running around but I’m not allowed, it seems. Faces, a man and a woman, he dark, she blonde, laughing, but not with me. Then I see darkness, lights, colours, movement, music. I smell something burning. It’s all a bit blurred. Gets bluer.

The librarian shakes me, wakes me: “Are you all right, sir?” Guess they’re used to people falling asleep here, but probably not on a stack of architectural blueprints.

Back in the car, photocopies in the seat beside me, I keep chasing the dream. They’d like that, back at the office. But, I have the kernel of a new one in my head.

Still, I keep looking. At Gillespie’s Crossing I almost think I see it, overlooking a loose collection of outhouses, ranged on muddy tracks around a central sprawling structure, two storey, decks and balustrades. Lines strung between them, supporting coloured flags. Or laundry.

My lids closing, I can almost see the corridors. Running down, chased, feral like dogs, to the sea air. But we’re landlocked here. This isn’t it.

Driving down lean lanes, curving corners like chicanes, need to get home before I drop off again. Concrete, stucco walls envelop me as I enter my neighbourhood, making plans in the back of my head. When the high fence looms ahead of me, I gun the car into a stop and stumble out the door, up to the door. The phone’s ringing. It stops as I get inside. The curtains still drawn, there’s a sliver of sunlight slashes across the floor, up the wall, as I cross to hear the message, Laurie, speaking now.

“Andrew. Andy, are you there?”

“Andy, I’m sorry I had to leave the way I did. I love you, you know that. It hurts me, to leave it like this.” Me. “I – I have to come and get some stuff, out of the house. It won’t take long.”

“They said at your work that you were taking some time off. Are you okay? Are you going to be home today?” I stand in the dimly sunlit room, still as a mountain. “I can be around about four, if you can let me know. Call me, or text me, okay. I’m sorry, things got so – complicated.” Complicated, yes. But Laurie, life was well complicated before you turned up.

There’s nerves, shaky conviction, and a typical attempt to be reasonable, rabidly pursued by a past of unreason. A high ground purchased on credit.

Today? No, I can’t stand it. Old memories come flooding back like dreams. When this house was their sum, and our touch home stone. When I responded to a complaint with “I built this place the way you wanted it.”

“Built? You never built anything in your life!” Something thrown then I think, not just the insult; a crash. But she’s right of course. And she’ll say it again, like she’s said it before, I can make it happen for others but not for us, never for us. I can duck and dive, or shout back, but the result is the same: I’m out scouring the outlying suburbs, slowing down and cruising past the homes, the young families, it’s dinner time, trikes and gumboots by the door, wondering.

They come through the door, shouting, reaching out. I’m shrinking and someone’s holding me, crying back? I don’t know which, who my parents are.

I come to and it’s nearly four, shit. I shake my head, huff, and hustle to make the calls I have to make. Not to Laurie, she’ll keep, others first.

Lawyer. Accountant. Acquaintance/mate in the council office, consents department. Accountant again. Trusts Office. Lawyer again. I rub my eyes, notice they’re streaming, catch them in the mirror, reddened wet. You never built anything. “Take it easy Andrew, get some sleep eh, be in touch first thing.” Yes, thank you, humble. I slide down on the couch – hey now, haul myself up, stumble off to bed, tearing my clothes against the humidity (it’ll rain tonight), eyes closed before I lay myself down.

Silence, click. I put the phone down, turn around and for the first time the house takes on a nightmare quality. The slant of light changes, darkens as he approaches, looming with finger outstretched, shouting or talking loud but I can’t hear a word. I step back, against the oven (I may have been spotting pot, in my teens I guess), whirl and I’m off down the corridor to a lounge room full of party goers, music and lights. Beer in a box, I grab one. Someone accosts me but it’s okay, some girl smiles and vouches. A dog barks. I’m out on the beach and I think I’ve changed age again. No, I’m still vaguely fifteen, seventeen; there’s a girl, a kiss, a moment of bliss inbetween and I’m spreadeagled on the bed again, could see myself for a second.

I didn’t want to come back. I wanted to stay. I watch the line of sunshine creep across my bed, come round this side to observe its monastic silence through every room. I know there’s an answer, beyond these lines and parchments showing a route to a happy home. If the hallways can just come together and pull the rooms into place, the outside will break this horse in, by tension, not pressure, Sunlight breaking like dawn’s beams. No, think straight, I got shit to do. Up, up and awake.

It’s Saturday, I’m tired, but holding it together. The auction is going smoothly. The place will go for about three quarters by looks, and that makes me feel good for my kids and whatever grandkids may come. To say nothing of the alimony. Everything’s sorted re the land, I’ve got the little patch out back, with the shade grove. And I’ve got three days to move into it.

I have the plans, the tools, the will – I tell myself. I tear up a thirty square hole in the ground in the course of a day, drink some cold, bubbly lemonade and flatten it out before the sun goes down.

Next day, I bring in my cement and struggle absurdly with the mixer, wishing I’d got some students in. But by the end of the day I have piles, ha ha, foundations and a mess of timber lying around, and not just a plan, but a reason. Knackered, I’ll sleep well tonight.

I’m walking down a hallway, there are people down the end, laughing, drinking. A dog, a big Alsatian, brushes past me on the way. In there, a big room, the crowds part to show a woman, blonde and huge, pregnant. The colourful patterns of her dress like tattoos on her belly. I’m pushed from behind, the people either side of me laughing. I hear Andy, but I don’t know if it’s a question, a call or a catcall. I’m on my knees, a wolfhound licking my face. Trying to get away, can hear him behind me, but all I can do is crawl forward.

Out to the beach, on a grey day. A dog whimpers.

I’m scooped up by welcoming arms, the dark haired man shouting but he’s receding, the smell of burning fading as I sit in the black car.

7:00 AM, I struggle up off the couch, and start downstairs. I hurl the frame together almost in my sleep, stare for a moment swaying, surprised at my work, then start picking up and throwing down the timber to its four sides. This seems like the longest time I’ve been awake in years. I think I hear the phone ring once in the house above, but pretty sure I’ve had it cut off. A silence, click.

By the time I have the rough-cut walls up, the electrician arrives. I sit and rest while he does his stuff. “Bit of a project eh?”

I don’t understand what the man on the beach is saying. His dark hair and full teeth, wide. “Give it up boy.” The woman, blonde, is laughing.

Dog, barking behind them. The wind, whipping the sand around. My castle.

I have no voice, but, for the first time, I’m trying to cry.

My cry wakes the plumber, who for the first time turns and says, “All right mate?” I stir, sit and up, nothing between, to see that his job’s done, so’s the electrics, just the roof gaping. The glow of evening sun makes the dark advancing clouds too obvious. After going up and cutting a cheque, handing it over to a dubious plumber with an eye for a sleepwalker, I size up the beams and corrugated iron amidst the early evening spit. I should leave it, I’ve got another night, but I don’t want to stop now. The skies come together in a dark conference. Rumbles are heard.

I don’t care. I get to work hoisting beams, balancing them off with rope, cantilevered, holding them against the pillars and pounding in nails, ‘til I have a skeletal framework overhead and the moon is effaced by concrete clouds clashing by, and the rumbles are closer, louder. I haul the first sheet of corrugated iron onto the frame, begging for shelter, as the flashes begin.

I hear beams fall down, close but not here. Rain comes; lightning falls asunder. I pull up another sheet, another – my foot slips on one, I have a vision of myself from above, lying on the wet ground, leg askew. Doesn’t happen this time, and I haul sheet after sheet, the iron glistening in the wet wind, and hammer them down.

I’m inside, fiddling with a lamp, spit flying past my eyes. I sink to my knees, a pack of dogs passing me, one with a tiger eye. There’s a rumble in the sky, then a flash. Laurie calls after me but she seems far away. I’m on my knees, far away, yet the rough-hewn boards seem so close and clear, on my back. Lightning flashes and I roll, awake, against the half-filled night sky. A full moon still races against thoroughbred clouds. The boards lean in, looking like they’ll die any minute. I steal back up, laddered, pounding, crashing, finished. Finished, it’s like a dream.

I lie on the floor – I’ll get a bed tomorrow. I lie on the floor, wet, the sky’s black. there are no hallways here. I’m working in the sand, a castle, it’s looking right. Someone’s laughing, with me. I lie on the floor, sweating. A dog comes over, licks my face. I dig in the sand, hoping, I’ll find something good. And the fragile hangers over me still stand.

There’s a boy, digging in the sand while his parents are - it doesn’t matter. He’s got all he needs. It’s not complicated. He’s come home.