Spoiler! :
Old Man
I killed a lamb last week. Paula was stuffing a hind leg with garlic cloves and rosemary stalks. Her sleeves up and hair tied in a summer knot, clad for both the garden and the kitchen. I had nothing to do these days, not since I retired. Today I read my book and the paper, the sport and business, then tore it up and used it to light the fire.
My daughter and her Chink fiancé were on the way for dinner and the night. Kate had called my wife a week ago. She travelled Europe with him and he had taken a knee under the Eiffel tower. Again, her little voice came down the line from Auckland airport before they started the drive down. Paula guessed they would probably be here by seven.
***
I thought about the kill, the lamb's helpless eyes came in focus. Always the same, the body hunching over itself, the head flapping back. Years ago it wasn't that easy.
“Who’s that coming up the drive,” Paula called from the kitchen, snatching me from daydream. I watched the car through the blinds, a silver, slick, Jap model with small wheels. A firm knock came at the door. I placed my glasses on the kauri table in the den and moved to the foyer. Paula held the door and my daughter shuffled in with a suitcase, then she moved into Paula's arms and tears started at the corners of her eyes. Her hands moved up and down Paula’s back then she stepped towards me.
"Dad," she said, warmly taking my arms around her waist.
He came through, case under a lean taut arm. He pulled my wife in introducing himself, then grinned and stretched out his hand. I took it. His dark pupils slyly found mine, and his grip was firm. Skin stretched across the hard, hair-free cheek bones. Swept across his forehead, a black fringe fell.
“Ung-So, it’s lovely to meet you Mr. Phillips.”
“Call me Tatai,” I said, pressing the door closed.
He carried a woman’s scent, perhaps it came from my daughter.
Kate put her notebook computer on the dinner table and, undistracted by the languid strokes of my carving knife, they all watched. With every click, my wife Ooh’d and Aah’d at the photographs of grand churches and those ghastly pyramids outside the Louvre. We had seen most of it, but that was a long time ago now. From a long neck, the boy’s head hovered over my daughter's shoulder, lips licked, mouth in a sappy half-grin.
“It’s all ready, do you want to start serving up, Paula?” The plates were set at the table, piled with a steaming mess of veg-garden and home-kill. Using my oak cane for support, I gently lowered myself onto the chair. Then Paula, swift like a lioness, batted my hand, caught half way to the gravy.
“You know you can’t touch that, not with your heart.” I slowly retracted, lips tight keeping the frown inside. The Chink gobbled down the entire meal as though he hadn’t eaten in weeks.
“You can eat, boy.”
“Oh, ah, thanks.” He paused to swallow a mouthful of water. Kate and Paula glared at me with eyebrows high, and noses creased. Looking at me like that, they could have been twins, if you tightened Paula’s skin and took my daughter's colour, I mean.
“This is a lovely house you have, Mr. Phillips.”
“I built most of it myself.”
“Oh that’s interesting; Kate mentioned you’re a bit of a handyman.”
“Well I wouldn’t go so far as to-“
“-Don’t be modest, Tatai. You know he did most of the electrical fittings and plumbing himself too.”
“Oh wow, that’s amazing.” The boy exaggerated.
“So where are you from, boy?”
“Wellington, Sir,” he said, then forked a few more slices of lamb.
“OK, but where were you from?” The girls stopped eating in my unfocussed outer gaze, I could feel the same look from them; this time they held it a little longer. I revealed my wrists and lifted my brow, as if to ask ‘What?’
“Originally, my parents came from Korea.”
“Korea,” I thought a moment and continued, “And what brought you to our great country?” His gaze moved to my daughter, and a dopey grin started at the edges of his mouth.
“I guess my parents just realised how amazing this country really is.”
“Compared to?”
“Korea.”
“Oh, well I haven’t been to Asia since the Vietnam war, so I wouldn’t know.” Kate’s knife and fork clanked against the china and that look came again.
“Who wants pudding?” Paula asked as she swiftly stood, forcing her seat into a slide.
Silence lingered and when Paula returned from the kitchen, she brought with her a sweet cinnamon scent wofting from a dish of crisscrossed pastry and sliced apple. She served it up and heaped the whipped cream into all the bowls except mine.
“So what was your favourite city of the trip?” Paula asked, turning to the boy. He eyed Kate, then with spoon in one hand and scratching along his jaw with the other, he spoke.
“Paris was definitely my favourite place.”
“Oh how wonderful. Tatai and I stayed in Paris for a week when we were younger. I loved it, so beautiful.”
“I didn’t care much for it,” I said, between hot mouthfuls.
“And are you going back to work?" my wife continued, glancing away my input with the roll of her eyes.
“Next week, that’s the beauty of my job, I can go back to practicing at any time, really.”
“So Dad, how is retired life?” Kate started.
“It’s fine, I don’t have much to do now. I just walk about the farm, shooting the rabbits.”
Kate pushed me with more questions about retired life and asked about her aunts and uncles. I took a moment to let my gut catch up to my mouth, glancing down at the half-full bowl, then over at the boy's dry bowl. He dropped his spoon against the china and his eyes finding Paula.
“That was a delicious pudding Mrs. Phillips, and the dinner was amazing too.”
“And most of the veg’s are from my garden,” Paula boasted, lines seaming from the edges of her eyes. She then dashed around collecting the plates and offered my daughter and the boy a glass of wine. Kate asked,
“I’ll have a red, Merlot if you have it? Do you want a glass of water, Hun?”
“Yeah I will have water, if you don’t mind?”
Conversation continued at the dinner table for a short while longer. I added my thoughts occasionally but, I couldn’t speak without letting my lip curl and eye’s narrow. He laughed too loud. I found myself staring at his wrists,I could see them snapping back under an armload of firewood or a summer bale. And his body, tapered in at the hips.
With every joke, my wife threw back her head in a snort of laughter and each time I neglected to laugh, my daughter gave me that look, staring at me like a hideous slug was moving along the ridge of my nose.
“We should take care of these dishes,” my wife finally said, bringing conversation to a halt.
They disappeared with the plates in the kitchen and Paula called, “Why don’t you take Ung-So on the grand tour, Tatai?”
I stood with cane in hand. “Come on then.”
His face washed with wide-eyed-confusion, and then he stood following my silent trail. I moved through the foyer, taking my daughter’s suitcase as I passed. In my wake he skulked. Flicking lights on and off as we went, I showed him the den, the TV lounge, the guest bedroom and ensuite, and finally the pool room, noting it was once Kate’s nursery.
We reached the crest of the steps after a few careful half strides and his Chink hand occasionally pressed on my lower back.
“That one’s our room,” I said, pointing at the first door. We moved up the hall, I reached in to the next room and found the light switch. “This is Kate’s old room.”
Shirtless men, crudely cut, still tacked to the wall. I watched the boy, running his gaze along her bookshelf library, Wolfe and Picoult, well read by age ten. He scanned the framed and hung sepia-tone memories of high school balls - being head girl, she attended several. Strung from the wall, above her pink bed, her ballet shoes fell. We stood, shoulders almost touching, staring at the only photo unstained by sunlight. Our little girl jammed beneath my shoulder. Held in one arm was a framed degree and in the other her mother’s waist. All grins, all those years ago.
“Wow Kate’s hair was so long.”
“Yeah,” I said without effort, though he may have heard it uncouth.
I lead him to the deck, overlooking the farm. From the hills, washed in receding pine, to the gully, dotted with a moonlit flock. I jerked my head, before I walked down the stairs. The girls sat with a teapot and cups. Paula’s eyes found mine, her head tilted toward the den, a tacit command.
“Have a seat.”
He fell into the red leather antique and stared at the open fire. I walked to my father’s old sideboard and poured a couple of fingers of whiskey.
“You want a whiskey, boy?”
His back straightened.
“No thanks, I don’t drink.”
I winced as my rusty knees finally bent. The fire casted dancing figures around the walls and the boys’ eyes were dark, shadowed like canyons.
“Can I ask you something, sir?” he began. I swallowed a taste of whiskey and nodded. “Oh-” he paused and his eyes moved from the licked flames to mine, “Actually, it’s nothing.” The cool glass trembled softly in my hand and I sucked a wheezy chest of air.
He sat stiff, then unbuttoned his shirt collar, and hunched over his knees. A small glistening silver chain fell, spinning and rocking. He quickly snatched it back in his shirt.
“You a Christian, Boy?” I watched him with a firm glare, and my heart came on fast. The weight in my throat cleared with a pat on the chest and a hard cough. “Why did you hide it away?”
Somewhere beyond the flames he stared, eyes unfocussed, vacant.
“I don’t know, Sir.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? You don't know why you're ashamed of it or if you’re a Christian?”
"I ah-" he began but stopped, swallowing the words, his eyes stayed still, voided by the flames allure.
He let it slip and I watched it twist and bounce, shining and twirling against the light. Suddenly, I was conscious of my own crucifix, I quickly ran my hand over it like a tongue over a capped tooth and again the lamb's cold helpless eyes flashed. The last jolts of life. The thudding organic metronome coming fast, then not at all.
Together we stared through the flames. The fire cracked and spat sparks against the grill, the popping and rustling grew so loud I couldn’t hear my thoughts. I heaved myself from the chair. The last finger of whiskey went down in one mouthful and I walked behind my seat, leaving the boy steeped in fire light.
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