Desertion
It was Saturday morning teatime before Vanessa realized something was different. She'd set out the breakfast things as usual, scouted round for laundry, brought in the paper and sprinkled cat food into the cat dish.
She sipped her tea, observed the empty chairs, the untouched breakfast, the unopened newspaper at the head of the table. She heard, in her head, footsteps, the meow of the cat, the rustle of the newspaper, the scrape of spoons, conversation. In reality, the only sound was her light breathing and the tick-tick of the dining room clock.
Outside was all bright sunshine and blue skies, the same as yesterday. The chink of Waitamata Harbor visible throught the lounge window showed a huge container ship steaming up the channel. Auckland, New Zealand's "City of Sails" was certainly living up to it's name that day. White yachts bobbed around the container ship like icing peaks surrounding a wedding cake.
Wedding cakes, today of all days? Vanessa let her gaze be drawn toward the bland facades of the high-rise buildings and the red-and-blue pulsing city lights, winking on-off, on-off, on-off. Just the same as yesterday. The day was the same. The city was the same. But she was different.
Because they had gone, all of them - husband, children. She looked around. Even the cat was gone.
A bubble of laughter rose to her throat. It was funny. Funny! Her life: Comedy of the week.
"Stuff you, Mum. We're off. Thanks for the last twenty years and all that. See you."
When had the first one gone? Why hadn't she noticed? It had been Brent. The eldest, as it should be. Heading off on the great OE. She hadn't noticed his absence much because of th other two. Demanding daughter Debbie, loud son Mark. The house had still been full of their friends and noise and movement. She hadn't really noticed when Brent was no longer there.
Now the other two had gone off to join their elder sibling. Off. The hysterical laughter was reaction. She was probably suffering from "empty nest syndrome." Every emotion had a name these days. Nothing was sacred anymore. You couldn't have a good cry without family, friends and health care specialists giving it a three-word name and suggesting you take this vitamin supplement or that herbal extract. She had bottles of such things in a cupboard somewhere. Or perhpas she was just feeling her forty-four years?
Vanessa put down her cup and tried to ignore the trembling of her fingers. So, all her children had gone. Left home. Departed the nest. Flown the coop. She would just have to accept it. No doubt they would be back when they needed something.
The thought had her pushing back her chair and getting quickly to her feet. She didn't want them back! She was glad they had gone. Glad! Relief washed through her in a great wave. No more three loads of washing every day, no more ferrying children to hockey, rugby, or basketball games, no more suffering teenage parties, no more huge dentist's bills, no more endless cooking of endless meals.
She was free! Vanessa wanted to climb up on top of the table and kick plates and cereal about the room. She actually had one foot on her chair about to do that when a flood of guilt attacked her. She must be mad! She must be having one of those pre-menopausal breakdowns she had read about, (which she could possibly find some vitamin suppliment or herbal extract to combat).
She caught sight of her reflection in the mirror on the opposite wall and thought, in some surprise, Yes, I do look mad! Her shoulders were hunched and her gray-green eyes were staring. Her short honey-blond hair was all scrunched up, too. She had forgotten to brush it that morning. What with everything.
She plumped back down on to her chair, looked toward the head of the table at the unopened newspaper, and she faced the thing she had been trying not to think about all morning.
Ron. Her husband. He had gone, too.
Vanessa recalled the pathetic little one-sided conversation of the previous night.
"You don't really mind do you, Van, if I shove off?'
Worm.
"We've reached the end of the line with our marriage, Van. Haven't we? Honestly, I mean. You know, past our 'use by' date."
Worm.
"Er...well." He pulled at his double-breasted suit jacket, which he had taken to wearing of late to disguise an expanding paunch. How Vanessa disliked those dakr-gray pinstriped suits. They were so much the uniform of the successful accountant and smacked of Ron's expansive, middle-aged lifestyle, which had become more and more nothing at all to do with her. The suits made him look shorter than ever; and she'd always been annoyed that Ron was short, hardly much above her own five feet, four inches.
"You'll have the house, Van." He puffed out his chest to look important, and his flat gray eyes actually met hers for a second. "There's no arguement there. I've a bit put aside. Not much" - hastily - "but enough to set us... I mean enough."
Worm. As if she hadn't guessed.
"You'll be all right. You've got your job at the shop, friends" - vaguely - "And there's Debbie. She's a good daughter to you."
Blind worm.
"Well, I'll just get a few things." Sounds came to her of furtive rustlings in the wardrobe for shirts and trousers. "You don't mind if I take this suitcase, do you, Van? It's quite a good size for a...I mean, for me."
He'd almost said "for a man," and she'd nearly laughed at that.
"Well, that's that, then." Catches clinking closed, unmusical, dull. Final. He brushed a hand through his thinning mousy hair. Vanessa was sure he had copied that mannerism from a film he'd seen somewhere. Not with her, of course.
"You've been good about this, Van." A guilty flare of color stained his sallow cheeks. He gave a little dart of his tongue, looking like a dog waiting for a titbit. Thank God, he'd stopped at pecking her cheek. She couldn't have born it.
"Well, I'll be off now, Van. I'll keep in touch...the children and...Well, goodbye.' He backed hastily from the room.
She had listened to him thumping down the hallway and out to the car, the car starting up and driving away down the road. Then...silence.
Vanessa turned her gaze from the unopened newspaper. She forced the laughter back down her throat. She couldn't laugh. People would say she was mad. Your children left, your husband left and you laughed? Yes, they would say she was mad. Prescribe something stronger than vitamin supplements and herbal extracts for her. Lock her up in a place with pale green walls.
Best to appear calm. She poured herself another cup of tea, calmly, reached for the newspaper and opened it calmly, at "news of the world."
Daisies Never Die: Excerpt.
Rose started back along the street. When she reached the end, she decided she would take the path along the riverside to her house.
The tide was coming in. In the late afternoon light, the river appeared dark and mysterious. Pohutukawa trees leaned their giant silver-gray branches out over the water in graceful embrace. A kingfisher, perched among the branches, spied something in the secret depths below and dived in a flash or iridescent blue.
Rose paused to survey the scene before her. Across the river, the mountain was shadowed, the sun behind it. As she watched the clouds turn pink, she experienced a thrill of excitement as she thought of her afternoon's adventure. What would the following day reveal?
She turned to unlatch the gate to her yard; and as she did so, a monarch butterfly alighted on the worn post beside her hand. For one incredible moment, she looked right into the creature's eyes. Then it was off, sailing into the air on its jaunty flight.
A strange shiver went all the way through her, and for fully thirty seconds, she didn't move. Her heart raced uncomfortably, and the skin on the back of her neck prickled. In her mind's eye, she could stil vividly see the butterfly's bright dark eyes. It had been like looking intoa pool of infinity.