Trish has big gaps between her teeth and is what the girls at Samantha’s school would call ‘flat as a surfboard’. The sun is always reaching for Trish, making her skin glisten as she moves through the swimming pool, her legs as shiny and smooth as a dolphin’s nose.
Samantha’s dad’s workmates are all blokes and fellow sparkies—all of them except Trish, who answers the phones and orders pens and printer ink. Samantha envies Trish’s confidence, the way she shoulders herself into different conversations at family day, flitting from man to man, weaving between picnic tables and pools. The men say things like Fancy another beer, Trishy? and in reply Trish says fanks instead of thanks, because she has a lisp. Trish also makes an ugly, duck-like honk whenever she laughs. It’s the kind of sound that would make Samantha wilt with embarrassment, but not Trish.
Samantha’s mum says Samantha’s too young to shave her legs, but if she was allowed to have smooth legs then maybe Samantha would have the confidence to flit between boys too. Samantha watches a group of them—the sons of her dad’s workmates—thrusting at each other with pool noodles, joking about stiffies. All of the boys except for the boy, Hamish, who waits in line for the water slide. His hair is gelled up into spikes. The shell necklace across his throat looks like the swim lane dividers. The freckled skin between his shoulder blades is Samantha’s new site of worship. Samantha channels her inner Trish and walks over to talk to him. Hamish turns when he hears her footsteps. All the hairs on Samantha’s arms stand up like a million little stiffies.
“Oi, girl,” says Hamish, “they’re not going to let you on.”
He points to a sign that says You Must Be This Tall. Somewhere ahead of them, a boy holds up the line. Hurry up! shouts someone behind them. Don’t be such a pussy.
Hamish frowns at Samantha.
“Aren’t you Tyler’s little sister?” he says.
Samantha deflates like a punctured floaty. Her brother Tyler played cricket with Hamish last year, but Tyler quit and now spends most of his time in his room, the air stale, curtains permanently drawn.
“Isn’t that your guys’ dad over there,” asks Hamish, “with that hot office chick?”
Samantha turns to where Hamish is looking and sees Trish brushing a hand along Samantha’s dad’s forearm. She looks away.
When it’s Hamish’s turn on the slide, Samantha runs off to another pool. She stays in the water for the rest of the afternoon, her fingertips pale and wrinkling.
*
Trish likes that Steve lets his guard down whenever he’s around her. Their conversations aren’t just routine office chats about weather and traffic. He tells her things, like how his son is having behavioural issues at school, how his wife blames Steve for not doing more, how he feels overworked, underpaid, and how he sometimes wishes they hadn’t had kids when they were so young—though he told Trish to forget he told her that last one.
Steve’s wife isn’t here today, even though the invite specifically said it was a family-friendly event. Trish overheard the other wives whispering about it. Not that Trish really socialises with them. She tries to be friendly, but they seem to always angle their bodies away from her. Like they don’t trust her around their hubbies, maybe. They don’t understand that their hubbies are perfectly safe, that Trish only has eyes for Steve. But she and Steve know to be careful about it. Steve makes sure to give Trish plenty of space when they’re around their workmates, like they are today.
Except right now, Trish notices that Steve isn’t around anyone. He’s by himself, crouched low, rifling through a chilly bin by the fence. With no one watching, Trish wanders over for a stolen moment.
“Can you pass me one of those?” she says, her shadow falling on his back.
“Sure,” says Steve absent-mindedly. When he clocks that the shadow belongs to Trish, he says “sure” again, but softer this time. They pop the caps and clink their bottles, sipping in comfortable silence.
“At some point,” says Trish, her voice low but light, “we should probably talk about the other night.”
Steve’s eyes are unreadable, hidden behind a pair of Dirty Dog sunglasses. Behind him, kids scream and make bombs in the pool. The smell of burning sausages drifts through the air.
“Yeah,” says Steve. “Sorry.”
“What are you sorry for?” says Trish.
“I think we were both a bit pissed and silly, ha ha.”
Trish doesn’t laugh. Steve shuffles on his feet.
“Things are pretty full-on at home right now,” he continues.
“With your boy, you mean?” Trish rests her hand on Steve’s hand, and finds it wet with condensation from his beer bottle.
“Lisa’s taking it pretty hard,” he says. “I don’t really have the headspace for all this as well.”
‘”All this?” says Trish.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Steve, you’re the one who said—”
“Hey,” says Steve. “Let’s not do this here.”
*
Tyler pulls his cap forward over his face like a visor from the sun. He’s in a spot by himself, sitting on a sparse patch of grass near the carpark. Well away from the other boys, from the piss and chlorine stench of the changing rooms, and from his dad’s workmates, whose voices turn into shouts the drunker they get.
Tyler lies on his back, the volume on his discman dialled up to the max to drown them out. Tyler likes rap metal. His favourite albums are covered in parental advisory stickers that his mum and dad won’t let him listen to without headphones—his dad especially, who repeatedly tells Tyler No one wants to hear that racket.
Tyler feels the hard lip of a shoe nudging his sweat-damp jeans, the denim rubbing against the clammy skin of his waist. He pulls a headphone away from a sunburnt ear, and peeks an eye around the rim of his hat.
“What?” he mumbles.
“Why aren’t you swimming?” asks his sister.
Tyler shrugs against the earth. “Dunno,” he says. “Don’t feel like it.”
Samantha stares. Scratchy, muffled lyrics hiss from his headphones. Sammy used to be goofy and annoying, but now she walks around all self-conscious with her shoulders up near her ears, avoiding eye contact with everyone. Tyler still finds her goofy and annoying, but in a different way.
“Do you want a sausage?” she says, holding out a palm of sweaty coins. “Or something from the vending machine? Dad gave us some money.”
“Piss off,” says Tyler, tugging the headphones back into place. He zips up his hoodie, zipping out the sunlight, zipping himself closed. He waits for Samantha’s shadow to shrink.
Typical Steve, thinks Tyler. Trying to use Samantha to be all matey with him. Buying them stuff he knows Mum wouldn’t allow if she was here. She’s tight with that sort of stuff, always scribbling equations on the backs of power bills and shopping lists. She doesn’t hand out coins, just soggy sandwiches messily folded in tinfoil, and bruised floury apples, cold from the fridge where she prefers to keep them.
Tyler’s mum doesn’t like his dad’s workmates because they always have a ciggie in their hands. She puts on a load of laundry as soon as they get home, trying to wash the smoke from their clothes.
Tyler doesn’t like Steve’s workmates either, but for different reasons. He doesn’t like how they stare at him, give him a hard time for wearing combat boots and long sleeves on a hot day. They think his lip piercings are embarrassing and make him ‘look like a homo’. Tyler thinks their polo shirts with the yellow armpits are embarrassing, and their stupid little shorts too.
How are his piercings ‘homo’ but stubbies aren’t?
Tyler thinks his dad is the most embarrassing of all. Usually, Tyler’s dad thinks rugby is boring, that beer is gross. But today, ‘Steve,’ this make-believe person, pretends to like these things. Tyler thinks it’s pathetic and almost feels sorry for him. Almost. The blokes keep putting cans of Lion Red in his dad’s hands, and he pretends like he’s too busy chatting and turning sausages to drink it, until it’s warmed through by the sun and undrinkable. He thinks no one notices, but Tyler does.
Tyler wishes his dad would notice him back—see past the piercings and the combat boots. But Tyler gave up on that a while ago. He got sick of waiting.
*
Steve hates how quiet Samantha is being. She’s turned away, staring out the passenger-seat window into the black night. She hasn’t said a word since they left the pool party. This is exactly how it started with Tyler, and Steve is worried it’s happening with Samantha now too.
Will she start spending all her time in her room? Will she stop saying Mum and Dad and call them Steve and Lisa instead? Will she get into fights? Cut school? Cut skin?
Steve wonders if Lisa has noticed anything. Though it’s hard to tell whether the two of them are even on the same side anymore. She’s started using different names too, no longer calling him ‘Honey’ and ‘Stevie’ but ‘Your Father’: you’re just like Your Father; don’t ask me, go ask Your Father.
Still, Steve had wished she would at least come to family day, would make more of an effort. Instead, she’s next door with the Avon Lady, drinking boxed chardonnay and comparing blush applicators.
Steve hates family day. He hates how Trish snatched her hand back from his arm. He hates this constant feeling in his chest, like he’s drowning, like his feet can’t touch the bottom in the deep end. He hates being Dad and Your Father and Stevie all the time. Sometimes he even hates being Steve.
He looks over at Samantha’s slouched silhouette, flashing orange under the passing streetlights. Her T-shirt has a wet imprint of her damp togs underneath. Her hair smells of chlorine and has a kink from her hair tie when she went swimming.
Steve flicks an eye to Tyler in the rear-view mirror, slumped in the back seat plugged into his discman, either asleep or pretending to be. Tyler and Sammy used to always fight over who would sit in the front, but that hasn’t happened for ages, not since Tyler started preferring to hide in the back.
“Should we pick up some ice-cream?” says Steve. “Mum might like that, eh?”
Tyler doesn’t give so much as a grunt of acknowledgement.
Sammy sighs. “She probably won’t eat it,” she mumbles, eyes half closed with sleep. And then, unprompted, adds: “I didn’t like that lady.”
Steve flicks his eyes to Tyler in the back seat, ignoring them.
“Who?” says Steve.
“That office lady. I think she’s ugly.”
“That’s not very nice,” says Steve. He doesn’t risk saying anything more. He keeps his eyes steady on the road as they turn into their street.
Steve used to let Tyler back the car in and out of the driveway, in preparation for getting his learners, before Tyler lost interest in that too. Steve remembers how Samantha would sulk, begging to let her have a go, but she was always too little.
He stops the car at the bottom of the driveway and pulls the handbrake. Rests his hand on the back of her headrest.
“Want to take us home, Sammy?”
Samantha opens her eyes as Steve cracks open the car door. The dome light flicks on, glowing over their heads like a halo.
“Actually?” she says.
“Why not?” says Steve, unbuckling his seatbelt.
Samantha does the same, and the two of them cross paths in the headlights, swapping places and sliding into their new seats. Tyler doesn’t stir.
“Whenever you’re ready,” says Steve. “Take it slow.”
Samantha wraps her fingers around the steering wheel, her palms finding the warm patch where her dad’s hands had been. She settles into her new position. Her dad releases the handbrake, and she gently presses her foot to the peddle.
Taken with kind permission from the newly published Landfall Tauraka 251 edited by Lynley Edmeades (Otago University Press, $35), available in bookstores nationwide. The latest edition of NZ’s most distinguished literary journal also features new writing by Czar Nick Ascroft, Dame Fiona Kidman, Greg O’Brien, Uzair Khan (a 17-year-old student from Auckland studying Cambridge International qualifications, and winner of the young writers essay prize), an interview with Tusiata Avia, and a great poem about the beautiful people of Dunedin by the very gifted Tunmise Adebowale.
