reached the floral clock, tightly coiled in this early spring but still marking time between the green minutes, the Roman hours, it took Dorothy a moment to be able to read that she was early. Raindrops scattered the bench like melting glass beads, and she was glad of the waterproof coat. Young people, black-jacketed students, passed in pairs, and cyclists wheeled sedately by. It was silly to sit in the cold this long but she fell into a kind of meditation or prayer, the wind against her cheek, gloved hands clasped, there beneath the shaking branches of a Moreton Bay Fig.
Through this middle-distance gaze an elderly man and a teenage boy walked slowly along the path. Daniel, old. Everything in her body went hot. Not the cold pulse rush of outside the grocery store – hot thuds. A squall came and the man and boy ducked under the band rotunda and Dot fanned her face with her hand, another old lady having an episode out in the rain. It was crucial to stay calm, looking at the wet sheet of a band flyer plastered against the rubbish bin and to think of spreading protective paper over tables, on the floor, of her day tomorrow asking people who knew they were dying whether they wanted to make something with clay or with fabric.
Daniel and the boy looked out through the subsiding drizzle, not seeing her.
‘Daniel,’ she called. Then louder, ‘Daniel.’
Across the bending path she watched him make sense of her – of what he was seeing. ‘Dottie?’ And he took in the full impact of the years, the decades. She rose, shedding raindrops. He stepped down from the shelter, using his umbrella to stabilise the descent, and slowly, awkwardly came closer until he was standing right here. Behind the lenses of his specs his eyes were dark and bright. His breath rose and fell. When he stooped to kiss her cheek the sides of their glasses knocked together.
‘I wear these orthotics but it’s too many gymnastics,’ he said, ‘my feet are no good. You should see some of those old clowns, really crippled, popped shoulders, dodgy hips – it’s not natural.’
‘We’re all old clowns now.’ She had touched him. He was there. ‘Daniel. It’s good to see you. Who’s the boy?’ she asked, nodding towards the band rotunda where the teenager was sluicing water from the railing with a finger, headphones on.
‘That’s Oscar. He’s my son.’
Oscar was fourteen, in school and living with Daniel. ‘His mother’s had some troubles,’ Dan said. They were walking now, the boy, who’d responded to the introductions with a grunt, alongside.
‘This is – María?’
‘No. María’s in Spain.’ He waited till Oscar was ahead a few paces and explained that a year ago he’d got the call. It was the first he’d known that he had a child. The boy’s mother – ‘We were never really together’ – was in a bad way. ‘Christ, it was my parents all over again but worse, meth, and so. She was a lot younger than me. Stupid. I mean me.’ He’d wanted to bring Oscar to Spain, wasn’t ready to live in Auckland again, the rain and isolation, but legally it was too complicated. ‘I pursued it for a long time, but just as we were getting close María said she really didn’t want to go through with it.’ They’d been trying for a baby for years. He tried to persuade her to see this as their blessing, a child they could care for, raise together. But she couldn’t. ‘It wasn’t what she had planned. I couldn’t give her what she wanted. Too old, everything.’ Daniel looked as sad as she’d ever seen him. He wore the hair he had left cropped close, white flecked with grey. The bones of his face were prominent, exposed; spoke of the cost of living.
‘How’s Oscar?’
Daniel shook his head. ‘I can’t believe him. You know?’ They stopped there on the path, the thick arms of the Magnolia grandiflora bearing succulent flowers, the lemony white startling. ‘We’ve only got a few years before he leaves home, but – to have this. It’s pure chance. How life can change if you’re lucky to be around for it.’ Daniel called to his son. ‘Slow down, we’re senior citizens here.’ When the boy reached them he said, ‘Tell her, Oscar, we do all right?’
‘Yep.’
‘Some people think I’m your grandfather.’
‘That is pretty awkward.’
‘We go to soccer, he plays, I shout, we have our little things we like. I’m teaching