him to cook.’ He nodded in Dorothy’s direction. ‘I learned to cook from her sister. She would have nailed that octopus.’
Oscar smiled. ‘It was kind of chewy. Daniel likes Spanish food. Do you like octopus?’
‘Depends how it’s done. Sometimes.’
‘You can try mine. When I’ve improved.’
Dorothy smiled at the boy. ‘You look so like your dad,’ she said, taking her time over it, loving the sentence. ‘Like he used to look.’
Above them a bird made a sound and Daniel mimicked it, up-down, up-down.
‘I had this bird once,’ Oscar said. ‘It was a blue bird, with a green tail, I think it was a parrot. I used to bring it insects.’
Daniel raised his eyebrows. ‘Really,’ he said. ‘A parrot.’
‘Are you going to stay in Auckland?’ she asked him.
‘Oh yes.’ Daniel cocked his head, smiled at her. ‘You?’
She laughed. ‘Yes. My kids are all here.’
They had reached the edge of the park, where it met the road. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘So –’ He stepped back as a helmeted cyclist whizzed past, spraying water. ‘Hey,’ he called after the muscled figure. ‘Do you mind?’ The cyclist stood on his pedals and turned, a feat of balance, and threw them the finger. ‘Fucking arsehole,’ Daniel said. ‘Sorry, Oscar.’
‘Dad.’
Daniel took Dorothy’s forearm, holding her back while Oscar walked on. His voice was light with surprise. ‘Stop a second.’ He whispered in her ear. ‘He doesn’t usually call me Dad.’ They paused for a moment, and her eyes drifted shut at the feel of Daniel’s mouth up against her face, the warmth of his breath. ‘What were we talking about?’ he murmured. ‘Oh. Yeah.’
She couldn’t move away. ‘We were talking about . . .’
‘You live here. And I live here.’
‘Yes.’
‘So,’ he said, pulling away to look at her. ‘So,’ and he began to shake a bit with laughter, water leaking from the corners of his eyes. ‘We’ve got all the time in the world.’
A big dark-windowed car bounced down the street with music booming out of it and Oscar and Daniel and Dot all looked at its headlights flashing in time with the bouncing.
‘That’s so cool,’ said the boy.
19. The Forrests
They took Donald by surprise, the cards and emails, the number of people his mother kept in touch with. The traffic of words had slowed lately, but there was still the occasional former student writing of a success, an ex-hospice colleague having a party, a young woman visiting with her child who wondered whether she could come and stay. Donald asked Matt what he thought. ‘Sure, write back, she can stay with us. Be good practice, having a baby in the house.’
‘The girl is like ten. I think her mother was from the house of fallen women.’
‘Ours will be ten one day. Bring it on.’
‘Don’t.’
There was one more box to take to the home. Residents weren’t meant to have much, or to need things any more, but, ‘There’s got to be room for a few photo albums and a ceramic-frog collection,’ Donald said to the manager. He could always sic Ruth onto them; his aunt was world class at demanding bang for her buck.
If every mother was secretive, walked around outrageously in her own mind, never really known, he wondered whether it was a female condition or true of all parents, and what this would mean for his own child. Dorothy shuffled into the living room. ‘Hello, darling,’ she said.
‘How are the legs?’
‘Restless. So strange, like I want to do a jog. Go for a jog. I’ve never jogged.’
‘Here’s the rest of the stuff we’re taking. This is the last of it.’
She didn’t look into the box. ‘We have to phone Grace for her birthday.’
‘You already spoke to her. Amsi made her a cake and then the cat ate it. Remember?’
‘Why have they got a cat?’
‘Why not?’
‘Pets are quite dirty.’
‘The kids love it.’
‘Cake eaters.’ Dorothy leaned forward and picked something up off the ground that wasn’t there. ‘Oh damn,’ she said. ‘I’m doing it, aren’t I?’ She shook her head at Donald. ‘Do we want to know, or not want to know,’ she said to the room at large. ‘On the whole, not. But we do know. We do know, and that’s why you, Donald, are so incredibly beautiful. Your energy, your kind heart. That’s why those lilies smell so fucking spectacular. The prayer flags moving in the wind like that, the invisible force of the wind. Those grapefruit in the green bowl. That’s a very nice touch. Thank you for that.’