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Piwakawaka, or fantail. Smaller than a house sparrow. Eratic butterfly-like flight. Catches insects on the wing.
The Reunion.
The first time I really noticed Gloria Dulaney, was when, one afternoon, she said, “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”
I remember, I gulped, and I must have looked as alarmed as I felt. Gloria, you see, was generally considered to be stuck-up and she was taller than I by at least two inches, which is a foot when you are thirteen. We had never had a relationship.
Shortly thereafter I gave up fooling around with women until I was twenty-five. Not that I wasn’t interested in them, but I had found radio--we called it wireless in those days–and that was more interesting. Then the war started and three months before I turned 18, I volunteered and was accepted for service in our Air Force.
And now we move on in time, to last October, 65 years after Gloria’s proposal, which I had never forgotten. I flew with my American wife back to New Zealand to attend my school’s 125th anniversary. The anniversary began with a parade through the four-block town that terminated at the Recreation Ground, which, if I remember correctly, had once been a racecourse, but now hosted weekend rugby and cricket matches. The floats didn’t come close to matching some I had seen in the States, even discounting New York’s Macy’s parade, which I had seen on TV numerous times, and there were as many decorated bicycles and tractors as there were trucks, but it was a noble effort and the participants were having the times of their lives.
We--my wife and I--were accompanied by my sister, who had never left the town in which we were born, and she had given everyone, it seemed, notice of our coming, which meant that they didn’t need to be told who the old fellow with the young wife was, and they--not a soul under seventy--were moving in on us.
The first to reach us was a tall and stately but frail fellow in a baggy olive-green suit and matching low-crowned hat, both of which could have been made from coir matting, such was their whiskery appearance. Grabbing my hand, he pumped my arm with totally surprising strength.
“Lester! Jesus Christ! You haven’t changed a bit.” He peered at me short-sightedly. “I’d have known you anywhere.”
I turned a pleading gaze on my sister.
“Goodness, Lester! It’s Jack Robbins. Don’t you remember? He used to live just up the road from us, you know, across from the Railway Station.”
"Up the road.... Jack....” I said, and now I remembered the Jack who lived just up the road from us across from the Railway Station. Only he was not this Jack.
“And this is his wife, Kayleen,” my sister added, indicating the pigeon-shaped matron who had materialized at Jack’s side, a woman who would make three of my wife and leave material enough to fabricate a sizeable child. Jack wore hearing aids, I saw.
I studied Jack and recognized the old grin. Ah, yes–that Jack! I decided to catch up on lost ground, but a tiny, bow-backed woman, towing a sniveling child, came between us.
“Lester, I’m not going to tell you who I am, but you kissed me once, if that will help,” she said, her old eyes sparkling with mischief.
God! Who was she? I decided to joke my way out of the mess. “I am reminded,” I said, “of Pat O’Connor confessing to the priest that he’d been up to no good with a young maiden he refused to name.
‘Was it Eileen O’Haggety?’asked the exasperated priest.
‘No, Father, it was not Eileen O’Haggety.’
‘Was it Mary Sullivan, then?’
‘No, Father, it was not Mary Sullivan.’
‘All right, Patrick, I admire you for not revealing her name, but you’ve the penalty, just the same, so it’s the parish lawns that need mowing. I’ll be seeing you at me door on the morrow at eight, and don’t you be forgetting.’
‘Did you have to tell him her name?’asked Mike, who was waiting outside.
‘No,’ said Pat, “and would you be believing, I got two new ones.’”
The little women roared her head off; she saw the parallel. “And he hasn’t changed a bit,” she said, addressing my wife. I’m Jean Wilson, by the way. Jean Anich, back then–and look at him. He’s remembered!”
I had. Her laugh had done it. But it was she who had kissed me–the first time a girl had ever stuck her tongue in my mouth, which I felt was kind of dirty at the time.
Barely remembered people came and went. Before I could have a conversation with one, another came on the scene. Some I didn’t remember at all, not even when I learned their names.
Later, during a lull, I asked my sister, “What happened to Lucky Herawa?” Lucky had been my defender at school against the bullies. He stood six feet even then, and I, less than five.
“Lucky died years ago, Lester. His heart," she said.
No! “And Monica White?” I had been sweet on Monica, although she had never once given me the time of day.
“She’s gone too. Cervical cancer. They’re all going Lester. Heart or cancer--one or the other.”
I was wishing I hadn’t come. The little kid in Jean’s care was her great, great--or was it great, great, great?--granddaughter. Holy cow!
But then came this tall and elegantly dressed, so regal-looking, older woman striding purposefully toward me. Older, yes, but it was she!
“Gloria!” I thrust my hand out. She took it in both hers and held it while she studied my face.
“You’ve aged well, Lester. A young wife does that to an older man, I’m told. And this must be the lady.” She took and held Diana’s hand as she had held mine. “I would have married your husband, but the blighter wouldn’t ask me,” she said. “I think he was bothered about being shorter than me at the time. Well, he’s made up for it now. Is he still into the radio thing? I live in Australia so I don’t hear much about anyone anymore. You live in America, I’m told. Where, in America?”--addressing me now.
“In Arizona.”
“Where in Arizona? I was there just the year before last.”
“A place called Sedona. It’s near Flagstaff.”
“Flagstaff... I remember seeing it on the map. We flew from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon. I suppose you’ve been there. Isn’t it awesome?” “We,” she said. I checked her hand. No ring.
We chitchatted. Diana, I saw, was restless. I looked at my watch. We needed to drive back to Napier and shower and change for the evening banquet.
“How much do you remember of Standard Six?” Gloria said.
Standard Six--eighth grade in the States. It took me a moment.
“You show me yours"--I ventured.
"--and I’ll show you mine,” we finished in unison and then laughed our silly heads off.
“What was all that ‘You show me yours and I’ll show you mine’ stuff before we left?” Diana, who never misses a beat, asked, when we were back in Napier changing for the banquet.
“Before we left...?”
My wife is from Brooklyn, New York. No one ever wins out over someone from Brooklyn. “Don’t give me that,” she said.
“Essays,” I said.
“Essays? That’s it--essays?”
“There used to be a year-end competition among the Hawke’s Bay schools on art subjects. That year Gloria and I had been chosen to write the essays. She wanted to swap them to read, but the request came out wrong. Needless to day, she spent the remainder of the year blushing.”
“Well, you keep away from her tonight.”
“Come on. She’s seventy-eight.”
My wife snorted a sound midway between a Bronx raspberry and a horse ridding itself of gas. You have to be from Brooklyn to make a sound like it, so don't try it.
end
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