From Under the Overcoat Read online

  It wasn’t all good times. There was fighting, usually about money. Mum screamed at Dad about bills and the bank, and Dad just smiled and hugged her and said things like Don’t worry, it’ll all be alright, Martha.

  Every night, I would choose a book, and Dad would read it to me in bed. All our favourite books — his and mine — were on the shelf in my bedroom. This is my main memory of him; I can remember going from picture books through to chapter books. The last book on the bookshelf was Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield. It was dark blue, with gold lettering and lines on the cover. It was one of Dad’s books. His favourite story, he told me once, was ‘The Doll’s House’. He said the story had originally been called ‘At Karori’ and he made me promise I’d read it when I got older. Which I will do, although I’ll have to get another copy because when he went away, his books disappeared.

  I was five, or four maybe, when he left. It happened one night, while he was reading to me. The usual rule with the big books was one chapter a night. But Mum had a lot of pressure at work, and she had started going back to the office after dinner, so sometimes Dad would just read on.

  That night, Mum came to the doorway. She was still in her work suit, but she had freshened up her lipstick and brushed her hair. I could smell her perfume, Chanel. I was surprised that she would waste it on work. Her most precious thing was her Chanel. So yes, I was surprised about the wastage of the Chanel, for sure.

  ‘I have to go back in,’ she said to Dad.

  Dad acted as though he hadn’t heard her. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was too caught up in the story.

  ‘Eric, I’m going. An hour or so.’

  Dad read on. I sat up in bed — I’m pretty sure I would have — and reached out to Dad, to the book. ‘Dad, she has to go to work, okay?’

  ‘Don’t go in tonight, Martha. I’m asking you not to go.’ He definitely said that. I remember, because his voice sounded weird, tight, as though something had gone down the wrong way.

  ‘I have to,’ she said. ‘He wants me in there.’ And then she was gone.

  Dad kept reading. He read to the end of the chapter, then he started on the next one. I fell asleep.

  The next day, he was gone. Mum had dark circles under her eyes, and her actual eyes were puff y and red. I remember asking her where Dad had gone, and she said she wasn’t sure. I asked when he was coming back, and she said she didn’t know. I asked her why he had gone away, and she didn’t know that either.

  That is what I believe to have happened. I am reasonably sure that it went something like that. Sometimes, when I let the evening run through my head again, it turns out differently. It’s a little bit like the Santa and the chimney memory. Sometimes I’m not sure whether it ever happened at all.

  The perfume smell is different. That, I remember for sure.

  OF COURSE, I ASKED Mum again, many times, about my father’s disappearance. She always had the same reply. She didn’t know. She wasn’t sure.

  Some kids at school started saying he was in jail for theft. When I told Mum, she laughed.

  ‘Poppycock,’ she said. ‘Absolute rubbish. Tell them to mind their own business.’

  The next rumour was that he had gone away to live with another woman. When I told Mum that one, she said nothing at all.

  Of course, I asked again, many times. As I got older I tried to put the questions in other ways. I’d try to trick her, casually build them into other conversations.

  The replies were always the same. She didn’t know. She wasn’t sure.

  I asked her if he ever tried to contact me. ‘No,’ Mum replied, and I felt so angry with him, I never asked that question again.

  We had no relatives, and most people I knew had arrived in the neighbourhood after my father left. Besides, it’s not really the sort of thing you ask other people. Excuse me, just wondering, do you happen to know where my father is? I think, looking back, I just decided the best thing would be to simply wait for him to come back.

  Over time, people stopped talking about us, about my father’s absence. Oh, now and again, something would happen — a mother who’d lived in the neighbourhood as long as we had would be talking to me and I’d see her look at me strangely. She might go to say something to me, then stop. And I’d know that she’d remembered there was something odd about me, about my situation.

  But lots of my friends, those who lived in the townhouses that annoyed my mother so much, had just one parent. Mum never realised it, but aside from the house, we were a pretty normal family. She started talking in that strange old-fashioned way. She closed off her old life, like the ending of a story, and turned herself into a mysterious, private snob living in a grand mansion, surrounded by agrarian women and townhouse peasants.

  ON HER THIRD VISIT, Mrs Button meant business. You could tell. She stomped in through the back door without knocking. She was carrying her sandals, one of the heels had snapped right off. She was holding it in her other hand.

  ‘That bloody back path,’ she said. ‘The heel went down a crack, I nearly went right over. Where’s your mother?’

  I pointed towards the big lounge. ‘She’s in there already.’

  She threw both her sandals in the corner of the kitchen and marched through, calling Martha. I kept out of the way until I knew they were settled, then I went to the stairs.

  ‘The first open home will be on Saturday,’ Mrs Button was saying. ‘Between eleven and twelve, when there’s plenty of sun around the back.’

  I won’t be having open homes, thank you,’ said Mum.

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to, Martha.’

  ‘Any old Tom, Dick and Harry poking around the place.’ Mum was carrying on as though Mrs Button hadn’t said anything.

  ‘Open homes are all part and parcel of the selling process. It would be highly unusual not to have open homes.’

  ‘Highly unusual, but not unheard of,’ said Mum.

  ‘Think about it this way. Would you buy a home without looking through it?’

  ‘I most certainly would. If I got the right feeling about a place, I would.’

  ‘And how would that right feeling come to you, do you think?’

  ‘Oh Claudia, don’t tell me you’ve never had a gut instinct about something. You see it, you just know. You just go for it.’

  ‘I see. So we’re back where we started, whereby the passerby falls unconditionally in love with your house and buys it, interior unseen.’

  Silence.

  ‘The first open home will be this Saturday. Have a good clean-up, put fresh flowers on the table and do some baking just before. The smell enhances the appeal, attracts buyers.’

  Mrs Button laughed and, to my total surprise, Mum laughed with her. Then Mrs Button collected her sandals and the broken heel from the kitchen and left via the front door. She walked down the path, out the front gate, and turned left to start the two-block walk to her car in bare feet. I watched, holding my breath. She didn’t stop to read the for sale sign.

  Did my mother clean and tidy the house before the open home? Did she buy fresh flowers and bake nice-smelling buyer cakes? Of course she didn’t. She made no particular effort at all. She got up that Saturday morning, got dressed and went in to work. The house looked the same as it did every other day — a shambles, in Mum’s language.

  Did I do anything to enhance the appeal of our house? I am proud to say I didn’t. In fact, I spent the days between Mrs Button’s visit and the open home thinking up ways of putting buyers off. These included importing ants into the kitchen, stuffing sour-smelling milk cartons behind the hot-water cylinder and emptying black food colouring into the water tank.

  When Saturday morning came, I walked around the house, trying to see it through the eyes of strangers. It was a ruin. I couldn’t imagine anyone would want to buy it. But I hadn’t counted on the amazing spruce-up powers of Mrs Button.

  The open home started at eleven, but she arrived at eight-thirty. Mum had left, and I was eating breakfast in the ki
tchen.

  ‘Katie! You’re still here,’ she said. She had come in through the front door; Mum must have given her a key. No more backdoor slinking for Mrs Button.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘You are going out, aren’t you.’ Another of Mrs Button’s orders disguised as a question.

  ‘I thought I would stay and watch,’ I said.

  ‘It’s not a TV show, Katie. I’m sorry, but you can’t stay.’

  ‘Why not? It’s still our house.’

  Mrs Button sighed. ‘Because it’s upsetting, sometimes. And for the buyers, it can be … you just can’t stay. It’s not real estate sale practice.’

  ‘Alright then. Can I finish my breakfast?’

  ‘If you hurry,’ Mrs Button said.

  I watched as she got to work. She started on the kitchen. She scrubbed, scoured, mopped, wiped. She turned the oven on so warmth came out, and sprayed something out of a can. She grinned at me. ‘Banana cake fragrance. Real estate agent’s secret weapon.’

  On she went through the house. She picked up, vacuumed, polished, arranged, rearranged, straightened. She moved furniture to cover the wallpaper problems. Mirrors sparkled, dust disappeared. Rugs I had never seen before appeared over the worst of the red carpet. She ran water through the taps, unlocking the air bubbles that made them shake. She muttered about the colour of the water, but she didn’t guess what I’d done.

  When she had finished inside, she went out to the garden shed. She dragged the old lawnmower out. It took her twenty minutes to mow both the back and front lawns. The random bits of junk she piled inside the shed. She went out to her car, and came back with a toolbox. It took her ten minutes to put the gates back on their hinges.

  I felt a lump in my throat. Mrs Button was right; it wasn’t a good idea to stay. It already wasn’t our house any more. It belonged to people who cared about what others thought. That’s how it felt to me. I did the eyeballs-up thing, and managed to stop the tears.

  I made a big deal about saying goodbye to Mrs Button, and I left half an hour before the open home.

  ON THE OTHER SIDE of our back gate, in the park, was an enormous oak tree. Its roots were so close to our boundary that they had grown under the fence, lifting it slightly off the ground. The tree had millions of branches thick with leaves. Some of them hung over the fence, into our property.

  I’d left our house through the front door. Then, checking that Mrs Button wasn’t watching, I raced to the end of the road, round the corner and into the park. I climbed the oak tree.

  From the highest branches I looked into our house. I had never seen it from this angle. I watched through the leaves as Mrs Button walked around outside to the back of the house. She had a screwdriver in her hand, and I wondered what she was up to.

  She stopped outside the first set of downstairs windows and poked the screwdriver in between the woodwork. She prised and pushed until they opened up and folded back. They weren’t windows, I realised. They were big opening doors. I’d never even noticed.

  Mrs Button put the screwdriver down on the lawn, and pulled the doors again. They opened right back, on both sides. You could see everything inside our house — into the big lounge, the little table and chairs. Light flooded the rooms.

  On she went with her screwdriver. More doors sprang open, this time revealing the kitchen. The tiled floor, the old coal range, and Mum’s modern stove sitting next to it. It looked like a doll’s house — one of those old-fashioned ones with the whole side of the house opening up.

  Mrs Button disappeared back inside. She next turned up at my bedroom window. I knew that one couldn’t be a door — there was no balcony. I could see her pushing hard from the inside, then the window popped open. She pushed it right back. Then she did the same in Mum’s room. You could see everything in the two rooms; they were at the exact same level as my branch. I pulled back into the leaves of the tree, in case Mrs Button saw me.

  IN A LITTLE WHILE, people started to walk through our house. Just a few at first, but soon there were lots. From the tree, I watched as they moved in and out of our rooms. It was as though the house had been sliced open. You could follow the progress of these strangers as they wandered around.

  I thought I would feel funny — upset — but I didn’t, not at all. This tidy, spick and span, shiny house that had been opened up for the world to see wasn’t ours. That wasn’t the way we lived. And I knew that once these strangers worked out that the house was falling to bits, they’d leave and we could get back to normal.

  I tried to keep an eye on the ones who went round twice, who might be serious about buying. What I would do about them I wasn’t sure, but it was important to know who they were.

  There was another reason I was watching. I wondered whether my father might come. I kept expecting to see one of the little toy-sized men turn around and be him. It was a stupid idea and I knew it wouldn’t happen, except I kept thinking that it would.

  IT WAS NEARLY TIME for Mrs Button to close up our house. A man arrived. I could see clearly into the kitchen, where Mrs Button had laid out her paperwork on the table. She was just gathering it all up to put in her bag when he walked in.

  He was wearing a suit but it made him look scruff y, not sophisticated. You had the feeling that he could have been a rich businessman once, but he had gone to seed, as Mum would say. His shoulders were stooped and he had quite a belly on him. He looked as though things had got on top of him.

  He shook Mrs Button’s hand. They talked for a while. I wondered whether he might be a friend of hers. Mrs Button waved her hand at him, as if to say Go on ahead, then she got back to the task of packing up.

  The guy disappeared. I wondered which room he would pop up in first. He appeared in the main lounge, walking slowly around, stopping to look at the photos on the mantelpiece. I thought this was a bit rude, but to be fair, he might have been checking the wallpaper.

  Then he appeared upstairs, in my bedroom. He didn’t spend long in there at all. He probably had no kids.

  Finally, he stood in the doorway of Mum’s room. He looked like the little man doll off a wedding cake, stiff and formal, hands by his sides. I felt as though I could reach out and pick him up with two fingers. He stood there for ages, then he walked in and closed the door behind him.

  You wouldn’t believe what he did next. He picked up Mum’s Chanel from her vanity table, walked to her big bed and sprayed the perfume on her pillow. Then he laid down on it.

  He was only there a minute or two. Finally, he stood up, smoothed the bed down, and turned the pillow over. He left Mum’s room.

  I felt dizzy; I’d stopped breathing. My lungs hurt. I took quick, sharp suckins of air, as though I’d just run a race. I wasn’t close enough to the window to smell Mum’s perfume. But I definitely could. Heavy, sweet, suffocating. Straight away, I remembered the night Mum and Dad had argued about her going back into work; the night Dad disappeared.

  I climbed down the tree as fast as I could and ran around the block. I rushed along the street to the front of our house.

  By the time I got there, Mrs Button was loading her stuff into the car.

  ‘Oh hello, Katie — good timing. We’re done for the day,’ she said.

  Who was he? I went to ask but the words stuck in my throat. ‘Is the house sold?’ I said instead.

  She laughed. ‘No. It doesn’t happen that quickly.’

  In the distance, a car disappeared around a corner.

  The open homes carried on. At each one, I took my place in the oak tree and watched. I didn’t think the sad man in the suit would come back, but he did. Not every time, but when Mrs Button got another real estate agent to do her open homes. He must have parked and watched, waiting to see who was in charge. He slipped past the agent, not bothering with the kitchen, and wandered in and out of the rooms. Every visit was the same as that first one; a whizz around the house, then into Mum’s bedroom, closing the door carefully behind him. Then, the perfume on the pillow.

 
SOMEONE DID BUY THE house. Not the weird guy, and not straight away, but nearly a year on. After heaps more open homes and torture sessions between poor Mrs Button and Mum.

  When Mum and I packed everything up, we found some portraits of the original owners of our house. They were big people: stiff, formal. There were two kids in the photo too. My mother was triumphant, holding those photos in one hand, the photos of her own parents in the other.

  ‘You see, Katie. This was a grand house in its day. Owned by people of great gravitas. Of very high standing in society.’

  I realised I had never known exactly why our house was heritage listed. You don’t care about things like that when you’re a little kid. I thought about asking Mum then, as we bundled our stuff into boxes. There were lots of things I could have asked her about, including perfume-man. But by then I had some of my own secrets to hide, some of my own plans in the pipeline. And I guess I’d given up on question-asking as a waste of time. The trouble with specific questions was that they got specific answers. No more.

  I found some photos of my father in the bottom of an old packing case. There was one of him reading to me at night — Mum must have taken it. I never mentioned those photos to Mum. I felt panicked, looking at them, frightened that my real memories of him were fading so fast I wouldn’t recognise him again.

  I ended up not keeping a lot of my own stuff. It felt as though one part of my life — my kid years — were over and a new start was just around the corner. I had no idea what the new start was actually going to be, but when Mum and I locked the yellow front door for the last time and walked down the garden path, the photos of my father were in my bag.

  WORMS

  On the way back from the Easter surf trip, Jack Cleveland wrote off his old man’s new Beemer. It was on the tight bend at the start of Pukehina Beach Road, where it meets the main highway back to Te Puke. There’s that old gravel dump on the bend. Cleveland overtook Cru Davis right there, lost it in the loose metal and rolled the car down into the river.