Trilemma (5 page)

“They've told me to go with the Seaview site,” Adam tells us.

Tom splutters pastry crumbs on the table. “But—”

“No buts,” says Adam. “That's the decision. Let's get on with it.”

Tom glares at me. I gaze steadily back.

He turns to Adam and lifts his chin. “Okay, boss. I'll call the agent and make the final arrangements for Seaview.”

“We need to talk,” Marion says to me. “Let's go to my office.”

When we reach her office, she closes the door, picks up my
working visa application from her desk, and places it on the table. She tilts her elegant, silvered head toward the papers.

“You didn't tell me you were actually born in New Zealand.”

“I didn't think it was relevant.” I pause. “And I'm illegitimate.”

Marion snorts. “Haven't heard anyone call themselves illegitimate for a long time. No one here cares whether your parents were married or not. You could probably get citizenship since you were born in New Zealand,” she adds. “But it would have been even easier if you still had family here.”

“Oh?”

“That would make it a dead cert.”

“Actually, I do have some family in New Zealand.”

“Fantastic! Give me their details, and we'll include the information in the application.”

I mutter something noncommittal.

I can't tell her I don't know where they live. I can't tell her that they have never wanted to know me, that every time my father tried to make contact, they sent back a reply that always had the same theme.

Fuck you and the horse you rode in on
.

When the weekend arrives, I sleep in and it is late morning by the time I get up, shower, pull on jeans, a shirt, and my most comfortable shoes. I make coffee and toast with Marmite. The first time I tried the stuff, I slathered it on thick like Nutella and it made me gag. Ben laughed until he fell off his chair. Now I dab it delicately in dainty dots like a Pissarro.

Outside in the bright sun Michael and Polly are chasing each other around the house. They stop to wag their tails at me and then take off again, giggling happily.

I love to walk. I don't care whether I walk the busy streets of a city or the alleyways of old stone villages, shady forest paths, or wild and lonely beaches. It's the act of placing your steps one after another, letting your eyes see whatever the world has to offer, your ears hear the sound of the birds or the buzz of foreign-sounding voices, and your nostrils smell the earth or the food cooking in some back street café.

I head down the road and turn onto a path through a forest. I could be in another world. The trees are tall and their foliage is dense and green and lush, full of hidden birds who twitter, honk, ring, screech, cry, and sing. A jogger jogs past, panting, sweat glowing on his pink skin, feet slapping the leafy carpet as he thrusts himself onward. A man walking his terrier greets me with a polite nod. The dog sniffs my leg and passes on.

When I emerge from the trees, ahead lies the city, glinting in myriad shades of black, white, gray, and green. The jagged shapes of buildings rise up from streets that are neither boulevards nor alleys but somewhere in between. Every building is a
different height and shape, and every street emerges on an angle.

I walk down a steep hill and arrive at the top of Cuba Street. I pass art galleries and boutiques of handcrafted clothing, a New-Age gift shop, a fish shop selling dozens of varieties of fish and shellfish, a coffee roaster. To my left and right are cafés of all types; rich ones, poor ones, Italian, Malaysian, Thai, Chinese, Indian, Mexican, Turkish, French.

Young girls strut past in laddered tights and short-skirted dresses alongside boys with pants falling off their behinds. A middle-aged woman sits at a table on the pavement drinking coffee and reading a book. A couple walks by carrying bags of shopping and arguing over where to stop for lunch. I count three street performers—an Asian boy playing violin, a hippy with a guitar, and a Maori couple singing to a boom box. “How bizarre” he sings in a beautiful tenor while she warbles the chorus and taps her tambourine.

I collect a baguette from a French deli and a fillet of local fish,
hapuka
, I am told, from the fish shop. On my way back up the street, I pause outside the window of an art gallery. Inside are canvasses in black and white, with Maori words scattered across them in red. I don't know what any of the words mean, although I am starting to recognize the language.

Reading the words, a sudden thought strikes me.

I remember playing in the sand of Cannon Beach back in Oregon, years ago, just my father and me. We built a hill out of the damp sand, with a castle at the top where I buried gold-colored candy wrappers. My father marked the spot with a
Z
, and then he named our castle “Ngatirua,” creating the word out of small pieces of gray driftwood.

“Who lives there, Dad?” I'd asked.

“A prince used to live there, but he escaped.”

“Is there a monster?”

I remember him laughing. “Maybe there's a monster. Or a wicked witch.”

I turn back to the road and walk briskly up the hill. When I reach my apartment, I retrieve a large envelope from the battered leather suitcase under the bed. On top is a photograph of Ben and Emmy standing in front of Ben's studio, but beneath is the handful of old photographs I'd found in Mom's house.

I take out the first clue I found in my father's papers, a photograph of an infant lying asleep in a buggy. On the back of the photo is a scrawl, saying “Linnet,” the year of my birth, and the address of the house in which I now live.

I pick out another photograph, this one of my father. Behind his head is a painting of a Maori warrior so the photograph must have been from when he lived in New Zealand. On the back of the photograph is a word; “Ng” then a squiggle then “rua,” it says.

I had thought Ngatirua was a funny made-up name, but now I realize it might be a real place.

Clue number two. I type “Ngatirua” into Google. No locations come up, just a jumble of similar words. I scroll through the results. The last is an image of a painting, called:
The Road to Ngatirua
. The painting is of a road zigzagging up a hill, tan and ochre with touches of green.

Then I see the artist's name. Rose Mere.
Mere!

I type in “Rose Mere.” And at last I strike gold, of sorts. I find an article on a Hawke's Bay artist who painted in the fifties and the sixties. She died the year I was born. Married, two daughters.

I continue reading. Now when I bring up the maps, I search the hills of Hawke's Bay for a road like the one in the painting. After half an hour of careful examination, I think I have found the road to Ngatirua.

I make a pot of tea and take my cup outside onto the roof terrace, where the break in the railing stills gapes like a hasty exit. The breeze has stiffened and tugs at my hair. I gaze to the north, beyond the harbor, where steep green ridges march into the hazy distance.

A precious feeling of happiness washes over me, the first time I've felt hopeful since the day I lost Ben.

Somewhere beyond those hills must be a trace of my sisters.

It has rained overnight and the sky is hovering between gray and blue. When I look to the north, I can see the long white cloud hanging over the hills.

Should I, shouldn't I?
What's to lose?

The edgy charge of anticipation suspends rational thought. Half an hour later I drive alongside the river to the top of the Hutt Valley. The road narrows and becomes a single lane to climb the Rimutakas, turning and bending and turning again to reach the summit, high in the mountains and covered with dense native bush and trees. Going down the far side is easier and ten minutes later I emerge into a small country town. One blink and it is gone.

The next place arrives with a prettiness of flower baskets and a charm of colonial architecture, and is bustling with people. I drive on, deeper into provincial New Zealand, where the flat lands are stocked with dairy cows, the hills in sheep and beef. Higher up, the grass turns to bush and higher still there is a scattering of snow on the otherwise bald peaks.

I see the road sign and make the turn.

In front of me a range of steep hills towers above green pastures dotted with sheep. Climbing the hill, cutting left and right into the green land, runs a zigzag road. I stop the car and take out my copy of Rose Mere's painting.

It is the same shape. This is the road I seek.

What am I going to find at the end of this road? A haven amongst my long-lost family? A pot of gold? A weird castle with a monster in the dungeon? Or nothing at all?

I shake my head, smiling at my foolish fancies, downshift, and drive slowly up the switchback to the top of the hill. The rise is steep and the corners are sharp. The car strains and chokes and splutters as I reach the summit. Five minutes later I see a corridor of tall trees to my left. At the roadside is a mailbox large enough to hold a sheep.

I stop and read the inscription.

There are two sets of names, not one. Christopher and Vivienne Marchmount. Walter and Alison Repati. I have found both of them.

Do I stop now and return to Wellington?

The blood races through my veins in anticipation. I lift my foot gently from the brake and turn up the driveway.

Invisible dogs bark as I drive up and stop the car in front of a sprawling farmhouse of gray clapboard with white window frames. A battered SUV is parked in the car shed and a dirt-embossed motorbike leans against a water tank.

I pause with my hand on the door lever, and then I press it down, push open the door and step out of the car.

Gravel crunches beneath my feet as I approach a porch adorned with Wellington boots, a basket of wood, two cat food bowls, a walking stick, and four umbrellas in various states of disrepair. When I reach the door, I knock lightly, three times. It seems appropriate. I wait, listening, but there is no noise from within, no patter of feet across old wooden floorboards coming to meet a long-lost prodigal sister.

I knock again, loudly this time. Still nothing. I walk around the back. The dogs start barking again, more of them joining in, until there is a crescendo of dog noise coming from the hill beyond the house. On the far side is a large veranda facing north to capture the sun, with doors opening from the house, but all are closed today.

The house has a sleepy air, as if it waits like a faithful dog for its owner. I want to walk up to the glass and peer inside, but I am not certain it is empty, so I look from afar, but see nothing.
I circle around to the entrance and knock again, but there is no response.

Back in the car, I reverse down the driveway and pause. The driveway goes around a rose garden and up a hill.

There must be another house farther in.
I drive forward, past bluebells pushing up their petaled heads amongst the ferns beneath the trees, and climb to the top of the rise.