Antipodes Page 8

  Erin: “I’m totally fine with hearing about Ben. Whatever’s going on with him, let me have it.”

  “Off to bed, Erin?” Felicity asked.

  “In a few minutes.”

  Felicity’s smile froze. “It’s important that you are well rested. Particularly as an athlete, you need a proper amount of sleep.”

  “I’m going.” Erin scooped up her gear and bid Hamish good night. She didn’t appreciate being treated like a child. Felicity already had a daughter, so shouldn’t the whole child-management thing be out of her system? She still read stories to Pippa, who was ten. As soon as Erin could read, her au pair was off the hook for stories.

  In under a year, she would be at college, telling herself when to go to bed, deciding what to eat and when. And not accepting to-do lists from her mother all the damned time, she hoped.

  Erin was quick in the frigid bathroom before slipping into Pippa’s dark, quiet bedroom, which smelled faintly of intestinal gas. Pippa breathed deeply as Erin tucked her computer into its case.

  Erin dove into her bed to find three fuzzy hot pillows in her sheets: hot water bottles all in a row.

  Ecstatic, she absorbed their heat until she was certain she wouldn’t die of hypothermia.

  She was warm. Really, truly warm. No hourlong grasshopper mating ritual required. She pushed one hot water bottle to her toes and slid the other two onto the floor.

  Felicity was a saint. A somewhat bossy saint, but still.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Pippa wasn’t in her bed Tuesday morning. Showered, dressed, and in the kitchen for breakfast, Erin asked Felicity where she was.

  “She had a rough night,” Felicity said. “She’s still asleep in my bed.”

  Erin didn’t want to press. She and Felicity performed a little pas de deux around the kitchen, packing lunches and foraging for breakfast.

  Mounted on the dining room wall, a heater about a yard wide and a foot tall belched warmish air into the room. At that rate, Erin would be cold forever.

  Felicity leaned around Erin to grab flatware. “Pippa! Breakfast!”

  “Felicity?”

  She looked Erin in the eye. “Yes?”

  “Thanks for the warm bed last night. It was really … nice.”

  Felicity touched her arm. “I’m trying to help.”

  “You did, thanks.”

  A groggy Pippa joined them in the kitchen.

  Felicity straightened the naked baby oil painting, which had been askew. “I’m a bit late today. It’s hosing down out there. Fine on your own this morning, girls?”

  Erin and Pippa assured her they were fine. A half hour later, they bundled up, pulled on their boots, and walked to the bus stop in the pouring rain.

  “I like your wellies,” Pippa said.

  “They’re Hunters.”

  “We call them wellies.”

  “I meant the brand,” Erin said.

  Pippa raised her bright rain boots decorated with emoji. “And this kind is called gumboots.”

  Pippa maintained a steady line of commentary as Erin grew more irritated by the bus requirement. After ten minutes, Erin said, “Pippa, I need a little space.”

  Pippa nodded and was quiet until the bus arrived and she blurted, “You’ve forgotten your cello!”

  “I’m taking a break. And thank you for the space.” Erin nodded to the bus. “You first.”

  Pippa climbed the steps and rubbed her purple metro card in a circular motion on a post. The beaming driver said, “G’morning!”

  Pippa said, “Good morning, Ladanian!”

  “G’morning!” he said to Erin.

  Erin copied Pippa’s movements with her card. “Hi.”

  “Have a seat!”

  Pippa sat with Erin, but she talked across the aisle to Nadia, who wore an identical plaid Ilam Primary uniform. Other riders wore a veritable rainbow of uniforms. A sad rainbow: dark red, royal blue, blacks, whites, and one gaudy yellow.

  Out of their neighborhood, over the bridge, and through the chaotic roundabout, Erin was the only rider in Ilam High blue.

  “You’re going to miss your stop,” Pippa said, pressing a thin yellow strip next to her seat.

  The driver stopped somewhat abruptly, just in front of Ilam High.

  Erin walked toward the rear exit

  “You have to cross at the Deborah!” Pippa yelled.

  Erin furrowed her brow. “What?”

  “You have to cross at the Deborah!” Pippa yelled again.

  Erin could make no sense of that.

  A small girl in black and yellow shouted, “The black and white stripes, just there? The zebra.” She pointed to the crosswalk.

  Deborah, zebra. Zebra stripes.

  “Got it!” she yelled to Pippa, and she disembarked.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Erin’s art teacher had been absent Monday, so Erin had doodled in a notebook as her classmates gossiped for the better part of an hour. Excited to begin creating, Erin was delighted to find Mrs. Campbell in class Tuesday morning.

  As Erin was introducing herself, an air horn sounded and her classmates dove under tables. Curling into tight fetal positions, each student clung to a table leg and wrapped their other arm around their necks.

  Erin froze.

  “Erin?” Mrs. Campbell said. “Earthquake. Drop, cover, and hold!”

  Erin crawled under a table and assumed the same position as her classmates. In the quiet that ensued, Erin decided earthquakes were uneventful. She’d expected them to feel more … quake-like.

  Moments later, another air horn sounded, and a woman on an electronic megaphone said, “All clear.”

  Everyone crawled out from under their tables and took their seats as Mrs. Campbell apologized for missing Monday’s class. “I was stuck in Oz for an extra day. Anyway, this term, we’ll be working on watercolors.” A true assignment would begin Thursday but, in the meantime, they’d experiment with watercolors, brushes, and different weights of paper.

  Erin gathered supplies and painted a bold red line on her thinnest paper. She added more water to the red and created another line, then another, until she painted a faint pink line. The paper buckled under the wetness, and Erin switched to a thicker paper, repeating the experiment.

  When Mrs. Campbell stopped at her desk, she said, “You’re very methodical, aren’t you?”

  “You said to experiment.”

  “So I did. Now let’s try to create a new image, and then re-create the same image on each piece of paper using what you’ve learned.”

  Erin didn’t know how to paint much of anything. She imagined a boxy swimming block—a psychedelic swimming block, because that was more colorful—and started again with her thinnest paper. It was challenging.

  Erin hadn’t been allowed to take art since sixth grade because other electives were too important. And, of course, AP government looked better to Columbia than playing with paints. She had forgotten how easily she could lose herself in a project.

  When Mrs. Campbell announced it was time to pack up, Erin was nowhere near done. And she found she couldn’t wait for the next day’s class.

  _________

  Alone at lunch, Erin cracked her Italian book to read ahead. The clouds had burned off during her art experiments, but everything remained damp. She juggled her Italian book and lunch until Jade called her name.

  “In here!” Jade pulled Erin into the gymnasium.

  They sat on the floor and Jade said, “How are you finding New Zealand?”

  “Still jet-lagged,” Erin said.

  Jade held out a plastic container of brown and gray food. “True kiwi lunch here. Want some?”

  “Every time someone mentions kiwi, I picture fuzzy green fruit,” Erin said.

  “Aye, we’ve got kiwi fruit, too. This is bangers and mash.”

  “Funny, isn’t it? Last night, Felicity asked whether I liked—whether I fancied—kumara. An orange vegetable. Not a carrot. Soft in the middle when cooked, but not a squash. The
n she served it and it was a sweet potato.”

  “Kumara are my favorite in winter.”

  “Yeah, my grampa used to make them with butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon. I love them, but it’s a perfect example of how off-kilter I feel. Same cars, but yours are smaller. And slower. Everything is a little slower. We speak the same language, to an extent. But sometimes? I have no idea what people are saying. And sometimes, words have entirely different meanings. At home, biscuits are small, fluffy, buttery breakfast breads. What you call biscuits, we call cookies.”

  “Sounds delicious, either way,” Jade said.

  Outside, a circle of guys bunched up over the rugby ball, pushing hard but not moving in any particular direction.

  “Aren’t words funny?” Erin said as she watched them. “I once met a girl at a resort in North Carolina—that’s actually in the southern part of America—and it took us a while to parse that when a Chicago native says she skis, she means skiing in snow. But we also go water-skiing. In the south, though, where it’s warm, skiing means water. And they call the other kind snow skiing.”

  “Here, of course, the North Island is the warm part, and we get the cold down here,” Jade said. “One of us is upside down.”

  “Yeah. It’s definitely me.”

  “You’re sweet, though. We’ll keep you.” Jade smiled.

  “Thanks. I’m sticking around for the cute accents.”

  “Wait until summer. It’s a dream.”

  One of the rugby players jogged into the gym, a ball under his arm. He spotted Erin and grinned. “Hey! I’m Richard.”

  “Erin.”

  “What’s on for tomorrow, Erin?”

  “Uh … school again?” she said.

  “What say we pop round the dairy? Get us a cuppa or an ice block if it’s warm?”

  For translation, Erin looked to Jade, whose eyes were wide as she shook her head vehemently.

  “No, sorry. Can’t,” Erin said.

  “Erin is spoken for this week,” Jade said.

  “Gizza fighting chance!” Richard said.

  “Sorry, mate,” Jade said.

  “Sorry. Mate,” Erin repeated.

  Defeated, Richard left them.

  When he was out of earshot, Erin said, “What was that about?”

  “That bloke doesn’t take no for an answer. He is bad news.”

  Taken aback, Erin said, “What was he asking me to do? A date on a dairy farm?”

  Jade giggled. “A dairy’s a shop. He asked you to go for coffee or ice blocks, like sweet-flavored water frozen to a stick.”

  Erin squinted as she imagined that. “Oh, popsicles. We call them popsicles.”

  “Whatever you call them, don’t get them with Richard.”

  “Thanks,” Erin said. “I never would have guessed.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Swim team didn’t practice on Fridays, so her first Friday in Christchurch, Erin met Pippa after school and diverted to Riccarton Mall. Erin had finally beaten jet lag and felt rejuvenated, but she would need Pippa’s advice on a perfect gift for Felicity’s birthday. For Claire, Erin would charge a pair of pumps or new bag, but Felicity wasn’t really that kind of mom.

  Pippa said, “She already chose her prezzie.”

  “Right, but I didn’t.”

  “She says spending the day together is what she likes best.”

  Spoken like a person who was compensating for watching her wallet. Erin probably should buy Felicity an actual gift. Maybe on the AmEx this time. The bills came on different days, and if she was lucky, the leather pants and present could slip through undetected.

  “Pippa, there must be something she really wants but can’t have.”

  “Nope.”

  “Everyone has something they want but can’t have. Something extravagant.”

  “She’s not an extravagant kind of person.”

  No kidding.

  Erin’s hostess gift had included a box of consumables, so chocolates were out. Flowers were trite. “What is her favorite thing in the entire world?”

  Pippa grinned. “Me.”

  Erin nodded. Felicity was kind of like her Grandma Tea, who had genuinely loved being with Erin, no matter what they were doing. Every Christmas, Grandma Tea just wanted to spend time in the same room, so that’s what they did—reading or making music together or doing their own thing. She always said time was the most precious gift she could not give herself.

  What could Felicity not give herself?

  MAC. Erin could give her MAC.

  “Do you know if there’s a MAC here?” Erin asked.

  “Like Mackeys? Golden arches?”

  “No. M-A-C. Like makeup.”

  “Mum doesn’t wear makeup except when she goes out.”

  Probably because it’s too expensive. “Trust me, this will be a nice treat for her. It will make her feel great.”

  Pippa followed her to MAC, which they found next to Kmart.

  No CND and no Banana Republic, but Christchurch had Kmart. America was exporting the wrong businesses.

  An hour later, gift certificate in hand and experimental makeup on their faces, Erin and Pippa arrived home to find the FedEx box. Without space for anything more in her room, Erin stored it, sealed, in the garage.

  She was ready for Felicity’s birthday and whatever it brought.

  On Erin’s seventeenth birthday, she imagined she was living on Venus, where a day is longer than a year. She texted Ben an apology and told him her body was punishing her with a relentless headache.

  It hurt from the hangover, from crying over her assured social implosion, from crying over Grandma Tea’s ring, from crying over Grandma Tea and Grampa themselves, and from Ben’s tardy reply.

  She had no appetite but kept drinking water to rehydrate. Some birthday.

  Two years ago, her last birthday celebration with Grandma Tea, she’d received a letter instead of a card.

  Erin pulled files from her desk and quickly found the pistachio envelope, which had resealed since she first opened it. Gently, she pulled away the flap and reread her letter.

  My Dearest Erin:

  After the excitement of your birthday celebration subsides, once you’ve put away your new things and recycled your cards, I wanted to say once more how grateful I am to have you in my life.

  Our summers together mark the best times of my life; your childhood was a second childhood for me, and for that I am truly grateful.

  You have grown into a clever, fierce, stunning young woman, and I hope you find as much happiness in your life as I’ve found in mine.

  I miss you always and am grateful you keep in close touch. As you prepare for big things, remember I am a mere phone call away.

  I love you, Erin, and I’m beyond delighted you’re my granddaughter.

  XOXOXO,

  Tea

  Erin cried herself to sleep and woke to Ben’s ping at last.

  ♥ ♥ Ben♥ ♥ :Stop texting! I am done with you.

  She sat up in bed, her stomach in her throat again.

  Erin: That’s not funny.

  Despite never before generating read receipts from Ben, Erin’s phone indicated Ben had read her text. Panicked, she called him. It rang once and diverted her to voice mail. She hung up and called again. One ring and voice mail.

  Expecting to vomit, she ran to the bathroom and stood over the toilet.

  Nothing came up. She held the sides of the toilet seat and cried. First swimming. Then her social life. Her car. Now Ben.

  How had she so angered the gods?

  Erin called Lalitha. No answer.

  Erin: Litha, I need to talk ASAP.

  Lalitha must have been sleeping off her hangover, lucky girl.

  Erin couldn’t imagine eating alone at Topolobampo while other diners looked on. She couldn’t imagine eating, period.

  Her parents couldn’t handle one more thing right now, so she’d have to fake it. Erin pulled up her hair, chose a tiny purse, and slipped into the dress m
eant for her birthday celebration.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Most mornings, Erin’s life in Wheaton felt light-years away. Lalitha was in school when Erin woke. When Wheaton let out, Erin was in class. Lalitha was never available during Erin’s five seconds between school and swimming. And after Erin’s swim practice, Lalitha was already in bed.

  Texting across time zones was almost as painful as snail mail.

  In Christchurch news, Erin learned Good-Time Girl had been at a beach bonfire the previous night. Erin must discover that Christchurch without becoming a creepy stalker.

  She scanned her dad’s daily How Are You/I Miss You/Sending My Love email, peppered with details of the weather, the Fiat, and Wheaton news.

  Claire had demanded Erin text her as soon as she woke up.

  Erin drew a deep breath.

  Erin: Hi, Mom. I’m up.

  Claire: I have a client in five.

  Erin: Okay.

  Claire: Our plan isn’t going to work if you don’t keep in closer touch.

  This plan was Claire’s; Erin had not consented to such rules.

  Erin: Okay.

  Claire: I sent you the edits. She says you have to sell yourself in this essay. You’re studying abroad, which is rare in high school. You’re a great cellist. A great swimmer. Show them how amazing you are: you are relentless. They need to know you are ambitious and will stop at nothing to get what you want.

  If that were true, Erin would destroy her phone to forestall more text conversations with her mother.

  Erin: I’ll send you a new draft soon.

  Claire: Like tomorrow. We need to get this right.

  Erin: Okay.

  Claire: Are the classes rigorous enough? It will look bad if you are regressing academically.

  Erin: They’re fine.

  Claire: How were orchestra auditions?

  Erin: Everyone who wants to play gets to play.

  Claire: What kind of cello is it?

  Erin: It’s fine.

  Claire: Okay. Practicing every day? Keeping your schedule? Are you back in your routine?

  Erin: Yeah.

  Erin: Yes.