TURBINE | KAPOHAU

Aunt Sandy was sitting outside the cafe, reading a magazine through a big pair of purple sunglasses. She was eating cherries from a plastic supermarket punnet, dropping the stems and pits in the ashtray. Maisy, unsure of her welcome, sidled over and sat down opposite.  

‘You know,’ Sandy said, slapping the magazine closed, ‘last time I was here they’d just had the Ridley and co murders and you couldn’t get a coffee for love or money. A bunch of accountants were on a work retreat and tried to murder each other – something to do with an affair.’ She put a cherry between her teeth and twisted off the stem. ‘Never be fooled by accountants. They’re a feral breed, I tell you.’ She looked Maisy over with a thoughtful eye. Maisy fidgeted, picking at the laminated edge of the menu. ‘Remind me how old you are, sweetness?’ 

‘Fifteen,’ Maisy said.  

‘Fifteen! How time flies. You’re still in school?’  

‘Yeah.’ 

‘And you’re enjoying it?’ 

‘Nope.’ 

‘Fair enough. I was much the same. Couldn’t get out of there fast enough.’ 

Sensing school was a dry topic, Maisy asked, ‘Where are you going after this?’ 

Sandy ate another cherry, thinking. ‘Roundabouts. I’ve got a few stopovers to make.’ 

Maisy swallowed her nerves. ‘Sandy?’ she said. ‘D’you reckon you could give me a lift?’ 

Sandy took off her sunnies and tucked them into her collar. ‘To where?’ 

‘My dad’s. He’s in Whangārei.’ 

‘I’ll need your mother’s blessing,’ Sandy said. 

‘Mum’s kicked me out.’ 

‘She has, huh?’ Sandy thought this over for a moment. ‘I’m not taking a direct route,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a few places to call in on. But if you don’t mind some detours you can hitch a lift with me.’ 

* 

Sandy’s car was awash with maps and fossilised muesli bars, and a string of crystals hung from the rear view mirror. Her aunt drove like it was a game: oblivious to the speed limit, overtaking on blind corners, honking with friendly comradery at anyone who honked first. She always had a cigarette between her fingers against the wheel, stopping her relentless chain-smoking now and then to chew overpoweringly minty gum.  

Sandy mostly talked about herself the first day. ‘I wouldn’t say I believe in a higher power,’ she said, ‘but there’s absolutely a universal energy that keeps us all in check. Universe with-a-capital-U is the modern God. Fucking asshole.’ She held down the horn as the car she’d been trying to burn off swerved into her lane. ‘Anyway, sometimes the call of the higher power just completely throws us off kilter. We hear it too clearly and it disturbs us. I knew a kid like that when I was living in Waione. He was visiting his family for the summer, then gets up one day and goes, I’m travelling west. Now bear in mind that west of us was Palmerston North and west of that is Australia, so obviously a screw was loose. But that same day he packs his bags and hitchhikes west. Don’t you worry, I told his mother. It’s the Universe calling him.’ 

‘Where did he go?’ Maisy asked. 

‘West. He travelled all the way to Foxton beach before he called his poor mother. Mum, he says, I’m getting on a boat. She begged him to come back, but he wasn’t listening. They told her he stole a kid’s kayak and paddled off into the sunset. Last anyone saw of him.’ 

‘Did he get to Australia?’ 

Sandy gave a loud, throaty laugh. ‘No one’s getting to Australia in an open top kayak.’ She was silent for a bit, overtaking another car and making a hard right. Maisy kept her eyes fixed on the road. She was starting to feel a bit carsick, and was also starting to think about Jem, which wasn’t helping.  

‘Do you reckon he stopped being crazy before he died?’ she asked. 

‘What now?’ 

‘What if he kayaked out too far to turn back and then regretted it?’ 

‘It’s just a funny story,’ Sandy said. ‘You don’t want to think too long about funny stories.’  

Maisy felt her heartbeat against her seatbelt. ‘I knew someone who could hear the Universe,’ she said.  

‘Really?’ Sandy pushed her sunnies into her hair. Her eyes were blue, fringed with pale lashes. ‘He didn’t go paddling off to sea, did he?’ 

‘No,’ Maisy said. But it quietly unsettled her, thinking back to her final moments with Jem: the noise, the confusion of shadow and light; his hand abruptly pulling free from hers. 

  *

They got fish and chips from a takeaway place with a glowing plastic fish above the door. Motels would soon blur together to Maisy, but that first night had an otherworldly clarity to it: the fake Tuscan facade, the rush and howl of the road nearby. ‘One room, I’m afraid,’ Sandy said, rattling the key in the door. ‘You don’t mind a couch bed?’  

Maisy, holding their dinner in a newspaper parcel, felt a cold twist of guilt.  ‘Sandy,’ she said. ‘I don’t… I haven’t got any money. I can’t pay.’ Not even for the fish and chips, now leaking salty grease onto her arms.  

Sandy, who’d managed to get the door open, waved this away. ‘It’s a treat on the house, darling. Your aunty’s treat. You’ll have to put up with some detours though, my love.’ 

‘Oh,’ Maisy said, overcome with relief. ‘No, that’s great. Thank you.’  

Inside, the couch bed was made up with sheets as thin and cold as paper. Maisy lay awake, listening to Sandy brushing her teeth, angling her face so that a slice of Venetian blind cut the streetlight outside in half. Her mind went where it always did when she lay awake: the goldmine, the click of Jem’s torch as he turned it off, his final words whispered somewhere close to her ear. There’s another way out.  

 *

Sandy was a sanguine travel companion, and only ever lost her cool when they passed poorly signed roads. ‘I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million fucking times, this is NOT the road to Palmerston North.’ Something about Palmy seemed to particularly upset her. 

‘Do you go there much?’ Maisy asked.  

‘Only by accident. I tell you, it’s a bloody maze. Every road sign on this side of the country points to it, and once you’re there there’s not a single sign pointing you out. It’s a labyrinth. I used to date a man from Palmerston North – it was a real low point for me. Piece-of-shit pig. Never trust a man, my love. Just because they’re simple, doesn’t mean they’re safe.’ Maisy wasn’t sure she agreed, but Sandy’s opinion was something she’d started taking very seriously. 

Sandy continued. ‘Your father – and I really am sorry to say this hon – but Trent was always one of the bastards. You can never trust a man who cheats. It’s like a dog: once they know they can get away with it, they pick up the habit.’ 

This side of her father was new to Maisy. He’d worked night shifts driving freight from Auckland, and his stopovers at home were largely spent snoring in the spare room. She stayed silent, hoping for more.  

Sandy heaved a world-weary sigh. ‘I’m not a perfect person myself, believe you me. Your mother’s not the first one to cut me out. But our difference, I’d say, is that I appreciate that our mistakes don’t make much difference in the end. We all end up where we’re meant to end up – even your father.’ 

‘Really?’  

‘Oh yes,’ Sandy said. Then she fixed Maisy with a firm, considered stare, and Maisy wondered for the first time if, maybe, Sandy knew about Jem. ‘What will come will come, darling.’ 

Maisy sat stiffly, watching the red needle, waiting for more. She had a horrible suspicion that Sandy was steering the conversation towards a question. What happened in the goldmine that day? And then, by implication: what did you do to him? But Sandy hummed, eyes on the road, working her jaw on a fresh stick of gum. No – maybe she didn’t know about Jem. For the first time Maisy wanted to tell Sandy, break her from her kindness, crush her illusions before she had a chance to find out from someone else. It was my fault.  

She didn’t say anything. They drove on past chalky mudstone cliff faces, dry rattling poplars, old bridges, and Maisy swallowed the secret back down and let it corrode inside her, as it always had.  

 *

 Sandy took them to a post-shop after lunch one day and bought a huge stack of postcards. ‘Lick the stamps for me, there’s a love,’ she said, picking up a pen.  

Maisy said, ‘I’ve always wondered why you wrote to mum.’ 

‘To your mum?’ Sandy looked up, surprised. ‘Darling, those postcards were to you.’ 

‘They were?’ 

‘I always felt a bit of guilt,’ Sandy said, ‘that I couldn’t be a better aunty, given your mum and I weren’t close. But to tell you the truth I was a bit hazy on your name.’ 

‘Oh.’ 

‘I started keeping in touch with everyone after an accident. I was climbing a mountain with a boyfriend of mine in shit conditions, and my hat blew off. Now bear in mind this was the most gorgeous possum fur hat. And he and I had a fight about whether to climb back and get it. Long story short: we broke up, he kept going and I went back for my hat, and by the time I found it I had no idea where I was. Fuck. I can’t talk and write addresses.’ She crumpled up a card and started on a fresh one. ‘Anyway, I knew the Universe was with me because it had helped me break up with that piece of shit. So as I walked I started bargaining with the Universe. I went, okay, if you put a nice little lodge around the next bend I’ll give up smoking. Then I’d get over and it wouldn’t be there, and I’d have to up the stakes. I was almost dead with cold and a blizzard had kicked in, and I knew it was gonna take something big. So I said, you know what Universe? I’m a shit friend. From now on I’m going to write postcards and keep everyone in the loop. And what do you know, I stumble on a road and ten minutes later I’m stretching my fingers over a fire at a nice lodge, planning my first postcards.’ 

‘Who d’you write to?’ 

‘Oh – everyone I know. Well, every address I can remember, anyway.’ 

‘Even the guy you broke up with on the mountain?’ 

Sandy scoffed. ‘In this life, my pet, it’s important to decide who’s worth forgiving. And that piece of shit let me wander off alone into great danger without any food. Unforgivable, if you ask me.’ 

The postcard in front of Maisy swam. She was thinking of Jem again — of course she was; every day was a careful tiptoe around that gaping pit of guilt. But now, looking at Sandy writing with her tongue between her teeth, Maisy was struck with the full concrete force of it. She’d let Jem wander off into that deep, empty goldmine all alone. The tacky taste of the stamp made her feel suddenly sick. 

Sandy swept the stack of postcards Maisy’s way, startling her. ‘Right, go and post these. I’m off to make a call.’ 

 *

Maisy slipped the cards into the mail slot one by one (There were thirty-six). She nicked a poisonous blue energy drink from a dairy and gulped it down on the footpath. Anything to keep her hands busy; anything to keep from thinking too much. Sandy was hunched in a phone box, talking quickly. 

Back in the car, Sandy took a different turn and didn’t comment on the Palmerston North sign. She seemed in an unusually good mood, and kept smiling and whispering under her breath. The energy drink was working strange effects on Maisy’s heartbeat, and she felt shivery and sick enough to let two Palmerston North signs pass before she roused enough suspicion to talk. 

‘Are we going south?’ 

‘We are. We’re making a detour to see a friend of mine.’ 

‘Not the guy you used to date from Palmy?’ 

‘“Used to”s a negative term,’ Sandy said. ‘We like keeping our relationship quite flexible. And I’ve bargained with him – as in, I’ve used him as a bargaining chip with the Universe, so I can’t cut him out completely.’ Then she glanced at Maisy. ‘You know, being with you’s been a real inspiration to me, darling. Talk about reconnecting! It’s always possible to make amends.’ 

Maisy’s heart was beating like crazy, probably from the drink. She concentrated on a corner of the dashboard, but it was too late: her imagination was thudding against the walls of the mine. ‘Sandy,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’m a good person.’ 

Sandy looked at her, amazed. ‘Darling, no one’s a good person. I’m not.’ 

Maisy’s chest was tight, and she could only get her words out in bits. ‘I didn’t… stay with my friend. When he needed me.’ It was all around her with warped, nightmarish clarity: Jem’s hand slipping from hers, the dull thud, thud in her ears, a flare of fire. And the vast, yawning, jabbering sob of the Universe, its hungry wet breath in her ear, the great dark emptiness of its eyes. 

She could have dragged Jem back, or followed him, or pleaded with him to turn around. But instead she’d covered her ears and had begged the universe: Jem, not me. I’ll do anything, just not me.  

With an effort Maisy pulled herself back, eyes fixed on the rope of crystals swinging from the rear view mirror. Sandy’s concerned face was turning quickly between her and the road. ‘You alright darling? Too hot?’ 

‘Yeah.’ Maisy swallowed thickly, biting her tongue. She felt clammy with sweat and a choking, swooping dizziness.  

‘Wind down the window a few turns. We’ll stop at a motel soon — how about that? A bit of dinner in your system.’ 

Maisy managed a nod. She wanted to ask if Sandy ever planned on forgiving that man who’d left her alone on a mountain, but she also wanted to wind down the window and hurl. The question could wait.