Blog 6 - Friday 5th January - Spontaneity Gave Me a Husband

Today is a big day, as Mum and I are getting our hair done. Mum comes into my room, puts down my tea and toast, and then, alarmingly, starts to leave the room.

“Aren’t you going to have your tea with me?” I ask, most put out.

“No, I’m going to read the newspaper, then bring you the newspaper.”

I tell you, I’m sparkling on all fronts. My tea is suddenly a tad weak. I’m not sure what to make of this rejection. I stare sadly at the Maya Angelou book beside my bed that Moley gave me. Moley says poetry makes her feel stupid, like most poetry makes most of the population feel. But *The Caged Bird Sings* is beautiful. And anything by Billy Collins. If you have a hangover or have had abdominal surgery and the dog next door keeps barking, read *Why I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House*.

The neighbour’s dog will not stop barking.

They must switch him on their way out.

I can see him sitting in the orchestra,

his head raised confidently

as if Beethoven had included a part

for barking dog.

I go to meet Mum for coffee in the kitchen and put on a brave face, despite her rejection. I sing to her:

“Tu chantes, c’est la vie…**

You sing, this is life, you laugh or you cry, you cannot choose, you sing, this is life…”

I don’t spontaneously enjoy songs anymore. I contemplate their meaning now, as wisdom—a euphemism for old age—suffuses my spontaneity, which, truth be told, has caused a lot of grief.

My marriage was spontaneous. Moo Hefner and I had known each other only two months when we decided to get married—a week after watching Charles and Di’s wedding. It was like getting a dog after seeing one rehomed on the telly. Our wedding was a tad more low-key than that of Charles and Di, with only 50 attendees and some half-dead orange chrysanthemums that Mum and Davy Hartstone grabbed from the local dairy when I realised, at the last moment, I didn’t have any flowers.

We had our honeymoon in the Marlborough Sounds and I won a meat pack at the local pub.

After coffee, Mum and I set off on our expedition to the hairdresser. Mum says taking me out is like driving the elderly: “Would you like a little outing, dear?” We laugh—I less merrily than Mum. We both agree it is so nice to be out and about.

“You’re in my hands today, and I like wooden churches best,” she sings as we drive past the wooden church on Khyber Pass.

“Je ne vais nulle part sans toi,” Mum continues, meaning *I don’t go anywhere without you*, and I am strangely touched.

While Mum is getting her hair done, I go to my house, which is next door to the hair salon. Lynnie (our Irish cleaner) has all the chairs up on the table, but she is playing with Bella on the floor, which she will then forget to wash. Charley says I choose cleaners for their backstory, not their cleaning ability.

“I can’t believe you’ve been ill!” Lynnie says, clasping me to her skinny breast.

“Look, Lynnie,” I say, pointing to a kingfisher sitting on the fence like a naughty boy all dressed up in his father’s tuxedo.

“God has sent him to say welcome home,” trills Lynnie.

I leave her playing with Bella and looking at the kingfisher, and go to the hair salon.

Jo, who owns the salon, tells me her bowel split after an operation for appendicitis in Auckland Hospital. She continues her woeful tale.

“I was in hospital for three months and nearly died. But Dad said, ‘You are only sent the trials you can cope with, Jo, and you were sent more than your sisters because you can cope with more.’ I’m the favourite because I’m the toughest.”

Amazingly, I find myself in yet another club I never even knew existed until I became a member: the "bowel club. I am now a member of the heart disease club, the divorcee club, the pensioner club, and the bowel club.

As we drive home, Mum says, “Darling, I’m afraid the hairdresser no longer gives me a buzz. I saw, with nostalgia, the pleasure Gigi found in the dresses Moley and I bought her for her birthday. I have lost that capacity to find pleasure in human activities. I am a poor fish!"

We buy bread on our way home, as Jamie and his Australian girlfriend Sammie are coming for afternoon tea. They have had an on-again, off-again relationship for eight years, are now engaged, and have been tripping round the country. They show us pictures of themselves dressed up as hobbits in Hobbiton, covered in mud at the hot pools, and cave diving in Waitomo.

Sammie says that Jamie swam out for miles and miles in choppy water and she was afraid he would not come back, and she’d be stuck forever in some hot pools on a remote beach.

“I am Poseidon!” Jamie announces.

“No, you’re not,” Mum corrects him.

He says, “Sammie, you’re going to die when you see Cathedral Cove.”

“No, you will not at all,” says Mum.

He says, “Happy” (the name my children call Mum), “why do you take the crusts off the bread? Is it better for you?”

“No,” Mum says, “it’s prettier.”

“Don’t crusts make your hair curly?” he asks.

According to the *NZ Herald* star signs (courtesy of Maryse), Mum’s ability to distil complexity into something direct and clear is her gift to others. But try as she might, she is simply flummoxed by Jamie’s hyperbole.

After they have left, I ring Moo Hefner about the tiles for the old bach. Most people would say I talk about Moo Hefner way too much, as I feel them roll their eyes. I remember when he walked out on me four days before our 30th wedding anniversary. He said I never put him first and didn’t appreciate that he is a male lion who never liked our pasta-based diet.

I was living in Melbourne when he left, and Mum came over and ran the house for me while I was teaching. Dad had died just two months earlier. Mum patiently listened to my hand-wringing, egotistical disbelief that someone dared leave me, never for a moment showing the tremendous grief she herself was suffering.

She finally had enough and told me to brush my hair, stop my histrionics, and give my poor international students a good shot at their final exams.

Moo Hefner asks me how I am, and I tell him not to feign affection by pretending to care about my health.

He says I am his trustee, his business partner, and mother of all, not some, of his children.

Mum and I watch *The Queen’s Gambit*, where Beth says she finds safety in living on the 64 squares of a chess board.

That night, alone in my room, I continue my gentle detox, which means just a very "small "wine and whiskey, and no sleeping pill. It is just so hard to sleep. In those bewitching hours, when my body is struggling to go to sleep, a sort of madness whizzes through my brain like mosquitoes looking for the last drop of blood in the world and I have it.

Out of this madness comes the acceptance that Moo Hefner is incapable of loving at all. And as Maryse says: “Men who can’t love make money.”

It took me 30 years to understand that Moo Hefner’s tragedy lies in his inability to understand that his love of money has made him forget how happy we were when we were poor.

Moo Hefner had a better hair cut.