Short story: Something will change, by Alice Tawhai

She lay very still in the half dark. Snow lay behind her, mimicking her position. His breath sighed over her shoulder as the darkness thinned, like the breeze of the ocean, sighing over a swell. She knew what he looked like without even turning her head.

He had coffee skin and Milo eyes, and black hair cropped close to his head, number one style. Snow wasn’t his real name, but the joke was that when he was six, his mother had taken him to audition for the part of the new Milky Bar Kid on the ad for Nestlé white chocolate bars. She’d heard it was worth something, and she’d thought that maybe it wouldn’t matter, him being dark.

So there he was, surrounded by little blond boys with fair, fair skin and silver cap-guns, and the man in charge had come up to him and said, “Sorry, Snowy, you’re not quite what we’re looking for.” He’d got a free chocolate bar, in a creamy-coloured wrapper, with a picture of the original Milky Bar Kid on the front: wearing spurs, blue jeans and a red and white checked shirt. When he opened the bar there was a raised imprint of the Milky Bar Kid on the chocolate. He was more impressed with this than anything, and not at all disappointed with his morning.

The name Snow stuck, and by the time he realised that it was a joke, and people were laughing at him, not with him, he didn’t care, because it was part of him. These days he often covered his brown chocolate eyes with white contact lenses, making his eyes look like hard chips of ice, startling against his black lashes and the colour of his skin.

They made him look cold and absent, as if he were backing away from her and keeping her distant. He couldn’t keep them in for too long, because they irritated his eyes. She was glad that he wasn’t wearing them now, even though his eyes were still closed.

She looked at herself in the mirror. It was early, and there was still greyness in the light inside the bedroom, and a smokiness about her reflection. Her silvery-blonde hair was pixie-cut, and it usually took on the sheen of whatever she was near. On this occasion there wasn’t much light and the colour was pure. Down the side of her face — she was never sure if it was her left or her right side, because mirrors always confused her  — a strawberry birthmark ran from the outer corner of her eye to the outer corner of her lip.

Snow often told her that she looked as if she’d fallen asleep at the kitchen table, with her cheek resting in a puddle of strawberry jam. This didn’t bother her, but she did feel old and worn. The lines on her face were deeper than they should have been at thirty-six, and the smudges under her eyes were darker. She knew the cause. A half-finished glass of bourbon was still on the dressing table in front of her. Next to it, an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts was mirrored back alongside her own image.

There was a silence about the hour that was somehow eerie. Even the birds are weary this morning, she thought. Maybe they had a hard night too. She lit a cigarette, and because the ashtray was full, she flicked the ash into her son’s small silver christening cup. It was engraved with a stork, a calendar, a clock and a pair of scales to represent his name, his date and time of birth, and his baby weight.

Waste of time, she thought bitterly. He wanted to live with his bloody father. And if anyone was ever hopeless with kids, it was him. The truth was that her son had hated Snow, and had resented being corrected and disciplined by a man who was not his own dad.

The problem with Snow was that he always had to be right. There were never two ways of doing things, there was only his way. He had to do everything perfectly: follow recipes exactly, have all the gear for everything, read up on the correct procedure.

He did all the cooking, because he couldn’t stand the way she’d throw in a pinch or a handful of something. He had a set of measuring laughing at him, not with him, he didn’t care, because it was part of him. These days he often covered his brown chocolate eyes with white contact lenses, making his eyes look like hard chips of cups and a set of measuring spoons, and every grain of salt was accounted for.

Her parents liked him because he cooked. They’d stopped on their way through last week, and stayed for a drink. The fire was roaring in the sitting room, and Snow had filled her mother’s blunt-cut crystal glass with home-made bourbon, while her dad watched TV without the sound. “What’s happening? What’s happening?” he’d ask every now and then, but nobody else was watching, so they ignored him. Sometimes he’d suddenly cackle, certain that he’d figured it out.

She’d been with Snow for years now — just the two of them for most of that time, just the two of them since her son had left.

The china cabinets in the sitting room were filled with the kind of treasures that can’t co-exist with people who have children. Stuffed ducks, woodpigeons and tūī that Snow had carefully stitched up himself. China teapots in the shape of cabbage leaves, silk fans and a  collection of knives. In the corner of the room was the only known fully preserved moa, also the product of Snow’s taxidermy. It was brown and fading, but its feathers had a slightly violet sheen under the light. It had been found down south, in the subantarctic islands, in a deep shadowy cave under permanent ice. It had been given to Snow by a friend of his, someone who’d been on that trip. That was the sort of person Snow knew.

Snow didn’t like stereos. He still had a record player, and the needle was kept scrupulously clean. He chose the music, putting on some Tom Petty while her mum poured bourbon into everyone’s glasses as if she was running a bath.

Snow got out his little burner to have some spots. He was not the sort of man to get his precious kitchen knives blackened on an element. He had a special way of spotting, which involved sucking through glass tubes so as not to waste smoke. Later, he lit a joint and offered it to her mum. “This is good shit,” he told her. “Best you can get.”

She knew he was showing off, because he’d grown it himself. He had a hydroponic outfit under the house, and he was a major supplier around the North Island. Her mother declined, waving her glass with a shaky hand. “This is enough for me and dad,” she declared. Her father nodded from the corner, surrounded by the haze from his tobacco, trying to work his Ventolin inhaler with his left hand and keep one eye on the TV.

Snow woke up, and she clicked back into the present. Her cigarette had nearly burnt down to her fingers. “Don’t smoke in the bloody bedroom,” he said. “How many times do I have to tell you? Every time I turn around, there’s another fucking ashtray to empty.” She didn’t say anything, just stubbed out the cigarette and looked backwards at him through the glass without turning around.

“Too good to speak to me now, are you?” he asked. “Too fucking good? Are you too fucking beautiful, sitting there, looking at yourself in the mirror?” She chose not to reply, because she knew from experience that whatever she said would be wrong. She was always wrong, whatever she offered. It was always Snow who was right.

“Get the fuck out of here, before I get pissed off,” he said, and she got up quickly, thankful that he’d been too lazy to hit her.

“Take his ring off,” her sister had said one afternoon, a long time ago, as they’d sat drinking some ales at the kitchen table. “Those are diamonds. It must be bloody worth something, and he’s just a shit. Don’t think I don’t know what goes on in this house.”

But she didn’t take his ring off. “What is it?” asked her sister. “Are you too scared to leave? Because you can come to me.”

She thought of the fear of staying, knowing that at any moment Snow might get angry with her for not replacing the sugar in the sugar bowl after she had taken a teaspoonful, or for leaving the back porch light on after she went to bed. She thought of the bruises under her silver hair, and the times when she had believed that her skull must be cracked with little zigzag lines. The constant alertness, the racing in the pit of her heart: that was the fear of staying, not of leaving.

“I love him,” she told her sister. Her sister had snorted. “How can you love someone who treats you like that?” But she couldn’t explain it. Snow loved her. Why else would he take such an interest in everything she did, and make sure that she did everything just right? She loved him. Why else would she stay, even after one of his punches had left her deaf in one ear? It was a deep, deep love, and that was why other people sometimes didn’t see it.

“One day, something will change, and you’ll be out of here,” said her sister. But nothing had changed, and her sister had given up now, content just to bitch about Snow on the phone. She went outside, wanting to put some distance between herself and Snow for a while. The long, frosty grass by the shed was like snap-frozen candyfloss, sitting in a chiller, waiting to be thawed and eaten. Even the shorter grass was sharply defined, blade by icy blade, like hair on the hard-packed dirt. It reminded her of when she and Snow had first got together, before she had become wary. She would lie behind him in bed, her warm breath on his back, her lips touching the fine hairs that grew there, brushing across them without grazing his skin and wondering if he could feel a touch so light.

The sun was a burning white circle in the mist, surrounded by a golden-white halo: an angel that it hurt her eyes to look at. Darker sky was gathering at the low horizon across the valley, threatening to take over the brightness. It was very quiet, and the silence was overwhelming, and still eerie. Nothing moved in the trees, and the wind had dropped down to complete stillness.

Last night there had been a gale, and she and Snow had made love in their shadowy bed, her sitting on top of him like the mast of a boat tossed around by passion and the roar of the wind outside. Her moaning was the creaking and groaning of the timbers, echoing the gale whipping furiously around the corners of the house outside.

She wondered whether the mist would clear today. Sometimes it just hung around in the valley, and the house was like an island above the sea that it created, and she was marooned.

Apart from the silence, everything seemed to be as usual. Later, Snow came stomping inside, all rarked up. “The fucking dog’s gapped it!” he said. “I let the back of my ute down to untie the bitch, and the minute the leash was unknotted she took off, dragging it behind her. Bloody nearly bowled me off the tray. I’ll get the fucking stick onto her when she gets back.”

“She can’t have gone far,” she said, drawing her breath in tightly. “Normally Ayla never leaves your side.”

“Hrmph,” he said, stomping off, her second escape of the day. It was mid-afternoon, and time, she thought, for another drink. She put a country music album on Snow’s record player, being very careful with the needle. Her bourbon sloshed from one side of her glass to the other, spilling onto her hand. Then the house shook, as if God had it by the scruff of the neck and was trying hard to shake some sense into it. The needle made a graunching sound as it skated across the record. She knew she’d be in trouble for that. The things in the china cabinets tilted forward, and some of them smashed against the glass. The cabinets themselves began to topple over. She felt as if she were walking up hill, towards the wall.

The moa slid past her as if it were on wheels, its black eyes looking enquiring as it elegantly nodded its head up and down, greeting her as it glided past.

When the heaving stopped, and she found her feet again, she went and stood outside on the grass, where she thought it would be safer. Further down, to her right, a power pylon had caught fire. A haze of malevolent green swept upwards from the cross-bars and into the dark grey sky, which threatened to turn black with rain. It glowed like something spiritual, and angry electricity crackled and sparked down the lines crossing the valley.

Below the pylon the ground had slipped and the dirt was exposed like moist chocolate cake ripped apart by greedy hands. The air was filled with the insistent hum of leaking power. She could still hear echoes of the song she’d been listening to inside, before the quake started. “. . . and the Wichita line man is still on the line . . .” It sounded lonely and faraway.

She shook herself. No, it was a dog howling in the distance. She wondered if it was Ayla. To her left she could see Bottomless Pit Lake, steel grey on the far side like the sky, but silver on the near side, like a mirror lying in the dark, brooding grass.

She remembered what her sister had said. “One day, something will change.” She tried to notice if there had been an earthquake in her heart: a sliding apart, with new cracks forming.

She saw Snow coming up the metal road, and remembered that he’d been out looking for Ayla. He was holding his left arm awkwardly by his side. Maybe he’d fallen when the ground shook. When he got closer she saw that he had his contacts in. Perhaps it was because his eyes were white, but she thought he looked a little bit scared. Everything inside the house was crushed and broken and scattered and mixed up. But he was still the same, and she was still the same too. She hoped he wasn’t hurt. She loved him.

Taken with kind permission from the bestselling collection of short stories, in hardback edition, The Penguin New Zealand Anthology (Penguin, $45), available in bookstores nationwide. It features 50 stories by authors such as Charlotte Grimshaw, Patricia Grace, Eleanor Catton, Maurice Gee, CK Stead, Janet Frame, and others.