‘What happened to Fred Calhoun?’ you hear yourself asking, and wonder why.

  He hesitates, surprised. ‘I worked for him for another five years, until I’d completed my diploma in art and my confidence in myself was strong and I knew that I wanted to study architecture.’ He stops and looks as if he’s forgotten what he’s been talking about. ‘Bloody Alzheimer’s!’

  ‘Fred Calhoun?’ you remind him.

  He smiles, relieved, and says, ‘He and his doting wife Jill and their two kids became my ‘āiga – right word?’ You nod. ‘Yeah, they saved me, Jonas. I never lived with them, but their home was always open to me, and when I established mine, it was open to them. Whatever success I made was theirs. They were my special guests at all my graduations, parties, openings, birthdays, everything, Jonas. I made sure they needed for nothing. In their retirement, I designed and built them their dream home at their favourite summer beach, Whangamata, and filled it with a selection of those drawings I’d done when I’d been his apprentice. And when Fred died of prostate cancer twenty or so years ago, Jill and I carried out his last wishes: that he be cremated and his ashes scattered at our favourite fishing spot in Whangamata Bay.’ He pauses again, looking inwards, and then ends his narration. ‘Jill died two years later and we buried her beside her parents in Taihape – her last wish.’

  The café is now crowded, and many people are looking for seats. You and Graeme ignore them as you sit in that special healing quiet that eventuates when a confessor has been relieved of his burden, his story, by the listener, who, in this case, will continue to try and unpack the full implications of his wise confessor’s tale, at least until their next lunch together.

  ‘For many years I regretted that they didn’t know anything about dyslexia then; maybe they wouldn’t have treated me so unkindly. But, Jonas, don’t you think that’s what turned me to whatever I am today?’

  ‘Shit, yes!’ You hear yourself celebrating his triumph over circumstances and ignorance.

  ‘I like that, Jonas, I like that you agree with me!’

  That afternoon, just before you go into your class, Shakespeare in Film, your cell phone rings. ‘Hi, Jonas!’ It’s Donna (Samoan name Matagi, which she doesn’t like), and you’re immediately wary because she’s been pressurising you, mainly over the phone and through common friends, to restart a three-month relationship you’d had the previous year. After four years of revelling in a rollicking social life, she is still trying to finish a BA in journalism. ‘How was your Poly lit class this morning?’ she asks. You’ve never liked the way she exaggerates the way she talks, like a stereotypical Poly student, and you resent the way she always seems to know what you’re doing.

  ‘Fine, great.’ You replicate her jovial tone. ‘Gotta go into my Bill Shakespeare class now.’

  ‘Awesome. I love Shakespeare films, man, I really do! By the way, who was that old Pālagi dude you were lunching with today? Your prof or something?’

  ‘Naw, he’s just a classmate.’

  Staccato laughter, and then she says, ‘Where’s he bin all these years instead of getting a degree?’

  Now you have to work hard at suppressing your rising contempt. ‘Donna, the old guy’s a retired architect who’s keeping his mind alive studying literature.’

  ‘Our other Poly friends tell me he’s bloody rich and famous …’

  ‘Fā, Matagi, gotta go to class!’ you interrupt her, and switch off your phone.

  It’s your turn to cook at home, so after your Shakespeare class you stop at the supermarket where your mother works, and she helps you get the supplies you need. ‘Who’s that wealthy Pālagi businessman in your class? Ben told us last night that you spend a lot of time with him,’ she says in Samoan. Again you have to stop yourself from being angry openly. The whole fucking Samoan community must know about it! ‘Ben says he looks as ancient as Moses!’ She laughs.

  You try to smile. ‘Yes, e makuā pei o Moses but e kelē aku aga kupe,’ you say in the usual mixture of Samoan and English that is your language at home. ‘Plus he’s lāuiloa i Giu Sila!’ You exaggerate.

  ‘We’re having Dad’s fifty-fifth birthday next Friday, don’t forget. Why don’t you invite Moses and his wife to come?’ You can’t escape her scrutiny. ‘That’s if you think we’re good enough for them!’

  You’re trapped. You have to nod and say, ‘I’ll ask them.’

  You’re intensely worried about how you’re going to ask Graeme, and how your asking is going to put Graeme in an awkward position, and if he and Melissa come, how they are going to react to your family and vice versa. And you’re not going to feel good if you lie to your mother that you asked Graeme but he already had another commitment to go to. You’ve lied before about other things, but this is too important to lie about. So you keep putting it off and suffer the dreaded signs – unrelenting stress and lacerating stomach pains – of your recurring duodenal ulcer.

  Four days before your father’s birthday, while you’re in your usual computer booth on the fourth floor of the new all-glass Student Study Centre, trying to finish your last assignment of the semester, your cell phone rings. You hurry out to the corridor to answer it.

  ‘Still being a diligent student, Jonas?’ Graeme greets you. You say hello, and try not to sound guarded. ‘I’m also trying to finish my last essay, but have given it up and am now having a cuppa coffee, would you like to join me?’

  Shit, accepting his invitation means you can’t postpone inviting them!

  A few minutes later, there’s a flat white waiting for you as you join Graeme at one of the tables by the windows. And some Melissa-baked shortbread, Graeme’s favourite. ‘She told me to bring those for you.’ He looks more fragile and vulnerable; a sickly paleness is pushing up through his skin, the wrinkles on his face are more numerous and deeper, and his coffee hand is shaking visibly whenever he lifts his cup to his mouth.

  ‘Melissa was a VSA in a village in Samoa, eh?’ You keep postponing the invitation.

  He sits up, obviously excited about the topic. ‘Yeah, in the village of Pou-tassy. Is that correct?’ You nod. ‘On the north-eastern coast of Upolu. She was only seventeen, just finished high school. She lived with a family there while she taught at the school. Learned a lot of Samoan, loved it; loved the whole place and people. After she returned and graduated as a teacher she kept going back to visit her Samoan ‘āiga during her holidays. She helped many of her ‘āiga migrate here. When she left teaching and became an architect and ran her own practice, her visits to Samoa dropped off. But she still participates in her ‘āiga’s affairs here in Auckland.’ You recall her telling you some of that the first time you were at their home.

  You have to do it now, while he’s least expecting it; while he’s wowed about Samoa and Samoans. ‘Graeme, mydad’shavinghisfifty-fifthbirthday …’

  ‘Hey, Jonas, slow down, man!’ He laughs and, gazing at you, waits for you to calm down, then he says, ‘Now, let’s hear it.’

  You swallow once, twice, look unflinchingly across at him, and say, ‘My ‘āiga would like you and Melissa to come to my dad’s fifty-fifth birthday on Friday night next week.’ You’ve said it, and it’s like ridding your throat of a sharp fishbone.

  ‘Thank you, Jonas, Melissa and I accept your ‘āiga’s generous invitation and will come on Friday, at what time, sir?’ His eyes twinkle – are those tears?

  ‘About 7.30 pm, my silver-haired lord!’ You parody him. You start to write down the address for him, but he reminds you he has an ‘infallible memory’ like all pre-literate Samoans.

  As you enjoy your coffee and shortbread, you find yourself telling him about your ‘āiga – did he steer you to that? – and enjoying it. You tell him your mother had only a village education, your father graduated from Samoa College; they met here while going to the same church, in Mangere, ‘fell in love, so the story goes’, married and had three heirs: Jonas (named after his father’s father), Ben (after Charlton Heston as Ben Hur) and Diana (after Diana Ross, his mother’s favourite singer.) You laugh with Graeme at that last bit. You father, while labouring on a building site, attended cooking classes at night, then got a job as a waiter in a flash restaurant; worked his way into assistant chef, then chef. Your mother cleaned, and when you were born and she had to stay home, she cleaned at night. Finally a cousin got her a job at Foodtown as a shop assistant. ‘By the way, in that whole saga of migrant success, my parents deliberately kept away from what they called “the wasteful, expensive fa‘a-Samoa”, so they could afford to get a good home and get us educated. They’ve not gone back to Samoa since they got here, even.’

  ‘What do you think of that?’ Graeme asks.

  ‘In the last few years, I’ve felt deprived of the fa‘a-Samoa and my roots. So have Ben and Diana.’

  ‘Have you told your parents that?’

  You shake your head and drink the reminder of your coffee – it tastes bitter and cold. ‘We don’t want to hurt them. They’ve sacrificed so much for us.’

  ‘Jonas, I wish my spoilt mokopuna were like you and your sister and brother and didn’t want to hurt their elders!’ he declares. ‘They don’t even recognise there are such creatures as elders.’

  You look at him with shrewdness and irony, and ask, ‘And whose fault is that?’

  His eyes light up with mock surprise. ‘Jonas, you’ve got me there; right there where the blame should be.’

  ‘But you didn’t raise them: their parents did.’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose, but to protect myself and Melissa from their rapacious free-loading and keep them at bay, I keep giving them anything they want.’

  You recognise Donna’s scent before Donna and a friend, Cushla (Samoan name, Teuaute), are upon you, right at your table, casting their shadows over you. Graeme looks up and smiles. You push back your seat and, without looking up at them, say, ‘Graeme, these are Matagi and Teuaute!’

  Graeme extends his right hand to Donna. ‘How are ya?’ They shake hands.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, sir!’ she greets him. Graeme moves to shake Cushla’s hand, but she hunches up and shies away. ‘And how are you, Jonas?’

  You make no move to invite them to sit down. ‘Good, good,’ you mumble. ‘Graeme and I were just leaving to go to a class.’ You’re relieved Graeme hasn’t asked them to join you.

  ‘Shit, I almost forgot!’ Graeme improves on your lie. ‘You, beautiful young ladies, want this table?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’ Cushla speaks for the first time.

  Graeme gathers his satchel, straightens his clothes and shoves on his Hurricanes sports cap while you all watch him. When he tries to get up, he grabs at his bad knee in pain, so you reach forward and help him up. ‘I bloody well need that knee replacement Melissa and you keep urging me to have.’

  ‘And when are you having that done?’ you ask, trying to avoid Donna’s intense scrutiny.

  ‘Straight after our finals, and this time Melissa is going to kick the shit out of me if I chicken out again!’

  ‘Good luck with your operation, sir,’ Donna says, and you know she means it and recognise, from your past relationship with her, that she does have many appealing and decent qualities. ‘And good luck with your finals,’ she says to you.

  ‘Thanks, Donna,’ you say and mean it. ‘And good luck with yours.’

  ‘Lovely meeting you,’ Graeme says to Donna and Cushla.

  ‘I’ll ring you,’ you hear yourself saying to Donna, and gaze fully at her for the first time. Yes, she is beautiful. And as you and Graeme walk away from the table, the exciting, wild imagery of your sexual life with her starts capturing you.

  ‘What was that all about, Jonas?’ Graeme asks, softly.

  ‘Donna and I used to have a relationship …’

  ‘Used to, and it’s now called a relationship, eh?’ Graeme slaps your shoulder.

  ‘Yeah, used to.’

  ‘She’s a very beautiful young woman!’

  ‘Yeah, straight out of Prof Thalmer’s lecture and presentation on “Dusky Maidens and Gauguin in the South Seas”, eh?’ You start laughing at your own comment.

  ‘Too right,’ laughs Graeme. ‘Too bloody right!’ He holds himself up by leaning onto your shoulder as you laugh and weave your way down the corridor through the stream of students and staff now coming in for lunch.

  Like most families that you know, you, Ben and Diana and your parents have evolved – or is it developed? – ways that enable you to live together fairly harmoniously. Some of that harmony you achieve through avoidance of areas of possible friction. For instance, if you watch the television news or eat together, you and your parents never discuss politics or current affairs or the behaviour and lifestyles of young people. On your political scale, but you’ve never accused him of it, your father is even right of Ayn Rand. You gave him Atlas Shrugged and it became his second bible, which he quotes from to justify his unshakable belief and faith in capitalism and his being a totally self-made man who has arrived where he is through the honest sweat of his brow and the strength of his own hands; Samoans who remain poor are that way because they’re lazy and want to live off the sweat of hard-working taxpayers like himself and your mother. Mention things like socialism, the Labour Party, the welfare state, the rights of unions to collective bargaining and welfare benefits for single parents (especially unwed ones) and he (and your mother) become Emperor Nero at the gladiator games, callously turning down their thumbs for the final kill. You recognised early that that was why for them it was thumbs down on the fa‘a-Samoa out of which they had come. It was socialistic: ‘āiga before the individual, communal sharing, compulsory contributing to family and community affairs and projects, and what your father condemns as ‘a bloody system of sweat-eating, with too many sweat-eaters and too few sweaters’. So over the past few years you’ve preferred to get your news coverage off the internet through your computer in your room. But tonight, you can’t avoid being in the sitting room with them, in front of your Mum’s new humongous flat screen television. It is Ben’s and Diana’s turn to cook dinner, so they’re in the kitchen and dining room doing that. You’ll watch the news – Dad prides himself on being ‘well informed’ – and then over dinner discuss and finalise the arrangements for his fifty-fifth birthday party, which he insists is your mother’s wish.

  You get stubbies for Dad and yourself and a Bacardi and Coke for your mother, as the signature tune for the TV One six o’clock news starts. You sit down in the armchair on your mum’s right, away from your father. You take a deep drink on your ice-cold beer as the news headlines begin: Prime Minister in Beijing for free trade talks; two teenagers die in car accident in Mangere, alcohol and speed suspected; Minister of Justice accused of conflict of interest …’ You don’t pay too much attention to the headlines as you continue drinking and waiting for the news details.

  You get a second stubby out of the fridge and start returning to your seat when the face of someone you feel you should recognise comes on to the screen, and the announcer is saying, ‘This morning at his home in Freeman’s bay …’ It is old black and white television footage of a youthful long-haired Graeme; he is being interviewed without sound while the announcer is talking. ‘Graeme Hudson, one of New Zealand’s most distinguished architects, collapsed and died of a massive heart attack …’ You sit down quietly. You feel nothing. Not shock nor sorrow nor pain. ‘… Mr Hudson designed some of our country’s landmark – and what some have called controversial – buildings and complexes …’ On to the screen come some of those, and snippets of Graeme and his staff designing and directing their construction. ‘Graeme Hudson achieved all this despite suffering from a severe form of dyslexia. He went on to become the most generous patron of the Dyslexia Society …’ You watch the bespectacled head of the Dyslexia Society being interviewed about that. Now you refuse to believe the news: you had lunch with Graeme only two days ago!

  ‘Isn’t that your friend, Jonas?’ you hear Ben asking. He is standing just behind you.

  ‘Is it?’ your mother asks, turning down the sound. ‘Is it?’

  Everything immediately sounds loud and demanding and focused on you. You now have to face it. ‘Yes,’ you whisper. ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘The one who is supposed to be coming to my birthday?’ your father asks.

  ‘Yes.’

  It is a calm morning full of sun and squawking seagulls and mollyhawks and the gullet-deep growling of the sea as it surges in from under the Harbour Bridge. You walk between your father and Ben, wearing formal ‘ie lavalava and ‘ulafala. Your mother and Diana walk a few paces ahead of you, holding the ‘ietōga between them, displaying its ancient and silky beauty as it shimmers in the light breeze. Your mother told you it was the mat they were saving for your graduation; it has been in her ‘āiga for years. The night Graeme’s death was on television, you’d insisted with your parents that even if they didn’t believe in the fa‘a-Samoa, you wanted them to do it for Graeme’s funeral. ‘But your friend and his family know nothing about the fa‘a-Samoa!’ your father had objected. ‘His wife knows a lot about it; she lived in Samoa for a long time and has Samoan ‘āiga,’ you had countered, unafraid of him for the first time, you will recall later.