Victoria University of Wellington Press PO Box 600, Wellington New Zealand vup.wgtn.ac.nz Copyright © is retained by the authors and VUP Published April 2020 Please read and share freely. No commercial use, or further publishing of extracts, without prior permission of VUP. [email protected] PDF ISBN: 9781776563197 ePub ISBN: 9781776563357 Kindle ISBN: 9781776563364 This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without the permission of the publishers. The moral rights of the authors have been asserted. Grateful thanks to Bill Manhire for the idea; to all the authors for their enthusiastic participation; to publishing partners (Picador, Europa Editions, Carcanet) for permission; to Tara Black for the cover. From the publishers The VUP Home Reader is everything we’re working on at the moment—extracts of books which were published in February and March, books which are in the warehouse or on the water, final proofs and uncorrected proofs, manuscripts and work- in-progress—stretching into 2021. We offer it as company, as entertainment, as a promise. Stay safe and well. Stay home and read! Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Fergus Barrowman, Publisher Craig Gamble, Publishing Manager Kyleigh Hodgson, Editor Kirsten McDougall, Publicity Director Jasmine Sargent, Editor Ashleigh Young, Editor VUP HOME READER 2020 Eamonn Marra, Home Freya Daly Sadgrove, Heron Oscar Upperton, Dutch Instruction Alison Douglass, from Assessment of Mental Capacity Madison Hamill, Speculative Fiction Mikaela Nyman, from Sado Breton Dukes, The Swimmers Michele Amas, Home town Natalie Morrison, from Pins Ian Wedde, from The Reed Warbler Brian Easton, from Not in Narrow Seas Hinemoana Baker, How to Survive on a Plinth Pip Adam, from Nothing to See James Brown, Metro Rata Gordon, Vagator Craig Gamble, The Rule of Twelfths David Coventry, from Dance Prone Miro Bilbrough, from In the Time of the Manaroans Kate Camp, How to Be Happy Though Human Chloe Lane, from The Swimmers Airini Beautrais, Sin City Phil Lester, from Healthy Bee, Sick Bee Ingrid Horrocks, Canyon Country: The Elk Bernadette Hall, from Fancy Dancing Tusiata Avia, Samoan funeral with Aunty Catherine Chidgey, from Remote Sympathy Geoff Cochrane, Chosen Bill Manhire, Wow Tara Black, from This Is Not a Pipe James K. Baxter, The Fleece John Newton, from Escape Path Lighting Tina Makereti, Tea Ruby Solly, Arrival Rebecca K. Reilly, from Vines Ash Davida Jane, conversation / conservation Patrick Evans, from Bluffworld Susanna Gendall, from The Disinvent Movement Danyl McLauchlan, The Hunger and the Rain Vincent O’Sullivan, Once Kirsten McDougall, from She’s a Killer Sue Orr, from Loop Station Elizabeth Knox, Faulty Valve Contributors Eamonn Marra Home from 2000ft Above Worry Level February 2020 I got kicked out of my flat and fired from my job. Mum had just bought a new house in her old hometown so I suggested to her that I could come stay for a while and help set it up. I deactivated my Facebook account and bought a plane ticket. The only flatmate with any sympathy left for me asked if I was excited to move home. ‘It isn’t home. It’s where my mum lives. I’ve never lived there before,’ I said. ‘Home is where your mum is,’ my flatmate said. ‘Home is where your stuff is,’ I said. I had left most my stuff outside the Salvation Army. A few years ago Mum and Dad did dance classes together. It was pretty cute. I had never—and still have never—seen Dad do anything that resembled dancing, but every Wednesday night for a year they would go off to a school hall in the next suburb over and learn the basics of waltz and foxtrot and those kinds of things. ‘Oh, it’s all just a bit of fun,’ Mum said. ‘We’re not taking it seriously.’ After a year, Dad decided it wasn’t for him anymore. They stopped going out and Dad got very into the news. Every night after the six o’clock news he would watch the other channel’s timeshifted six o’clock news, and after that he’d change to an international news channel. Whenever Toby and I went home for dinner Dad would tell 6 us about another violent attack that had happened somewhere in the country, or in another country like ours. Sometimes they were random and sometimes they were part of a pattern unfolding. ‘I honestly believe we are heading for a war,’ Dad said. ‘It’s happening locally, it’s happening nationally, it’s happening internationally. People are not respecting each other. Not respecting authority. Something is brewing.’ Mum watched with him for a while, but complained that they paid for all those channels and only ever ended up watching three of them. She bought a second TV for the bedroom— something she’d never allowed when we were growing up. ‘What kind of house needs two TVs?’ she used to say. Eventually Mum got bored of TV and went back to the dance class alone. Within a month she had graduated to the advanced class. Every time she came home Dad would ask her who she’d danced with that week. ‘Sometimes she has to dance with the other women,’ Dad told me at a family dinner. He laughed. Mum stayed quiet. Dad took over the laptop. He’d sit on the sofa hunched over the coffee table, browsing news websites while the news played on TV. He would sit down straight after work and stay there until after the table had been set for dinner, then return to the laptop straight after dessert. Mum kept a notebook of things to research: books people had recommended to her, auctions for box sets of TV shows she used to love, articles her co- workers were talking about. Whenever Mum finally got to use the laptop, she would pull out her notebook and get a week’s worth of internet out of the way in an hour. When Mum was using the laptop, Dad wouldn’t look at the screen or read over her shoulder, but would sit close by, waiting to have it back. Toby bought Mum a smartphone for Christmas so she could 7 use the internet without having to wait her turn. Every time Toby or I came around we would have to show her how to use it again—which button was the camera and where the photos were saved and how to attach them to an email if she wanted to send them to us. Mum got sick of asking us for help, so she enrolled in a class called Communicating through Technology. She told us about learning how to make and edit short videos using an app. She said it was amazing what you could do on a tiny machine. ‘Why do you even need a smartphone?’ Dad asked Mum. Dad had had the same phone for the past eight years and had only just mastered texting. ‘I just want to send photos to my friends overseas,’ Mum said. ‘You’re being naive,’ Dad said. He told us we should delete all our internet accounts, but that before we deleted them we should change our names and dates of birth and locations. We should upload photos of random people and befriend strangers from the far reaches of the world. We should try to break these websites’ algorithms so they couldn’t work out who or what or where we were. ‘These websites, they have no way of making money otherwise. They’ll sell you to the highest bidder.’ ‘Everyone has a smartphone these days,’ I said. ‘If you spend more time in the real world and less time online, it might make you happier,’ Dad said. I got a friend request from Mum on Facebook a few days later. Her profile picture was one of me and her and Toby where none of us looked good. The only other thing on her profile was a video she had recorded on her smartphone. It was thirty seconds long. The first ten seconds were of her facing the camera saying that she would appreciate no one telling Dad about this, and the final twenty seconds were of her trying to 8 work out how to stop recording. Mum maxed out at about fifteen friends. They included me, Toby, a couple of people I recognised from her work, a woman in a floral dress, a woman with big horn-rimmed glasses, a middle-aged man in a military uniform, three people whose profile pictures were cartoons, one whose was a flower, her friend Pam who lives in Canada, and a very sexy lady. ‘You know that one is just a scam,’ I said. ‘I thought it was Pam’s daughter,’ she said. ‘Why would Pam’s daughter want to add you?’ ‘I haven’t seen her for five or six years,’ Mum said. ‘And she was always very outgoing. But I’ve realised it probably isn’t her because she’s sent me a message asking if I want to have sex.’ I told her how to delete a friend. Mum left Dad just over a year ago. She posted a video titled ‘Moving Home’. In the video she was sitting in her car. She said she had spent a long time considering it and had decided to quit her job and move back to her hometown. She was going to move in with her sister while she looked for her own place and was looking forward to starting the next phase of her life.