O.K. All right, Allbright. I sat up half the New Zealand night reading about a wild inaccessible corner of 16th century Lancashire in the north of England where several local people die in mysterious circumstances and where Dr. Aaron Allbright, Regius Professor of Divinity, trying to solve the mystery, comes up against the fears of the people about witchcraft and ends up in the South of France, caught up between the Protestants and the Catholics in the Wars of Religion in France. Where he escapes being murdered— by Dying of The Plague. In 1595.
Now all this may strike you as an unusual coincidence, or not, but what really caught my own attention about the whole thing happened a few weeks later.
First, we bought a small house just outside Whatuwhiwhi. A small house sitting at the very end of a little finger of land which projected out into Doubtless Bay and sat about 150 feet above the waves where the Orcas come to calve once a year. A section of land like this would cost 8 to 10 million Yankee Dollars in Newport or Laguna Beach. If you could find it. We paid less than— well, let’s just say a few beads and trinkets. The little cottage stared across the Bay to our farm on the opposite side of the Bay so we joked that we would be able to keep a close eye on the construction of our big dream house, once it began. Of course, it was ten miles straight across the water but with good binoculars we could actually see everything fairly clearly.
We got settled in and a couple of weeks later arrived Mama Delia La Joie Rodrigue. All the way from Palm Springs, California. Of course California. The one and only Palm Springs. And the one and only Mama La Joie Rodrigue. Now a Palm Springs matron par excellence, 78 years old and all dolled up for world travel.
“Beau come and get me. I’m at the airport.”
“Ma. I’m in New Zealand and—”
“And a good thing, too, ’cause I’m in New Zealand and I wouldn’t wanna be here on my own. Can’t understand a word. It’s English they’re speaking? I don’t think so, honey. Maybe it’s my hearing aid. I can’t find it. I should’ve gotten a bigger one. So I’m 78 and I says to myself, if I don’t go now I’ll never go, I says. You know what I mean? Why wait? At my age, what am I waiting for? Mr. Right? In Palm Springs? I don’t think so, honey. You know what? They’re not all locked up. The desert’s full of old widows and old single ladies like me and a few old men who want somebody to take care of them. You know what? Everybody in the world wants the same thing — more time. Well, I got better things to do with my little time left than take care of some old Palm Springs man who already buried or probably dumped two or three wives for younger ones. Better things, like travel. So here I am.”
Mama Rodrigue never re-married after she left her philandering husband. She never forgave him and she never stopped loving him—he was the love of her life.
“How long will it take you to get here? I’m hungry honey and I can’t wait to see that Poggio. Well Kanji and Sophie and Deva, too, but that little Poggio Itty Bitty—”
“What about Aaron and me, Ma?”
“Don’t talk stupid, Beau. Come get me, honey.”
“Ma, it’s at least six hours away if I leave this second. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? We could’ve met you.”
“So now I have to report everything to you, I’m so old? Look, I’ll take a taxi. I don’t want you driving all that way.”
“You can’t take a taxi, it’s too far. It’ll cost you more than your ticket from Palm Springs. Fly, ma. We have planes that fly to Kaitaia once a day.”
“Oy vey. Course I’ll fly. Taxi-plane, acushla. My boy thinks maybe I’m stupid just because I turned 78. Don’t forget, I raised you. I had a lot a trouble with you, but I enjoyed it. Oy vey iz mir.”
You probably guessed that many of Mama Rodrigue’s friends and customers in Palm Springs were Jewish and she had learned a whole new language in the years since Beau and I convinced her to close up her bakery in Little Rock and retire to California to be close to us.
“Sure, but I’ll move to Palm Springs but not Orange County, why not? I wanna be close but not too close—you Boys would drive me around the bend. Bonkers meshugganah.”
Mama Rodrigue arrived in the Far North of New Zealand with one suitcase filled to the bursting point with new men’s clothing for Beau and me. Her hobby for the past several years was shopping at T.J. Maxx so we would have enough clothes to last us for the rest of our lives. “You Boys are too busy to shop so I’m the personal shopper. And I never pay full price. I wait until the Snow Birds leave the desert and everything is marked down. Never pay full price for anything in life, Boys. Never pay full price!”
The other suitcase, with her clothes, was lost by the airlines.
Mama Rodrigue had impeccable taste and had dressed countless men of our size all over Southern California. You see, we donated most of what she bought for us to homeless shelters and the Aids Services Foundation since no two men could possibly wear all the clothing she had bought over the years, not even in ten lifetimes. She loved to shop, yes, but mostly she lived for bargains. She had worked hard for her money, so many long hard years in her Basque Bakeries and then all those years as a hairdresser in Palm Springs. “I never pay full retail price for anything,” she always repeated proudly. When she “retired” to Palm Springs in her mid-50’s, she had promptly enrolled in Beauty School and then opened “Dee’s Ambiance Beauty Salon,” which she closed up when she passed birthday number 77. I remember that conversation very well.
“Aaron, tell Beau I’m retiring from the Beauty business.”
We both just looked at her. We had always thought she would drop dead someday, like a workhorse who kept going right up to the end. Imagined she would just fall over while she was cutting or curling someone’s thinning hair. Or fitting them for a wig.
“Why, Ma? What happened?”
“Beau Honey, for Goodness sake, I started working when I was 15, now I’m 77, it’s enough, give me a break. I was combing out Louise Bono’s hair, I told you about Louise? And her wooden leg fell off, ker-plunk, scared me to death, what a racket. So here I am, 77, down on the floor of “Ambiance Beauty Salon” trying to fasten up Lulu Bono’s wooden leg and I says to myself, Dee you’re too old for this, time to step aside, let a younger woman take over and welcome to it. Anyways, I want to enjoy my retirement but I can tell you one thing, no bridge clubs and lunches with the ladies every Wednesday. Had enough of those old ladies. Nobody’s happy, always complaining. Jane Mary for one is practically driving me meshugganeh, ‘I’m going blind Dee, blind, blind!’ Finally I says, For God’ sake, Jane Mary, stop carrying on, nobody wants to hear it. Anyways, you’ll be dead before you go blind so stop worrying. See? Nothing to worry about! What a kvetsh. Everybody thinks nobody has a problem except them. So I gave her a new hair color, she looks ten years younger, looks only 100, ha! But it’s enough, I’m closing the door. Retirement time.”
And she did.
Now here she was in Whatuwhiwhi. “Nobody told me it’s the middle of winter in New Zealand, it’s July! What a world! Who could believe it? Wonderful, huh?”
And I couldn’t believe her phone conversation with the airlines about her lost bag.
“No, honey, I can’t come get it, you’ll have to send it up here to me, we’re hours away from Auckland. My sons are too busy to drive all over the country for an old woman’s suitcase. And you’ll have to speak up and talk slow, please, I don’t follow your accent. Don’t get me wrong, I like it, it’s cute, I just can’t understand you, who could? No, I didn’t put my name on my suitcase. Sorry, I’m not used to traveling alone, my personal assistant got hired away from me by Madonna, can you believe it?
“Anything inside that will help you recognize it’s my own brown suitcase? Sure, I got two blond wigs and a pound of worms. What? Worms! Worms! For fishing. Plastic worms for fishing. My sons moved to the Far North, everybody fishes up here. Did you know Zane Grey moved to the Bay of Islands and built himself a house up here, right out on one of the islands. He was really into deep-sea fishing. I read all about New Zealand when my sons said they were gonna move here. His name was Pearl, Oy! Pearl Zane Grey! No wonder he dropped his first name. What kind of parent would name their boy Pearl? And how could he write all those wild cowboy westerns with that name? Pearl Grey.”
So here she was in Whatuwhiwhi now, with one suitcase full of new men’s clothing for Beau and me, no change of clothing for her, her own suitcase was lost, no clothes, no hearing aid, and no insulin for her diabetes.
The next day, we headed to the nearest town of any size, Kaitaia, New Zealand’s northernmost town, about half an hour’s drive away, in order to go to The Kiwi Ladies’ Clothing Shop and to see a doctor. Dee needed some clothes until her suitcase was found by the airline. And she needed needles and insulin for her diabetes.
I made an appointment for Dee and also for Beau and me. Neither Beau nor I was ill but we wanted to have a family physician in our new country and I also needed to get my prescription for my daily 10 mg of a simple medication that I take, a statin, like so many other folk, for slightly elevated cholesterol. Which my body cranks out in spite of a near-perfect diet and lots of vigorous exercise.
A blood test was required to confirm the necessity of a medicine I had been taking in the States for years. Just red tape, the good Doc said so we decided to take care of all three of us with one visit. A week later, my blood test results were ready and the three of us went off to Kaitaia again to get my prescription from the doctor.
Doctor Stearns took me into his office and asked me to take a seat. He brought my file up on the computer.
“Aaron. Do you know that you have leukemia?”
My world stopped.
“No. I didn’t know that.”
Beau was waiting outside in the car with his mother when I came out. He was reading The Mists Over Lancashire and Dee was calmly watching him. She was rarely calm. When Beau was growing up, his Mum’s nickname had been “Hurricane Dee.” Energetic, a force of nature.
I opened the driver’s door and got in.
“This book is too much, Dr. Aaron Allbright,” said Beau. “Should we get some lunch? Or do you want to go home and I’ll cook us all a Little Basque Dough Boy Bakery and Café special. Plat du jour. Avec moi comme dessert.”
Dee hardly spoke any French anymore, not since she left New Bedford so long ago.
“Dessert? I’ll make dessert,” she said. “One of my specialties. Maybe I’ll open a Little Basque Dough Boy Bakery and Café in What-a wee-wee. Boy, what a name for a town! Who would name a town like that, who would? Just like Pearl Zane Grey. Pearl Zane Grey from What-a-wee-wee. What’s wrong with people anyway? I’ll make dessert.”
I smiled at her. “You already have, honey.”
•••
After Dee went to bed that night, I told Beau. Neither of us knew anything about the disease. But we both thought “Do you know you have leukemia?” meant “Do you know you are going to die in a few weeks?”
We still refer to that first year in New Zealand as 1595.
When we finally turned off the lights that long night, I stroked our blind little Kanji, who always sleeps on the pillow between our heads so he won’t fall out of bed in the night. He started purring like a Big Mac 18-wheeler.
I said to Beau, “For God’s sake, Jane Mary, I’ll be dead before I go blind so stop worrying. See? Nothing to worry about—”
Of course, we decided not to tell Dee. It would worry her to death. And New Zealand was her last big trip.
We decided not to tell anyone. It became the big secret.
End of Chapter 4
Wait for the next chapter on Substack or buy the whole book on Amazon
Aaron Allbright’s novel in five parts will be published on Substack.
Before too long!
In a Desert or a City
BOOK I
‘PRINCE CARTIER’ or HOW I LEARNED TO LOVE BEING GAY WITH MY SAUDI PRINCE AND TO START WORRYING
BOOK II
MONSIEUR LE PRINCE, PARIS
BOOK III
THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS
BOOK IV
TYROMANCY AND LUCIFER
BOOK V
WHY WAIT FOR THE LIGHT?