Excerpt from the novel Universal Drive

When Margaret thought about that next period when Bob was trying to make the plan for his business work, she got a pang of unbearable, inescapable guilt. The kind of guilt that triggers a sharp jolt of anxiety, making your breath go short and your gut contract, adrenaline coursing through your body uselessly because it was too late to do anything, too late for damage control. Just too late. She’d helplessly watched Bob fall off the precipice he’d built himself.

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What had she even been doing while Bob was working on his plan with Ray? She’d been fully absorbed with her own work, that’s what.

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So much was changing so fast.

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Her feedback was required every moment of every day. That and talking to the kids most days. Mandy every day, or second day, and Nat video calling in when he was able to, or an email just to let her know he was still alive when he could, with big stretches in-between when they were in the field.

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Around that time, most people she was dealing with – the community nursing patients in the district as well as the community nurses she was in charge of – were also in danger of losing their homes, and everyone was scrabbling to make something out of the ruins of their decades of expectations of houses, vehicles, jobs, and shopping, none of which was working the way they’d come to feel entitled to.

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Yes, right when Bob had been busy with this new deal with Ray, Margaret had also been in the middle of kicking off the community meals program with the community gardeners.

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There had been – if she wasn’t completely deluding herself and remembered properly – some kind of feeling of mutual support with Bob. He was selling the depot, getting his fleet split up, while she was getting the community meals going. She hadn’t been able to do a lot of the kind of listening she’d done when he first told her the idea. All that energy was going into her projects. She’d told herself he could take care of it. She thought Bob was on top of it. That he was doing his thing and getting on with the plan. He was certainly making out that way.

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She had just been so incredibly busy. Always a breath away from being completely overwhelmed. She was getting, God, what was it? Like, 16 different groups and organisations to collaborate, as well as getting the community nursing team canvassing support on top of their already overloaded schedules. Heroes, they were, her team. Real warriors. She’d had to persevere, for them, for the clients, for the council, for the neighbourhood, for all the communities she was dealing with. Now she felt like everybody could go to hell for all she cared. This was her day to think whatever she wanted. But back then, she was one hundred percent in the thick of things.

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Maybe she lost sight of what was happening with Bob. Maybe she’d convinced herself he was okay because she hadn’t had the time and energy to support him more.

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At work, she’d been lucky enough to be able to trade favours in exchange for council and hospital resources, she had a unique position to really make things happen. It had been so exciting. And it worked. Damnit. People got fed. Fuck “business”; those were results. People got fed, they got together, which also helped mental health and improved people’s participation, not just with the clients and their carers – with everybody. It was all those kinds of programs that laid the groundwork for the Rebuilders. And just look at what that movement has done. Amazing. She got a flush and shudder of satisfaction thinking about it. And love. There was so much love. She was so lucky with Lisa and her lot at Ranui community gardens, but you know, that was the same all over, at all of the local kitchens and gardens, so much love. She looked to her left where the decorative gate was coming up to the community gardens. It was too early for even the most avid gardener, the morning sun making the different coloured pieces of wood in a slap-dash decorative archway over the entrance gate, wide enough to get a trailer through.

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She remembered how that night at the feast at Ranui community gardens had been such a high point for her, back then, when Bob was still working on the business with Ray. And afterwards, when she’d got back home after being so elated, Bob had been so disappointing, and she’d thought so badly of him.

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Those beautiful lights at the gardens that evening. They were so lucky it hadn’t rained. Lisa had organised a feast at the gardens to celebrate the program really kicking off. All those little lights of different shades of orange flickering flames to white fairy lights, to the bluish glow of the LED solar lamps beginning to glow as the sun went down. The damp smell of wet earth, the mixed aroma of herbs, flowers and vegetables. The trestle tables set out, the team’s couriers coming back in after having pedalled their way around the district, the delicious smell of the food simmering in big pots.

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That indescribable atmosphere of joy when Margaret took a moment, the garden around them darkening but still alive with some sounds of insects, the dampening evening air warded off by the candles and lamps on the tables and the strings of lights under the gathering shed roof. Bliss.

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She’d just gotten herself a plate of food, and she stood there, enjoying the love and that sound of people chatting in low voices so that others could hear themselves talk too, so naturally. She’d just been pausing, taking it all in, when Lisa tapped her glass with her spoon or fork or whatever, ready to make a speech and people hushed.

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“I’d just like to take this moment, to give thanks to all of us, to this big chosen family, and all of those who have recently joined us,” Lisa looked around the gathering. The whites of her eyes shining from her dimly lit brown face in the flickering light. Mutters of agreement and gratitude and thanks sounded over the tables.

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“And of course, well, you all know how much we love you,” she said, smiling, a little bit cheekily.  Arda, John, and Tangi, sitting near her, nodded and smiled and looked around at the group.

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“...but I’d like to take the chance to give special thanks to the woman who initiated this delivery program and whose passion and dedication has really sparked off the community meals program across the whole district, with so many wonderful, unexpected benefits for all of us. Here’s to you, Margaret Arnolds.”

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Suddenly, everyone was turning around in their seats to look at her, where she was standing with her plate of food.

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“…who has been the best kind of angel not just for us, but for Henderson and for everywhere else her great energy vibrates.”

More murmurs of agreement from the tables, people standing, serving themselves food had turned around. They were all looking at her and agreeing.

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Lisa raised her glass, “Here’s to you, Margaret Arnolds!”

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Everyone raised their cups and glasses or forks or whatever, just their voices, and Margaret felt like she might faint; she was caught in a ball of good feeling all directed towards her.

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Oh, it had been like the best kind of dream you could imagine.

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After all that hard work, after seeing her clients suffer neglect and malnutrition, after seeing so many able-bodied people not know what to do with themselves, that night had felt like a million stars were shining into the universe forever.

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Later that night, when she got home, she’d told Bob about it, still glowing with the good feeling. He had been inert. Sort of stony. Almost sullen. Maybe even anger behind his eyes. Something, anyway. He was robotic. She rabbited on about it, regardless, while they got ready for bed. He became like an increasingly dark cloud, but made an effort to make listening sounds, non-committal noises, as she talked, like “oh” and “aha” and “I see.” But he wasn’t engaging. He didn’t ask any questions or give any feedback, he didn’t even make eye contact at first, maybe just once, briefly, and there was something in his eyes, she couldn’t work out what it was, something withdrawn.

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The toast at Ranui gardens with Lisa and her crew wasn’t exactly the first time she’d gotten recognition for her work. No, she was getting positive feedback all the time. Just seeing people get helped, that was recognition too, immense satisfaction, but also people said good stuff all the time. But that night had been a marker for her. She’d worked so hard for that program. But also, all the projects. The whole lot. All of the things she’d got going on in-kind benefits and favours, without money, without titles, without a flashy car.  

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She was pretty sure Bob didn’t realize what was going on. Had Bob even had any idea of what that was like? That whole different thing, that reward far greater than money, the knowledge that you were a part of a bigger thing, a good thing, many good things, many bigger things. She started to suspect it was not only that he didn’t get it, generally really, but especially that night, that it was just that he couldn’t handle her getting a bit of attention from everyone else but him.

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She remembered her Mum, Anthea, saying something years before: “He’ll never let you take the limelight,” she’d predicted in a little poisonous remark back when Margaret had first started dating Bob. Anthea had just met Bob, they’d gotten on great, Bob had been perfectly charming, so had her Mum. They were both charming, smart people. Anthea had been quite sick that time. Becoming more disabled from Parkinson’s but on the way to surviving cancer.

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After Margaret had seen Bob out at the door that night, where they had shared a long, passionate kiss, she came back all befuddled with pheromones, and her mum had delivered her judgement, looking up at her from the couch, swaying slightly, her facial muscles straining against the Parkinson’s disease for a serious facial expression and her eyes intense with that very direct message she clearly urgently wanted to convey, “He’ll never let you take the limelight.”

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Oh Anthea. Her poor Mum. It was impossible to tell what was very clever manipulation – because she’d been frighteningly good at that – and what was genuine care for Margaret’s wellbeing. Or both. Or whether she had just been jealous of Margaret’s attention to Bob.

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Bob did enjoy the limelight in some ways. She had never found there was anything wrong with that. She loved it, in fact. The joker he could be, how he loved to tell a story. How his hands would put on a little show with his gestures. So funny. He could be a real performer.

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Back when they’d just started dating, Margaret had watched him win the national excavation operator championships.

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He’d popped the cork off a champagne bottle with a bucket attachment on the 12-tonne excavator, and the crowd had gone wild. From where she was standing on the sidelines, she could see his face through the glass of the excavator cabin, his eyes wildly open, his mouth an open smile, ecstatic. He’d done an excavator dance around the field. Bob and the machine moved as one, the enormous vehicle with its mechanical arm just an extension of his body. The dance was like a crazed mechanical dinosaur doing a disco. It had been absolutely magnificent.

That was his day. He’d kept the trophy by the side of his bed for ages before it finally got moved to the dresser in the dining room, next to her collection of milk jugs shaped like cows.

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When he’d been announced as the winner, she’d been literally jumping up and down cheering.

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Now why couldn’t he have shown a bit of joy at her success after that night at the community gardens? Why? Everyone else seemed to be able to be happy for her. With her. About her.

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Everybody, except apparently Bob. Just an “aha” when she told him about the euphoria she’d felt. Everyone else was starting to love what was going on in the neighbourhood. It was the first time they had really felt like something was working and growing despite the otherwise miserable outlook. That positive energy spread and had resonance. There was so much goodwill, so much entrepreneurial spirit, and so many people willing to pitch in.

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Except Bob. That whole period, he maintained he was busy with the deal with Ray, even though, when she thought about it, it must have been clear something was going wrong, but he acted like he used to, just getting his head down and getting on with it.

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His robotic reactions, well, she’d just written them off as bad eggs.

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But he hadn’t told her Ray was not available. He hadn’t told her he wasn’t getting the deals he had hoped locally. She’d just wanted him to be happy for her.

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And maybe that was a convenient excuse, although God forbid, she’d never wanted to leave him in the lurch.

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For a moment, she wondered if she could have put all of that organisational energy into Bob’s business and made his plan work. Even without Ray, somehow. Bob had always loved it when she’d been a part of his team.

But she really hadn’t, she really didn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t have gone back to helping him with the business – like she had done when the kids were little, before she’d even done the community nursing qualification.

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She had done a fine job with Bob’s business back in the day. Just basic organisational stuff really. Not tidying, she definitely wasn’t tidy, Bob was much tidier than she was, always. But she was great at organising. At seeing what was important and getting some structure into things. And once she had, it was time to move on and do her community nursing qualification. That had been the right decision at the time too, even though Bob hadn’t liked it. He’d felt betrayed and abandoned when she stopped helping out at the depot. But honestly, she’d never liked admin work; it was only ever a necessary evil to get things done, unless she gamed it with cute stationary post-its and things, satisfying her stationary fetish. Sitting in that sweaty, dirty depot with a bunch of stinking men doing bookkeeping and a bit of marketing? – neither of which she was qualified for but did competently anyway – she would have died of frustration and boredom if she’d stayed on. Plus, it had been better for Bob and the business because he found Linda who came from a construction family and had the health and safety qualifications the business needed, and the business had thrived.

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She remembered that day she’d told him she was going to do her community nursing training instead. The hurt in his eyes had almost killed her on the spot. He’d felt so abandoned. But he wasn’t at all. She was firm because she just knew it was the best thing.

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Yeah, nah, that choice had definitely been the right one – after all, Bob’s business flourished and all through that period that the kids were in primary school, when she’d got her community nursing certificate down and got a job straight away at outreach at the local hospital. Clearly, all good decisions.

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But when she’d got the promotion at the hospital, right when the global changes were being felt everywhere, really hard, she’d been made head of community nursing in Henderson. That wasn’t that long before the Ray debacle, but Bob had been grumpy then at her promotion too. He had actually entertained the idea she might go back to helping out at the business. He basically just needed free labour, and he’d assumed she was in danger of losing her job like everyone else. Like poor Jenny and, oh, so many of her colleagues, that had been devastating. But instead, she got a promotion. Which was a bit of a curse, since she had to deal with impossible staff shortages. That had been the beginning of that period, she started doing everything differently. Insanely exhausting, but exhilarating.

Yes, Bob had been a bit of a dick about that promotion too, actually.

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“Don’t go biting off more than you can chew,” he’d said. And “They’re only using you because they’re cutting costs and they think they can pay you less.”

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She’d agreed that the hospital Admin wanted to benefit from the amazing networks she’d built up with her church stuff and the volunteer networks, even her tramping group. Why wouldn’t they? And what was wrong with that? Better than not making use of them.

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Margaret wondered whether his grumpy, sullen response to her moving on and to her promotion had placed little shards in her heart.

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Maybe.

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But he’d kind of caught it in the following weeks after the promotion with nice comments like, “Gotta look after the boss lady” and setting the table for breakfast.

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Really? Was that even something to be grateful for?

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Instead of doing the community meals program, Margaret could, theoretically, have helped out a bit with admin and acquisitions at the earth-moving business, if she’d let her own job slide. But where would that have got them? She would have let down her whole hardworking team, all the people in their care, the whole neighbourhood, just to help out Bob with a questionable and risky business plan that was outside of her expertise. And there was no way they could have done without her income. Plus, she loved her job. She was really, really, good at it.

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Anna thought that all men were retarded. And that women spend most of the time protecting them from it. Making them feel capable and genius so they’ll get out there and bring home the bacon because they didn’t have nearly as many hurdles as women still did.  But Margaret didn’t think all men were retarded. Not at all. Well, not from the source material anyway, just that society had made them feel entitled in so many ways that weren’t appropriate anymore. That, and that they weren’t taught to look after themselves. Just to be relentless working machines right through to mid-life crises, till disappointing retirements where they felt useless and got grumpy and died earlier, as Anna had surmised. You could only ever take what Anna said with a pinch of salt, but there was always a grain of truth in it.

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So, Margaret had also felt entitled. And damn well right too. She had done it. She had turned the community nursing department into a community development department, including getting people fed, and a little later on, getting a lot of people housed too. She had worked miracles. She had, along with a lot of other great people too, it’s true. But somewhere, inside, she must have felt angry at Bob for not being more positive about her job. And her incredible achievements. Her leadership. Really? Was that really it?

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But while Bob loved a bit of attention, he wasn’t constantly seeking it. True, he could go off into a long boring story sometimes when he didn’t know how to ask questions to keep a conversation going. But that night, after she got her exhilarating appreciation toast at the community gardens, when she thought about it, Bob must have been in a terrible state, and he hadn’t really said much about it. He was a stoic. He could suffer like the best of them. Quietly and soldier on. And on. And on. And that night, that thing she’d seen in his eyes, she’d thought it was jealousy, but it wasn’t.

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It was desperation.

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And shame.

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He was sinking.

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He must have seen that slight anger in her eyes, for not celebrating her more, and maybe he’d thought she was disappointed in him, for not being man enough to make his business work. He’d made the right sounds, said reasonably okay things somehow, she couldn’t remember what.

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Maybe she just hadn’t known what else to do except let him pretend he was running a tight ship when it was clear he was driving a broken heavy freighter in a storm. He wanted to be the guy she’d married. The funny guy doing the dance in the excavator at the national championships.

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But now she realised, maybe what was going on behind those eyes as he’d looked at her, before she’d rabbited on demonstratively about how well things were going. As she talked, he’d listened. Then once they were in bed, he’d looked at her, listening, with that thing she hadn’t understood behind his eyes, and once she’d petered out, getting increasingly resentful at him for not being more joyful. He’d looked at her, till she was finished, diligently, even though he must have been twisting with all kinds of negative emotions at his flailing, dying business, his feeling of helplessness at how to engage, how to do things, whatever he was feeling that she hadn’t taken the time to draw out of him like she used to. After she ran out of steam and felt miffed and pulled the blankets up to her chin, he’d eventually turned over, and she hadn’t snuggled up to him. She felt he should have done what she’d done when he’d had a success. But he must have felt desperate. And so alone.