I

The morning you get up early to fly home to Auckland, you come downstairs and find your mother already up, in the kitchen, bottling plums. This is what you see: a steamy yellowed kitchen; a bucket of red plums; your mother in her old blue dress. (You count five fresh bandaids on her arms.)

You want to stamp your foot and say, But you're too old to climb trees picking plums at the crack of dawn. You want to say. Your husband is dead. And your children have all grown up and flown away.

Stop, you want to say, Stop. Please stop.

You sigh. Morning Ma, you say. It is enough. Your mother says, I can't bear the thought of it all going to waste.

You put on the kettle to make yourself a cup of tea while your mother disappears into the storeroom. The storeroom is full of half-tins of paint, old newspapers, jars of nails and things that might come in handy one day. She emerges with a cardboard box marked fragile: handle with care, the orange sticker half peeling off. In this box she puts a layer of newspaper and then a dozen jars of plums that have been cooling by the sink. Your mother folds the flaps of the box, in-out in-out in-out, tucking her children in bed.

These are for you, your mother says. To take back. She holds the box out.

You know you will have to carry this on board the plane, juggle the box with your hand luggage, find a safe place for it during the flight. You take the box from your mother. It is heavier than you thought, and warm.

Thank you, you say.

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2

She is waiting by the carousel, counting. A lone canvas bag is going slowly round the track beside her while she stands, the black suitcase at her feet, leather bag over her shoulder. And the cardboard box in her arms. She shifts the weight of the box around from one arm to the other but she never puts it down. From where she is standing she can't see a clock so she counts. The unclaimed bag is on its eleventh solo journey by the time he turns up.

Fuckin’ traffic, he says. She tries to kiss him but the box is in the way. He looks at the box and she explains. Bottled plums.

He rolls his eyes. Christ, he says, your mother … He picks up the suitcase and heads to the exit.

As she runs to catch up, out of the air-cooled interior to the outside heat, she adjusts the box, putting a hand underneath to make sure the bottom doesn't fall out. She pictures the jars falling and exploding on the footpath, imagines glass and blood and flesh all over the tarmac.

Your mother, he says. Christ.

Your mother, she thinks, believes fruit grows in tins.

She kills me, your mother, her boyfriend says as he unlocks the car. Hasn't she ever heard of Watties?

The car is full of band equipment. Guitar cases. Amps and assorted cables lie in the back seat but there is room, just, to squeeze the suitcase behind the passenger seat. She puts the shoulder bag at her feet. The box of plums sits on her lap.

What about the money? he says.

He has parked the car in the sun. The vinyl of the seats burns her legs and when she closes the door, she can't breathe. She winds the window halfway down but the air outside is warm and sticky and blows her hair in her eyes.

Well? he says and blasts the horn at a car pulling out in front of him. Every time he brakes suddenly like that, the box lurches into her stomach.

She said she'd lend it to us and we don't have to pay it back. But, she says, but …

A gift? Cool, he says. He slows down and stops at the corner, indicates page 64 left, waves a girl across the road in front of him.

No, she thinks. No, a loan we don't have to pay back is not a gift. It's quite a different transaction altogether.

But it is too hot to explain so she unwinds the window down as far as it goes, rests her head against the edge and looks at the people they're driving past. A couple kissing. A mother pushing a stroller. Two kids fighting. There is always a cost, she thinks.

Hey, he says. He reaches out and squeezes the bit of her knee sticking out from under the box.

Hey, he says when she turns to him. We're rich. He smiles at her and blows a kiss.

The heat has given her a headache, and her stomach hurts. But a cool breeze is flowing into the car and she can breathe again.

Yeah, she says. We're rich.

3

Afterwards, I have a shower and quietly unpack my clothes from the suitcase. I go into the kitchen and fill the empty kitchen shelves with the bottles of plums. Something has been ringed with red biro in the newspaper lining the box. I take the paper and an opened jar of plums over to the table. The newspaper is yesterday's. The ad ringed is for a house for sale near where my mother lives. This is ‘suitable for a young family’. The property boasts ‘established fruit trees’. It is about half the price of the inner-city apartment we are planning to buy. But it is in Christ church and we are not. My boyfriend can't stand flatness.

I must ring my mother to let her know I got home safely; she will worry if I don't and I will worry about her worrying.

I must phone before my boyfriend wakes up because he will require full attention. He will have to be fed. We will have to go out spending money that isn't ours.

I must ring my mother. But not now. Right now I just want to sit at my kitchen table and eat my bittersweet plums. Now I just want to sit here alone and plan the future, tinker tailor soldier sailor, counting the stones.