Features

The car swings heavily around the corners. I can feel its weight with every turn, migrating up through the steering wheel, a sense of connection that’s lost in newer, smoother cars. Each curve feels like a lift settling to the ground, but pulled sideways, towards the mountain on one side, or the ocean on the other, calm and flat today, bright with a light that seems to come as much from the water as the sun. The trip takes longer this way, but you miss this if you go by the highway; you arrive without knowing where you are.

There’s a small red charm hanging from the rear-view mirror. I watch it swing back and forth in time with the car, until I’m driving without thinking. When the first houses appear it’s a surprise, and all at once I’m home. Low, brown and white weatherboard houses, cactus gardens and mown verges. The place looks nice, like a picture of itself. In a way it’s like a cow in a field, too, just there, chewing and uncurious. My mother would disagree though. She thinks the film has brought the town together, distinguished from New Plymouth proper by more than just rubbish collection and school zoning, now there’s a shining star in Oakura. Calls home are thematic: 
    “How’s Tom?” 
    “Oh. He’s fine. We saw him this morning.” She means that in the worst, most literal way. The bay window looks out across a paddock, onto Tom Cruise’s house. “He was talking on the phone.” 
   “What? Outside, on a cell phone?” 
   “A tiny one. We couldn’t even see it. I drew the curtains.” 
   “Mmmm.” Pause. “Did you tell people, were they jealous?” 
   “Oh, maybe a little bit; it’s all anyone talks to me about. But you should see it, dearest. He comes down to get his own milk. And he’s so lovely, he tries to tip at the caf’. He gets them to make up fruit salad and takes it home. Mary said he just can’t wait for kiwifruit season.” 
   “Really.” 
   Tom came over when he first arrived and I can see him, trolling about the house like a censer. He wanted to apologise for his helicopter’s noise and since then my mother has acted about him the way some priests can get about God. Except God isn’t coming over for dinner this evening. Still, my mother acts as if she were channelling his ghost, as though he can hear us when we’re talking about him. 
   “Ma, he lives in Los Angeles.” 
   “Yes, but he’s staying in O-aw-kra, dearest. And it’s us who made him so comfortable.” There’s a subtext here, which I’m scared goes something like: it’s O-awk-ra he means when he says Nu Zeelan. I say nothing and the silence fills with the ghost of Tom. At last she says, “He loves it here.” 
   “That’s because he doesn’t have to live here,” I joke, and my mother let out a sort of quiet hiss that reminded me, for no reason I can explain, of flailing electrical cables. 
 
   * 
 
   As I walk up the path, though, I can see a difference. The wind is blowing a trace of leaves across the sky, accompanied by a faint susurrus, and it seems so cinematic that I can believe there’s a film being made nearby. The house looks almost like a set, and I remember the unpainted walls upstairs, the beams lodged against the shed to keep it from falling over. 
   Neil’s face is calm as he opens the door, which isn’t like him, but he hugs me with his usual uncertainty, like he’d taken a course in it. He asks how school’s going, and smirks when I tell him it goes. 
   My mother is sitting in the living room, staring out the window at Tom’s. She doesn’t hear me come in, and for a second I stand there, just inside the doorway, looking at Tom’s house. I haven’t seen it since he moved in and the additions have changed the way it looks – like several houses pushed together. I think there’s a gymnasium now. Looking around our living room, it seems bare, just some flowers and a family portrait to one side of the television. I slough onto the couch beside her. 
   “Hey Ma.” 
   She smiles, but her teeth don’t show, and it falls from her face. She doesn’t need to say, “He’s not coming.” 
   “Ay?” 
   “He can’t make it.” 
   I throw an arm around her and she sighs. It’s very quiet, blocks of light lie at odd angles around the room and suddenly I’m glad he’s not coming. I’ve been driving for four hours, but dinner would have disturbed the peace of all this, kicked up dust with conversation I don’t feel like making. 
   “Aw. What’d he say?” 
   “That he was sorry.” 
   “Well, it’ll be nice to hang out, just us.” 
   “No … he’s sending … his double.” 
   For a long moment my mouth moves up and down, jawing for lack of a better response. Then I’m laughing. “You’re joking? Did he think it’d be too dangerous or something?” 
   She laughs, quietly. “He’s very busy, you know. Had to fly out to the set this evening. They’re near the end of filming.” There’s a pause while she smooths her skirt. “I hear they look quite alike.” 
   More silence. I can hear Sally and Joss playing upstairs. My mother is looking out the window again and it’s just beginning to get dark. An expression I don’t recognise creeps onto her face, eyebrows crooked and lips pursed into something like a smile. She pats my leg, springs up and rushes into the kitchen, her exit echoed by the clatter of cookware. 
   I stay on the couch for a few minutes, gazing out at Tom’s house, which is still in the sun, then head upstairs to see the little two. 
   They leap up to greet me and return just as quickly to their game. Dolls and plastic figures are arranged on the floor between the beds, being narrated through their day’s strife. A poster of Tom leers down at them, a smile set like his jaw was on pistons. 
   “Are you a Samurai?” Barbie asks Action Man, leaning in. 
   “Yes,” replies Action Man, only slightly less squeakily than Barbie. “I have just come here. Where are the baddies?” 
   “They’re over there,” Barbie points at a rag doll slumped against an up-ended Tonka truck. “They won’t let us dig a swimming pool …” 
   I lie on Joss’s bed, feeling the strange weariness of driving, and flick through a book. It’s Baba Papa, a multi-coloured family of gelatinous splodges. Their house looks like a Barcelonian apartment block and every time they leave they have to change shape just to get out the door. They look like they enjoy it. 
   The sky is book-leather blue when the doorbell rings. When we get downstairs there’s a man, in black jeans and jacket, smiling with my parents in the living room. He turns away from the window as the three of us come in. He does look like Tom Cruise – high cheekbones, dark straight hair, the same hydraulic smile. But there’s something not quite the same, like a machine that’s been put back together with a few parts still lying around. 
   Introductions. I smile, and he smiles again. My parents smile and my mother pats Neil’s knee while he looks around the room as if he’s expecting someone else to come in. Before anyone else can say something, Joss asks: 
   “Are you Tom Cruises’s stunt double?” 
   “No.” 
   “What are you then?” 
   “His double.” 
   “What’s that?” 
   “It’s like a stunt double, but for scenes with no stunts.” 
   “Oh. Why?” 
   “So they can film two scenes at once, kiddo.” 
   “Why?” 
   “It’s quicker like that.” 
   As my mother ushers us up to the table, Tom’s double is still answering Joss’ questions. “Yeah guy, the shots I’m in are pretty short. They have to be, but it can get a bit ridiculous,” he chuckles. His brow is creased, but his lips curl up at the edges. “But it’s a film, ya’know? The whole thing’s a farce.” 
   The little two nod sagely. They’re fascinated by the idea that the camera can pass off this impostor as the real thing. They interrogate him steadily for as long as they’re allowed. He’s too busy answering their questions to acknowledge dinner when my mother brings it in, setting it amongst the candles, so that dinner has a slightly last supper feel about it. I’m half listening, half watching her watch him respond to the little two. 
   My mother’s gaze never leaves Tom’s double. She speaks to the little two without looking at them, staking out the limits of their curiosity with offers of more salad and salt, while Neil slides business-like coughs into the pauses. 
   “I actually trained for seminary, ya’know.” Looking at me: “Seriously, man. Only six months – I couldn’t handle the you are the few, the chosen thing. So I went to acting school, figured it was pretty much the same.” 
   A convoy of caterpillars arch across my family’s face. 
   “You’ve got the script, timing … the powers that be. All that sh … stuff, ya’know?” 
   We nod. Joss and Sally take their cue. I imagine wires connected to their chins, tugging a yes from above. Neil looks at my mother, and I wonder whether she’s offended, but there’s no sign of the broken-vase smile; it’s the real one, and the questions continue. 
   I stare up at the blotch where my mother’s Ye must be born again plaque used to hang. It always seemed like a kitsch relic, but now there’s just a discoloured outline on the wall. I think of a girl who told me, a few days ago, how proud she was that she and her friends never talked about God anymore, had passed that earnest compulsion, proud of that same outline in her life. I’m wondering why I never thought to ask my mother about where that plaque came from, or where it went, when Tom’s double catches my attention. He’s animated, almost bumping up and down in his seat. 
   “Yeah, he’s great. Consummate actor.” He laughs and small flecks of food snow the table. “I doubt his kids even know who he is.” 
   Now my mother gets excited, wearing her pie-graph face, features focused on a point between her eyes, mouth lifting but not smiling. “He’s always seemed very sincere to me.” 
   “Oh, yeah. Sorry. Don’t get me wrong. He’s sincere as anything. That’s what makes him such a great actor – he always means it.” 
   My mother’s face unclenches; Neil rumbles thoughtfully. 
   “Always means what?” Joss asks. 
   “Everything.” 
   More ‘Ohhhh’s. 
 
   * 
 
   The pause hangs in the air like a confession, straining the silence. We stare out the window, trying to avoid meeting each other’s gaze in its reflection. We all follow the same line, and there, in the slick of light that spills from his house, stands Tom. He’s got one hand to his ear, pacing back and forth, through bars of shadow, waving the other hand in a spastic greeting to the darkness. Sally and Joss giggle. 
   We watch Tom parade up and down the side of his house, swinging his arm as if raising applause and I see that his double has the same manner, expansive, made for large rooms or waving from tarmac. The sense of watching some old chiaroscuro movie is eerie; the heavy back-lighting, our faces reflected faintly in the screen. 
   Dinner is forgotten until Tom’s double mumbles “Well …” and moves to go. He thanks my mother and Neil, who barely respond, focused on the celebrity. I’m trying to watch Tom and say goodbye at the same time. I manage, “Uh, nice to …” and a wave. 
   As Tom’s double leaves, his reflection passes across the window and Tom. And suddenly, with our neighbour beside his reflection, I can see what distinguishes the two – they look and move alike, dress alike, but it’s even more obvious than that – Tom is shorter. His double has to stoop to shake Sally’s hand when she offers it, but Tom can barely see in his own windows. 
   Tom takes the phone away from his ear, looks at it. He stands there for a moment, lifts his head and stares into the night, towards us, his face in shadow – it’s hard to tell whether he can see us. Even if he does, I doubt he can tell we’re looking at him, but when he turns it’s a composed, almost self-conscious pivot. He nods to himself and stretches his arms. 
   I hear our front door close and look up from the performance. Sally is trotting away from the table. My mother and Neil are still gazing out the window, the scene playing out in their glassy eyes. Joss seems to be thinking. 
   Out the window, Tom is moving away. He scuffs something with his shoe, pauses and looks up. It’s a theatrical, catalogue-model gaze. He seems to be considering his house, as though it were a long way away. My mother lets out a long breath and Tom takes one careful step, followed by another. Somewhere there are electrical cables lying spent on the ground and, as he disappears inside, the credits begin to roll.