How to Be Second Best

by Jessica Dettmann

  ‘Darling, Daddy got sick because the blood couldn’t get through to his heart for a little while, that’s all. Not because he was scared. That’s just an expression, and I won’t say it any more.’

  ‘Can we come home, Mumma? I miss you.’

  ‘Yes, absolutely. I’m just going to visit Daddy to see how he’s feeling today, and then you can come home. I love you. Can you please give Tim the phone now?’

  Tim is guarded when I get him on the line. He’s never great on the phone. I manage to ascertain that yes, he had a good sleep, yes, he’s ready to come home, and no, there’s nothing wrong. I can tell I’m not in his good books, which after almost a week away is fair enough. He perks up at the end of the conversation, to tell me Philip taught him to play solitaire at Grandad’s house.

  ‘It’s like Uno, Mum, but better in a way because you don’t have to wait for someone to play with you. I won a lot of games. You should get Philip to teach you too. Or maybe I could.’

  ‘I’d love that,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll talk to you later, after I’ve seen your dad, okay?’

  ‘Okay, bye!’ He hangs up before I can ask to speak to my father again, but now I’m in the hospital car park anyway, so I away put my phone and go inside.

  * * *

  The intensive care unit does smell of disinfectant, as it rightly should. It’s reassuring. It also has a hint of chocolate, but that’s because I walk in just in time to catch the end of ‘Happy Birthday’, as a nurse pretends to blow out the unlit candles on his cake and his colleagues all cheer. It seems out of place in a ward where life hangs in the balance, but I suppose birthdays are birthdays, and if you have a job and a birthday you get a cake and a song. Besides, most of the patients here are unconscious. The nurses aren’t going to wake anyone up with their singing.

  Troy is in the second bed on the right. Helen is sitting beside him, her back to me. Her head is bowed and she’s holding his hand in hers. For a moment I pause. I wish I could turn around and walk out. I don’t want to know what’s going to happen next.

  But I steel myself and go over. Helen hears my approach and turns around. She looks horrendous. Well, horrendous for Helen. There are dark circles under her eyes, her face is pale, and her hair is limp, but on her it looks waifish and endearing. I, on the other hand, briefly caught sight of myself in a mirror in the lift and look like I’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards.

  Still, I look better than Troy. I feel a jolt of horror when I stare down at him. He’s no longer grey like a dead man, but he’s as white as a sheet and has so many tubes and drains and drips and primary coloured monitor cords coming off him that he looks like a child has scribbled on a picture of Troy in anger.

  Helen smiles. ‘Hey,’ she says. ‘Good timing. They’ve just reduced the sedation a little while ago, so if he’s going to wake up it might happen soon.’

  ‘Shall I wait with you?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes, please,’ she says.

  We sit in silence for a while, listening to the sounds of the ward around us, and the steady beeps of Troy’s heart monitor.

  Then Helen speaks. ‘I haven’t called Lola,’ she says. ‘I’m too scared to talk to her on the phone in case I lose it. I know I have to keep it together for her, but I don’t think I can right now.’ Her voice is shaky.

  ‘I think that’s all right,’ I tell her. ‘They’re all together. They’re with Dad and they all love him. He’s taking them to Bunnings this morning. And he’s been in touch with your parents and they’re all going to have coffee afterwards, at the cafe near the park with the fence around it. Dad’s got everything sorted. Honestly, Helen, don’t worry about Lola.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘I never thought I’d say this, but I’m lucky to have you, and your dad. It’s pretty weird, to think our parents are hanging out together.’

  ‘It’s not the weirdest thing about our family.’

  ‘No,’ she agrees. ‘You’re right. I couldn’t have imagined I’d end up in a . . . situation like this. It’s not what you picture for your family, is it? Stepchildren and exes and ex-step-grandparents.’

  ‘At least there are names for those things for you,’ I tell her. ‘What on earth are your parents to me? My children’s sister’s grandparents? We’ll have to come up with something catchier.’

  Helen laughs, and I join her, and so it’s a moment or two before we realise Troy’s eyes are open and he’s looking utterly confused. Apart from the fact that he’s waking from an induced coma after a heart attack, it’s the first time he would ever have seen Helen and me enjoying each other’s company. He probably thinks he’s dead.

  ‘Oh, you’re back,’ I say, surprised.

  ‘Darling, thank God,’ says Helen and she falls upon him with kisses.

  ‘What am I doing here?’ he asks.

  ‘Kale poisoning,’ I say with a straight face, before Helen shushes me.

  ‘Darling,’ she says seriously to Troy. ‘You’ve had a little episode with your heart. But you’re going to be all right.’

  ‘My heart?’

  ‘You had a heart attack.’

  ‘A heart attack?’

  He’s already annoying me, repeating everything Helen says. My internal sigh of exasperation must be slightly external, because Helen shoots me a look of disapproval.

  ‘Sweetie, the doctor says it’s totally normal that you might have some memory loss about what happened.’

  ‘What did happen?’

  ‘You collapsed at the end of the Fun Run. Your heart stopped, but only very briefly. The ambulance guys got it started again. They brought you here and fixed the blockage in your heart, and then they kept you asleep for a bit, to rest you.’

  ‘Fuck. I don’t remember that. I sort of remember going to the run. Did I finish the race?’

  ‘You came last,’ I say.

  ‘Emma.’ Helen’s warning me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Troy, rather pathetically. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Apology accepted,’ I say at the same time as Helen says, ‘Don’t you dare apologise, you didn’t do it on purpose!’

  Helen gives me a look that makes it very clear it is time for me to go. But I’m not quite ready.

  ‘Troy,’ I say, ‘who is Dr Lee?’

  He sighs and closes his eyes. ‘My cardiologist.’

  ‘Why did you already have a cardiologist?’

  ‘Because I haven’t been feeling great for a few months. I didn’t want to worry either of you, so I didn’t say.’

  Something comes back to me. ‘Is that where you were when you missed parent–teacher night?’

  He nods.

  ‘So why did you let me think you were seeing a therapist?’

  ‘I was embarrassed. I sell juice. I sell healthy lifestyles. How’s having a dicky ticker going to look to people?’

  ‘Oh my God, you’re such an—’

  Helen cuts me off. ‘Emma, don’t you have some calls to make?’

  ‘Fine,’ I tell them. ‘I’ll go let people know you’re back from the brink. I’m glad you’re not dead, Troy,’ I say, and I realise, as I give him a little pat on the hand, that I probably mean it.

  * * *

  When I step out of the lift in the hospital lobby, Philip is standing there, waiting for me.

  Because of course he is. My heart leaps to see this person I didn’t really know a week ago and who now seems to pop up like a genie at the most opportune moments.

  He’s partially obscured by the gigantic arrangement of tropical flowers and foliage he’s holding, but he spots me at once and smiles.

  ‘Hello,’ he says.

  ‘Hello,’ I say back.

  We just stand there looking at each other, and smiling. Eventually it becomes awkward, but we don’t stop smiling and staring, and finally it becomes hilarious.

  When I stop laughing, we sit down on a mauve couch, with the flowers on the coffee table in front of us. It’s like we’re hiding in a little jungle. I tell him that Troy’s s
till alive and probably no more brain deficient than he was before the heart attack. He’s had a lucky escape.

  ‘But they don’t allow flowers in intensive care,’ I add. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘These are not for your ex-husband,’ he tells me. ‘They’re for you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘They are beautiful, and they are by far the biggest bunch of flowers I’ve ever been given.’

  ‘Well, what is it they say? “Go big or go home?” And I didn’t really want to go home, so I went big.’

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to be in the Solomon Islands?’ I ask him.

  ‘I am, but the team can manage very well without me, and I thought I’d see if there was anything I could do to help before I leave.’

  ‘You’re very kind,’ I say. I feel a bit overwhelmed. ‘I don’t know what you can do though.’

  ‘May I take you out to dinner, some time?’

  ‘Philip,’ I say, ‘my life is a mess. All those people back at the running race? They’re my messy horror show of a life. It’s all kids and ex-people and step-people and grandparents and people I was involved with and shouldn’t have been, and school, and this tiny little suburb where you can’t sneeze without everyone knowing about it. And then there’s me. I’m a disaster. I’ve been sacked from half of my life, looking after my ex-husband’s kid, because I was such an interfering know-it-all. I’ve probably buggered up my career by trying to tell Wanda what to write and how to write it. I act like I know what’s best for everyone, but I really don’t. I don’t even know what’s best for me. I don’t think you want to get mixed up in this. And you don’t live here, which is awesome for you, but how would that work if we . . . you know, started something?’

  ‘Everyone’s life is a mess, Emma,’ Philip says. ‘Lives aren’t tidy. I’m older than you, which is something you kindly didn’t include when telling me all the reasons we shouldn’t, as you put it “start something”. I’ve seen a lot of messes and they all work out in the end, in some way. Eventually it all dries and you can scrape it up and start again. All we can do is try to enjoy the parts we can and survive the rest so we can eventually look back and make some sort of sense of it.’

  ‘I don’t know how I’ll ever make sense of my life,’ I tell him. ‘I don’t know how to be a mother and an ex-wife and a stepmother and all the other people I have to be. I don’t understand this story.’

  ‘You will,’ he says. ‘You’re an editor. You know how to see the shape in stories. But no one can really understand something while they’re in it. You can’t see all the parts. You can’t get perspective and you don’t have 360-degree vision, metaphorically speaking. There are bits of the story you can’t see right now. I think you’ll see the shape in this part of yours once you get a bit further along, when you get where you’re going.’

  ‘How will I know when I get where I’m going?’ I ask him.

  ‘That, I don’t know,’ he admits. ‘Maybe there will be a big sign that tells you.’

  ‘Philip,’ I say, ‘if I go out for dinner with you, can we talk about something other than my life in storytelling metaphors?’

  He grins. ‘At least for the entrée,’ he says.

  ‘Right then,’ I tell him. ‘It’s a deal.’

  ‘Where were you going?’ he asks. ‘When I ambushed you at the lift?’

  ‘Oh, home. Well, wherever the kids are, actually. Bunnings, maybe, or the park. I need to see them.’

  ‘If there’s nothing I can do right now to help, I should head to the airport,’ he says. ‘But I’ll be back in Sydney in a week. Can we have dinner then?’

  ‘Yes, Philip, we can.’

  Together we walk out to the street. There are three taxis waiting. Philip opens the back door to the first one for me.

  He hands me the jungle flowers, and then he kisses me. Or he tries to. But there’s about two hundred dollars’ worth of greenery crushed between us, and a bird of paradise is stabbing my breast. In a movie I’d let them fall to the floor and wrap my arms around Philip, but these clearly cost more than the flowers for my whole wedding, and I’m not letting them go. So our kiss is awkward and his beard is scratchy but I’m so happy.

  I get in the cab and roll down the window.

  ‘I’ll see you soon,’ he says. ‘And oh, wait, I have one more thing to give you.’

  He passes a package to me. It’s flat, square and wrapped in brown paper. ‘It’s a book. It’s for Freya, and sort of also for you. Freya told me about her tiger book yesterday, and the situation with the ending. And I remembered this book, and I thought it might be a good one for her to have. Only she might be miffed because it’s called — well, I’ll let you read it. Anyway, I’m going to miss my flight unless I hop to it, so goodbye, Emma. For now.’

  With that he kisses me again, very quickly, through the window, leaps into the cab behind and he’s gone.

  ‘Where’re we heading, love?’ asks the cabbie.

  ‘Um, the Bunnings at Shorewood, please,’ I say.

  ‘No worries. Those flowers are quite . . . big, aren’t they?’

  ‘They are. They are very big.’

  I unwrap the package. It’s a paperback children’s book called Timothy, An Extraordinary Tiger. It looks old. I check the imprint page: 1979. It’s older than me. It was also originally written in German. How in the name of God did Philip source an almost surely out-of-print English translation of an obscure children’s book about a tiger, on a Sunday morning? He is a curious marvel.

  At the risk of making myself car sick, I start to read.

  It’s the story of a toy tiger, Timothy, who a careless child leaves in the garden at the home of a hunter called Mr Bang Bang. That night a tigress — who Mr Bang Bang wants to kill — comes to the fence. Timothy cries like a cub, and although she thinks he is a strange little tiger, the tigress takes him away with her. Mr Bang Bang gives chase, hunting them through the forest, and Timothy and the tigress learn from each other as they try to evade capture.

  In the end, the tigress takes Timothy home to her cubs, as their new brother. The book ends when they set off to find themselves a new, safer, bigger lair.

  It’s a good ending — hopeful and warm. Freya will like it.

  And so as I sit in a taxi that smells ever so slightly of sick, with half the Amazon’s worth of flowers sticking into me, and an old book in my hand, I drive away from Troy and Helen, and off to find the rest of my strange-shaped family, who are eating barbecued sausages and buying wood to build more spice racks.

  Acknowledgements

  My deepest thanks and most heartfelt gratitude are due to the following people:

  My husband, Drew Truslove, who has stoically endured the writing of this book and who somehow understands that while I’m a lot of hard work when I’m writing, I’m even more when I’m not. Thank you for balancing so deftly the running of your business and our home, your own art, the raising of our children, the management of the bloody cats, and the care and feeding of an anxious would-be novelist.

  My parents, Carol and Nicholas Dettmann — who made me watch Fawlty Towers and The Young Ones with them when all my friends were watching It’s a Knockout — and my brothers, Sam and Pete. If there are any lines in this book that make anyone laugh, they probably had their origins in something one of these people said.

  My children, April and Teddy. Before you I wasn’t a writer and now I am. Let’s face it, you’re so wonderful that all I want to do now is show off and try to impress you.

  My exceptional editorial team at HarperCollins: Catherine Milne, Anna Valdinger, Katherine Hassett, Belinda Yuille, Dianne Blacklock and Shannon Kelly. Being the editor working on a book about an editor by an editor must be like being trapped in a mirrored change room wallpapered with overworked metaphors. I take my hat off to you all.

  Designer Hazel Lam, for going above and beyond to get my book this incredible cover. Hazel iced and decorated the cake herself. I fear she has no idea how to be second best.

 
Sarah Barrett, for making sure the book got seen, and the HarperCollins sales team for convincing booksellers to take a chance on a new author.

  James Kellow, for employing all the people I’ve just mentioned.

  Frank Moorhouse and Ben Elton, for endless support, encouragement and friendship over many years. People who say you should never meet your heroes obviously have the wrong heroes.

  Natalie Yamey, who for more than a decade has made counselling sessions feel like storytelling practice.

  Jo Butler, for her many years of friendship, which blurred into becoming my agent and selling this book when it wasn’t even a book yet. Thanks also to Jeanne Ryckmans, and all at the Cameron Creswell Agency.

  They say you should keep your friends close and your editors closer. It’s easier if they’re one and the same. Kate O’Donnell, Ellie Parker, Jessica Tory and Ariela Bard gave their sound editorial advice and friendship, and Amy Kersey and Amy Maiden have been generous with their love, support, wisdom and stern talkings-to when required.

  Rachael Cordina, John Witzig and Chris Effeney for helping me understand cardiology, the geography of southeastern Queensland, and how fun runs work.

  Finally, the small but dedicated band of readers of my blog, Life With Gusto. Their support, kindness, encouragement and appreciation have been so important to me over the last seven years.

  About the Author

  JESSICA DETTMANN is a Sydney-based writer, editor and performer. She is graduate of the University of Sydney and has studied at the Bread Loaf School of English in Vermont and at Lincoln College, Oxford. She once appeared as the City of Sydney Christmas Angel and sat on top of the Town Hall in a gown that reached the street.

  After a decade working as an editor for Random House Australia and HarperCollins she began writing after having two children. Her skills at working with authors transferred well to parenting, but she never sufficiently appreciated how rarely her authors had wiped their noses on her jeans. She now thanks them for this.