by Kris Webb
My gaze travelled down further to Jack. Without meaning to, I found myself searching his face for a likeness to Anita. He had olive skin, dark eyes and light brown hair that curled slightly at the ends. If I hadn’t known better I’d have bet his father was Italian. A little belly pushed out his grubby yellow T-shirt and he trudged along in jeans and tiny sneakers, showing no interest in his surroundings. Alongside Anita he probably would have looked like her son, but there was no feature that seemed to be exactly hers. Strangely I felt relieved.
Jack rubbed the knuckles of one hand into his eye and I saw a tiny dimple on his chubby hand. He looked lost and utterly confused and his vulnerability took my breath away.
He was barely more than a baby, certainly not old enough to understand what had happened. All he knew was that, suddenly, his mummy wasn’t there anymore.
Could there be anything more terrible than to suddenly be taken away from the person who had always provided you with love and protection – always been there ready with a cuddle to make things seem all right again?
Up until that moment, I’d never understood what it meant to feel your heart breaking but as I gazed at my best friend’s baby, I felt my chest contract, weighed down by sadness. My lungs felt incapable of taking in air and I had a terrible sensation that if I didn’t move quickly, I’d never breathe again.
Grabbing Patrick’s arm like a lifeline, I dodged several clusters of people and stepped into Robert and Jack’s path.
When Robert saw me he managed a weary smile. ‘Hello Julia.’
The trip had obviously not been an easy one.
Robert had his own business in London, selling wine from a number of premium Australian vineyards. As a single and childless thirty-six year old, he had a large disposable income and I’d never seen him anything but immaculately dressed. But now his shirt and trousers, which had no doubt looked the cutting edge of fashion twenty-four hours ago, were crushed and covered in a variety of stains. Behind his rimless glasses, his eyes were bloodshot.
I couldn’t think of anything to say and hugged him instead. Pulling back, I looked at the little boy by his side.
Jack was standing staring up at Patrick and me. I couldn’t begin to imagine how he must be feeling.
His mother had disappeared from his life three days ago. He’d been shunted to the other side of the world with an uncle he knew only vaguely and he was about to be left with a woman he’d never seen before.
I dropped into a crouch in front of him. ‘Hi Jack. I’m Julia. How are you?’ I asked quietly.
Jack tightened his grip on the toy he was holding and turned away from me, burying his face in Robert’s legs.
I tried again.
‘Now what’s that you’ve got there?’ I asked, pointing at the toy clutched in his arms.
Jack held a large brown plastic frog out towards me with a pride that almost broke my heart.
‘That’s Harold, apparently,’ Robert supplied.
Feeling like the Horse Whisperer, I shuffled forward on the pretext of taking a closer look at Harold.
‘He’s . . .’ I struggled for a word to describe the very large and very ugly toy. ‘Excellent,’ I finished lamely.
Suddenly the creature emitted a loud croak and I lurched backwards in fright, landing on the floor.
Why couldn’t Anita have given her son a nice cuddly stuffed dog like a normal mother, I wondered as I stood and dusted off my trousers. It was clear that now was not the time to present the bear I’d hastily thrust at Patrick when Jack had appeared.
Patrick and Robert nodded at each other awkwardly.
‘Sorry, Robert. This is my brother Patrick,’ I said, and they shook hands briefly.
‘You must both be tired,’ I continued, desperate to get this excruciating scene over with.
Patrick took the trolley that contained a suitcase and folded-up stroller. Robert was obviously travelling light and his luggage seemed to consist only of a leather backpack he had slung across one shoulder.
Torn between feelings of sadness and abject terror of what lay ahead, I followed them to the car.
TWO
As we approached my silver European car I cursed, once again, the impulse that had made me buy it new, for a ridiculous sum, two years ago. At the time I had managed to convince myself that it would be reliable and last me for years and that I wasn’t just buying it because it looked cool. Instead, it had spent more time in the mechanic’s than on the road, as one thing after another went wrong. To add insult to injury, the parts all had to be shipped at great cost and low speed from the other side of the world.
Thankfully the first year’s worth of repairs had been covered by the warranty. But now I was on my own and I was in constant fear of what disaster my temperamental set of wheels was going to throw at me next.
I’d once read about a man in China who’d had similar problems with his car. He had drawn attention to his plight by towing it behind an ox through the centre of Beijing and having several men set to it with sledgehammers. It was only with regret that I’d given up on the idea of a similar performance in the Queen Street Mall, oxen being pretty hard to come by.
My sole consolation, that the car looked cool and classy, was wearing very thin. As Robert tried to cram Jack into the back seat, I realised that the disadvantages of a two-door car were about to take on a whole new dimension.
Finally Robert managed to deposit Jack into the car seat I’d bought the day before. He wrestled with the harness for a few minutes before withdrawing his head and looking over his shoulder at Patrick and me, hovering uselessly behind him.
‘Do either of you have any idea how this works?’ he asked wearily.
Patrick shook his head vehemently.
‘The woman in the shop did explain it to me,’ I admitted. ‘Although I wasn’t paying much attention – I figured it would be pretty obvious.’
‘Right, your turn then.’ Robert straightened and gestured towards the back seat.
As I leaned over Jack, he started screaming at the top of his lungs. The noise felt as though it could burst my eardrums and it was almost impossible to concentrate. I fumbled uselessly with the two straps, unable to click them together in the way that had seemed so easy when the shop assistant had demonstrated it.
Admitting defeat, I stood up. ‘What do we do now?’ I asked hopelessly, wondering whether it would be criminal to drive home without strapping him in.
A woman pushing a child in a stroller walked past and unlocked a car several metres away.
After a moment’s hesitation, I followed her. ‘Excuse me,’ I began.
She looked up and smiled.
‘This is going to sound really strange. But none of us has any idea how to do up the baby seat.’ I gestured towards the car. ‘Would you mind giving us a hand?’
The woman looked over at a stained and exhausted-looking Robert, a terrified-looking Patrick, who had positioned himself on the far side of the car, and then back to me.
‘Sure,’ she replied, obviously having decided that we all looked too incompetent to be dangerous.
Pushing her stroller over, she leaned into the car and spoke soothingly to Jack who stopped crying instantly. She clicked the belt into place with one easy movement.
‘Thank you so much,’ I gushed.
‘No problem at all,’ she answered. Turning to go, she stopped and looked back around. ‘Is there anything else I can do?’
‘No. We’ll be fine, thanks,’ I lied.
With a doubtful look she headed back to her car.
By some miracle we finally managed to fit the three of us, plus the luggage and the stroller, into my car. This was despite the fact that it was designed to carry about one and a half people. As the smallest, I’d squeezed into the back seat with Jack, who had resumed crying as soon as the helpful woman had left. Patrick slid into the driver’s seat and turned the key in the ignition.
I could deal with this, I told myself, pulling a plastic shopping bag off the
floor. I’d spent a hellish hour in Baby World the day before. For some reason I couldn’t bring myself to tell the truth about Jack to the shop assistant. Instead, I’d made up some crazy story about my nephew arriving and my sister-in-law having forgotten to pack anything but his clothes. The woman obviously thought I was mad but was more than willing to help me fill my trolley.
Nearly a thousand dollars later, I walked out with what I was assured were ‘the basics’.
Before I’d left home this morning, I’d filled a bag with a random selection of my purchases. Opening it now, the first things I saw were an empty drink cup, a carton of cupboard safety locks and a set of swimming floaties (I hadn’t been paying much attention by the end). Digging further I found a small cardboard book with pictures of babies and a rattle on it.
I offered this hopefully to Jack. My spirits rose when he took it, but fell when he flung it to the floor. The next three toys met the same fate. I abandoned my useless bag of purchases and tried talking to him. Unable even to hear my voice I gave up and spent the remainder of the trip looking miserably at him, feeling utterly useless.
After what felt like an eternity but was only about fifteen minutes, Patrick pulled up outside the house. Fortunately unbuckling the car seat was relatively easy. I hesitated, unsure whether to pick Jack up. A glance ascertained that Robert and Patrick were fully occupied unwedging the luggage from my tiny boot. ‘Right,’ I muttered under my breath.
I tentatively pulled Jack’s arms out of the straps and held him, still crying, to my chest as I scrambled out of the car and hurried towards my house.
The Queenslander, which I’d bought a year earlier, was set up high on a hill in New Farm about two kilometres from the CBD. While it looked quite impressive from the road, it had definitely seen better days and I lived in fear that it was going to take notes from my car and start costing me a lot of money.
The main selling point for me had been the enormous deck, which looked over a small overgrown backyard. The combined kitchen and dining room ran off the deck with the living room, two bedrooms, a study and bathroom looking as though they had been afterthoughts.
Although he was six years younger than me, Patrick and I had always got along well and, to help me pay the crippling mortgage, he’d moved into the bedroom downstairs.
Despite the fact that I now subscribed to three different home-renovating magazines and had magnificent plans, I hadn’t managed to do more than paint one side of my bedroom door fire-engine red.
Patrick struggled briefly with the front gate and then our small convoy headed up the long flight of stairs. I carried a still-crying and struggling Jack, while Robert and Patrick brought Jack’s gear.
I twisted the key in the lock and pushed the front door open with my shoulder. Jack finally stopped crying. With relief I set him down and he headed off at great speed towards the steps that led down to Patrick’s bedroom.
In panic I ran after him and deposited him back in the middle of the room, only to see him tear off towards a pot plant, somehow managing to shove a handful of dirt into his mouth before I caught up with him. After frantically scraping out the largest clumps, I looked around at Patrick and Robert, who stood in the doorway watching wordlessly.
‘What do I do now?’ I asked, trying to be calm. ‘Is dirt dangerous?’
Robert looked embarrassed. ‘Well, he ate about half a pot plant in Rome airport and seems to have survived,’ he admitted.
Slightly reassured, I released Jack. Anticipating his sprint-star acceleration this time, I caught him just before he pulled over the large terracotta pot next to the front door.
‘What on earth do I do with him?’ I asked Robert and Patrick as I held a wriggling Jack in my arms.
I was met with blank looks. It was fast becoming clear that Robert and Patrick knew even less about children than I did, a situation I hadn’t thought possible.
Patrick’s face lit up.
‘What about feeding him?’ he exclaimed, obviously impressed by his flash of brilliance.
At this stage any ideas were welcome and I nodded vehemently. ‘Great idea – food. When did he last eat, Robert?’
Again Robert looked embarrassed. ‘Well . . . It depends what you call eating . . .’ His voice trailed off. ‘Once we got to Singapore I remembered the lollipops I’d thrown in my bag before we left and . . . Well, he ate a few of them on the Brisbane leg and didn’t seem to want anything else.’
‘How many lollipops?’ I asked suspiciously.
‘Ah, a few,’ he replied, not meeting my eyes.
I raised my eyebrows and waited.
‘All right, probably around ten,’ he admitted.
‘Right . . .’ I said slowly. Any vague hope I’d had that Robert would be able to help me look after Jack vaporised as I realised he’d had his nephew chain-sucking lollipops for the last eight hours.
Looking around for somewhere to put Jack, I discovered that somehow my excited shop assistant had omitted a high-chair from my ‘essential’ purchases.
I spotted the stroller, which was stacked next to the suitcases.
‘Patrick, could you open that?’ I asked as I headed for the kitchen, still holding Jack.
Yesterday, credit card still shuddering from the Baby World experience, I’d gone to the supermarket. With no clue about what an eighteen month old would eat, I’d been hit by a burst of inspiration and bought anything I could see with cartoon characters on the packaging. Consequently, two shelves in my fridge were crammed with miniature yoghurts, cheese sticks and other things I couldn’t even identify.
Grabbing a yoghurt and a spoon, I stepped back into the living room to see Patrick struggling with the as yet unopened stroller.
‘The damn thing won’t undo,’ he muttered through gritted teeth as he tried to pull it apart with brute force.
‘Robert, you must have opened this, surely,’ I pleaded.
‘No, I couldn’t get it open either. I just stuck Jack on the top of the luggage trolley.’
Thrusting Jack at Robert I grabbed the stroller. As I did, I was reminded of a strategy a married friend of mine had once let slip after too many drinks. Swearing me to secrecy, he had confided that the approach many a groom takes to his wedding arrangements is to seize with great enthusiasm a difficult job and then proceed to make a total and absolute hash of it. The result, my friend grinned, was that the bride-to-be immediately removed any form of responsibility from the groom.
If Patrick and Robert were using a similar strategy, it was clearly very successful.
After struggling for a couple more minutes, I managed to accidentally depress and twist a latch at the same time as undoing a clip, and the stroller sprung open. I made a mental note never to fold it up again.
Banging it down purposefully on the floor, I took Jack back from Robert and deposited him in the seat. After pulling the top off the yoghurt, I handed it to Jack and placed a spoon in his free hand. He looked at the carton with great interest and then inverted it, pouring the entire contents into his lap.
‘Right,’ I pronounced heavily.
Ten minutes later I had opened and discarded just about every packet and tin I had bought and Jack still hadn’t eaten a thing.
In desperation, I looked at Patrick and Robert. ‘What do I do now?’
They both shrugged.
‘Maybe he’s not hungry,’ Patrick volunteered.
‘Surely if he hasn’t eaten in nearly twenty-four hours he needs something in his stomach?’
Robert cleared his throat. ‘Um, one of the airline hostesses took a shine to Jack and made him some fairy bread. You know, bread with hundreds and thousands? He was pretty happy with that.’
‘Yeah, well it’s handy to know, but my pantry doesn’t quite stretch to hundreds and thousands. I haven’t even seen any since I was a kid. I wouldn’t have thought there’d be a huge demand for them on international flights either.’
‘She told me it was her secret remedy for stroppy kids. She gave me
the bottle. I think she figured I needed all the help I could get.’
I looked at Jack and decided today was not the day to worry about his dietary intake. ‘Sounds good to me.’
I picked up the loaf of bread sitting on the bench.
‘Julia!’
‘What?’ I looked over at Patrick.
‘You cannot make multigrain fairy bread. It has to be white.’
Robert nodded his agreement as he rifled in his shoulder bag and pulled out a small bottle. ‘It was definitely white on the plane.’
‘Okay.’ I held up my hands in defeat.
I reached for the loaf of white bread, which, together with frozen pies and sugar-laden breakfast cereal, seemed to constitute Patrick’s sole grocery needs.
Jack accepted the brightly coloured piece of bread, smiled enthusiastically and wolfed down two slices. I handed him a third for good measure. Hunger pangs obviously stilled, he began to lick the tiny balls off the bread.
‘All right, I think I might put him to bed.’ I figured that everyone was tired when they came off a long-haul flight but that didn’t make me any less nervous at the prospect of trying to get him to sleep.
‘Why don’t you head off?’ I suggested to Patrick. ‘Won’t you be late for work?’ Somehow it seemed better to have as few witnesses to my incompetence as possible.
After Patrick had headed downstairs, Robert cleared his throat.
‘Julia. There are a couple of things we need to talk about.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ I looked at him, not knowing where to start.
‘Did Anita ever mention Jack’s father to you?’
I bit my lip hard, trying not to burst into tears again. In the last two days I had cried more than I had in the rest of my life. Now that Jack was here I had to try to get it together.
‘Um.’ I tried to force the shakiness from my voice. ‘His name was Thomas Driscoll. He broke her heart.’
‘Do you know how they met? Or if he knows about Jack?’
I nodded. ‘He was a teacher at her school, out from England for a twelve-month stint. He had separated from his wife and he and Anita were together for a few months. But then his wife came over and asked for another chance. They had two kids – girls, I think. Didn’t Anita ever tell you any of this?’