The Helpline

by Katherine Collette

  ‘Did you have anything to do with next door getting shut down?’

  Don put his hand to his mouth, like a fence being hastily erected.

  ‘Me? Do what?’

  His response suggested he knew it was happening. This wasn’t necessary an indication of guilt, but I had hoped the news would surprise him. If Don was surprised then it seemed more plausible this was all a big coincidence.

  ‘What could I have done?’ said Don. ‘I’m not the mayor of the city.’

  ‘But you could have told her what I said.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About how it’s…rundown.’

  ‘Did we talk?’ said Don. ‘You and I?’

  ‘Yes, here.’

  ‘In this office?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I wasn’t hurt. Anyone could forget a casual meeting; it didn’t mean anything.

  ‘What do you think I told her?’ said Don.

  ‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter, forget about it.’

  ‘You think I told the mayor something you said. Something private.’

  ‘No, I—’

  ‘It’s okay. I don’t blame you. But I would have hoped you of all people would give me a second chance.’ Don hung his head, the way he did every time Alan was mentioned.

  I told Don he didn’t need a second chance. He was still on his first chance so far as I was concerned. Don said, ‘Thanks, Germaine,’ but the way he said it was sad and disbelieving.

  Poor Don, poor Alan Cosgrove. I understood so completely how he felt. His insides had holes in them, deep voids that were just…empty.

  But I could fill them.

  I had the letter advising the senior citizens of the outcome of the safety audit and the centre’s pending closure in the glovebox of the car. With all that had happened, I hadn’t had a chance to put it in the outgoing mail. Given how close I was and the necessity for cutting costs I thought maybe I should hand-deliver it.

  I should have thought again. The timing was terrible.

  As I walked to the front door, meaning to slip it underneath, the door opened. And—what were the chances?—there was Gladys, with Betsy right behind her. When they saw it was me they were stepping over themselves with excitement.

  ‘Goodness me. How about that? We were just talking about you,’ said Gladys.

  I should have spent the fifty cents on postage. The best way to deliver bad news is not in person: when Sharon dies I hope to learn about it in the obituaries.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d be here,’ I admitted.

  ‘We’ve been working out how to spend the money we get allocated. You said to prioritise and that’s what we’ve been doing,’ said Betsy.

  The space available in my neck to enable breathing seemed to shrink. ‘There is some…news,’ I said in a tight voice.

  The worst part was how understanding they were. ‘It’s not your fault,’ said Gladys a total of nine times, all the while dabbing her eyes. Nine is a lot of times to say the same thing.

  Around the fifth time, it stops being reassuring.

  Suffice to say I wanted to get out of there. That’s why, when Betsy said, ‘James is still worried about his pension payment,’ an issue that was entirely unrelated, I agreed to help.

  Betsy went inside to get his forms. Gladys continued to snort into a tissue.

  When Betsy reappeared she was holding a thick wad of sheets. There must have been fifty pages. ‘Here they are,’ she said, giving them to me. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind calling?’

  I took them all and backed away. ‘Yeah, yeah, fine. Whatever.’

  30

  I was glad I offered to help James. It gave me something to do in the morning, something that wasn’t related to the closure of the seniors centre.

  I spread his forms across my desk and dialled the number for the Department of Social Services. The voice at the other end said, Press 1 for family payments…Press 2 for income reporting.

  It was quite calming actually, having someone tell me what to do. I didn’t have to think, I just had to follow their instructions. I pushed 3 for pension payments, 2 for outstanding payments, and then 4 to speak to an operator. Easy.

  Only, no operator. Just hold music, and the occasional voice that said: Did you know that for certain requests (not yours) you can log on to our website?

  I was on hold for a long time. Four hours in total, and it would have been longer, only the mayor came to see me.

  She was standing in the doorway, holding a small plant in a gold pot. Her expression was very serious—she must have known how unproductive I was being.

  I put the phone down, expecting her to say, ‘Germaine, we need to discuss your performance.’ That would have been fair.

  But instead, she said, ‘How are you feeling?’

  I wished she hadn’t.

  There was a churning mass of unfamiliar emotions in my stomach and I was trying to keep it there using the timehonoured technique of pretending it didn’t exist. I didn’t want the mayor to know about it.

  I was confused. Confusion, I had discovered, was not a simple, singular entity; it had multiple facets. It was possible for a person to be confused about a lot of things simultaneously.

  Fortunately, before I could answer, detailing the ways, the mayor reframed her enquiry. ‘You didn’t come in on Friday.’

  No, I’d called in sick. What had I told Francine? A migraine. I pressed a palm to my forehead and coughed. ‘I’m much better. Almost fully recovered.’

  ‘Good.’ She came in and sat opposite me. ‘I was thinking about you all weekend, Germaine. I kept going over our conversation. I hope you’re okay. You know it’s not your fault we have to shut the centre down, don’t you?’

  I said yes. It was, after all, what I had been telling myself, what I had told myself a hundred times.

  ‘And you know it’s not Don’s fault either.’

  No, it wasn’t Don’s fault, although he was the primary beneficiary. I wondered if the mayor benefited in some way, then I felt guilty for wondering that.

  There were things I didn’t know, of course. Of these things I didn’t know, only some of them were things I wanted to know; there were others I had no interest in learning about (as shown in figure 5).

  The mayor seemed to sense my uncertainty. She put the plant on the desk and sat down. ‘What’s the problem, Germaine?’

  ‘It’s just…Is Don rich now?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then how can he afford…?’ This information was supposed to sit in the lower left-hand quadrant of figure 5, but it seemed to be shifting upwards.

  The mayor listened, as she always did.

  ‘He’s not rich now but maybe his situation will improve. You know what it’s like. Things change, nothing’s set in stone. Maybe, perhaps, in the future...When he has a little more land he might be able to expand the golf club’s facilities.’

  ‘Like he could have a coffee cart?’

  ‘Yeah, a coffee cart. Or’—she was very casual about this, as though she was just tossing it out there—‘some kind of gaming machine?’

  Gaming machines. I blinked. That was controversial. I knew how Sharon would react to that. She’d be pretty upset; a lot of people would.

  ‘But I thought—’

  ‘There’s a lot of wheeling and dealing in politics,’ said the mayor in a way that discouraged further enquiry. Then she put her hand around the gold plant-pot and pushed it forward. A trail of dirt led across the desk directly to me. ‘This is for you,’ she said.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘It’s a Chinese money plant. It’s meant to bring you luck but you have to put it in the right spot. I’ve had one for years.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I wasn’t sure if Chinese money plants helped accrue income; I wasn’t sure if this was information I wanted to know, either (see also figure 5).

  ‘My pleasure. I thought you needed a little pat on the back. You’re doing a great job, Germaine. It’s not easy, and you can’t p
lease everyone. But don’t worry. It’ll blow over.’

  That was true. Time would pass. The seniors centre, homework club, all of it would be a distant memory one day—if everything went according to her plan.

  ‘Hey.’ She brightened now. ‘What are you doing the last weekend in November? You know the mayoral ball’s on at the golf club. Christos can’t come and I thought maybe you could be my plus one. You’d have to sit on my table…And Don’s.’

  ‘Great.’ It was great. It was.

  What was wrong with me?

  ‘I’m going to make the announcement about the closure of the centre that night. I know it’s sooner than we thought but time is of the essence. I need to get things moving before...’ She glanced behind her. ‘Just between you and me, Germaine, I might be moving on. Or up might be a better way of putting it. Looks like I might just have the numbers this year.’

  She explained that while the council had been a ‘wonderful place to work’ and she’d ‘loved being mayor’, she’d achieved all she was able to. There were bigger things, better things on the horizon. Her voice was a whisper: State Government.

  She was leaving me. I picked up the plant and held it tight.

  ‘It’s where I can make the biggest difference. Mind you, it won’t be easy. It’s not what you know, is it? Unfortunately. But lucky for me, and thanks to Don, the “who” seem to be on my side.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ I said.

  ‘Here’s the best bit: where I’m going, I’ll need a reliable advisor.’ She waited for my reaction.

  ‘I’ll need you,’ she added, when I failed to respond.

  If this had happened a few months ago when I first started, I would have been pleased. And a bit relieved—finally. About time figure 1 (Career Trajectory) came to fruition. But a lot had happened since then and while I felt some of these emotions they were tempered by others.

  The mayor patted the desk, like it was on obedient dog. ‘You’re with us now.’

  So we were tethered. Which was fine so long as we were headed in an upward direction but what if there was an unexpected vertex? What if one of them fell?

  When the mayor was gone I dialled the department again. The hold music was soothing and as long as I was listening to it I didn’t have to do anything else.

  I’d only been waiting ten minutes when a call came through on the other line. I picked it up but didn’t speak into the receiver. I was keeping open the possibility of hanging up.

  The voice at the end was unexpected: male, and very young. ‘Germaine?’ said the voice. ‘It’s Charlie.’

  Charlie? ‘What’s wrong?’ I said. He sounded serious, like something bad had happened. What else could go wrong?

  ‘I’m calling about,’ he hesitated. ‘It’s just…Well. We didn’t get today’s sudoku…Celia was worried.’

  ‘I wasn’t worried. I hate those stupid things,’ said Celia, in the background.

  I was glad to hear her muffled voice, even if she wasn’t talking to me. Even if she was saying she hated sudokus.

  The sudokus. I’d sent a total of twenty-two, one per day for twenty-two days and then nothing the past three. In all that had been happening I’d forgotten.

  I never knew if she was getting them, there’d been no indication, and the audit report had taken up so much time that I hadn’t been to homework club and hadn’t seen Charlie. I liked to think she’d been doing them, or if she hadn’t she’d seen the envelope and knew that I was thinking of her. Maybe she even imagined I was sorry.

  ‘Can you put her on?’ I asked Charlie.

  Charlie said to Celia, ‘Germaine wants to speak to you,’ but Celia didn’t want to speak to me, not even when I told Charlie how important it was. She refused to get on the phone—she seemed to be in a recriminatory mood, which I supposed was a step up from listless.

  But I had to tell her. ‘Say she’s not the only one that’s going to miss the place…They’re shutting the centre down, Charlie.’

  There was a kind of echo as this was conveyed, then: ‘What the hell?’ and Celia shouting in my ear at a volume that suggested she was worried her voice might not carry. But it was carrying: I could hear her loud and clear.

  ‘There have been some unexpected developments since you left,’ I said.

  ‘Unexpected developments? What have you done?’

  ‘It wasn’t me. I didn’t do anything.’

  Celia did a slow breath in, the kind that seemed to be for my benefit. I hate breaths like that, shows of patience. She kept doing it while I told her what had happened, how hard I’d worked and how things had changed with no prior warning.

  When I was finished she did a last patient-breath and said, ‘Well? What are you planning to do about it?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Why would I try to do something about it? It was what’s called a ‘foregone conclusion’. That’s when the end is a fixed point and there’s no way of changing it.

  She didn’t like that. She handed the phone back to Charlie.

  ‘You okay, Charlie?’ I said.

  ‘I’m okay.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Ask me if I’m okay.’

  ‘Are you okay, Germaine?’

  ‘Not really.’

  I had twenty-four hours of respite and then the phone rang. This time it was Gladys.

  ‘Can you come to the club tomorrow? We’re holding an emergency committee meeting to work out what to do.’

  I coiled the phone cord around my finger.

  ‘Germaine?’ she said, after a bit.

  ‘It’s too late, Gladys. There’s nothing we can do.’

  ‘Celia thinks there is.’

  ‘Celia? She’s not on the committee.’

  ‘It’s the committee plus her. Plus you, if you come. How’s nine am?’

  I pulled the phone cord so it squeezed my finger. It was like a noose, getting tighter.

  This was the problem with getting close to people: they started to rely on you. If you did something nice you got a reputation; they expected you’d do other nice things. And I didn’t want to. The feeling was…It was fear. I was afraid of what might happen.

  But then Gladys said, ‘Come on, Germaine,’ and I felt myself waver.

  I liked to think I was self-sufficient. I was an island with pristine waters and enough edible plants and animals that I didn’t have to import supplies. I mean, it was nice when boats came to visit but it would ruin everything if I turned into a major tourist destination.

  And I had to be pragmatic. I had bills to pay and a career to think of.

  ‘I can’t, Gladys.’

  ‘Okay.’ One word, but so full of disappointment. ‘Sorry, Germaine…I shouldn’t have asked.’

  Click.

  The phone went dead.

  31

  I continued on my unproductive downward spiral. My mood was like a vortex, feeding on its own negative energy. The only time I felt a prick of relief was when I saw Jack in the empty tearoom. And then he opened his mouth.

  ‘Guess what?’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Marie sent me something she thought you might be interested in.’

  ‘Marie Curie? What is it?’

  ‘You’ll see. Wait here, I’ll go get it.’

  ‘No, don’t—’

  But he was gone, out the door and down the stairs, and quite slow in coming back, which didn’t help my disposition.

  On his return, he handed me a document, about twenty pages. I glanced at the top sheet but the print was small and hard to read.

  ‘Remember how we talked about heat loss that time?’ said Jack. ‘And you sent me an article, breaking it down by body part?’ He had a bemused expression on his face, as though this was a ‘joke’ I was going to enjoy.

  ‘Yes…’

  ‘Well, I showed Marie and she was very sceptical. She said she’d never heard of the Journal for Scientific Medical Studies of Australian Sciences. And she pointed out the research wasn’t
peer reviewed.’

  ‘Really? Did she?’ My disdain for Marie multiplied.

  ‘So she went looking for herself and found this. If you look on page seven’—Jack pointed at the document—‘it says, thirty-four per cent of temperature regulation is attributable to legs.’ He started to laugh but only for a moment. Then he stopped.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing.’

  Jack exhibited a dawning realisation that this hadn’t gone how he’d expected. ‘Don’t you want to read it? What’s the matter? Come on, Germaine. It’s a joke.’

  ‘Yes, it’s very funny. Bet you both laughed about it for ages.’

  ‘No. We didn’t.’ His head fell to one side. ‘Germaine.’

  ‘Ha-ha-ha-ha.’ I was very forceful in my amusement, so he could see what a sense of humour I had, how light-hearted I was. Then I wrung out the paper, like it was a tea towel, or an arm getting a so-called ‘Chinese burn’, and I threw it to him.

  Or at him, whichever.

  ±

  The best thing about coming home was I didn’t have to talk to anyone. I was going to lie on the couch in complete silence, doing nothing. I parked the car on the street and was dawdling along the footpath when I ran into Jin-Jin.

  ‘Have you heard?’ she said. ‘They want to shut the senior citizens centre down.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve heard. I was the first to know.’

  ‘It’s so sad. That’s how I’ve met all my friends…Except for you. It’s lucky we live so close, isn’t it? We can easily keep in touch.’

  Jin-Jin and I walked towards the entrance of our apartment block and then, as though things weren’t bad enough already, there was Sharon, loitering by the front door.

  She was wearing a lurid purple dress and holding a Tupperware container. If I’d known she was coming I would have worked late. I had half a mind to go back to the office right then, but I didn’t get a chance; she’d seen me.

  ‘Surprise,’ she said.

  I stepped away from Jin-Jin in what might have been a seamless transfer of irritations had Jin-Jin not put her oar in. ‘Are you Germaine’s mum? You look exactly like her. I’m her neighbour, Jin-Jin.’

  Sharon said, ‘The girl from number 22? You do exist.’