The Book of Emmett

by Deborah Forster

  But he’s not really in the mood today. Peter, huge eyes level with the table edge, stares ardently at the black bird. Emmett rubs his hair roughly and laughs, ‘You’ll be right mate, just stay away from bloody power lines, that’s all I’m saying.’ He hands the bird to them by order of age and each child weighs it reverently before passing it on. After they’ve all held it, the bird goes to a shelf on the olive green dresser with the square biting latches and there it perches, scanning their lives for years.

  ***

  To make up for the disappointments of work, Emmett con centrates on his Famous and Completely Original System. Its mathematical probabilities are multi-purpose and are meant to deliver winning lottery tickets and horses. It’s a broad strategy based on records of winnings which he keeps with a kind of religious fervour. Despite there being little evidence of his genius, he’s convinced.

  Some days, a row of seagulls line up on the picket fence out the front of Wolf Street, idly peering in through the venetians like bored patients in a waiting room. Somehow though, the sea gulls can be forgiven because they bring with them the good feeling that the sea knows them, even in Footscray. When one of the kids opens the gate, the birds lift lazily, hover, and then come right on back again.

  Day after day, the crooked stripes of light cleave through the wonky blinds and Emmett sits in that irradiated bedroom absorbing his smokes and his beer and sweating out sour alcoholic funk as he slaves away on his probabilities, nutting out all those numbers at the big green desk, firmly believing he’s working for his family.

  While beer is the only true constant in his life, for a man who doesn’t believe in much, God crops up a lot. When things are going well with the stats, he talks to himself. You bloody little bee-uty. God, he says, is in all things! And he smiles and chucks beer down as if he were a man standing on the edge of a cliff tossing everything he owns into the abyss. When his confidence swells his heart is a billowing red balloon rising slowly. He’ll show the rotten bastards.

  But when the figures don’t line up, the tone changes to fury and again he appeals to God. Jesus wept, a man is doing his best here and I just keep coming up against it. Why can’t you give a bloke a break? I don’t ask for much in this fucking bastard of a world, he snarls to himself and hurls his pencil down, draining the glass and glaring at the poxy little seagulls perving on him out there, thinking, a man oughta grab the bloody shotgun.

  Emmett reckons probabilities explain the laws of the universe. ‘ This is the big one,’ he tells Rob one day at a backyard barbie at Wolf Street when the boy is a bit older. ‘This is how you understand every bloody thing there is mate. Everything. This is the rule that applies to all things and let me tell you, nothing, not one paltry thing, is random.’

  Rob doesn’t say anything because he thinks everything is random, especially Emmett. He smiles and just to be polite and keep him in the good zone asks, ‘And how does it work Dad?’

  Emmett waves his hand airily, and foam from his beer slops on his faded orange Hawaiian shirt, always a summer favourite. ‘Bugger,’ he says, brushing absently at it. He’s drunk a fair whack by now and isn’t in the mood for detailed explaining. Besides, his grasp on the concept isn’t entirely finalised and he doesn’t want to risk making a total arse of himself. ‘I’ll explain it all to you one day son and that will be my legacy to you. One day, you too will understand the universe.’

  Grouse, thinks Rob. This’ll make me the only person in the whole world who understands the universe (apart from that well-known genius, Emmett Brown). But he keeps his opinions to himself and slips off to get a sausage from the barbie. He wraps the charred thing in white bread and douses it with tomato sauce and is ready to sink his teeth in when Emmett intervenes with, ‘Wouldn’t shout in a shark attack would you mate?’ and Rob looks at him blankly. ‘Dense too,’ sighs Emmett. ‘Get us one of those will you mate? Plenty of dead horse on it,’ and lowers himself into a weather-beaten deckchair propped skittishly near the house.

  Rob does so and on handing the snag over manages to spurt sauce all over Emmett’s foot which looks disturbingly naked in its thong. But Frank, snoring on the concrete, is up in a flash and obligingly licks up the sauce in under a second so real harm is averted.

  Emmett aims a mild swipe at the boy with his other foot. ‘Useless fucking idiot child,’ he mutters benignly and asks the air conversationally, ‘Why would you have them?’ And he leans back with snag in one hand and beer glass in the other and he lets the sun warm his face. Probabilities can wait.

  Emmett is firmly convinced that one day he’ll make it big with these probabilities and it’s only a matter of time. It will happen. One day he’s going to be a rich bastard, he tells himself as the amber fluid flows through his veins like a yellow river, and then he’ll be happy. He just knows it.

  9

  Nan is so small. She seems to be dissolving into the air. Still works hard though she breaks up all her jobs with little rests. Still loves a smoke and keeps her fags in her apron pocket till after she’s hung out the washing and then sits on the box in the sun savouring the work that’s behind her. Above her the washing flies like empty people.

  She makes the beds early and does a bit of washing every day plus any dishes hanging around. When all her work is done, she sits at the table with a cup of tea, her smokes and her pack of cards and plays Patience, her fag burning long in the ashtray beside her. She seldom eats but when she does, she loves bread and jam and choc wedges. Sometimes she’s still at cards when the kids get home.

  ***

  In the days of Nan, being the first one home is worth something. At ten Louisa is the same height as her grandmother and, getting home, she slides her bag into the corner and puts her arms around her. Nan smells of ironing and of Lily of the Valley talc. Her softness, her mildness is an antidote to Emmett, and Louisa thinks of her Nan as purely good. When Lou gets home she says, ‘Hello little darl, what’s cooking today?’ and before long she’ll be dealing Louisa a hand after she’s put the kettle on, saying, ‘I saved you a tic-toc, last in the packet, and while Louisa is licking the biscuit, she’ll think that if he would only stay away, life could be like this. Could be perfect.

  ***

  Sharon James’ old man runs Jim’s Butcher Shop on Willy Road, a blue-and-white striped shop with a sawdust floor and more than the occasional low-flying blowfly making passes at the meat. Sharon, who’s in Louisa’s class at school, has curly blonde hair and plenty of dough because, according to Nan, there’s one certainty in life, and this is that publicans and butchers are always rich. Louisa knows Nan says this to soothe her because Louisa wildly envies Sharon’s blonde hair and her popularity, even if the girl does look like a pig. Something about the nose. When she mentions the snout to Nan, they laugh with a hilarious shame until Nan says, ‘Well, my darlin’ girl, we should not be passing remarks, Louie, the poor wee lassie can’t help her schnoz,’ and they’re off again.

  Louisa’s the only girl not invited to the party at the James’s house and though she hates herself for it, she follows the group home instead of taking her usual route through the lanes. At Field Street, Mrs James, a large version of her daughter, nose and all, is ushering the girls into the house and when she sees Louisa straggling behind, she calls, ‘Sweetheart, don’t dawdle, the others have all gone in,’ and gestures towards the front door. ‘Hello, Mrs James,’ Louisa says glumly, coming to a halt at the picket fence.

  At the questioning she replies, ‘Um. Well, I wasn’t invited to the party.’ Though Louisa is transfixed by the possibility of going inside, shame surges through her like a tidal wave. Just as she guessed, the woman takes pity on her and will have none of her leaving. ‘But what about the party? We’ve got lots of lovely food. Oh, how awful you weren’t invited, there must have been a mistake. Sharon would never leave one of her little classmates out. It’s Louisa Brown, isn’t it, from down in Wolf Street? Would you like to come darling? Of course you would. Just nip home and get your party dres
s on and we’ll be underway.’

  And before another second has passed, Louisa is sprinting towards home like a runaway racehorse, cutting a swathe through the street. At home, the boys are having a sedate little game of kick-to-kick and the footy bangs against the house, which means Emmett’s not home. She’s too winded to speak. In the fernery she grabs Nan, gasping, ‘Dress. Party. Sharon.’ They both know there’s no party dress, but Nan makes straight for the ironing pile and soon extracts something Anne made for Louisa years ago. It has lace, which qualifies it. ‘I’ll run over it with the iron, my darling, and you’ll be the most beautiful girl there. And what about we let you wear your hair out for a change?’

  Nan unearths a block of chocolate for a present from somewhere in her bowerbird room and brushes Louisa’s long hair until it reaches a semblance of decency. Of course the summer dress is too small and slight for winter. The lace is torn but the old green jumper covers much. Her grandmother walks halfway to Field Street with Louisa and watches her all the rest of the way down that needle-straight street, worrying whether the chocolate will be enough.

  ***

  Louisa’s singing ‘Yellow Bird’ loud and flat when she hears of the death of her grandmother. She’s just home from school, walking down the sideway, past the ferns with their long green fingers when Emmett’s voice reaches her before she sees him. ‘Stop singing, Louisa,’ he commands. As she walks through the door he says, ‘It’s not a day for singing. Your grandmother has died today.’

  Her father is in the kitchen with her mother. They don’t spend much time in the same room. It must be true. She looks at her mother leaning against the Kookaburra stove, all cream and green, cream and green and Anne nods and makes it true. Louisa’s eyes rest on the small picture of the kookaburra on the stove, covered by a slick of dusty grease, and as she notes this, the crushing weight of the universe settles in forever.

  Nan had gone down to the milkbar for a packet of smokes and in the shop she had a heart attack and fell to the crazed red concrete floor and died.

  She’s now lying on her bed. The stillness of Rose strikes Louisa with the force of a truck but this is the last time Louisa will see her because Anne believes kids should not go to funerals, that they should be shielded from death.

  The girl cries for a month. Nothing can stop her. She goes to school and does her school work and cleans and does the potatoes for tea. She walks the lanes to school with Frank leading the way like a pilot but she’s in a trance and the tears just keep coming. Whether she’s at school or in her room, at the shop or at the table, they seep forth as if there’s a spring inside her.

  She decides dying is a good option. She can’t live without her Nan. Simple really. Why doesn’t everyone just leave her alone? Rob and Peter and Daniel manage to keep going though there is a flatness to their eyes. And then, with the suddenness that is pure Emmett, he has seen enough.

  It’s one Saturday morning when he decides it has to end. ‘Louisa,’ he roars from the kitchen, ‘get out here.’ Carefully the girl edges from her grey bedroom like a sea creature stranded in a tidal pool. Her hair is unwashed and her clothes smell of every single day she’s worn them. ‘Get yourself cleaned up. We are going for a walk.’ Louisa is shocked into waking. Into thinking. Emmett has never taken the kids for a walk.

  They walk down to the shop where Rose died. It isn’t far. Emmett holds Louisa’s hand and she barely notices despite not being able to remember it happening before. Rob and Peter and Daniel trail behind like a chorus. ‘Now,’ he says patiently, ‘we are going in here and we are buying the newspaper.’

  She steps inside behind him and looks at the red floor and wonders where her Nan’s head fell. Which spot was it? They buy the paper and he shoves it under his arm and it flaps as if it were a dying bird.

  Outside a tide of cars passes and the sun shines with morning hope. Emmett stands Louisa on the step of the shop and looks her in the eye, a pair of matching indigo eyes, and says, ‘This, and you know what I’m talking about, this is going to end now. Finished. Finito. This is it.’ He makes a sideways cutting motion with his hands.

  ‘I know you’re sad and that is right, she was your grandmother and you loved her and you know Louisa, she loved you too, but she has died and it’s time to stop grieving. I’m your father and I’m telling you that now is the time to stop. It can’t go on. Your Nan would not want to see you sad. It’s all over now Lou.’

  Her brothers are cantering around, close enough to hear but far enough to be out of clouting range. They notice Louisa nodding and hiccoughing through streaming tears, but then she always cries when people speak up close to her. Such a sook.

  Emmett grabs her hand and he swings it towards home, making an effort towards joy, and now Emmett’s palm seems like a bit of wood but it feels like they’re leaving her Nan behind and that’s got to be some kind of betrayal. And she knows it is. Even so, she feels the burden of her grief leaving her like a boat slipping its moorings.

  10

  There’s something sacred about the races. They are a continuum and their currency is hope. Emmett studies the form all week and by Saturday he’s ready. Sussed it right out. Bloody organised. To the kids, the form guide, that perfectly folded paper, is the divine document and the key to their futures. At Wolf Street it’s the Bible.

  They’re proud that this is the thing Emmett devotes himself to because when he eventually wins, they’ll stop being poor. And then things will get better. Their father will be happy, their mother will not have to work so hard and then they’ll be allowed to breathe like other kids. Money will make everything better. But despite all the quiet they give him, the wide berth, the tiptoeing and the nervous, watchful looks they shoot him in passing, it hasn’t happened yet.

  Like horses, the Brown kids notice with their skin; the ripples along a flank that show a fly has landed, the waves beneath flesh. They’re as alert as antennas to their father’s mood.

  ‘I told ya he wouldn’t win anything today. He didn’t have enough time on the probabilities. Still, I tell ya, he’s a bloody amateur,’ Rob says casually as Louisa joins him to sit in the dirt and lean against the back fence.

  ‘Race four already and bloody nothing.’ He pulls a weed and casually wrings its neck.

  Louisa sighs; she agrees but can’t admit that the day will end like all the others, with the old man getting comprehensively pissed and aggro over anything. How can you allow that so early?

  ‘Day’s not over yet, it’s only race four and he reckons to Mum he’s got something special in the sixth, and you know the System doesn’t just have to work on the trifecta.’ Saying it she looks sad and somehow crushed as if she doesn’t believe a word. The System can be independent of those races, she insists.

  ‘Well, the trifecta’s finished and that’s where all the real bucks are, you know that,’ says Rob, the bitter realist.

  ‘Are not,’ she says more fiercely than she feels.

  ‘Are so,’ Rob says and quickly sneaks in with, ‘are so to infinity,’ then he snickers, his shoulders moving with pleasure. Louisa says nothing, knowing he’s right, and in frustration digs her big toe into the dirt.

  The sun is a lemon and she can feel it tightening her skin, hatching hot freckles. Rob’s in the same shorts, always looking a bit undersized because although he’s small for his age, his clothes look small too. He wears a checked western shirt with some red in it, short sleeves too high on his arms and his greyish hair is crew-cut.

  Louisa’s dress is navy polyester/rayon/nylon with bobbles like warts strewn over the pattern of flowers that will never fade. She stretches the dress over her knees into a tent. Emmett has seen to it that she has not yet cut her hair. He likes girls to have long hair. It seems purer. Though he doesn’t know it, the truth of it is that Anne and Louisa conspire in this and about once a month Anne snips off Louisa’s split ends with her dressmaker’s scissors. Louisa’s dark hair is plaited and secured at each end with rubber bands.

 
Occasionally she paints her face with their paintbrush tips. Hairs escape the plaits horizontally. She examines the constellation of freckles on her left forearm, noting again that it’s the Southern Cross. This has to be a good omen.

  Rob lets go a fart, a long fat bubble, in a peaceful kind of way and laughs at the sound of it. ‘A bit more choke and you would have started,’ Louisa says amiably as she leans away to avoid the blister of smell. She punches him lightly on the arm, calls him a pongy old dog.