The Book of Emmett

by Deborah Forster

  Jessie and Warren’s place lies between two train stations and the trains pass rhythmically in a loop of sound that suggests cattle thundering in a canyon. The sound is trapped and early in the mornings when the trains first start up the clattering echos in the basin of the streets.

  Next door, up in the flats, the Vietnamese woman lays her washing along the railings and ties it down with plastic-coated wire already in place. Jess raises a hand in a gesture of friendliness and shyly, the woman bows back. Jessie feels moved to say; ‘You have a lot of washing today.’ The old woman nods and wordlessly retreats into the flat, as silent as air.

  There are birds passing in the highways of the air, sluicing their way towards other places. If this were Canada they might be migrating and wouldn’t that be something? Great clouds of wings heading somewhere. But we don’t have migratory birds, she thinks, and casts the dregs of her coffee into the flourishing weeds that make up her garden. She believes the only thing this place has in common with Canada is air.

  Jessie still works in the Rainbow women’s refuge and for all that, she’s not completely humourless. Sometimes she laughs with the women who come to see her for advice, but she does this just to see them smile and when they do she gets a glimpse of who they might be. Her sense of humour, like her mother’s, is held in reserve.

  She doesn’t allow herself much emotion at work. Keeps a tight rein. It’s no accident that she works where she does, she understands the connections, but she’s ruthlessly professional and effective.

  Feminists who worry about politics are cracked, she reckons. From where she stands, life and death are the things that count and life can be very short when your husband is a brute. Her intensity is legend and intimidating.

  ***

  The sisters’ relationship has spun out after Louisa’s illness and they never get back to the jokey ease of where they once were. They take turns but usually Jessie taunts and Louisa resents, and each strives to be Anne’s Most Beloved Daughter.

  Jessie makes up ground with her mother when Louisa is sick with long chats on the phone in the evening. On those nights, over at the desk, Warren sighs beside a cold cup of coffee while he marks an endless, teetering pile of indecipherable school work, half of it on torn paper, one on kitchen paper.

  Jess sees him slumped there, giving each child’s effort his all, and watches as he writes half a page of encouragement and wonders why she doesn’t throw down the phone and go to him, put her arms around him and tell him she loves him. It’s a fleeting thought. He knows she loves him, she thinks tartly, of course he does.

  After a while on the phone, listening to her mother talk about the other, it dawns on Jess that Anne always loves the one she’s not with, and listening to her mother’s intimate worries about the others makes her long to ask: what about me?

  But the rules say she must continue steadfastly and she reckons she could listen for Australia. She notes the peeling wallpaper in the room, the pile of clean clothes that must be put away and that she needs to cut her toenails. But for Anne the real question is, when is Robbie going to find a nice girl? One who fully understands and supports him.

  Anne hasn’t been told what’s wrong with Louisa but she knows something’s up because she hasn’t heard from her in a long while and distance makes her special. She will be told, but not until it’s almost over. ‘Those children are running her into the ground,’ she tells Jess. ‘Mmm, I know,’ Jess says, as the feathery cat settles and curls on her lap. ‘I know.’

  The solitary light from the porch is still on and it steals through the curtains. Jess can tell that Anne is smoking while she talks, because she hears her mother’s long hungry drags. But then Jess is puffing away too. Neither mentions it to each other because each thinks the other is giving up. And suddenly Jess can’t talk about Louisa for another second. She could scream. ‘I’m sure she’s just been busy Mum,’ she says calmly, though Anne notes her terseness.

  Jess doesn’t even consider having children. She’s seen them grind her sister down, take all the spark away from her and make her into a sad old bag. That’s family life for you, she thinks brightly, and anyway she’s got her causes to keep her busy. Battered women, animal rights and now she’s become a vegetarian. Pays to maintain your focus, she believes. And anyway, Warren doesn’t seem fussed about kids. He teaches so many he reckons he can do without his own, so the pressure to breed is absent. Anne’s not pushing it either. ‘You’ve got enough on your plate,’ she says and adds ominously, ‘and believe me, your life is not your own once you have children.’

  ***

  The old elm tree in Jess’s backyard is getting more ragged every day. It’s too big for the space. Lost half of itself in Tuesday’s recent storm of the century but didn’t do much more than fall on the decrepit side fence and split it. So that was good.

  Pete and Rob turn up one bright Saturday to trim up the elm, and Rob leaves the place shrouded in swirling sawdust. Pete sweeps a bit and leans on the broom a bit more.

  ‘Lovely day, Woz,’ he smiles. He messes around with the dogs, passing the broom in small circles so they jump up and chase it. ‘Whaddya reckon Wozza, how’re the mighty Dogs gonna go this year?’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest clue Pete, it’s all beyond me, as you well know.’

  ‘Now Woz, we’ve had this talk, ’member, and we sorted it. You agreed that you were going to be a staunch and even a defiant Dogs supporter. Don’t tell me you’re backtracking?’ He smiles and waves the broom again at Bert the old kelpie cross and the wind blows sawdust and elm leaves around in eddies.

  Warren smiles weakly. ‘You really shouldn’t tease me Pete, it’s hard enough trying to make sense out of Jess. With two of you, I’ve got no hope.’ He brings out the radio and it drones on, a hose of noise in the background, and then out of nowhere, while they are sweeping, Warren turns to Peter and reports shyly, ‘The Dogs are doing well this year because of the new coach.’

  Pete laughs and says, ‘Well, you’ve floored me there, but I’m bloody proud. It’s true mate, he cannot possibly be worse than the old one.’

  At lunchtime when he sees the cupboard is bare, Pete nips down to the shops and buys four pies and a bottle of tomato sauce that, amazingly, Warren doesn’t use, much to the horror and possibly even to the mild disgust of the Browns.

  Pete forgets about Jessie’s new vegetarian thing so Rob eats her pie while Pete makes her a toasted cheese. She’s a bit snaky about them not remembering she’s a vego but even as she tries not to make too big a deal about it, she impales them. ‘You’re disgusting carnivores, the lot of you,’ she says more fiercely than she means. Rob looks up from his second pie and laughs. ‘Be surprised if there was much meat at all in these pies,’ he says with a wink at Warren. ‘Maybe some ears and noses though. And a few tails.’

  Jess looks at him and her eyes narrow and some part of her sees the humour. The other part is happier, though, seeing Pete bringing her a hot, melty cheese sandwich.

  45

  Anne is beginning to think Peter will never marry. He’s moved around a bit over the years and now he’s back at the shop. One Thursday afternoon, he settles back at his desk in the second small bedroom upstairs and looks through the bamboo blinds into the sideway between the shop and the chemist next door. The sky has taken on the honey colour of early evening and he pulls up the blind to catch more. Some of the gold drifts in but between the two buildings he can catch only a sliver. The computer screen holds itself before him briefly but soon falls into saving itself. He wonders how you save yourself. There’s a soapstone owl on his desk, a little gift from his first girlfriend, Gloria, who thought he was wise. He often holds it, looking for a wisdom transfer. He puts it down and decides he needs a walk.

  Out in the street, Lily Baxter’s barrel of a dog, Ned, charges snorting and snuffling straight at Pete, mouth wide open like some deepwater fish. Lily Baxter takes off after the dog, grabbing at his collar and saying, ‘Sorry ... Ned’s a bit of a sticky
beak, but look at that, he likes you already.’ She smiles. ‘It’s fine,’ he says, patting the squat sepia animal. ‘He’s a great dog. What is he?’

  The dog props magnetically on his shoe, he’s not going anywhere. ‘He’s a Staffie, not pure bred, his mother was a seal by the look of him.’ She laughs. Pete grins and keeps patting. He’s seen Lily before and knows they went to the same primary school. He recalls it instantly. By grade six, girls were becoming real to him and one lunchtime always stays with him. He was on the bitumen not far from some girls. He spent a good part of the time watching Lily Baxter and her mates play hoppie.

  Now here she is right in front of him outside the shop. You’ll get nowhere and you know it, he tells himself, sternly turning. They’re never interested in you. But Lily has been chatting and he’s already stunned himself by inviting her to come fishing with him one day. ‘You wanta try surfing,’ she says amiably. ‘Better than killing fish.’ He laughs with reservation, amazed that anyone could think something so dumb.

  ‘Says you.’ She looks straight into his eyes. ‘Yeah, I say it. Fish are alive just like you are alive. Fish have feeling too.’ He’s too flummoxed to reply, he’s never heard anything like it. He peels Ned off and sends him back, but something makes him turn around. ‘You went to West Footscray Primary, didn’t you? Year below me. Never forget a pretty face.’ He winces at the corny line. ‘Wouldn’t wanta teach me to surf, would ya?’ She laughs as if that was all pretty funny but answers with a ‘maybe’ that gives him hope.

  He’s elated as he walks away in the completely wrong direction and must wait till she’s gone to come back. Cannot believe how well that went, he says to himself. Upstairs, he settles down in his room and decides, that’ll be the end of it, cannot possibly work out. He doesn’t expect a thing. So when she drops in a few days later and catches him minding the shop, he’s charmed and embarrassed. He makes her a cup of instant out the back and in one of those random, good long gaps between customers that shopkeepers both love and hate, they talk about everything from surfing to school days to the souls of fish.

  Lily reckons surfing is what the gods would do if they still hung around here on earth, especially if they had access to Geelong Road. ‘Think about it, at one with the sea, with the power of it, the colour of it, with the wind. With every single thing.’ There’s something in her that lifts him. She’s studying nursing and working part-time. ‘Bit of the old moolah never goes astray,’ she says, rubbing her fingertips together in front of his face, her smile wide.

  Apart from fishing, she never seeks to convert him. She gathers information on computer courses and leaves it in the van. She helps him apply. He dithers about kissing her, so she kisses him to get it out of the way. They’re standing out the back of the shop on a fresh afternoon when the wind is whipping around and the sky is full of scattered cloud. Peter’s being dilatory again, finding it hard to let her go, so Lily leans over, puts two hands on his face and pulls him to her.

  Eventually they go surfing. Driving down to the Geelong Road through the flatlands past the You Yangs, the dark mountains on the side of the bay, heading ever onwards to the coast in the van and down there with her, he is healed by the ocean and by talking, and slowly he learns about having another partner against the immensity.

  46

  When she closed up the shop, Anne put up white nylon lace curtains in the windows out the front. The nylon washes so well, she thinks, and I can see out, but no one can see in. Not during daylight hours anyway. It won’t be long now till Emmett’s birthday and that means he’ll finally be gone, out of the garage and away to the bush. Early retirement and a great fat cheque.

  She wonders whether maybe he’s got a girlfriend or something. He’s rarely there and when he is, he doesn’t seem part of the place, he still sits in the garage slaving away at those bloody probabilities. Honestly, if he’d only turned his mind to something useful or even sensible, God, imagine the difference. Still, it’s water under the bridge now. Nothing is going to change Emmett. Not one solitary thing.

  Anne says none of this worries her at all. He has ceased to be a concern, though she will admit to herself that the sooner he goes, the better and her life will go on with the hum of electricity in the wires out the front. Most mornings she’s out there getting the graffiti off the pink-tiled wall between her place and the Indian restaurant next door with the kind of energy the young might envy.

  She’s absolutely determined that order will prevail. Yet change is everywhere and it springs upon her. The local bank branch closes up and the library branch is gone and so is the swimming pool, the post office is now a shop and the old weatherboard Presbyterian Church is a Chinese Christian Centre.

  The fish-and-chip shop is run by a Korean named Mr Kim whom Anne admires for his scrupulous cleanliness; every Friday she gets her tea from him. Once, she gave one of his African customers a dollar when he couldn’t buy a piece of flake because he was short. When she handed the coin to him, he looked like he was about to be struck. He held the glowing coin in his palm and was dumbfounded. So was Anne by her unexpected generosity.

  The next wave of people pushes through the old suburb. Within a stone’s throw, there are two Indian clothes shops, an Indian hardware and a video and grocery store with little speakers out the front, sharing tinny music with the street. The subcontinent has moved to West Footscray. ‘Well,’ explains Anne to her old friend Maria who lives in Melton, ‘the Vietnamese snaffled Footscray long ago.’

  ***

  Emmett eternally believes he’s got a chance with Lady Luck. He’s in the garage crunching his numbers one sulphurous Sunday afternoon. When the boys arrive for a working bee, he emerges and greets them effusively. ‘Mate,’ he says to Pete, hugging him and gives Rob a quick pat on the shoulder, which Rob doesn’t fail to notice. Then he’s off back to his room. ‘Be out in a tick and give you a hand,’ he shouts through the open door. ‘I’m onto a big one now. The numbers are coming out just right.’

  It’s so hot the sky pulses at them and after two hours Pete sticks his head under the hose and heads off to find Emmett in his old Bonds T-shirt and checked boxers, snoring like a hammer drill.

  He stands in the doorway gazing in for quite a while and then he shuts the door softly and goes back to work. ‘Dad’s taken a sickie,’ he says.

  Sweat eases things between Rob and Pete. They have long held a deal about helping each other with big jobs. Problem is, Rob does most of the asking. Pete reckons his time will come.

  Today the topic is property values. Everyone’s doing up the old places and making a fortune. Easy money. ‘So there you go. Isn’t that just typical,’ Rob says sourly to Pete as they shovel under the hot sun. ‘The Browns lose out again, but look on the bright side, some things stay the same and we’ve still got the worst house in the street. Ha!’

  It grates that Wolf Street, with its Edwardian trim of three mingey tulips would now be worth far more than the shop. Behind it the petrol station is boarded up and hazard signs sag across the fractured concrete and the cyclone fencing, and down the road there’s a bar called Glide or Slide or something evocative. People sit in the sun and smoke and talk on mobile phones and read the broadsheet and drink expensive coffee with far too much milk.

  Can this really be Footscray? Louisa wonders, noting with slight concern taut little houses that used to be dumps. She’s driving over to help the boys with a bit of backyard blitzing. She’s easing herself back in slowly and decides that a bit of physical work might be a good idea.

  Tom and Beck are in the back seat bickering over the Play Station, and she ignores them resolutely with new determination won from her clinic. Her psychiatrist, Dr Emmeline Mackenzie, is a big woman with sad, oyster eyes whose silver crew cut hinges on her cow’s lick and gives her the look of an elderly schoolboy. Louisa has never known anyone so composed.

  She’s trying to become like Dr Mackenzie, so she tells herself she’s looking forward to seeing her brothers. Will Jess show up?
Regardless of the good doctor, she hopes not, can’t face the Princess today. But walking down the narrow sideway between the two shops she feels the vibe between Rob and Pete and realises there’s a sulk underway and would you believe it, poor old Jess is nowhere in sight.