The Place on Dalhousie

by Melina Marchetta

  And they take him to a café and fill him in on what he hasn’t heard in phone calls. That Justine’s still in ‘fucking Melbourne’.

  ‘It’s what we call it now,’ Frankie tells him.

  ‘Because we’re sick of hearing how cool it is down there and how fantastic the music scene is, and how it’s less expensive than Sydney, and Melbourne Melbourne fucking Melbourne,’ Tara says.

  ‘The whole of Queensland got the treatment while you were there,’ Mackee explains. ‘Jimmy’s in fucking Queensland, we’d tell people. And because Siobhan’s still in London, it’s fucked as well, and so is wherever the fuck in Europe Will is.’

  ‘Stuttgart,’ Frankie tells him. ‘Fucking Stuttgart.’

  And Jimmy can’t help laughing because they do idiotic conversations better than anyone he knows.

  ‘So you’re staying with us?’ Tara says.

  ‘One of our housemates is in Pakistan so you get his room,’ Mackee adds. He’s wearing a tie, which isn’t really a Tom Mackee thing to do.

  ‘What’s with the noose?’ Jimmy asks.

  ‘Brace yourself,’ Frankie says.

  ‘Because Tom goes by the title Sir these days,’ Tara tells him.

  ‘Teaching?’ Jimmy’s more than surprised. ‘Mate, no.’

  ‘He got his Dip. Ed. last year,’ Tara says. ‘He’s back to wearing the sexy Design and Technology apron and goggles.’

  ‘Ah come on, Tara, do you have to tell people what we get up to in the bedroom?’

  Tara’s laughing and it’s good to see. Because two years ago when Jimmy was last in Sydney, Mackee and Tara were feeling their way around being together and it all seemed raw.

  And they don’t stop talking for hours, and later he can’t even remember what it was they spoke about. All they want to hear is what he’s been up to in better detail than they get over the phone. So Jimmy tells them how he’s driving dump trucks for the mines and he tries to pretend that Tara isn’t about to have a major brain freeze at the mention of mines, and that he’s working one week on, one week off, and how the company flies him to Brisbane but anywhere else is at his expense. And he’s talking a mile a minute about town-hopping and how he got his big vehicle licence, and how he really wants to save up enough so he can get into the paramedics one day. And when Jimmy’s covered everything, he figures it’s time to tell them why he’s really in Sydney, apart from wanting to see them after a two-year good behaviour bond kept him in Queensland.

  ‘Promise you won’t freak out.’

  Wrong way to start things because Frankie’s about to have a meltdown.

  ‘I’m not dying and I’m not going to jail.’

  ‘Probably should have started with that,’ Mackee says.

  For a moment he’s silent. He’s only had five days to process this himself.

  ‘I got a girl pregnant,’ he says.

  For the first time since he got off the train, there’s silence.

  ‘Is she going through with it?’ Mackee finally asks.

  ‘She’s already had it,’ he says.

  The silence this time is a beat longer.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ Frankie asks, and Jimmy can hear the hurt.

  ‘Because I didn’t know, mate.’

  He has to start somewhere, but even in his own head he hasn’t worked out where.

  ‘I met her about two years ago up north during the floods. We went our separate ways. Apparently she got pregnant. Remember when I changed phone numbers about a year ago because I couldn’t find my phone? Well, I found it in my duffel bag when I returned to Rockhampton a year after she contacted me. He’s fifteen months old.’

  ‘How do you know it’s yours?’ Tara asks.

  ‘Because she says it is.’

  There’s more silence after that.

  ‘I don’t know how to pronounce his name,’ he says because everything feels so intense. ‘You’re going to have to help me here, Frankie. It’s Toto.’

  Jimmy tries to say it the way he heard it over the phone when he spoke to Rosie, but seems to fail.

  ‘You got an Italian girl pregnant?’ Frankie asks.

  ‘Yes, and you’re not going to believe where she lives,’ he says. ‘Haberfield. So I better go see her sooner rather than later.’

  Mackee’s nodding in agreement. ‘Nothing worse than bumping into the girl you knocked up while stuffing your face with the Italian cheesecake at Papa’s.’

  And it all seems wrong but they’re pissing themselves laughing.

  Mackee and Tara take him home to the two-storey Victorian terrace they rent across from the railway line in Petersham. They share it with two friends, one who’s overseas and the other who’s out bush for six months. Mackee leads him up the stairs and hands him a towel from the linen cupboard.

  ‘You know you can stay as long as you want, mate,’ he says.

  It’s heartfelt, no matter how it’s delivered, and it’s the thing that Jimmy’s worked out about his relationship with Mackee. That their connection is strong, despite the lack of dialogue between them. Before the girls came along in Year Eleven, they had never exchanged a word. Nor had the girls, and they’d come over from the same school. Frankie said the six of them were the loneliest people in the world until they became a group. But even then, Jimmy and Mackee only got to know each other in fragments. Until a couple of years back when Jimmy disappeared from their lives and Mackee tracked him down and asked for help working on a community building project in Walgett with Tom’s father and grandpop. Working with them was tough at first, because the Mackees were dealing with their own shit, and most times it was Jimmy who did the talking. Mackee’s dad later wrote to say that Jimmy had filled in the silence for them, and it made all the difference.

  In the shower he can hear the rumble of their voices and he’s comforted by the sound. He hasn’t lived in a house since Frankie’s place more than two years ago. It’s been a whole lot of motel rooms and boarding houses and makeshift accommodation out at the mines.

  In the kitchen, Mackee is cooking and Tara has work spread out on the dining table. Her computer sounds the Skype ringtone just as Jimmy sits down.

  ‘That was quick,’ Tara says. ‘Siobhan.’

  Jimmy owes Siobhan a couple of phone calls, so he goes straight into an apology when her face appears on the screen. She’s been working in London for the past five years on a British passport because her mum was born there. She was the screw-up when they were at school. Now she has her life worked out better than any of them and dishes out advice and threats from the other side of the world.

  ‘Can we just skip the pleasantries while I find the one key word that’s gone through my head since Frankie texted?’ she says.

  ‘Brace yourself,’ Mackee says from the sink.

  ‘Condom!’

  ‘They didn’t hear you in Sheffield, Siobhan,’ Mackee calls out.

  ‘And he’s working for the mines as well,’ Tara says, leaning over Jimmy’s shoulder.

  ‘Go ahead, ruin the environment and knock up girls you meet in floods,’ Siobhan says. ‘She is the flood chick, isn’t she?’

  Tom sings a couple of lines about floods and fools as he chops up the vegies.

  ‘And have you spoken to Frankie?’ Siobhan asks.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About Will.’

  ‘None of our business, Siobhan,’ Tara says, but Mackee is sitting next to Jimmy now, so it seems serious.

  ‘Well, he’s in Germany and she’s here,’ Mackee says. ‘And the deal was that they’d both be living overseas together for a year.’

  ‘Talk to her, Jimmy,’ Siobhan says.

  Later, the three of them sit on the front verandah eating Mackee’s tacos and drinking beer, accompanied by the rattle of the trains.

  Tara’s telling them about her work at Barangaroo and how it’s part of the C40 Cities climate program. Her passion for urban renewal comes through in every word she speaks. ‘The pay’s shit, but it’s an amazing opportu
nity.’

  ‘How can you afford to keep this place?’

  ‘We sort of can’t,’ Tara says. ‘But I’m working full-time and Tom is still getting shifts at the Union, as well as casual teaching, so we manage to make the rent.’

  ‘We share a mobile phone and go without pay TV,’ Mackee informs him.

  ‘Which means we watched the first episode of Game of Thrones at my parents’ place last week,’ Tara says.

  ‘Where Jaime and Cersei declared their familial love for each other,’ Mackee added. ‘Never again.’

  A train rattles by and it lulls them into silence. A comfortable one. And Jimmy wonders if this is what Mackee and Tara do when they’re alone. Sit side by side on an ancient vinyl couch without the need to fill the silence with banal talk.

  Much later they head back inside.

  ‘I thought she was just some girl you met and forgot,’ Mackee says, as if he’s been thinking about it all this time.

  Jimmy shrugs.

  ‘Were you in love with her?’ Tara asks.

  ‘Didn’t know her long enough. She was a train wreck. I was one. A good fit.’

  He takes one of the buses that travels along Parramatta Road and walks down to the Haberfield shops. He’s been here once or twice with Frankie, mostly to pick up Italian sweets or groceries for her grandmother, who won’t get her homemade pasta or deli food from anywhere else. It’s a couple of blocks of the essentials. A news agency, drycleaners, cafés, restaurants and pasticcerias. They’re mostly grassroots businesses, like the hole-in-the-wall bakery or the IGA. It hasn’t had a makeover like plenty of the other main streets in the inner west, and he figures that’s the way the locals want things.

  Rosie’s place is on Dalhousie Street and he needs to check his phone for the number. Finds the house soon enough. A small cottage surrounded by pretty impressive Federation homes. In the front yard is a tiny box garden of wild grass and flowers that gives it an unkempt feel, contradicted by the homeliness of the verandah, where a couple of cane armchairs, same as those outside the Queenslander houses up in the Burdekin, sit, a small ceramic table between them. Like Mackee and Tara’s train-watching vinyl couch, they speak of home. He rings the doorbell and regrets it a moment later, because he figures he’s woken up the baby. When no one answers, he peers through one of the windows and between the curtains. Jimmy can see a fireplace with a cuckoo clock above it. He walks across to the other window and realises he’s looking into someone’s bedroom.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Behind him a woman is standing at the gate, unimpressed. She’s dressed in a suit; obviously home from work, judging from the oversized bag she’s holding. She’s sort of beautiful in an older woman way, but Jimmy’s too intimidated by her hostility to ponder the beauty. Rosie never mentioned parents so he doesn’t know how the two are related.

  ‘I’m looking for Rosie,’ he says.

  She continues to stare at him without responding.

  ‘Can you let her know I’m here?’

  ‘I’m not her receptionist.’

  He’s about to turn and head home, but knows he has to work out the truth sooner or later.

  ‘I think it’s important that I see her … them.’

  Jimmy notices the flash of realisation. She’s just made the connection and couldn’t look more unimpressed, shouldering him out of the way to unlock the door.

  Although there’s no invitation to follow, Jimmy steps inside after her.

  She disappears into the bedroom so he walks into the room with the fireplace, wondering if he’s meant to wait. It’s small, so the TV’s mounted on a cream-coloured wall to save space, and there’s a three-seater sitting the right distance away. He likes the cuckoo clock. Maybe a bit kitsch, but he figures the ‘Made in Germany’ label means it’s the real thing. When he figures that no one is returning for him, Jimmy explores the house. Apart from the bathroom, the rest of the place is an open-plan kitchen and living area with impressive jarrah floorboards. Jimmy’s worked with Bob Spinelli on properties around the city and Mackee’s a carpentry freak, so he’s been dragged to enough timber-recycling sheds to appreciate how the red tinge of the wood works well with the colours surrounding it. Although he sees the wood’s imperfections, the polish makes him want to take off his shoes. His favourite thing about the place is the natural light coming through a couple of French doors at the back, enviable after some of the places Jimmy’s lived in.

  He’s just about to look outside when he hears a sound above him. Walks to the foot of a narrow staircase where he sees Rosie standing at the top. He makes his way to her and they stand before each other for the first time in two years. When Jimmy met Rosie that time up north, her hair was cropped and he couldn’t keep his eyes off her face. Stared at her for at least half an hour before he had the guts to approach. He remembers the singlet and shorts she was wearing and the colour of her skin, and the way she folded her arms while she was listening to the information being handed out. Jimmy honestly thought that a pasty-skinned, bushy-bearded weirdo in orange work gear didn’t stand a chance.

  Her hair’s longer now, shoved back in a ponytail and looking like it hasn’t been washed in weeks. Her dark eyes are accentuated by darker circles. Even so, if he walked into a pub today and saw her standing there, he’d still wait thirty minutes to take a chance. The thump of his heart gives that away. She’s studying him now and Jimmy wonders what she’s looking for. Resemblance to her child? A disbelief that she ever saw anything in him? Behind her, he sees another living area, different from downstairs. Toys and cushions scattered over the floor, a sofa covered by an old sheet and a bag with nappies spilling out. The back end of the room is the best thing about it. Wall-to-wall glass with a view of the backyard. From where he’s standing, Jimmy can see a mess of a garden.

  ‘How have you been?’ he asks.

  She doesn’t respond.

  ‘Like I said on the phone,’ he says, ‘I’m sorry it took so long. I lost my mobile …’

  ‘You lose a lot of things.’

  He remembers once how they were lying in bed and talking about the stolen Monaro. Jimmy’s suddenly overcome by the memory. The sex. The chemistry. The sorrow of that town.

  A cry interrupts the silence between them and Rosie disappears into the next room. Jimmy’s pulse is going for it, because he’s not ready for this. He hears murmuring and the crying stops and she reappears, holding the kid who looks heavy in her arms. A good-looking baby, caramel hair and same coloured eyes. He starts crying again when he sees Jimmy, and Rosie balances him on her hip and grabs a baby bottle that’s lying on a milk crate.

  ‘Have you ever held one of these?’ she wants to know.

  Jimmy doesn’t respond. And that’s how they spend the hour. No one speaking and a baby wailing.

  One that looks absolutely nothing like Jimmy.

  ‘I’ll come back tomorrow if you like,’ he says.

  ‘Up to you.’

  The next day he gets there earlier so he doesn’t have to deal with the hostile woman in the suit. This time it’s Rosie who answers the door.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asks.

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

  Because she’s in her pyjamas at eleven o’clock in the morning, and yesterday she was in the same pyjamas at five-thirty in the afternoon. Jimmy follows her upstairs where the baby is crying again. She disappears inside the bedroom to get him.

  ‘Who lives here with you?’ he calls out. ‘Is it your mum?’

  She comes out holding the baby. The now ear-piercing screeching is taking swipes at Jimmy’s temples.

  ‘As if I look anything like her.’

  True. The woman is fair-skinned and blue-eyed, but she doesn’t seem the type to be renting out her attic space, so Jimmy figures she’s somehow related.

  ‘She was my father’s other wife.’

  ‘Was’ could mean two things about Rosie’s father. Divorced or dead. He goes for the latter.

  ‘It’s a gr
eat space,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t look this big outside.’

  ‘My father did it himself.’

  ‘He was a builder?’

  ‘No.’

  She holds out the crying kid for Jimmy to take, but he doesn’t.

  ‘When he gets used to me, maybe,’ he says.

  Rosie cradles the sobbing baby, but it doesn’t seem to help. And that’s it for the day. No more talking, just a lot of standing around and soaking in the mess.

  He takes a bus out to Waterloo, back to the housing commission block of flats he lived in most of his life. Thirteen floors of misery, his mum used to say. Jimmy doesn’t know whether that’s true now, but it was a place of fear for him then. Not for his life, but for hers. He remembers the older kids who used to sell ciggies in the toilet block. They’d tell him that the newspaper called this place Suicide Towers. From that moment on, until his mum left him behind, Jimmy was convinced she’d walk up to the roof and throw herself off. The area had changed now. More hipsters moving in and a lot more families with better lives than theirs. Maybe that’s not a bad thing but it depresses Jimmy. Makes his life feel even more forgotten.

  His phone rings and it’s Frankie.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she asks.

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Come over tonight. My mum’s asking about you.’

  Jimmy enjoys the idea of being asked after. There’d been moments in the past two years where he’d felt himself disappearing off the grid.

  Later that afternoon, when Mia Spinelli opens the door, she hugs Jimmy with that intensity and promise that he’s always found in his embraces with this family. When he first met them in Year Eleven, Mia was suffering depression and Frankie was dealing with her only spiral into something close to it. For some reason, he connected with Mia during her illness. She calls him her second son, and he wishes it were true. Wishes these people weren’t his on loan. Even Nonna Anna, who’s staying with them because she’s had a hip replacement, welcomes Jimmy as if he belongs to them.

  ‘Too skinny,’ she says, her accent heavy with warmth.

  He does the rounds with Frankie. Dropping off her brother Luca who’s doing a health science degree and working part-time at one of the local primary schools at their after-hours day care. Then taking Will’s grandmother to the physio before heading in to work to pick up her pay.