‘Are you and Will okay?’ he asks, because he figures that if she’s hanging out with Will’s family everything should be fine. The two have been a thing for eight years. Have been in love for even longer. Jimmy isn’t one to live through other people’s relationships, but he can’t fathom the idea of them not making it. Their public displays of affection may be too much, but they’re the sort of people who rarely fall out with friends or relatives. Despite Will being an introvert and Frankie being the exact opposite, they have a great friendship. An enviable one. Three years ago when Jimmy was in Sydney, he felt as if he really got to know Will and he still receives a text at least once a month asking, Have you found the Monaro?
‘Who’s saying we’re not?’ Frankie asks.
‘No one,’ he sort of lies. ‘But he’s in Germany and you aren’t.’
‘We’ve been apart before,’ she says.
‘I thought the plan was that you’d live overseas together.’
‘We will,’ she says. ‘But I’m in the middle of sorting things out and I can’t just pick up and take off.’
Jimmy leaves it at that because he can tell she’s getting irritated.
She parks in a no-standing zone at King Street Wharf where clubs and restaurants line the road, and tells him to keep an eye out for parking police while she runs in to grab her pay. He can’t keep count of how many jobs she has these days.
‘You must be knackered, mate,’ he says when she returns.
‘I’m still paying off my HECS loan, my credit card, my phone, plus I need to save.’
Jimmy’s noticed that everyone’s talking about saving money, or paying off loans, and stuff they didn’t seem to worry about a couple of years ago. He doesn’t know how to be part of that yet. He may understand what he wants to do for a living, but he doesn’t have a plan that takes him into a financial future. It just hasn’t been a priority. These past eighteen months he’s made good money, and he’s learnt to spend good money. On flying up to the Cape to fish. On watching the V8 Supercars in Townsville. On grog.
‘We’re not twenty-four anymore, Jimmy.’
‘I can’t see the big difference between being twenty-four and twenty-five.’
‘Quarter of a century!’ she says.
Back at Frankie’s place, he has dinner with the family. Here, it’s always chatty. As if they haven’t been together for weeks and need to fill each other in on fragments of their day that are neither trivial or profound, but provide him with a comfort beyond words. There’s constant talk over each other, but no one gets irate. Tonight it’s a switch from English to Italian and back again, but Jimmy doesn’t know whether they’re translating for him or Mia’s mother. They are known to each other in a way Jimmy’s family wasn’t. When his grandpop died, the old guy was still a mystery to him. An angry man who raised a broken daughter who walked away from Jimmy because she woke up one morning and couldn’t find a way out of that life except to leave. It’s what she told him that time he tracked her down in Lismore. Jimmy is certain of two things: that he was no better off with the old guy, and that his mother’s decision to leave led him to this table. For that, he’s grateful. After dinner, Frankie heads off to the UTS library and promises to be back in a couple of hours. Jimmy helps Bob wash up and then sits with Mia, who’s marking a batch of uni essays.
‘Have you seen him?’ she asks, and he doesn’t question to whom she’s referring.
Jimmy nods.
‘And Rosie? Is that her name?’
‘Yeah. Rosanna.’
‘What’s the surname? We may know the family.’
‘I have no idea,’ he says. ‘And I don’t know how to bring it up without sounding like a dick.’
‘Then ask her the baby’s full name.’
Simple solution. Why didn’t he think of that?
‘I don’t think she’s coping,’ he says. ‘I recognise the signs and I want to do the right thing, you know, I don’t want to let her down.’
‘But?’
He looks up, meets her eyes, because he can pretty much bullshit anyone including himself, but not Mia Spinelli.
‘I don’t know if he’s mine.’
And Jimmy feels like a bastard saying that. Has no idea what he owes Rosie, but it’s not calling her a liar.
‘Then find out. Regardless of where you want to go with this, you can’t have that question lingering every time you’re with them.’
She googles something on her laptop and scribbles it down on a post-it note.
‘Tell her to ring one of these numbers. They know how to deal with babies and mums.’
He takes the post-it note, but can’t imagine Rosie appreciating him talking about her with other people.
Frankie comes home and they head down to meet Tara and Mackee at the Union. Jimmy is meant to fly out tomorrow and his head is no clearer than it was a couple of days ago when he arrived.
‘Are you coming back?’ Mackee asks.
‘The room’s there for you,’ Tara says.
Jimmy’s relieved by the offer because it makes going away a lot easier. But it’s the fear of returning to Sydney and Rosie’s house that keeps him awake. And he’s frightened of the weak reckless side of him that wants to return up north to stuff things up, good and proper. So that it’ll be more than a good behaviour bond keeping him from ever coming home again.
The crying is endless. It’s a sound that has embedded itself into the part of her head that can’t block noise out anymore. She wakes to it, showers to it, walks the streets to it, breathes in rhythm to it, and Rosie takes the blame for it all. Ten weeks of not giving a shit what she drank or smoked or what pills she took while he was in her belly. When he was born, she thought Toto had escaped any of the damage she did because the nurses said he was perfect, but Rosie was kidding herself because that’s what she does.
Today she leaves the house because Tuesday has incentives. It’s the day that gives her a reason to get out of her pyjamas and have a shower because the mornings are the worst and most days she talks herself out of walking down the stairs. Most days there are too many people to avoid. Martha downstairs. Or Teresa next door. She seems to have a radar that detects the moment Rosie and Toto hit the pavement.
‘Rosie, why don’t you come in and –’
Rosie keeps pushing the pram up Dalhousie, but really she wants to turn back and tell Teresa exactly what she thinks of her. For forgetting Rosie’s mum the moment she died all those years ago, even though they were best friends. For welcoming the second wife with open arms too soon after. Rosie hears them outside the window. Teresa and Marco and Martha chatting away about the house mostly. As if the house, like their neighbours, belonged to Martha from the beginning, when it was Rosie’s mum who came first. She passes St Joan of Arc’s Church and old Signora Bitch Face from across the road is gossiping to one of her cronies, giving Rosie the evil eye. Fuck you all, she wants to say. Toto is crying again and she wants to yell the same thing to him, and it makes her feel like a monster, and she’s crying as she pushes the pram, praying she won’t do something to hurt Toto, like those women who drive their kids into lakes or leave them behind in hot cars for hours. She keeps on hearing Min’s voice in her head. What are you going to do with your life, Rosie?
So she’s been trying to move forward. She went to Leichhardt Library a couple of weeks ago and found an advertisement on the community noticeboard for those who didn’t get to join a mothers’ group when their baby was born. That’s where she ends up on Tuesdays. Meeting at an old church hall in Lilyfield with at least nine other mothers, three who are vying for leadership. Passive-aggressive Caterina, Yolanda the foghorn, and cardio mum, who’s determined that everyone is going to lose post-baby fat. A few of the others seem friendly, but they don’t want to commit to the first person who smiles at them in case someone better comes along. One or two don’t contribute at all, like the mum sitting beside Rosie who checks her phone every time it beeps as if missing a tweet is going to ruin her life. Or t
he Chinese girl who hasn’t spoken a word. Rosie finds them all irritating. She’s either ignored or paid too much attention.
‘Oh, you’re so young,’ passive-aggressive Caterina says, as if it’s something to be sympathetic about. She reminds Rosie of the girls in the neighbourhood who used to bitch about what she was getting up to with their brothers and cousins, rather than what their brothers and cousins were getting up to with her.
‘He’s so big for his age.’ Definitely a reprimand from cardio mum who Rosie is convinced has already put her baby on a diet. The woman’s first question every week has been, ‘Is he walking yet?’
And then in that first week, the topic she most dreads comes up. The exchange of ‘When did you stop breastfeeding?’ stories. By the time they get to Rosie, some of the others are in tears from the trauma of moving onto formula.
‘I didn’t breastfeed,’ she says. ‘It was too painful.’
‘Oh, you poor thing.’
Rosie’s grateful for even a bit of patronising sympathy from passive-aggressive Caterina until she realises the woman is talking to Toto. Had Rosie given up too soon? Her mother would have endured the bleeding and scabby nipples. Her mother endured years of cancer.
‘Where’s the next meeting?’ Rosie asks.
‘We’ll put things up on the Facebook page,’ Caterina says. It seems as though it’s only on a need-to-know basis. As if they’re a group of operatives who have something to hide.
‘I’m not on Facebook,’ Rosie says. ‘Could someone text me?’
No one commits to doing that.
Cardio mum tells them about a ‘Mums with Gloves’ program she’s starting up at one of the parks just off the Bay Run and then goes into nutrition news again to help anyone who wants to lose the baby fat. Yolanda bristles through the whole spiel.
And then there’s Toto’s incessant crying. It stops conversation most times. Produces strained smiles from the others that don’t quite reach their eyes. Yolanda pulls Rosie aside when she goes to makes herself an instant coffee. She’s an Indigenous girl who’s just moved to Sydney from Moree with her partner and, apart from bristling whenever cardio mum speaks, Yolanda’s brought up how crap Sydney is about three times now.
‘It’s his teeth,’ Yolanda tells her.
‘What?’
‘Your bub. He’s crying because of his teeth.’
‘He’s never had trouble with his teeth,’ Rosie says.
‘But the molars are painful and you should –’
‘It’s none of your business, Yolanda.’
‘I don’t like your tone.’
Obviously a teacher. Rosie’s history with teachers is worse than her history with girls from the neighbourhood. Before they leave, Caterina wants a photo of all the babies together because she thinks they’re the most culturally diverse mothers’ group in the area and is patting herself on the back for bringing them together.
But Rosie goes back each Tuesday regardless, because it’s company. Because some days she just needs to speak to someone other than Toto. A few of the mums are close to going back to work soon and there’s a lot of talk about professions. Banking. Pharmaceuticals. IT. It’s yet another question Rosie dreads. They bypass some of the others but Caterina insists that someone Rosie’s age must have a story.
‘I’ve enrolled in a nursing degree,’ she lies. She’s enquired about it, anyway. Researched it online at the library. Next time they ask, she’ll fill in the details. About how she’s thinking of midwifery because of Min during the floods.
But today, after four weeks of mothers’ group, they aren’t there. Nine women with prams, the United Nations of the inner west, on the run from Rosie.
So she takes the bus to the city for the first time with Toto, worried that she won’t be able to get the pram on and off in time, but a couple of people help her when she gets off at UTS. She heads to the Student Association and browses the pamphlets outside the door. Takes one about free legal advice for UTS students. Once inside, a guy her age helps her download an application form and she wants to weep with gratitude because kindness disarms her these days. Lachlan, or Lachie as he likes to be called, is doing a Bachelor of Mathematics and Computing. Beautiful straight teeth and a great smile. Tells her to come back on Thursday and he’ll help with the application. Rosie contemplates the offer in his eyes, because he doesn’t seem to be fazed by a sleeping baby. And as far as she’s concerned, she doesn’t owe SES Jesus anything.
But that afternoon he turns up on her doorstep. He says something about working in the mines up north, one week on, one week off, but Rosie figures that’s just some bullshit lie. She can tell he’s not interested in Toto. Hasn’t touched him once, and the moment he walks up those stairs he’s itching to leave. He doesn’t have the beard anymore. It softened him. During the floods it made him look kind.
She hears a ringtone. Not hers, because Rosie doesn’t get phone calls. ‘Jimmy here,’ he says, and then he mumbles to whomever he’s speaking to. The fragments she knows about him begin to disappear.
‘You’re Jimmy, not Jim,’ she says, when he hangs up.
‘My friends call me Jimmy.’
Toto doesn’t want to be contained because he’s tasted the freedom that feet bring him, and he wants more. In Rosie’s arms he headbutts her and for a moment she’s stunned by the force of it, but she doesn’t let on.
‘Do you want me to call you Jim or Jimmy?’ she asks.
‘You can call me whatever you want.’
She remembers the nights during the floods lying beside him when he didn’t shut up. Now she gets short abrupt statements and little else. Rosie hates small talk. Hates people who force her to indulge in it. But that’s who she’s become now. Someone satisfied by the mundane. The girl who pushes prams through shopping centres just to enjoy the pace of a flat surface because it calms her down.
‘I won a raffle at Marketplace,’ she tells him. ‘I’ve got a portrait of Toto and they’re giving me three copies, so you can have one. He’s pretty photogenic.’
Rosie holds the baby out to him, but Jim’s hands stay at his side. So she puts Toto on the floor and lets him try to walk. He falls, hits his head, and starts to cry.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispers, holding him tight. ‘I’m sorry.’ Because it’s all she says to him these days.
‘Are you sure he’s mine?’
Jim’s words clench something in her gut.
‘Why would you ask that?’
‘Because he looks nothing like me.’
‘Toto’s yours,’ she says.
Apart from the coldness in Jim’s voice, there’s also pity in his eyes.
‘How can you be sure, Rosie?’
‘Trust me, he looks like you! When he smiles, he looks just like you.’
‘He doesn’t!’
Toto jumps in her arms, his little heart beating fast. And that’s it for Rosie. Gennaros don’t beg. It was her father’s golden rule. She takes Toto into the bedroom, puts him down in the cot and then returns.
‘I want you to leave,’ she says. ‘You don’t respect me and I don’t need that in Toto’s life. I told you he was yours because I know how you felt about your mother not letting your father be part of your life. You said any man should have the right to know.’
He doesn’t respond, and she shoves him.
‘If you don’t want to be part of this, then go away, Jimmy, or whatever the fuck your name is. I don’t want your darkness in his life.’
‘I’m worried about you, Rosie,’ he says. He takes something out of his pocket. A post-it note with a couple of phone numbers on it. ‘These people might be able to help.’
‘Why would you care?’
‘Because I just do.’
‘You don’t even know me. I’m just some girl you picked up who you think is a liar!’
After she manages to put Toto down for a sleep, she heads to the kitchen to organise food. It’s the Heinz stuff from the supermarket for the time being because she do
esn’t have it in her to prepare anything else. She hears the front door open and starts to head upstairs. There’s an unspoken rule between them not to be in the same room. But Rosie stops herself, because this is her house. Her kitchen. Bruno comes down the stairs and walks towards Martha, but Rosie calls him back and sends him up again. Martha puts the groceries down on the butcher’s trolley, her icy blue stare on Rosie for the first time since Rosie’s returned. She’s darkened her blonde hair lately. When Rosie first saw her in that cancer ward all those years ago, she thought Martha was the good witch Glinda from The Wizard of Oz. Some things changed over the years. Same land, different witch.
Rosie wants to be the first to speak because she needs that control.
‘Where’s my father’s wedding ring?’
Martha seems surprised by the question. ‘In my jewellery box.’
‘I mean his real wedding ring.’
Martha’s eyes meet hers. When it comes to staring, Rosie can win this. Almost.
‘No disrespect to your mother, Rosie, but I do consider my marriage to your father the real thing.’
‘I don’t give a shit, Martha. Where have you put my parents’ stuff?’
‘You took most of your mum’s things when you left.’
‘And what right did you have taking down photos of my mother in the living room?’
‘Once again, no disrespect to Loredana, but why would I have photos of her in a house that I’ve been the sole occupant of for almost three years?’
‘Because it’s my house.’
‘Yes, but also mine. I’ve lived here for six years, Rosie. Your father and I worked on it together. Both of us. He didn’t just work on it alone.’
Together. Us. When those words come out of Martha’s mouth, Rosie wants to slap her hard.
‘My father never worked on this house alone before my mother died. It was the three of us.’
The Place on Dalhousie Page 6