The Place on Dalhousie

by Melina Marchetta

  ‘What do you and Will talk about every day?’ he asks after someone puts a macchiato in front of her before she’s even asked for it.

  ‘He’ll have a short black,’ she says to the waitress. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because I can’t understand how people fill their day with talk without it becoming empty.’

  ‘Are you having trouble talking to her?’

  At least they don’t have to beat around the bush. He nods.

  ‘While Will’s there, he wants to know about everyone here. People mostly. He keeps up with news and stuff online, but he misses family and our friends. He misses us.’

  She gives him a look and there’s laughter in her eyes. ‘He’ll never get over the Monaro.’

  ‘Yeah, neither will I,’ he says. And then, ‘Is he thriving? Doesn’t want to come back?’

  She doesn’t respond for a moment, but he gets that look.

  ‘He is thriving. He’s making a shitload of money. He’s making amazing connections, so he doesn’t necessarily want to come back now.’

  ‘But?’

  She’s annoyed again. Like the last time they had a discussion about Will.

  ‘Do you know the worst thing about being in a relationship this long?’ she asks.

  Jimmy shakes his head. Hasn’t been in one long enough to know.

  ‘It’s that everyone wants to talk about your relationship. They want to dissect it. Speculate on whether it’s run its course.’

  ‘Why would they think that?’

  ‘Because according to the experts, relationships that begin at the end of high school last about seven years. Most split up when they’re about twenty-three, twenty-four.’

  His coffee comes and she passes him the sugar.

  ‘I don’t like being a stat,’ she says. ‘So let’s get back to the lack of discussion between you and the baby mama.’

  Jimmy would rather be speaking about her than himself.

  ‘She sort of shuts down conversation before it starts,’ he says.

  Nothing changes at Dalhousie Street for the rest of his time in Sydney. Sometimes Toto totters or crawls towards him and hands over a plastic block that’s dripping with saliva. Every day they go for a walk down to Algie Park and Jimmy asks Rosie if he can push the pram and she barely acknowledges the request. It pisses him off. Jimmy doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life on the back foot with Toto just because he was one year late.

  ‘Is it a control thing?’ he asks her, the day before he’s due to fly out.

  They’re on Ramsay Street, and he doesn’t want an argument outside the busiest bakery on the block but he can’t hold back.

  ‘I can push a pram, you know. It’s pretty obvious you don’t need a brain to do it,’ he says.

  Rosie puts the brake on the pram and hands Toto a rusk to slobber over. At first Jimmy thinks she’s ignoring him, but then he gets the full impact of her stare.

  ‘What are you, five?’ she says. ‘Ask me if you can hold him and I might say yes. Because he’s not going to remember who pushed him in a pram!’

  He doesn’t respond and that seems to irritate her even more.

  ‘All he wants is to be fed and held, and you can’t even do that, and I don’t get it because you were the most touchy-feely guy I ever came across. And I’m not. So he got that from you.’

  Toto drops the rusk and Jimmy picks it up, but she snatches it from him and throws it in the bin. As if she doesn’t even trust Jimmy to do that himself.

  At her place, he watches her struggle up the steps holding Toto and once they’re in the sunroom Jimmy figures there’s no use staying because the silence between them is too toxic.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ he says. ‘See you in a week.’

  He heads down the stairs to where Martha’s sitting at the table, drinking tea and reading the paper. She glances up and he must look like shit because she points to her mug and, instead of walking out, he nods.

  ‘That guy – is he your boyfriend?’ he asks when he’s sitting before her.

  ‘Ewan.’ Martha looks up from what she’s reading to think about it. ‘We’re flirting.’

  ‘He looks familiar.’

  ‘Sacked NRL coach.’

  ‘Who isn’t these days? It’s such a pathetic game.’

  She laughs again. ‘Isn’t it just? You’re obviously not a fan?’

  ‘Naw. I like cars. It’s the adrenaline.’

  She gives him a look. ‘Well, you’ve bred into the right family.’

  The kettle sings and he gets up to make his own cup of tea. Can’t help noticing the splashback. ‘You know, I can do the grouting for you guys. It’ll look amazing once you finish.’

  ‘I’m now officially on leave so I’ll get around to doing it myself.’

  After a moment Martha puts down what she’s reading.

  ‘Where did Rosie go?’ she asks, her voice low and as if she’s been waiting a while to ask.

  ‘Tresillian? Does that make sense?’

  She nods. ‘It’s a clinic to help mums with babies. At least she knows how to ask for help.’

  He tops up her mug and they sit for a while talking about how FIFO works. He used to think it was a good perk, but flying in and out only gets him as far as Brisbane.

  ‘Are you thinking of moving back here?’ she asks.

  He shakes his head. ‘The money’s too good. I’d never get that sort of pay here.’

  ‘You need to make this work, Jimmy,’ she says.

  He volunteers to go grocery shopping with Tara the next morning because Mackee trains his little cousin’s soccer team on Saturdays. Jimmy hasn’t spent much time with Tara without Frankie or Mackee around. Sort of knows her the least. At school she called him a dickhead a lot. Not out of affection either. She was a bit militant back then – perhaps as lonely as the rest of them.

  Jimmy’s surrounded by women who won’t let him take control of the wheels, because at Coles Tara won’t let him push the shopping cart. She has a system and is very particular about sticking to the grocery list she’s holding.

  ‘I don’t do lists,’ he says. ‘I just grab what I need.’

  ‘If I don’t stick to a list I go over our budget.’ Her tone is cold, abrupt.

  ‘You’re pissed off at me.’

  ‘I’m pissed off at you,’ she says.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘We were expecting you on Saturday. Now whenever you don’t turn up, we think you’ll disappear again.’

  ‘Frankie’s fine about –’

  ‘Frankie’s good cop at the moment. We take turns.’

  ‘When is she bad cop?’

  ‘When Tom’s being a dick.’

  ‘Was Tom being a dick the other night?’

  The question surprises her. He doesn’t know whether her reaction is because he overheard them, or just that he’s bringing it up. But throughout the whole toiletry aisle, she doesn’t speak.

  ‘The other night was Tom having an anxiety attack,’ she finally says, ‘and then he doesn’t cope and he gets even more agitated and goes for walks at two in the morning and that freaks me out because I think a group of drunks are going to king-hit him on Stanmore Road and, as much as my heart is telling me not to shout at him, my mouth is saying, “Where the hell have you been?”’

  ‘Understandable.’

  He glances at her, hoping he’s not overstepping the mark. ‘I miss the way Mackee was when we were at school.’

  ‘I do too, but I’m sort of more in love with this version of him.’

  And that’s the thing with Tara Finke. She can deliver sincerity in such a practical way.

  ‘Dating is the fun part,’ she tells him. ‘Living together is complicated. It means that when he doesn’t speak for the whole morning, you’re wondering if everything’s okay. When you’re dating, by the time he drives over in the morning, he’s worked everything out.’

  ‘You’re good with him.’

  He feels the intense study again. ‘An
d that surprises you?’

  He laughs. ‘Yeah, actually it does. The same way it surprises me that Siobhan can dish out good advice when she used to be the worst at taking it.’

  Tara focuses on handing over the groceries in the order of how she wants them packed.

  ‘I jumped the dating part,’ he finds himself saying. ‘I just got her pregnant and you can’t go backwards from that. The chance is gone, you know.’

  ‘Would you have liked to have dated her?’

  He hands over cash as she’s taking out her Visa card to stop her from paying.

  ‘I thought I had it all worked out,’ he tells her. ‘I’ve been saving for ages and I figured I had another year then I could come back here and apply to the paramedics. It’s a three-year course and I wouldn’t be making much on a base wage. But I’d have a profession, you know. For once in the history of my family. Both sides. They’re not bad people. They’re just so fucking useless, that’s all.’

  ‘Jimmy –’

  ‘I don’t know how to be a father,’ he interrupts, and he can’t understand why he’s admitting it to Tara. ‘So that means I’m just like the rest of the people I come from. I don’t know how to be anything but a big disappointment in someone’s life.’

  He takes the shopping trolley and they start walking.

  ‘She’s given you a way in,’ Tara says after a while. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Rosie.’

  ‘And she didn’t have to. Take it. I don’t think that kid is going to have a better life because he has a father, Jimmy. I think he’s going to have a better life because he has you.’

  Jimmy thinks Tara’s just crossed into good-cop territory.

  ‘Don’t ask me to explain a compliment,’ she says, briskly.

  And her words take him back to Dalhousie Street. Martha lets him in and he says he’s sorry for disturbing her again, and goes upstairs to where Rosie is bathing Toto. The bathroom light is crap and she looks even more beat. He doesn’t know whether she’s a good mum or not, but what he does know is that she loves the baby. Toto’s at least happy to see Jimmy because he smiles in that twisted crazy Hailler way.

  ‘I have held one of those,’ Jimmy tells her. ‘I was with Kev the day after the water went down. We got access to that area beyond the mill and we found him … that baby … and Kev had a meltdown … and I just picked him up, this little thing, and he was so cold and I can’t forget how it felt and I don’t want to touch yours … ours … because he deserves better than hands that held a dead baby.’

  Jimmy sees Rosie’s eyes water and he knows she hasn’t forgotten anything about that town. She reaches out and grabs a towel that’s sitting on the sink.

  ‘My father believed in signs,’ she says. ‘Not that they change events or predict what’s going to happen. It’s more about what we do when we come across one.’

  She removes Toto from the bath and wraps him in the towel.

  ‘I was going to have an abortion, you know. And the night before I was booked to have one, I had a dream. Not of my mother or my father or of anyone telling me anything profound.’ Her eyes meet his and she’s trying not to cry. ‘I dreamt of the flood and of the town and I dreamt that someone found that baby alive. I don’t know who it was, except that Min was holding him.’

  She looks at Toto, who loves the attention. Post-clinic Toto seems to love everything.

  ‘Honestly, I know what everyone thinks. That I’m like any other dropkick who has a baby because at least then there’ll be someone out there who loves them. But the dream was a sign. I felt it here,’ she says, pointing to her heart. ‘So you’re wrong if you think your hands only held death.’

  And she holds Toto out to him and Jimmy takes his son.

  Rosie has nowhere she needs to be. Five minutes into a job interview at the nursing home she walks out. It makes her regret the money she spent keeping Toto in the council-run occasional day care for two hours, although she’s relieved to have found a place that only charges ten dollars an hour. Her plan is to find a job that can offer her a couple of shifts a week and then she’ll add on from there. But five minutes into the interview she picks up her bag, and says, ‘I’m out of here.’

  She’s walking out of the grounds when she spots the guy Martha’s been hanging out with on the front verandah of the house for the past couple of weeks. Rosie can hear everything from her window. It’s nauseating to listen to, but she knows everything about him. The latest is that his father has had a fall and it’s become obvious to everyone that he can’t stay home. It’s turned Irwin, or whatever his name is, into even more of a misery guts. She’ll never understand why people whinge about their parents getting old and all the things that come with it. Rosie would give anything to push her mother and father around in a chair. She wouldn’t care if they were dribbling and didn’t know who she was, or if they pissed their pants every morning and every night. The woman in the interview asked her why she was interested in working with old people. Someone as young as her. She didn’t say her real reason. Because no one in her family except for Nonna Eugenia got to grow old.

  Today, he’s pushing a guy in a wheelchair who is obviously his father, and they’re coming towards her and she’s about to look down and ignore them, but then she doesn’t. Because of the way he brushes the old man’s cheek with the back of his hand with an affection that makes Rosie’s eyes water.

  ‘Can I give you some advice?’ she says.

  It takes him a moment to recognise her.

  ‘Rosie, is it?’ he asks.

  She nods and goes to speak, but he stops her. ‘Look, I don’t want to get involved in whatever this is between you and Martha, because you need to sort it –’

  She holds up a hand to shut him up.

  ‘I don’t like it here,’ she tells him. ‘Regardless of whether your father remembers you, it doesn’t mean he’s given up on feeling anything. If he stays at this place, he’ll die sooner. I’ve seen it happen. There are better homes.’

  He looks taken aback. ‘Like where?’

  Rosie likes the fact that he’s asked and she names a few, but then gets pissed off.

  ‘Just do your research and don’t be so fricken lazy.’

  His phone rings and he answers it. Rosie moves his father’s chair before heading off, because the sun is directly in the old guy’s eyes.

  She gets a haircut next, seeing as she’s paid for two hours of day care. Stares at herself in the mirror and contemplates her instructions for the girl at JustCuts. Rosie doesn’t have one of those elfin faces that look fantastic with cropped hair because she took after her father and everything about her face is too pronounced, but she’s got good skin courtesy of her mum. So she goes for a buzz cut.

  Later, when she picks up Toto, his hands go straight to it, chuckling, and the day-care girls laugh at the sound. They love Toto, and that’s going to be Rosie’s yardstick in life. She’ll love anyone who loves her son.

  On the way home, her phone beeps a message and her heart leaps for an instant and it’s how she knows. It’s a Pavlov’s dog thing. The only person who texts her is SES Jesus so the instant euphoria at the sound of the buzz spells trouble. He’s texted her once or twice during the week. Wants to know how Toto’s doing, so she sends a photo. Wants to know how she’s doing. You okay? Rosie’s trying to have a guy-free year just to prove to herself that she can. She’s surprised that she misses talking most of all because she didn’t date many guys who were chatty. But he was. Not as much anymore. She decides not to respond to texts asking how she is, because then Rosie’ll end up sleeping with this guy and him being Toto’s father is tricky. She can’t go around screwing up that situation. He needs to be Toto’s father above everything else.

  When he flew in last week it was a bit less awkward than the last time. He couldn’t keep his eyes off Toto. Laughed when he saw him totter around on tiptoes. Rosie tells herself that she loves his laugh because it reminds her of Toto, but then she remembers the Pavlov’s dog
thing and realises it’s because she’s got a thing for this guy.

  ‘It’ll be sort of sad when he works out that the rest of the world can walk by the time they’re one,’ she had said.

  ‘Naw, let him go on thinking he’s special.’

  And Rosie could tell that no one had ever told Jimmy he was special.

  She tries to stay upbeat despite unsuccessful interviews. Because there are moments with Toto that make Rosie feel euphoric. The unconditional love from him, and the way his face lights up when he sees her. But there’s always something to crush the joy. At a café in Rozelle where she’s getting a latte, Rosie notices two of the women from the mothers’ group. Yolanda the megamouth and the Chinese girl who never said a word. Rosie’s not interested in being seen, so she turns the pram, accidentally blocks the entrance and gets the huffing and puffing sound annoying people make when they don’t have the guts to say, ‘Get out of the bloody way’. Rosie refuses to move, which sort of causes a scene. It means Yolanda and the other one spot her. Suddenly the two are on their feet, shoving their prams between patrons to reach her.

  ‘For your information, what you did was rude,’ Yolanda says.

  Rosie has no idea what she’s done to them but she’s trying to get out of pramageddon to avoid scaring the babies. And then someone comes up behind them and gets all hot and bothered because now three prams are in the way.