The Place on Dalhousie

by Melina Marchetta

  Rosie’s coming out of the house with the pram as he walks up, and he helps her down the step.

  ‘Just got in,’ he says, although she hasn’t asked. Toto gives him a tired smile and Jimmy figures he just woke up. ‘It’s like I can’t stop thinking of him, you know, and it’s freaking me out because every other week I feel forgotten. As if I have to start all over again. I’m worried that he won’t remember me.’

  It’s blurted, but he has to get it out. The problem with being away is that it means Jimmy spends too much time in his head, and all sorts of things happen in there.

  He’s suddenly aware of someone else on the verandah.

  ‘My Nonna Eugenia is here from Sicily,’ Rosie tells him.

  He expected a small woman with hair set immaculately like both of Frankie’s nonnas, or even Mackee’s Nanna Grace. They could be described as stern or haughty, but warm. Rosie’s grandmother has a hardness in her eyes that makes him flinch.

  ‘She doesn’t like me,’ he says to Rosie when Eugenia relinquishes the pram to stop for a ciggie outside the community centre.

  ‘Does she have to?’

  Jimmy was hoping she’d contradict him.

  ‘Her father was a good-for-nothing, she was married to a good-for-nothing, her neighbours are good-for-nothing. So as far as she’s concerned, men don’t rate.’

  ‘What about her son?’ he asks. ‘She would have loved your father, right?’

  Jimmy doesn’t know why he says that because it’s not as if he’s top priority when it comes to his mother.

  ‘Son-in-law,’ she says. ‘And my father was in a class of his own.’

  A car races around the corner of Ramsay and Dalhousie and almost mounts the kerb where they’re walking. Jimmy grabs Rosie’s hand and pulls her back. He doesn’t even try to wrest Toto from Eugenia. A fortnight ago he convinced Rosie to share the pram and now her grandmother comes along and she’s not in on the agreement.

  They spend the next half hour walking the two blocks of the main drag. Here, there seems to be a place for every deli item. The shop to buy cheese, the one to buy fresh pasta, the fruit shop, the delicatessen for pickled vegetables, and then the IGA, where they take a ticket and wait for twenty minutes, just so Rosie can buy one hundred grams of salami. For the life of him, Jimmy can’t understand why she doesn’t get her groceries all in one place. Finally, they wait in a queue outside the hole-in-the-wall bakery, another one of those family-owned businesses with more charm than sparkle, selling a variety of stone-baked Italian breads, and pizza loaves and cakes. Nothing like the flashier pasticcerias up the road. When Rosie’s paid up, the woman behind the counter gives her a free bread roll for Toto to gnaw at. They head back home and Jimmy notices that she gets a couple of text messages.

  ‘Are you going out with someone?’ he asks.

  She shrugs. ‘Maybe. I haven’t decided yet.’

  ‘Has he met Toto?’

  ‘Yes.’ After a moment she glances at him. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Nothing serious.’

  ‘I’d hate to be described that way. Nothing serious.’

  The girl he’s seeing does the accounts for the mines and he can’t imagine her losing sleep because she’s ‘nothing serious’ to him. Jimmy is probably less than nothing serious to her.

  Rosie eyes him and then looks at her grandmother.

  ‘Do you want to take him for the afternoon?’ she asks.

  He’d never pick Rosie for someone who doesn’t make her own decisions, but Eugenia’s definitely in charge here.

  ‘Are you okay with that?’ he asks. ‘Because I want it to come from you, Rosie. I want to know that you trust me with him. It’s what you and I need between us. I don’t want to be tiptoeing twenty-four seven.’

  ‘If I wasn’t okay with it, you wouldn’t be taking him,’ Rosie says.

  Eugenia says something to her and Rosie nods in agreement.

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘I’m not a translator,’ she says, irritated.

  ‘I don’t want to be second-guessing what your grandmother’s saying about me.’

  ‘You talk too much. That’s what she’s saying.’

  Outside the house, Rosie crouches down and kisses Toto.

  ‘Two rules. Keep him warm and don’t swear in front of him. He’s about a second away from saying his first words and I don’t want them to be Fuck you.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘And don’t get excited if he says Dada. It’s not exactly a first word; it’s more of a tongue placement behind his teeth thing.’

  ‘Won’t get excited.’

  He doesn’t mean for it to come out the way it does. She glances up at him and something softens in her eyes.

  ‘It’s just that when he says it for real, you’ll want it to mean something more than baby sounds.’

  Jimmy sends the gang a message telling them he has Toto for the afternoon. He asks whether they want to catch-up even though he knows they’re either working or in lectures. Frankie and Mackee take less than a minute to respond and, according to Mackee, Tara says she’s chucking a sickie for the afternoon and orders them not to leave until she gets there. The pram’s a shocker, flat in one wheel and lopsided. Jimmy stops at a servo to pump it up, but it’s more of a puncture than a flat. It must wipe Rosie out going uphill. He takes Toto onto a bus down Parramatta Road and gets out at Camperdown where he’s to meet Frankie and Mackee outside the Deus Ex Machina motorbike shop. Mackee’s already there, waiting. He crouches beside the pram and peers in.

  ‘Hey, Totes,’ he says.

  ‘No swearing in front of him, okay?’ Jimmy takes Toto out of the pram and places him on the ground while he tries to fix the wheel for the tenth time.

  Mackee grips Toto’s hand and looks up at Jimmy. ‘You never let go, mate. Never.’

  Frankie arrives and she gets eye level with Toto. Jimmy sees tears well up in her eyes.

  ‘I can’t believe we’ve started breeding,’ she says, picking Toto up.

  ‘He’s made us old,’ Mackee laughs.

  ‘You’re the one wearing a tie and talking shares and the stock market.’

  ‘Guys!’

  They watch as Tara, weighed down by a satchel and briefcase, waves at them from the middle of Parramatta Road. She’s perched on the thin medium strip with cars racing past her both ways.

  ‘Use the lights!’ Mackee shouts. She ignores him and races across the road the moment she gets a chance.

  ‘Oh my God, he’s gorgeous.’ She shoves all her stuff onto Mackee and holds out her hands to Toto.

  ‘I dislocated my shoulder last month and you didn’t take time off work,’ Tom accuses her.

  ‘I gave you a sponge bath for a week,’ she says. ‘Be grateful.’

  Toto goes to her, solemn at first, and then he laughs.

  ‘Fuuuck, it’s Hailler in Year Eleven detention,’ Mackee says.

  ‘What did I say about swearing?’

  ‘Justine wants to Skype with us from fucking Melbourne,’ Frankie says, taking out her phone.

  In true Justine fashion she cries when they hold Toto up to the screen. Jimmy hasn’t seen her in years, but it feels like less. She’d have to be one of the most generous people he’s ever known. At school, if he wanted moments away from Frankie’s dramas, or lectures from Tara, or descriptions of Siobhan’s sex life, there’d be Justine in the music room. Today, she’s rehearsing for a gig and plays Toto a piece of crazy music on the piano accordion and Toto loves it. Tara has a bit of a sway with him while Frankie sings an Italian song until Mackee tells them to hang up or he’ll walk away. Inside the café, Mackee tries to fold up the pram.

  ‘In what century did she buy this thing?’ he says, while Tara grabs the first waitress they see. ‘We need a highchair!’ As if Toto’s the first baby to ever enter the joint.

  And it’s all manic and sort of emotional.

  When they’re settled, Jimmy looks at the menu, wishing there was something that sug
gested what to feed a seventeen-month-old.

  ‘Do you think he can have French fries?’

  ‘Course,’ Mackee says. ‘I took my cousin Billy to Macca’s when he was about one.’

  Frankie is studying Toto. ‘You’re pretty adorable,’ she tells him. ‘Very Italian-looking.’

  ‘So why did she name him after my dad’s favourite band?’ Mackee asks.

  Jimmy shrugs.

  ‘I reckon she named him after Toto Cutugno. He’s an Italian icon,’ Frankie says. She breaks out into one of his songs.

  ‘I think it’s a family name.’

  ‘Toto comes from Salvatore,’ Frankie explains to the others.

  ‘Sounds nothing like it,’ Mackee says, taking off his tie.

  Tara leans into him. ‘How was the interview?’

  He shrugs. ‘Pretty ordinary.’

  Despite still getting casual work, Jimmy can tell Mackee is getting frustrated with the finding-a-real-job process.

  Frankie brings up her project and Tara’s impressed that she’s presenting two papers at a symposium. It makes Jimmy feel guilty that he hasn’t asked what she’s studying.

  ‘Family history,’ she explains. ‘There’s so much information around for people whose families migrated from the UK and Ireland,’ Frankie tells them. ‘But not that much for everyone else.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were interested,’ Mackee says.

  ‘Accidentally to begin with,’ she says. ‘As part of my degree I did a genealogy elective and, this one night, a friend of my parents was over for dinner talking about how his parents died without them having written anything down about their migration or history. So I started doing research for him, wrote to libraries and organisations all over Italy, managed to find records six generations back, and then I put it into a booklet for his family. They were weeping.’

  She looks at them, nodding.

  ‘Anyway, they wanted to pay me. I said no. They said yes. I said no. My mother said, “You’re not living with us forever so take the money.”’

  Jimmy can imagine Mia saying that.

  ‘How much did you charge?’ Tara asks.

  ‘It was about twenty hours’ work and I charged thirty dollars an hour.’

  ‘Not enough,’ Mackee says. ‘You’ve got a masters.’

  ‘I’m working on at least half a dozen at the moment. All word of mouth. But the best part is that I decided to write an article for an online magazine about migration since the 1920s. It sort of focuses on reasons and experiences and how they’ve changed depending on what decade they arrived.’

  ‘I want to read it,’ Tara says.

  ‘I really wanted to go into what we can learn when it comes to refugees arriving here today. Drum roll, please.’

  ‘Aren’t you loud enough?’ Mackee says.

  ‘Last week,’ she says, ignoring him, ‘I got an offer from ANU to do my PhD on the topic.’

  ‘Jealous,’ Tara says. ‘Very jealous. You’re a bloody superstar.’

  ‘No swearing,’ Jimmy pleads.

  Tara sends a wistful glance at Tom. ‘Should I do a PhD?’

  ‘No. Earn money, woman.’

  ‘When did everything become about earning money?’ Jimmy asks.

  ‘She wants a couple of those,’ Tom says, pointing to the baby.

  ‘He wants a couple of them as well,’ Tara says.

  ‘But we’re not fornicating for the purpose of procreation until we can afford to live on a single income,’ Mackee explains.

  Tara’s fingers creep up Toto’s hand and he chuckles.

  ‘I never pegged you as clucky,’ Jimmy says.

  ‘What a ridiculous word that is,’ Frankie says.

  ‘Archaic,’ Tara agrees.

  ‘Every time I hug one of my baby cousins or godchildren, the relatives are all, “Oh my God, she’s next. She’s so clucky” and I’m like, “It’s a hug, people.”’

  ‘So no babies for now,’ Mackee says. He gently pokes Toto on the chest. ‘You, number one son, Toto.’

  ‘You have to get the pronunciation right,’ Jimmy says.

  Mackee takes out his phone. ‘I’m googling how to pronounce Toto in Italian.’

  Toto’s amused by their laughter. Jimmy is moved by it. These guys always came up with the goods. Great families to be part of, beds to sleep on, food on the table every time he was in their homes. But Toto’s the first thing Jimmy has had to offer and he’s overcome by what it means to him.

  Upstairs at Rosie’s place, Toto does that bucking thing he always does when he sees his mother. She’s got eye make-up on and looks hot and it means she’s going out with the guy who’s met Toto, and Jimmy figures he doesn’t have the right to feel jealous. They don’t have memories or history. Jimmy didn’t get a girlfriend pregnant. He got a stranger he had known for two weeks pregnant. It’s as bloodless as it can possibly be. Rosie looks up and it’s only her grandmother being there that makes him head down the stairs.

  ‘I’ve got an interview this week,’ Rosie calls after him. ‘At a nursing home in Chiswick. Eugenia can look after him for now if I get it, but I need to work something out for when she leaves.’

  ‘What are the options?’

  ‘Occasional day care.’ She shrugs. ‘And Signora across the road might agree to do it. She used to babysit me.’

  He comes back up the stairs because he thinks any progress with Rosie is important.

  ‘I’ll pay for any child care while I’m not in Sydney, but when I’m here I really want to look after him.’

  She doesn’t look impressed. ‘You can’t go around promising things and then not delivering.’

  ‘Who says I won’t be delivering, Rosie?’

  ‘I rang your number for a year!’

  ‘I couldn’t …’

  ‘I don’t give a shit where you left the phone, Jimmy. You didn’t deliver.’

  Not that much progress after all.

  ‘Enjoy your date,’ he mutters, walking away.

  Frankie takes him to drinks at the Old Clare, celebrating an engagement of a couple of her friends. The place is packed and she’s waved over by a group of mostly guys. All of them pissed.

  ‘Will’s friends from uni,’ she says, introducing them. ‘Jimmy.’

  The taller of the guys feigns a sob. ‘Your friends too, Francesca.’

  She laughs and Jimmy can tell she likes these people.

  ‘And they’ve just come back from the big drunken tour of Europe and saw him in Germany.’

  ‘Stuttgart!’ the guys holler to each other, as if it’s a trigger word for another swig of beer.

  ‘We had so much fun,’ the only girl says. Erin is her name, he thinks.

  They bring up the pipeline project Will’s working on and Frankie nods a lot and Jimmy can’t understand a word they’re saying. Another guy joins them, holding two beers and sipping from both, so pissed he can hardly string a sentence together. He ogles Frankie until one of the guys introduces her as ‘Will’s Plus One’.

  Jimmy sees a flash of irritation cross her face.

  ‘Will told us you’re back at uni,’ Erin says to her. ‘Doing what? Top-up courses?’

  Before Frankie has a chance to respond, she says, ‘You’re a crazy girl not wanting to spend a year in Europe.’ Erin nudges the tall guy. ‘The moment this one gets a job overseas I’m following him over.’

  ‘Who says you’re invited?’ the boyfriend says with a laugh.

  ‘As if I’d trust you on your own, babe.’

  She looks at Frankie, waves away what she just said, coming up close.

  ‘Will and I had a D & M about you. He can’t understand why you’re not with him.’

  ‘Did the dickhead stop asking you to marry him, Francesca?’ one of the guys asks. ‘Is that why you’re not over there?’

  ‘I’ll marry you,’ the drunk says.

  The space invasion is full on and Frankie steps away from the intensity of the group.

  ‘See you guys later.’
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  Jimmy follows her as they push towards the couple getting engaged. Along the way friends recognise her and there’s a whole lot of ‘How’s Will?’, ‘Where’s Will?’, ‘Why aren’t you with Will?’

  They stay a while and Jimmy gets talking to a couple of their friends whom he’s met before. It feels good to talk about work. Engineers understand mines and Jimmy doesn’t have to apologise about what he does. Outside when they leave, Frankie’s quiet. Not unhappy, but he knows something’s not right. It’s crowded on Broadway tonight and they don’t have much luck getting on a bus. ‘Let’s walk,’ she says, although it’ll take them about forty minutes, especially in the heels Frankie’s wearing.

  ‘And just for the record, I am no one’s plus one,’ she says, out of the blue.

  ‘Good to hear.’

  ‘Because that’s what I am to some people. Will’s hot girlfriend. While they’re speaking pipelines and formulas, no one truly asks what I do. Just, “Oh, you’re in the band” or “You make bridal wear, how lovely”. And then it’s back to pipelines and infrastructure and aren’t I lucky because Will’s going to be able to pick and choose who to work for one day, and Will would be a fool not to take up an offer in Europe this year because Will’s got a future more important than mine and I’d be a “crazy girl” not to go to Europe because everyone wants to spend a year hanging out in Germany as their boyfriend’s plus one.’

  ‘For the record, you’re not that hot.’

  She grins, because she can’t help herself. Jimmy doesn’t know how else to respond. Has to admit that he’s always had a sort of reverence for the rise and rise of Will, because it’s mostly due to pretty intense hard work and intelligence.

  Frankie’s phone rings and Jimmy figures it’s the aforementioned at this time of the night. She looks at the screen. Shows him.

  ‘Stuttgart!’ she hollers and Jimmy laughs because she’s spot-on with the drunk impersonation. She answers the phone and walks ahead of him.

  Rosie lets him take Toto for a couple of hours every day. Same instructions. ‘No swearing. Keep him warm.’ Jimmy is to ring her the moment Toto says his first words. On Friday, he heads back to Mackee and Tara’s place. Mackee hasn’t got any casual work today and is in front of a computer screen, browsing Seek.