The Place on Dalhousie

by Melina Marchetta

  ‘The paramedics are advertising for interns,’ Mackee tells Jimmy, handing over some information he’s downloaded and taking Toto from him. Both he and Tara have collected toys that Mackee retrieves from a basket in the corner. ‘First thing you have to do online is prove you’re eligible. Send in a résumé and two referees.’

  Jimmy reads the info pack. Once they clear his eligibility, he’s to do an online aptitude test and then wait to see if he’s made the next round. There are plenty of rounds. Too many. He wants this more than anything, but can’t help noticing the opening salary for a trainee. At least thirty thousand less than what he’s earning in the mines. He wouldn’t have cared a couple of months ago, but he’s just told Rosie that he wants to pay for day care and everything else. He doesn’t know what he’ll be able to afford if he settles in Sydney, pays rent and tries to support a kid.

  Later, while Jimmy’s playing with Toto, Mackee types up his résumé.

  ‘This Kev guy should be your referee,’ he tells Jimmy. ‘Did you get to know him well?’

  ‘I stayed for a couple of months after the floods. Helped with the clean-up. I haven’t been in contact because I’m pretty slack in that way, but I can’t imagine him not vouching for me.’

  ‘My dad can be your character reference,’ Mackee says.

  Jimmy doesn’t know when Mackee got so responsible, but the application and supporting stuff is done within the hour.

  They head over to Mackee’s aunt Georgie’s place to spend the afternoon at the park across the road with Toto and Georgie’s four-year-old, Billy. Mackee’s sister Anabel pops over, because she lives around the corner. Today she’s sporting a Princess Leia hairdo and has her trumpet. Year Twelve music exam trials are on soon and she’s practising twenty-four seven.

  While she grabs an orange and cuts it into quarters, she nudges Jimmy.

  ‘So you got a girl pregnant?’

  Jimmy can’t help laughing. There was never any beating around the bush when it came to Anabel. Her phone buzzes and she grabs it before her brother does.

  ‘It’s from her girlfriend.’ Mackee is making kissing sounds.

  ‘Grow up,’ she says, sticking a quarter of the orange in her mouth and giving Billy and Toto an orange-peel twisted smile. Billy thinks it’s funny and Toto is in awe of both of them. Anabel grabs her trumpet and her phone and does a dramatic prance around the park, playing a marching tune, while Billy follows.

  ‘Did Tommy tell you about the pram?’ Georgie asks Jimmy.

  ‘We all put in to buy Georgie a pram when Billy was born,’ Mackee says, ‘because she was this geriatric mother who couldn’t even walk to the station without a whinge, and now it’s collecting cobwebs in the garden shed.’

  ‘It’s yours on loan until someone in the family needs it again,’ Georgie says.

  Jimmy goes to shake his head. ‘Take it,’ Mackee says. ‘It’s worth more than her car.’

  Georgie laughs. ‘Sadly true.’

  Jimmy embraces her. ‘Mate, too generous.’

  ‘Auntie Margie Finch still goes on about that lovely friend of Tommy’s who came out to Walgett to help build the community centre back in 2007,’ she says, referring to Mackee’s great-aunt who’s a nun.

  Jimmy can’t hide the grimace. ‘I was a bit lost back then.’

  ‘Weren’t we all?’

  Georgie’s pram is a breeze and Jimmy almost breaks into a jog with it. Toto sits up, holding tight to the bar and staring out at the world. He drops a new toy that came with the pram and starts crying. Jimmy picks it up and crouches, looking into his caramel eyes.

  ‘I’m Jimmy,’ he whispers, ‘and you’re the first thing I’ve ever sort of owned and I don’t want to get this wrong.’

  Toto has a ghost of a smile on his face. A knowing one. Of course Jimmy’s going to get it wrong. It’s how he ended up in detention all his school life. And on a good behaviour bond for two years. It’s how he lost a Monaro.

  Rosie’s sitting on the front doorstep waiting when they get home. She isn’t impressed with the pram.

  ‘I’m going to have to give them money,’ she says, trying to take Toto out, frustrated with the shoulder straps.

  ‘No, it’s on loan.’

  ‘But I have to give them something.’

  Jimmy takes over with the straps and lifts Toto out, handing him to her.

  ‘They won’t accept anything,’ he says.

  ‘I don’t like owing people.’

  ‘You owe them nothing, Rosie. Maybe a thank-you note and leave it at that.’

  ‘I want you to return it,’ she says.

  Jimmy doesn’t want to insult Georgie and the Mackees, and he can’t think of any reason why they need to. He pushes the pram back to the front gate. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Where?’ she asks.

  He takes Toto from her and puts him back into the pram.

  ‘Uphill.’

  Ten minutes up Waratah Street and Rosie’s changed her mind.

  ‘It’s like the V8 of prams,’ she says. ‘A Holden twin-throttle 5.0 litre.’

  ‘No, it’s a Ford Barra 4.0 litre six cylinder.’

  She’s trying not to smile, but then she does. He hasn’t seen much of a happy Rosie. Even Toto seems to respond with a chuckle of his own.

  Jimmy does an elaborate show of how he can spin the pram around effortlessly and they head home.

  ‘How come you know your V8s?’ he asks.

  ‘I was the son my father never had.’

  He glances at her. ‘What would he have done about a stolen Monaro?’

  ‘He would have hunted the thief down. My mum was the proud owner of one. “Da Fiat is shiiiiit.”’ Jimmy figures Rosie’s impersonating her mum. There’s a bittersweet smile on her face. ‘Go figure. She loved an Aussie car.’

  ‘Did they ever watch the V8s?’ he asks.

  ‘Too expensive. You?’

  He nods. ‘The Gold Coast. Ipswich. Townsville.’

  ‘I’d love to watch the race on Phillip Island,’ she says.

  ‘I’ll take you there, one day.’

  The words come out before he can stop himself, but they don’t seem to bother her.

  ‘Where’s your nan?’ he asks.

  ‘Eugenia’s not a naaaaan,’ she says, but she smiles and he can’t stop looking at her.

  ‘You want to get something to eat?’ he asks.

  She shakes her head. ‘I want to take Eugenia to the cemetery.’

  ‘I can stay and look after Toto?’ he asks. ‘If you don’t mind me hanging out at the house.’

  She thinks for a moment and shrugs. Nods.

  Jimmy’s in the kitchen with Toto when Martha arrives home. He helps her with the groceries while Toto’s in the mini mover ramming into walls. Martha puts on the jug just as the home phone rings, but she ignores it and the answering machine clicks on.

  ‘Martha, pick up the phone!’

  Jimmy sits at the butcher’s trolley expecting Martha to pick up, but she makes herself comfortable opposite him.

  ‘Whoever it is sounds pissed off,’ he says.

  He checks himself too late, looks over at Toto and hopes his first words aren’t pissed off.

  ‘You won’t remember this because you’re too young,’ Martha says, ‘but there was a time in life when you could go an entire day without speaking to anyone on the phone. And it was liberating. And very unstressful. And you didn’t get phone calls such as “Hi, it’s me, I’m on the bus” or “Hi, it’s me, I’m buying the milk”. I mean, who gives a rat’s arse?’

  Jimmy points to Toto. ‘No swearing. He’s just about to say his first words and it’s freaking me out because I think it’s going to be something pretty awful on my watch.’

  They look down at Toto, who’s smashing into the sideboard with his car. The porcelain figurines on top of it are shaking, as if they sense life is no longer safe. Martha gets up and approaches him, crouches at eye level.

  ‘Listen, Seb Gennaro, you’ve got to stop
ruining my furniture.’

  ‘Do you have a photo of him?’ Jimmy asks. Because he’s keen to see this resemblance. ‘Seb?’

  ‘Course I do. But what about Rosie’s photos?’

  He shrugs. ‘She says they’re in storage, but I think there’s more to it.’

  The phone rings again and the machine switches on. There’s another ‘Where are you, Martha?’ which she ignores again.

  ‘I’ll get you a photo,’ she says at the same time as Toto shouts out. Martha stops, looks at Jimmy.

  ‘Did he just say what I thought he said?’ Jimmy asks.

  They wait and watch. ‘A one-off,’ Martha reassures him.

  Jimmy isn’t so convinced. ‘She’ll kill me.’

  On cue the front door opens and Jimmy hears Rosie and Eugenia’s voices.

  Toto sets off on his walker in the direction of his mum’s voice, chuffed with himself.

  ‘Marta. Marta. Marta.’

  Rosie would have preferred Toto’s first words to be ‘Fuck you’. Worse still, he’s turned Martha into a martyr and what she is, at the end of the day, is a thief. Because of her there’s no trace of Rosie’s mum in the house. At least she can sneak into Martha’s room and stare at the photo of her father on the mantelpiece, marvelling at how much Toto looks like him. But her mother’s disappeared and Rosie’s frightened that she’s forgetting what she looked like. Eugenia being here has made the yearning worse because there’s a tease of resemblance. Once or twice while they lie in bed together, she reaches out to touch the parts of Eugenia’s face that remind Rosie of her mum, but her nonna isn’t much for physical affection and pushes her hand away with irritation.

  ‘Smettila, Rosanna.’

  But Rosie doesn’t want to stop it. So she goes searching for fragments of Loredana. There are reminders in the neighbourhood. Some people know where to get the best pane di casa and arancini. Rosie knows where to find women who speak the dialect. She can’t go overboard because she’s on a budget, so it’s one hundred grams of prosciutto from Lamonica IGA, a tub of fresh ricotta at Paesanella, a small container of giardiniera from Zanetti’s. There are the terms of endearment she waits to hear. Bella. Gioia. Tesoro. Words that cocooned Rosie’s childhood. Missing ever since her mum died.

  When she’s not stalking Sicilian-speaking women on Ramsay Street, she goes for more job interviews and is offered a couple of shifts at the nursing home down in Chiswick. But she can’t provide one hundred points of identification because her driver’s licence has expired and her name’s not on a utility bill or council rates. She doesn’t have a credit card. Her Medicare card only gets her twenty-five points and she’s got an ID card for her pension that’s worth forty. But to reach one hundred, she needs her passport. Her birth certificate. Which means that Luke the C-bomb has to come back into her life after dumping her in Queensland two years ago. He doesn’t just have her legal documents, but her mother’s wedding dress. And all her photos. Packed away in two suitcases sitting in his shed in Maroubra. Rosie left them there before they headed up north because she didn’t want anything she loved under Martha’s roof. Luke’s changed his number and she manages to track down one of the guys they met in Coffs Harbour, who gives her a more current one.

  ‘It’s Rosie,’ she says.

  ‘How did you get this number?’

  ‘I want my stuff, Luke.’

  ‘Then come and get it.’

  ‘I don’t have a car.’

  ‘Not my problem.’

  ‘Then tell me when you’re home.’

  Lachlan rings and it’s good to contrast guys. She’s hung out with him since Eugenia’s arrival and it makes her feel normal, like other people her age who get to hang out and laugh and not give a shit about anything but exams. It feels good knowing she can attract guys with decent histories. He still lives at home, in the sort of family that has dinner together at six p.m. with a mum who calls out ‘Lachlan, set the table’ every time Rosie’s there. His family ask about the baby without an inch of judgement and Rosie laughs at everyone’s attempt to pronounce Toto’s name. She tells them that it’s not so strange a name in Sicily. Tonight Lachlan wants to veg and watch a movie together in his room, but then changes his mind and suggests they head down to The Rose in case his friends are there. By the time they settle back to watch TV a second time, he’s changed his mind again and they head out for a drink. Deep down she thinks he has a fear of missing out.

  He introduces her to his friends and they seem decent, all studying economics or law or both. They talk about taking Nō-Dōz and speed to keep them awake to study and reassure her that they’re not junkies, just stressed out about exams. Lachlan seems to interpret her silence as disapproval and he takes her hand under the table, squeezing it. But it’s not disapproval. Just indifference. Rosie’s been there, done that, with drugs and they don’t interest her anymore. They failed to live up to any expectations and one of her few blessings is that she doesn’t have an addictive personality. Just a destructive one.

  Back at his place they have sex. He’s cautious, apologises a couple of times, asks permission. She finds it endearing. Later, when he drives her home he whistles a tune. She can tell he’s happy and it’s because of her. It gives her the courage to ask a favour.

  ‘My ex-boyfriend has a suitcase of some really important stuff of mine and I was wondering if you could drive me there to pick it up?’

  ‘Is he a psycho?’

  ‘No. Just a dickhead.’

  ‘Is he Toto’s dad?’

  She shakes her head. She gets a sense he doesn’t want to do it and instantly regrets asking.

  ‘Look, don’t worry about it,’ she says. ‘It’s cool.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s all good.’

  The next day, she leaves Toto with Eugenia and takes a couple of buses to Maroubra, planning to drag the two suitcases back the same way. Out front, Luke’s place looks like a hoarder’s hovel. A rusty boat trailer, half on its side. A soiled mattress piled high with split garbage bags filled with rubbish that have been put out for collection for what seems like weeks. Filthy bath fittings, mops, rusty hinges. On the front verandah, a collection of muddy runners, another grubby single mattress, rotted, mouldy. Rosie can’t begin to imagine what the shed looks like these days and the idea that it houses her precious belongings fills her with shame. All she wants is to take part of her mother’s memory out of this fleapit dump. She knocks at the front door, but no one answers, and her knocks turn into a hammering. With every blow, she feels a rage build up inside of her until her knuckles begin to bleed.

  She tries the shed next. Finds it padlocked, and there Rosie unleashes the fury that’s wound up inside of her since hearing his voice. She’s at that splintered timber door with two fists, screaming with a rage she can’t contain. Because Rosie is powerless. Every day. All day. No money. No job. No means of identifying herself. No way of climbing out of a rut. All she has is the house her father built, and now Martha’s got real estate agents walking in and out, telling them lies. And it always ends with that unfathomable despair that has chased Rosie for years. That she will never see her mother and father again. Toto’s birth was a godsend and a curse. It brought back the memory of everything she lost.

  Later that day she picks up Toto and meets Yolanda and Tess and the babies. She doesn’t know what she has with these women, but they’re at Livvi’s Place every week and no one’s bailed yet. She figures the two see each other more times than every Tuesday, but she couldn’t be bothered begging for more. While the babies sit in the sandpit, she fills them in about the nursing home job but doesn’t tell them the truth, that she can’t identify herself.

  ‘It’s really diverse,’ she says. ‘I saw this Asian woman in the garden and they do a welcome to country at breakfast.’

  ‘Superficial bullshit,’ Yolanda says. ‘That doesn’t make a place diverse, Rosie. Honestly, you come across so racist sometimes.’

  ‘I’m not racist.’ />
  Tess asks about the uni application and Rosie regrets ever telling them about it.

  ‘I’m not going through with it,’ she says. ‘It’s in the too-hard basket for the time being.’

  ‘I thought the guy you’re dating from the student centre was helping you,’ Tess says.

  ‘I don’t want to be that girl who needs help with everything,’ Rosie says. ‘Not a great way to start a relationship.’

  Yolanda has a teacher’s look of disapproval in her eyes. ‘You are that girl. It’s not going to change. So get yourself a profession or you’re going to spend the rest of your life making do.’

  ‘Easy,’ Tess says to Yolanda.

  ‘You need to support Toto,’ Yolanda says.

  ‘Who says I’m not?’ Rosie demands.

  ‘On a couple of shifts at a nursing home?’

  ‘You’re not my teacher, Yolanda. So get lost with the lectures.’

  ‘Guys,’ Tess says, pointing to the babies.

  Yolanda’s eyes are fixed on Rosie’s hands. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Is that Lachlan guy treating you like shit?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re upset about something more than Yolanda nagging you,’ Tess says.

  ‘I’m not nagging her.’

  ‘You’re nagging me.’

  Rosie can feel Tess watching her and gives in. Doesn’t know where to start. Begins with the fact that she hasn’t enough points to ID herself for a job.

  ‘What about your licence?’ Tess asks.

  ‘It needs renewing. The cheapest option is fifty-six dollars for a year and I won’t have that until next Thursday when my pension comes through, and my ex-boyfriend has two suitcases of my stuff including my passport and birth certificate … and my photos.’

  ‘What do you mean he’s got your stuff?’