Inheriting Jack

by Kris Webb

‘That sounds lovely. Thank you.’

  ‘Excellent,’ she responded. ‘Excuse me for a moment.’ She disappeared through a door behind the counter, which I could see led into a living room.

  ‘Sometimes I think I should go into business selling cups of coffee,’ she said when she reappeared. ‘Then at least I could justify buying a fancy machine. Mind you, my stove-top machine has brewed so many cups I’m not sure I could bring myself to retire it.’

  ‘What are the stools for if you don’t sell coffee?’

  ‘I started offering coffee to some of my regulars a couple of years ago. It just sort of took off. Mind you,’ she smiled, ‘it drives the posh cafe up the road mad.’

  I’d only been in the shop for five minutes and already I had a feeling as to why people stayed for coffee. Something about the place made you feel comfortable.

  I looked around. ‘You have some great stuff.’

  ‘My husband Joe always just sold the standard corner-shop stuff. But when we were married, I started stocking a few different items from places I’d travelled to. Customers asked me to get certain things, and before I knew it, the place was crammed full of stuff. I don’t make a fortune, but it’s a lot more interesting than just selling milk and bread.’

  I’d always thought that people who owned corner stores must have terrible lives, living behind the shop and working all day every day. But Carla’s life sounded great. I reminded myself that I had recently thought the same thing about the woman behind the cash register in the supermarket and the guy driving the rubbish truck past our place at six in the morning. Basically, anyone’s life but my own looked pretty appealing at the moment.

  Carla turned her head. ‘That’s the coffee starting to bubble. Won’t be long.’

  I hadn’t heard a thing, but she returned soon after with two small cups of inky coffee. We sat on the stools, both of our eyes returning to Jack, who was still happily engaged with the cans.

  ‘I can’t quite believe this has all happened,’ Carla said quietly as she stirred sugar into her coffee. ‘It just doesn’t seem possible that someone so young could be gone. My husband died of a heart attack a few years ago. That was hard enough, but at least he’d had a life. Cutting Anita’s off now just seems so wrong.’

  It was strangely comforting to talk to someone else who’d loved Anita.

  ‘I keep half expecting her to walk around the corner and for this to turn out to be a huge mistake. It just doesn’t seem right that she’s never going to see Jack again,’ I said.

  ‘How are things going with Jack?’ Carla asked carefully.

  I exhaled. Given our performance earlier, there wasn’t much point in telling her anything but the truth.

  ‘Not so good. Just when I feel like I might be getting on top of things and that Jack is becoming comfortable with me, something like that business outside happens.’ I paused. ‘Ah well, I’m looking for a nanny to look after him when I go back to work. It’s only three days a week, but maybe she’ll be able to sort us both out in that time.’ I didn’t really believe it, but didn’t want to sound too depressed in front of Carla.

  ‘It’s a huge thing Anita has asked you to do,’ Carla said. ‘She obviously thought a lot of you.’

  ‘I guess so.’ My voice wobbled and I swallowed. ‘I feel so useless so much of the time, like I’m failing Anita and Jack by not being able to make him happier.’

  ‘You can only do your best,’ Carla replied. ‘No one can ask for any more.’

  ‘No, I suppose not. I just wish she was here.’

  Tired of the cans, Jack walked over to us.

  ‘Would you like to sit up here?’ Carla asked him.

  He nodded emphatically and she lifted him onto a stool between us.

  ‘Is it okay with you if he has a couple of lollies?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure.’ If only she knew how poor his diet was, I thought guiltily.

  Carla picked a few coloured jubes out of a box and set them on the counter in front of Jack. He put a red one in his mouth, delighted at the sugar coating. Wanting to give Carla a little time alone with Jack, I wandered over to the shelves, pretending to be enthralled by the range of biscuits.

  After a couple of minutes Carla lifted Jack off the stool. Stepping into the living room, she brought back a box, which she handed to me.

  ‘These are some old photos of Anita. I found them in her mother’s things when I cleaned out her house. I thought you might like them for Jack.’

  How strange it was going to be for Jack to grow up with only photos of his mother. I had no idea how I was going to help him deal with that.

  Jack headed towards Carla’s living room. Grabbing him with my free hand, I decided it was time to go.

  ‘I think we’ll head off, Carla. Thanks for the coffee.’

  ‘You’re welcome. I’ve really enjoyed having you both here. Well, goodbye, little Jack.’ She bent down and kissed his cheek. ‘Please just drop in whenever you feel like it, Julia. I’m always here.’

  ‘Thanks. I will.’

  I gathered Jack and the stroller and headed out the door. After putting Jack to bed that night, I poured myself a large glass of wine and sat down on the sofa with a block of paper.

  Questions to ask nannies, I wrote at the top of the page.

  After my advertising disaster the week before, I’d discovered that the Thursday local paper had a large job section. I’d called the advertising department twice to make sure that my ad would appear the following day and was now worried they’d leave it out on the basis that I was a weirdo. At this stage I was refusing to think of the consequences if nothing came out of it.

  I took a sip of wine and wrote: Name. Okay, that was a good start.

  After that I was stumped. I thought back to my last interview and with a flash of inspiration added Experience?

  With relief, I heard Patrick’s key in the lock.

  ‘Hi there. How was your day?’ I asked brightly.

  ‘Not so good. Jennifer spent the morning alternating between yelling at her secretary and yelling at me. This afternoon I shut myself in a conference room and didn’t come out until I was sure she had gone.’

  ‘And people still don’t know about the two of you?’

  He shook his head. ‘Don’t think so. If they do, they’re doing a very good job of hiding it. The news about her and her husband splitting up seems to have leaked out, though. I think everyone assumes that explains her foul mood and they just figure I’m in the firing line.’

  He sank into a chair across from me.

  ‘But the good news is I had plenty of time to work on the nanny selection criteria for Jack.’ He opened his laptop and turned it on. ‘I’ve worked out a way to make sure we get a good nanny. This spreadsheet lets you rank each candidate against each other . . . Watch.’

  Opening a program, he proceeded to show me how I could score each candidate based on a series of questions. I could then rank the questions in order of importance and compare them overall using a bar chart.

  I covered my two pitiful questions with my elbow as he filled in a series of imaginary interviews and turned the information into a bar chart which demonstrated the hypothetical applicant’s strengths and weaknesses.

  ‘That’s great.’ I tried hard to summon the requisite enthusiasm. ‘Do you feel like giving me a hand figuring out what I should actually be asking?’

  He looked at his watch. ‘Sorry, I’ve got to go. Touch football tonight.’

  ‘Yeah of course, I’d forgotten it was Wednesday.’

  In a time that would have made Superman’s phone box transformation look sluggish, Patrick emerged from his bedroom in his club jersey and shorts. He obviously hadn’t looked in a mirror and his hair stuck up where he’d pulled his tie over his head. About to tell him, I stopped. Patrick’s hair always looked as though he’d just got out of bed and I’d lost count of the number of times I’d seen girls try to smooth it down.

  I followed him as he headed out the door and st
ood watching him go. At the bottom of the stairs he turned around.

  ‘I nearly forgot – I called Tony today.’

  I tried to sound as though I could hardly remember who he was talking about. ‘And?’

  ‘And I told him that if he thinks I could do it, I’ll give it a go.’ He shrugged. ‘You never know.’

  With a wave he was gone and I turned back inside, trying not to feel like the little woman left at home by herself. Two Wednesdays ago I was out drinking with a bunch of friends, oblivious to the fact that my life was about to be transformed. Now here I was, a frog-obsessed eighteen month old asleep in the next room and no prospect of any social occasion on the horizon.

  Well one thing was for sure, sitting in front of a virtually blank piece of paper trying to think up interview questions wasn’t going to improve my spirits. Thumping the block of paper on the table, I stood up and went back to the fridge for the bottle of wine. Up-ending it, only a tiny amount dribbled into my glass. Knowing full well I wouldn’t find another bottle, I nonetheless searched the fridge, throwing myself onto the sofa when I acknowledged that the place was dry.

  Fabulous. No company and no wine. Maggie was working; I thought about calling Tanya but decided I wasn’t a fit telephone companion. Given the lack of other options, I turned off the lights and crawled into bed, figuring I may as well catch up on some sleep.

  As soon as my head hit the pillow my mind started racing. Why on earth had Anita thought that I’d be up to looking after Jack? Surely she had some friends in Italy with children who could care for him properly and whose lives wouldn’t be totally turned upside down by his arrival.

  As I lay there I added up in my mind the number of ways my life had changed. Going out, sleeping in, working late, long weekend lunches. They were all a thing of the past. I’d always known that having a child meant changing lifestyles, but I had assumed that by the time it happened to me, I’d have a loving man who looked like Mel Gibson to keep me company.

  Instead, here I was, by myself. I hadn’t been able to manage a successful relationship pre-Jack and there was no way I could see anyone willing to take on two of us. Even though I knew no sane man could be interested in a repeat of Sunday’s breakfast disaster, I’d held out a small hope that Tony would call. But it was now pretty clear I wouldn’t be hearing from him again.

  God, even holidays would never be the same. I couldn’t see Jack sitting peacefully under a tree on a tropical beach while I spent the day reading. And he’d last about two minutes in an art gallery in Rome before trying to deface ancient paintings.

  At the thought of Rome, my self-pity stopped abruptly. The main reason for my trip to Europe, planned for later in the year, had been to spend some time with Anita. Anita who was now dead and had entrusted her precious son to me.

  Fantastic, I thought. From self-pity to depression – this was really turning into a wild night.

  With a sigh I threw back the covers and sat up. While not being able to sleep was never fun, it was doubly frustrating when Jack was fast asleep.

  My usual technique when I’d found myself unable to sleep had been to make a cup of hot milk and call Anita. The time difference meant I’d usually catch her in the early evening and we’d chat for half an hour or so, after which I’d go back to bed. We’d told each other everything since we were young and that hadn’t changed even though we lived on opposite sides of the world.

  I pulled the steaming cup of milk out of the microwave and leaned against the kitchen bench, looking out into the dark backyard. Because Anita hadn’t been a part of my daily life, I found that, despite Jack’s constant presence, I could go long periods without thinking about the fact that she was dead. But when I did register her absence, grief hit me like a physical force. I closed my eyes.

  Suddenly I remembered a half-bottle of limoncello that had been in the back of the freezer for ages. Opening the door, I dug behind three ice-cream cartons which I knew from past experience would each contain no more than half a spoonful of ice-cream.

  My fingers closed on the cold bottle and I banged it down on the bench. The icetray was, predictably, empty.

  ‘Ah well, it’s cold enough anyway.’ I spoke aloud, ignoring the fact that the purpose of the ice was to dilute the potent alcohol. ‘Just one won’t hurt,’ I assured myself as I sloshed a generous amount into a glass.

  I tipped the milk down the sink and picked up the glass. As an afterthought, I tucked the bottle under my arm. Flicking off the kitchen light, I walked aimlessly towards the living room. A thought struck me and with more purpose I turned towards my bedroom. I pulled the box of photos Carla had given me down from the shelf where I’d put them earlier in the day. Sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed, drink balanced on a book beside me, I up-ended the box and looked at the photos of Anita’s life.

  I made a pile of special photos, which grew quickly. There were some of her as a baby and a small child and her first day at school. I picked up one of the two of us at our senior formal. In the shot, Anita and I were laughing into the camera, looking young and happy. It was clearly taken early in the night, long before any alcohol was smuggled in.

  Anita looked as though she’d just stepped out of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. She had on a long emerald dress which clung to her body. With her simple pearl choker, she’d have looked great at a cocktail party on tonight – fifteen years later.

  Unfortunately, my outfit hadn’t withstood the test of time so well. Where Anita had gone for gentle sophistication, I had gone for effect. Elbow-length red gloves competed for attention with red sparkly earrings, making the short black dress look like an afterthought. It was only after a brief wrestle with my conscience that I deposited the photo in the pile.

  There were a lot of photos of the two of us in Europe, but it was a photo of Anita taken in a small town in France that I looked at for the longest. Sitting on the grass next to a river, she was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt with her head tilted back and a smile of genuine happiness on her face. She’d had no idea that there wasn’t a lifetime of happiness ahead of her.

  But Anita’s smile held my attention for another reason. I’d seen that smile a handful of times in the last ten days when momentarily everything was right in Jack’s world. Even through my weary haze I’d been struck by the simple joy in it and the fact that it was usually caused by something I’d not even noticed, like the butterfly sitting on the rail of the deck this morning.

  It occurred to me that when Jack had first arrived I’d looked for something of Anita in him. But already it was the other way around and it was Anita who reminded me of Jack. I put the photo down on the bed and stared blindly at the wall.

  I’d lost my friend. Never again would I talk to her or laugh with her. But in Jack I had an unbreakable connection to her. By bringing him up I was making sure that Anita’s and my friendship didn’t die in that accident.

  The thought gave me a rush of happiness. With determination I went through the pile a second time. The top forty shots of Anita were what I wanted and three hours later I had them chosen and stuck into one of the many empty albums I’d bought over the years. I also had an empty limoncello bottle sitting on the bedside table.

  When I finally fell back onto the pillows, my eyes were bleary but I was happy. Jack was going to know as much about his mother as I did – with certain omissions I was sure she’d approve of – and this album was for both of us.

  TEN

  Jack’s shouts wrenched me from the arms of Bill from Playschool. Eyes still closed, I reluctantly acknowledged that Bill’s calm assurances that I should head out for dinner and leave him and Jack to make me a new car out of toilet-paper rolls were only a dream.

  Before I even moved a finger, I knew that it was going to hurt. Turning my head slightly, I squinted and looked at the clock radio on the bedside table. After blinking twice, the blur of red glowing lights finally assembled themselves into numbers. 4.56.

  Rolling onto my side, I slowly levered mysel
f into a sitting position. This was clearly a mistake and my arm collapsed, depositing my head back on the pillow just as Jack let out another unmistakably cheery greeting from his cot. It’d seemed like a cruel trick that, for the first time since he’d arrived, Jack hadn’t woken up screaming. At this point in my life, the sound of another person’s happiness seemed like the ultimate torture. To add insult to injury, it sounded as though he was still in his cot, which meant I had to go and get him.

  I slid my feet onto the floor, head still on the seductive softness of the mattress. This wasn’t too bad, I told myself. Maybe if I could just keep my upper body horizontal, everything would be fine. Reluctantly I acknowledged that tending to a toddler from that angle was going to be tricky. Using every element of willpower I could muster, I pushed myself upright. I made it as far as the doorway before I realised I was going to be sick and veered towards the bathroom.

  By the time I finally reached Jack, I was feeling slightly better but still in desperate need of sleep.

  I lifted him up and carried him to my bed, every conceivable piece of sleep paraphernalia at the ready. Bottle, dummy, Harold.

  As he happily sucked away on his bottle, I whispered into the darkness, ‘If you go back to sleep now, I swear I’ll let you drive my car the second you get your licence – before even. And,’ I added, trying without success to imagine the warm little body beside me as a teenager, ‘if a girl rings, I’ll leave the room so you can have some privacy. Hell, if you let me sleep for another half an hour, you can have your own line.’

  An hour and a half later I woke to the sensation of a finger being poked up my nose. Jack slid off the bed and followed me as I dashed into the bathroom again. As I leaned over the toilet he reached up beside the sink and tried to grab my bottle of Chanel No. 5. It teetered for a moment as I lunged for it and then slipped from my fingers, smashing into a thousand pieces on the floor.

  Jack’s ‘Ooh’ of delighted surprise didn’t do a lot to help ease the moment and, unable to deal with the mess, I ushered him out of the bathroom and closed the door behind me.