Inheriting Jack

by Kris Webb

‘I got fired.’

  The silence seemed to stretch forever while I tried to think of something to say.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘You know,’ he continued as if I hadn’t spoken, ‘they actually gave me a cardboard box to take my stuff home in. I felt like Melanie Griffith in Working Girl. Do you reckon they buy them in especially?’

  ‘Where are you now?’ Judging from the background noise and his tone of voice, I guessed he had already found a pub in which to drown his sorrows.

  A sudden flash in the rear-vision mirror caught my eye and I looked up to see a motorcycle cop gesturing rather impatiently for me to pull over. Cursing under my breath, I prayed that he hadn’t been there for long.

  I threw the phone onto the floor and pulled the car to the side of the road.

  The policeman stopped behind me and slowly walked the length of my car, before leaning down and peering at me.

  ‘Good afternoon, ma’am. My name is Sergeant Barlow.’

  I smiled in what I hoped was an innocent manner.

  ‘Are you aware that talking on a mobile phone while driving a vehicle is an offence?’

  I thought about saying that I was Svenka from Sweden and no one had told me this rule but quickly decided I didn’t have the cleavage to pull it off. Instead I nodded guiltily.

  ‘Was there an emergency, or any reason for the offence?’

  I turned for a quick look at Jack. He was entranced by the policeman’s helmet and was waving his arms up and down and laughing at him. Reluctantly I abandoned the next lie that came to mind – that I’d been communicating with a doctor as I rushed a critically ill child to hospital. I shook my head.

  ‘And are you aware that you were doing seventy-two kilometres per hour in a sixty zone?’

  I shook my head again, relieved that I hadn’t used my Svenka from Sweden defence. I was pretty sure speeding was a crime in Sweden as well.

  ‘May I see your driver’s licence, ma’am?’

  I turned in my seat. Jack was still gripping my wallet, with notes, coins and various cards scattered over the back of the car. The policeman followed my gaze and when I turned back around, he was still staring at the chaos.

  ‘Ah, is it okay if I get out? I’m going to have to open the back door to find my licence.’

  ‘Do you think that’s a good idea, letting your son play with your wallet like that?’ he asked dubiously.

  I had sudden visions of yelling hysterically, Basil Fawlty style, ‘Good idea? Good idea? Of course I don’t think it’s a good idea!’

  Thinking that might give him grounds for a ‘driving while insane’ offence, I made a noncommittal noise and opened the door. He stepped away and I opened the back door. I found my licence wedged between Jack and his car seat and brushed off a few squashed sultanas.

  As I turned back I noticed that Sergeant Barlow, apparently searching for something more hygienic to look at, had moved closer to the registration sticker on the windscreen. As he did, I remembered that it had expired two months ago and although I’d paid my registration fee, I hadn’t replaced the sticker.

  Miraculously he made no comment and instead took my licence and looked at it.

  ‘Could you tell me your current address, ma’am?’

  Without thinking, I told him.

  ‘And how long have you been living at that address?’

  ‘Um. A bit over a year.’

  ‘This licence says that you live in Red Hill.’

  I wondered who would look after Jack while I was in jail.

  ‘Ma’am, are you aware that it is an offence to not change your address on your licence within fourteen days of moving?’

  I shook my head. The policeman had obviously decided that if he kept looking, he would find enough traffic violations to arrest me.

  ‘All right. I have to book you for the speeding and the mobile phone offences, but if you tell me you’ll change the address in the next couple of days, I’ll let that one slide.’

  I nodded enthusiastically.

  He wrote out a ticket and handed it to me.

  ‘Drive carefully, ma’am,’ he said as he turned to leave, looking as though he thought the possibility highly unlikely.

  I picked up the phone from where I had thrown it on the floor, hoping desperately that the call from Patrick had been disconnected.

  ‘Patrick?’

  All I could hear on the other end was Patrick’s laughter. ‘And you call yourself a responsible member of society.’

  ‘It was your call that got me pulled over, thank you very much. And you have cost me –’ I looked at the ticket, ‘one hundred and eighty dollars.’

  The mention of money brought Patrick’s temporary good humour to an abrupt end. ‘I’d offer to pay it for you, but now that I don’t have a job, it would take me about a year to get it together,’ he said gloomily.

  ‘God – I’m so sorry about your job.’

  ‘Yeah well, I guess it shouldn’t really be a huge shock. It was pretty obvious that Jennifer was going to make life hard for me. I just didn’t know she’d make it this hard.’

  ‘You still haven’t told me what happened,’ I said.

  A roar of revelry from the bar drowned out Patrick’s reply.

  ‘Look, why don’t you come home for dinner? We can get some takeaway – my shout.’

  ‘That sounds good. I was considering a bar crawl with my cardboard box, but I’m not really in the mood. I’ll see you soon.’

  As I pulled away from the kerb, I wondered how this sudden career dead end would affect Patrick. Although his lack of commitment to his job had always been something of a joke, his shock at suddenly being unemployed was real. I couldn’t imagine it would be easy for him to get another job.

  I’d just walked in the door when the telephone rang.

  ‘Hi – it’s Tanya.’ I could tell from the background noise that she was calling on her mobile.

  ‘Hi!’ I replied, pleased to hear her voice.

  ‘How’s your day been?’ she asked.

  ‘Ah . . . Not too bad.’ That was the best response I could manage. I didn’t want to tell her about my panic-filled day at work, the traffic violations or the supermarket trip from hell.

  Most of my shopping had been done while Jack screamed hysterically because I had refused to let him eat a packet of cockroach baits. Walking up and down the aisles, I’d avoided eye contact with anyone and done my best to pretend that the terrible sound wasn’t coming from my trolley. An old woman had stopped in front of us, peered intently at Jack and then walked away muttering something that included the words ‘not in my day’. It had taken all my self-control not to run after her and knock her walking stick out from under her.

  ‘What about you?’ I asked Tanya, desperate to hear about something fun.

  ‘Well, since you ask, I’m pissed off and am about twenty minutes away from your place. I caught a flight out this afternoon and then hired a car. Don’t suppose I could cook you and Jack dinner?’

  ‘Of course – I’d love to see you!’ I wondered briefly how Patrick would feel about Tanya’s arrival and decided that he was so miserable, having someone else around could only be a good thing. And in any case, it seemed forever since I’d seen Tanya.

  ‘Sure, come on over. Although I have to warn you, dinner might be more of a wake than a party.’ I told her what had happened.

  ‘I guess that beats my dramas,’ she said. ‘Greg and I had a fight and I told him I wasn’t coming home until he apologised.’

  This was a part of Tanya’s new life I was starting to get used to. Occasionally being a country wife became too much for her, she and Greg would have a fight and she’d storm off to the city for a couple of days to blow off some steam.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ she’d said the first time it happened. ‘Finding a bit of space isn’t exactly a problem, but I’ve got to travel halfway across the state to find someone who isn’t employed by Greg or hasn’t known him since he was born.’

&n
bsp; On these occasions she usually stayed with me and we’d spend Saturday mornings checking out the shops. Maggie would join us for coffee and cake at a cafe we’d been going to for years. And after lunch we’d all have a manicure and a facial, even though Tanya maintained that any benefit was gone within about thirty minutes of her being home. We’d head out for dinner and drinks, sleep late and then drive north and spend Sunday afternoon on the beach. By Sunday evening either Tanya or Greg would usually have apologised and she’d head home again.

  As I hung up the phone, I wondered again about the wisdom of putting Patrick and Tanya together. At this rate we’d all be sobbing into our wineglasses by nine o’clock.

  I looked at Jack and then at the bathroom. Sometimes the effort involved in wrestling him in and out of the bath and then dealing with the flooded bathroom seemed too much. Who would know if I didn’t bath him tonight? I could just put him in his pyjamas before anyone arrived, maybe even sprinkle talcum powder on him if he smelled a bit. Knowing I’d feel guilty if I didn’t, I sighed, picked him up and carried him towards the bathroom.

  FIFTEEN

  The doorbell rang just as I’d put Jack in the bath, which tonight was tinted a lurid red. I’d realised that if I carried on with my technique of using hideously expensive bath products, I’d be working just to support Jack’s bath habits. The idea of food colouring had hit me in a burst of inspiration and Jack was delighted with his new array of colours.

  Cursing under my breath, I picked him up and wrapped him in a towel. One of the many delights of Harold was that Jack insisted on taking him into the bath with him. As I walked towards the door, I tried to pretend that I wasn’t being squirted in the face by a toad. What could Anita possibly have been thinking when she bought Harold?

  Amidst the afternoon’s dramas I’d forgotten that Maggie had mentioned she might drop around this evening. She didn’t appear to notice the stream of red bathwater running down my face as I opened the door.

  ‘Look what I bought,’ she said, brandishing a big plastic truck in front of Jack. Placing it on the floor, she pressed a button. It tore across the room, emitting ear-shattering music.

  Jack kicked to get down and, naked and dripping wet, headed towards it with a look of delight on his face.

  Maggie looked up at me. ‘It was on special at Mr Cheapy – I knew he’d love it.’

  ‘That’s just great,’ I replied, my lack of enthusiasm lost on her. I decided immediately that the toy’s speaker was going to have a terrible accident before Maggie was out the front gate.

  It was clear that detaching Jack from the truck from hell to finish his bath would be way too hard. So, taking the line of least resistance, I quickly wiped him dry and struggled him into a nappy and his pyjamas. Meanwhile, I filled Maggie in on both Patrick’s and Tanya’s problems.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ she said doubtfully. ‘This is going to be fun, isn’t it? Why don’t you just invite Nick Cave and be done with it?’

  Patrick walked in ten minutes later, carrying his cardboard box, which he dropped on the floor.

  ‘Hi.’ I wasn’t sure what to say. ‘How are you holding up?’

  He gave me a half-hearted smile. ‘I’m fine.’ After a moment he added, ‘It’s just a job.’

  I nodded.

  Giving Jack an unenthusiastic high five, he threw his suit jacket on the sofa, undid the top button of his shirt and loosened his tie. Jack toddled over to show him Maggie’s truck and Patrick automatically picked him up.

  ‘So, do you think Jennifer did it?’ I asked tentatively.

  ‘Had to,’ he replied. ‘There’s been talk about redundancies for a while and ten other people got their marching orders today too, but Jennifer had assured me that my job was safe. Guess she changed her mind,’ he added ruefully.

  ‘Surely you can do something about it if she fired you because you broke up with her?’ I said.

  Patrick pulled a face and we all laughed as Jack tried to imitate him. In retaliation, Patrick pulled a cross-eyed look before continuing.

  ‘Yeah, thought about that. But even if I could prove we were having an affair, showing that I lost my job because of that and not because I’m a crappy accountant who doesn’t do anything anyway wouldn’t be too easy. Besides, all the publicity and gossip that would go with it would suck and no one would want to hire me after that. No, I’ve just got to get on with it.’

  He paused. ‘Maybe it’s a good thing. It will make me do something I should have done myself years ago. At least they gave me two months’ pay. That’ll give me a bit of time before you have to kick me out.’

  Maggie looked inquisitively at Patrick. ‘Hold on. I must be missing something. Who’s Jennifer?’

  ‘My boss. My married boss,’ he corrected himself. ‘Who I was kind of having a fling with and who wasn’t too impressed when I told her I didn’t want her to leave her husband for me.’

  ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me!’ Maggie exclaimed, looking at me. ‘How could you keep gossip like that to yourself?’

  ‘Patrick asked me not to tell anyone,’ I replied. ‘I wouldn’t even have known myself except I overheard him on the phone.’

  ‘Trust me,’ Patrick said tiredly, ‘the CIA could have learned something from the strategies that went into keeping this affair secret – until Jennifer went and told her husband, that is.’

  ‘I thought that kind of thing only happened in the movies. That’s very cool.’ Maggie had recovered rapidly from her pique at not having been told. She looked admiringly at Patrick, obviously reassessing her opinion of him.

  ‘Yeah, very cool until it lost me my job,’ Patrick said flatly, putting Jack back on the floor.

  ‘I guess that is a bit of a downer,’ Maggie acknowledged. ‘Not to worry,’ she announced, ‘tonight’s cocktail will make you forget all your problems.’

  The King’s Head had recently opened a cocktail bar and Maggie’s Cocktail of the Day had become the focus of interest amongst a lot of the young professionals working in the vicinity. She often stopped by our place to use us as guinea pigs for her upcoming concoctions, some of which had been less than wonderful.

  She rummaged through a plastic carrier bag and pulled out some bottles. ‘It’s called a Pussyfoot – orange, lemon and lime juice, some grenadine and a couple of secret ingredients.’

  ‘How secret?’ Patrick asked dubiously.

  ‘Trust me,’ Maggie replied with a smile.

  ‘Well, as long as it has a bucket-load of alcohol,’ Patrick sighed.

  ‘C’mon, it’s not as bad as that,’ Maggie said. ‘I’ll bet there are heaps of jobs around for accountants.’

  Patrick just grunted.

  The concoction Maggie made was bright red and looked anything but appealing. Reluctantly we each accepted a glass, waiting for Maggie to try it first. When it didn’t seem to have any immediate side effects, Patrick raised his glass.

  ‘Here’s to new horizons,’ he toasted unenthusiastically.

  We clinked glasses and took tentative sips.

  ‘Maggie, that is truly disgusting.’ I didn’t even try to break it to her gently. ‘Why can’t you stick with good old margaritas?’

  Thoughtfully, she took another sip. ‘Because everyone does margaritas. The whole point is that the cocktails we do are different – that’s why people talk about them.’

  Patrick stood up. ‘Well they’ll certainly talk about it if you serve that up,’ he said. He collected his and my glasses and, despite Maggie’s protest that the recipe just needed a little tweaking, poured their contents down the sink.

  For once, after my shopping trip, our wine rack had something other than dust on it and Patrick pulled out a bottle of red wine.

  I heard a car pull up out the front. Picking up both Jack and the truck from hell, I went out to greet Tanya. She jumped out of the hire car and hugged me, stepping back to look at Jack.

  The word that first sprang to mind looking at Tanya was ‘nice’. With her long straight
hair invariably twisted and secured against her head, and her clothes that hid rather than revealed her body, she looked like she was born to be a high-school English teacher.

  ‘Well hello there, handsome.’

  Gently she took Jack’s hand and shook it before turning to me.

  ‘You didn’t tell me how cute he was, Julia!’

  ‘Didn’t I?’ I asked. It occurred to me that my conversations with Tanya had been full of complaints about how little sleep I was getting and what horrible things Jack had been doing. ‘Yeah, you’re right, he is cute. I guess I forget that sometimes. Kind of like you forgetting how nice Greg actually is when you’re annoyed with him,’ I added mischievously. ‘What did you fight about?’

  ‘Oh,’ she waved her hand dismissively. ‘I was sick to death of cooking meat and three vegetables every night. So I decided I’d make a big effort and cooked a big chicken risotto for everyone – you know, to celebrate the end of the building work and all that. You would have thought I’d served them rat bait from the reaction I got. Greg told me that I should stick to the basics and – get this – that if I wanted to do something different, my desserts could use a little work. Anyway, we had a huge fight. He told me I was overreacting and should have known that “fancy” cooking wouldn’t go down well with the boys. God, I realise that artichoke and olive terrine probably wouldn’t be ideal, but I didn’t think a bloody roast chicken risotto would start a riot.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘Sorry. I’ll call him in the morning and everything will be fine. I would have come down next weekend to see you and Jack anyway. By the way, I’ve arranged to stay with my aunt tonight. Sorry, Jack darling, but I don’t fancy sharing a house with you given what I’ve heard about your sleeping habits. But I am dying to cook for some people who don’t think that antipasto is a phobia of Italian food.’

  That was another thing about seeing Tanya these days. I’d heard a scientist once explain that the greatest difference between men and women was not their hormones, or even their anatomy, but the number of words they were allocated each day. According to this theory, the average man could comfortably manage 550 words each day, while women could easily manage 2550. If Tanya was to be believed, Greg’s interest in talking was even less than the average, so by the time she made it to the city she was desperate for conversation.