The Near Miss

by Fran Cusworth

  ‘She’s going to be okay,’ she told them. ‘She’s strained a ligament and bruised her foot. But it’s relatively minor.’

  ‘Lucky,’ said the woman. She had extraordinary blue eyes.

  ‘Lucky you were there,’ said Grace steadily. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Melody. We just moved here last week. From up north.’

  ‘Where up north?’

  ‘A commune. Tuntable Falls. Have you heard of Nimbin?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Grace. Drop-out ’sixties scene, up in the rainforest mountains. Explained the dreds. ‘I didn’t think there was anyone up there under sixty.’

  ‘Plenty,’ said Melody. ‘Their kids.’

  ‘You grew up there?’

  ‘No, here. Donvale. Most boring suburb in the world. Probably why I fled to Nimbin as soon as I could.’

  Grace nodded. ‘Well, I for one am glad you came back! Hey, do you think you could both come for dinner one Saturday night? My husband Tom and I, and Lotte, we live just near the ice-cream shop. We would like to say thank you.’

  The man beamed and looked absolutely delighted. ‘Can I bring my girlfriend?’

  ‘Of course.’ She looked at Melody. ‘Do you want to bring someone? Besides your son?’

  ‘Uh. Maybe.’

  ‘Is your car alright?’ It was the polite thing to ask, although Grace could not have cared less about the car. I do hope my child’s body didn’t dent your fender?

  Eddy blushed. ‘It’s fine. We drove here in it, remember? From the scene of the crime.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Sorry.’

  ‘So to speak. Wasn’t really a crime.’ The man spoke hastily, as if sensing Grace’s burning guilt, and the two women turned as one to study him for a moment.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, his hand on his heart.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Grace said gloomily. It would have been nice to blame something other than her daughter’s lunacy, but in this case it was not possible. ‘She’s always been a runner. I’m just lucky you both have quick reflexes.’ She tore a corner from a magazine and wrote. ‘So here’s my address. I’ll see you.’

  At her feet, the boy, who must have been Lotte’s age, shrieked and pointed. A tiny tin train peeled away from his feet and skittered across the floor merrily, over the linoleum, under seats and between feet, carving a straight line through the lives it passed. The hippy looked accusingly at the man.

  ‘You fixed it.’

  He looked sheepishly proud, and crouched by the squealing, delighted child.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So this little girl, she was nearly killed.’ Eddy followed Romy into the kitchen. He kept one hand in his pocket, cupped around the small velvet ring box, blocking it as if it might leap out of his pocket and propose of its own free will. Had Romy heard the first part of the story? ‘We were so lucky someone grabbed her in time. Are you listening, hon?’

  ‘We’re out of coconut milk. When did we run out of coconut milk?’

  ‘I used the last can the other night, in the curry. Hey, did you take money from my wallet? I was sure I had about ten fifties, and now there’s only one. It’s okay, it’s just that—’

  Romy whirled and stabbed her finger at a piece of paper pinned to a wall. ‘You haven’t added coconut milk to the list!’ she said accusingly. Triumphantly, almost, Eddy could have said. Maybe she thought enough of these minor transgressions on his part would mount up to equal her infidelity. Maybe she was scrambling for the moral high ground. Oh God, what was he thinking? Romy was always like this. She had made love with some strange man without setting a foot off the moral high ground. He rubbed the velvet nap anxiously.

  ‘I’m trying to tell you about something that happened to me today,’ he said mildly. ‘I wish you’d listen. This was huge. A little girl was nearly killed.’

  ‘And yet, she was fine, si?’

  ‘She was, well her foot was bruised and she strained a ligament, but it could have been so much worse— Oh God, there it is!’ He crossed the room to the remote and turned up the television. ‘This is it!’

  There it was, on some current affairs show! First Melody and her son, sitting eating ice cream, probably shot on someone’s phone camera. Then something flashed white behind Melody and there was the little girl running into a river of moving cars, her head not much higher than a car bonnet.

  ‘That’s me!’ He pointed at the red Subaru, sliding into frame, Melody already spinning and flying after the child, in a whirl of green dress and golden dreadlocks and sunbeams.

  ‘Shit!’ breathed Romy.

  The brakes on his television car screeched, the camera frame wobbled, unseen people gasped and screamed. A broadcaster spoke solemnly over the top.

  ‘This near miss today in the Melbourne suburb of Meadowview graphically illustrates the dramatic findings from the government’s newly released traffic accident report. If not for a quick-thinking bystander, this child would have become a statistic, one of the twenty per cent who . . .’ The footage was replayed, in slow motion.

  Romy shook her head. ‘Where were the kid’s parents?’

  ‘The mother was there. She was so grateful.’

  ‘That you hit her kid?’

  ‘No, because I braked in time and it wasn’t worse. And I took her to hospital. The kid is okay. It’s minor. And the mother has asked us to dinner. You, too.’

  ‘A thank-you-for-not-hitting-my-child-very-hard dinner? Kooky.’

  ‘You said you wanted to meet new people.’

  ‘Maybe.’ She finally seemed to wake up to his presence and slid her arms around his waist. He exhaled and leaned back against her arms.

  ‘You sure you didn’t take four-fifty from my wallet? I don’t mind, I really don’t. I’m just hoping I didn’t lose it.’

  Romy broke away from him and returned to staring into the pantry.

  ‘No, Eddy, I didn’t.’

  When Skipper said he was scared to start at the new kindy, Melody told him to bring his invisible friend, Mr Sumper. Mr Sumper varied in age. At times he was old enough to go to primary school and drive a car. He could teach Skip how to do things. But then Skipper would say that he remembered when Mr Sumper was a baby, when the only person he liked was Skipper.

  ‘He was shy,’ Skipper reminisced nostalgically. ‘And I held him, like this.’ By the neck, it appeared, and possibly tucked under one arm.

  ‘And could he talk?’

  ‘He could only say “Mo-mo” and “tooka”.’ Skipper generally gazed into the air at some point to his left when discussing Mr Sumper, as if channeling some being who was poised up next to Melody’s right ear. Bless him, he probably was.

  She grew to love Mr Sumper. He was the sibling Skipper didn’t have, and didn’t look like getting anytime soon. How simple, that Skipper had created his own. She pictured him as an elfin man of indeterminate age, with a green hat no higher than her knee. She could say to Skip at any moment: Is Mr Sumper here? And Skip would stare off to the place by her right ear and finally say either no, he’s in Sitter-ny (Sydney) or yes, he’s just sitting over there. And Melody would nod in the direction of the small green man, and give him a wave. Who knew, maybe there was something there that only a four-year-old could see?

  Now, she crouched in the kindergarten home corner, hoping Mr Sumper was not too far away. A brown baby and a white baby lay in a small wooden bed and stared sightlessly at a sky fluttering with finger paintings. Melody fed the brown baby a plastic lemon, and made kissy noises to simulate eating, while Skipper supervised approvingly. From the corner of her eye, she saw the little girl enter across the room. Lotte. She limped a little, but not much. Already better, Melody thought, with a twinge of possessive pride at the sight of this little human she had snatched from the jaws of death. Lotte trailed around a group of girls for a bit, but they turned their sharp little shoulder blades towards her, as if they knew her only too well. The child ran her fingers over the book display, and passed the unattended play
dough table, where she stuck her finger into each of the four perfect balls of dough waiting to be discovered. She reached the home corner, and stopped and stared at Skipper.

  Melody picked up the brown baby and waved its hand at her. ‘Hi, Lotte,’ she made the doll say, in a squeaky voice.

  Lotte gave Melody a baleful look and turned her attention to Skipper.

  ‘Skipper’s new here, he’s starting today,’ offered Melody.

  Lotte regarded him. ‘Would you rather be eaten by a rhinoceros or a giant turtle?’

  Skip thought about it. ‘Turtle.’

  Lotte nodded. He seemed to have passed some test. ‘Do you want to come outside?’

  Melody tucked in the white baby and rose to her feet, feeling self-conscious. The other mothers stood in small groups, wearing little pastel dresses and shorts, feet slapping in thongs. She twisted the silver studded band on her upper arm, until it let go of her hot skin, and she let it settle again on a cooler piece.

  She couldn’t keep lurking here in the home corner. She had come to Melbourne to give Skip a normal life, a safe life, and that meant making friends. She spotted Grace in one of the clusters, and ventured over nervously. The little group fell silent and parted at her approach, the women smiling questioningly at her.

  ‘Oh! Melody!’ stuttered Grace. ‘It’s great to see you here! What a coincidence! What’s your little boy’s name again?’

  ‘Skipper.’

  ‘Of course! Well this is Nina, and Anna, and Verity. We were all in mums’ group together.’

  ‘Hi,’ said Melody, in what she hoped was a pleasant manner. She felt like an elephant, three metres wide and high amongst these svelte, girl-women. One of them, who had a pointy face with a sharp nose, stared up at Melody’s hair. Another, with a full mask of makeup, stared down at Melody’s boots. The other, whose face was kind and smiley, met her eyes.

  ‘You were on the telly! About the accident!’

  ‘Oh!’ Melody was startled. She had not watched a television for years, and had draped a sarong over the set in her rented flat. ‘I haven’t seen it. Was it okay?’

  ‘Amazing! You looked great!’

  ‘And I’m sorry if I never thanked you for saving Lotte.’ Grace sounded wounded. ‘I mean . . . I thought I did.’

  ‘You did,’ said Melody.

  ‘Well I thought I did. The reporter, she just made it sound a bit—’

  The woman with all the makeup broke in. ‘Like you hadn’t thanked her.’

  ‘But I’m having Melody for dinner. And her son.’

  Melody wrapped the handle of her hessian bag around her fingers until they turned white. ‘The reporter asked me that question, and I didn’t really understand what she meant. If it sounded . . . I really didn’t mean . . .’

  ‘Oh, it’s okay. That’s television.’

  ‘And we’re looking forward to dinner . . .’

  ‘Amazing footage. Lotte was so lucky you were there,’ said sharp-face. Grace shot her a look.

  ‘Just a fluke,’ said Melody.

  ‘Lotte’s a runner,’ said Grace. ‘She’s crazy. I don’t know what to do about it.’

  ‘She’ll grow out of it,’ said the kind-faced woman. ‘She has a big spirit.’

  There was a commotion from the home corner, where Lotte had returned to tip babies out of their cradles and hurl plastic food, piece by piece, from the fridge. Two little girls shrieked at her to stop. Skipper turned away to press his palms against some play dough. Lotte finally gave up the house-trashing and went to sit beside him, punching her little fist on a ball of red dough.

  ‘She’s lively,’ murmured the kind-faced woman, while sharp-face and makeup exchanged glances.

  Later, Melody picked Skipper up on her bike, and on the way home they stopped at the big bin behind the shopping centre. Melody checked no one was watching, then stepped up on a milk crate and peered over the edge. In one corner was a box of eggs, cartons slipping and sliding all over each other, yolks dried shiny and awful. She climbed up on the edge and reached down for the cleanest carton she could see. Picking through the landslide, she found six unbroken eggs. There were more but she did not want to linger; women were walking in the distance with prams and strollers. They might be kindergarten mothers. She climbed out and showed Skipper her find.

  ‘We’ll check them later, to see if they’re fresh.’ She still had the nine fifty-dollar notes back in the flat, but she wouldn’t spend them until she had to.

  ‘How?’

  ‘We put them in a bowl of water. If they float that means air has got in and they’re bad. If they sink, that’s good.’

  ‘Sinking is good.’

  ‘Funny, isn’t it?’

  They walked through the pet shop and stroked the kittens in there, and ate some samples of cream donuts out the front of the bakery.

  ‘Can we go to Lotte’s house for a play?’

  ‘We’re going there for dinner. On Saturday night.’ God, she had forgotten to mention that they were vegetarian. It wasn’t even necessary up north. Maybe she could tuck a note in Lotte’s kindy bag.

  ‘Can we go there now?’

  ‘No. But that’s nice, that you knew someone at your kindy. Did you play with her some more?’

  ‘Yes. Always I played with her. She finded me all the time.’

  He climbed onto a low wall and into his bike seat. She put the eggs in her bike basket, and they set off. If they were quick, they could get home before those rain clouds burst.

  That night, Skipper said, ‘Lotte says Mr Sumper’s not real.’

  ‘So? You know he’s real.’

  ‘She says you can’t see him, so he’s not real.’

  ‘Tell me, Skip — do I love you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you see my love?’

  ‘In my heart.’ He patted his little chest. She had told him this.

  ‘But you can’t see it, can you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But it’s real, isn’t it? Just like Mr Sumper is.’

  He gave her a look.

  ‘That wasn’t very nice of Lotte to say that.’ Melody pursed her lips and he saw.

  ‘I like Lotte. She never be’s mean to me.’

  ‘She’d better bloody not,’ muttered Melody, momentarily reflecting that she had saved the life of the little girl who may end up killing Mr Sumper, Melody’s low-maintenance second child.

  Skip frog-hopped through the kitchen.

  ‘I love Lotte.’

  Somewhere in the universe, Mr Sumper thinned into vapour and vanished.

  Chapter 3

  A computer engineer, Tom had always tinkered around with inventions in his spare time. He had invented a robot to do basic tasks for elderly people living alone, only someone else had got their version to market first. Then he briefly tried to create an electromagnetic motor which could produce its own free energy, and the spare room was strewn with the spare parts of that doomed venture. His latest brainwave was solar-powered roof tiles, cheaply produced from recycled water bottles.

  Grace had once been affectionately amused by Tom’s spare-time creative efforts, and even believed in them, but now she wanted to have a second baby and take time off. She wanted their mortgage to grow lower, instead of higher. She wanted Tom to stop spending so much money on spare parts and materials, and so much time on making stuff. And she wanted her guest room emptied of all the invention junk which had crept inwards from Tom’s back shed. This was why she resentfully kicked yet another garbage bag of empty plastic drink bottles aside as she stalked out of the house on her way to work.

  She caught the train, holding onto a strap and the luxury of twenty-eight minutes of unscheduled time. Time to think and stare out the window. Lotte would be fine, the bruising on her foot was healing already, but the accident had frightened them all. Grace needed a second baby. She needed a spare.

  Grace mentally roamed through her smorgasbord of worries. Would the foundation at work fold if she wasn’t suc
cessful in winning a new grant? Was Lotte always going to be so temperamental and strange? How could she persuade Tom to apply for a better, higher-paying job, and how soon could they start trying to get pregnant?

  She had once believed that Tom’s inventions might pay off, that he could win the lottery of creativity and make a big sale to a multinational. But they had been disappointed so many times that she had lost the faith. Yes, she had once dreamed of a world where they could have all the things, and all the time, they wanted. A get-rich-quick scheme, for God’s sake, like any stupid, greedy hick. What a fool. She wouldn’t risk her fertility on that again. The silver lining of Lotte’s accident was this clear-eyed sighting of the way things were.

  At the office of the Mental Wellness Association, Barbara Boiler stuck her head around the door and barked. ‘Page six of the Morning Star? Read it yet?’

  Grace sighed. ‘I’m well thanks, how are you?’ she muttered to herself. She opened the paper on her desk to the page already marked accusingly by a coloured Post-it note. Ah. Here. TV Soap Sparks Suicide Risk, Black Dog Trust CEO Helen Strutter was yesterday outraged at suicide storyline in Home and Away.

  ‘It’s hard, Barbara. It’s a bit of a one-day story, but I’ll get onto the Star and see whether they’re planning a follow-up for tomorrow, and whether we can get you a comment.’

  Boiler, or Bunny as Grace secretly called her, shifted her late-middle-aged bulk into the room. Her flat locks were blonde with grey roots. She talked with her hand over her mouth, for some reason Grace had not yet deciphered. When sitting, one of her legs jiggled ceaselessly. Her life was focused on getting more publicity than her rival Helen Strutter from the Black Dog Trust, and she believed Grace, as her media officer, was incompetent for failing to achieve this.

  ‘I’ll tell you what you’ll do.’ Hand over the mouth. ‘You’ll put out a press release to all the dailies, to the tellies and especially to Miriam Whatsit over at Rise and Shine, and you’ll tell them what I think about Home and Away. Say this: Respected mental health expert Barbara Boiler, comma, highly respected chief executive — no, just say chief, cap C — of the Mental Wellness Association, comma, stepped into the debate yesterday— Hang on . . . strode into the debate yesterday over the controversial Home and Away episode . . . Go for the stronger verb there. Strode instead of stepped, see?’