Eddy went over to the child.
‘Are you okay, Ella?’
‘It’s too noisy.’ She rubbed her eyes and glanced back inside, where sleeping babies and toddlers were scattered on cushions and crumpled blankets, their closed eyes all facing the television screen, like corpses circling a dried-up billabong. A finished DVD played its menu screen in ghostly rotation.
‘Come on, I’ll take you back to bed.’
Inside, Eddy picked his way carefully amongst the small bodies to the vacant spot on the couch, still warm. The girl tried to curl up on his lap, a move he deftly dodged, telling her she was too heavy. He sat her beside him, put a blanket over her and tucked her in.
‘Can you tell me a story?’ she asked.
He glanced outside; the child’s father had now yielded his place at the esky and was chanting along another contender. No real reason to bother him.
‘Uh. Once upon a time a man loved a lady very much. So much, that he wanted to ask her to marry him.’
‘Was she a princess?’
‘Well, to him she was. Anyway . . .’
‘Was she a real princess?’
‘A suburban princess, let’s say. Anyway, he wondered how to go about this task . . .’
‘He has to get a ring.’ At their feet, a baby moaned and jabbed some unseen monster with a chubby fist before rolling over.
‘Exactly. So he went off to the shop and got a ring.’ He tugged a blanket up over a curly blond boy, and pushed a pillow away from a sleeping toddler’s face. Ella watched him until he sat down again.
‘And he has to do a mission,’ she told him.
He stared at her. ‘What?’ This may have been the wrong topic to choose; Ella’s eyes were wide with opinion, and her wakefulness seemed to be gently sweeping the room. One toddler made a short, unintelligible but distinctly formal speech in his sleep, another kissed the air longingly and began to whimper. Eddy spotted a nearby dummy and hastily reinserted it.
‘You know, if she’s a princess, he has to do a mission — like kill a dragon, or find a riddle that makes the sad king laugh . . .’
Eddy thought about bungy-jumping in New Zealand, which Romy had wanted them to do, and which he had wriggled out of. God, could you imagine the risk ranking matrix on that? The insurance premiums those people must pay . . . ‘Well, maybe he went to the king and the king didn’t need him to do a mission.’
‘They always need to do a mission.’
‘Who’s telling this story?’
She stared at him doubtfully. Man, little girls were being born hard-wired to want more, more, more. What was it, some genetic selection programme? Now that a diamond ring, the ability to vacuum and a willingness to take family leave when the kids were sick were commonplace, the next generation would want all this plus a dragon slain, to say nothing of an act of undergraduate stupidity involving a steep drop and a massive rubber band. He pressed on.
‘Okay then, the king said you must go and speak to every frog in the land . . .’
‘Are you and Romy going to get married?’ Like a flute, that little voice.
‘Maybe. Keep your voice down a bit.’
‘Well, are you?’
He blinked and consulted his empty hands. ‘Er, maybe. No. Well I don’t know.’
‘Can I see the ring?’
Eddy regarded her. She stared back at him. She was scary. She could read minds. She had x-ray vision. It was time he left this nursery; went and did man things.
‘That’s enough. Go to sleep.’
Next morning the air in his tent smelt stale and alcoholic, and he wrenched open the zipped door, gasping for oxygen. He fell back and stared at the polyester roof, tracing the lines of the seams, and finally Romy stirred and opened her eyes.
‘My head.’
He kissed her forehead and got up alone, the ring still in his pocket. He would make her a coffee. But out in the eucalyptus morning, where sun kissed dewdrops on every glittering green surface and the air was sweet, dirty urchins drifted upon him like a polluted tide.
‘I’m hungry.’
‘I’m thirsty.’
‘Can we have breakfast?’
‘Don’t you have parents?’ he muttered, as he built a fire, boiled water and crossly washed bowls still caked with the previous night’s dessert. He dried them and laid them out in a row. He found some Weetbix and rationed them out. Raided someone’s esky and used up almost all their milk, saving the last centimetre for Romy’s coffee. Washed spoons and then handed out a bowl of Weetbix and milk to each child.
‘Sugar?’ A little one held her bowl up to him, baby legs bare below a too-big jumper. She belonged in a seventeenth-century orphanage.
‘Rots your teeth.’
Back in the tent, Romy sat with her head in her hands. She accepted the coffee and huddled over it.
‘There’s no sugar?’
‘Romy. You could say thank you. I did have to wash up and feed half a dozen children out there before I could even get to the coffee.’
‘Thank you.’ She sipped sadly. ‘You’re not having a good time, are you? You don’t like these guys.’
‘That’s not true. They’re okay, it’s just their parenting skills leave a bit to be . . .’ He lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘I mean, if they’re going to bring their kids, it might be nice if they actually looked after them.’
‘Mmm.’
‘They’re fine, they’re fine, these people. They’re your friends, I know. It’s just . . . you get different around them. You’re not you.’
Romy put down the coffee and stared thoughtfully out of the tent’s flaps. ‘I feel like I am. Sometimes I feel I’m more me with these guys than anyone. And then I go home and I wonder just who I’ve become? Who am I?’
Eddy sighed. They would drive home today, and Romy would be deflated. ‘You’d be a better mother than any of them.’
She made a face. ‘I don’t know about children.’
He smoothed her hair, and cupped her jaw. ‘We could make one, you know. I’ve heard it’s quite easy.’
Romy put her forehead between her fingers and rubbed desperately. ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’
There was a knock at the front door, startling Eddy from his memories. He inhaled sharply; he would not answer. He checked that his pale blue pyjama top was buttoned. He rolled the navy piping that edged the jacket between his fingers. He froze; there was the ghost of a face in the window. He stared at it for a full half a minute before realising that it was his own reflection. He was losing it. More knocking. Who was it? He could not speak to anyone, he felt too close to weeping. Real men didn’t weep. Was it his mother, maybe bearing a plate of hot roast? He was kind of hungry. But he wanted to see no one except for Romy, and Romy would not knock. This was her home. Or was it, in her eyes? Maybe it was her, maybe the knocking was an apologetic overture, an acknowledgement that she had betrayed him. He stood and reached the door in giant steps, his heart bursting for terror that she would creep away again, into the mysterious world of Missing.
He threw open the door, but it was not Romy. A man stood before him. The little girl’s father. From the road accident. From the dinner. Tom. He was momentarily unrecognisable in a navy suit and white shirt, although he had loosened his tie and was holding a six-pack.
‘G’day, brought some beers. Wanna drink?’
Eddy looked down as if feigning surprise to find himself in sleepwear. ‘Uh. Okay.’ At this time of morning? But then he saw the time: it was well after lunch.
Tom had flowed inwards by now, like a liquid. Eddy could not remember whether he had gestured his guest inside or not, but Tom roamed through the house swigging his beer and checking out the décor. Patches of mud and grass stuck to the back of Tom, on what looked like a good-quality suit, but Eddy decided not to mention it. He did not really think Tom would care. Was he drunk? Not very. The school children would walk past again soon. He felt ridiculously sad at the prospect of missing them, and anxious to re
turn to his window. ‘Shall we sit in the front room?’
‘Here in the kitchen’s fine.’
‘But I need to . . . it’s nicer up there . . . this way . . .’
‘Sure. Are you sick?’
‘No.’ Eddy declined to offer any reason for why he was wearing pyjamas at three in the afternoon. ‘And you? Not at work?’
‘Nope.’ Tom offered no excuse either, and so the two men sat in harmony at the front window, cautiously free of explanations, and drank beer. The women drifted back along the street, their faces ambivalent as they left behind the private pleasures of the day and took on their mother-selves again. Eddy looked at Tom nervously; his own isolation had given him a queer, dislocated feeling, as if he was speaking through fifty layers of soundproof glass.
‘She hasn’t come back,’ he said, too loudly. And then he shrank back from himself; all wrong, all wrong. Being human was too difficult.
Tom nodded as if he knew. He took out a newspaper, and flicked through it, then folded it and held it before Eddy. ‘Seen this?’
Eddy read it reluctantly, without touching it. He did not like this particular newspaper, and had not read it in ten years. Big pictures, small articles, lots of supermarket specials and erectile dysfunction ads. Tom pointed at a large blurry picture, a stock-standard image of a security camera’s perspective on a store robbery. Eddy had seen similar pictures a hundred times. The caption of this one indicated it had taken place in the early hours of the day before. A small grocery store, with the shadow of petrol pumps in the corner, and rows of chocolate bars and advertisements. A slim hand reached from one side of the picture, behind the cash register, offering — one could almost see the tremble of the fingers — a bundle of cash. Clear also were the two thieves, one close to the counter and one a step behind, darker images against the tinsel and glitter of busy rows full of products. And what was that on the robbers’ faces?
Pirate and Cat get the Cream in 7/11 Hold-Up
Two thieves believed to have robbed a series of petrol stations in the eastern and northern suburbs have been dubbed Pirate and Cat, due to their unusual disguises.
Police are hunting a man and woman believed to be in their thirties who have gleaned close to $55,000 in cash from grocery hold-ups. Security cameras show the woman wearing a cat mask and the man in a balaclava with a red patch on one eye, and a tricorner hat. The woman is estimated to be 170 centimetres tall, of medium build with dark hair and olive skin. The man is possibly part Asian in appearance, estimated 190 centimetres tall and of muscular build, police say. Both have Australian accents, and left the scene of each crime together on a motorbike.
Members of the public are asked to contact police with information.
Eddy’s eyes moved on to another article below it, about giant feral cats that had been sighted in some national park; maybe this was what Tom had meant him to read? But then Tom’s finger jabbed the robber picture again, making Eddy jump. ‘You see it?’
‘See what?’ Eddy felt shaky and irritable. He wanted to be alone. He hardly knew this man, Tom. But then his eyes, drifting over the page, suddenly locked on the female thief.
Tom said, ‘The crims.’
The woman rose from the page at Eddy, even while remaining flat. The picture was impressionistic, made from the giant pixels of a poor-quality camera, but even so you could make out the cartoon cat expression on the mask, which curled around the side of her face. Oh God. It couldn’t be. The robber’s hair was not short, as he had first thought, but tied up at the back — you could make out one long tendril, falling over her shoulder. Like the pirate, she held a very large gun, a fact which made him momentarily check his rising horror — but then he looked at the way her shoulders were raised. Romy always did that when she was nervous — and the way her jeans flared over her shoes, and the way she leaned her head, cat mask and all, on one side. But, oh, it was more than all these things, it was a certain shiver in the air around her, a displacement of the pixels that he recognised.
‘Look familiar?’ said Tom.
‘No.’
Tom nodded, watching him. He half-grinned, as if it might be funny, but he was hedging his bets in case it wasn’t.
Eddy breathed fast and deeply. He could not believe this. What a ridiculous thought. ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Fucking hell.’ His head hurt.
Tom stopped smiling. ‘Are you—’ But then his mobile rang. He took it out, looked at it and swore, before he answered. ‘Hi, darl! Yeah, working, just out getting some supplies. Some transmitters. Then back to a three-hour meeting. Tricky client . . . I did? Oh, I did, that’s right. Miss Laura rang me from kindy. Some issue about Lotte she wanted to talk to us about . . . Can you? That would be great. I’m just hectic all this week.’
And he hung up and twisted off another bottle top. Eddy’s breathing finally slowed, although he kept staring at the newspaper picture. Tom talked a bit about robotics and asked him things about risk analysis, which seemed like a far-off life now to Eddy, although he surprised himself by managing to find the words to talk about it, and by sustaining a possibly normal-sounding conversation. They talked about footy. Eddy didn’t ask Tom why he was lying to his wife about being at work, and Tom didn’t ask Eddy how he felt about his crazy girlfriend who had become a robber. Finally the conversation fell silent, and just as Eddy was feeling that it had been an uncomfortably long period without a word, he looked over at Tom and saw that he had fallen asleep in his chair. Relieved, Eddy relaxed back into his own chair and watched until his neighbour ran past on his way home from work, his tie still flapping. Finally, Tom woke, alarmed at the time, and Eddy pointed out the grassy mud chunks that were still inexplicably on Tom’s pants, although now redistributing themselves onto Eddy’s carpet, and Tom brushed more of them off onto the carpet without apologising, and left to go home.
Eddy sat in the gathering dark with his newspaper and his disbelief, until finally he came to with a start of anger and hunger, and ordered a delivery pizza. The girl on the phone recognised his voice, or his phone number, and asked if he wanted the usual — gluten-free, thin-based vegetarian delight with extra rocket — and he reflected for a moment and told her that, actually, he really, really did not. He would have a meatlovers with the lot, thick wheat base, and he didn’t want to see a shred of anything green.
Chapter 6
‘They what?’ spluttered Grace. She had been surprised to find Melody also waiting to see Miss Laura at kindy, and then dismayed when the teacher ushered both mothers into her office. God, can I never get away from this woman? Grace had wondered, trying not to meet Melody’s calm blue eyes. The kindy teacher had sat them down and made it clear: There Was A Problem.
‘They are very good friends,’ said Miss Laura. She was attractive in a wholesome sort of way: thick eyebrows and rosy cheeks and generous breasts and hips. Her eyes crinkled from long days of smiling down at children.
‘But?’ demanded Grace.
‘They are excluding other children from their games.’
‘Are there that many who want to play with them?’ Skipper was new, after all. And Grace’s understanding from three-year-old kinder the year before was that Lotte had repelled most of the other children by now, and was generally left to her regal solitude.
‘Well, there’s little boys who want to play with . . .’ Miss Laura trailed off and glanced at Melody. Ah. It was clear now. There were little boys who wanted to play with Skipper. Of course. Her dysfunctional daughter was holding back the hippy child’s social chances.
Melody blinked. ‘Does it matter?’ she said, coolly.
‘Well, it’s more than that actually.’ Miss Laura smiled down at the floor and was still for a moment, as if remembering something, before she jerked back to life. ‘I keep catching them in the toilet together.’
Grace reeled. ‘Doing what?’
Miss Laura shrugged. ‘Number ones. Twos. But they are insisting on being with each other when they do it. Or, well, Lotte—’
&
nbsp; ‘Oh God,’ snapped Grace. ‘Can’t you just stop them?’
‘We can, of course. But you are their parents. It’s right you should know. Maybe you can say something.’
As they left the kindergarten shortly after, Grace’s face burning, Melody put her hand on her arm. ‘I don’t see anything wrong with it. They’re four years old, for God’s sake. They’re just curious.’
‘Of course!’ Grace nodded, tearful with relief. ‘Well, I’m off to do some shopping.’
‘Can Lotte come to the park for a play on Saturday?’
‘Yes!’
Grace watched Melody go, and then she furtively crossed the street and entered a coffee shop. She settled herself at a table with three other women, mothers from the local kindy. She knew Verity Genoise, a stay-at-home-mother, from mothers’ group. There was Nina, an elfin-looking lawyer, whom she knew from three-year-old kinder, and Anna Trapper, Grace’s mother-of-four neighbour down the road with the wannabe actor/director husband.
‘How is Lotte’s leg?’ Verity had been appalled by the accident, and couldn’t seem to stop talking about it.
‘Getting better,’ Grace said crisply, and she hoped, discouragingly. She knew it was all her fault. A failure of the parent on duty. Any other job, you’d be sacked.
‘Will there be any lasting effect?’ Did Verity sound hungry, hopeful, or was that Grace’s imagination?
‘She looks just fine to me,’ said Anna smoothly, sipping the froth off a coffee.
‘But will—’
‘She does seem fine, doesn’t she?’ Grace hastily agreed, nodding at Anna. ‘And Damien: how did his job interview go?’ An unfair ruse, she knew, to swing Verity’s attention away from Grace’s misfortune to Anna’s. Both the antisocial four-year-old and the unemployed husband were favoured targets of Verity’s sympathy.
But Anna was calm. ‘Just a chat about a possible movie later this year.’
Damien Trapper wanted to direct movies, and had spent the past two years not working, and trying to get film projects up and running. Anna did both waitressing and telephone sales shifts so the family could meet the rent and eat. Grace was secretly horrified by Damien, all the more during the year that her own husband had started to resemble him, tinkering away on his own personal R2-D2 out the back while the margin they had built on the mortgage shrank.
The Near Miss Page 7
