The Near Miss

by Fran Cusworth

  Melody swam to the surface and lay in cool sunlight for a while, dishes clanking from the kitchen, voices chirping. It was all dreamy and yet jerky, the way children grew up, it occurred to her. You looked at them one day and they’d grown two inches overnight. Or they suddenly came out with a phrase you’d never heard them say before. She remembered the jerkiness herself from childhood, when she realised she had changed all over again. The world was anew, and the dimensions and perspectives around her seemed abruptly different, as if a cartoon had morphed into a film, developing shadows, dimension, pores on skin, flyaway hair.

  She dreamed about a party in the commune she had been to the year before, a cold night not long after the Winter Solstice, a party to mark the burial of a child’s placenta. Seven years old, the little girl was, and the question had not been fully answered, where had they been keeping the placenta these past seven years? She woke from this puzzle to find Skipper beside her, talking to Grace, telling her a long involved story about an UNO game he’d played the night before, apparently with Eddy. ‘Then I put down collect four! Then he had to pick up six!’

  Finally she woke again, and the world was flat, cleansed, new. She felt cool and clean. The sheets and blankets were no longer in a pile on top of her, but had been neatly folded and tucked around the mattress. Her hair was damp against her head. She barely had the energy to blink, but she was better. She lay and stared out at the powerlines, out at the sky, and a little plane passed by with a sound like a far-off lawnmower on a Sunday afternoon. She felt very, very grateful.

  Grace came in and sat gently on the side of the bed. ‘Better?’

  Melody nodded. ‘Thanks for looking after Skipper. I don’t know what . . .’

  Grace shrugged it off. ‘Forget it. You’ve been so sick.’

  ‘And I think I was meant to do a reading for this guy . . .’

  ‘He came. I told him you were being rushed off your feet and I was your delegate.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘I did the reading for him. Told him all good things. He’s going to meet the love of his life. The money’s on the kitchen bench.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It’s good money! You could really expand that business you know. Set up a website.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Guess what? I’ve got good news and bad news.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Good news first. You were voted a saint! Overwhelmingly!’

  Melody stared at her. The evil television show. ‘Not a sinner?’

  ‘Not a sinner.’

  ‘People really voted?’ Was the world mad?

  ‘They did! Thousands voted. It was all on the telly the next night. You were sleeping.’

  ‘Should I watch it?’

  ‘Nup. Let it pass.’

  ‘And the bad news?’

  ‘Well, the bad news is that your real estate agent rang to say he’s evicting you for not paying the rent.’

  Melody sighed and laid her head back on the pillow. She was exhausted already, and yearned to return to the subterranean world of illness, where someone else took responsibility for her child. Was that the first time ever in Skip’s life?

  Grace folded the edge of a sheet into a fan shape and said ‘Um . . .’ and ‘Uh . . .’, and Melody waited for whatever it was she was trying to say.

  ‘I just, well anyway, I was wondering, now the house is sold we have to leave next week, it’s a quick settlement, and Lotte and I have looked at this really old place down the road, maybe you’ve seen the old blue one on the corner, well it’s up for rent, and it’s a dump, a total dump, someone should put a match to it, but for now it’s okay, and they’d let us bring the cat, and there’s plenty of room, enough for you and Skipper, too, and even though it’s a dump I thought you might not care. I mean I don’t mean it like that, but you’re so good at making simple things better . . . Anyway, have a think about it, we could, you know, live together, share the rent, share expenses.’

  Melody shifted her thoughts sluggishly to the blue, condemned rental, which she walked past on the way to kindy, green things growing wild through every crack. Her heart lifted. And that Grace would ask her, that she really didn’t think Melody was a thief. Or if she did, she didn’t think she would contaminate Lotte. Somehow that was more reassuring than the forgiving vote of telly world.

  ‘Could start a veggie patch,’ she croaked. ‘It’s spring, perfect time for planting. The kids could share a room.’

  ‘And,’ said Grace, her eyes shining, ‘if you want to do it, we will stop eating meat. And we will get rid of our telly. I know Skip’s never lived with one.’

  ‘You would do that?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I mean you really don’t have to, but—’

  ‘No. I want to. It will do us good.’ Grace appeared to be holding her breath, waiting.

  ‘That’s very generous of you.’

  ‘Soo . . . what do you think?’

  ‘We’ll do it.’ Melody raised a limp hand to shake, and Grace beamed. Her handshake was so firm, she made Melody tired. She looked at the ceiling of her poky little flat, and thought, we’re leaving this sterile box. She would have a patch of dirt again.

  The children burst in the room screaming, leaping on the bed and landing on their little knees. ‘Did she say yes? Did she say yes?’

  Chapter 15

  Eddy Plenty stood beside the kindergarten teacher, in front of a square-and-triangle cubby house. He crouched and looked up to talk to Miss Laura, spreading his hands apart as he did, outlining some inaudible solution to the sagging window shutter, or the mossy eaves. From Melody’s perspective on the far side of the kinder yard, they looked like a nursery-rhyme husband and wife, come home to find their house had shrunk. But Hans, how do ve get in, now ze door iss ze height ov our goat?

  Melody and Skip had moved house that morning. Eddy-the-Kind had arrived at Melody’s flat with croissants and coffee, and offers of help to move her possessions into the new-old house, to which Grace had already moved her things. Melody and Skip didn’t have a lot of stuff, and in two car trips the job was done. Melody liked the run-down old house, although she could see Grace was appalled by it. The taps coughed and spluttered when you turned them on, as if shocked at such demanding behaviour. While there were two shabbily grand front rooms, the back was a series of lean-tos upon lean-tos, like a card house. Every floor, wall and ceiling was made of dark brown lining boards. These boards had shrunk over time, leaving gaps the wind blew through. Grace had said gloomily it was like living in a rabbit hutch, but for Melody it reminded her of the quirky home-made cottages up in the commune. Rose-patterned carpets were worn down to hessian in the high-traffic areas. Every gutter was full with wild green grass, circling the roof in a gaudy tiara of weeds. The floorboards had a trampoline-like feel to them, because the stumps beneath had rotted, and the parts of the floor which were solid were only so because they were sitting on dirt. It creaked with history, and memories of the living, and of the dead.

  Then the women set off to the kindergarten working bee, which was on that day, and Eddy cleared his throat and offered to come help. He had brought a toolbox from the back of his car, and he looked more at home there than the real fathers. One of the dads, with a ponytail and a wispy growth, sat holding his head, wearing too-tight jeans and sunglasses, at the base of a downpipe, which he had been motionlessly studying now for about an hour, emitting a gentle scent of last night’s alcohol. Another father, this one wearing a fine wool pullover, iron-pleat jeans and Bulgari glasses, pushed a wheelbarrow full of tanbark and asked Melody plaintively for the third time where Miss Laura was; it was possible he had been pushing the same barrow around the yard since early morning, stopping every few metres to check his iPhone. Only Eddy Plenty looked like he had a purpose, and tools, and the ear of Miss Laura, the queen of proceedings.

  Melody, fully recovered from her illness, was preparing to paint a mural on the ugly brown back wall of the kindergarten’s g
arden. She dipped the brush in the pot of gold paint, steadied herself in a crouch, and made a long, confident, downward slash of gold. Some drops fell on the lavender ballgown she had chosen to wear to the kindy working bee. This dress would be spattered from top to bottom by the end of the day, which was just fine. It had cost her five dollars in a Brotherhood of St Laurence shop, a relic of her grandmother’s era, when gorgeous dresses were being churned out of the local garment district in Flinders Lane. It would be all the better for a bit of paint. She stepped back to see her wall. She had brought rollers and a tray the day before and started by painting the whole thing white. Then today she had chalked out her whole design.

  ‘Do you want to see the picture I’ve planned?’ She handed the paper to Grace, who sat dully on a log wearing a pair of bib-and-brace overalls that featured such an authentic layer of dust and grime that they must have been Tom’s.

  ‘Uh . . . yeah.’ Grace seemed about to burst into tears. Melody said nothing. Whether it was the overalls, or the moving to a grotty house so soon after the auction, something had sunk Grace back down to an all-time low. But Melody was getting used to it. She looked over Grace’s shoulder and admired her own work.

  There was a mythical city on the left, chalked in all rising gold turrets and a wizened old queen beneath a flag, staring out into the distance. The city petered out to a stretch of land, which ended in a dark forest. Pools of light in the forest showed three scenes; a wolf tearing apart something unidentifiable on the ground, then further on a stern and tall fairy with a group of littler ones sitting around her, and the last grove revealed a tiny treasure box, emanating paint-swipe rays of light.

  ‘We just have to fill it in.’ Melody pointed over to the green paint and handed Grace a brush. ‘Do you want to have a go at the forests or the plains?’

  ‘I don’t know. You can do the hard bits.’ But then Grace only held the brush and stroked the bristles as if it were a live animal, her eyes staring unseeingly into the pot of deep green. Melody went back to her castle, blocking out the entirety with gold, planning how she would later do the bricks and the turrets. She stood back to get perspective. Grace still caressed her brush, bending the bristles of the cheap Chinese tool so hard that spikes flicked out. Over on the other side of the yard, two mothers whispered as they sieved sand in the sandpit, placing rogue leaves in a bucket. Melody returned to her lovely gold paint. There was a sob from Grace. It was no longer possible to ignore her.

  ‘What’s up?’ She glanced over at Eddy as she crouched at Grace’s feet. He was wearing a welding mask now, raised like a peak cap, and he listened as Miss Laura waved her arms vigorously. Maybe he would come help with Grace. He could rapidly become her go-to man, she reflected. Good for babysitting, moving furniture, mopping up tears.

  ‘I’m so sad about losing our house. And I miss Tom.’

  ‘I know.’ Oh God, she hoped living with Grace wouldn’t be too demanding.

  ‘Do you? Do you really know?’

  ‘Well, I understand.’

  ‘Do you . . . have boyfriends?’

  Melody exhaled. ‘I don’t have a boyfriend now.’

  ‘But are you . . . you know?’

  ‘No, I don’t know. Am I what? Gay? Hetero?’

  ‘Well. Yeah.”

  Melody shrugged. ‘Not really. Not gay.’

  ‘Oh.’ Grace laughed a little. ‘Er . . .’

  ‘I like girls, though.’

  ‘As friends, you mean.’

  ‘No. I’ve had girlfriends.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘But I’ve had boyfriends, too.’

  ‘Oh! I mean, okay. That’s interesting. I hope you don’t mind me asking. Everyone I know is, you know. Normal. So, you’re ah . . . bi.’

  ‘I’m just me.’

  ‘So, if you don’t mind me asking, who is Skipper’s dad?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘Ha ha. Is it Van?’

  ‘Do you think he looks like Van?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Here we go. Gold, gold, gold.’

  Melody lifted her brush and painted a nice long streak. She did love gold. Grace would learn, she could ask all the questions she liked. Melody had never felt a need to explain herself.

  The late spring sunshine faded. Melody put a hoodie over her ballgown and returned to her painting. She would go to the Aboriginal dreaming workshop out at Ouyen in summer; she had paid the registration fee that morning. A week of living in teepees and studying the various dreamings, under the tutelage of a wise elder. Hopefully it would be warm by then. It would be great for Skipper to have some wild time again, to get back among people who were a bit more zen. This kindy was okay, but the recent freeze-out by the mothers had reminded Melody, you’re not in Kansas anymore. You might not have belonged at the commune, in the end, but that’s not to say you belong anywhere, yet. Go with your heart. Feel where you belong. But the dreaming camp would be like the old days, the good bits anyway.

  ‘Hey,’ said Grace, sidling close to her. ‘Do you think I should ask Eddy out?’

  ‘Out where?’

  ‘You know. Out for dinner. On a date.’

  Melody painted in the drawbridge. Where on earth had this come from? ‘Do you like him?’

  ‘Well, it would piss Tom off.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I mean that’s not the only reason! I mean, Eddy’s not bad-looking. He’s okay. And how nice is he, coming to this working bee when he doesn’t even have a kid here. He’s so dependable. Maybe he’s more right for me anyway. Maybe I should have been with someone like him all along. Someone who would appreciate me. For. Who. I. Am.’ Grace stabbed green onto the wall viciously.

  ‘Okay, maybe keep the green a bit lower. Not higher than that line.’

  ‘Do you think I should do it?’

  ‘It’s up to you. Just be a bit careful with the . . . see how it’s spotting over there . . .’

  ‘Imagine Tom, if he found out. He’d be wild. Bet he thinks I’m just sitting around crying.’

  ‘Mm.’

  Grace painted the same patch for the fourth time. Her tears were falling into the paint pot. ‘Yeah. Bet he does.’

  Melody turned her brush to the arched gate. Painting the vines would be fiddly, but she would just start with the slate bricks. ‘I rang that woman from the current affairs show yesterday,’ she said, mixing up grey with white, to get some variegated slate. ‘Anthea Schulberg.’

  Grace slid her brush into the green and slapped the excess onto the edge of the can, splashing flecks of green on her forearms. ‘I hope you told her off. What a complete cow. You could have sued for defamation, if the vote hadn’t gone your way.’

  ‘Well, I only rang because she rang me first, and asked me to call her. Although I did say to her, you know, lighten up, sister. Not very cool on the voting thing.’ Melody hadn’t really said that, but she sensed Grace needed to hear that she had.

  ‘So why did she ring?’

  ‘Actually, it was the weirdest thing.’ Melody paused. She still couldn’t quite believe it herself. ‘She’s asked me to come back into the studio.’

  ‘For what? Another bloody episode?’ Grace groaned. ‘How many times are they going to remind the whole nation that I was the mother who let her daughter run into traffic?’

  Melody blinked. She hadn’t thought of it like that, had considered any subject of national humiliation to be herself, rather than Grace. ‘Actually, it’s not about that. She’s been promoted to producer, and she remembered me.’ I couldn’t get you out of my head, was what Anthea Schulberg had actually said. We did research on you; you have an incredible face, no viewer in our research group could turn you off. ‘She wants to start a horoscope section, once a week on the show. And she remembered I was a fortune teller. I told her I read futures through the hands, through feeling the soul, rather than, you know, global horoscopes, so I wouldn’t be much good to her.’

  ‘You said what? Shit, that’s a job, a great job.
Don’t knock that back. We can make up horoscopes! You didn’t say no, did you! It would be—’

  ‘No, no, she hassled so much that I finally said I’d go in. Read a script, give it a go.’

  ‘Couldn’t you write horoscopes?’

  ‘Maybe. Someone showed me once. I could try.’

  ‘Jesus, I could write them for you if you like. We could just take a few women’s mags and cut and paste.’

  ‘Grace, I couldn’t do that. That’s totally dishonest.’

  ‘Says the saint, or the sinner?’

  ‘Stealing from a shop is much different to making up horoscopes. People make decisions based on these things. They can take steps that change their lives. It would have to be real, or I wouldn’t do it.’

  ‘And would they pay you?’

  ‘For the audition? Probably not.’

  ‘But if you got it?’

  ‘Well, I guess so. I haven’t asked. But I won’t get it. It’s ridiculous. People train at uni for these things. I have no experience at all.’

  ‘God, it’s telly. If you got a gig like that you’d . . . you probably wouldn’t need to live with me anymore.’ Grace’s face fell, and she looked like she might weep again.

  ‘Oh, please,’ Melody switched brushes and dabbed some brown tree trunk on the wall, feeling uncomfortable. ‘As if I’d get it. And anyway, as if I’d move out, just when I’ve moved in. As if Skip would let me move out now.’

  She was getting some weird looks from the women in the sandpit. No doubt they thought her lavender ballgown inappropriate attire for mural painting. You’re the ones sieving dirty sand, sweethearts, she felt like calling out. Feel perfectly free to think my outfit’s a little weird.