But everything had proceeded as it usually does for anyone else in the same situation. In a matter of days all three of them were together in their house, and life continued. Having a child was difficult, but it was meant to be difficult, because being an adult is difficult. Life becoming more difficult is what adulthood is about, Rick supposed, and adulthood is about meaning and purpose and noble struggle.
They didn’t have much money, so during the day they would sit in the town’s central park and let Giselle roll around in the grass. They would monitor Giselle’s facial expressions and relish all evidences of emotion. Even watching Giselle cry was fascinating, Rick had thought, in the way that she would transform from placid to discontented in less than a second. The baby had not been afraid to express exactly what she felt as soon as she felt it. It was also pleasant to witness her determination to learn more. When Giselle first rolled from her back onto her belly it was an incredible milestone, and for Ruth and Rick, in the moment it was enough. Their baby had learned this one thing, so now she could relax for a while. But for Giselle it had been important to immediately explore all of the possibilities that came with rolling onto one’s belly, like crawling. Her inability to immediately do anything else new made her cry.
And so life for Giselle was a deluge of obstacles. Nothing was satisfactory for very long: one development only served to make the next more urgent. Transformative thresholds were crossed weekly, sometimes even daily, but each and all were never enough.
As they’d watched Giselle grow over the course of six months, the fact of Rick not having a job became more and more prominent. He lacked the patience to spend whole days and nights with Giselle, so he would wander the streets with CV in hand applying for jobs, and that became his proxy job. Ruth stayed at home, rocking the baby to sleep, keeping the baby asleep, and tending to whatever needed tending to around the house.
Rick’s job hunting had not been successful. For some reason people did not want to give him a job. He knew that he would be a good worker, and he believed that he’d presented himself better than many of the teenagers who worked at the shops in the town. But for some reason managers and owners disliked him, and always would. These types of people were a whole category of mankind unfavourably disposed towards Rick, and this was abundantly obvious after only a fortnight, as by then he had applied at every single shop in the town.
He had not wanted to stay at home all day and listen to Giselle cry while also feeling gloomy about not having a job, so he’d left the house each morning under the pretence that he was still searching. And occasionally, lost for any jobs to apply for, he would stop into the pub for a quick beer just to while away the time. He was an adult in the eyes of the law, after all, even though he didn’t feel like one, and legal adults are allowed to drink beer whenever they wish.
He’d mistakenly believed that he had crossed the transformative threshold to adulthood one day when Ruth’s father, Don, caught him drinking a beer at the Grosvenor pub. The old man walked in at lunchtime with his coworkers from the council. He’d pretended not to notice Rick.
Many things went through Rick’s head that day. He’d immediately formulated a scene where he would reveal all to Don, and Don would understand that Rick was under immense pressure. He hoped that Don would not tell Ruth, nor would he ever mention the situation during family get-togethers. Surely he would not make Rick’s wretched life worse by introducing this new complication. Surely adults did not act reflexively: surely they thought things through and assessed what actions would lead to the best possible outcome.
But of course Don did tell Ruth. He didn’t recall her being too upset. She simply said that it was little wonder he had not found a job if he always smelled like beer, to which Rick replied that he only had a beer when he felt especially depressed about not having a job. This strategy worked. He had seen that Ruth felt sympathy towards him because he was trying his very best and failing nonetheless. Adulthood was proving difficult for Rick, but the important thing was that he was trying his best.
Still, Don telling Ruth meant that Rick could no longer drink a beer occasionally as he’d looked for jobs. Don tried to get him a job at the council, doing whatever labour the council felt inclined to delegate, but the council didn’t want to give him a job either. There was no reason given except that others were more suited than him. By then he’d already understood that he was not suited for a job. He was simply not someone worth paying to do something.
Rick spent part of a dole cheque getting a Responsible Service of Alcohol certificate, but then no pubs would employ him. He did a coffee-making course, but no cafés were interested. He’d investigated studying at the TAFE, but it was far too expensive — and anyway, to earn just a little bit of money it was surely not important to have a qualification. He was simply a deadbeat adult who didn’t even feel like an adult, and he supposed employers must have sensed that he still felt like a teenager, and that he had yet to properly cross the transformative threshold.
Eventually he’d presented a bold idea to Ruth: they would need to move away from the town. Rick was not so audacious to recommend the city, but surely another town would have people willing to employ him, especially since they had not seen him wandering the main street for many months with CV in hand. He would appear to be a regular person with a strong work ethic applying for a job that he was more than capable of carrying out. Chances are, he’d told Ruth, that he would get the first job he applied for, since people would not associate him with the inability to get a job.
Ruth had agreed to move, but only if Rick arranged a job in advance. This was far from easy, because looking for a job is hard, Rick said, and he didn’t have a car. The only bus in town didn’t leave the town, and there was only one train that passed through the town, the freight train, and it never stopped. He did consider leaping in front of it one day, he chuckled to me, when feeling especially fed up.
He’d put notes on noticeboards around town requesting lifts to the next town in case anyone commuted on a daily basis. He’d never received a reply. He’d investigated potential bus routes at the terminal, in case there was a bus that passed by even the outskirts of town, but there were no buses leaving or arriving anywhere near. The only option was to drive, except he didn’t own a car, nor did he have a driver’s licence – and he had money for neither. Meanwhile, as he resubmitted CVs to all of the businesses that had already rejected him, he’d become more and more tense about not being able to have a beer during the day. He was still drinking at home, of course, every single night, but he was lost for things to do in the town while ostensibly looking for a job. He’d reacquainted with an old high school friend named Shane who lived in his mother’s shed and smoked marijuana. Since Rick smoked cigarettes, he’d doubted Ruth would be able to smell marijuana on him if he smoked it too, especially since she had never smoked it before and was probably unfamiliar with it.
For several weeks he’d only visited Shane after a solid five-hour stint of looking for work. He would start looking at nine in the morning, visit Shane at two, smoke two bongs, leave Shane’s at four, and then wander around town until the effects wore off. Shane sat in his shed and smoked bongs all day while watching television or playing video games. When Rick was there he’d done the same, and enjoyed it because the marijuana made him more analytical, and more sensitive to the subtleties of entertainment. It seemed to make time pass slower too, which was a blessing, as Rick was finding it increasingly difficult to arrive home while still under the influence of the drug. Giselle’s screaming would seem more piercing, and Ruth’s exhaustion more depressing and alienating.
One day he’d been so fed up looking for a job that he’d visited Shane at ten in the morning. He had planned for it to be a one-off, but it had quickly become a habit. And under the influence of the drug the prospect of wandering the town in search of a job seemed even more undignified – pathetic even. It was true that Rick had been hiding at Shane’s house. He’d waited for each day to pass so th
at he could finally go to bed.
It had taken Ruth several months to realise that there was something further wrong with Rick. She’d certainly known that there was something already wrong with him before — depression, anxiety — but she soon suspected he was doing drugs also. She’d asked about his red eyes one evening and he’d lied that he had been crying on the way home. This had worked as an excuse for that one evening, but it couldn’t continue: he couldn’t keep telling her that he was crying.
So instead of smoking marijuana with Shane all day, Rick had decided he would do so only at the beginning of the day: from ten o’clock until lunchtime. Then he would wander around town until it was time to go home. This way the drug’s effect would disappear entirely before he saw Ruth, and his eyes would be clear.
Giselle was one year old, and Ruth was becoming more worried about Rick’s wellbeing. She was very supportive, and eventually compromised on the matter of moving towns: that they would do so without his having arranged a job first. But by that point the prospect of moving to another town alarmed Rick, because what if he couldn’t find work there either? He would be alone wandering in a new town, with nowhere to hide during the day.
In the end, moving towns was the only thing left to do. Despite Rick’s reluctance, they’d decided to move to a town sixty kilometres west. At first he was anxious, but as they’d begun packing away their belongings he’d started to realise how much he had grown to hate the house they’d lived in, and how much he had lost faith in the transformative threshold of which he had always dreamed. All of the events prior to that — leaving school, becoming an official adult, marrying Ruth, and rearing Giselle — were only steps along the way to true transformation, and this move to another town would be the element that sealed the deal.
On the day of the move, Don had helped them pack all of their belongings into a council ute. They had already secured a flat in the new town, thanks to a friend of Ruth’s family. All they’d needed to do was drive, arrive, unload, arrange, and then Rick would spend two days enjoying his new life before getting serious about finding a job.
He’d been a bit nervous about the drive, though — nervous about the way Don had packed the council ute. What Rick and Ruth had anticipated being several trips had turned into one, as Don had made it a game to see whether all of their belongings could fit onto the one tray. And fit they did, but only just, and not properly at all — because as they’d been leaving town, picking up speed on the highway, out near the old abandoned car yard, three lounge chairs strapped to the top of the load had come loose, causing a great imbalance. The truck had skidded off the road.
Don, Ruth and Giselle: they’d all died. Rick had received not even a scratch; he awoke several days later to find that he was back at his parents’ house, lying in the same bed he had slept in as a teenager, under the same linen he had snuggled up to for the entirety of his childhood. His parents told him not to worry, that he was living back with them now, that everything would be okay.
Rick said that he had experienced nightmares like this all his life: where, after a period where he was certain he had crossed the transformative threshold to adulthood, he would wake up one day to find himself back at home, in his pokey old bedroom, with his parents pottering around in the next room. In his nightmares he would have no immediate means to escape the situation – it would be months, even years, before he could escape and become an independent person again, and all the while the people around him were enjoying their freedom, and making the most of their lives.
Rick packed his last column of tuna tins onto the Woolworths shelf, and looked upset when he saw there were no more left. He told me that after the car accident it took months for him to want to leave the house again. Clearly adulthood was not for him. He hadn’t wanted to face the world, nor had he wanted to take drugs or drink beer and become more miserable. He’d only wanted to go back to being a child, or a teenager, when the world did not seem so horrible.
That’s why he came to the supermarket every day: it was a sanctuary. He was overcome with many beautiful memories when he visited it, and if he focused enough, he could pretend that he was there with his mum. The nostalgic songs played over the loud speakers had not changed since he was a child, nor had the harsh fluorescent lighting which accentuated all of the loud colours on each of the products. The sound of the checkouts beeping as products are registered to the bill was intensely musical to him.
When he was a kid Rick had loved nothing more than to go shopping with his mum. Even on occasions when she did not buy him a treat he told me he was happy, because the supermarket for him was a showcase for domestic comfort. It’s arranged perfectly: when you enter you are immediately hit with the smell of fresh fruit and vegetables, and to the far left of this area there is the cold meat section. Then, if you take the aisles as they come, up and down accordingly, you are exposed to the breakfast cereal section, the bread section, and then the spices and condiments section, then the Asian and Italian cuisine sections, and then it gets serious with the stationery section, and then the magazine section, and then the toiletries section, followed by the fragrant laundry section which always morphs into the cold foods section, where the ice cream and frozen pies are kept. And each one of these sections, Rick said, is evocative of a strange memory from his childhood. Each section is a warm anecdote, or at the very least an image, of a time when all he needed to do in the world was be good for his mum. And so as an adult there in the supermarket, he was as close to inhabiting a non-volatile world as he was ever likely to get.
Rick pointed to the stacked tuna cans. He said that if I was impressed by the work he had done, then he’d appreciate my putting a good word in to the manager. He was uniquely passionate about the environment.
Rick handed me his CV, and asked that I give it to my manager alongside a personal endorsement. I told him I would see what I could do.
*
Each year the town had its own special day. On this day the main street was cordoned off from the bottom petrol station all the way to the top petrol station, and market stalls lined the streets selling Pluto Pups and other types of deep fried food, or else novelty T-shirts and cheap toys. At one end of the street near the top petrol station, a band played in the park, and there was a jumping castle too.
The day celebrated the fact of the town being a town. For one day in autumn, just before the biting morning frosts set in, people were invited to acknowledge that they lived in the town. It was an opportunity to feel warmly towards the town, and given the festivities, and the coloured lights that criss-crossed the main street at night, and the thousands of litres of beer involved, few could resist being part of the occasion.
I attended the town’s day because I was having trouble writing my book about disappearing towns. Adult couples, teenagers and troublemakers milled the streets, browsing keepsakes they could purchase at one of the dozen or so stalls set up in the area. The stalls sold shirts, stubby holders, flags, stickers, plush koala bears and car decals, all decorated with the Australian flag and the name of the town. In the park there was a special cordoned-off area where people were permitted to drink beer from tin cans. It was necessary to line up to gain entry, but since few people left the special cordoned-off drinking area once they had entered, I was not able to enter, and so not able to have a beer. Instead, I bought a can of Coke and sat on the grass as the band played a cover of ‘Electric Blue’ by Icehouse.
Jenny from the pub eventually called over to me. She was serving beers inside the cordoned-off drinking area, and motioned that she could get me inside. Soon enough the security guard manning the entry waved me over and I was welcomed in.
In the cordoned-off drinking area customers lined up, bought their beer, and then joined the end of the queue again. As she opened beer cans for townspeople, Jenny explained to me that it was her biggest business day of the year. Her pub hardly did any business anymore, aside from mine, so it was lucky that her father was friends with an organiser of the fest
ival. The money she made on this one day was enough to sustain the pub, so I should be grateful that the festival existed, she told me, since I was the only person who ever drank in the pub.
Jenny was always making comments to me like this. But I wasn’t about to complain – I was privileged that she spoke to me at all. Especially on this day – there was no need for Jenny to speak to her customers in the cordoned-off area, as there was only one variety of beer, and it was not permitted to buy more than two beers at once, as per council regulations. Jenny automatically served two beers to each customer. If asked for only one, Jenny would insinuate that this person had consumed enough for the day, and should get some fresh air, i.e., leave the cordoned-off drinking area to make room for someone eager to buy and drink two beers at once.
I watched as Jenny served the beers. At one point Rob rattled at the fence nearby and motioned me over. He wanted to get inside the drinking area. He said he’d do anything to get in, and besides, I wasn’t drinking anything so there was no reason for me to be in there.
He was right that I wasn’t drinking any beer, but I liked watching Jenny work. Also, I did not want to exploit my privilege by requesting a swap. I told Rob that he might as well drink at one of the pubs on the street, two of which had a view of the stage, but he was not satisfied with this solution. The line into the cordoned-off drinking area was blocking the view of the stage, and besides, he really wanted to drink with his friends, who were already inside. I explained that it was impossible and he marched away.
At that time of evening, as the sun was starting to go down and the band were becoming a little more upbeat, the line to the drinking area was snaking around the perimeter of the park, to the extent that the whole park was enclosed by a wall of thirsty revellers, none of whom would ever have a beer this year in the cordoned off area — they would need to wait until next year.
The Town Page 5
