The Book of Emmett (15 page)

Demand for weatherboard box houses in skinny streets in West Footscray is slow, and selling takes months. Emmett's trying to take it easy and cut back once again on the grog. But it's not easy. He can't get a proper breath into his bloody lungs. And he cannot sleep. Not at all. Not one single bloody wink. Beer, that's the answer, he tells himself, good old beer never hurt anybody, it's practically medicine.

The new neighbours are wogs of some kind and the woman next door bellows the kid's name morning, noon and night. Sounds exactly like ‘arsehole' to Emmett. One night over spaghetti puttanesca, Peter tells him that the kid's name is Tassos but this doesn't help. Emmett isn't mad on these spicy sauces either, or spaghetti really when it comes down to it, but the kid's made an effort, so what can you say? These days there's not much of an audience for his tantrums. And tantrums really take it out of you. He often finds he has to take a sickie the next day.

One afternoon, Emmett, home early as ever, finds Peter herded out by the estate agent into the backyard under the clothesline on the crate picking out ‘Wish You Were Here' on the guitar. The tomatoes have gone all leggy and smell ripped and tight, with a few as red as rubies and getting redder.

A family of six is poking around inside with the air of owners. Emmett comes upon a grandmother sitting in his chair in the lounge room and for one white second he nearly explodes. Instead he storms out, alarmed and ready to riot, but for some reason he keeps his voice down. There
is
money involved, he reasons, and a deener is still a deener.

He heads straight for Pete in the yard and hisses pretty loud, ‘What the fuck is going on? Who are those bastards telling a man what to do in his own house? And there's a bloody old wog sheila sitting in a man's chair. Fair bloody dinkum mate, this is it. We have reached the dizzy fucking limit!'

Pete explains that the agent wants one last go at selling the joint. ‘Apparently they're fair dinkum,' he says, and Emmett's eyebrows rise and the peerless blue sky swims around them. The light's so clean today, Pete thinks, that even here in Footscray, you feel the planet moving through space. Not such a bad day. He manages a smile at the old man.

Emmett turns to the hose for comfort and waters his remaining tomatoes. A small child detaches itself from the party looking at the house and comes to stand beside Emmett. ‘What's your name?' says the child.

Emmett can't bring himself to speak to the boy and briefly considers hosing him, could do with a good drenching, he reckons, but decides against it and just says quietly, ‘You better choof off now young man, your mother wants you.'

Peter goes up to talk to the agent and it seems the Greeks do want the house and have even made an offer there and then on the front verandah with a solid brick of cash to back it up. The agent holds it like it might fly away and grins nervously.

The years at Wolf Street tower before Peter. This house is at the heart of every single thing he's ever known. He walks down the passage out to the kitchen. He stands on the step and looks over at Emmett watering in the yard and the idea of leaving slams into him.

How can we possibly not live in this shit-hole? he thinks. All the pain. And Daniel. In his mind Pete sees the corner of the kitchen where Daniel hit his head.

When Peter walks over Emmett, feeling philosophical, says, ‘Agent piss off then? So much for fair dinkum with those blokes. Would
not
know the meaning of the word.

‘Growing things, Peter. This is what it's all about mate. You grow something and it does what you want. It's obedient and quiet and you can eat the bastards.' And Peter understands that his father clearly prefers tomatoes to kids and his wife, which is no surprise. He looks back at the house, steadfastly refusing to praise the tomatoes.

‘Come on Pete, look at this beauty. They are works of bloody art, for Key-Ryst's sake mate, you've got to admit.' So inevitably Peter slides his eyes towards the tomatoes and says, ‘Yeah, they look great Dad. What do you want for tea? Tomato soup?' He'll tell Emmett about the sale after tea. Tell him before, and he'll only get himself all worked up and ruin another good meal.

Silence follows and Pete moves into the kitchen to produce a dinner that since Louisa has started teaching him about food always has something special: yoghurt and mint sauce with the chops or a glistening salad and a good vinaigrette. At last Emmett has the cook of his dreams working for him.

Emmett takes to Louisa's John Keele with an ease that astounds everyone. The man who hates outsiders, who trusts no man, well, it turns out, he doesn't mind John Keele at all.

The first time Louisa brings him over he says politely to John dithering at the screen door, ‘Come in, young fellow, what the
hell
are you waiting for?' and gives him a quick once over. ‘Hair's very light. One of them Scandinavian mob are you?' he wonders out loud, not waiting for an answer.

He turns to Pete and bellows, ‘For God's sake Pete, get this bloke a bloody beer. Quick smart! Can't you see a man's dying a thirst here?'

Pete goes to the fridge and swoops in, grabs one and hands it to John who smiles his thanks. Emmett's grinning away at John like the Cheshire cat but Louisa thinks, I'm the invisible one. Unfolding plainly before her is something she's long suspected, her father prefers men. Women, she thinks bitterly, he sees no sense in us at all. You need a penis to be real around here.

Still, she gives a thin little smile, glad enough that Emmett likes John. Relieved that the night is full with Emmett's bounty. Pete leans back against the wall and they settle in for Emmett's performance. He launches into a few poems starting with Banjo and moving on to Lawson and C.J. Dennis and John keeps smiling.

Louisa doesn't know whether to be horrified or to laugh. She thinks she loves this man, but having Emmett in full flight is bound to put anyone off. How do you stop Emmett Brown? And what if it turns? But John seems to be happy. He's laughing and joking with Emmett and even reading a few poems. What's going on?

Then the mood shifts with the light outside the window. Anne says they should be thinking about tea. ‘What about Chinese,' she suggests, ‘celebrate meeting John?'

Emmett puts up ten bucks and Louisa and John nip down to Poons to pick it up and leaning on the wall in the restaurant under the giant chopsticks clock, he remarks, ‘Your dad has quite a strong personality, doesn't he?' The understatement of the century, she thinks, and that she might start laughing and never stop.

‘Yeah, he does,' she says, struggling to stay calm. And later, stopping at the traffic lights, they kiss and she feels she has had a reprieve from something, that John has been spared for her.

In possibly the smallest house in North Melbourne live Louisa Brown and John Keele. When John stands out the front with his arms outstretched, he touches both walls. But in that narrow width they are happy.

The house is in Leaf Street and even the name makes Louisa smile, but then she's in love and smiling comes easy. In Leaf Street they make love whenever and wherever they want and they want to often. They smile at each other and make each other cups of tea just how they like it, they read books to and with each other while they sip wine. They throw dinner parties for other journalists who gossip with a kind of feverish mania about anything, and they love having people round to their little place.

They make coq au vin and bouillabaisse from old recipes from his French mother. They walk to the market first thing most Saturday mornings and she believes life is as good as it can be. She puts her face close to his shoulder as they walk and she thinks they are just like Dylan and Suze on the cover of the
Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.

She treats John's poetry ambitions with complete seriousness and reads every transcript of his poems, encouraging each draft. When he does a reading (he calls them gigs) she sits up the front and claps embarrassingly loud and she brings Rob and Peter along to boost the audience. The brothers seem so clean with their combed hair and washed jeans and they listen politely, sipping their beers and sneaking looks at their watches, wondering when it'll be all right to nick off.

At work John gets promoted more quickly than Louisa despite having lousy shorthand, but this is common (‘it's not all about note-taking, Louisa') and soon she's a C-grade and he's a B. Louisa is very good at shorthand and does much court reporting. It's soothing to watch justice at work.

John's hair has faded to a dirty blond and she begins to wonder whether he'd been bleaching it. She never asks though, it seems too personal. He cuts it shorter and soon it settles into mouse-brown with barely a glance back at blond.

His special skill is ghost-writing columns for ex-footballers. He likes the time he spends with them and says getting something out of them is like emptying the sock drawer looking for pairs. Their thoughts are rambling and unmatched. When he says such things she loves him.

Though Louisa is wary of gambling, they go once to the races. John is persuasive, tells her he operates only on tips and doesn't bet if he doesn't get any and he never even mentions probabilities. With John's tips they do all right but still, it feels strange being there. There's a tightening in her chest and a sorrowful feeling that she's given something away but then since she can't name it, she thinks it isn't that important anyway. In the last few months she has started to bite her nails though, and this is unnerving too. Maybe, she thinks, she's losing the way.

She's conscious of the similarities between John and her father – poetry and racing are both impossible quests – but she tries not to think too deeply.

And then at the races in her blue dress she does something strange. Going down the grandstand stairs at Flemington to watch a race, she puts her hand on John's arm and almost in a trance state says, ‘I'd like to marry you, if you'd like to marry me.' And John is utterly shocked. His eyes, it seems, become transparent.

In the long pause Louisa laughs far too hard with a kind of terror bursting through her. Why on earth, she wonders incredulously, would you say such a thing? And from the look on his face, he's embarrassed. My God, she thinks, I've read the whole thing wrong.

‘Just a joke,' she says cracking up, trying to save herself, and he laughs too, his hard barking laugh. Trouble is, she's been thinking of children, his children. She believes she's old enough now to make a good mother. She often thinks about Jess. Something there needs to be repaired. Some shame in the way she behaved that needs to be erased.

John Keele stops a second on the step and then grabs her hand and keeps heading downstairs. ‘Jeez Weeza,' he says, using his pet name for her, ‘you caught me by surprise there. Wasn't thinking about marriage, just thinking about the next race.' He bark-laughs again. ‘Anyway, thought you didn't believe in marriage.' She doesn't answer, just keeps laughing lightly, though nothing seems the least bit funny. She blames it all on going to the races. The poison of it. Your own fault, she says again and again to herself.

The horses, sleek as seals, are moving towards the barrier. Phil Dwyer, a pimply-faced streak not that much older than Louisa, joins them. She knew him when they were cadets and now he works for the little paper. He's always curious about what's going on at other newspapers. ‘You on today Keelie? Business and pleasure,' he says, eyeing off Louisa, but doesn't listen when John replies that he's mostly doing football these days. Then Dwyer gets to the point and nods towards Louisa, ‘See you brought along the little filly.'

Louisa bristles because Dwyer knows her, knows she's a journo, not some fancy bloody piece. Just what she needs today, a nasty little shit who thinks he's God just because he's got a dick. She wants to tear his head off or to run home, just run, but she flicks her hair back harder than she means to and snaps caustically, ‘And what are you Johnny? A stallion?' Then, quite pleased with that one even though she thinks she might cry because she got it so wrong with John, she turns to see the horses better.

‘Ho, feisty!' Dwyer replies with a smirk, ‘I love 'em feisty.' And Louisa imagines killing him slowly with something heavy.

John pats Dwyer's shoulder to shut him up. Then the moment of the race begins and they watch intently and are hypnotised by the cacophony of hooves, the beautiful humming. The strain and the spatter and the rawness of these divine animals striving to win for someone else stirs Louisa, brings tears for them and for herself, for the foolish racing endeavours of her father, for all those years, and for the pure spectacular futility that is gambling.

While the jockeys are turning back, Louisa turns to John, ‘We'd better get going, we've got dinner with Jules and George tonight,' she says brightly, trying not to show that she's been moved or that she knows she's been rejected and they walk away, uneasily holding hands. Halfway to the grandstand, he stops her and says, ‘Listen. I want to say something to you ... Yes, I'd love to marry you Weezey, you know I would.' And so, with those words, the world has righted itself. Smiling and kissing John's perfect mouth, she is elated. All she must do now is shake off the ghost of his hesitation.

That night they lie close on the tiny high old bed she bought when she first moved out, and the airy curtains fall in and out with the breeze until she gets up to shut the window. At first the billowing seemed romantic and then it just got annoying – like so many things, Louisa thinks grimly.

She can't sleep, so she goes into the lounge room and gets a sheaf of his poems from the drawer in the dresser. She hasn't read any for a while, and the second one is new. Look here. It's about a woman with brown eyes. Well, she concludes, staggered, and right then her heart is clamped and towed away.

On the couch, in a funnel of chalky lamp light, she wonders whether there is anyone in the world you can trust. Anyone you know. And she completely doubts it. She puts the poems back and goes to bed, and the dark closes around her like the night sky.

Louisa Brown and John Keele are married at the registry office one Wednesday lunchtime in May. Their witnesses are two subeditors. Round old Harry Marks gave her sound advice when she began. ‘Just start at the beginning love, and the rest will follow,' Harry said, the pen in his spotted hands hovering over her copy. The other witness is the very wrinkly Alfie Jordon, whose hairy ears are elephantine and who wears spotted bowties most days and always has three sugars in his tea.

They've known Louisa since she started work at
The Ant
and on her wedding day they wear suits with white carnations in their lapels as if it's a special occasion. Louisa wears the black dress with the tiny flowers, the one Emmett paid for after he won the double and, today, there's another echo of Emmett – her hands shake just like her father's.

But John is not the least bit nervous; if anything he seems heedlessly eager to tie the knot. ‘Let's get going,' he says, rubbing his hands together as he strides up to Louisa and the two witnesses standing on the wide grey steps on this windy day. His hair, grown long and blond again, is moving in the breeze. Louisa's is streaming back from her face and today, she thinks, John looks shiny as though he were made of metal. She puts out her hand to hold his but he doesn't notice.

And when they come out arm in arm, they are married and it doesn't feel so different; the wind still pushes at them out there on the steps. Harry and Alfie wouldn't mind a drink but they're all due back at work. John kisses Louisa and hurries off to a sacked coach press conference (it's that time of the year) and she goes back to the office.

She rings Anne from her desk in the humming, gossipy news room and nestles into her corner to talk. Can't understand why she feels so shaky. ‘Hi Mum, it's me,' she begins brightly as she always does and Anne, as usual, says, ‘Hello you and what's happening in there today?' Louisa is hesitant, feeling ashamed, like she should weep and admit to all mistakes. But she swallows hard and pushes on and her voice is high and young.

‘Nothing much. How ya going Mum? Good. Listen. Guess what? John and I got married today, yes at lunchtime. Because I wanted to. Well, I didn't want Dad there. Couldn't stand for him to mess it up and John didn't care either way. Mum, are you all right?' She presses the phone to her ear, seeking the rope of her mother's voice, the voice that steadies and holds her, pulls her from the deep.

Anne is stunned. She pulls out the stool from under the counter. It's a quiet day at the shop, there's time, there's no one around. Anne says, ‘It's okay,' several times and truly means it.

Part of her is even relieved that she doesn't have to go through a wedding. It's true, as everyone knows, she does hate a fuss. And can you imagine Emmet at the wedding of his eldest child?

But then, something strikes her. ‘You're not pregnant are you Lou?' In that silence, the question is answered.

‘John knows,' Louisa says as if it makes a difference.

Harry and Alfie give their carnations to Louisa to press for her glory box. And though no one knows about the wedding, at Louisa's desk there's a bottle of French champagne with a ribbon and a card from Michael Abbey. Reading his name, she feels the electricity of him. Regret stirs her heart as she holds the bottle. She puts it in the bottom drawer and slams it and takes a sip from a glass of water with a skin of dust and begins work on a feature on hospital closures. She looks up and says ‘hi' to a passing shaggy illustrator as if it's just another day and kicks off her shoes under the desk. First, she thinks, I've got to sort out these notes. And her gleaming gold wedding ring seems huge on her hand.