The Book of Emmett (17 page)

Working as a journalist begins to wear away at Louisa. Every day she feels she has to pull on another personality, to become someone who isn't herself. Someone bigger and grander and more decisive, even more competitive. Once, she'd enjoyed the swagger of ringing people and telling them she was calling from
The Ant.
Now it all exhausts her and she misses her young son, Tom, more than she would have believed possible.

Tom is two years old, grown too heavy for sitting on Louisa's left arm, as he did when he was younger and she made dinner after work. He was so round and peaceful sitting there like an owl that she didn't like to put him down. Eventually though, she found she wasn't able to close her left hand and went to the doctor who put it into a splint and told her she had carpal tunnel syndrome. She had to smile because at the time there was a rash of repetitive strain injuries among journalists, so she blended in. Once again, for the wrong reasons.

Now that Tom doesn't sit on her arm, he stands on a little stool beside her. He has a bowl cut and his hair is long and thick and shot with gold, and his cheeks are round as peaches. He is placid and funny. The first time he had a haircut, he fell asleep. He loves playgrounds and singing ‘Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree' in the pusher. Louisa calls him Owl-Boy, and when he calls her ‘Mum' she knows no one has ever called her anything better.

He is easily the most interesting person in Louisa's life. Tom made having a baby all right for her, she knows this and every night kissing him goodnight with his ragged bear, Bluey, she is aware that time is moving past her and that he is growing faster than she can believe.

The brightness of certainty has slipped in her. She's sitting at her desk as ever, shoes off, doodling, when she should be writing a feature about some ageing opera singer. She'd rather be with Tom. She's sick of asking people questions and hearing their pat answers and watching them check themselves in the mirror.

She's begun to think about Daniel again. Maybe it's having Tom, she doesn't know, but there is something about him that takes her back. We were all so utterly changed when he died, she thinks, it was as if the world had tilted too far, that anything could happen, that we might fall off.

She understands that she should have stopped the death because she was older. Everything, she has realised, changes you incrementally forever. She looks at the picture of the opera singer, so fat and such a voice, and she doesn't want to be here anymore.

She thinks maybe she's let the baby take over her special self, that's what Anne reckons, and maybe it's true, she keeps nothing for herself anymore, everything is about Tom. So it's no surprise she's seen John dimming. Men seem to crave every attention, she thinks. And soon there will be another child. Can she love anyone as much as she loves her first child? She has a feeling she can.

And children heal all things, they even begin to heal Daniel. Now, she thinks, with my children I get another chance. If your childhood was stolen, how do you make sure everyone else's is safe? How do you make sure it never happens again?

That's one for another day, she decides, taking a swig of cold coffee and getting on with the piece on the opera singer without mentioning the circumference of her neck.

One Friday afternoon she has an interview with an ageing rock star. He's lined and grouchy and reed thin and touchy about his lost looks. He directs the photographers caustically and exactingly to his approved side. She's three months pregnant with Beck and feeling delicate.

Once she'd thought this bloke was magic; now, dressed in black, holding court in the smallish stale hotel room as he chain-smokes, his pleated little mouth puckering with each intake, she's not so sure. He doesn't care to say more than three words in a row, or to take off his sunglasses. What a total wanker, she allows herself to think, knowing this approach won't get her a run.

It's clear from the clippings that he's flat broke, that's why he's out here inflicting himself on us. Australia is always the last stop for the formerly glorious but he still expects toadying. Who can be bothered? Flogging something – a book, a CD, a tour – always selling something. Louisa sighs as she checks her questions. And then it's her turn. ‘Jack,' she starts out and smiles, ‘the last time...' And that's as far as it gets.

‘It's Jackie,' his PR hisses and Louisa says, ‘Sorry, oh dear, off to a bad start.' She laughs, coughs and trails off, floundering. A waiter slides in with a tray of coffee to be ignored. She wonders ... and before she can get the question out, that's it, the end of the interview. He flicks his hand at her. Doesn't feel like talking to her. She picks up her tape recorder and backs towards the door, barely able to believe the blunder and the consequences. Outside the suite, she holds the tape up to her heart, flicks it off and whispers, ‘That's it. It's over now.'

Back at the office, they're understanding. ‘He's always been a nasty prick,' the news editor, Eric Anderson, says soothingly. ‘Don't worry Louie, we can pick it up from the wires or maybe we just won't run anything. He's just another Yank has-been.' Louisa thinks that's a good one, of course they'll run something, everyone else will have him. No choice. ‘Lou,' he says kindly and lays his heavy hand on her shoulder, ‘go home mate, take the rest of the day off, see the little bloke.' She doesn't need any more encouragement.

She gets her coat, and feeling like a girl let out of school early, she can't get out quickly enough. The day is bright and cold and the air might have been shaved from an iceberg. On the way to the station she walks past three or four rundown travel agencies in the scungy Greek part of town. Around Lonsdale Street, blue and white flags flutter patriotically and souvlaki shops seem to wait for evening when the feeding will begin. This is Greece for Australians.

She comes to the Mykonos Travel Agency and stops dead. A half-size replica of some ancient god stands naked and white on a mini-column by the door. In the window she sees an ad for a travel agent. ‘Willing to train,' it says, ‘part-time work available.' If she had money she would not work at all, she'd stay home with Tom, but this looks better than the long hours at
The Ant.

She thinks of Tom currently at a crèche and the new baby, who will also need to be handed over to someone, and something rebels in her. She needs to make things more manageable. She stands at the window for a long time. The frigid, broken wind eddies around her. Finally she goes in.

She leaves
The Ant
with barely a backward glance and spends short days typing in destinations to faraway places, pleased that someone is going somewhere. And her boss, the very round Mr Christos Conti, is understanding of families. You even look a little bit Greek, he says and she smiles.

On Sundays, they go over to Anne's for a roast. No one does a roast like Anne, Pete reckons, her food tastes so clean and each flavour distinct. The irony of Louisa being a travel agent is not lost on anyone. Rob delights in reminding Pete, ‘The joke is that she's the worst traveller, possibly on the face of the earth. Gets lost going to the shop to buy a bottle of milk and gets sick as soon as you start moving.'

Pete laughs. ‘Yeah, remember all the times she got carsick? Well, she always did. You don't remember anything. That's why she got to sit next to the window. I thought it was an excellent strategy since I was stuck in the bloody middle and then, it got worse, I was always having to nurse Jessie. Sorry, Jess.'

And Jess, who is cutting bread, waves the bread knife at him in a friendly, forgiving way.

‘Which time would that be?' Rob wonders. ‘That time she heaved when we were going to Maryborough. She must have eaten corn. There was an awful lot of corn in it. Dad made her get out and he took a photo of her covered in sick.'

‘Shut up Robert,' says Jessie plonking herself down.

‘Pretty funny heh?' Pete says sourly and takes his plate over to the sink, washes it, then says he has to be off. He kisses Anne on the cheek and waves to the rest as if he barely knows them.

Rob won't be long heading off either. He's definitely off the family at the moment. There's something stilted these days that he can't put his finger on but then the rest of his life is not working out that well either. He's had two partners in eleven years, one a horticulturist and the other a hairdresser, and neither lasted.

Still, he thinks, you never know your luck in the big city. He swings by and rents a couple of political thrillers at the video shop and he's off home to his house behind the hedge. It's not a cypress, couldn't quite manage that, it's a lilly pilly, a native that ripens with purple berries that spurt.

Beckett Keele is born after a day and night of monumental struggle. A cap of fine dark hair hugs her small round head and her eyes are the midnight blue of memory. Louisa sees Emmett's eyes in them and, though the power of his reach lives in them, when she holds the child he is transformed into purity. If this is love, she thinks, then here it is again.

A few days after they get out of hospital, Peter buys a soft pink rabbit for Beck as a welcome for being born. He already has something for Tom. It's a blustery Saturday afternoon and the occasional leaf and stick brushes up against the window; it feels like the end of something though he realises his feelings are often early, long before the actual event, and even when it happens you're never sure whether that moment of recognition was about endings or beginnings.

Louisa's living room is cluttered with teetering stacks of folded nappies and impossibly small baby clothes. Tom's toys are strewn around carelessly. Last night's pizza box is open on the coffee table and Pete has a nibble at a crust that's a serious danger to teeth while Louisa tries to settle the baby. Maybe he should make a cup of tea, he considers. He would really like one but somehow the room is like an inertia trap that has taken him into itself, so he stays still and watches it all like a bemused spectator.

Outside, the choppy wind hurries through a clump of swaying gum trees down at the park and then the moaning begins. It seems there might be a storm. There's no sign of John even in the room, not a book or a coat, nothing.

‘He's at a poetry reading,' Louisa says curtly. Having given up on putting the baby to bed, she's folding a nappy longways to place on Pete's shoulder – Beck spills after she's been fed. ‘I'll get us a cup of tea,' she says but then sits down as if she's forgotten the next step in tea-making requires walking to the kettle.

Peter holds the baby gingerly, as if she might explode, and Tom is enticed away from his uncle's knee and over to his mother by the absence of that rotten baby and by the idea of showing Mum his new red matchbox car.

‘One of Dan's,' Pete says and Louisa feels tears stabbing at her. ‘Are you sure? No use keeping them for nothing, better to see young Tom enjoy them.' She tries a smile at her brother but it's not quite there because exhaustion has claimed her. People always say their babies are so good, they just sleep all night. How come hers never do? Typical, she thinks as she lays her head back on the couch and sees a tree outside bending before the convincing wind, the granite clouds huge behind it.

She closes her eyes but tears fall straight down her face anyway, at the thought of Daniel, at the hole John has left in her life, at this endless consuming weariness. The cat moseys on over and settles up against her leg. Tom waves the toy in her face, saying ‘car Mummy car' over and over, and then Peter realises he's never seen anyone so tired. That you could even be so tired.

He gets up carefully and, with the gentlest movements he can manage, places the fragrant sleeping baby into her basket and mimes ‘shoosh' to Tom. He pushes the snoozing cat down from beside Louisa and the cat stands, affronted by this startling displacement. Peter then puts an arm around his sister, who wakes instantly, and he says, ‘Louisa, rest. I'll look after the kids.'

He steers her into the bedroom, finds a blanket piled on the floor, covers her with it and pulls the blind down then goes outside to Tom and Beck. ‘Now young Thomas,' he says, ‘dishes are our first priority.' At the sink with Tom beside him, he feels the strength of something beginning.

Mr Conti, Louisa's new boss, is as short and wide as a tram. His face is completely round. He is so short he can't reach the top shelf near his desk and he keeps a little wooden box for that purpose. He combs the last strands of his dark hair across his shiny brown scalp and, obediently, they stay put all day.

He calls her Luisa and it sounds exotic. He has no time for computers which are just starting to revolutionise the industry because he prefers the old methods of forms and phone calls. He thinks they should work civilised hours and that they should always take care to be accurate. His loyal clients come to him because of his old-fashioned ways.

He runs the family company like a benevolent dictator. Gives the staff access to every junket that comes in but never takes them for himself and neither does Louisa because of the kids. His wife, Eleni, with her dark eyes and her host of gold rings, shows up occasionally at the agency as do their three daughters, Paula, Maria and Kylie, so named when Eleni thought something more Australian was required. Kylie Conti has a thatch of dyed blonde hair with dark seeping through at the roots like soil.

The girls are always jetting off here and there. Jetlag is an excuse to stretch on the couch where the customers should sit. Louisa reckons this is the way work should be, plenty of giving and taking. You do your job and you get it right. There's no need to be the smartest or the rudest or the funniest and no need to have your copy dissected or spiked by ambitious dolts. No need to compete for favour with worn-out editors. Especially when everyone is better at most things than you are.

Stepping into the office in the mornings is like walking onto a Greek island. Greek coffee, hot and thick, becomes her favourite kind. She works hard and learns well, even picks up rudimentary Greek, and the girls are there to help her when she strays. Eleni brings her trays of moussaka and in time Louisa returns the favour; her own is declared almost as good. When she works on Saturday mornings, she brings Tom and Beck with her and the Greeks cherish them. How did she get so lucky?

Some days, she has lunch with Gary who's still at
The Ant,
he's on industrial relations now and she notices a certain hardness creeping into him. He always keeps her waiting because he's so busy and when he strides into their Malaysian restaurant, The Golden Noodle, he pecks her cheek rather than hugs her, which leaves her feeling cheated.

He asks after John but not Tom or Beck, even though he must see John at the office, and then launches into the current gossip (affairs and promotions) with a seriousness of intent as if journalists are the only people worth talking about.

Warren Silk, his new partner, is an arts journo on the local broadsheet and he reminds Louisa of Mel Gibson. She once interviewed Mel, and on arriving back declared to the office that ‘men don't get more handsome than that'. And so it is with Woz.

‘How's Woz?' she asks, thinking of Mel. Gary's hopping into a plate of lemony seafood noodles and says tersely, ‘Haven't seen a lot of him. He works so much it's becoming a joke and then he plays water polo or he's off at gallery openings. There's always something going on.'

‘You sound like the wife,' she laughs, trying to keep her voice light. She's diligently picking out the tasty bits from a seafood mee goreng but she's not hungry. ‘For some men, there's always somewhere more interesting than home,' she adds, and pushes away a curly piece of squid that looks like elastic.

Though he agreed to be Tom's godfather, Gary is not fussed about even hearing the details of motherhood. He does his duty though and on each of Tom's birthdays he's arrived with a different children's classic carefully wrapped and ribboned.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
when Tom was two and at three,
Kidnapped.

Gary seems to regard being a parent as a diversion from Louisa's real life. She believes the colour in his eyes fades when she talks about her family. His own spare time goes into getting fit and these days he has biceps like Sylvester Stallone. Louisa could not believe they were real until she touched them one summer afternoon. ‘Didn't know you had it in you,' she gaped, and he grinned like a boy.

He thought she was insane to leave journalism. ‘How could you just chuck it all away?' he asked her incredulously. ‘How?' He was honestly mystified. Journalists were his world and gossip was its fuel. He was cynical, funny, bitchy, very well-informed, and made you feel anything was possible; and she thought, he's definitely lost interest in me. Perhaps the price of admittance to his world was a press pass. Ah, Mr Turner, where have you gone?

Walking back to work after lunch, it seems to Louisa that Gary and maybe even John are being swept away from her. That she is here in the middle of a wide prairie, alone, tending to things, checking the walls of the house and trying to get things to grow. And growing her kids.