46

When she closed up the shop, Anne put up white nylon lace curtains in the windows out the front. The nylon washes so well, she thinks, and I can see out, but no one can see in. Not during daylight hours anyway. It won’t be long now till Emmett’s birthday and that means he’ll finally be gone, out of the garage and away to the bush. Early retirement and a great fat cheque.

She wonders whether maybe he’s got a girlfriend or something. He’s rarely there and when he is, he doesn’t seem part of the place, he still sits in the garage slaving away at those bloody probabilities. Honestly, if he’d only turned his mind to something useful or even sensible, God, imagine the difference. Still, it’s water under the bridge now. Nothing is going to change Emmett. Not one solitary thing.

Anne says none of this worries her at all. He has ceased to be a concern, though she will admit to herself that the sooner he goes, the better and her life will go on with the hum of electricity in the wires out the front. Most mornings she’s out there getting the graffiti off the pink-tiled wall between her place and the Indian restaurant next door with the kind of energy the young might envy.

She’s absolutely determined that order will prevail. Yet change is everywhere and it springs upon her. The local bank branch closes up and the library branch is gone and so is the swimming pool, the post office is now a shop and the old weatherboard Presbyterian Church is a Chinese Christian Centre.

The fish-and-chip shop is run by a Korean named Mr Kim whom Anne admires for his scrupulous cleanliness; every Friday she gets her tea from him. Once, she gave one of his African customers a dollar when he couldn’t buy a piece of flake because he was short. When she handed the coin to him, he looked like he was about to be struck. He held the glowing coin in his palm and was dumbfounded. So was Anne by her unexpected generosity.

The next wave of people pushes through the old suburb. Within a stone’s throw, there are two Indian clothes shops, an Indian hardware and a video and grocery store with little speakers out the front, sharing tinny music with the street. The subcontinent has moved to West Footscray. ‘Well,’ explains Anne to her old friend Maria who lives in Melton, ‘the Vietnamese snaffled Footscray long ago.’

Emmett eternally believes he’s got a chance with Lady Luck. He’s in the garage crunching his numbers one sulphurous Sunday afternoon. When the boys arrive for a working bee, he emerges and greets them effusively. ‘Mate,’ he says to Pete, hugging him and gives Rob a quick pat on the shoulder, which Rob doesn’t fail to notice. Then he’s off back to his room. ‘Be out in a tick and give you a hand,’ he shouts through the open door. ‘I’m onto a big one now. The numbers are coming out just right.’

It’s so hot the sky pulses at them and after two hours Pete sticks his head under the hose and heads off to find Emmett in his old Bonds T-shirt and checked boxers, snoring like a hammer drill.

He stands in the doorway gazing in for quite a while and then he shuts the door softly and goes back to work. ‘Dad’s taken a sickie,’ he says.

Sweat eases things between Rob and Pete. They have long held a deal about helping each other with big jobs. Problem is, Rob does most of the asking. Pete reckons his time will come.

Today the topic is property values. Everyone’s doing up the old places and making a fortune. Easy money. ‘So there you go. Isn’t that just typical,’ Rob says sourly to Pete as they shovel under the hot sun. ‘The Browns lose out again, but look on the bright side, some things stay the same and we’ve still got the worst house in the street. Ha!’

It grates that Wolf Street, with its Edwardian trim of three mingey tulips would now be worth far more than the shop. Behind it the petrol station is boarded up and hazard signs sag across the fractured concrete and the cyclone fencing, and down the road there’s a bar called Glide or Slide or something evocative. People sit in the sun and smoke and talk on mobile phones and read the broadsheet and drink expensive coffee with far too much milk.

Can this really be Footscray? Louisa wonders, noting with slight concern taut little houses that used to be dumps. She’s driving over to help the boys with a bit of backyard blitzing. She’s easing herself back in slowly and decides that a bit of physical work might be a good idea.

Tom and Beck are in the back seat bickering over the Play Station, and she ignores them resolutely with new determination won from her clinic. Her psychiatrist, Dr Emmeline Mackenzie, is a big woman with sad, oyster eyes whose silver crew cut hinges on her cow’s lick and gives her the look of an elderly schoolboy. Louisa has never known anyone so composed.

She’s trying to become like Dr Mackenzie, so she tells herself she’s looking forward to seeing her brothers. Will Jess show up? Regardless of the good doctor, she hopes not, can’t face the Princess today. But walking down the narrow sideway between the two shops she feels the vibe between Rob and Pete and realises there’s a sulk underway and would you believe it, poor old Jess is nowhere in sight.

‘Mum should never have moved to the bloody shop,’ Rob hisses at Pete as they shovel up the old tree roots they’ve dug out of the backyard. They are planning to pave but it’s a pure fact that work without pay tends to make him real irritable.

‘Stop whingeing Rob. Only makes it worse. This was your idea anyway,’ Pete retorts, dragging the shovel back to the beginning of the pile again and wiping the sweat off his face. His dirty hair stands at attention.

‘I’m trying to talk to you, you perfect bloody saint, but that’s clearly impossible.’ Rob waits his turn at the pile and they go on grimly in silence. Louisa walks in and says, ‘G’day you lot,’ and grabs the shovel. ‘I’ll have a go, you go get a drink,’ she tells Rob who lets go of it and heads for the kitchen. Tom and Beck, ears flapping like flags, follow him inside. A pair of ducklings.

‘How is he?’ she asks Pete. ‘Grumpy as all shit,’ Pete says, wiping his face, and they laugh just that bit too loud and she thinks, great, now Robert will think we’re laughing at him. ‘C’mon Rob, you bludger,’ she yells, ‘we need you out here.’ In the kitchen Rob is engrossed in the classified housing ads. The kids sitting beside him twiddle the PlayStation in turns.

Anne ages like a leaf. She goes from being green and strong to lighter, frailer and dry. If you’d told her that, she’d laugh. She likes old autumn leaves, well, she likes most old things. Louisa visits once a week.

They sit at the blackwood table and have a mug of tea. Louisa thinks she comes for tea and grievances. It’s always teabags, which really grates on Louisa who hates them but imagines Anne doesn’t know this since she never says. All pure foolishness. Anne knows most things. She leaves Lou’s teabag in longer to make the tea strong.

Anne’s hands are knotted with arthritis and she warms them around her flowery mug. Light shines off the porridge-coloured bricks next door and the glare is cast in. From where she’s sitting, you can just see a triangle of sky between the fence and the bricks.

Their conversations ramble around lightly like the spring breeze and they touch on most things – the interpretation of the roses, easy recipes, getting the best out of children, missing bin night and what to do when it happens, worries at work, bills, weight, television – but really they’re talking about knowing each other. About the way between them.

Anne often speaks about her parents, George and Rose. ‘They look after me, I know they do, and they are always with me,’ Anne says in her enduring way. This, as ever, slightly annoys Louisa. Maybe it’s just jealousy, maybe she wishes she had these kind of stories too but Louisa has never felt anyone looking out for her.

Anne remembers how her father, apart from the six years he was at the war, would bring Anne and Rose vegemite on toast and a cup of tea in the mornings. He’d put the toast under the griller while the kettle was boiling to keep it warm.

So how then, Louisa wonders privately with a long nurtured sense of outrage, did you allow Emmett to be our father when you had such a father?

Louisa pushes away at the story of her family but the mystery of Emmett is the layer that separates them. Anne wonders why her kids will never let it go but she doesn’t ask them, she wouldn’t hurt them for all the world. The blessing of these children is in every part of her.

When Louisa presses into the dark landscape Anne will say, ‘I don’t know why I didn’t leave him, but I had little children and he would have come after us and where would I have gone? There were no single mother’s pensions then, and I’m glad young women have them now. I couldn’t have taken you kids home to Mum and Dad, it would not have been fair, there were so many of you and he was dangerous.’

And Louisa gets heated sometimes when talk turns to Emmett. She grips her mug and the hot tan liquid moves a bit too fast. She looks up at the herbs Anne has placed near the fingers of sunlight just missing the window ledge. They’ve grown gangly reaching for the light. Listening to her mother sometimes requires an act of will and subjugation of her instinct.

‘My way of handling him was to ignore him. His terrible displays. It was the only way, anything could make it worse. I could take what he dished out. I was tough.’

It takes Louisa some effort to speak against her mother but one day she does. Louisa says, ‘That’s true Mum, you were tough and you are tough now, but we were not tough. We were little kids.’

Louisa looks out into Dr Mackenzie’s garden and the tall white anemones move in the breeze. She begins with simplicity. ‘My father was overbearing. He’s still alive but he’s sick and old.’ She holds her hands in her lap until they start to feel hot and fat. Where do you begin with the story of Emmett? The elastic silence stretches around them. Dr Mackenzie is prepared to wait.

And then Louisa blurts, ‘It feels like our childhood wasn’t acknowledged. That because we survived, well, most of us did, then it’s all right.’

‘What do you mean “most of us”?’ Dr Mackenzie asks. She has a notebook on her lap and her big hand is jotting steadily. Louisa wants to stop her from writing. Writing makes things real.

And so the welling arises in her and her voice goes its own way again. ‘There was another one of us.’ She coughs to clear the past but it doesn’t work. ‘He was named Daniel. My brother Peter’s twin. He fell over one night running from Dad and he hit his head, fractured his skull actually, and he died.’ The doctor writes and then lets her eyes rest on Louisa who weeps for much longer than is sensible, considering this happened so long ago and also that money is being paid and the clock is ticking. And then she smiles at the truth of her being her mother’s daughter regarding money, and Dr Mackenzie passes her a box of tissues. Louisa can’t stop taking them, she takes at least eight. She wants so much.

When Rob first hears that Louisa will need to take medication all her life to guard against her depression, he’s not astonished. He’s felt the weight of such anchors within him too. But knowing this hasn’t done a thing for Louisa. She’s sick to death of the family looking at her as if she’s not herself and it irks her that they think they might all get it too, as if it were the flu. All they think about are themselves, she thinks. All anyone thinks about.

Rob was particularly annoying when he slipped into his pet theory that whatever Louisa has, Emmett had too. She wants nothing to do with Emmett. ‘Do you think I’m like him?’ she asks incredulously. He doesn’t answer. She realises she shouldn’t have said anything to him, it only fuels discussions later. She can just see Jessie and Anne getting stuck into a bit of character analysis on the side. She decides to say as little as she can to anyone.

Visiting Dr Mackenzie each week and talking about Emmett are the fastest hours of her life. The doctor tells Louisa it would be a mistake to turn her hate for her father back onto herself, and Louisa is clobbered by the realisation that Dr Mackenzie thinks she hates Emmett. ‘Oh no. I don’t hate him,’ she spits out baldly. ‘I’ve only told you part of it, he wasn’t all bad.’ Then she revises and ends up saying, ‘But since I was a child there have been plenty of times when I’ve just wanted to lie down on the road and let him run me over.’ And she groans at her own ineptitude and imprecision.

The doctor writes fast again and, while she does, Louisa tries to correct impressions. Feels like her old interview subjects must have felt. ‘It wasn’t,’ she begins, ‘it was just...’

So she starts to hold back on detail. The main thing she wants to settle is guilt about leaving Jessie, which still affects her. Talking to Jess is not easy. Emmett isn’t curable. ‘You need to think about why you felt so responsible,’ she hears the doctor say, ‘and then you will have your answer.’ And then it’s the end and Louisa tries to keep Dr Mackenzie talking, but she just rises with her sad smile and opens the door because the fifty minutes are up.

Outside, walking to the train, she recalls in a flash of resistance that she felt responsible because she was. How’s that supposed to help? she wonders, watching the city pass and recoiling from the gaudy, suggestive billboards as if they were an assault.