57

Apparently when hospitals call people to tell them their loved one is gravely ill, it means they have already died, but at the time of Emmett’s death, the Browns don’t know that. Anne hears this titbit much later on talkback radio, where she gets most of her information.

Jessie is at work the day he dies and Anne rings to say the hospital has called. It’s a bit over a week after Christmas and she’s volunteered to go in because the women she works with have family and there are plenty of other people to look after her own mob. Anne says, ‘Dad’s very sick, darling. Dad’s dying. Do you want to go to the hospital?’

‘Will I pick you up?’ Jessie asks her. The boys will go straight there. When Jessie gets to the shop Anne is sitting with her hands clenched in front of her on the old wooden table. She seems to have fallen into a rift in time.

Rob and Pete can’t find the damned entrance to the hospital carpark. They’re driving like maniacs in Rob’s ute, hurtling around corners and coming to jerky stops at traffic lights that change just as their breath starts to slow. The bright smell of sawdust surrounds them.

Peter looks over at Rob and sees his hands on the steering wheel and recognises Emmett’s hands. His own are the same, though maybe not as brown. These are the exact hands that thrashed them when they were kids. That hurt their mother. That showed them how to knot ties. That made beer that exploded in the shed. That sheared their dog Frank in summer. That showed them how to bat. The legacy that lives within the genes lives within the mind. Nothing is withdrawn.

Then he remembers how the Footscray gardens run down the hill like something green spilled into the brown river. On hot nights sometimes Emmett took them there and everything felt alive. Funny to remember the good things, Peter considers, just while they’re getting lost.

Earlier he had been glad they were lost because it meant it wouldn’t happen. He had the street directory on his knee in an effort to help but still it took so long threading through the sluggish traffic that Rob snapped and chucked a U-ey and nicked through the back streets. Finally, they find the carpark entrance, leave the car illegally parked and sprint to the lift. Peter remembers hesitating there for a second and then Rob sees the curving concrete stairs and he’s gone, taking them two at a time. He follows, moving fast, but soon he’s beginning to breathe hard.

They fly down the corridor, find a nurse and Rob says urgently, ‘Where is Emmett Brown?’ She says a room number and waves them towards a ward and they burst in, rush to the side of the bed and stand there panting and sweating.

The sun is slanting in. In the next bed, Edith, the whale-woman is snoring. The pink cotton curtain between the two beds is half-drawn and the day is rapidly moving past.

The last thing Emmett sees is a rural scene in France. A haystack and a farmhouse and green trees and some chooks pottering around in a print at the end of his bed. His eyes are still settled on it when his sons get there. By the time they arrive Emmett is yellow, hands clutching his chest.

It’s just before twelve o’clock and it seems he’s been dead quite a while. Peter reaches over and closes Emmett’s eyes and takes his cold hands in his own. He would like to make them warm so he pulls the sheet up over the old man but keeps hold of Emmett’s hand.

He looks around for Rob who by now is surging toward the nurses like a force unleashed to blast them for leaving Emmett to die alone. ‘NOBODY should have to die alone,’ he yells. And the nurses are sorry. Nothing is their fault, they are so few and so busy. And then it hits him that Emmett’s life is over. There’s no turning back. He stops fighting as if someone has turned him off. Next door Edith snores on, ploughing the deep fields of sleep.

Peter puts his hand on Emmett’s head and waits for Anne and Jessie. He feels such a weight holding his heart down. He can barely raise his head but he sees the window and through it the west is spread out like a map. He knows his face is wet by the freshness of the air touching it.

Rob comes back and sits in the chair in the corner and a skin of anger, like something alive, revives and settles on him and he imagines the anger is to do with the hospital leaving his father to die alone.

He knows he’s crying but he doesn’t wipe his face. Caring doesn’t edge into his thinking at all. He stares ahead, tries normality but it doesn’t fit. He even wants to laugh but the feeling passes. Though he’s still, his heart is racing. They stay beside their father for long minutes guarding him, tending him.