The Book of Emmett (23 page)

Anne's backyard is as tidy as a ship's deck. Not a speck dares land. She's out there sweeping in the shining morning, when everything is still and quiet, apart from the occasional train down the back and the river of cars out the front. The crabapple Louisa gave her years ago is about ready to release its rosy blooms. Anne touches one of the plump pink pouches and hopes the mean old wind stays away this year. Last year it stripped the branches bare. Still we live in hope, she thinks grimly, sweeping away a few last grains of something before storing the broom on its hook and going inside to sew in the alcove between the shop and the kitchen. Emmett is sitting in the kitchen at the blackwood table with his hands in his lap. At the end of the week he's going into the Woolamai Hostel.

The little tele is turned into Kerri-Anne on the morning show. She's so bright, Anne thinks, she gives you a lift just by being there but Emmett's not watching, he's looking at the light out the window. His head is still and it is impossible to know what he sees.

Anne's working on something for Noreen Nugent, one of her oldest customers. Noreen just keeps getting fatter and she rounds up her wardrobe every few months and gets Anne to let out all her clothes. How long the seams will keep offering something to her is anyone's guess. Still, while it lasts, it's a breeze for Anne and will bring in a good twenty bucks. Money is an eternal comfort to her.

She's never more herself than when she sews. Something about the busyness of it and the noise of the machine; she becomes part of it. She thinks she will leave the old machine to Louisa when she dies, but she's not sure why.

She glances over to check Emmett and hopes a sparrow or something passes occasionally to interest him. He doesn't ever look at the tele, just watches the light. Anne wonders whether there must be someone who would care to know about Emmett. But there's no one. Drinking friends don't count, never did.

The only person she can think of is Chook Sash, his old mate from North Melbourne. She knows he moved to Werribee not long before Daniel died, she remembers he came to Danny's funeral and that meant something – and still does.

Emmett had once told her he used to call Chook ‘Dugong' at school because he looked like one, whatever that was. Emmett had laughed and she had offered a tiny smile, though she never considered calling people names to be funny. He didn't notice her lack of commitment. ‘But most of the kids didn't know what a dugong was so I changed his nickname to Chook 'cause he sold eggs.'

He'd told her Chook had been with him in most of his fights at school. ‘Always loyal, always available,' and he laughed again, ‘but he was a plain boy, old Chook, a very plain boy. Used to wear his hair long. Gave him something to hide behind.'

Anne had liked Chook instantly, had seen in him that inconceivable thing, a man she could talk to. At Daniel's funeral he was a consolation. Though she wasn't noticing much, she always remembered the home-grown roses Chook had thrust at her with their kindly smell.

He was a gentle presence in the family until Emmett had banished him after a fight over politics. Chook was never a confirmed Labor voter, unlike Emmett who was violently passionate about Whitlam and, surprisingly, even about Hawke. Chook never could see much difference between the sides.

Being an adult had improved his looks. Still pale and large, he kept his faded hair short and he was no longer troubled so much. His face was studded with scars gouged by acne. His eyes had become amber and were flecked with leaves of light. He made a reasonable living as a plasterer. The pay was okay and he got to be inside most of the time which suited him because in the sun he was toast.

When she rings, Anne gets hold of his wife, Wendy, and there's a bit of enquiring about kids (they have three girls, one's a worry, the others are fine). It isn't easy for Anne to reveal herself to Wendy. There's an ache there and she wishes she could just talk to Chook and not parry with details. Wendy says she'll pass on the message to Mervyn (she doesn't like people calling him Chook) that Emmett isn't doing too well. Anne thanks her, hangs up the phone, and sits looking at it.

The next day Chook is at the door of the shop banging away with no intention of not being heard. She opens the screen door and it takes a while to recognise him. But when she does, she sees that he's a roomy man and still shambolic. And now, standing there engulfed in plaster dust, there's a ghostly quality to him. His hair is streaked with plaster.

He edges into the kitchen shyly, as wary as a horse moving uncertainly into a stall way too small for him. They get a cup of tea going and then go out to the backyard to look at Anne's lemon tree in a pot. Chook seems more comfortable outside. It's easier to talk out here under the shade of the peppercorn. A wind picks up and touches the lemon buds lightly. Emmett is upstairs in his room sleeping in the cradle of the afternoon.

‘I don't know, Chook,' Anne says, and then she surprises herself and starts crying. God, it's a rotten nuisance all these blasted tears. She tells Chook about the brain scans and the dementia and how fast it will go. ‘I just wanted to talk about Emmett with someone who really knew him.' Chook puts his hand on her shoulder and tears slip down their faces.

And even Chook is suddenly and fiercely amazed that Emmett means this much to him. He has been gone from him for so long. Then they sit at the green plastic table splattered with chalky bird-shit circles and after a bit Chook starts talking and thinking together. ‘I knew that I had grown to love Emmett as a mate, but I knew he didn't ever love me. It didn't matter in the end, he was something else. I've never met anyone like him.'

He tells Anne stuff about Emmett that she has never heard. About the orphanage. ‘He got sent there time and again, poor little bastard, when his Nana couldn't afford to keep him or when he went wild or when his mother decided he should go back in the orphanage to be with his little brother, Jimmy, but it wasn't just one he went to, he went to them all over, even went to that awful one at Royal Park. It was bad in there and worse in the foster homes. He wouldn't tell me what the foster father did to him, but as I got older I could imagine. He hated that bloke.

‘He wasn't an orphan as you know, he just had a useless mother who couldn't be bothered looking after him and then she kept having more kids by different fathers, all over the place, there were at least four halves, you know, half-brothers or sisters. Springing up everywhere.'

Sitting there in the yard, their eyes are towed to the lemon tree as if by mutual consent. Over the fence, the top of the Uncle Toby's Oats silo just shows and goods trains hustle by along the fence-line making long clacking in the afternoon. A couple of Screen-master James Stirlings spread upwards near the fence, a mesh of olive green leaves as big as raindrops. A daisy bush takes the sun and a mauve hydrangea, its singed leaves as wide as wings, clings to the mercy of shade.

But the lemon tree in the cobalt blue pot is the undisputed star of the yard. It even has its own shade cloth cape constructed by Anne to fend off the sun on killer days. Today it has four lemons hanging from it like yellow balls.

Their eyes shuffle from one lemon to the other. Anne knows some of this stuff, but she doesn't let on what she knows or doesn't know. She's mining a rich lead here. She asks Chook how Emmett ended up in North Melbourne with his grandmother and he speaks as if this was something he's been waiting to say. He's an authority on Emmett.

‘Eventually it was his uncles who saved him from the orphanage. I think it was his Uncle Spud who said he should just stay put with them at Nana's. Left the other poor little bugger Jimmy in the home though. Don't know what happened to the other halves. Unbelievable, the way they treated kids in those days.

‘You know, he loved my mum so much. She'd ruffle his hair and make him eat and tell him he was a handsome boy. I came home one day and Emmett was sitting in the kitchen having a cup of tea with her. Now I know she was a kind woman and everyone loved her and she was not a bad mother unless she was pissed, which was most of the time if I'm honest, but I got a bit shitty seeing Emmett Brown sitting there helping himself to a slice of bread and dripping and a second cup of tea. After a while, I made Emmett uncomfortable with my bad manners and he got up and left. He gave Mum a peck on the cheek and it seemed to me they had some kind of understanding.'

Chook pauses for a while and then says, the fact was, he was only a kid himself. Left unspoken is that he was always touchy about his mother, probably still is. In the quiet that follows his words, Anne knows she's just gathered more about Emmett than she ever has. She puts her head down on the table and leaves it there resting on her arms.

Chook reaches over a white hand, still flecked with plaster, and puts it on her head. He pats her hair softly as if she were a child. This is so affecting, a wave of feeling for him washes up in her heart.

He offers to help Anne in any way he can and she's grateful, but she never calls him again. She thinks of Wendy and their girls and she doesn't want to be taking up their time. She's just glad he knows.

When Emmett goes into the hostel, there's often a note in the visitor's book saying that M. Sash had called in. When he comes, Chook always brings a piece of fruit, a pear or a peach or if it's winter, a thick-skinned navel orange. Peeling it, the spiky citrus smell springs into the stale air like a song.

Though Emmett stares ahead resolutely as if he's concentrating, Chook firmly believes that Emmett remembers the smell of oranges from when they were boys at the market, tossing them around against the grey gully of winter. Chook divides the fruit into segments and sets the pieces out on a flowery plastic plate he brings along. And then, with the patience of the humble, Chook places a fragment of orange into Emmett's papery hand and guides it up to his mouth.

He waits the long minutes until it's time for the next piece. Sometimes it doesn't get to the mouth. Emmett throws it away. When this happens, Chook places the next piece into Emmett's mouth. Sometimes he spits it out. Sometimes he chews it. He looks solidly ahead. Whatever happens, Chook wipes his old mate's mouth with the bit of paper towel he brought along and then he wets it at the tap and cleans him up before he sets Emmett free to roam the corridors once more.

Woolamai Hostel is built on the principle of a circle, never Louisa's favourite shape, and now, in a fog of confusion, she's lost again and doing laps of the beige place. Imagine how the patients must feel, she thinks furiously, aiming her rage at the anonymous designers of the joint. Instead of giving these poor people a signpost, a big red lamp or a pot plant, no – they make it all beige. Of course they bloody do.

Most of the inmates are in for dementia. She passes knots of them standing near the main desk. One old man is groping an old woman's sagging breasts and her face is as empty as a clean plate. Nothing. The old man rubs himself against the old woman's behind and as he bumps at her, she holds on to the wall to steady herself.

Louisa wants to go over and slap the old man away but no one else seems to notice or mind and so she thinks she might be imagining things. Anyway, there's not one single staff member around and Louisa is once again a reluctant witness.

Women and men, she sighs, seething at her quailing heart
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at the cold fear the sight raises in her. At the sadness it stirs, knowing she should do something. You are still a gutless wonder, she scolds, forcing herself to look away. Another patient, a tubby little woman named Nancy, startles her, appearing into the void of memory. She gently touches Louisa's hair. ‘Do you know Mrs Golightly?' she asks, ‘I do. I know her...' Louisa feels stinging tears spring up. Wintry tears for Nancy and for the old lady she didn't help, for every single thing.

She tries to get a grip on herself and her memories but they well up like flood waters. Everyone tells her she lives in the past and she thinks well, so bloody what? You live where you want to and I'll live where I want to
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It's mainly her brothers and sister who chide her about it. They can all get stuffed anyway. She finds she's muttering ‘get stuffed' and thereby proves that she is truly losing it.

She presses on through the pale sealed circle, through the sour piss-seasoned air, searching for Emmett as if he has the answer, and the very idea of this is so insane she utters a harrumph without even meaning to.

Some days she finds her dad standing by a wall pulling at his cardigan. Memory is sharper than reality because whenever she first sees Emmett at the hostel, she irrevocably believes this can't be him. A mistake. Cannot be him, someone has taken him and replaced him. Emmett is huge and terrifying and smart and cruel. He can't be this poor old bloke fiddling with his buttonhole.

And then her eyes adjust to the truth that the first one is gone and in his place is this poor scrap who walks miles round and round all day every day, walks until he can walk no more. Getting him to sit down seems to cause him pain.

She is always astonished by what she feels. Understanding love is hard for her, she's never really grasped the concept. And Emmett should be hated by all of them. How could he not be? And yet, seeing her mother with him, she is again humbled by love.

On each visit to Woolamai, Anne takes a picnic of things Emmett used to like: fruitcake and his own mug and good strong coffee. Little square ham and mustard sandwiches cut up as small as stamps and placed into his mouth.

‘Love doesn't come into it,' Anne says dismissively, ‘he was my mate and I spent most of my life with him and here he is now and he's suffering and if I can make him one little bit happy, then I will. He is a human being and he gave me my kids and now he is a poor old thing.'

Once Emmett seems to wake from the place that holds him and with the old blue look, he says, ‘My baby girl. Little Louie.' Then he is drawn away by the light on the wall and she thinks she must have heard wrong and wants him to say it again; but she's too surprised to speak and her voice stalls. She'd thought he was gone, now here he is again. In that little sentence, all the sorrow and all the sweetness of him come flooding back. Her father knew her. Despite everything, he knew.

She leaves Emmett and Anne and walks to the window, leans on it looking out at the red dahlias reaching for the sky. She turns towards her parents and it seems that they explain everything about her. She wants to laugh and to cry out in their defence, ‘It's not your fault.' But that would be mental so she just wipes her eyes and heads back over to them.

Louisa watches while her mother feeds her father and is astonished by the quality of tenderness in the face of memory. The monster has become the lamb and through it all her mother has maintained her humanity.