The Near Miss (16 page)

Grace stepped away from her mother and wiped her face dry, suddenly embarrassed. Jesus, was that the best her mother could do? She had been a junior primary teacher for over twenty-five years, so there were probably entire generations of children still in counselling to recover from their first year at school as five-year-olds.
No, Dianne, you can't read. Nor can you tie your laces or cook a sponge or drive a car, like any normal human being. Pretty doomed state of affairs if you ask me.

‘Right, well, I thought we'd start on Lotte's room,' Grace said briskly.

‘What? Did I say something?' Her mother followed her.

‘No, nothing, really, I just wanted to get going on it.'

‘I said something wrong, didn't I? I hurt your feelings.'

‘Not at all, Mum.'

‘I just like to tell it how it is. I don't like to butter both sides of the bread — you know me.'

‘What on earth does that mean? Butter . . .'

‘You know. Blow smoke up your—'

‘Mum! It's fine. Really. And you were so kind to bring the cake, and to come to help. Really.' She hastily gave instructions for Dawn to pack away Lotte's toys and fled to the back garden.

The shed door hung open. Grace peeked inside, her eyes needing a moment to adjust to the dim light. The roof was, of course, clad with the opaque plastic tiles that doubled as mini solar panels,
but they had been installed at an early stage of Tom's research, and didn't work, beyond letting in a little natural light. But then she realised her eyes were fine, that there was just nothing inside. Not the workbench, or the tools, or the pile of scraps of metal, screws, brackets. Tom had taken it all. The shed looked enormous. Grace closed the door shut and wrestled the lock across. She crouched under her clothesline and studied the back of her home. Her mother passed inside like a shadow across the window and disappeared again. The weatherboards flaked and rotted at the edges. A piece of guttering sagged. A pot of rosemary grew beside the door, and a little garden bed held a pool of dry leaves, in the same space in which Lotte's flower seedlings grew last spring. Buds were bursting out of bare branches, sunlight bathed the grass. The arrival of spring in Melbourne always felt slightly miraculous, as if someone had brought you a holiday and left it kindly on your doorstep.

She could hear the neighbour from two houses away, talking to her grandchild, in a voice that could cut glass. ‘Yes! What you say to Nonna! Ah ha ha ha ha! STOP THAT! Ay!' And then ‘Awwww', a musical descent over three octaves, all at 88 decibels. ‘Awwww! Pretty girl! Pretty girl!' And then a foreign language in between, all delivered like gunfire. ‘Worp worp! Worpa worpa nonna worp!' Some chatter from the girl, and then the grandmother again, now talking to another adult. ‘Outrage! And then and then and then. Outrage! I said! Why don't you! Worp worp worp worpa. Ice-a creama!' And just when you wanted to wipe a whole country off the map, the voice returned so brimful of tender affection that Grace had to resentfully smile. ‘Peek A
BOO!
I
SEE
you!'

To sell this house, it would feel like cutting off parts of her body. The way light fell in a certain room, and had illuminated the face of a new baby. The way leaf-shadow played on a wall, and Lotte had watched it. The way the key sounded in the lock when Tom was coming home to
her. Grace knew the entire house with not just her eyes but her hands. For the past ten years, since buying the house straight after their wedding, she had got up once a night to go to the toilet. She could make her way around in the dark, knowing every creak and the feel of every surface.

Grace remembered a friend's grandmother, who had declined with dementia until she had to be moved out of her knick-knack-filled home and into a bare-walled nursing home. The woman had lost all of her remaining memories almost instantly; something Grace understood. Your home was full of placeholders for memories. Tom did not realise that this was irreversible. He just couldn't.

‘The sale's in a month?' said her mother, stepping out the back. She peeled off plastic gloves and tucked her hair back off her face. ‘You should get a bit of money for it.'

Oh well done, Mum. A positive. ‘Most will go to the bank. To pay back the mortgage.'

‘All of it?'

Grace forced herself to consider it, and did the sums. ‘No. Some will go to the real estate agent for commission, advertising, auctioneering, that sort of thing.'

‘But surely something for you? You've been paying this mortgage for ten years.'

‘Maybe,' said Grace, daring to dream about it. That much? Or even,
that
much? Enough to put a deposit on a small flat? But no, Tom would come back to her, so she wouldn't do that. Invest in shares? Start a business? ‘Or maybe not.'

Her mother shook her head like one who's just had bad news. ‘All those mortgage repayments for nothing,' she said, patting Grace's shoulder. ‘Fifteen years in that job and you might as well have stayed home.'

‘Yeah. Right. Jesus, Mum . . .'

‘You can always come and live with me, you know. There's space for you and Lotte. I won't get in your way.'

‘Thanks. But I'll find a new place, and we'll start afresh,' she said.

‘You sure now? I'd love to have Lotte.'

‘And me.' Grace prompted.

‘Well, of course. And you. I'd love you both to live with me.'

‘Thanks, Mum.' Hell would freeze over first, she silently resolved.

Melody took the spray can from her bike basket and shook it, the inner pebble knocking inside a full tin. Prussian Blue. Destined for a pale orange wall, visible from an inner-city rail station. The spring full moon had already risen above the northeastern suburbs, most of its ghostly arc ahead, yet to be completed. As was her task.

‘You right?' she whispered back to Eddy Plenty, on a bike behind her. Some shiny new forty-speed number, straight from the box. He had called her earlier, angry and wanting to contact Van and punch his lights out. There had been more news stories in the papers in the past week, and one on the news, about the city's celebrity thieves, Cat and Pirate. Melody had gone to visit him. She saw from his pale face and the state of his house that he was not doing well. It was a pity Romy had dropped back in, just long enough to break his heart all over again, by the look of it. But she already knew Eddy's weakness: he loved to help. She had cooked him dinner, and coaxed him out into the dark night, on their bikes.

Risk Being Alive.
How nice to have this angry man, so straight he had probably waited for the green man all his life, as her apprentice on this mission.
Risk Being Alive.
A little present she was planning, for the half-dead commuters of the Hurstbridge rail line. She leaned around her son, traffic lights reflected in his eyes, and nodded at Eddy. ‘You right?' she repeated.

He walked his bike up alongside her, holding his legs apart as if the bike were on fire. ‘Where are we going?' he whispered. God, don't let him bail on her now, timorous soul that he was. Imagine him thinking he could punch Van's lights out. Ha! She'd probably saved his life by stopping him trying. Whatever rage burned in Eddy, it was a dead match compared to the blaze in Van, whose switch could flick from languorous to insane in an instant.

She looked ahead into the darkness and then back at him. So many people, they just had to
know everything up front. ‘It's a surprise,' she said. ‘Trust me.'

Eddy settled his backside on the seat of his bike, folded his arms and looked at her warily. He was pleasant-looking, in a straight sort of way. ‘Surprise' might have been the wrong thing to say to him. ‘Okayyy.'

He was the good-with-kids-and-animals type. A listener. She stepped onto the pedal and launched down a side street, down roads of mostly darkened houses. Ah, suburban Melbourne, all those millions of souls, sleeping at precisely the same time. She could feel their deep breaths, sense the loosening of their muscles, smell the enchanted forest of so many dreams, spooling like serpent-entwined smoke from the ashes of the day's purpose and drive, winding their miasmic ways around the driveways and For Sale signs, the council rubbish bins and the empty cans in the gutters. Knitting the world together again, for the new day ahead.

She pulled up at Victoria Park railway station and parked her bike at the foot of the grassy slope that led up to a factory, its pale orange wall facing the rail bridge high above. The trains wouldn't start again until 5am; she had a clear couple of hours. She lifted the hood on her son's head and studied his vacant, sleeping face. Perfect. She scooped him out of the bike seat and waited for Eddy Plenty to catch up, his face a mixture of curiosity and alarm.

‘Here.' She thrust the sleeping child at him and he let his spanking-new bike crash to the ground as he hurriedly held out his arms and took Skipper. He sat them down on a low wall, under a street light, and Melody knew her boy was safe. She turned to climb a narrow maintenance ladder, to take herself up to the trestle bridge far above. ‘What . . . what are you doing?' whispered Eddy, looking angrily aghast, his arms full of sleeping child. She climbed. At the top of the ladder she hopped out onto the empty tracks; two sets, one heading east, one west. There would be no trains for a couple of hours, she hoped.

Below were the drab shop faces of the hardware store, a baby-wear shop, a petrol station. She picked her way along the track, shaking her can, hearing the quiet squeaking of fruit bats and the leathery flap of their wings in the sleeping, city night. She stood before the factory wall and reached high for the first letter, and worked her way through them:
R
,
I
,
S
,
K
. . . She stepped back after each one to regain her perspective. Once, she stepped back a little too far and fell over the girders of the track, almost falling off the ten-metre-high bridge. She crawled back from the edge, trembling, a sole car passing underneath, maybe someone going home from shiftwork. She went on through the letters, her heart beating too fast.
RISK BEING ALIVE
. By the time the moon had moved to centre stage, right above her, the job was done. A train hooted, far away. Sometime tomorrow she would feel the true satisfaction of it, but, for now, she just wanted to smell the neck of her child, to feel the inky night air as she rode her bicycle into it, to go home, put on the kettle and have a cup of tea. She lowered herself onto the ladder and climbed down, one rung at a time, to the dark shadow figure below.

‘Why the hell did you do that?' said Eddy. ‘You could have killed yourself.'

‘Well, here I am safe.'

‘What if the police catch you?'

‘Well, they won't now.'

‘What does it mean?'

‘What?'

‘Risk being alive.'

‘Just . . . be alive. Take risks. Don't press the pause button on living.'

He looked appalled. ‘You're crazy.'

‘Do you really think that?'

‘Well, not literally, but—'

‘Hey, it's Grace and Tom's auction tomorrow,' she said, swiftly changing the topic.

‘I know. Tom's in a state.'

‘I thought I'd go. Wanna come?'

‘Ahh . . .' Eddy shifted the little boy back into her arms.

‘I reckon Tom could use your help.'

‘Oh?' Eddy looked surprised.

‘They both could. Grace, too.'

‘Oh. Well. Maybe.'

She settled Skip back into the bike seat and wrapped a sarong around him, binding his sleep-floppy limbs to the seat back. Then, climbing aboard, she looked over at Eddy for a minute. In the shadows he looked quite dark and dangerous. Could she shag him? A thank-you shag? Maybe not.

‘I'm going to go. To the auction.'

‘To help Grace?' said Eddy.

‘Maybe.' They rode off into the night together, speaking quietly, sailing through the meagre patches of light cast by street lamps and the longer patches of dark shielded by trees and sleeping houses.

‘I'm a bit surprised they broke up. They didn't seem . . .' His wheels squeaked and the night air felt cool on Melody's skin.

‘. . . at the dinner.'

‘I know.'

‘Grace thinks it's because of the accident.'

‘What?'

‘The breakup. It gave them both a fright. Made them assess their lives, shake everything up.'

‘Oh.'

‘These things happen for a reason.'

‘You think?'

‘I do. So, do you want to come to the auction tomorrow? I can ride past and pick you up.'

‘Can I really help? I might be intruding.'

‘We'll help.'

‘Does Grace really think the breakup is because of the accident?'

‘Well, you know Grace.'

‘That would make it my fault. Sort of. And that's why Romy met Van, too.'

‘It's no one's fault. It's just the pick-up-sticks of the universe, falling in a certain way. Now we look at what's there and work out how to make the best of it.'

The bikes creaked as they pulled up out the front of his house. Melody yawned, and Eddy looked reluctantly at his front door and sighed deeply.

‘Do you want to come in for a hot drink?'

She smiled. ‘I'd better get Skip home. I'll come past tomorrow?'

‘Okay. Actually, I might take the car, and take some tools, just in case. Can I pick
you
two up? About ten?'

‘Sure.'

Grace should have known how bad auction day would be, she thought later. The fact that she and
Tom couldn't agree on a reserve price for the house could have given her an inkling. (She wanted higher; he wanted to practically give it away.) Nor could they agree on whether to spend some money on the house first, on things like clawing the garden back from its wilderness, and getting the windows washed, and the roof fixed. (She wanted these things done; he refused.) On the morning of the auction they nearly had a standup fight over who would park in the driveway, until the agent came over and said that it would be better if the driveway was left clear. They had both come with their mothers, in their mothers' cars — Dawn a crumbling Volvo, Maureen a red Commodore with
Doncaster Holden
stickers on the back. Dawn and Maureen each sat behind their respective steering wheels ignoring each other while their children fought it out on the nature strip. Dawn cried while Lotte patted her shoulder, and Maureen read a
New Idea
with shaking hands. As if divorce wasn't bad enough — Grace noted that Tom had gone from calling it their separation to their divorce — there was the enforced return to the company of their mothers. She knew she should be grateful for the help of her mother, but accepting her help was so humiliating she had to hold back her rage. Her only comfort was that she could see that Tom was in the same boat, and that his abrasive, opinionated mother was even more annoying than her own gloomy and frequently weeping parent.

Right now, standing out on the footpath, she could see that down the side of the house Tom appeared to be in an argument with his mother. Maureen rested her hand on her fat hip and waved her right hand expressively, one moment towards the house (with a disgusted flick of her fingers) and then the next towards Tom, chopping the air in front his chest as if she were demonstrating how to slice bread. Lotte stood between them, and Grace urgently beckoned her daughter over to her.

‘Sweetie! Are Daddy and Nanna having a little argument?' she whispered.

‘I don't know.'

‘What are they saying?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Of course you don't.' Grace straightened up. She kicked the ground casually and tried desperately to eavesdrop on the argument. She couldn't hear anything, but after a few seconds she got it, by some effort of wilful osmosis and reading of body language. Maureen was agreeing with Grace; they should set the reserve higher, hang out for more money rather than cave in for a low price.

‘Maybe it's possible, maybe we will get a decent amount,' Grace murmured to her mother.

Dawn looked worried. ‘Ooh, I hope so, love.'

‘Lotte and I could take a little holiday. Maybe Bali.' They could do their hair in silly braids and buy fake watches and lie on sun-loungers.

‘Ooh, not there, love. Terrorists.'

A car pulled up, and Melody and Eddy climbed out. Grace stared at them. Had they come to watch the misery of it all? To gloat? They hadn't seemed the types. Lotte ran to extract Skip from the car.

‘It's still early,' Grace said. ‘Another half-hour before they start letting people through.'

‘You know the gutter,' said Eddy awkwardly. He rubbed his nose and waved toward the guttering that had fallen down over the western window.

Grace looked at it. ‘Tom and I couldn't agree on whether to pay someone to fix it.' They had fought just the day before over that very gutter, shouting for almost an hour.

‘Would you mind if I . . .?' He waved again towards it. ‘It would only take a . . .' He shrugged, to indicate that it would be little more than a minute's work.

As in fact it was. Eddy sort of streamed up a tree, Melody handed him tools and the guttering, and the whole thing was fixed while Grace stared. Then the two of them grabbed a rake and clippers and in ten minutes' work the garden had gone from bedraggled to presentable. The real estate agent was almost prostrate with gratitude at Eddy's feet. Melody persuaded the agent to let her in the house, and she took out a small bag with an oil burner, and lit some essential oil that Grace had never encountered in her life, with a smell she could not have described. A smell of warmth, and welcome, and some faraway place and time which Grace could not remember, but which had been the best time of her life, whatever it was. By the time people arrived to start inspecting the house — mostly neighbours and kindy mothers — the smell had wafted through every room and the first thing everyone said was ‘Mmm! What is that divine
smell
?'

Grace went outside to sit in the car and let her hopes rise, as more and more people arrived. She had been applying for jobs for two months now, and had received approximately zero responses, except occasionally from computer-generated emails. Even they were negative.
We have received your application along with six million others,
they warned.
We will not be able to contact all applicants personally, so if you have not heard from us in a period of time, please consider yourself unsuccessful.
She would steal a march on them and consider herself unsuccessful already, she figured. All the marketing ads now wanted a knowledge of SEO and HTTP and an embrace of social media, including obscure things she had never heard of and was not convinced anybody used. (
I am excited about the potential of pintagram
, she had written to one, only realising after mailing the application that she had fused two forms of social media into one that did not exist.) She had thought the fact she had a Facebook account which she checked monthly meant she was on-trend with new media, but apparently not. A windfall from this auction could be fantastic.