The Near Miss (3 page)

‘He was shy,' Skipper reminisced nostalgically. ‘And I held him, like this.' By the neck, it appeared, and possibly tucked under one arm.

‘And could he talk?'

‘He could only say “Mo-mo” and “tooka”.' Skipper generally gazed into the air at some point to his left when discussing Mr Sumper, as if channeling some being who was poised up next to Melody's right ear. Bless him, he probably was.

She grew to love Mr Sumper. He was the sibling Skipper didn't have, and didn't look like getting anytime soon. How simple, that Skipper had created his own. She pictured him as an elfin man of indeterminate age, with a green hat no higher than her knee. She could say to Skip at any
moment: Is Mr Sumper here? And Skip would stare off to the place by her right ear and finally say either no, he's in Sitter-ny (Sydney) or yes, he's just sitting over there. And Melody would nod in the direction of the small green man, and give him a wave. Who knew, maybe there was something there that only a four-year-old could see?

Now, she crouched in the kindergarten home corner, hoping Mr Sumper was not too far away. A brown baby and a white baby lay in a small wooden bed and stared sightlessly at a sky fluttering with finger paintings. Melody fed the brown baby a plastic lemon, and made kissy noises to simulate eating, while Skipper supervised approvingly. From the corner of her eye, she saw the little girl enter across the room. Lotte. She limped a little, but not much. Already better, Melody thought, with a twinge of possessive pride at the sight of this little human she had snatched from the jaws of death. Lotte trailed around a group of girls for a bit, but they turned their sharp little shoulder blades towards her, as if they knew
her
only too well. The child ran her fingers over the book display, and passed the unattended play dough table, where she stuck her finger into each of the four perfect balls of dough waiting to be discovered. She reached the home corner, and stopped and stared at Skipper.

Melody picked up the brown baby and waved its hand at her. ‘Hi, Lotte,' she made the doll say, in a squeaky voice.

Lotte gave Melody a baleful look and turned her attention to Skipper.

‘Skipper's new here, he's starting today,' offered Melody.

Lotte regarded him. ‘Would you rather be eaten by a rhinoceros or a giant turtle?'

Skip thought about it. ‘Turtle.'

Lotte nodded. He seemed to have passed some test. ‘Do you want to come outside?'

Melody tucked in the white baby and rose to her feet, feeling self-conscious. The other
mothers stood in small groups, wearing little pastel dresses and shorts, feet slapping in thongs. She twisted the silver studded band on her upper arm, until it let go of her hot skin, and she let it settle again on a cooler piece.

She couldn't keep lurking here in the home corner. She had come to Melbourne to give Skip a normal life, a safe life, and that meant making friends. She spotted Grace in one of the clusters, and ventured over nervously. The little group fell silent and parted at her approach, the women smiling questioningly at her.

‘Oh! Melody!' stuttered Grace. ‘It's great to see you here! What a coincidence! What's your little boy's name again?'

‘Skipper.'

‘Of course! Well this is Nina, and Anna, and Verity. We were all in mums' group together.'

‘Hi,' said Melody, in what she hoped was a pleasant manner. She felt like an elephant, three metres wide and high amongst these svelte, girl-women. One of them, who had a pointy face with a sharp nose, stared up at Melody's hair. Another, with a full mask of makeup, stared down at Melody's boots. The other, whose face was kind and smiley, met her eyes.

‘You were on the telly! About the accident!'

‘Oh!' Melody was startled. She had not watched a television for years, and had draped a sarong over the set in her rented flat. ‘I haven't seen it. Was it okay?'

‘Amazing! You looked great!'

‘And I'm
sorry
if I never thanked you for saving Lotte.' Grace sounded wounded. ‘I mean . . . I
thought
I did.'

‘You did,' said Melody.

‘Well
I
thought I did. The reporter, she just made it sound a bit—'

The woman with all the makeup broke in. ‘Like you hadn't thanked her.'

‘But I'm having Melody for dinner.
And
her son.'

Melody wrapped the handle of her hessian bag around her fingers until they turned white. ‘The reporter asked me that question, and I didn't really understand what she meant. If it sounded . . . I really didn't mean . . .'

‘Oh, it's okay. That's television.'

‘And we're looking forward to dinner . . .'

‘Amazing footage. Lotte was
so
lucky you were there,' said sharp-face. Grace shot her a look.

‘Just a fluke,' said Melody.

‘Lotte's a runner,' said Grace. ‘She's crazy. I don't know what to do about it.'

‘She'll grow out of it,' said the kind-faced woman. ‘She has a big spirit.'

There was a commotion from the home corner, where Lotte had returned to tip babies out of their cradles and hurl plastic food, piece by piece, from the fridge. Two little girls shrieked at her to stop. Skipper turned away to press his palms against some play dough. Lotte finally gave up the house-trashing and went to sit beside him, punching her little fist on a ball of red dough.

‘She's lively,' murmured the kind-faced woman, while sharp-face and makeup exchanged glances.

Later, Melody picked Skipper up on her bike, and on the way home they stopped at the big bin behind the shopping centre. Melody checked no one was watching, then stepped up on a milk crate and peered over the edge. In one corner was a box of eggs, cartons slipping and sliding all over each other, yolks dried shiny and awful. She climbed up on the edge and reached down for the
cleanest carton she could see. Picking through the landslide, she found six unbroken eggs. There were more but she did not want to linger; women were walking in the distance with prams and strollers. They might be kindergarten mothers. She climbed out and showed Skipper her find.

‘We'll check them later, to see if they're fresh.' She still had the nine fifty-dollar notes back in the flat, but she wouldn't spend them until she had to.

‘How?'

‘We put them in a bowl of water. If they float that means air has got in and they're bad. If they sink, that's good.'

‘Sinking is good.'

‘Funny, isn't it?'

They walked through the pet shop and stroked the kittens in there, and ate some samples of cream donuts out the front of the bakery.

‘Can we go to Lotte's house for a play?'

‘We're going there for dinner. On Saturday night.' God, she had forgotten to mention that they were vegetarian. It wasn't even necessary up north. Maybe she could tuck a note in Lotte's kindy bag.

‘Can we go there now?'

‘No. But that's nice, that you knew someone at your kindy. Did you play with her some more?'

‘Yes. Always I played with her. She finded me all the time.'

He climbed onto a low wall and into his bike seat. She put the eggs in her bike basket, and they set off. If they were quick, they could get home before those rain clouds burst.

That night, Skipper said, ‘Lotte says Mr Sumper's not real.'

‘So? You know he's real.'

‘She says you can't see him, so he's not real.'

‘Tell me, Skip — do I love you?'

‘Yes.'

‘Can you see my love?'

‘In my heart.' He patted his little chest. She had told him this.

‘But you can't see it, can you?'

‘No.'

‘But it's real, isn't it? Just like Mr Sumper is.'

He gave her a look.

‘That wasn't very nice of Lotte to say that.' Melody pursed her lips and he saw.

‘I like Lotte. She never be's mean to me.'

‘She'd better bloody not,' muttered Melody, momentarily reflecting that she had saved the life of the little girl who may end up killing Mr Sumper, Melody's low-maintenance second child.

Skip frog-hopped through the kitchen.

‘I
love
Lotte.'

Somewhere in the universe, Mr Sumper thinned into vapour and vanished.

A computer engineer, Tom had always tinkered around with inventions in his spare time. He had invented a robot to do basic tasks for elderly people living alone, only someone else had got their version to market first. Then he briefly tried to create an electromagnetic motor which could produce its own free energy, and the spare room was strewn with the spare parts of that doomed venture. His latest brainwave was solar-powered roof tiles, cheaply produced from recycled water bottles.

Grace had once been affectionately amused by Tom's spare-time creative efforts, and even believed in them, but now she wanted to have a second baby and take time off. She wanted their mortgage to grow lower, instead of higher. She wanted Tom to stop spending so much money on spare parts and materials, and so much time on making stuff. And she wanted her guest room emptied of all the invention junk which had crept inwards from Tom's back shed. This was why she resentfully kicked yet another garbage bag of empty plastic drink bottles aside as she stalked out of the house on her way to work.

She caught the train, holding onto a strap and the luxury of twenty-eight minutes of unscheduled time. Time to think and stare out the window. Lotte would be fine, the bruising on her foot was healing already, but the accident had frightened them all. Grace needed a second baby. She needed a spare.

Grace mentally roamed through her smorgasbord of worries. Would the foundation at work fold if she wasn't successful in winning a new grant? Was Lotte always going to be so temperamental and strange? How could she persuade Tom to apply for a better, higher-paying job, and how soon could they start trying to get pregnant?

She had once believed that Tom's inventions might pay off, that he could win the lottery of
creativity and make a big sale to a multinational. But they had been disappointed so many times that she had lost the faith. Yes, she had once dreamed of a world where they could have all the things, and all the time, they wanted. A get-rich-quick scheme, for God's sake, like any stupid, greedy hick. What a fool. She wouldn't risk her fertility on that again. The silver lining of Lotte's accident was this clear-eyed sighting of the way things were.

At the office of the Mental Wellness Association, Barbara Boiler stuck her head around the door and barked. ‘Page six of the
Morning Star
? Read it yet?'

Grace sighed. ‘I'm well thanks, how are you?' she muttered to herself. She opened the paper on her desk to the page already marked accusingly by a coloured Post-it note. Ah. Here.
TV Soap Sparks Suicide Risk, Black Dog Trust CEO Helen Strutter was yesterday outraged at suicide storyline in
Home and Away.

‘It's hard, Barbara. It's a bit of a one-day story, but I'll get onto the
Star
and see whether they're planning a follow-up for tomorrow, and whether we can get you a comment.'

Boiler, or Bunny as Grace secretly called her, shifted her late-middle-aged bulk into the room. Her flat locks were blonde with grey roots. She talked with her hand over her mouth, for some reason Grace had not yet deciphered. When sitting, one of her legs jiggled ceaselessly. Her life was focused on getting more publicity than her rival Helen Strutter from the Black Dog Trust, and she believed Grace, as her media officer, was incompetent for failing to achieve this.

‘I'll tell you what you'll do.' Hand over the mouth. ‘You'll put out a press release to all the dailies, to the tellies and especially to Miriam Whatsit over at
Rise and Shine
, and you'll tell them what I think about
Home and Away
. Say this: Respected mental health expert Barbara Boiler, comma, highly respected chief executive — no, just say chief, cap C — of the Mental Wellness
Association, comma, stepped into the debate yesterday— Hang on . . . strode into the debate yesterday over the controversial
Home and Away
episode . . . Go for the stronger verb there.
Strode
instead of
stepped
, see?'

‘Got that.' Grace scrawled dutifully. And thanks for pointing out the verb. Like a degree in English wouldn't have alerted her.

‘Hmm.' Bunny tapped her fingers on her mouth and jiggled her legs. ‘Sounds good.' She began to leave.

‘And said what?'

‘Sorry?'

‘What's your
stance
on the
Home and Away
thing?'

Bunny considered it. ‘I'll email you.' She left.

Grace watched her go and let herself momentarily unravel. Oh, that woman. She ran her nails over her scalp, just to reassure herself she was still alive, and picked up a picture of her daughter from her desk. Lotte, captured one frosty Melbourne morning in her Incredibles nightie. Lotte with her legs bare, standing just outside the back door, breathing with purpose into the icy air, and raising her hands to touch the steam of her own breath. The visible breath had become invisible in the picture, and Lotte's hands and eyes seemed to reach up to something godly in the silvers and greys of the winter garden. Grace stared at the picture, searching for anything new in it, and felt the tiny crack in her soul widen a little further.

That day, she was meant to finish the monthly newsletter, write a speech for the annual sponsors lunch on Friday, organise a new publicity photo for the Bunny (who felt she had lost weight since the last one was taken three months ago), and do some more work on the association's application for a state government Good Works grant. The Good Works grant had taken on a new
urgency since the association, incredibly, had missed out on the large, triannual Healthy Australia grant from the federal government that had been the cornerstone of its funding for the past decade, a snub that had favoured the newly enriched Black Dog Trust. Now, it appeared, Grace was expected to put all that aside and write a press release starring the Bunny which would go out by lunchtime, to hook into a story which was already yesterday's news.

She fled to the kitchen, and ran into her favourite colleague.

‘I've got a client I'd like you to meet, a woman who's got post-natal depression,' said Josh Papps. Josh was one of the project workers, of a similar age as Grace, gently spoken and with a real compassion for the troubled souls he helped. He had a girlfriend, but Grace suspected he was gay, and didn't know it.

‘Yeah?' Grace feigned interest. As if it wasn't enough working with and for mad people, and suspecting herself at times of being one.

‘Just because you did such a great job of pulling yourself out of the PND. I mean, you were amazing, all those herbs, and the exercise, and the counselling . . . and look at you now.'

Grace nodded distractedly. ‘Oh?' Josh
would
ask this, in the week when Grace was secretly fighting the old symptoms, the old enemies, once again. Insomnia — every night since Lotte's accident, the vast dark universe of the bedroom ceiling above falling into her open eyes. Loss of appetite, dislike for food. And a toxic, unending anxiety that was a taste in her mouth.

Grace shook her head. ‘I don't know that I really got over it. Take now. One little mishap with Lotte and I'm a freaking mess. I can't sleep.'

‘Really?'

‘What if something happened to her? She's so crazy, so impulsive and wild. She just
does
things, and you can't stop her, like running out into traffic. We're going to lose her. I really . . . I
know . . .'

Josh handed her a tissue. Grace put down her cup and pressed the tissue to her eyes. Josh rubbed her shoulder kindly.

‘It was a terrible thing. Anyone would be frightened.'

‘I haven't slept for the past few nights. I wake up at two in the morning and I just obsess about it: what if the car had been travelling a tiny bit quicker, what if that woman had been a tiny bit slower? And Tom takes risks with her, I know he does. Lets her walk down to the neighbours on her own, even
across a driveway
.' She searched Josh's face for signs of horror, for indications he might go and alert Human Services this minute, but he just reassembled his eyebrows and mouth into a new arrangement of dutiful concern, like someone shifting from one hip to the other. He didn't have kids. Maybe he hadn't understood. ‘I mean, she's four years old and he lets her walk across . . .' She shaped her hands and made a face of exaggerated alarm, waving to denote a driveway the width of the Eastern Freeway. ‘Just straight over it to where . . .'

‘Poor you. Does Tom know you feel like this?'

‘I can't tell him. He'll stop us trying.'

‘For a baby?'

‘Yes!'

‘Oh.' Josh took a teaspoon and levered the lid off the International Roast. ‘Maybe you
should
wait a bit if you're feeling like this again.'

He was too nice. Definitely gay. ‘I want another baby. I want to get out of this job.'

‘The Bunny?'

‘She's . . .' Grace grimaced, and Josh nodded and showed the tact of friendship. He didn't talk anymore about the client he wanted Grace to meet, the one with PND. He didn't point out that
wanting to escape a bad job was not a reason to bring a child into the world. Grace sipped water from a bottle, and for the thousandth time calculated how much twelve weeks' maternity leave on her wage would be. How many work-free days it would represent. Anything to get a rest from the Bunny.

Grace would wake at night and feel for Tom beside her, and find only flat sheets and blankets. She would then pad through the house and look out the back window towards the garden, where light would shine from along the joins of the tin shed, outlining it like a child's line-drawing hovering in the dark. Night after night, Tom crept out there to work on his inventions. When she confronted him about it, he shrugged. ‘I went out for a piss, and I just thought I'd check on the shed.' Or ‘I only popped out for twenty minutes', when she knew he'd been out there for hours.

She rang him at work one afternoon, and got his colleague, an engineer called Deepak. ‘He's asleep,' Deepak whispered. ‘In the store room.'

‘He's what!'

‘He does it every day now. What do you
do
to him at night?'

‘Nothing!'

‘He's always exhausted.'

No wonder. How long had he been sneaking out to the shed to give the best of himself to his tiles, leaving the sleepy dregs for his day job, the one they relied on. Being a programmer for a global IT company earned good money, nearly twice as much as a media manager at a not-for-profit.

‘He's taking nanna naps?' said Grace.

‘Exactly.'

‘Bet his boss loves that.'

‘He doesn't know,' whispered Deepak. ‘We're all doing our best to cover for him. But it's getting too— Yes, thanks,' he suddenly boomed. ‘Just send that order as requestedthankyouverymuchhaveaniceday. Excellent. Goodbye, sir.' The line went dead.

‘We could always sell the house,' Tom said that night.

‘Oh, ha ha.'

‘I'm serious.' He stood in the bedroom and stripped off his business suit as if it were alive and crafted from reptiles. He dropped the jacket on the floor and wiped his hands of it. Kicked the pants into a corner. The cat kneaded the fabric with her claws. Lucky they were millionaires, with money to treat suits like they were disposable raincoats.