“Plans?” she had asked, but she was talking to Francesca and Justine because whenever things flared up between them, Tara did a whole lot of avoiding.
“Will and I are going to Sallo’s party down at Cockle Bay, so come with us,” Francesca said.
“She’s not dressed for it,” Tom had pointed out. Tara was wearing a skirt over jeans and some high-neck black skivvy that flattened her even more than she was, but it wasn’t nightclub stuff and he was cheering in silence.
“Come to my gig,” Justine said, locking the case of her accordion. “It’s just a bit of a jam session with some of the guys at the Con.”
“Will I be the only one who’s not a musical genius?” Tara asked.
“Probably,” Tom answered for Justine. “And it’ll make you feel inferior and then depressed, and then you’ll want to slit your wrists and you don’t want to be caught dead wearing a skirt over jeans. I mean, what is that look, Finke? Really? On the other hand, I’m cleaning my stuff out of Georgie’s attic ’cause Joe’s coming home, so you may as well come with me.”
He said it with a shrug, as though he was pretty blasé.
“Oh, the choices,” she sighed, unraveling herself from her satchel and putting it down on the floor. “I’ve got to go to the loo.”
He had watched her walk away, and the skirt rode up her jeans and sat where he wanted it to sit. Although there was no flesh showing, his body had already kick-started into something completely out of his control. He felt Justine and Francesca come up beside him and he put an arm around both of them, humming “Danke Schoen” until he realized they weren’t just standing around waiting. They were staring up at him.
He looked from one to the other. “What?” he asked, on the defensive. “What?”
“What are you doing?” Francesca asked.
“Thomas?” This came from Justine, who usually protected him from the wrath of the other girls.
His hands fell to his side.
“What did I do now?”
“Do you want us to fill you in on something, Tom?” Francesca, Queen of Rhetorical Questions, asked, because she was going to fill him in whether he wanted to be filled in or not. “You know how Siobhan gave Tara a mobile phone for her birthday? Well, we set it up for her so that every time one of us rings, a particular tune comes on. Have you heard of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Tom? Because when you ring her, the tune to ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’ comes on.”
Now he was really pissed off. “Back,” he had said, looking at Justine. “Off,” he said to Francesca.
“I’m texting Siobhan.”
He looked at them both with disbelief. “As if I’m scared of Siobhan.”
Francesca got out her phone, and in desperation he had grabbed it from her.
“Please, Frankie. I’m begging. Don’t text Siobhan.”
Tara walked back into the hall and Francesca managed to pry her phone out of his fingers by giving him one of those pinches where she got a grip on the hair on his arm and twisted.
He grabbed his guitar and jumped off the stage, then picked up Tara’s satchel and steered her toward the door.
“I haven’t said good-bye to them,” she said, trying to get her satchel from him. He slung it over his neck.
“Tara says bye,” he had called over his shoulder.
And that began the week when advice came flying from Joe across the seas on how not to stuff things up.
Tom needs the guru to provide him with the words to make things right now. But he knows he’ll never hear them again and he stumbles to the toilet, spewing out the ache of loneliness churning itself inside of him.
They go to Lucia and Abe’s for a barbecue celebrating Abe’s forty-second birthday. A small gathering in the Charbel household means at least forty people were about to converge on them. Georgie is designated the task of straightening her goddaughter’s hair and allows Bella to straighten hers haphazardly in return.
When the guys walk into the kitchen to get the meat for the barbecue and Bernadette arrives with the cake, Georgie knows this is her last chance before she loses her nerve.
“I’d like to make an announcement before everyone else arrives,” she says. For a moment there’s silence.
“What’s with the hair?” Jonesy asks.
“Jonesy,” Lucia says, shushing him.
For a second, Georgie’s eyes meet Sam’s and there’s a flicker around his mouth and a softness in his eyes.
“I’m having a baby,” she says firmly.
There’s a moment’s silence.
“Oh. My. God!” Lucia says, feigning surprise. “Who would have guessed.”
Abe laughs and he reaches over to hug Georgie.
“I’m twenty-two weeks and it’s due in November,” she says, holding on to Abe because she wants desperately to hold on to someone and Abe’s the closest thing she has to her brother.
She looks at Sam. “Close your ears if you don’t want to know what I suspect to be the sex of your child,” she says, and he blocks his ears.
“It’s Sam’s?” Jonesy asks, surprised, just as he gets a message.
“Where have you been, Jonesy?” Bernadette says. “In La-La Land?”
“Contrary to popular belief, I think it has no penis,” Georgie whispers to them while Lucia covers Sam’s ears.
Jonesy looks up from his text messaging, shocked. “Poor little guy.”
After everyone’s eaten and the men are outside playing cards in the tiny courtyard, Abe’s mother dangles a necklace over Georgie’s belly to see if it’s a boy or a girl. As she sits surrounded by the women and her goddaughters, who watch with the widest of eyes, she is suddenly overcome with emotion. Leila sees it on her face and takes it gently between her hands. “She misses her mama, don’t you, Georgietta?” the older woman says.
“What’s it going to be, Tata?” Bella asks. “The baby?”
There is a certainty on the older woman’s face. “A boy. It’s all at the front and there’s no change in the face.”
Later, Lucia piles Georgie up with leftovers while Sam lights up a cigarette, waiting in the dark on the front lawn.
“I hope you’re not smoking in front of her,” Lucia says to him.
“Yeah, I lie in bed and puff in her face, Lucia,” he says, irritated.
“I hope he’s joking.”
“He’s joking,” Georgie says with a yawn, kissing her and then Abe.
When they’ve pulled away from the curb and waved to everyone, Sam puts on the heater to warm up the car for the short drive home.
“Can you feel that?” he asks.
They place their hands in front of the heat at the same time and both pull back.
“Bella came out and said it was a boy,” Sam says.
Georgie laughs for a moment. “The odds are fifty to one. I reckon it’s a girl.”
Silence again.
“My mother wants to visit,” he says.
“Tell her to visit,” she says quietly, leaning her head against the window frame and closing her eyes. Sometimes in the past when they’d come home from Dominic and Jacinta’s or Lucia and Abe’s, they’d make love with a lack of inhibition born of too much alcohol and too few issues in their lives. These days their lovemaking is instigated in silence. No words. No teasing. He had once been verbal during sex. Had to articulate. Swore. Cursed. Prayed. All words entwined in every thrust. “Shhh,” she’d laugh, in case they’d wake up Joe, who lived in the attic during those days. But he couldn’t keep it contained, so she’d cover his mouth with her hand and she’d see it all there in his eyes. All of it.
She wants to cover his mouth now. Cover the silence and watch his eyes for a sign. But they’ve become strangers, guarded with each other.
The next day, Lucia and her sister come over and Georgie has to stop them from wanting to talk babies. Her announcement the day before has reopened the floodgates of communication, which is both a relief and a curse, really. Then they get to talking about Bernadette
’s decision to try Internet dating, and all three of them end up hunched over Georgie’s laptop when Tom walks in.
“Is that my wifebeater?” he asks.
“I don’t like the derogatory term, thank you. It’s a undershirt.”
“Yeah. My undershirt, Georgie,” he says. “With a spencer underneath it. Looks ridiculous.”
“Shucks, Tom, because I’m really going for the fashionable look these days.”
“Buy yourself maternity stuff, Georgie,” he mutters.
She feels him peer over their shoulder to see what has glued them to the screen of the laptop.
“Internet dating?”
“People are meeting the loves of their lives this way,” Bernadette explains.
“BabyI’myourman69?” he asks, reading the name on the screen. “I hope you girls don’t think that sixty-nine represents the year he was born.”
Lucia laughs. “If the munchkin, whose face I used to wash, tries to explain to us what a sixty-niner is, I’m going to report myself to child protection.”
Georgie’s not listening. She’s too busy following what’s on the screen in front of her with her finger. “But look at what this one wrote: ‘If you’re in your late thirties, I suppose your biological clock is ticking and midnight is just around the corner. So hey, baby, baby.’ He’s ready. He wants kids.”
“His own, Georgie,” Bernadette points out. “And we’re looking for me, not you.”
“And you’re not in your late thirties,” Tom points out while he fiddles through the cabinets, looking for food.
“Okay, what about this one? Itsnowornever.”
She finds it difficult pronouncing the name.
“It’s now or never,” Tom explains, back over their shoulders.
Georgie reads it carefully. “This guy chose the ‘Don’t want any of my own, but yours are okay’ option for kids.” She feels optimistic.
“What a surprise that there isn’t the option, ‘Don’t want any of my own, but it’s okay for you to be fat with someone else’s child,’” Tom says.
Georgie can’t get over how cynical her nephew’s become.
Tom leans forward and taps the screen with determination. “Look at his taste in music, girls. You can’t go out with someone who listens to ‘anything from the ’70s, ’80s, or ’90s.’ That’s what he’s written. He has to be more discerning than that. And he’s a swinging voter. Sam would never let a swinging voter bring up his child.”
Georgie stares at him, unimpressed. “So now we’re a Sam fan, are we?”
“At least he’s always been specific about his musical tastes.”
She turns to Bernadette and Lucia, not believing what she’s hearing.
“So who would you choose, Bernie? The faithful guy who listens to ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s music and swings in his voting, or the unfaithful guy who’s into the Clash and the Waterboys and still believes the Labor Party are the true believers?”
“They’re my choices?” Bernadette asks, dismayed. “Can’t I have another one?”
“What does Sam say about this?” Tom asks, eating the cereal from the box with his hands.
“Sam and I aren’t together.”
He points to her belly.
“So you’re giving birth to the Messiah, are you?”
“Why is Sam an issue all of a sudden?” she says angrily.
“Georgie, you’re sleeping with the guy!” Lucia says, laughing with exasperation, looking at Tom. “She’s sleeping with him, isn’t she?”
He stares at them, mid-mouthful. “Please,” he says after he’s swallowed. “It’s bad enough that the middle-aged are having sex, without thinking of my aunt doing it. And I don’t know why someone just doesn’t tell Sam to use a condom instead of impregnating the women of the inner-west.”
Georgie stares at him, stunned, and then she bursts out laughing.
“Middle-aged? What a little dickhead,” Lucia says.
To:
[email protected] From:
[email protected] Date: 25 July 2007
Dear Finke,
Okay, so you’re cranky. I can imagine that if you are reading this now, you look cranky. That crease on your forehead and that stare that can slice the bejesus out of anyone. How is life there? Truly asking. Life here is pretty shitty. Mind-numbing at times, to be honest. Don’t know why I’m even telling you, but Georgie reckons she writes to Joe and sends the letters to his in-box, and that somehow getting things off her chest helps. (She actually has a chest these days, courtesy of a pregnancy.)
This, by the way, is not helping, but I have nothing else to do, so at least it relieves the monotony. I’m working in a hideously boring data-entry place a couple of hours a day, and I’m sure that Francesca and Justine have told you I’m the dish-pig at the Union alongside your new bestie, Ned. I tend to keep to my corner while the troika bond.
Anyway, I’m just going through the motions these days and wake up each day to the same scenario. I can’t begin to tell you how hard it is filling up seven lots of twenty-four hours without the assistance of illicit substances. TV sometimes helps, but Georgie has the most pitiful collection of boxed-set DVDs. I’ve covered Sex and the City (season three is my favorite), as well as Will and Grace and The West Wing. Every time we have an issue, she brings it back to The West Wing. Georgie thinks she’s C.J., who was the press secretary.
Best be going. Don’t want to o.d. on a good thing.
Cheers,
Tom
There is nothing in his in-box the next day. Part of him is relieved. He can imagine her seeing his name and pressing the delete button, and that thought gives him the freedom to hit the keys again. It becomes part of his way of filling up those seven twenty-fours. Between working alongside Mohsin the Ignorer, lying on ugly banana chairs in Georgie’s backyard at night, chatting to Sam, who seems to come by more frequently, or working from five to ten at the Union, his life becomes consumed by the number displayed alongside his in-box. Most times there will be an e-mail from Anabel and one from a mate he met at uni, who sends him the most ridiculous stuff on YouTube or attachments with a plethora of tits or other types of nudity. But Tom decides it’s going to be his mission to keep on writing to Tara Finke. He’s going to aim for the record. He’ll stop at ninety-nine unanswered e-mails. He’s going to wear her down.
To:
[email protected] From:
[email protected] Date: 27 July 2007
Dear Finke,
I can now type fifty words a minute without looking at the keys. As I type, I’m actually looking at the guy on my right-hand side, who persists in speaking to me although I can’t understand a single word that comes out of his mouth. He has a very thick Irish brogue and I feel like Marjorie Dawes in the Little Britain fat-busters sketch, who can’t understand the simplest of words because the other woman has an accent.
On my left is Mohsin the Ignorer and I don’t know why it gets to me that he doesn’t talk, but it does. I think he’s a racist and that makes me sound petty, but that’s the way I’m calling it. Except there’s something that makes me want to talk to him, which could have a lot to do with the fact that I don’t talk to many people these days except for Georgie and Sam and my sister on the Net. Did you know Anabel was living in Brisbane with my mum? Shit, not seeing that kid kills me and some days I feel like just stealing Georgie’s car and driving up to be with them. I haven’t spoken to my mother in eleven months, you know. She sends me a text message a couple of times a week and I know she speaks to Georgie almost every second day. I don’t have the guts to go there, because I’m ashamed. I called her something pretty bad when she left my dad. Don’t worry, because I won’t repeat it in this e-mail. I know how you feel about that word. But I’ll never forget the look on her face.
Except there seems to be other stuff to stress over, like the whole thing with Georgie having this baby. Not even when the Sam betrayal happened or when Joe died did she seem this bad. I think a nervo
us breakdown is coming and it’s coming fast, and I have front-row seats to it all. Not that I’ll be able to stop it, because I would have no idea how, but in a strange way Sam seems to help. When he’s around, she’s less highly strung and anxious, and somehow she allows him over a lot more because I’m there. It’s like I’m the buffer, so I’m going to allow myself to get buffed for the sake of Georgie’s sanity.
Write back.
See ya,
Tom
He takes to getting to work at the Union earlier each day. Most of it is about boredom, but usually whoever arrives first has dibs on the MP3 player the moment the day shift clocks off at five. Lately Francesca’s been going through the I-miss-Will compilation he burned for her and it’s a whole lot of Bloc Party and Augie March and not quite Tom’s thing, and then there’s what he calls Ned the Cook’s emo music and Justine’s Monsieur Camembert, and worse still, Stani’s talkback.
Today Francesca is in even earlier than Tom, taking advantage of the quiet time until the five o’clock crowd comes in. She’s practicing guitar in the back room and he hears a few of the words but doesn’t recognize them and figures that it’s one of her own.
“Change it to a minor,” he tells her from the doorway.
She pauses for a moment but does what he says. Although she’s got a good ear for music, her bends are dodgy and he stays to listen.
“You bend like a girl.”
He walks over and changes the placement of her three fingers on the neck of the guitar.
“And cut your nails.”
“I love my nails,” he hears her mutter as he walks out.
To:
[email protected] From:
[email protected] Date: 30 July 2007
Dear H-anibal,
Yes, for the billionth time, Georgie is very excited about you coming for the Christmas holidays. Don’t say she didn’t tell you on the phone last night a thousand times, because I heard her. Tell J-Lo she finally told Nanni G and Bill about the baby and I get a sense Nanni G wants to come up earlier because she rings almost every second night.