Outside Sam’s mother’s house on Crystal Street, the kid waves up at her like he does every time they do this.
“Hi, Georgie.”
“Hi.”
Sam’s mother watches from the patio of her tiny semi, and Georgie has no choice but to walk toward her. The older woman kisses her, clutching her tightly, as confused as everyone is, and Georgie hears her whisper, “It’s a miracle, Georgie. It’s a miracle.” Which is strange because Sam grew up with people who didn’t believe in anything. And she thinks of those times she’d joke with Lucia and Jacinta and Bernadette that she was the only one of the four who wasn’t named after someone who saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary. Georgie didn’t believe in miracles. It was as though God had said she didn’t deserve them.
They walk toward Stanmore with Sam between her and Callum. As always. As he would when he waited for her at the station in those numb days. The boy was four when Joe died and didn’t question who Georgie was or why she was so silent. She remembered once, when they stood at the lights and Sam’s phone rang and it was time to cross, how the kid took hold of her hand as if she was the only person who could get him to the other side alive. And Georgie felt eleven years old again, holding her little brother’s hand.
When they reach Sam’s house, on Myrtle Street, he unlocks the door and sends Callum in.
“Why don’t you stay?” he asks quietly.
She shakes her head. They have a strange silent agreement. Georgie being under the same roof with Callum isn’t part of it.
“Don’t let Lucia stay upset at you for too long.”
“How do you know it’s not me upset with her?” she asks sharply.
“Either way, it will cut you up. You know that.”
He knows her well. He had slept beside her often enough to know that Georgie needed to be connected to her world. Years ago he’d reach over and grab the phone and hold it out to her. “Ring them and sort this out, or I don’t get to sleep,” he’d snap.
But this is now. He doesn’t say anything. They neither greet nor bid farewell with a kiss or a touch. Their physical relationship only happens in bed. So the unspoken lingers between them. He’s a stranger, this man, with his vulnerability and his empathy. She liked him better with the arrogance. She could fight that with sharp tools of her own.
“They’re hurt,” he says.
“Sorry?”
He sighs. Everyone sighs in front of Georgie these days.
“They’re hurt that you haven’t told them about the baby.”
“Why can’t they just ask?” she asks bluntly.
“It’s not their business to. It’s yours to tell and they can’t understand why you won’t.”
She sees it on his face, the recognition of her shame.
Because you don’t get pregnant by a man who’s betrayed you and boast about it to the world. Because you don’t forgive his relationship with another woman, no matter how nonexistent or brief it was. This is shame, she wants to shout at him. Not getting pregnant, but getting pregnant by you. You don’t forgive a child coming out of that relationship. Not unless you’re desperate or part of some Cosmopolitan magazine article. And he knows.
“I don’t know what to say to you, Georgie.”
Behind him, Callum’s standing by the door, clutching a book in his hand.
“Your son wants you to read to him,” she says, turning around and walking away.
To: mackee_joe@yahoo.co.uk
From: georgiefinch@hotmail.com
Date: 10 July 2007
I end my day, Joe, the way it begins. Listing items of clothing. Because that time when I traveled to London to try to bring you back home to Mummy and Bill and Dominic, your Ana Vanquez told us every detail of your last couple of hours.
That you wore brown corduroy pants.
A blue cotton shirt.
Your fake Rolex from some marketplace in Morocco.
A black band around your wrist.
Black leather boots that you bought when you guys traveled to Spain to meet her family.
And I can’t stop thinking of that woman I interviewed. How she told me that she cries when she thinks that her husband and son and father and uncle and cousin knew where they were heading that day in Srebrenica. Because they had those hours on that bus, Joe, understanding the inevitable and it makes her sick to the stomach to think of their fear. Of her boy’s fear.
But did you, Joe? Did you have a moment to fear? Or were you thinking of your beautiful Ana Vanquez? Or me, your sister? Were you thinking of the table your brother, Dominic, was making for Mum and Bill so we could all fit round it when you came visiting with your girl? Were you thinking of your nephew, Tommy, hogging your space up in my attic and your niece, Anabel, being the only person apart from Mum who has your father eating out of her hands? Was there a tune in your head? Were you listening to a song? Thinking of those kids you were off to teach? Were you smiling, Joe? Looking the world in the eye?
He gets a part-time job at some data-entry place near Central Station, working from ten to three every day. To his left sits a guy called Mohsin. Mohsin the Ignorer, Tom calls him. Tom speaks; Mohsin taps away at his computer as if he hasn’t heard a thing. Language isn’t an issue because he’s heard Mohsin speak to the guy on his other side who persists in talking cricket all day and it’s clear to anyone with intelligence that Mohsin is a rugby league man and cricket talk annoys him. Tom can tell by the amount of sighs he hears during those five hours at work whenever the cricket freak opens his mouth and talks LBWs and all-rounders. Once or twice he’s seen Mohsin read the league pages, but each time Tom offers his opinion, total silence ensues. So now when Mohsin the Ignorer turns his way, Tom gives him a “talk to the hand” look and pretends he can type a hundred words a minute.
Today he’s restless and checks his e-mail. Before he can stop himself, he types Uncle Joe’s name in the search space and retrieves one of his e-mails. And for the first time in a long while, Tom laughs.
To: tomfmackee@hotmail.com
From: mackee_joe@yahoo.co.uk
Date: 28 June 2005
Subject: Nothing Comes of Nothing
My delusional, numbskulled nephew,
How long is this going to go on, mate? This obsession with the psycho Tara Finke — your words, not mine — whose name you haven’t stopped saying since you were sixteen. Conquer this passion. Do something about it! Yeats it, Tom. STD.
My advice? Get out the Norton I left you, and you better bloody still have it because if you lost it like you did my Slade Alive! LP, I will hunt you down, son. Page 1902. “Japan.” Not about the Japanese, but about moments of perfection. Commit it to memory and make good use of it. Because if I come home and you’re still pining over this little girl without having given her a chance, I will call you a chicken shit for the rest of your life. C. S. Tom, for short.
And can you please clear your crap out of Georgie’s attic? She reckons you use her place like it’s a hotel. Don’t expect me to bring my girl to a hovel.
With much love and affection,
Joe
P.S. Tell your father to get stuffed about the Roosters getting beaten by the Tigers. One text message a day is enough gloating.
In Tom’s family, there’s “before London” and “after London.” The 28th of June 2005 was “before.” It was easier to remember the “befores.” That morning, he had googled Yeats and worked out that STD was all about seizing the day and not some sexually transmitted disease. He knew that all along, he’d tell his uncle, Mr. Expert on dishing out advice about footy and women. He was always curious to know if Joe worked out the subject line before he began the e-mails or after. Joe was an English and history teacher, so everything had a theme. Most times it was the Shakespeare he was teaching. Tom could tell it was King Lear those days because the subject line the week before was “Poor Tom’s a-Cold,” just because he wrote to complain about the windchill factor at Brookvale Oval.