13

I know I should have planned ahead more effectively when my parents told me they were going away, but I didn’t. So it’s not until late Sunday night that I work out I haven’t made any childcare arrangements that would allow me to keep up the usual running plans over the next couple of days.

I call Ash just before I’m due at her place in the morning.

That’s okay, she says. I think I know the way by now. Of course, it might not take me as long, so I’ll probably have to go a bit further.

Thanks. Hey, how’s your car?

I have to call them tomorrow.

You’re starting work today, aren’t you?

Yeah, this afternoon.

I start at two, so I could give you a lift before then, if you’d like. If the time works out for you.

Um, yeah, that’d be great, if it’s no trouble.

No, it’s no trouble. I’ll be in the neighbourhood. I’ve got a few things to do, so it’d be easy to drop by.

A few things to do. Mid-morning I’m in the neighbourhood, at the uni libraries to read some Erikson. And I didn’t know half of it when I was talking on the weekend about how much this place had changed.

For a start, where I’m sitting is underground and surely used to be dirt below a path when I was studying here. Back in a time I’m now thinking I should be referring to as the old days. The old days when the microfiche machines were cutting-edge technology and everyone got a tutorial on how to use them.

I sit inconspicuously at a terminal around the middle of the fifth row. I stumble through the catalogue, trying out key words that take me off on tangents. Remembering the name of the book would help. In the distance I can see librarians sitting at a counter and I wonder if I should email them and identify myself as the person floundering back here, needing to be saved. I’m prepared to wave to direct them to me if it’d help, even though it’d be an uncommonly public admission of my ignorance.

Eventually I stumble upon Childhood and Society, and I remember that’s the name Ash mentioned. I click in the box that offers geographical directions, and I send the directions to print. Somewhere.

I listen for the noise of printing. No. Of course there’s no printer nearby.

Somewhere near a printer, someone is being told where the library keeps its copies of Childhood and Society, while I’m staring at the screen, memorising each step of the directions and the first bit of the call number. Good planning. I didn’t even bring a pen. Why? Would it have made the process too formal? As if, without a pen, I’d be doing something casual that I do all the time, dropping in here for a bit of a read?

But at least I get there. Through places that are so new they even smell it, up stairs I walked up in my first year here, through a doorway I’ve never seen and finally among shelves that smell just as they always have, and books.

And what am I doing here, anyway? What am I on about with this woman? If I was putting on any more of a performance I’d be obliged to do curtain calls. Yak’s milk and notches, and why the fuck do I need to know a thing about Erikson on the off-chance that he’ll come up again in conversation?

Conversation. We’re good together in conversation. I get to use my brain with her, actually use it, think. And of course I want more of that.

On Saturday, Ash said, Do you think all disease occurs at a biomolecular level? and I almost said something like, You should get out more, before I realised she wasn’t George and she genuinely wanted to discuss it. And then I wanted to as well, more than I wanted to tell her she should get out more. And we talked about the biochemistry at nerve synapses, the molecules that send signals, the immune system and clotting mechanisms, each as a series of molecular events. She said she’d wondered about the question for a while, since she’d been sick once, but she’d had no-one to ask before.

There was a time when I had conversations like that with George and other people. When more of our talk was actually about things than it has been lately. Maybe we’ve known each other too long, talked them all through too many times. Maybe it’s just where we are now.

It’s the reading Proust joke. At uni, George would have loved it if we’d all read the big stuff and talked about it. Debated it all night over cheap wine, sitting on someone’s lounge-room floor. Now, our book club that reads Proust but reads nothing is only a game we play with Wendy’s mind. And the wine is much improved, and we go to bed early. I haven’t had an argument about a French film, or a Czech novel or the cultural or biological or sociological significance of anything in years.

Erikson says – I know he says it because I’ve got it in front of me – that the adolescent mind is an ideological mind positioned between the morality of childhood and the ethics of adulthood. So maybe the ideological stage was the time when we had to talk everything through, when the big questions were worth asking, and now we’re just cruising ethically along. Or maybe that’s not what Erikson means at all, but Ash did suggest he was applicable to everything.

None of which helps explain the several seconds when I wanted to kiss her. When I clunked back a stage or two myself and nearly made the move. I’m almost expecting to break out in acne and bad clothes, just sitting here thinking about it.

Stage One is basic trust versus basic mistrust. Forms of comfort and people associated with them become familiar. And teething is perhaps the first crucial test of that trust, and where mistrust begins.

And didn’t I need to learn that right now? I thought it was just a few tough nights we were having. I didn’t realise we were creating mistrust during this lost sleep. I have the Bean with me now, sound asleep in her pouch. I can’t believe there’s any mistrust, even if I couldn’t fix the teething completely.

I think it’s Stage Six where things went wrong with Mel. Intimacy versus isolation, in which the young adult, having won identity, looks to fuse that identity with others. So maybe we were both looking for fusion and picked the nearest feasible identity. We should have paid more attention to Erikson then. There are dangers in Stage Six, and he doesn’t hold back from spelling it out. First, when intimate, competitive and combative relationships exist between the same people. And that certainly sounds like us, though we wouldn’t have admitted it. And also the ‘isolation à deux’, where – if I’m reading it properly – two people share the avoidance of contacts that would lead to a commitment to intimacy, and thereby protect themselves from addressing the big Stage Seven issue, generativity. Establishing and guiding the next generation.

Of course, we ended up addressing it by accident. Or putting ourselves in a position where we were about to address it, at least. And maybe Mel’s houseful-of-kids scenario was a desperate hope that we could stake some claim to Stage Seven, while leaving Six in a shambles behind us. But, shit, we tried so hard, and does Erikson give us any credit for that? We must have believed in something, believed at least some days that the intimate would outlast the competitive and the combative. But maybe it’s not so easily negotiated, and trying hard doesn’t always fix it. Maybe I’m too Stage Six for any plunge into Stage Seven to have worked, even though I was genuinely prepared to try to force myself there.

I think Ash is Six as well. How long can you be Stage Six?

Or maybe I’m not. I haven’t felt any biological need to establish the next generation, so technically I’m not Seven, but there’s something about having the Bean around that’s different, and that I’m growing accustomed to, and that I’d fight a lot to keep.

Perhaps I shouldn’t get too hung up on the numbers. Perhaps this is all a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. And it scares me, looking at the early stages, to see how much of an issue parenting is when it comes to getting through them intact. I wonder how Mel’s death will mess Lily up developmentally. I wonder how I’m going to tell her, how I’m going to measure it out in the right doses. Erikson doesn’t let you know that, and neither does the baby book. There isn’t a chapter called ‘How to explain that the other parent has always been dead’.

Lily doesn’t even have a concept of life yet. That’s years away. And maybe you get to understand life and death together, and before then you just assume. Food will come, nappies will be changed, you will be kept from harm. Then you’re out in the world, learning things one at a time. The noises blocks make when you whack them together, how rain feels on your face, words, simple maths, impermanence. How old are you when you realise for the first time that some of your assumptions have let you down, and there might be harm out there?

Can I guess the phases Lily will go through? Can I guess how she’ll feel about Mel’s death, even some of the time? The bits she’ll tell me, and the bits she won’t? The times when she’ll blame herself? Can I pre-empt any of it at all? What’s it like to win the Electra war on day one? Or am I getting that wrong too, just fooling around with Freud and Jung and Erikson, and plenty more names I don’t know?

How do I even feel? I have to keep my own head straight to be much good to her.

Wake up, I whisper down into her ear on the way out of the library. Wake up. Let’s play now.

We’ll make it up as we go along, I decide. That’s what we’ll do most of the time.

We sit under the shade of a poinciana tree, and Lily flaps a seed pod around. The dry seeds rattle inside it, and that’s enough to give it toy status. She’s happy.

I call Wendy on the mobile to follow up a few things while she’s got some scheduled admin time, in case we don’t get the chance to talk between patients later.

I should check your emails, she says, about someone who hasn’t called back. They might have tried that way.

Yeah, good idea.

Hang on and I’ll go to your room. She puts me on hold – thirty seconds of something that might be Tchaikovsky (another issue of pointless partnership dissent) – and then she picks up my phone. Okay. What’s your password?

Oh, yeah, I’d forgotten about that.

Too many letters.

Okay, um, it’s B, I, G, B, O, Y.

And you’re thinking that by spelling it I won’t know that your password is bigboy?

Well, they have to be six letters long. Or six alphanumeric characters, anyway. And I needed to have a word I’d remember.

And ‘dahlia’ or something would have been beyond you.

Definitely. I’d never remember dahlia.

Bigboy. Short for big boy who’ll never grow up, I suppose. You all probably have passwords to do with your penises, don’t you? And you think it’s so subversive. Okay. First there’s something about a Window Weasel.

Yeah, skip that.

Should I? It’s not happy with you.

Just hit LATER.

Okay, now on to your emails. I’m dialing in, typing in bigboy, and here they come. You’ve got a few, but I don’t see anything like what we were looking for. You’ve got a couple of joke forwards from George. I got them too. Nothing particularly new. Another New Zealander’s fucked a sheep or something, but been caught out by a holidaying Australian ventriloquist.

Some of these things don’t really deconstruct well, do they?

No. And they’re not always brilliantly funny, either, but he keeps on sending them. You’ve got a couple of notifications of web-site updates. Looks dull. One’s a laser one, the other’s about airfares to New York. When are you going to New York?

I’m not. That was ages ago. There’s this complicated unsubscribe process you have to go through to get them to stop.

Okay. There’s one from your father with the title ‘made good time heading south’. I might leave that one for you. And there’s one from Katie. No title. Let’s have a look. She double-clicks. And it says, ‘Jon, I know the timing’s not right, but I can’t keep it to myself any longer. I’m developing strong feelings for you and there’s no denying it’ . . . Etcetera, etcetera . . . ‘Please, please tell no-one. Particularly Wendy’ . . . So, what do you want me to do with that one?

Probably better leave that for me to take a good look at later, as well.

Sure. Now, one from Southside Surgical about a discount on cotton buds this month. Do you think you’re up to that?

Depends how they’re feeling about me, I suppose. Do you think there’s any chance we could keep the Katie one to ourselves? It’s not the same as weeing on the cat, is it?

No, it’s not. It’d be the kind of thing I’d carry to my grave, except . . . There’s a noise, somewhere in the background. A human noise, being muffled.

Um, are you alone at the moment?

No. George is standing right here. Heard the whole thing. That’s the laughing sound.

Doesn’t he have lectures this morning?

Apparently not. There’s a pause. What? Wendy laughs. He says he thought you’d done enough to put her off by pissing on her cat. And I’d have to say I thought the same. Perhaps you really did need to steal from her as well.

I have to fix things with Katie. I know I have to fix things with Katie, and soon. I pick Lily up and we go to the car.

Why does it get complicated? I say to her, as she pokes the seed pod into my chin. Wasn’t I minding my own business enough?

I drive to Ash’s place. There’s music on when I get there, I can hear it from the path.

Hi, she says from inside, when I get to the top of the steps. What’s the time?

I’m early. Sorry. I was nearby, so . . .

Early’s fine. You had me thinking I’d be late for my first shift for a second. It’d be pretty sad to get sacked from a bagel joint on your first day.

Sorry. There’s plenty of time. I thought we could have lunch before you start work, maybe.

Yeah, good. I just have to change into my . . . um, overalls, first.

Overalls? That’ll be a nice look. Heavy work, bagels.

At least there’s no tie, she says, when she’s in her bedroom with the door shut. Couldn’t stand to have one of those jobs.

The CD player randomises, picks another track.

I should work out how to get to the airfare site and unsubscribe, rather than just trashing the emails unopened out of habit. New York was my plan. Travel was not uncommonly one of my fixing-things strategies. Mel would happily have stayed at home if I hadn’t pushed her into it most years, but she liked it once we were on the plane. She was big on galleries. They gave us a chance to argue about art, instead of life. And there was something – temporarily – very okay about arguing about art. Never have I seen one person get so shitty about another person’s view of Jackson Pollock, but for once I could laugh at her shittiness and she’d laugh back.

Or maybe a tie wouldn’t have been such a bad thing, Ash says as she comes out of her room in overalls that have the bagginess and colour of a sack. I’m sure this wasn’t the pair I tried on. What do you think?

Well, they’re very gender-neutral.

That’s good to know. At least they’re not expecting me to use sex to sell bagels. They’re practically species-neutral. She picks up her keys from the kitchen bench and says, Let’s go. Let’s listen to that Lemonheads album one more time, shall we?

You’ve got a problem with the Lemonheads album?

As soon as the engine’s running, she cues up track two – ‘Into Your Arms’ – and she sings along quite loudly and not very well.

I do this, don’t I? I ask her. I sing when you’re in the car.

Sometimes. Sometimes you just hum.

I don’t hum.

You hum.

Humming is such a grandpa thing to do. Don’t tell me I hum. Okay, I have a book, a baby book, that recommends singing. And humming. Some humming, I think it says, as well as the singing. Or there’s no way the child gets to Erikson Two intact.

Poor Bean. Wouldn’t want her to be sorting out that basic trust stuff forever.

Exactly. So now you understand. On occasions, there must be humming. Particularly since we’re having bouts of teething at the moment and mistrust has therefore, for the first time, reared its ugly head.

We pull up at traffic lights. I look around to the back seat and Lily’s asleep in the capsule.

I haven’t told you everything, I find myself saying, as I turn back to the front.

It was a thought in my head, but now it’s coming out. I was thinking of how much I haven’t said, wondering again about how to say it, and now I am saying it. Starting to say some of it, anyway.

I haven’t told you about Lily’s mother.

That’s okay. I figured she had one.

Yeah. Here’s what happened. It’s a complicated situation, and I won’t try to get into the whole thing right now, but. . .

The lights change. We drive off.

This is her car, actually. MLB, the number plates, they were her number plates. Melissa Brand.

Yeah . . .

Okay. It’s complicated. I’m giving the car back when the lease runs out.

To Lily’s mother?

No, to the company, the leasing company. There’s an amazing amount of stuff you have to sort out, so it’s easiest if I just keep it till the lease is up. It’s her phone that I’ve got too. She was a dermatologist. She was one of the other partners in the practice. We met at uni. But she died when Lily was born.

It falls into a silence, that last sentence. It doesn’t follow the rest in the way I thought it might. It was an explanation that I was attempting, me hurling myself at the shortest possible way of telling Ash everything, setting things straight. I just want them straight. So I needed her to know. The problem started with the introduction of the past tense. She was a dermatologist. I was committed at that point, and I had to get it over with. But that’s not the problem. There was no other way.

And now we’ve driven two blocks since, and we’re both staring straight ahead.

Oh, she says, then takes a breath in. I didn’t think that was what you were going to say.

Yeah. It was unexpected.

I’m feeling sick now, and my mouth is dry. In the back, Lily poos loudly.

I just changed her at uni, I say, thinking aloud again. But I knew there’d be more. Sometimes you can tell.

Ash rubs her eyes and sniffs. I don’t know what to say. That’s so awful.

Um, yeah. But it happens, you know? There are a few days there that’ll probably never make sense to me, but I’m on top of things now, I think. It’s different, of course.

Yeah.

I’m okay now, really. I’m doing okay.

Yeah. Oh god, I thought you just broke up, or something. Sorry.

I didn’t tell you. It’s not an easy thing to tell, you know? So you don’t tell people, in case they can’t get past it. It’s like, the last few weeks, running together and things, that’s been good. Because you didn’t know. Because you didn’t spend the whole time being careful, or treating me like I was abnormal. So, if it’s okay, please don’t change that now.

All right.

But the immediate issue is that poo smell, which will kill us if we don’t put all the windows down.

It will. She smiles. How do they make those smells? What are you feeding her?

The blandest diet in the world. And somehow it gets incredibly putragenic in there. Not all the time, though. That’s what I don’t get. Sometimes it’s okay, sometimes it’s disgusting.

The windows whir and slide down and the air comes in, hot and smelling of cars and cut grass as we go past a school sports ground.

I won’t he careful, Ash tells me. I won’t change things.

We get to Indooroopilly and find a space in the car park. I carry the Bean, since no-one else should have to when she’s in this state, and Ash walks on the other side of me carrying the baby bag.

And no debate about disposables versus cloth nappies, I say, when we’re in the change room. I’ve got to do this four thousand times.

Plus, whatever she’s done in that nappy really needs to be disposed of, and I’m talking toxic waste facility, a long way out of town.

Ash stands well back, I accomplish most of the job with one long, held breath.

Now, lunch?

I’ll get there. Give me a few minutes, but I’ll get there.

The car still smells badly of poo when I get back to it after we’ve eaten, so I put the windows down again for the drive to Toowong. Ash is now with her overalled co-workers, though looking more baggy than most of them.

I’ll see you, she said, when I left her at Bagelos in the food court. My four-to-six Tuesday tutes haven’t started yet, so call me if you want to do something tomorrow.

Sylvia takes the Bean from me as I walk into work.

Hello, you lovely thing, she says. Let’s get you away from that daddy of yours. Bad, late daddy. You two have been out playing, haven’t you?

We have. And she’s got practically no concept of time. You get her started on one of her favourite topics and there’s no stopping her. There we were playing with a seed pod and suddenly she said, ‘Do you think all disease occurs at a biomolecular level?’ and we were off. First, of course, I argued that it was a bit of a reductionist approach, but I have to say she was talking me round towards the end.

It’s a shame she can’t do laser surgery, too. There’s a bit of that here this afternoon for anyone who wants it.

I work hard, but I’m behind for the rest of the day.

Between patients three and four I take a look at this morning’s emails. Wendy’s left them sitting on my screen, and for three patients I’ve been trying not to be distracted by the one sent by ktnflag. Waiting there, benignly untitled.

It’s worse when I read it. Text buffers nothing, softens no edges, gives it right to you. And the part that Wendy quickly etceterad away on the phone this morning is no better than the I’m developing strong feelings for you and there’s no denying it part that precedes it.

At least I’ve been straight with Ash now. And I think I’ve known her long enough, or at least seen her often enough, that that’ll be okay. We’ve talked about too many other things, surely, to get stuck on this one. I think that’s been my worry, why Mel has been on my mind lately. I haven’t been meeting new people, and I haven’t told this enough yet that I know how to tell it. Eventually, enough time will have passed that it won’t hit people the same way – won’t whack into them like an airbag, the way it did with Ash – but we’re not there yet. But she had to know some normal things first, before I tossed in the big abnormal one.