The Rosie Result

by Graeme Simsion

  ‘Are you sure you can’t do this one?’ said Blanche.

  ‘Why are you so interested?’

  ‘I might end up blind, so I want to see as many things as I can first.’

  Blanche’s argument was compelling, but before we commenced, I needed to deal with Hudson’s response. Most people found dissection unpleasant, yet it was important to be able to perform unpleasant tasks. Changing nappies, cleaning up vomit and hugging relatives were life skills.

  For me (and, it appeared, Hudson) contact with animals, alive or dead, was in the unpleasant-task category, but I had overcome the problem to the extent necessary to function professionally and socially. Hudson needed to learn to do the same.

  ‘How did the swimming teacher persuade you to overcome your dislike of submersion?’ I asked him.

  ‘Easy. First, I had to splash my face with water, then put just my nose in, then my face, then…’

  I let him finish the explanation, but I had seen the pattern of gradual increase in exposure—under personal control. We had not tried the technique with him, primarily because my father had employed it with me without success. Possibly Hudson had been demonstrating nothing more than natural resistance rather than an inherited phobia. Or the dynamics between Hudson and the swimming teacher may have been different from those between me and my father.

  It took me only a few minutes to position my laptop computer as a camera in the kitchen. Hudson configured his own computer as a monitor in his bedroom. I donned a pair of the surgical gloves I used for house cleaning and commenced the dissection using a razor blade, a freshly sharpened kitchen knife and several bowls.

  It was many years since I had dissected a bird, but animals share common organs, and I took the opportunity to explain similarities and differences with human anatomy. Hudson watched remotely for a few minutes, then joined us, but did not come close and refused to conduct any of the dissection himself. In contrast, Blanche seemed extremely interested.

  ‘Pigeons are really intelligent, right?’ she said as I scooped out the brain. ‘Like, one of the smartest birds.’

  ‘It depends how you define intelligence. Pigeons are good at learning when they’re motivated by rewards, but seagulls have worked out for themselves that if they follow the furrows in a field, they’ll find insects. Both survive in the urban environment, but neither species has learned to recognise windows.’

  When we had finished, and I had demonstrated the cleanup and disinfection protocol, I commented on Blanche’s enthusiasm.

  ‘Are there blind scientists?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course. Some tasks require sight, but almost anything physical can be delegated. Science may also be able to prevent blindness in the first place.’

  After Blanche had left, Hudson was annoyed. ‘You told her that science might be able to stop blindness. She knows that, but her parents won’t take her to a doctor. There’s a law but the police won’t do anything unless she’s basically dying.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Internet, obviously. And a teacher at her old school tried. Which is partly why she got moved. There’s only one way. You have to persuade her mum. She’s your friend.’

  I was doing my best.

  There were three items on the Hudson-life-skills list that were relatively straightforward but of disproportionately high importance: greetings, ball catching and sex education.

  I had once purchased a book by Eric Berne: What Do You Say After You Say Hello? The title was misleading, but if it had been accurate, the material would have been too advanced for me. I could not even get the initial greeting correct, because people do not generally commence a conversation by saying ‘Hello’. It sounds odd and I was conscious of sounding odd no matter what formulation I used.

  I had settled on the deliberately quirky formulation of ‘Greetings!’ which was consistent with being the class clown and a person whose nickname was that of a Star Trek character. Looking back, surely ‘Hi, John’ (or, obviously, the name of the person being addressed) would have sufficed both as greeting and response. However, what worked in a country school forty years ago might not work today. I called Claudia on her home phone.

  ‘Claudia Barrow.’

  ‘Greetings.’

  She laughed. ‘No need to ask who’s calling.’

  ‘Coincidentally, that’s what I need to discuss. Can I speak to Eugenie?’

  Claudia and Gene’s daughter was studying engineering. Claudia handed her the phone while I was in the middle of pointing out the advantages of having two parents living in the house.

  ‘Hey, Don. I think last time I spoke to you I was about nine. You were having a baby…Remember you helped me through a really bad time?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘At school. They used to call me Calculon. And you said something that helped.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Can’t remember. Something about other kids being jealous of smart people. I think it was more that it was you, rather than my parents. They were probably saying the same thing, but who listens to their parents? Anyway, I get to thank you at last. So, thank you.’

  ‘Excellent. But the baby you referred to is now eleven and named Hudson and I need to know the correct form of greeting for him to use.’

  I explained the problem and we settled on ‘Hey, Eugenie’ (substituting, obviously, the name of the person being addressed) with an optional raising of one hand as if commencing a ‘high five’ but without that level of energy and maybe better not to do the action at all if he’s not completely relaxed about it. He should be careful not to display too much enthusiasm, even if he is extremely happy to see the person. It was okay to use the greeting with teachers, probably with an attenuated hand movement and not too loudly.

  She asked: ‘When do I get to meet Hudson? He sounds cool.’

  ‘His problem is the exact opposite. Lack of coolness.’

  ‘Lack of coolness can be pretty cool.’

  19

  Hudson was now riding independently and Rosie insisted that I phone my father to thank him for his help.

  ‘He’ll appreciate it.’

  ‘He’ll just grunt and say something critical.’

  ‘Let’s see.’

  I called him with the phone in speaker mode so Rosie could hear, and thanked him for his help.

  He grunted. ‘Someone had to tell him how to do it. Don’t know who’s going to do that when I’m gone.’

  ‘There you go,’ said Rosie. ‘I told you he’d appreciate it.’

  Ball catching was the second of the three items on my high-impact, modest-effort list. When I was eight, my parents had forced me to join the local cub-scout pack. The only aspect that appealed was the accumulation of badges, but before I could earn any, I needed my ‘bronze boomerang’, which required that I complete a prescribed set of tasks, including catching a ball from a set distance with a specified success rate.

  After months of preparation, I took the test, but failed by one catch. The leader insisted on a waiting period of four weeks before I could retry, and at that point I persuaded my parents to let me replace the pack meetings with aikido lessons. However, I continued the ball-catching practice and began to enjoy the achievement in its own right.

  ‘Throw me the keys,’ I could say to Rosie, and snatch them from the air with one hand as though I had always been able to do it, like the rest of the human race. I could give Hudson that same satisfaction.

  I attempted to introduce the subject in a casual, roundabout way.

  ‘Feel like a game of catch?’ I asked.

  ‘You think I can’t catch a ball?’ said Hudson. ‘You want to show me how, right?’

  I shouldn’t have bothered with the oblique approach. Hudson and I were both comfortable communicating directly.

  ‘It’s an essential life competency,’ I said.

  ‘What’s going to happen if I never learn?’

  ‘It’s a skill common to numerous sports. Hence you would be unable
to play those sports.’

  ‘Good. If they won’t let me read a book, I can score or something. Or select teams. Which I’m good at.’

  ‘Sport was invented so we could practise skills that might be needed in critical situations. Actually, throwing is more important than catching. Humans are amazingly good at throwing—better than any other animal. How might that be useful?’

  ‘Hunting. Killing animals with rocks. I don’t need—’

  ‘Correct. Animals are so scared of humans’ ability to throw that if you are threatened by a dog, then just pretending to pick up a rock is likely to discourage it. Even in the absence of a rock.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘You’re suggesting I’m making a joke?’

  ‘No, Dad.’ Hudson laughed. Was there a legitimate underlying joke in our conversation or was he laughing inappropriately?

  ‘I’ll do it if we can use a tennis ball.’

  ‘Of course. What would be the alternative?’

  ‘Mr Warren makes us use a cricket ball. Which hurts. If you throw it hard. Which he does.’

  We didn’t own an example of either ball type.

  ‘I think there’s one on the roof,’ said Hudson. ‘The kids next door came looking for it and Mum wouldn’t let them go up.’

  I got the medium extension ladder and the roof-hook kit from the shed and removed the Tillman Hardware packaging. ‘Do you know how to use a ladder safely?’ I asked.

  Hudson did not. By the time we had completed the ladder-safety briefing and the roof-safety briefing, fitted the hook, climbed onto the roof, cleared the gutter, reinstated a loose tile and located the ball, we had only three minutes left of scheduled Hudson Project time.

  ‘Looks like we’ll have to do it some other day,’ said Hudson.

  ‘We have time for a quick assessment. To establish the baseline competency.’

  Rabbit had been correct. Hudson’s skill level was not only low, but obviously so, a major problem for the school playground. He stood with his hands wide apart and his mouth open. I recognised the stance and the response it had provoked in our Shepparton backyard when I was a child.

  ‘You’re not going to catch the ball in your mouth,’ I said, before remembering what had followed. Hudson closed his mouth and stood waiting for further instructions. Nothing in his expression indicated humiliation, but no interpretation was necessary. Memory sufficed.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Whether your mouth is open or not is irrelevant to the catching process. I used to do the same thing, which is why I noticed and made a joke.’

  ‘A dad joke.’

  ‘A grandad joke.’

  I walked up to Hudson and demonstrated the hands-close-together position, then threw the ball into his hands from approximately thirty centimetres. He caught it.

  ‘Enough for one day. One-hundred-per-cent success rate. Now we increase the distance. Gradually.’

  ‘Easy. We could use a cricket ball if you wanted.’

  I gave considerable thought to the approach to sex education. I knew from my schooldays—and later—that sexual ignorance was a serious social disadvantage.

  As a teenager, I had been given the relevant facts, primarily by other children and often in the context of jokes, but had somehow failed to absorb them, and was left confused and disgusted.

  In retrospect, the problem was information overload: the mechanics of sex were presented in conjunction with nudity of older persons of both sexes, foetal development, birth and some of the most controversial moral issues in the adult world, all in language more carefully regulated than for any other topic.

  If I had been taught my times tables while being forced to look at images of naked adults, with interruptions about the methods of preventing conception and the life-shattering results of failing to do so by someone who was manifestly uncomfortable with the task, it is unlikely that I would have learned to multiply.

  My most useful sex education had occurred in the high-school playground when two dogs had engaged in mating until a teacher had intervened with a bucket of water. Somehow, many of us had sat through an entire educational film without ‘getting it’ but the dog demonstration addressed the basic mechanical questions, although obviously not the issues of informed consent, gender identity and sexual orientation which I imagined would now be further cluttering the biology lesson. Hudson would not understand these subtleties if he did not know what they were referring to—like learning traffic safety in a village without vehicles or roads.

  With modern technology, I was able to improve on the dog incident. Using videos from the internet, I assembled a collage of animal mating, from redback spiders to Tasmanian devils. I knew better than to do anything in the realm of sex without consulting Rosie, and replayed it to her that evening. Hudson’s revised schedule, which entailed going to bed earlier to compensate for waking at 5.20 a.m., was giving us more time for discussion.

  Rosie agreed that the video was ‘as good a starting point as any’. I loaded it onto a memory stick and gave it to Hudson on our way to school.

  ‘Animal mating: it’s interesting and also funny,’ I said.

  ‘You want me to watch it?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘It’s supposed to teach me something. What?’

  ‘Sex education. But without the embarrassment of naked adult humans.’

  He put the stick in his pocket without further discussion.

  The three high-impact, modest-effort initiatives produced mixed results. Hudson had not reached a level of expertise in ball-catching that would allow him to contribute to a sporting contest. However, he had learned how to not catch a ball in the style of proficient catchers, who sometimes made errors. Failure no longer appeared inevitable.

  I had not conveyed the greeting protocol to Hudson. It was important knowledge, but, after some reflection, I concluded that if my parents had offered it to me I would have considered their behaviour odd.

  The sex-education video exercise confirmed that schools’ sensitivity to sexual topics had not declined since my childhood.

  ‘Since it doesn’t include humans, it isn’t pornography,’ I told the principal and Rabbit after being summoned to explain. Rosie had, over my protests, taken time off work to accompany me. (‘I’m sure you can handle it, but when it’s something official about Hudson, I just like to be there.’)

  ‘Come on—’ began Rabbit.

  The principal interrupted: ‘You’re quite right. And you’ve found a way of starting what can be a difficult conversation for many parents. But we’d rather Hudson hadn’t brought it to school.’

  ‘Were other children upset by it?’

  ‘I don’t think upset is the right word,’ said Rabbit. ‘It’s the parents. Nothing so far, but we’ve got some strange types. Diverse, as we say.’

  Blanche’s father and Blue House Fan.

  ‘To be honest,’ said the principal, ‘we’re not too concerned, but we need to say something, in case there’s a complaint. I’m sure they can find it on the internet, or on TV for that matter. The polar bear breaking his…’

  ‘Penis bone.’

  ‘Thank you…might give a few of the high-school boys something to think about. But we do want to come back to what we’ve discussed before. Every time Hudson does something that’s a little odd—’

  ‘It reinforces your idea that he’s autistic,’ said Rosie.

  ‘Has autism,’ said the principal.

  Rosie breathed in audibly, and I guessed she was about to argue the position of Liz the Activist, which was now our position, but which would inevitably provoke an off-topic argument. I deftly returned the conversation to the subject.

  ‘The topic of this meeting was the sex video and we should confirm that we have resolved that before addressing other issues,’ I said.

  Rabbit laughed. ‘Sorry, no offence, but it’s uncanny. You and Hudson…’

  Rosie completed the sentence for him: ‘are two different people and we’re here to talk abou
t only one of them, right? I remember last time we had some issues about sport. And they contributed to the idea that he might be autistic. Has that changed?’

  ‘Well, we were certainly surprised by his performance at the swimming carnival,’ said Rabbit. ‘Especially since he has a letter excusing him from swimming, which you might like to review. But swimming’s an individual sport. He’s not a team player. I’d guess he finds it hard to put himself in someone else’s place.’

  ‘You mean he lacks empathy,’ said Rosie. ‘I wonder what made you think of that?’

  ‘Well, that’s the word, and I think we all know that it goes with the territory.’

  ‘So,’ said the principal, ‘have we thought any further about an assessment?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rosie, ‘and for the moment the answer is no. Is that all right with the school?’

  ‘Well, we can only advise,’ said the principal. ‘Unless it escalates. I do have to say that if he becomes violent, and we hope that never happens, but without a diagnosis…If that should happen, everything changes.’

  ‘I’m sure that would apply to any child,’ said Rosie.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And I’m sure you’d be similarly concerned about verbal abuse.’

  ‘Well, yes, as I said—’

  ‘I mention it because it seems he’s acquired a rather unpleasant nickname. Nasty. And whatever concerns you have about him, I don’t think he’s done anything to deserve that.’

  ‘No,’ said the principal. ‘Not at all. I’ll see what I can find out. And we’re sorry these meetings are becoming a bit more regular than we’d all like.’

  ‘It’s a thing I’ve learned,’ said Rabbit, ‘and don’t take this the wrong way. But every year, in the first class, I can spot three or four kids that I know are going to take the lion’s share of my time. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing.’

  ‘The Pareto principle,’ I said. ‘The so-called eighty–twenty rule, which will occur with any normally distributed attribute, hence to be expected. I have a similar experience teaching at university. From the first lecture, I identify the small cohort who will ask for extreme guidance on assignments and challenge assessments.’