by Nicole Trope
‘Finally I heard the click of the straps and then Anna stood up. She didn’t look at anyone. She pushed the pram towards the double glass doors that led outside and then tried to use the pram to push them open. That obviously wasn’t going to work but Maya was screaming so much that I don’t think Anna could think straight. I don’t think anyone could think straight with noise like that. Lucille called in the next mother, and I watched Anna bumping against the glass doors and got up and went over to help her. “Watch her,” I said to the other mothers and pointed to Lex.
‘Once Anna was outside, she turned around to, I guess, say thanks for the help or something but then she just burst into tears and, voilà, a friendship was born.
‘I felt so awful for her. It was like looking at a drowning person and knowing they were about to go under for the last time. “Wait for me, we’ll talk when I’m done. Go for coffee or something,” I said.
‘She started to shake her head but then she started nodding. “I’ll wait,” she said. “I’ll walk her around and try to get her to watch the video again. I’ll get her to calm down. I’ll wait.”
‘I was the last one to go in to see the nurse, so Anna had to wait for me for at least half an hour, and when I came out, I was almost sure that she would have given up and gone home, but she was still there, walking back and forth in front of the clinic. Maya was quiet by then, watching her video like she’d never started screaming in the first place.’
‘Mrs Harman—Caro —I’m just trying to work out why you’re telling us all this,’ says Detective Sappington and, to Caro, she sounds bored.
Sucked in, Caro wants to say, you have to listen. ‘I’m telling you,’ she says in the voice she used to explain things to Lex when she was a toddler, ‘because, as I’ve already explained, you need to hear the whole story. You need to know that I was there for Anna from the time Maya was twelve months old and, believe me, it’s difficult to be friends with someone who has a child like Maya. It’s not as if we could just hang out in a coffee shop or a park, because she never knew when Maya was going to go off. Anna had this sleep machine at home that made a loud static noise Maya loved and that would instantly calm her down but it wasn’t like she could take that out with her; and she had the DVD player but there was always a chance the battery would go flat, or that Maya would drop it and break it. She was only a baby. I think they must have gone through at least twelve of those things before she was two.
‘So, when I tell you that I love Anna and that, after a while, I even loved Maya, you need to know that it’s the truth, and you also need to know there’s no way I would ever have done anything to hurt Anna, never ever.’
‘And yet, she’s blaming you for Maya’s death,’ says Detective Ng quietly.
Caro feels the weight of the words on her shoulders. She thinks about the bottle of vodka in her freezer. She swallows. ‘I can’t,’ she thinks but knows she has no choice. Oblivion is not an option right now.
‘I know, I know she’s blaming me. Everyone is blaming me but I’m not the one who . . . who killed Maya. I was driving the car, yes, but I’m not the one who killed her. I know that what I’m saying is strange, that you can’t understand it, but let me explain, let me keep explaining, and then it’ll be your job to figure out who’s telling the truth—me or Anna.’
‘Yes,’ says Detective Sappington. ‘That’s exactly what my job is.’
Chapter Seven
‘Is Caro here?’ Anna asks Walt.
‘I don’t know,’ he says, but then he looks at Cynthia and Anna knows that she is.
‘I bet she was late,’ she says. ‘She always runs late. Whenever we met up anywhere, I’d tell her to get there fifteen minutes earlier than I was going to be there, and then she’d phone me frantically when she thought she was already fifteen minutes late and I’d say, “Don’t worry, I’m just arriving.”’
Anna pushes her hand against her chest, where her heart is. ‘I miss her so much,’ she says, and she knows that Walt and Cynthia will assume she’s talking about Maya, but she’s not.
‘Anna, would you like something to eat?’ asks Walt.
‘I . . . don’t know. I’m not really hungry. How long have I been here?’
‘Just a couple of hours but we can send out for some sandwiches, maybe take a break. You can come back tomorrow, if you like.’
‘No . . . I don’t want to wake up again with this hanging over my head. I want to finish this. I’d like to have the time to . . . to . . . I don’t know, grieve, I guess. I just want some peace and quiet. I don’t want to have to talk to anyone anymore. I don’t want to have to explain how I’m feeling or what happened. I just want to be left alone.
‘I never thought I would survive her funeral. I couldn’t stand having to speak to everyone, having to say, “Thank you for coming,” to every single person. You’re not supposed to bury your child. Everyone says that, and when you do, it feels . . . it feels like one of those movies where the characters realise they’re about to die because a tsunami is on the way, and there’s nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. It feels like it is literally the end of the world. You’re not supposed to survive the end of the world, Detective. I’m not supposed to be sitting here.’
‘Anna, are you thinking about hurting yourself?’ Cynthia asks quietly, as though she is making her way along a ledge towards her.
‘Hurting myself? You mean, killing myself, don’t you? Every day. I think about it every day.’
‘Are you talking to anyone, to anyone who can help you?’ she asks.
‘As I just told you, I haven’t stopped talking. I find myself comforting others without meaning to. My mother, who never really had much to do with Maya, has been over every day, and every day she sits on my couch and cries all day long. I think she enjoys it. And she’s joined by my mother-in-law and my sisters-in-law. I make tea for everyone. Black tea for my mother, and green tea for my mother-in-law, and chai tea for my sisters-in-law. Lots and lots of tea. And, of course, there’s cake and biscuits as well. My neighbour, Merle, dropped off a chocolate fudge cake. It was really good. I ate it at two o’clock one morning. I ate the whole cake.’ Anna stops talking because she realises she is rambling; talking about nothing so she can think about nothing.
She is about to apologise again but doesn’t. She is so sick of apologising. ‘It’s easier to be in the kitchen because when they see me, they crumble,’ she says. ‘I don’t know what to say. I want to scream at them all to leave me alone but I think Keith prefers to have people around. It stops him from confronting me with accusations and blame.’
‘Why do you think he blames you?’ asks Walt. He had begun doodling again but now his hand stills. Anna can feel a change in the atmosphere. She has Walt’s full attention now.
‘Well, I was with her, wasn’t I? I opened the front door to go out and get the post, and I left it open. I knew she was upset. I knew she liked to run when she was upset but I still left it open.’
‘Why did you leave it open? I’m sorry, that’s a hard question to answer, but I have to ask it,’ says Walt.
‘Why?’ says Anna and she feels hot tears on her cheeks again. ‘Here I go again. Just give me a few moments.
‘I don’t know why. I just don’t know. I went to get the post. I didn’t think. I was only going to get the post.’
‘But it was Saturday, Anna,’ says Walt quietly. ‘The post doesn’t come on Saturday.’
‘I know that, Detective. I know that, Walt,’ says Anna, emphasising the T at the end of his name. ‘I hadn’t managed to get out to the post box for a couple of days, and those circulars come all the time, you know. I went out to get whatever was in there. How hard can it be to walk down the front path of your house to the stupid chicken-shaped post box and get your mail?
‘There have been moments over the last few years when I’ve forgotten exactly who Maya is and simply treated her like any other seven-year-old, or ten-year-old, or eleven-year-old child. I forget to be vigilant, to be af
raid, and to watch.
‘One day, when she was about five, I was standing in the kitchen and she was watching her space video and I was making lunch for her, and I looked over and she turned to look at me and gave me this little smile; so little, it almost wasn’t a smile, but to me, it was like a small gift, and I wanted to touch her so much, I went over and put my arms around her. It was stupid of me but, for a moment, I forgot that she hated to be touched like that. She went ballistic. She started screaming and throwing things, and eventually she picked up a small plastic chair and threw it at the television, cracking the screen. It was only a hug, such a small thing, but it was the wrong thing to do and I forgot.
‘That’s what happened. I forgot. I wanted to clear out the mail box. I didn’t know that Caro would be coming around the corner, on her way to visit me. She liked to do that. She’s always liked to do that. The first time she just popped in, I was so embarrassed. I’d only known her for a few months, and I’d only invited her over when I was able to make sure that the house was tidy and that I looked like a normal mother with a normal child. She turned up one evening, and the whole house was in complete chaos because Maya had a cold, and even with her sleep machine and her DVD player, she still wouldn’t settle. The doorbell rang, and I thought it was Keith and that he’d forgotten his key. I think it must have been close to the time he came home. “Thank God,” I said out loud because I really needed some time out. I hadn’t even made it out of my pyjamas. That’s okay when you have a newborn but not when your child is nearly sixteen months old. I opened the door, and Caro was standing on the doorstep holding a cake box. I was holding Maya, who was screaming, and I had no idea what to say to her.
‘“Bad day?” she said.
‘“The very worst,” I said.
‘“Geoff offered to take care of dinner and bath time tonight so I can have a break. I found a new bakery last week and they’re famous for their mud cakes.”
‘“The house . . .” I said.
‘“Fuck that, just give her to me, and have a quick shower or something. I don’t care about the mess.”
‘“She’ll just scream,” I said, and Caro laughed. “I think I can handle Miss Maya. Screaming doesn’t frighten me.”
‘I knew that day we would be friends forever; I mean, I thought I knew it. She held Maya, and I heard Maya screaming but I didn’t care. I can still remember how good that shower felt. I stood right under the hot water and blocked everything out. After I got out of the shower, Keith came home and he offered to drive Maya around. He had a CD of the static noise that she liked, and between that and the movement of the car, he hoped he could get her to sleep. Caro and I ate two slices of cake each. I was so happy to simply be able to sit still. By the time Keith returned with Maya, who was sleeping, I felt like I could go on again, like I could handle the night to come and all the days after that. I felt like she had saved me. Again. I felt like she had saved me again.’
‘She sounds like a great friend,’ says Cynthia.
‘She is,’ says Anna. ‘I mean, she was. I didn’t know she’d be coming around the corner. I didn’t know she would have been drinking. I didn’t know that leaving the front door open would lead me here. How could I have known? How could I possibly have known?’
‘Mrs Harman’s test results haven’t come back yet. We don’t know that she’d had too much to drink. She may very well have been below the legal limit,’ says Walt.
‘Caro was drunk. If she hadn’t been drunk, she would have stopped. Even if it was dusk, she would have stopped. She would have seen Maya. She would have seen her! The speed limit in that street is like it is everywhere else, fifty kilometres an hour, and she would have seen her and stopped if she wasn’t out of her mind. I don’t care what your tests say. I am so tired of saying this, so tired of talking about this. I just want to be left alone!’
‘Anna, please don’t upset yourself,’ says Cynthia in her quiet ‘stop the person about to jump’ voice. Anna feels an irrational flash of anger. She sees herself picking up the chair she is sitting on and smashing it over the table.
‘Don’t upset myself. Don’t upset myself,’ she says, hearing her voice rise. ‘Whatever you do, Anna, don’t upset yourself. Yes, I know. I need to remain calm. I need to be calm and quiet, and grieve politely.
‘Do you know that at the funeral—well, after the funeral—we were all standing outside and everyone was coming up to tell me how very sorry they were, and a flock of white doves flew over the church. Everyone looked up. It was such a beautiful day; a perfect day. It was warm, but not too hot, like it is today, and for some reason, I could smell sunscreen in the air—I don’t know why. My mother-in-law was standing next to me when the doves flew over. She was dressed in red because, she said, Maya loved red. I was all in black. “Why bother with what colour she loved?” I thought when Estelle told me why she’d chosen her dress. “Oh, look, Anna,” she said when she saw the doves, “it’s a sign, a message from Maya. She wants you to know she’s at peace.”
‘I started laughing. It was so absurd. “Maya wouldn’t have sent me a message,” I said to Estelle. “She could barely speak. How would she have known what a white dove symbolises?” Estelle didn’t say anything when I said that but she had this look . . . this look on her face, like she was seeing me for the first time and didn’t like what she saw. I stared right back at her until she turned around and went to find Keith, no doubt to tell him she thought his wife was crazy.
‘I upset her. I keep upsetting people because I don’t listen to their platitudes and then act like they’ve made me understand what happened. I call people on the shit they sprout and no one likes that.
‘It’s all bullshit. There’s nothing anyone can say to make it better. When someone dies after they’ve had a chance to live their life, to be an adult and get married, and have children and grandchildren, then you can say, “She lived a good life, she’s at peace now,” but you can’t say that about an eleven-year-old child. There’s nothing you can say about the death of an eleven-year-old that could make it easier to bear. Keith gets angry at me when I say that. “Everyone’s only trying to be kind,” he simpers at me. But I don’t care about everyone else. I don’t have the energy to accept people’s sympathy.
‘In the car on the way home from the funeral, we passed a church down the road from our church; a bride and groom were getting into a limousine, and I knew instantly that the doves were for them. I don’t know who gets married on a Tuesday afternoon but there they were, off to begin their new lives. I was so jealous of them, my mouth filled with bile. I had to hold my hand across my lips because I was afraid I’d throw up in the car.
‘Why did I leave the door open? That’s such a good question, Detective. I’m sure I haven’t thought about it or been asked it before.
‘It’s ridiculous I should have to be here. Ridiculous and cruel!’
Walt leans over and grabs Anna’s hand. He squeezes harder than he needs to, making her focus on the slight pain he’s causing and making her relax a little.
‘Maya liked to be held tightly,’ she says. ‘I could never squeeze her hard enough but Keith could. It’s a sensory thing with autistic children. If I tried to stroke Maya’s hair, she’d pull away, but if Keith held her really tightly, she relaxed. She would wait for him at the end of every day. She knew that when the sun was setting in winter, he’d be home soon, and eventually I could explain the idea of time to her a little on her iPad. She knew what a six looked like and she knew that Keith came home at six, and she’d wait by the door and he’d come in and then fold her into this intense hug, and they would both just stand like that for about five minutes. I had to hold her tightly if she was having a tantrum but it wasn’t the same thing.’
Anna is quiet for a moment as she remembers watching her daughter and her husband. She is ashamed to recall her feelings of jealousy about their relationship. About the ease with which Maya seemed to relate to Keith, when she felt she had to fight for even the sligh
test acknowledgement of her existence. A smile from Maya would make her day but they were few and far between and mostly, mostly, it was all just one long battle, exacerbated by Maya getting bigger and lashing out at her. Anna knows that under the sleeves of her rosebud-print dress there are a few fading bruises left over from Maya’s last major tantrum, and when they are gone, there will be nothing left at all.
Once Maya was diagnosed, once all the doctors had confirmed it and there was no other way to see things, Keith accepted it and then set out to become the poster parent of an autistic child.
It was a huge shift and difficult for Anna to accept. Even though she knew there was something wrong with her daughter and she kept pressing Keith to acknowledge what was being said about her, she also, secretly, clung to the hope that his denials offered. There was always a chance that Keith was right and there was nothing wrong with Maya.
‘I don’t want to be here,’ says Anna.
‘I know,’ says Walt, and she knows he thinks she means in the interview room, ‘and, believe me, I know it’s not the best time for this conversation, but an accident like this has to be investigated, especially when there are two conflicting accounts, and the closer we are to when the incident happened, the more likely you are to recall the details. I know how hard you’re finding this, Anna. I do know. Why don’t we take a five-minute break and I’ll get some food sent in?’