by Nicole Trope
Anna had felt her skin prickle. ‘What things exactly, Mary?’
‘Let’s leave it for the meeting. Does Monday at two work for both of you? Can Keith get some time away from work?’
‘I’ll have to ask him.’
‘Okay, let me know as soon as you can, because we want to have all of Maya’s teachers there and her therapist as well.’
‘I will,’ Anna had said. ‘I’ll let you know.’ She had not been able to do anything else for the rest of the day. ‘They’re going to ask her to leave,’ she said to Keith when she called to tell him about the meeting.
‘Don’t go jumping to conclusions, Anna. It’s possible they just want to change the way they’re doing things. They might have some new strategies they want to try.’
‘I picked her up early twice last week, Keith. She hit that little boy so hard, she nearly knocked out one of his teeth, and then she scratched Lila, who she usually gets along with, or at least plays next to.’
‘Anna, Maya is not the only child there who has an issue with anger management. They know how to deal with these things. That’s their job. It’s why we’re paying them thousands of dollars a year.’
‘I think the other parents are complaining more and more, Keith. I think they’re going to tell us that we need to homeschool her. I can’t do that. You know how she gets with me. I won’t survive it, Keith.’
‘Anna, I have to go into a meeting now. We’ll discuss this when I get home. They’re not going to ask her to leave, and if they do, we’ll find another school.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know, Anna; look, I really have to go now.’
Anna had spent the day googling schools but there was nowhere else for Maya to go. They would have to move interstate to get her into another school that could deal with her needs. She knew, without even having to think about it much, that she would have to homeschool Maya. She would be at home with Maya all day, every day. All day. Every day. She knew Keith would try to frame it as a good thing. ‘Think of the money we’ll save,’ he would say. ‘Think of all that can be achieved with one-on-one therapy,’ he would say. ‘Think of how easy it will be to control her environment,’ he would say and all Anna would want to say in return would be, ‘Think of me, Keith—think of me.’
On Friday night, she and Keith had not discussed the meeting. He had shut her down instead. ‘Let’s wait and see,’ he had said. ‘You always assume the worst.’
Anna had not pushed him, but in bed on Friday night, she had watched the numbers on her bedside clock click over again and again, and all she had been able to do was assume the worst.
The day of the accident had been a beautiful day, warm and cloudless. Anna had finished cleaning the kitchen and then gone to have a shower, secure in the knowledge that Maya would watch the video exactly three times. Anna had exactly fifteen more minutes to shower and dress. She had tried to let the hot water soothe away all thoughts of red plastic cups and phone calls from Maya’s school.
Once she was dressed, she knew it was time for Maya to get on with her day, but for reasons she now cannot fathom, she tried to change things. What she had thought then, though, was, ‘What difference will it make?’ Because she understood now that the answer was, and always would be—none.
‘Let’s go outside to do your exercises,’ she said to Maya. ‘It’s a beautiful day and we can sit in the garden in the sun.’ She had picked up the book and the pencil they were using to work on Maya’s grip. Her school was getting her ready to progress from drawing to writing. Anna had thought about a story Lex had written that had won her the writing prize at school. It was about a young girl who finds an old music box, and upon playing it, releases a ghost into her life.
‘Where did she come up with something like that?’ Anna had asked Caro.
‘I don’t know. She reads a heap and she’s always had a great imagination. She was so pleased to win. We took her out for pizza to celebrate and she couldn’t stop smiling.’
Anna knew Caro hadn’t wanted to discuss it but she hated the idea that her friend had to keep her own child’s triumphs a secret. ‘I enjoy hearing about her,’ she always told Caro, and she did, but every story about Lex hurt as well. Lex was everything Anna had imagined Maya would be; everything.
‘Come on, Maya,’ she had said, pointing to the garden, ‘it will be lovely to be outside.’
Maya had looked at her for a moment and then swiped through her iPad until she found the word she was looking for: ‘No.’ The robotic voice made Anna clench her jaw tightly. She was so tired of that voice. None of Maya’s therapists could figure out why she was still largely non-verbal. They had expected delays but not no speech at all aside from the word ‘Dada’, which Maya said whenever she saw Keith. She seemed to understand everything but still chose not to speak.
‘Come on, Maya,’ Anna had said, pointing to the garden again. ‘Outside, outside in the sun.’
‘No.’
‘Maya, it’s hot; please, let’s go outside.’
‘No, no, no, no,’ the voice said.
Anna had walked over to Maya and taken the iPad out of her unresisting hands. ‘Please, Maya, can’t you just do this for me? Just this once? I want to feel the sun on my face. I want to sit in the garden with you.’
Maya had held out her hands for the iPad and Anna had stepped back.
‘Say it, Maya. If you don’t want to go out into the garden, say it. Say “No”. Say it.’
Maya held her hands out again for the iPad. Anna could see her getting agitated but she didn’t seem to be able to stop herself. Maya stood up and grabbed the iPad, and pressed the ‘no’ again and again and again. ‘No, no, no,’ said the robotic voice.
‘Anna?’ says Walt, and Anna raises her head from her hands. ‘She broke her iPad,’ she says to Walt. ‘It was how she could speak to us. She pointed to words and then she could communicate with us, but she dropped it and broke it, and for some reason . . . for some strange reason . . . the other iPad wasn’t charged or wasn’t working or . . . something. She had to wait for it to start up, and the longer it took, the angrier she got.’
Anna hears the words come out of her mouth and, at the same time, sees her own hands grabbing the iPad out of her daughter’s hands. She watches herself fling the iPad across the room, and the cracking sound it makes as it hits the floor is satisfying. It feels right and she turns back to Maya in triumph. ‘Now you can’t say anything,’ she says. And that’s when the screaming began.
‘I tried to get the other one to start, but it wouldn’t, and Keith was at work because he’d gone in to finish a few things, and Maya had a complete meltdown. She screamed for at least an hour, maybe longer. A baby screaming is hard but an eleven-year-old doing it is a lot worse. Every time I came near her, she kicked me or pulled my hair or hit me.’
‘That must have been very difficult for you,’ says Cynthia.
Anna laughs. ‘Yes . . . difficult. It was very difficult.’
‘So, what happened then?’ asks Walt.
‘Eventually, she calmed down and I managed to get the iPad working, but it threw everything off for her and meant that she was edgy all day.’
The detectives sit back in their chairs and Anna shrugs her shoulders at them. She does not know if they believed her or not, but there is no way she’s going to tell them that after an hour of screaming, Maya had exhausted herself just enough, and Anna had managed to come around behind her and grab her, pinning both the child’s arms against her sides. She had dragged the heavy weight of her, kicking and screaming louder than ever, into her bedroom, where she had thrown her on the bed and then left the room, locking the door behind her.
The screaming had continued for another fifteen minutes before Anna had heard another sound. It was a slow thump, thump, thump, and she knew it meant that Maya’s throat was aching and she was physically spent. She would be sitting on the floor in front of the pink wall in her bedroom, and rocking back and forth, thumping her head
gently on the wall each time. It was never hard enough for her to really hurt herself but it did sometimes give her a bruise. Anna had known she should have gone into the room and sat down next to her daughter, and rocked with her, so that they could reconnect and Maya could understand that she loved her, that she wanted to help her, and then they could both get on with the rest of the day. Instead, she sat down on the couch and flicked on the television, and had a thought she had never had before: ‘I can’t do this anymore.’
‘Okay, so she was edgy all day, and then you went to get the post and she just ran?’ asks Walt.
‘No . . . I mean, yes. I went to get the post and she just ran out the door, and I had no idea there would be a car and that it would be Caro. I started running after her but it was too late. It’s not the first time she’s run out onto the road. Once, she managed to open the door herself when I was in the shower, and she ran out into the street. The next-door neighbour was coming home from the shops and saw her in the road and stopped, and then she brought her home.
‘Caro should have stopped. Maya is tall—I mean, was tall—taller than me already, and there was no way that Caro could have missed her. She was drunk, so she didn’t stop. She didn’t stop and now Maya is gone, and I’m tired of discussing this.’
Anna looks down at the table. She is done speaking to these people. Done. Done. Done.
‘Anna, I’m going to get myself a coffee and maybe some chocolate. I could use some sugar. What about you?’ asks Cynthia.
Anna looks up at Cynthia and can see what she’s thinking. She’s afraid that Anna is finished talking to them, afraid that they’re going to have to let her go home, leaving them with no real explanation of what happened.
‘I want to go home now,’ says Anna, although her mouth fills with saliva at the thought of some chocolate.
‘I know, Anna, but you did say that you wanted to finish today,’ says Walt. ‘We just need to get a few more details, if you could bear with us for another half an hour or so. Cynthia will get you some coffee or tea. It’s nearly over now and I’m sure you’ll feel better if you’re able to put all this behind you. Let’s keep going, so that we can all move on.’
‘I think I’ve told you everything,’ says Anna.
‘I think you haven’t,’ says Walt, and for the first time that day, Anna hears a sharp edge in his voice and she feels a prickle of fear. She looks at Cynthia but she is looking down at her shoes. She thinks about standing up and just walking out but then wonders if she will be allowed to go. ‘Do they know something?’ she thinks. ‘Has Caro said something to them? Has this whole day been about them waiting for me to tell them what they’re already sure of?’
‘Coffee or tea, Anna?’ asks Cynthia.
‘Um . . . coffee, please, with three sugars.’
‘See,’ says Cynthia smiling, ‘I knew you needed a sugar hit. It’ll be easier after you’ve had that.’
‘What will be easier?’ thinks Anna. She looks at the camera, hating the feeling of being watched.
‘I’ll grab some chocolate as well . . . our vending machine has the best stuff. Anything in particular you’d like?’
Anna feels the way she had when her mother told her that people would need food after the funeral: How is it possible to eat right now?
‘I don’t care,’ she says to Cynthia.
‘I’ll grab a selection then . . . Walt?’
‘Yeah,’ he says looking at Anna, ‘the usual.’
Chapter Twelve
Caro takes the bar of chocolate Brian offers her, opens it and divides it up into squares. She can hear Susan talking to someone in the corridor.
‘Who’s she talking to?’ she asks, putting one of the squares on her tongue. It immediately sticks to the roof of her dry mouth and she has to take a large gulp of water to dislodge it, exacerbating the nausea.
‘Just another detective,’ says Brian.
‘Are they talking about me?’
‘I don’t know. Why do you think they’d be talking about you?’
‘Because I’ve been here the whole day, because Anna’s here as well—at least, I think she’s still here. Maybe she’s talking to the detective interviewing Anna.’
Brian shrugs his shoulders.
Susan comes back into the room and sits down. She looks like something is bothering her. She flips back through her notes, and then nods her head, as though she has cleared something up for herself.
‘Sorry to go back to this, Caro, but I just want to make sure of something,’ says Susan. ‘You said that Anna knew you were coming over, because she’d called and asked you to come.’
‘Yes,’ says Caro. ‘She called me at around five and asked if I was busy. She often did that at the end of a bad day.’
‘Often?’
‘Yes, especially when Keith was at work. He tried to be home at exactly six every night, because Maya would wait for him, but that meant he got behind. So, every now and again, he would go in on a Saturday to catch up but it meant that Anna was alone with Maya the whole day. If she had a bad day on a Saturday, she’d call and ask me to come over, or we’d just talk until she felt better. It was the same in the holidays. Maya was not an easy child to spend a whole day with. Sometimes, I could go over there and just, you know . . . be there until Keith got home. Lately, I haven’t been over much . . . Maya in full tantrum mode can be a bit scary . . . well, more than a bit . . . but I did try to talk to Anna as much as I could. Geoff used to tell me that I was neglecting our family in favour of Anna and her issues—that’s what he called them, “issues”. I felt bad for staying away so much, so on that Saturday, when she asked me to come over, I did. Lex and Geoff were at the movies, so I was alone anyway.’
‘Yes, I understand that. I just want to make absolutely sure that Anna did call you; that you didn’t just decide to go over there for a visit.’
‘Susan, I’ve already answered that question. She called at around five. She said that Maya had broken her iPad earlier in the day and that the replacement one wasn’t working properly, and Maya had been difficult all day. She asked me to come over and sit with her while she waited for Keith to come home, because he had another iPad with him, and because he worked in IT, he knew how to fix the stupid things. She said . . .’ Caro closes her eyes and tries to remember the conversation. What had Anna said and would it explain what had happened? Had she missed something in her friend’s voice? Had she missed it because she wasn’t really concentrating, because she was focused on sounding completely sober despite the alcohol she had consumed? She can’t remember exactly how much she’d had to drink that afternoon. It’s all a blur. Everything that happened that day is coated with the alcohol she has been drinking steadily ever since. She’s never been as out of control as she has been in the last two weeks. She hates not being able to remember, not knowing exactly what happened, but more than that, she hates thinking about the facts she does know.
Caro can’t say this to the detectives. She bites down hard on her lip, trying to replace the nausea with pain.
‘Anna was upset, really upset,’ she says. ‘She said, “It’s been a bad day, Caro.” And I said something like, “Poor you” or “I’m sorry,” I can’t really remember, but then she said . . . she said . . . oh God, I remember, she said, “No, Caro, you don’t get it, it’s not like all the others. This has been worse, Caro; it’s been the worst day of my life.”’
Caro is surprised she’s recalled the words. They were different, not the words Anna always used. It was not a typical day and Anna hadn’t even sounded really upset, more as though she were just stating an ordinary fact. ‘I missed it,’ thinks Caro, knowing that she’d heard but not heard, like she always did when she had been drinking.
In the same way she’d heard but not heard Lex telling her about the school excursion she’d be late home from and then spent the next afternoon sitting outside the school, frantic that Lex had not emerged. In the same way that she’d heard and not heard her sister telling her that
her nephew, Mark, had to have his tonsils out and then had to apologise profusely because she hadn’t called to ask how he was. In the same way that she heard and didn’t hear Geoff telling her he couldn’t deal with her drinking anymore.
There were so many things people said to her, asked her and explained to her that when they were said she thought she’d never forget, but sometimes the memory of a conversation came back too late, just like it had now. Anna had been trying to tell her something and she hadn’t heard it.
‘I missed it, and now Maya’s dead and they’re going to blame me,’ she thinks.
She knows that the conversation she had with Anna is the key to getting the detectives to understand. That’s all she can do now. She can’t think about what kind of a friend she was on that Saturday, can’t wonder how things would have gone if, instead of getting into her car, she had said, ‘Tell me why, Anna. Tell me what you’re feeling.’ If she had just been able to think straight.
‘So, she was pretty upset,’ says Susan.
‘Yes, but not only upset, it was more than that. She was . . . I don’t know—defeated? Yes, that what she sounded like, like she couldn’t go on anymore, and that’s when she asked me to come over, and she sounded so bad that I said I would. I knew it wouldn’t be for long, because Keith would get home soon.’ Caro wrings her hands. She hadn’t thought that at all. What she had thought was, ‘Fuck it, I don’t feel like this tonight.’ That’s what she had thought.
The memory of that thought comes back clearly because there had been many times over the years of her friendship with Anna that she had not wanted to deal with her friend’s bad days. It wasn’t as if she could ever say to her, ‘Things will get better,’ because they weren’t getting better. Maya, if anything, got worse the older she got. She was more delayed and more violent, more frustrated and stronger, with each passing year. Anna was stranded in the long, dark tunnel of raising Maya and there was no light at the end.
Sometimes it was too much for Caro. If Anna had been a different kind of person, it would have been easier, but Anna could not focus on Maya’s triumphs, on the moments of joy she experienced, because they were overshadowed by her child’s failures and tantrums, and by Anna’s inability to accept her life. Sometimes, Caro wanted to grab her and shake her, and say, ‘Just accept it, accept it and make the best of it,’ but she understood she didn’t have that right. The fact of her child, her beautiful, intelligent child, meant that she had no right to tell Anna how to feel, because she had no real idea what she was dealing with.