Blame

by Nicole Trope

  Caro puts up her hand as Susan leans forward. She wanted to stop the detective from saying anything. ‘Not that she was on drugs,’ says Caro. ‘Anna only drinks herbal tea and she won’t take anything but over-the-counter pain medication. She just sounded like she’d taken something but I know she hadn’t.

  ‘She said, “I can’t do this anymore,” but nothing else. I asked her what had happened, and she told me that she’d been alone with Maya the whole day, and her voice still had this flat, dead kind of quality. I was worried about her, so I told her I’d come over and she said, “Yes, come over, Caro. Come over now,” and then she put the phone down. I wanted her to tell me not to bother, like she sometimes did. I’d rather have talked to her for as long as she needed me to, but I called her back and it was engaged, and so I called her mobile but she didn’t answer, so I felt like I had no choice but to go over there. I was worried.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just call her husband or get your husband to drive you, or wait until you had sobered up?’ asks Brian.

  ‘That would have been the right thing to do,’ says Caro, irritated by his interruption, ‘but, obviously, I didn’t do that, so what’s the point of asking the question? I was worried about her, really worried. In the ten years I’d known her, I had never heard Anna sound like that, so I got in my car and drove over there.

  ‘Her house is in a cul-de-sac, and as I turned into it, I saw Anna and Maya out on the front lawn. They were physically fighting. They were kind of twisting around each other, like they were trying to make their way to the road one minute, and then back into the house the next. They are . . . shit . . . they were basically the same size, so they weren’t getting very far.

  ‘Maya was kicking out at Anna. I saw it and I sped up—just a little, to get there quicker—and then I slowed down in front of the house, but as I got there, they’d made their way right to the kerb, and for a split second, Anna looked at me and then she just pushed Maya, pushed her hard, right in front of my car. I wasn’t going that fast—at least, I don’t think I was. I did try to brake but Maya was already in front of the car and it . . . and I . . . hit her, and she bounced off the front of the bonnet and slammed down onto the road.’

  Caro sits back and takes a deep breath. She realises that she’s crying as she sees this and hears the sound of Maya’s head hitting the road.

  The image and the sound she had heard through her open window have played in her head on a continuous loop only alcohol could stop. Now that she doesn’t have that option, she is overwhelmed by it anew and feels as though she might faint.

  ‘Oh God,’ she says, covering her mouth with her hand. ‘I hit Maya. I hit her.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Susan. ‘You hit her and she died.’

  Caro winds her arms around herself and begins to rock back and forth. I hit Maya, I hit Maya, I hit Maya, plays in her head.

  ‘I thought I was okay. I really thought I was okay to drive. I’d only had . . .’ Caro stops rocking. She sits up. The afternoon before Anna’s call comes back in full colour and she realises what’s been niggling at her about her drinking.

  ‘I’d only had one glass of wine,’ she says.

  ‘You must have had a lot of something else,’ says Susan. She gives Brian a quick look and he looks again at the folder on the desk.

  ‘No,’ says Caro, as her memory of that afternoon now returns with the force of a punch. ‘No, I hadn’t. I had two shots of vodka—maybe three, because I poured myself a double the second time. I had one, and then I promised myself I wouldn’t have another but I did, and then I opened the wine and poured myself a glass, and then I thought that I better have something to eat. There was some leftover pizza in the fridge, so I warmed that up—’

  ‘Caro, I’m not sure where this is going,’ says Susan.

  ‘You need to listen,’ says Caro and hears the forcefulness in her tone. ‘I promised myself that I wouldn’t drink the wine until the pizza was hot. I forced myself to clean the cutlery drawer so that I’d wait. When the pizza was warm, I took it out and turned around to put it on the bench, but I forgot the wine was there. I knocked over the wine bottle with the oven tray and that toppled the glass as well. I can’t believe I didn’t remember this. I spilled all the wine and broke the wineglass. I had to clean it up. I hadn’t even had a sip yet.’

  ‘Caro, this is not really the time to change your story,’ says Brian.

  ‘I’m not changing my story. I’m remembering what happened. I cleaned it up, and then sat down on the couch with my pizza and a new glass of wine. I’d only had a few sips when Anna called. Don’t you get it? I wasn’t drunk. I wasn’t drunk at all. I don’t care what those results say. I know I wasn’t drunk.’

  Caro sits forward and looks at Susan, willing the detective to believe her.

  ‘Caro,’ says Brian, ‘you’re digging yourself in deeper here. When the results do come back and show that you were over the limit, you will have lied to police officers. You’re an alcoholic, Caro. It’s pretty much a certainty that you were drunk at the time of the accident.’

  Caro sits up and looks at Susan. ‘What do you mean when they “do come back”? Don’t you have the results right there?’

  Susan hesitates, and then she shakes her head a little and Caro watches two small spots of colour appear on her cheeks. ‘No,’ she says.

  ‘You bitch,’ says Caro softly.

  ‘Hey,’ says Brian. ‘Take it down a notch, Caro.’

  ‘She made me think those were the results.’

  ‘I never said they were,’ says Susan. ‘But you can bet when they do come back that they’ll say you were way over the limit. All this other bullshit is just designed to throw us off and that’s not going to happen. Your story about Anna pushing her own child into the road is too far-fetched even for Brian to believe; isn’t that right, Brian?’

  Before he can answer, Caro says, ‘It’s not a story. It’s the truth. I know I hit Maya, I know I did, and I know I’m going to pay for that. I’ve relived that moment over and over again. I had to pull my best friend away from her daughter’s body, so that the paramedics could get to her. If I’m standing in the kitchen, or the bathroom or the bedroom, and there’s no other noise, I hear Anna screaming. I hear Maya hitting the road. The accident was my fault. I shouldn’t have been driving because I had been drinking—even if I wasn’t over the limit, I still shouldn’t have been driving—but Anna pushed her in front of my car.’

  ‘As you say, Caro,’ says Susan, ‘you’d been drinking. You were intoxicated. Probably more intoxicated than you’re currently willing to admit but we’ll have the truth in a few weeks. Maybe you think you saw Anna push Maya, but it’s possible it’s not the case.’

  ‘I know what I saw,’ says Caro. ‘I will never forget it. I don’t care if you believe me or not. I have nothing to gain from this, am I right?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ says Brian.

  ‘It will affect the case but will also mean that we have to focus on Anna. She is, or was, your best friend. Are you sure you want to do this?’ asks Susan.

  ‘I’m not sure of anything right now. I’m not even sure I want to wake up tomorrow,’ says Caro. ‘Not sure at all.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘It must have been very difficult to always be patient with her,’ says Cynthia.

  Anna has relaxed in her chair. ‘Aren’t we done?’ she asks.

  ‘Not yet; I just want to get the final details.’

  ‘Some days it was fine,’ says Anna. ‘On days when she’d been up a lot the night before, it was difficult. School days were easier, and days when Keith was home were fine.’

  ‘Was she happy at school?’ asks Cynthia.

  Anna sits up again. ‘She was . . .’ her voice trails off.

  ‘How much do they know?’ she wonders. It’s possible they have already been in touch with the school. It’s possible that they know about the tantrums and about Maya hurting other children. For a moment, she doesn’t know whether to be e
vasive or simply tell the truth. The longer she waits to speak, the more they will question her answer. In the end, she decides on truth. ‘She was happy when she first started there. It’s a great school, with a teacher-to-pupil ratio of one to three. It’s almost impossible to get into.’

  ‘So, she was happy at school?’ asks Walt, and Anna understands that he’s repeated the question because he thinks there is more to the answer.

  ‘She was, but not lately. She’s been getting aggressive with the other kids—you know, biting and kicking. I often had to pick her up early because of . . . an incident.’

  ‘An incident?’ says Walt. ‘Can you give me an example of the kind of incident you’re talking about?’

  ‘It was usually to do with her hurting another child. A few days before she, she. . . died I had to pick her up because she bit another child,’ says Anna. Walt seems to shrug his shoulders as if to say, ‘so?’ and Anna knows that he’s filing this under normal childhood behaviour. ‘It wasn’t the first time she’d bitten another child but it was the first time she had drawn blood,’ says Anna and she feels her mouth twist as she remembers the way that Mary had looked at Maya, as though despite being involved with autistic children her whole career she had never seen such a thing.

  ‘And how was the school handling those . . . those incidents?’ asks Walt while he writes.

  ‘They were doing their best,’ says Anna, ‘they had strategies in place but a lot of the time they didn’t work with Maya. They were doing everything they could, just like I was doing everything I could. Some days she responded to the methods we were using, most days she didn’t. I think the school was beginning to run out of options for dealing with her. I was supposed to meet with them the Monday after she died.’

  ‘Do you think they were going to ask you to remove her from the school?’ asks Cynthia gently.

  Anna shrugs again. ‘That school was costing us sixty thousand dollars a year. There’s no way we would have been able to afford it without help from Keith’s parents. They were used to dealing with kids like Maya. It’s what we paid them to do. I’m sure they just wanted to try some different strategies or something,’ says Anna, parroting Keith’s words.

  ‘That’s a lot of money,’ says Walt.

  ‘Yes,’ says Anna. ‘A lot.’ She and Keith had not taken a holiday since Maya was born. They rarely went out to eat, and when they did, Anna felt guilty because Keith’s parents were helping them pay for the school and for Maya’s extra therapy and then had to come over and babysit for them. Keith had missed out on promotions that would have meant travelling because he wanted to always be home for Maya, so his salary never increased to a point where they could afford to relax. Anna wonders what they will do with all the extra money and then remembers that she is no longer part of a ‘we’. It’s just her.

  She doesn’t think she has ever felt this tired in her life. Somewhere inside her, a voice is telling her to be careful, that Cynthia is being patient and kind for a reason, but she doesn’t care anymore.

  She has thought about taking her own life every day since Maya died. She feels a sense of peace in the middle of the night when she plans exactly how she is going to end it all. She even knows what clothes she is going to wear. She allows herself a dramatic funeral and imagines people shaking their heads at the sadness of her end. Her doctor has prescribed the strongest-available sleeping pills and she tells Keith she’s taking them, but she’s hoarding them. The growing pile and the thought of another prescription keep her functioning.

  ‘You must allow yourself time to grieve,’ her doctor had said. ‘Here’s a list of names. You need to talk to someone.’

  ‘I don’t think therapists are very effective,’ said Anna. She is tired of listening to other people, tired of blocking out the voice in her head.

  ‘You are doing the best you can,’ each of her therapists told her. ‘You’re a great mother,’ Caro told her, and Keith told her, and all the people who helped with Maya told her, but she knew that they weren’t really believing it. What else could they say—‘You’re doing a crap job of loving this child’?

  People say that you are never given more than you can handle, but Anna knows this isn’t true. Caro was not equipped to handle the heartbreak of losing so many babies, of losing Gideon. And Anna has met many, many mothers with autistic children who handle it better than she did. They have more energy, greater reserves of strength and patience, and more love to give than she felt she had with Maya. Maya was too much for her to handle.

  Whatever she did and however hard she tried, she never managed to deal with her child the way she knew she should have been able to.

  ‘I don’t think anyone can really conceive of the amount of money it takes to care for a special needs child until they have one,’ says Anna. She twists her hands together, studying the prominent veins and dry skin as she remembers the pile of bills on the table by the front door that still have to be paid. Bills for occupational therapy and physical therapy and speech therapy—all of which were in addition to the school fees. ‘I don’t know how people manage if they don’t have enough money or relatives to help them. Maya had every therapy that money could buy. Not that it ever made much of a difference.’

  ‘Did you . . . did you have any feelings of resentment towards Maya, Anna?’ asks Cynthia softly. She sits forward and catches Anna’s eye.

  ‘Resentment?’ says Anna, like she doesn’t understand the question.

  ‘Yes,’ says Cynthia, ‘did you perhaps resent her because she was so difficult and took up so much of your time? Because of the cost of the school, and because she used to lash out at you and hurt you?’

  Anna smiles at Cynthia. ‘I must say, I did feel a little resentful that my life was never going to be my own again—is that what you mean?’

  She hears that her tone is flat. And her smile feels wrong, as though her lips haven’t really moved.

  ‘Yes,’ Cynthia says. ‘Something like that.’

  Anna nods and starts talking again. ‘I got angry and upset, especially when she attacked me and actually hurt me. All mothers have times when they wonder about the choice they made to have children, don’t they? They take up so much time and energy. That’s what used to drive my mother crazy when my brother and I were younger. I didn’t understand it then, I thought she was mean and selfish, but I get it now. Kids demand everything and Maya demanded more than most. Of course I resented it, resented her. Don’t tell me you’ve never had a bad thought about your kids, Cynthia, because then you’d be lying.’ Anna smiles her strange smile again.

  ‘I wouldn’t say never,’ says Cynthia. ‘There’s a reason they call it the hardest job there is.’

  ‘Yeah, but most kids give something back. They smile at you when you smile at them, and then they learn to talk, and tell you what they see and hear and feel. They sit on your lap and let you read them stories. They wind their little arms around your neck and tell you that they love you, and then they get bigger and go into the world, and come home to tell you everything they’ve seen and heard. Your kids are going to grow up and get jobs and get married, and one day they’ll bring you their children to play with, and you’ll know that you’ve created this little group of human beings.’

  ‘That feels like it’s pretty far away, Anna.’

  ‘Do you know what happens to an adult with autism?’ asks Anna. ‘I don’t mean Asperger’s, or someone at the lighter end of the spectrum; I mean someone severely affected by autism, like Maya was.’ She is staring at the wall behind Walt’s head. Her speech is slow and soft. She knows she is in a room with two detectives but also feels like she is alone, like her words don’t really matter, because no one else can hear them.

  She hasn’t heard if Cynthia has answered her question, so she just continues speaking. ‘They end up living in aged care facilities if their parents can’t take care of them. I used to worry that I’d die and leave Maya alone in a world that still doesn’t understand her disability. I used to see
myself old and bent, pushing a walker, and still trying to get Maya to brush her teeth in the morning.

  ‘She hated brushing her teeth. She didn’t like the sound of the scrape of the toothbrush across her teeth and she didn’t like the taste of any toothpaste I bought. It used to take ten minutes, twice a day, just for her to brush her teeth and that was if she was in a compliant mood. If not, there’d usually be a tantrum and teeth brushing would go out the door. They had to sedate her at the dentist’s. I remember one visit where our dentist gave me a twenty-minute lecture on my responsibilities as a parent because Maya’s teeth were in such a bad state. “You give her too much juice and too much junk food,” he said.

  ‘“I don’t give her any of that,” I said. “She’s on a sugar-free, dairy-free, gluten-free diet.”

  ‘“You mothers with your ideas,” he sneered. “Children need to eat proper food to grow. It is also your responsibility to make sure she brushes her teeth.”

  ‘“But—” I said.

  ‘“But nothing. Gum disease in children is one hundred percent preventable.”

  ‘I just sat there listening to the idiot dentist, you know. What was I going to say?’