by Sue Wallman
“It’s the combination that’s the problem. How they’re interacting,” says Dad. “So yes and no.” He speaks more quietly so I can’t hear what he says next.
“You’re sure?” asks Dr Jesmond.
“I’m sure,” says Dad.
On the way to the schoolhouse, after I’ve told Drew about Mom, I fill him in on what happened at the mall. He’s impressed I was in the computer store on my own, and that I managed to get on the internet. He looks even more impressed when I tell him how I dodged Mick.
“He’s a freaking nightmare. But you, Mae Ballard,” he points at me, “did a good job. Next mall trip you’ll have more information. Keep digging around.” He’s more confident than he should be. There might never be more clues, and I probably won’t get to the computer store again, but I’m glad he thinks I did well.
“I’m going to search the grounds staff office,” I say. “There might be something there.” I’ll wait until the gardeners’ shifts are over for the day. Most staff have complicated shift patterns and also work at night, but gardeners and teachers only work in the daytime.
“Cool,” says Drew.
I smile. I hope, finally, I’ve become a more interesting person in his eyes.
Ms Ray doesn’t ask about the mall. She launches straight into lessons after announcements about the restaurant doing an Indonesian-themed buffet at lunchtime, and movie night tomorrow for those on full privileges.
There’s no time to think about anything else because once she starts actual lessons, she pounces on us with questions to check we’ve been listening. At morning break, I remind her quietly that we’re supposed to be using the work booklets that are stacked up in the closets in the entrance hall.
“You think that’s important?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say. For a bit. Until Dad and Karl have forgotten about you.
After break, she hands out a work booklet to each of us, and she sits at the front, and it’s quiet unless one of us puts up our hand and she comes over to help.
I have mixed tennis in the afternoon: Drew and me against two new grad students. We win in straight sets and they can’t believe it. They ask who coaches us and we tell them we have a different coach each summer.
“You two should totally play some serious tournaments,” one of them says.
“Yeah,” says Drew. He gives them a sarcastic thumbs-up. “Like we’d be allowed to take part.”
“Oh. Right.” The student is embarrassed. “I thought you guys got to go on lots of sporting trips.”
“A few,” says Drew. Neither of us can be bothered to explain, yet again, that we have to somehow know the event is taking place or be invited, it has to be approved and there has to be a member of staff available to take us.
Drew and I return the tennis balls and our racquets to the sports equipment room. We add a red sticker to the tubes that the balls came in so that the staff know when they’ve been used five times and need replacing, and we store our personal racquets in the staff kids’ closet. We walk to the juice bar, and I sign for a Very Berry smoothie and wait for Drew on the patio, while he decides what to choose. We sit together for less than a minute before he sees Will walking over with a bunch of other patients.
“Gotta go. Things to discuss,” says Drew. He winks, which means black market things.
“I’ll come,” I say.
“No.” He almost shudders. He wants the negotiations to be his, not mine. “The less people involved the better.”
I roll my eyes and go back inside to inspect the current jigsaw – a flamingo scene. And as I’m looking at all the pink pieces, I look up and see another load of pink: Thet in a silk dress the shade of my old ballet shoes. She’s carrying the notebook that she’s writing her novel in. The outside of it is raspberry-coloured dimpled leather with a woven elastic strap to keep it closed. Inside is the only place that Thet allows herself to scribble, change her mind and be untidy, and where her world isn’t pink.
“How’s it going?” I ask, nodding at her notebook.
“I’m writing the forest scene but the snow-flower won’t bloom,” says Thet. She hugs the notebook against her chest with folded arms. “Mae, I’m going home in six weeks. My grandmother’s found a new school for me.”
I’m supposed to say congratulations because it means she’s worked hard at her treatment and done well at Hummingbird Creek, but I can’t. This will be the second time I’ve said goodbye to Thet, not knowing if I’ll ever see her again. I guess recently I’d been hoping that Thet’s wealthy grandmother would keep her here until she was eighteen because she’s so settled.
“I’m mostly better now,” says Thet.
Six weeks, that’s all. I can’t help myself. “D’you have to go?”
Thet doesn’t look at me. She mumbles, “It’s been decided.” She has no choice but to accept it.
“Maybe this time Dad will let us email or write to each other.” I don’t say it with much conviction but I feel the injustice. Patients can secretly tell each other how to contact them via email or social media once they’ve left. Staff kids can’t do that.
“If he doesn’t, find me on the internet when you’re at college,” says Thet. She pats her notebook. “You know the name of my main character. Search for her.”
I’ll have to wait two years before I can do that. I look beyond the lawn to the trees by the perimeter fence. All this land used to feel immense, but for the first time in my life it’s closing in on me.
ELEVEN
I sit on the swing-chair on the schoolhouse veranda and wait for the last person to leave the grounds staff office next door. I don’t have long until I need to be back in the apartment for dinner. When I walked past the office a few minutes ago I could see through the window that one of the gardeners was still there, writing a schedule for the following day on the big whiteboard.
A cleaner pushes a trolley slowly over the grass to Hibiscus instead of using the path. When she stops to key in the front door code, I almost miss the sound of the trolley’s rattle. There’s just the thunk-thunk of basketballs bouncing on the court the other side of the grounds staff office. From here I can see our roof terrace and glimpse Mom’s plants through the tiny gaps in the marble railings, bright splodges of red, orange and pink against the white.
I don’t like thinking of Mom up there, attached to the laptop, even less of herself than usual. To distract myself I get up and peer into the window of the schoolhouse. Ms Ray’s been busy this afternoon – she’s taken down the posters of inspirational quotes about how to live our lives and pinned up big pictures: strange buildings, purple-tinged mountains, a lake from above, a place where the dust is orangey-brown and people have pottery bowls laid out on squares of material. I’m staring so long at them that I forget to keep an eye on the grounds staff office.
As I walk across to see if the gardener’s left, he comes out of the door and gives an upward thrust of his chin as a brief greeting. Gardeners aren’t supposed to talk to patients or the staff kids, but he’s known me for years. I used to visit Mom in this office all the time, but I haven’t been here for months because I’ve wanted to spend all my spare time with Drew. In case he thinks it’s odd that I’m calling in now when Mom’s not around, I keep walking for a bit before doubling back.
I tap in the door code, which has never been changed. It’s not as if there’s confidential stuff in here, such as medical records.
The comforting wood, earth and metal smell of the office greets me as I walk in: stray seedling trays en route to the glasshouses by the vegetable garden, a few steel tools, although they’re mostly kept in the attached shed, rain jackets hung by the door, boots, sprays to combat plant disease and piles of seed catalogues.
Mom does the gardening paperwork, inputting payments into the system and ordering plants and gardening equipment. Her desk is by a window that looks out on to curved flower beds. On it there’s a pile of invoices in a wire tray. A mug of cold herbal tea. Pens. A highlighter without its
lid snapped on tight enough.
I check through the drawers. There are envelopes and thick sheets of paper, engraved with a hummingbird. More pens, lengths of string, paper clips, plant labels and other bits and pieces. There are order books, and printed out emails from suppliers.
Emails… Does Mom have internet these days? I turn on her computer and enter the password that she’s always had: Daffodil. I used to write pretend invoices for her, and I learned how to spell daffodil, her favourite flower, pretty quickly. There’s a harp noise, and her desktop reveals itself. My eyes dart back and forth across the screen, which is cluttered with documents and folders. There’s one that says: Network. I click on it and find a folder named: Emails for sending. Another: Emails received.
So Mom still isn’t allowed internet either. She has to send her emails via admin. I click on other documents, but they’re gardening schedules. A copy of a letter of polite complaint about a batch of diseased trees that were delivered. A shopping list. I recognize some of the items on it, clothes that she bought during the winter. There are photos of flowers that she must have taken on her own camera. The endless shots of unfurling petals make me sad for some reason.
I log off and carry on searching her desk, looking for something – anything – personal. The shelf on the wall next to Mom’s desk is crammed with gardening books. I stand to reach a couple of the books on the top shelf. Sitting back down, I flick through the biggest book, called Shrubs for your Garden. It has a few pieces of paper in it, but they’re blank. Just bookmarks. The second book is on daffodils. As I flick through, a bit of paper drifts on to the floor like a pressed leaf.
When I pick it up I see it’s not regular paper. It’s a photo of a guy in his twenties, maybe younger. He’s lounging against a gate, laughing. In pale jeans and a black leather jacket. Dark hair, black eyes, olive skin. In the field behind him are three horses. One is looking at the camera; the others are grazing. The colour in the photo has bleached out, as if it was kept in the sun too long. I turn it over. F with Barney, Sunny and Rhonda. And a date from seventeen years ago. Smudged biro. Curly handwriting. Mom’s.
I study the person on the other side. Frank, my uncle. It’s not a super-sharp image, but there’s something about him that I recognize. His hair and eyes are darker than Mom’s, his face rounder. The three names must be the horses.
Eager for more photos, I turn the pages of the daffodil book, faster and faster. I hold it by the front and back covers and shake it, but the photo of Frank is all that was there. Systematically, I reach up to the shelf and go through each gardening book. I fan through the seed catalogues in the corner of the room, and all the magazines.
There’s only that one photo. It must either be hidden because it’s precious, or she’d just forgotten about it. Her other photos were damaged in the basement flood. I place it back in the daffodil book, roughly in the centre, where I think it came from, and replace all the books back on the shelf.
I search through the rest of the office, including the other two desks. My watch beeps. Ten minutes to dinner. I leave the office, clicking the door gently behind me. Birds swoop in the sky. I hear the manic chirping of the hummingbirds, their song like someone snipping away with a sharp pair of scissors.
Dad’s setting the table when I walk in.
“How’s Mom?” I ask.
“Much improved,” he says. “You may go and see her.”
She’s propped against two pillows. Her watch is still attached to the laptop on the bedside table.
“Hi, Mom,” I say. “You feeling better?” Her skin looks brighter.
“Yes, thanks.”
I look at the computer screen, then, glancing towards the door to check Dad’s not there, I place my finger on the touchpad. Three graphs are on the screen. Heart rate, sleep pattern and temperature.
Mom coughs, and I catch her eye. Don’t do that with Dad so close by, she’s telling me. “Would you get me some more water,” she says, pointing at the glass next to the laptop. It’s half-full, but she wants me away from the computer.
After I’ve tipped out Mom’s water in the bathroom sink of the en suite and refilled the glass, I open her side of the cabinet. I’ve become sneaky. The cabinet is mostly filled with make-up, but on the bottom shelf there are two glass bottles of pills, one clear and one brown. The printed label on the clear bottle says: Louelle Ballard. Take two every morning. Someone – Dad, probably – has crossed it through and written: 1 only. The brown glass bottle has a label saying: Louelle Ballard. To be taken under supervision. I think about the conversation I overheard this morning. Dad thinks Mom’s illness is to do with the combination of these two drugs.
She wasn’t making sense, had an intense headache, muscle pain and was lacking in energy. She had that strange neck-fizzing thing too. I’ve experienced some of those symptoms. Right now I have a painful ache in my thigh. I picture the muscle inside, bruised-black like an overripe banana. What if Dad’s wrong? Could there be a disease sweeping through the Creek, and Mom has an extreme version of it?
I take the water back to her. She has a sip and asks me to tell her about my day.
I found the photo of your brother. I saw the horses. Barney, Sunny and Rhonda. Did the horses belong to your family? Frank looks handsome in the photo – what was he like in real life? Thet’s leaving soon. But if I talk about it I might cry, and I don’t want to upset you.
“Tennis was good,” I say. “Drew and I beat the grad students.”
She smiles.
“There’s a movie night tomorrow,” I say. We haven’t had a movie night for ages. The movies are chosen by Dad, Dr Jesmond or Abigail and are mostly lame, but it’s usually a fun evening.
“Nice,” says Mom.
There’s a knock on the door. Dinner. “I better go and help,” I say.
Mom eats dinner on her own in the bedroom, her plate on a tray. Dad and I eat at the table. He tells me how pleased he is with how Greta is handling life outside the Creek, and asks me to make her feel more welcome on her trips back to see us. I don’t mention how much my thigh is hurting, and we don’t talk about Mom. I’d like to take my plate and sit on the bed next to her, but I don’t dare ask.
In the morning, I have brain-training in place of exercise. Usually I quite enjoy it. Timed verbal and non-verbal reasoning tests make a change and most times I get enough of them right to earn ten tokens. But today Joanie is finding hers stressful and taps me on the leg to ask me to help her, so I end up doing two tests at the same time, and neither of us earns any tokens.
After breakfast, I enter the apartment and there’s a cleaner wiping the doors to the roof terrace. Mom and Dad’s bedroom door is open and I rush in.
Mom’s not here. There are clean sheets on the bed. No laptop. The glass of water has been cleared away. I almost throw up.
“Please!” I call to the cleaner. “Where’s my mom?”
The cleaner stares at me. “Exercise class,” she says.
I release the breath stacked up in my body, and when I can speak, I say, “Thank you.”
The movie for tonight is announced at lunchtime. As usual, I’ve never heard of it before, but none of the patients look wildly enthusiastic, and Will wanders over to the staff kids’ table and tells us it’s a crummy remake of an old film about mistaken identity. I don’t care – I could watch any movie. I learn so much from them.
After dinner, I take the lift down to the basement level to the movie theatre. Will says we have one of the most advanced cinema systems in the world, with ultra-high definition and responsive surround sound. Possibly the most super-comfy adjustable chairs too.
Zach and Ben are sitting together at the front. Luke and Joanie aren’t old enough to be here. I look round for Drew – he’s sitting near the back next to Will and there are spare seats next to him.
I sit down and save the seat the other side of me for Thet, by placing my wrap-cardigan on it. She arrives as the orderlies start handing out popcorn and bottles of water.
The patient the other side of Will groans when he sees the popcorn. He’s Austin, the one with anger-management problems.
I say, “Don’t you like popcorn?”
“Not this kind,” he says. He picks up a piece. “Dry-popped. No butter. Salt-free. Tasteless. No, it’s not my fave.”
Will laughs. “After you’ve been here a few months, you’ll come to terms with it.” He takes a piece of Austin’s popcorn, throws it up in the air and catches it in his mouth. “Just as you’ll sit through the movie even though you’d rather die than let anyone know you watched it in real life.”
Austin raises his eyebrows. “Thanks, dude. You’re so reassuring.”
An orderly comes round and checks that everyone’s ready for the movie and warns a couple of people that they’ll be asked to leave if they make inappropriate comments or spoil the movie for others. It looks as if he and a grad student are in charge tonight.
Drew grins at me. He’s hoping for a silent popcorn fight as soon as the movie’s underway. I want to tell him about the photo of Frank but I’ll have to wait until a better time.
The lights dim and the music begins. “No trailers?” I hear Austin whisper loudly.
Drew throws his first bit of popcorn very high and sideways. It hits someone near Austin who chucks a couple of bits back. There are some sniggers, and the orderly who’s sitting at the front says, “Settle down please, everyone.”
“You want to move?” I ask Thet.
She shakes her head, but I know she’s terrified of popcorn that’s been on the floor landing on her. “Come on,” I whisper. Even though I want to stay seated next to Drew, I can feel her anxiety levels rising. “We’ll move a couple of rows further back.” I point to two empty seats at the end of an aisle.
We leave our cartons of popcorn and crouch-run to the seats. As I sit down, I notice that my neighbour is Noah. The other side of him is one of the popular girls, Piper, who glares at me because I’ve interrupted their conversation.