by Darren Groth
“Fast-forward a decade, and here we are,” says Kelvin, continuing the speech he’s probably given a thousand times. “Fair Go Community Village, the place where special needs and life purpose come together. Fair Go sits on seven acres of land; there are twenty residents living in the fully furnished, fully appointed townhouses. There is a staff of twelve full-time and twenty-eight part-time staff employed here. A number of the full-timers, including me, live in the dedicated staff units on site. We offer a range of vocational opportunities: small-scale agriculture, creative arts, recycling, hospitality, basic digital media skills. Fair Go makes pesto and jams and chutneys from our homegrown fruits and veggies. We sell them in our shop, and in a few stores around West Brisbane. Arts and crafts are also sold in our shop, as well as on Etsy. All the info can be found on our website, which is in large part maintained by two of our residents.” Kelvin pauses midstride. “I should also mention that we encourage peer-to-peer training. Good example over there.”
He points toward the parking lot. A small team of damp, energetic car washers are sudsing up a “ute”—a vehicle, I’ve discovered in my short time here, that can’t decide if it’s a car or a truck. The leader is a big guy in board shorts and a T-shirt with some sort of dinosaur or sea-serpent print. His head is turned, like he’s looking elsewhere, not really paying attention. His voice says otherwise. His instructions are clear: dip deep into the water, don’t squeeze, wash with a clockwise motion, separate bucket for tires, thick sponge for the rims, thin sponge for the windows, chamois after rinse. He says “no lie” a bunch of times.
“That’s Perry Richter,” says Kelvin. “He was going to be a resident here at one point, but his family circumstances changed and he didn’t end up making the move. So now he shares his car-washing expertise with the residents. He also does a bit of basic first aid.”
Kelvin waves. Perry responds with what appears to be a kung-fu kick. We walk on.
“Personally, I think Living Partner is the best role in Fair Go. It’s what really separates this place from any other care facility around. Each LP has five residents assigned—they are your crew. The task is quite simple: be there. To listen, to talk, to play, to guide. Develop rapport, build a relationship. Hang out. Become someone the Fair Goers look forward to seeing and spending time with. It’s a life-changing experience for a young person, no doubt about it.”
Kelvin leads me into a gymnasium-type building that has a climbing wall in the first room, and bikes, treadmills and weight machines in the second. We make our way up a winding ramp and stop outside a door that says Rec Room 1.
“Any questions?”
I shrug. “When do you make your decision?”
Kelvin grins and opens the door. “I don’t decide, Munro. These guys do.”
Five residents are seated behind a long table in the center of the room. Kelvin ushers me over.
“Righto, some quick intros before the formalities. Munro Maddux, this is Bernie, Shah, Blake, Iggy and Florence.”
I offer my hand to each. Two of the five accept. Shah nods and yawns; Iggy offers a bent elbow instead of a hand; Florence leaves me hangin.’ I sit in the chair in front of the table.
“This is your interview panel, Munro. Each of the residents has a question or two prepared for you. Answer them as best you can. Now, I realize we have a language difference here—you speak English, and we speak Australian. If there are any hassles, I’ll interpret. At the end of the questions, the panel will vote using a ballot to determine whether you get to do your volunteer hours here. All five panelists must vote yes for you to be our next Living Partner.”
“Do you vote as well?” I ask.
Kelvin smiles and plants himself on a stool off to the side, next to an air-hockey table. “You’re here because I already voted yes. If I thought otherwise, I would’ve said goodbye to you back at my office. Okay, we good to kick off? Bernie?”
Bernie stands, clears her throat, slips her hands into the pockets of her cargo shorts. For a few seconds she blinks rapid fire, as if there’s a strobe light behind her eyes. Her hunched back gives her the appearance of a bass clef. She begins pacing back and forth in the space between me and the table.
“When I was eleven, my family went to Wilson’s Lookout to see Riverfire. Before the fireworks started, I wasn’t paying attention properly and I stood on a blanket that belonged to the lady next to us. She got really angry and said I was rude and had no manners. She said I got that from my parents.”
“Bernie,” says Kelvin.
“My mum told her that I was special needs and I didn’t properly understand social situations or personal space.”
“Bernie—”
“The lady then called me the R-word. She said being an R-word was no excuse.”
“Bernie!” Kelvin forms a time-out T with his hand. “Munro’s only here in Australia for six months, so you need to hurry up with your question, hey.”
Bernie stops pacing and puts her hands on her hips. She moves in front of me, dips her head and stares at my tie.
“Do you use the R-word?”
I lean forward to catch her gaze. “Never.”
I have a story to share too, about a boy, Vincent Perrault, who lived on our street. He called Evie a “dumbass retard” twice. Third time, I chased him down, pinned him, arm-barred him back to his house. I told his mom what he’d done and said the next slur would see me beat the living snot out of her “precious little Vinny.” He never trashed Evie again—never said anything at all to us, in fact—and the Perraults moved to Calgary the following year. I’m ready to launch into this story, but Bernie seems satisfied with my one-word answer. She applauds and returns to her seat. The strobe light behind her eyes is out.
“Shah, you’re up,” says Kelvin. “What’s your question for Munro?”
Shah yawns again. “You here for good?” he asks.
I hesitate, then answer. “I’m on a high-school student exchange. From Vancouver, Canada.”
“You leave family behind?”
“Yes.”
“You here alone.”
“I have an Australian family, the Hydes, I’m living with for the next six months. And I’m getting to know the people at school.”
“But you here by yourself. You are alone.”
“Yeah, I am.”
Kelvin holds up a hand. “Okay, Shah, that’s good enough, hey?”
Without answering, Shah rises, turns his chair around and sits facing the opposite way. A chunk of skull about the size of a golf ball is missing from the back of his head. What look like burn scars are poking out of his shirt collar.
Kelvin scratches his cheek and sighs. “Righto, let’s move on, shall we? Blake, you’re next.”
I shift in my seat. Blake. Brown hair. Blue eyes. She has the Down’s features—flat face, pixie ears, big tongue. She’s similar to Evie with one glaring exception: she’s an age my sister will never be.
I wait. If the Coyote is right about things getting worse, this is the moment to tell me all about it.
Still waiting.
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Still waiting.”
Blake’s giggles shake me loose. I glance over at Kelvin.
“Don’t worry, my man,” he says, winking. “You’ve only been here a couple of weeks.”
“I’m sorry,” I stammer. “I misheard the question. No, I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Not in Canada?”
“No.”
“Not in Australia?”
“Like Kelvin said, I’ve only been here two weeks.”
“Is there someone you’ve met that you like?”
“I’ve met a bunch of people I like.”
“No! I mean like like.”
I rub my eyes. “There is a girl at school.”
Blake makes a woo sound and tucks a strand of hair back over her ear. “What’s her name?”
“Caroline. Caro, for short.”
“Are you dating?”
“Every day?”
“Most days.”
“You think you might marry her?”
“Righto, that’ll do for your 100 questions, Blake,” says Kelvin. “This is Fair Go, not eHarmony.”
“I’ve got a boyfriend. Dale in number 6,” adds Blake. “He never gets jelly.”
“Jelly…not sure that version of the word is on Dale’s iPad. Okay, Iggy, over to you. The floor is yours.”
Iggy makes a show of attempting to stand. Several groans later, he gives up.
“I am not feeling the best,” he says. “My lungs. So I’m going to stay sitting. My question is, have you ever done CPR on anyone?”
A breath snags in my throat. My right hand clenches.
“Whoa, Ig,” says Kelvin. “That might be a bit rough, mate. How about you ask something else.”
“Why? A Living Partner has to know CPR, yes?”
“That’s right, but—”
“So I want to know if he’s good at it. Just in case he needs to do it on me.”
“Iggy, it’s way too harsh to—”
“I’ll answer it,” I say. My breathing has steadied. My hand, though clenched, feels no pain. I’m still here in the interview and not teetering on the edge of the world. My mind is clear.
Nothing, Coyote?
Kelvin’s pinched face turns my way. “You sure you want to answer?”
I nod and fix my gaze on Iggy. “I, uh, didn’t save the person. But it wasn’t because my skills were bad. It was…It was…The person couldn’t be helped at that time. CPR wasn’t going to be enough.”
The deep discomfort I ought to be suffering belongs instead to Iggy. He shrinks into his seat, melting like a January snowman in a March rain. I move to the table and go down on my haunches.
“You and I both hope you’ll never need CPR. But if you do, and I’m here, I’ll do it, and I’ll do it well. You’re in good hands. I’ll even shake on it.”
I kink my elbow and hold it over the table. All eyes—even Shah’s—are on Iggy. His eyes are on me. The melt has stopped. His bent arm tentatively emerges from the blanket. We make brief contact and then he coughs into his shirt sleeve and squirrels his arm away again. I go back to my seat. Bernie bursts into a round of applause. Blake sticks two fingers in her mouth and whistles.
“Sweet!” says Kelvin. “Okay, Florence. I know the question you’re going to ask.”
Florence licks her lips. Her teeth are pretty messed up—three of the front four are missing, as well as a few more toward the back. Her nose is pushed to one side. She looks like she wants to do similar damage to my face.
“You ever hurt your sister?” she says.
“Florence!” Kelvin steps toward me. “Munro, wow, I’m so sorry. Flo usually asks people if they know how to defend themselves. I had no idea she was going to…”
The rest of Kelvin’s apology fades. Florence’s question is only that—a question. It should be a knife to the gut or a hellish scream or a car going off a cliff. But it’s not. It’s just…words. And I’m putting words together in reply. Coolly. Calmly. Without the Coyote to contend with. Did I ever hurt Evie emotionally? Sure. When I was six, I put her Jessie doll in the garbage disposal. When I was eleven, I told her she’d get diarrhea if she went on the Zipper at May Days. When I was fourteen, I showed her the sex scene in The Fault in Our Stars. Did I ever physically hurt my sister? Just one time. I broke her ribs pressing on her chest, trying to save her life. I can give all these answers if I want to, even the last one. But I won’t. I have a different response.
“I don’t have a sister.”
Florence scrunches her nose. “Too bad,” she says. “I would teach her Flo-jitsu.” She moves to the side of the table and performs a short physical sequence that looks like an angry robot trying to kick a soccer ball. “My own martial art.”
Kelvin fans his face with his hand. “Okaaaay. Well, that was…educational. If no one has anything more to add, I’ll get the ballot box and the papers.” He collects a notepad, pens and an empty Streets Blue Ribbon Neapolitan ice-cream tub from a cupboard in the corner of the room. Placing them on the table, he lays out the rules. “Yes or No on the piece of paper, no names, fold it once, drop it through the slot in the top of the tub. And don’t try to sneak a peek at anyone else’s vote.”
Blake and Bernie are the first to cast their votes. Blake blows me a kiss. Bernie gives me a sneaky raised thumb. I think I’m cool with them. Iggy has brought his blanket up over his head and is completely obscured as he marks his slip. A small pale hand emerges and scrabbles around for the tub, eventually finding it with some “getting warmer, getting warmer, really hot…got it!” assistance from Bernie. Then it whips back under the blanket.
Two left—the two major question marks.
Shah sits poised over the paper. He watches me as the pen descends and starts to scribble. There’s the flicker of a smile as he drops his vote through the slot.
Last one.
Florence gives me the stinkeye and pretends to karate-chop her pencil. She deposits her paper in the tub, then sits back in her chair, arms folded. If she could get her hands on a microphone right now, she would drop it.
“Done!” announces Kelvin. “I’ll take the box. Munro, we’ll go back to my office and find out if Fair Go is in your future. Bernie, Shah, Blake, Iggy, Florence, thank you for your time. We’ll see you at dinner, and I’ll let you know the result then. Munro, after you.”
As we depart Rec Room 1, I hear Blake say in a loud voice, “You two better not have fucked this up for us!”
The warning is met with a solid belly laugh.
“Gotta say,” says Kelvin, lowering himself into his office chair and putting the Walking Dead coffee cup to one side, “there were a couple of interesting moments there. You handled them well though.”
“Yeah, that was a…surprise.”
“Not put off, are ya?”
“Not yet.”
“The rest of your six months in Oz will be a breeze after that.” Kelvin shakes the ice-cream tub and peels off the lid. “Righto, ready for the count?”
He plucks them out one by one and lays them open on the table:
One—Yes. With a smiley-face.
Two—Yes. With the e backward.
Three—Yes. And a please.
Four—YES!!!
I edge forward in my seat. Despite fears and doubts, I decided to give Fair Go a shot. And what’s happened? Nothing. A big, beautiful, silent nothing. Screw the sample size of ninety minutes. I’m calling it: this place will not make things worse. But can it live up to Lou and Ms. Mac’s hype? Could it actually make things better? Something was definitely happening in that interview. Something promising, hopeful. Something that makes me want to come back.
Kelvin extracts the fifth ballot, opens it, holds it where only he can view it. He glances at me, then back at the slip of paper. An age passes. The office contracts. The zombie on the Walking Dead cup tries to bait me into a staring contest. At last Kelvin bites his bottom lip and shakes his head. He lays down the final vote.
Yes.
No please. No exclamation marks.
Just Yes.
The residential manager extends a hand across his desk. “Congrats, Munro. You can call yourself a Living Partner now.”
I meet his firm grip. “I think I will.”
Kelvin escorts me to the front entrance of Fair Go. The Brisbane sun is low in the sky, its rays now moving through my body rather than beating me over the head. The grass in and around the Welcome sign is brown and thirsty. A smell like cinnamon is in the air. A throng of dark clouds hangs out by the horizon.
“Know your way back to the station?” asks Kelvin.
“I do. It’s pretty straightforward.”
He looks at his watch. “You’ve got about ten minutes, so you’re sweet.”
“Great, thanks.”
Kelvin claps me on the shoulder, goes to turn away, pauses. “He
y, I’m sorry again about that question from Florence. I don’t know why she asked that…well, I do know why she asked it, but I don’t know why she asked you.”
I look at the Welcome sign. I didn’t notice the o had a smiley-face when I came in.
“I can honestly say it didn’t bother me,” I reply.
“I’m glad.” Kelvin flicks a thumb over his shoulder. “Every resident lives with adversity, Munro. Some, like Florence, live with too much.”
“Is she still living with it?”
He pulls a weed from the dry grass and wipes his hands. “Not physically. Her brother went to prison for what he did to her. And Flo’s a tough bugger. They all are.”
Kelvin departs with a wave that’s almost a salute and heads back into the Fair Go grounds.
On the train, thoughts fly by as quickly as the scenery. What did happen in that interview? Where was the Coyote? Is this a breakthrough? If it is, will it travel beyond the boundaries of Fair Go Community Village? As an immediate test of my newfound resilience, I pull out the novel we’re doing for English, Picnic at Hanging Rock. It’s supposed to have hot private-school girls and murder and be creepy as hell—all good stuff. I open it to dog-eared page eighteen and begin shoveling the snowbank of words. By page twenty, I’m hoping a plow comes by. Barely any of it registers. I guess I’m not cured.
Reading has been this way for longer than I can remember now. Ollie assured me difficulties concentrating and staying on task were temporary. Things would improve with time and space and kindness to self.
But how long is temporary?
Where were you?
Ah, Coyote. Welcome back. I missed you so much.