The Trivia Man

by Deborah O'Brien

  ‘Okay. Are there any other sports that interest you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you like school, Patrick?’

  ‘Some of it.’

  ‘What parts?’

  ‘The lessons.’

  ‘And what don’t you like?’

  ‘Recess. Lunchtime. Friday afternoons.’

  ‘Why Friday afternoons?’

  ‘That’s sport.’

  ‘Who’s your best friend, Patrick?’

  He thought for a long time, before saying, ‘My uncle.’

  ‘That’s nice. Uncles can be very important people in your life. Is there anyone your own age that you would call a friend?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay. I’m going to give you some toys to play with.’

  When he produced a trio of dolls, Patrick groaned.

  ‘They’re action figures, Patrick, not dolls. Which one would you like to be?’

  ‘None of them.’

  ‘Well, how about this one here? He has blond hair like yours, doesn’t he? We’ll call him Patrick. Now, I’ll get your mum a cup of tea and you can go into the playroom with your toys.’

  Peter pointed to an adjoining room separated by a big window. Patrick gave his mother a tentative look, but she said, ‘Go on, Patrick. It’ll be fun.’

  Did Peter think he was a little kid? Why would he want to play with dolls? Nevertheless, he took the figures, went into the playroom and sat down on a rug. For a while he just held them in his hands, deciding what to do with them. Then he put the one that looked like him on the floor. He didn’t know what to do with the other two until he spotted a toy basket. He dropped them both inside. Afterwards he sat on the rug for a while, until he noticed a bookcase in the corner. Most of the books were too young for him, but he found one about volcanoes and started to read it. He was lost in the pages when he heard Peter’s voice:

  ‘Would you like a drink and some biscuits, Patrick? Then I have some little tests for you.’

  Patrick liked the tests. There were lots of maths questions.

  Next Peter gave him some blocks to play with.

  ‘Can you build this shape with your blocks?’ he asked, showing Patrick a picture.

  It was easy. No matter what shape Peter produced, Patrick could make it with the blocks.

  ‘You’re good at building things, Patrick,’ he said.

  Patrick was sure his mother would be proud of him, what with the maths test and the blocks. After that, it was lunchtime and his mother took him to the shops for a hamburger. Then they returned to the office for more tests. Patrick did them in the playroom while Peter talked to his mum. When Patrick had finished everything, Peter said, ‘Thank you, Patrick. You’ve done very well. Now, Mrs Monaghan, why don’t we make an appointment for three weeks from today. That will give me time to collate the results.’

  Elizabeth

  When they got home, Patrick went to his room to do maths problems on his computer. He had already outstripped the rest of his class and was working at upper primary level. Meanwhile, Elizabeth made herself a strong cup of coffee and sank into a chair. For a long time she’d known her son was different, but today she’d seen him through the eyes of a behavioural expert and the view had been unnerving. She’d agonised over every terse and colourless answer Patrick had given to the psychologist’s questions, desperately wanting to prompt him, yet wary of appearing like a pushy parent. The worst moment had been when Patrick nominated his uncle as his best friend. In her heart she feared that one day Patrick would turn into Kevin.

  She tried to shift her thoughts to happier things. Such as her high school reunion on Saturday night. She’d been looking forward to it for months, had bought a new outfit, gone to the hairdresser for foils and visited the beautician for a very expensive series of facials. The only task left was to find a suitable babysitter. Normally she would have asked Danni to help out, but she was going away on holidays. Elizabeth didn’t have any other close girlfriends, only a large number of acquaintances. Which left Stephen’s parents as the sole contenders, except that she’d never been on good terms with them. Not since the time they’d minded Patrick as a baby and forgotten to put him down for a sleep.

  That only left Kevin. Could she really trust him to look after Patrick for an evening? Would the two of them stay up till all hours, playing computer games? Would they gorge themselves on potato chips and soft drink? Would Patrick be so hyper afterwards that it would take her days to get him back to normal? She shuddered at the possibilities. Still, she couldn’t think of anybody else.

  Patrick

  Tonight Uncle Kevin was coming to look after him. Patrick could barely wait to show his uncle the science project he’d made with the help of his mum – a volcano constructed from modelling clay and painted with acrylics. The book about volcanoes in Peter’s playroom had given Patrick the idea. His mum had helped with the decorating because he wasn’t good at things like that.

  Just as the hall clock chimed six, Uncle Kevin arrived, dressed in his black work suit and carrying a briefcase. Patrick’s mum offered a stern reminder about observing Patrick’s bedtime and handed her brother a sheet of paper with neatly written instructions about heating the dinner. Then his mum and dad were out the door and Patrick could hear the car starting up. Uncle Kevin took off his coat and tie and placed them carefully over the arm of the sofa.

  ‘Come and see my science project, Uncle Kevin. I’m handing it in on Monday,’ Patrick said, leading his uncle into the kitchen where the finished product sat on a wooden board on top of the table.

  ‘Do you know what it is?’ Patrick asked.

  ‘It’s a volcano, of course. I like the way you’ve done the lava.’

  ‘Mum did most of that. But I painted the crater,’ Patrick said, pointing to the red area at the top.

  ‘What a pity you haven’t shown the workings of the volcano.’

  Patrick frowned.

  ‘But you could always do a cross-section,’ Kevin added.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Kevin took a notepad from his trouser pocket and sketched the inside of the volcano with a pencil and paper. ‘See, here’s the main vent leading down to the magma chamber and this is a secondary cone.’

  ‘I should have thought of that,’ Patrick said. ‘But it’s too late now.’

  ‘Not necessarily. All we need to do is cut it in half. Then we could paint in the vent and the layers of lava and ash on the flat surfaces.’

  ‘Do you think we could have a secondary cone too?’

  ‘I don’t see why not. Let’s go and find something to cut your volcano with.’

  Eventually they decided on the largest knife in the timber knife-block – a lethal-looking German model.

  ‘I’d better do this,’ Kevin said. Like a surgeon, he held the stainless steel instrument above the mound of dried modelling clay, took a deep breath and began carving through it, from top to bottom. Clay dust flew everywhere. When he had finished, there were two perfect halves. The next couple of hours were spent painting the vent and the various other features onto the exposed surfaces. Kevin did one cross-section, Patrick the other. By ten o’clock they were finished. After Kevin checked that the paint was dry, they pushed both sections back together and adjourned to the TV room, where they placed the volcano and its base on the coffee table.

  ‘You’d never know that we cut it in half,’ Kevin said.

  ‘Or that there’s a surprise inside,’ Patrick added.

  Kevin found some snacks in the pantry and ice-cream in the freezer and soon they were ensconced on the sofa, feasting on their goodies and admiring their efforts.

  Elizabeth

  When Elizabeth and Stephen arrived home at midnight, she went straight upstairs to check on Patrick, only to find his bed made and pyjamas neatly folded on the eiderdown. There was no sign of him, or of Kevin for that matter. Back downstairs she discovered the reason why. Kevin and Patrick were asleep on the sofa in the TV room, Patrick’s head
on Kevin’s shoulder. Patrick had never been an affectionate child and the sight of him cuddling up to his uncle triggered a brief pang of jealousy.

  Why didn’t her son behave the same way with her? Then her eyes fell on Patrick’s science project, sitting on the coffee table next to a collection of empty snack food packets and soft drink cans.

  ‘Bloody Kevin,’ she muttered to herself.

  Standing in the doorway, Stephen whispered, ‘I’ll carry Patrick up to bed. And don’t be angry with Kevin. Patrick can sleep late tomorrow.’

  ‘Today,’ Elizabeth corrected. ‘I bet they didn’t even eat dinner,’ she growled, marching out of the room in the direction of the kitchen.

  A chaotic scene greeted her there. The French cherrywood table was covered in grey dust and paint smears. Opened tubes of acrylic paint and dirty brushes lay on the table top, together with her best carving knife, also coated in dust. What in heaven’s name had the two of them been up to? She began wiping up the dust with a damp cloth. The paint was harder to remove – traces had worked their way into the grain of the cherrywood. If they’d been doing a painting, where was it? And since when had either Kevin or Patrick been artistic? Then it struck her. They’d been messing with Patrick’s science project. The project she had devoted hours to.

  She rushed back to the TV room, picked up the volcano on its board and held it aloft. As she did so, it separated into two pieces. One of them began to slide off the board. Although it seemed to be happening in slow motion, there was nothing she could do to halt its fall. With a crash it hit the wooden floor and smashed into a zillion particles, creating a layer of volcanic ash over everything in its vicinity. Kevin woke with a start.

  ‘Damn you, Kevin,’ Elizabeth hissed. ‘Damn you to hell.’

  Kevin

  It was a couple of days after the volcano incident and Kevin was lying low following the dressing down he’d received from Elizabeth on Saturday night. Admittedly, he’d made a bit of a mess in the kitchen, but he’d had every intention of cleaning it up before he left. And it was true that in the excitement of painting the cross-section, he’d forgotten to serve the dinner she had left for them in the fridge. And yes, Patrick’s bedtime had come and gone, but it wasn’t a school night. And in the final analysis, Elizabeth was the person who broke the volcano.

  Fortunately, one half of the project had remained intact and Patrick was able to hand it in to his teacher on Monday morning. All’s well that ends well, Kevin repeated to himself, like a mantra. Most people would assume that particular saying had been coined by Shakespeare in his 1604 play of the same name, but Kevin knew better.

  There were some things, however, that he knew nothing about, and one of them was women. Specifically Danni. She tantalised and terrified him at the same time. Fortunately, she’d just left for a holiday in Cairns and he didn’t have to deal with her for another two weeks.

  In the meantime, he had been contemplating Maggie’s comments regarding love. About it turning your life upside-down. Was he in love with Danni? If the criterion was that she made it impossible for him to think straight whenever he was close to her, then perhaps he really was. He decided to consult Maggie at the next trivia night. Although matters of the heart – as she so aptly called them – were topics of discussion he would normally avoid, Maggie made such conversations tolerable.

  Maggie

  Josh was interstate, but he texted her every day. The businesslike tone of his earlier messages had recently morphed into something more intimate, though she herself was yet to respond in kind. She couldn’t help remembering Kevin’s remark about risk assessments and due diligence. Maybe she really should make a list of pros and cons, analyse the various factors and weigh them up in terms of importance and probability. No, that was ludicrous. You couldn’t formularise emotions the way you did with depreciation or capital gains tax. More’s the pity. If that were the case, life would be a helluva lot simpler.

  In the meantime, there was her latest Year 7 class to deal with. Two dozen twelve-year-olds who had just finished a ten-week ‘taster’ course in Cantonese with Mrs Cheng, culminating in yum cha at a restaurant in Chinatown. It was hard to compete with that, particularly when you taught an ancient language nobody spoke anymore. The first lesson was always the hardest and Year 7 Yellow would be no exception. At recess Maggie was setting up her computer, ready for the new class, when she saw a boy standing in the doorway. His dark, curly hair was parted in the centre and his school uniform looked in perfect order.

  ‘Are you in 7 Yellow?’ she asked with a smile.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Are you the Latin teacher?’

  The precision of his elocution made him sound as though he’d come from an earlier century.

  ‘Yes, I’m Ms Taylor. What’s your name?’

  ‘Phillip Brown.’

  ‘So, Phil, do you realise that you still have ten minutes of recess left? What are you doing here when you could be out playing soccer with the others?’

  ‘My name is Phillip, not Phil,’ he said in his Little Lord Fauntleroy voice. ‘And I don’t play soccer. I’m here to tell you something.’

  ‘Well, go ahead,’ she replied, thinking that one day he would grow into his formal voice. It would suit a barrister, a professor or even an actor.

  ‘I really don’t see why I should be studying Latin. It’s a complete waste of my time.’

  Maggie took a deep breath. ‘Hold on a minute, Phillip. You haven’t even had a Latin lesson yet and you’ve already made up your mind.’

  ‘What use is Latin to a 21st-century student?’ he said in his punctilious way. ‘Why don’t you teach something relevant?’

  She’d heard all it before but never put quite so directly or eloquently by a twelve-year-old. ‘Phillip, why don’t you reserve your judgment until the end of my lesson? Then, if you think it’s a waste of your time, we can talk some more.’

  He pondered for a moment before saying, ‘All right, but I won’t be changing my mind.’ Then he turned and walked out the door.

  Through the expanse of glass that separated her room from the corridor, she watched Phillip line up outside. But the problem was that the bell hadn’t rung yet, and he was the only one in the line. On her computer there was a file entitled ‘Special Needs Students: Year 7 Yellow’, which had arrived via email from the school counsellor a few days earlier. Maggie had saved the document but hadn’t opened it. That was her policy. Get to know each student for who they are; don’t label them in advance as a syndrome, disorder or disability. For a moment she was tempted to look at the counsellor’s list, but there was no need to do so. In her heart she was certain Phillip Brown would be there, complete with a label. What a pity to classify the boy as though he were a book on a library shelf, when Maggie could already see there was so much more to him than that.

  At the end of the lesson she asked Phillip to stay behind.

  ‘I’ll be late for maths,’ he said brusquely.

  ‘I’m not going to keep you long, and I’ll give you a note, if necessary. Now tell me, did you change your mind about Latin?’

  ‘Somewhat,’ he replied, sounding more like a professor than a pupil.

  Maggie smiled. ‘What aspects of the lesson did you find worthwhile?’

  ‘The game about words. I didn’t realise that you could work out the meanings by knowing Latin prefixes and suffixes.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I liked learning my name in Latin.’

  ‘So you’ll be coming back next lesson?’

  He gave her a thoughtful look as though she was really offering him a choice. Then he seemed to grasp that she was kidding and offered the ghost of a smile, or perhaps she had imagined it.

  ‘Vale, Philippe,’ she said by way of farewell.

  ‘I thought my name was Philippus.’

  ‘It is, but when someone is addressed by name, the ending “us” changes to an “e”. Technically, it’s called the vocative case.’

  She expecte
d a blank look in reply to this complex grammatical explanation, but instead he said, ‘Is that why Julius Caesar said “Et tu, Brute?” after he was stabbed? I always wondered why he used “Brute” instead of “Brutus”. I thought he was calling Brutus a brute.’

  Maggie was so taken aback by the depth of his answer, she couldn’t speak. After a moment she composed herself enough to ask, ‘How did you know Julius Caesar’s last words?’

  ‘Alleged last words,’ he corrected. ‘I read Shakespeare’s play.’

  This young man was certainly someone very special. As he turned to go, she said, ‘Phillip, I’m really delighted to have you in my class, but just a little piece of advice. Although I appreciate your candour, there are others who might not feel the same way. So you probably shouldn’t make a practice of telling your teachers their subjects are irrelevant.’

  ‘I was just saying what I thought. I told my music teacher the same thing.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Maggie said, ‘it’s best to keep critical words in your head and not say them out loud. Particularly when they might hurt someone’s feelings. Okay?’

  He considered her words for so long she wondered whether he was going to answer at all. Then he said, ‘How do you say “okay” in Latin?’

  Trivia Night

  Edward was back after his bout with the flu, and grumpier than ever. He didn’t even seem pleased that, as a result of their success at the Sixties Night, the Dreamers had now attained first place. Or, more exactly, equal first with the Usual Suspects.

  ‘We won the karaoke last week too,’ Carole told Edward proudly.

  ‘I don’t suppose those two contributed,’ he said, eyeing Maggie and Kevin.

  ‘They contributed more than enough to the answers,’ said Ash.

  The evening’s theme was sport. As usual, it involved dressing up. Edward had chosen a footy jumper, Carole a tennis dress, Ash and Mei Zhen had come as hockey players, complete with sticks, while Maggie had donned a wetsuit. Kevin wore a canvas hat and carried a fishing rod.