Checkers (6 page)

Daniel got really twitchy in Group today and Marj noticed, as she notices everything. Group can be a kind of game sometimes, when someone decides she wants a bit of attention. It's usually Cindy. She sits there looking so sad and depressed, head down, ignoring people when they try to talk to her, till Marj finally says, ‘I think we have one person in Group today who's feeling particularly upset,' and we all look at Cindy and make sympathetic noises and wait for her to spill her guts.

When Marj is away, as she is often, like every second day—I don't know how she has the cheek to collect her pay some weeks—her replacement, Lesley, is almost exactly the same but not quite. It's like a cardboard cut-out of Marj, or a Marj doll, because the words are the same but they come out of Lesley's mouth at a slightly different speed, and she says some words differently.

Anyway today it was Marj and, instead of Cindy being the drama queen, it was Daniel. Whoops, I didn't mean that the way it sounded. Even if Daniel would have been the first to laugh.

He wouldn't have laughed today, though. He wasn't in laughter mode. He wouldn't say anything for quite a while, but finally, with Marj prodding away, he whispered, ‘I feel awful.'

‘I think it's something to do with Noel,' Cindy said.

‘Noel the patient in F11?'

‘Mmm.'

Noel's one of the adult patients. I've never been quite sure what I think about him. He's fat and jolly, cheerful with the other adults, and impossible to beat at table tennis. He's got the most vicious serve I've ever seen, and for a big guy he's quick on his feet. But with us kids he's a bit, I don't know, there's something a bit nasty about him. He hangs around us quite a lot, and I think he feels we should look up to him, treat him with respect. He gets a little pissed off when we laugh at him. So all the jolliness stuff—sometimes I wonder if it's just a front.

Daniel still wouldn't say anything so Cindy told her story. ‘Last night I saw Daniel sitting outside having a durry and I thought I'd have one too, so I went to get some money from my room for the cigarette machine. Noel was just coming past and he asked me for a smoke but I said I didn't have any, which was true. He went outside and I went down to the machine. When I got outside Daniel asked me for a cigarette and I gave him one, then Noel asked me for one again, but he's always botting smokes, so I wouldn't give him one. Then I went inside to get a jumper, cos it was so cold last night, and when I came out again I couldn't find Daniel. I couldn't figure it out, because he'd been there two minutes earlier, about to light his smoke, and now he'd gone. So I went up to his room to look for him, but he wasn't there either: like, the room was empty. But just as I was going out I thought I heard a noise from the cupboard so I opened it and there was Daniel, all scrunched up and crying. I got such a shock, because the cupboard wouldn't be the cleanest place in the world and you know what Daniel's like about dirt. Anyway, he wouldn't tell me what was wrong but after a while he asked me to take him down to the boys' bathroom. And on the way there he said if we saw Noel not to stop, just keep walking. Well, we didn't see him, but that's why I think it had something to do with Noel.'

‘You had a long shower last night, Daniel,' Ben said.

Lately Daniel's cut his shower times down to only an hour a day, most days, so a long one was bad news. I figured Marj would know all about that, though. The staff know everything that happens, everything we do. It's enough to make you paranoid, which means you'd stay here forever then. Catch-22.

So Marj started in on Daniel. She might have already known what upset him anyway, because if the night staff knew, they'd have put it down in the case notes and talked about it when they had their little change-of-shifts ceremony. If you asked for a smaller helping of apple pie at tea time that was a symptom of something and they wrote it down.

‘Daniel, you seem to have had a bad night?'

No response.

‘Have you talked to anyone about it?'

No response.

‘Did something specific happen to upset you?'

Long, long pause, then a tiny nod.

‘Something last night?'

Ditto long pause, tiny nod.

‘Is Cindy right about Noel being involved?'

Daniel didn't respond to that at all, so Marj tried again.

In Marj's book, any reaction is a good reaction. They don't care if you cry, scream, yell with rage, attack them—verbally, anyway. The only thing they can't stand is what I give them. Silence. Passivity. Nothing.

So she must have been pleased with what she suddenly got from Daniel. He burst into a flood of tears, crying noisily, rocking himself backwards and forwards. I moved over and put my arm around him. I hate seeing anyone unhappy. But it was about five minutes before he calmed down.

‘How're you feeling, Daniel?' Marj asked.

That's their standard question. I wish I had a gold medal for every time I heard it. My trophy cabinet would be full. You'd think it'd be obvious how Daniel was feeling. He was gulping and sobbing but he finally managed to say, ‘Awful.'

We were all sitting there, pretty tense. No matter how often you see someone crack up, it's powerful. We all like Daniel, I think, even Ben, who's so nervous of him. And although he is an emotional guy, kind of brittle, and he does give the impression that he's covering up and could easily snap, I'd never seen him like this.

‘Do you feel you can talk about it?' Marj asked.

‘He . . . he called me a fairy,' Daniel hiccuped.

‘A fairy?'

‘Yeah, a fairy, a poofter, all those names, you know. When Cindy wouldn't give him a cigarette.'

‘But you make jokes like that yourself,' Oliver said, looking slightly surprised.

‘But it's different then,' Daniel said. ‘I do it to stop other people doing it.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Well, I sort of beat them to it,' Daniel explained. ‘If I do it, they don't bother. Or if they do, it doesn't matter so much.'

I understood what he meant then. It was a smart tactic.

‘So you do mind all that stuff,' Oliver said.

‘Of course I mind,' Daniel said. He sat up a bit. He was still crying but he was getting angry too. ‘Of course I mind. You think I like it? I can't help the way I am. I didn't choose to be this way. But this is the way I am, this is me, I just want people to accept it. But some of the kids at school, even people in my own family, and now people here, they can't leave me alone.'

‘No-one in this group gives you a hard time,' Oliver said.

‘Some of you do.'

There was silence for a bit.

‘What are your parents like?' Cindy asked.

‘They're OK. They're cool. They just tell me to be myself, not worry what people say. But that doesn't help much.'

‘How can you not worry what people say?' Emine asked.

‘I can't,' Daniel said miserably. ‘I just think this is going to keep happening all my life.'

‘Do you like the way you are?' Cindy asked. She was being pretty good today, like she really cared.

Daniel considered. ‘I don't know. Sometimes. I think I've got some good points.'

‘Such as?' Marj said.

‘I try to be nice to people,' Daniel said. ‘I work pretty hard. I try to do the right things, most of the time.'

‘What do you want to be when you leave school?' Cindy asked.

‘I used to think I'd like to be a social worker,' Daniel said. ‘But I don't know, I doubt if they'd take me after being in here.'

‘Why not?' Emine asked.

‘Well you know, being in a psych hospital, it's not exactly the perfect background for it, is it? They'd think I'd crack up under pressure.'

I couldn't help myself, I had to say something. It was too awful to see Daniel so miserable, tearing himself apart. So I spoke.

‘I think you'd be a good social worker, after being in here,' I whispered.

Marj just about slid off her chair. But she was too well trained for that. She got red in the face and sat up a bit.

‘Sorry, didn't quite catch that,' she said. ‘Would you mind repeating it?'

So I did. What the hell, it was about time. But I could understand her getting excited. They were the first words I've ever spoken in Group.

Daniel being so upset made me think. Everyone's problems are different, but they're the same in a lot of ways. One thing about all of us is that we don't have any skin. People talk about thick skin and thin skin, but we don't have any, or we wouldn't be in here. When people like Noel attack us, we've got no way of holding them off.

It's bad enough with Noel, who's not much more than a stranger. It's a lot worse when it's someone close, like your own family for instance.

I was never thick-skinned, but I was better than I am now. Somehow I've lost whatever skin I had.

When things started going wrong with Dad and Rider Group it was bad, but it was still bearable. I almost got used to the front-page stories, the current affairs shows on TV. You could tell that most days they didn't have anything new. I didn't read many of the stories in the paper, and I got into the habit of taking Checkers for a walk when the current affairs shows came on at six-thirty. The worst part was that Dad and Mum and Mark, and yes, me too, stopped functioning as a family. Once Mum got over the first shock she became kind of housebound. She scrubbed harder, polished harder, cleaned more, but she hardly ever went anywhere. Dad couldn't understand that, and it made him mad, but he didn't seem able to do much about it. I couldn't understand it myself, and it made me mad too.

It was about eight o'clock on a Tuesday night when we reached the next stage of awfulness. A reporter had been hanging around for nearly two hours. He rang the bell and asked to talk to Dad.

‘He's not home yet.'

‘Can I ask when you're expecting him?'

‘I don't know. Probably quite late. But I don't think he'll give you an interview here.'

I was getting more polite to them, I suppose because I had some vague idea that they'd be kinder to us. I guess that was a bit naive.

I shut the door and the man wandered back to the street. I watched him through the window. He had a conference with his photographer, and they settled down on the front wall to wait. I didn't look at them again. We were so used to them by now. I even knew this one's name: Allan Watkins, from the
Standard
.

When Dad finally drove in I was sitting at my desk, trying to do homework. I got up to put some hot water on, in case he wanted a coffee. On the way to the kitchen I heard loud voices, angry voices, from outside, and I stopped and looked through the window. There was Dad, yelling at the reporter. He was waving his arms around like an AFL goal umpire with his flags. The reporter was only a metre from him, standing with his arms folded, not moving. The photographer was about five metres to Dad's right, out of his line of vision, snapping away non-stop, having a great time. I paused, not knowing what to do. If I went outside I might make things worse. If I stayed inside things might get worse anyway. Mum was home, but having a sleep in her bedroom. She slept a lot these days. Mark was out. There was no-one to tell me what to do. After a minute, as the voices got louder and Dad's arms even more violent, I thought I'd better go out there. Dad looked like he might hit someone at any moment. I went to the front door, pulled it open and went out. And just as I stepped onto the lawn it all exploded.

Dad pulled back his right arm and hit the reporter somewhere round the middle of his face. The reporter grabbed his nose and buckled at the knees. As he dropped, Dad pushed him backwards, so that he lost balance completely. The photographer didn't do a thing to help his mate, just kept taking photos. Mr Watkins was lying on his back on the grass, holding his nose and moaning. I ran towards them, praying like mad that he wasn't hurt. Not that I cared about him; I just didn't want Dad to get in more trouble. But then I saw blood on Mr Watkins' face. Dad was standing over him, not saying anything, just looking grim. For a moment the only sound was the ‘scarritch, scarritch' of the camera. Then Mr Watkins yelled up at him, ‘You stupid bastard, what did you do that for?'

I reached Dad at that moment and grabbed him. I was scared he'd hit the reporter again. But he let me pull him away so Mr Watkins could get up. He got out a handkerchief and held it to his nose to soak up the blood. No-one said anything. They just stood there glaring at each other. The photographer was changing film cartridges, I think. I was the first to speak.

‘Are you all right?' I asked Mr Watkins.

‘No, I'm not,' he said, answering me but looking straight at Dad.

‘Do you want to come in the house?' I asked. ‘To clean up?'

‘No,' he said. Then he turned to the photographer. ‘Let's get out of here,' he said.

Even Dad could tell by the tone of his voice that the situation was desperate. Dad put out a hand to stop him. ‘Look,' he said, ‘I'm sorry. I lost my head. I didn't mean to hurt you. Come inside and clean up, and have a drink. You too,' he said to the photographer.

But they ignored him. The photographer picked up his bag and the reporter looked around for his notebook. I saw it, and his pen, a few metres away, so I picked them up and handed them to him. He didn't thank me, just walked away, he and the photographer, to their car, which was parked outside the Sykes'.

Dad stood there without moving. His head was down. I felt sorry for him, but I felt sort of masterful, in control. ‘Come on,' I said. ‘You'd better have that drink yourself.'

He followed me into the house and I got him a whisky. He sat there for about two hours, not saying anything. I tried a few times to get him to talk, but he wouldn't. I cooked him some tea but he wasn't interested.

Eventually Mum came out of their bedroom. She looked at us and seemed to realise something was wrong. ‘What's happened?' she asked. He took her back into their room and shut the door. I could hear them talking for hours.

When Mark got home—he'd been to Josh's—I told him about it. But he didn't seem to react—just listened to what I said, then disappeared to his own room. In the end, I gave up and went to bed.

Next morning I dreaded to look at the
Standard
. But I thought I'd better so I'd know what to expect at school.

‘It couldn't be worse,' was my first thought. In fact, the time came when I realised things could always be worse. But I hadn't quite realised that then. I stared at the page in horror, not knowing whether to read the story or look at the pictures. It was all over the front page, of course, but there was heaps more inside. Photos of Dad throwing the punch, of the punch connecting, of the push, of the reporter lying on the ground. It said he had to go to hospital to have his nose X-rayed, and that he was considering legal action against Dad. I don't suppose that surprised me.

But what worried me as much as all that was the story behind the punch; the story of what he had said that made Dad lose his temper. It turned out there was more trouble about the contract. The paper said that one of the other bidders, a company I'd never heard of called Jackson Investments, had bid fifteen million dollars more than Rider Group. No-one would confirm it—there was a series of ‘no comments' from all the people involved—but the paper swore its information was from ‘a reliable source'. The main editorial said that there'd have to be an inquiry, a Royal Commission preferably.

By itself it was no worse than all the other stories. It was just the sense that this was never going to go away; that it was going to keep getting worse and worse and worse. The Premier was famous for taking no notice of the press: it was his proud boast that ‘I run this state, and the newspapers don't.' In the last election the Opposition had run an ad showing the Premier with a bubble coming out of his mouth saying, ‘I am the Premier. Shut up.'

But even he couldn't ignore this much longer. It was stinking worse than the Cheshunt Abattoirs. I was keeping my eyes closed and my nose firmly pegged, but the smell was starting to seep into me too.