The Full Ridiculous (16 page)

(1) He will not admit that Christina Bowden or anyone from Boomerang has told him about the Eva altercation.

(2) He will not admit that Eva or anyone from her family has told him about the altercation.

(3) He knows all about the altercation.

Wendy is in an icy fury that she tries to conceal from Rosie as you drive home. Rosie sits in the back seat clinging to an optimistic view that, even though Doctor Quinn knows about the fight, she may still be admitted to Mount Karver. Although you sense that she hasn’t got a hope in hell, you jolly her along because there is a remote possibility that she may be right.

Back at home, Rosie goes downstairs to debrief with Juan, and Wendy calls Christina Bowden, who assures her that no one from Boomerang has given details about the fight to anyone at Mount Karver. ‘It would be prejudicial and unethical,’ says Christina when Wendy presses her. ‘We just wouldn’t do it.’ You both trust this woman, and conclude that either the police or the Pessites must have told the headmaster about the fight.

Constable Lance Johnstone is dumb, mean and unethical enough to snitch on Rosie but it’s unlikely that he would have any idea about her application to Mount Karver and therefore would not know that information about the fight would be relevant to Doctor Quinn.

The most likely scenario is that the Pessites have described their version of events during Eva’s interview. You can see Eva’s mother looking askance and lowering her voice as she refers to Rosie as a ‘girl of low morals’. She begins reluctantly at first, ‘…so glad Eva would be getting away from certain elements…girls can be worse than boys sometimes…you think boys are the violent ones but that’s not always the case, is it?’ She offers crafted fragments of information, forcing the headmaster to tease out all the details if only to make sense of what she is saying.

It wasn’t
her
idea, she can say later. The headmaster
forced
her to tell.

You can imagine Eva’s blow-by-blow description of the fight playing out as if she hasn’t rehearsed it with her mother. For some reason you can’t picture the father or his role but you are certain that these people would have said and done everything in their considerable power to make Rosie sound like a monster.

Shit.

Four days later a letter from Mount Karver arrives. Still clinging to hope, Rosie dances inside with it, rips open the envelope and scans the letter. Her face falls. She hands the letter to Wendy who scans it and hands it to you.

Rosie has not been accepted in the first round of applications but may be considered in the second round.

You wonder if this is, in fact, true.

Ignatius Quinn is canny enough to realise that if he refused entry to Rosie outright, you would respond with an open declaration of war, bombarding the school board with letters of protest outlining how you have become part of the Mount Karver ‘family’ via fundraisers, fetes and sporting events—you deserve greater consideration than this.

Ignatius Quinn is cunning enough to dull the pain by turning the rejection into a two-step process. There can be no howls of protest if Rosie still has a chance of being accepted in a second round. Then, once you are acclimatised to the possibility that Rosie may not be offered a place, he deals the final blow.

Wendy takes the letter from your hands and draws your attention to Rosie, who hunches at the kitchen table, staring out the window. There are no histrionics, not even a little weeping.

‘Is there anything I can do?’ Rosie eventually asks.

‘Write a letter,’ says Wendy.

Rosie bustles into her room and returns with a pad and paper. You privately wonder whether it isn’t cruel to offer your daughter hope. But you don’t have the heart to stop her as she starts a letter to Doctor Quinn outlining why she would be a valuable asset to the school and telling him how much she would like to attend. She finishes it in her lovely clean handwriting and passes it to Wendy for proofing.

Rosie has her mother’s gift for letter writing. Her plea is passionate and genuine. Despite the fact that it has a few spelling mistakes and some grammatical deviations, Wendy doesn’t change a word.

22

When Wendy takes a call from Elsie Schmetterling, she guesses she’s getting the inside lowdown on Rosie’s letter to Ignatius Quinn. But the call is not about Rosie at all—it’s about the gun incident. You overhear enough of Wendy’s conversation to be suppressing a wave of panic by the time she hangs up. You discover that the police have requested a meeting in Ignatius Quinn’s office with both O’Dell parents, Constable Lance Johnstone, the area commander, and the superintendent in charge of weapons licensing.

Eek. And shit.

According to Elsie, the headmaster has no clue as to their agenda but wants you to attend. Wendy tells Elsie that she’ll get back to her.

Wendy calls Shelley Mainwaring but you are interrupting with so many questions that she hands over the receiver. Shelley recommends that Wendy attend the meeting but not you. This makes you relieved and alarmed.

Relieved
because you are a coward and have no wish to attend and now you have a legitimate excuse because you are following legal advice.
Alarmed
because you thought the whole thing had blown over but now your lawyer is advising you not to attend, which indicates that you are still in jeopardy.

You ask whether you are still in jeopardy. Shelley knows you are a headcase so is careful not to inflame you with her answer. Because the police have still not formally responded to the written statement that you submitted shortly after Constable Johnstone threatened to arrest you, Shelley is not satisfied that the matter has been resolved. There is a remote chance (she emphasises
remote
) that the meeting could be some kind of ambush.

‘What kind of ambush?’

‘They might arrest you.’

A lava of stuttering gibberish erupts out of you so Wendy takes the phone. Wendy can’t believe that the cops would try to arrest you when you have done nothing wrong. Shelley reminds Wendy that Constable Lance Johnstone is a loose cannon. Who knows what kind of scenario he has created in the minds of his superiors?

Every time you visit your psychiatrist, he asks you to fill in a form with the same questions:

Do you have nightmares?

Do you try not to think about your accident?

Are you always on guard?

Are you easily startled?

Do you feel detached from others?

Are you interested in reading books or magazines?

There’s a couple of pages of questions like these. You are supposed to answer
yes
or
no
and then rate the intensity of your feeling out of 10. Today it goes:

Nightmares, yes, 8 (down from 9 last week)

Think of accident, yes, 7 (up from 5)

On guard, yes, 10 (always)

Easily startled, yes, 10 (always)

Detached from others, yes, 9 (same as last week)

Interested in reading, no, 2 (same as last week)

You suppose Doctor Maurice tracks your scores to monitor your progress.
It seems awfully simple. Can you really be summed up with a series of scores? Maybe you can.
On the inside you feel like a complex mass of intertwining disasters but maybe from the outside you’re just a Fuck-up Grade B with a degree of difficulty of zero point seven.

Anyway, you like Doctor Maurice (it’s only in your head that you call him ‘Doctor Maurice’; in real life you call him ‘Maurice’ mostly but sometimes ‘Doctor O’Connell’). You like Doctor Maurice because he makes you feel like you are not alone. And because he is kind.

‘I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.’ You are suddenly transported back to school where you hear your curly-headed friend, Chris Sepak, quoting Blanche DuBois from some Tennessee Williams play.
Which one? Doesn’t matter.
It’s a routine Chris does for the gang. He raises his voice to a girlish pitch and nails a perfect Southern accent. ‘I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.’ You all laugh uproariously.

The doctor asks you why you are smiling and you answer, ‘Nothing,’ which doesn’t exactly make sense. You kick yourself mentally for not paying attention to this man who is trying to help you.

Doctor Maurice scans the form you have just filled in and asks you how you’ve been going. You tell him about the all-pervasive dread you are experiencing. You know it’s not rational but you feel that the
good part of your life is over and the bad part has begun
.

You see that you have been engaged in a ridiculous, new-agey pact with the universe:
I will be a good person and good things will happen to me.
You’ve been thinking that since your accident the universe hasn’t kept up its end of the bargain. But recently you’ve begun to realise that the universe is, in fact, trying to tell you something: that in your core you are not such a good person. You’re not bad. You’re just not good
enough
.

Doctor Maurice interrupts, ‘Listen to me, Michael. Bad things happen to good people. They do. They just do.’

You know he’s just trying to be kind but kindness is the thing that always gets you. You struggle to stop the tears but they come anyway, tumbling down your cheeks, girlish embarrassments like Chris Sepak’s high-pitched voice.

Yet again you curse your emotional incontinence.
How the gang at school would laugh.

As Maurice hands you a tissue you admit that you are terrified of being arrested; terrified in the way that people are terrified of elevators or heights. The fear may be irrational but it is also limitless and immense.

Doctor Maurice can feel your terror and comes and sits on the couch next to you. Somehow his physical proximity comforts you. ‘I am with you,’ it says.

You tell him about your godfather who is long dead but was Deputy Commissioner of Police when you were a boy. He was stern, kind and dependable. You held him in the highest possible esteem. Because of him, you grew up believing that the police were there to serve and protect. You always took comfort in their presence. It never occurred to you that they wouldn’t be on your side.

How can it be that they have become a sinister shadow looming over everything?

Leaving the psychiatrist’s office, you close the glossy fire-engine-red front door and step outside, where you are almost run over by a postman on a bicycle.

You push your way down the narrow sidewalk against a stream of pedestrians. They are all well-dressed, young, vital, filled with purpose and headed to important destinations. Then you see someone out of place like yourself.

An Aboriginal man, about your age, moves slower than the other pedestrians. He watches his feet as he walks, not making eye contact with anyone. The frayed cuffs of his long-sleeved white shirt are turned up a couple of times, just like yours. He wears faded jeans with scuffed Birkenstocks and has an air of peacefulness about him.

When he passes, he glances directly at you. You see that you have been wrong. The man’s eyes are filled with pain, not peace. Nothing is said and he walks on. But you are struck by a profound connection. You feel it in some inner place that you would call a soul if you were convinced such a thing exists.

A question stops you in your tracks: here you are, middle class, white, well educated, well connected, living in fear of the police coming to arrest you.
What must it be like to be poor, black, with little education or opportunity? Where do you turn for comfort and support when the police come after you? How do you assert your rights? Who will help you? What do you do with the certainty of your complete powerlessness? How fucking unbearable must that feel?

You stumble and put your hand on a parked car to stop yourself falling. Suddenly you feel sick and a stream of vomit erupts from your mouth and splatters into the gutter.

‘Hey, that’s my car!’ a man’s voice calls behind you. A small amount of vomit has splashed onto the door of the red car.

A little while later you are sitting in your own car, trying to collect yourself before you attempt to drive home. You wipe your mouth with your handkerchief and put it back in your pocket, where you discover a twenty-dollar bill. It occurs to you that you should go back and give it to the owner of the vomit-specked car, a contribution towards a carwash.

You walk back to find him but he is gone.

23

Lining up at your local cinema, you’ve bought your (tax-deductible) ticket and are looking forward to the oblivion that is granted when the lights go down and you immerse yourself in someone else’s story.

An usher appears and opens one of the double doors to the cinema. As patrons pour out of the previous session, you study their faces; they’re smiling and chatting, which is a good sign because it’s a comedy.

Suddenly you realise that you’ve forgotten your pad and special pen that has a tiny light on it so you can take notes in the dark. You will need these notes to compose your review. You pat yourself down to make sure you haven’t tucked them into a pocket somewhere, but, no, they’re not there.

Idiot
.

Maybe you left them in the car.

If you go to the car now you will lose your place in the line which may mean you will miss out on your favourite seat almost exactly in the middle of the cinema—halfway between the screen and the projector, fifteen seats from the left exit, fourteen seats from the right exit.

You hover for a moment, seized by indecision. When the cinema is finally empty the usher opens the second door, allowing patrons to enter for the next session. As the line starts to move, you engage in a panicky dialogue with yourself
.

Maybe you can write the review without notes?

What if you can’t?

Then you could just see it again.

But what a waste of time and money.

You should have gone to the press screening yesterday instead of mucking around at your psychiatrist’s.

Mucking around?

Is that really what you think, you infant?

Why can’t you calm down and stop catastrophising?