Blame (23 page)

Anna wanted to take a walk in the local park on a sunny day and feed the ducks. In the early stages of her pregnancy with Maya, she and Keith had loved watching the children stand by the artificial lake and throw bread at the ducks. They had delighted in imagining their own giggling child celebrating a summer's day in the same way. It was such
a small thing and yet it hadn't been possible. Maya was terrified of the ducks, and if someone shouted or laughed loudly, she freaked out and ran. She didn't understand the water, and twice, before Anna had simply given up taking her to the park, she had run straight into the lake before Anna could catch her.

She had watched Maya with her play therapist and projected forward to a future where she could say to her friends and family, ‘Yes, she has come a long way, hasn't she? We didn't think it was possible but we're so grateful that she's making such great progress.' She had thought about the possibility of a mainstream school and seen a teenage Maya sitting with her in a coffee shop.

But just as suddenly as her improvement had begun, it had simply stopped. In fact, Maya had seemingly taken three steps back. And her tantrums had grown worse. Anything could set her off—a colour she didn't like, a food she didn't want to eat, Anna sitting in a chair she didn't want her to sit in, her DVD taking too long to load, the sun shining too brightly. Anna never knew what it would be. She spent all day, every day, moving slowly and trying to keep everything the way it had been the day before but she could never get it completely right. And when Maya threw a tantrum, she became violent. She would bite and kick and scratch and punch, and Anna had no choice but to hold her. If she let go, Maya would make for the front door, or she would kick and punch the walls, damaging her hands. So Anna held on and Maya used her as a punching
bag. Afterwards, they would both feel exhausted, and peace would descend on their home for a couple of hours, but each time it happened, Anna felt a little more hope for a different future for her child drain away.

It seemed impossible to her, as she sat on her couch sipping tea, that she was going to be accused of murder in the morning. Would the police use her lie about Caro coming over to somehow make everything her fault?

It was almost laughable, but not funny at all. She had seen the way the two detectives had looked at each other—like they'd heard something, or seen something, and now they knew the answer.

She thinks about Walt's dark green eyes. Perhaps he is in bed next to Cynthia right now. Perhaps they are discussing her, discussing all the things she has said, and working out how to trap her into a confession. Perhaps Walt runs his hand slowly down Cynthia's body. Anna shivers in the heat, feeling Walt's hand touch her own skin. She shifts on the couch. A year ago, she had noticed that her period was late and experienced a brief moment of panic before she realised that she had not had sex for close to two years. Keith had given up approaching her; she couldn't make the leap from mother of an autistic child to lover. She had managed it every now and again when Maya was younger, but the older she got and the more violent she became, the less Anna could see herself as anything other than a parent of an autistic child, fighting to get through every day. There was no room for sex in that woman's life.

She could refuse to go back in the morning, she knew she could. Or she could tell Keith that she needed a lawyer and refuse to say anything else until they charged her with something. That was probably the wisest course of action but she had a feeling she would go back anyway. ‘I have nothing to hide,' she says to the flickering television set.

But everyone has something to hide. Anna knew that Caro had sat in the interview room with different detectives and tried to hide the level of her drinking. She must have. She hid it from everyone else, or thought she did.

Over the years of their friendship, Anna had watched Caro's drinking get worse and worse, especially after her most recent pregnancy. She remembers the phone call from Geoff at seven in the morning. She was grateful, at the time, that Keith had still been home, and that he had told her he would sort out Maya and get her to school, so she could go and see Caro in the hospital.

‘I held him as long as I could,' Caro had said, ‘but they've taken him away now. He was so beautiful, Anna. You should have seen how beautiful he was.' Anna had never seen Caro so lost. With each miscarriage, she had seemed to shrink further and further into herself, questioning everything she had done. She wouldn't drink anything except herbal teas and only bought organic food. She turned getting and staying pregnant into her career, and Anna could see the strain on her face, on Geoff's face, and even on Lex's face, when their families occasionally saw each other.

In the same way that Anna searched for cures for autism, Caro became addicted to websites where women posted personal stories of their miscarriages. When she was past the three-month mark with Gideon, she relaxed a little, and then when she was past the five-month mark and knew she was having a boy, she threw herself into decorating the blue room for him. ‘Everything happens for a reason,' she had said over and over again to Anna. ‘If I hadn't lost those other babies, I wouldn't be having this little boy now. You just have to trust that everything happens for a reason.'

It had been difficult for Anna to be friends with Caro at that time. Her face radiated joy, and even when she walked she seemed lighter, despite her heavy belly. Anna found herself feeling slightly envious. She was still searching for her own reasons why things happened, and managed to dismiss Caro's years of heartbreak and simply think of her as ‘lucky'.

When Gideon died, Caro was stunned. She believed she had reached a point in the pregnancy where, finally, the only outcome could be a healthy baby.

Anna had driven to the hospital and parked her car, and then waited a moment until she could find some words to say to Caro but all that she could think, and hate herself for thinking, was, ‘Where's your reason now?'

‘You're becoming a bitter woman, Anna,' her mother said to her every now and again.

‘You and I both, Mum.'

‘He had such tiny little hands, Anna,' said Caro, as she lay
pale and still in the hospital bed. ‘I forgot how tiny babies' hands are.' Her tears kept coming. ‘I wish you could have seen him, Anna. He was so beautiful.'

‘Oh, Caro,' Anna had said because there was nothing else to say.

She had seen the confusion on her friend's face and known that Caro was trying to find a way to reason through the tragedy, and failing. It had made Anna doubly ashamed of her own unkind thoughts.

She was unused to being the strong one in their relationship, unused to offering advice and comfort. She knew that sometimes she was so wrapped up in her daily struggle with Maya that she failed to see when her friends or family needed her, but she had tried with Caro. She had tried harder than ever on that day. She wanted to be a better person, a better friend.

In the weeks following Gideon's death, Anna called Caro almost every night and listened to her friend talk about her lost child. Finally, after two months, she asked, ‘Will you try again?'

‘No,' said Caro. Her voice was flat.

‘But why? I know it's been really . . . really hard . . . but you're still young enough.'

‘Geoff doesn't want to. At first, I didn't want to either. It felt like it was an impossible situation and I thought that maybe I'm not meant to have another child. But lately, I don't know, lately I am thinking about it. I mean, I pick up Lex from school, and there are all these other mothers with
babies strapped to their chests and babies in prams, and I keep looking at them and thinking, “How come they've managed to get it right? How hard can it be?” You know?'

‘Yeah, I know,' said Anna because she did know. She looked at other mothers all the time, wondering at their good fortune. She looked at harassed mothers in the grocery store, with four children all talking at once, and she thought, ‘How come she gets to have four functioning children and I don't even get one?' But that thought wasn't one she shared with anyone, not even her therapists.

Anna spent a lot of time on the internet, looking at all the websites and reading all the blogs and the personal stories of parents of autistic children, and over and over again she read the word ‘blessed'. It seemed to her that every other parent of an autistic child had managed to find the beauty in raising them, the hope and the joy and the humility that came with understanding and accepting their children for who they were. All of these parents talked about letting go of what they had imagined a child should be, of accepting the differences in their own children. Some talked of faith and most spoke of gratitude for the lessons they were learning. Anna envied their peace and happiness, and she kept searching for it in different places with different people.

She wanted her face to light up when she spoke about Maya, the same way Melanie's did when she spoke about her son, Jonah.

Anna had met Melanie at a local group for parents of autistic children that she attended a few times before she
decided it was not for her. They met once a month, to discuss new therapies and treatments and any triumphs they had experienced. Anna had been elated when she found the group and she had hoped that there she would find people she could speak to about how hard it was. People who would understand that most days it was easier not to leave the house when their child was home. People who were scared that if they took their child somewhere, he or she might attack another child, might hit or bite or kick. She thought she would find another mother who would sit with her in her lounge room, and the two of them could watch their children spinning, or lining up blocks, or simply staring at something only they could see, and she wouldn't need to explain because the other mother would understand. And, more than that—she would get how Anna felt, her frustration, her anger and her worries.

She had Caro, but Caro sympathised and couldn't empathise. Caro's child was fine.

At the first meeting she attended, Anna had listened patiently while the parents described the different things they were doing, and what was working and what wasn't, waiting for someone to say something about just how hard it was, about how angry they sometimes were because they had to deal with a child with autism, but it never came.

Instead the catchword of the group seemed to be ‘restraint,' as one parent after another told the group about how they had managed to practice restraint in a difficult situation and felt so much better for the achievement.
A woman named Deborah said, ‘I walked into Benny's room and it was the most awful sight I'd ever seen. He'd smeared poo all over the walls—oh it was horrible and the smell, I don't need to tell you about the smell.' A few of the parents laughed but Anna closed her eyes. There was nothing funny about it. ‘Anyway,' Deborah continued, ‘I wanted to yell at him you know because he's nine now and we were way past that stage—he was even wiping himself in the bathroom—so believe me I was angry. But then I remembered about restraint and I thought, “well this is as good a time as any to practice that,” so instead of yelling I went up to Benny really quietly and I said, “I think it's hose time, Benny,” because he loves the hose and I knew he wouldn't argue. I kind of guided him without touching his hands until we were in the garden and then I turned on the hose and rinsed off his hands and he stood there with a dreamy look on his face. When his hands were clean I gave him the hose and let him water the flowers and I went in and cleaned up and by the time I was done he was really calm and the whole day was just easy. I was so grateful that I had restrained myself instead of just reacting.'

The group had applauded the woman and Anna had clapped along with them as she recalled a similar incident with Maya, where Maya had done the same thing in her own bedroom. Anna hadn't been able to muster the patience Deborah had described. Instead she had locked the door to Maya's room thinking, ‘if she wants to be surrounded by shit, let her stay there surrounded by shit.' Keith had
arrived home twenty minutes later as she had known he would and unlocked the door to Maya's room. ‘That was cruel,' he had said to Anna and she had not even had the energy to reply. She had cleaned Maya's walls while Keith put her in the bath. Anna had berated herself for days afterwards, wondering at her own lack of humanity.

More stories like Deborah's had followed, and with each one Anna had felt her body slide further down in her seat. She wanted to put her arms up over her head and disappear, but she couldn't leave until she had asked the question.

At the end, she had raised her hand, almost hoping they wouldn't realise she wanted to say something but they had all looked at her, and she had thought, ‘Here goes . . .'

‘Um, I just wondered if anyone sometimes felt . . . I don't know . . . a little, um, upset about having to deal with all of this every day.'

One or two members of the group had chuckled, and then there had been mostly murmurs of ‘no' and ‘no way', and Anna was sure she'd heard the word ‘blessed'.

‘We all know how hard it can be, Anna,' said a man named Roy, and Anna watched everyone else nod their heads, ‘but at this group, we feel that we are best served by focusing on the positive aspects of raising our very special children. It does no one any good to complain. We're all in the same boat here.'

Anna had stared at her feet as the meeting broke up and people walked over to the table loaded with cake and cookies.
She had made for the door but a woman with grey hair falling over her shoulders and down her back stopped her. She was dressed in a long, multicoloured skirt and she wore bracelets up to the elbow on both arms. ‘Anna, I'm Melanie,' she said, touching Anna gently on the shoulder. ‘I wanted to tell you not to worry about what Roy said. I know how hard it can be and I'm happy to talk if you'd like.'