Creepy and Maud (10 page)

The casserole dish became a prisoner in a holy war. Maybe Li deliberately kept it. Maybe it was just forgotten. Either way, Mum loved being able to hate the theft of it. Over a very short period of time, that casserole dish grew in size and importance. It had a five—no, ten—litre capacity. It was the only casserole dish Mum ever had with a true fitting lid. It was the most expensive casserole dish Mum had ever bought—an
investment.
No, it was a wedding present, irreplaceable and with great sentimental value.

Did you know that the word
religion
comes from the Latin
religare,
meaning ‘to bind’? I read that somewhere. Probably in my
Collins Australian Internet-Linked Dictionary (with CD-ROM).
To bind. And since we are more bound by things we despise than by things we love, I reckon that makes our agendas our religion. God’s just along for the ride.

I like dead languages. They’re predictable, static, unchanging. It takes death to do that. That’s why I like history. It’s locked in. Change gets a lot of undeserved positive attention. Change is good. Change is necessary. Change is growth. No one stops to question this. Darwin has a lot to answer for.

The French teacher at school is an alcoholic. Or a vampire, depending on who you ask. Mr Thornton used to teach Maths but was switched to the French Department mid-year. (Our regular French teacher took the rest of the year off to recuperate after her
boyfriend set fire to himself on her front lawn.) The vampire theory came into play because he looks like one. No fangs, just all the other accoutrements of a bad diet: pasty skin, bloodshot eyes, and a web of translucent blue-grey veins mottling his neck and face. Makes him look like his head is being held in place by a macramé pot-holder. He shakes and sweats a lot, too. The shaking and sweating seemed to get worse after his transfer from the Maths Department. I think maths suited Mr Thornton. There are absolutes in a discipline like maths that you just never find in a living language. And being able to speak French doesn’t mean you’re able to teach it.

I am in his French class. So is Maud. We never speak to each other, of course. I’ve studied French for half a year and as a result know the date of Bastille Day, how to make crepes and how to count to ten. I also know how to say some words like
table, chair, bed, pencil
and
trumpet.
These skills are not going to be of use to me. I just might be able to go into a shop in Paris and say ‘I want a trumpet,’ but considering I don’t want a trumpet and am a bit foggy on the whole transitive verb thing, I’m just as likely to walk in and announce, ‘I am a trumpet.’

It is a beautiful day; the sun is warmer than it’s been for a while. Because it’s nice and sunny, Mr Thornton suggests that those in the class who are working on
their translations of
The Little Prince
go and do so out on the verandah. I am not one of those working on a translation of
The Little Prince.
I might be able to pick out the words
table, chair, bed, pencil
and
trumpet,
but other than that I’m screwed. So the rest of us, including Maud, stay in the classroom to work on our conversational French with Mr Thornton.

Conversational French involves Mr Thornton asking a student a question in French and waiting for the correct response in French in return. He is shakier than usual today and keeps wringing his hands and wiping his palms on his trousers. You can tell the kids he doesn’t like by the length of the question he asks them. He really doesn’t like Maud, so I’m not surprised when he stands in front of her desk, looks her in the eye and proceeds to pitch a volley of rapid-fire French stuff at her. I only know it’s a question from the inflection of his voice at the end. There is a long pause. Usually, if someone is struggling, Mr Thornton repeats the question more slowly, or writes it on the board, but he doesn’t do that this time. What he does is fidget and tremble and sweat. Then he flattens his palms on her desktop, leans towards her face and says, ‘Hmmm?’

Maud keeps his eye throughout. And then she says, ‘Est-ce que vous êtes un vampire ou un alcoolique?’

What happens next takes place in seconds. Mr
Thornton snaps upright as if he’s been slapped. When he stops shaking enough to stagger out of the room, he runs smack into Stephanie Morcombe. These sorts of collisions between staff and students are not uncommon, especially between periods, when everyone is hightailing it to their next class. This collision is a bit different, however, because Stephanie Morcombe has hoisted herself up onto the top of the balcony balustrade to best take advantage of that beautiful warm sun. I am still struggling with the whole idea that Maud speaks French when the first scream starts ricocheting down the corridors. You see, when Mr Thornton clobbers into Stephanie Morcombe on his way past, the force of his weight literally throws her off the edge of the balcony. There are, therefore, two screams: one is cut short pretty quickly (it’s not that far to the bottom if you’re in freefall); the other scream is longer.

Someone eventually leads Mr Thornton away and someone calls an ambulance and a knot of do-gooders form around Stephanie Morcombe’s prone body. I realise I’ve never understood the meaning of the word
stricken
before when I see Mr Thornton’s face. Not just pain, not just fear—Thornton is absolutely incapacitated. People are asking him what happened and he can’t speak. All he can do is hold himself and make these strange mewling noises. And he won’t open his eyes. His face is kind of
coiled in on itself and he’s gasping for breath and I think someone should go get the poor bastard a drink.

Maud is leaning against the balustrade railing, looking over and down. Stephanie Morcombe is being put on a stretcher. The ambos are talking to her, so I know she isn’t dead. There’s blood on the pavement and some of it has seeped into the grass. It’s when I look at Maud that I realise she is stricken, too. One of her hands is white-knuckling the railing. The other is frenetically snaking hair between fingers. Maud never pulls in public. It is her private thing, like me. But she’s pulling now. Teachers have started directing kids back into classrooms. A small group of the Pandora bracelet set are clinched together, dry-sobbing with just enough counterfeit hysteria to ensure they are able to redirect a modicum of attention back their way without ruining their make-up. And Maud is pulling and staccato breathing, her eyes shut fast.

I realise this situation is a gift as soon as I see Stephanie Morcombe isn’t dead. I’d like to think that had she died down there, I would have refrained from using the circumstances to my advantage. However, Stephanie Morcombe isn’t dead and Maud is standing right next to me, and she is in distress. I’ve read enough books to know that distress in the female is a shoo-in for establishing rapport. It’s the rescue thing. So I
slowly inch my hand towards hers on the railing. Slowly. Slowly. Stop. Slower. Slowly. Now, quick, before she opens her eyes. I gently rest my little finger on top of hers. When she doesn’t flinch, I apply a gentle pressure. Then her little finger slips out from underneath mine and gradually curls around it. I respond by hooking mine further around hers. Then there we are. Making a wish. Her eyes still closed.

It’s Mrs Campbell, the principal, who comes to get Maud. I wonder what Mr Thornton actually said that facilitates Maud’s apprehension so quickly and with so much hostility. Mrs Campbell is not stricken. She’s on a mission. That’s not all that surprising. Considering the ruckus she makes over regulation sock length, I figure she’d be pretty fierce with those involved in throwing a student over a balcony. She actually harrumphs as she leads Maud away.

‘But for your daughter’s actions...’ is what the letter to Maud’s mum and dad says. I know because Maud lets me read it through the binoculars.
But for your daughter’s actions.
Interesting but spurious assignation of blame. I mean, how far back do they want to go? But for Mr Thornton coming to class drunk? But for the flaming boyfriend on the front lawn? But for it being a sunny day?

Everything changes after the
but for
letter. Mr
Thornton gets suspended with pay and Maud gets suspended with therapy. Stephanie Morcombe returns to school with stitches, a cast and celebrity status. A flyer comes home, indicating that students are now forbidden to get within thirty centimetres of the upper level balustrade. And we all give thanks in the school chapel. I’m not sure what we are giving thanks for, but I can put on an appreciative face with the best of them. That’s all they want—the appearance of gratitude. Maud isn’t allowed back to school until she gets the appearance thing down pat.

Are you a vampire or an alcoholic? That’s what Maud asked Mr Thornton. It was clearly stated in the
but for
letter that ‘such a gross lack of respect is indisputably contrary to school policy and endangers the moral (and physical) safety of all other students.’ The letter also pointed out that this was not the first time Maud had proven herself indisputably contrary. The school suggested ‘therapeutic intervention to address your daughter’s obvious difficulty in relating to others in an appropriate way and her employment of self-harm to exploit her own agenda.’

I’m not making that up. They actually wrote that. I think it’s indisputably contrary to start hypothesising about Maud’s agenda. No one has shown much interest in Maud or her agenda prior to the alcoholic vampire’s collision with the Pandora princess. Maud always arouses the kneejerk reaction from people, but that’s a lot different from genuine interest. When your hair is spotted with blood and your eyebrows are balding, people will swoop on things like sock length and dubious artwork and French insults specifically to avoid the hair spotted with blood and the balding eyebrows. That’s what I reckon, anyway.

The idea of therapy fascinates me. I’ve never been, but Mum and Dad have. Look how that’s turned out. Obviously, they should have taken Dobie Squires along, as well. For a while during and after their sessions they did stop pointing at one another. This was a measure of success. But then I could see they were becoming competitive about it. If Dad pointed at Mum during a fight, she would make a note of it. Literally. They had these therapy diaries they had to keep. I know because I read them. Their problem was that although they both agreed to the therapy, they were both going along to make sure the other one got fixed. The therapist became a substitute parent. They were actually telling on each other in the diaries. I scoured those things for some
evidence of self-perception. Found nothing. Zip. What I did find were things like: ‘Tuesday 1.30pm Merrill pointed at me during a discussion—very aggressive’ and ‘Thursday 10.15pm Merrill raised his voice during a discussion—anger projection.’ Funny, she never mentioned the dog. The pointing at each other resumed in full after they found each other’s diaries.

Maud was in therapy long before the school made it mandatory for her. She told me about her therapist the day she came home in mittens. Not gloves, mittens. So her fingers were bagged. I’m still furious about that. Maud’s fingers are like a dancer’s body. Long, lithe, graceful. And they move a lot, even when she’s not pulling. Sometimes they just flutter in the air. Sometimes she flutters with one hand and draws with the other. Or pulls with the other. Putting her in mittens is like hobbling her. She used to take them off. A lot. To draw, and to pull. Now she doesn’t take them off at all. What’s next? If this therapist was willing to go mittens before Maud was found complicit in Stephanie Morcombe’s swan dive tuck position, I fully expect to find my love any day now with her head in a sack.

She doesn’t talk to me for ages, either. She shows me the
but for
letter, but that isn’t her talking to me; that’s Maud letting me eavesdrop on talk between the school and her parents. I watch her a lot and she can see
me watching, but still nothing. It’s when she draws the Thomas the Tank Engine curtains, twice, that I realise what’s going on. She isn’t shutting me out, per se—I haven’t done anything. Recently. She is shutting herself in. She is ashamed.

Does she take the mittens off behind those closed curtains? Does she pull? It’s unbelievably unfair that I am being denied access. I bet all the stuff she would otherwise be writing to me is going into a fucking therapy diary. And I won’t be able to read hers without breaking in! Maybe she isn’t pulling behind those closed curtains. Maybe she’s actually doing all her cognitive behavioural exercises (I read about those, too) and learning to control herself. Maybe she is having her agenda, and her religion, counselled right out of her.

Therapy works on shame. Or it does in my house, anyway. For just a brief period of time, my mum and dad shamed each other mercilessly. All their fights became steeped in quasi-analytical hyperbole. They attacked one another for stepping off the therapy straight and narrow and finished each other off by threatening to tell on each other with the counsellor. What’s interesting is how effective this was. Both of them were fearful of being found out. They would actually start to fret with the fear of discovery hanging over them. My mum cried the day Dad said to her, ‘God forbid Deidre should find out
what you’re really like.’ (Deidre is their therapist.) That’s when the shame thing clicked into place for me. It was also pretty clear that, for my mum, Deidre had replaced God in our house.