The Rosie Effect (23 page)

‘—and on the police officer—’

‘You threw a cop? Not here? In New York? Where was his partner?’

Jack interrupted. ‘I guess there were consequences for Don. Whoever won the fight, you got arrested, right?’

‘Correct.’

‘And then?’

‘Total disaster. Threat of criminal prosecution, deportation, lack of access to my child, restrictions on working with children, forced attendance… And the necessity of deceiving my wife, which is incredibly stressful and has unpredictable consequences.’

‘You were too ashamed to tell your wife what you’d done, right? That you’d got yourself into trouble again.’

I nodded. Although my justification for not telling Rosie
had been to protect her from stress, there was some truth in Jack’s observation.

Jack addressed the group. ‘Doesn’t sound so clever now, does it? We all get angry and we fuck up. Why? What makes us angry?’

Again, nobody raised his hand. I could empathise with Jack. It was like the first class of the semester with new students. As a fellow teacher, it was my responsibility to help Jack out.

‘To understand anger,’ I began, ‘it is necessary first to understand aggression, and its evolutionary value.’ I continued for approximately a minute. I had not even begun to explain the consequent evolution and internalisation of anger as an emotion when Jack stopped me.

‘That’ll do for now, Professor.’ The use of the formal title was encouraging. I was surely the top student at this point, and I could not see any challengers. ‘We’re going to take a break, and afterwards I’m going to be looking for some contributions from the rest of you. Don, you’ve earned your gold star and you can shut the fuck up.’

Everyone laughed. I was class clown again.

Most of the students walked outside and the requirement for the break became obvious. Several, including Jack, were nicotine addicts. I stood in the courtyard drinking my instant coffee with Dave.

One of the students, a man of about twenty-three, BMI approximately twenty-seven as a result of muscle rather than fat, approached us, dropped his cigarette, and stamped it out with his boot.

‘Wanna show us some moves?’ he said.

‘We will be returning inside shortly,’ I said. ‘Exercise will make us hot and uncomfortable and unpleasant to others.’

He performed some shadow-boxing moves. ‘C’mon. I wanna see what you can do. Beside talk.’

This was not the first time someone had challenged me to demonstrate my martial-arts skills. I did not need Jack’s advice to know that it was unwise to spar with an unknown opponent in poor light with no protection. Fortunately I had a standard solution. I stepped a few paces away to create some space, removed my shoes and also my shirt to minimise the perspiration problem, then performed a
kata
I had prepared for my 3rd Dan karate grading. It requires four minutes and nineteen seconds. The students gathered in a circle to watch and at the end clapped and made noises of appreciation.

Jack walked up beside me and addressed the group. ‘This stuff’s pretty, but nobody’s invincible.’ Without any warning, he grabbed me in a chokehold. It was competently executed, and I suspected he had used it many times with success. I predicted that this was the first time he had applied it to a 4th Dan aikido practitioner.

The safest defence is prevention and I automatically moved to block him from applying the hold. Part way through the manoeuvre, which would have ended with him immobilised on the ground, I made a decision to allow Jack to complete the hold. He was attempting to illustrate a point, and my action would undermine his lesson. I expected that Jack would hold me for a few moments to demonstrate the technique’s effectiveness and then release me.

Before he could do so, a strange voice said, ‘That’s enough.
Let him go. Now.’ The voice was strange because it was Dave doing his Marlon Brando-Woody Allen combination. Jack let me go, looked at Dave, and nodded.

Dave was shaking.

We returned to class, and I followed Jack’s instruction to shut the fuck up. Nobody else spoke much at all. Jack’s advice on self-control consisted of two principles, repeated numerous times:

1. Don’t get drunk (or consume methamphetamines).

2. Walk away.

They had zero relevance to my interaction with the police, but there was a clear connection to my meltdown problem, though on the most recent occasion I had run rather than walked. What if it was infeasible to walk away? What if I was in a lifeboat after a shipwreck? Or in a space station? I needed Jack’s advice, but was under instructions to remain silent.

I whispered to Dave, ‘Ask what to do if you can’t walk away.’

‘No.’

‘It’s further practice for self-confidence,’ I said. Dave had stopped shaking.

He put his hand up. ‘What should someone do if they can’t walk away?’

‘Why wouldn’t you be able to walk away?’ said Jack.

Dave was silent. I was about to offer assistance when he said, ‘Maybe I’m minding the baby, and I have an anger attack. I can’t leave because I need to look after it.’

‘Dave, if you can walk away, walk away. Better to leave the baby for a while. But you need to calm down fast, that’s what I’m hearing. So, deep breathing, try to visualise a relaxing scene, talk to yourself, say a calming word or sentence over and over.’

Jack made us all choose a calming phrase, and practise saying it multiple times. Dave began saying
calm, calm
. It struck me that the word might have a paradoxical effect: it reminded me of someone trying to shut me down. The man on the other side of me began chanting in a language I could not identify, but one of the words triggered an association, due to its similarity to Ramanujan, the name of the eminent Indian mathematician. The Hardy–Ramanujan number is the lowest natural number that can be expressed as the sum of two cubes in two different ways. Mathematics. The unassailable world of rationality. As Jack passed, I was repeating the name of the number in the same tone as my chanting neighbour. The technique seemed to have the required effect; I felt distinctly relaxed. I mentally filed it for future use.

At the end of the class, Jack asked me to stay. ‘I want to know something. Could you have gotten out of that chokehold?’

‘Yes.’

‘Show me.’

He applied the chokehold and I demonstrated, without actual impact, three techniques for breaking it. I also showed him how to prevent it being applied, and a refinement which made it more secure.

‘Thanks. Good to know,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have done
that, out there, you know. Bad example. Solving a problem with violence.’

‘What problem?’

‘Forget it. No problem. You ever hit a woman or a kid?’

‘No.’

‘I figured. You embarrassed a cop and they threw the book at you. Wasting my fucking time again. Ever thrown the first punch in a fight?’

‘Only in class. There have been three external confrontations, none of which required striking, excluding one with my father-in-law which took place in a gymnasium with appropriate equipment.’

‘Your father-in-law. Jesus. Who won?’

‘There was no judge or referee, but he suffered a broken nose.’

‘Look me in the eye and tell me you’re never going to hit a woman or kid. Ever.’

Dave had been listening. ‘Better he doesn’t look you in the eye.’

‘Go on,’ said Jack.

I looked directly into Jack’s eyes, while I repeated the promise.

‘Jesus,’ said Jack. ‘I see what you mean.’ But he was laughing. ‘I’m in deep shit if I give anyone an early pass out of this class and they reoffend, but I think I’m safe with you. Better for both of us.’

‘I don’t need to come back?’

‘You’re not
allowed
to come back. I’ll tell your social worker you’ve graduated.’

He turned to Dave. ‘I can’t make you come back, but you ought to think about it. You’re dealing with some dangerous thoughts.’

Dave and I detoured via a bar before going to our respective homes, as I would have aroused suspicion if I returned from a boys’ night out without smelling of alcohol. Dave had similarly not told Sonia about the Good Fathers Program.

‘There’s no reason not to tell Sonia,’ I said.

‘Best she doesn’t know. Men’s business.’

Sonia of course knew about the Good Fathers Program, but she couldn’t tell Dave without revealing the Rosie impersonation.

Rosie was in bed but not asleep when I arrived home. ‘How was your night?’ she asked.

I had solved one part of the problem arising from the Playground Incident and gained new knowledge. Dave had increased his self-confidence in dealing with conflict, although he had needed two burgers to recover from the trauma.

I wanted to tell Rosie all about it, but everything led back to the Playground Incident and Lydia. The potential of the revelation to cause stress had diminished, but I was now worried that a full explanation would reveal Lydia’s assessment of my competence in the father role, and increase Rosie’s own doubts.

‘Excellent,’ I said. ‘Nothing to report.’

‘Likewise,’ she said.

The martial-arts demonstration had reminded me of Carl and his attempts to surprise me with a punch. The routine
had been mandatory on visits to Gene and Claudia’s, and inevitably ended with Carl immobilised and minor damage to decorative objects. Now, there was a risk that Carl’s punching ability would be applied to his father.

‘Have you spoken to Carl yet?’ I asked Gene the following evening.

Gene had purchased some port, which had three advantages over cocktail ingredients:

1. Existence. We had largely exhausted the supplies of anything alcoholic, except George’s beer.

2. Improved taste. Some cocktail ingredients are not palatable by themselves.

3. Lower alcohol than spirits. I had identified alcohol as the likely cause of recurrent morning headaches.

‘Carl won’t speak to me. Believe me, I’ve tried. There’s no way past the fact that I was unfaithful to Claudia.’

‘There’s always a way.’

‘Maybe with time. But it’s my problem, not yours.’

‘Incorrect. Rosie wants you to leave, hence I am required to ask you to leave. The best solution is that you return to Claudia, but you can’t until we solve the Carl problem.’

‘Apologise to Rosie on my behalf. I’m working on somewhere to live. I’d give anything to sort out the situation with Carl, but I can’t change the past.’

‘We’re scientists,’ I reminded him. ‘We shouldn’t be defeated by problems. If we think hard enough, a solution will present itself.’

22

The Lesbian Mothers Project protocols were straightforward to review. The obvious limitation was the absence of a control group of heterosexual couples or unrelated adults.

‘There were no same-sex couples in the original study,’ B2 said.

I had been instructed by B1 to conduct all liaisons with the team via B2 who had recently completed her PhD. ‘That was an exploratory study,’ I said.

‘This is an exploratory study, too. We’re entitled to equal consideration.’

My police clearance had come through, presumably because Margarita Cop was still holding my report, pending advice from Lydia, and I was now permitted to observe the experiments.

The B Team had constructed a small living room with sofa and armchairs. The protocol was trivially simple: B3, the nurse, took a sample of oxytocin from the baby; then one of the baby’s carers cuddled the baby. B3 then took another sample. At a later time, the carer would return and repeat the exercise, except that this time she would play with the baby rather than cuddling it. Then the experiment would be repeated with the second mother.

‘What are the early results?’ I asked B1.

‘You of all people should know that it’s inappropriate to draw conclusions based on early raw data. Don’t you have mice to dissect? Seriously, we’ve got a women’s group visiting this afternoon and it’d be nice if you weren’t hanging around.’

B3 had been watching. ‘Can I buy you a coffee?’ she said.

‘It’s 3.13 p.m. Caffeine has a half-life—’

She turned, but intercepted me again outside the front door. ‘You want to know what the early data is saying? I’ll meet you at the café.’

Secrets, secrets, secrets. Rosie didn’t know why I was working on the project. She didn’t know about the Playground Incident, Lydia, and the Good Fathers Evaluation. Gene had deceived Claudia for years. Now B3 was sharing data that B1 would not. Once, there had been no secrets in my life. And my relationships, albeit few, had not been in danger. I suspected a correlation.

‘I’m taking the samples and I have to key in all the results,’ said B3. ‘The first job’s because I’m a nurse. So’s the second. So’s getting the coffee, for that matter. But you don’t need a PhD to see what’s happening. The oxytocin goes up with cuddling, doesn’t move with play. For either mother. Looks
like only fathers can make the play thing happen. They’re changing the way they do the play so it’s more like cuddling. Not when you’re around, of course. They’ll find a reason to dump the early results.’

I walked back with B3.

‘Maybe come back tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Briony’s a bit edgy.’ B1.

In a social situation, I would have taken the subtle hint that I was not wanted. But this was science. Sometimes it is convenient to be immune to subtlety.

When I returned, a group of thirteen women was being greeted. B1 and B2 ignored me, but one of the women (age approximately sixty-five, BMI twenty-six) approached me directly.

‘Are you the token male?’ She laughed.

I used David Borenstein’s words. ‘I’ve been assigned by the Dean to ensure that the research is not influenced by lesbian politics.’

She laughed again. I detected friendliness. ‘What did you do to earn that job? Sleep with the Dean’s daughter?’

B1 interrupted and pointed to a woman with a baby beside her in a mid-quality pram. ‘When the baby wakes up, this woman is going to play with her baby, and we’re going to measure the baby’s oxytocin. She’s the non-gestational mother, and we’re finding that the baby’s oxytocin rises when she plays with the baby. Just as it did for fathers in the Israeli study.’