by A. A. Bell
‘Unfortunately, yes,’ he said. ‘Some behavioural management strategies have the side effect of ingraining in clients a desire to be agreeable in order to avoid something that’s even more disagreeable.’
‘But if you’ve been employed to break old habits,’ Zhou asked, ‘then obviously you’re not alone in your suspicions about all this?’
‘It felt that way at first,’ Ben replied, ‘except for Matron Sanchez. She hired me specifically to help improve the quality of life here for clients, and that’s achievable regardless of my suspicions about any possible misdiagnosis — or my tactics. Take Freddie Leopard — ah, Kitching — as another example. Hewas in here just before, claiming to hear voices, which isn’t normally perceived as a useful ability, but I try to show how disabilities can be gifts. In his case I suggested he should harness those inner voices as muses for writing a play. I believe he’s now working on one, night and day.’
‘What about any instances of maltreatment?’ Zhou asked.
‘Maltreatment?’ Ben paused, noticing another flicker of fear crossing Mira’s face. ‘Well, I’m not aware of anyone who’s deliberately abusing clients, but I’m aware of a few issues that borderline as unintentional.’
‘Unintentional?’ Mira complained. ‘How can abuse be unintentional?’
‘Give us an example,’ Zhou suggested.
‘I can give you three,’ Ben said. ‘First, the dehumanisation of the three Sarahs by numbering them instead of using their surnames or initials. Second, there’s the rule against discussing medications with or in front of any of the clients, when I would have thought that it should be a fundamental right for anyone to be fully aware of the details of their medical treatments, regardless of their ability to understand or make decisions. And third, I’m aware that some clients can be hypersensitive to a particular disciplinary strategy, but I’ll be taking all of those issues up with Matron Sanchez this afternoon.’
Zhou exhaled heavily and his chair creaked as he shifted position. ‘Okay, that’s a wrap. It’s a pity we can’t put you in the hot seat, too, Miss Chambers. We still need to test at least ten blind people. Preferably a full set of fifty.’
Ben looked at Mira, wishing he could get inside her head too.
TEN
‘She’s earned it,’ Ben argued, still with Matron Sanchez an hour past the end of his shift. He leaned across her desk and turned Mira’s file around so the application for a day pass was on the top, facing Sanchez again. ‘All I need is your signature, a company car and an hour or two. At least give her that much?’
Sanchez picked up the application and tore it to shreds. ‘Sorry, Ben. I admire your creativity, proactive style and results so far, but I can’t spare the staff or the car to take you.’
‘What about the gardener’s tray-back? It’s only two seats, but I don’t need anyone else anyway. She trusts me.’
‘After just eight hours? If only it were that easy. Be reasonable, Ben. It’s much more likely she’s trying to gain your trust so she can try another escape attempt.’
‘Do you really think that’s likely after this morning? I deliberately gave her a chance to escape by telling her I needed to drop in for more paperwork, and she didn’t get too far before coming back in.’
‘You don’t think it’s because she caught onto your trick?’
‘If she did, she hasn’t shown it.’
‘I doubt she would.’ Sanchez tapped the report folder on her desk. ‘She’s a smart girl, Ben. You said it yourself on page two of your incident report: we’d track her down wherever she went. I don’t think she’d have made it too far without figuring that out for herself. She’s also cunning enough to know that her chances for escape improve dramatically the further away she can get from here. That’s why she wants a day pass, Ben. She wants to escape, not visit some treehouse at Halls Bay where she used to live as a kid.’
‘You promised she could have a pass if she made it through a whole day without further incident, and she has. We’ve been busy all day since our session with the VIPs: finger-painting, basket-weaving and clay-modelling. Did you know she can play Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ on both piano and guitar? Apparently, her mother taught her years ago, so her memory for details is remarkable. She even beat me at chess!’
‘How well did she cooperate with the VIPs? My session with Phoebe was pretty intense.’
‘Mine too, but we learned a lot about each other. If anything, I think it helped.’
‘I’m very sorry then.’ Sanchez dropped the shredded application into her waste basket. ‘I didn’t promise a day pass. I promised I’d consider it and I have.’
‘But —’
‘Look, I’m not denying that her progress today is an impressive turnaround. It’s what I’d been hoping to achieve eventually by employing you, jail record or no jail record. I always admired your unorthodox and daring techniques with kids all those years ago. But in Mira’s case, it’s her speed of recovery that worries me — and her motives.’
‘Hey, when I’m on a roll, I’m rolling. I’ve discussed motives with her too.’
‘And?’
‘Obviously, she gets the same deal as everyone else; meaning she stays, behaves and learns the skills she needs for independence, and when she’s developed enough to live and hold a job outside on her own, out she goes, whether that takes her a few weeks, months or years. She’s excited by the prospect that she might some day be allowed to move out of here, albeit a little upset that nobody mentioned it to her before. She thought she was in jail.’
‘Don’t play into her delusions, Bennet. Every client is reminded of their opportunities every morning at breakfast.’
‘Since she’s refused to speak to you until today, it’s not surprising you don’t know. Mira hasn’t been to a group meal at the dining hall yet. She’s been room-bound since she arrived here.’
‘I’m sure that wasn’t the case on her first day, but even if it was, it’s standard procedure to reinforce that message at every daily therapy session. I’m told that she refuses to listen; she’s consumed within her own hallucinations.’
‘Was,’ Ben argued. ‘Was distracted by her hallucinations. She was vastly improved today. I noticed the term “blindsighted” in her file. That’s only a temporary condition, isn’t it?’
Sanchez nodded. ‘Usually, yes. It’s a common phenomenon when sight has been lost after a major trauma. Unfortunately for Mira, her temporary condition has lasted almost a decade; it seems her underlying Fragile X syndrome has pushed her over the edge to make it a permanent state of mind. We should be grateful, at least, that she was born female or else the syndrome could have manifested into far more debilitating afflictions, like with Freddie. Still, male or female, there’s no cure. We can replace her eyes as soon as there’s a suitable donor, but there’s noway we could replace all of her chromosomes. Not this millennium, at least.’
‘I’ve reached her, though, Matron. I swear I have! Maybe it’s me, or maybe she really is at peace now that she’s convinced herself that she can’t see.’
‘I appreciate that. It’s the reason why I’m agreeing to restore her personal privileges so soon, and I hope you’ll take extra care to explain this to her. It wouldn’t hurt for her to show a little gratitude either, since I’m prepared to wipe the slate clean for a whole week if she does.’
‘Major progress is deserving of a major reward, though!’
‘Restoration of her personal privileges is a major reward. Considering that she’s hurt virtually everyone who’s ever worked with her, it’s a wonder she can even remember what it’s like to have privileges.’
‘She didn’t hurt me deliberately.’
‘Oh, yes, it was an accident. Look, Ben, we can argue in circles all afternoon, but the facts are simple. Mira has been institutionalised since she was twelve years old. That was the last time she cooperated in an IQ test, or any other form of psychoanalysis for that matter, so who knows how clever she really is? She certainly seems
to know our strategies even better than we do.’
‘Even if she is still plotting something, surely you must agree that her progress in one day is astounding?’
‘Haven’t I already said as much? I’m also keen to see what she can do in a week.’
‘A week?’ Ben snapped. ‘Matron, a week for Mira might as well be a year. She’s been working hard all day, expecting to earn her first gate pass today, even if it’s too late to use it until tomorrow or the weekend. She couldn’t care less about her personal privileges — she’s used to going without. And if I lose her trust now, who knows if I’ll ever get it back?’
‘If you lose her trust now, you never really had it.’ Sanchez snapped closed the report folder and handed it back to Ben for filing. ‘Come back in a week. If she’s managed to behave the whole time without hurting anyone, I’ll sign a fresh application. If she’s made further progress as well, I might make it for a whole weekend.’
‘Matron,’ he pleaded, ‘surely there must be some way to make it happen sooner?’
‘Certainly! Convince her it’s time to take out those terrible stitches. We’re running out of time before her eyelids heal closed permanently. So I’ve booked her in for tomorrow’s clinic, first thing in the morning — and I’m sure you can imagine how happy she’ll be when she wakes to find that I’ve been forced to exercise my obligation as her legal guardian.’
Ben nodded but left the office fuming. At the end of the hall, he punched the freshly painted wall, leaving a fist-print. In the garden, he swatted petals and thorns from a rose bush as he took a shortcut to the staff car park. Once there, he kicked the tyre of his rusted crimson Camaro — a two-seater ‘69 model, the same car in which his parents, while still sweethearts, had accidentally conceived him. He rested his head against the roof near the driver’s door; the window reflected his mood as well as his image.
Why couldn’t Sanchez see how disastrous this would be? She wasn’t the same Maddy Sanchez he’d worked with years ago on the mainland.
He glanced at the front gate, lamenting the wasted effort in staying back on his own time to argue Mira’s case. But it wasn’t the lost time that really worried him, nor the sense of helplessness that reminded him of six years behind bars. It was Mira, and the only way she could take the news of his broken promise, not tomention the prospect of having her stitches removed forcibly.
Resentment boiled his blood, turning his cheeks red. None of the other staff knew as he did how wretched it felt to be wrongfully imprisoned. Hour by dragging hour, often wishing himself dead. Yet here was a young woman who clearly felt the same — unnecessarily — and now he was restrained for no solid reason from helping her.
An old woman grunted behind him. He turned to see her approach with an armful of wilted flowers, her hair tasselled with twigs and her teeth muddy with chewed leaves, reminding him of a witch from a childhood fairytale. Behind her, he could see the very real mischief she’d been up to: a row of four other staff cars all raggedly decorated with piles of garden debris.
Good for you, he thought all too bitterly. Unafraid to express yourself with a little initiative.
She smiled and stepped closer, offering her wilted flowers to him and grunting a wordless request to provide the same service to his car.
‘No, Phoebe,’ he said firmly, but kindly. He ushered her aside before she could stuff a wilted branch under his windowscreen wiper. ‘You shouldn’t make private cars into floats for the festival. The owners need to drive them home tonight.’
She dumped her bundle, screamed, wailed, stamped her feet and tugged at her frazzled grey hair.
‘Yeah, I know. You’re doing time anyway, so what’s the harm in a little crime?’
She screamed louder and curled her fingers into fists, preparing to punch herself.
‘All right! Okay. You can decorate that car.’ He pointed to the matron’s neon-pink Volkswagen Beetle. ‘She lives here. But you’d better hurry back to your ward after that, okay? You’ve nearly missed out on your afternoon tea.’
Phoebe stooped to collect her twigs and glanced up at him, grinning broadly, mud and chewed leaves still clinging to her teeth.
‘And stop eating dirt. It’ll ruin your appetite, amongst other things.’
He unlocked his car and climbed in, casting Mira’s file onto the passenger seat. At home, he intended to scour the pages for ideas to help him do or say anything that might alleviate the bad news for Mira so she’d stay cooperative and focused on future progress. But now that he stared at the blank cover of her file, he was stung by a primal urge to help her in a more direct way. There’d often been times in his childhood when his mother had to protect him by drawing a circle around him in the sand and warning him never to cross it. Inside, he’d had all the little luxuries he’d needed to play and build sandcastles, while outside were the bad people and enough ocean to drown him. That brief age of innocence had long evaporated, but could he do the same for Mira now? The trouble was, all Mira’s nemeses were already inside her safe circle.
Hardened and bitter by his own lost years, Ben no longer feared society’s censure as he’d once done — and certainly not if some good might come from defying the rules. Surely after all he’d been through, he was owed one brief digression? And if that digression would almost certainly save Mira from a life sentence that offered even less hope of freedom than his own comparatively brief period of incarceration, then surely it had to be worth it. In barely a few hours, the benefits would greatly outweigh the risks — which would have been nil anyway if the matron hadn’t been so unusuallypigheaded about a gate pass or the availability of a government car to go with it.
And she did say that she’d hired me for being unorthodox and daring.
Freddie watched them crossing the small lawn from the broad bough of a tree, like a leopard watching prey graze and walk away.
He was full. He’d fed upon the echoes of their conversation a dozen times in the last fortnight, each day with the echoes growing softer amidst the rage of others. Until today. Psst! They broke the soft end of the sound barrier.
Now, as Ben and Mira finally claimed their garden stage, Freddie had to read their silent words from their lips.
A glutton for punishment, watching them filled him with such dread and fear, he felt ill. He tried to console himself that he might be wrong, that Fate might yet deal a twist that would issue a fresh scream of repercussions. Reassuring too was the fact that he’d already managed to nudge the future in a fresh direction by stitching Mira’s eyelids closed.
Abduction was also a big deal, especially for an excon who’d managed to secure himself a decent job, and yet Ben had felt pressured into it on his first day with Mira. To him, keeping his promise was worth the risk of losing his job.
So Freddie stayed silent in his tree, watching Ben fold her gently into the boot of his car; the leopard sheathing his claws and gnawing at bark. Too easy it would have been to shout an alarm. And perhaps he should have. Mira would never be safe on the mainland once her secret was out, but at this particular branch in time, Freddie was the only other person in the world who could have guessed it. Mira didn’t yetunderstand it herself. How cruel would he have been, though, to stop them now and rob her of one perfect moment of bliss?
He watched their car until it disappeared over the bridge, then slinked down from his tree, seeking solace again in the dungeons. And along the way, he pegged a few stones at seagulls.
PART THREE
Ballad of the Poet Trees
Poetry is nearer to vital
truth than history
Plato
ELEVEN
Ben noticed a motorcycle cop ahead of him, on the mainland side of the bridge, right where he’d planned to stop and let Mira out to sit in the front.
The cop was taking a break in the shade of a palm tree, conducting surveillance on a group of bikini-clad jet skiers who were pestering a flotilla of small fishing craft.
As Ben’s car exited the bridge,
the cop’s helmet turned as if watching him. Ben checked his rear-view mirror, alarmed to see the cop pull onto the road behind him and accelerate to keep pace.
How could he know?
Mira had only just finished her afternoon tea of cake and juice, and had been quietly reading Braille poetry in her room when Ben had returned for her. They had a three-hour window until anyone was due to check in on her or deliver her hot evening meal at six. She’d been so keen to avoid another run-in with the Napoleonic guard at the gate that she’d insisted on riding in the boot, even though Ben had managed to swipe a blank day pass from the unguarded receptionist’s desk and fill it out with a scrawl that approximated the matron’s — except for the signature, which was little more than a swirl.
He double-checked his speed and began to sweat as the cop followed him through two roundabouts to the edge of the small fishing settlement, where ramshackle housing gave way to swampy farmland. Turning right onto a narrower road, Ben took a shortcut through cane fields to the freeway, but the cop followed, flashing his lights as a signal for Ben to pull over.
Heart pounding, he obeyed, keeping both hands on the wheel where the cop could see them. The guy was built like an armoured truck and Ben had no desire to upset him.
‘Nice wheels!’ he said. ‘Where did you steal them?’
‘The car’s mine,’ Ben replied flatly. ‘I salvaged it.’ From the floor of the bay, he didn’t add; after his mother had driven it down a boat ramp in a drunken attempt at joining his father in the afterlife.
‘No kidding? Driver’s licence and registration papers?’
Ben sighed and retrieved them from the glove compartment.
‘How fast can she go?’ The cop leaned in for a closer look at the battered old dashboard.
‘No faster than the speed limit, Officer.’ Ben forced a smile and handed over the documents. ‘Unless I missed a sign back there?’
