Creepy and Maud

by Dianne Touchell

  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.

  TWENTY

  The weirder you’re going to behave,

  the more normal you should look.

  —P.J. O’Rourke

  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.

  All of this must have worked for Deidre. If the goal of therapy is the appearance of wellness, she must have thought my parents were star pupils. Neither of them was brave enough to be honest (with themselves, each other, her), so their goal became the appearance of honesty. The appearance of normalcy. They were faking it. They both started to look tired from the effort. Fights got shorter and less interesting (for me). Even Dobie Squires got bored. So the more they faked it, the better things appeared. The better things appeared, the greater their reward. Mum’s therapy diary changed focus from Merrill to Deidre. ‘Deidre was very pleased with our progress today.’ ‘Deidre very impressed with our employment of new skills to resolve conflict.’ Fortunately, the pendulum returned to its normal gait soon after Deidre (aka God) was out of their lives. Deidre could cash her cheques with a clear conscience, Mum and Dad could return to honest hostility towards one another, and Dobie Squires could return to bailing Mum up in the garden (and kitchen and lounge and toilet).

  So you can see why I am so concerned about Maud. She is the most honest person I know. All this therapy will change that. At least temporarily. And if she starts to change,
even if only for a little while, it will interfere with my efforts to get her to love me back. We have a very delicate situation here. Not helped by closed curtains. So I write to her and, because I don’t know if and when the curtains will open and close, I sticky-tape the note to the window and leave it there:

  —Take them off

  School is very different without Maud there. I hadn’t realised how much of my day is centred on following her and watching her. I leave a class and automatically head in the direction she would be coming from (I have her timetable memorised). Then I realise she is at home and I feel that therapy fury bubble. I think about taking some time off myself, but part of my whole fly-under-the-radar thing is never drawing attention to myself, and a couple of days off is enough to stimulate the attendance officer into asking questions. Mum and Dad would ask questions, too, and I prefer being ignored.

  There isn’t much talk about Maud at school. Her question to Mr Thornton has morphed into something akin to a terrorist threat, but that’s to be expected. Translations of The Little Prince resume under the supervision of a PE teacher who speaks German. Some idiot ties flowers to the railing Stephanie Morcombe was dropped from. Other than that, things return to normal. When events as inane as unauthorised hair colouring usually excite weeks of illicit analysis and debate, it seems odd that Maud has died on the lips so quickly. I have a feeling staff are nipping it in the bud, due to Mr Thornton’s involvement. They’ve closed ranks. Apparently, a drunk French teacher doesn’t even warrant a flyer. Shame about that. I would have kept that flyer.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The-Ro-mance-Lang-uage

  French is a Romance language. It does not mean romance in the way people think, though: it comes from Vulgar Latin and means to speak in Roman. Vulgar just means popular. When I hear French, I hear earthy words in the mouths of earthy people, open-mouth words, not the la-di-da-tight-lipped how to order in a French restaurant and find-the-toilet-after stuff they teach us at school. Dad uses the word vulgar a lot, and he is not talking about good, simple people when he says it. He says Creepy’s mum and dad are Vulgar. He thinks he is calling them crude and offensive. He does not know that I am the Vulgar one. Creepy is a good, common, ordinary boy in the Romance language.

  Mum and Dad do not like me speaking in French. Especially now. It is not just because they are afraid I might be using swears at them; it is because it excludes them. I might as well take up Wicca, judging from the look they give me when I answer them in French. Nancy calls my use of a foreign language a device and a contrivance, which annoys me, because I used to think having a facility for languages was a good thing. But I do not tell Nancy this. I am beginning to think that anything I do or say these days will be interpreted as defiance. And I do want to cooperate, very much.

  Having a facility. Mum calls toilets ‘facilities’. When we are out, she will ask where the facilities are. So I have a facility and she goes to one, or on one, or in one. She asked after the facilities at Nanna’s funeral, and the man looked at her as if she were asking directions to the crematorium. She tried repeating herself but eventually had to say the word: toilet. Except she did not say it; she whispered it. I do not think she is trying to be fancy. I just do not think she likes the word toilet. There are a lot of words my mum does not like, and most of them are to do with me. Now she has words in two languages to cringe at.

  I found out early that you have to be careful what you say. And what you write. There is no romance to language. No one actually communicates with each other through language. I figured if no one was listening to me in English, they might as well ignore me in French, as well. I did not know a different language would upset everyone just as much as my silences do. It makes me sad. I am not that powerful. Now all the romance is being slapped out of me, but at least Mum will lose that pinched look. I will go back to school in mittens. I will be the hero of my own life. I will be miserable and that is okay. Misery breeds facility. My hidden romance.

  There are hidden romances all over the place. I see the little adventures in other people, even the ones they do not see themselves. Creepy is having a romance with the romance I am having with hair. His mum is romantically involved with the bottle and her husband, although neither of them realise it. My mum and dad are romantically involved with the daughter Nancy has promised to squeeze out of the wreck of me. Secreted, veiled stories we would never show anyone else on purpose, so quiet they become a loud ringing in the ears, like a bride spitting in her dad’s ear at the last minute: ‘I’ve changed my mind!’ Of course, she walks down the aisle anyway because the caterers are already heating up the chicken.

  When I go back to school, they are putting me in a remedial class for reading. That is pretty romantic. Shame it will not be a bit more hidden, but I did agree to it, so you could say my chicken is being heated. They would have put me in there whether I agreed to it or not, but my falling in line pleased everyone because it was seen as personal progress. I expect to learn nothing. The class is being run by an English teacher who once called me lazy and foggy. She did not just call me that, she wrote it in my report. I said it over and over to myself: la-zy-and-fo-ggy. Mum and Dad said it over and over, too. Her name is Ms Tryst and she wrote: ‘Has potential she refuses to access. Less laziness and fogginess would be beneficial.’ I thought that was rude. Once she wrote a poem on the board and asked us to assess critically the literary references used therein. Used therein: that is how she talks. She wanted us to deconstruct it. It was a piece by John Donne. I could not understand it. I mean, I could read the words, but they spun off inside me and just disappeared somewhere, so I spent the time drawing a picture of Ms Tryst instead. I got detention for that. And I got la-zy-and-fo-ggy said to me out loud in front of everyone. And then said out loud in my report. When I got home that day, there was a note waiting for me in the window. It said:

  —No man is an island

  I pressed my palm against the window and felt sad.

  I’d rather have detention than remedial reading. Remedial class will be just like detention, only with humiliation thrown in. Just as well humiliation is an essential component of romance. That drawing I did of Ms Tryst was a good one. She was very angry about it, though. Remedial class will be during school hours. I am to miss one session of PE to attend remedial reading, which is fine with me because I am always looking for a reason to miss PE. I suppose they cannot make it after school in case it starts interfering with my detention. But for now I am suspended, stranded, adrift. An island.

  No man is an island: romantic but untrue. Even when islands bump into each other, they only grind and groan before lumbering away from each other again. If they do get stuck together for a bit, it only serves to shove stress on the fissure between them. There is no crossing over into someone else’s country. Not even for a visit. We just yell across the divides. The thing is to pretend otherwise at all times.

  I pretend with Nancy so she can pretend she is not pretending when she gives status reports to Mum and Dad. Mum and Dad pretend to be encouraged. School pretends to be interested and promises to take me back if the pretending sticks. The whole situation is one big remedial class. I always thought what you said to a doctor or a priest was private. That must only be on the telly. Psychiatrist, chaplain, teacher, parent. Island.

  A few hours later, I put my own note in the window. It said:

  —I AM AN ISLAND

  Creepy looked at it for a long time, his elbows resting on his desk, his long fingers sunny and lithe. I did not wait for him to respond. I closed my curtains and turned away and went to get a drink out of the doll’s house.

  I wonder how things might have been different if it had been me who went over the balcony. It occurs to me that no one would have shown much interest. I watched from inside my head that day: I could see people’s faces contorting, their mouths all square and wet, and I heard voices as if from a long way away, distorted growly vowels pulled and pulled the distance of miles until they snapped back with a ban
g. Mr Thornton was comforted, Stephanie was comforted, people just passing by were comforted—and I was treated like a Gorgon. People would not even look at me.

  He wants me to take my mittens off again. I have not taken them off since they suspended me. It will be a new intimacy.

  Coda: Our secret, veiled stories in fragments but whole at the same time.

  TWENTY-TWO

  And since you know you cannot see yourself,

  so well as by reflection, I, your glass,

  will modestly discover to yourself,

  that of yourself which you yet know not of.

  —William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (c. 1599)

  The Victorians never really covered the legs of their chairs and tables in deference to modesty. I was disappointed to find this out. I like the idea. All that dark sensuous wood carved in voluptuous vines and florals curling into corporeal little openings in fretwork as pretty as body hair. Stained and oiled to a gleaming sweat-shine. Quite dirty, really. No wonder convention required the dressing of these things. Except it didn’t. It’s a myth. But as I wish I didn’t know that, I’m going with the myth. How much nicer to think that if you lifted the hem of a table skirt, you’d be like as not to tremble with the expectation of fingering a little varnish. It’s the same reason nuns wear habits and Muslims wear burqas and Brethren wear scarves and my school has a sock length policy. To cover up the naughty bits.