The Rosie Result Read online

  I could see that Hudson was searching his mind for a counter-example. He must have failed, because he changed the subject.

  ‘What sort of work is she doing? It’s still mental health, right?’

  ‘True, but a change of focus.’ I gave him a summary of bipolar disorder, and the difference between clinical and patient-assessed outcomes.

  ‘The drugs stop them committing suicide?’

  ‘That’s one possible outcome. They reduce depression. But they also reduce manic behaviour: they slow the patients down, which the patients don’t always like. Which can also lead to them assessing their lives as less worthy of living.’

  ‘The drugs make them easier to control, right?’ I assumed he had been listening to Rosie, but he elaborated. ‘Dov’s on drugs. It’s sort of zombified him.’

  ‘Who’s Dov?’

  ‘The kid at school with autism.’

  There were several outcomes of the conversation I had with Hudson while he was trapped in the Porsche. The first was learning that trapping him in the Porsche was an excellent approach to conversation: few alternative activities, minimal interruptions and no eye contact due to the driving task.

  The second, and most important, was that he accepted the change to Rosie’s working hours, subject to his participation in developing a new schedule for himself. My arguments of parental competence and the importance of improving—and possibly saving—the lives of people with bipolar disorder had apparently been persuasive.

  The third was a mental note to learn more about Dov, the autistic boy, who was apparently being prescribed medication for his condition. My immediate reaction had been relief that we had not sought a diagnosis for Hudson: I felt certain that whatever problems he was having were not amenable to pharmaceutical solutions, but it would be difficult to argue with a psychiatrist whose opinion differed.

  The fourth outcome was an agreement to visit my parents, subject to the dog being locked up.

  When my mother called, as scheduled, on Sunday and asked when she would see us, I was able to give a non-standard response. She was pleased, but defensive about the dog, which was ‘only a puppy’, ‘excited to see Hudson’ and ‘just being friendly’. Hudson needed to get used to animals or he would grow up like me, scared of cats. This was untrue: there is a difference between ‘scared of’ and ‘does not enjoy contact with’—despite the reactions to having an unwilling animal thrown onto your lap being similar.

  ‘Just tie the bloody dog up,’ said my father in the background. ‘And I need to speak to Don, privately.’ I heard him take the phone from my mother.

  ‘Hi, Dad, how are you?’

  ‘You’re the cancer scientist. Dying. I need you to do something for me—or get Rosie to.’

  14

  Rosie elected to avoid the trip to my parents’ home in Shepparton, which would have involved discomfort for one of us, due to the dimensions of the Porsche’s rear seat. She was pleased with my progress in de-escalating the Hudson situation: ‘I think you just spending time with him, engaging with him, has given him some reassurance.’

  I re-engaged as soon as we were underway. ‘Have you considered the new schedule?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you have any suggestions?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘I want to get up at 5.20 a.m. on school days.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s a good time to talk to George in New York.’

  ‘You’re in contact with George?’

  ‘Of course. He’s my friend. He’s supposed to be your friend too, but he says you don’t call anymore.’

  Since Dave had started planning his trip to Melbourne, he and I had been in touch directly and the Boys’ Nights Out had been deferred.

  ‘What do you talk about?’

  ‘Stuff. He really hated school. There was this kid who used to beat him up. George had to go to hospital once. But when George was famous, the kid who wasn’t a kid anymore called him and asked for free concert tickets, and George told him to go…to go away.’

  ‘Presumably you don’t talk to George every school day. There must be another reason.’

  ‘I’ll read.’

  ‘But you’ll have to go to bed earlier to make up.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘So, why do you want to do it?’

  ‘If I’ve got something good to do before I go to school, I’ll feel like getting up.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware of the problem. But it’s an excellent solution.’

  ‘And I want to go to Grandpa’s after school Tuesdays and Thursdays. Like I do now.’

  ‘Don’t you get bored? Sitting around at a gym?’

  ‘I need the time for homework. It’s a good place to read. I should see Grandpa regularly. Before he dies.’

  ‘But I want to teach you skills. To assist in making school more pleasant. With ongoing benefits.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Improving physical co-ordination. Acquiring friends. Avoiding being annoyed by others.’

  ‘What do you mean “annoyed by others”?’

  ‘Mr Warren advised that you became angry because another student’—I remembered the word—‘niggled you.’

  ‘What’s niggled?’

  ‘I don’t know. Whatever it was that made you angry.’

  ‘There’s a kid who plays with my hair. It’s annoying, but… Did you ask him to do something?’

  ‘No. I thought I should consult with you first. Do you want me to talk to him?’

  ‘Definitely not.’

  ‘Would you like some advice on tactics?’

  ‘You’re going to tell me to ignore him, right?’

  That’s what my mother would have said: He’s only doing it because you react. Just ignore him. I knew it wouldn’t work. In my case, being poked caused me considerable distress and the poker zero. It was obvious who would crack first.

  My father would have recommended violence, or at least the threat of it. Front him in the playground. Tell him to stop or you’ll sort him out. You’re big enough and you know how to do it. If I had made and carried out such a threat, I would have been in serious trouble.

  This was all hypothetical. I had never told my parents about the kid who used to poke me, because I knew what their answers would have been. It was time to share my adult knowledge with Hudson.

  ‘Obviously, if you had a good relationship with him, he wouldn’t want to damage it by annoying you.’

  ‘You’re saying I should make friends with him.’

  ‘Correct. And you contribute to the second goal of increasing your number of friends. Friendships are largely random. I used to think that I was only compatible with a small proportion of people. In fact, most people are interesting.’

  ‘He’s interesting to his friends. He’s the class clown. That’s why he does what he does. He thinks it’s funny. I don’t, so we’re not…compatible.’

  In Shepparton, we visited the family hardware shop, which continued to operate under my brother Trevor’s management. It would have been economically non-viable if my parents had not owned the building and stock, and provided Trevor with free accommodation and meals. When we arrived, he was occupied with a customer, but I was able to procure the stud finder and electronic distance measurer that I had come for before proceeding to our parents’ home.

  My father answered the door and looked terrible. His facial skin was grey, and he had lost weight since I had last seen him. I was surprised that he was able to stand, and, in fact, he sat down almost immediately in the chair that had been reserved for his use all of my life.

  ‘Light a fire, will you, Don,’ he said. ‘It’s freezing in here.’

  Hudson and I collected kindling from the shed and I threw it in with some paper. My father’s selection and installation of the stove had been sufficiently well researched that there was no need to waste effort setting the fire properly.

  ‘That’s not how you set a fire,’ said
my father. ‘You ever set a fire, Hudson?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Well, that’s not how you do it.’

  My father got out of his chair and demonstrated the correct method. I sat in my own designated chair and reminded myself—several times—that it was an excellent bonding moment between grandfather and grandson, and that Hudson was learning a useful skill. A life skill.

  When my mother left the room to make instant coffee, my father, still building the fire, asked, ‘Well, what did you find out?’

  ‘Continuing chemotherapy will improve your twelvemonth survival rate by approximately twenty-five per cent.’

  ‘Twenty-five per cent of bugger-all is still bugger-all.’

  ‘Correct. Bugger-all in this case is approximately fifteen per cent.’

  ‘You’re going to die?’ said Hudson.

  ‘Everyone is. I’m eighty-six and I’ve got cancer, so it’s not going to be long. You’d better see me again before I go, in case there’s some advice I need to give you that I’ve forgotten.’

  He turned to me. ‘Don, tell your mother you’ve done your homework and there’s zero value in the chemotherapy.’

  ‘Dad said it was twenty-five per cent,’ said Hudson.

  ‘He did,’ said my father, ‘but he’s not going to tell your grandmother that, or she’ll make me keep doing it. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. Now I’m going to bed to listen to Beethoven.’

  ‘Why did you lie to Nan?’ asked Hudson as we drove past Tillman Hardware for the second time in an hour. ‘If Pa doesn’t want to take the drugs, she can’t make him, right? There’s no law?’

  ‘I didn’t lie. I corrected for the fact that humans have a poor intuitive understanding of probability and statistics. Your grandmother would say, “We should take any chance, no matter how slim,” without properly weighing the negative aspects. The most likely outcome is that Pa would suffer with no benefit.’

  ‘Why is Nan always so sad?’ People with autism are poor at recognising others’ emotions.

  ‘Because Pa is ill.’ It was the logical answer, but it was possible that my mother had been sad for sixteen years—since my sister died. It was not something I had noticed.

  The following day, Sunday, I rode to the cycle shop and purchased training wheels for my bike, which I estimated Hudson was now tall enough to ride. In New York, he had resisted learning and I was able to relate to his problem—precisely. My father had successfully taught my older sister and younger brother to ride, but I had failed to learn, due to multiple falls and fear of further injury.

  I knew the solution, but my father did not want me to be seen with ‘sissy’ training wheels. I did not learn to ride until several years later and was excluded from numerous activities in the intervening period.

  Hudson and I had negotiated a physical-skills session for Sunday afternoons and I requested his assistance to install the wheels.

  ‘Training wheels? No way, Dad. They’re for little kids.’

  ‘Currently your bike-riding skills are at little-kid standard.’

  ‘If someone sees me—’

  ‘Obviously, I’ve considered the embarrassment factor. We will be practising at a remote location. Pass me the ratchet.’

  Hudson looked around and I realised that he would not know what a ratchet was. Years of enforced labour in the hardware shop had given me an encyclopaedic knowledge of tools and their applications. I retrieved the ratchet from its case and demonstrated its use, along with the relative advantages of socket, open, ring and adjustable spanners.

  With the first training wheel installed, I suggested that Hudson fit its counterpart on the opposite side, but he had not been watching with that in mind. I fitted the second wheel myself, instructing him to observe with the objective of learning: we would need to perform the task multiple times as the bike alternated between training mode for Hudson and transport for me.

  We drove to a park in the opposite direction from the school, with the roof down to accommodate the bike.

  ‘Is this sufficiently distant?’ I said.

  Hudson nodded, we unloaded the bike, he rode with the training wheels without incident, we returned home and Hudson resumed reading his book, all within the one-hundred-and-twenty-minute slot. Things were going well.

  15

  Compiling a detailed list of goals and activities for Hudson proved more difficult than I had expected. If I knew then what I know now had prompted thoughts of social rituals and physical competencies, but few specifics.

  We had made a good start on physical skills with the bike riding. Next in importance was ball catching, which Rabbit had mentioned specifically. I was well qualified to teach it, having overcome a severe deficit of natural ability.

  Appropriate dress was important. Even with a school uniform, there were subtle differences in deployment that Hudson needed to know, unless he wanted to be the class clown. Being the class clown provided some protection and positive interaction, but it was not as good as being accepted in the normal way. In any case, that position was apparently already filled in Hudson’s class.

  I would need to keep up the mathematics tuition, which I had incorporated into our dinner routine. Mathematics is excellent training for rational thinking, arguably life’s most important skill.

  What else? Times had changed. My knowledge of BASIC and transistors and how to fix a broken cassette tape was obsolete. Motor vehicles and electronic appliances were too complex or inaccessible or uneconomic for amateur repairers. Hudson would never need to read a street directory or roll a cigarette.

  One of my teachers had presented Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘If’ as a specification for manhood, with its claim that a fully configured male should be willing not only to gamble but to wager his entire pile of winnings on a single event with a fifty per cent probability of success. Then and now, Kipling seemed to be describing a personality fault that would warrant professional intervention. Rosie would not have responded to such recklessness on my part by complimenting me on my manliness.

  I checked my notes from the discussion with Rabbit Warren and added team sports, tact, playing in a group, and dealing with anger and conflict.

  By the time I collected Hudson from school, I had a draft list which was daunting, considering the time available for working on it. Hudson immediately introduced a complicating factor.

  ‘Can I go to Blanche’s place and you pick me up afterwards? It’s okay with her mum.’ Blanche was standing beside him.

  ‘We have ninety minutes scheduled for—’

  ‘I can do it later, instead of reading. Wait.’

  He indicated that we should move away from Blanche to speak privately.

  ‘You said “acquiring friends” was one of our goals. That’s what I’m doing. So, this should count instead of whatever we were going to do.’

  ‘Blanche is already your friend.’

  ‘Aaargh.’

  I could understand Hudson’s reaction. It was important to maintain existing friendships—using tact and conflict-resolution skills—as well as finding new ones. And there was something I needed to give to Allannah, though I would need to go home to get it.

  ‘How are you planning to travel to Blanche’s?’

  ‘She’s getting the tram because her mum has to work. Can I borrow your myki?’

  ‘I’ll give you a ride.’

  ‘Cool car,’ said Blanche from the back seat. ‘Does the roof come down?’

  ‘It’s winter,’ I said.

  Hudson actuated the roof mechanism and we travelled to Blanche’s, via our home, in extreme discomfort.

  Blanche’s residence was an organic-food and unsubstantiated-therapies business: Thornbury Natural Living. Allannah was behind the counter in the shop, and Blanche’s brother was playing on the floor.

  ‘Don’t bother your father,’ said Allannah to Blanche.

  ‘Der,’ said Blanche, and she and Hudson proceeded up the stairs.

  ‘I have the informat
ion and equipment you requested,’ I said to Allannah.

  She looked surprised, then said, ‘Would you like a tea? Or a coffee? I drink herbal, but I can make an instant coffee.’

  ‘Herbal, please. I don’t drink caffeine after 3 p.m.’

  While she prepared the infusion, I unpacked the items I had brought.

  ‘Cheek scraper for DNA collection, plus zip-lock bag. You scrape the inside of Blanche’s cheek with it. In fact, it’s better if she does it herself.’ Hudson would not have permitted another person to scrape his inner cheek.

  ‘Also, a letter specifying the test required and indicating you’ve consulted with a geneticist, which is me, to be signed by you. You need to add your full name, contact information and credit-card details. Then, mail it to the laboratory in the accompanying envelope with the sample. There’s a document explaining how to interpret the results.’

  ‘You’ve gone to so much trouble.’

  ‘There would have been more trouble if you or the laboratory made an error due to poor instructions.’

  ‘Well, again, thank you. I’m really sorry, but…It’s Don, isn’t it? Blanche wasn’t sure.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Do you want to wait till Hudson and Blanche are finished? She needs to start her homework in an hour or so.’

  ‘Of course. I’ve got my computer. I can sit somewhere and work.’

  ‘You’ve got stuff to do?’

  ‘In fact, no. It was an automatic response, due to being constantly overloaded in the past.’

  ‘But not anymore?’

  I outlined my situation. The explanation consumed the full hour and Allannah listened without interrupting.

  Hudson and Blanche returned. ‘Can Hudson stay a bit longer? We can do our homework together.’

  Allannah looked at me and I nodded. The parents-after-school discussion was a new social situation for me, and I felt that I was handling it competently. With the extra time, I could do even better: ‘Any questions?’ I asked.