The Subjects Read online

I never liked to be told to sit. It meant you’d done something wrong or you were about to be forced to dredge up something you wanted to let lie.

  ‘My name is Dr J. We met in a roundabout way in the courtroom this morning.’

  I nodded. I did not sit.

  ‘You must be famished,’ he said, asking Greg to bring us some food. And after Greg had left: ‘So, what now?’

  I waited for him to answer his own question but he didn’t, instead directing me to ‘please have a drink’. Beside him on a small table was a glass jug with pieces of lemon floating in it and two glasses. He filled them and passed one over. The drink was sweet and very cold and smelled like the jasmine growing on the bus shelter outside our flats.

  ‘It might be more comfortable if you took a seat.’ His eyes were dark and far apart. They moved down to the seat on offer and then back again to meet mine in an entreaty that was both gentle and firm. The chair itself—I didn’t wait to be asked again—was an armchair covered in worn green velvet. It felt good enough to sleep in.

  When I finished the drink he handed me the piece of paper he’d been reading as I entered. I looked down at the page in my hands. The first line was in bold and read: As between Daniel G and the School.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘It is a contract.’ That trace of an accent. Even when he spoke his lips remained in a half-smile.

  I looked back to the page. The next line was a heading: The Conditions, and under that it was blank (rendering the document, as far as I could understand, meaningless). ‘Where do I sign?’ I said.

  He smiled more fully. ‘Let’s you and I draft something first. Think it over for a day: what you want of me, and what you are prepared to give…’

  About that time Greg reappeared with a tray of finger sandwiches, put them on an empty table with two plates and left without speaking. Dr J motioned for me to help myself, and I piled my plate high with two of each mystery filling. When I was sitting down again and eating, he helped himself too; we ate for a few minutes in silence. I can’t really explain why I was relaxed enough to do that, only to say that I was hungry and the fancy sandwiches were as good as cake and I was comfortable in my velvet chair. Nothing bad had happened yet. Maybe if I could just let things slide for a while and wander around the luminous corridors, how could it hurt? It didn’t mean I was falling for the ‘let’s you and I’ bullshit; I only had to go back to this guy’s coded conversation in the courtroom to know where he sat in the scheme of things. It was a skill that throughout my almost seventeen years had served me well: how to peg people. Teachers, lawyers, customers…if you gave me ten minutes, I could tell you who to trust.

  I started: ‘“The School.” The judge said it was a program. You say it’s a school now?’

  With his mouth still full he shrugged and nodded simultaneously.

  ‘What happens if I leave?’

  He put the rest of his sandwich back on his plate. ‘What would happen to you if you left?’ He appeared genuine in his need for clarification.

  ‘If I woke up in the morning and walked out the door.’

  He shook his head. ‘How would I know?’

  ‘I mean, do you call the cops?’

  He gestured towards the piece of paper now sitting under my plate. ‘There is no fine print in there, Daniel. It is blank, a clean slate, as we call it.’ His eyes held firm again and I noticed that his face was without symmetry: a high forehead and a severe side part, the left eye larger than the right, so that the bushy eyebrows were uneven, one a little higher and more arched. His nose deviated to the left with a pronounced bump at the bridge, and at the right corner of his full lips there was a small raised purple scar.

  The face was a roughly drawn map of a shadowy place you wouldn’t want to linger in too long; but his physique, that was something different. His collar was a little tight. Above it, an Adam’s apple rose and fell as he swallowed. And then his triceps. You could watch them as he moved, and the little muscles down his forearm, the blue-green veins beneath skin that was a fine, poreless olive. No excess, nothing wasted, nothing wanting. If I’d been that way inclined, it might have been arousing. As it was, I just found something reassuring in his physicality.

  ‘This is what they gave us,’ he continued, pointing to a folder on the table with the tulip lamp. ‘The file that travels with you. I have only read the cover sheet but if you prefer me to read more I will do that.’

  ‘I’d prefer it if you gave it to me.’ Part-joke, but he didn’t get it.

  His reply was straight-faced: ‘That wasn’t one of the options.’

  Now, as I recall this, I see the Doctor was responding as he did to most things—in his peculiarly literal way, any of the subtleties of nuance or sarcasm sliding through to the keeper. But that day as he spoke, I took it as his declaration of authority, and it threw me immediately onto the attack.

  ‘Like it’s going to make a difference if I want you to read it or not,’ I said. ‘Like you haven’t read it already. I’m not an idiot. I don’t know who you are or what this place is. I just want to know what I need to do to get signed out…’

  (I hear it: these are not the words of a boy filled with hope and fear. But I tell you, they are precisely that.)

  At some point while I was speaking he dropped his eye contact and reached over to make a note on a piece of paper on the table, ceasing to react in any way to what I said or to the anger in my voice. Again, now I can read it—this was his habit: for lack of relevance, a speaker would lose his attention. In his mind our interview was complete. For the time being he did not need anything else from me; I may as well not have been speaking at all.

  ‘And now,’ he said as he continued to write, ‘if you’re happy to stay with us tonight, I’ll get Greg to show you your room.’ I hadn’t noticed Greg come in but he was back, standing behind me. ‘And tomorrow morning after a good sleep you can find your feet. Let’s meet back here when you’re ready, how does that sound?’

  The answer in my head was that I had a business to get back to and I wouldn’t still be here at the end of tomorrow, but I was exhausted and played along, said goodnight and followed Greg out of the room. We walked through the waiting room and into the corridor.

  Now it was darker there were lights at the base of the big pots in the courtyard that made the pear trees glow. There was the sound of quiet voices, which I traced to the back of a pair of straw-coloured heads sitting out of the light between the planters. With their hair cropped short, I couldn’t tell if they were boys or girls.

  I stopped. It looked good out there. Private.

  ‘The sisters,’ Greg said. ‘They’re having dinner. Do you want to meet them?’

  I did but I couldn’t. I needed to sleep. I needed to sleep, then I needed to wake up and obtain the information necessary to make a plan.

  During the inquiry a decade later, the Doctor was asked under cross-examination about the file he pointed to in his office that first day, and in particular the absence of a single entry during my seven-month stay. His response was that he could not add to the file because he hadn’t read it in the first place. Then came pages of long-winded and cryptic questioning by the counsel assisting as to how he had conducted assessments in light of such an omission, culminating in this:

  COUNSEL: I take it then that you had no regard for the conclusions of every other professional involved up to that time in the lives of these students? Every doctor or teacher or therapist, you thought it right to disregard? Are you familiar, Dr J, with the term ‘God complex’? You didn’t feel you were playing God, just a little bit?

  After years of laying the blame with him, I re-read the answer a number of times and I smiled like an older man recalling a fond childhood.

  DR J: No, I did not. Keeping with your metaphor, I was not playing God; I was trying to block out the noise so that I could hear him.

  Amenities

  The starting point, as I understand it now, was a mindset. A mix of sorry circumst
ances and clever architecture meant that in spite of our innate mistrust of institutions, within the first twenty-four hours of arrival each of us at some point had the same thought: whatever this place was, being here was a good thing. Light-filled corridors and a jug of lemon water were our introduction to the concept of a benevolent universe. But the clincher for me was the shower.

  When Greg opened the door to my room and said goodnight I saw, across from the double bed with the sky-blue doona, a sliding door. On the other side of it was a bathroom—a toilet, a basin and a shower. Inside the shower, I kid you not, standing on a little wire shelf, a pump pack of citrus-scented body cream. I tapped the tiles to check for another entry point before daring to believe that there was only one door and it was mine. (It is a simple truth: give a sixteen-year-old boy his own shower and you are giving him a 1.2 square metre pleasure zone.)

  A bathroom attached to a bedroom. I didn’t even know there was a word for it. In that instant, without learning anything more about my place of banishment in the arse-end of nowhere, the question beating in my brain went from how quickly I could get out of there to how long I could put up with whatever weird shit they were going to throw at me. It wasn’t like I hadn’t known weird in my life, and really, I reminded myself, normal didn’t have a lot going for it.

  I slept for fourteen hours. When I woke up I was relieved it wasn’t a dream. It took me seven seconds to get the shower to a perfect warm. When the screech of monkey laughter came over the sound system I didn’t know what it was telling me to do. I wiped the fog from the mirror and leaned in close to take a long look and to see if anything was different.

  You need a plan.

  It was a thing for me, having a plan—for me and for my mum, Mary. Without one we were prone to panic. You can get to hell and back, Mary said, as long as you have a plan. There was Mary to think of, alone in the flat…My throat constricted as it flashed up, a week back: a ball of bruises on the kitchen floor, one eye closing up. I had uncurled her, pincered a half-smoked joint to her blood-cakey lips (who could argue?), and she asked where I’d been, like it was any other day, like I was any other son.

  ‘What’s our plan then?’ she’d said. We had signals, for when I should leave or when I shouldn’t come inside. A tea towel on the fridge door.

  ‘Hang it on the fridge.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The blue stripes.’

  There were other plans, less relevant to the danger at the door, like what shelf she should put photo albums on in case the plumbing went again, or remembering to keep insect spray by the bed for the ants—my mother casting a net full of holes around a treacherous universe. She liked to go over them, her plans—repeat them, or parts of them, like a drill, off by heart, in her sleep: the blue stripes, the second shelf, the bedside drawer—projecting herself into a different version, where simple precautions would avert disaster. With the strategy crafted, she’d tick a mental box. Job done. I never heard her utter a word of complaint about anything that was actually happening.

  She smiled and nodded as she closed her eyes. ‘Make a plan.’

  However illusory, line up at the post, make a mental map. Decide. A tea towel on a fridge door. There was no reason to think it would work. And looking into the mirror now, there was nothing different about my face. Then it fogged up again and I couldn’t see anymore. I resolved to give it a clear week, whatever it was they threw at me, then reassess. It wasn’t much of one, but that was it; that was my plan.

  The monkey laughed a second time and I opened my door to the glare of a sunlit corridor. Through the glass, I was looking directly at the upper branches of the pear trees and, through the leaves, into the opposite corridor. There—with his face at the glass looking back at me—stood a fat guy. When our eyes met he started walking in my direction. I’d never been mean to fat kids but I’d seen plenty of other people be mean to plenty of fat kids and I’d seen fat kids who were mean fuckers too, classic victim-turned-perpetrator, the worst kind.

  This one looked at me sideways as we drew together at the stairwell.

  ‘You looking for someone?’ A little voice, high and reedy.

  ‘Ah, I’m not sure—Greg, I guess.’

  He shook his head. ‘You don’t really see Greg again. I dunno what he does all day. I’m Tod. You should probably just come with me.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘The kitchen.’

  ‘I need food.’

  He cracked a smile. ‘I can help with that.’

  At the bottom of the stairs was a big white-tiled kitchen, pristine except for a stack of bowls and a pile of banana skins in the sink. At the end of a long, stainless-steel table sat a round-faced girl with messy hair and muddy skin. She was reading a cereal box and did not look up.

  Tod ignored her and opened a double-doored fridge which was chock full of milk and orange juice, cartons of eggs and jumbo packets of cheese. One end of the counter was covered with bowls of apples and grapes, and lining the whole length of it were honey jars. There must have been twenty of them. I didn’t ask; I just watched Tod as he started cracking eggs with one hand into a bowl. He was clearly chuffed to tell me that he was making me an omelette with feta cheese and spinach, and some of the herbs that grew in pots in the garden; double-chuffed when I told him I’d never had an omelette before. I wondered to myself why he was so fat if he ate food like this. I guess he intuited my question.

  ‘I get lessons now, from Magnolia. She’s a mad cook. Columbian. I didn’t used to eat this sort of stuff. I’ve lost twelve kilos in three months, if you can believe it.’

  ‘Well, sure,’ I said. ‘Anyone can be fatter.’

  I wasn’t trying to be funny but the girl snorted and looked up. She had amber-brown eyes. Golden, almost.

  ‘Daniel—meet Rachel,’ Tod said.

  We got as far as a nod when two other girls swept in. I recognised their heads from the courtyard. The sisters. Fair and freckled; similar but not the same. They glanced at me in unison before sitting down opposite Rachel.

  ‘How did you sleep?’ one of them asked her. And when there was no reply: ‘Any dreams?’ It came with a smirk.

  At which point Rachel was on her feet and out the door in a blink. The sound of her spoon dropping into the empty bowl hung in the kitchen.

  Satisfied, the sisters made toast and were spreading honey when another boy entered. He stood at the bench for a minute watching me eat before approaching the table.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘My name is Alex.’ Dark hair. His eyes a gentle green.

  ‘You want some eggs?’ Tod asked. Alex shook his head.

  I checked the time. It was midday. ‘I think I’m meant to go see the doctor guy.’

  ‘Things start late here,’ Tod said. ‘And they know where we are—there are cameras. You just can’t see them.’ I looked around. He was right; I couldn’t see any.

  ‘Did he give you your contract yet?’ It was Alex.

  I nodded. ‘What’s that about?’

  He looked back at me like he wanted me to answer my own question, like he suddenly wanted something from me. Everyone seemed to be waiting on the answer, even the sisters, but when the silence went on too long they shrugged and left.

  I motioned to the door. ‘Why are they here? What did they do?’

  Tod seemed glad I’d asked. ‘Imogen and Grace,’ he said. Smiled. ‘They shaved their heads and set up a scam charity for rare childhood cancers. Made thousands of dollars through online donations. Very clever.’

  ‘And you?’ I asked. ‘What about you?’

  The question was for both of them. Tod was the one to answer:

  ‘Same as you, same for all of us. A better option.’

  We all let that hang for a while. I didn’t ask for any more information but Tod eventually offered it up.

  ‘I hit my teacher in the head with a hole-puncher. His right eye’s screwed.’ Seeing the glint of surprise, he stared me down. ‘Had me pegged for a gentle gi
ant?’

  Here in the culinary bosom of fatty Tod, I didn’t want to argue. ‘Cook like that,’ I said with a final mouthful, ‘I don’t care if you blinded your whole class.’

  The omelette had a creamy middle and crispy edges and I could have eaten another seven, no problem, but when I eyed off the remaining eggs, Tod shook his head. ‘There were four in that omelette; you don’t want to eat more than that.’

  The reasons to like Tod were building. For all I knew, he was part of all this, someone’s little helper, but when he told me I shouldn’t eat more than four eggs, I didn’t feel the need to play the firecracker and scare him away. The truth was, I was strangely touched. The only other person in my life to ever voice even a fleeting interest in what I ate was Mary. Tod, after his twelve short weeks with Magnolia, presented as a more competent guide.

  Over the loudspeaker came the monkey again, and out in the corridor the sound of footsteps and chatter.

  ‘I guess I go see him now,’ I said.

  I must have looked worried. Alex leaned in. ‘It’s a trip,’ he said.

  ‘And where do you guys go?’

  They said Helen’s class and I asked what subject.

  ‘There are no subjects,’ Alex offered. ‘It’s kind of free-flowing. A group thing.’

  My inner alarm sounded. ‘Fuck that,’ I said. ‘I don’t do group.’

  Tod stood in the doorway, filling the whole thing up. ‘Neither do I. It’s not group group.’ And when I didn’t move he shrugged, unapologetic now. ‘It’s just…it is what it is on the day.’

  If it wasn’t group, I thought, it was God, God or some version of it. The scenario was already building at the back of my mind: gone was the pink sun and the crowd scene. Instead it was a happy-clapping Greg with the Doctor doing deals in the dim light.

  It all fell into place—the fancy building, the wholesome food. That’s where the money came from; God is big business, especially Our Saviour of the Mansions, out here in the middle of nowhere. I knew what this God looked like, too. Mary and I saw him on morning TV, sitting on a white sofa surrounded by pot-plants and talking about sacrifice and salvation.