Burn Patterns (7 page)

‘Yet, you said you crashed a while ago. James, you told me you crashed some time ago.'

He considered his bandaged arm, blinked at it. He looked up at Iris, smiling. ‘I get confused. It can be very confusing on your planet.'

‘Yes, it can.'

Iris went straight to her home office. She and Mathew both had offices on the ground floor. Mathew's was moderately spartan. Huge desk. Wall of law books. A rug, a single reading chair under the window. Iris joked that Mathew's home office was modelled on the Third Reich. Space as power. Mathew didn't like the joke. He called her office ‘the junk shop'.

Iris's office was cluttered. It had been her workplace at one point. Clients had been able to come around the side of the house, entering directly through the French doors. There was a comfortable couch, other lounge chairs. She still used the wooden filing cabinets to hold the few files she was working on from the practice.

Her office was full of relics. A large painting of a bushfire was on one wall, painted by a child. A battered brass fire-extinguisher sat in a corner, a gift on Iris's departure from the fire service. Iris still had pictures done by Rosemarie. They charted her life from barely recognisable faces and stick figures all the way to a couple of paintings from Rosemarie's high school art class. They were all framed, scattered about the walls and cabinets. There was a stethoscope and a microscope in a wooden box, both once owned by her father. A couple of his history books were in the bookcase.

It was the butterflies, however, which dominated. Framed display cases filled the walls. A smaller frame held a purple Lycaeides melissa, another a sole red-banded jezebel. Twenty blue morphos were arranged in a deep wooden frame. Another contained a spiral arrangement of different sized monarchs.
Ulysses swallowtails were everywhere, the blue and the green, also the darker Mexican ones with black dots. Once the family discovered Iris's fascination with butterflies, it became a default gift. The office had never been restful. It positively pulsed with detail and colour.

Iris opened her laptop to her file on Francesca Garbello. It was time to write a letter acknowledging the breakthrough of the recent visit. Francesca had been raped. Her husband was at work, her children inside the house. Francesca was unloading shopping from the car, which was in the garage. She hadn't closed the garage doors yet. He grabbed her from behind, pushing her face down on the back seat of the family car.

In spite of physical injuries, Francesca tried to keep the rape a secret. Her husband, Carlo, noticed certain of the symptoms, and assumed he had done something to upset her. When he attempted lovemaking, Francesca broke down and told of the assault.

The identification of post-traumatic stress in war veterans in the 70s led to the discovery of many of the same symptoms in rape victims. Indeed, the trauma, loss of power, assault on identity and benevolent world unity were common. Sleep problems, self-blame, anxiety, depression, bipolar, substance abuse and flashbacks were found to be common features in a number of soldiers and many rape victims.

Studies showed that in the first seventy-two hours after a rape, distress was acute. Ninety-four per cent of victims exhibited PTSD symptoms at two weeks, falling to sixty-four per cent at one month, and fifty per cent at three months. Fifty per cent of rape victims can self-heal after three months. For a variety of interlocking reasons, as in unaffected soldiers, these people are resilient enough to mend unassisted. However, the other half-need help. Trauma shatters the sense of self. It breaks the sense of personal autonomy, safety and justice. It also breaches attachments to family and society. Relationships suffer. Social support was essential for recovery.

Francesca, at her husband's insistence, had gone to Dr Chew a year before for cognitive behavioural therapy. Dr Chew began therapy at first with Francesca, subsequently with Francesca
and Carlo. Dr Chew's files revealed she had been particularly sensitive to the cultural factors which might aid or inhibit Francesca's recovery. Whilst not a virgin when she married Carlo, Francesca had been with few partners; she counted fidelity as a central tenet of marriage, as did Carlo. Francesca felt she was now dirty, used goods. Her husband would never forgive her for her (unwilling) infidelity. Carlo felt he had not been a man, failed to protect his family. They were both filled with anger because they had not identified or exacted revenge on the rapist who seemed to have escaped completely. Certain of these attitudes were societal ideals, others were bound by gender stories. Dr Chew had unpicked some of these.

She had also explored their family and relationship concepts based on their heritage as traditional Italian Roman Catholics. God's justice was respected and they were persuaded to talk to a priest about these matters. However, the potential ‘shame' from wider family was so heavily feared they had decided not to tell their respective families, even though both Dr Chew and later Iris continued discussions concerning which members of their families would understand their pain, would want to help them. Long term, eventually, it might be important to have other family members bear witness to their trauma.

Narratives of self-blame were also evident. Dr Chew was clearly focusing on these with Francesca and Carlo. Of course, Carlo had to go to work. He could not stay at home all the time. Yes, maybe Francesca might have closed the garage door before getting out of the car, which she now did (albeit in a different car). They'd sold the other car, moved houses. She did have to go shopping. She might have gone to the police and therefore obtained DNA evidence. This evidence may or may not have caught the culprit. Many people do not report rape. Francesca felt it would be like being assaulted again, by doctors, or by having her shame paraded to the world. It was also natural for Francesca to want to try to wash the dirt from her body, to want to crawl away – not to die, to recover.

Dr Chew had worked with them both concerning the negative self-narrative around Francesca's perceived failure to fight back. She had fought. She had protected her children through
her actions of compliance in a situation beyond her control. She continued to fight back, in recovering, in remaining strong for her husband and children.

In their new life, they phoned each other a couple of times a day. Francesca was no longer hypervigilant or numbed. Her drinking was down to one glass of wine with dinner. She no longer experienced flashbacks of the assault, except when she and Carlo attempted intercourse. The specific stimuli surrounding imminent penetration caused Francesca panic attacks in which she couldn't breathe and felt imagined pain. Iris was helping them with their lovemaking. It was time to highlight how far they had come in a therapeutic letter.

Dear Francesca and Carlo,

I am writing this letter to congratulate you both on the amazing journey you've shared with me. My intention here is to celebrate with you how far you have both come and to remind you about how strong and loving you are. I hope you might be able to refer to this letter in the future, should the snake start to try to sneak back into your lives from time to time (as we agreed, mainly when you are tired or feeling insecure).

*

Iris heard Mathew come in around six, but she kept working on the letter. She wanted to bring in the phrase ‘feed the love, starve the fear'. She also wanted to highlight Carlo's patience in his wife's recovery as a sign of their ongoing commitment to each other.

She might finish before she got ready for the dinner. It was an important law society do. Round tables of husbands and wives in black tie, ball gowns. It was a fundraiser for multiple sclerosis, also a see-and-be-seen affair. Networking. Weaving. Mathew Foster, charming, judicial.

The practice of law, of course, was boring. It was clerical, fernickety, time-consuming. It was an occupation of margins, of reducing risk, of exploiting increments. Except when one of them had a high-profile court case, although they were not
supposed to share, especially at such events.

A couple of wives were friends outside the office and they compared children's tales that soon became too specific, too prolonged and too self-referential. Many of the men in the office went cycling together, which was a difficult conversation to join. Two of the lawyer's partners were interesting. Jacinta's husband, Thomas, was in education at the university, often provocative. Roland's wife, June, was an arts administrator, always very witty about visiting actors and drunk artists.

At six thirty, Mathew appeared at Iris's office door, already dressed in his tuxedo.

‘Oh,' said Iris peering at him past the glare of her desk lamp. ‘I'll get ready. I thought we were leaving at seven thirty.' She stood.

‘I thought I'd go in early for drinks.'

‘Right. Well, all right. Shall I meet you at the do?'

‘You hate these things.'

‘I said I would. It's important.' Iris went to him, touched his arm. He was wearing the cologne Iris had bought him last Christmas, lavender and sandalwood mixed with his own body smell.

‘You have a lot on your plate. You can sit this one out. All good. Free pass.' He patted her on the shoulder, kissed her cheek, before turning away.

Iris said, ‘Mathew, I'm fine to go. I can catch up with June on which plays to see this summer. I'll meet you there.'

‘Don't.'

‘What?'

He sighed. ‘Strategically … Conservatively speaking, it's important they see me as …'

‘Married?'

‘Well, that they see me, for a start.' He'd taken the bait, didn't like her flippancy, even though it was a defence against hurt. ‘It sounds childish, jealous, and it's not. They'll want you. They'll want to talk to you about this high school gymnasium business. Your theories. Your contacts.'

It was time to come clean. To tell Mathew she'd been there, at the school, when it blew up. When the station officer was erased.
Iris said, ‘And it should be about you.'

He searched her face for intent.

‘I mean it. Strategically, you need to be front and centre.' Iris smiled, intending encouragement.

A car horn, taxi or friend, beeped outside, on cue.

Iris grimaced.

‘I want you to understand. It's …'

‘Nothing personal?'

He grimaced.

Iris said, ‘I'm sorry, I do understand, Mathew. You're right. It will probably go better without me, but I am hurt.'

He scrutinised her. He wasn't a bad man. He came back, his hand gently clasped the back of her head and he kissed her quickly on the lips. Her right hand held his hip.

‘Thank you,' he said. ‘I'll make it up to you.'

The cologne was called Passion. It was
by
Elizabeth Taylor not for her, she'd explained, when she'd given it to him.

*

Iris changed into her gym gear, pounded out twenty minutes on the running machine in the gym room while she watched the news.

The school explosion led the bulletin, and cascaded into related stories. Most of the visuals were from mobile phones, repeating portions of the explosion, recorded from a variety of angles. A news camera was behind the fire appliances. It caught the digital flash of white before the camera went blank. General interviews with the police followed. Confirming it was not a gas explosion. There were no suspects yet. Experts were asked about terrorists. Old stories about American school massacres were repackaged. The Arson Squad was not revealing details of what they'd found under the gymnasium. There was an interview with the Fire and Rescue Service commissioner, with an overlay of women, grieving. They might be firefighters' wives, although the service usually shielded the families from the media. Rounding out the gymnasium explosion special was a civil liberties story about the confiscation of the students' phones, the subsequent scouring of student computers and Facebook accounts for clues.

In other news, bushfires were doused. The fires had been discovered early. Iris thought the pattern fitted a fire recidivist at work. Iris missed the old tag of firebug, but conceded it lacked enough censure. Overseas, people continued to kill each other, to topple governments, rape children, blow up women shopping in markets, murder young people at concerts.

She went to the fridge for water. The salads were dark or limp. She threw them in the bin. She couldn't face a Lean Cuisine. She pulled out a container of carbonara sauce, found frozen fettuccine. She put water on to boil.

She thought she would ring Rosemarie, although the time difference might make it too late on a weeknight, too interrupting and strained while Rosemarie sat at a pub or library raising her eyebrows at whoever she was with, while her mother made small talk.

She rang Frank's mobile. He didn't pick up. Moments after she rang off she could hear her own mobile ringing in her handbag.

Frank.

‘At dinner. I missed your call.'

‘Sorry.'

‘Well? Is he our man?'

‘How did he hurt his arm?'

‘The motel fire, I believe. Apparently, they were onto him pretty quickly in the divvy van and in his prison cell.'

‘How does he get matches?'

‘As far as I can tell, he picks pockets. Pending more police reports.'

‘Has he been tested for drugs, alcohol-induced psychosis?'

‘Laboratory tests are being processed. He seems sharp, focused.'

‘Yes. And non-aggressive, apart from the firelighting.'

‘Yes.'

‘Have the police examined his belongings?'

‘I'm sure they will, Iris, if they are not already. They are checking for his fingerprints, as is police procedure. You're stalling.'

‘I don't know.'

‘What?'

‘I don't know if he's faking. He is disorganised in his thinking. He may have a psychosis or he may be faking it. He's smart, educated – winning. Soft. Very troubled.'