Somebody Loves Us All (15 page)

Angela was regrouping, looking at her feet, which were in black brogues, almost like a school shoe. Her entire outfit was more businessy than normal. As if answering his thoughts about her appearance, she said quietly, ‘I have a job interview later on. Council job.’

He wished her luck and she flinched slightly.

She sat silently for a while and when she spoke again she sounded more solid. ‘Your professional opinion is very valuable to us, Patrick. And you’ve worked very hard, despite what you say. We appreciate that. Let’s not even mention fees and money. Let’s not. This is Sam’s future.’

The sunshine was coming into the room, polishing the wooden floors. The southerly had whacked the city for a while. Now they got the reward. Intense blue sky, sunshine, stillness, the smell of the trees. He wanted to be on his bike.

‘I agree, which is why it’s important not to linger here.’ His mind went quickly in search of the idea he’d had on his ride with Lant, something to replace Sam’s current pose rather than cure it. He was cutting the Covenays loose but with this notion: Sam was now The Boy Who Couldn’t Be Cured. Maybe this was what he’d been looking for all along, to defeat Paddy. Then let him have it. Everyone could move on once he’d been granted the victory. It had only been Paddy’s pride that had kept the relationship going so long.

‘Linger?’ said Angela. ‘Malinger, you mean?’

‘I didn’t mean that. He’s a boy of tremendous will-power.’

‘Sometimes I think he’s the devil.’ It was a statement of precision, delivered as if the facts were practical in nature, almost obvious.
I think he has shingles
. She’d lifted her heels and let them fall as she spoke, giving emphasis. She glanced in the direction of the door as if Sam might be listening. ‘I’m not religious at all. This would be a secular devil.’

‘With saints for parents,’ said Paddy.

‘We’re certainly not that, Patrick. He drives us insane. Half the time I want to hit him very hard.’ She clenched her hand involuntarily into a fist and regarded it with surprise, releasing immediately. She was blushing all along her neck now and up her ears, which looked painfully red. ‘Alan is better than I am. He has control, or he did have. The feeling of rage is there. It comes out in unusual places. Last month he resigned from his cricket club where he’s played for twenty years. Turns out he punched a man, his teammate. This is Alan! My gentle giant. He can’t remember the circumstances but it was over nothing. He wrote a letter of apology. He doesn’t return customers’ calls sometimes. I’m just as bad, worse. At the dry-cleaners a few weeks ago I had a horrible woman complaining. She left some things, special care items. I took them to the dump bin out the back and threw them in. When she came back I watched my brother looking everywhere for the clothes. I’ll pay him back. Hence the job interview. This is why I think my son is the devil. But we’re the devils, aren’t we. He does nothing but sit back and watch.’

‘I can give you the name of an educational psychologist for Sam.’

This failed to penetrate. It felt such a weightless offer. They’d already been down that route. She looked up at the space where the cartoon usually hung. ‘I have one more confession to make. This week Alan finally got around to fixing your picture. He was very sorry about it and how long it took. Ridiculous.’

Paddy started to say that this wasn’t important but she held up her hand to stop him.

‘Anyway, it’s all done. He brings it upstairs and leaves it by the front door so we’ll remember to bring it today. It’s wrapped in brown paper. That was two nights ago. When I saw it again the next morning, the wrapping paper was torn a bit though the picture was still there. I asked Alan whether he’d had to do something else to it but he said he hadn’t touched it. Sam was in his bedroom of course, music on. We both had a bad feeling about it, so we took it into the kitchen and pulled out the picture
on the table there. You may remember, well of course you will remember, the cartoon was free floating in its frame.’

‘I remember.’

‘Sam had remounted it on card, given it a border. He’d worked with Alan’s stuff that he keeps in the garage. He’d done a nice job, very neat. He has an eye for it actually, which is what Alan always said. You probably think it strange that we looked at that first but I suppose for me I was imagining the whole thing torn up or something. But it was well presented. Alan said he’d thought of card-mounting it himself but didn’t want to bother you with it and he was feeling silly about the length of time he’d had it.’

‘No,’ said Paddy, ‘because the space where it used to hang has itself been a great talking point. I’m thinking of keeping it like that. Why not let everyone imagine their own story around that gap?’

Angela looked as though she didn’t quite follow this. She was struggling with some other thought. ‘The frame is the first thing. But it’s not what matters. It’s the picture that matters.’ She splayed the fingers of her right hand and looked at them. ‘You know the work he does on his hands, Sam’s hands. He likes art. I think. What do I know? Patrick, he’s redrawn your cartoon.’

‘I see.’

‘He’s the devil.’

‘What has he done to me?’

‘Removed a lot of the hair.’

‘Okay.’

‘Changed the mouth.’

‘Yes.’

‘Adjusted some of the clothing, I think.’

‘Are my collars gone? I had big collars.’

‘You wear an ordinary shirt now.’

‘The boy’s a genius. Anything else?’

‘You’re older. It’s photographic almost, the likeness. What does he do every session but get a chance to steal looks at you.
He’s been looking closely, he must have been. The detail. Don’t think I’m excusing it in any way. It’s an outrage. A crossed line.’

‘Can I see it?’

‘It’s in the car. I didn’t want to have it with us straight away. I was going to give it to you and explain when I picked him up. There was some crazy idea I had that he would apologise to you.’

‘That was crazy.’

‘No, that actually perhaps this was some special crisis point in, in—the treatment. Something?’

‘I doubt it.’ Again the moment in the doorway came to him.

‘Okay.’ She dropped her head. ‘It was Alan’s idea first to simply get rid of it, throw it away and say he lost it, it was stolen, something. Give you money. Then we thought at least show it to him.’

‘How amazing.’

‘I’m deeply deeply sorry, Patrick. It’s ruined. It’s just vandalism. We’re ashamed and horrified. Yet I brought him here today for help. From the very person he’s abused. Tell me what we can do. But we can’t do anything.’

At that moment they heard voices coming from the corridor and they both stood up. There was a knock on the half-open door and Geoff Harley stepped inside. ‘Sorry to barge in,’ he said, ‘but I met your mother downstairs.’

‘Yes?’ said Paddy.

Geoff turned and ushered Teresa inside the doorway. She was dressed in her nightgown. She was wearing her headphones around her neck, the microphone attached and hanging against her chest. Her eyes were glassy and her mouth hung open slightly. She looked wrecked, sleepless.

‘She seemed a bit disorientated. She was checking her mailbox and then she couldn’t remember her apartment number. I’m afraid my French wasn’t quite up to it. Her English is really quite good but she did seem confused.’

‘Ma?’ said Paddy.

She looked up at him. ‘Oui? Yes?’ She reached for his hand. ‘Patrick!’ she said.
Patreeck
. ‘How stupid of me. I haven’t been sleeping well. This building, I got a bit lost, that’s all.’
Beelding
.
Loss
. She turned then to Angela and tried to smile.

‘Bonjour,’ said Angela. ‘Je m’appelle Angela and voici mon fils, Sam.’

Teresa turned to Paddy. ‘What did she say?’ She faced Angela again. ‘I am sorry for interrupting. Please excuse me.’

Then Sam Covenay stepped forward from the shadows and Paddy watched him bend down and kiss his mother on both cheeks.

He called Lant, who called someone in neurology—Murray Blanchford, whom Paddy didn’t know. Blanchford called back within minutes. They quickly went over his mother’s immediate condition though Paddy didn’t say anything about the French accent. Let him come upon that. He talked about confusion, disorientation, some speech issues. Blanchford knew who Paddy was since Lant had told him. He wanted to know whether Paddy had observed any behaviour that might suggest dementia. Paddy said there’d been nothing. Mentally, his mother had been very sharp. This was more in the nature of something sudden. Then Paddy drove his mother to the hospital, phoning Helena on the way and leaving her a message to the effect that they were getting things checked out and there was no actual emergency. ‘She’s walking around by herself,’ he said. He also left the same message for Stephanie. Through it all, Teresa sat quietly, responding with nods to his questions about how she was feeling. She kept bringing her fingers to her lips and lightly pinching them together. She apologised repeatedly.

In the car they stopped at some lights and a school party crossed in front of them.

‘Who are they?’ she asked suddenly.
Oo are dey
?

‘Schoolkids,’ said Paddy.

‘I know they’re schoolkids, Patrick. I mean, from which school?’
Patreek
.

They were dressed in blue blazers, caps. Boys mainly but a few girls. He said he didn’t know.

‘I don’t really know the Wellington schools,’ she said.

He reached over and pressed his hand against hers. She made a small sound of surprise at this, as if he’d got the tone wrong and reassurance wasn’t what she needed. She was deep in her stoic mode now. In profile, looking straight out through the windscreen, she was a statue of classical indifference. He’d never seen her cry actually. When his father died, and then his uncle, in that vortex of tragedy, she’d gone into her room and not a sound was heard. She’d emerged to cook dinner for them. He was full of anxiety now. But also he was excited, he had to admit, enlivened almost. What had happened to his mother? He wasn’t unfeeling.

At the hospital they went straight into an examination room where Murray Blanchford soon joined them. He was small, serious, with a short grey beard over some rough scarred-looking skin. He rubbed a pen through the beard when he listened, which produced a slight rasping sound.

He asked Teresa whether she’d like to sit on the bed or on a chair. She pointed at a chair.

‘Let’s begin,’ he said. ‘How do you feel, Mrs Thompson?’

She shrugged. ‘Foggy.’

‘I’m sorry, could you repeat that please?’

She said the word again.
Fergy
.

‘Foggy,’ said Paddy.

‘And when did you start feeling like this?’

‘I don’t know.’

Paddy explained about the morning, how she’d been disorientated in the building.

‘You’ve felt okay leading up to this morning?’

‘Yes.’

‘Any moments in the past week or so where you’ve forgotten things, mislaid things, felt confused?’

‘No.’

‘Have you had any episodes, that you can recall, when you may have blacked out, maybe lost some time? Anything like that?’

She shook her head. Then he asked her if she was taking any medication. No. They’d get some blood tests done, he said. Liver, kidney function. Just normal stuff.

Blanchford worked his pen through the beard, noting nothing though he had a file open on the desk in front of him. ‘I’d like to ask you to do some physical things, very simple, to see how everything’s working, Mrs Thompson.’

Teresa nodded, felt her lips.

He asked her to hold out both arms, palms upwards, as if carrying a tray, and to close her eyes and count to ten. For a moment she didn’t follow this and Blanchford mimed it. The Barre manoeuvre. Paddy watched her hands. They remained level. Good. Then Blanchford got her to lift one arm slowly above her head and then the other. He asked her to flex her fingers. He wanted her to turn her head from side to side and then to look up and down. Covering one eye with her hand, he asked her to hold out an arm, then to repeat the action on the other side. ‘Now raise both arms together, keeping your eyes closed, please.’

Paddy watched his mother’s arms come up at the same rate and to the same height. Good again.

While remaining seated, she had to extend first one leg, then the other in front of her. Standing, he got her to move her arms out to the side. ‘Now could you just walk across the room and come back.’

Paddy had seen all of this before. But he’d never seen his mother do it. He was watching in a sort of trance. She accomplished each task carefully, solemnly, and when Blanchford told her to relax, she slumped in her chair, drained. He wrote something down. Naturally she’d been terrified of failing one of these tests. That they were finished meant little. For Paddy, there were no obvious signs of weakness but Blanchford might have seen something he didn’t like. They weren’t to know.

‘Now I’m going to just feel very lightly around your head, if I may. Please tell me if you feel any discomfort, pain.’ Blanchford walked behind her and rested his fingers on the back of her
head. Then he began feeling around. He was looking away from her as he did this, as if to watch his own hands would interfere somehow with their deeper sensory knowledge, or as if he was some brilliant musician, turning away from his instrument when he played. It was a bit quacky, or he was deeply talented.

Teresa had closed her eyes.

Blanchford stopped at certain points, resting his fingers in her hair. Above her right ear, he lifted the hair and looked. ‘When did this happen? You had a little cut or something here.’

Teresa opened her eyes. She appeared puzzled.

‘It must be from where you fell last month,’ said Paddy. ‘In the bathroom, remember. She had a few stitches put in.’

‘Any problems since then?’ said Blanchford. ‘Headaches? Dizziness?’

Teresa shook her head. ‘Nothing.’
Nuteen
. She gripped the edge of her seat as if she was about to topple over.

A subdural haematoma? Paddy should have considered this possibility earlier.

Blanchford was writing in the file with sudden fluency. He was reassuringly old-fashioned in this regard, being unable to talk and write at the same time.

The room contained the sheeted bed, four chairs with metal legs, and a computer workstation where Blanchford was writing. There was a keyboard but no monitor. The cord for the monitor sat above the keyboard, as if someone needing a monitor had come and snapped it off. This was probably what had happened, Paddy thought. A set of shelves above the workstation carried a single box of tissues. By the bed was a tall metal cupboard, and in the corner by the door, a rubbish bin with a paper bag liner. There were no windows. Paddy had spent years in such rooms.

‘Can we go home now?’ said Teresa.

Murray Blanchford looked up. ‘So I would like to talk about speech.’

Of course she’d said
ome
for home.

‘Okay,’ said Paddy, ‘so this is not her voice.’

‘This is not my voice,’ said Teresa.

Blanchford had stopped writing. ‘Okay.’

‘I don’t sound like this usually.’

‘There’s been a change,’ said Paddy.

Blanchford sat back, considering. He looked at his pen. After a moment, he held it up. ‘Can you tell me what this is, Mrs Thompson?’ Blanchford held up his pen.

‘A pin.’

‘And this?’ He indicated his chair.

‘Cheer,’ she said. ‘Char, you know.’ She gave Paddy a panicked look. ‘Seat, okay. Where you seat. I know what it is! The main problem is I haven’t slept. So you’re seeing me at a low point, I’m afraid.’

They took the lift to radiography and then, while Teresa was being prepared, Blanchford led Paddy along the corridor, looking into offices. They found an empty one with a computer and Blanchford sat down behind the desk, tapping quickly at the keyboard. ‘What are you doing?’ said Paddy.

‘It’s a powerful diagnostic tool.’

Paddy walked around behind him. Blanchford was Googling accent acquisition.

He pointed at the screen. ‘Here. Astrid L.’

Together they read about the Norwegian woman, knocked unconscious in a bombing raid in 1941, who’d come around with a strong German accent. Her neighbours then drove Astrid L. out of her home town on suspicion she’d been a spy.

‘Where does your mother live?’ said Blanchford.

‘In town.’

‘Probably safe then. From the intolerant neighbours, I mean.’

So they were by themselves, they could joke now? Paddy stayed grim.

Foreign Accent Syndrome. FAS. An urban legend sort of condition that Paddy had paid no attention to. A team from Oxford University was working on it.

Blanchford sat back in the chair. ‘Sorry, of course this is not a diagnosis at all. We’re surfing the Internet for God’s sake. We need the scan and so on. Probably not meaningful to give your mother this information at the moment, but up to you.’

In most cases of FAS, the change was temporary. The accent disappeared after a few hours.

‘You’ve not seen it yourself then in your work?’ said Blanchford.

‘No.’

‘It’s certainly more refined than the usual word salad. Dysphasics are ten-a-penny but French? My wife speaks French. She considers it horribly lazy and arrogant of me, which it is, but personally I’m waiting for all the world to catch up with us and speak English. It’s happening, you know, even in France.’

Paddy turned from the screen to look at him. ‘Sorry, I wasn’t listening.’

Helena and Stephanie arrived together at the imaging room. They’d met each other in the hospital car park. Paddy was hugged fiercely. Stephanie held on to him. He marvelled again at his sister’s physical power. Post-motherhood, she was a sturdy, ample person. Her cheeks were always red and full. The young Steph, his little sister, he remembered as narrow, wan even. Having babies had not robbed her of a certain nervous tension but it had given her an entire sphere in which she was not tense at all. Her daughters, remarkably, were not fussed over. She’d dumped them, she said, with a neighbour. ‘What are they saying, Paddy, is it a stroke?’

‘They’re not saying anything, Steph.’

‘Dementia? Alzheimer’s? The kids are so young for this to happen.’ She meant her kids. ‘Who’s told Margie?’

‘All they’re doing is some tests. We should ring Margaret afterwards.’

‘She had the stomach bug and no one went round to see her!’

‘Could be totally unrelated, Steph.’

‘And then she skives off to Palmerston North! Alarm bells should have rung then. She was hiding, was she? Poor Mummy.’

‘Probably didn’t want to be a burden,’ said Helena.

‘But that’s what people are to each other, burdens,’ said Stephanie. ‘Look at me!’

‘We should call Pip too.’

They were sitting in a row of chairs along the back wall of a room mostly taken up with the controls for the scanner, which could be seen through a viewing window. A technician entered and sat in front of his board of lighted switches, making adjustments. They began to speak in whispers as before a show or a play.

‘Where is Teresa now?’ said Helena.

‘Being sedated for the scan,’ said Paddy. ‘They’re getting her ready.’

‘Sedated?’ said Stephanie. ‘Is that normal?’

‘She wanted it,’ he said. ‘She’d developed this shake she couldn’t control.’

Stephanie made a whimpering sound. ‘I want to see her before it happens,’ she said. ‘She’s my mother.’ Paddy remembered something Teresa had said to him once about his little sister, ‘Everything comes out. Stephanie says all the things we think. It makes her seem stupid. But we’re all stupid aren’t we.’

Helena took her hand. He was grateful she was there.

A voice came through a small speaker above the glass panel. The technician pressed a button and said something in response. Then their mother walked into view.

Stephanie gasped. Paddy was aware too that Helena drew back. Teresa looked tiny within the frame of the window. A hologram almost, performing in a spray of fluorescence. Dressed in a hospital gown, she wandered towards the glass, looking directly at them it seemed, feeling with her hands for the way. She pressed a hand against the glass. The technician on their side was gesturing to her to move away and sit down. It was
fantastically theatrical, grotesque. Where was everyone? How could she be alone in there? On reflex, Stephanie stood up and said their mother’s name and held out a hand before realising what she was doing. The technician glanced around at them. A nurse appeared beside Teresa and drew her back towards the scanner. Stephanie sat down again.

Paddy had never lived easily with the next image, the human body tied down and inserted into the narrow perfectly machined space. MRIs were worse but even the CT doughnut was hard to take. He’d attended a few of them in his time at the hospital. In the bad old days of Bridget’s mystery illness he’d had to be here and Bridget’s own calm in the face of the procedure was no help. Her submission threw into sharp relief his near panic. He got through it now by studying his watch. The gesture observed by anyone would have suggested great calm, even boredom perhaps. But, he thought, we are all stupid.

For the time their mother lay confined there, strapped in, her head fed into the gleaming cylinder then pulled out again to be reinserted, the process happening several times, he felt pressed upon by thin wet sheets of metal. His watch-strap was silver and it seemed to turn too in his eye.

They couldn’t hear the scanner through the glass panel but he could easily imagine the noise, which was a whirring, and this entered his ear somehow, causing his familiar symptom. His cochlea could be examined with a CT scan, but it was something he hoped to avoid. He was a health professional and finally as squeamish as Tony Gorzo had been, shaking his finger, trying not to hear what could happen, what did happen, every day, to someone. Someone like this.

Helena whispered beside him, ‘What are they looking for?’

He had to wait several moments before he could answer. ‘They’re just looking,’ he said finally. The haematoma would be picked up easily. Lesions could be trickier. A tumour. CTs could miss those. They’d have to come back in a few days for the MRI anyway. The CT was precautionary more than anything else, to find out whether they needed to start emergency stroke
medicine. Blanchford would be looking in Broca’s especially. If something was pressing there, the vocal cords might be affected, the length of syllables. Odd to think of such units now, that a syllable had put them all in this place. A flush heated his neck and travelled up.