The gifted son, p.34
The Gifted Son, page 34
‘You can’t exercise your body, but you might like to exercise your brain.’
The play they’d studied in Year 12 English had been Romeo and Juliet. Jamie had always pictured the young Capulet as Tessa in a velvet Elizabethan gown. He flipped through the pages and thought about how energised he’d been when he’d been writing his essays in class, preparing for his exams. Anticipating university, and a summer of surfing, and getting a share house with Jez, and inviting Tessa over. He let the thin book slip from his hand onto the floor.
‘What’s the point,’ he said, toneless. His mother bent and picked up the book then brushed it off, but didn’t press her son.
At the end of the week, Charlie came back for another visit, and he wasn’t alone. His friend had short, cobalt grey curls and fashionable, black-framed glasses. He was also using a wheelchair but, unlike the other wheelchair users Jamie knew from rehab, who wore comfortable, stretchable clothing made of jersey and fleece, this man was dressed like a London gangster from a Guy Ritchie film, in a tailored shirt and waistcoat made of distressed material. His outfit was completed with a pair of red high-top runners. Jamie could see why Charlie liked him.
‘Jamie, this is Richard Booth. He volunteers at a peer-support program for people with injuries like ours. He really helped me. I told him you were feeling a little lost.’
‘Hello, Jamie,’ Richard said.
Jamie didn’t want to be rude, but he hadn’t asked for this, so there wasn’t much warmth or enthusiasm in his voice when he said, ‘Hi, nice to meet you.’
Richard smiled. ‘We’ve been working with Charlie for the past few weeks as he prepares to return home after rehab. He thought you might benefit from some support from someone who knows what you’re going through and can help you prepare for life ahead.’
‘I’m still recovering from my infection so …’ As much as Jamie was intrigued by this cool-looking guy, he didn’t need a cheer squad making him feel like all he needed was a change of attitude.
Richard was undeterred. ‘Given the right support and the right people around you, you can live a wonderful, fulfilling life. There are definitely challenges. But we have families, we have kids, we have good sex lives, we travel. We get on with things and we do the best we can. There’s nothing that someone with a spinal cord injury can’t do if they really want to.’
‘Sure,’ Jamie mumbled, unwilling to be convinced.
‘Well, you’ve been through a lot this past month, but we’re always keen to listen. I’ll leave my card. You can call me any time,’ Richard said.
‘Take your time, man,’ Charlie said. ‘There’s no hurry. Go at your own pace. I’ll come see you again in a week.’ Then handsome Charlie and fashionable Richard left. Jamie could barely even muster the energy to say goodbye.
Chapter 45
Jez
Because Mark had pleaded guilty, he was sentenced quickly. Jez had promised he’d be at the hearing to show his support, and after a little coaxing, Jamie agreed to go too. Jez picked him up from the DART Centre, his hands drumming the steering wheel, anxious for the day to go well. His friendship with Jamie hadn’t been completely repaired yet, but they were both making an effort, which was the most important thing.
‘Thanks for coming along today,’ Jez said, overly polite, as they crossed Sydney Harbour Bridge.
‘I still don’t know how I feel about him,’ Jamie replied.
‘I reckon this might help.’
The matter was listed in the same court Ryan’s had been. As Jez pushed open the creaking door and held it so that Jamie could wheel himself in, he remembered how awful he had felt the last time he had been at the Downing Centre, and wished he’d come clean earlier. His regret still covered him like a thick film, cloying and impossible to ignore. He wondered if he would ever be rid of it or if it was just part of who he was now.
He and Jamie took a seat near the front.
Mark had never been taken into custody because he’d given himself up, so instead of sitting in the dock, he spent the short hearing behind his lawyer, facing the magistrate. His mother, Lorna, sat beside him wringing her hands in dour court clothes. His father was on the other side, leaning over and whispering into Mark’s ear. He was pointing to the guards, and a mysterious door next to the dock, perhaps preparing Mark for what would happen if he was given prison time.
After the magistrate arrived, in his imposing black gown, the police prosecutor read a summary of the day of the fight. The magistrate looked at Mark, commenting, ‘Quite serious,’ when the story was complete. Jez found himself holding his breath.
Mark’s lawyer then rose to his feet and argued Mark should get a reduced sentence because of his guilty plea. He presented medical records relating to injuries he sustained during his years at St Nick’s. Jez’s stomach turned as he pictured each one: the broken arm. The broken nose. The split lip. The anxiety and mental anguish.
Mark’s mother shook her head and hugged her son as the court heard the grisly details of his years at the school that presented itself as a paragon of excellence. As disciplined. Elite.
‘I have a report from a Dr Whitmore who treated Mark four years ago when his mother brought him to hospital,’ the lawyer said, holding up a piece of paper and clearing his throat: ‘“Teenage boy treated for injury from blunt force trauma to face. Mouth cut open, requiring sutures, two teeth chipped, and severe swelling and bruising to the jaw.” It notes Mark claimed he had fallen off a fence, but the doctor indicates that he suspects the boy had been beaten up.’
Jamie looked at Jez in disbelief. Jez nodded wordlessly. Mark’s lawyer read a formal apology from Mark onto the record.
To the Honourable Magistrate, to Jamie, and his parents, Lillian and John, and anyone else hurt by my reckless actions, I would like to say a heartfelt sorry for my violent behaviour. If I could trade places with Jamie I would. I can’t explain what came over me when my fist flew through the air that day but I think about it constantly, wishing I could somehow take it back. I know this is too little too late, but I promise I am going to do everything I can to show how sorry I am, and to make amends for my actions.
When Mark stood to receive his sentence, Jez heard Jamie take a sharp breath next to him.
‘Mr Giesen, the maximum penalty for assault in the state of New South Wales is two years in prison. The period of incarceration reflects the seriousness with which the community views the crime.’ The magistrate’s voice was gravelly and free from compassion. Jez had a sinking feeling.
‘You were not acting in self-defence, and your act was wilful, reckless and very, very damaging.’ Mark stared straight ahead. Unblinking and stiff.
‘However,’ the magistrate continued, ‘your school record tells the tale of someone who has great potential. You were an exemplary student, the material you have provided from your school shows you won many awards. It is also a grocery list of cruelty, bullying and ostracisation.
‘I accept your remorse is sincere. Your admission of guilt counts in your favour and, while your crime was serious, I think you are at very low risk of reoffending. It is my belief that gaoling you would only risk perpetuating a cycle of violence that began when you felt the unyielding knuckles of a clenched fist strike your cheek at a school that seems to have done absolutely nothing to protect you. In my view, the best outcome for everyone would be for you to repay your debt to society through service, rather than wasting your potential in prison.’
The magistrate sentenced Mark to a community corrections order. ‘It’s an alternative to incarceration,’ he said. ‘But you will need to complete a hundred hours of community service.’
‘Thank you, Your Honour.’ Mark sat back down and was enveloped by a hug from his mother who kissed the top of his head over and over. Jez felt relief course through him. Then the magistrate stood, and it was finished.
‘You weren’t in Mr McGuigan’s woodworking class were you?’ Jamie asked Jez as they lingered on the mosaic tiles in front of the courthouse, waiting for Mark.
‘No,’ Jez said. ‘Never did woodworking. Why?’
‘I was just thinking of something that happened one day.’
After a beat Jez asked, ‘Did it involve cans of spray paint?’
Jamie’s cheeks blazed red with shame. ‘Yeah,’ he said, voice small. ‘Yeah it did.’
It wasn’t long before Mark appeared with his mother by his side, his head down and his body slack. Lorna stayed with the lawyer while Mark walked over to talk to Jez and Jamie.
‘Good result,’ Jez said.
Mark nodded. ‘I guess. I almost wanted him to be harsher. I deserve it.’
‘Nah, man—’ Jez began, but he didn’t finish the thought. They turned to look at Jamie. He was silent for a moment, thinking, until he said, ‘I’m sorry all that happened to you at St Nick’s.’
Mark’s eyebrows flew up in surprise. ‘Nah. You shouldn’t say sorry. You didn’t do anything.’
‘Exactly. I didn’t do anything,’ Jamie responded. ‘I want to say I didn’t know this was happening to you. But when I really think about it, I guess I realise that’s not exactly true.’
Chapter 46
Jamie
Jamie was quiet on the drive back to rehab, even as Jez chatted about what a good outcome it was, and how he’d really thought for a moment there that Mark was going to end up in the slammer. They crossed back over the Harbour Bridge, where Jamie could peer at people on the ferries coming in and out of Circular Quay. They were leaning over the rails of the giant boats, languid, trying to soak up the warmth of the sun. He couldn’t imagine a time anywhere in the foreseeable future when he would be able to be so carefree. It stirred in him the newly familiar feeling of being an outsider.
A few weeks back, when Jez had suggested Jamie forgive Ryan, he had found it had been easy to do and it had freed Jamie as much as he thought it was freeing Ryan. It had been an act of seizing back control of his life. But he could see now that it was not empathy or magnanimity that motivated him, or even the desire to make things better for Ryan. He had been bartering with the universe. In his mind, it hadn’t even been a matter of if his injury was healed, but when. He had expected that everything would work out just as he wanted it to because it always had. Because bad things didn’t happen to him.
That bubble had been pierced when he learned that Mark was the one who had thrown the punch and he’d woken up in hospital and seen Great-Uncle Francis in the flesh. At first, the sense of injustice had been like a boulder that pressed down on his chest so that, even if he had wanted to forgive Mark, he wasn’t able to ignore the hurt and anger he was feeling. He had felt wronged in a way he never had before. Happiness or even contentedness had felt out of reach.
Then, in court, listening to everything Mark had been through, his mind had changed again. He recalled that at St Nick’s Mark had seemed to be an unusually clumsy classmate. Jamie had noticed his arm was in a sling more than once. He was sometimes even sporting papery strips of facial tape, applied by the school nurse. The boulder wasn’t gone, but it had shifted, so it wasn’t as heavy anymore. He sighed and watched the Opera House sails swim past the car window. It had been a bizarre few months but he was glad Mark hadn’t gone to gaol.
Jez pulled up at the entrance to the DART Centre and jumped out to get Jamie’s chair. Jamie transferred into it then said, ‘Hey, thanks for making me go today.’
‘No worries,’ Jez said. ‘I’m glad you decided to come.’
‘Do you … do you think you’d be up for a Zombie Apocalypse session on Saturday?’
‘Yeah totally.’ Jez’s face broke into a broad, happy grin. ‘That would be awesome.’
‘Cool,’ said Jamie. ‘See you then.’
‘Yeah,’ said Jez. ‘I’ll bring the Pringles.’
Jamie wheeled himself towards the automatic doors and waved goodbye. He went to his room and opened the top drawer of his bedside cabinet. He pulled out two cards. The first was Cal Wallace’s business card. Partner. Probate and Family Law. It was creased now, its corners turned up and grey. But that didn’t matter. Jamie snapped a photo of it and texted it to Mark with a note: ‘On the last day of school Mr Hoover gave me this hook-up for a job. I can’t use it right now, but you might be able to. You were always better than me in legal studies. You should give Cal a call.’
As he pressed send, he felt a stirring of something behind his breastbone where he had always imagined his soul resided. The boulder was being lifted, and in its wake was lightness.
Then Jamie picked up the other card and called Richard Booth’s spinal injury support team.
Epilogue
It was one year later when Lillian eased her four-wheel drive into a prime spot on the beachfront car park and pulled on the handbrake. ‘Have you got enough room on your side?’ she turned and asked her son.
‘Yeah, plenty.’ Jamie threw open the back door. The sounds and smells of the seaside rushed into the car.
‘I’ll get your chair,’ John said, unbuckling. ‘There’s Kate.’
Lillian wound down her window and called out to her daughter, who was standing in shorts, a T-shirt, sunnies and a cap, a few spots away. Her glossy bob had been pulled into a ponytail that swung jauntily as she applied sunscreen to her skin. She’d traded in her Mercedes for a people mover and the boot was open so Rich could unload folding chairs and a giant fringed beach umbrella.
Kate waved and jogged over to Lillian’s car. ‘I’ve already put down a picnic blanket at a great spot.’ Her hands were covered in sunscreen, which she rubbed into her arms. ‘And I had a go at making a lemon meringue pie, only it turned out a little deconstructed. But I hear that’s how all the top chefs are doing them these days.’
‘It’s the taste that matters,’ Lillian promised. She was delighted that her daughter was spending her nights and weekends doing things other than report-writing, but also amused, as she listened to Kate cite advice she’d read in the Le Cordon Bleu Pastry School and The Pastry Chef’s Companion, that she was doing it in a typically Type A Kate style.
She seemed to have put some boundaries in place at work and was coming around once a week for a family dinner with Jamie. Rich often joined her. Not every time, but sometimes, and as glad as Lillian was to see her son-in-law, a small part of her enjoyed it when it was just the immediate family.
‘Do you need a hand here, Dad?’ Kate asked as John lifted Jamie’s wheelchair out of the boot.
‘No, I’m right, you go help Rich.’
Lillian watched Kate return to her husband, who leaned forward and gave her a peck. Behind her, Jamie had gotten himself into his chair and was tugging at his wetsuit, which had snagged on some part of the backseat.
It had been a tough year. Jamie was showing great resilience and Lillian was proud. It seemed he would always need the wheelchair, but he had graduated to a zippier, lighter model, and he had kept up some of the activities he’d started when he was in his early recovery phase, pre-infection, which was giving some structure to his days in between study as he prepared to finally take his Year 12 exams.
He still performed at the nursing home. Lillian liked to drive him there so she could watch him lose himself as his fingers twinkled across the keys. Each week he seemed to become more confident, not just as a player and performer, but in his place in the world. The music’s magical properties lifted him out of his own head and helped him imagine a brighter future. He sometimes talked about doing an advanced piano course at the Conservatorium to refine his skills, which Lillian encouraged, and he was trying his hand at songwriting. He had been working towards some goals with a nice man from the Spinal Cord Association and, when he had announced he wanted to go surfing for his nineteenth birthday, Lillian had taken it as a sign of real progress. Jamie freed his wetsuit and started unzipping it. John tried to help. He would have a party tonight with just his friends at the pub, but for today, the family was getting to tag along.
‘Mum, we’re over here,’ Kate said. ‘Not far from the ramp.’
Kate had suggested they come to Collaroy because they rolled out giant accessibility mats made of rubber so wheelchair users could access the water without getting bogged in the sand. It was like a red carpet, only blue and flexible. ‘Really? That’s brilliant,’ Jamie had said. And so they had come.
There were colourful beach umbrellas everywhere, and sunbathers stretched out on rainbow towels, their sun-screened limbs glistening. The air was filled with the squeals of little kids being chased and tossed by waves. Their cries of fear and delight gave the air a crackle of excitement.
‘I dropped a pin for Jez,’ Rich announced.
‘I think that’s his car there,’ Kate said, pointing. As the sunlight glanced off the windshield of an old Corolla, she saw Jez and Mark were in the front, boards strapped to the roof. They parked and found Jamie, who forgot his troublesome wetsuit and grinned, raising his hands for high fives, as they approached.
Kate harpooned the umbrella into the sand and set up two folding chairs on the blanket she’d already laid down to claim their plot. It was right next to the accessibility mat, but back from the sand, on the grass, where Jamie’s wheels could get purchase, and close to the electric barbecues, one of which Rich was already commandeering and wiping down with bunched up newspaper.
‘I’ve just got to get one more thing,’ Kate said. She jogged back to the car and returned carrying a plate with a collapsed pie on it. She placed it on a shady corner of the picnic blanket and gently tried to coax the crust into a more upright position with a spoon.
Lillian watched her corporate daughter fuss over this domestic task and longed to ask if she and Rich were planning on starting a family soon, but she had learned it was better not to needle Kate. Even though she seemed so much more relaxed these days, and Lillian was simply interested in her daughter’s life, she had come to understand that Kate interpreted her curiosity as expectation, and that misunderstanding had been the source of animosity over the years. Besides, Lillian was content. She was seeing Kate more often and that was enough.
