The Enumerations Read online

  Down-up-down-up-down and the door’s open.

  103.

  26 July 2011 / 20:32

  ‘These ous,’ the constable had said, as Noah’s father showed him to the door, ‘I tell you, they’re one step ahead of the game all the way. Looks like the work of this syndicate that’s been hitting the area. Same method. Cars, cash, keys, cell phones’s all they want. In and out. Job done. But one of these days they’ll slip up – make a mistake. And then, ma’am, we’ll get them.’ He’d glanced at Noah’s mother reassuringly. ‘We’ll be on them like a ton of bricks. You’ll see.’

  ‘When they make a mistake?’ his mother said, when his father came back. ‘They need to get them now. He’s leaving us alone, vulnerable. They have our keys, they know where we live. They’ll know we called the police.’ Her voice rose hysterically.

  Noah’s father put his arms around her shoulders. ‘We had to,’ he said. ‘If we don’t follow the correct procedures, they’ll have won, Kate.’

  Maddie was upset too. ‘Can we go to sleep, Mom, Dad? Is it safe?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mads, don’t worry.’ His father is on his phone. ‘Andrew Meyers. He’ll know what to do, Kate. The same thing happened to him a few weeks ago.’

  A burst of Mr Meyers’s loud voice and then his father’s. ‘Andrew? Hi, it’s Dominic. Look, I’m sorry to disturb you in the evening, but we’ve had a … Kate’s car’s just been stolen … No, we’re all fine. Thanks, Andrew. Yes, yes, in the drive, and they got the house keys too. Hacked the security code at the gate.’

  Another burst of noise and Noah’s father scribbled something down. ‘No, no, it doesn’t matter what they charge. We need this done tonight – otherwise none of us will sleep.’

  The pizzas sat cooling on the kitchen counter, but their stomachs were too knotted to eat.

  The Speed Key van arrived within half an hour. The four men got to work at once, checking the perimeter, fitting a new lock to the front door. They replaced and recoded the gate sensor, all the gate buttons and did the same for the garage. They worked quietly and efficiently and within three hours everything had been completed. Noah’s mom asked if they had eaten and they were happy to take the pizzas with them. His father used the new remote, the gate rolled open and the Speed Key team drove out.

  The kitchen was filled with silence.

  ‘At least …’ Noah’s mother began, and his father picked up on her words quickly.

  ‘At least they didn’t hurt you, darling.’

  ‘And,’ she tried to follow on, ‘at least …’ and then she was shuddering. ‘Why us, Dom?’

  ‘Just bad luck, Kate. Men like that respect nothing.’

  That’s what the constable had said too. ‘No respect for the laws of the land, these ous.’

  ‘We can’t give in to it,’ said Noah’s father. ‘We have to try to maintain law and order. If we don’t, we’re asking for chaos.’

  That was the thought circling in Noah’s head when he went to bed. That and the others that filled his head all through the night: Columbine, Gun Control, a lone wolf and his unspeakable acts of violence … Noah stayed awake, tense, ready to leap to the defence of his family.

  He had to maintain order, keep chaos at bay. He’d have to work hard, though, because a shadow was forming at the gate of their newly secured home.

  Always there.

  Always waiting.

  104.

  Day 25 / 12:35

  ‘Think about it, Noah. Give it a few moments’ thought until our next meeting.’

  Of course he thinks about it. How can he not? How can he ignore the lightness and peace that filled him when he said ‘Here and Now’, before she asked him about the past, before she tricked him about the future.

  1.He is not interested in the here and now (no caps) of Greenhills.

  2.All he cares about is what’s happening out there, which is where he is not.

  3.He’s not there to protect them.

  4.He’s stuck in the here and the now of Greenhills.

  5.His power has been sabotaged.

  105.

  Kate picks up the envelope. Every two weeks she gets a report, an update to show her how well the staff at Greenhills are managing her difficult son. It’s printed on thick creamy paper, beautiful, with an elegant letterhead, but it’s not nearly thick enough to absorb the misery of the words typed on it. Ms Turner writes the reports; she’s careful to stress the positives, mentioning Noah’s slow but significant progress. Ms T – that’s what Maddie calls her – is nice enough. Competent. And she doesn’t talk down to Noah like Dr Lovelock did.

  Kate remembers his report; it was long and complicated, puffed up and puffed out by medical jargon. She can picture him writing it, his thin lips tweezered, his convex chest sunk in on itself, his stork legs jointed sharply at the knee. Does he like any of his patients, Kate wonders. Or is it just the two of them? Her beautiful, imperfect son, product of a bad mother. He’d talked down to Kate, too, as if Noah’s problems stemmed from her. As if she didn’t feel enough guilt, always wondering if there was anything she should have done differently.

  All the way to the moment of conception, that’s how far back her guilt goes, and from there through each of the trimesters of her pregnancy. Kate spends hours racking her brains, trying to remember what she drank, if she’d been in the same room as people smoking. Should she have spoken differently to Noah as an infant, as a young child. Had he been overstimulated? Under-stimulated? Had she fed him the right food? What about their occasional forays over to the dark side, to fast-food joints with their grubby play areas?

  Today’s report is kind, hopeful, encouraging, not unlike Ms Turner herself. Even so, Kate cannot see a light at the end of this tunnel. There is one, Ms Turner insists. Just keep going, keep trying; the work will be worthwhile. But Kate needs more than a glimmer of hope. She wants to be blinded by a flash of miraculous light.

  106.

  It’s the second time they’ve met outside in the grounds and Kate’s sitting under their oak, watching Maddie, Noah and Juliet. They’re on the lawn and Juliet’s chattering away, her hands flying. Maddie laughs and Noah almost smiles.

  Kate feels a twinge of jealousy. It isn’t up to Juliet to make her son smile. That’s her job, her responsibility.

  ‘Mrs Groome?’

  It’s Mr Bill.

  ‘They seem to be getting on well,’ he says, looking over to her children, and Monica’s child.

  ‘Yes.’ The word sounds tight and mean and Kate forces more out. ‘It’s good to see Noah looking more relaxed.’

  But is it? Why does Juliet have to be there at all? It should be Kate, Noah and Maddie against the world. No one else. Dominic can stay locked away in his selfish little space.

  Kate doesn’t let any of this show. She’s learning the rules of survival and the first one of these is to smile. Smile when people ask how Noah is doing, smile when Ms Turner sits across the desk from her and asks how things are going, smile at the red-faced man in the car next to her at the traffic lights, smile at the young woman at the checkout, smile at the man who finally arrived to fix the pool pump … and smile at Mr Bill.

  ‘May I?’

  She gestures to the space beside her on the bench and Mr Bill settles next to her, burly and buff.

  Buff, that’s a word her children use, one that conjures images of men toughing it out at the gym, gleaming with sweat, muscles pumped and straining inside their skin. Dominic has the build of a long-distance runner, lean rather than chunky. He’s a cool, elegant presence, whereas the man sitting next to her fills every inch of his space, bursting with energy and good cheer.

  ‘Your husband couldn’t make it?’

  ‘No, he had to work.’ Kate wishes that Dominic was with her, watching their son, seeing his eyes move from Maddie to Juliet and then back again as the two girls laugh. He’d see Noah smile as he looks at his little sister, see her leap to her feet.

  ‘It’s easy. Look. I’ll show you,’
Maddie says. Two backflips and a somersault and then back to her seat on the lawn, her face beaming. Juliet laughing, Noah saying something Kate can’t hear.

  ‘She’s a livewire, that one.’ Mr Bill’s also laughing.

  Kate smiles. ‘She is, and she adores her brother. She misses him so badly.’ Suddenly, it’s all spilling out, how strange it is not to have Noah at home, how she’s learning day by day how his routines and rules dominated their lives, hers especially. She doesn’t mention Dominic, though, doesn’t say that his life hasn’t been affected that much, that the more their son’s condition intrudes on their lives, the more he withdraws, leaving her to deal with most of it.

  Mr Bill listens intently, focusing on what Kate is telling him. It’s easy talking to him, a total contrast to Ms Turner in her rooms, where every single word she says carries significance, where Kate worries about being unkind about Dominic or betraying her son by saying the wrong thing.

  Kate runs out of words. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘I didn’t mean—’

  He stops her with a gentle touch on her arm. ‘Don’t be sorry,’ he says. ‘It’s good to get things out.’ He looks over at Noah again. ‘Noah’s a good kid. He’s managing to get by, day by day.’

  He’s calm, unflurried, and his words reassure Kate more than any of Noah’s previous therapists, more than anything Dominic can bring himself to say. More than Ms Turner, even. She wants to grab his arm, hang on for dear life and say, ‘Really, Mr Bill, really and truly?’ Instead she turns to him, finds another smile and says, ‘Thank you, you don’t know how much that means to me.’

  He smiles back, gets to his feet. ‘Time to start gathering the troops.’

  And it is. Time to call Maddie, smile at Juliet, walk up to Noah and say goodbye to her son for yet another week. But first, time to say goodbye to Mr Bill and thank him again.

  107.

  Week 5: Day 30 / 09:48

  ‘Okay, Noah?’

  They’ve just been through his senses and Noah’s sweating at the thought of not using his 5s to hold the future safe. He can’t say it’s been any easier than the last 3 times he’s tried this. ‘It’ll come, Noah. We’ll keep trying until it does,’ she says. ‘It is a good technique. Trust me.’

  Is she serious?

  His eyes flick over to the framed poster of two men, walking railway tracks, looking like they’re ready to hop onto a boxcar and hitch a ride to the next town. One older than the other, neither of them young. Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, Ms Turner has told him. There’s a quote from Jung at the top of the poster; it could have been written as encouragement just for Noah: ‘In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.’ At the bottom of the poster, equally encouraging, words from Freud: ‘Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.’

  ‘So, Noah,’ Ms Turner says casually, but he’s learning (fast) that she never says anything casual, or without some sort of reason. ‘Let’s talk about your family tree.’

  He looks away from Sigmund and Carl, her question hanging between them.

  ‘The thing is,’ she continues, ‘by now, as part of your therapy, I’d have asked you to work on a family tree, but you’ve already drawn up an extensive one.’

  He nods.

  ‘Your mother tells me you started it in Grade 10?’

  Another nod.

  ‘And you’re still busy with it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So how far back have you managed to go?’

  He takes a deep breath. It’s harmless talking about this. There’s nothing she wouldn’t already know from her notes. ‘Quite far,’ he says. ‘Back to when the Huguenots arrived in the Cape.’

  ‘That’s impressive. Whose side is that on, Noah?’

  She knows the answer. Why this pussyfooting?

  ‘Do The Work …’ Juliet’s words drown out all distraction and he answers, ‘On my mother’s.’

  ‘That’s a lot of research, Noah. It must have been fascinating.’ The closer she gets to asking him the hard stuff, the more she uses his name.

  ‘I used our Family Bible. It wasn’t too difficult.’

  ‘And your father, Noah? How far back did you go with him?’

  ‘Nowhere.’ He manages 1 word (2 syllables).

  ‘But you’d like to?’

  He’s back to nodding.

  ‘It’s important, isn’t it, Noah?’

  There she goes again. What did I tell you?

  Noah nods.

  ‘Would you like to tell me why?’

  Relief floods through him as he realises he can answer. ‘It’s about balance,’ he says.

  What—?

  But Noah has a plan.

  ‘Both sides should balance. It’s really important.’

  He can tell her this; it’s nothing she wouldn’t have guessed anyway.

  So, Noah does The Work, but not all of it. He doesn’t tell her how important it is for him to gather clues about why he is the way he is.

  ‘Balance,’ she’s saying now. ‘Yes. I can see that balance would be vital, Noah.’

  She looks at her watch. ‘This has been good.’

  Noah waits for the zinger, the sting that waits in the tail of every session. But today, there’s nothing.

  ‘Thank you, Noah. I appreciate all the hard work you’re doing.’ She smiles and adds, ‘And your honesty.’

  You got her, well and good. Excellent!

  Noah feels no satisfaction. Tricking Ms Turner feels mean-spirited.

  He worked on his senses with her, and that brought a few moments of real peace, but now it’s like the hour was wasted. He didn’t do The Work, at least not the way he should have.

  108.

  Gabriel is still hiding. He’s crouched down behind the hedge that borders the house across the road, the one that belongs to Mrs Thin and Mr Fat. He doesn’t know the surnames of the people who live around them.

  Every weekend Gabriel sees Mr Fat in the driveway of their house, under his car, his feet sticking out. Swear words coming out too, and he says he’s tinkering. Tinkering is a happy word, but Mr Fat doesn’t sound happy. He’s throwing out words like Fuck this for a lark and Who engineered this piece of crap anyway? and Gladys! And Mrs Thin is running out and saying Yes George and he says Get me a beer before I moer this fucking piece of shit to pieces and she’s saying Language, George, the neighbours, but Mr Fat just pulls himself back under the car on a funny little pallet with wheels and Mrs Thin goes back into the house.

  So, it’s Mr George Fat and Mrs Gladys Thin’s house, their hedge, where Gabriel is hiding. Across the road, his house is blazing, but Gabriel knows Mum is out of danger, because he’s seen her, and he knows Harry’s safe because Mum’s holding her.

  One of the onlookers is yelling. There’s someone else, an old man, he cries.

  Gabriel raises his head above the hedge, and waits for them to storm the house and bash down the front door and make their way down the burning passage and use their crowbars to force open the door and find the old man and bring him out, but they aren’t moving. They’re spraying the house with their thick hoses, huge spurts of water lit pale orange in the dark, playing in the dark, water falling with a sizzle and puff of steam on the roof of the house and on its walls, but no one is going inside.

  It’s too late, he hears someone say. Mrs Pink Hair from the house on the corner. She’s talking to Mr Rose Grower from the house next door to hers. Her voice sounds excited, and almost happy. Her face glows in the light from the fire from the house where—

  Gabriel doesn’t want to think about that. He lifts his hands, feels the sting from where the glass cut him, smells the throat-choking smell of petrol, imagines the small flare of a match in Mum’s hand, the thin thread of fire, the flames on their way. Voices are calling his name. He ducks back down.

  Gabriel, Gabriel, Gabriel.

  He curls himself into a small boy-sized ball. Tucks his head between his knees. He is a small boy in shorts and a T-shirt. A small boy who
was asleep with his sister. He doesn’t know anything. He didn’t see anything. He is hiding behind the hedge in Mr George Fat’s garden and all around him he can hear the voices calling.

  109.

  Dominic is living a lie. He is not the good father everyone believes him to be.

  ‘If I could do it over, I’d never have gone into business.’ That’s his partner, staring into his glass, motioning to the waiter for another, his fifth brandy of the evening, and Dominic knows he’ll be driving him home, helping him up the path.

  ‘What about you, Dominic?’

  Dominic is silent. And then he says, ‘I always said I’d own my own company one day. I’d never have to work for a boss. So, I guess I’m pretty far along that track.’

  He can share this much, and then he can listen as his partner talks about the art classes he’s been taking, how good his teacher says he is, how he did it at school and got an a for Matric. He listens and says, ‘You’re doing it now, that’s good,’ but he doesn’t say that he never saw himself as a father, can’t believe that he has two children to look after. If he did, he’d say he loves them, of course he does, and he always will, but he thought he’d always be alone, a bachelor, until his dying day. That had been his refrain until he met Kate and fell head over heels in love.

  And now, now what does he have? A beautiful, unhappy wife. A sad, damaged son and a daughter who loves him far more than he deserves.

  Maddie, the daughter who makes the sun shine. Noah, the son who brings the clouds, who greys their days. When his son’s out of the house, it’s easier, lighter. Without Noah, the days are crisp and bright.

  110.

  Without Juliet, everything will fall apart.

  What will her little sister do without Juliet to keep her secure? What will her mom do without Juliet to keep things going? Thoughts of home float in and surround Juliet. Her father’s angry shouting, the silhouette of a full glass at the side of the sink, the shape of the empty bottle in the bin. Lily’s worried face, the slurred grey of her mother’s voice.