The Electrical Experience (12 page)

Becker had not realised that Terri was nearly thirty. Some search. Some of us, he guessed, were looking for more than others. Take himself, for instance.

Becker handed back the letter. The apple is said to fall not far from the tree. But in this case it seemed to.

‘Her search, did you say?' McDowell seemed to have just caught up with that, or to have gone back for it. He was having trouble with it, too. ‘You must stay the night.'

‘Thank you, sir, but, no, I have luggage at the motel, and I'd like to return there.'

‘Why, mother would be very hurt indeed if you didn't stay.'

‘Really, sir, I'd prefer …'

Becker stood up.

McDowell stressed the invitation, the insistent host, the contest of politeness.

‘After all, you've been of such good counsel.'

‘Please, sir, I wish to return to my motel, if you would excuse me.'

In the car McDowell laughed again heartily, and said, ‘I put a strong case, but always remember this, there are three sides to every question—your side, the other fellow's side and the Right Side', and laughed.

Becker was not clear in his own mind to what, if anything, this related.

The Telephone As Bolas

All right then, it was a transactional world. Becker had learned that early enough. One good turn deserved another, a little kindness will be returned a thousand-fold. Sam was fond of saying, ‘Every conversation is a transaction: every meeting is a deal.' Well, Sam, what was the trade tonight, what did I give, what did I get?

The motel room was a comfort, to be sure. Not that he was retreating from L-I-F-E, no, sir, not by a dandy long shot. He was still ready to get out and dig for the treasure. But he couldn't see why he should have been selected tonight in this fibro town to receive the ass-pains of Rotarian T. George McDowell and his errant daughter.

A bourbon with ice. Fire and ice. I think I know enough of hate/to say that for destruction ice/is also great/and would suffice.

Becker was not averse to poetry or to jazz music. He sometimes wondered if this did not soft-edge him, as it were, in business. Together with too open and too
honest a disposition. Why don't I look like a bastard? Why don't I look like Lee Marvin? Please, God, make me look like Lee Marvin.

Motels. A clean, safe passageway around the world. He could be in Manitoba. Or good old Atlanta. The joy of standardisation. All he asked of his little old hunk of life, for today, was the standard five-star motel. Tomorrow he might ask a castle.

The telephone rang, causing Becker to drop his bourbon.

Ah, shit.

Who in damnation!

Damn you, Sam.

He heard the plug of connection. The telephonist said long-distance person-to-person, ‘Mr Becker?'

‘Yes, this is he.'

He heard the wires, saw them stretching along the coast of this fibro nation. He saw the wires stringing him together with someone—a bolas—against his preference—the authoritarian telephone. He watched the mute whites and greys of the television, awaiting the intrusion of the call to bring him stumbling down.

‘Hullo, hullo, hullo,' he said impatiently.

‘Hullo—' a girl's voice—‘it's me, Terri.'

Terri.

‘Jesus! What is this? I've just this moment come from your father's house and now you're busting in down the line.'

Becker checked the anger in his voice.

‘I want to talk with you and apologise for my uncouth
conduct the other night … the seduction hassle … it wasn't cool, me unloading all that on you.'

‘Oh hell, forget it.'

‘What did my father say?'

‘Too much. We talked some, we even talked about you. Say, how did you know to get me here, and why this time of night?'

‘I made the bookings, remember?'

He remembered all right now. From the mit of the father to the mit of the daughter.

‘Tell me what my father said.'

‘Now look, it's very late.'

‘Did he tell you his daughter was crazy? I bet he didn't.'

‘He showed me your letter. Yes, as a matter of damned fact.'

‘He showed you my letter?' Outrage. ‘Why, that is not fair.'

‘Look, if you don't mind me saying, I seem to know more about you and your damned family than I want to damned well know.'

‘He shouldn't have shown you my letter.'

Becker began to wonder again. Why? Why me? She went on complaining.

‘You can see he doesn't love me, can't you?' Becker took the question, stretched the telephone cable to its limit and, using one hand, poured himself a drink, adding ice.

Becker was in need of a prayer as well as a drink.

Here we go. ‘No, I don't think he loves you. Not in the way you mean.'

Rotary love, maybe? He didn't bother to mention it.

Terri went silent. The line was empty of voice.

‘How can you say that?' she came back.

‘You asked me—I told you.'

Again silence. He could hear a drumming on the line. Wind? God's impatient fingers?

‘No one has ever said that before. Everyone said I wasn't being fair to him.'

‘Well, you asked me. That's the way I see it.' Becker sipped his drink, watching the TV picture from the corner of his eye.

‘At least you're straightforward.'

‘I'm going now. I have a big day.'

‘Selling Coca-Cola.' Her voice, returning to normal, was good-natured, but had a derisive edge.

Becker had met derision before. Becker knew about derision.

‘Yes, goddamn it, doing my simple self-appointed task of selling the best damned soft drink in the world, the best damned way I know how.'

Becker believed, among other things, in prowess and the pursuit of excellence.

Suggested Creed for New South Wales Country Schools, adapted by T. George McDowell from that used by the Queensland Department of Public Instruction.

 

I believe in an independent and locally owned agriculture and town commerce; a soil that shall grow richer rather than poorer year by year; a town that shall grow richer in amenity year by year.

 

I believe the measure of a day's work is tiredness.

 

I believe a clean farm and a clean town are as important as a clean conscience.

 

I believe that self-employment is the highest goal for any person.

 

I believe in the special inspiration which comes from working in the daily sight of nature.

 

I believe the interests of the townfolk and farmfolk are mutual.

 

I believe the interests of the skilled man and the employer of skills are mutual.

 

I believe that every piece of goods I help to manufacture or grow represents part of myself when it goes out into the world.

 

I believe that life is of two parts, the Private and the Communal, and that the private shall be beyond the reach of the State and that the communal shall be shared.

 

I believe that the town and the farm are a mutual entity, entitled to run its own affairs.

 

I believe the only just and manageable government is Local Government, where those who govern are known to the governed.

 

The Creed was not adopted by the Department of Education up in Sydney. They gave as the ostensible reason that it was ‘too long'.

Confidential

My name is Gwenth Mary McDowell, I am 36 years of age and I reside at Unit 6, 221 Penrose Avenue, Double Bay. I am a single woman. My occupation is Headmistress (primary). You ask me if there is anything I can say which may help you with the psychiatric treatment of my sister, Terri—Teresa. From what you tell me, I understand that she does not admit that there is anything wrong and has not sought assistance voluntarily, which makes your task so much the harder.

I have not seen my sister for a number of years (except for one recent meeting), as she has cut off relations with her family and also because circumstance, and her way of life, have taken us in opposite directions. There is a six-year age difference, as well. No, I do not wish to place any importance on the age difference. There are many girls of her age and younger with whom I can speak as equals. Contrary to the talk in newspapers, people do not change that much, and there is, in my experience, no generation gap. It is more that some people, irrespective of age, seem to go in different directions—as if there were, in fact, two distinctly different sorts of humans. Sadly, I am being forced daily to this view. When you look at issues such as abortion, sex, and morality generally, there
seem to be just different types of human beings and all the argument in the world won't change it. Or so it would seem. As a Christian I am unwilling to accept that some people are beyond redemption, but it is difficult not to. I sometimes feel that an island, say Tasmania, should be set aside for those who do not want to accept things.

Terri has no religion and may even, in fact, be, in my opinion, a type of ‘witch'. I know that this is terribly
old-fashioned
unclinical (or maybe not?). What I mean is that she may be psychologically
evil
maladjusted, committed to harming herself and others, though not necessarily with intention but because of something over which she had no control, and certainly, I'm afraid, something which is irreversible. I have done two years' psychology at the University of New England and have, of course, read widely in educational psychology, so I do not speak entirely as a layman.

In our family my mother was the strong person and a religious woman. Evidence of Teresa's born antipathy to God was shown early as a child when she refused to attend Sunday-School or Church. I remember clearly Terri saying that church ‘suffocated' her. My father is not what you would call a religious man, but I do not want that recorded against him. He was, in his own way, ethical. But, of course, Good Works alone is not enough.

We were brought up to love animals, and our father provided us during childhood with almost a farmyard of animals. He thought it educational and as a way of giving us an appreciation of nature. I believe these views he took from the philosopher Elbert Hubbard. Despite this, our father was very much a man of affairs and not particularly spiritual. Maybe, though, if this
love of animals could be reawakened in her, she might find her way out of the morass. We not only cared for the animals, and thus learned a great deal of biology, my sister also sketched the animals in various poses. Maybe she was confronted with
animal-sex
biology too soon. She has some talent as a sketcher, but in my opinion will never be an artist. I suppose she has not told you that she failed to complete Art School?

I raise the next subject because it is a clinical matter which you, as a social worker, will understand. She was mortified, I remember, by her first menstrual period and tried to conceal it from my mother. She was also disturbed by her breast development. It was as if she hated womanhood and wanted somehow to cling to her childhood. As if she were not willing to leave childhood. But her embarrassment, or whatever, about her body did not last long and she soon became known as a flirt (and worse). I remember another thing about her body which she confided to me. She had one day been examining herself in my mother's mirror and discovered, by holding a second mirror, that her head, she thought, was badly misshapen. She said she had believed this for a number of years until she realised that, in fact, the two mirrors had caused an optical distortion. But even in recent years she said she has to go to the mirror to check again.

I must say this melodramatic little story of her imaginary deformity did not stop her seeking constantly the attention of boys (and men). In some ways, though I am loath to criticise them, our parents were remiss in the subject of sex education. This did not matter in my case, because I had other interests. As a
teacher
educationalist, in the course of my duties, I have had to assess a number of books on sexual education and would
say that the whole problem seems now to be realistic and frank without being evocative and stimulating. I don't know how one overcomes this problem.

To return to my sister's psychiatric problems. We had a comfortable childhood, although our father had a policy that every penny had to be earned by some completed task. My sister rebelled against this. I remember she once found a mention of a
savage
primitive tribe, where the status of people in the tribe was measured by their extravagance. I remember her bringing this up at the dinner table. Throwing it at my father.

I do not know if this sounds simple-minded, but I believe her dabbling in drugs was a search for
delight
. An attempt to find
delight
the effortless way. The delights of life, as you must know being a social worker, are not that easily found. I myself have found some satisfaction through working with children and the administration of the school, but I would not say that I had found
delight,
or experienced ‘the delights of life'. I do not complain and do not go seeking this through drugs. Unlike my sister, I do not see it as some sort of Right. I certainly no longer believe it necessary for a person to experience
everything
in life. Even if one tried to go through life ‘using the senses 100 per cent', it is not always possible to do so. ‘Using the senses 100 per cent', you may recognise is one of her favourite expressions (or used to be). She was very taken with the idea of sensation through the nervous system, and this again may have attributed to her interest in drugs. I myself have opted, I suppose, for the reasonable use of one or two of my senses and experiencing life through the Holy Spirit.

Her life is a profound disappointment to her, I suspect. She has not given due weight to the spiritual (as did my mother) or,
on the other hand, to community or professional values (as did my father). She leads a disappointed life because she thought the nervous system could provide everything, be it alcohol, speeding in cars, sex, and at one time, Yoga. And another thing, she thought at one time that it was desperately important to surround herself with the ‘right' objects, shapes, gardens, and the ‘right'-sized rooms even, and she spent far too much time and money doing this. She often said, in the times when we were still seeing each other occasionally, that people could make themselves mentally ill by not having the right surroundings. This is sadly ironic. She constantly changed her address in search of the perfect place to live. She was really a gypsy—a gypsy in this, and in other ways.

Where does a young person get such ideas? How do such ideas get into circulation and reach even those protected from such ideas? Why do some ideas grab a hold on some people and not others?

She says every object sends out its own message, which beats incessantly into the brain.

I suppose it's all what is called reaction. Certainly our family did not go about emphasising the carnal and sensuous.

I do not believe that Teresa likes being alive. I don't think she likes it very much at all and hence her constant attempts to alter her life. She would try anything which took hold of her senses ‘100 per cent'. Even as a child she would say things like ‘I hate life'. As if she expected to ‘like' life, as if it were a person or an animal. This is a very wrong perspective, it seems to me. She could never accept life as a vale of tears.

As a child she was befriended by an old man, an eccentric, in the town. They were what you might call ‘natural friends'.
I suppose, later, they had art in common. He was always lending her art magazines from abroad. He used to call himself various things from time to time. Once for some time he was a Dadaist, whatever they may be when they are at home. It was always thought that he had a degree from some university or other, but when he died it was found that this was not so.

It is revealing that these ‘sorts' of people always find each other, even in a normal healthy town.

She often said she could not ‘learn properly'. She was not dull, nor did she have any obvious defect, such as hearing. She could not, though, listen straight and would always get instructions mixed up, as if, at times, to annoy. It is an educational problem which should be given more attention. I think she was overimpressed with life and its immensity and thought it offered more than, in fact, life does.

I know all this is probably very revealing about
me
. These things always are, but that can't be helped. Really, there is no explanation for her conduct. I came from the same family and it was a very decent childhood. Apart from the death of one of our sisters, the family has suffered no real tragedies, suffered no hard times, and not faced scandal. I don't know if what I've told you is of any use. I hope that you are able to do something for her, but I very much doubt it.