In Sickness, in Health ... and in Jail

by Mel Jacob

  Dave was right. Patrick was a great provider and he loved doing things for me. On every day release, he had replaced spare keys, and refilled water bottles and ice cube trays, and recharged my phone. After one day-release visit I’d remarked to Amy, ‘Patrick makes my life so much easier.’ And she had said, ‘That’s the most ironic thing I’ve ever heard.’

  ‘Are you still there?’ Dave asked.

  ‘Yeah, sorry . . .’

  ‘If I may be so bold . . . Patrick has experienced some things and seen some things he thought best not to tell you.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘I don’t think anything happened, as such, but I know he wanted to spare you the details of some incidents, so as not to worry you. People think love is all about being gushing and impulsive, but restraint is also intrinsic to love.’

  Dave’s words gave me pause. I could see how Patrick might have thought that sparing me the details was noble. But he was wrong. I wasn’t some pathetic nineteenth-century woman who fainted at the drop of a hat. I was strong. I was brave. And I could handle whatever it was he was afraid of telling me.

  I found Patrick sitting on the floor of our darkened bedroom.

  ‘What happened to you?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing’s happened.’

  ‘I don’t mean now . . . I mean inside, in prison.’

  He didn’t respond. He continued sitting there, looking at the wall, which was weird enough in itself. I moved towards him and he lowered his head.

  ‘I need you to talk to me. If we’re going to get through this, you need to tell me what happened.’ I put my arm on his shoulder and he flinched.

  ‘I don’t know where to start.’

  ‘Start anywhere. Start at the beginning, the end. I don’t care, but don’t shut me out.’

  He averted his gaze from mine and, this time, stared at the ceiling.

  ‘You don’t want to hear about it.’

  ‘I do want to hear about it—’

  ‘You don’t want—’

  ‘I do—’

  ‘You don’t want to hear that an inmate smuggled a pen into the milk truck in case he felt like stabbing someone, or that another one hacksawed through a pregnant woman’s neck, or that a man poured petrol on his wife and set her alight.’

  ‘I didn’t know . . .’ I said, starting to cry. ‘I’m sorry,’ I continued, moving onto my knees, so I was next to him. I tried to put my arms around him but he moved away. His body was as rigid as steel.

  ‘Or that on the way back to Sydney, in Bathurst, they put me in maxo because there was no other room. I walked out into the big triangular-shaped yard, trying to mind my own business . . . and a group of six guys surrounded me, somehow they’d found each other . . . they were talking about all the women they’d raped . . . pulling their hair . . . seeing if they cry or cower . . . the things they’ve done . . .’ he said, his voice trembling.

  ‘I’m sor—’

  He cut me off. ‘One of them moved in real close. He had brown, crooked teeth . . . all nicotine and hate . . . and he said, “How many have you done? How many have you raped?” He was smiling. And you know what I said?’

  Now his voice broke completely and I was bawling too.

  ‘Because I thought they were going to bash me, I said, “They haven’t caught me for any yet!” And you know what those . . . those animals did? They cheered and high-fived because they thought I was one of them . . . I know what I did was wrong, but very soon they’re going to be out . . . and walking around with you and Lexie . . . just looking for . . .’ He began to cry properly now. ‘And I know you don’t want to hear it, because I heard it and I can’t get it out of my fucking mind.’

  Patrick was slumped on the floor, broken and damaged. The very lowest point of his life. I’d been so desperate for him to understand what I’d been through, when I had no idea what he’d been up against every day. It occurred to me that our experiences had been the polar opposite: I’d seen the very best of humanity and Patrick had seen the worst.

  I put my arms around him and held him. He didn’t hug me back, or lean into me, or rest his head on my shoulder. But I held him anyway. I held him tight. ‘We will get through this. We will get through this,’ I said.

  And I knew then, instinctively, intuitively, what love is. It’s the greatest contradiction of all. It’s the ultimate surrender and the toughest battle. And I was prepared to fight for us.

  FORTY-TWO

  My great epiphany about love didn’t make life any easier. Before the year was out, a bushfire tore through the land the agent had helped us buy. I drove straight there. Fire trucks were sandwiched along the street and a helicopter was releasing large buckets of water onto the flames.

  It was devastating. Once magnificent scribbly gums felled, charred or scorched by fire. The dense green bushes and scrub now bare and black. Not all the trees were gone, but those that remained were disfigured. One enormous boughless trunk lay on its side, the coals at one end red with heat, like a gigantic matchstick. Even the agent’s sign had melted.

  ‘How lucky are you?’ John said on the phone later.

  ‘Lucky?’

  ‘It’s cleared the land. A lot of trees need fire to regenerate, it releases the seeds. The Aborigines understood this.’

  In the week that followed, I walked in places and on paths I had not been able to access before. Though it was black it was remarkable to actually see the lay of the land. The centre of the block previously appeared to be just a steep, bushy slope but now a flattish, stage-like area flanked by an arc of boulders had emerged.

  As I stood motionless, awed by what had been revealed, I thought about the way the fire had exposed the shape of the land, perhaps the way suffering exposes us. I thought about what John told me about regeneration. I had stayed with Patrick but I had been cold. I had been distant. And I knew then that for anything to grow between us, I would have to clear everything else away. I would have to forgive him.

  There was a month to go.

  ‘The time will fly by,’ everyone said. But it didn’t. Not for me. It was the final stretch but, as with most things, the last part was the hardest.

  Patrick was still returning home at weekends in the clutches of PTSD. He raged and flinched, and retreated into himself; so much so it seemed like he had completely disappeared.

  Finally, 28 January 2015, the date of Patrick’s release, was upon us. It was also the day that Nick and Lexie started back at school. So Patrick’s mother and his sister Clare picked him up, and met me in Springwood, halfway between our house and the school. I cried when I saw Patrick walking along the street in his blue jeans, blue shirt and his terrible haircut.

  ‘It’s over,’ he said, holding his body close to mine. ‘It’s finally over.’

  He was out. He was free. We had survived.

  And I had been brave, I had been strong, but not in the way I’d always considered strong to be. In the past, I’d equated strength with being tough. Like an emotional armour, impenetrable and unyielding. But if the past four years had taught me anything, it was that strength is the opposite of that. It’s having the courage to be vulnerable enough to tell the truth. To share our flaws, the very things that make us who we are.

  ‘Dad, Dad!’ the kids shouted when we arrived at the school, and leaped into Patrick’s arms like circus performers. Without a hint of shame or inhibition, they kissed his face, felt his whiskers, and squeezed his arms and his chest as though they were checking if it were really, truly him.

  Patrick had missed Lexie’s candle walk, the school ritual in which parents walk with the students to mark their journey from kindergarten to Year One in the main part of the school. It was recess by the time we arrived at the school and all the other parents had already gone.

  We stayed for the student assembly, Patrick and I sitting on the plastic chairs behind the students. Nick and Lexie might as well have sat facing the back wall, with all the time they spent looking around and beaming at Patrick. A
fter the assembly, Lexie ran into Patrick’s arms again and Nick hung back. He was torn. I could see that he wanted to go Patrick, but he was older now, and he had a reputation to uphold.

  ‘Mum, Dad, are you going now?’ Nick asked.

  ‘Soon,’ I said.

  ‘’Cause there’s no other parents here,’ he said, ‘so it’s a bit weird.’ At home that afternoon, Nick launched himself at Patrick. He wrapped his arms around Paddy’s legs, pressing his face into his jeans as if he wanted to savour the moment. And, after he did let go, and for the rest of the afternoon it was impossible for him to be near him without touching him.

  ‘I’m sitting next to Dad,’ Nick said to Lexie, who had positioned herself so close to Patrick that she was virtually sitting on his lap.

  ‘I am, I was here first!’ Lexie insisted.

  ‘You can both sit next to him,’ I said, and we moved another setting across our long antique table. It was our first proper meal together as a family and Nick, Patrick and Lexie sat on one side of the table and I on the other.

  We gave thanks for Patrick being returned to us safely, for our family and for the miracle of Patrick learning to cook. For two years we had longed to have a meal together without the anxiety of the guards or the monitoring box and now we were finally all together none of us knew what to say. Eventually Nick said, ‘You should learn to cook like this, Mum,’ referring to the dish that Patrick had made—Five Spice Chicken á la Zhao.

  ‘Yeah, it’s really good,’ Lexie agreed. Then once again the conversation stopped. The only constant in the meal was the smile on Nick and Lexie’s faces.

  After dinner Patrick read to Nick and Lexie in our bed before the kids retired to their own rooms. Patrick had promised Lexie he would stay with her until she fell asleep. And when I walked up to the bedrooms after tidying the kitchen I saw her sleeping on his chest, moving with the rise and fall of his breathing, just as she had done as a baby.

  When I went in to say goodnight to Nick I noticed his eyes were wet with tears.

  ‘You okay?’ I asked.

  ‘Tears of joy, Mum, tears of joy,’ he said smiling and hugging my side. And I knew then that he was more than okay. He had begun to understand the great paradox of being human.

  FORTY-THREE

  In the weeks that followed Patrick’s release Nick and Lexie were smitten. Their absent hero had returned and he could do no wrong. According to them, he was more fun than me, told better jokes, and enjoyed playing with them more. Perhaps it was true. Patrick didn’t return to work for three months and made up for the lost time taking the kids camping, abseiling, horse riding, fishing and surfing.

  Patrick began seeing a psychologist to unburden himself of things he had seen and heard in prison. While this certainly helped, the thing that brought the most healing was exploring our new parcel of land in Warrimoo, learning that it is an Aboriginal word meaning ‘place of the eagle.’ As a family we walked trails, discovered caves and rock formations, and built and stoked many fires. And one overcast Sunday morning, we witnessed the most profound and humbling thing: tiny green shoots emerging from the blackened ground. Signs of new life.

  And so too our new life began.

  With each day that Patrick spent steeped in the family unit and in nature, he began to shed the hardness of his experience. And ever so slowly he softened until I glimpsed the kind and gentle man I had fallen for so many years ago.

  In May, Patrick returned to work on a part-time basis, relieving me of the business and home duties and allowing me to fully immerse myself in writing. I abandoned the novel I had been working on, deciding instead to write about our lives since Patrick’s arrest. It didn’t take Paddy long to remember, in his new role as house-husband, that the pace on the outside is far more hectic than what he had become accustomed to in prison. He juggled part-time work, laundry, cooking, cleaning, school excursions and music lessons, and the endless thankless tasks required of parents.

  After one of Lexie’s characteristic outbursts Patrick said, ‘Now Lexie, I think there needs to be an apology.’ To which she replied, ‘Yes, apology accepted,’ leaving him flabbergasted.

  Nick continued to be full of surprises. He continued African drumming, earning a small-fortune from busking. One morning, after receiving a text pic from another school mum, we learned of his other talent. ‘How long have you been playing the violin?’ I asked when he got home from school. ‘About two years,’ he said casually.

  We learned that sometimes things are better left unsaid. When Patrick went for his first post-prison haircut, the hairdresser asked, ‘Who on earth cut your hair? You let a friend, who’s not even qualified, cut your hair? Why didn’t you just go to the hairdresser?’

  But everything else required many words or explanation. And so we continued talking about the experience, exploring new and interesting conversational terrains about parole and what it means to have your passport confiscated. Patrick finally met Nick and Lexie’s friends and our new friends John and Emily, and was also surprised they are not African like he had imagined them to be.

  Cracks began to appear in the perfect-pedestalled image of Patrick that the kids had held onto while he was away. His return humanised him. And it was a crushing and valuable lesson for them, as they learned that their father was not as indefatigable and fun as their imaginations and memories had led them to believe.

  Time passed. We sold our house and moved into a rental property in Springwood, further up the mountains, a beautiful part of the world that not only backed onto bush, but was also home to a family of Tawny Frogmouths and one friendly wallaby. We have plans to build on our land but first we need to learn how to live together again. Lexie finally got a kitten named Mittens, who’s widely regarded as the most wayward member of our family.

  Patrick and I continued our friendship with Zhao and with Tom. I helped Zhao write a cover letter for a position, outlining his knowledge of financial transactions and explaining that his jail time had given him insight into the more complicated business of understanding human behaviour. Tom has promised to catch up but hasn’t yet been able to find the time working two jobs that pay award-wage.

  And we did eventually get to the beach.

  It was late afternoon. The kids were kayaking from one side of Currarong creek to the other. When they reached the other side, Nick blocked Lexie’s kayak. She disembarked, throwing a handful of sand at his legs.

  ‘Mum, Dad! Lexie’s throwing sand!’ Nick yelled.

  ‘“Tell it to the judge!”’ she said, laughing and throwing another handful.

  As I sat looking out on the shimmering expanse of water of Warrain Beach, Jervis Bay, perfectly framed by the sandbank to our left and the cliffs to our right, I thought about all that had transpired in our lives.

  We are not pieces of puzzle, as I had once thought. We are people. Imperfect and inconstant—ever-changing people.

  I would never know the answer to the question that tormented me. Why Patrick chose to do what he did. I also didn’t know what triumphs or disappointments lay ahead of us. None of us do.

  But I knew with all my heart that I loved him. I ran my hand down Paddy’s arm, slipping my hand into his, and he didn’t flinch.

  I cast the ‘why’ into the water.

  It just is.

  It just was.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Years ago I recall reading an article in which Nick Hornby said words to the effect: ‘People think novels slip out. They don’t. You have to push them out.’ This stayed with me, although I never understood the full extent of his meaning until I wrote my own book. So thank you to all the people who helped me birth this one (there were many stitches!).

  For my mother, Lorraine, who instilled in me a love of books and learning and showed me what it is to live a rich creative life. For my father, Gary, the most quick-witted person I know. Thanks for passing on your sense of humour, creativity and love of good music. For Rosemary, for your grace and undying support. John, for your d
edication in travelling such long distances in coming to every single court mention. And to Angie, Donna, Brendan (aka James), Louisa, Roseanne, Dave, Bernie, Doug, Neena, Grant, Mary, Dan, Ben, Kieran, Brenda, Michelle and Sandra. I am so fortunate to have a family who not only supported me while Patrick was incarcerated, but graciously supported my decision to write, not only about my life but theirs as well.

  When you go through a dark period your true friends become incandescent. Thank you Frieda, Bec, Pamela, Niki, Anthony, Winton, Ruth, Mon, Beau, Ange, Simon, Kylie, Dave, Jay, Susan, Fiona, Emma, Graham, Maggie and Milena and Julianne.

  Thanks to John and Emily from Hands, Heart and Feet. The Blue Mountains is so very blessed to have a group that connects people in such an intimate way. Students should be able to claim Medicare rebates for the medicinal service you provide to our community.

  For those who read early drafts or fragments and/or gave advice: The Word by Word writers’ group of Jen Kingsford, Arna Radovich, Shae Blizzard and Lisa Fleetwood. Thank you for your ongoing critiques and having the courage to tell me when I got it wrong. To Therese Becker, Wyndham Lewis (why you aren’t a household name is one of the great mysteries of the world), Markus Zusak, Kaori Shimmyo-Goers, Rebecca Evers, Kylie and Simon McCoy, Tim Elliott, Benjamin Law, Anna Funder, Kylie Fornasier and Liam Pieper.

  Thank you to the Allen & Unwin team. No doubt, the chap with the delightful English accent, Tom Gilliat, has something to do with their professional, attentive and collaborative approach to making books. To Christa Munns for your unflappable demeanour, meticulousness and for being my Clara. To freelance editor Sarina Rowell for your unerring eye for detail. And thanks to designer Josh Durham for your brilliant mind.

  Thanks also to Ben Naparstek who published my work in the Good Weekend and first introduced the idea of writing about this experience. To Danielle Teustch/sensei who taught me how to craft a story. To Tim Elliott, thank you for your inspiring email encouraging me to keep writing, and for introducing me to Richard Walsh, who is not only publishing expert but also a trusted friend.