by Jessie Cole
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When my father broke into the strangers’ house he carved mandalas into his palms with the glass from a shattered mirror, smeared himself with sewage and ate a packet of cigarettes. His control had unravelled and he was wild and savage and lost. Grief and guilt had overtaken him and he had driven himself from the road. The darkness that engulfed us all in the green garden sea had finally spilled into his outside life in a torrent of mad despair. He was hospitalised, but he soon came out, and then he was hospitalised again. He talked of axes and Aphrodite and splitting skulls, and his old doctor friends called from Sydney and whispered to my mother down the end of the line, ‘Do you have any guns there? Get rid of the axes. Get rid of anything weapon-like.’
Then, when the raving was over and the subdued sadness returned, it was somehow our fault and he could not forgive us. He was bitter and angry and uncomprehending, and we could not forgive him. He began to speak of my mother as that woman, and when she left the house for any reason she would return to the roaring sound of a chainsaw as he chopped down another of her beloved trees.
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We fled the house when I was seventeen, in my final year of school. Battle-scarred and weary, my mother rented a tiny yellow cottage by the ocean. The losses were compounding. Zoe, our community, the father we had known, and then—the final blow—our home.
With the disintegration of my family I held on to Gabe like a lifebuoy, shivering and afraid. A year older than me, he had already finished school. Working casually at his parents’ small business, he would often come and go. He was always warm and welcoming and when I retreated into his arms taut with anger, fear or sorrow, he wrapped me up tightly and then made me a snack. Whipping up gourmet toast, Gabe fed it to me morsel by morsel until I was revived. Through all the chaos, he joked and smiled, jollying us along. Perhaps I was the ballast and he was the helium balloon. He stopped me sinking beneath the waves and I stopped him—with all his lightness—from just floating away.
The new house was fresh and clean and salty, and at first we found its brightness blinding, so used were we to the forest green. I was off-kilter in the sudden smallness of this strange world—bangs and scrapes and knocked knees at every turn. I had lived my entire life in the caress of a sprawling forest, and the tight proportions of this cottage left me disorientated. In just turning about I bumped into the doorway, or the table or even the wall. I could not adjust to the toning down of movement. Finally free from the writhing of my father’s grief, I was black and blue, as though all the bruised imprints I had gathered beneath my skin through the dark years were surfacing like delayed signals of distress.
Jake and I had left our two cats behind when we fled the house with our mother. It’s difficult to suddenly relocate a whole menagerie, and we were frightened our ancient cats would not readjust to life elsewhere. A few days later my father tracked us down.
‘You take everything and leave me with the fucking cats?’ he yelled down the phone.
Enraged, he made a mound to burn all the things we’d left behind: school exercise books, ragged T-shirts, our mother’s basket of furry knitting wool, a dusty pile of New Internationalist magazines that he had always despised. When it wouldn’t light he swore and stamped across the orchard to find the kerosene. Tipping the pungent liquid on the pile, he leaned down and struck a match. The fire exploded in his face, burning all the way up his outstretched arm and across his livid cheeks.
When my mother didn’t return to pick up the cats, old and finicky creatures, my father taped them inside a cardboard box and took them down to the waterhole. He’d thought to drown them like kittens, but the box wouldn’t sink and the cats clawed their way out. All his plans rebounding, my father waded in and drowned Jake’s cat by hand. It fought him with a dying viciousness, but my cat escaped and swam away, then hid in the lantana. After he had drowned my brother’s cat, my father crawled up the bank and retched, then stumbled up the forest steps to ring us and tell us what he’d done. I stood stunned on the other end of the phone line, and hung up without a word.
The next day, my father dropped my cat at our new house by the sea, and it raced inside and sat on the kitchen table, frenetically licking its paws with a quiet kind of madness. My father didn’t come inside but stood on the doorstep and yelled. His burned skin was peeling, hanging from him in long strips and flapping in the breeze. He pointed at the crimson scratches the length of his forearm, where Jake’s cat had fought him from beneath the water. I couldn’t look at him, and fled beneath my bedcovers, hands pressed tightly over my ears.
A few days later I received a letter from him in the post.
Dear Jessie,
SOCIETY AND CULTURE EXAM
Question 1
(multiple choice)
Re: CATS
Supposing you lived at Gulargambone, 300 kms from the nearest vet at Dubbo, and your special 12 year old cat was ill i.e. started vomiting nearly every night, and losing hair, and shitting in the corners of the house, what would you do.
(Circle one answer)
1. Put up with it.
2. Drive 20 kms and let it go feral.
3. Hit it on the head with an axe.
4. Get your neighbour’s wild dog to tear it apart.
5. Drown it in dam.
(Remember, this question’s worth 5%)
6. Drive 300 kms to vet for treatment or euthanasia (remember, a 12 year old cat = 90 year old human).
7. Put poison in its food.
8. Spray it with deadly poison.
9. Nurse it until it dies. (Slowly)
(Assumption is you have no gun)
10. Give it extra special care by taking it to bed and letting it vomit in your bed instead of the lounge.
11. Give it to a friendly neighbour, or your children who love cats, and would love to nurse a dying cat.
Question 2
(10 marks)
1. Do the Chinese eat cats and tortoises, and if so, is there a difference between this practice and Australians eating lambs, calves, rabbits, crabs, lobsters, fish or kangaroos?
2. Have you ever seen a baby lamb?
3. Why were the Japanese so small in size for so long?
Dad xx
(Good luck in your exam)
I read the letter and then put it in a box at the back of my wardrobe, hoping against hope to forget it, while my crazy-eyed cat went on endlessly licking its paws. This cat lived seven more years—five more than my father. Rickety and strange, there was something frightening and familiar in its maddened gaze.
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Without us, the house in Burringbar was grey and dull. Once the mania blew over, my father sagged with sadness and despair, all the fury of his grief becoming muted with his new aloneness. We had begun again in a world of blinding brightness—sand, sun and fresh white light—and he had begun again in darkness, and the rain came belting down.
When my father could no longer bear being home, he arrived at our cottage steps and knocked gingerly on our door. I opened it, knowing it was him, and he stood in the doorway with a shattered smile, a bottle of wine tucked under his arm.
‘Jess …’ My name slipped from his mouth like a sigh. ‘Where’s Mum?’
I stared at him, my eyes hard, knowing that he was brokenhearted, but wanting him gone, for this was our new house, and hadn’t he—in all his mad rage—driven us from our home? My body tightened, the angry coil within me twisting until I felt it might snap.
But I let him in—I always let him in.
My brother and I slunk around the cottage, silent and disturbed, while our calm mother comforted our broken father. His sadness seemed to expand, filling the cramped lounge room. We held our breath while our father drank wine. We watched the bottle, and became jittery as it grew empty. Our eyes held for small moments of excruciating communion—sister and brother—and then we dodged each other’s gaze. What we feared more than anything was going back, going back to the darkness. Hiding in my bedroom, I thought of the crashin
g ocean, the beating waves. I dreamed of swimming out past the horizon to another place—the far side of the world—away from the yellow house and my father’s gulping, wine-red mouth. I willed my father gone, the savagery of my thoughts my only consolation. I willed him back to the house without us. And he went, shuffling out the door.
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At eighteen I finished school, and moved to Brisbane to go to uni. The beach and sand were replaced with cafe lattes and concrete. Gabe, still working in his parents’ business, stayed home. He visited often, and there was no talk of breaking up. I figured he would follow me when he was ready. I rented a flat on Paradise Street with my friend Lou, one of the shiny-shiny girls, and we set about making house—two country kids, wide-eyed at the newness of everything. We studied bus timetables to work out how best to get to uni, and then, flushed with triumph at our first independent bus ride, called our mothers to report back on our success. This new city world was fast-paced, and the possibilities of life stretched out before us. Study, work, travel—meeting new people, experiencing new places—and for me, freedom from the weight of all that had gone on at home. I felt I had climbed a mountain and, looking down across the vista of the city, the world was at my feet.
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A month after moving, I wrote my father a letter.
Dad,
It’s always hard to begin a letter. It’s funny because I feel like I know exactly what I want to say and then I get a pen & paper and I go blank.
There are so many things I would like to tell you about how I feel but I change my feelings so often it is difficult. I guess in a way it’s because I’m so young. I’m harder and more idealistic—like that Dylan song.
I used to believe that if I could just tell you how angry you made me it would make an impact on your behaviour. That if I just told you how I felt you would change or it would help. But I don’t believe that now. I know that communicating through letters can be distancing—when we could speak instead—but I think letters can also make relationships intensely intimate, and externalise things that might stay hidden. It’s a form I like, and I know you do too.
Mostly, I want you to know that I never, ever in my life felt unloved by you. I don’t know why Zoe felt the way she did. Perhaps her childhood was a lot different from mine? I always felt that you loved me as a child. I always felt secure. You have that to be proud of in yourself. You were such a good dad. All my early memories are happy and I always thought you were the best. This is a good achievement! Early childhood is so important, as I’m sure you know. And all is not lost! I have managed to come through this family mess relatively unscathed, and I’m sure Jake too is still a happy ‘functioning’ teenager.
Most fathers I know basically haven’t made it through their children’s adolescence with their child/parent relationships intact. I don’t know whether this phenomenon is a north coast or Australian or a worldwide thing. Fathers of your generation have somehow lost out or stuffed up and I wonder if it is a side-effect of the changing gender roles, etc. I know that statement is very black and white, but it seems to me—from watching my friends—that fathers are having trouble adjusting or something.
You never told me what happened when you were hospitalised that first time. I’d like to hear it from you.
Did you ever read the story I wrote in school about how you changed? In it I described how I remembered you to be from before Zoe died—as a happy person. And you were so beautiful, Dad. It’s just that one of the most beautiful things about you was the way that you listened. The way you used to listen to people—I’d watch you and think how amazing it was. I don’t know if you were really listening but it always seemed so genuine. Sometimes it seems that what happened is—you stopped listening. You were so caught up in you that you stopped noticing anyone else. You didn’t see us anymore, Dad.
I guess I want to say also—that I’m happy with who I am, and what I have become, and I’ve been able to become me through my experiences and I don’t feel you have necessarily made me a worse person, or made me dislike myself. I don’t feel any problems I have are due to you or your effect on me—except as a general worry about you or about your effect on Mum.
I know when we last spoke you said ‘you’re happy that I am happy’—but I know you’re not. I wish you were, Dad.
I’m glad you’re not working anymore. I don’t think it was good for you. The trouble is—you have to find something else to do. Come back to uni and study Literature or History! I’m sure you would love it!
I still think all the time about Zoe and what she did. I can’t believe that she could believe that 50 or 60 years more of life would bring no experiences worth having. Even eating a yummy meal is worth living for! And there is no way that her belief that there was nothing worth living for could have been based solely on her relationship with you. I know, deep down, that’s what you think. You just must have been what was in her mind on that day when she was feeling particularly low. I hope it doesn’t hurt you for me to say these things. I don’t want to hurt you.
Dad, I know that Zoe devastated you. I know after that it was just hard for you to resurface. I missed you so much when you first got sick. All I wanted was for you to come back to normal. As a little child, I always believed you loved Zoe best, but it didn’t bother me because I thought she was the best too. I always felt you loved me enough. I never felt neglected by you.
Dad, please don’t be sad about me.
Love you, love Jessie xox
p.s. Could you tape me some really good Randy Newman and some John Lennon? I’d really love it!
Two weeks or so after I posted this letter, my father wrote back. He tore up his response before sending it, so when the envelope arrived I tipped it upside down and the fragments wafted down, fluttering over the floor of my city flat. I swept up the white paper butterflies and put them back in the envelope, then rang my mother.
‘Why does he do things like that? Why send a letter ripped into tiny pieces? Does he want me to stick it back together? Is it some kind of test? I won’t do it.’
‘Jess, I don’t know.’ My mother sighed on the other end of the line. ‘He’s not well—he’s depressed. He did a lot of things when he was … sick … He feels bad.’
‘Well, I know, but why does he do things like that now? I’m throwing it out.’
‘Yes, throw it out. You can’t try and read a ripped-up letter.’
But I stuffed the torn letter into the back of my cupboard and tried not to think about its maimed black scrawl.
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When Billie finished her degree she’d moved across the sea to Japan, quick-smart. Though we’d always kept in touch, I hadn’t seen much of her since Zoe’s death. She remained a half-mystical creature for me. Self-sufficient, ambitious, a go-getter. Everything I was not. A few months after I left home, Billie phoned me in Brisbane, unexpectedly.
‘I’ll fly you over for the weekend.’ Her voice was certain. ‘You organise the ticket and I’ll pay.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah, it’ll be fun to have you here. Your first trip on your own. Eighteen!’
I was fresh out of home, new to the city, not yet acclimatised. Negotiating Billie in a foreign country seemed a daunting task, but I was willing. The world was beckoning—Tokyo was just the beginning. In the travel agent’s, the receptionist looked at my long messy curls escaping from their tie and raised her painted eyebrows in silent question.
‘My sister’s flying me over for the weekend,’ I confessed, feeling myself a child caught masquerading as an adult. An international jetsetter.
The night before I left, the phone rang. Answering it, I heard the familiar long pause and indrawn breath of my father inhaling on his cigarette.
Seconds ticked by.
‘Dad. Hi.’ I was impatient, halfway through packing.
‘Jess.’ I could hear him exhaling. I imagined the smoke drifting from his downturned mouth. It infuriated me that my father would call but not be ready
to talk.
‘Well, I’m almost packed to go,’ I said. ‘Just putting in a few more things. I’m changing money at the airport.’ I couldn’t bear his silence. ‘Do you think that’s a good idea?’
‘Mmm.’
‘Dad?’
‘I don’t know … I’m not sure.’
I stared across at my suitcase, running through an inventory of necessities in my mind. Holding the receiver to my ear with my shoulder, I wandered across and took out a pair of socks. My father’s slow smoking breath continued, floating disembodied on the other end of the line.
‘Dad?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Are you ringing for some reason? ’Cause I’m busy now. I’m trying to get ready.’
Again, the suck on his cigarette.
‘Dad?’
‘Jess …’
‘Yeah?’
‘Well, have a good time.’
‘I hope so. I’m a bit nervous, but it’ll be fine. I mean … will it?’
The silence spread between us, jangling my nerves.
‘Dad?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Dad, I have to go, okay? Unless you want to tell me something?’
My fingers tightened around the receiver, my knuckles turning white as I listened to his breathing.
‘Dad?’
‘Have a good time, Jess.’
‘Yeah, okay. Bye.’
I waited for my father’s slow goodbye and then hung up the phone, releasing the breath I had held while waiting for the gaps in his silence, his half-swallowed words. Turning towards my suitcase, I squashed the socks back in and then, blocking out all thought of my father, I ran back through the list in my head of everything I might possibly need.
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On arrival in Japan, Billie took me to lunch in the city. Tokyo: endless cement and slim, fancy-suited people who moved together like schools of fish. Anxious, I could feel my laugh becoming unnaturally loud. Telling a story, my hands swept out on either side in untidy emphasis and bumped the people cramped in beside us in the restaurant.