by Jessie Cole
18. I think I mentioned that it hurts my hand to write—is my body telling me something? Is it saying—well don’t! Or is it just arthritis (which it is on x-ray).
19. Is it therapy? (Yes)—mutual, or just self therapy? Depends I guess.
20. My letters (this kind) are always night-time ones, usually after alcohol, and sometimes end at 3 am. They gather momentum probably become more disorganised—a real adrenaline buzz.
21. Your mum is an absolute non-letter writer—(or card sender)—not her style at all. My mother used to write (very briefly). Would always end (except once) with ‘well son, I suppose I should close (after 2 minutes) because I’ve got to go shopping’ or something … I forget.
22. What do you do with the letters after you’ve read them, especially if a lot of effort has gone into them?
When you sat down and went blank, I think it’s just that you thought—what the hell am I going to write here? Head full of thoughts, ideas, emotions, but just what to say? Tentativeness enters. Will this upset the other person? Do I really want to write this?
ANOTHER MAD TOPIC
Manics just about universally are letter writers, and they write much more when manic. (I’m not manic.) That phenomenon is pretty amazing because it’s just about diagnostic. But—they’re (we’re) letter writers anyway. (Not when depressed.) Then later super intense!!!
End of part 1.
Love Dad
≈
March 25
(13 days later)
Dear Jess
IN RESPONSE TO YOUR LETTER:
1. I never knew that I made you so angry for so long. Certainly after ’94 I did, but not before. (Remember no answers are required.)
2. There’s pre/post manic time. I know post manic time was a disaster, but didn’t think my behaviour was so bad pre-’94.
3. Lot of ‘I didn’t know’(s) in here. But that’s the way it is.
4. Zoe’s childhood was very different. Marriage break-up age 2, and chronically super-smart elder sister. (And Zoe’s mother was a lot like Zoe. In for instance the violence of their poetry & dancing. Both amazing dancers & savage black poets.)
5. Childhood—Janny’s total unconditional love certainly worked. I think she just learnt that from her mother or parents. My childhood love (I can’t remember any). My upbringing was based on punishment and no rewards so I learnt all that. Mind you, Janny is one of the most perfect mothers in existence.
6. When I went mad in ’94 I self mutilated in various ways. The most obvious was the mandalas in my palms. But I thought I outstared the sun (for about 2 minutes)—my timing was off—obviously. It seemed like I’d beat it, and kept on staring. I was rather proud of the mandalas cut into my palms (with cracked mirror) but everything else was rubbish.
7. You said in your letter that you had: ‘A general worry about you or your effect on mum’. Well it’s best to be honest. It’s not very reassuring, but it happened, that’s me. I don’t want to make a story up about anything. (There are tactful omissions but that’s not really my scene.)
I know that during the peace following August/Sept/Oct ’95, when you guys moved to the yellow house, Janny has got tearful when I’ve been there. I notice you both (you and Jake) notice & are very protective, and I think—‘Shit, it will be seen as my fault again.’ But I don’t think it necessarily is, it’s just that I’m there and some little thing (or bigger thing) comes up about the present—eg. Property Settlement, or something 10 years ago. And Janny cries and I don’t, and you guys think ‘this arsehole is still at it’.
Dunno if this letter is going in quite the right direction. But I love your mother and I know that she just tolerates me and that hurts me all the time. And before long she’ll meet someone who loves her, and that worries me. I know it will happen because she’s so beautiful physically & mentally (nearly) and then I’m gone and without hope.
8. ‘Listening?’ Dunno. I can’t think of any good qualities I possess.
9. ‘Did I love Zoe best?’ I don’t know. She/Me were the great nightmare. She was vastly the most difficult for me. But we never really got on. Well with a mother like Janny, you two were obviously safe, and Billie was always self-sufficient.
10. It’s very hard to know with a scenario of:
Billie 16—self-sufficient
Zoe 14—wild & emotional (and in special need)
You 7—with a proper mummy & super cute (sorry)
Jake 5—the boy.
11. I think you underestimate what I ‘notice’.
My drinking and smoking is a form of slow self-destruction. It’s a bad part of my personality that’s probably always been there. Zoe’s death certainly didn’t help at all because I still feel the pain of some responsibility for her action, in several different ways.
Today has been a black pit day. Sometimes there are grey pits. Sometimes even normal days (nearly).
Maybe I contributed something to you. It took me 50 years to realise that my father contributed a lot more than I ever thought.
It was a lovely letter you wrote.
My greatest loss is Janny, because I don’t think I’ve really lost you or Jake.
I do love you.
(And admire and respect you.)
Hardly anyone feels this way about me. I am a liability, a burden and an embarrassment. (For me more than anyone else.)
I think I used to be something but I’ve forgotten those times.
Love Dad
≈
I leaned over the pages, dripping tears, letting my father’s pain wash over me. I imagined him alone at the kitchen table, drunk, writing those words. My father had striven—always—to be exactly who he was, but even so I was shocked by his honesty. I thought about how he had chosen to live as though his own childhood didn’t exist—how, despite my curiosity, I’d never learned anything concrete about it. His description so stark: My childhood love (I can’t remember any).
How hard he had tried to break that pattern of punishment and no rewards. The love for me he had always expressed, sitting in the letter, captured there in time. But his suffering, overwhelming everything. If I’d read the letter at the time he sent it, would I have known what he was planning? Probably not. Before his death, I had never believed that he would leave me. Despite all his madness, despite the fact I knew he threatened it, I had trusted him to stay. I thought of the note he left, scrawled out beside him in the car.
Billie, Jessie, Jakey—I’m sorry.
Short and to the point. Apologising for what he knew to be the deepest betrayal—that his love for us, in those final moments, could not overcome his pain.
‘I’m sorry too,’ I whispered and, crouching beside the letter, I felt myself begin to rock. How hard it was to truly hear another’s sorrow. My heart hurt beneath my ribs and I pressed my fingers into the pain. Minutes passed, long and slow.
Standing, I turned away from my father’s words and walked back to the creek. Stepping into the shallow centre, I lowered myself into the water. I let it flow over me, pulling at my clothes and heavy, streaming hair. It was cold and the rocks against my back were hard. Lying in the chilly water, the bouncing tinkle of it was lost to my submerged ears. I closed my eyes to the canopy of leaves overhead, pushing my head back to let the creek pour across my face. It was dark and quiet inside my mind, and I held my breath and felt the silky movement of the current around me.
I imagined my father’s sad words being prised from inside me and surging away down the rushing creek. In my mind I watched as the words curved around the bend below me and disappeared into the jostling waters downstream. I saw them meander along the passage of the winding creek until they joined a river and plunged on towards the sea. In the ocean, the words were sucked towards the horizon. In the ploughing of waves they began to disintegrate—letters pulled from letters—until the dismembered vowels and consonants floated about, detached and drifting.
I came up for air with a gasp, then lay still in the water, watching the sway of t
he towering branches above, waiting for the next leaf to drop. Cold, I sat up, my clothes sticking to me, smothering and tight. I rose from the creek, wringing water from my skirt. Flicking my hands dry, I picked up my camera and photographed each page. This push and pull, always: to let go, to hold on. I didn’t want the letter anymore, but I didn’t want there to be no record of it either, and I wanted to be able to show it to Varda if I needed to. I gathered up the supplies I had brought, then—averting my eyes from the pages of my father’s letters—pulled myself, still dripping, back through the barbed wire and up the sliding slope.
≈
That afternoon, Jake arrived with Gemma for the night, and I hung back, giving him space. Settling into the couch, he sat, guitar on lap, sipping tea. My mother had gone to the shops, and it was just us, the three of us.
Gemma was in the kitchen looking at recipe books.
‘Jake?’ I perched on the edge of a chair, trying to figure out how to broach the subject. That chasm that lay between us, the thing we never spoke of.
‘Yeah?’
‘I read this letter today. A letter from Dad. I hadn’t ever read it before.’
Jake stilled, as though frozen mid-movement.
‘He sent me this letter after I left home, but he tore it up before he put it in the post, so it arrived in pieces. I wouldn’t read it then, but I kept it, you know, in the envelope.’ I was finding it hard to explain. ‘When he died, I just couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t make myself read it.’
I rolled up the hem of my singlet with trembling hands.
‘What did it say?’ Jake looked down at the carpet, away from my face. I could hear Gemma clanking dishes in the kitchen.
‘It was Dad being Dad. Lists of things, and a bit of a rave about the book Possession. It was an answer to a letter I’d written him. But it was sad, really sad. He was very low, broken. He said he loved me, but he always said that.’
‘Can I read it?’
‘Are you sure you want to?’ I didn’t want to cause my brother any more pain.
Glancing back towards the kitchen, Jake nodded.
‘Well, it’s down there,’ I pointed. ‘Down the ridge, beside the creek. Where we used to play.’
Together we crossed the grass to the clothes line, walking over the brown ant-mounds to the slope. I climbed down first, and at the bottom I held the barbed wire apart for Jake to slide through, wincing as his shirt caught against a hard spike. Jake slipped off his shoes, leaving them on the bank, and stepped through the water.
‘It’s there. On the ground. I stuck it down with glue.’
I did not want to see the black ink-scrawl again, and I wavered on the other side of the bank, watching. My heartbeat quickened. Jake squatted, leaning his weight against his fingertips, and I watched him lift his hand to swipe at his eyes. He read slowly, and I stood across the water, holding my breath.
Finally Jake turned to me, eyes red and swollen. ‘It’s not your fault, you know, Jess. The not reading it.’
‘I know.’ I sucked in a breath. ‘It’s just sad. Even if I’d read it then, it probably would have just made me angry.’
Jake stood and wandered to the creek edge. ‘You weren’t there when he died. You were with Billie in Japan.’
‘Yes, I was gone.’
‘I never told you what happened the night before.’
My brother’s words propelled me forward and I stepped through the barbed-wire fence.
‘No, you never told me.’
‘Dad was over at our place, the cottage down at the beach, and he was stomping around, ranting about something, like he always did. Mum and I were lying on the couch, just lying there while he yelled and yelled, and then I said, “Dad, no one cares.”’
My brother peered down at the flowing water.
‘He stopped ranting. He just stood still in the middle of the room. I’d never said anything like that before.’ My brother turned from me, wandering back towards our father’s words. ‘He was silent for a minute, and then he said, “No one cares?” And Jess, I said it again. He looked kind of stunned, and then he turned around and walked out.’
Crossing the creek, I drifted over to where Jake crouched beside our father’s letter.
‘But Jake, they’re just words, right? You know it’s not your fault?’
‘I know. But it’s like all those years that he was bad and you and Mum would get angry and I never said anything. And on that day I’d just had enough, and I finally spoke, and I knew as soon as the words were out that they were wrong, and then I said them again.’
Watching tears slide from my brother’s eyes, I squatted on the ground beside him.
‘In the morning when I got up, I was upset about it, and Mum told me that after I’d gone to bed she’d rung Dad up, and that they’d talked for ages, and that he’d understood that I didn’t mean it. That she’d known I was worried, and so she’d rung. Mum told me Dad was okay about it.’ He paused, sighing. ‘But when he wouldn’t answer his phone, I just knew.’ Jake kept his eyes on the ground. ‘Mum wouldn’t let me come with her to the house, but it didn’t matter—I knew he was dead.’
I reached out my hand to touch my brother. His body trembled beneath my palm.
‘The worst thing is, it occurred to me a few years later that maybe Mum didn’t make that phone call.’ His voice clogged up. ‘Maybe she never spoke to him that night—maybe she just didn’t want me to feel bad, and so she said she did.’
Creeping towards my brother, I wrapped my arms around him while he cried. I shook my head, wanting to deny his words, wanting to catch them all up and float them all away.
‘But Jake, it’s not your fault,’ I whispered. ‘Dad was so awful—you were allowed to get mad.’
Jake’s body was soft, his face turned away.
‘But Jess, I never said anything to him. It was the only time I ever spoke.’
I cried then too, soft, gulping sobs, holding tight to my grown-up younger brother.
‘Let’s wash it all away.’ I pointed to the letter stuck down on the dirt. ‘Let’s pick it off, and float it downstream.’
‘Do you want to?’
‘Yeah. Let’s.’
‘Okay.’
I scratched at the paper, tearing it off the earth, and the puzzle of my father’s words came away in my hands. Jake reached out and pulled at the torn edges. With a handful each we walked back to the creek. I dropped the first scrap and, fluttering down, it landed on the water, tumbling away quickly downstream. Waiting, I watched as Jake plucked a thin white fragment from his hand and released it to the transparent slide of the water.
‘Okay, now more,’ I said as I opened my palms.
Throwing the shreds into the air, I watched them spiral downwards, sucked away in a sudden gush as they landed. Jake glanced across at me with a wobbly smile and then emptied his white scraps into the creek.
‘I’ll get the rest.’ He turned back to scrape up more of our father’s words. I watched him from the creek edge, hoping that I was right to speak, right to tell Jake of the letter, right to bring him down to see it.
Jake stepped towards me, holding out his hand.
‘Do you want to, Jess?’
‘No, you do it.’
He scattered the remnants of the letter, and it rushed downstream, disappearing beneath the surface of the water.
‘Jess?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I always wanted to tell you what I said.’
≈
Up at the house, I could see Gemma take note of Jake’s red eyes. ‘I’ll make tea,’ she said simply, and slipped into the kitchen.
My brother sat back down on the couch, reaching for his guitar. I stood in the centre of the room, not knowing where to be.
‘Jakey?’
‘Yeah,’ he murmured, looking down at his guitar.
‘I’ve been writing stories.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Stories about us.’
He was quiet, holding his fingers on the strings but
not making a sound.
‘About what happened?’ he asked finally.
‘About everything.’
The silence stretched.
‘It’s not all inside me then,’ I whispered. ‘I can get it out.’
The truth of this seemed suddenly apparent.
‘That’s good,’ he said slowly. ‘It’s good to get it out.’
He picked out a few notes on his guitar. I tried to listen to what they said. Sadness? Relief? Anxiety? It wasn’t a language I quite understood.
‘You going to write about this?’ he asked, looking up at my face. ‘About what I said?’
I stood there thinking about that. If it was my story to tell.
‘Jakey, I don’t know what’s mine or yours.’ I could feel my voice quivering. ‘Maybe I never have.’
The kettle was boiling. I heard Gemma arranging the cups on the bench.
‘Write it.’ Jake plucked at the strings of his guitar, the sound soft, soothing. ‘I want you to.’
‘Will you read it?’
‘I’ll read all of it.’
I thought of the writing I’d already done, of what it would be like for my brother to read.
‘It might be hard going.’
‘It’s better,’ he said, ‘than us carrying it around by ourselves.’
Gemma came in from the kitchen with the steaming teas. She put them down on the coffee table between us, sliding in beside my brother, smoothing a gentle hand down his arm. I watched her tender ministrations and a yearning broke open deep inside me. Still hovering, I wondered again where I should sit. It felt odd that after all these years I still couldn’t find a way to be with them. I walked to the bookshelves and pulled out a book.
‘Maybe I should read Possession?’ I said, tucking the random book back in.
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m going to go look for it.’
≈
That night, ready for bed, I approached my mother in her island bedroom. Putting away her clothes, she was distracted.
‘Mum?’
‘Mmm?’