This teacher had never been particularly nice to me; he had threatened to cane me numerous times. I’d only ever seen him as an opponent, but now I was obliged to reassess, to credit him with the compassion he’d shown me. It was all very disconcerting.
I stopped crying and waited until my eyes weren’t so red. Then I took myself off to Maths in Space.
*
It was my final year: the HSC. It was so incredibly important, possibly the most important time in your life. That’s what Andrew said. If you got a good mark, it set you up for life. If you got a bad mark, then you’d be on a downward spiral and probably end up living under a bridge or being a street sweeper. Andrew was going to do well, and so would Tim. John I wasn’t so sure about, but then John wasn’t the kind of guy who worried about marks. He was into art. Me? I didn’t necessarily believe the stuff about how important it was, but I was nonetheless desperate to do well, driven by the need to prove to myself that I wasn’t actually as stupid as I suspected.
Mum had been begging Dad to control himself so that I could study and, incredibly, he complied: there were no random outbursts and only minimal brooding; he even cut down on his gin consumption. It almost killed him: for months, the house quivered with an almost imperceptible static, like a dog whistle, the subsonic hum of Dad’s subverted narcissism.
One night, though, around the middle of September, he came into my room. He was in his running gear – white singlet, blue tracksuit pants, runners – even though he had come back from jogging hours ago. He had something on his mind.
‘I want you to do something for me,’ he said. ‘I want you to roll me one of your marijuana cigarettes.’
I’d saved some pot for after my final exam. Dad knew this. Now he wanted to try some of it.
‘Are you sure?’ I asked.
‘I want to see what it’s like to get high. I want to see why you all do it.’
The whole thing felt wrong, but then I wasn’t in a position to say no. So I rolled him a joint and he smoked it, just a few puffs. He coughed, and murmured in way I took to be an anticlimax.
The trouble started about an hour later. Screaming. Muffled crashing. Then Mum’s voice, urgent, insistent, calling for me. I leaped out of my chair and flew down the stairs, where I found her, in a dressing-gown and slippers, bailed up by Dad in a corner by the front door. Never had I seen Mum look so small, so vulnerable, so shrunken and rumpled and tearful, with that scoliosis, the big hump on her back. She looked like a hermit crab reversing into a crevice. Dad loomed over her, as if he was about to hit her. To prevent this, I jumped in between them, facing Dad, which was when he grabbed me by the throat. There was a frozen moment, an image I see again and again: Dad’s bared teeth, his wild eyes, his fingers clamped around my neck. Is he really going to strangle me? We locked eyes for an instant. Is this what he wants? Then Mum screamed and attacked Dad, giving him a whack on the shoulder. Dad let go of me and Mum and I made a dash for it, out the front door.
Our escape up the steps felt weirdly silent and oddly abstract, as if we were in a movie. Mum was ahead of me, moving impossibly slowly. I considered picking her up like a baby, cradling her in my arms and running, but that would’ve been wrong. We made it up one flight of steps, Dad right behind us, then another. As we passed the top garden, Dad paused to pick up the pitchfork.
We reached the street, where, bizarrely, Camilla was waiting behind the wheel of her boyfriend’s blue ute, the engine running; later I found out that Mum, anticipating trouble, had rung and told her to come. We piled into the front seat, Mum trembling and grey-faced. For a moment I thought she might vomit. ‘Go, Millie! Go!’ she screamed. We drove off, tyres squealing. I looked back, through the rear window, and saw Dad standing in the middle of the road, brandishing the pitchfork, his eyes swivelling in rage and confusion.
*
Mum and I spent two weeks living with Rob in a ground-floor semi that he rented with his girlfriend. I was relieved that Mum and I were out of the house and also because the situation with Dad would now have to be resolved one way or another. Also, it felt nice just to be with Rob: it reminded me of when we were all together under one roof.
After we decided it was unsafe for Mum and me to return home, we rented an apartment in Neutral Bay, a cosy two-bedder with a bricked-up fireplace and a bay window that caught musty slabs of morning sun. The day we moved in, Mum stood in the middle of the kitchen and cried.
In a show of reasonableness, Dad had allowed me to collect my school uniform and textbooks. And so I went to school every day, as normal. Except that it wasn’t normal, because I couldn’t tell anyone where I was living. If Dad found out, he’d come looking. We took precautions to maintain the secret, all agreeing that we would tell our partners and no-one else. Before I told Margot where we were, Mum insisted on talking to her face to face, to impress upon her the importance of discretion.
It was a surreal arrangement, like living a double life, as if I were partly invisible. I couldn’t bring friends back to the flat, of course, or give them our new number. When they asked where I was, why I was never at home, I lied. For years our house had been a focal point: now it was off limits. When I saw my friends, it was out and about, or at their houses. And when my friends called home, they got no answer. Either that, or Dad would pick up, sounding every bit as mad as he was, and talk some garbage about me being in the shower or off surfing or on the toilet for the rest of the week. Most of them suspected something but were too polite, or confused, to say anything. Only once in the five months I lived in that flat did anyone address the issue directly. It was Andrew. ‘What’s going on?’ he said, in a tone that suggested I was playing some kind of trick on him. ‘I can’t tell you,’ I replied.
Still, I didn’t mind living in the flat. The unit was small. It was convenient; it was easy. I had my schoolbooks, and I had a room to study in. On the weekends, I would sit in the sun by window and read, or listen to music on a little cassette player. The best thing of all was that we no longer had to deal with Dad – at least not on a day-to-day basis. It’s hard to explain what a difference this made. It was like the sensation you have as a plane takes off, the sudden sense of possibility, of weightlessness, of liberation and fleeting freedom. Mum and I could talk without fear of saying the wrong thing, of being too happy or too sad or too noisy. As with any crisis, fleeing home had reminded me what was important. Can’t find the right books at the library? No big deal. Can’t find your favourite winklepickers for the weekend? So what? I miss that now, the way epic events can declutter your life. Now, I sweat the small stuff all the time.
*
In October I sat the HSC exams, which had in my mind assumed a monumental, almost physical quality, like a brick wall I had to leap over. They were held in long draughty halls: when you walked in, all you saw were rows of desks lined up like gravestones, one of them yours. I came out of each exam feeling as if I had held my breath the entire time. My writing hand hurt; it developed a habit of cramping, traitorously, in the middle of a paragraph.
When it was all done, everyone drove to Avoca Beach, where we slept on the floor of a mate’s parents’ apartment and surfed, smoked pot and ate hamburgers. At night we played drinking games, ending up on the floor, unconscious. John and Andrew came, but Margot stayed in Sydney (she was in the year below me, so school was not yet over for her). After Avoca, I decided to drive up the coast by myself for two weeks. I anticipated a healing solitude. I anticipated tranquillity. I anticipated sitting on a rock, staring at the ocean, processing everything, coming to terms with it. And yet within an hour of leaving Avoca I had begun to dwell on everything I wanted to escape. I’d brought it all with me, in my echo chamber of a head, around which ricocheted recriminations and regrets, in my mind’s eye a constant loop of unpleasant images: Dad’s hands around my neck, Dad brandishing the pitchfork, Mum and I running up the steps, Dad’s hands around my neck, Dad brandishing the pit
chfork . . .
The first night I stayed at Seal Rocks, on the beachfront at Number One Beach, sleeping in the back of the car, with T-shirts and towels wound up in the windows for privacy. The second night I stayed at Crescent Head, world-famous Crescent Head, the place I had longed for Rob to take me on a surfing trip when I was a boy. Now I was here. After surfing, I went to the RSL Club for a beer and a schnitzel. An old man in a Balmain Tigers jersey sat watching Perfect Match on the TV; Perfect Match, where everyone was ‘easygoing’ and liked to ‘rage’.
Within three days, I was out of my mind with loneliness. I eavesdropped on other customers in the bakery; I lingered in the surf shop, flicking through board shorts. Words came out of my mouth, things I didn’t intend to say, questions I knew the answer to and comments on the weather. One afternoon I found myself at the end of the point, where the grassy tip juts skywards, like a prow. A jagged southerly gushed up the cliff face and into my eyes, pushing up my nose like water from a hose, or air from an oxygen mask when you’re just about to have an operation, which was exactly what I felt I needed, seeing as I was on the point of collapsing, of fainting, of passing out from pure melancholy.
What was it Dad used to say? That a beautiful view could make him cry.
Just then a man and his two young daughters walked up and stopped a few metres away. He hugged his girls, one in each arm. They looked at the ocean fixedly, expectantly, as if they had an appointment. I edged closer to them. The father was pointing at the waves and saying something about how the weather affected the swell. Before I could stop it, my mouth was opening and closing and my voice was coming out, questions about where they had been and where they were going. The father squinted at me, smiling warily.
I found the nearest phone booth, called Margot, and told her I was coming home that night.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Dad was now living alone, which was a problem. For one thing, he had no idea how to cook: he could barely make a piece of toast. He hadn’t changed his own sheets since he was a boy. Shopping was a mystery to him, as was handling money and paying bills, and he had never, in all our time in that house, been asked to do so much as turn on a sprinkler. Now, he had to do it all, because there was nobody there to do it for him.
For the first six weeks after we fled, Mum refused to see Dad or even call him. It fell to us kids, then, to visit. We brought him food, we talked to him, we cooked for him. We cleaned the pool, put on the dishwasher, took up the bins.
Every time I visited, Dad would ask the same thing: ‘Where’s Mum?’ I couldn’t tell him, of course, which felt like a betrayal, as if I were being evasive or cruel, which perhaps I was. After a while he gave up asking where Mum was and focused instead on her return. He made us promise to talk to her, to convince her he posed no threat, that he was better now, that he was sorry, that she should come back to him, that he couldn’t go on without her.
‘Look at me,’ he said one day when I’d gone around to collect Mum’s mail. ‘Do I look violent to you?’
‘No, not now you don’t,’ I said. ‘But you did before. You chased us out of the house.’
‘But that was because I was ill! I was very, very ill! It wasn’t my fault.’
‘Yeah, I know, but it was scary. You had a pitchfork.’
‘That was just one night, when I sick.’ He held out his hands, palms up, pleading. ‘You have to admit, I was good until that night.’ (Just one little pitchfork!)
‘Yeah, but I don’t think Mum is ready to come back.’
‘When do you think she will be ready?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But you talk to her?’
‘Yes.’
‘So, what does she say?’
‘She says she’s sad and she cries a lot.’
‘Why don’t you tell her, then, that I’m fine now, that she can come back?’
I opened the fridge, got out some bread and went to the toaster; I felt like cinnamon toast.
‘I miss you being here,’ he said. ‘I miss Margot coming around. I miss you playing your music. It’s so quiet here now. It just doesn’t feel right.’
The toast popped up and I buttered it, then sprinkled on the cinnamon and sugar. Dad went to the bathroom, leaving me in peace. From the kitchen, I could see the bay. A ferry rumbled in, its vibrations rising through the floor and into my feet. I chewed the toast, the sugar grains crunching sweetly between my molars. When Dad came back, I collected the mail, hugged him, and left.
*
We had Christmas at home, with Dad, but minus Mum. It was horrible. Dad reminded me, disconcertingly, of a small child, smiling, eager to please, yet impatient and helpless and a little bit desperate. We sat on the balcony overlooking the bay and he passed around a bottle of Pol Roger champagne, which we mixed with guava juice. The champagne went straight to my head, which was exactly where I wanted it. Later, we swam in the pool, where I floated around on my back, drunk, looking up at the neighbours’ houses on either side of us. What did they know? I wondered. Had they guessed something was wrong? What if we saw them on the street as we were leaving? That would be awkward.
After lunch came the presents. I gave Dad a Herbert von Karajan CD; I can’t remember what he gave me. I read all the cards. I had tried to keep mine neutral: Happy Xmas, Dad, much love always! But Rob came right out with it: Dear Dad, I am so terribly sorry that things have worked out the way they have, which I didn’t think was particularly cheery.
Just before we left, I ran up to my bedroom and grabbed some tracksuit pants and a sloppy joe, and two or three surfing magazines. When we said goodbye, Dad stood at the door waving.
*
In early January, Dad began writing letters to Mum, which he gave to us to deliver. The first letter read:
My dearest, darling, most loved and revered wife Rosie,
You must believe what I say now for it is the absolute and complete truth between us. I have only ever loved one woman and that has been you, all along, since the first day I saw you. I know you have never loved anyone but me – you have told me so, many times. You must know that in the 33 years that we have been married, you have never lost your beauty for me – I still think that you are the most beautiful girl for me, and curse myself now for the horribly painful times I have caused you.
Now you will not speak to me nor see me. And yet it is absolutely IMPERATIVE that I make contact with you, to explain what you must believe, namely that I have completely lost all the aggression and horribleness which naturally terrified you and caused you to leave me in fear.
Unfortunately – that is not a strong enough word – but unfortunately, that last terrible night when I frightened you so much came about before I had started these new tablets which I have now been taking for the 6 weeks which my psychiatrist said they would take to work fully, so you have never seen me or spoken to me since they have started to work. I have been completely better for a number of weeks now; no agoraphobia and no aggression at all. I know that because now I can talk to shopkeepers, go shopping and talk and feel normal. I could not even drive a car, but now I can!
If only you would agree to speak to me or preferably see me now that I have recovered, I am certain that you would be convinced. You would not be frightened, I can promise you.
I know I have been moody, but everyone has moods. And I fully realise that I made your life not just miserable but intolerable many, many times. BUT it has not ALWAYS been like that. There have been many times when we have been perfectly happy together. Can’t you just forget about the bad times, and focus instead on all the GOOD times? If we don’t get back together we can never have those good times again. Are you really going to let the next 20 years of our lives go by – 33 years of the past and 20 years of the future, a future of love and happiness that we could share? Are you really going to give up on all that, just throw it all away?
For all our ma
rriage it has been Max and Rosie, and it HAS TO be again. If not, I simply cannot continue living, because life will be meaningless. I have no desire to go anywhere or see anyone or do anything without you by my side. Now this house – YOUR house – just sits here, an empty shell without you. Your clothes are where you left them: I have to keep your cupboard in the bedroom closed so I can’t see your dresses. Everything in this house reminds me of you; all the photos, all the things we collected over 33 years together. It’s all here, waiting for you!
As it is, every night I go up to that dreaded room, to that bed, OUR bed, where I lie by myself, alone, unable to sleep, thinking only of you, of what you mean to me, of how my stupidity drove you away.
Can’t you just forgive and forget and come back to me, darling? I am nothing without you. Don’t throw it all away.
Tim is here now to take this letter to you, so I must stop writing. Please come back, darling!!
All my love, now and always,
M.E.
*
Dad wrote to Mum almost every day for five months. In the end, there were one hundred and seven pages of letters, a two-inch-thick wedge of A4 pages filled corner to corner with Dad’s maddeningly tiny script. He wrote relentlessly; he never gave up. He ran out of pens and paper, but he never ran out of words.
I would deliver the letters to Mum, and she would sit by the bay window in the apartment and read them, sighing occasionally or shaking her head. I didn’t know it then, but she kept every one, filing them away in a white plastic bag I came across twenty-two years later, after she died, tucked away in her sock drawer.
All the letters begin the same way:
HOME, Saturday, January 9th, 8.45pm . . .
HOME, Tuesday, January 11th, 12.30am . . .
Farewell to the Father Page 12