To read the handwritten letter click here.
Sunday 16 September, 2012
Dear Ella-Louise,
It has been a month since you last wrote and there have been times when I have considered simply ceasing to write; to stop all remorse and barricade it behind a wall in the darkest recesses of my mind. And then forget about it. Pretend it never happened.
Memories of twenty years ago are sullied and smudged by what I did to you. I imagined the girl you were two decades ago and I was that boy. How foolish he was. How foolish am I.
You said in your last letter why I can’t let go or say goodbye, bring about closure. Perhaps it’s the right thing to do: say our goodbyes and close the book on our friendship because I cannot give you the comfort and security you long for. I remember saying to you in a previous letter that I felt partially ashamed of what I have and what you do not.
And yet you throw the accusations at me that all I had to do was ask you to stay. You could have made that choice yourself. Over the past eight months or so we’ve been writing I’ve been trying to put together an image of who you are now. It’s like sorting through puzzle boxes to find the pieces that fit. The boys have a tendency to mix up their puzzles and half the time is spent sorting out what goes where. Piece by piece a picture emerges and you transfer pieces from one box to another when it doesn’t fit.
Even when all the pieces have been used there are always gaps, incomplete pictures where you guess what should fill in the missing space. And I can see all the gaps I have in the picture I have of you. The spirited girl I knew in high school, troubled by the spectre of her mother and the demons that haunted her, someone full of vibrancy and joy despite the darkness became an undercover narcotics cop. And it nearly killed you, the darkness threatened to swallow you whole but you stood there and yelled into the abyss and broke its hold.
But I imagine you took a permanent marker to the image of yourself and blacked it out.
And that’s what I want to do to the memory of that night: take a black texta and black it all out.
But isn’t it funny with puzzles: you create a picture but your eye is drawn to the shapes of the individual pieces, following the lines and curves and creases, distorting the image slightly. Then you notice the dog-eared pieces, the creases from unintended folds.
And I won’t be telling Rebecca about my adultery; she doesn’t need to know about it, nor do the children. This will be my sin and guilt to wear around my neck. Our marriage is good and solid and I don’t want Rebecca to have to endure the shame of my actions.
Why not let Zeke fill the gap? He is obviously attracted to you and wants to offer you some security and validation. Just as I’ve been holding on to the memory of you for twenty years, you’ve been holding onto the memory of me for the same length of time. Maybe we simply both need to let go and let it be. If you want normal, try Zeke. He seems to be able to provide you with the home, security and comfort I can’t give you.
But there are things I have to put back together.
Father’s Day a couple of weeks ago showed me just how much this whole thing has affected me. We were having it at our place and I went to get Dad from the rehab hospital. As I was taking him out to the car in the wheelchair I imagined you pushing him as you did the day after the reunion. And still Dad’s words of “You’re an idiot, Jude” sounded back at me. I may have been idiot for missing the obvious 20 years ago, but I knew I was an idiot for my actions.
Dad noticed the silence in the car and said, “What’s up with you?”
I fobbed it off with, “Nothing” and felt like I was 17 again and learning to drive. Back then Dad asked me about you, just after they gave you the guitar for your birthday. I know they had argued about the gift and thought they were doing the right thing. As Dad directed me around the town, the L-plates sufficiently displayed, he asked questions about you: what were you like? What did I like about you? As a 17 year old, getting grilled by your father was embarrassing. And like any teenage boy I answered with monosyllabic responses. But he looked towards me, and I felt like he was about to say something. I glanced over but he looked away. I don’t know what he wanted to share but he obviously decided to refrain from speaking.
Now, taking him home for Father’s Day, he did the same and I felt 17 again. Even in my own house with Rebecca, Jordan, Harley and Flynn, and Mum, I felt like I had transgressed everyone and everything.
Dad sat at the dining room table as best he could and hated being the centre of attention. Harley and Flynn wanted to show him their drawings and their new toys while Jordan simply sat beside him and held onto his left hand. Mum shooed the boys away and left Jordan with Dad. They didn’t need to speak; he turned his head and smiled at her, that half-mouthed smile and Jordan stroked his arm. She is so like her mother: considerate and compassionate.
But the withered husk that is my father scares me. He has made some progress with the physiotherapy but lately he seems to have given up. I don’t want him to go but it looks like he has decided this is not worth the effort.
He mirrors how I feel; stuck in a single spot, slowing decaying as the world continues to revolve in colour, yet seeing only shades of grey.
I imagined you sitting where Jordan was, holding my father’s hand. And that was the moment I knew I had to keep it from Rebecca. Around me the kaleidoscope of life kept refracting the light and how I now saw things.
Taking Dad home that afternoon he looked at me again and asked outright, “Is everything between you and Rebecca ok?”
“All good,” I said.
“Everything ok between you and Ella-Louise?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “She came down for the reunion and we caught up.” Sort of an admission, but not the truth. And I was 17 again.
“She seemed upset,” he said.
“Did she tell you about her past?”
“Yeah, she’s done it real tough,” he said.
Then he did it again, looking at me as if there was something else to say but he looked forward again and fell silent.
Even in his broken physical state he has a strength I don’t have. He looked after Helen and me, and took in Rebecca as one his own when we married. I realised he held you in the same esteem; if he could have taken you in as a daughter he would have.
What can I possibly offer Jordan, Harley and Flynn? I am not the man my father raised me to be.
Remember how we stood on The Point in the high winds and leaned forward into the wind and pretended we were weightless? I feel that if I tried it now I would be tossed over the edge to be mawed by the frothing ocean.
I settled Dad back into his room and was about to leave when he looked at me, having decided to say something that was on his mind, “Make sure you treat her right, son.”
I know I am at fault for what happened the night of the reunion, and at some point I have to accept the fact that I cannot be what you want me to be for you. And you have to accept it too. Can you let go any more than I can? Could you bring closure to your own life and forgive yourself? If you testify in the court case will that bring an end to something for you? An end to a part of the darkness?
It seems we have tied ropes around ourselves, knotted it with memories at every opportunity only to have it become a tangled mess like the lengths of discarded fishing line we would find around the rocks. What if there is no other way to deal with our past and current present than to hack through the ties that bind?
I walked around the house and everything has changed yet nothing is physically different. The boys’ toys are still scattered around the lounge room floor and Jordan’s room is shifting from little girl pink to pre-teen shades of black like autumn leaves. There’s still a spilt in the lounge room carpet and the bathroom sink drips and stains the basin no matter how many washers I replace. I make love to Rebecca, consume her as I have before but now it feels like I taint her body even when I touch her breast or kiss her lips. I don’t imagine I am kissing you or you taking me into yourself, but I feel myself withdrawing from Rebecca emotionally and mentally.
Maybe “goodbye” is the only option we have and I will not abandon my wife and children.
But I cannot abandon a friendship that was so significant to us both. I don’t even know what to say. There was a time I could speak with you for hours but now I find words are like eating a mouthful of sand after being dumped by a huge shore break.
I know who I am and what I want. Will you admit you can’t have what you want and take responsibility for your history? It seems like the moment you left Piper’s Reach you wanted to run, to escape, to find, to become what you wanted to be with or without me. Reminds me of Cyndi Lauper and “Time After Time.” You always knew where you could find me, where I would have been waiting.
But you waited 20 years. I can’t make the second hand on the clock unwind. All that remains is a shoe box of memories and the regret of a lustful infidelity.
Whatever happens for us to seek closure, we should seek it out. We each have our own mess to sort through and deal with.
What’s your call?
Jude
I feel so torn, wanting Jude and EL to somehow make it work but feel so sorry for Rebecca and the kids. It would be so hard for Jude to turn away from EL and vice versa with how strongly they both feel…how can they just walk away but how can they be friends now… I’m so drawn into this
And yes – you saw an in person display of goosebumps yesterday when we were talking about it Susan.
It will be interesting to see how EL reacts to this. I still can’t help thing of Jude treating Zeke and her lightly – as though suggesting she just choose a different (in his opinion) better brand of coffee.
That was the first thing that stuck out when I read this letter.
But now every time I read it I see something different in it… the simmering resentment and anger have died down to see the quiet nuances in it.
It’s like flipping that awful Michael Bolton song on it’s head: how can we be lovers if we can’t be friends. (and no that will not appear on the Piper’s Reach sound track)
Probably the most poetic of letters yet. There is little self-pity in these words, and I see a maturity in Jude that makes me more sympathetic toward him and his rather sensible approach to this whole affair.
There is also a tenderness about this letter, an almost pleading of sorts for some kind of reconciliation, if not closure, to what has happened. This letter makes it harder for me to accept or believe that the two will ever get together as a couple; rather, it suggests that, in the end, they will part as old friends, still filled with secrets, and still loyal and respectful to the other’s decisions and life choices.
This, of course, could all change with a strong reaction by EL. We’ll see!
Is it a new level of maturity or is it a new level of cop out – calling EL on it and asking for her to make the decision of what they do (perhaps know she won’t ask him to end it and thus commuting his need to keep it going?)
I think this letter is so telling of the mess they’ve landed in – that neither of them are willing (or able) to release each other. We know why EL wont–Jude and his family (especially his Dad) are the only things left in her life resembling a family. She’s not going to let go of that easily.
And I think it was Deane who said it last week… EL’s spent so many years being so many other people she’s returned to the beginning to try and work out who she is and Jude is central to that. She’s not going to let him go easily on that account.
But why does Jude by into it? He’s got so much to lose… he’s literally got everything to lose… so why not just cut EL loose. He did it when they were teenagers – let her leave. So why not let her go. Stop writing to her. Put up the barricades and leave it as a horrible memory for time to eventually consume.
Ok. You asked for it. Here is what I think. There are, at the very least, two types of love that people experience: The inexplicable feeling that overwhelms them, and the sensible and responsible response to society’s persistence for the domestication of individuals.
First, that inexplicable feeling for another does not leave us. Even untapped for decades, it lies quietly within, at the ready when called upon without effort. Sometimes it is stirred from hearing a song, or eating fortune cookies, or even walking in the city streets after a brief downpour. And when it is rekindled from the very person that serves at its center, the ability to just “let go” and shut that door is as impossible as living without oxygen. We breathe, we thrive, we exist on that inexplicable love.
Second, the love he feels for Rebecca and his family exists because it is supposed to exist. He did what he was supposed to do, and anything to the contrary, anything that is primal and goes against that domestication, is bad. I doubt very seriously that there is anything inexplicable about his relationship with Rebecca; it exists because that’s what people are supposed to do when they choose to follow the highly persuasive domesticated path.
He wants closure. It is clean. It keeps the domesticated relationship intact (or at least the facade of it), but he cannot deny the inexplicable, primal love that he feels for EL either, even if he doesn’t fully recognize it as such.
He carries too much guilt to have the two loves co-exist; yet, he does not possess the confidence or the control to terminate either one.
I think that, for Jude, the best scenario for him is to have EL leave so he can continue his domesticated relationship with Rebecca and dwell on the unrequited and primal, inexplicable love.
And that’s probably how he’s trying to frame all of this right now, regardless of how much is actually true. This is what makes his character so tragic, yet so accessible, whether or not the readers want to — or can — admit it.
EL’s never been domesticated (for want of a better word – and I don’t use it with the intention of offending anyone)–she has no personal understanding of it (though we’ll see a glimpse in a months time of why she should have a better understanding). Though after all this time… it is a sense of the domestic she craves.
Her love for Jude is primal and domestic and here lies the true conflict–as it was 20 years ago and how it exists now (with the added complication of carnal konwledge)–she loves Jude as a lover but there is also a sense of brotherly love-commeraderie, further complicated by the fact Jude and his Dad are the only people left on the planet she considers family. They are her first and only link back to who she used to be. Perhaps the only people on earth who really give a damn about her (I’m not sure EL can wrap her head around the more recent additions in her life and consider them the same way she considers The Smiths).
I don’t think either of them have really picked through their feelings to understand them…to unweave the mess they are…just like Jude says, of tangled fishing line knotted around them.
And after all that – I totally love you dissertation Rus. At the end we’re going to have to cite you as a psychological expert for your insights and the influence of your thoughts and wisdom.
PS: I was playing a little Devil’s Advocate as well – I’m bad!
PPS: I wonder too – if Jude is seeking validation from EL that she’s not going to just as easily walk away from him, as he can walk away from her. That it kind of makes it okay (bearable) in a rather warped and twisted way.
I’ve been absent on comments due to other things in my life…BUT…Jude must be a Capricorn – The King of Guilt…..He hath spoken….but keeps tossing the ball back to EL….He wants the cake…and eat it too…I see a ton of self-pity and very little maturity….Sorry Rus…..If Jude is going to live the life he told EL he will be living….he needs to put closure on it – not her.
@Rus…….I LOVE your posts – you literally take the words out of my mouth….I SOOO agree with Judes new maturity level….I don’t see an end to this letter writing soon,..I don’t see them ever being a couple, but maybe the letters will continue for ages til they figure it all out……..
I hadn’t thought of Jude as having matured. In my head he is a scared man; scared of losing his wife and scared of losing his friendship with Ella-Louise. His decision to throw out the question to Ella-Louise was an attempt to preserve his marriage, even though his wife doesn’t know of his infidelity.
He is also scared of who EL is. He only knows the girl of 20 years ago, not the woman who has gone through so much. She is protecting him, asking him for what he could have given her in the past, but cannot in the present and he knows it but cannot reconcile the differences between the EL he knew and the EL as she is now.
If he truly understood her, and what she truly needed, he would not have given in to his fantasy.
I have the greatest admiration for EL, and for Jodi to write her. It is beyond my ken to write such a complex and multifaceted character.
You have me blushing Adam. EL is definitely the most challenging (and at other times easy) character I have had the honour to write. I can only write her in her many shades of complexity because of the simplicity and grace you bring to Jude… Who Jude is allows the multiplicity in EL to be played with such effect.
It will be interesting to see how Jude digests the entire back history of EL and how (and if) it changes him and how he feels and conceptualises her. Or if he just won’t let go of his idea of who she was. How deeply the entrenched need to enshrine the past is within him.
Jude’s maturity is, I think, still something that he, himself is not aware of. In my previous note above, I alluded to the two types of love that Jude is probably experiencing. For him, the game is much bigger now than just “go away” or “I’m done with this.” His maturity is, I think, is understanding that he doesn’t understand it, and he doesn’t know what to do with that, except encourage EL to possibly be the “leaver” so he doesn’t have to make a choice (which, again, I think is impossible for him to do).
Jude has a long history of “not understanding” things – and I wonder how much of his mother’s sheltering of EL (I’m sorry – but that’s how I see Marion!) as teenagers stopped him getting a grasp on it… when we underestimate young people’s capapcity to understand, empathise, adapt and evolve.
How much of Jude is stuck back there because he didn’t have the resources, skills or help to understand it all.
Do you really think if EL wrote to him and said ‘good-bye’ he’d put away his pen and paper, his book of stamps and go back to playing happy families content that a tumultuous and unforeseen period in his life was over.
Would you forgive her and get on living his own life if she ‘walked out on him again’.
Adam…once again….Thee best…..
It seems like Jude is unable to make a clean decision – he wants his cake…But nothing is the same again, and if Jude doesn’t make a clean break with EL, it will erode his marriage and destroy everyone.
And I’ve never met a parent that couldn’t see right through their kids – probably because they’ve lived the same situations in the past.
Nice one, Adam
DC– I absolutely agree with you about the parent comment. Don’t you think the same is true about a wife being able to see through her husband? Isn’t it only a matter of time before Rebecca senses something is not exactly right?
Bill totally sees right through Jude (and he sees right through EL as well). The fact his body is impaired, reflects in no way on his ability to assimilate and grasp the nuances in Jude.
And Rebecca would have to have an inkling… you’d have to feel the undercurrent or notice his extremes of affection as odd.
Just how much Jude is living Bill’s previous life remains to be see. We’ll see a brand new character walk onto the page in about five weeks time. And Adam has the joy of fleshing it all out.
Main plots, counter plots, sub plots and sub-sub plots.
And to think I thought there would be no fodder for Season 2, much less a Season 3.
PS: Adam and I agree – we think Bill Smith rocks! Not sure how you guys feel about him.
I think Rebecca will have an inkling of an idea that something has changed, how could she not know? As for Jude, I think he will need to admit his guilt to his wife in order to maintain his marriage. This kind of betrayal cannot e safely swept under the rug.
Can’t see him leaving to be with EL but then I didn’t see the infidelity coming either. Intriguing.
As the other half of the writing partnership – I didn’t see the weekend affair with EL coming either, I was pretty much odds on for nothing happening from what we all knew of Jude at the time.
Now I wonder if Jude can bring himself to admit what he’s done? Does he have the strength to stand up and take responsibility for what he’s done?
We were taking bets last week, Susan, (for Jude’s birthday – what terrible people we are!) on what would crack Jude first: his guilt, his Dad, Rebecca, EL, the bad/good guys pursuing EL or some other left of field thing/person none of us consider at the moment.
Part of me wonders – did Grace or someone else see Jude’s car at the McCracken house that Sunday afternoon?
I think they can continue to be friends, but there are some more challenges and complications to come.
Sorry it’s taken me so long to get around to reading this letter. It was well worth the wait.
Challenges and complications galore. I still love your comment last week suggesting EL was pregnant.
It was worth the wait to see you back! We’ve missed you while you were away.