Jude, Wednesday 3 April, 2013

Wednesday 3 April

Dear Ella-Louise,

I left you in the hotel room with my latest letter. I couldn’t stay in the same room so I’ve gone and found a cafe to keep writing because there are things I haven’t yet said in the letter you’re reading. I told you I would come to Sydney. I did not say why. I told you in that letter you could not come back to stay in Piper’s and didn’t say why.

Why am I not saying this to you face-to-face? Pen and paper are the medium I am most comfortable with. On paper I was safe, even though ink is indelible. The permanency of writing it down was always the way for me to communicate. Perhaps to the detriment of using my actual voice in person. In person it’s difficult and cumbersome. Silence is the default I have.

Why did I come to Sydney? I needed answers. I needed resolution. But I know I will not find them here. I came to Sydney to support you and protect you in your time of need. It’s a reaction to all those years ago when I never responded when you needed me, curled up at your Nan’s. It does not, in any way, make up for failing you.

Yet I had to lie to be here. I told Rebecca and Mum I was in Sydney for work. Is not unrealistic as I come to Sydney every once in a while, but the fact I have to lie about it makes me uneasy.

Sydney is not home for me and nor is it where I feel safe. Piper’s is my home, my refuge and safe place. Even though the storm is raging and it may look like a place of punishment and torture, is where I am anchored.

Over the weekend and during the trip to Sydney have thought about who I am, who I think I am, and who others think I am.

Who do you think I am? Does it matter who you think I am?

Nakedness is not the ultimate level of exposure in understanding who someone is. The person is revealed in how they touch, caress, look, taste, how they listen, how they give to someone and how they receive. Nakedness is still another level of understanding. We understand through the clothes someone wears.

If I was to lay out every event from my life like a display in a museum, who would I be? You can wander the exhibits, read the letters, hear the conversations and still not know who I am.

But I know where I come from and therefore who I am.

Remember how we walked the dunes and noted the shifts and changes in the height of shape, especially after the storms that chomped into the beach. But it always reformed.

I have been part of the dunes, shaped and reformed by the wind, waves and tempests.

And that is why you cannot return to Piper’s. I need to have the chance to reform after the storm.

I will help you in whatever way I can while I am here. For that you have my word. Beyond that, I don’t know. We will have to talk it over when we have a chance.

When I return home to Piper’s, I know I am returning to Mum and Dad and their past; returning to Rebecca and our present. This is what I have to return to. You can return to Coranderk with the knowledge of a clean start, free from the chains of the past except I know the memory will never disappear and that’s probably the hardest thing to live with.

I will always have the memory of the day you left on the bus to Sydney. I will always have the memory of our time together as kids. I will always have the memories of ecstatic bliss and wretched betrayal.

There goes my phone telling me you’ve finished reading. Time to deliver this one too.

Always and ever
Jude

Wednesday 3 April (Late night)

Dear Ella-Louise,

You hypocrite!

You accuse me of disrespecting you, unable to be a man and speak with you in person yet you’ve turned your phone off, denying me the chance to have the conversation. You keep telling me you’ll tell me everything but all I have is scraps falling from your hand when you choose to open your palm and let them crumble. You keep revealing parts of your life I do not know, have not known, have never known, and then expect me to be the same person you imagine me to be. You never came out and said anything straight from the beginning, hiding it all behind silence and reminisces.

And what right do you have to correct or amend my father’s wrongs? He is not some crusade to rally to, an icon to resurrect in the hope he will bring salvation to your cause. My father is my responsibility, not yours. Sometimes secrets and silence is the only response we have left.

And we are left hurling words at each other like stones, reaching into our shared and individual histories, looking for ammunition to cast the last stone.

Strike me now and be done with it; I’m laying down my stones.

1:45am

I went out walking for a while to clear my head and cool off. When I came back into the room my letter from today and what I wrote were on the bed. Scattered pages of words like a downed albatross spread out on the blue bedspread. Words and silence are all I have. They were all I had when we were children and it seemed it was all you ever needed. We never really talked in any depth about what was going on with your Mum. I think it’s because we had no idea what to say, no vocabulary to carefully explain the unnamed emotions we felt in the pit of our stomachs. The page is where we were deepest, shared most fully, and trusted wholeheartedly. It was our greatest strength and our most intimate weakness. We preserved each other in letters, artifacts of our existence, a sacred codex.

But today was the first day I saw the true power of spoken words. I watched from the sidelines as you were interviewed for television under the lights and in front of the cameras.

On the note stuck to the door, you wrote that it’s not all about me, that it was too much to expect me to be here for you. Maybe it is, and only because of what I left to come here and what I have to return to. You make it sound like we are still eighteen and single, unattached and unanchored to anything but each other. It’s akin to emotional blackmail, a petulant tantrum to get what you want when you know the solution is more complicated than ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’

If I have acted selfishly, I am sorry. If it’s not all about me, which it isn’t, it’s not all about you either.

However, today was the first time I understood what your past has done to you, how completely and utterly broken you were. I recognise in the scars on your back the wounds that will never completely heal despite the confession you made in front of the cameras. You were made to be the scapegoat, the sacrificial victim to satiate and appease the bloodlust.

When I arrived this morning in my ‘bag of fruit’ as Dad would say, I was very nervous, petrified even about what to say, how you would respond, what you would say.

I hadn’t seen you since June but the tension quickly evaporated as you bustled about getting ready to leave for the interview. As we travelled into the city I felt the overwhelming presence of the buildings, an artificial claustrophobia brought on by the unnatural structures making jagged teeth indents in the sky as I looked up. Only the smell of the salt from the harbour sated the fear.

And then the awkwardness of Bryan’s arrival. Have never felt so uncomfortable around someone, especially knowing he read through my correspondence to you. But he was professional throughout our interactions, brief as they were. It was interesting to watch him orbit around you, fussing, trouble shooting, looking out for you and protecting you. He never appeared flustered, taking and giving direction, articulate in what he wanted and making sure you had what you needed. He observed throughout the interview, interjecting when he felt things were getting off topic or treading dangerous ground. He is your Superman – the man of steel, the man of action.

But there you were alone and naked under the lights, the camera a microscope to judge what you said.

I watched as you spoke, cloistered in the darkness beyond the illumination of the lights. From my position I could see you face. You answered the questions with honesty and candour, belligerence and aggression, humbled and broken. With every question another layer was removed, but only I saw it. While the media were out to make you their scapegoat you revealed just how broken you were. I imagined you laying out on a bed all the different costumes you wore during the past twenty years; different appearances to play a role, multiple roles as you ducked away to change and return. Each costume a skin shed or metamorphosis but at your core, a part of you that could never be changed. And as you continued talking I could see in my mind’s eye each outfit and costume disintegrating, decaying, patched and resewn until the cloth fell apart in your hands, wisps of fabric spun around you like cobwebs collect on neglected furniture and mantelpieces.

I have seen you physically naked but today I saw a true nakedness, one woven with words, a true understanding of the brokenness you have suffered through. You were branded as traitor and perpetrator, never as victim, yet the courage and hope within you never faltered.

In my mind I imaged the scars I traced across your back. I imagined the lines softening and reducing until your back was unmarked, untouched. But they will never heal and I am truly sorry for what you have been through for now I understand.

My only wish was that you had told me sooner. I understand why you couldn’t, what risk it would have put me in, but I still wish you could have said something, anything. Even just a hint of what you were going through so I could have been there for you like I was so many years ago.

When the camera stopped recording, after the last question had been answered I imagined you scooping up the threads of clothes laying on the bed, draping them over your shoulders and arms. You walked to the balcony of the hotel and stood there in the afternoon light. You stretched out your arms in a crucifix formation, the loose threads wafting in the air making them look like wings. As you raised your arms the light shone against you and you burst into flame. The clothes fell as ash and were borne away on the wind. You turned around, clothed anew in garments of your own choosing.

You were reborn from the ashes as you pushed yourself up from the interview chair. In your face was such a look of exhaustion; it drained the colour your face and eyes, weak as a newborn. The fire was there though slowly being kindled as you tested out your new legs. You looked at me and said, “Come along, Jude. We have things to talk about.”

Back at the hotel we sat in silence and drank tea. I knew there was no other time to give you my letter than now. I had to draw the line somewhere and it was here and now, as much as it hurt and pained me. I acknowledge your reaction is justified and appropriate, and I had hoped to talk it over with you. I even hid behind more words and pages while you read it.

I am not sure what I’ll do tomorrow. I want to be there for the other interview, to again be there for you like I promised; to give these letters and make restitution and gain absolution.

I wish you were here in this sterile hotel room, where I can catch a faint scent of you, to help you take the first tentative steps forward.

Always and ever,

Jude

Jude Sunday 31 March, 2013

Sunday 31 March

Dear Ella-Louise,

As soon as I sent that text last Thursday agreeing to meet you in Sydney for the interviews I wanted to rescinded it. Since then I’ve been thinking through why I want to go to Sydney and see you. I need to put it down on paper to help me follow the trail of breadcrumbs we’ve dropped over the years. It means you’ll have this letter to read in person, which will be a strange sensation. We only ever sat and read letters in person once from my memory. We were sitting in the park down from the fish’n’chip shop. We sat on opposite sides of the tree but I found it hard to concentrate on what you had written because I was worried how you were responding to what I had written.

After I give this to you I will have to leave you alone to read it.

I’ve avoided your responses and calls because what you’re asking of me is overwhelming. You make it sound as simple as a walk along the beach yet we have been engulfed by flames. The match was dropped into the undergrowth of our relationship. At first it caught on, then smouldered, wisps of smoke curling before being swept away on the breeze. It lay beneath the surface waiting until we consummated it at the McCracken house.

Then the guilt consumed me and I waited for the flames to engulf me again, except this time it’s funereal.

I am here with limitations and restrictions.

I can come with you to see your father and I’m here for the interviews, to support you in whatever way I can.

But I can’t let you return to Piper’s Reach. For you to return there threatens more of my life than you realise. It begins with me and Rebecca, extends to my parents and children and then reaches out to the people who know.

I finally convinced Rebecca to speak with me two weeks ago, just before your letters arrived. I wanted to be able to speak with her and talk to her about you, about what happened between us. Not to justify or explain, because I knew it sounded foolish. I wanted to clear the air.

The kids were with me for the weekend so I left them with Mum and Dad and went home. Like when I went to tell Mum, I stood at the door and debated whether I should knock or use my keys. However the door was open and the screen door wasn’t pulled to properly, so I knocked before entering.

“Hello,” I called out.

“In the kitchen,” was the short reply. It sounded so familiar and normal.

Entering the kitchen I saw Rebecca at the sink filling the kettle. I stepped up to embrace her, kiss her cheek as I did every time I came home but I pulled myself up short, frozen in my movements.

Rebecca turned and frowned at me.

“I’m sorry,” I said taking a step back. “I was coming in to kiss you just like I normally do.”

Her frown softened slightly before she moved to plug the kettle in and I went and sat down at the table and watched Rebecca move about the kitchen as we exchanged small talk about the children, their homework and how they were getting along.

“Flynn has taken to wetting the bed,” said Rebecca. “Harley seems to be taking it in his stride and I’m finding Jordan in bed beside me some mornings.”

“The kids have been telling me you use swear words to your mother when you’re on the phone when you think they can’t hear.”

Passing volleys. Testing the strength of the defence. And I felt ashamed.

“Sorry,” I said. “It wasn’t meant to be critical.”

Rebecca blushed slightly and a small wry smile played on her lips but the tone cut through. “Choice words for a choice situation.”

Bringing the tea over we sat across the table from each other. But how to start? Where to start? And no outcome slated for the conclusion.

I opened my hands releasing the cup from between my hands, letting go of any security and anchor.

“I am truly sorry for lying to you. For cheating on you. For betraying you. For exposing you to shame and ridicule. For abandoning you and the children.”

A litany of apologies like so many links in a chain to become a garland she could wear or a weight to sink me to the bottom of the ocean.

“What do you want from me?” Rebecca asked.

“Forgiveness. Trust. A chance to repair the damage.”

“Why? On what basis? For what reason?”

Everything I thought of was a cliché, trite, a pat answer found in a sitcom. I could only answer with a truth, “I love you.”

“That’s shit. Do you love her as well?”

“Not the way I love you.”

Rebecca pushed herself into the upright back of the chair and looked away. She turned back and leaned forward, fire behind her eyes, a demand for honesty and a no-nonsense reply.

“Explain to me why it happened,” she said.

“Was there ever someone in your life when you were young and you fell in love with, but nothing ever happened?”

Rebecca nodded slightly, as if the memory made her uncomfortable, or fear of where this was going.

“That was Ella-Louise. We were good friends in high school but nothing ever came of it. Our friendship lasted until the day she left Piper’s Reach for Sydney. She became a memory after that.”

I went on and told her about your life here in Piper’s. The drug association, the fear, the family hang-ups (mine included). I told her about your life undercover, what you lost in terms of family and life. And that I only heard about it during the last year.

“Why did you hide it from me and keep it a secret? Do you not trust me?” Rebecca asked.

“I was embarrassed,” I said. “How do you admit a crush you had back in high school wants to reconnect and catch up? Especially when it’s someone you felt deeply for. There was nothing in it, just reminisces of our shared past.”

“So when did it change?”

“I don’t know.”

“You entertained an adolescent fancy but didn’t have the forthrightness to tell me about a long lost girlfriend.”

“Would you have done the same? Would you have told me about someone you once loved getting in touch?”

“Yes, I would have.”

“Even if what you were talking about brought up feelings of the past?”

“Yes,” said Rebecca. “You let your unresolved feelings dictate how you thought. Were you afraid I’d be jealous? Afraid I’d mock you for a teenage crush? Come on, where’s the credit?”

Memory is a perpetual adolescent, with a naivety, and innocence that clouds your judgement. You see the past as you want to remember it, stuck with an emotional immaturity you’ve forgotten about.

I wonder if I froze my mind when you left Piper’s, kept in the same pattern hoping for your return?

But the folly and fallacy of youth is no excuse for the mistakes an adult makes.

Rebecca spelled out in no uncertain terms that I was not to see you again, to have no contact with you. And then your letter arrived asking me to come to you. I decided to come to you so we could sort this out between us, and I can’t allow you to stay in Piper’s.

I said to Rebecca it was too hard, almost impossible to break all contact as we needed to resolve the situation between us.

“If she maintained the fantasy for all this time, she can keep the fantasy going for another twenty years,” said Rebecca.

I’m here to sort this through with you; to help you with what you need. You’ve spelled out clearly what you want, what you need from me, but there are parts you will have to go alone.

You want me to know about your past, to let me into your experiences, but you locked me out from the start. Were you afraid I’d reject you for what you went through? They were your choices; they were always your choices. You say you don’t want to shelter me from your past but I have no connection to it, no link. I am a stranger to the twenty years spent in the wilderness without a protector, with a light to guide you home.

You spoke of my need to protect you. Yes, I felt the need to protect you – the lost boy and lost girl trying to make a safe haven. You ran from Piper’s Reach because you had to; I couldn’t run away because of what was here for me.

And yet you return to ask me to try and change history, as if we can alter the faults and sins of the past. You went to Ginny – why? To make absolution of your past, to evoke your own memories of what she had? What were you trying to do? Change time, to make it right? How do you intrude upon Ginny’s life. She lives with her past, as does my father. I live with my past and you have you to live with yours.

What’s past is prologue.

As I sit at the table at Mum and Dad’s to write this, seeing the worn marks in the wood and think of my old bedroom, now a guest bedroom where I am sleeping, I wonder if I am stuck in an adolescent loop. No longer does the room resemble what it was like when I was a child. It is simple and efficient, with no personal touch. It has grown and developed, yet devoid of personality. Is this what I have become?

I am in an uncomfortable position, one with events have been placed on me, each with their own prerequisites and requirements, and responsibilities. My wife demands I cease and desist all contact. You asked me to come to you and to return to Piper’s Reach.

I chose to come to you so I can help you in this last quest but nothing more.

We have a storm to endure and a clean up in the aftermath to restore things not as they were, nor how we want them but how they should be.

Fair winds and fair weather

Jude

Jude Thursday 7 March, 2013

POST MARKED: 13TH MARCH 2013

Thursday 7 March, 2013

Dear Ella-Lousie,

It has been six weeks since Rebecca found your letters and pushed me out.

Tonight I drove down to the beach and stood on the high tide line. I watched the waves chase each other up the beach leaving their whitewash reflecting in the moonlight before disintegrating, only to be replaced. Despite the coolness of the evening I took off my shoes and socks and walked into the edges of the whitewash. I let the water run up and over my toes, cascading over the arches of my feet and running behind to collect at my heels. As the water ran back to the ocean, it dragged the sand away, eroding where I was standing. The longer I stood with my feet in the shallows, the less stable I became as more and more sand was eroded from around me.

Everything I knew and believed in is slipping away from me. It’s being cast out to sea, churned and mawed.

After I left the house on the Tuesday I waited for a reply from Rebecca about seeing the kids. I heard nothing for two days and I hesitated to send another message. By Friday I sent another text asking to see the kids. It was their first week back at school (Jordan going into Year 4 and the twins into Year 2) and I missed the nervous enthusiasm of new uniforms, bags, pencil cases, lunch boxes, hair cuts (for the boys at least), new teachers and old friends.

I missed the controlled chaos of the morning, the search for the lost shoe or finding a pair of socks that match.

Rebecca finally responded late on the Friday night with a short note: “You can see the kids Sunday. Your place.”

I was a wreck on Saturday as I had no idea of what Rebecca had told them, nor what I was going to say.

Rebecca arrived shortly before lunch. I watched from the lounge room but kept out of sight. The kids got out, subdued and Rebecca stood next to the open driver’s door as if it were a shield between her and the house. Mum went out to greet them and the kids flocked around her like seagulls on a chip before she shooed them towards the front door.

Mum went around towards Rebecca who crossed her arms and remained behind the door. Coming around the edge of the door Rebecca edged back, arms still crossed, looking down. Mum stopped at the edge of the car door, hesitated and spoke to Rebecca. Rebecca continued to look down, not making eye contact. I watched Mum raise her hand in some gesture of comfort but paused mid air, hovering near Rebecca’s shoulder. Lowering her arm Rebecca uncrossed her arms but kept them in front of her, hands clasped together. Mum stepped forward and gave Rebecca a brief hug but Rebecca did not reciprocate, her hands clasped down by Mum’s arms.

When Mum let go Rebecca quickly got back in the car and backed out of the driveway. The kids were camped on the front step waving before being ushered inside. They came barreling in as they would normally do when we came to visit but there was a moment’s hesitation, an uncertainty about how to respond. I was as unsure as they were.

Flynn broke first and ran over. I knelt down to embrace him and soon it felt like a scrum with arms interlocked, entangled and me pushed off balance. As we picked ourselves up off the floor and came unstuck, Jordan said, “Daddy, I miss you not being at home.”

“We don’t get to wrestle because you’re not there,” said Flynn.

“Come and help Nanna with lunch and we’ll talk while we eat,”” I said. If I had been asked one more question or had to look in their faces I would have lost it. The flurry of activity in the kitchen helped subdue the rising panic in my stomach for a moment. The boys raided the fridge for margarine, jam, peanut butter and cheese while Jordan helped with cutlery and plates.

It all felt so routine and normal as they boys attempted to spread thick globules of margarine and strawberry jam on their sandwiches. Mum made me a cuppa and poured cordial for the kids. After that she slipped away and the vulnerability crept in.

As Ellie asked you questions with the innocence and trust of a child, I knew my own kids needed the same level of honesty, to know they were not in the wrong. Their concentration was fixed on sandwich making and I wanted the normalcy to last for as long as possible.

And the moment came in between mouthfuls when Jordan spoke up and said two words, “Mum cries.”

She was looking at her half eaten sandwich focused on the wedges of cheese and the teeth marks I could see scalloping the edges of both bread and cheese.

“She thinks we don’t see or hear it,” Jordan continued. “But we do.”

“And when she’s on the phone to Grandma she cries too. And uses those words you tell us not to use,” said Harley.

I was caught with half a mouthful of sandwich and swallowing but I started crying. Forcing the lump down I wiped the tears from my eyes.

“I’m so sorry” was all I could muster and speak. “I’m so sorry,” I repeated.

Jordan, Flynn and Harley kept eating, but much slower.

“What has Mummy told you?” I asked.

“She said you had done something very bad to her,” said Flynn.

Jordan had retreated behind her sandwich, her eyes no longer wanting to find mine.

“Mummy said it was like at school when you do something so bad you are sent to the Principal’s office,” added Harley. “Only much, much, much worser.”

Jordan posed the question at me through her sandwich, “What did you do?”

An honest inquiry that needed an honest answer: some understanding of why their father and mother were no longer living in the same house. But how do you explain an affair, a fling, a lustful weekend of passion? How can a child possibly grasp the intricacies of human interactions and relationships?

And yet they do. They understand more than we give them credit for. They only lack the vocabulary to express their awareness and understanding.

“Daddy broke a promise to Mummy; a promise he made before you were born and a promise he should never have broken.”

“Like when you promised to take us bike riding one day and didn’t do it?” said Flynn.

“Yes.”

“But you made it up to us. Can you make it up to Mummy? Flynn was sincere in his request.

“It will take a lot to make it up to Mummy,” I said.

“It’s serious, isn’t it?” asked Jordan. “How serious?”

“Very serious.” The temptation to hold my tongue and leave the details vague was strong but Jordan needed answers. She had been with me and Dad many times; I don’t know what she had heard but she grasped there was a problem. I had to hold my cup between my hands, keeping the last of the heat form leaching out now it was empty.

“Do you remember my friend Ella-Louise? She came to Piper’s Reach last year for the school reunion. I spent some time with her that I shouldn’t have. And I kissed her like you’ve seen Mummy and Daddy kissing. It was a very wrong thing to do, breaking the promise I made to Mummy. That’s why she is very upset with Daddy and why he is staying here at Nanna’s.”

It was out there but I didn’t know if it had registered.

“When are you coming home, Daddy?” asked Harley.

I merely shrugged. That was six weeks ago and I’m still here.

Rebecca came back a couple of hours later and again stood by the driver’s door and refused to come in. hugging the kids I didn’t want to let them go. Their faces were a mix of sadness and uncertainty and joy at seeing their mother.

Since then Rebecca has refused to speak with me except via text. She drops the kids off here and we go about our regular business of being a family. In the back of my mind I know it’s a falsehood, a broken image.

I have offered the idea of going to counseling but it has not been replied to one way or another. I’ve tried apologizing via text but it is met with coldness. When I push at the silence Rebecca responds with vitriol, disgust at my actions and duplicity. The strongest response was aimed towards you: “She was silent for twenty years, and you speak of me being silent. You were silent about your affair and you dare push me about being silent. And she can be silent for the next twenty years for all I care.”

You came home to Coranderk after having made peace with your past. You came home and made peace with the present. Right now there is no peace for the immediate future.

I’m sorry you cannot come here. Autumn is just around the corner and the storm season is not too far away.

Please be at peace in Coranderk. You deserve a new start without the fallout happening here.

Fair winds and fair weather

Jude

Jude Saturday 23 February, 2013

Saturday 23 February

Dear Ella-Louise,

I’m sorry for the long silence but I felt it was necessary. Thing are still very far from fair winds and fair weather. At the moment the coast is being lashed by a severe storm. And it’s not something I intend to leave at this moment, but weather it out.

I’m writing this from the same place you and I spent many hours at with our books and our homework. I can still feel the divot in the dining room table where I dropped Mum’s cut glass vase that afternoon back in Year 10. All that water sloshing over our science assignment research: the ink running like streams and forming blue and black puddles. I’m so glad the vase didn’t break but the clean up was a shocker. You were pretty ticked off your work was ruined but you eventually saw the funny side of it.

All these years later, the indentation is still here and I can rub my finger in the groove; even under the tablecloth it’s evident. No matter how careful we are in our lives, we leave a mark, an indentation, a scar, not only on ourselves but on the people around us. I can rub my knee and feel the skateboard scar from all those years ago – self inflicted, and I can feel the scar within myself from what I have done to you and Rebecca.

Then there are your scars – the physical of your womb, your back, your tattoo, and the emotional and mental scars from you life under cover. And the one I’ve inflicted upon you.

You spoke of your own fear, of your touch, your brokenness bringing a good man undone. I think you sell yourself far too short – you always had a goodness I could not quite understand. It’s a goodness to fight for those who cannot. At times it’s ugly and black and frightening but it’s a goodness that never fades. You are still a good woman. In comparison my goodness is a charade, a falsity, built on others’ perception and understanding of who they think I am. I was “good” because I was compliant, not because I stood firm on something.

It wasn’t your brokenness and darkness corrupting and infecting; it was my own. And for that reason I cannot accept your offer to go to Coranderk. The chance to remove myself from this storm and be in a peaceful location is tempting but the storm will only come with me. The tangled mess we have weaved will take some sorting but I can’t do it removed from Piper’s Reach. Thank you for offering to be for me what I was for you but it will have to be from a distance.

The irony is not lost on me, that I have returned to Mum and Dad’s house, sitting at the same table we sat at, where I wrote notes to you.

Ava is right, too. It wouldn’t be right for you to come to Piper’s. As much as I would like you to, to have you here, to speak with you face to face, to sort everything out, but it can’t happen yet. Right now it feels like I’m back in the surf, ducking under the waves. I can hold my breath and submerge to the quiet peacefulness and the gentle push and pull of the waves. I cannot hold my breath forever and must return to the surface where the waves crash over your head. It would be almost too easy to slip beneath the waves into silence and solitude.

For right now I need to take stock and work things out with Rebecca. There has been many conversations going on in the month since it all happened, with Dad, Mum and Adrian.

I called you that Thursday on a whim but found the words were blocked in my throat, jammed tight to the point of choking. I wanted to speak with you, even though it was four in the morning. I couldn’t sleep, had tossed and turned all night while too many things fought for attention in my mind. When you’re left alone with no one to talk to, no outlet to decant thoughts and ideas, you run the risk of temporary insanity.

Where do you go to confess your faults and adultery? In the first few days I stayed in the office, a recluse with the benefits of technology but no desire to use them for they require a human connection and it was the one thing I feared. To speak, to confess or divulge made the reality even more crushing so I basically hid in my office for the long weekend, slipping out for food and coffee. I avoided the usual places and normal times so I wouldn’t be seen. Each time I felt naked and branded with a sign reading “Adulterer.” Back at the office I felt safe again having disconnected myself from people. Mum tried to ring a couple of times on my mobile but I ignored them. I was too embarrassed to talk, feeling like the little boy caught playing with himself.

Late on the Monday afternoon of the long weekend I called Mum after I had driven past home to see if Rebecca was there with the kids or if they were still at Mum and Dad’s. I parked a little down the street, away from the house but could see the boys playing in the backyard.

I called Mum and said I wanted to come over and have a chat. She was curt in her reply but assented. As I went to pull away Beth arrived, pulling into our driveway. I turned the car around and watched Rebecca emerge from the front door, embrace Beth and wipe at her eyes. Their shapes became indistinct in the rear view mirror as I pulled away.

Standing on the front door of Mum and Dad’s I vacillated between knocking and opening the door with the key I’ve had since I was sixteen. To open the door of my own accord would have been presumptuous given the circumstances yet we do it all the time, each time we come over. Here I was, a stranger in a familiar place, like breaking curfew all over again.

Mum opened the door before I could knock and left the door open as she returned towards the kitchen. No greeting, no response. I followed her in and sat at the dining room table, fingering the divot in the table.

“Tea?” Mum asked.

“Yes, thanks,” I said.

Nothing else was said as she made two cups of tea and brought them to the table. I scalded myself with the first sip. Mum sat in the chair, straight backed, lips thin and tightly compressed.

“Rebecca told you what happened?” I asked.

Mum nodded.

“What has she told you? I asked. The question sounded stupid, as if I had some defense to mount, to put my name forward so I could be in the clear.

“That you have been unfaithful physically, emotionally and spiritually,” she said. “With Ella-Louise.”

When she said your name the guilt was a sudden slap across the face. I felt fifteen again, when she found one of your first notes to me. I had hidden it like it was a treasure and felt the embarrassed exposure of a teenage boy when she produced it, having found it in the pockets of my uniform. But now there was a bitterness and venom in her tone, not the lighthearted mocking she first employed.

“It wasn’t Ella-Louise’s fault,” I said.

“You’re both at fault,” Mum retorted. “But you even more so because you betrayed Rebecca, Jordan, Flynn and Harley.”

She bit her lower lip as if holding in something; stopping herself from speaking her mind.

“Say it, Mum.”

She shook her head.

“Say what’s on your mind.”

Again she shook her head, so I said it for her.

“You’re upset your son had an affair with a woman you never truly liked. You were tolerant of Ella-Louise, but never totally accepting of her. You always thought she was never good enough, the daughter of a junkie and would lead me into trouble. She became a cop because of what happened to her mother, sacrificed years of her life under cover to fight against the evil that consumed her mother. We hadn’t spoken in twenty years and she was looking for a friend to help her through the darkest and toughest part of her life.

“I was the only one from her past she could trust. She had lost everything: her family, her job, her life.”

“But you never thought of telling your wife. You kept the whole thing a secret from her.” Mum went on the attack. “You were so caught up in your boyhood dreams you were blinded to what was happening. She seduced you.”

“She did not seduce me.”

“Then how do you explain what happened?”

I knew it would be impossible to argue against Mum; she had made up her mind that you were guilty. I was guilty too, but not for the indiscretion. I was guilty for betraying my family. This is what she blamed Dad for – the betrayal of family. Even though he was innocent of adultery, he was guilty of focusing on someone other than family.

I pushed at the topic with a question. “Is this why you blame Dad?”

“What do you mean?”

“The whole thing with Ginny Laine. Even though he was never unfaithful to you, you treat him as though he was simply because he was looking out and caring for someone else. He was being compassionate and caring for someone in need and you treated him unfairly. It’s easier to blame the other woman for the fault than to see your own misgivings and faults. It’s easier to blame Ella-Louise than to see I was at fault. I was. I gave in to lust, something Dad never did. I’m at fault because I let down my friend who needed me and trusted me. And I’ve broken trust with Rebecca, my children, you and Dad, my friends.

“You were too self-righteous to see Ella-Louise’s Mum needed help, needed a friend, but you chose to judge her instead.”

I stopped the tears welling up in my eyes. Mum held her cup in a gesture that made it look like it was an anchor as what I said buffeted her like a storm. She steadied and launched her own counter attack.

“You cannot deflect the guilt and wrong doing of another by simply taking it all on yourself. Ella-Louise is in the wrong, too. She reached out to you, taking advantage of your caring nature and compassion. I doubt she hid from you exactly what it was she wanted and you bought into her needs.

“She came back to Piper’s for you and nothing else. She came to have and consume you and now you are left with nothing but a bitter taste in your mouth because you were used.”

I took my cup and sculled what I could, enduring the pain from the too hot tea. Setting down my cup I said I was off to see Dad. Half joking I said I’d see if there was a bed spare at the nursing home.

“Where are you staying now?” Mum asked.

“At the office.”

“Come back here after you’ve seen your father.”

An offer of somewhere to stay despite her anger and misgivings.

I found Dad in his room sniffing at a cup of coffee.

“You want this?” he asked. “It’s pretty brutal but I couldn’t be bothered with it today.”

I took it from him, poured milk and added sugar and downed the tepid concoction.

Dad waited patiently for me to say something. I tried reading his face but it was impassive, the disappointment hidden but I knew it was there.

“I’ve screwed up.” It was all I could say.

“You screwed up the day you bought into the fantasy of Ella-Louise again. I’m not blaming her but the moment she wrote to you and you responded. Your groin stood to attention at that instant while your brain looked for an opportunity to make it happen. You soiled your own bed and when you had the chance to make it right, whatever the consequence, you told yourself the lie that it didn’t matter, no one would find out.

“Your mother is very angry with me that I told her nothing about what I knew. I told her that you had to fix up the mess you’d made. I told your mother she would have only made it worse if she knew and waited for you to do something.”

“Is that why she won’t bring you home?”

“Too many reasons, Jude. Too many reasons.”

“What do I do now?” I was the young punk asking for advice, not the adult making decisions.

“You make it right. Somehow you make it right with Rebecca and your children. You tell them you screwed up and ask forgiveness even if it’s not forthcoming and pay penance.

“And you have to decide what’s to become of you and Ella-Louise. Until you make that decision, you will not be free to do anything else.”

“What did you do about Ginny?” I asked.

Dad grimaced slightly and he looked away.

“I gave her up. Severed all ties for the sake of my marriage.”

“Do you ever think of her?”

“Did you ever stop thinking about Ella-Louise the moment she left Piper’s Reach?”

Touche.

Even with the distance of a month the pain is still raw and I am still processing everything.

I went back to Mum’s and crashed out in my old room. I went back home on Tuesday and collected what I needed. Walking through the house was an unusual experience. No one was home but everything was left as it was: plates on the table and cereal bowls in the sink, a half-drunk coffee sitting in a splashed pool of liquid. It was a museum to memory, vacated by my presence and I was the visitor observing a still life recreation of the twenty-first century.

This was an exhibit of my life; life as it was four days previous. It was the little things that broke my heart: Flynn’s colouring book, Jordan’s iPod and Harley’s favourite Buzz Lightyear.

I found a pen and paper and left a note on the table for the children, before texting Rebecca I would like to have a chance to talk to the Jordan and the twins. Slipping the phone into my pocket I collected what I came for and headed back out. The click as the front door closed behind me caused me to stop. I wanted to turn around and unlock the door, leaving it ajar to know I could return again some day soon.

It was too soon to know, and even a month later, everything is still up in the air. I am emotionally and mentally exhausted and am not at peace. There is still so much to tell you but the rawness of the conversations and events are still exposed to the salt air.

I’ll write again very soon as writing it down helps me put things into an order, whether it’s chronological or alphabetical or some other codification I’m yet to decipher.

I’m going to make a cup of tea and watch this storm blow itself out from the back verandah.

Fair winds and fair weather,

Jude

Jude Sunday 27 January, 2013

Sunday 27 January, 2013

Dear Ella-Louise,

I have something to tell you but first I have to respond to your letter because it will all make sense afterwards. It seems like we wrote on the same day but I posted mine later so you should receive it early in the week. And hot on its heels this will arrive.

Firstly, I am glad you are safely home in Coranderk and have told, Matt, Ava and Zeke what happened. I hope you can gain some balance and equilibrium as you recover. It must be a unique sensation to not have to run and hide anymore, to shed all the layers of the past, destroy then even and rebuild yourself.

I understand your need whilst first in hiding to reach out to something familiar and secure. Each time I walk the high tide line or wander around the base of the lighthouse I have reminders of you. You locked me away for safety and returned, like in your dreams, to the point of protection you knew best.

But it has destroyed me. The lighthouse is a point of reference, a signal of danger. It draws you towards safe passage and a secure harbour but one false move and your stomach is torn open by the rocks jutting up, hidden under the surface of the storm.

I am that lighthouse – both protector and destroyer. I came back to you on the Sunday at the McCracken house out of a desire to protect you. During our time at high school our lives revolved around each other, protecting each other from the challenges and difficulties of life. When you left I felt alone and without purpose because who was I to protect? You had sailed beyond my reach on a bus headed for Sydney. I didn’t know how to protect you from such a distance, believing you had found a safe harbour with your Nan. Now you recognise the need to have rescued yourself first.

And in recent weeks we have asked so many questions, hypothesising and guessing, postulating scenarios about our past. If one thing had changed, where would we be now? If we could exchange stones all those years ago, or rewrite new ones, how different might it be?

I would have always been your protector, whatever happened to us. Whether the stone in our hands reads “Free” or “Stay” I would have protected you. I didn’t answer the phone on Christmas Day because I was angry: angry at Bryan, at you, at myself. Had I answered the phone we could have talked. I could have offered you a place at the table, to be a part of the family again, to be included, loved and protected. I would have listened to all that you had to say; listened to everything you’d been through without judging or commenting. I would have been there for you because I wasn’t there when you needed me in Sydney.

I was meant to be your protector but I have been the cause of your destruction and the instigator of my own demise. You spoke of your dream, where I touched your back like I did that night at the McCracken house. As I touched the scars I was consumed by fire and reduced to ashes. Except there was no rebirth, no rising from the embers.

Your dream came true. I am consumed and destroyed. This is what I have to tell you: Rebecca discovered the letters. She exposed my infidelity and unfaithfulness.

I am toying with my mobile, bringing up the number in the call log, the one you called from. My thumb hovers over the button; how hard  it is to press, to call you and hear your voice and tell you everything that happened.

In my guilt I throw my phone across the desk. I abandoned you when you needed to talk so how can I expect you to do the same for me?

It happened on Friday. I had gone back into the office to get ready for this coming week when we go back into full swing. Dave was the only other person in the building. I had left in the middle of the afternoon to run some errands and didn’t intend to go back into the office. I planned to be home a little earlier than normal and take the kids out to the beach before dinner.

I came home to a quiet house, no tv, no video games, no music but Rebecca’s car was in the driveway. I expected some noise but everything was silent. I called out as I went in the front door but had no reply.

Moving into the kitchen I saw Rebecca. She was seated at the dining room table, her eyes red and blotchy. In her hands a ragged handkerchief was twisted between her fingers.

At first I thought someone had died. Then I saw your letter from Malaysia on the table in front of her. The pages were spread out, sheets of incrimination and guilt.

I sat down opposite her, put my hands on the table and waited. Rebecca did not look up. Her voice remained even, but quiet as she sat there; her hands twisting the handkerchief before waving over the papers.

“I’ve read through this,” she said. “The first time I didn’t believe it. The second time it glanced off me. On the third time my stomach felt I had been punched so hard I wanted to vomit.”

Rebecca closed her hand together, paused in their conjuration over the papers. Her eyes kept glancing over the words.

“I came into the office this afternoon, but I must have just missed you. I came over to your desk to leave you a note and this was on your desk.

“Did you screw her?” she asked.

I could deny nothing, omit nothing if she asked. “Yes,” I said.

“Why?”

I had no answer. No return of reply. I can’t even answer this question when it is asked by you. I couldn’t hope to explain a history so entangled in one another in a short response. To answer the core of Rebecca’s question required an admission of fantasy, of long lost and unrequited love, of asking those hypothetical questions. And at the core of her question is a focus on herself – why have I betrayed her? The question “Why?” is not just about an explanation of what lead to my actions but a heart wrenching plea to explain the most intimate of betrayals.

“Did you try and absolve yourself by making love to me? Were you sanctified by sex with me?” Rebecca asked. “Did you think of her as you sucked my breasts? Were you imagining her as you looked at me? Did screwing me take away your guilt?”

With each question she stared at me, wiping at the tears with the back of her hand. My mouth was dry and my heart pounded like the surf in a storm. The hurt and pain in her eyes ripped me apart. I wanted to speak, to console, to offer my apologies but there were stones in my throat.

“Do your parents know about this?” she asked.

“Only Dad,” I said.

There had been a pause before she asked, almost five minutes. When I said only Dad knew, the silence descended again. After a while, Rebecca became agitated, fidgety. She finally broke her silence.

“Tell me what happened.”

She was wrestling with the torment of either not knowing and guessing or knowing and living with the knowledge of the specifics.

I told Rebecca what happened between us on the weekend of the reunion without omission or embellishment, no begging for forgiveness or pleas for understanding and clemency.

There were so many other things to say, to tell Rebecca about our history growing up, about what happened when you left Piper’s Reach and all the suffering you had been through. To some how understand that you were not to blame. There will be time for explanations later. For now it had to be factual and clinical.

When I had finished, Rebecca collated the letter in front of her into one pile and slid it back to me across the table.

“Take this back to your office. You can stay there,” she said.

Rebecca anticipated my questions.

“The kids are at your mother’s. At this stage I won’t say anything.”

I stood to leave, collecting your letter as I rose. Walking past Rebecca I reached out to touch her shoulder but she flinched, recoiling as if struck.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Standing beside her I felt the true bitterness of guilt, the acid taste in the back of my throat when I saw just how much I had hurt her. Would it have been like this if I had told her before she found out?

I had to ask a question. “Will we have a chance to talk about this at a later stage?”

Rebecca shrugged.

“I love you,” I said, “and I’m sorry for hurting you.”

From the door to the kitchen I looked back at her as the afternoon sun began to fade. She remained at the table, eyes focused at a point beyond and through the surface of the table. Never has a moment in my life hurt so much.

This is now the second day at the office where I have set up a temporary home. I haven’t spoke to Mum or Dad or the kids.

I do not know what happens from here. All I know is that the weather has closed on, bringing wind and rain in destructive waves.

Would you have traded your life for something else? Would you have traded your life for someone else?

Fair winds and fair weather

Jude

Jude Tuesday 22 January, 2013

To read the handwritten letter click here.

Tuesday 22 January, 2013

Dear Ella-Louise,

I’ve dropped back into the office today and found the letter you wrote in Malaysia.

I feel a little foolish after having read it especially in regard to Bryan. And for that I am sorry. Pangs of jealousy can feel like a knife to the stomach or the constant sting of grazed hands and knees, and I was a little out of line in what I said, how I expressed it. Sorry.

You’re right when you say your ordeal is simply an academic or intellectual thing for me. Presented as facts and statements, highlights of a presentation or lines quoted from a play, I struggle to make the emotional connection.

When you were in the school musical I watched the transformation you underwent each night. You took on the persona of the character with clothes, hair, make up. I was surprised one night when I saw you still in your stage make up – accented, highlighted, deliberate, to make your character real for the audience. You laughed and wiped your brow, smudging the thick layer of foundation beginning to unmask the Ella-Louise I knew underneath.

The longer I reread your letters the closer I come to understanding the characters you played and the roles you filled. And somehow a tangled piece of fishing line or unspooled reel of cassette tape is your link between past, present and future.

Everything about it is a case of “What if…?”

We could pinpoint a thousand moments in our lives and ask the question “What if…?” as if hypothesising the past opens up new avenues of possibilities in the present to construct alternative futures.

What if you said you would stay?

What if I said I loved you?

What if Paul had not spewed down my back?

What if we hadn’t slept together?

But they are futile questions, ones without answers. Even while we were away on holidays Harley was swept out by a rip. Thankfully he didn’t panic and followed his surf training, coming ashore further down the beach. It scared the hell out of Rebecca and me, helpless as we watched him being dragged out to sea. Even in that instance Rebecca and I asked “What if…?” questions. What if Harley panicked? What if he drowned?

At some point you let the what if questions fall like leaves in autumn. They are dead, a part of the cycle of life.

I’ve gone back out the car park below The Point and super imposing all the memories I have of us, of then and now, against the grass of the hill. A montage of images, reflections, sense, things to laugh and cry about. In some ways it reminds of me glass cases with rows of insects and butterflies pinned to the backing board and catalogued. And their life extinguished.

Going back to your letter sitting on the passenger seat beside me, I accept responsibility for what happened between us, and I accept that you bear responsibility too. I denied it for so long because I couldn’t bear the thought of you being wrong. If I took full responsibility, I reasoned, you were absolved of wrongdoing. It means I kept you safe, I protected you, I kept you whole and pure.

We each gave the other permission: to accept what we had always wanted but had withheld; to give ourselves over freely and without fear, knowing the safety of each other’s body and spirit. We orchestrate our own demise, and I do have significant things to lose here in the present.

Our family holiday showed me how much I have to lose: my wife, my children, my family. I don’t know what to do to love you in the way you want. Yes, I do love you, but it’s the Ella-Louise I knew so long ago. I love the memory of you. Do you love the fantasy you have created of me? Have you manufactured a memory of who I am from what you remember? I know I kept a fantasy of you in my heart and mind, a treasure of the past. I can admit it, can you?

How am I to love you in a way deserving of who you are? I cannot see you as another Mrs Jude Smith. We can remain friends, and I can love and support you in that way except our shared past must be dealt with. That one moment of permission has forever altered the perception we have of each other. My heart still breaks for the girl I knew, what she had to endure, and what she has endured in her life in the past twenty years.

But it feels like you are making me choose, a choice between yourself and my family. To choose between my present and my past “What ifs…?” My questions stopped the moment you stepped on board the bus for Sydney, watched my questions get caught up in the plume of exhaust smoke and flurry of dust kicked up by the tyres as the bus pulled away from the kerb. I had to let part of you go, but treasure a small part of you to myself for the sake of history and memory.

Perhaps that is what Dad has done, kept a memory of Ginny Laine alive so that she will not die. We have let Paul die because we do not speak of him, do not preserve him in our memory, letting time erode our memories and remembrances. We used to sit and watch the waves pound the cliff under the lighthouse and wonder when the incessant, but patient, mawing of the ocean would cause the cliff to collapse and bring down the lighthouse.

I’m still trying to come to terms with what Dad said to you, and parts of it I can believe while other parts seem too fanciful to be true. I don’t doubt Dad was honourable with Ginny, did everything to protect her and keep her safe, wild as he was.

I can certainly see parts of myself in him, both good and bad – those things that attract people and the things that cause him the greatest trouble. And they are often the same characteristic. The loyalty, the passion and willingness to give all for family, a protector – these are all the characteristics I see in myself, a reflection of my father, and to some extent, my mother.

My mother is a complex person: she appears overly self-righteous and condemnatory of others, quick to judge and strict in her personal opinion of herself and others. Her intentions, as well intentioned as they were, were born out of a desire to help others, something my father does too but from Mum there was more sympathy and pity than empathy.

It comes from a place in her own childhood, something that is rarely spoken of. All I know is her father was strict and authoritarian, almost ascetic in his ways, according to Dad. The nicest thing I’ve heard Dad speak of him is “righteous prick.” He died before I can remember. There is a photo of me, probably about two years old sitting in a man’s lap who had a very austere look about him. He looked like a snap shot from one of those old time photos. He is rarely spoken about but even more of a secret is Mum’s older brother, Richard.

He is simply a name and a photograph to me, for that is all I know about him. If I asked Mum about him she ignored me or changed the topic and Dad was very reluctant to say anything although he wanted to.

The only time I ever found out anything was when we were in Year 12, some time at the beginning of the year a little while after the surf club Christmas party. Mum came home from the shops from doing the groceries in tears. Apparently your Mum launched a verbal tirade about “anything and everything;” Mum’s words. She spoke of it being a rehearsed vent and included remarks about me but she wouldn’t repeat anything. I was surprised Mum didn’t retaliate, fight back, spit her own venom.

But there was nothing. No response except her tears when she returned home. She came home, dropped the groceries in the kitchen, dissolved into tears and trailed off the to the bedroom.

Dad went in and was only gone for a short while. When he came out he said nothing as he made a cup of tea for Mum. When he came back out again I asked him if Mum was ok. He simply nodded.

“It’s about Ella-Louise’s Mum,” he said.

“What did she do?” I asked.

“Nothing significant,” he said. “It’s more in response to your Uncle Richard.”

“Did something happen? Why have we never heard much about him?”

Dad paused at the kitchen counter, his hands resting on it to support his weight.

“If I tell you, this must be a secret you keep forever.”

I nodded, but what Dad said to me only really has resonance now.

“Richard’s an alcoholic and was disowned by your grandfather before you were born. Your mother has built herself a coping mechanism that conflates her father’s authoritarianism and her compassion to help others. Unfortunately it comes out as criticism and negativity.”

I can see now what my mother was trying to achieve, misdirected and ill-perceived as it was to protect me, to protect Dad, even you. The effect of it all has been a lack of surety in myself, and perhaps Dad, too.

Mum has her own secrets, her own personal pain to deal with, people, events and circumstances that have shaped who she is for better or worse. Its influence has been far reaching but I have to accept things for what they were, and are, and take responsibility for myself. I find it hard to accept Mum still punishing Dad after all these years; it may be how Dad feels because of the stroke. It has affected him and made him weak and vulnerable both physically and emotionally. The fire is still there but it’s diminished, flickering, in danger of being extinguished. Maybe Mum is punishing him because she won’t get the house fixed to accommodate an invalid.

There are two streams of thought here so I’ll go and talk to Dad about it later.

The wind’s picked up this afternoon and pushing the white caps into a fury. The wind is whistling around the car, creeping in through the half opened windows. I had to grab the papers from being flushed out the windows. It would have been funny to see a ream of writing paper escaping from a car.

I can see the high tide mark from where I sit and the lighthouse is a perpetual reminder of who we were, what we wanted, and what we want now. While the high tide mark varies from day to day, the lighthouse is a monolithic testament to the fact I was trying to save you. Save you all those years ago and even now. But you don’t want me to save you so perhaps I should turn off the beacon, close the door behind me and lock the door forever.

You have made it clear what it is you want but right now I cannot give it to you. I want to love you, give you the love I kept hidden in my heart. I gave some of it to you the night of the reunion, unchained the box I had locked away for you. I have had to lock it again but I know where the key is. I want to throw it off The Point like we did the stones, yet Pandora’s Box is open and nothing can change that.

We are standing on opposite sides of a door, each of reaching for the handle to open but pausing, letting our fingers hover above. I can see the metal of the handle smudge with condensation from the sweat evaporating from my fingertips.

There are a couple of spits of rain beginning to fall. Better get back to the office then head home.

Always and ever

Jude

Jude Wednesday 16 January, 2013

To read the handwritten letter click here.

Wednesday 16 January, 2013

Dear Ella-Louise,

I’ve come into the office after getting back from holidays and there was a letter here from you, dated just after Christmas. It means you won’t have received my last one yet or maybe you’re home from Malaysia.

We’re pretty thin on the ground here at the moment with the holidays knocking most of our staff out so it’s nice here, pretty much by myself with the stereo turned up a little louder than usual.

I’ve pulled out your last few letters and have spread them out on the desk, going over them again and again to try and make sense of everything that has occurred to you in the past couple of months.

And firstly I must apologise for being a selfish prick, caught up in my own weak fallacies when you were struggling with the very real threat of life and death.

And I feel a little embarrassed at having my letters read by someone other than you. I feel a little violated by Bryan because of his phone call. He treated me like a petulant child who was threatening to throw a tantrum. He told me in no uncertain terms was I to try and call you or find out where you were. As if I would have the gall to put you at further risk by contacting you.

And it appears there is more to this relationship than that of lawyer and client seeing as you went off with him for 2 weeks to Malaysia. I had hoped you would be able to come back to Piper’s in the aftermath of the trial so we could sort things out. I am still waiting for you, waiting to see you again and embrace the friend I once knew, the connection in my soul that grounds me here in Piper’s. Even if it is only to see you one more time in order for you to let go, for me to say a final farewell, I need you to return but don’t know when or how it can be.

In coming to some sort of understanding of what you’ve been through it is nearly impossible. I replay the content of your letters, but all I see are scenes from a silent movie – no dialogue, no sound, no context. I see you take on different roles, different characters, perform on different stages.

But the more I replay the scenes, the deeper my sorrow becomes. I am coming to know the isolation, the fear, the terror of what you have been through. It gives me goose bumps thinking about it. It makes my stomach turn and feel really cold when I consider your experiences and all I can say is I’m sorry for not understanding, for not being able to be there for you.

It’s a bit like the realisation that your mother was as addict. All through high school I was aware of the talk about your Mum. It was whispered in the corridors a school, muttered in quiet circles at parties and I knew in my head your mother was involved in drugs. And for that reason I focused on you. It wasn’t until a couple of years later while at uni did the awareness sink from my head into my heart. And I hated myself for not knowing sooner. You had left Piper’s for Sydney and I was at uni.

The realisation came because a guy in our dorm was a heavy drinker and he changed dramatically when on the piss. His mood fluctuated from sombre to violent and aggressive in a moment’s notice. His girlfriend was tolerant of it but it soured when he took a swing at her one night. He fractured her cheek and it was the last we saw him.

When I went back home in the holidays I spoke to Mum and Dad about it and how I finally understood something of what you had gone through while we were at school. I said to them I hated myself for being stupid and not realising sooner what was happening to you.

Mum was in the middle of drying the washing up and pursed her lips tightly into a thin line. I guessed she was wrestling with her own thoughts on the matter.

“You didn’t need to know such things when you were younger,” she said, as if it summed up a parental exclusion clause.

Dad stepped into the conversation, filling in the gaps. “We deliberately kept things from you. We felt you didn’t need to know. If you wanted to know, we would have told you if you had asked.”

“So you kept me in the dark? On purpose?” I asked.

“You did more for that girl than you could possibly imagine,” said Dad. “You gave her something no one else in this world offered her and for that I am sure she is eternally grateful.”

Me being the dense idiot I was, couldn’t get my head around what Dad had said.

“You gave Ella-Louise security and hope when she had none. You gave her friendship and support, without question, without the need for return.”

Twenty years on I had forgotten all that, forgotten the simple purity and beauty of our friendship.

I saw the number come up on my phone on Christmas Day, and still a bit annoyed at Bryan, thought it may have been him at first. But when it kept ringing I guessed it had to be you. I didn’t answer because I didn’t know what to say. Any kind of casual conversation was trite in my mind, a covered over falsehood of exchanging pleasantries. I wanted to hear your voice, to know you were ok but I needed to see it on paper, to physically read your voice from the page to know you were safe. Sorry I could not speak to you in person.

And for whatever reason I feel betrayed by this burgeoning relationship with Bryan. You said you were waiting for me, to come back and talk to me and now it feels like I’m on the outer, excluded from all that has happened to you.

Dad told me you called him, that he got the message you left. He says to say “Thank you.” He asked me how soon you were coming back to Piper’s and I shrugged and said I didn’t know. I was angry at you for leaving the message and having to act as intermediary for you and him and I was angry at Dad for pestering me about Rebecca. The more he mentioned it, the more the guilt stirred in the pit of my stomach.

“Why are you at me to tell Rebecca?” I asked. Dad was a little taken aback. “It was a one off mistake, something I deeply regret and I want to move on.”

Dad looked at me, his eyes taking on the colour of the sea beneath storm clouds.

“That’s bullshit,” he said. “You did it because of what you fantasised about. You had every opportunity to back out but you threw yourself in with wild abandon.”

I hadn’t expected a reaction this strong. He went on. “And no matter what you think, someone, someday will find out and tell Rebecca before you get the chance.”

“But what about you and Ginny?”

“That was all above board; there was nothing going on. But someone saw us together one evening and told your mother.”

So many things made sense: Mum’s judgemental tone, their often cool relationship, Dad’s attempts to prove to Mum he meant what he said.

“Whatever happen between you and Ella-Louise must be resolved and reconciled,” said Dad, “but you also have to look at you and Rebecca.”

I realised you have all these letters of mine dating back months you haven’t read yet. Ask Bryan; he could probably give you the highlights package.

In your last letter, the one just after Christmas, Bryan asked if you still love me. You said you didn’t know. I still love you and I am prepared to release you if you need me to.

On the radio in the background they’re playing The Triffids’ “Wide Open Road.” I can see for you the broad expanse of a new life, wherever it is, with whoever it is.

So how do you think it feels sleeping by yourself
When the one you love, the one you love, is with someone else

You spoke of how well do we really know anyone, or know ourselves. You know me, who I was all those years ago, who I am now. I knew who I was until the reunion and I haven’t reconciled myself yet. I can see how hard it must be to know yourself after all those years of hiding behind names and personas, being someone else.

I hope you find yourself.

Fair winds and fair weather,

Jude

Jude Thursday 3 January, 2013

To read the handwritten letter click here.

Thursday 3 January, 2013

Dear Ella-Louise,

Sorry I haven’t written back to you for quite some time, apart from the Christmas card. It hasn’t been through want of trying but more to do with circumstance.

Right now I’m still nursing a New Year’s Eve hangover – I know it’s 3 days later but I’ll fill you in.

Just after Christmas, an old friend of Rebecca’s called us and offered us their powered caravan further down the coast. We hadn’t been on holidays for some time and the thought of a break away from home was a good one, so we took the offer and came down just before New Year’s.

To be honest it was good to get away from home, try and reconnect with Rebecca while we’re down here for a couple of weeks. The kids are loving being right on the beach, riding bikes and scooters, swimming for as many hours as possible. And there’s a lovely bunch of people nearby, very friendly and accommodating. Which is the cause of my 3 day hangover.

One of our neighbours here is Romanian. He and his wife have been coming to the same place for more than twenty years. Their kids are all grown up and they treat Jordan, Harley and Flynn like their own grandchildren.

And he makes his own schnapps, which accounts for the massive headache. Throughout New Year’s he kept offering shots of different flavours: blackcurrant, blueberry and others I’ve erased from my memory. And he hasn’t stopped offering since and I feel it’s impolite to refuse. I’ve come so close to spewing my guts up but have managed to keep everything down.

Rebecca’s taken the kids for an early swim while I try to remember what sober feels like and wait for the caravan to stop spinning. Someone’s making bacon and eggs and I want to raid their party and chow down. But first, Berocca.

Ever since you told me the date of the trial I have been worried and concerned. I don’t know if you’ve had the chance to read my letters, or even if they were forwarded to you, but the silence is terrifying. I assume you are home now because I received your letters and have hold onto the hope you are ok. The quietness, the silence, the lack of news is unsettling, except what you have written.

I have read and reread your letters from late November, just before the start of the trial and the thing that sticks out the most is the image of the phoenix, its wings too weak to unfurl and fly away, but I cannot be your John Connor, to have your back, to be there on the other side for you. I have retreated into the wilderness of my own design, an apocalyptic wasteland where I cling to the fence as the wave of destruction I set in motion consumes me. I cling to the fence, anticipating the surge.

But for you there is the certainty of a wave, one where your past is confronted – all those whose names I have come to know as characters in the shadow-puppet play of your past life when Charlotte McKay: Jakob, Alan and the band, Dario and the Franco family, Grayson. Even the current players: Matt and Ava, their daughter Ellie; Zeke. Two different lists of characters performing two different dramas. The curtain has been raised and the stage is constructed with two different settings.

But the final act remains unresolved, unknown, unwritten. And it worries me. There are too many options, too many real chances this will all end in tragedy. The longer I do not hear from you, the more real the idea of your death becomes. I will keep writing in the belief you are alive and will keep writing until there is certainty one way or the other.

In the play that is your life, the one I have read and followed since we were teenagers, and the life of tragedy I have read through your letters, death has been constant companion. Yet we do not speak of it. We didn’t speak of Paul Halligan’s death at the reunion because if we don’t speak about death everyone lives. If we deny our mortality, our lives have significance. Ironically, to leave a legacy, to be remembered, we must die.

Yet I know death is something you do not fear while I am shit scared of it. Especially when it comes to Dad. His health is getting worse when he should be getting better.

I want to know you are home and are safe, to know how the third act played out so that we can write an epilogue, to find a point and a place we can reconcile.

I remember the photo you were talking about, up at the Heads. It was on the corkboard above your desk at home. The few times you felt it was safe enough to bring me back to your place. It was the North Head because we wanted to be higher and further from Piper’s Reach. It was what Jordan would call a “selfie,” a self-portrait, but it’s what we did back in the day: point the camera at ourselves, press the button and hope the shot came out when the film was processed.

In one of your Mum’s rages, and it may have been after the Surf Club Christmas party, she tore it off your wall and ripped it into pieces. You were devastated and I knew you wanted my copy (also back in the day when you could buy double sets of prints) but you were too afraid to ask. I made it into a card for you and gave it to you just before you left for your Nan’s.

Speaking of the Surf Club, this was the first year Dad couldn’t make it and he was sorely put out. He insisted he was well enough to go but he was recovering from a chest infection and Mum told him to have more common sense and to stop being a stubborn barnacle. Mum can’t even swear right without it sounding ridiculous.

As I said before, Dad hasn’t been too well lately and it’s really killed his spirit. I’ve also deliberately avoided him at times so he won’t ask me about you or Rebecca. I’ll take Jordan with me as a barrier, a shield, but Dad sees right through it and drops comments. I’ve told him about the trial and what I know from your letters and it placates him a little.

From time to time I’ve thought about Ginny, her past and present, and how different things might have gone for her, what Dad might have done. Then I play out the different scenarios that could have been us but rather than wave a tapestry, I end up with a tangled mess of knots with no meaning.

If I try and backtrack our history, our paths, all I see are missed opportunities, mistimed chances, crushes out of sync and in sync without the impetus to make something happen. And now we have become entangled in designs of our own making, wound like the spools of cassette tape and fishing line.

We all went to the surf club Christmas party in honour of Dad, and his absence was noted. The kids had fun on the jumping castle and were lead around on Shetland ponies. There was a cracker of a fireworks display, unlike the clandestine ones Adrian organised and there was much carousing.

I didn’t play a set, although the memory of playing alongside you all those years ago is still fresh. We had a ball that night – nothing existed outside of playing alongside you – bum notes, missed words and all. Even the broken string in the middle of “Throw Your Arms Around Me” didn’t matter.

Standing on the balcony after a few too many, Adrian came and joined me and he’d had a few too many more. And he hit me with a question I was not expecting.

“What’s up with you and EL?” he asked.

I had no idea where he was coming from and it felt like someone had dropped a brick into my stomach.

“What do yo mean?” I asked.

“Back at the reunion, over at her place, you were looking at her the whole night like you used to do when we were back in high school.”

“Was not,” I said.

“Mate, you were making the same eyes at her then as you were twenty years ago while you played the stage back in there,” Adrian said, thumbing back over his shoulder into the surf club.

“There’s nothing going on,” I said. “We caught up over the weekend. We hadn’t spoken in twenty years, just like everyone else.”

“So how’d you get her to come back? She didn’t even come to the reunion.”

“She came back for her own reasons, not because of me.”

“Bollocks, man. She had the hots for you and you had the hots for her. You could see it. I noticed Rebecca left the reunion early and you hung around for ages.”

“Rebecca went home sick.”

“But you didn’t rock up to the recovery party on the Sunday like you said you would.”

“I told you I had to look after the kids because Rebecca was sick.”

I felt the load in my stomach grow heavier and heavier as more bricks loaded in with each of Adrian’s questions. I had kept to the same story, never wavered, never changed, but the carefully told lies, neatly arranged in their own rosary chain was threatening to unravel.

I never told Adrian or Beth anything of your past because I felt it was sacrosanct and not to be told to anyone. All anyone knew was that you had returned from the silence, made some sort of peace with the past and returned to the silence of the future.

“Someone reckons they saw your car drive away from the McCracken house on the Sunday, just before that big bugger of a storm blew in,” said Adrian.

“Nah, couldn’t have been me,” I said, every lie unknotting the one before. One too many brews for Adrian and lubricated minds find tales spun from the onshore wind, forming a crusty salt of veneered truth until the falsehood is believed as fact.

“I reckon you hooked up with her,” said Adrian, half-joking. “Wouldn’t surprise me if you did.”

I turned away from Adrian, back towards the surf club, the music had paused and Rebecca was exiting the room onto the balcony. Adrian had been speaking over the noise but in the moment of silence he said, “Did you screw her?”

The music started again obliterating the end of Adrian’s sentence. Rebecca spotted me and Adrian, came over and kissed my on the cheek before rendezvousing with Mum and Beth on the far side of the balcony.

I don’t believe she head Adrian’s insinuations but I almost dumped a brick or two in my pants. I drained my glass and said to Adrian, “Here, let me get you another.” I hoped a few more drinks into him and he wouldn’t remember much of the night.

That was back in early December and Adrian hasn’t said a word since.

I need to hear from you, to know you are safe. I’m too far gone to be your John Connor but I still want to have your back, to protect you in some way, but I am so far removed from your past, the past I never knew existed until you came back into my life. I can only spectate from the sidelines, fossicking news from the paper, the television or radio. I read that Ruby-Rose McKay refused to testify against the man she married, the man she was sent undercover to investigate.

All I can see is a figure in a court room, isolated, without friends or support, boldly defiant and having her own purpose in doing so.

When I combine the letters with the news I piece together more of who you are and the metamorphosis you are under going. I see the need to burn it all away and rise again, unfurl the wings, letting them harden from the residual heat of the fire so you can fly away from here.

Be at peace.

Cup of coffee #3. Beginning to feel human again and rereading what I wrote. Apologies for the rambling jumping backwards and forwards covering old and new ground.

I’d like to tell you about Christmas, what we did but it feels insensitive knowing you possibly spent it alone. I hope Matt and Ava invited you in and made you feel at home. How are the renovations coming along? I imagine Zeke has been putting himself to good use while you were absent. How will you decorate your new home: photos from the days with the band? Music memorabilia? Antiques or modern furniture? This is your rebirth and you can make it any way you want.

It’s funny how you remember your old bedroom walls: posters of bands and musos, surfers and skaters, random pictures cut from magazines. And never being able to remove the Blu-Tac stain from the wall or taking it off a poster without it ripping.

I look around my place and see nothing of what was. Back when we were in high school our rooms were our identity, a composite sketch of who we were, what we wanted to be who we wanted to be like or what we were rebelling against.

How and when did we lose our identity? At what point did we pull down the charade, the veneer, metaphorically, symbolically and literally and become someone else?

Sometimes it feels like I have simply added layers like wallpaper or papier-mâché until what is inside, at the very core, has deflated, withered and died. It’s a bit like Christmas when you get more enjoyment in choosing the wrapping paper and wrapping the present, aiming for clean lines, straight folds and crisp corners, and trying to avoid it looking like the ham-fisted effort of a five year old, than in the gift itself. At my age I know what I’m getting; there’s no surprises anymore. Best thing about being a kid was how many hints you could drop to your parents and see what you scored on Christmas Day. I love buying presents for the kids in that regard, just like I loved buying things for you. Even if it wasn’t your birthday or Christmas, some little token, just to see your face light up. It could have been something from a gum ball machine but you appreciated the thoughtfulness. You even made it a running gag to get a new trinket each time you went to Sydney; the weirder the better.

Christmas this year was a sombre affair with the passing of Rebecca’s grandmother, Ruth. She still managed a laugh and plenty of gin for ninety-four. It happened about a week before Christmas, one of those “expected-but-unexpected” things. This year we were with Rebecca’s family and they invited Mum and Dad as Helen wasn’t going to be around.

Jordan helped look after Dad but his spirit wasn’t in it this year with stroke affecting him. He felt awkward and hated fuss (like he always does). Something’s cracked within Dad and I don’t know what it is. Back at the nursing home he poured a large Scotch and sat on the little balcony and did nothing until the ice had completely melted. I sat beside him in silence, another statue to the quandary of emotion but present in the physical.

And as I sat with Dad, not moving until he gave permission to go, I thought of you, Ginny, Rebecca, Mum, Adrian, Paul, the trial, everything, to see if somehow I could make sense of it all.

And in all of it was Dad’s directive to step forward and tell Rebecca. I wanted to ask him why. Had he stepped up and spoken to Mum all those years ago and what happened? Was that the reason why I sensed some coolness between Mum and Dad growing up? And why Mum often railed against yours?

Too preoccupied with plastering the walls of my room to construct my own identity, my own DNA to notice my parents’ relationship. Too caught up in distancing myself from who my parents were, who I thought they were, when I should have focused on the values they represented. Even today I cannot measure up to the man my father is. I share his traits and character, but not his masculinity.

Enough moping.

When I get back from holidays, I’m hoping there’s a letter from you waiting at the office. We’ve shut down over the Christmas and New Year break and extended it into January. I need to go in every second day or so to check on a few things but it’s good time away from the office. No field trips, no seasickness.

I pray you are safe and I hope to hear from you soon.

Always and ever

Jude

Jude – Friday 21 December, 2012

To read the hand written letter click here.

Friday 21 December

Dear Ella-Louise,

I hope this card finds you back home safely. I don’t know if you have received or read my letters but I have received and read yours.

The silence since the start of the trial is worrying and I hope you are ok.

There has been a lot going on but here is not the place for it. After Christmas I will write again and fill you in.

Happy Christmas.

Always and ever,

Jude

P.S. Remember the dog-awful blouse Mum gave you for Christmas in about Year 10? She still gives dodgy presents.

Interview With Rus Vanwestervelt

Throughout the time of Post Marked: Piper’s Reach, one commentator has engaged with the series in such as way as to be almost a third author. Rus Vanwestervelt has given Jodi and Adam remarkable insight into each of their characters, articulating their psychology and motivation in ways neither of them could have envisaged.

Such is the impact of Rus’ insight and lengthy essays he posts after each letter that Jodi and Adam have coined a phrase: WWRT – What Would Rus Think?

With that in mind, Rus sent through a series of questions about Piper’s Reach to Jodi and Adam. They responded with four thousand words.

Drop into Rus’ site and get a behind the scenes look into the process and thinking behind Post Marked: Piper’s Reach.

Find the three parts of the interview at http://www.rusvw.net/

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3