Sawdust (22 page)

Even as we sat there before the marriage counsellor – empty in our marriage and yet somehow old and ancient friends, holding hands
– the counsellor sat on the other side of the room, not looking at appearances, not looking at our tightly-sweating, clasping hands, but reading instead into the tone of our words, the slant of our bodies, the blinking of our eyes.

And what she heard, once I was able to finally open up – from the bottom of my gut – was how Chris had tried to manipulate me, was continually befooling me, saying that he could not exist or carry on without me. She also eventually saw how I had allowed myself to be deceived, had allowed myself to be lied to.

Finally, it also came out: how Chris had threatened to kill himself if I left him.

He sat there shaking his head in the negative, defiant.

‘Is that true?’ she asked.

‘Yes, yes.’

Only it was me replying.

Chris said nothing.

I looked across at him.

He looked down. His eyes dark and upset.

‘He’s done it before. You have to believe me.’ I was sounding desperate. ‘You have to believe me. He does this to me all the time with his self-harming and “can’t-live-without-you” threats.’

That was among our first counselling sessions. But so it went, on and on. At home, we lived like ghosts around one another, but finally, finally, seeing us still holding hands, there was only one conclusion that could be reached:
This marriage is over.

For my part, without actually saying it, the counsellor had in effect given me the power to say to Chris, my husband of almost thirteen years, father of my three children, my once friend and saviour from Mum and Dad, ‘I neither want nor need you anymore. Our marriage is done.’

For Chris, in his corner, ultimately there was only one piece of advice, and in the end it had to come from the counsellor herself, ‘You have to let this woman go.’

‘Okay, Deb,’ he finally acknowledged, ‘if this is what you really want. I won’t harm myself. I won’t even threaten it. I promise. I’ll let you go. I just don’t want to tell people at the base yet.’

I understood what he meant. I nodded. Accepting his fear of social failure.

Thinking back on it, strangely, or maybe not so strangely, I had at first resented the counsellor for what she brought out in Chris and me – the ultimate realisation that we were really hanging onto nothing.

And then, suddenly, at that particular session, knowing it was over, knowing I would soon be free of him, there was this sheer relief like my mind had suddenly opened up and oxygenated like a massive flying air balloon. I had finally managed to internalise it, that this
really
was what I wanted.

But the beating pulse, the light-headedness, the sense, or rather the true meaning of that relief in all its more subtle and terrible permutations, would only come in the moments after the session.

Chris and I had quietly exited the counsellor’s rooms and were going down in the lift. He was standing opposite me, chest throbbing like a frog in that small, confined space. There were tears rolling down his eyes. And the more I looked at him, the more I saw he was not saying goodbye, or even
au revoir
,
or even it was good knowing you; he was standing there reneging on everything he had agreed to in front of the counsellor. He was denying everything he had confessed to.

He stood there, legs crossed at the ankles, leaning against the wall for support, telling me that I still meant everything to him, that I was still bound and tied in every way to his life. He needed me. Could not live without me. I was his world.

To me, at that moment, rather than like a man, my friend, my soldier, my once shiny knight, he looked like a little boy, like a little schoolboy whose parents had never allowed him to grow up, a boy in a playground who needed others weaker than him to lean on, who needed others to exert control over by making sure – no matter how darkly and emptily – they will remain weak, and in effect always be there for you. He looked not just sad and tragic, but perfectly selfish.

I gazed at him, into those intense hazel eyes whose curving arches, like temples, had once stared into my flesh, and saw only eyes now that were red with self-concern, like a little boy’s.

‘
What!
What’s wrong with you now!’ I said it without feeling. And when he did not respond, I told him with firm assuredness to stop the crying, to stop the mewling, and reinforced with my harsh breath that this was it, this was the end of our marriage, whether he could accept it or not. I also told him it was time he grew up. I told him that, irrespective, we were both now going to have to do that – but separately and apart.

He sobbed on, ‘You’re not going to leave me. You’re not!’

I stared, feeling my eyes pinching into his chest, feeling every fibre in my body rejecting him, telling him that I didn’t care how much he self-harmed, how much he threatened and manipulated, I was separating from him.

That was one of the valuable things I had learnt through the counselling. I was not responsible for anything he wanted to do to himself. Even to this day it holds no weight with me if you threaten to self-harm. I can’t abide by anyone trying to hold on to someone by doing that – it is not a way to prove love. Only deceit.

Finally, finally, half looking into my eyes, still whimpering, he nodded as though he had heard. The weight and strength pouring off my shoulders in those moments was enormous. I didn’t have to think twice about it, it was just there, I think now, had actually always been there, but being the snail and pacifist avoider of conflict that I was, I had to wait for a marriage counsellor on a defence force base to allow me to express it: this inner strength, this independence of thought; to allow it to finally exhale from me.

I was not responsible for any other adult person, and standing in that lift I told him so. With my words, my unsympathetic words, I let him know it. The bubble of pride that I felt when I slapped Dad as a fifteen year-old and he walked away, was back, even bigger and shinier in my breasts than before. I was glowing. I didn’t even know why.

And yet there was another thing that was to come up through counselling, counselling this time that I went to alone, that I went to towards the end of the marriage counselling – mainly because my school, that is the school my children went to, saw that there was something wrong with me. Saw how it leaked on my face and caught in my thick, shameful forest of hair.

Actually, it was Sarah’s teacher who noticed something was amiss with me.
Mainly, she noticed it because she found out I wouldn’t let my girls play at any of their friends’ houses; I only ever allowed their friends to come to our place. The teacher, Theresa Rose, was the first person ever to tell me, face to face, that it was a normal and healthy part of growing up for children to go to their friends’ places. I was surprised. Of course, I know I shouldn’t have been.

Not only that, with a sense of urgency, it was she who put the school counsellor on to me rather than the other way round. And while I could have taken it as a threat, I saw, reading the honesty in her mouth, reading the pressing body language of that teacher, that there were only the best of intentions there. I
knew
what it was, I knew I needed it. Perhaps for my children too.

In the end, I buckled and accepted the help.

Again, like the marriage counselling, this proved the best thing I ever did in my life. Admit to an outside source with the professional background what I had kept secret and hidden in the darkest corners of my soul.

Once again it was not long before I was given “the permission” to breathe. To exhale my real power, to breathe it through my larynx and chest and gut and right up into Mum’s snorting nostrils and Dad’s hard bird nose. Yes, tell them to their faces the truth. Tell them the way I saw that thing in me that distinctly reeked of reality’s shame.

First came Mum’s turn.

Chris and I and the three kids were up in Brisbane, visiting my sister Marge. Mum and her new husband were there too. I don’t know how it happened, but as it does so often in families, only perhaps that little bit easier in my malfunctioning one, an argument developed, and like a typical Queensland storm it grew from grey to black to purple and then a ghostly dark green before anyone could do anything about it. Soon it was hailing big emotional rocks, with Mum doing her usual, packing her bags. My sister Marge was standing behind me, encouraging me to stop her.

So, eventually I trudged heavily into Mum’s bedroom, and said, ‘Mum, what are you doing? Why do you have to do this? Maybe we need to talk? Why do you have to go?’

Only if it sounded like a plea, it wasn’t. It was merely questions from stiff, cut lips. I was not being sympathetic, I was only doing what anyone would do. What my sister was urging me to do.

And Mum, sobbing, turned around but like I was begging, like I was that little girl asking forgiveness, and she yelled at me, at my sister, at everyone: ‘What have I done? All I’ve ever done is stuck up for you kids. All I’ve ever done is help you!’

It hit me like I had seen kangaroos punch, brutally, with cruel beating might, and it connected right in the nose like one of those mighty kangaroo fists had got through my guard. My eyes went foggy, my lips drooped, only I was not going down to the dirt. Oh no, no, no longer. Counselling had given me that much;

I looked into her eyes and hit back: ‘Oh my God, no you didn’t!’ And then glaring I repeated it. ‘Oh no, you did not!’

‘What do you mean?’ Her eyes heaved. ‘I always tried to protect you. I always stood up for you kids.’

My cheeks, I could feel were red and bursting. ‘Oh no, you did not. You did not
protect
me. Did not
ever
protect me!’ I was so angry, so tired of the lies, so tired of the self-deceptions, I could feel the bones in my chest bursting out into her lips. ‘You
never ever
protected me.’

And still she persisted: ‘I did. I always protected you.’

‘No, you did not. Oh no, you did not. You were not there when I needed you. You never were. You never protected me from Dad!’

That seemed to startle her, actually bring her to a halt, quieten her. Her nose was sniffing, she was rubbing at it with a fist, in that way she always did under duress. I could feel the hairs on my head digging into my skull just as hers must have been stabbing into her head. I saw myself standing before her: a little girl, unprotected, set among miswired adults, groping through a darkness that they explained away as normal light of day.

Horrified, unable to talk, she stormed off, crying: ‘How can you say that? How can you say that?’

But I knew she understood. I knew she did. If anything, it was like she was crying those words to herself. Only she couldn’t make it sound that way. She did not like to be defeated.

I did not chase after her. I did not feel sorry for her. I felt I had had my day. And really, taking the whole history of my life that went before, it was just a small moment, a small if powerful blow back to the human being who had constantly punished and neglected me. At last I had done it, had my moment with her. That balloon in my chest bubbled again, just a little, just for a small moment I felt it swell.

Until my sister Marge came running up to me: ‘You’re nothing but a bitch! How can you be such a bitch to Mum!’

I was stunned. Gob-smacked frozen. Absolutely stopped in my tracks.

Marge was fully aware of my counselling sessions, knew very well about
our
childhood,
my
childhood, even if she didn’t know how I had put my lips and tongue out to Dad one day in order to save her. She had even agreed to my face, at some stages, that life had been difficult for us growing up. But as they say, life, families, even bad, rotten families...

All I could think was at least I had given a punch back, at least I had stood up and rattled a nose – so that Mum did not go through the rest of her life without knowing what I thought.
Felt
.
What dwelt like an unkillable worm inside me. Hitting back made me feel that little bit more empowered. And I was proud of that. My sister had her own life, there was nothing I could do about that.

And then it was Dad’s turn next.

It may seem a bizarre thing, but through all my relationship problems with Chris in Melbourne, through all my groaning and tears of despair about our continuing financial problems, aside from one or two significant others like my sister and Chris’s older sister Rosita, who I confided in, it would be Dad, yes, Dad with an attentive ear who would phone me of his own accord on a regular basis and listen to my woes.

It reminded me of when I was younger, even at the height of my abuse, if there was anyone I could somehow talk to, it was not Mum, it was him. He was always there for me. And like then, perhaps even more so now, he sat patiently at the end of the phone and listened to what I was going through. Sometimes he would even offer rather wise fatherly advice.

But this is what I mean... that man, the beast who had tortured me... who treated me worse than a car rag... had infiltrated my skin, had drilled through the hard bone in my ribcage, had seeped into my very brain cells... and become a part of me. In the end, I believe, he really cared.

Only with counselling – through counselling – I now had this power, and not even a thick-skinned idiot and fool like me was going to let Dad get away with it.

One night during one of these calls he was telling me about his own problems, one that was particularly bothering him, how he had sub-leased the mill –
Dan Gallagher Enterprises
– to my older brother Jim. Only Jim had not made the lease payments in months and it was doing Dad in financially. He was at wit’s end, not sure how to get the money out of Jim, money that he needed to live on, and he was angry.

‘I’ve always done the right thing by you kids. I’ve never ever hurt or harmed any of you,’ he groaned.

Dad groaned
that
.

Now a veteran of counselling, I felt my chest thunder and then roll, but with the utmost control into the phone, I said, ‘Oh yes, you did. You hurt me. You sure as bloody hell did.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ his voice blustered back, a badly bent trumpet totally off-key.

‘You hurt me, Dad, and you know it. You hurt me like no child should ever have to be hurt.’

As though seeing him on the other end of the line looking down that long distance of lean, muscly, awkward body of his, I heard a pause, a thick silence, and somehow I kept expecting to hear the line shake, the phone to grab hold of my neck and strangle me to death.

But in the end I could barely pick up this small voice that cried: ‘Oh my God. Oh my God. I didn’t mean to, Deb. Really. I didn’t mean to. I know what you’re talking about. I know I have hurt you very badly. But... I only ever meant to love you. That’s all. I’m sorry, Debbie. Really, I’m sorry.’ His voice was breaking up, struggling. ‘You have allowed me to stay in your life, Deb. I can see. I know what’s going on. I know what I’ve done. And I don’t know why you have forgiven me. I don’t know why, but you have. I am eternally grateful for that.’

Dad, my dad, my –
You don’t ever mess with Dan Gallagher
– giant dad, sounded so shocked and staggered, he almost sounded defeated. Almost.

But it was too late, all these words, it was too late. Just as it was too late with Mum, so with him, but in my soul, in the circling pulse that was driving through my chest, I knew I had survived, I had come through. And I think it was because of that, inside myself, I could forgive him. He knew, in his bones, in the bones that linked us, he knew, even in his own badly processed head, I had somehow forgiven him.

The truth is, though, as I have found, a heart forgives, in fact can forgive as much as it likes, and yet still it carries the pain. At best we manage to put distance between ourselves and that thing that is hurting us, even sometimes put up actual walls and geographic miles between us and that haunting thing – something I achieved by living apart from him, in Malaysia, in Newcastle, in Melbourne, in Brisbane, in Ipswich – but still the pain does not simply depart. Just as it does not, like magic, depart with that single most charitable of Christian utterances:
I forgive you
.
No, no, no, it does not.

Dad thanked me on the phone for forgiving him. But it was clear I didn’t want him anywhere near me, not when I was by myself and definitely I did not want him anywhere near my children. He seemed to accept that – accepted it, I suppose, as part of his “hard-earned” punishment.

Knowing him, though, right until the very end he probably believed that because he did not intend to hurt or harm or in any other way abuse, but only to love, that somehow he wasn’t altogether crazy or wrong and should not really even have to apologise or be forgiven.

I am sure he believed, right to the end, there was still something perfectly reasonable and harmless in his actions. If only others could understand. Would “get it”. I could... and I could not.

At least I had had my day with him, albeit in separate rooms on the other end of a telephone line. But I had done it. Stood up to him. Not only to him but to
him
and
her. Them
. To both Mum and Dad. And although I am an idiot for letting Dad – and Mum – back into my life, maybe even a complete moron for doing so, I cannot be an altogether out and out wombat... because, before anything, I have realised I am a human being and therefore not perfect.

And that’s the way I believe we should all be given the chance to live... not just as human beings but as
imperfect
human beings. Idiots, morons, wombats or not, it is true none of us should have to endure abuse by gender, race or sex, yes especially
sex
, but more than that, we should never have to endure neglect. Not on account of anyone’s beliefs – or imperfections.

But there is more – and there is a twist. Because on the verge of packing up and leaving Chris, what did I do, I went to see a clairvoyant...