Sawdust (25 page)

When I was told by the doctors that my father had terminal brain cancer, I cried
. The tears just rolled. I could not hold them back. Although, in retrospect, when I think about it now, that he had brain cancer was maybe some divine justice, some poetically fair end to the brain that had diseased all those around him.

By the time he was flown back to Anondale, he was so weak, this once big strapping man, this wood of my life, this tough, hand-hardened man who as a boy ran the Olympic torch through Gladstone; now he had absolutely no control over his body.

Dad’s one regret was that he never got to see his father’s grave. Never got to see the tomb of the father who he grew up without, the father who served his country and died a hero but left everyone’s life inextricably changed behind him. The least I could do, on his deathbed, was to forgive him. It was an
opportunity I would never be able to visit again.

Pressing all his strength to his cracked lips, his tongue flicking not against the gap between his front teeth in that old, menacing bird way, but flicking nervously right through almost invisible lips, he said to me one day, ‘I know, Deb, I know. I hurt you. I did some terrible things. I am sorry.’

It was like the court in his head had finally ruled against him. And he had accepted the judgement. I felt immense pity for him. Pity that in his life he had got it so wrong. Pity that he had turned other people’s lives upside down and did not even acknowledge his logic may have been arse about face.

I think in the end though, to be perfectly honest with myself, I felt pity for him because in his now dull, cancer-riddled eyes, much as I should have hated those eyes, much as I should have passionately resented the sick, white tongue that struggled to breathe to me now, I saw despite everything, despite the ever searing harm he had done, he only ever meant to love me. In his head that remained true.

Of course it upsets me, upsets me still, this strange love. But in my heart I know he loved me. He did! It was conditional. It was a sick love. I wanted to believe it, though. I wanted to. What little girl who grew up believing in the man that was the central wood-structure of her entire life, whose height was capable of reaching the sun, would not want to believe that?

He was no danger to anyone on earth now. The damage had been done. A pragmatist, forever the practical minded soul, I knew there was nothing I could do about it. It was a time for forgiveness and healing.

I know many may see this kind of pity, this softness of approach, as a weakness. But I do not. I see it as a strength. For all my lack of schooling, all my torrid, mixed-up experiences of growing up, that is my biggest lesson in life: Dad could die with his darkness and lies; but I had to let go. I had to continue to grow. What I demanded was honesty, and I think in the end, he at least gave something towards that.

When I think about it, rushing quickly over my life to those times, I see two hardworking people, my parents, Mum and Dad, so busy trying to eke out a living and a bit of enjoyment from life that they spent no time on the three things they needed to do most in life: educate, love and bring up a family properly.

Probably not unlike many other parents, everything was in effect experimental with them because they did not know what they were doing. And in a sense that is all I can say in their favour. They had a deep lack of knowledge, a lack of everyday familial know-how, and it did not make it easy for us.

I shiver when I think about it: Dad’s crazy, screwed up way of seeing things, the stubborn, heavy-handed axis he rotated on, so far removed from the modern universe that he was closer to Neanderthal man. Mum, washed out, bloated and overworked with chores, a woman who saw but did not want to see.

This is my siren-call, my human scream, because I know the truth. And the worst part of it is that to outsiders we looked – at least most of the time – like one big happy family, grandfathers, grandmothers, daughters, sons, sons-in-law, happy, happy grandchildren. But it was a façade. What a bloody façade.

I know from the inside now, we human beings put up that veneer, and as in the case of my family, when we should be wearing the truth on our foreheads like banners for all the world to see, we keep it hidden. Hidden like birds hide their hatchlings in a nest.

But the truth is this: if I had the choice all over, for all Dad’s so-called love and good intentions, I would never want to live through it again. Sometimes I am still not sure how I survived.

I sit in my Flinders View lounge room in Ipswich and take out a picture of their wedding day, of Mum and Dad’s great day of coming together as one, and look over it for the signs of love, for the signs of my beginnings...

On my father, standing there like a solid upright tree in his immaculate dark suit, I see a rebellious, James Dean smile. I see a man a little reticent yet confidently looking out of the photo.

He is tall, obviously young, dashing, standing straighter, with more bravado than a “switchy-stick”. Mum, beside him, is smiling more widely than he is, is in fact showing white straight teeth and a round, gushing face. She has a petite little body that is clothed in fairy tale white veils and virginal white dress.

I see the future for a moment: while I am left to fend for myself in the company of rum-sodden, music-thumping adults, she will blow up ten times her size and run around in a full-body plastic astronaut suit trying to lose weight.

I suppose it is not surprising, barely reaching up to Dad’s unbending shoulders, that she carries an uncertainty in her rosy cheeks and even in her well-known “c’mon lips” and beguiling brown eyes. I see the uncertainty especially in the bloated smile. It is like her lips and teeth are trapped; it is a smile she may never wear again.

In her daring eyes she wants to be optimistic, desperately wants life to work out. Wants to ride away, as in a fairy tale carriage, from the fights and drunkenness and broken pieces of her own upbringing.

In that moment of the photo is a belief that her parents’ ill fortune will not visit upon her or her children. They both look like that. Mum and Dad. Untouchable. Ready to love and reach out to the world.

What is really sick about the photo is that Dad has white gloves. Perhaps almost like a sign, one white glove is on and one is off. The one white-gloved hand is holding the other empty glove. A real gentleman. This, no country bumpkin. This, a man of honour. The camera cannot see the warnings, the duplicity, the hands behind the gloves.

Next to his naked, barely visible hand, I see Mum’s whiter than white dress and already it somehow looks soaked in the sanguine clots of the future. One day his hands will hold her like that dress. Strangling. One day he will hold us like that, the hands naked, the gloves given back to the hire shop or buried in the paddock. I see children in the linen of Mum’s dress, full of hope yet struggling to breathe. Mum wears us on that expansive tight dress and yet she has not even had children yet.

But it is those gloves, those white-white gloves of Dad, which really get to me. The perfect, perfect henchman to his lady. I see those gloves around my neck, pulling my spine down into all that is old and second-hand and dilapidated in our back paddock.

Old fashioned and dated now, the white gloves carry the promise of integrity, of valour, of decency, and yet they will strip me of mine. Already, just hanging at his sides, without lifting a finger, I can see –
feel
– the damage those hands will do. Yes, the gloves will come off as soon as the ceremony is over, and the giant hands that they hide will saw not only wood but children.

It is hard to believe a marriage that looks like this can really be made in a witch’s stew. It is Father Christmas, the Tooth Fairy illusion we all want to abide by. It is the innocence we wear on our rouged cheeks, the ceremony put on for the gifts.

Studying that picture, I see a kind of hopefulness sitting in Dad’s high-cut cheekbones, that they too have no idea what lies ahead. Behind this gentleman and his lady, behind Mum and Dad there are massively long-hanging curtains. They hang as in a grand theatre, partly open, as though eager yet unable to reveal what’s inside.

And now, back in the hospital... in the world of darkness, I see myself crying, hearing a voice full of cancer, eyes like Old Jack Frost, confessing, ‘I did some terrible things... I know. I know. I wish I could have done things better...’

There is no retort I can give to this, other than to brush my hand over his cold forehead and tell him to rest, that it is a time to be calm. The solid wood that stood at the centre of our universe – at the centre of my life – has been felled.

I forgive him with my eyes.

Rather than twelve months, Dan Gallagher died exactly seven months after his diagnosis
, at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month – Remembrance Day – sorry he never saw his dad’s foreign grave and wishing he could have his life all over again.

My family could not believe the tears that flowed from my eyes. They saw it and did not want to see it, knowing my story, knowing their own story, but finally they came to terms with my unfathomable grief.

My own children – who did not have a dime of respect for their grandfather at the time of his death – all came to his funeral to be by my side. They wanted to show that great human dressing:
our family concord
. But more than anything they did it to support me, to support me from the bloated watercourses wending down my eyes.

I think, seeing the monster’s body safely housed in that polished casket, there was a kind of forgiveness in them too.

Behind my own tears, I saw a practical woman. I saw a life – mine – that was yet beginning. Even as my father lay on his deathbed, struggling against his cancer, I had told him, ‘You know, Dad, you are going to die. You are not going to beat it.’ That was the least I could give him, honesty.

Today, I look at my children and see them as adults before me. Dean: tall, manly, easy-going and ambitious in his RAAF way, a young person following in the footprints of his father but with his own escapades to look forward to. Never ashamed to tell the world of his love for his family. Ruth: very attractive in an almost exotic way, with easily tanned skin and long, dark glossy hair, a person deeply loyal to those she cares about, also intensely religious, pious and honest with a good dash of stubbornness. And then there is Sarah: small, tight-boned and beautiful to look at, classically fair in that English maiden sort of way, witty and clever, and, yes, yes, perhaps a bit like me, a woman with attitude.

I also see in her, besides her compassion and empathy, a little of the judgemental and self-opinionated, but always there is reason. In her own words – she is a perfectionist. As she justly said to me on that day she was let out into the world to be a physiotherapist, ‘You know, Mum, I’m the first on both sides of the family – to go to university and graduate.’

And she had done it with A’s – and honours.

People often say to me what a wonderful job I have done with my children. And maybe I did impact, but what I always reply is that they took the steps themselves, weighed up the odds and made their own choices.

At best, perhaps I gave them the confidence to make those choices, gave them the safety, the openness and discipline of a home that allowed them what my parents never allowed me: to grow up according to the best of my abilities. There was something waiting to burst in them, my children, as there is in all of us, and I think in my small way I was able to help release it.

For me, the safety and openness of reasoning with adults that my children had from birth did not come until I was about thirty. That was when I first went to counselling. Until then I believed that everything that happened to me was my fault.

If anything, I deserved whatever demented actions and punishments were dished out to me. Just as I had pulled Dad into me on that bed as he read to me from his dirty books, I was guilty. Guilty, guilty, guilty.

In many ways, thank heavens for my marriage breakdown, because without it the chances are very small that I would have been led to this one positive thing: further professional counselling. Everybody tense, miserable, maybe even suicidal, I would still have been married to a man I no longer loved; would still have been burying my secrets, deceiving my children, and blaming myself for everything.

It is my message, my one big message to the world: Seek help if you need it. If it is true and proper it will give you the tools, will unleash the strength and acumen in you, and by God, I think there is in all of us that have been felled by “the hand that saws” a need for insight – and valour.

It is something we should be given in school – before reading and writing and history and geography and even arithmetic – the lessons to prevent the damage committed by our own blood. The knowledge to combat the seemingly wonderful families and adults around us.

I was a warrior now. I had a “counsellor’s shield” as my guide; I was no longer anybody’s exotic instrument or any kind of plaything. I had received warmth and light when I needed it: through Aunty Bev, through her beautiful warm hands and eyes that did not judge; through that school principal who allowed me to lie my banging, mixed-up head down in her office and keep my secrets to myself; and through the Godbolts who showed me more than anyone what it was to be a normal, loving family.

The smell of candles in their caravan, that thickening beeswax with its creamy, smoky flavour still brings a shiver of warmth to me – both for the Godbolts and for the early days with my knight in shining armour.

Why do we open up the door and let them in? I should mistrust men, but I do not. I take them at face value. I look at their lips and try to read their mouths. Maybe it’s a fault, a weakness in my character? But somehow when I see – or feel – honesty in the mouth, I still do not mistrust. I give benefit of the doubt. Except when it comes to my own children. Then, don’t even come near me. Stay away. Most men don’t know how to play with small girls anyway. They are too rough or overcompensate by being too soft. At any rate, and in any event, they can be awkward with female children. It makes me feel protective.

I suppose before I put it all on Dad and men, there was Mum too. She did nothing – absolutely nothing – except in the most absurd ways – to protect me. In terms of Mum, it was useless.

In a twist, recently when I visited her at my sister’s place I became emotional due to a conversation I had with her where she asked me if I’d forgotten – or forgiven – Dad and her brother (yes, Mum even knew about that) – for the terrible things they had done to me. I faltered and held in my reply. I didn’t really want to talk to her about it.

My sister, after realising what had happened, later sent a text message to me saying she was sorry Mum had upset me. My sister told my mother that she should not bring up that stuff anymore as Dad was dead now and couldn’t hurt anyone again.

She also told Mum the reason I get upset with her now is because I don’t understand why she didn’t protect me all those years ago. Mum’s reply, quite simply, was that Dad had threatened to kill us. She felt she had no other choice at the time but to let things be.

What I learnt from Mum was that, in the end, I had to grow up in myself. That was the only place it could ever be resolved. Even if I came out losing it was always good to know that.

Another thing that’s good to know is the excruciating pain and exquisite joy of giving birth. There is only one thing more wonderful and more magical than giving birth, it is watching your own child giving birth to her child.

I have experienced that too now, only just two years ago, and there is nothing more sweet, more delicate, more spicily miraculous, especially as that ripping, shooting, bloating pain does not belong to you – only the marvel of it. I could not believe it, I absolutely could not believe the sacred communication driving like a wave between mother and daughter and newborn soul, and all I can say, because I have seen it for myself now, is yes it is true, us women are truly amazing.

People already say of my relationship with my granddaughter, Sophia, ‘You’re going to spoil her. You’re giving too much of yourself to her.’ The reality is I always wanted to be a mother, now I want to be a grandmother. And I want to spoil my grandchild and all my other grandchildren when they come along too. I want to spoil them with affection, with love, with complete and soft pillow-like joy, with space and oxygen and safety.

Like that little girl, Sophia, already growing up, walking unsteadily, flapping her arms like ducks’ wings with excitement whenever she sees me, I see myself sitting on the back steps of our house in Anondale, just near the passing cars dashing by on the highway, a small child unconsciously seeing the future, a small child with hope, and I feel the sun shining on the golden honey as it drizzles from my bread in lines of expectation from my warm little fingers onto my arms.

And in the end I am glad Dad didn’t choke me that night on the way home from Grandma’s, just so that... just so that, without malice, without venom, I can tell you my story. So that instead of saying woe is me, instead of simply being a victim, I can warn others.

And there is another reason. So that I can tell you of this: that behind the darkness, after the shadows of it, there are warm little places, tiny little holes where the light shines through. It is true, we are women, we are survivors.

I found that engagement ring, hadn’t I? We can do it. I know we can.