Only

by Caroline Baum

  The lottery letters were easily disposed of. When I scrawled ‘No Longer At This Address’ on them, they stopped after a while. But the pile of correspondence from Johannesburg was harder to deal with. For days, then weeks, it sat on the hall table. Neither my mother nor I could decide what to do. Should we take my father his mail and risk upsetting him? Should we return the letters to their sender? Did Amber deserve an explanation for my father’s total silence or could she simply interpret it as rejection? Were they still entangled in some way that meant she needed clarification that he would no longer be providing her with financial advice and support?

  Eventually I got sick of their presence in our home and took them to him at the nursing home. He was by then too medicated with antipsychotics to register any interest. I am ashamed to confess that a few days later, when he was not in his room, I peeked inside his bedside table drawer, found the letters opened and took one to read at home. I wanted to know what Amber was like. I wondered how she wrote to my father, what the tone and pitch of her affection was, whether there would be any real intimacy on the page. I need not have worried: it was a long tedious description of having a new boiler fitted. At the very end she said she was praying for him and that she needed him strong. That reference to his physical being made me feel queasy.

  I asked a colleague of my father’s who knew Amber to tell her about his situation so that she would not write or call anymore. Months later, on another visit, I found an envelope taped to the back of a desk drawer I thought I had cleared. It was filled with large denominations of Euros and marked ‘Amber’. I felt a flash of fury, thinking of him squirrelling away money for a mistress instead of offering to help me with airfares to come home. I grabbed the notes. Later, I spent them on a trip to Istanbul for Christmas with David and my mother. I didn’t tell her how we could afford it.

  I fantasised about Amber. I imagined myself going into her travel agency in Jo’Burg, pretending I was interested in some business and having meetings with her, and then suggesting dinner and getting to know her, seeing if I could get her to reveal herself to me without knowing my identity. Perhaps she had seen photographs of me, perhaps not. I wanted to know the story of the affair from her point of view and what she knew about his family … I asked myself whether at the end of such confidences I would reveal myself to her in a ‘TA DAH!’ moment and revel in her shock and shame.

  There have been others but I don’t know how serious any of them were. Occasional flings perhaps, or what today we would call fuck buddies. Did he use call girls? Easy enough to order one up with room service in hotels, or did he content himself with the porn channel?

  Maybe he was more of an admirer than a seducer. As I sifted through files for essential documents, I came across caches of private correspondence to and from him—my father kept duplicate copies of all his missives. Some were to a woman in the US who had formerly been a nun. In one he mentioned her exquisitely beautiful hands and what a pleasure it had been to go shopping for fine calf-skin gloves for her in Florence. I remember him returning from that trip with multiple pairs for my mother and me, their supple, pointy-tipped fingers edged with tiny stitches and lined with silk for extra warmth. I felt sickened thinking of him writing to her with his own bleeding stumps, chewed nails and torn flesh.

  CHAPTER 25

  Grief

  Back in Australia I am totally unprepared for the wash of anger that pushes me under like a rogue wave. It is so completely unexpected, unpredictable and violent that it frightens me. I did not love my father with this kind of ferocity, so why am I lashing out so fiercely and randomly?

  I call a counsellor friend for advice. Grief is not her field, and she has limited time but offers to listen if I can meet her outside her workplace. A café is not private enough. ‘Perhaps we could talk in the car?’ she suggests. The very space that defined so much of how my father and I related: it feels right, familiar, safe. There is comfort, too, in sitting facing forward, not having to make eye contact, like in a confessional. I splutter out my confusion, clutching the wheel. Oncoming twilight conceals my distress from passers-by.

  After an hour of listening, my friend hugs me across the handbrake. I drive home, exhausted by my outburst, but also calmer, like a volcano reverting to dormancy after an eruption. The muscle memory of each gesture, braking, accelerating, indicating, offers some consolation with its mechanical repetition and achievable mastery. Gestures I learned from my father, now encoded in me. I feel his presence when I disregard the speed limit or execute a particularly tight park.

  I wonder if my father’s muscles, atrophied as they are, retain any patterns of the gestures of steering or changing gear now that everything else in his brain is bombed, blasted, smashed. I replay our last drive together in my mind, over and over, like picking at a scab: the utter banality of it, the lack of portent, of significance, in our mundane exchanges about the automatically retractable side mirrors, heated seats and silent Prius engine. If I had known we would never again be able to have a normal conversation, what would I have said instead?

  Then comes the pain. Unfamiliar aches begin at my ankles, creeping up my legs to my buttocks and into my neck and shoulders, moving like a weather pattern from site to site, waking me at night like approaching thunder.

  As a child, I used to love storms. If they came in the night, we would all get up and watch from the windows of my father’s bedroom, energised by the spectacle. I think that at some primal, unconscious level, we were each reacting to the tempest within ourselves, charged by the electric violence raging in our psyches. We whooped at the loudest crashes and lightning bolts as if we were at a fireworks display, and felt a new sense of peace when calm returned. But this storm is different: there is no climax. It does not pass.

  The pain is corrosive, like rust eating into duco. It becomes more and more acute, combined with a deadening fatigue that leaves me breathless and bedridden for days. I feel as if I have battery acid in my veins and concrete in my limbs. Blood tests and X-rays show nothing out of the ordinary.

  I give up exercising because it makes me feel worse. I lose three or four days of the week lying prostrate, dozing. I have occasional good days when my energy returns, but the aches always come back like a punishment, as if my body were saying, ‘How dare you think you could cheat me?’

  Eventually a doctor agrees with my internet diagnosis of chronic fatigue combined with chronic pain—something called fibromyalgia. ‘It’s a dustbin diagnosis,’ he says, ‘which means we just chuck all the symptoms into a bin that we can’t explain and give it that name.’

  The illness affects me for two years. Then one day, I realise I have had five, maybe six, days in a row symptom-free. I feel stronger, have more stamina, the soreness is less acute, less persistent, less frequent. I start making bolder plans, attempting half days and then full days in the city, reclaiming parts of my life.

  Months earlier, I had agreed to do a public conversation with Helen Garner for the Sydney Writers’ Festival about her then new book The Spare Room. A book about death, dying, and the testing of friendship. Subjects that were very close to the bone now, in front of nine hundred people. I had no idea how I would cope.

  Usually there is so much adrenalin coursing through my body on these occasions that it acts as a protective barrier to an almost magical degree. When I psych myself up to get just nervous enough, I can feel it sharpening my synapses. Too relaxed, overconfident, I’m no good. But I also knew I was in totally uncharted territory and could not predict my own reactions to the emotional terrain of the book. I did not trust myself.

  I wrote to Helen and told her of my fears. Unsentimental and yet completely sympathetic, having recently lost her mother and her sister, she reassured me and told me she would not let anything happen. But I knew it was my job and my responsibility to be in control. It was unfair to expect Helen to look after me. This was her moment in the sun.

  Normally before one of these events, I prefer not to spend much time wit
h the person I’m going to be interviewing. Otherwise all my energy is drained on small talk and we get stale with chitchat, trying to avoid the topics we’ll discuss on stage. It’s a trick I learned from Michael Parkinson. He made it a rule never to see his guests before they went on. At first I used to think it was slightly rude, but now I understand his thinking completely. Seeing them beforehand takes the edge off and dissipates the element of risk, an essential ingredient to give these exchanges some fizz, to make them sound vital and unrehearsed.

  So it went against all my instincts to suggest to Helen that we have lunch before our event. We could do that and then spend the afternoon apart. I had a hunch it might make me feel safer.

  We met at the Sydney Theatre bistro. She sat on the banquette facing into the room. We ordered the same salad as a main course, no wine. She wanted to know everything about what had happened in London. And of course, being Helen, she wanted forensic detail. She asked questions that were as sharp as scalpels, probing with the delicacy and precision of a surgeon. She told me about her own experiences of caring for her mother and sister. Within minutes, I was blubbering. So was she. Hunched over the crisp white linen tablecloth, we did not discreetly wipe away tears, we mopped up great floods, using our starched napkins the way you use bread to soak up sauce. Our waiter left us alone. Perhaps other diners wondered who was being so cruel to Helen as to upset her in public, but I didn’t care. We cried about the things we had seen that we could not unsee, the suffering, the pain, the sorrow, the regret, the helplessness of daughters, the irrational rages that suddenly rushed at us from nowhere over the smallest thing. When we had finished, we hugged each other wordlessly and went our separate ways.

  It was cleansing, cauterising. I had got it all out, shared it with her, and I knew she would not betray the trust we had established. Helen and I bonded through sorrow and letting our guard down that day over lunch. I draw on her for strength when I am feeling shaky and doubtful in purpose. Instead of summoning C.J. from The West Wing, I often ask myself, ‘What would Helen do?’ and push on.

  Our Writers’ Festival conversation was candid and well received, and proved to me that I could get back into the saddle, that normal life was there for me to go back to and that I had not completely lost my chops. It gave me confidence and courage. It emboldened me to ask braver, more direct and penetrating questions, and each time I was rewarded with reciprocal openness. It’s as if the wisdom that comes with staring down sorrow and loss gains you entry to a new fellowship of humanity, where you are welcomed into a tender embrace and no one ever asks to see your wounds as proof of admittance. They just know you’ve earned your place among the survivors.

  The day after our talk, I drive home from a meeting elated and relieved: I’m back in the professional saddle. I can sustain hours of equanimity without being ambushed by a sudden rush of tears or power surges of temper. My life is in gear. I can’t wait to get home to tell David about how well things have gone.

  I park at the top of our driveway. Those last few metres always give me a sense of satisfaction, as if I were scaling a small mountain, instead of just revving the engine to get up a very steep incline. The climb is symbolic of reaching our elevated sanctuary. Through the drawn curtains I can see David’s silhouette on the sofa, about to watch the seven o’clock news, the unofficial cut-off point for our working day. I know the wine is already opened. I have a small window in which to debrief him before the headlines begin. I run inside.

  As I begin my account of promising meetings, both of us become aware of an unfamiliar sound on the other side of the curtains. Something scraping, with the rhythm of a ricochet, like a tin can being kicked repeatedly along a wall. Metal tearing. Puzzled, we draw the curtains back.

  Where we should see the bonnet of the car, there is a void.

  A void.

  Where the car should be.

  A void.

  Where the car—

  David’s eyes are suddenly stretched wide, round like those of a cartoon child. His mouth is a matching O of horror as he runs outside. Still not fully understanding what is happening, I follow in time to see our car sliding down the driveway, before coming to an abrupt halt at a peculiar angle, jack-knifed against a concrete retaining wall. The side mirrors have torn away fence posts on the descent. Then, the undercarriage falls out like the spilled guts of roadkill.

  The enormity of what could have happened makes us both lightheaded with relief. The neighbours, brought out by the noise, look on in disbelief as we hug and punch the air, laughing. The car has not rolled down on to the main road or gathered speed and propelled itself across the street into another house. It could have been much, much worse.

  When I tell friends of the incident, they nod wisely. Clearly, according to them, the episode demonstrates that I am still dealing with the aftermath of my father’s decline. For months, I buy that interpretation. I am not myself, not ready to venture into the outside world, not self-possessed enough to regain control.

  But today I am not so sure. Couldn’t it just be that in an absent-minded moment of eagerness to share the news of my successful day, I had forgotten one small gesture of precaution and left the handbrake off? Just how symptomatic and symbolic was that one error? I wonder what my father would have made of the episode. As someone who tended to overreact with stinging criticism to the smallest misstep, sometimes he surprised me with uncharacteristic acceptance. I like to think he’d make light of the episode and say: ‘It could have been worse, Baby. At least it was only a Holden, not a Mercedes 280 SL.’

  CHAPTER 26

  An unfinished daughter

  When I started dating, I always gave boyfriends a brief précis of who my parents were. A skeleton story that was meant to intrigue them, suggesting there was more depth and mystery to me because I was such a mixture of cultures and there was so much drama in my parentage. Like the cynical writer of a soap opera teasing viewers into wanting to know what happened next, I worked the melodrama of loss.

  I was using the same method of seduction as Scheherazade used to get herself out of a tight spot. Perhaps I, too, was fighting for survival by consciously constructing a narrative to give my existence a lustre that set me apart. Over the years it became a pat recitation I could deliver with such polish that I knew where to leave significant pauses for my listener to interject the odd exclamation of shock, horror or sympathy.

  I did not attempt the same pattern of storytelling when I was getting to know the girls and women who would become my friends, and with whom the bond of intimacy was often stronger than with lovers. It was as if I knew that my female friends would hear my story differently and refuse to be taken in by it. If I was to earn their trust and their affection, they seemed to be saying, it would have to be not because of who my parents were, but because of who I was as a separate, distinct individual.

  In Australia, that was easier. I was a blank canvas. If friends met my parents, they did so briefly, when I was already an adult. While I might have told them stories of my strict upbringing, face to face my parents appeared a little stiff and intimidating, but agreeable enough. Here I have no past, no roots or heritage on the map of this continent. It is liberating but also lonely, a sort of semi-orphaned state. And it will only get lonelier.

  David was the first man to notice my strategy and call me on it in a way that was both sensitive and direct. ‘I asked about you, not your parents,’ he said the first time we had dinner. I was taken aback. My standard repertoire was not working. I had no idea what to say. The silence grew awkward. He waited patiently, his gentle dark eyes promising an attentive listener.

  David is less like my father than any man I know. How many life lessons did I have to learn in order to avoid a repeating pattern of choosing men who dominated, bullied and abused me? Too many.

  I chose men to work for who scared me, judged me, withheld approval and punished me. When I was at my most impressionable, in my early twenties, I dated and then lived with a damaged man who sh
ared my father’s values. After the relationship ended I was smart enough to realise how toxic it had been and to invest most of my salary in therapy. But though I identified the problem, I found it difficult to shake my tendency to be drawn to men who were charismatic but also critical.

  When they first met, David and my father had nothing to say to each other. My father made a snap judgement. On the basis of scant evidence, he decided that David was a failure: a divorced man with no visible assets or means of support, and with the additional baggage of a child. He worried that David might depend on me financially, and that I might have to support us. He could not respect a man who would allow that to happen. His way of demonstrating his disapproval was simply to ignore David, quite literally. It was unnerving, rude and wearing. In restaurants he would ask me, ‘What is David having?’ instead of addressing him directly.

  At first David made an effort to engage my father but one day I noticed a very polite but subtle shift. I asked David what was going on. ‘Well, I can keep trying,’ he said equably, ‘but he’s not going to change. And I think I will lose my self-respect if I keep trying, so I’ve decided to stop the tap dancing.’ I admired his decision.

  From then on, David met my father on his own terms and things very gradually started to improve. By the end of my parents’ trip to France for our miraculous Christmas reconciliation, the transformation was complete. It hinged on the simplest thing: David’s driving, and his ability to navigate Nice and its surroundings, to get us smoothly to Monte Carlo and Menton and back, find parking spots, remember one-way systems.