Headstrong. Heart-strong. But not smart-strong.
At least, she didn’t feel that way.
You see, the law has a way of making its disciples feel insignificant. It’s cunning and overwhelming. Although he was a distraction from it, in some ways Jay was akin to the law. He dulled Elouise’s sparkle. He shat on her brilliance.
Not intentionally, of course.
You see, Jay was rather clumsy. Especially with her heart. Like a child holding a hamster, he didn’t realise when he was squeezing it too tight.
If architecture was a business of harmony through dimensions, measurements and calculations, then Jay Adler-Anderson was in the right trade…
Jay’s facade was harmonious – his traits complemented one another. Humble, talented, handsome and charming. He had complex elements too. Cleverly camouflaged, of course. I’ll spare you the details here, but it’s safe to say that Jay was a truly intricate being.
His father taught him a valuable lesson: three life principles. Although intended solely as career advice, Jay promptly applied it on a grander scale. These rules were: run smoothly, avoid delays, stay within budget.
Fortunately for Jay, it was hard to blow a budget as large as his own. Avoiding delays was easy with practice. He just didn’t practice enough when it came to me. And running smoothly? Well, he had a knack for keeping his cool. He foresaw contingencies – even those quite farfetched. He made a point of preparing for every eventuality. He didn’t gamble; he took calculated risks. A true smooth operator.
The middle of a book. The inverse of its spine. The moment when it is most open, most exposed. That’s when it’s at its weakest. For you can turn it inside out, reveal its most private words. And easily dismantle it…
If Elouise was a book, then that’s what Jay did to her. It didn’t matter how many pages she had – how thick her skin seemed. He continually made his way into her core. And he sat there. An impurity. A grain of stray grit.
Of course, that might give you the impression that a pearl would form. Some day, something beautiful from this emotional carnage. Something smooth and tough and seemingly perfect.
But let me tell you something about pearls: they’re not as strong as diamonds.
To make a pearl necklace, you drill right through its middle. But to make a diamond necklace? You mould a metal mount. You set it, support it, embrace it.
“Before you freak out and hurriedly close this book, remember: “You do not have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”
…Excuse my use of this misquoted, mis-credited saying, as despite the fraudulence, it’s quite fitting.”
For such young skin, mine was terribly scarred. Each mark told a story, many of which I was desperate to forget. I once had a friend, (I use the term loosely) who approached me in the schoolyard before sport one Thursday afternoon. His name escapes me, but his gesture never will. For on that sweltering, cloudless day, beneath the awning of our tenth grade classroom, he smiled, awkward and embarrassed as he reached deep into his blazer pocket. There was no exchange of words, but a small jar of ointment passed between our sweaty palms. We locked eyes briefly and went our separate ways.
Whether this gift was given out of sympathy or support, I’d never know. Many times I debated it, but in the end, the motive was meaningless. It was the motion that mattered. This would be the only innocent version of a series of similar exchanges. Perhaps because the transaction with the boy was purely gratuitous. I had since lost my innocence, I brought cash to future exchanges. The scar cream became sedatives or stimulants, sometimes both. And the rosy cheeked boy? He became cold strangers lacking smiles.
The day after I turned eighteen, I got a tattoo. I cringe every time I see it. A design I’d Googled and forced upon it my own meaning. It’s not just the design: childish, simple shapes, but the embedded memories of that age. The frenemies and alcohol, promiscuity and other acts of stupidity. It was just another of my scars, only it was more prominent. And voluntary.
One night after staring at a steam-blurred reflection of myself, beating myself up with cruel thoughts, I researched tattoo removal. It wasn’t the first time I’d done so, and it wasn’t the last. I’d done the reading, watched the videos and studied the before and after photos. It would cost significant time and money to remove. Almost a dozen sessions and tenfold what the tattoo originally cost.
In the case of certain binding financial agreements, an error can be rectified by the court so long as the documents reflect the parties’ true intentions. It was my intention to run from the past, but the black marks beneath the surface of my skin could not simply be ‘rectified’. If only there were a verb for the act of running from one’s past. I’d take that word and tattoo it over the existing ink. And I’d never make a permanent decision again.
A detour to a Tube station for a little green bag. It wasn’t what I wanted, but what I needed. Getting high was the perfect band-aid. A mask for the pain. A passage into the calm, the carefree, the surreal. My fingers tingled, my face was warm. A dazed walk to my temporary home. I was weak, easy. I simply didn’t care. I could have been raped, murdered. These thoughts, however repulsive and brutal, entertained me.
Five star hotels are excruciating. They take your money and leave you lonely. In my room, a French Pear candle burned. Ephemerally nursing the pain. Smooth, spicy, sweet but not overly so. Coming down from the high, I savoured the scent. I lost myself in the flame. Flickering delicately, dancing with an airy death. Teasing it, dodging it, cheating it. The scene soon blurred. My eyes took interest in the horizon. It was dusk: a sleepy sky and peeking moon. Incongruent with man’s mayhem below.
That was the moment suicide first invited me into its embrace. A fatal security. An offering of peace. An escape from my tumultuous mind. Jumping was alluring: a quick and permanent fix.
But there were tears, doubts, fears.
I couldn’t bring myself to take the plunge. In that moment, I was both a coward and a hero. I was my own saviour. But I hardly felt safe.
I put my feet up on the couch. A mouthful of salted caramel goodness washed down with a sip of green tea. I opened my laptop and began to review my notes from today’s tutorials. My Civ Pro notes were deficient.
I put it down to the distractions caused by the douchebag in my tute who had just returned from an Aspen ski trip. I’d caught him out of the corner of my eye, fart-arsing around on Facebook and Photoshopping a tan onto a prospective profile pic. He’d spent the majority of the hour texting, his phone irritatingly vibrating against the desk every thirty seconds or so. The rest of the class were astonished that the tutor didn’t notice. Personally, I was disgusted. When he looked up to participate, he had a haughty smirk across his face. Douchebaggery at its finest. How people like this made it into law school was beyond me.
Have you ever bungee jumped before? There’s a moment of free-fall before the cord loses its slack and tightens. It’s a surreal feeling. You either love it or hate it. It’s exhilarating. It’s confusing. It’s petrifying. If you like to be in control, you’ll loathe this phase. It’s only temporary, but when you’re in the moment, it seems infinite. As you hurtle downwards, you momentarily lose faith in the cord. What if it doesn’t recoil? What if it doesn’t ‘catch’ you? The beginning of our ‘relationship’ was exactly like this. Jay made me both ecstatic and terrified. What if he made me fall with no intention of catching me?
As promised, here’s an excerpt from the very beginning…
Chapter 1: “We’re young and we’re naïve”
Graffiti inspires me.
Not the tasteless “tagging”, but the profound messages scrawled on benches, walls and the backs of train seats: the quotes that just happen to relate to your life at any given time. To me, they were a kind of horoscope, providing guidance and stability when I needed it most. Perhaps I tried to make the messages fit. Maybe I tried to connect dots that weren’t really there. Coincidences were nice, but I believed that everything happens for a reason. Making causal connections was a good skill to have; I was going to be a lawyer after all.
When I started uni, I was bright eyed and bushy tailed. I had wanted to do law for so long, but I was never quite sure what kind of law. “Not criminal defense or family law…” I’d declare to whoever happened to take interest in my studies. “Perhaps international business law, you know, mergers and acquisitions of big corporations.” Fast forward a couple of years, and I try to avoid corporations as much as humanly possible. There’s a reason why students call it “Corpse Law”. It’s like pulling teeth.
There’s a joke that people sell their souls when they choose to study law – sometimes I think it’s true. In the lead up to exams, I’d spend weeks holed up in my apartment surrounded by textbooks, with no influence from the outside world. Every day, I’d see suits walking around the city: blank faces attached to mobile phones. But not every lawyer is like that, and I really hope that I’ll be one of the exceptions.
I was in my penultimate year, slaving away at clerkship applications and practically grovelling for work experience. My grades weren’t half bad, and I did some extracurricular activity. I was like every other student – I was just getting through, hoping desperately to land a grad job. There were a few hundred of “us” graduating at the end of the next year. While we were all “friends” then, come next year we’d be gouging each others’ eyes out and clambering over one another to secure sponsors and be admitted to practice. Like everything in life, it’s sink or swim – and we were all hoping for a life jacket.
At the start of this year, I found a penchant for family law. I said never I would, but I guess you can’t judge a book by its cover. It was strangely fulfilling: ticking boxes, balancing competing interests, making compromises and fighting for what the client deserves. There was something more to this side of the law than the rest, but I couldn’t quite place a finger on it. Maybe it was the personal side: the emotion attached to the law, the fact that you were dealing with human flaws. But balanced with the administrative aspects that made you less like a therapist and more like the lawyer you were. I also enjoyed the variety – each and every case was unique. I thought there’d be less chance of drowning in my career if I carved it out of family law.
That morning, I found myself standing in front of Marks and Morgan Lawyers – a private family law firm “specialising in the discreet and dignified settlement of significant asset pools”. Although they covered all aspects of family law, property settlement was where the money was. The time charges for filing through some clients’ disclosure documents would have fed a small nation. Situated on the twelfth floor of an inner city high-rise, with its legendary silver logo and heavy double doors, it was Australia’s crème de la crème of family lawyers; but the office work was far from glamorous.
It was my second day of placement: an unpaid opportunity to kiss the asses of Brisbane’s best closers, and I was particularly eager to grovel to the head honchos. Anna Marks had been an idol of mine since before I liked family law. Elegant and poised, Anna made her mark on the legal scene over thirty years ago as one of Australia’s first female managing partners. One part Anna Wintour fierceness and one part Hilary Clinton diplomacy, Anna was the one person who could make or break a family law grad’s career with the click of a finger. If you played your cards right, she was one of the life jackets.
Nullity 