Sarah Before

by Craig Shepherd

  Jane saw it too, not just the sadness on Sarah’s face, but the total fatigue in her eyes, and even the way her head seemed heavier on her shoulders compared to earlier in the evening. She felt horrible for thinking it too, but she saw that under this kind of emotional duress Sarah’s face seemed to suddenly bear the scars of far more than her forty-two years, the lines around her eyes now accentuated by the tears.

  “I know that you hardy know me, but do you want me stay with you tonight? I really don’t mind and I hate the thought of you being alone at the moment,” the words came quickly from Jane, seemingly without thought, something Sarah appreciated even more than the words themselves.

  Jane now seemed like a life raft floating past her in the middle of a stormy ocean just as her body was about to give up the fight. She realized there was nothing disingenuous in Jane’s offer, it was just her first response when confronted with a friend (Were they friends yet?) who was upset.

  “You don’t have to do that Jane, I’ll be fine,” Sarah replied, wiping away the residue of her tears and knowing she needed Jane to stay there tonight but couldn’t bring herself to show such desperation.

  “It’s no trouble at all. You’d be doing me a favor, I probably shouldn’t drive anyway,” Jane turned her head in a gesture towards the empty wine and beer bottles she had collected on the counter.

  Although there was nothing physically wrong with Sarah, she felt completely drained. It was as though telling the story of her family’s tragic demise had added years to her life that she couldn’t erase. Her back ached and her limbs felt heavy, as though her arms were pulling away from her shoulders when in reality they just hung by her side, defeated. Jane helped her get up and held her arm for a moment, making sure she wasn’t going to collapse. Sarah’s knees howled at her, but after a moment she was able to stand unassisted. She didn’t say anything to Jane, instead looking at her with an expression of vulnerability and gratitude.

  “Come on, I think we’ll both be grateful for the rest,” Jane’s voice returned to a more regular tone. Not quite upbeat, but no longer coming from a forlorn place of sympathy. When she was satisfied Sarah could stand by herself, she walked to the back door to make sure it was locked, exactly the way Sarah would do every night before retiring.

  Being the shorter of the two, Jane was able to put her arm comfortably around Sarah’s waist and walk her towards the front door where she also checked those locks before leading the way to the bedroom.

  The bed wasn’t made, and the corner of the two blankets were folded back where she had left them when she had gotten up that morning. She sat on the edge of the bed and laid down sideways, pulling the covers up to her neck as her head hit the pillow.

  “I’m sorry Jane, I’m not much of a host…” The exhaustion was evident in her voice, trailing off to the point that it was barely audible. Jane stood beside the bed and kindly tucked the covers around Sarah’s shoulders.

  “Don’t worry about anything now, just get some sleep,” Jane spoke softly, the way a mother would to a weary child who had been lured close to sleep by a bedtime story.

  Sarah’s eyes were closed and Jane wasn’t even sure she was still awake to hear her. Feeling tired herself, perhaps still a little shocked by what she had heard and still anxious about whether her responses were appropriate, Jane walked with soft footsteps to the door where she flicked the light switch, then to the other side of the bed, lifted the covers and crawled into bed next to Sarah.

  She didn’t fall asleep as quickly as Sarah though. There were still questions and curiosity about Sarah’s story. Questions she wouldn’t ask, but ones that swam around her own mind regardless. She figured the fire was caused by faulty wiring or something of that nature, that much was fairly obvious, but her questions weren’t about the fire itself. They centered more on what happened to Sarah next and how she ended up in Calston nearly seven years on. Pokona was miles away. Jane figured it must be at least two thousand miles to the west of the town they now shared. A long drive by anybody’s standards.

  She knew the answers were none of her business, nor was the curiosity going to do her any good because as far as she was concerned, the whole topic was off limits now. Sarah had pushed herself as hard as she could emotionally just to tell her about the final stages of her family life. She saw the strain on her face as she battled with the words right before breaking down in tears. The whitening of her knuckles around the drinking glass, probably unaware she was even tightening her grip. She imagined part of Sarah wanted to share her story, however there was a formidable opponent inside her desperately trying to keep those words from being spoken. Despite the slow, careful delivery of each sentence, she felt like it was the only way Sarah had been able to get the story out. Although only knowing Sarah briefly, Jane did feel a connection and never wanted to see her traumatized by her own memories in such a physically draining way ever again, so no more questions would be asked.

  In any case, Jane thought, after something like that, I’d want to get as far away as possible too.

  She closed her eyes and slept on that thought, with her new friend taking the deep, elongated breaths of sleep next to her, hopefully comforted by her presence.

  CHAPTER 11

  Standing in her bathroom, Sarah stared intently at her own reflection in the mirror. She thought of how weathered she looked on the morning after she had told Jane about how she had lost Jason and the kids. Since then, two weeks of decent sleep, regular visits from Jane, and even some progress with her agoraphobia had certainly brightened up her appearance, yet the person looking back at her still felt like a stranger. Trying to recall the young woman she had once been, she found the memory hard to reach. She wondered if the Memory Wardens in her head wanted those things off limits to her, keeping them locked in the guard’s office of her personal prison, like contraband she had managed to smuggle in and enjoy for a few hours before being caught.

  She began to glare at the mirror even harder, creases forming on her forehead as if squinting would bring those memories back more easily, but all she could see was a worn out forty-two year old woman, the flesh of her thin face hanging more loosely than it once did. She noticed the lines in her skin which used to work out from each side of her nose and cradle her cheekbones were now pointing straight down giving no accent to her cheeks at all. The darker areas under her eyes masked the wrinkles but she knew they were there. The longer she stared into the mirror, the more she caught glimpses of the old Sarah peering back at her, like a ghostly image trying to force its way out from behind her face. The skin that once stretched tight over her jawline had begun to sink. Not in heavy bags of flesh yet, but it still looked as though someone had untied a knot behind her head which previously pulled that skin taut over her bones.

  But what she noticed most was the hair. In her own defense, she hadn’t been in any state to get to the salon over the last few years, but as though this was the first time she was seeing her current appearance, she was shocked at how far she had let herself go. She felt like a character in a movie who wakes up one day to find they have aged twenty years overnight, such was the surprise when looking in the mirror. The simple fact was, she just hadn’t cared for a number of years.

  She never had guests and obviously left the house so rarely that personal grooming had just gradually fallen away from her daily routine. Although there wasn’t much she could do about the lines and the slackness of her skin, she felt a little disappointed she had let her hair get to the condition it was in. She had never had short hair, always at least shoulder length, but had never let it grow as long as it was now. She put both hands behind her head and ruffled the hair forward over her shoulders, letting it fall beside her face, covering her neck. It now hung well below her breasts, but the length didn’t even cause her the most concern. The color had faded so dramatically. It had been a rich brown color once, with a tinge of auburn to it. Jason had called it ‘bright brown’, and they had both laughed. It was an absurd, yet strangely ac
curate description. The strands now seemed dry, lifeless, and thin, like there was too much space in between them. She wondered if Jason would call modern-day Sarah’s hair ‘faded brown’. It would be reasonably apt, she thought. Or grey-brown. No grey hairs really jumped out at her, but as she took a handful of hair and held it in front of her eyes, she could see the 3:15 to Greyville was a little further along the line than she first thought.

  She tried to recall the last time she had been to a hairdresser. It would have been back in Pokona. She didn’t recall seeing anybody since she left there, although not long after she first moved she did try and cut it herself. She had done a fairly admirable job, but wouldn’t say it gave her a burning ambition to explore hairdressing as a trade. Wondering if Jane knew any hairdressers, she thought she could be comfortable enough to have someone come to the house and work their magic on her aging, mistreated hair. She put it in her mental calendar to ask Jane about it next time she saw her.

  Thinking she was only now paying attention to her appearance because she had work to do and a penchant for procrastination, she turned her mind to the article she needed to write. Two days ago she had received an email from Jim Newborn, one of the editors for an online magazine called Change 4 Good. Or, change4good.com, she supposed would be the correct way to refer to it. She had written a few articles for them in the past, her first one a kind of ‘sufferer’s perspective’ piece on anxiety disorder. She certainly hadn’t needed to plumb too deeply into the wells of her imagination for that one.

  Newborn’s most recent request though, had her researching a two thousand word article on the lifestyle benefits of veganism. While Sarah would never begrudge a person their own beliefs and lifestyle choices, the art of avoiding animal products with almost militant vigor was one of life’s pathways she didn’t have the commitment to walk down. She considered herself an advocate when it came to gross and indifferent cruelty against animals, but she had her own ideas when it came to the food chain, and more specifically, where human beings sat in that chain. Her personal view on the subject made the prospect of writing this article daunting. Rather than some of her easier assignments where she could write from her own mind and just find a few easy facts to back herself up, this one was going to take a lot of research – probably more than it was worth for the hundred and fifty dollars on offer, but she could ill afford to knock back a paying article of any kind.

  Change 4 Good was also a preferred client of hers for the simple fact they made payment quickly once the work was delivered. Everything went straight into her PayPal account which made things easy for her to manage. She worked for a lot of online magazines, blogs, websites and a handful of print publications, but it had to be online work. It wasn’t lucrative, but she only needed enough work to ensure she could live her modest existence without having to dip into the cash hidden away in a locked box, predictably tucked in the back of her bedroom cupboard.

  Sarah didn’t really consider herself a writer, at least not in the more traditional way she thought of a writer. Her idea of a writer was a person who writes novels, but she was no more than a glorified blogger. Maybe not even glorified, and perhaps even less than a blogger. She had no website of her own. Still, she was grateful for the work she did pick up, as her situation made other employment opportunities particularly difficult. There was somehow less pressure with the type of writing she did anyway. It was usually a very particular subject matter and she just had to produce an informative piece on that topic, or sometimes provide her own opinion. As long as she stuck to the guidelines, there was rarely a problem or a dissatisfied customer.

  She spent the rest of the morning reading through pro-vegan websites, blogs and forums while she made notes on the key points to discuss. She found a lot of vegan internet space was dedicated to the mistreatment of animals rather than the health and lifestyle benefits of living animal-free, and found most of it to have the tone of propaganda rather than being informative. She quickly became adept at avoiding this type of website, in no small part because the animal cruelty images made her stomach churn. She couldn’t decide if she found it amusing or disturbing that she was beginning to liken the whole idea of veganism to a religion, but the more heavy-handed websites made the feeling hard to ignore. Thankfully, she also found a lot of websites taking a much more measured approach and was able to find substantial amounts of information relevant to her article.

  Having gathered enough information to start working on the article she decided to break for lunch after a quick cigarette. She hadn’t ventured onto the back porch since her last troubling experience with the balcony. It was an experience she had tried hard to push from her mind, although like a tiny splinter under the skin, the sharp spike of the memory still hit her from time to time. Sticking to her routine for the past couple of weeks, Sarah walked out onto the front porch, tensing her body while opening the door in cautious anticipation of the icy air, but was relieved to find it wasn’t as cold as expected.

  The scattering of trees along Western Avenue now stood bare, the leaves forming pools at their bases, waiting for stronger winds to disburse them throughout the neighborhood. The empty branches seemed to be reaching skyward, like bony fingers pushing up through the earth below, searching for some kind of salvation. It was the first time she had seen them this bare, and found them eerie enough in the sunshine. She would rather not see them reaching out of an evening fog under the soft glow of the streetlights.

  Sarah lit a cigarette and looked to her right as she exhaled the first plume of smoke. The street was basically deserted. Parked cars lined the street but there was no movement of people in the area. When she saw the person rounding the corner of the intersection of Western and a small side street she couldn’t recall the name of, her eyes stayed fixed on them. It was rare for the street to be so quiet, which made the person seem more out of place. It was as though the world had frozen in time, and the person was somehow able to move freely amongst the silent, stationary landscape.

  The person continued walking in her direction, but on the other side of the street, and as they moved closer, she noticed the person was carrying something. A long stick, probably the length of a broom handle was in the person’s right hand, resting on their shoulder as they walked in a strangely slow but deliberate motion. On the end of the broom handle, sticking out behind the person’s head was a picket sign, the kind you would see the nut-jobs holding as they walked in circles outside abortion clinics. She wondered which noble cause this particular person was returning from fighting for.

  The unknown protester kept walking, and Sarah noticed they were wearing a black, hooded top which concealed their face, but her curiosity was drawn to the sign rather than the person’s face anyway.

  They’re dressed exactly like the person on the balcony.

  She had noticed that before anything else, but had tried to ignore it until the voice in her head forced the issue, opening up a new line of curiosity she had wanted to avoid.

  Maybe this sign is for you too. You know it is. How many protesters walk around the streets alone?

  “It’s not for me. The sign is different,” she muttered under her breath, instantly embarrassed to be having an audible conversation with a voice in her head. More immediately concerning was how feeble her argument was, and she knew full well the voice in her head was right no matter how far she wanted to run from it.

  You don’t want it to be for you, but you know it is. And you don’t know why it is. You won’t know either, just like the sign for Jane’s phone call. Looks like you’re five kinds of…

  Sarah shook her head quickly, as though her internal voice had manifested into a small cloud of insects around her face, bugs that could be scared away with movement. Nothing could be shaken away though, least of all the person walking down the street, and her resolve to argue with herself was now gone. It had been replaced by fear. Fear of what happens when the person reaches the spot right across the street from her – a moment which was rapidly approac
hing. She felt the anxiety rise inside her, but she also felt stronger now than she may have done a month ago, before she met Jane, and before she had successfully navigated a new series of exposure therapy milestones. This strength combined with her curiosity was enough to keep her from rushing inside and slamming the door behind her. Part of her still wanted to prove the antagonizing voice inside her wrong by seeing the person’s sign had nothing to do with her.

  Each step the person took was exactly the same, never deviating from a straight line, each step the same distance apart. How had she described the person’s movements on the balcony? Robotic? That was the best way she could describe this, but not rigid as one would imagine a robot from the movies. The way this person walked wasn’t like that. It was….exact. Exact and precise, as though each step was programmed into them by a central computer system and they would never alter their course.

  Just then, the remaining half of the cigarette fell from between her index and middle fingers, sending a tiny burst of fiery red light from the tip as it struck the concrete beneath her. Sarah didn’t notice this, as her gaze was fixed on the person as they moved close enough for her to read the sign. They were still across the street, but maybe only fifty feet from her porch. Her mouth fell open and her eyelids gaped, in an expression that was one part shock, one part confusion, and probably two parts fear.

  MEAT IS MURDER

  The sign wasn’t about abortions, job cuts, the war on terrorism, or a declining federal health and education budget. It was about the exact thing Sarah had spent the morning researching. She had seen scores of signs with that exact slogan spread across the websites she had visited, but this was different. It wasn’t scrawled in uneven black marker, or written in splattered red paint to symbolize the blood of innocent mammals. This was precise. Exact.