Twin Truths

by Shelan Rodger

  ‘I am not a doctor.’

  ‘My God, this is going to be good. You’ve told me something about yourself!’

  And that was how he started to lose it.

  Chapter 6

  I gulped some wine to drown the taste of sperm, pulled on a T-shirt and staggered over the ridge, out of sight and earshot. It was quiet, the quiet you only get in open spaces. Gentle corn-coloured hills belied the fact that we were on the edge of the lower slopes of the Andes. Hills, grass-stumbling into plains, plains sliding into the faraway sky. The kind of spot that should make you feel at one with yourself and the world.

  I felt the knot inside my chest push up into my throat and for a second I was underwater again, choking for air, but suddenly the knot broke free. I let the tears roll down my cheeks and tasted the salt, my own salt and not someone else’s. It was the first time I had cried in Argentina.

  When the tears had finished and I had stopped shaking, I sat watching the light on the hills, taking in the space around me. My mind was blissfully empty.

  I don’t know how long I sat there, but when I returned they had both left and I thought, ‘Thank you, you bastards. Thank you for making me cry.’

  Chapter 7

  He sat down with his guilt and carefully put it to one side, in the same way that he usually stepped out of his own skin into his therapist’s chair. He brushed a crumb off the tablecloth, as if a piece of that guilt had stayed with him and this deliberate action would remove it.

  When she entered the restaurant, before she saw him, he allowed himself to look at her properly for the first time. She was not conventionally beautiful, but she was striking, and her whole demeanour was sexual. She saw him now and smiled warmly. Her face, which could look harsh, came to life when she smiled.

  ‘Hey, Doctor, cómo te va?’

  ‘Leave that out, will you, Jenny?’ It still sounded strange to say her name; she had always been the English girl in his head.

  ‘Anything you say, Doctor!’

  She was like a mischievous child, and he realised how long this playfulness had been lacking in his life. His thoughts drifted to his marriage. Neither of them had been able to explain how the first baby had caused a rift between them. At first they were so focused on the baby that they didn’t notice they were no longer talking to each other. By the time they had the second, Ignacio knew in his heart of hearts that this was an attempt to undo the damage that had already been done and to start again. Carolina had suffered terribly with the second and behaved erratically, sometimes hysterically. This was when she started castigating him for not listening to her and this was when he started working longer and longer hours, arguing that they needed the money. A bigger house with a swimming pool would solve all their problems. He, a psychotherapist!

  ‘Hey, Doctor, will you join me?’

  ‘Sorry, Jenny. What shall we have?’

  They ordered a parillada – cuts of meat and sausage, sweetbread and crunchy intestines, which came sizzling on a grill – a large portion of chips and a mixed salad. And a bottle of Rincón Famoso.

  ‘So, are we agreed, no bullshit?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re trying to suggest about me! Anyway, there are two good reasons for not agreeing anything of the sort.’

  ‘Which are?’

  ‘One, I don’t think it’s fair for you to use anything you have learnt about me in our “sessions” outside them, and, two, whenever people make rules, they break them. I’ve had enough of rules.’

  ‘According to the rules, I shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘My point exactly and, please, if you’re having marital problems or think you’re gay or having doubts about your profession, I don’t want to know.’

  ‘Aren’t you setting rules?’

  ‘Not rules. I didn’t say I didn’t ever want to know, just not tonight.’

  ‘OK, fair enough.’

  ‘So, when was the last time you went to the cinema?’

  She surprised him again. Somehow, he had assumed that she would carry on with the mind games; that conversation would be intense and full of revelations by either one or both of them. The fact that it wasn’t, the fact that they laughed and talked about theatre and music and film, seemed to give the evening an innocence.

  When he got home that night and found his wife watching a film and drinking hot chocolate, he made an effort. They chatted. They even made love.

  He forgave himself.

  Chapter 8

  Two messages. One from someone at the bank, who wanted to cancel next Wednesday’s class. One from Nick: did I want a drink after work? Yeah, I’ll go for that, must be past full moon.

  ‘How you doing, Jens?’

  ‘Not so bad. Where’s the lady?’

  ‘I broke it off.’

  ‘You surprise me!’

  It was the usual Nick saga. He fell madly in love with falling in love and then discovered a real human being and couldn’t cope, but tonight he seemed unusually low.

  ‘I’m thinking of going back to England.’

  I thought he was joking at first, but he was genuinely restless, felt that he was ‘living a lie’.

  ‘But you don’t believe in truth!’ I pleaded and felt vulnerable all of a sudden.

  ‘No, I don’t believe in “truth” but I do believe in lies.’

  ‘Isn’t that illogical?’ I remembered Sally floundering at my dinner party as she struggled to support Henry in the face of all our banter and I felt a sudden shot of sympathy for her. Paradox and irony were not her thing, and I, too, ached suddenly for simple cause and effect. I forced myself to concentrate on what Nick was saying.

  ‘No, it’s not illogical at all, not if you think about it. It’s impossible to know what the answer is but it is possible to know what the answer isn’t. Be honest, Jenny, you shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘This is as good a place as anywhere.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Nick sounded almost morose. This wasn’t like him, and I felt inexplicably angry.

  ‘OK, so tell me then, Nick, why not here? What’s the difference between “here” and “there”?’

  ‘I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel like we’re really living here. It’s too easy. We’re made to feel too special, just because we’re English.’

  ‘Bloody hell, you’re starting to sound like Henry. Don’t tell me you think it’s wrong all of a sudden to have someone come in and clean your house!’

  ‘Listen, I know you like the mind-game stuff, but I’m tired of it, that’s all. I think it’d be better to live somewhere where we don’t have a head start; somewhere we have to get our hands dirty to be anyone.’

  ‘Hang on a minute.’ I didn’t know where this anger was coming from, but I could feel the emotion rising in my voice. ‘Can you stop talking about “we”? This is your cop-out, not mine. If you feel that you can only be authentic if you’re surrounded by cattle on the Northern Line, then fine, but actually I think you’re deluding yourself. I think what you need is a mirror to take a good long look at yourself, and it wouldn’t make any difference where that mirror happens to be. But don’t drag me into it, OK? I’m doing just fine here. I like it here and I like who I am.’

  Nick looked at me long and hard. ‘I like who you are, but I’m not sure that you do.’

  I opened my mouth, but he put a finger over it, stopping me before I had a chance to find out what I was going to say. ‘OK, let’s not go there, but you’re going to have to accept that I’m going with a gut reaction that tells me it’s time to go back.’

  * * *

  When I returned to my flat, I sat on my balcony with a flask of coffee and a chain of roll-ups. What exactly was eating at me? Was it the fact that Nick might leave and that I relied on his company at a deeper level than I had realised? Or that he was showing a different side to his character and in some way letting me down by betraying the character he had decided to play? If he was not the person I thought he was, then what did that say about me? What did he mean that
he was not sure I liked myself? He knew nothing about the real me. He knew nothing about why I was here. Or was it simply the fact that he was going back to England that bothered me? A Pandora’s box for me. I thought briefly of the man I had left behind; the man who should have made it possible for me to stay after what had happened, the man I had run away from . . .

  I made two decisions that night. One was not to see Pablo again. I had toyed with the idea of keeping it going, fantasised about the sexual possibilities which San Luis had opened up, masturbated about the event that made me cry, but yes, of all the lies, Pablo was one of the most blatant.

  The other decision involved Ignacio. Therapy was something you just did in Buenos Aires, like going to the gym. I had treated it like a cultural playground and it had been compulsive, like the stories Nick and I had invented about our lives for each other. But now, suddenly, something was pushing inside me, pushing away from the lies. I thought of Ana and wanted to ask her if therapy had helped her. I thought of Ignacio and wanted to ask him what he really thought about me – professionally. I decided to start taking my therapy seriously.

  Chapter 9

  ‘For God’s sake, Carolina, pull yourself together!’

  For the second time in the space of three days words escaped before Ignacio had consciously formed them, and for the second time he regretted it immediately and knew it was too late to take them back. He had always battled internally with his impatience, but he had never lashed out at her like this.

  He had come home late from work to find Carolina sitting in the middle of the living-room floor, surrounded by photo albums, a box of half-eaten chocolates, a half-empty bottle of whisky and a loo roll. It was Wednesday night: the night the children were at her sister’s house, the night that was supposed to be their quality time, the night that was supposed to save their marriage every week. Only he had forgotten it was Wednesday.

  She lurched as if she had been physically struck and fell back against the sofa. Ignacio looked at her, trying to gauge the gravity of her response, waiting for the tears and the screaming, and searching desperately inside himself for a way out.

  ‘I’m sorry, Carolina. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I’ve been under a lot of pressure lately. I’m sorry. I forgot that it was our night out.’

  He moved towards her, disconcerted by her silence, but her eyes stopped him in his tracks. The pleading look, the tear waiting to fall, the hurt he was so used to seeing in them had gone. Her eyes were dry and the pupils were hard and small, pointing at him like a gun.

  ‘Carolina?’ He tottered like a child, confused because the rules had suddenly changed. ‘Carolina?’

  ‘I don’t care about the pressure you’ve been under. I don’t care if you forgot it was Wednesday or if you deliberately did this to hurt me. The fact is that you have hurt me, you keep hurting me and I’ve had enough.’

  ‘Look, we’ll go away for a weekend, leave the kids with your sister and go away for a weekend, just the two of us.’

  ‘No, Ignacio, you’re not listening to me again. I said I’ve had enough. I want out.’

  ‘Carolina, you’ve had too much to drink. You don’t know what you’re saying. Let’s talk about this in the morning.’

  ‘There is nothing left to talk about. Don’t you understand?’

  Where were the screams? The tears? The paranoia that she was the victim in their marriage? The pressure on him to make everything right? Ignacio looked at her and saw a woman he didn’t recognise. She looked intensely sober; her hands were not shaking, her eyes were in control. It slowly dawned on him that she meant what she was saying.

  ‘But what about –’

  ‘All the time we have spent together? The children? The house?’ She gestured sourly at the photo albums spread across the floor. ‘Ignacio, they are already a memory for you. When is the last time you really talked to the children, or spent time at home or with me? You keep the photo albums.’

  ‘But we made love only the other night. I am trying, Carolina.’

  ‘You made love to someone else the other night.’

  ‘Carolina, this is your paranoia again. I have never been unfaithful to you. What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘My God, you underestimate me! When are you going to learn that you don’t have to take a degree in psychology to know when your husband is with you or not with you in bed? I have no idea where you were when we made love, but you were not with me.’

  ‘And you’re going to break up a marriage on the strength of some pathetic wave of female intuition?’

  ‘No, I am going to give a name to what is happening anyway. And I am going to get out while I still can.’

  He couldn’t look at her. He sat in an armchair and stared at the floor with his head in his hands. His eyes focused on the Indian rug between his feet, a pattern of rust and crimson with off-white curls along the border. The lines began to blur as tears threatened to drown the image. It wasn’t meant to happen like this. He looked up, feeling that she must respond to the hurt in his eyes, a mirror image of the way she had looked at him for so many months now.

  But she had already left the room.

  Chapter 10

  Ana looked across the pool at her youngest daughter and commented on the fact that she would need to start watching her weight.

  ‘Ana, she’s two years old, for God’s sake!’

  Of all the things that irked me about life in this city, one thing I never got used to was the total obsession with physical beauty.

  ‘So? Look at her tummy. Now is when we can do something about it!’ Ana was laughing but serious.

  ‘Do you miss your sister very much, Ana?’

  Ana looked at me slightly askance. ‘Yes, I miss her. Here, do you want to see a picture of her?’ She reached into her bag and showed me a snapshot inside her wallet.

  ‘My God, she looks just like Silvina!’

  ‘Yes, that is both hard and comforting at the same time. Silvina is only five years younger now than her mother was when she disappeared.’

  ‘She must have been very young when she had Silvina.’

  ‘It was two weeks before her twenty-first birthday. Damn, the phone’s ringing. I’m going to bring back a Coke. Do you want one or would you prefer a beer?’

  ‘Beer for me, please.’

  Two weeks before her twenty-first birthday. I thought of my own. We had argued about where to have it. In the end, of course, my sister won. We booked the basement of an Italian restaurant in London and filled it with our friends. To our relief, our mother stayed away. I tried to imagine what it would have been like to have our father there. Would he have known what to give his daughters? My sister gave me a hand-carved box and told me to put my deepest secrets in it to keep them safe, even though I had no secrets from her.

  ‘Hippy,’ I teased her.

  It looked at first as though the box was empty, but under what seemed to be the lining there was a narrow velvet pouch and she had placed a photo there. I didn’t find the photo until afterwards.

  And then something else happened that night. I remembered the end of the evening like a beginning – the distant touch of soft hands in the night, and his manhood, waves on the shore inside me . . .

  ‘Hey, where are you?’

  Losing my virginity, I thought.

  ‘Miles away,’ I said. ‘Where’s the beer?’

  Chapter 11

  It was four in the morning and I looked at the ashtray in disgust. Five cigarettes. My mind was still reeling. Falling, falling, and the sound of a machine like an electric saw slicing the bodies. ‘Come here little girl, I need to clean your teeth.’ Shiny-faced, fat, leaning over the saw. And the bodies of women and children lurched towards him out of control. I watched, paralysed, as they fell under the blade and blood splashed over the walls and the windows. Then I saw her. She seemed to be floating, unaware of the gravity that was tugging at everyone else, unaware of the horror on their faces and the blood. And then I real
ised why. She was asleep. ‘Wake up. Wake up for God’s sake. Keep away from the saw.’ I tried to cry out, but she floated past me. And then her eyes opened and recognised me, and for a split second she started to smile. Then she saw it. Her eyes filled with death and I woke up with a start, just as the blade was about to come down.

  Chapter 12

  ‘Where have you been, Doctor? I’ve been trying to make an appointment with you for two weeks.’

  Ignacio fought with the urge to tell her why he had not been able to work. He fought with the knowledge that he was still in no fit state to listen to other people, and to Jenny of all people.

  ‘I had to go away for a couple of weeks. How are you? You look well.’

  ‘I decided to stop seeing Pablo.’

  ‘What made you decide in the end?’

  ‘I don’t know really . . .’ And she told him about the conversation she had had with a friend who was thinking of returning to England and the feeling that she needed to start cleaning up the lies in her life. Suddenly, Ignacio realised that he had been relying on her games. He had had enough truth to deal with in the last couple of weeks. He wanted the unpredictability of the sessions with Jenny, the excitement of her teasing, partial revelations. For the first time there was something dull about her. He didn’t doubt that for the first time since they had met she was being honest.

  ‘Hey, are you listening to me?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Jenny, I don’t think I can carry on with these sessions. I can’t be professional with you anymore. Our relationship is too personal.’

  ‘But we only went for a meal together, for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘I know, but a lot has happened since then. I’m sorry. I won’t charge you for this.’

  For a moment, the look in her eyes reminded him of Carolina. She appeared hurt, about to cry. Then something in her hardened.

  ‘You arsehole! For the first time I come in here wanting to be honest, wanting to talk, to really talk, and you fucking lose it.’