by Karen Perry
I know she’s on the phone to Jeff. I’ve come to recognize the strain in her voice when things are difficult, and I imagine things are difficult now. That picture. A stroke of genius. It was a toss-up, whether or not I would send it to him too. But then I thought, What the hell? Two birds, one stone, job done. I wonder how she’s explaining it to him, what possible reason she can come up with to lessen the harshness of it. I guess it’s not evidence of a betrayal – not when the photo was taken so long ago, before the marriage – but no one wants to be reminded of their partner’s sexual past. Especially when it serves to highlight how flagrantly different and more colourful that past was when compared to your own staid, boring present.
Feeling brave, I tiptoe up a few steps to listen. The words are muffled but when I hear her mention the police it sends me scuttling back down to my room.
I close the door and sit on my bed, still listening for a voice overhead. But it’s too distant to make out. The word police has scooped out a cold cavity inside me, and for the first time since coming here, a feeling of deep unease comes over me. What if she does call the police? What if she has already? For a long time, I sit there in the cloudy room I’ve come to call my own. With my knees drawn up to my chin, alert to every sound, I wait for her to come and find me, to tell me to stand up – that she knows it all now, every single thing I’ve done.
And then, finally, it happens.
I wake in the middle of the night. A creaking floorboard overhead alerts me to her wakefulness. Checking my phone, I see it’s almost 3 a.m., and I wonder if she has slept at all. I follow her footfall across the room and down the staircase. I’m out of bed when I hear the faucet turn in the kitchen, water running.
‘Hey,’ I say.
She looks back with a guilty air. I can’t be sure, but it seems like she’s just popped a pill into her mouth. She doesn’t respond to my greeting, just takes a swig of water from the glass she’s holding, then leaves it on the counter.
‘Sorry if I woke you,’ she says, and turns to face me.
Except she’s not looking at me. Her arms are folded protectively over her chest, even though it’s not cold in here, and there’s something funny about her mouth, the downturn at the corners, a sort of wavering about it.
‘That’s okay. Are you alright?’
And then her mouth does that wavering thing again, and I realize how upset she is. The cries burst out of her and she claps both hands over her mouth, a furious look entering her eyes, as she pushes past me, towards the sitting room. Instinctively, I follow her, my awareness heightened by the drama of her emotional display – moved by it, in fact. That she can feel free enough in my company to break down.
‘Cara? What is it?’ I ask gently. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Everything’s a mess. And I … Oh, Jesus,’ she says, shaking her head furiously, holding a balled-up tissue to her nose.
There’s a manic energy to her as she paces between fireplace and window, unable to settle.
‘Calm down,’ I tell her.
But she snaps at me that she can’t. How can she?
‘Not with all this going on!’
‘All what?’
She gives a small cry of frustration, and continues with her manic pacing. Looking at her, you’d think she was angry. But I know it’s not anger that’s powering this display. It’s fear. And for a second, I feel guilty about the picture, about what I’ve done.
I walk to the drinks cabinet, and pour her a large vodka – neat. Then I order her to sit down, and I put the glass into her hand, cupping it with my own as I instruct her to drink. It’s amazing how easily she consents, like she just wilts. And I can tell she’s been longing for this – aching for someone to take charge, to guide her, to ease her burden.
‘Now,’ I say firmly, once she’s taken a couple of big sips. ‘Tell me what is wrong.’
And she does tell me – most of it, anyway. About the text messages, about the picture sent to every staff member, her humiliation. Falteringly, pausing every now and then to gulp at the vodka for courage, occasionally shaking her head or rolling her eyes in an effort to acknowledge the outlandishness of what she’s describing. But underneath it all, I can see how deeply this has affected her. The slow corrosion of those messages. The insidious nature of the email threat.
‘God, I could kick myself for being so stupid. For allowing myself to be photographed like that in the first place!’
‘Lots of people do stuff like that. It’s not something to be ashamed of.’
‘Oh, Amy – yes, it is! If you’d seen the way people were looking at me. My boss …’
She drops her face into her hand, shaking her head as if trying to dislodge the memory.
‘It’s just so fucking vindictive of him! Not that he’s owned up to it,’ she adds, with a snort of derision.
‘Have you spoken to the police?’ I ask. I’m taking a gamble here, but it’s worth it.
She shakes her head. ‘What’s the point? I’d prefer to sort it out myself, anyway. Keep it private.’ And then, remembering the public nature of her humiliation, she laughs – a short burst like a hiccup. ‘If that’s even possible.’
‘Have you spoken to him? To Finn?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He says he didn’t do it. That he didn’t send the photograph. But if he didn’t do it, then who did?’
She looks at me then, and I’d swear there is something behind that stare, something searching and interrogative. Nerves tremble in my stomach. I turn away and walk to the drinks cabinet and help myself to a vodka. Her eyes are on me the whole time, and then she says it.
‘He knows about Mabel.’
My heart tightens and I sip my drink, steel myself and then turn to meet her gaze.
‘How does he know?’
She shakes her head slowly. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never told another living soul. Except you.’
Her voice is low and steady, a test in it. I hold my nerve, keeping my voice level, and say, ‘Well, he didn’t hear it from me. How could he? I’ve never even met the guy.’
Confusion or irritation crosses her brow and she gives her head another angry shake before lifting her drink to her mouth, the glass almost empty.
‘Of course,’ she relents. ‘Sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.’ Then, with vehemence, she adds, ‘I wish to Christ I’d never met him.’
‘I thought he was the love of your life?’ I say, softly probing.
A burst of harsh laughter from her, then she asks, ‘Is that what I told you?’
‘Yes. When we were alone in the storeroom. You said you’d married the wrong man. That you’d mistaken comfort and safety for love. That you should have been brave enough to make a different choice. You said –’
She looks up sharply. ‘Go on.’
‘You said your child was his, and he didn’t even know it. That your husband didn’t know. A mess of lies, you called it, that needed to be sorted out, unravelled, no matter what the consequences. And if you got out of there alive, you would put things right.’
Just saying it aloud brings it all back to me – how I felt the night she’d told me. The thrill of the illicit. Sharing a secret like that, it binds you to a person, weaves them into your life in such an intimate way.
She shakes her head, stares into her empty glass with contempt. ‘I must have been drunk. Either that or I am a fool.’
I take her glass from her hand and she doesn’t protest as I refill it.
Watching me, she says, ‘One time, we were at a party – Finn and I. Some friend of his from TV. While we were there, the house was raided by the police, and I panicked because I knew Finn was carrying. I’d seen him myself before we’d left our house, slipping a few grams into his pocket for later. The police didn’t search all of us, but they searched him …’
She pauses, wordlessly accepting the refreshed glass I put into her hand, before resuming her story. In a tired but somewhat ha
rdened voice, she goes on.
‘They didn’t find anything. I assumed he’d flushed it down the toilet or thrown it out of a window, and when we got out of the house with a few of the others, he was euphoric. I wanted to go home, but he wouldn’t have it, insisting we move on with the others to another party that was happening in Canary Wharf.’
‘Did you go?’
‘Yes, I went,’ she answers, with the ghost of a regretful smile. ‘And when we got there, Finn turned to me and said, “Give me your bag,” and when I did, he reached inside it and found the little bag of cocaine he’d hidden there. I couldn’t believe it. He’d planted his drugs on me to save his own skin.’
‘What did you do?’
She draws in a breath, as if to steady herself. ‘I confronted him about it. Obviously, I was furious. But he just laughed it off, said I was overreacting. Said that he knew the police wouldn’t search someone like me.’ She shakes her head slowly, then repeats: ‘Someone like me. There was real contempt in the way he said it. And then I watched while he snorted a couple of lines, shared it with a couple of the others, and we all went up on the roof –’
She stops, but I can sense there’s something she’s not telling me.
‘And?’ I prompt, but already, I can see her shutting down.
‘And nothing,’ she answers despondently. She drinks deeply from her glass, her eyelids lowered.
‘Can I ask you something?’ I say tentatively. ‘Why would you go back to him? After he’s behaved like such a prick …’
She smiles down at her glass, and there’s something wistful and yet bitter about it.
‘I’ve asked myself that,’ she replies, ‘a million times. It’s like some kind of addiction, I suppose. Because even though he has hurt and betrayed me, behaved selfishly beyond imagining, when it is good between us there is such intensity of feeling it’s like nothing I’ve ever known before. The greatest rush. Can you understand what that is like?’
I can understand. Of course I can. I’ve been there myself. With Connie. And now, with Cara. There are so many parallels between us: the way she latched on to Finn after her mother died mirrored my own attachment to Connie in the wake of my mother’s abandonment of me. That same rush she talked about – I knew it. I had felt it. It had driven me to the darkest of places.
She opens her mouth to say something, and then closes it. Something changes in her face, anger draining away into a pained expression that betrays a deeper worry – one she won’t speak of.
Except to say, ‘I’m frightened, Amy. I’m frightened of what he might do.’
Her voice is barely above a whisper.
And then the anger gathers again inside her, and she says, stormily, ‘God, I could just kill him!’
‘Don’t say that,’ I tell her, surprised by the sudden thud of conscience in my heart.
She smiles at me, her eyes glassy and unfocused.
‘Why not?’
‘Because you don’t know what it feels like.’
Her eyes are on me now. I’m flirting with an uneasy threshold. Alighting on the raw graze of a hidden insecurity.
‘You don’t know what it’s like to really hurt someone.’
‘And you do?’ she asks.
The air has grown still around us. There’s no car alarm now. No noises from without or within. I feel the weight of her attention and find myself thrilling to it.
‘My friend, Connie – the one I told you about?’
She waits.
‘She … there was an accident.’
The word crackles in the air between us.
‘It was my fault.’
Cara’s still sitting on the sofa, her hands wrapped around her glass, but she’s looking at me oddly. Despite the vodka and whatever pill she swallowed, she’s still together enough to register the weirdness of my admission.
‘What do you mean?’ she asks, her voice hoarse and wary.
It’s like I’m back there once more, the cold night air hitting me in the face. I’m winded all over again, realizing what I’ve done. I’m sitting at the very edge of the couch, the tumbler held in my two hands, and I can feel my throat closing over with unexpected emotion so that I have to drink quickly to try to calm myself. The vodka worms its way down to my stomach, warming me and opening me out a little. Still, it’s hard.
‘I need another,’ I say, getting to my feet. ‘This is difficult …’
She doesn’t say anything, just watches while I fetch the bottle, and pour us both another measure. I leave the bottle on the floor by my feet and resume my position, only this time her body is turned towards me, one elbow resting on the seat of the couch.
‘What happened, Amy?’
I take another sip of my drink and begin.
‘It happened when I was nineteen. I had this job in our town waiting tables and I was coming home one night, in early Fall. I guess I was pretty tired. It was late and dark, and I was driving along the road that led to our house. We lived about four miles outside of the town – a kind of remote place, nothing much around except trees. It was just me and Elaine by then. Connie had a boyfriend – Ray. This Polish guy she’d met at a barbecue. They were renting a studio apartment on the other side of town and she was talking about getting married.’
I take a sip from the glass. It’s been so long since I’ve told this story, I’d half-forgotten the power it has over me. But something is happening to me now. The smell of diesel in my nostrils, the headlights sweeping over the road lighting up the sugar pines that grew on the margins, some tinny pop song playing on the local radio station – Shit FM, we used to call it – the only station that piece of junk could pick up.
‘I’m driving along and suddenly I feel this impact,’ I tell her. ‘At first I thought it was a dog or something. I hadn’t seen anything, just felt the bump of it. I stopped the car and got out. There was blood all over the road.’
I have to stop for a moment. How vivid it had been, even in the darkness.
‘And there’s this person lying there, crumpled, by the ditch.’
I can’t look at her as I tell her this, but I can feel Cara’s eyes on me, her attention like a held breath.
‘I knew it was Connie before I even got to her. She had this purple suede jacket she used to wear everywhere, and so I knew at once it was her.’
I suck in my breath to beat the nausea that has come on me all of a sudden. Pink matter glistening on the asphalt. Her mutilated face.
‘Later, we found out she’d had a fight with Ray. She’d walked all that way and was nearly home when I –’
My throat tightens. I put the glass to my lips and find my hand is trembling. When I go to speak, the words won’t come, and instead I gulp in air like a fish pulled from the water. Cara’s hand is on my wrist, her fingers encircling it in a firm grip. She doesn’t say anything, but I can feel her willing me to go on.
‘I called 911, and then I waited with her, whispering all the time that she was okay, that I was going to stay with her, that help was coming.’
Her grip on my wrist tightens. I look down and see the clasp of it whitening my skin.
The tears come now. I can’t stop them. All this time I’ve been pushing them down, but they spurt up now in a rush, spilling out ugly and crude, my whole body shuddering with the force of them, the back of my hand against my face to hold back the messy tide of it.
And then she’s reaching up for me and I slide down on to the floor beside her. She draws me towards her, pulling me so that my head lies in the crook of her neck, my hand still over my face. I can feel the pulse of her right there by my ear, the heat from her body, her hair brushing my forehead. Every nerve ending is popping, so I can barely make out the words she is whispering, something about how it wasn’t my fault, how it was a terrible accident, and because of the murmuring softness of it, the sweet warmth of her, I almost believe it.
My breathing slows. The tide of emotion subsides, overtaken by something quite different. I feel her drawi
ng back from me, and dare myself to bring my eyes up to meet hers. I’m holding myself so still, knowing we are on the cusp of something. Her eyes are locked on mine, and there’s this pause. The air between us shrinks with anticipation.
Which one of us will reach across it? Who will be brave enough?
My courage is summoning itself, my fever stirred, when she shakes her head, and says, ‘So what happened to Connie?’
And like a punctured balloon, all the anticipation shrivels.
I turn my face away, look at the fake flames in the phoney fireplace, and feel a sharp nudge of disappointment.
‘She had a concussion. Some broken ribs.’
‘But she was okay? She recovered?’
I press the heels of my hands into my eye sockets, try to calm myself. Then, taking my hands away, I give a brief shake of my head, stretch out my neck a little.
‘Yeah. I guess. I didn’t stay.’
‘You left?’
Shrugging, I say: ‘I kind of had to. It was an accident, and all, but … I dunno. I didn’t like the way Elaine looked at me after that. So I took off.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘Philadelphia, for a while. Then New York. But, there were always reminders. I couldn’t stop feeling guilty about it, you know?’
‘Is that why you had therapy?’ she asks, tripping over the words.
Despite myself, I roll my eyes. Just remembering those sessions with Dr Krauss droning on about agent-regret and not blaming myself for my bad luck makes me itchy with irritation and impatience.
‘He used to tell me that I was feeling responsible for an act of which I was not culpable. That I was taking the blame for a situation that had been created through no will of my own. That I was suffering from self-imposed pain, and that was the thing that really annoyed me, you know? Like I was wallowing in it, or something. And I kept wanting to scream at him, “But I hit her! Not anyone else. I did it! Why don’t you understand this?” ’