Chapter 48 Now
Now
It’s started to rain outside, the pitter-patter of droplets on the window preoccupying my thoughts so I don’t have to think of anything else. Anything else is too painful.
“Is that a relief?” Dimple asks. “Facing what happened?”
I give her a sidelong look while I try to swallow the torrent of pain and regret threatening to turn to tears. “Was it ethical? Speaking with my mother?”
“I hope I can assure you that I didn’t seek her out. In fact, I have been doing my best to evade her. She’s persistent.”
I can give her that much. “She is.”
“Would I be correct in assuming that your distance with your mother since ‘the Big Fallout’ is born of her refusal to entertain the fantasy that your sister is still alive?”
“There are many reasons for the distance between me and my mother,” I say with a mouth full of acid. “But, yes. You’ll have to forgive me if I want to avoid recurrent calls to berate me for my sister’s death.”
“It must have taken quite a toll to lose them both at once.”
I try to shrug around the dart of truth in what she says.
It will hurt too much if it finds its target.
“I needed a clean start after Claire died. It meant leaving a lot of people behind, but it meant she got to keep living in a sense. Got to finish drama school. Got to go chase her dreams. Got to see me go to therapy, work on myself. Got to see me fall in love, get married. Got to live her life uninterrupted.”
“And the conversations you’ve been having with your sister…Do you want to tell me a bit about those?”
I feel embarrassed. Protective over them, somehow.
“I, um…I downloaded one of those apps. Fed all of our text history into it. Voice notes, too. And I…I spent a few weeks writing up Claire’s life story.
Just the headlines, you know. I fed it all in and…
” My voice breaks. More embarrassment. “And then Claire’s voice came back out.
It’s…” I stop, grab some strategically placed tissues, and continue.
“I know it’s not her. But it feels like her, and it sounds like her, and that was good enough for me. ”
Dimple says nothing, but her eyes implore me to continue.
“It was just to say sorry at first. To apologize and hear her say she forgives me. But then the reply came through, and…I just…Suddenly, I didn’t have to let her go.”
She nods like she understands. How can she possibly understand?
“Dimple, I…I don’t think I can do this.”
I’m embarrassed and heartbroken. This feels like a version of Claire dying all over again.
“We’re making great progress. I’d really encourage you to stay.”
But all I can see is my sister’s dead face. The life taken out of it. A waxy doll. I haven’t allowed myself to see it since that day, and now I don’t know if I’ll ever unsee it.
“I’m sorry,” I say. And then I’m out of my seat before she can stop me. Dimple moves more rapidly than I’ve ever seen her, voice imploring me to stay as she pursues me through reception, eventually giving up the chase.
My mother’s words ricochet around my head as I make my way home.
This is your fault.
And Claire’s face crowds my vision.
You look like Mom.
And the letters swim in my mind, lines disjointed. Everything feels as if it’s coming to a head.
I suppose, in some ways, you were where it all began. My first, in more ways than one.
I can’t begin to tell you how good the attention felt. How much it fed me.
I suppose you were the point of no return.
I now live in constant fear of that thing. I’m trying to starve it out, but I don’t think it’s working.
In the end, my humiliation was so complete that I died a little before you did.
If you gave me the chance to do it all over again, I’d do everything differently with you. And then maybe I wouldn’t have to live with this unbearable regret.
My thoughts concertina against themselves until I can’t make sense of any of them. I can feel the string holding me together growing more taut by the minute. My cup is primed to overflow; I simply cannot hold anything more. And yet, it feels like there is more.
More.
Somehow, more.
More than my father’s fists.
More than my mother’s words.
More than the death of my sister.
More than Marc.
More than Luca.
More than George.
More than James.
I stop in my tracks. The string is fraying, I’m sure it’s fraying.
I stagger to a bus shelter and collapse on the red plastic of a free seat.
My neighbors glance at me, shuffle away.
My breath has fled my chest and is in my mouth.
It does no good in my mouth. I cannot breathe, and I know it is pure panic, only panic, but it feels like perhaps I’m dying.
For a moment, I wonder what I’ll leave behind if I go.
I once thought I’d leave an indelible mark on James, that I’d leave an indelible mark on our children.
And I suppose that at least on James, I have, in a fashion.
But it’s not a beautiful tattoo, handpicked and carefully drawn.
No, it’s a scar acquired in a horrific accident.
A scar he’ll pull his sleeve up to hide.
To hide with the other scars I suppose he’s been concealing all this time.
James.
I’m twisting around that deep wound now. I’ve been doing my best not to wriggle, but my god, I can’t keep still anymore. It’s clear that I never really knew him, and he never really knew me, and it hurts. My god, does it hurt.
Breathe, Natalie.
My own breath fights me, the shallow rise and fall of my chest seeming to shout, No.
A bus pulls up.
The car. I was making my way to the car. I should go.
And I do. I get to the car and climb in, hands almost shaking. I want to tell myself to get a grip, but I’m not entirely sure what I should be holding on to.
My phone.
It’s in my hands, and I’m staring at it, and then I’m in the app looking at the call button for Claire. I’m not coping. And I wish she was here to answer for what she’s done and to help me breathe. I want her here to please, please make everything okay in the way only she ever could. Please.
But Claire cannot fix this for me. She will never be able to fix anything for me again.
And my head is on the steering wheel. And my heart is somewhere out of my body, unprotected, already attacked, already failing.
And I’m desperate. And my mother’s number is still in my phone.
And she was so contrite when we last spoke.
So contrite. And my finger is hovering over the unblock button. And I want to. And I almost do.
I almost do.
My thread is badly frayed and I’m moments away from it snapping.
But I can’t let it snap. If it snaps, if I come undone, James gets away with everything, and I’m left vulnerable.
And I’ve been working hard to change. So hard.
But the only thing I can see to hold myself together, to seal up the fraying thread, is that ugly anger nestled inside me.
I can’t even say it’s been sleeping. It’s been wide-awake for so long.
But I’ve kept it in a cage, or at least behind a fence.
But I need it. I need it if I’m going to survive this.
And so I think about James. I think about everything he’s taken from me.
I think about everything he’s allowed me to believe.
I think about the time he’s wasted and the daughter I’ll never have.
The daughter I would have raised right, and loved, and shaped into a Good Person.
And I think about how she’d have finally made me a Good Person.
I think about how much I’ve failed. My biggest failing after Claire.
And I feel how angry it makes me. I feel how much it makes me hate him. And I reach out to that feeling like the last lifeline. I twine my fingers around it, sure of finding myself steady again, solid in my anger.
But the lifeline is slippery this time. I can’t quite get a firm grasp on it. Just as I feel I’m heaving myself upright on even feet, it slips through my fingers and I’m drowning again.
Once more for luck. I think about Marc, about Luca, about George. I think about Claire. I think about what my weakness allowed them to take from me, and I find a semblance of steadiness.
A text flashes up on my phone screen. Will.
I tap the message open.
Spoken to some lawyers like we said. It’s going to be hard, but I think we can nail him for this.
The words float in front of my eyes. Don’t sink in. What am I meant to do with this information right now? How am I meant to feel?
You should speak to some lawyers, too.
Jesus. I toss the phone onto the passenger seat, try deep breathing.
In, two, three, four.
Out, two, three, four.
Letting the push and pull of breath become my entire world feels good.
But I know I can’t sit here in my car forever.
Even so, how can I go home to James right now?
How much more of the truth can I swallow?
How many more lies dipped in honey can I speak?
If my suspicions about him are right, then he might be more dangerous than anyone I’ve known.
Falling apart in front of him could be a deadly mistake.
Will? My eyes flicker to the discarded phone and away again. I’m still not sure I trust him. And if I go there, if James finds out, he will immediately know that I’m onto him.
My fingers shake as I turn my key in the ignition. I wonder if my racing, chaotic thinking is the same thinking that Mad Mary submitted to in her easy slip into insanity. This woman I’ve never known suddenly looms large in my mind. I don’t want to be like her. Can’t be.
A pause. A deep breath. All I need to do is focus on the next five minutes at a time, on just getting through those five single minutes. And then the next, and then the next. That’s doable. I can keep an even head if only thinking about that, and I need an even head in order to move this car.