Chapter 6 (my favourite chapter)
All The Things We Don't Discuss
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It was a few nights later that Ryan and I were eating a dinner of pasta and cheese; the cheese was crunchy on the top, golden brown, and there didn’t seem to ever be enough of it. The pasta was supple and not too soft. The whole house was flooded with the smells of safety and comfort.
Ryan and I had found ourselves in a pause filled by the sound of the rain outside. We were contented cows and our worlds were full of only melted cheese and pasta. A wall of glass, black with night, screened us from the scraggly garden. Time was getting ahead of us both. Ryan made a sound that suggested he didn’t want the silence to continue, and glanced around the kitchen again, looking for something to talk about.
“Yeah it looks good,” I said.
“I’m just glad it’s done.” His voice rumbled like a washing machine set to spin.
“You don’t even live here…”
“Well.”
I cleared my throat. Ryan sipped at his Heineken. I looked down at the empty empty cans of beer. The cheese was congealing. Then, apropos of nothing, he said,
“We should go back t’ olden times before all this technology started tanglin’ everythin’ up an’ see what could happen instead like.” I turned this around in my head. He drank more beer. I drank more beer.
“What about electricity,” I asked; cutting myself a slice of the not-too-dry chocolate cake he had arrived with. “We’d be in a spot of bother without it.”
“I’m sure we’d-a discovered electricity,” he retorted, “but we could use it different.”
“And have mutant powers?” I chuckled at him, revealing my chocolatey teeth. He made a mock grimace and answered, “Jus’ ones to do with lightning and uh....”
I snorted and nodded, sucking my spoon. Ryan, laughing, continued, “An’ everythin’ might be be’er, if we all decided t’ go down a differen’ road like maybe it’d be like friendlier – ”
“You’re not friendly.”
“Lies, man. You’re sproutin’ propaganda.”
I began tapping a hardened piece of pasta on the inlaid edge of the table. Smiling in a way that I thought made me look cunning in the same way that film noir villains are cunning, I inspected the tiles on the table and said, “Would there be propaganda in this other future?”
“This better future,” he insisted. A genuine dreamy look came into his eye. “No. There’d definitely be no scapegoating or propaganda.”
The sound of breaking branches and a crash reached us from the garden. My thighs stiffened. We didn’t move. I flicked a glance at the wall of glass that faced out onto the garden, and looked at Ryan.
“I’ll check,” he said.
He lumbered up, leaning on the table to finish his beer. The crash did not repeat itself. Without putting his coat on, he walked to the glass door inset in the window and pulled it open. A stream of icy air hit us.
“Hello?” Ryan said into the darkness.
Nothing happened. He jammed his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and called out again.
“Maybe it was a bird,” he looked back over his shoulder.
He remained standing for a minute longer, staring out into the darkness. He knew, the same as I did, that it was too heavy and too loud a noise for it to have been a bird.
“For goodness’ sake,” I said, “close the door, it’s ghastly.”
“Yeah,” he said, closing the door and leaning against it. He laughed, “What are we like, in here like a pair of –”
He was interrupted by the sound of something being dragged slowly through the scrub outside. Ryan turned off the light. My chest tightened. In the moment that it took my eyes to adjust to the darkness, for the garden to become visible, my mind ran riot, gorging up images of hands clawing up through the earth, fugitives, murderers –
That’s when a smudge of white came into view. The colour resolved itself slowly, shape-shifting in my mind from an enormous overgrown bird, to a zombie, to a woman. She was standing beside the undergrowth near the window. The only reason I saw her so quickly was because of her hospital gown.
“There’s a –” Ryan turned towards me.
My legs felt like they had dissolved. I gurgled in my throat, unable to think. I shocked myself back into life by wriggling my toes furiously, and then shoved the chair away with a grating on the tiles. I pushed past Ryan out into the night. The weeds snatched at my trousers, but then my arms were around her. She pressed her glacial flesh against me, her hipbones sharp against my legs.
Ryan helped me bring her inside.
“Oh my God,” I heard him say, “oh my god, my god.”
It wasn’t until I saw him wrapping her up in a blanket and our coats that I realised that that voice was mine.
He was talking to her, giving her a running commentary of what was happening, but the woman’s eyes stared fixedly forwards as though she didn’t see us.
My hand smoothed her hair. Ryan was checking her pulse, her pupils. It was then that I looked down – she was dripping rain on my shirt – and saw that she was wearing my brother’s shoes.
I studied them, unable to understand them in this kitchen.
A click from the kettle – Ryan – and I looked back at her face.
“You’re really cold,” I told her.
“A towel,” Ryan said, in a detached voice I had never heard, “an’ some clothes. D’you have any of those fluffy Penny’s socks?” He was rifling through the presses that we had spent the weekend installing. My footsteps rang out against the concrete and clamoured their way up the metal stairs to the closet on the landing. I thought pleasant things about Zen gardens, my hands grappling over themselves for towels, pyjama bottoms, a t-shirt. No Penny’s socks, but hiking socks, new, thick wool.
When I arrived back down in the kitchen, the woman was sitting at the table with a cup of tea in front of her and Ryan was chafing her hands in his.
I watched the sad contour of her spine as I approached, the sag of her limp cotton underpants. Her naked feet lay on the tiles of the floor, and they, like many parts of her, were red. The shoes were abandoned by the door.
“I have clothes,” I held them up.
It was quickly clear that the woman wasn’t going to dress herself. Ryan stripped her, talking to her the whole time. I handed him the articles of clothing one by one, averting my eyes.
I sheathed her feet myself, the flesh and bone feeling like dead things in my hands; dead, wet things, creatures from a lake. From my vantage point on the floor, I looked up at her face. She was gazing down at me, face void of all expression.
“Do you know her?” Ryan asked me.
“Yes,” I exhaled, “It’s Sarah. My twin.”
"You wanna tell me what’s going on?" Ryan asked in a low voice as we rummaged for anything to keep Sarah warm through the night.
"No," I answered.
He sighed. "Look, is she actually your sister like?"
"No, honestly, she is." Why would I lie about who she was? He scrutinised my face, and nodded.
“I believe you.” Choosing a blanket and a duvet, I stepped back out onto the landing. In the outsized pyjamas, Sarah looked like a child. She was coughing violently, but followed me down the hall.
Later that night I made a list of things to ask the next day:
What was she thinking?
How the hell had she found me?
What did her coming mean?
How had she even gotten into the garden?
Why was she in a hospital gown?
Did our father know that she was here?
Was she in hospital because of the coughing?
When had she last eaten?
"There we go," Ryan straightened up from tucking Sarah firmly into the camp bed that we’d unearthed. This room was enormous, clearly a classroom in a previous life, perhaps half the size of the vast bare space downstairs, and was a veritable curiosity shop.
Narrow alleyways wound through mounds of cast-off junk. Not all of it seemed to be school equipment, but there were plenty of tiny school chairs, stacked desks, neatly stacked chalkboards, easels, even woodworking tools. Sometimes I would come across an incongruous item; a small pile of shoes, perhaps; science fiction books all in French; ancient camp beds; a box of kitchen utensils; a sleeping bag.
"Do you need anything?" I asked Sarah, "Water? Do you want anything to eat?"
She closed her eyes.
"She’ll be fine." Ryan smiled at her. He could have said anything, but, like a dog, she responded to his tone of voice, giving a whisper of a smile back. He continued, "Just a couple of long sleeps and some good healthy food and you’ll be grand."
"What on earth –" I began, but he shook his head at me. He began to clatter his way down the stairs that were rusted thin.
I closed the door on my sister as softly as I could, dreading the thought of more tea or, even worse, more drink, just wanting to fall asleep in my own bed and everyone to leave me alone.
Chapter 7 coming in 2 weeks’ time.