Sarah Before

by Craig Shepherd

  Sarah let her head fall back into the soft upholstery of the chair in a gesture of resigned exasperation. She could re-trace her steps as much as she liked, wondering where on her journey home she may have dropped the purse but she knew all too well it would be sitting at the bottom of the green plastic basket she had dropped at the grocery store. For a time, the black, non-descript purse would have been obscured by a small bag of rice or a hand of bananas, but by now it had surely been found by another customer. Or best case scenario, a store employee who had started replacing her discarded items in their rightful places on the shelves before finding the purse and handing it in to the store manager. If they were honest and valued their job, they may have even left the two hundred dollars cash when they handed it in.

  Quickly shaking off her concerns about the lost money, Sarah realized her address was in the purse too. On one hand, she wanted someone to return it. On the other, she’d come too far to be found now.

  CHAPTER 4

  Sarah woke a couple of hours later, still in the same deflated position on her lounge chair. Her mouth was dry, and before her eyes even fully opened, she was making a smacking sound with her tongue and wetting her lips. Sarah had done this when she first woke up for about ten years now. She had once told Jason she never remembered needing to moisten her own mouth as a child, and this was probably the first sign of getting old. It was one of the little inside things they shared in their relationship, with Jason commenting on it several times as their years together went on. If he woke before her and she stirred while he climbed out of bed, he would hear the smacking of her lips and tongue, and remark that she must be getting older. Every relationship has them. Not inside jokes so much, but just the somewhat odd things each person may think and sometimes share with their partner and nobody else. Sarah thought of them as relationshipisms, a made-up word, but the only way she could describe these running half-jokes they had shared.

  Her eyelids blinked open and she found herself in a mild state of confusion as to why she was asleep in a chair. Her eyes widened further when she remembered her missing purse, and the obvious predicament she was in. As her father would have once said, ‘You’re five kinds of fucked, kiddo’. She smiled briefly at the thought, remembering the way her relationship with her parents had changed once she got to about the age of fifteen and they saw her as more of an adult. Before that, there was absolutely no way in the world that Tom or Helen Benson would have cursed in front of their little girl, except on the odd occasion where she may have been playing near the back shed while her father was having a few beers and watching sports with his friends.

  In fact she recalled she’d heard that exact expression from Tom during one of those times. She was only about nine and couldn’t remember exactly what childhood game she was playing with her cousin Sally in the back yard, but she did remember her father, her uncle Dave and Mr. Summerhill from her dad’s work were watching football in the back shed, no doubt having one or two more beers each than they would let their wives know about. There was a round of cheering and she’d heard her father’s hearty voice rising above the others to proclaim “They’re five kinds of fucked now!” That was accidental of course, he had never meant for his daughter and niece to hear him speak in such a way. Still, he had known she would hear all sorts of profanity amongst her school friends and understood there were some things he couldn’t protect her from forever.

  He had even explained to her when she was fifteen that he didn’t mind letting slip a curse word in her company now and again, now that she was older, but he had never done so in her childhood because he didn’t want his daughter repeating those things and being thought of as foul mouthed. He had said it wasn’t becoming of a young lady to swear, especially not in public or around her elders, but he felt he could relax a bit because his little Sare-bear knew right from wrong. The fact that he still referred to her as ‘his little Sare-bear’, a name he had called ever since she could remember, showed Sarah she was still daddy’s girl, even if he had reached the point where he would no longer shield her from everything in the world which had previously been deemed inappropriate for a child.

  Sarah knew she couldn’t reminisce all day, jolted properly awake by the gravity of her situation. Without her purse, and with the realization the entire supermarket ordeal had been for nothing, food wise, she understood in this moment she was indeed five kinds of fucked. How would she eat? How would she get her purse back? Would she even get her purse back? The questions raced through her head over and over, never allowing enough time for an answer to be found before the next question came. She sat forward in the chair, her elbows resting on her knees and hands clasped together beneath her chin, trying to relax. To slow her mind down so she could think. Tiny beads of sweat began to form on her forehead, but she started breathing deeply with her eyes closed. Air was sucked in forcefully through her nose and pushed out her mouth, her lips forming an ‘O’ shape.

  It was a simple trick from Chapter One in the book on how to manage panic attacks, and it was effective this time at least. She looked over to the telephone stand which two hours ago had alerted her to the problem she was now frantically trying to solve. She called the waist high wooden structure a telephone stand, figuring that’s what it had once been used for but there was no clunky old phone sitting on this one. It was now merely a resting place for things like purses, loose change, keys, and the one thing she really needed right now. Her cell phone. She figured this old stand still had a few years of telephone placement left in it after all, albeit a more modern version.

  She got up, grabbed her phone, and with one more of her calming breaths, she searched online for the Everyday Grocery store’s phone number. Once upon a time there would have been a thick phone book on the first shelf of the telephone stand, but all things become obsolete in time. Before she pressed the button to dial the store, Sarah needed air and thought about stepping out onto the front porch to make the call. Too soon, she thought. Hesitating with her hand on the chain lock, she decided the front door was too close to the rest of the world for the time being and started walking through the living room to the back door that led from her small, not so modern kitchen.

  The floor was a pale yellow linoleum, faintly patterned with almost invisible brown diamond shapes in each square, and an equally outdated pale Formica benchtop hugged two of the walls in an ‘L’ shape, barely leaving enough room for a small table in the middle of the room. The cupboards were the same color as the bench top, with stained brown timber handles. She hated the décor as a whole, likening it to a house built in the 1950’s that nobody had bothered to update in the ensuing six decades, but she wasn’t too put off by it. She couldn’t be, the way she moved around, and it had been many a year since she had been able to be choosy with the appearance of her living spaces. Despite the kitchen’s vintage, it was clean enough. Sarah had made doubly sure of that by spending two days meticulously cleaning everything as soon as she moved in, a ritual she had developed after renting a house in Granville that looked fine to the naked eye, until she opened a cupboard to find mouse droppings and scratched up pieces of shelf liner strewn from end to end.

  She stepped around the cheap, but sturdy little four seater table and reached for the key which sat permanently in the back door’s deadbolt. Flicking the tumbler lock on the handle, she opened the door and let the smooth breeze greet her face, which still hadn’t completely cooled down from waking in a state of panic. Right outside her back door was not much more than a battered concrete slab. It couldn’t be called a back porch, but it was under the cover of a crudely built pergola type of roof drawing out from the wall for about six feet, plenty of shelter to keep a round metal table with a glass top and a cheap outdoor chair away from the elements. She assumed there would have been more chairs as part of this set once upon a time, but through numerous tenants coming and going there was just the one left now. Not a problem for Sarah, of course, given the extent of her outdoor entertaining included a guest list o
f herself, a packet of cigarettes, and a coffee.

  Sitting down to make the call, she took a deep breath. She held the phone with one hand and rubbed the fingers of her other onto her palm, a nervous habit which had once been a distraction to help cope with anxiety. Now it provided no relief from the anxiety at all, but the habit had stayed with her regardless.

  “Everyday Grocery, you’re speaking with Jane,” the lady on the other end of the phone sounded friendly. Happier, and far friendlier than Sarah imagined she would sound if she was back working in a grocery store. The long days under the neon lights, with an endless stream of customers coming through her register, the same small talk taking place with most of them. She had still been a teenager when she worked at Crawford’s back in Pokona though, and she figured the person answering the phone was probably a shift supervisor rather than an embattled checkout worker, so she could see reason behind the jovial voice on the other end of the phone at least.

  “Oh, um, hi Jane, I’m hoping you can help me,” Sarah usually spent some time rehearsing the conversation she was about to have before she called anybody. It wasn’t so much to do with her anxiety, but more because human interaction wasn’t frequent for her. It is strange how something as simple as making a phone call or chatting with an assistant in a shop can seem problematic when you go for long periods not having contact with voices and faces. “I was in your store earlier today, a little over two hours ago, and I…“ She paused for a moment, again regretting her lack of preparation for this call. She hadn’t come up with an excuse as to why she left her basket in the middle of the aisle and left so abruptly. “I was quite unwell and had to leave in a hurry. I left a basket of food in one of the aisles and it would seem my purse was in the basket. My name is Sarah Laurent,” she half expected Jane to remember her – she had probably spoken with a colleague about the crazy junkie who dropped her basket and stumbled out of the store in a stupor. But it seemed Jane had missed that piece of excitement.

  “Hi Sarah. I’m not sure if we have your purse but I can check for you. If we find an unattended basket we do usually keep it in the cool-room out the back for a few hours in case someone comes back for it – you’d be surprised how many people have to get out of here quickly for an emergency, and a few people come back,” Jane’s voice remained friendly, even more so than her introduction. Sarah felt at ease though. She could almost picture Jane – early twenties, perhaps still at university while working a few days here and there, or maybe even just one of those people who took the job straight out of school and never moved on. Slightly chubby, but pretty in the face, and almost certainly blonde. Sarah both appreciated her helpful nature and envied her youth and vitality at the same time. She knew Jane didn’t have kids. Kids wear a person out too much to keep up that kind of enthusiasm once they get to work. “If you hold the line for a minute I’ll see what we have out the back.”

  One of the benefits of only visiting the local grocery store, thought Sarah. The larger chain supermarkets wouldn’t be so helpful and they certainly wouldn’t hold onto a basket of goods for a customer. After several minutes listening to announcements of weekly specials in between uplifting classical guitar hold music, she heard Jane returned to the phone.

  “Are you there Sarah? I’ve got good and bad news – the basket was kept cool out the back so you can come and grab your things whenever you like, but there doesn’t seem to be a purse in there.”

  Sarah’s heart sank, and not just her heart. It felt like everything inside of her dropped an inch or two lower than where it belonged, like someone had just attached fishing sinkers to her organs. Even if she could somehow find the strength to return to the store, she couldn’t pay for the groceries without her purse anyway. She didn’t sob straight away, but felt the tears behind her eyes, poised and ready to fall as soon as she let them.

  “Um, OK. And nobody has handed in a purse, I don’t suppose?” Her voice wavered slightly, doing her best to stop from breaking down, but as soon she got the words out, the first of the tears escaped the sides of her eyes and start rolling down her face. She immediately starting brushing them away.

  “I’m sorry, no, we haven’t had anything handed in today at all. Do you think you can get back for your groceries today? We’re unfortunately only supposed to hold them for a few hours – any refrigerated items you bought will keep in the cool-room for a while, but they’d spoil if we leave them much longer,” Jane’s voice had lowered slightly – no longer the jovial, chirpy voice that first greeted her. There was pity in her voice now.

  “I…..I….” Sarah stammered, and the sobbing she’d been able to keep at bay until now could no longer be held back. She couldn’t even get the words out, and didn’t know what to say even if she could. It sounded pathetic, and she knew it. She imagined what Jane must be thinking. That Sarah was standing in the parking lot of the local nut house, just waiting for the doors to open so she could go back where she belongs.

  “Do you need a moment ma’am, its OK,” Jane said, and the care in her voice was genuine. Like a nurse, or an aged care worker, trying to reassure someone who has just shit themselves in their wheelchair. Sarah’s voice only came out as a squeak, but she did manage to answer in the affirmative. In between sobs, she went back to the breathing trick. It did nothing to stop the storm clouds in her mind, but it did calm her down enough to be able to talk.

  “I’m sorry, I…“ What she said to Jane, the friendly shop assistant, next was something she had never really said to a stranger before, outside of countless wasted therapy appointments. It surprised even Sarah herself. Her voice was far from steady and calm – rising in places as she tried to stop another sob from escaping her mouth. “Jane, I have a problem. It’s a panic disorder which basically makes me agoraphobic. Housebound. I wasn’t exactly sick in your store today, I had a panic attack and I just, I had to leave. I got home and found I didn’t have my purse and I don’t even know what I was hoping when I called you because I don’t think I could even leave the house again to come and get it if it was there,” her words ran together for the most part without much sign of punctuation, the only way she could keep herself from crying.

  “Oh, look. Um,” Jane had obviously been caught off-guard by Sarah’s emotional outpouring, and as skilled in customer service as she seemed to be, she was obviously unprepared for this tear soaked confession. “Just a moment Sarah, are you OK?” She asked without waiting for an answer. “Just give me a minute and I’ll see what we can do.”

  “Ok,” Sarah sniffed, thinking Jane was handling this as best as she could. It wasn’t every day (even at the Everyday) she would get a phone call from a mentally disturbed woman who had lapsed in her ability to look after her personal belongings.

  Sarah looked around the yard while she waited for Jane to return to the phone. More advertisements in her ear. There was an apartment building in the next street over from Sarah, over her back fence and a few houses along and she couldn’t stand the run-down thing. It was painted white, but there was probably more grey concrete showing through now than there was actual paint. She couldn’t see the base of the building but imagined the communal yard area at the back would be overgrown. Uncared for grass crawling up the fences and more than likely some beaten up old garden furniture strewn to most corners of the yard. The parts she could see did nothing to change her opinion that the building’s owners had given up on maintenance a long time ago.

  There wasn’t a lot of money in this area and it shouldn’t surprise her really. The rents were cheap, and what you got for your rent was cheaper. She imagined the residents didn’t care much, happy enough to have a roof over their heads, even if the paint on that roof was a mosaic of splintering cobwebs. Each apartment, the ones on the side she could see at least, had a concrete balcony hemmed in by a crude metal railing, not unlike the one at the front of her house she had been vomiting over a couple of hours ago. The stale taste was still in her mouth. She could only see six balconies from her vantage point, two ro
ws of three, and four of them had clothes or towels hanging over the railings, the true sign of a classy housing estate.

  What looked like an old woman was sitting on a plastic outdoor chair on the middle balcony of the bottom row. Although it was probably around two hundred feet from where Sarah sat, the figure on the balcony unnerved her. Obviously, she couldn’t see the person’s eyes and she couldn’t even be sure it was an old woman, but it made her uncomfortable all the same. Was the person looking at her? They didn’t seem to be doing anything on the balcony except sitting there. Normally someone would be doing something not dissimilar from what Sarah herself was doing now, talking on the phone, or having a coffee or smoke. These were really the main uses for balconies, especially in these types of areas. She’d certainly never seen anybody set up with an easel and palette, creating landscapes of the unkempt backyards, falling down fences, and faded plastic children’s play equipment that would be visible from the balconies up there.

  Almost as if the person knew they had been spotted, they stood up from the chair with ease. No grabbing at the sides of the chair and leaning forward for leverage as she would expect from an elderly person, but rising from sitting to standing in one clean movement. They stood for a second, facing Sarah’s direction. All she could really make out was that the person was in dark clothing, but there was nothing distinctive in what she saw. They turned their back and calmly stepped to the door before sliding it open and stepping inside, disappearing behind a wave of white lace curtain which momentarily blew out when the door was opened before being yanked back in by the occupant as they pulled the door slowly shut behind them.

  “Are you still there Sarah?” It was Jane’s voice on the phone, making Sarah flinch a little. She was quickly and secretly thankful that Jane had returned to distract her from the curious figure she had been fixated on.