Jane was matter of fact when discussing the breakdown of her relationship, and didn’t go into too much detail. Sarah figured she didn’t need to. Although she herself had really only ever had a serious relationship with one man, she had seen enough of her friends in Pokona go through breakups and the stories were mostly the same. The issues manifested in different ways – drinking, money problems, infidelity, even children – but ultimately most breakups were the same underneath. The way Sarah saw it, some relationships are full of love, and some aren’t. Having it or not didn’t make too much of a difference in the final outcome. It was more about the commitment and a deep desire to work your way through the world with the person you had beside you. If you didn’t have that, you were five kinds of fucked from the word go. Everything becomes more disposable as earth keeps moving around the sun, and people’s attitudes to relationships were no exception.
“Basically, Joe’s life moved forward and I was just the passenger along for the ride.”
“Sometimes that’s OK, but it sounds as though you felt like excess baggage instead of a passenger,” replied Sarah.
It was the first and only time during the evening Sarah really noticed the age gap between herself and Jane, who at twenty-six hadn’t yet developed the guarded, cynical views on life she had arrived at. Or as she saw it, earned. It was because of the way Jane spoke, with a sense the things which had gone wrong in her relationship were unheard of and never experienced by others before. To Sarah though, it sounded like Jane was doing just what she herself used to – confusing unique memories with ones that countless other people had their own versions of.
“It took nearly two years for us to break down completely, but by the end I just felt like a burden. It’s not like Joe ever did anything deliberately to make me feel like that, but it was his thing all along. His promotion, his transfer. I was just…there,” Jane said, a sadness creeping into her voice.
“The mind can play a lot of tricks on a person, especially when you let life wear you down,” said Sarah, indicating she spoke from experience. In the register of history’s romantic couplings, Jane and Joe’s would be marked as deceased, with the cause of death, ‘Grew Apart’. That would be just about right except there would be no annotation to say they only grew apart because they let themselves do so.
Jane then spoke of the more recent time of her life, which she considered somewhat of a rebirth. She had remained in Calston, despite having nothing particular to hold her there.
“If that was me, those memories would feel like a lynch mob chasing me out of town,” Sarah said.
“I was settled here though, you know?” Jane continued. “I stopped trying to keep up with the kids at Mixers when I found a job at the Everyday Grocer. It was day work, with a chance for more hours if they became available, so I jumped at the chance. I mean, I don’t want to be here forever, but for now its fine. One day I want to be somewhere bigger, somewhere exciting.”
It wasn’t a dream Sarah could share with her, and they laughed about the idea of the older woman living in an inner-city apartment, stepping out of her front door into crowds of people and jostling through swarms of fellow workers.
“So that’s why I’m saving my pennies now. I can’t sing or dance, so busking on the street for food would be out of the question,” joked Jane.
Sarah’s tale was far more complicated than Jane’s was, and her condition made it impossible to harness such lofty aspirations, but that was the beauty of imagination. There was always a ‘what if’, and in a ‘what if’, you could wipe away almost any memory you wanted to.
It wasn’t often she thought about her past any more. It usually only brought her tears at best, and at worst an onset of a deep depressive state where not only was she stuck inside, but didn’t even care. She could remain in that state for weeks, months even, and not have the slightest care for anything except sleep and the barest of survival duties. Eating occasionally, only when she really needed to. When the pain in her stomach from lack of food became too much to tolerate. Washing, cleaning, brushing her teeth, changing her clothes, those were jobs done even less frequently.
But tonight, speaking with Jane who would sip her beer and listen – really listen – without judgement or pity, she was able to explore those memories which had become ghosts to her. There were memories held in the deeper recesses of her mind she was certain were unique to her. Not like making love to her boyfriend on the sands of Andrews Lake, or walking through the edge of the bushland as the sun issued the last rites to another day. These ghost memories were darker. The pale shadows lurking in the corners of her dreams until her guard was down.
The problem Sarah found with some of the things she spoke about, was sounding uncertain in their re-telling and she feared Jane would come to the conclusion she was making them up. It wasn’t the case at all, but after only visiting these memories in her darkest moments over the last few years, it was as though they had distorted themselves. Ghostly shadow memories twisting themselves around inside her head, like apparitions shapeshifting into the savage, menacing dream demons meaning only to do her harm. To poke at her mind until she would force herself awake, and ensuring they would maintain their fearsome, hateful form for many nightmares to come.
But here with Jane, under the occasionally flickering sixty-watt light globe hanging above the dining table, her memories didn’t have the horror movie persona they held in her dreams. She definitely felt a pang of sadness when touching on parts of her life, but for the most part was able to get through her re-telling of events without showing signs of distress. It was almost cleansing for her to shed some of the constricting skin of her previous life, and she pondered with an air of hopefulness whether she might sleep undisturbed tonight.
She took Jane way back through meeting Jason, becoming engaged, married and finding out she was pregnant. Earlier, Jane had noticed a certain caution in Sarah’s eyes. Like a dog who longs to be showered with attention by a visitor to its home, yet still treads warily until they feel safe. But when she spoke of her early years of marriage, Jane saw the darkness disappear from Sarah’s eyes, giving way to a light she was probably unaware of.
“My pregnancy was unremarkable, really. I think the hardest part was leaving my job at the travel agency. They did offer to hold my job for me though, so that was nice,” said Sarah. “And on June 26, 2002, Elizabeth was born. We toyed with the idea of naming her Beth, after Jason’s sister, but it felt strange paying homage to someone who was still alive. She was still humbled and cried when she visited us in the hospital.”
“Tears of joy, I hope?” said Jane as she took a mouthful of beer and smiled.
“They were,” Sarah replied, and Jane saw the glimmer in Sarah’s eyes start to dim. “I never did go back to Pokona Travel.”
It was clear she regretted not continuing with the promising career she had developed for herself, and while she obviously loved her daughter and cherished the opportunity to stay at home raising her, Jane could tell that giving up her career had still left a void in Sarah’s life. Still, the way Sarah’s head would tilt backwards and her eyes would almost float off into a different world when she talked about little Elizabeth (Lizzy for short, to avoid confusion amongst family), the deep, irreplaceable love she held for her daughter was obvious.
Sarah continued, explaining Jason had gone against his initial decision on the foreman position by that stage, asking his boss if the position was still available, much to his employer’s delight. She hadn’t asked him to move out of his comfort zone and take a job he felt was beyond him, but Jason recognized the growing strain that being a one income family was having on their savings and the extra six thousand dollars per year was something he couldn’t ignore.
Despite missing her job, Sarah spoke about how she relished her new life caring for Lizzy. “Two of my friends, Melissa Helbrecht and Josie Simpson. They had both had kids earlier that year and during summer we spent almost every day together down at Waterson’s Park. We
all lived nearby, and it was such a good time. We’d walk, gossip, and share our new-found parenting knowledge. I learned a lot, being a few months behind them on the motherhood journey,” she sipped her beer and continued. “There was this huge parkland area, always so green no matter what time of year it was. We’d set up a couple of picnic blankets and sit while the children played together. Well, it wasn’t really playing. Mel’s daughter and Josie’s boy, along with Lizzy all had fairly limited moving ability, but the looks of curiosity and wonder on their faces as they happily sat or laid on the blankets together, it was like they had their own little secret club.”
“You only have the one child?” asked Jane.
“No, on October 17, 2004, my little boy Noah came along. I know you don’t know Jason, but you should have seen Noah’s little face. The resemblance to his father was frightening. Our family and friends usually talked about it above anything else when being introduced to Noah for the first time. Lizzy was like a cross between my mother and I, but there was no doubt which side of the family Noah was going to take after.”
“Go on,” Jane kept listening intently, content in hearing Sarah’s story with as little interruption as possible.
“Lizzy might have looked like me, but she was daddy’s little girl. I was the same with my dad, so I shouldn’t have been surprised,” she paused and that cautious look was back on her face again. She took a deep breath. “Not long after Noah came along though, I started feeling confused, I guess. Something started eating away at me slowly. Nothing drastic, more like the way the tide rolls in against a sandstone cliff. It’s not noticeable, but each wave takes away a tiny bit of sand each time.”
It was at this stage of Sarah’s life where she saw the joy in Jason’s eyes, the way his whole demeanor lit up when he came home and hugged his daughter. His shaggy hair would be flicked away from his face in one motion as he lifted little Lizzy from the floor, exposing a gleam in his eyes Sarah hadn’t seen since the early days of their courtship. It reminded her of their evenings at Andrews Lake, when the fading strips of sunlight would catch his face. The way his mouth stretched back to show his top teeth in a smile revealing everything that mattered in his world was held right there in his strong hands.
Sarah would tell herself over and over that of course she still mattered to Jason. She was the mother of his children after all. And shouldn’t she be happy to be married to a man who had so much love to give to his children, to his family? Of course she should, she told Jane, but she couldn’t stop that tide rolling in and taking the smallest piece of her back out to sea every time she noticed the look of love which had previously been reserved for her.
Back then, she hadn’t shared any of these thoughts with anybody. It was a time of confusion, unfamiliar emotions. Unsure of herself, she wondered if that was how schizophrenic people felt. Sometimes aware they weren’t functioning correctly, and other times completely oblivious to their malady. Anyway, how could she go to her friends and confide she was jealous of her own children? It wasn’t even Lizzy and Noah who she was jealous of, not really. She loved them dearly and would have thrown herself in front of a moving train to keep them safe.
“Looking back, it probably wasn’t jealousy at all. It might have felt that way at the time, but it was more just a realization we were becoming two people raising children. We were forgetting the love that led us to start a family in the first place,” said Sarah.
Regardless of the internal battle she’d been fighting, there were no glaring changes in their life. Jason kept working, they would still do things as a family, and Sarah continued her regular excursions with Mel and Josie. Those days had gradually changed from pushing strollers around the park to now sitting on benches near the vast area of play equipment. Josie had also given birth to another boy around the same time Noah was born, and while the youngest two were still limited to crawling around on the picnic rugs, Lizzy and the two older children had upgraded to wildly exploring some of the smaller climbing apparatus and slides. Sarah and Jason continued to do everything happy couples do, basically, and to anyone on the outside looking in, they had a happy family and the kind of life a lot of people never get to experience.
“In his defense, I think Jason would have been mostly unaware there was anything wrong,” she said. The fact was, the only place a problem had existed was in her own head, and even that hadn’t been a constant issue. She wasn’t walking around in a jealous rage every day of the week, but once every couple of weeks something might start chipping away in the back of her mind, convincing her things were changing and this would make her withdraw from her normal self a bit. Insignificant things like taking a bath or going to bed once the kids were in bed rather than sitting in front of the TV with Jason. “It was just little things,” she told Jane. “So, to someone like Jason who wasn’t an outwardly emotional kind of guy and didn’t necessarily pick up subtle warning signs, I can understand why I’d felt so alone.”
Feeling it was time for a break, Sarah suggested a smoke, and Jane followed her out the back door. The night air had become even colder. With every exhale, she couldn’t tell where the cigarette smoke ended and the fog from her breath began. It all swirled amongst each other, the blue-grey plumes of smoke staying in the air and rising higher than her breath. Her gaze followed the smoke but landed on something far past it. The middle balcony of the second floor of the apartment building she had been fixated on earlier.
It was now dark outside, the clouds taking away any moonlight that might have otherwise illuminated the sky. The only light came from the soft orange glow of streetlights up and down the street behind Sarah’s, but most of them were blocked by rooftops and it was only a dull light making its way in between the houses. Fixing her sight on the balcony, she noticed it was the only one with the outside light on. It did nothing really but light up the concrete floor of the balcony itself and the metal railings around it, and it made Sarah think of prison bars. She could faintly see the plastic chair where someone had sat that afternoon, but it was hard to make out much more in this light.
She had almost said something to Jane about what she had seen, but was wary if they were to go back inside and continue discussing Sarah’s past, the next part of her story didn’t sit well with what she may have said about the balcony.
CHAPTER 7
Back inside, both women had emptied a beer and Jane checked in to see if Sarah was OK talking about her history, to which Sarah responded it was fine as she collected two more beers from the fridge.
“A couple of years went by, Lizzy was starting kindergarten and Noah was about to turn two. Everything had been pretty normal, although what I had started calling my ‘crazy thoughts’ had become more frequent and I was almost deliberately distancing myself from Jason,” she was surprised at how effortlessly she was opening up to this stranger. “One day, I noticed myself becoming jittery around the house, and I wasn’t able to put my finger on the reason why. It started as little things. The first one I really remember was tripping on a pair of Jason’s work boots he’d left inside the front door, and although I yelled at him for not using the shoe rack, I’d gone about my business without much more of a thought.
“At least until I walked past the door later to find the shoes still there, and it wasn’t anger I felt anymore. Whatever it was, it wasn’t directed at Jason either. It was all about those shoes and the mess around the front door. It wasn’t O.C.D. though. I never did have that problem, but I just felt, I don’t know, overwhelmed. I didn’t suddenly need to clean everything up. I just didn’t like what I saw, and it made me really uncomfortable.”
She told Jane about the way her head had started to ache when she looked down at the doorway, and the pain felt like it was coming from right behind her eyes. She had squeezed her eyes shut and used her thumb and middle finger to press down on her temples, unsure of what this could achieve but it was just a natural reaction to the pain. Her breathing had become sharper, air was coming in but was shooting out of her
nostrils in quick bursts that her lungs had trouble catching up to. She had lowered her hand from her face and opened her eyes but the pain had only gotten worse, as though a vice were being tightened on either side of her head, affecting her vision. She’d still been able to see everything, but objects had lost their contrast. To explain this to Jane she likened it to looking at a photograph that was slowly turning to a watercolor painting, all the previous crisp outlines disappearing and the colors melting together to create what wasn’t much more than a blur.
“I wasn’t even worried about the doorway by then. My mind was just racing around in circles trying to process what was happening. It was like I was under siege by an army I couldn’t see. What I remember most though was the heat. It came over me like a wave. I felt like there was a furnace burning inside me, and right when I felt the sweat starting to break through my skin, I hunched over and threw up, mostly on the linoleum floor of the entryway, and partly on the front door itself.”
It made her feel queasy even thinking about that first time. She remembered Jason hearing the commotion, rushing out to see what the problem was, but she hadn’t been able to speak, instead waving him away as she took off in a quick shuffle towards the bedroom. After washing her face, she was thankful her body felt cooler, but still didn’t feel right. She had felt anxious and didn’t know what she could do about the shoes and the shitty catalogues and goddamn fishing rod near the front door.
Sarah Before Page 5
