Taming the Beast

by Emily Maguire

  In the expression of physicality, in the tearing of the flesh and the intermingling of fluids, there is honesty. Sarah had always known the things that Daniel had never been able to admit out loud. She knew them ever since he pushed himself onto and into her immature body. All the time he had been spewing out justifications and explanations and rationalisations, his true nature was pounding the hell out of her flesh. And now she was showing him, with teeth and claw, that they were the same. One.

  His hand closed over hers and it was over.

  Freud believed that the sublimation of desires was responsible for civilisation. The basest, most animalistic urges were repressed, and the energy that would otherwise have been wasted in hedonism was harnessed and re-directed. In other words, Daniel told Sarah, instead of having sex, people built cathedrals and cities and nations.

  ‘The world has enough of all those things, don’t you think?’

  ‘More than enough.’

  5

  The last thing Jamie expected at five fifteen on a Friday afternoon was for Sarah Clark to walk through his office door. The only time Sarah Clark ever walked through his door these days was in his dreams, and even then it was never his office door.

  She was much thinner than in his dreams and she was wearing more clothing too. She looked different all together. Older, smaller, tireder. Defeated. But he must have been reading her wrong or projecting, because Sarah Clark had never been defeated in her life.

  Defeated, old, tired, thin, whatever. She could have snakes for hair and blood pouring from the eyes and she would still be the most beautiful thing he had seen in over a year. He stared at the fortnightly sales sheet on his desk and concentrated on breathing.

  ‘There was no one at the front desk so I just wandered in.’ She was standing in the doorway, and he thought she sounded nervous but that was impossible. ‘Is it okay that I’m here?’ She sounded scared but that was impossible too. Sarah Clark did not get nervous or scared. Jamie thought he must be projecting again. He was fucking terrified.

  Thirteen months and twelve days. That bastard must have finished with her. She must have been dumped out on the street and had to come home. He knew she’d given up her job, because he’d gone to the restaurant to find her. He’d tried to find her at the university too. That was over a year ago.

  ‘I guess you’re not happy to see me then?’ Sarah started to cry.

  Jamie’s paralysis broke. Sarah in pain caused a reflex reaction much like the mother’s instinct to protect her child. He knew he was weak and weedy, a pathetic excuse for a father, a terrible husband, a failure as a man in general, but what he could do and would do with his dying breath, was take care of Sarah.

  He wrapped his arms around her, wincing as his fingertips scraped her too prominent spine and his ribs clashed against hers. She felt different than he remembered, and it wasn’t his memory failing him. The end of time was when Jamie would forget the way Sarah Clark felt. He remembered perfectly how she felt: bony and smooth and warm. And she felt too light, as though a heavy hand would crush her. She had always felt that way, and she felt that way now, but more so. Bonier, smoother, warmer, lighter. That wasn’t what made her feel strange to him though. It was something else, something that wasn’t to do with the tiny bones and the impossibly pale, always hot skin.

  He tried to pull back from her to see her face but she clung tight, quivering like a tiny bird thrown from the nest before its wings were strong enough to support it. She was injured and afraid, and that was why she felt so unfamiliar to him. Jamie had always been aware of how breakable she was, but now, as she shivered in his arms and drenched his shirt with tears and mucus, she was broken.

  ‘Come and sit down.’ He tried to step out of her arms but she held fast, so he had to half walk, half stumble backwards with her clinging to him, and then ease her into the chair. Her grip remained tight on his arms. ‘Stop crying now. Everything’s fine. Come on now.’ He pulled one hand free and brushed away some hair that had broken free of her plait and was plastered to her cheek.

  ‘Jamie, oh God. I missed you so much. I needed you and now it’s all a mess. I understand why you didn’t want to… I know you were mad, but, Jamie, you’ve been mad before and I’ve done stupid stuff, but you always helped me. Why didn’t you…’ Sarah released his arms, burying her face in her hands.

  She was verging on hysterical which scared him, because if Sarah was anything she was calm and unemotional. ‘You have to stop crying, Sarah, I can’t understand you.’ Jamie stroked her face and then her arms and made what he thought were comforting noises. They were the kind of noises that Shelley always made when he woke up from one of his nightmares. Sarah kept crying and shaking. Jamie wondered if she was on drugs.

  She stopped abruptly and stood up, knocking him backwards. ‘Enough. If I keep crying like this I’m going to burst a fucking tear duct.’ She walked to the window and peered out, wiping her face with her sleeve. Jamie noticed that she was wearing a white cardigan. It was very odd, the kind of hand knitted matinee jacket that they dressed Bianca in when there was a cool breeze outside.

  She cleared her throat a few times, leaning her forehead against the glass. ‘You must be doing well. Got a view of the river and everything, huh? Must be nice looking at the fast flowing sludge all day.’

  ‘Yep, I saw them drag a body out the other day.’

  ‘You did not.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  Sarah sat back down at his desk and lit a cigarette.

  ‘This is a non-smoking building, Sarah.’

  ‘Aren’t they all? You want me to hang out the window or something?’

  He shook his head. ‘So how ya been, Sarah Clark?’

  ‘Well, how do I look?’

  ‘Like absolute shit,’ he said and Sarah laughed. ‘I’ve missed you, Sar. I’ve been waiting for that phone call you promised me.’

  ‘What?’ She frowned. ‘I called you a hundred times!’

  ‘No, you didn’t. When did you call?’

  She returned to the window, opened it a crack, tapped the ash from her cigarette and then closed it. When she turned back to him, there were tears running down her cheeks again. ‘I called all the time, at first anyway. I left messages with Mike, and with your mum, with Brett. I tried to talk to Shelley but she… well, I can’t blame her.’

  He stood up and walked towards the window. He had to get a better look at her face. ‘Sarah, if you called so many times then why have I been going out of my mind worrying about you?’

  ‘Jesus, Jamie, no one told you? What a fucking… what about the messages I left here?’

  Jamie felt the nausea returning and focussed on the flashing blue Car Parking sign across the street to keep steady. ‘Messages?’

  She opened the window and threw the cigarette butt out. ‘Twenty or so. More probably.’

  Jamie sat down and pressed his hands together the way his therapist had shown him to. He was supposed to focus his feelings of panic and anger between his palms and then release them by turning his palms up. Let it go, Jamie, let it all go.

  ‘Where did you leave the messages?’

  ‘I left them with that snappy bitch of a receptionist.’

  Why would Angie not tell him that Sarah had called? Angie did not even know Sarah. Except she probably did know about Sarah, because she went to yoga with Shelley every Tuesday night. Jamie pressed his hands together so hard he thought his wrists might break. ‘So you’re saying that Shelley knew you were trying to get in touch with me?’

  ‘Shit.’ Sarah kicked the wall. ‘Yes, she fucking knew.’

  Focus the rage. Squeeze it between your palms. It is just a tiny ball. Flatten it. Control it. Thirteen months and twelve days she had been trying to contact him, and everyone he knew had conspired to keep her away. Own the anger; don’t let it own you. Thirteen months and twelve days of his life had been wasted in pain and misery.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her cross the room and climb
onto his desk. He thought she was sitting cross-legged but couldn’t be sure, because he was focussing on the despair and betrayal and lost hope being squashed and compressed. He controlled his feelings; they did not control him.

  ‘Are you praying? Have you found God or something?’

  ‘You talked to my mum? You talked to Brett?’

  ‘Yeah, and your dad. What’s with that crazy hand business?’

  ‘It’s a behavioural therapy thing. I have to squash the bad feelings between my palms and then I can let them go.’

  ‘What a load of shit. Give me your hands.’

  It was a load of shit. He relaxed his hands and let Sarah take them, one in each of her own. This was much more effective than any of the techniques he had been taught. When Sarah pressed her fingertips into his palms the panic and anger all went away. What did it matter that he had suffered needlessly because of the selfish plotting of his nearest and dearest? What did it matter that over a year of his life had been lived without Sarah when all along she had wanted him, needed him, called for him? It didn’t matter one bit, because she was here now, and nothing else had ever mattered.

  ‘God, it’s good to see you,’ Jamie said. ‘Not that there’s much of you to see. How’s that old man treating you?’

  She smiled. ‘Like a Queen.’

  ‘Great, I’m glad.’ Jamie managed to not choke on the words only by pretending that this was one of his nightmares, and that any minute her head would split open and spurt hot blood all over his desk and chair and body.

  Sarah’s head did not split open. ‘Whatever you think of Daniel, you should know that he does love me. He loves me as much as anyone could, Jamie. Even you.’

  Jamie had a moment of genuine pity for Daniel Carr, who was in for some serious heartache if he loved Sarah as much as Jamie did. Then he looked up at her blue lips, and any sympathy for the bastard vanished. She looked like a twelve-year-old junkie.

  ‘If he treats you so well then why do you look like death? Why did you turn up here crying and shaking?’

  She climbed down off the desk and walked over to the window, lighting another cigarette. For several minutes she stared out into the approaching night and Jamie watched her. She seemed to be considering something. Twice she half turned to Jamie with an open mouth, and both times she pressed her lips together and turned back to the window. Jamie waited because he didn’t know what else to do. Probing had never worked with Sarah. It was likely to make her feel pressured, and then she would turn sarcastic or start joking, and he would never know what was wrong.

  The more he waited and the longer he examined her, the more his dread grew. She was sallow, scraggy, wasted. Even after the rape she had not looked this bad, so it must be something truly awful that she was working up to telling him. It was possible that she was on the pills again, or something worse. Who could tell what a sick fuck like Daniel Carr would do? Maybe he dealt heroin, or maybe he pimped her out to his jaded intellectual friends. Maybe she was sick. She looked sick. Jamie’s heart sped up and he pressed his palms together.

  He had seen people on 60 Minutes looking like concentration camp victims and talking about how it can happen to anyone. And she wasn’t just anyone – she was Sarah Clark. Talk about high risk. Jamie looked at her emaciated form leaning heavily against the glass, and he remembered how good it had felt to spurt inside her and feel her fluids mixing with his own. It had seemed so important that there be nothing between them, no barriers to their intimacy. He remembered Mike saying how sharing body fluid was the ultimate vote of trust in this day and age. He saw that Sarah’s hand shook as she raised the cigarette to her lips, and he realised there were very few things in this world that would cause Sarah Clark to look scared and weak and to sob and shake.

  Actions and consequences and what goes around comes around and you think that these things will never happen to you but this disease does not discriminate and the only safe sex is abstinence and the grim reaper knocks down the pins and there are pretty girls falling down too and love will not protect you and beauty will not protect you and every time you go to bed with someone you are going to bed with their partners and their partners and their partners but Sarah was always careful except when she could tell that a guy was Clean.

  ‘God, Jamie, it’s the most terrible thing. I never thought it could happen to me.’ She turned and smiled and it was like looking at a corpse. ‘I’m love’s bitch.’

  After Sarah had made her pronouncement, Jamie knelt at her feet, wrapped his arms around her waist and cried. She allowed him the same liberty in this as she had always allowed him. It occurred to him, as he covered the front of her dress in tears and snot, that she had never rejected him physically. It also occurred to him that he had never seen Sarah in a dress except at weddings or parties, and then it would be a tight, sexy number, not a yellow sundress made modest with a prim white cardigan. Things were much worse than he had thought.

  ‘What’s with the dress, Sar?’ He lifted his wet face to look up at her.

  She smiled and then her forehead creased as the smile morphed into a grimace and then back into the original smile. ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘Daniel bought it for me. He likes it.’

  Jamie hated the way she was smiling, so he spoke into her stomach. ‘Jesus, Sarah. You turn up after so long and you look so bad, I thought you had some fucking disease and you tell me you’re so in love and that he loves you, and I don’t understand because if he loved you, he would not put you in some stupid little girl’s outfit and he would make sure you ate and didn’t smoke so much and he wouldn’t make you cry.’

  Jamie knew he was babbling. What did it matter? All the therapy and the anti-depressants and anxiety suppressors and relaxation tapes only worked when Sarah was not around. It was easy to keep his shit together when she had disappeared off the face of the earth. Or was believed to have disappeared off the face of the earth. But here she was looking like an extra from Return of the Living Dead and he didn’t give a fuck if he was babbling or hyperventilating or ruining her stupid fucking dress.

  Sarah stroked his hair. ‘I know it sounds bad, but all that stuff doesn’t matter to me. It never mattered to me what I wore or ate or if my iron levels were high enough. If I ever had a half-normal existence it was because you nagged me into it.’

  ‘And that was a bad thing?’ Jamie said, as a stabbing sensation shot down his left side. He wondered if it was possible to have a stroke at twenty-four.

  ‘No, it was a wonderful thing. I always felt loved, even when I knew I didn’t deserve to be. I wouldn’t have made it out of my teens if it wasn’t for you.’

  The stabbing sensation eased off into a dull ache. ‘But…?’

  ‘But…’ Sarah sighed. Her hand fell from Jamie’s hair, landing lightly on his shoulder. She coughed, sighed again, then continued. ‘I was never the fragile creature you thought I was. I loved you for taking care of me, but I always felt… cloistered. I’ve always had this need to… push things as far as they’ll go. Push myself. You always stopped me right when I got to the edge. Daniel doesn’t stop me. He binds my hands and feet and throws me right over.’

  ‘Oh.’ Jamie wondered if he was being dense. Firstly, how the hell was what she just said a compliment, to Jamie or to Daniel? She made it sound as though she had a choice between a nursemaid and a psychopath. And all that aside, if she loved the psychopath and the psychopath loved her back, then why the hell was she weeping on the nursemaid’s shoulder? Why wasn’t she off with the psychopath having nails driven through her palms or something?

  ‘Is it true that you freaked out when I left?’ Sarah said.

  Freaked out was one way to put it. Another way would be totally, utterly and completely lost his will to live. No need to make Sarah feel bad about it though. ‘I was pretty upset.’

  ‘I didn’t know how you felt, Jamie. I’m sorry.’

  The pain in his side flared up again. ‘Sarah, you knew t
hat I loved you. I told you all the time.’

  ‘I thought you meant you liked hanging out with me and you liked fucking me, and you didn’t want me to hang out with or fuck any other blokes. I thought that’s what you meant when you said you loved me. I didn’t know… I didn’t understand how hard it is to walk around all day feeling like half of your body is missing.’

  ‘So, um… so now you understand about love because… because of him?’

  Sarah recommenced stroking Jamie’s hair, but it wasn’t comforting anymore. It felt as though she was doing it to soothe herself, the way people fingered worry beads or chewed their nails. The way he pressed his palms together. It felt to Jamie that she was disconnected from him in a way she never had been before. For the first time since she’d arrived, it occurred to him that maybe her absence had been more than a blip in their relationship. Something had been damaged, and just having her here, having her skin touching his, was not enough to fix it.

  ‘The thing I never understood about love is that it can’t be quelled, like lust can. With love, if you follow its call, if you give in to it, it just gets worse. The more you have, the deeper you go, the more you need.’ Sarah’s voice broke and she paused to blink the tears away. ‘When Daniel’s not with me, I have this agonising need to talk to him. So I call him and as soon as I hear his voice, I have to see him. When I see him, I need to touch him. Then I touch him and it isn’t enough, so we make love. And then, where do you go? Because it still isn’t enough. It is less than nothing to be in his bed. I feel like I’m starving.’

  Jamie leapt up and grabbed her shoulders. ‘Sarah! You are starving. You’re really scaring me. You need to get a grip on reality or you’re going to fucking die.’