Fragile Like Us

by Sara Barnard

  “There I was, thinking you wanted to see me,” he said, easing into the roundabout and then taking the second exit onto the highway.

  “It’s not about that,” Suzanne replied. “It would have just been nice to be included in the decision.”

  “Okay. One: when Sarah and I talked about it we thought you’d be thrilled, so asking your opinion didn’t even come up. And two: you can’t just up and leave just because you don’t like a decision someone’s made.”

  “Why not?”

  In the rearview mirror I saw Brian roll his eyes. “Because it’s bloody annoying. I don’t get my kicks driving from Cardiff to Reading to Brighton and back again, you know. We could’ve just had a nice weekend in Wales. I was going to take you to rugby.”

  Suzanne made a face. “Wow, I’m so sad I missed it.” It was strange for me to see her like this, somehow diminished in the presence of her older brother. She was transformed from my cooler, worldly friend into Brian’s Little Sister. Sulky and slouching against her seat.

  “Plus,” Brian added, ignoring her comment, “you really should tell me before you turn up at Mum and Dad’s. What if they’d been there?”

  “I wouldn’t have gone in if they were. And why would telling you make a difference?”

  “Oh, Zanne, come on.”

  “No, go on, tell me.” She shifted a little in her seat so she was facing him. “Spell it out.”

  I saw Brian tense his shoulders against his seat, tilting his head back slightly. “I just worry, okay? You know that.”

  Suzanne leaned her head around her seat to look at me. “That’s Brian’s speciality,” she said, a touch of sarcasm in her voice. “Worry.”

  “Is it?” I said, not sure what to say.

  “Yeah, it’s a great filler for where the actual helping should be.”

  “Jesus!” Brian let out a sharp exhalation. “That’s not fair.”

  Suzanne sat back, her face disappearing from view. “Is it fair that you get to act really put upon? Oh, poor you, having to drive to come and get your stupid, runaway sister?”

  “You don’t get free reign to act however you want because you’ve had a rough time,” Brian said. “The world doesn’t work that way.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Suzanne’s voice was earnestly sarcastic. “That changes everything. I’ll be perfect from now on.”

  “For God’s sake.” Brian’s calm exterior was faltering. “Do you have to make this so hard?”

  “Yes. Consider it payback for all those years I was being abused and you weren’t.”

  The words sliced through the car, stopping my breath for a second. I watched Brian lift a hand from the wheel and wrench it through his hair.

  “I tried—”

  “Hey,” Suzanne interrupted, her voice suddenly, disarmingly conversational, “remember when I was, like, nine or something, and you were sick and tired of all the yelling, so you locked yourself in your room? But I didn’t know you had? And I went running away from Dad and ran smack into your door? And I was crying for you, but you didn’t open it? Remember that?”

  In profile, I saw Brian’s jaw clench so hard I could see the muscle twitch.

  “I do,” Suzanne added, still in that bright, cheerful voice, like she was sharing a happy memory instead of one that was utterly devastating. When he didn’t respond, she reached out and poked his arm.

  “I was thirteen when that happened,” Brian said, quiet and tense. “Thirteen. I know it’s life-fuckingly awful that it happened to you, but it was completely shit for me too, okay?”

  “I have stories from when I was thirteen too,” Suzanne said.

  I heard Brian let out a hrumph of frustration. “When did you get so bitter? Was it around the same time you started acting like some kind of delinquent?”

  “Oh, fuck you.” Suzanne snapped, twisting in her seat to face the window, then changing her mind and turning back to him. “Maybe it was when I realized that you’re not some kind of hero?”

  “For God’s sake.” Brian’s voice had suddenly got louder. “None of this is my fault, okay? I’m doing the best I fucking can.”

  I was starting to feel panicky. The tension in the car felt like electricity sparking out of control from a wire ripped free from its moorings. It felt like it could catch at any minute and set us all aflame. The cars and lorries and coaches and buses roared past us, steady and controlled, while Suzanne and Brian battled in the front seats.

  They’d both reached full volume now, Brian leaning back against his seat, one hand on the wheel, the other sporadically leaping up into the air to gesture wildly. Suzanne, her face twisted with rage and pain, both hands waving in the space in front of her as if trying to shape it into something she could control.

  “What is it you want?” Brian was yelling, bashing his fist against the wheel for emphasis. “Whatever it is, you actually think you’ll get it like this?”

  “I don’t want anything!”

  “Right, sure. So you’re just going to act like a total lost cause until you become one? How’s that working for you so far?”

  “Lost cause?” Suzanne threw herself back in her seat, her fingers scrabbling at her seat belt. “Fine. Fine.”

  Brian’s head jerked between her and the road. “Stop it. What’re you doing? Sit down.”

  “Why wait?” The seat belt pinged back into its casing. “It’s going to happen anyway. Might as well make it interesting.” From the back seat I saw her fingers move toward the door handle.

  Brian’s free hand had reached for her, his fingers clenched tight around her arm. “Calm the fuck down, Suzanne. Sit down.” I watched his other hand lift from the wheel and scramble at the buttons beside it, locking her door from his side. I was too scared to move, clutching my seat belt tight to me as if it would save me when we got steamrolled by a truck.

  “Get off me!” Suzanne tried to wrench herself free from him, pulling at the door handle. “Stop trying to act like you care.”

  Brian looked properly at her. “Of course I—” The car swerved, a dozen horns sounded. Despite myself, a strangled shriek of panic escaped my throat. “Shit.” He let go of Suzanne, put both hands on the wheel and guided the car across the left lane into the hard shoulder.

  When we stopped, I realized just how much my heart was hammering. My hands, released from their death grip on my seat belt, were shaking.

  But it still wasn’t over.

  In the sudden silence of the stopped car, I saw Suzanne’s panicky rage flame. “Open my fucking door, Brian.”

  “Just calm down.”

  Suzanne’s fist slammed against the door frame. “Open it.”

  Instead, Brian opened his own door and got out, closing it behind him and hurrying around the car to open Suzanne’s. He caught her as she lunged out, his hand closing securely over her arm, pulling her away from the road to the grass beyond. I opened my door and watched them argue, listening to the words that carried in the wind.

  “Why won’t you just let me . . .”

  “Worried about you . . .”

  “I just hate . . .”

  “What about . . .”

  I let my feet touch the tarmac, my hand on the open door, wondering whether to go over and intervene. I didn’t really think Brian would ever hurt Suzanne, but how could I know for sure? What exactly was my role here? Because, surely, I had one.

  After a few minutes watching the argument escalate—Suzanne getting more worked up, Brian easing off, trying to calm her down—I forced myself to slide out of the car and make my way over to them. I paused a few meters off, thrusting my hands deep into my pockets. Brian glanced at me.

  “Why are you even here?” Suzanne was yelling at him, seemingly unaware of my approach. “You’re useless. You’re so fucking useless.”

  “You’re right,” Brian said. His voice was calm now. Controlled. “I am useless. I’m sorry.”

  “No.” Suzanne’s face screwed up, her hands clenching into fists. “No, that’s not ok
ay. You can’t do that.”

  “I’m sorry,” Brian said again. He held up his hands, palm up, away from his chest. “You’re hurting, and I’m sorry.”

  Suzanne bridged the gap between them and smacked her closed fist against his chest. “I hate you.”

  “I know. It’s okay.”

  Another punch. “I hate you.”

  “I know, Zannie.”

  “Shut up.” She pummeled his chest, her frustration almost palpable in the air. He let her, holding out his hands away from her, waiting.

  I could see what he thought he was doing. I recognized this moment from the earnest, moralizing TV shows I’d watched that took on an Issue and solved it in forty minutes. This scene was ubiquitous—the unhappy person taking out their frustration on someone who loved them, before collapsing in tears into their chest, all that rage spilled out, purged. The healing always came next.

  But that wasn’t what would happen here. I had no idea if Brian could see it too, but as I watched Suzanne smacking her hands ineffectually against her brother I saw it clearly. He was steady and solid, so together and unbroken. Her fists, her shouting, her fury, had no impact on him, not really. Nothing she could throw at him would dent or bruise him. She, in contrast, was so unbearably fragile. A house of cards on the verge of collapsing. She’d already been pummeled by closed fists and someone else’s rage, and it had broken her. All Brian was doing was forcing her to see this unbridgeable difference between them.

  She did break down, of course. The tears took over and she pressed herself against him, letting him settle his arms around her shoulders. I heard him saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” and I wondered how he could lie like that. Why did people do that? Where did that impulse come from, to tell someone so clearly far from it that things were okay?

  “Let’s go,” Brian said, quietly but firmly. Still with one arm around Suzanne’s shoulder, he started walking back toward the car. He met my eye and smiled reassuringly, understanding and secure.

  In the car, Suzanne curled herself into her seat, facing away from us both. We were all silent as Brian eased out of the hard shoulder and into the traffic. After a few minutes, Suzanne’s tentative, shaky voice broke the silence. “Caddy, tell me something good.”

  I thought she’d forgotten I was there.

  “In Iceland,” I said, keeping my voice light and steady, “there’s a waterfall that always has a rainbow in front of it. Like, guaranteed. You can go and stand under it. Or at the end of it, you know, like a leprechaun.”

  “An Icelandic leprechaun?”

  “Of course. They’re the best kind.” I waited for a moment. “Do you want another one?”

  “Yes. Please.”

  “Last year, during the Brighton marathon, my uncle tripped and twisted his ankle three miles from the end. So another guy, who was running for Mind, I think, gave him a piggyback the whole rest of the way, so he’d still finish and get the full money for the charity. He was, like, a total stranger.”

  I heard a smile in her voice. “That’s a nice story.”

  “Hey, Zannie,” Brian said. His voice was gentle. “You want to pick some music?” He reached across her and pulled an iPod from the glove compartment. She took it from him and began scrolling through it. He squeezed her shoulder, solid and steady, before returning his shaking hand to the wheel.

  24

  WE DROVE MOST OF THE way home without talking after that, listening to an album called August and Everything After twice through. I’d never heard any of the songs before, but Suzanne and Brian clearly had a lot, because at random intervals they would both sing along to a single sentence, or even just a word, making me jump each time. It was the kind of music where even the happy songs felt sad. Or that could just have been my mood.

  By the time we pulled off the highway and began winding through the familiar Brighton streets, Brian and Suzanne were talking comfortably, not quite as if the argument hadn’t happened but more like they’d consciously left it behind. It occurred to me that being able to smile so soon after crying was something you learned.

  “So how much trouble are you going to be in, Caddy?” Brian asked, throwing me a knowing smile as he slowed for a red light.

  “Don’t say that,” Suzanne said. “You’ll make me feel bad.”

  “You should feel bad,” I teased. “We’re not all as used to it as you.”

  She turned in her seat slightly to grin at me. “Am I a Bad Influence?” she asked, waving her fingers and making a face of exaggerated fear.

  “The very worst,” I said, laughing more with relief than anything else.

  When Brian pulled up outside my house, Suzanne unbuckled herself and got out of the car, coming to join me on the pavement. She reached out her arms for a hug. “I’m sorry,” she said, surprising me.

  “What for?” I asked, hugging her.

  She laughed into my ear. “You want a list?” I moved to end the hug, but her arms tightened around me, just for a few seconds longer. Her hair smelled like cigarettes and last night’s party and Suze. “Good luck.” She released me, lifting her hand in her favored mock salute before heading back to the car.

  I threw a wave over my shoulder as they drove away and then turned back to my house, taking a second to just look at it. Was I caught or not? I had no way of knowing. It was Schrödinger’s house. I was bad Caddy and good Caddy, all at once. I curled my fingers around my keys and walked toward the door, bracing myself for the answer.

  It was bad.

  Maybe the worst thing about it, at least for me, was how close I’d come to getting away with it. My parents had no reason to question my late-night decision to stay at Rosie’s house, and even my disheveled, same-clothes-as-yesterday appearance could have been written off as the harmless Saturday-night fun of a sixteen-year-old. What got me caught was the fact that I had a great sister who loved me. It’s funny how the world works.

  Tarin, innocently helpful, had called Rosie not long after I sent my last text, trying to get a hold of me to tell me that she was heading into town to see a friend and did I want her to stop by Rosie’s house with my phone charger and a change of clothes? Rosie, seeing her opportunity, told her I wasn’t there and that I was, in fact, with Suzanne somewhere that wasn’t Brighton.

  “It’s not even that you did something so reckless and irresponsible,” Mum said, spitting nails. “It’s that you lied to us.”

  Except it clearly was a lot about me doing something so reckless and irresponsible. And also my “clear lack of respect,” my “failure to consider the consequences,” and “Jesus Christ, Cadnam, did you smoke?!”

  Suzanne, previously a point of concern, had become the devil incarnate overnight. (Rosie, in contrast, was the saint who’d alerted them to the truth.) Never mind that I’d gone with her quite happily—albeit with a blinkered idea of where we were going and how long it would take—and had lied to them off my own back.

  “That’s it now,” Dad said. “You can’t be friends with her anymore. You’re grounded for the foreseeable future anyway, but in either case you just can’t see her again. She’s not welcome here, and you’re not allowed to visit her; we’ll speak to Sarah to make sure.”

  He said this with all the gravitas of a person who’d cultivated their friendships before the Internet.

  “And we’re taking away your phone,” Mum added, as if she’d read my mind. “And your laptop.” When my face dropped in horror, she shook her head. “This behavior isn’t acceptable, Caddy. We expect so much more than this, especially this year, when you’ve got your exams coming up. These are your consequences.”

  As bad as it all was, it wasn’t the worst thing. When they were finished shouting at me, I went upstairs and knocked softly on Tarin’s door before pushing it open and poking my head into the room. “Am I allowed in?”

  She was sitting on her bedroom floor, surrounded by colored bits of paper, a book open in front of her. Origami was her hobby of the moment, a colorful distraction.
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br />   “Sure,” she said, but she didn’t look up and her voice was flat.

  I crept into the room and stepped carefully over her creations, taking a seat on her bed. “Um,” I said, intelligently, “I’m really sorry.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t think it’s me you need to say that to,” Tarin replied. She still wasn’t looking at me, her eyes focused on the yellow paper she was holding. Her fingers moved carefully, folding and turning.

  “I feel like it is,” I said.

  “I’m on the list, yeah,” Tarin said. “Me and Mum, Dad, Rosie, Sarah, Brian.” I wondered how she knew about Brian. “And Suzanne too.” She shook her head, almost to herself. “That little fucked-up friend of yours. She probably thinks she’s hit the jackpot with a friend like you, the poor kid.”

  My heart twisted. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re steady. And you’re nice. You won’t understand what that means because you’ve never needed it yourself. You don’t realize how important it is.” With one hand Tarin lifted the bird she’d made into the air so its sharp-cornered wings caught the light. It made me think of the dove on Suzanne’s necklace, always around her neck. “And so you think you’re being a good friend by going along with her and not saying, ‘Stop, you’re hurting yourself.’ ”

  “You don’t even know her.”

  “No, but I know what it’s like to feel like you’ve lost control of your life. And I know you. Helping someone who feels like that isn’t in saying yes, Caddy. It’s in saying no.”

  Part of me understood what she meant, but the other part, the obstinate part, was sure she was wrong. If I had said no, what difference would it have made? Suzanne would surely have gone to Reading with or without me. It was hardly like she needed my permission or approval to do anything.

  I wasn’t sure what to say, so I said the only thing I could. “I’m sorry.”

  Tarin looked at me. The disappointment on her face was worse than anything Mum or Dad could ever say to me. “I know, Cads.”