Never Turn Back

by Christopher Swann

  Stupid optimistic metaphors.

  * * *

  ANXIETY IS EXHAUSTING and a bit paranoia inducing. When I roll out of bed Saturday morning, I feel as if I have woken up on a similar but slightly different planet, the lone victim of a vast conspiracy. I’ve heard nothing from Marisa, but that seems ominous rather than reassuring. Susannah came home late last night and has already left again for her group therapy session, and so I find myself alone in my kitchen, looking suspiciously at my coffee mugs, as if Marisa has planted all of them in my house.

  I typically have Pilates class on Saturday mornings, so after I take Wilson outside and feed him, I drive to the gym. But when I get there, the door to the Pilates studio is locked, the studio dark. That’s when I recall my instructor, Heidi, texting last week to say there wouldn’t be any class today—she was going camping or something with her boyfriend. I stand outside the locked door, annoyed and frustrated that the universe seems to be conspiring against me. And just like that, I decide that’s not how I’m going to react. Instead, I head to the nearest row of open treadmills and spend half an hour running in place, knees pumping, arms slicing the air, pushing myself so I am sucking air and darkening my T-shirt with sweat. I try to empty my mind of Marisa and of meeting with Teri and just focus on running until the display shows me that thirty minutes have passed, and then I slow for a few minutes, letting my breathing and my heart rate drop to something approximating normal.

  I feel good on the drive home, focusing on the road, the next curve, the faded ROMNEY-RYAN sticker on the car in front of me. The radio is off and I drive in silence. In the afterglow of my run, I feel more certain of my course. Every turn of the wheel is deliberate and smooth, an accomplishment, progress. I’m steering away from the insanity of the past few weeks and onto a saner path. Whatever moral code I operate under is a far cry from when my mother called me a good son; it’s cobbled together and inconsistent as hell and maybe even a lie. But I try. That I fail isn’t as important as the effort. I tell myself that enough for it to even seem true. Regardless, I am calm and at peace with whatever awaits me on Monday.

  The sight of Marisa’s red Audi convertible parked in my driveway vaporizes my moment of zen.

  My front door is locked, and when I pull out my house keys, they are shaking in my hand. I jam the key into the doorknob and throw the door open so hard that it bounces off the doorstop, vibrating like a tuning fork. Across the den in his bed, Wilson lifts his head up, then scrambles out from underneath his blanket and races over to me, immediately rolling over so I can scratch his belly. “Okay, boy,” I say, absently scratching him as I scan the den, the kitchen. No one. “Where is she?” I ask Wilson.

  Someone, a woman, says, “What?” I look up and see my sister standing in the hall outside my bedroom. She’s wearing a Millennium Falcon T-shirt—my Millennium Falcon T-shirt—and a pair of gym shorts.

  “You’re home early,” she says.

  “I … Pilates got canceled,” I say. “Why are you wearing my shirt? What are you doing here? I thought you had group.”

  Susannah grins. “I bailed.”

  “You bailed. Why did you—?”

  Marisa walks out of my bedroom. Her legs are bare, and I’m willing to bet her ass is too. Right now it’s covered, just, by a tight black T-shirt with Get Up the Yard slashed in white across the front. “Hi,” she says, head lowered, smiling.

  I stand there, staring. Wilson, forgotten, whines at my feet.

  “Yeah … so,” Susannah says. “Sorry?”

  With a soft grunt the air conditioning kicks on, air whirring out of the floor registers.

  “Seriously,” Susannah says. “I’m sorry. I thought you wouldn’t be home for a while.”

  Marisa steps forward and puts her hand on Susannah’s arm, watching me the whole time. She leans her head against Susannah’s shoulder. She’s still smiling.

  “This is Marisa,” Susannah says brightly. “Marisa, this is my brother, Ethan.”

  “Nice to meet you, Ethan,” Marisa says. Still looking at me, she takes Susannah’s hand and raises it to her lips and kisses it.

  Wilson whines, louder, a growl building in his throat. Susannah glances down at him. “Dude, he’s gonna pee everywhere,” she says. “Might wanna take him out.”

  I find my voice. It sounds like it’s been locked in a basement and beaten for a week, but it works. “Get out,” I say.

  Susannah frowns. “Hey, look, I’m sorry I didn’t ask before bringing her over here. It just, like, happened—”

  “Fuck you,” I say, and the words unlock a white heat that’s been building in my chest ever since I saw Marisa’s car in my driveway. The shock on Susannah’s face is genuine, and I ride it on a fresh wave of anger. “Just fuck you. And you”—I point my finger at Marisa—“you get the fuck out of my house.”

  Marisa lets go of Susannah’s hand and walks down the hall toward me. Her gray eyes are locked on mine, and now she’s grave and imperious and definitely not wearing anything other than my sister’s T-shirt. Her voice low, she says, “You don’t mean that.”

  “Wait,” Susannah says. She looks from me to Marisa and back again, and I see comprehension unfold across her face. “Oh, shit.”

  “You’re upset with me,” Marisa says. She bites her lower lip. “You’re angry. But you don’t want me to leave. You want to punish me.”

  “I—”

  She’s in front of me now, so close I can smell her. Vanilla and pepper. She reaches out and takes my hand. “You want to,” she says. “I know you, Ethan. You want to punish me.” She grips my wrist and then places my hand to her chest, the swell of her breast in my palm.

  “Oh shit,” Susannah is saying down the hall. She leans against the wall, then slides slowly to the floor. “Oh shit oh shit oh shit, Ethan, I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”

  “It’s all right,” Marisa whispers to me. She’s standing before me in a T-shirt, holding my hand to her breast as if it’s an offering. “Do it. Do whatever you want. You can do whatever you want to me, and I’ll let you.” She’s breathing a little more deeply now, and she tilts her head back slightly, her lips parted. I can feel her nipple beneath my hand. Susannah is quietly sobbing somewhere down the hall, but I can’t look away from the woman in front of me. A small but insistent voice in my head says get away, but there’s a darker, voiceless urge. I hesitate, suspended between two wills. “Do it,” Marisa whispers, closing her eyes. My fingers barely clench, and she smiles, terrible and victorious.

  She opens her eyes, wide, her smile gone. “Shit!” She glares at her feet. I look down. Wilson, whining softly, ducks his head in embarrassment. A puddle is spreading across the wood floor. Wilson has peed on Marisa’s foot.

  Marisa’s lips curl back from her teeth, and she kicks my dog. He gives a sharp cry and skids a couple of feet across the floor.

  Something falls away and in its place is a black revulsion. I shove Marisa away from me, hard enough that she staggers and has to put a hand against a wall to steady herself. I kneel down to check on Wilson, saying “It’s okay, boy; it’s okay,” and Wilson scampers to me and licks my hand feverishly, as if apologizing for being kicked. I don’t see any bruising or feel any broken ribs.

  Marisa gives a low, disgusted laugh. “Poor puppy.”

  I snarl, “You so much as touch my dog again—”

  “I was talking about you.” Marisa has regained her composure, arms folded across her chest, T-shirt riding dangerously high. “I know you, Ethan. I know who you are. You and your little sister.”

  Susannah is sitting on the floor behind Marisa, arms wrapped around her knees, crying to herself.

  “You don’t know a thing about us,” I say.

  Marisa sneers. “I know everything about you,” she says. “Poor little tragic orphan, so broken and fucked up you have to sleep with strangers and then pretend you’re in love so you can try to feel normal.”

  There’s a blur of movement behind Marisa, and then Susan
nah is on her. Her first punch glances off Marisa’s face. Then she’s punching and screaming and trying to rake Marisa’s eyes. “You fucking bitch you don’t fucking know anything you goddamned cunt—”

  I rush forward to pull Susannah off Marisa. My sister is a whirlwind of fists and fingernails and curses. I wrap my arms around her in a bear hug and lean back, trying to lift her off the ground. “Let go of me!” Susannah screams, flailing and twisting in my arms. “Put me down, let me go—”

  Marisa stands there, her hair disheveled, a bruise on her cheek. She looks slightly dazed, as if surprised at the turn this has taken. Marisa stares at Susannah, who continues to struggle and scream. As small as my sister is, I can barely control her. “Get out!” I shout at Marisa. “Go!”

  Marisa looks at me as if she’s just now registering that I’m there. The look she gives me is more frightening than anything else that has happened. Her eyes are empty, an utter void … no, that’s not exactly right. There’s intelligence in her look, but it’s cold, even malignant. She’s looking at me as if sizing up a fetal pig for dissection in freshman biology. Something clicks into place behind her eyes, and she smiles, slowly. “I’ll be seeing you,” she says. “You can count on that.” And she turns and walks unhurriedly down the hallway to my bedroom.

  I have to drag Susannah into the den, trying all the while to keep her from scratching my face off. She’s cussing and spitting like a cat, and I almost stumble over my coffee table. Suddenly she sags in my arms, breathing through her mouth like she’s winded. I tense, my arms still around her. “You gonna be good?” I say.

  “Yeah, fine,” she mutters. “Just, let go, okay? I’m fine.”

  I let go of her and take a step back, my arms raised, ready to grab her if necessary. But she collapses onto the couch like she’s been deboned. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry, Ethan; I’m sorry.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Just … don’t do anything stupid.”

  She shakes her head. “Is Wilson okay?” she asks.

  I look around and see Wilson hunkered down in his bed, gazing at me. He doesn’t get up from the bed when I go over to him, but he thumps his little tail. He allows me to rub his ears, then noses me carefully. Then I hear a metallic scrape and I turn to see Susannah walking away from the fireplace, holding the poker that she has taken from its stand. I jump up and run after her into the hall, intercepting her just as she’s about to go through my bedroom door and bash Marisa’s head in.

  I tackle Susannah cleanly, right at the waist, the poker clattering out of her hand as we fall through the doorway into my room. As I lay on top of my sister, trying to keep her pinned to the floor, a sandaled foot edges into my line of sight. I look up to see Marisa standing over us. She’s put her jeans on and is still wearing Susannah’s Get Up the Yard T-shirt. She walks past us as if we aren’t even there. I don’t turn around to watch her leave. The front door opens, then shuts.

  Beneath me, Susannah is crying in hard, silent jags as if something is trying to force its way out of her. Then I hear the patter of Wilson’s feet, and soon his frantic little tongue is licking my face. “Okay, boy,” I tell him. “It’s okay.”

  “Shit,” Susannah says, her voice muffled. “I love that T-shirt.”

  * * *

  WHILE SUSANNAH TAKES a shower, I put the poker back in its place by the hearth, then strip my bed and stuff the sheets into my closet washing machine. I get new sheets and pillowcases, but I am brought up short by a black thong I see on the floor by the bed. Is it Susannah’s? Marisa’s? I look at the naked mattress, then at the closed bathroom door, behind which I can hear the shower running. I sigh and put down the stack of clean sheets, then pick up the thong and toss it into the washing machine along with the soiled sheets.

  By the time Susannah finishes her shower and appears in my old plaid bathrobe with her hair wrapped in a towel, I’ve remade the bed and am spraying air freshener around my room. Susannah wrinkles her nose. “What’s with the lilac?” she says.

  “Wilson had an accident,” I say. It’s a lie and we both know I’m not trying to cover up any scent of Wilson’s. Susannah doesn’t say anything, but I still feel like I’ve been caught cleaning up a crime scene.

  “Might need to borrow another shirt,” Susannah says.

  I pull open a drawer and look for a T-shirt. “How about underwear?” I ask.

  She waits a moment before answering. “What did you find?”

  “Black thong. I washed it.”

  “It’s not mine.”

  I pluck a plain navy T-shirt out of the drawer. “Well, I feel so much better now,” I say.

  “How many times do you want me to say I’m sorry, Ethan? I’m sorry.”

  I shut the drawer before I turn to face my sister. “I don’t want you to say you’re sorry. I want you to not do shit like this in the first place.”

  Her incredulous look lasts only a moment, and then her face tightens, her mouth a cruel line. “What, like sleeping with your secret psycho girlfriend?”

  “Wait,” I say. “Just wait a minute. How did you even meet her?”

  She folds her arms across her chest. “In group.”

  “In group?”

  “Kinda thinking you don’t get to be Judgy McJudgy here.”

  “Why was she in your group?”

  “I don’t know, Ethan—because she had some issues to work out? Like everyone else who’s ever been in group therapy? Like you would fucking know.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You think I’m the broken one? The same shit happened to you, Ethan. The same shit. And you just sail on like nothing happened.”

  I’m twisting the navy T-shirt in my hands so hard my fingers are beginning to ache. “You think I just sailed on? You get shot and Mom and Dad die and I just shrugged it off like, ‘Oh, well,’ and my life is all fine? After you—” I stop abruptly, literally biting my lip. Ponytail surfaces in my memory, and then, at the back of my memory cave, that one night in the Bluff, in the abandoned house with Luco and Frankie and Susannah, stirs and starts to uncoil. I make a curt gesture with my hand as if to sweep away both memories.

  “After I what?” Susannah’s voice drops a notch into a calmer register. “What did I do, Ethan?”

  I shake my head, trying to stay focused. “I’m asking about how you met Marisa in group. You didn’t know who she was? You didn’t know she knew me?”

  In a flat, disappointed voice, Susannah says, “No, Ethan, I didn’t know she knew you. Do you think I’d bring her here on purpose if I knew?”

  “Fuck.” I sit down on the newly made bed and put my head in my hands. “Fuck.”

  After a moment of hesitation, Susannah puts a hand on my shoulder. “I really am sorry.”

  “No,” I say. “She knew.”

  “What?”

  I lift my head and look up at my sister. “This isn’t a coincidence,” I say. “She knew. Marisa knew you were my sister.”

  Susannah’s mouth opens the slightest bit, a crack in her demeanor, and her hand falls from my shoulder. I can see her thinking, calculating, turning over in her mind everything she knows about Marisa.

  “When did she join your group?” I ask.

  “A month ago,” Susannah says. “Maybe a little more.”

  Soon after she started working at Archer. “How long have you been—” I say, and then stop, not sure how to continue.

  Susannah saves me the trouble. “Sleeping with Marisa? Today was the first time. But we’ve been flirting.”

  “Did you tell her about me? Talk about me in group? About our family?”

  “Not by name, no,” she says. When I continue to stare at her, she adds, “I mentioned Mom and Dad, okay? And the fact that I have a brother.”

  I feel sick and light-headed and want to sit down, but I’m already sitting down. A few months before my parents died, Mom and I watched Casablanca, and I remember Humphrey Bogart’s hard, wounded despair in reaction to Ilsa’s return. Despair
is a good way to describe how I feel right now. Of all the group therapy sessions in all the towns in all the world, yada yada yada. Marisa found my sister and then latched on to her like a lamprey. And today, the day after we broke up, she jumps in bed with my sister. But why? To fuck with me, to manipulate her way back into my house? To show me that she could?

  I thought I knew Marisa, understood her as a smart, libidinal woman with a rebellious streak. Now I understand, with bone-chilling certainty, that I haven’t known her at all.

  * * *

  AT SOME POINT Susannah hands me a bottle and I drink from it—bourbon, a burnt liquid glow in the throat. We pass the bottle back and forth, sitting on the floor of my bedroom, not talking much, just looking at the wall in companionable silence. Occasionally we speak softly to Wilson, who crawled into my lap earlier and now gazes at both of us like a child must look at parents who aren’t fighting right now but could start up again any minute. Susannah and I aren’t talking much because we want to maintain this delicate bubble of peace that, sooner or later, will pop. For now, it holds.

  Eventually Susannah gets up to go pee, and that’s when I realize that the blue-and-green tartan bathrobe she’s wearing isn’t mine, at least not originally. It’s Dad’s. It’s a bit too big for me, but Susannah looks like an elfin child in it. Sitting on the floor in a pleasant bourbon haze, the memory of Marisa banished for the moment, I look up at my sister, the bathrobe pooling at her ankles, and realize that this is what we all do, eventually—we put on our parents’ clothes and try to act like them, like grown-ups.

  I hope someone acts like a grown-up soon.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I come to in a twilight gloom, my head thick as a tire. I’m in my bed and my stomach is a heavy, sour medicine ball, and I lie still, closing my eyes, because if I move too quickly that sour ball will start rolling around and I will most definitely be sorry.