After Before

by Jemma Wayne

  “I’ll see to the bed.”

  “It could have made a difference.”

  Emily began to collect the empty glasses that had accumulated in the room.

  “It wasn’t meant to happen so fast,” Luke kept on.

  Emily put the glasses back down. She wished that he wouldn’t talk with such volume and venom. She wished his eyes would close. Or would not exist at all.

  “Emily,” Luke said again as though she had an answer for his anguish.

  She brought her finger to her lips and shushed him firmly. “It wasn’t my fault,” she said decisively. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “It’s what you didn’t do.” His words came in angry whispers. “It’s what you didn’t do and could have.”

  “I couldn’t have stopped it,” Emily protested.

  “But you could have helped. Her. And us. We trusted you.”

  “Well you shouldn’t have.” Emily noticed that her voice had suddenly risen. “You shouldn’t trust anyone.”

  Luke stared at her, his two-toned eyes darkening into similarity but intense and as penetrating as ever, his strong jaw angled upwards, his hands twitching. As anger infused him he seemed to grow in front of her, and when he raised his arm Emily was certain he was going to bring it down against her head. She flinched. But then all at once, his great frame crumpled backwards into the small, unsupportive chair, and everything inside him shrank, like a hot-air balloon deflated. The escaped air whistled around the room and silenced them both.

  “I - I’m sorry for you,” Emily offered after many awkward minutes had passed.

  Luke looked up. “You’re sorry?” Through his desolation he grasped her apology like a piece of evidence, proof of her culpability or at least his lack of it, and it seemed to replenish him. “Sorry? Sorry’s no good. What am I supposed to do with sorry? What’s John supposed to do with sorry? Sorry won’t bring her back.”

  “She’s not gone yet,” Emily reminded him.

  As though she’d been listening all along, Lynn opened her eyes. At once, both Luke and Emily flew to the bed. Lynn’s breath remained laboured but with her eyes open, much of her old poise seemed to return. Her no-nonsense gaze darted between them.

  “Mother, I’m here. Are you alright? I’m here.” Luke gushed urgently.

  Lynn focused on him and took another series of breaths, with each intake looking as though she might speak but never quite harnessing the puff for it.

  “You’re doing well,” Emily told her. “You’re looking better.”

  Weakly, Lynn smiled, and Emily gulped suddenly, surprising herself. When she looked at Lynn, she saw both the old woman and her own mother, and could feel her ambivalence slipping away. She hurriedly returned to tidying the room - glasses and blankets and things that didn’t matter, and Lynn shifted her eyes back towards her son. Taking a breath she opened her mouth, but again nothing came out of it.

  “What is it Mother? What do you need?”

  Lynn’s eyes closed. Consciousness and unconsciousness danced across her face. A slow waltz that for all the death she’d witnessed, Emily had never seen. For many minutes she and Luke hovered over her not daring to move, but then all at once Lynn took a deep breath that seemed to pull on every scrap of oxygen in her body, opened her eyes again, and with barely a tremor in her voice, she spoke.

  “I’m sorry I won’t be at your wedding, Luke.” He shook his head and began to protest but she continued over him. “You must look after John though, won’t you? You must tell him, tell him it’s okay. When he comes to you, you’ll do that, won’t you? And tell Vera she should use the china, all of it. Don’t be precious about it. Don’t lock it away. What you don’t use, smash.”

  “Mother, don’t talk like that,” Luke interrupted, unable now to take any more and grasping her hand tight before realising how fragile it was and weakening his grip. “John’s only downstairs, you can talk to him yourself. And Vera, I’ll ask her to come. Maybe for lunch tomorrow?”

  “I should have used the teapot with the crocuses.”

  Luke looked to Emily for explanation, who nodded, but did not explain. With a gigantic effort Lynn raised her free arm and patted Luke’s hand. Her skin was soft, almost translucent next to her son’s harder palms. “Don’t stick to all the rules Luke,” she murmured. “Some you can break. Don’t be afraid to.”

  A thin coat of pain flew across Luke’s strong face. He tried to hide it by painting on an even broader smile, but when Lynn asked him to leave the room so she could talk to Emily, he couldn’t hide his distress any longer.

  “To Emily, Mother? Not to me?” But even as she lay sinking deeper into the folds, a single glance from Lynn was enough to move him. Obediently he closed the door.

  On the other side of the room, Emily continued to tidy, furiously engaged with the unimportant. But the silence-sodden seconds were heavy. She turned.

  “You went?” Lynn asked her. “To GENSUR?”

  Emily nodded and without speaking began to help Lynn out of her stained nightgown and into a fresh one. She rolled her carefully onto her side and manoeuvred the bed sheet out from underneath her pale, shaking body. Then she replaced it with a clean white sheet that she found in a disordered cupboard whose jumble revealed Lynn’s final attempts to care for herself in the days in which Emily had been missing. Lynn looked relieved.

  “You managed to forgive?” she inquired hopefully, sinking again into the pillow that Emily had plumped behind her and trying not to wince as her failing body settled thankfully back into stillness. Emily noticed that there was a dark bruise on Lynn’s arm where she must have banged it or fallen.

  “I told you my story,” Emily answered. “I laid it out. I gave it to you.”

  “But that was only the beginning. You must accept it Emily. You must forgive.”

  “I told you that I couldn’t.”

  Lynn nodded as though she understood, but her weary brow crinkled, troubled.

  “I brought you flowers,” Emily said to distract her, pointing to the vase on her nightstand. “Tulips. I looked for daffodils but it’s not the season. Still, they’re yellow.”

  “Like on your hills in Rwanda.”

  “Yes.”

  “Put them on the windowsill then so they get some sun. They won’t last long in the darkness.”

  Emily did as she was asked, carefully rearranging the stems over and over.

  “Forgiveness breaks every moral code of the universe,” Lynn whispered as if reading her thoughts while Emily was still facing the window. Her voice had suddenly grown raspier. “It’s hard. But without it, you will miss grace.”

  “Grace?” Emily turned around.

  “If you forgive, the wrong loses its grip on you, because you’ve put it into God’s hands.”

  “You don’t believe in God anymore,” Emily reminded her.

  “I have forgiven Life, Emily. I have done it.” She said this with a proud, overwhelming smile that shot light through her creases. “It is okay now.” She stopped. Her breath had run out. It was many minutes before she could speak again. “Only John - ” she mused slowly. Then paused. “Promise to try Emily,” she whispered.

  Instinctively Emily shook her head, but then, she realised that it didn’t matter whether she promised or not. It was not a necessity. “I promise,” she relented.

  Lynn’s eyes closed. “Okay,” she murmured. “Okay. Okay.”

  Motionless, Emily watched her. Next to the bed the empty glasses still waited to be taken downstairs, on the floor the stained linen lay crumpled needing to be laundered or at least removed from sight, and it occurred to Emily that perhaps she ought to run Lynn a bath or make her some soup; but she did none of these things. There seemed no point. And so she merely watched.

  Until, inexplicably, the rosary began to circle around her head. He shall come to judge the living and the dead. Emily shook herself.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she whispered to the almost empty room, pushing the familiar words back
again. “It doesn’t matter. She is just one more person. Why should I care?” But now the words of the rosary crept from her mind onto her lips and she lowered herself onto the bed where, careful to avoid Lynn’s frail, fragile legs she found a space that felt like a grass-woven rug and leant up onto her knees. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” She reached for Lynn’s hand. “You shouldn’t have given up,” she told her. “You should have tried. You should have kept trying. You should have come back the next day. You shouldn’t have left me with nobody and nothing.” A hot tear rolled down Emily’s cheek. Melting her. Melting her. She bent her head low and placed Lynn’s soft, spindly hand onto the rough edge of her scar.

  Over an hour later, Emily was still in this position when John pushed open the door.

  “I have to talk to my mother,” he whispered urgently.

  Though much older than she, John struck her suddenly as young, or at least in every way the younger brother.

  Without a word, she stood up from the bed, and straightened her fringe.

  Emily just about remembered what a full house sounded like, a place with sounds you could identify without having to see, with family and familiarity. Downstairs, Luke was clattering about in the kitchen. Emily followed the noise.

  “Bloody fridge,” Luke muttered when he saw her standing, watching him attempt to rearrange the shelves so that the turkey, which Lynn had organised delivery of weeks earlier, would fit inside. “I can’t find the recipe Mother uses for the stuffing, but I know that’s her favourite part. And John likes cranberry sauce but I don’t think we’ve got any cranberries. Usually I carve. Since Father died. I’ve got the knife.” He picked it up. “Mother always keeps it in this drawer, but the - I don’t know, do I have to put the bird in now? I don’t want her to be without her turkey. I don’t want to - ”

  He stopped. Emily had moved forward, taken the long carving knife from his hand, and in grateful surrender Luke had let her. His jaw remained fixed in a slightly raised profile but the corners of it trembled. His eyes meandered away from her but were bursting with colour. He looked so much like Jean.

  Emily raised the knife to his face.

  Neither of them spoke. Flashes of grass and dirt and her mother flickered before her. She could feel her heart beating fast, adrenalin shooting through her arm and fingers into the metal instrument. Her scar pulsated. Green and grey and blood red danced before her eyes.

  Then Luke started to shake.

  Emily paused. But she had shaken too.

  Luke’s hands gripped the sideboard, and the pots on top of it rattled to announce his desolation. He laughed loudly, obscenely, because there was nothing else to do, but he could not control his spasms. It was a total physical collapse, and it was mesmerising.

  “Sorry. I’m being pathetic,” he mumbled apologetically, waving her away in embarrassment, and only then did Emily realise that his shuddering was not from fear, at least not of her or her sharp-edged blade. Violence was a concept that never even occurred to him. Yet he shook.

  And she had shook. And was all at once shaking again. The knife waved from side to side in front of her.

  “I’m sorry Emily,” Luke said suddenly, through his own trembling turmoil. “For before. It was unfair of me. None of it’s your fault at all. It’s my fault.”

  Emily said nothing but gripped the knife more tightly, and finally Luke noticed. He let go of the side and slowly refocused his two-toned eyes towards her, observing as he did the way her body quivered, the way her own eyes flashed, the way her nails had turned white from the force of her clasp on the sharp, deadly blade. And now, understanding crept dangerously across his brow. It seemed to compose him. He stopped shaking, his jaw clenched and he looked strong again, he widened his stance and he looked powerful. He ran a weary hand through his hair and disordered it. She’d seen him do that before. Somewhere. Her head began to throb. Her two worlds scrambled. I didn’t have a choice. “You did,” she said. I tried to save you. You are still alive. “Not really,” she answered.

  Now Luke was scrutinising her closely.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Her head continued to pound. Clutching the knife harder, she put her free hand to her temple and rubbed it.

  Luke moved a step closer.

  “None of it was your fault Emily,” he stated again, eyeing the knife. “My mother cares for you, you know.”

  “I watched her die. I watched them all die.”

  “What? Who?” She shook her head but abruptly Luke reached for the hand still working on her temple. He encased her palm within his own and held it still. “Stop Emily. I’m sorry,” he repeated. Stunned by his touch, her head beat harder. Her scar throbbed. She needed it to stop. She needed to touch it, to calm it. She needed her hands. Weakening her grip on the knife, Emily tentatively lowered it, then finally she put it down, raising her now free hand to find her scar, but Luke was too quick. He caught her wrist and held it aloft with the other one. “I’m sorry,” he said again, holding her still, forcing her to focus on him. “I’m sorry.” Without speaking, the two of them held each other’s gaze, remaining this way for many long seconds until finally, trapped in his grasp, unable to escape, unable to avoid him or hurt him or pretend he wasn’t there, Emily let out a deep, haunting sob. “I’m sorry,” Luke said once more and now Emily stared up into his green-grey eyes. Not one thing or another. Or two things at once. Aggression and fear. Power and regret. Love and loss. Just like Jean’s, though through the film of her tears they looked almost ghostly, almost gone. She held them in her sight until they disappeared.

  “I forgive you,” she sobbed finally.

  And then they kissed.

  Afterwards, Emily sat alone on the orange-tiled floor of the kitchen and tried to work out how it had happened.

  To start with, all they had done was hold each other and let their salty tears mingle with the other tastes of their mouths. He had clung to her as if in need of comfort, and she to him, each tenderly letting their tongues explore the other’s as though this was a sweet first kiss and she again an untouched child. Gently they had inhaled each other’s alien smells, leaning in close, steadying their breath, considerate, anxious not to expel too much force and blow the moment away. It had seemed, almost, like a natural extension of his apology. Sorry. But there were no more words. Silence had surrounded them and it was insistent. There was no TV blaring from the lounge, none of the old music chugging out of the gramophone, and now that Luke had stopped fumbling with the turkey and she had put down the knife, there was no clattering about of cupboard doors, or friendly, familiar sounds to remind them of the ground they were leaving behind. Upstairs, John may have dragged his chair a little closer to Lynn’s bed, and Lynn might have been murmuring; but they had not heard these earthly sounds or chose not to.

  Instead, Luke had touched his hands to Emily’s face and held her a little away from him. She may have flinched slightly, but otherwise she did not move or try to move, standing instead wilfully paralysed by him. Luke had relished her paralysis as though she was some ethereal being. He examined her closely as he went, caressed the smooth dark skin of her cheek and pushed her fringe behind her ear so that with his thumb he could trace her long, lumpy scar. He let his fingers slide into her thick hair and felt the texture so much rougher than his own. He explored her small ears, traced a curve around her earlobes, cupped her dark, bony chin in his pale hands, and with his mouth tasted her skin. He paused. He looked. And then all at once he tugged roughly at her heavy jumper, lifting it in one motion over her head so that she stood in Lynn’s kitchen in just her bra and jeans, which he quickly began to unbuckle, and with that movement, their early caution was over and there was no turning back. Now they were both overcome with a powerful momentum. Emily reached for the shiny black belt of Luke’s trousers and the zip beneath it. Luke’s shirt was already untucked but she scrambled with urgency to unfasten the buttons, one, then another, and then ripping o
ff those that remained. He looked up as the white circles bounced across the floor, and for a moment she thought he was going to stop. But instead, he grabbed her wrists and threw her hard against the fridge, inside which the turkey was nestled, tearing her bra from her chest with an intensity that equalled her own. She fought back. Slapping him across the face and scratching at his shoulders she pushed hard until he backed away slightly, and then she pounced on him once more, trapping his face with her hands against the cupboard and sucking hard on his lip as they kissed again.

  After that, it was hard to say who had taken the lead, or followed it. Together they had descended somehow onto the floor and brawled naked, tugging, biting, craving each other’s raw flesh. His lip bled. Her breasts throbbed under the strength of his fingers, and she cried out in pain. But Emily felt empowered as they battled, high on the excitement of returning his roughness, of demanding it, of controlling it. She held onto his hair. A few strands of blond came loose in her hands, his pale, stubbled face rubbing coarsely against her thighs, that angular jaw and penetrating eyes beneath her, compliant. And then, as her fingers began to unfold and she writhed against the cold floor she’d mopped so often, he yanked her over and thrust his way inside. Deep. Intense. Within her.

  Strangely, this was the moment that she felt her mind floating away. Flesh collided and took time and space with it. And from nowhere, Emily thought of Omar. Luke puffed on above her and her own body continued to contract and contort in a peculiar, detached pleasure, but she was no longer there. Instead, she was in Omar’s box-filled shantytown, then watching him from across the road, then noticing how enchanting his smile seemed up close, how beautiful he was. How his eyes had continued to bore into her own even once he’d learned she was not a ‘sister’. Luke grunted in satisfaction, but Emily was lying on a bed while her father read to her, she was looking at yellow flowers swaying in a cool breeze from between the gaps of her mother’s fingers, she was laughing as Cassien chased her through the bushes, she was waving a greeting to Gahiji whose head tilted as he opened his arms for her to dash into, she was home. A current of warmth rushed through her body. The cell had been so cold, so hard, so numbing. But she was warm now. She was balancing on the branch of a tree, and she was warm. She was in a cage where her mother refused to move, and she was warm. She was looking straight up into Jean’s face.