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Comeback

Gary McMahon

This is it, thought Ian as he sat fidgeting in the car. The last fucking time. Rain battered the windows, restricting his view, and the inside of the glass misted over. The street beyond was empty of all but the most foolhardy pedestrians, and traffic moved like a line of sleek predatory beasts through the downpour. Ian squinted through the sudden storm and tried to remember what Sasha looked like.

It had been three years since he'd last seen his sister in the flesh; grainy digital snapshots and the occasional clipping from some charity fact sheet had been his only frame of reference since she'd left the country under a dark cloud. As usual Ian had picked up the pieces after her rapid departure, but this time they'd been too scattered and bent of out shape to fit back together in any recognisable shape.

The rain intensified, mirroring his frazzled mindset: the sound of it fizzing and sizzling against the car roof was exactly what he heard inside his own head. Darkness flared before his eyes, then died away like smoke; he wasn't sure if he was emotionally strong enough to see her again, not now, not like this.

He tuned on the radio and a familiar voice burst through the static: Nina Simone singing lazy blues in a strange wavering tone. He leaned back and enjoyed the music; Nina was his favourite, although Sasha had never liked her style.

He recalled her face that last time he'd seen her, pale, distressed; eyes flat as stones at the bottom of a murky pond. She had shed no tears at their parting; her innate strength (or was it coldness) would not allow it. She had a core that was hard as steel, cold as an artic wind. It was part of why he loved her so much.

When Ian opened his eyes, he saw that a National Express coach had pulled up at the bus stop. The sound of the rain had masked its approach, and he was too late to see how many passengers had alighted. The coach pulled away, looking vague and dreamlike through a grey shimmer of rain, and he sat bolt upright, straining to see through the deluge.

A lone figure stood at the bus stop, sheltering beneath the plastic canopy of the vandal-proof structure. Sasha looked shorter than he remembered, and she had recently shaved her head. The blonde stubble that remained looked almost platinum as it caught the light from passing car headlights. Her narrow angular face was set rigid, the eyes hooded, unreachable. For an instant, she looked to Ian like a lost little boy; the androgyny suited her, it always had.

He sat for a moment longer before making a move, enjoying the fact that he could examine her without her being aware of his intense scrutiny. She shuffled, shifting her weight from one sandaled foot to the other, and hugged her thin frame against the chill.

Finally he reached out and killed the radio. Then, sighing deeply, he opened the door and stepped out into the storm.

The gutters were overflowing, water running across the road like a river that had burst its banks. The rain was worse than he'd experienced in a long time; even in this inhospitable part of northern England it rarely rained so heavily. Sasha either didn't see him or was ignoring his approach, and when he skipped a puddle and stumbled into the bus shelter beside her, her eyes widened in shock.

They stood in silence, neither one capable of shattering the mood. Seconds stretched into minutes, and finally she broke his gaze.

"Sasha," he said, almost questioning her presence back in his life.

"Hello Ian. I presume you have a car. There's no fucking way I'm walking anywhere on a night like this."

So much for teary reunions.

"Yeah," he said, turning away to hide the hurt in his eyes. "Over there. Come on, let's go."

He left her to carry her own bag, and ran back to the car, flinging open the door in a fit of rage. He was unable to look away as she slowly slid into view through the passenger window; her frail figure looked ghostly in the poor conditions. He was also unable to stop himself from reaching over to open the door; and she smiled slyly as she climbed inside, lugging a large wet army kit bag onto the back seat.

They drove through the night in silence, Ian concentrating on the road and Sasha tapping her fingers on the dashboard. If she was trying to make an impression, she was succeeding. His nerves were frayed, his patience unravelling like a spool of thread rolled across the car floor by a playful cat.

"How was India?" he said at last, if only to break the tense silence.

"Goa isn't India, not to me. It's more like Blackpool on a fucking bad night."

He smiled at that; it was a typical Sasha comment. The profanity was new, though; she'd never sworn in her younger days. Ian wondered what other bad habits she might have picked up on the road.

"I went there for a rest, with some people I met in South-east Asia."

Ah, well, he thought. That explains everything. She was proving to be as cryptic and unreadable as ever.

"Did you at least enjoy yourself, after all that charity work?"

"Yes," she said, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth and her eyes lighting up from the inside. "Oh, yes. I had a whale of a time. For a little while." Then darkness seemed to cover her features, making them hazy and ill defined. For the briefest of moments Ian felt that she wasn't even in the car, and only a puddle graced the seat beside him.

"Where do you want to go?" His hands gripped the wheel. It was a leading question in so many ways, and Ian wasn't even sure if he wanted it answered.

"Your place," she said, without pause.

He drove on, feeling panic rise in his stomach like a flock of razor winged butterflies.

*

Ian poured drinks while Sasha soaked in a hot bath. He could hear her through the thin plywood door, singing a song in some foreign tongue. A haunting tune she'd picked up along the way. He emptied his glass in one swallow, and refilled it with neat whisky. No matter how much alcohol he consumed tonight, he knew he would never get drunk.

She entered the room just as he was putting on a CD. David Gray, another favourite singer of his Sasha had little time for.

"I love this one," she said, surprising him.

"Drink?" he offered her a glass, and this time the smile she gave him was genuine.

"I met him once, you know. This singer. Nice guy…very talented."

She was stalling, playing for time. But sooner or later she'd be forced to tell him why she was here, and what she wanted. If he knew his sister as well as he thought he did, he surmised that thing would be money.

They sat at either end of the long sofa, Sasha curling her legs up under her bottom and Ian perching on the edge of the cushion, too afraid to move in case she fled like a distressed animal. He sipped his drink, biding his time, waiting for her to quit the small talk and tell him what he really wanted to know.

"How's dad?" She couldn't even look at him when she asked the question, preferring to gaze instead at the lifeless TV screen in the corner as if it were the most interesting thing in the room. Perhaps, to Sasha, it was.

"He's okay. Misses you, of course. He never really got over you leaving. You should pay him a visit; the nursing home is only a mile away. You could even walk it."

"Age isn't my thing," she said, without a trace of irony. "Nor is madness."

He felt like slapping her. Putting her over his knee and spanking her arse like the unruly child she was trying to be. Instead he took a long, deep breath; calmed himself using his own personal mantra, a few words from a film he’d once seen that had made a lasting impression: I am the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world…

"What about your mother?" This time she did look at him, and her frank and open stare was enough to break his heart all over again.

"She'll survive. She moved back to south Wales to live with her sister when everything kicked off. I think she's happy there."

Silence. A faint hum in the air, like invisible guitar chords vibrating after the music ends.

"Are you planning to visit your mother's grave? I mean, it's the least you can do."

Sasha shot him a dark glance, then her face softened as the alcohol took hold. She closed her eyes, breathed in and held the air in her lungs. When she let it back out again, words tumbled forth, spilling like bomb debris around their feet. "I didn't mean for any of what happened, you know. None of it was my fault – our fault."

Ian said nothing. Just waited for her to continue.

“My mother's suicide was an unfortunate by-product of what we did together; and it's an example of why we should never have been together in the first place. We're toxic, you and I. Everything's fine and dandy when we're kept apart, but if we mix….bang!"

Beneath her glib rhetoric lay a truth that Ian could not deny. They only shared the same father, which made what they had done less offensive in the eyes of God, but still they should never have lain together. Should never have made love.

"How did…I mean, what did you do…" It was no good; the words refused to come.

"How did I get rid of the baby?"

Ian nodded, afraid to pin a name to their sin.

"I tried everything when I went away. Vodka and a coat hanger in a hot bath. Throwing myself down some stairs. Pills. Pumps. Everything.

"Then, when I felt that my womb had been scraped clean, I started filling the gap by doing things I would never have dreamed of back here. I've been fucked in so many ways, and by so many people, that it would turn your hair white to hear the stories. Drink, drugs, parties. I immersed myself in carnality, trying to burn away the space we'd created inside me."

Ian tried to halt the images that appeared in his mind, pictures of Sasha on all fours in some tiny Asian back bedroom, or of her sticking a dirty needle in her arm. He knew instinctively that this time she was not trying to shock him; it was all true, and his body ached for the damage they'd wrought through their selfish actions. Yet still, beneath the shame and the hurt and the fear, he felt the faint stirrings of attraction. He still wanted her, and it frightened him to think that she might want him too.

It happened naturally, and without artifice. Neither of them took the lead, but they both blamed the other later. His hand on her thigh; her fingers in his hair. Then they were kissing, hands crawling over each other like hungry insects, mouths sucking the air from panting throats.

Sasha turned away from him, pulling him against her acutely curved spine. He pressed his crotch against her backside, forcing his cock between her buttocks. She moaned; he grunted. His hands went to her near-bald scalp, and then around to her face, feeling the snarl that she wore like a mask, and then he was smoothing his palms over her breasts, the small hard-as-candy nipples, and she was anxiously bucking against him.

It was only when he touched her stomach that she pulled away, kicking him off the sofa and crawling into a corner to weep, head in hands, knees bent and pressed firmly together to stave off any further attack.

Confused, lonely, terrified, Ian stood and went to the bedroom. He slammed the door on her withered form and curled up on the mattress to cry his own bitter tears.

*

Morning came and Ian had not slept a wink. His eyelids felt heavy as lead, and his head ached as if from a beating. He walked to the window and looked out at the street. A milk float bobbed along in the rain and stopped two doors down; a stray wet dog barked; two sodden birds took flight from a telephone wire. Ian put on his yesterday’s stale clothes and left the room, feeling unmoored from his bearings, adrift in his own existence.

The bathroom door was open, and Sasha stood naked at the sink, staring at her own face in the mirror. Her body was painfully thin, the skin sallow; and when she turned to the side to grab a towel Ian saw the soft swell of her belly and the faint tribal tattoo above her navel.

When she saw him looking, she quickly closed the door. But it was too late; he had seen it all: Sasha was pregnant again. The skin of her stomach had been taut as that of a drum, pulled so tight that it was almost translucent. Ian was sure that he’d even glimpsed movement beneath the gossamer covering of flesh.

He grabbed his coat and keys and headed for the door, feeling strangely calm but slightly nauseous. How dare she do this to him? Two years ago he’d almost been a father, and now she expected him to be an uncle to some yet-to-be-born wise-eyed Indian kid. No way. No fucking way.

He hit the street at a jog to avoid the worst of the morning rainfall, and dragged open the car door, tearing away from the kerb like he was a racing driver out of the pit. The road opened up before him; he leaned back in the seat and let the white line lead him. It was early enough that traffic was light, but red lights held him up all the way to the nursing home.

The carers were surprised to see him so early, but they faked their well-worked smiles and greetings like actors on a stage. Ian padded up to his father’s room on the second floor, being careful not to wake any of the residents. His father’s door was open; the old man was sitting in an armchair by the window, looking out on the small garden and the quiet street beyond.

“Hi dad,” Ian said, not expecting any kind of answer, or even to be recognised. The old man did not move.

“She’s back,” he continued, sitting on the edge of the bed and making fists, watching his stubby fingers as they whitened at the knuckle. “And she’s got herself knocked-up again.”

Sunlight glimmered at the window, making the outside world seem like a distant dream. Reality was here, in this small room, and what it amounted to was an old adulterer who’d forgotten the face of his only son.

“I don’t know what to do. It’s always fucking raining…”

“Rain,” said the old man, his head twitching, as if he were rousing himself for the first time in years. “It was raining the night my daughter was killed.”

Ian hung his head in his hands, felt them shake against his skull. He was so sick of this, so very tired of coming here and hearing only nonsense. The dementia had set in for good now, and he was gripped by the realisation that his father would never truly know him again.

“Rained so hard it washed away her sins, sending them down into the drains and out to sea, like so many flushed turds.”

Ian stood and kissed his father’s sweaty forehead; the old man looked at him, smiled. Ian thought then that recognition had lightened the rheumy eyes, but when they blinked in confusion he knew that he had been mistaken. He left the room and walked back down the stairs, tears threatening to spill and a scream lodged like vomit in his throat.

During the drive back to his flat he passed a small urban park with a swing set, slide and tiny roundabout. Children played in the downpour, their faces flushed and wet and happy. Stuck at yet another red light, Ian watched them laughing in the rain. He remembered Sasha at that age, how she’d always been so selfish, yet so unquestionably devoted to her overprotective brother.

Back at the flat, he stood outside the front door and listened. He could hear low music coming from inside, and then the sound of footsteps crossing the room. Sasha had not left; she was waiting for him, needing her saviour all over again. He recalled the playground fights he’d endured at school, so many fists thrown over the years that his nickname had been Slugger. And then there were the times he’d been called upon to save her from a date gone wrong, or a late-night party game that went too far. He was always there to pull her out of the shit, no matter how deep she waded into the brown steaming mess that appeared wherever she went.

He pushed open the door and went inside, ignoring her as she stood and turned off the stereo, killing New Order in mid-flight. He sat in a chair at the dining table, his fingers splayed across the tabletop.

“Where have you been?” The concern in her voice might have been real but for one thing: nothing about her ever was. She was a sham, a faker. Each and every emotion she experienced was a show for someone else. A performance to be admired. But, no. He was being too harsh. She wasn’t purely evil. Nothing in life was so black and white. Sasha was a survivor, and had learned at a young age that her best weapon was her simple, uncluttered sexuality.

Ignored by her father, resented by her mother, lusted after by her stepbrother, Sasha had employed every trick at her disposal to make her way in the world. When everything else failed, she turned to her last resort: Ian, the poor lovestruck fool. But even that had soured; she had fallen pregnant after the first and only time they’d fucked, and been forced to leave in search of an answer to the riddle of her life.

“Nowhere,” he said, answering her question. “Just driving.”

She moved towards him and placed a hand on his head, tousling his hair like she used to do when they were children.

“Who’s is it?” he demanded. “The baby.”

No answer.

“Do you even know?”

“It isn’t like that,” she said. “It isn’t what you think.”

“Then what is it? What’s the fucking story this time, Sasha? What shit do I need to bail you out of this time?” Anger consumed him, wrapping him up in white flames. He suddenly hated her for everything they’d both done.

“It’s ours,” she said, at last. “The baby is ours.”


“For fuck’s sake, can’t you even tell the truth now, after everything that’s happened? You cunt. You just can’t fucking help yourself, can you?” Spittle sprayed from between his lips; he was snarling like a wild dog.

“Please, Ian. You have to listen. You need to believe me.”

He grabbed her by the shoulders, jumping to his feet and throwing her to the floor. The dressing gown she was wearing came open at the front, exposing her lily-white body, her small sensual breasts, the unkempt mound of her mons. The convex belly that looked hard and plastic in the lamplight.

Ian stood over her like he’d won something, a victor claiming a prize that he could not even recognise. He watched in terror as the skin of her belly rippled, small hands becoming visible beneath the flesh, the soles of tiny feet pressing upwards as a substantial body rolled within the womb. He saw miniature perfect fingers, nub-like toes. Moving.

“My first stop after leaving here was an abortion clinic in Manchester. They scoured my insides, claiming the foetus was dealt with.

“The bump didn’t go away; I still looked pregnant. A doctor told me this was normal, that in a few weeks the swelling would be gone.

“He was wrong.”

Ian paced the room, trying not to listen but unable to block out the sound and meaning of what Sasha was telling him. When Sasha struggled to her feet there were tears in her eyes, shining like crystallised shards of some better world that could never come to pass.

“In Vietnam I visited a witch doctor who gave me a traditional potion to cleanse me of what he called “bad spirits”. That didn’t work either; the bump stayed right where it was, not getting any bigger or smaller.

“It was the same story in Pakistan, when an old-time wet nurse gave me a herbal wrap. Nothing happened. I was still pregnant.

“In India I threw myself into debauchery, trying to kill what refused to grow or wither inside me. I enjoyed myself for a while, then things went wrong.” She stopped there, crossing to the opposite side of the room, absently fingering his books and his CDs and examining the framed Taxi Driver film poster that hung above the ornamental fireplace.

“What then? What came next.”

“I was hustling these two guys for drinks in a roughhouse bar in Goa, a German doctor named Karl and an Indian chef called Sayeed. They were lapping me up, buying me beers and giving me the big come-on. One thing led to another and I followed them outside, to a little alley behind the bar.

“I figured I’d get them off for a few more beers, and then maybe go home with one of them later. I had no bed for the night, and I was tired. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Ian let her find her own way through the anecdote, waiting for the punch line. It was painful to hear such a confession from a woman that he‘d always loved, and even more difficult when all he could see in his mind was her beautiful smile from many years before. She would always be his younger sister, the girl he protected, and worshipped and wanted to save.

“Things got way out of hand when we eventually got down to business. Karl liked it rough, and Sayeed was a real sadist. They weren’t really interested in sex, just violence. So they took what they wanted and spit in my face. Then they beat me to death.”

The words washed over him without making much of an impact. He had to back-pedal furiously to understand exactly what Sasha had told him. “They…they what?”

“They beat me to death.” She repeated the phrase without putting whatever book she was inspecting back on the shelf. It was as if she were telling him the time. No emotion, no inflection in her voice. "“ I died there in that stinking back alley, pounded by the rain and covered in my own blood and puke. It was monsoon season, and the storms had arrived in full force. I watched with a sort of detached interest as my blood washed away into the open sewer at the side of the road.”

Rained so hard it washed away her sins.

When she finally turned her attention upon him, he saw that what he had at first thought to be pale mystery was actually the cold shine of death. Sasha’s eyes held no life at all, and her mouth was slack, the lips flat and bloodless.

“I…I don’t understand,” said Ian, flopping down onto the sofa.

“Our baby didn’t want me to go; it brought me back. It likes it where it is now, safe and secure in the warm darkness, and with a nice view out onto the world.”

Sasha sat down next to him, the dressing gown still agape to show her distended abdomen. “Touch it,” she said, arching her back and thrusting her pelvis forward. “Touch it now.”

Ian reached out a hand, let it hover over the throbbing skin of her belly, and then placed his fingertips on the cool, rigid membrane. Something twitched violently beneath his hand, a fluttering movement like the flapping of bird’s wings. A tiny clawed hand pressed against his, the palm flattening to copy his own desperate gesture. He could feel the dull pressure of the child pushing against him, announcing itself. Saying hello.

“It’s ours,” Sasha said again, closing her eyes as if for the last time. “What do we do when it finally decides to be born?” She held out a hand, looking to him, as always, for protection and reassurance.

Ian lay down and placed his cheek against her stomach, listening to the silent place where two hearts should be beating. He lifted his head to meet her lips, and when he kissed her he kissed her hard, so very hard, as if by doing so he might make things better.


© Gary McMahon 2007