Dead right, p.15
Dead Right, page 15
Their adult life had been spent revolving around their family in distinct elliptical orbits, alone, their trajectories rarely crossing. The death of their mother eclipsed them both, darkening their worlds causing them to spin further apart. Nanny had been the rejuvenating light that had restored their well-being, drawing them closer to each other, and to the rest of their relatives, than they had been since they were children.
Now in this time of approaching rapture the linguistic bond between the twins, fragile, untested in years, was about to be reconstituted. Their minds were once again uniting, filling the space between them. Words that only they knew, sentences only they understood once again shone, freshly burnished, the grammar complex and ingenious. Surprisingly Bernadette could visualize it all, florid lettering swirling in the air, merging, forming words, personal, building understanding, which she knew Anne could see and comprehend too.
“Yes, I do. It’s all coming back to me. Beautiful isn’t it?”
“It is. I don’t know why I’m thinking about it now. I had forgotten most of the words.”
Anne’s voice was vibrant, her earlier wavering frailty had vanished. The memory was restorative, opening out the mind in sequences of vivid light. The words forming rainbow sentences of random meaning and construction. To impose order on this spectral extravaganza communication was needed between the two of them. The rules – grammar and syntax – had to be reinstated and revitalized. They still had the time and the chance to connect.
“It was such a long time ago.”
“It was. Another age.”
“Things seemed simpler then. Everything seemed possible.”
“They did in some ways I guess.”
“I feel like a different person now. I don’t know whether I recognize my earlier self.”
Anne had raised herself up and was sitting leaning against the side of a faded magenta wingback armchair. Her drawn face was pale, her dirty dark hair, smeared to the side of her head, dank grease-heavy curls partially obscuring her lined forehead, yet she was smiling, an ashen toothy grimace. There was a joy in her voice and Bernadette instinctively responded to its novelty, rising against her nature, to the challenge of resurrecting a long-lost childhood language and breathing life into a moribund relationship. She struggled to get up, plumping the grimy pillow behind her, pushing down the piled sheets and covers that enveloped her, wincing as her cramped arthritic hands struggled to grip.
“We’ve all changed Anne”, she hissed, “for the better mostly. Look at us now.”
“Now?”
“Yes, selfless, that’s what we are.”
They were staring at each other across a narrow space in the gloomy half-light. Whether they recognized each other was a question neither could be certain of answering honestly. Fasting had turned them in on themselves, honing their own sense of identity, an introversion that was both disconcerting and consuming. Their current existence was a mix of corroded memories, sequentially incoherent, some recognizable as their own, others the result of the dramatic acts of strangers. Physical appearances had changed, divesting them of distinctiveness and obscuring their characters behind sculptured masks.
“Never used to be. Selfish not selfless that was Bernadette Walsh.”
“You’re too hard on yourself, Bernie. It’s me that’s selfish. I don’t really understand what’s going on. I’m not selfless at all. I don’t want to be here.”
“Yes, you do Annie. You really do. Where else would you be?”
Anne shrugged, she felt too diminished to argue with her domineering sister. Her fear was now endemic and debilitating. Any semblance of truth was marbled with insecurity, but she clung on to a single belief that there was, and always had been, a safe haven in America with Rick – her only true love, her solitary serious meaningful relationship. The vivid memories of that time sustained her. Confronted now by an alert attentive Bernadette she sought solace, where she always had, in a fantasy land south of the Mason-Dixon line, where deserted highways lined by gnarled oaks festooned with Spanish moss, dipped and curved through endless bright verdant marshes teeming with birds, stretching out to blue-sky horizons.
“South Carolina maybe.”
“Carolina? Why South Carolina?”
Bernadette knew the answer and was wary, acutely conscious of the devastating emotional impact on her sister of Rick’s rejection. Anne had talked often, over the years, about her first boyfriend, pining over the lost opportunity but ignorant of the circumstances surrounding his disappearance. That was until recently Bernadette thought, but then, who knew, maybe she hadn’t overheard her confession after all or had forgotten it under duress. The loss remained with her, Anne insisted, weighing heavily on her mind. Throughout her twin managed to evade any engagement, brushing aside inquiries, but recalling everything with guilty pleasure. Bernadette had had some experience of sex – six men in total, none of whom could be described as serious or long-term – but only one brief serious affair and it was those furtive couplings, rough and emotionally brutal, that she remembered with erotically charged clarity and not the pedestrian love-making of her more prosaic relationships. It was to the consequences of those few memorable nights in South Carolina that her sister was in her naïvety tangentially referring to.
“I used our secret language when speaking to Rick,” Anne spoke softly, “he had no idea what I was talking about. Couldn’t understand a word.”
“Did you? I never knew.”
Bernadette anxiously spat out the words, she needed to think clearly, but couldn’t, the pain in her stomach was, at that moment, intense. A faint memory signalled alarm. Betrayal was a dangerous territory into which she knew she should not stray, but she was trapped lying immobile only feet from her twin who appeared to be inescapably leading her there. Did Anne know? She was never meant to, her sisters had seen to that, but Bernadette’s recent indiscretion during their last afternoon in a mote-clouded church had breached their defenses. It was unsettling not knowing what was known and what was not, particularly as Bernadette had spent her life avoiding such uncertainty. Yet now it seemed a conversation about Rick was inevitable.
“It was so funny he used to get very annoyed at first, but then he played along.”
“That was our language, Anne, just for us. Why did you use it with him? You knew he wouldn’t understand?”
“It didn’t matter. It was fun.”
“How could it be when he had no idea what you were going on about. That’s weird.”
“No, it’s not. We had a great time when we were alone, if you know what I mean. He enjoyed it.”
Bridling at the superior, condescending tone of her sister and shrouded, as she was, in a mantle of mortality Bernadette felt the conventional constraints on her behaviour falling away. She could do or say what she wanted, when she wanted, there was nobody to stop her.
“I’m sure he did.”
“Stop it Bernie. You were always jealous about me and Rick.”
Coming clean, confessing, before a higher authority than this one had set Bernadette free. The knowledge of her encounter with Rick was no longer confined by the personal but was out there in the sacred realm. Open to all interested parties and Anne was surely one of those. Why shackle her soul-development now when they were facing eternity? Telling lies had never seemed so pointless.
“I had no need to be.”
“What do you mean?”
The quizzical surprise in Anne’s reply was a spur.
“It’s obvious what I mean I had no reason to be jealous of you and Rick.”
“I know you were, I could tell.”
“You’re wrong Anne. So completely wrong.”
“No, I’m not.”
Bernadette fell silent. Dappled shade from the Palmetto grove burnished her tanned skin. She could feel the warm sea breeze on the back of her neck as she lifted her damp hair, sense the soft white sand sticking to her sleek, sweat drenched body, smell the salty fish-tang decay of the nearby creek, see through narrowed-eyes the pelicans bobbing between the moored shrimp boats out in Saint Helena Bay. The boy lay beside her, his hot body pressing against hers, eyes closed and mouth open, his ruddy face beaded with perspiration, his chest rose and fell, his hairless nakedness a fascination. It was vibrant, real and she was living it – a vivid figment of her increasingly infertile imagination.
Anne capitulated first, breaking the silence with an emphatic appeal.
“If I’m wrong why is that then?”
Bernadette didn’t hesitate.
“Because I had it off with Rick myself, I had no reason to be jealous of you.”
“You didn’t. You’re lying.”
“I thought you knew.”
“No.”
“I thought you overheard my confession? At the church.”
“I didn’t. Why would I do that, it’s a sin to listen. How could you think I’d do that?”
Anne’s immobile, desiccated face barely registered her horror, but it was enough for Bernadette, so familiar with every emotion of her sister’s, to read and comprehend.
“Oh my God!”
“You’re lying. You didn’t sleep with Rick, you’re just doing this to upset me, like you’ve always done.”
“I did several times. I’m sorry.”
The physical contact had always been rough and energetic.They had been slick, breathless, their hearts pounding at the climax. In her innocence Bernadette had felt degraded and used at the time, seduced and outplayed by experience and guile, yet for years afterwards her body had thrilled at the imprinted sensations. Even now they were cherished memories.
“No, you’re not. How could you? You always do this. Why do you hate me so much?”
The emotional edge in her voice betraying the burgeoning fear that her spiteful, troubled twin might have been capable of such an act and was telling the truth. Anguished feelings choked off by doubt and uncertainty made her stumble over her thoughts. Words were difficult. As an afterthought she posed the obvious question.
“When?”
“The first time was on the beach on St Helena Island, you know where we used to go swimming. We were hidden in the palms, shaded and out of sight. It was beautiful.”
“That’s impossible. We were always together. If I wasn’t with Rick, I was with you. So where was I? You’re lying, I know it. You’re teasing me again.”
Bernadette’s snigger was cold and calculated. The pleasure she derived from baiting her younger twin had never lessened. Adulthood had not mitigated her desire to inflict pain, just wrapped it in a cloak of respectability that tempered the opportunities available to make her sister cry. Together and dying, with time playing tricks, the cloak had been cast aside, their love had only ever been skin-deep, never much of a defence. Anne understood, how could she not, they were almost identical, Bernadette having only an eight-minute advantage over her. Yet for their whole life this small difference had been sweeping in its influence. She felt sick.
“You were with Mary. We’d had an argument about something or nothing I can’t remember and you’d stormed off. Mary said she’d take you shopping to cheer you up. You bought those cowboy boots you were so proud of …”
Anne remembered the day clearly. Strolling with her older sister along the shady boardwalk and discovering the dingy shop at the top of Main Street – PHM Western Wear. She had been exultant finding the boots – they were upstairs now in the bottom of her wardrobe – and had rejoiced at having bought something that would make Bernadette jealous. The delicious sweetness of the celebratory chocolate milkshake at Dexy’s Soda Fountain afterwards still lingered. Sitting up at the counter she and Mary had talked nineteen to the dozen – that had happened rarely – Bernadette was so often the centre of everything.
“ … and never stopped reminding me of. While you were doing that Rick and I went to the beach.”
There was an emptiness in the air between them, the sultry truth leaching its heat into the vacant space. Anne was finding it difficult to breath.
“The second, third and fourth times we did it was in his room in the house he shared in Beaufort. You know where he had that large Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young poster from their 1974 tour up on his wall.”
Anne began to sob.
“He was a passionate man, very physical, but he didn’t have much to say. Not a keeper if you ask me. Not someone to settle down with.”
Anne wailed gulping air. Her words when they finally came were mired in remorse.
“It’s not for you to say, I loved him.”
“He wasn’t a good man, Anne. He wouldn’t have stayed with you long after he got what he wanted. I know that for certain.”
“How do you know? He loved me.”
“No, he didn’t. He just wanted to get his end away, like all of them. You were just one pretty girl out of many, just like I was. But you were saving yourself. You wouldn’t sleep with him, would you?”
“And you would.”
“Yes.”
“You gave him what he wanted and he didn’t stay.”
“My point exactly.”
“What did you do to him? Where did he go?”
“I don’t know and didn’t care, that was part of the deal.”
“What do you mean deal? Oh my god Bernie how could you? How could you do that to me?”
Mary stirred beneath the window, where she had stretched out beside the radiator. She craved the heat, the arid radiation suppressing fear – anticipation of the chill finality of the grave was a constant companion – and easing her suffering. Her chapped-red face glistened as it emerged from the cocoon of blankets, her thinning grey hair damp. She had been woken by the incomprehensible mutterings and high-pitched yells and was irritated, as she always had been when younger, by the unintelligible sounds.
“Oh mother of God, you two have started that nonsense up again. I thought you were done with all that. You never seemed to realize how left out I always felt. How dare you, talking in tongues like that.”
“We were reminiscing about Rick.”
Surprised, Mary hauled herself up and glared at the twins who were sitting scowling at each other. Anne’s face was wet with tears. She was sniffling. Bernadette sat meekly vacant, hunched, round-shouldered but resolutely defiant.
“I told her about me and Rick.”
“You didn’t!”
Mary was shocked. There had always been a reckless streak running through Bernadette, which was dangerous to be associated with, but until now Mary had largely managed to avoid being dragged into her games, unlike Anne and John.
“You promised you never would.”
“What’s the point of secrets now. The state we’re in?”
Anne looked aghast at her older sister.
“You knew, Mary? You knew about Bernadette and Rick?”
The truth was that Mary was secretive by nature, she enjoyed the closeness that came with confidences exchanged, appreciated the strength of character that keeping secrets demonstrated, understood that such knowledge made her a more exciting person, if only in her own eyes, simply liked possessing information other people didn’t have and resented giving up such an advantage with no obvious gain to be had. In the case of this devastating secret, hidden for so long for good reason, there were distinct disadvantages to it being revealed. Eternity was a long time to live with the enmity of a younger sister, who had looked up to and admired you her whole earthly life. Mary was not a cruel woman, always acting in what she saw as the best interests of everyone, and didn’t want events to unfold in this way, but the sisters were being swept into the maelstrom stirred up by their baser sibling. As so often in the past, Mary’s response was indistinct, the sounds draining from her mouth.
“Ummm.”
“Know! It was her idea.”
“Bernadette no, don’t. You can’t say that.”
But she was unstoppable, agitating with glee. Determination coarsening her voice as she spat out words.
“Neither of us liked Rick, did we Mary? He was an insincere, shallow swine, handsome I admit, but not good enough for you Anne and interested in only one thing. And we proved it. It was dead easy. Just one hint I was interested and he wouldn’t leave me alone. He was very engaged and boisterous in a boyish sort of way. It was exciting.”
“You slapper, how could you?”
“Don’t call me that. It was for your own good.”
“Oh Jesus, how can you say that? How did you have the nerve to think you knew what I wanted?”
Anne’s hysteria was uneven, out of control. With effort she had crawled out of her nest of bedclothes and was crouched on top of them as if about to pounce. Her sunken face contorted and pale, yellow eyes bloodshot and teary.
