Storytelling, Sarah told me, was the only way for some liars to come to terms with the truth. So I’ll tell you a story, she was saying in that strange layered way of hers, hand grazing mine as she reached for the little stick of charcoal. I’ll tell you everything, and I’ll tell you nothing.
She hated him because she met him; that was it, as far as I could see. That’s all it took.
Sarah said that the older she grew the younger the world seemed, still temperamental in the way of a teenager, brash enough to think that things could turn out differently. As a result she’d always wallowed in her longing for ‘old souls’ -- that unbearable euphemism for tired, cynical -- when in reality she’d just been waiting for her existence to open wide and for him to walk in.
“Amazing,” Sarah said wryly as she studied my left ear, the length of my neck, “how much time women spend waiting. The old standby is women waiting for their men to come home from war: but really we wait our entire lives. For belonging. For acceptance. For the glimmer of respect we feel we’ve earned for carving out our existences in a place that doesn’t quite feel kind.” She turned into a poet whenever she sketched anyone, she’d always demurred, as if apologizing for the sentimentality. Just like how she turned into a poet when she’d met him.
And I was envious at the prospect, that he’d caught something in her that I never had.
Was he her muse, or was she his? It was a tricky thing to consider; how can you liberate someone by capturing them on the page? I’m hesitant to write about it now, even, afraid that by memorializing her I’ll be trapping her, pinning down gossamer-thin wings.
He was brilliant, they all said, in that careless way; he’d never had to apologize for taking up too much space. Not like she had. She was relegated to a quieter existence, in the corners of rooms where she could see but not be seen, ink-smudged fingers and tired wrists, eyes so innocuously blue. It was her duty to observe as silently as she could, chronicle his bad moods and long-suffering bouts of depression, pour down the bottles before he himself hit bottom. He was something worse than a cynic. He was an addict.
He would never understand and so there was no point trying, she said in apology, though for herself or for him I would never know. And then her features would take on a darker cast, the light hair would fall in her eyes, and her voice would lower to a more striking pitch. Resentment, I know now, though I didn’t know it then. It was the only time I ever saw it on her face.
“Is there anything worse than being responsible for a man’s happiness?” she asked, fingers trembling across the fine parchment. Light as bird wings. “For anyone’s happiness, I’m sure, but his ego is so fragile. You’re either on a throne above him or you’re on your knees.”
And I went quiet, because I didn’t understand, not really, and her smudged fingertips went to my ear, brushed a coil of hair behind it. She looked at me suddenly with the eye of a voyeur, frighteningly curious, as if she was seeing me as someone more than who I was. An object of fascination, as lofty as she’d always been to him, untouchable and somehow worthy of envy. I didn’t like the reversal, and when I told her this she smiled.
“Neither do I,” Sarah said simply, withdrawing her hand and putting it back to the paper. “Did you think anyone ever does?”