The Smile of a Ghost

I can’t breathe, the air has gone out of my body. I need to sit down, my knees threaten to give way, my legs are buckling under me. No, I need to run, get away. This can’t be happening. This isn’t right. Hide, I must hide, don’t let him see me. I stumble, looking down I notice the uneven paving stones, still wet from last nights rain. I close my eyes – stop, think, these are old reactions. It can’t be him, just someone who looks like him. It’s happened before. I catch sight of a sturdy back, broad shoulders, red hair and a determined walk… But that hasn’t happened for years now, not since he’s been gone, not since I have been free.

I push my feet down hard on to the pavement, grounding myself, willing myself to feel anchored to the spot, to remain, stay, to face my fears. The noise from the traffic grows, horns dominate the high street this morning, people trying to park or get peoples attention as they wait to give friends, family, colleagues lifts and avoid getting cornered, boxed in by other unforgiving traffic. ‘Come on’, the horns demand, ‘hurry up’, time nor cars wait for no man it seems, ‘get a move on’…angry, blaring, important, demanding – just like him, just like he used to be.

The day is new and some of us have stirred earlier than others, have greeted this new day in its earliest of hours, wondering at the promise it holds, for the time ahead. A heaviness threatens to hang in the air now, the freshness of the dawn long gone, perhaps we need a storm to clear the air I think, to take the growing pressure away – thunder and lightning to relieve the humid mugginess that cloys and clings to you and brings no relief, allows no breath of fresh, cooling air. People rush past me to catch their lifts, board their buses, buy their morning paper, they don’t see me really, just the inconvenience that I pose, a further obstacle on their journey in to work or trip to the shops. Most of them are on their mobile phones anyway, already disconnected from the here and now and unwilling to be reminded of its reality.

I don’t want to look up again, I don’t want to check if he is still there, to see him standing right in front of me in the street, smiling. Green eyes watching me, claiming victory, that smile a confident smile, destroying my sense of self, my claim on reality.

“It can’t be…it can’t be you…”.

I hear myself push out the words from between rigid lips. A rictus has gripped my face – all muscles taut, while the rest of my body threatens to let me fall, to let me down, or both.

“Hello Martha, it’s been a long time”.

I hear the voice. His voice. Strong, assured, determined; sober too, I notice thankfully.

“Aren’t you going to say you are glad to see me?”

See him? I almost laugh. I haven’t lifted my head back up or opened my eyes again yet. Slowly I raise my head, reluctantly I scan his face. Despite the weakness my body betrays, despite myself, I hold his gaze. I am not sure I want to turn my back on him or if staring into his eyes has hypnotised me like a rabbit caught in oncoming bright headlights that are the herald of fatality in motion. However, I sense I daren’t look away, the time for running is over, lost to me now. How can it be him? The voice inside my head asks the same questions over and over. How can he be here? How can this be happening? How can he be here, in front of me, real, solid, flesh and blood? I shiver and he laughs. He’s seen my reaction, read my thoughts. I’m so cold, I want to shout at him, I’ve shivered because of the chill in the air, the day suddenly holds a pall it didn’t before, perhaps the rain is coming, the storm will break over us – but it can no longer break the pressure for me, or ease my tension.

“What are you doing here?”

As my voice cracks, I realise I haven’t asked him ‘how’, how can he be here? My mouth is so dry there is no chance for other words, a desert thrives there now, complete with cracked lips that I have chewed without noticing. My throat aches as I try to swallow, but I can taste nothing but my fear. My mind will not stay in the present, it breaks free and whirrs back through my memories, back to my past – my life flashing before me as if I was in peril, possibly, I do feel like I am drowning in my memories.

We were so young. He always seemed to be in trouble, to be angry. I remember my childhood, my brother, Jack, was barely 12 months older than me. A pensive family, edgy, lonely – I can’t remember too much laughter, other noise yes, raised voices, arguments, slammed doors. Then silence. The silence seemed to exist as a pause, a place to wonder when it would all begin again. Our parents were wounded souls, fighting their own internal demons, inherited from their childhoods, from their parents, from their experiences of emotionally barren and psychologically destructive family landscapes.

They did their best – stayed together, tried to make it work. It never did. Bitterness and resentment can outlive the ability to drown your sorrows in alcohol. Eventually dad became ill and could no longer work, just as I was leaving school. He retired through ill health and mum looked after him, tired and worn out, she didn’t give up, she kept plodding on. Perhaps she was looking forward to a better life, more consistency, more money, more stability. Dad couldn’t fly away from her anymore. I felt sorry for him though, his dreams had always included her, she had just never liked flying.

“You got away Martha, you thought you could leave me. I was always coming to look for you”.

The sound of his voice drags me back to the present, his voice low, almost a whisper with a hint, I think, of a familiar whine. We are standing like static islands in a river flow of humanity, the current of people passes around us, each side of us, but we are oblivious, our eyes rapt on each other’s face, arms hanging at our sides, hands clenched into fists – each of us a mirror for the other; a reflection of the other’s need. His green eyes always did look like they held the depth of an ocean, but they were always dark and brooding, as if the light never got a chance to get in, they seemed full of cruelty, vengeful and cold.

I can feel my heart beat erratically, like a big drum has gone mad and no longer keeps the tempo it was supposed to, I can hear its unhelpful rhythm in my ears, the sound all but deafening me. Think, Martha, think. But I can’t make sense of any of this, I don’t want to think about it, I don’t want to be here, like this, with him. Had I always felt this way?

“You were the one that left – you chose a way of life that left no room for anyone else, that meant you didn’t have to care about anyone else”.

I had been stung into replying by the sense of accusation in his words. I almost spat my reply, if only my mouth hadn’t felt so full of sand, my voice so rasping and weak. I had always felt he saw me as weak – weak because I cared. His smiled faded – it hadn’t been real or warm. It had been a veneer, an act. He didn’t fool me, he had once but not now. I thought of all the times I had helped him, covered up for him, lied for him… I had wanted to believe I could help him, get him better – help him stop drinking, pay off the loan sharks he hung around with. He never kept a job for long, let all the people down who did take him in, who wanted to give him a chance. Pretty soon he took advantage of one person too many and ended up in jail, feeling sorry for himself and blaming us all for his bad luck.

My parents helped me get away, told me to go, to take advantage of the college course I had always wanted to do – move away, start a new life. Stop putting my life on hold they had said. I didn’t get away for long though, despite his accusations, how can you run away from yourself? I took my guilt and remorse with me, my shame at running, leaving.

“You left me with them Martha. I came out of prison to find you gone and I was expected to survive without you. We were always better together, united, a force to deal with life, to keep it at bay – and then you weren’t there anymore – you left me”.

His face is inches away from mine now, I don’t flinch but I try to make myself smaller, insignificant, it’s something I remember doing a lot as a child.

“But you left”, I counter, sick of his portrayal of me, weary of his ability to tell a different story other than that which actually happened. A story that always had him as the victim. It was always someone else’s fault.

“You got away. You joined the army – then some private force, a shady outfit, off all over Syria, guarding prisons, oil rigs”.

I can still see the letter on the hall floor, a foreign postmark, words on the envelope written in a language I did not understand. I relive the shock of the news I read in the letter, I dropped it as though it had been too hot to handle, as if it had burned me. Taking it up again I remember scanning the words for his name, for the name of the place it happened, for the details, for the name of the person writing to me, trying to make sense of it all, for how and why he had died. Because he was dead.

I had attended his funeral. I had arranged it. Burying the empty casket, his body unrecovered, what remained of it staying in the country where he had been murdered by foreign insurgents. I had returned home to finally lay him to rest. My plans of working at the hospital after passing my exams as I had hoped, my shot at a different future, shelved, as I supported my parents; our parents. I had returned home to bury my brother, to deal with our parents’ grief. I had never left again, how could I? Our parents needed me – their fragile emotional states finally meeting more physical frailties, illness and old age. Jack would know I would have trapped myself.

They had died three years ago, within six months of each other, and were buried by their son. Their selfish, troubled, dead son. My thoughtless, jealous, abusive, angry brother. Jack, who was still standing in front of me, who had finally come back to find me.

“They’re gone Jack, mum and dad – you broke their hearts…”. I can feel the emotions rushing up to me now, sadness, frustration, the feelings of futility and waste.

“Don’t tell me they tried their best”. He almost shouts.

“Don’t excuse them, pity them. You left me when I needed you most – left me to shrivel and die, but I didn’t. I used my anger to get me out and get back at you. What’s it felt like being stuck here, being stuck with them all these years? You lived the life you set up for me – I hope you’ve been happy with it”.

His eyes are blazing now, darker than I ever remember them. I’m staring at him, the shock of his return from the dead vying with the realisation of how much he hates me. I am beginning to panic – not about me or for me, but about Jack…my son.

One of those car horns will soon be for me. My son will be here to pick me up, to drive me to the hospital where we both work. My thoughts are firmly wedged in the present now. I think of my husband, he will just be getting in from work, he will be reading the note I have left for him. We always leave notes for each other as our hours of work mean we can be like ships that pass in the night, but this one doesn’t ask him to hang out the washing or take the dog for a walk like usual. He will be struggling to get the chair from under the table, to move the dog so he can sit down, failing to understand the words I have written. Trying to make sense of what they mean. This note tells him what I couldn’t tell him face to face, what I had been scared to tell him, because I have been a chicken, have refused to face how ill the doctor told me I was. In it I tell him I love him, that I love our son. I ask him to forgive me, and to hold me close when I get in from work, to say it is ok, to tell me everything will be ok.

As my brother steps closer to me, so close he’s a breath away, I look into his soulless eyes and I realise I have just one regret – I wish I hadn’t given my son his name. In the next moment as my knees become weak and my legs buckle from under me, I know how glad I am my brother has never found out about my life…about my son. My brother is standing in front of me, as I fall on to my knees and fold up on to the floor, and he’s smiling again. As I feel my eyes close I can hear a car horn blaring madly in the distance.