Twisted Agendas (18 page)

The doctor stopped talking and asked, “You are worried?”

“We’re going to have to do this without Todd. I’ve told him our sex is great. It’s my hang up, not his.”

The upstairs room Sonia used for therapy sessions had a wooden floor as shellacked as a gym floor and walls painted primrose. Framed abstract art posters in a Jackson Pollack
style, African tribal masks and Sonia’s medical diploma adorned the walls. In the lower portion of the room was a lavender and white striped two-seater couch and matching armchair. A smoked
glass coffee table lay between them. Sonia opened the door of a built-in closet and took out a fuchsia blanket that she spread in the middle of the room. Next she took out a six-foot poinsettia red
sack with a drawstring at one end. She placed the sack at one end of the blanket.

After informing Piper she’d be ‘immersed’ in the womb sack and wrapped in the blanket, she retrieved a bunch of short fat candles from the closet, placed them in a circle
around the blanket and lit them. She drew the curtains shut and dimmed the overhead lights so the room took on the appearance of an ancient pagan initiation site.

Sonia switched on the CD player and stepped inside the illuminated circle. Piano music riffs began to trickle from the stereo. “Take off your clothes and climb inside the womb sack,
please.”

“All my clothes?”

“You may keep the underpants.”

Piper hesitated, and then began to undress. “Is that
Yanni
playing?”

“It is a German composer who is a friend,” said Sonia. “He created it for this purpose.”

A faint beating or tapping sound became audible.

“
Schnell
,” Sonia said. “Quickly. The heart begins to beat.”

Piper stepped inside the circle and looked at the candles. “I don’t think I can do this, Sonia.”

“Why?”

The heartbeats grew louder. “I don’t like the candles so close. And can you turn the lights up a bit?”

Sonia’s face, now rendered chiascuro in the flickering light, was a study of incredulity. The heartbeats began to overtake the tinkling piano.

“I don’t like so many flames this close around me. Sorry.”

“If I make the circle bigger?” Sonia asked.

“What have candles got to do with rebirth anyway?”

“It is my way.”

“Um, make the circle bigger… and brighten the lights.”

After doing so, the CD was started again. Piper climbed into the scarlet sack and Sonia tied it, instructing her to lie down. She proceeded to roll her body in the blanket until it became almost
dark. A moment later, something pressed against Piper’s bottom. “What’s happening, Sonia?”

“I’m putting some pillows around your body so you will feel surrounded by your mother’s fet stomach. You will begin now to breathe in and out continuously.”

It began to feel warm and the constriction, while not freaking her out, was unnerving. The heartbeats grew louder.

“You are breathing in and out like I have ordered?” Sonia asked.

“Yeah.”

“No further talking.” There was a smack on the pillow against her backside and another on her back. Her head was smacked next, first at the back then the front, then her thigh, calf,
and her backside again.

“What are you doing?”

“Do not talk. It is a simulation. Breathe in and out wery fast like I told you.”

The sporadic hitting interspersed with Sonia’s pushing down on her shoulders lasted for ten minutes. Piper’s body was bathed in sweat. She felt lightheaded from breathing rapidly.
The sound of the beating heart grew louder. Sonia began to occasionally groan.

“Are you still breathing the way I wish?” Sonia asked.

“Yes.” She hoped the ritual would soon end.

“One continuous rhythm in and out. Soon comes the birth.”

The loud heartbeats ended abruptly. The music changed to what sounded like trickling water amid a melody of soothing electronic music.

“Keep breathing in and out, in and out.”

The water trickle changed to a gush and Sonia began wailing. It was very hot inside the sack now. A trickle of sweat entered Piper’s eye and stung.

“Sonia, what is going on?”

“Do you want to be borned now, Piper?”

“Yes.”

“Do you?”

“I want out.”

Piper felt hands on her body, and then she was rolling as Sonia shrieked and moaned as if in the midst of a terrible labour. She saw the gold-yellow flicker of the candles through the fabric of
the sack. Fingers fumbled on top of her head. The sack then opened and was pulled down over her head and shoulders.

“Come out, Piper. You are borned again. Come out to your new, beautiful life.” She helped Piper stand and then peeled the sack down to her feet. Sonia opened her arms wide and
embraced her. “It is over. It is all over. You have dominated the primal pain. It is gone forever.” She led Piper to the chairs and fetched a towel so she could wipe her face.

“You may dress now,” she said, after Piper handed her the towel.

Piper struggled to put on her blouse. She really did feel like a helpless newborn. Her limbs and fingers shook from the rebirth experience. She could not make them obey.

“How do you feel?” Sonia said, after Piper sat across from her on the armchair.

“Weird.” Piper looked down at the rumpled sack that resembled a placenta now. “What am I supposed to feel?

“We can start the second prong tomorrow.”

“I’m gonna take a raincheck.”

“I do not understand this raincheck.”

She looked at the doctor. “This will sound crazy but maybe I’m just not really into sex. It’s that simple.”

“It is difficult to have a relationship with someone without the sex. Especially in the beginning years.”

“I really like being in a relationship with Todd so that is a problem.” Piper sighed. “Sex is important to him. I’ll have to try harder, that’s all.”

“What will you do?”

“Keep trying till it comes right.”

“My door will always be open.” Sonia’s professional concern was apparent despite the warm smile. “Counseling can often help in situations that seem impossible.”
Sonia rose. “And now I prescribe some wine for us,
ja
?”

A strong wind had kicked up while Agnes had been inside visiting Martha. The branches of the sycamore tree cracked like pistol fire each time they struck one another. Pages of
a discarded newspaper were wedged against the kerb and the right rear wheel of her car. Agnes disliked being out late. She wouldn’t have been out had it not been for her friend’s recent
accident. Martha had fallen and sprained her ankle and cut her face, a fall resulting in her having had to spend five days in the hospital because she’d no family members at home to care for
her and had refused to have a stranger from Social Services in her flat.

The roads were empty except for occasional taxis taking late night revelers home, delivery vans and trucks. When she saw the massive piers of Hammersmith Bridge, Agnes knew she was just five
minutes from home. She relaxed her grip on the steering wheel, even indulged herself by turning up the volume on the radio to hear the early morning news. She entered the deck of the bridge. In the
mid-distance, over the top of the bridge’s outer banister, the canopies of oaks and elms alongside the towpath swayed in the wind. The river’s inky black water gleamed in the pale
moonlight. Light manufacturing establishments hugging the Thames were bathed in the sterile neon glow of security lights. A solitary pedestrian crossing the bridge turned his head against the wind
to look at her as she passed by.

Halfway across, the car lifted off the surface for an instant. A huge flash of orange flame filled the rearview mirror. Her vehicle struck against something unyielding and hard. Agnes shrieked,
quickly realised she’d crossed a traffic lane and the car’s front wheel had struck a portion of the bridge’s steel barrier. The engine died. The bridge emitted a low metallic
growl as if it were in terrible pain. Looking over her shoulder, she saw the right side of the bridge was burning as brightly as the Iraq oil wells she’d seen bombed on television. A pillar
of thick smoke rose into the night sky. Terrified the structure would collapse, she tried to restart the car but couldn’t. Her hands and legs shook uncontrollably. She gripped the wheel,
willed herself not to panic and tried the engine again. It started and she began to move forward, initially in tiny leaps because her right foot feeding fuel to the engine would not fully
comply.

When Agnes pulled into the parking spot across from her house and turned off the engine, her body began to tremble. She sat for five minutes trying to recall the journey from the bridge but
couldn’t remember anything, not a street name or single turn she’d made. The devouring shrieks of fire engines consumed the city’s tranquility when she opened the car door.

Inside, the shock she’d felt weakened. She sat on her rocking chair in the living room unable to expunge the image of the pedestrian crossing the bridge. A cup of very sweet tea calmed her
and she switched on the television. A journalist reported a body had been found and there’d been a warning, a coded warning similar to the one given by the Real IRA when they’d bombed
the bridge the previous year as policemen, clad in flak jackets and carrying stubby black rifles, stood on the bridge’s piers.

The possibility that Katie might decide to leave her husband and move into Chumley Street with her children now that Julia and she had reconciled worried Danny. Worried him
that is until, asking matter-of-factly if she ever wanted to have children, Julia informed him ‘absolutely not’ because they’d destroy her lifestyle.

“Danny, what’s the plural for
Pferd
?” Finty called into the kitchen.

“I think it’s
Pferde
.”

“German sounds very harsh or is it just me?” Julia said. “How can you make that ‘
Pf
’ sound without spitting on someone’s face?”

“Easy,” said Finty. “Don’t talk with saliva in your mouth.”

The screams of a police siren penetrated the front window. The wail grew louder until it seemed the windowpane would shatter into a thousand shards. Every time he heard police sirens, Danny was
automatically hurled back to Northern Ireland, to a past era of daily bombings and tit-for-tat murders. Even a car backfiring had once caused him to duck to the ground much to Finty’s
surprise.

“Bloody hell, what’s happened?” Julia said. She swung her feet off the sofa and switched on the television. “Don’t tell me another bomb’s gone off
somewhere.” She watched the screen for a moment. “Nothing on the news.”

Danny came back from the kitchen carrying two very full cups of tea and set one carefully before Finty who was seated at the dining room table. He took the other to Julia on the sofa.

“How do you know it’s not
Pferden
,” said Finty. “I’m hopeless.”

“Don’t put yourself down like that.” Danny sat at the table beside her.

Now they were two-thirds of the way through the German course, there were an increasing number of work assignments and ever more complex vocabulary lists to be absorbed and Finty was now a
weekly visitor at his home as a result. Brought up to view reciprocal invites as expressions of interest, it disappointed Danny that he still hadn’t been invited to study at her flat. He
found her circumspect about her private life, rarely talking about her domestic circumstances other than to tell him how the puppy was faring or complain about her part-time job.

He sipped his tea and watched Finty discretely as she leaned over the table. He loved entertaining her at any time, but today was particularly special. They never met at the weekends, and were
doing so only because Herr Fehler had arranged for the class and any of their family and friends to attend a mid-July picnic concert at Hampstead Heath. He’d invited Piper and Julia, who
couldn’t attend due to a prior engagement. The concert was to feature works by Pachelbel and Brahms and Danny had suggested to Finty she come over beforehand under the pretext they could
study for a while.

They worked quietly until Danny announced it was time to leave for the picnic. While Finty went upstairs to freshen up, he removed the bottles of white wine she’d brought from the fridge
and packed them together with salads he’d prepared into two backpacks.

The phone rang. Julia answered it.

“It’s for you,” Julia called into the kitchen. “Your father.”

They hadn’t spoken since he’d come to London. A multitude of bad scenarios raced through Danny’s mind.

“Everything okay at home, Dad?”

“Aye. I just thought I’d give you a ring. How’s London?”

“I’m enjoying myself.”

“Grafting hard, I hope.”

“Yep.”

“Almost finished the course, eh?”

Upstairs, he could hear Finty as she moved about the bathroom. “Almost,” he said. Danny braced himself for the order to come home.

“Do you know who I happened to bump into the other day?”

“Who?”

“Susan.” His father laughed his insincere laugh. “I met her completely out of the blue. That’s why I decided to give you a ring.”

Since sending the letter to Susan, Danny hadn’t heard from her. For two weeks after he calculated she’d have received his letter, he’d expected an irate call
at any time, at the very least a note from her pleading with him to reconsider. There’d been only silence. But a month had since passed and he concluded she’d accepted his decision and
their engagement was now a part of his past.

“I thought there might be a reason for your call, Dad.”

“The girl’s not looking so well, son. You probably know her father’s not in great shape.”

“She mentioned that.”

“He’s had his heart surgery.”

Danny didn’t comment.

“The doctor’s warned him he has to cut down on his work or it’ll kill him.” His father sighed ponderously. “The man’s going to need help or he’ll have
to sell up. That’s a hell of a business he’s built. Lot o’ money there. Sure his wife knows nothing about running a farm. And Susan’s not up to it. It’s too much for a
slip of a girl.”

“Tell her father I wish him well.”