Chapter 5: I Promise I Won't Linger Long
It was hard, Jamie found out, to relax around them when they hated each other. And that's how it really seemed, although she knew that the truth was something entirely more complicated. There was so much tension at times that it reminded her of home. Just that morning, when she could no longer ignore the calls from her family, she had spoken to her mother, who had berated her over ditching school to go on tour with a band. Perhaps a certain level of indifference towards school had built up upon being asked, by Tegan, to officially do what she'd already been doing for years anyway... something that meant more to her, by far, than school ever could. The guilt gnawed at her anyway, and when her siblings called as well to lay on their share of the guilt, she stopped answering her phone.
The boys felt the tension too, and did their best to add levity when needed, and to stay out of the way otherwise. Jamie thought they did a pretty good job of judging when those times were. The night that Sara threw a half-full bottle of Vitamin Water at Tegan's head, Ted smoothly took hold of Jamie's arm and invited her, as though nothing was amiss, to go out for a frappucino. She went with him, relieved, but also somewhat hesitant, she would admit only to herself, to miss what might come next. The secret was weighing on her. She wished either she could talk to someone about it or that the secret would come out and somehow the pressure would be off. But would it? Did the boys know? They couldn't. They must! But no, they couldn't. Their crew? Their parents?
"Um. . ." Jamie started as they left the bus and walked the few blocks to the nearest Starbucks. "So, is it always like this?"
"Nah, not really. I mean, they fight but. . . lately it's been a lot worse." They thought about that for a while as they walked.
"Why do you think that is?" Jamie asked him carefully. Ted shook his head.
"I really don't know. It's just something between the two of them and. . ." His hesitation was intensely suspenseful for Jamie. Did he know? "Their relationship is just . . . different from other siblings," he finished, somewhat obviously.
That's an understatement, Jamie thought.
"It looks like they hate each other these days," she said.
"Yeah, it looks like that sometimes." He laughed. "But try fucking with one of them and see what the other one does. Ha..."
This talk with Ted did nothing to settle Jamie's doubts. She didn't think he knew. And if he did, he wasn't going to say anything. And then, she couldn't say anything either, could she? The idea felt like betrayal to her. As conflicted as she was, she would have keep their secret, even under an organ thief's knife. After all, she only needed one kidney.
Everyone seemed to suffer under this new strain between the girls. On stage, their "banter" ranged from antagonistic to outright hostile. Sara, it seemed, jumped on every opportunity to make a cutting joke at Tegan's expense, or to blatantly attack her. And Tegan was no match for it. She was hurt and confused and it was so obvious; Sara was overflowing with anger and nobody knew why, it seemed. Anyway, if they knew, Jamie wished they would give her a sign. The secret made her feel entirely alone.
After a few more solid weeks on the bus, a night at a hotel, no matter how cut-rate, no matter how many people to a bed, sounded good to Jamie. A place with a bathtub; a bed that didn't vibrate; it all sounded good.
There were only three women on the road, and so the three of them, it seemed, would share a room. Jamie couldn't help but wonder if Tegan and Sara had their own room when they stayed in hotels before hiring her. It wasn't her idea to share with them, and she would have volunteered to stay with one or two of the boys, zombie sneakers or not, to give them their privacy. But they had no ostensible reason to require privacy, so Jamie had no way to offer it to them without revealing what she knew.
Given the dynamic between them the last few weeks, Jamie wondered what exactly the sleeping arrangements would be, so, since she was the first to enter the hotel room, she set her bag on one of the two queen-sized beds and decided that they could figure it out for themselves while she was in the shower.
Jamie stood there under the hot water for a long time, longer than she needed to, but showering on the bus or in the grungy venues was an underwhelming affair and she longed for water pressure again. Washing her endless hair without water pressure was like trying to nail Jello to a tree.
She was in there long enough to wash several long-haired girls' hair several times over before the voices raised loud enough to be heard over the hiss of the shower. The first voice she heard was Tegan's. Jamie didn't need to make out the words to feel it all teetering on the edge of collapse. There was Tegan's voice again, loud, and a lower, tenser voice from Sara; silence; a crash; loud expletives; the dull thud of things slamming into other things; silence; a shriek of pain. That scream sent a wave of panic through Jamie and she hurriedly pulled a t-shirt and shorts on over her wet skin, hair dripping, and flung the door open.
"Oh my God!" she cried at the sight of them on the hotel room floor, throttling each other. It was hard to say who was the aggressor, but at the first moment, Sara was straddling Tegan, grappling with her dangerously flailing arms until Tegan broke free, took hold of Sara's belt and quite deftly flipped her onto her back with a sick thump. On her knees with Sara's legs around her, she grabbed Sara's jacket and pulled it up over her face, held her down. Sara swung at her blindly, smashing Tegan on the nose.
"Fuck!" she shouted, punching the blind Sara's shoulder and reapplying pressure to the jacket over her face as Sara yelped in pain and squeezed Tegan with her thighs, trying to throw her off balance. Jamie heard Sara's muffled cries as she kicked at Tegan.
"Hey, you guys!" Jamie said, dismayed. "Stop it! Come on!" She stood some distance away from them, frozen. A large part of her wanted to run and hide from this but something stopped her. Perhaps fear that they would kill each other and that would be it.
"Fuck you!" Tegan wailed. "Why-" she sputtered, choking on her words, one hand now clenched around Sara's throat, Sara's hands frantically grasping to pull it off. "Why don't you. . . why don't you. . ." To Jamie's ears, Tegan was bordering on hysterical. If something didn't change, something was going to break.
The sight of blood and the unhinged rage released Jamie's frozen feet. She ran up quickly behind Tegan, who was now dripping blood from her nose down the front of her shirt and onto the carpet and Sara's jacket. They were going to hurt each other and then what?
"Tegan, stop!" Jamie yelled, sliding in behind Tegan and throwing her arms around Tegan's torso, jerking her back off of Sara. Tegan fell back into Jamie and they both thudded down onto the carpet as Sara gasped and choked. Jamie kept her hands locked across Tegan's stomach, the wetness from her hair and her body soaking through both her shirt and Tegan's between them. "Stop!" she said again, surprised at how firm she sounded despite how uncertain she felt. Tegan lay against her, chest heaving, and then struck out at Sara with one foot, connecting with her ribs.
"Fucking kick me, you fucking motherfucker!" Sara yelled, yanking the jacket off of her red face, coughing and clutching her side where Tegan's foot had smashed into her. Her hair was in her eyes; her eyes were flashing.
"Call me a motherfucker, you fucking bitch!" Tegan screamed back at her, suddenly straining against Jamie's arms in an attempt to strike out at Sara again. Tegan's nose was bleeding heavily. Jamie felt the hot blood dripping on her hands and wrists, but held on and when Tegan lunged forward, Jamie pulled back.
"No!" she said. "No, you guys!" She looked at Sara's face over Tegan's shoulder, flushed, damp with sweat from the struggle, her hands now grasping her throat where Tegan's fingers had left angry-looking red blotches, her bangs plastered across her forehead. When Sara looked at Tegan and took in her bloody face, something other than anger flickered in her eyes, and the intensity of her rage dissipated somewhat. They sat like that, on the carpet, lungs heaving, glaring at each other.
"I'm not sleeping in the same fucking bed as you!" Sara snapped.
"Oh, I'm fucking heartbroken!" Tegan snapped back, and suddenly they were lunging at each other again. For a moment, Jamie had a flash of understanding of what it was like to be an elementary school teacher, or perhaps a prison warden.
"Fuck you," Sara spat.
"Go fuck yourself," Tegan retorted. Jamie held fast; Tegan had stopped straining against her arms and instead pressed her shirt sleeve against her bloody nose, which was still flowing. "Fuck," she said, weakly, "you broke my nose." There was a weary kind of surprise in Tegan's tone, and Jamie felt Tegan's laboured breaths against her body as she leaned back into her.
"It's not broken," Sara said, but her voice had lost much of its anger and had taken on a slightly apologetic tone. "I'll go get some ice." Jamie blinked in surprise at Sara who, a moment ago, was calling Tegan a motherfucker and was now running off to get ice for her nose. Jamie reluctantly released Tegan and crawled around in front of her.
"Holy shit," Jamie gasped when she saw Tegan's bloody face and watery eyes. Tegan seemed on the verge of fainting, cupping one hand under her dripping nose.
"Blood," Tegan said stupidly, bleary-eyed. Jamie brought her eyes level with Tegan's, but Tegan seemed unable to focus on her.
"Put your head back," Jamie said, and Tegan did, leaning her head back against the edge of the mattress. Jamie retrieved a towel from the bathroom, rolled it up a little and handed it to Tegan, who held it gingerly against her nose. Jamie sat back, quietly. She had surprised herself by getting involved in their fight, but now, in the aftermath, with the shouting over, her shyness returned and she sat awkwardly on the carpet, across from Tegan, feeling severely out of place. Sara came in with a plastic tub full of ice cubes and crossed quickly to Tegan, kneeling by her side.
"Here," she said, taking the towel from her sister's hand and unrolling it. She piled some ice cubes inside of it and rolled it up again. "You hold this," Sara said, putting the towel in Tegan's hand and then guiding Tegan's hand back to her nose. With a slightly sheepish look, Sara's eyes met Jamie's.
"Fun times, hey?" she asked, getting up and going into the bathroom quickly. Tegan, with her head resting on the mattress, opened one eye and looked up at Jamie, who smiled at her weakly.
"You okay?" Jamie asked, feeling somewhat lost. What else could she say? Once again, the anxiety of witnessing something she shouldn't have washed over her like a wave. She looked down at her own hands, her stomach twisting to see them covered with Tegan's blood. If they were any other couple, Jamie thought, someone would call the police. But the fact that they were sisters made the violence seem almost normal. . . until factoring in the entire context of their relationship, which made it seem all the more horrifying.
Water was running in the bathroom.
"Uh huh," Tegan said, and chuckled weakly. "How do I look?"
"Spectacular," Jamie said, looking up, and Tegan chuckled again. Sara came back with a wet face cloth.
"Let me. . ." she said, moving Tegan's hand aside. "Yuck," she said, and, so gently it surprised Jamie, she started wiping the blood off of Tegan's lips, chin, and neck. Tegan looked down at her hands. "Keep your head back," Sara said, lifting Tegan's chin with her fingers.
"Okay."
"Okay," she said. She wiped away the majority of the blood from Tegan's face and neck and then began cleaning her smudged, sticky hands. Jamie watched Sara tenderly wipe the crimson mess off of her sister's fingers, watched Tegan passively allow it, her eyes closed and her head tipped back against the bed. Tegan didn't move, didn't make a sound, didn't open her eyes, but the tears leaked out from under her eyelids anyway.
"Don't cry, Tegan," Sara said, her voice pained, and Jamie felt, powerfully, that she shouldn't be there. It seemed unlikely that they would start trying to murder each other again, so Jamie stood, quietly, and skirted around the bed and towards the door as unobtrusively as she could.
"I'm not," Tegan said thickly, as Sara wiped the tears off of Tegan's face with her sleeve.
"You are," she said gently.
"No way."
"If your nose runs, you're on your own," Sara said, and Tegan laughed, lightly.
"It's fine. I'm fine. Hey, Jamie, having fun yet?" Tegan asked ironically, with a tired half-smile at Jamie, who was about to turn the doorknob. Jamie faltered, trying to return the smile and feeling herself failing, her mind reeling and heart pounding painfully as she stared down at her two favorite people in the world, disheveled and broken, covered in sweat and blood.
"You have no idea." She recalled an interview she had read where Chris Walla talked about what it was like to work with Tegan and Sara so closely on an album. They're twins, you know, fire and ice. But it's a way more interesting, awesome, nuanced, horrifying relationship than that. All of those things, all the time.
Horrifying. That adjective had intrigued Jamie since the moment she read it. What on earth could he have meant? She watched Sara start to blot Tegan's blood from the carpet. Either Chris had known exactly what he was talking about, or he had no idea.
"We're sorry. You don't have to go," Sara said. "Shit, you must think we're completely insane," Sara smiled at her wearily.
"We're not, really, I promise. . . I think. . . I mean . . . God, we're the worst bosses ever," Tegan said. She sounded like she had a head cold.
"Ha, you're really not. . ."
"Stay with us. If you want, I mean. We're going to get pizza and watch HBO."