Just Say [Hell] No

by Rosalind James

  “Oh,” Tom said. “Cool.”

  Ella laughed, but it sounded more like a release of nerves than anything else. “Not so sure about that. I start school tomorrow, though, P.E. and all. As soon as they see my belly, they’ll know. Or if not, they’ll know soon enough. I reckon it’s better to tell them first. I’m practicing.”

  “Too right,” Tom said. “If you say it first, it’s not a secret. It’s just another thing about you. Maybe more interesting, that’s all.”

  He smiled at Ella, and it was so sweet, it may have taken Nyree’s breath away. Had she stumbled upon the last remaining habitat of Hard Men With Hearts of Gold? Just in case she hadn’t, she said, “Maybe don’t share that with the rest of the team, Tom. Unless Ella says it’s OK.”

  Tom looked confused. “Why would I do that?”

  “Yeh, well,” Nyree said, “talk in the sheds.”

  “Not about—” Tom said, and stopped.

  “Somebody’s sister,” Nyree guessed. “Somebody’s cousin. Never mind. I get it.”

  “You can tell them,” Ella said. “In the sheds or anywhere else. So I had sex and got pregnant. It’s not 1960. I’m not ashamed. How does anybody think babies happen?”

  Marko hadn’t said anything. Time to change the subject, so Nyree said, “Speaking of embarrassing things that aren’t secret, Marko, I saw a couple carrier bags beside your Cat Gym. If you tell me you bought that cat a pink princess bed, I will laugh.”

  “The best part about that giant leopard thing,” Ella said, “is that I don’t feel guilty anymore about costing him money. Geez, Marko.”

  “Go on and laugh,” Marko said, picking up the cue. “And no, I did not buy this bloody nuisance of a cat a princess bed. Already bought her a luxury bed, didn’t I, and woke up to find her in my bed instead the first night. I put her out, and she meowed outside the bloody door until I let her in again. She won’t use her gym, either. Catch me buying her anything else.”

  “Big talker,” Nyree said. “When I find the cat dishes with her name specially printed on them, I’ll remind you of that.”

  “Since her name is ‘Cat,’ Ella told Tom, “it could happen.”

  Marko said, “Do you want a present or not?”

  “What? Me?” Ella sat up straight. “I definitely want one.”

  “Hang on, then.” He got up from the table, came back a minute later, dumped two plastic carrier bags beside her, and said, “There.”

  As a gift-giving ceremony, it left something to be desired. Ella didn’t seem to mind, though. She just opened the first bag and pulled out two sets of towels and facecloths. Which were yellow. Too yellow, perhaps, closer to gold than the pale shade of Ella’s bedroom, but definitely yellow.

  “Marko,” Ella said. “Thank you.”

  “As you couldn’t find the right color on Sunday,” Marko said, “and there was a shop next to the pet place and I was there anyway, I popped in. Thought it would make the bath more friendly for you and Nyree. Keep you from having to paint it, is the dream, though I won’t get my hopes up. There’s another bag as well.”

  “Oh.” This time, there was no question that it was right. The sheets were lavender. “Oh, they’re beautiful. Thank you.”

  “Yeh, well,” Marko said. “Nyree said you were doing the room in yellow and purple. I thought they were good, in a girly sort of way.” He looked at Nyree. “I didn’t buy orange towels. First off, they didn’t have them. Second, there’s a limit.”

  Hard man? Maybe not so much.

  Tom went home after tea. Once he’d helped with the washing up, that is. Marko had to concede that at least he’d done that. He’d chatted to Nyree, but he hadn’t actually done anything Marko could object to. Pity.

  After he left, Ella took her new towels and sheets out of the bags, cut off the tags, and said, “I’m going upstairs after I wash these. So you know. All done for tonight. Closing my door and all. Announcement.”

  What? Marko thought. Nervous about school tomorrow? Texting friends? Sending nudes to some forty-five-year-old pervert in Los Angeles who got off on pregnant schoolgirls? How much was he meant to supervise, and how would he even start? He decided to address the simplest issue and work up to the rest. “No need to wash them, surely. They’re new.”

  “They have chemicals on them,” Ella said.

  “What, towels are sprayed with dangerous chemicals before sale? No. You can’t believe everything you read on the internet.”

  “Excuse me,” Ella said. “Sizing? It’s a thing. And the tadpole’s systems are still developing. Do you want it to come out with a hole in its spine because I didn’t wash my sheets?”

  She didn’t wait for his answer, just headed for the laundry room bearing an armful of linens, and Marko asked Nyree, “Seriously?”

  “Yes,” she said, still drying her hands on a tea towel. “About the sizing, anyway. About the rest of it, she probably knows more than I do. It’s good that she’s doing her best by the baby, at least.”

  “Hopefully not because she’s thinking of keeping it.” He said it quietly, so Ella wouldn’t hear. “What was all that announcement about closing her door, though?”

  “Dunno,” Nyree said. “Statement of boundaries? That I can’t tell her not to use her phone in bed? Something like that, I’d guess. I doubt she’d decide to keep the baby. She seems more realistic than that. But then, I’ve never grown a human inside me. First midwife appointment Friday, by the way.”

  “Whose idea?”

  “Hers. She said she needed to know when it was due so she could start looking at parents, so that’s a positive sign. I sat beside her while she researched her options and chose a midwife, but she did the rest. She rang the office up, too, explained her situation, and asked if they could deal with it.”

  “That’s good, then.” He wasn’t even a week into this, and his life was already more complicated and distracting than anything he could have imagined. It had better not get worse, that was all.

  “Another good idea,” she said, “would be telling me whether you’ve got some kind of issue with my bringing friends into your house, since you seemed fairly gobsmacked tonight. Are they restricted to my bedroom, maybe? Or not at all? If that’s your idea, I’m telling you now. Too extreme, boy.”

  Bang. There it was. His life getting—yes, more complicated and distracting. He needed his guitar to talk about this. The music would help him think and give him an excuse to take his time to do it. Plus, she liked it.

  When he didn’t answer straight away, she said, “And, yes, it’s your house, and, yes, I still have my garage. I could go there, but it would mean I wouldn’t be with Ella, which would be—oh, yeh. Stupid. I can even go there if you want to entertain, though I can’t imagine you being that squeamish. You’re a big boy who likes blondes. That’s no secret. It’s a big house, Ella and I are big girls ourselves, and you’ve had flatmates forever.”

  “How do you know I’ll be wanting to entertain?” he asked. “And what the hell does ‘entertain’ mean, anyway?”

  “Oh,” she said, “I think you can probably imagine the various scenarios that could arise. Ranging from my having Victoria in for tea to you having a few blondes over to try out that spa bath while you film. Do we just shut our doors so Ella doesn’t see the ropes come out, or are we going for total privacy? Let me know. Your house. Your rules.”

  “Bloody hell.” He ran his hand through his hair, and Cat let out a protesting squeak. He’d forgotten she was up there. He grabbed for her, then said, “Come sit outside with me a minute.” She was going for easy-breezy, but he was getting something else. He was getting that she cared. And that she didn’t want to. Was this about him, or about her?

  “We need to talk about it,” she said. “I’m going to bring one of my mates back here, and you’re going to tackle him. And since any normal fella would be in the hospital after that, I think it’s fair to say that you’ll be going to jail.”

  “We’ll talk about it. Meet me on the
deck. Five minutes.” He tried an enforcer stare. Probably wouldn’t work, but at least he’d tried.

  It wasn’t five minutes. More like ten. On the other hand, she’d taken a shower and was wearing her black silk dressing gown again. And something shorter under it, he saw when she put her feet on his deck railing. With lace.

  “I like your red nail varnish,” he said, already feeling his mind settling as his fingers picked out the melody and his palm thumped out the rhythm. “On your toes. Pretty.”

  “Thanks,” she said, stroking Cat’s head the way she liked, there where her fur was especially soft. “Although you’re just going for points now.”

  He smiled. “Could be. What would you say if I told you I didn’t want to film blondes in my spa tub? Just how many of them were you imagining, anyway?”

  “The imagination knows no limit,” she said cheerily. “You wouldn’t be the first man who bit off more than he could chew.”

  He may have stopped playing for a moment. “I’m careful where I bite,” he said. “I can chew, too. No worries.”

  “So those four women are all going home happy?”

  She was still doing that easy-breezy, and he was playing something much less sweet than he had the night before, and thumping out the rhythm harder, too. His body was a mixture of frustration and arousal that would have been familiar to his sixteen-year-old self, but not so much since. He’d signed up for this? What had he been smoking? “You’re a bit curious, aren’t you,” he said, “for somebody who keeps telling me this is a business arrangement?”

  “That could be, too. I’ve never been a not-quite-housekeeper before. Companion. Poor relation. It’s like an old English novel. No worries, though, on my end. I don’t go out with rugby players.”

  “What, as a life rule?” He was still playing, but then, she was still sitting there. “Got a list of preferred and prohibited occupations, have you?”

  “Maybe I do. Don’t you? I’d say you have a type.”

  He decided it would be best not to answer that. “Bit elitist of you, maybe. We don’t all drag our knuckles. And we don’t all talk in the sheds about the women we’re seeing, either. What was that all about? You must’ve known some princes.”

  She was silent for a long moment, as if this had got away from her, which it may have done. “I probably don’t need to say this,” she said, “but I don’t want to complicate your life.”

  “No,” he said, “because that would be a bloody nightmare. You might paint my walls orange. Introduce unwanted livestock. Bring all sorts of random people around. Oh, wait.”

  She laughed, and that was better. He smiled, started playing something softer, and said, “So. If this is about who I bring home? Let’s say I have no plans. D’you want to know how I’d feel about you doing it, though?”

  Another pause, before she said, “Yes. I do.”

  “I’d hate it,” he said, and saw her posture change. “And, yes, I’d be jealous. If I’m home, I’d rather you took him someplace else. Ella’s not the only one who doesn’t want to see the ropes come out.”

  She sat there another few minutes, which was good, but she didn’t share any more. She certainly didn’t climb into his bed in the wee hours, wrap her arms around him, and kiss his mouth. Instead, she worked the next two nights, and he didn’t even see her. Which was fine, because she was right. This was about Ella. Who offered up something new every day.

  On Wednesday, she showed him a tallboy of dubious construction that Nyree had spray-painted white. “On a tarp on the driveway,” Ella told him, “before you get all horrified about—what? White paint splatters on your white walls? And see how cool it is now?”

  Contact paper on the front of each drawer, in five different swirly purple patterns. “Nice,” he said, and Ella sighed and said, “No. Awesome. You just don’t know how to appreciate it.”

  He’d eyed the white net… what, draperies, he guessed, hung from two ceiling hooks near the foot of the bed and threaded through with fairy lights, and hadn’t said anything at all. There was no purpose, it was obvious. To the draperies or his comment. They’d hung window shades, too, which at least made sense.

  On Thursday, Nyree had done some more spray painting, because he arrived home to the sight of a desk made up of two short purple stepladders, each holding a yellow basket across its lower rails, with purple board laid over the top. Also a purple shelf attached to the wall, and a wooden kitchen chair, painted yellow. “See?” Ella said. “So much better. Papers here, in the baskets, and school books on the shelf. It’s got actual personality, and besides—we made it ourselves. I covered a can with contact paper, see, for pens and all. Matches the tallboy.” And if Marko wondered why you couldn’t just buy a desk and chair and be done with it, he didn’t say it.

  On Friday, everything changed again.

  Marko was in the sheds after the Captain’s Run at Eden Park on Friday afternoon—changing, not talking about the women he’d slept with—when he got the call.

  It was Nyree. “What’s up?” he asked.

  “I think you’d better come,” she said. “If you can.”

  He was already pulling his T-shirt over his head. “Where?”

  She gave him the address. St. Heliers Bay Road. “The midwife?” he asked. “Something wrong with Ella?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ve just stepped around the corner to ring you. But I think you’d better come. Please.”

  He may have exceeded the speed limit again on the way there. When he could, because traffic was Friday-afternoon rubbish. Finally, though, he pulled into the carpark of MedScan Radiology, then found the waiting room.

  He may have had to stop and take a breath when he saw the two of them. Ella in her new school uniform, but with her legs pulled up onto the seat like a little girl, her arms wrapped around her shins and her cheek on her knees. She was watching Nyree, who was sitting with her legs crossed and a pad of paper on her knee, holding a stick of charcoal. Sketching. That didn’t look too bad.

  Nyree looked up and saw him. Everybody looked up and saw him, because he’d come in his Blues hoodie and shorts. Most people looked surprised, or excited. Ella looked… something else. She said, before he even sat down beside her, “Why are you here? You’re supposed to be at training.”

  “All good,” he said. “Captain’s Run. Always short, eh. What’s happening? We waiting to take some pictures?”

  “Yeh,” Ella said. “And the midwife wouldn’t tell me why.”

  “Oh.” He contemplated saying that surely everything was fine, but as a veteran of more surgeries than he cared to count, when they sent you for further tests and wouldn’t tell you why, it usually wasn’t fine.

  “Yeh,” Ella said. “Sucks.”

  Marko looked at Nyree, who shrugged a tiny bit. It probably meant something to her, but it wasn’t helping him much. He wasn’t sure what to say next, so he looked at her sketch pad instead.

  It was him. His arms, anyway, folded across his chest. The fact that she’d drawn him would’ve been nice to see under other circumstances. And if he hadn’t had Cat on his shoulder.

  He said, “Entertaining the troops?”

  “Yeh,” she said. “Cats and dogs. Always a good choice, distraction-wise.” She flipped back a page, and there they were. The puppies from that first day. The bold one struggling his way out of the box, his belly hanging over the edge. The little white one upside-down in his palm, a few lines under his fingers showing where she’d weed on him.

  “My shining moment,” he said.

  “Funny, though,” Ella said. Proving that the distraction was working.

  He told Nyree, “You’re good.” There was nothing fussy about the drawings. A few quick lines, that was all, but somehow, the personality and humor showed through. He wondered how she did that, and if she could even say. Wondering about it seemed like the best place to rest his mind at the moment, since nobody was giving him any helpful clues.

  The door opened to the inner sanctum, and e
veryone in the room looked up. Nervously, or otherwise.

  “Fenella Hardigan?” the angular middle-aged woman called out, and Ella jumped up, looking like she’d been called into the head’s office. Looking sixteen. Her face paler than usual, the white uniform blouse shapeless over her billowing navy skirt, because she’d bought both of them too big on purpose. Long blue socks and chunky black shoes. A schoolgirl.

  The woman led them back to a corner, where a few chairs stood beside a coffee table bearing some limp, outdated women’s magazines, and said, “You two can wait here. Fenella—”

  “Ella,” she said. Quickly, because she hated her name. Maybe that was her own place to rest her mind.

  The woman said, “You can change into a gown in a cubicle. Once you’re in the room, your…” She paused with an assessing glance at Marko. “Friends can come join you.”

  She led Ella away, and Marko didn’t sit. He leaned against the wall instead and said to Nyree, “Fill me in.”

  She wasn’t sitting down, either. She kept her voice low, so Ella wouldn’t hear. “We went to the midwife as per specifications, and she did some prodding around Ella’s inner bits and some measuring of her outer dimensions and said, “Eighteen weeks or so, but we’ll arrange for you to go next door and get some dates.” Then she put a sort of oversized stethoscope on Ella’s belly, and we heard a racing sound. She said, ‘That’s a heartbeat,’ and Ella was excited, I think. And scared. It got real, maybe. But then the midwife listened some more, and felt Ella’s belly some more, and said, ‘Hmm. Something not quite usual here. Let’s see if they can get you in right now.’ I asked if something was wrong, and she said, ‘Probably not. There’s a fetus there, yeh. We just want to check.’ And that was it.”

  “Well, bugger,” Marko said blankly.

  “It was. I’m guessing Ella’s wondering how she’s supposed to feel. Glad if there’s something wrong, and maybe it’ll all be over? Sad about that? Both, probably. I thought she needed you here. I was out of my depth, you could say. And misery loves company.”