by Skylar Heart
The door opens and Tom comes inside with another box, filled to the top with things from the upstairs rooms. He’s already back from work and he immediately started helping Mal upstairs, somehow he still had energy left. “We’re about done. Just one or two boxes left.” He puts his box down and then sits next to me. “What’s on your mind? You look troubled.”
I shake my head a little. “Nothing much, just...” I let out a slow breath. “I feel like we’re just moving the mess around, like we’re not actually making any progress.”
He takes my hand, his grip steady. “It always feels like that at first. It always feels overwhelming, like we’re just making it worse. But I promise you that we’ve made a lot more progress than it seems like right now. The rooms upstairs look very differently than they did yesterday morning, and even though this room looks filled with mess, it’s mostly in boxes and bags, and they’ll be easy enough to sort through.” He raises my hand and kisses the top of it. “And you won’t have to do all of it on your own, we’ll all be here with you, every step of the way.”
I smile a little and lean against him. “I guess I’m just tired. It was a long weekend, a long week, and I’m just tired.”
He wraps his arm around me and then lets both of us fall on our backs so we’re looking up at the ceiling. “Yes, it was a long week, a very long week. But it’s now better than it was at the start, right?” His voice sounds vulnerable, like he’s not sure about the answer to his own question.
“Yes. It’s a lot better than it was at the start.” I turn to him and give him a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you. Thank you for everything.” I kiss him on his lips this time, needing to feel him against me more.
He slowly shakes his head and closes his eyes. “No, thank you. Thank you for being you and loving us, all of us.” He tightens his arms around me, holding me close, his voice thick and I don’t say anything anymore because my throat is all closed up.
I was such a mess, such a huge mess, but I guess I somehow forgot that they all had to deal with their own problems, their own messes, and sometimes they’re just as messed up as I am.
Jake and Mal made some rice with a sauce and we’re all having dinner at the large table, everyone now has enough space to actually eat at it without getting in the way of the others. It’s nice, for a change, and it makes being here feel less temporary and more like living here is actually going to happen, like this is all actually happening instead of it just being in my mind, instead of it just being a dream that exists only in my head.
“I’ll be back late tomorrow evening.” Dylan helps himself to more of the sauce. “I’ve got a meeting and it’ll be running late. So I probably won’t be back before dinner.”
Jake looks up. “I need to be in the city tomorrow, so I probably won’t be back on time either.”
I eye him. “For your research?”
He nods. “Yeah. We’ve got a meeting and I need to pick up a couple of things, stay on top of what they’re doing.”
He keeps my eyes but also starts grinning. He knows that I’m not that happy he’s here all the time because he’s got research to do and I’m pretty sure that he’s taken way too much time off anyway. So I’m glad he’s going back, but it also means that he’ll probably be back in the city often, and if we’re all going to be living here... that will be a lot more difficult for him and his research and after that his work... Real life is starting to set in and this is one thing I’m not looking forward to.
“Okay.” I just keep looking at him. “I’m glad you’re going back to work.”
“Hey.” He raises an eyebrow at me. “I worked from here just fine, thank you. Nobody is getting in trouble just because I’ve been working from here instead of the lab.” Then he reaches out and takes my hand. “But I’ll probably be going back more often in the coming weeks. We’re reaching the end of another one of the research cycles, so we’re going to have to collect a lot of data. But I’ll figure something out.”
Dylan shrugs. “I can drop you off at a station on my way to work, that would not be an issue.”
“Yeah...” Jake grins. “I don’t think you leave early enough for that. I’d need to be at the lab around the same time your classes start and I’d still have a long way to go from the station.”
“Ah.” Dylan nods. “True. Worth a try.”
“Then I also don’t leave early enough.” Tom grins.
“Nope.” Jake shakes his head. “I’ll just take the first bus in the morning, that should work out, and then take the bus back too.”
“Can’t you take Grandma’s car?” I look at Jake and then the other guys. “Or is there a reason why he wouldn’t be able to use it?”
“It needs checking first.” Tom shrugs. “I’ll drop it by a garage this week, so we’ll know how good it is and if it needs fixing or not. But he should be able to use that one if he needs to get to the city. Or, if it’s in too poorly of a state, we should probably look at getting another car because I don’t think two cars is enough for all of us, especially since we live in the middle of nowhere and we all need cars here.”
“Yeah.” I don’t know how I feel about that just yet, about buying a car and planning for things like that. It’s like... Somehow I seem to be okay with the idea of owning a house together, specifically this house, but buying something new, like a car, it feels so big and so important. I take a deep breath. “We’ll have to decide on that when we find out about Grandma’s car.” Because I’m not comfortable considering looking for and buying a car right now. It’s too much and too soon.
“Sounds good.” Jake squeezes my hand a little and then he gets up, starting to clear off the table as Elly darts away to the living room to watch her favourite show, which should be on right now.
Because I don’t want to think about other grownup things, I follow Elly and get comfortable on the couch as she sits in front of the TV, her eyes all wide as she stares at what’s going on in front of her.
I love watching her be so engrossed in the show, how she moves with the characters on the screen and copies some of the words they say. It reminds me of when Oliver was little and he would do the same thing when I’d read him stories during our monthly meetings. It’s interesting how little kids learn things, and especially in the way they parrot what they hear.
I remember Oliver overhearing Jake curse at one point, because Jake had hurt himself or something, and Oliver would say ‘fuck’ all the time for months, especially because he knew that it annoyed his parents and we’d all get upset if he did it... Those were the times.
These days Oliver is a lot more creative with his curses and it’s hard to sometimes catch him when he does it because he knows he’s not using a ‘bad word’ exactly, but we all know that he’s cursing. Kids...
Tom sits down next to me on the couch. “Do you think you could handle that?”
“Handle what?” I look at him, but he’s just looking at the TV.
“Hearing these voices all day for years to come. The repeating of the same things over and over again as she watches these shows.” He looks at Elly, a soft look in his eyes.
I laugh a little. “I think I can manage. It’s not that bad, to be honest.”
“No, that comes later.” He laughs too. “When she starts watching shows where everything has explosions or every other character has to scream at the top of their lungs all the time.” He shudders. “Shows for kids from like the age of six to about ten scare me.”
I grin, looking back at Elly. “Just be glad we’ve got a couple of years before that.” I lean against him, enjoying some quiet time together while I can hear the other guys putter around in the kitchen.
For now, I’m mostly glad that she’s small enough not to ask too many questions about us, not more than she does about why a specific leaf is shaped a specific way, or why milk has to be white... Little kid questions. They’re a lot easier to answer than the ones they come up with later.
A lot easier...
9
With Mia at home, together with Mal, it feels silly to keep dropping Elly off at her grandparents’ all the time. She always went there because it was free babysitting, which was very handy especially after Poppy’s death, but now Elly’s got other adults in her life, she doesn’t really need to go there all the time. And now that we’ve started to form our own little family, it feels like I shouldn’t depend on them as much anymore.
I ring the bell at Mal’s parents’ place, and instead of one of his parents, Mal opens the door himself, Elly on his arm, my girl brightly smiling.
“Welcome home.” Mal grins and I raise an eyebrow at him, not really sure why he’s here. “I was going for a walk and remembered that you’d be picking her up soon. I thought it was a good two-for-one.” He hands me Elly, who is very impatient for me to hold her, and then he steps to the side. “They’re in the kitchen, as they usually are.”
“As they usually are.” I give him a look because I’m the one who knows things like that, since I come here a couple of times a week to pick up my little girl. As far as I know, he doesn’t really come here often. Then I walk to the back of the house. “Evening.” I nod to Mal’s parents and they’re smiling big smiles at me, but it seems fake, forced somehow. Ehhh... Right.
Mal’s dad stands up. “Do you want something to drink? I heard that you’re working on renovating the old house at the end of your street, you must be putting in quite the hours, on top of your normal job. How is it going?”
I eye Mal, not exactly sure what he told them about what we’re doing there, but the guy just shrugs, seemingly as surprised as me. So this wasn’t something they were talking about before... “The renovations are going well. It’s currently not so much renovating as it is cleaning it out and fixing what really needs to be fixed.” I sit down on a chair and let Elly go as Mal’s dad gives me a glass of water, apparently not waiting for my reply.
“Yeah, it was such a shock when she passed. Everyone thought the woman would outlive all of us.” Mal’s mum looks at Mal and then at me. “I know that you all visited her often, way back when you were kids, but also later. She seemed very important to all of you.” It’s the way she says ‘all’ that makes me wonder what she’s really talking about. There’s something going on that I’m missing.
I nod, trying not to say something stupid. “Yes. She was very kind and always had a good story to tell. And Elly loved staying there when I was at work.” Since Mia’s grandma and Poppy and my parents all shared babysitting duty after Poppy’s death, Elly was over at Mia’s grandmother’s place often.
Mia’s grandma loved babysitting a lot, having a little kid around, and I enjoyed it because she was the only person I felt that I could let my guard down around. She was there when I needed someone who could understand me without judging me or without making me feel like I was failing. I just needed an ear, not a solution, and she could offer that.
“And now, with Mia? Is she babysitting Elly too? She’s been staying at the house, right?” Mal’s mum’s eyes on me are sharp, reading my reaction, and the slight sound I hear from Mal behind me totally betrays our surprise at the question. Then his mum lets out a laugh, an edge to it. “You don’t think that something like that would stay a secret for very long, right? Gossip is the only currency in this town.”
“Why did you just have to spring that on us?” Mal grumbles but then sits down on the chair next to me, frowning. “What else do you already know?”
She smiles softly. “You’ve all been living at the house together, together with a guy from the city.”
“Jake.” I nod. No use hiding his name.
“Ah, is that his name? Nice to know.” Then she looks at Mal. “You don’t think we wouldn’t find out that your band has gone on hiatus? Or that Mia is here? Or that things seem to have been really tense these last couple of weeks, with all of you? You don’t think we wouldn’t notice how differently you were acting the day of the anniversary of Poppy’s death? More upset than you normally are? More messed up than you were previous years?”
Mal’s jaw sets, his eyes flaring a moment. “What else do you want to know? What else do you want to gossip about with the others in the town?”
His mum just shakes her head slowly. “Nothing much. I just wished that you guys trusted us more, that you’d share these things with us without us having to hear them from others.”
I glance at Mal, who isn’t looking very happy at the moment, and then back at his parents. “There isn’t much to tell right. Yeah, we mostly live in the old house. Yes, Mia is with us, together with Jake. But there isn’t a lot more than that going on.” Not things we can share at the moment.
Mal’s dad lets out an unimpressed sound. “You think we believe that? The girl you were all crazy about is back, you’re all living with her, and nothing is supposedly going on? We’re maybe older, but we’re not that old. Is she here to stay? Are you all going back to your own homes any time soon?”
I take a slow breath. “We don’t know yet. We’re just trying things out right now.”
“And Elly?” Mal’s mum looks to the hallway, where my little girl is playing. “What’s going to happen with her?”
“She’ll be staying with me, no matter what happens.” Nobody is taking her away from me. Her happiness and health go before anything else.
“Even when you’re all living together? Do you think that’s a good idea, a little girl like that in a house with four guys, only one who is her dad, and a woman who isn’t her mum? Do you think that she’ll understand that? Do you think that’s a good place for her to grow up?” I’m not sure how to read her sudden questions but I don’t like her tone.
“Yes. I’m still her dad. Why would it matter if she has one or two or five adults around her who take care of her?” I stand up, done with this conversation. “You trusted me when I married Poppy. You trusted me when I took care of Elly on my own after Poppy’s death. Why are you questioning me now?” My voice is harsher than I mean it to be, but I don’t deal with people questioning my parenting of Elly very well, especially not when it comes to me making choices that are good for the both of us. Before they can reply, I go to the hallway and grab Elly’s jacket and shoes. “Hey, baby girl. Time to go home. I heard that Jake cooked today, pasta.”
I don’t want to talk about these things right now. I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m not doing anything wrong when it comes to Elly or when it comes to my own life, so why are people questioning us like we are doing something wrong? Why can’t they just let us be happy without trying to interfere? Why won’t they let me make choices that are right for my family, even when it’s not the most conventional thing to do?
I can’t help it, but I still feel annoyed at Mal’s parents even hours later, after dinner and when I’m putting Elly to bed in the back room.
Why did they have to ask those things? Why couldn’t they just let things be? My mum asked similar questions and I didn’t have real answers then, and I still don’t have them now. I don’t want to have to think about what we’re going to do, I just want to fix things right now. One step at a time, and we’ll see where we end up, anything is going to be better than where I was a couple of weeks ago.
I finish the story I’m reading Elly and she’s already fallen asleep. I look down at her for a while, just enjoying watching her sleep and not having to worry about things in this world, but I know that it won’t last long. She’ll start to realise that things are going on soon enough, she’s already started calling this house her ‘home’ and I know that others around her will figure that out soon enough.
Was Mal’s mum right? Could people really think that I’m putting Elly in a bad situation when she’s staying here with all of us? I thought I was doing what was best for her, what was best for both of us. But am I just forcing my own feelings onto her little life instead of taking her real needs and wishes into consideration?
As I leave the back room, Mal is standing in the hallway, his eyes on m
e dark. “Don’t pay attention to what they said. Really.”
“How? What if they try something? What if they’re right? What if they take Elly away?” That’s been my real fear from the moment I lost Poppy, that I’d accidentally step out of line, do something people really don’t agree with, and that they’ll take her away from me. ‘They’ were never really a person, more a feeling of ‘people who aren’t me and the guys’, people outside of our little group, people who wouldn’t understand us.
“They won’t.” He shakes his head firmly. “They’ve always been very open and accepting of a lot of things. Just look at me...”
I eye him. “They may have been in the past, but I don’t think that what they just told us was very ‘open’ or ‘accepting’.”
“They’re just worried. They try to pretend it’s about Elly, but they’re worried about us.” He nods towards the kitchen where Dylan and Jake are both working at the moment. “They’ve seen us through so many dark times. They’re worried that this falls apart and we’ll be back where we were, or maybe even worse. Adding Mia and Jake to the equation doesn’t really make it a much safer bet this time around.”
“I don’t know how to answer them in a way that makes them less worried, because I don’t even know if we can make this work.” I don’t want to be a downer, but it’s true.
“I don’t know either. But we can always try, isn’t that more important?” He eyes the back room. “Your mum was right, you know? She said that Elly was happier because she could see you were happier, and that strongly influences her too.” He takes a deep breath. “I think that no matter what, we’re different from how we were a couple of weeks back. We’re no longer the same people and that makes all the difference.”
I guess he’s right, but it still doesn’t make it easier, it still doesn’t make it easier to know what the ‘right’ thing to do is, at least not when it comes to Elly.