No Good Asking

by Fran Kimmel

  Eric covered Ellie’s hand with his. “We feed her. We let her sleep.”

  “She’s not a baby,” she said, unable to hide her frustration. “That’s not all there is to it. She’s eleven?”

  Eric nodded, then added, “Almost twelve.”

  “You don’t know the first thing about twelve-year-old girls,” she said.

  He looked at her, almost shyly. “But you do.”

  Ellie pulled her hand out from under Eric’s, swivelled back on her stool, and cupped her fingers around her mug. She didn’t. She didn’t know the first thing about girls. Especially this one. She didn’t know whether she’d had her first bra or first kiss. At Danny’s school, girl packs swaggered by in their too-short skirts and skinny tops, fingering their phones, all whispers and giggles. Ellie wanted nothing to do with any of them.

  Ellie had overheard Danny from the other side of his bedroom door, begging for one more chance. It was his first girlfriend. He was so not ready, and neither was she.

  She and Eric sat beside each other without speaking then. After a while, Eric reached his large hand up and rubbed her neck. Finally, he asked her, “Ellie, what would you have done? If you were me?”

  “I’d have killed the bastard,” she said. But then she looked at her husband and saw the sting in his eyes. She could not be the cause of more doubt—he was an insufferably good man—so she tried again. “You’ve had every reason to detest Nigel Wilson. I see it now. The monster across the road. That young girl in his house. I can’t imagine growing up beside someone like him. He must have been a horrible bully when you were kids.”

  He looked at her oddly. “Not really,” he said, turning to watch Sammy at work with his Legos. “It might have been the other way around. Maybe we bullied him.”

  This caught her off guard. That he’d think such a thing and, more so, confess this to her. “You? A bully? I don’t believe that for a minute.”

  Eric kept his eyes on Sammy. “We didn’t taunt the guy. Or kick the shit out of him. Not that.” He sounded far away. “But we didn’t go out of our way to include him in anything. That’s a form of belittling, I guess.”

  Ellie touched his hand and waited until he turned back to her. “Or it proves you’ve got good instincts. Then and now.”

  It took him a moment to catch up with her words. “Well, I did marry you,” he said. His tired smile almost reached his eyes.

  “Precisely my point.”

  He kissed her then, full on her mouth, and the gesture was so unexpected, so rare and charged that her hand jerked forward and knocked over her cup. They separated, disoriented, and watched the milky brown lake spread out in front of them.

  Eric stepped down from his stool and grabbed a handful of paper towels to sop up the mess. He poured himself more coffee and reached for Ellie’s cup, but she covered its brim with her palm and stood.

  “Enough for me,” she said. “I’m jittery as it is. Think you can hold down the fort while I get cleaned up?”

  “Why don’t you have a nap? Or run a hot bath. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Ellie nodded. He stopped her, catching her wrist as she turned. “She’s safe with us, Ellie. The system’s going to take care of her. We just need a few days to let it get up and running.”

  She blew a kiss to Sammy and then headed down the hallway, stepping over the dog on the way.

  Ellie crawled into her bed, shut her eyes tightly, and thought about what would cause Eric to kiss her like that. But the longer she lay there, the more Christmas intruded. She was too long married to be fussing over a kiss anyway. She should be making cookies for Santa, rummaging through the bottom drawer of the china cabinet for Dolly Parton’s Christmas CD. Who else was going to do it? Eric? And she had the guest down the hall to think about, plunged into the thick of their oddities and outbursts. She could not hide under the covers. So she went into the bathroom and stood in the shower until the water turned cold.

  She chose her best jeans and her blouse with silver buttons, the one she had bought three Christmases ago, when this house wasn’t hers and she was still making an effort. She hadn’t worn it since.

  She spent extra time with her hair, adding mousse, working it through with her fingers like a hairdresser had once shown her. She bent over at the waist and circled her head with the blow dryer from every angle until her brown hair fell in waves around her face. She spread out old jars of concealers and blush, half-dried mascara tubes, pencils, and lipsticks. She did her best on the outside. She’d keep the rest to herself.

  She emerged from her room at a quarter past ten to filmy air and a smell of burned bacon. Walter, hunched over his puzzle, looked up and yelled, “You got the carrots,” then the thought flew out of his head and he was back to work.

  Sammy stood on a chair at the kitchen counter, dwarfed by the checkered apron draping around his ankles. Beside him, Eric had flour snowed down his sweater and on the tips of his ears. Thorn lay underfoot, trying to catch the drippings. The countertop was strewn with measuring cups and spoons, the flour canister (lid upside down), the brown baking powder can (tipped over), the electric griddle with its loose cord wedged tight against the wall. A frying pan of lumpy grease sat on the stove, a plate of blackened bacon beside it.

  When Eric looked over, he gave an appreciative whistle. The breakfast dishes had been cleared, and now the table was set for six with Myrtle’s Old Country Roses china set, pulled out from behind the glass cabinet door. He’d brought down the good china and it was not even noon. She would find new hairline fractures surrounding the roses. Eric had become so clumsy lately with things breakable, cracking two of Myrtle’s dinner plates as he carried them to the sink after Thanksgiving dinner. But she wouldn’t focus on pending disasters. Her heart lurched, seeing Sammy and his father so close to one another. She wanted to reach out to her son and run her finger along his cheek.

  “What are you boys making?” she asked, coming up beside them. Sammy held his wooden spoon, mesmerized by the goop going round and round inside the metal bowl with its wobbled lip.

  Eric grinned. “I thought we’d make pancakes. Got a bit out of hand.”

  “Got a bit out of hand,” Sammy repeated.

  “I can see that. No sign of Danny yet?” Or the girl.

  “He’s awake, been rattling round down there for the past half hour. He’s had a shower too.” He shrugged his shoulders as if he couldn’t believe it either. Daniel usually ran up the stairs and raided the fridge within a minute and a half of falling out of bed. “These will be ready in no time. We’ve got bacon too. An in-betweener to get the day going. Sammy here, he’s been a huge help.”

  Sammy stopped his stirring, just for a second, with the faint trace of a smile. “I’m making the bubbles gone,” he said.

  “You’re doing an excellent job.” Ellie smiled down at her son. “Your pancakes are going to be deliciously bubble-less.”

  “Deliciously bubble-less,” Sammy repeated.

  “This is your fifteen-minute warning,” Eric announced. “Prepare to be dazzled.” Eric wouldn’t look at her, his banter not as simple as it seemed. He wanted her to go get the girl.

  It could not be put off. She would bring the girl out to their kitchen and present her to the Nylands. Hannah, this is Sammy. Sammy’s earlier calm from stirring round and round the bowl would break like glass. He would see a girl, not where she should be, and he’d rock into orbit and leave this earth. Danny would come up from the basement, fill a plate from the table, and disappear. Walter, oblivious, would shuffle up to her, pockets jangling with the weight of all those rocks, and ask her a pressing question, like if she’d misplaced her husband or remembered to blow out the pipes on the water well. Ellie wouldn’t look at her questioning eyes—What is this place? Get me out of here.

  “I’ll go get her then,” she said.

  Eric nodded, his humming as loud as a
wasp’s.

  —

  Ellie knocked lightly, waited, and then opened the door a crack to the black and gloomy room. It was too cold; she should have brought in extra blankets. The heavy brocade curtains, a horrid pea green with floral swirls, pressed together, blocking what weak light might filter through the ice-etched glass on this miserable winter morning. Ellie wanted to back away, to let the girl sleep until Betty came to collect her, but then she saw her outline on the edge of the bed—sitting, not sleeping.

  The girl would have a better view of Ellie, who stood in the light of the hallway, than Ellie did of her. She felt a twinge of anger under her ribcage: Why on earth would the girl just sit there like a bump in the dark? Did she need the queen herself to invite her to the table?

  Ellie flicked the light switch hard and Myrtle’s junk came into view. She took it in now with fresher eyes, the absurdity of this clutter. How could she have imagined her busy dusting and reshuffling had made this room presentable?

  The girl sat straight-backed and still on the untouched bed, blinking under the anemic yellow light. She was in the same clothes as last night, her garbage bag of belongings still in the middle of the floor.

  “Hello, Hannah.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Nyland.” Perhaps Ellie showed her annoyance because the girl immediately corrected herself. “Ellie, I mean.”

  “How did you sleep?”

  It was clear by the pallor of her cheeks that she hadn’t slept well. She had charcoal moons around her eyes, a tinge of blue above her lip.

  “I know that bed is lumpy as a bag of rocks. But there wasn’t enough notice—” Ellie stopped then, embarrassed. How could there ever be notice for when, precisely, a monster might lock a child in the cellar.

  Ellie crossed her arms and started fresh. “We’ve had this room closed up for a long time now. We should take a match to it is what we should do. But it was either here or the living room couch and that would give you no privacy, and Thorn would have had his nose in your face all night.” She looked around, sighing. “But it’s awful.”

  “I think it’s beautiful,” Hannah said.

  “Beautiful? Really?”

  Hannah pointed to the trinket-filled jars. “There are so many little things. So many colours.”

  Ellie stifled a snort. Had she even moved off the bed? She seemed incapable of lifting her feet. “Well, they’re all yours. You can open every lid, dump out every bobble and scrap. Do with them what you like.”

  Thorn wobbled into the room, tail wagging furiously, and stuck his nose in Hannah’s lap. Ellie was about to shoo him out, but the girl bent over and wrapped her arms around his neck.

  Ellie said, “Thorn is a smelly old dog. Aren’t you, Thorn?”

  Hannah looked up, face pale. “The sergeant told me he ate a whole bag of dog food one time.”

  Why did she keep calling him that? What else did Eric tell the girl about their family? “We need to get you something to eat. Do you like pancakes?”

  She had her fists close to Thorn’s ears, rubbing. The dog quivered in delight. “I like pancakes a lot. Thank you.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Yes, I am. I’m very hungry.”

  “Well, the boys are the cooks this morning, so I can’t promise how good the pancakes will be. But there’s maple syrup and bacon too. We’ll go see, why don’t we?”

  Hannah stood as if favouring her ribs. She looked so pitiful in her ragged jeans and tousled hair. Ellie couldn’t let the others see her like that. “Why don’t you put on some fresh clothes first and splash some water on your face.”

  Ellie ripped open the garbage bag and dumped the contents onto the hardwood. There were no fresh clothes here. Nothing that belonged in the dolled-up parade of the junior school’s hallways. All Hannah had were lifeless, well-worn utility-grade clothes, right down to the cotton underwear and undershirts.

  Thorn watched Hannah as she sorted through the heap, folding as she went. She put aside a purple wool sweater and a pair of jeans, as scruffy as the ones she was wearing.

  “Did Eric pack the right things for you?” Clearly there’d been little to choose from. With twenty bucks outlay, Ellie could have chosen better discards at Momma G’s Thrift Store. She had no socks or decent pajamas either.

  “Daniel did it,” Hannah said.

  Danny? Not a spectator on the sidelines but rifling through the girl’s drawers? Ellie tried to keep her voice even. “Are any of these your favourites?”

  “This sweater is the warmest,” Hannah said matter-of-factly.

  Ellie would have liked to pile the whole lot in the garbage bin out back. She could at least get them into the washing machine on heavy-duty hot.

  A chill had seeped up from the floorboards. “Tell you what. You go get washed up and I’ll see if I can find you some warm socks.”

  “Thank you for letting me stay here.”

  Ellie pushed Hannah into the bathroom and the dog out and closed the door before either could say more. Ellie’s legs trembled.

  The children’s choir version of “Away in a Manger” was floating down the hallway, along with bacon grease vapours. Eric had found the Christmas CDs. The children belted out the words at the top of their lungs. That’s all this was. No room at the inn anywhere in this whole world, except at the Nyland house. The girl was passing through, an unintended colliding on her way to someplace better.

  Ellie yanked open her third drawer and pulled out fuzzy pink socks with ridiculous pompom strings. She collected a brush and comb and rummaged through her scarf drawer until she found the baggie of old hair doodles and barrettes and went back to the bathroom.

  Hannah was leaned over the sink, her face lathered in soap suds. The purple sweater was overstretched, too wide for her shoulders. She rinsed her face and blinked through wet eyelashes at Ellie in the bathroom mirror.

  “I brought some things.”

  Hannah looked at her dirty, tangled hair in the mirror and sighed, shoulders slumping noticeably.

  “I’m not very good with my hair,” Hannah said.

  “It’s a pretty colour. I think they call that honey blonde.”

  Hannah squinted into the mirror and studied her hair. “I thought it was brown. Like a paper bag.”

  “There are movie actresses who want hair just exactly this colour. They have to get it from a bottle. And you’ve got lots of it too, which means you’ve got options.”

  What came next was more reflex than choice. Ellie lifted a scoop of heavy hair and brushed gently until the tangles disappeared. Then she selected three strands, right over middle, left over middle, adding to each until her hair was all caught up in a braid down Hannah’s back.

  “Pass me an elastic from the baggie?”

  Hannah reached in and pulled out a red one, not taking her eyes off the mirror. With her hair brushed away from her face, Hannah looked less forlorn. She turned this way and that, eyes wide, trying to get a look from different angles.

  “Voila, a French braid,” Ellie said, surprised her fingers knew what to do with a young girl’s hair. She’d gotten it right, on her first try, as if the bucket of imagined memories she’d filled over the years had guided her through the steps. “Do you like it?”

  Hannah nodded. “Jessie said her mom did it too tight every time, and it made her brains squeeze out like toothpaste. Jessie’s hair is almost black and it’s longer and it gets really kinky when it’s wet.”

  “Who’s Jessie?” Ellie asked.

  “My friend. From school. Before we moved here.” Hannah took a long breath and shook her head back and forth. “It’s not too tight.”

  Ellie passed her the socks and Hannah bent over, wincing, and pulled them on, tying small bows with the pompom strings.

  “Let’s get breakfast then,” Ellie said.

  —

  Hannah followe
d Ellie down the dark hallway toward the bright of the house, still tingling from the feel of Ellie’s hands in her hair. Thorn had nudged up beside her and kept running into her legs. She felt more grown-up with her French braid and fuzzy pink socks. Ellie knew a lot about style. She was wearing one of the most beautiful blouses Hannah had ever seen. Maybe she worked at the fancy women’s shop in Neesley, the one with the mannequins in the window. Or she might be a hairdresser. Maybe Ellie was given the customers with problem heads, a French braid easy as pie compared to what else she could do.

  The air smelled delicious and there was music, children singing songs she knew the words to. It had been a long time since she’d heard music and it made the hairs along her arms stand straight up. Her stomach hurt, she was so hungry, and she didn’t know if she would be able to stop herself from cramming a pancake down her throat.

  At the end of the hallway, Ellie stopped so suddenly that Hannah bumped into her. Thorn sat on his haunches and waited. Ellie just stood there, stock-still.

  Hannah peeked around her. She’d forgotten everything beyond her room, even though she’d stood right over there by the front door just a few hours ago. Nothing looked the same as last night. It was a wide-open space, no walls in between to separate one part from another. A squishy couch took up the middle with scattered chairs here and there, a puzzle table beside a brick fireplace with a burnt-up log crackling and spitting. The kitchen sink was in an island shaped like a lightning bolt. There were cupboards along a long wall and glossy ceramic turkeys, six in a row, on the ledge above them. A big wooden table stood over to one side. That’s where they were: the sergeant and Daniel with two others, a little boy and an old man, their backs turned to her.

  In the dark archway, Ellie stared down at her. Hannah felt a rising panic about someone out there in the light—someone that no one had told her about. And then she remembered. It must be Sammy. Her eyes flitted about, expecting him to jump in front of her.

  Finally, Ellie spoke. “There’s something I haven’t . . .”