by Bowes, K T
Hana picked at the rug beneath her fingers, wondering how she got from the kitchen to the ballroom. Logan remained behind her stroking her hair and Michael, having finished his observations, kneeled back on his legs and rested one hand on her shin. Hana felt Logan freeze, his body seemed rigid suddenly like leaning against a rock and the stroking stopped.
With a sudden revelation, she knew Michael was one of Caroline’s hurtful dalliances and felt an increased respect for Logan, maintaining a relationship with his brother despite that. If he forgave, his body language screamed out to Hana he hadn’t forgotten. She moved her leg as though it was an involuntary movement, deciding she would get up and start walking around, thus ending the physical contact with her brother-in-law however innocent it was.
Logan got up to help her and held her as she swayed along with the rhythm of the spinning room again, feeling as though she had sea legs instead of land ones for a moment.
Miriam bustled back in. “I’ve put a pot of tea in your room Logan,” she said brightly, “maybe Hana would like to lie down for a while.”
Hana looked over at her, realising that she had inadvertently played herself into some bigger plan. Miriam was set on making them stay the night and for the moment Hana didn’t have the energy to resist. She tried to move her feet towards the door but lost faith in her legs and their ability to carry her anywhere. A strong arm appeared behind her knees and another around her waist and suddenly she was in the air, crushed against Logan’s chest. He carried her the full distance, despite what it did to his tender wounds. Up the stairs to the first floor, along the landing and down into the wing he grew up sleeping in. The room felt familiar and safe and Logan laid Hana gently on the bed as Miriam plumped up the pillows and unloaded the tray of tea things. She was about to sit down and join them, when a small beep sounded from a pouch on her hip. She withdrew an elderly mobile phone, more like a brick than a listening device and a dismembered voice told her she was wanted downstairs as another wave of guests arrived.
Hana let out a deep breath as the door closed behind her and lay her head back against the pillows. “So what did the Doctor say?” she asked, making it sound as casual as possible.
“Not much yet,” replied Logan, “I’ll ask him in a bit. He seemed to think you needed to do some tests.”
“What sort of tests?” Hana lifted her head off the pillow and looked at Logan.
“Pregnancy tests for a start,” came Michael’s voice as he let himself into the room without knocking. Logan looked shocked, but Hana was quick to rebuff the suggestion.
“No, I don’t need…well, I can’t…it’s not…I’m too old…” but Michael shrugged it off.
“To be honest, being pregnant would be one of the better options. The others aren’t great; diabetes, some kind of heart problem, I could go on. Having a kid would be good…” he tailed off after looking at his brother, perhaps realising his own parenting left so much to be desired. He stood awkwardly for a moment, reluctant to sit down in the atmosphere that descended suddenly. “How do you feel now?”
“Like an idiot. But ok, I think,” replied Hana, then, “thanks for helping me…look, we’ve only been married a few weeks and well, we weren’t…you know…before, so I don’t really think I can be…”
Michael shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. “Only takes once,” adding with what sounded like bitter regret, “I should know.”
He turned to leave the room and then stopped. Without turning around, he said, “I’ve got all sorts of stuff in my medical bag.” He brought a cardboard packet out of his pocket and laid it on the cabinet near the door. Then he turned and looked Logan full in the face. “I won’t say anything.”
The door clicked shut and he was gone. As soon as Michael was out of the room, Logan, collapsed face down into the covers like a puppet with its strings cut. Hana heard him say a number of inappropriate swear words into the duvet, which came out muffled and mirrored her own sentiments, except one of them, which was definitely too rude. She leaned heavily against the pillows, feeling careworn and weary, waiting for her husband to say more. But he didn’t. He lay there so long face down, Hana thought he was asleep, only his body looked too rigidly set. Unable to wait any longer, she poked him with her toe. “What are we going to do, Logan?”
He leaned up on his elbows but still didn’t speak or look in her direction. Again she waited, wanting guidance, wanting help, but received nothing, just silence that made her afraid and lonely despite their proximity to each other. After another few minutes of this peculiar standoff, Hana swung her feet down onto the floor and walked across to the cabinet, noting she felt absolutely fine now and not faint or sick at all. In her heart of hearts she felt sure it was a virus or stress and needed to do the test and reassure herself of that, now Michael had thrown the possibility casually into their lives. As her hand closed over the cardboard box, Logan spoke, “No!” His exclamation was emphatic, slightly desperate and his face was unreadable. “Just leave it,” he asked her, his eyes boring into hers, “please?”
Hana was confused, not knowing what to do, one hand on the box, gormlessly standing there. Logan got up off the bed and strode over to her. He was inches away from her and she could smell the lingering aftershave on his cheeks and neck, but he didn’t touch her. The little voice in Hana’s head whispered, here we are again and Hana’s memories drew her back more than two decades, to the tearful meeting with Vik when she realised she was pregnant with Bodie. They hardly knew each other, yet he was so caring and supportive, wrapping his arms around her and telling her it would all be ok. And it had. He made it all ok, ending an arranged marriage betrothal despite the disgrace, lying seemingly happily in the bed he carelessly made with her for seventeen years.
Hana tried to stop her mind comparing her almost sainted husband with the frightened man before her. She had no idea what he was thinking; his face guarded and closed to her. She reached up and touched his cheek, feeling the stubble beginning to form around his jaw line. “It’s fine,” she said softly, “it won’t be that.”
Logan reached out for the box but Hana was quicker and she put it behind her back. Logan shut his eyes, apparently not willing to fight her for it but wrestling with some inner demon. He was so close to her his fringe tickled her forehead and she felt his soft breath on her face. She reached up carefully, wanting to kiss him suddenly, sensing he was like a frightened horse ready to bolt. She kissed his lips, keeping eye contact with him and felt the conflict within him.
But it was too late and some other emotion won him over. He backed away from her and was gone, the door clicking softly behind him. Hana was filled with a sudden sense of abandonment and anger followed. She wanted to stamp and kick things, looking around the room for a suitable candidate. Her rational self told her it was all expensive furniture and not hers, but it didn’t remove the desire one bit. Hana stomped over to the ensuite and shut the door roughly. It was a fire door and resisted the urge to be slammed, allowing her to push violently against it while it closed gently and nonchalantly as though she wasn’t there. Just like your husband, mocked the voice.
Hana felt like having a full-blown tantrum, understanding the weight of feeling that drove a two year old to kick and scream with abandon. She grabbed one of the towels from the rail and, shoving a chunk in her mouth, squealed into it. When she took it out of her mouth feeling no better, she noticed there was now spit and lipstick on the towel, a big round ‘o’ shape when she opened it out fully. How embarrassing. It wasn’t even her towel. The anger was gone, but the abandonment and rejection returned full force, leaving Hana tired and empty. She went to the sink and ran the towel under the hot tap, hoping against hope the stain would come off.
The sound of clattering rang out suddenly outside and Hana opened the frosted window to peep out. A horse trotted out of the stable yard and began cantering lightly across the paddock beyond. Hana recognised the jacket, although the rider had his back to her. Logan set off at quite a pace, weari
ng a cowboy hat and no safety helmet as usual. He sat comfortably on the white horse as though it was part of him and they covered the ground underneath them quickly, heading up towards the bush and the land beyond.
Hana wondered where he was going in such a hurry, before deciding she actually didn’t care and shutting the window with a snap. Her husband was gone, the towel was smeared in lipstick and Hana was fed up. She grabbed the cardboard box and began to tear the cellophane off it. It was time she was a master of her own destiny, she decided.
Ten minutes later, Hana sat on the closed lid of the toilet still. It was a mission to get the cellophane completely off the box and pry the end open. The test inside was also wrapped in packaging and that took time. Maybe the opening of the test itself was designed to take nine months. Then she needed to read the instructions. It was hard to understand which lines appearing in which place meant something and she began to think she was thick.
The instructions seemed to suggest she could find out she was pregnant even before a missed a period. Back when she was of childbearing age, they didn’t even do a test before they missed a period. Was it even really a pregnancy before the first period was missed? Or was that a moral-ethical question she perhaps didn’t want to dwell on? Hana tried to stop the mental distractions. She couldn’t possibly be pregnant; she was far too old. That’s why she hadn’t bothered getting pills or suggesting contraception in the first place. She felt too old within herself. She was a grandparent for goodness sake. Grandmas don’t have babies, she thought, feeling scandalised. Anyway, it was clear Logan couldn’t bear the idea. Hana thought about throwing the test away and waiting for her next period. Stupid Michael. Why did he have to say anything?
Reading the instructions one more time, Hana sorted herself out and did the test. She sat on the toilet lid again afterwards, waiting for all the things to draw their lines and change colour and do what the manufacturer promised it would. A line appeared to show she performed the test right and she waited. The instructions said to give it a couple of minutes for the pee to soak through and Hana obeyed. But she hadn’t really needed to.
The line in the box displaying her pregnancy appeared almost instantly, but she sat for a full five minutes to give it time to go away again if it wanted to. Evidently it didn’t. Hana felt strangely calm. It was like the world stopped. She sat for another ten minutes, but nothing changed. The pee started to dry on the stick leaving a blotchy appearance, but still the line remained. Hana sat for ages. She tried to remember when her last period was; having a distant memory of thinking it should have happened just after the wedding. She hadn’t noticed its absence. “I’ve only been married four weeks this Friday!” she wailed. Somehow the thought she was only a little bit pregnant wasn’t very comforting. Hana tried not to dwell on the effect this was going to have on her fledgling marriage.
Hana heard a knock on the bedroom door and started up from the toilet seat lid, feeling like a child caught doing something naughty. She shoved the test into a drawer of the vanity unit under the sink and flushed the toilet in an attempt to cover her tracks. Dragging the bathroom door hurriedly open, she came face to face with Michael, who let himself into the room and waited outside the bathroom. A spark of annoyance flicked inside Hana’s chest at his presumption, until he explained himself. “Sorry, I didn’t get any answer and wanted to make sure you hadn’t collapsed in the bathroom.” He seemed suddenly awkward, prattling on, “That’s where we find a lot of people in the hospital when they pass out. They don’t feel well and it’s a natural instinct to go and hide and then we find them stuffed down the side of the toilet…”
He stopped and looked down at his socks. Hana edged past him and sat back on the bed, saying nothing. Michael sat on a chair near the window and observed her. She wasn’t about to disclose her findings to him or anyone right then and it appeared he wasn’t going to ask. “I saw your idiot husband ride off,” he said and Hana thought she detected a sense of exasperation in his voice which made her look directly at him. Michael leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees. When he looked up, it was remarkable how similar to Logan he was, the grey eyes and dark hair. They must have been striking boys when they were younger. “Did he tell you I had an affair with Caroline?”
The question was blunt and caught Hana off guard. “No,” she said honestly, “but I did guess.”
Michael looked surprised. “She’s not all bad, you know. It was just she needed so much and Logan couldn’t understand that. He’s really…closed, I guess you’d say and that was no good for her. She needs some light hearted risk taker who has no complications and can smother her with affirmation and…well, love I guess.”
“And what does Logan need?” Hana asked, frightened of the answer.
Michael thought for a moment. “He needs someone steady, sorted. He really wanted to settle down without the mind games, have a couple of kids and a nice house to put his heart and soul into. He always needed you.”
Hana shook her head vehemently. “He doesn’t want that at all.” She stared out of the window in the direction Logan rode off. “He didn’t want me to do the test. He couldn’t face it.” She felt pressure behind her eyes and dared the tears not to come, gritting her teeth and squeezing every muscle in her body she could realistically control.
Michael shook his head, rising out of his seat and going towards Hana. He took her hand and pressed his fingers over the pulse in her wrist, glancing at his wristwatch. For thirty seconds he stayed like that, her arm suspended in his grip. Then he placed it gently by her side and moved toward the door. “Give him a chance?” he asked and then was gone.
Hana Du Rose
Chapter 20
When Logan returned looking tired and dusty, Hana was sat in the kitchen with Miriam peeling potatoes. She didn’t look directly at him, other than to notice his hat had squashed his hair flat to his head and his brow was beaded with sweat.
“Did you find the boys?” Miriam asked with interest, looking at Logan’s back as he went over to the sink to wash his hands. “Youse got that cast dirty.”
“Yep,” he said shortly, hunting around for a towel.
“Under the sink,” said Miriam, guessing what he wanted.
The atmosphere was tense but Hana put her energies into peeling with enthusiasm, scraping the curly brown ringlets into the bin next to her. Between her and Miriam there was a veritable mountain appearing in a huge saucepan on the table. They chatted about the matriarchal Grandma Du Rose and her penchant for home brewed wine along with some other family history snippets of a humorous nature. “She was hard case, for sure,” Miriam grinned. “Hard as jade but fair with it. She din’t like me...”
A bell sounded above the door in the kitchen, claiming Miriam’s attention and ending the story. “Somebody wants me,” she said, dropping her peeler onto the table and bustling out to answer the call. “Youse carry on,” she directed Hana, as though she was hired help, jabbing her finger at the potatoes.
Logan was over to Hana sat in seconds. Taking her arms he pulled her to a standing position in front of him, gripping her wrists so firmly it hurt. She accused him of abandonment with eyes glaring angrily into his. “Sorry, sorry,” he said, enfolding her and kissing her forehead. “Let’s do the test. I needed time to get used to the idea…”
“That I might be expecting your baby?” said Hana with bitterness.
“No!” Logan countered. “To get used to the idea you might not be. I’d given up on ever having children. It would be like…so awesome if we…anyway, can we get it over with?” Logan crushed Hana’s body to his and she felt him shaking under her hands as she pushed him away.
“No, I can’t,” she replied, a sharp edge to her tone. She extracted herself from his grip and thudded onto the hard chair. She picked up the knife to resume her peeling and Logan took his mother’s seat next to her, snatching the blade away.
“Ow!” he exclaimed. Hana watched the blood pool at the centre of the cut before sliding dow
n his finger and dripping onto the table. She wanted to punish him but not this way. She remembered the blood disorder and was filled with remorse. The stack of leaflets the doctor left her made discomfiting reading. She read them twice but it didn’t help.
“Give it here!” Hana tried to grab his finger, but Logan wiped the blood on his sweater and wouldn’t let her.
“Why?” His face was creased with confusion and, Hana noticed guiltily, pain. “Why can’t you do it?”
“I don’t have it anymore,” she said turning back to the potatoes, “because I used it. I didn’t understand why you ran off and thought I would be dealing with it alone, so I did it by myself.”
Logan had the decency to look shamefaced, but his grey eyes drilled into hers with an intensity that was almost manic. His voice was a whisper and his face close to hers. “What did it say?”
Hana looked away from him uncomfortably. It was one thing doing a pregnancy test and then shoving it away in a drawer, but having to admit to other people it was positive was something else altogether. She shuddered at the thought of having to tell Bodie and Izzie. Surely they would have guessed she would have been…well, she was married after all, but it’s a yucky thought; parents being sexually active. She thought about telling people at work and church and began to feel unwell. She let her breath out slowly and as calmly as she could, told her husband, “I’m pregnant.”
A single tear rolled down her cheek and she tried to suppress the sniff that followed it. Logan sat next to her holding her hand, but he said nothing and didn’t move a muscle. Hana carried on looking at the potato mountain or the cut on his finger, anything so as not to have to face him. She felt such a fool. Fancy getting caught out at her age. Surely she should have thought about contraception or even discussed it with Logan. “I’m so sorry,” she hung her head. “I’m an idiot. I can’t believe I’ve done this twice in one lifetime. Oh no! Three times if I count poor Izzie. She wasn’t planned either!” Hana squirmed uncomfortably in her seat and another tear plopped onto Logan’s hand.