Girl, Unstrung

by Claire Handscombe

  “Ebba,” I call, once I’ve caught my breath. “Ebba, you okay?”

  I don’t see her anywhere, but I can see through their light-filled bedroom to their closed bathroom door. The crying sounds like it’s coming from there.

  “Ebba? You need help?”

  “I’m okay,” she says, but even muffled through the door I can tell that she is clearly not okay. What am I meant to do, just leave her there? I’m not a monster.

  “You’re not,” I say. “What can I do?”

  “You can go get my phone from the living room. I should call your dad. I think I’m miscarrying.”

  I try not to panic, like trying hard is really any match for the knot in my throat or my thumping heartbeat. Now is probably not the time to point out that technically I didn’t Officially Know she was pregnant.

  “And then I guess 911,” she says. “I don’t think I should drive.”

  Ebba opens the bathroom door. She smells like mouthwash—the tell-tale sign of having just thrown up—and I’ve never seen her so pale. I want to hug her, but I don’t know if that would be okay – if that would make it worse somehow, if it’s better if I don’t touch her. Besides, our relationship isn’t exactly at the spontaneous hugging stage. We were nearly there, nearly, but then this whole thing happened, and now I don’t know.

  “Does it hurt?” I ask, stupidly. I don’t know what else to say.

  “It’s like really bad menstrual cramps,” she says. “That’s all.”

  But that’s obviously not all, because her face crumples. I have to hug her now, don’t I? I mean, that’s what normal humans do for each other in these situations. I step into the bathroom and pull out a tissue from the box on top of the toilet. I hand it to her, and when our hands touch I kind of squeeze hers with mine. She half-smiles at me, like it’s too painful to smile for real.

  “I have my phone right here,” I say. “Use that.”

  Ebba looks straight at me and says, “I’m sorry, Clara. We were going to tell you guys after the first sonogram. Tomorrow, as it happens.” Her eyes are leaking. This is excruciating.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I figured it out weeks ago. I’m not stupid.” I don’t know why I felt compelled to add the last part. It’s like my brain and mouth are pre-programmed to be mean to Ebba, and they run on automatic pilot, and I’m trying to shift them into manual, but I can’t. The lever just won’t budge. “I mean –” But what exactly did I mean? How do I make myself sound less callous in this situation? “I mean, there were signs.”

  “Yeah.” She pulls the band out of her pony tail, shakes her hair out. Then she puts it up again with the same band. “This happened to me once before. A long time ago. I wanted to be sure before we turned all your lives upside down, you know?”

  It’s sweet of her to think of it that way. “I’ll call dad,” I say. And then, idiotically, I add, “it’s going to be okay,” even though it’s clearly not going to be.

  “In the grand scheme of things,” she says. “Yes. I’ve got you guys. And your dad. I’m happier than I ever thought I’d be.”

  Ebba winces, doubles up, clutches her belly. I dial dad and pray he’ll pick up quick. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing here.

  The phone goes to voicemail. “Dad,” I say. “Call me. I’m going with Ebba to the hospital.”

  I realize as the words come out of my mouth that maybe the lever has budged, maybe I’m on my way to becoming a decent human after all.

  “I mean,” I say to her after I hang up. “I don’t have to come with you. I don’t know why I said that. But if you want –”

  “I do,” she says. “I would really like that. You don’t have anywhere you’re supposed to be, right? Orchestra or whatever?”

  In this moment, I can overlook the fact that she’s forgotten I’m not doing orchestra anymore this semester. The rehearsals are longer than I’m allowed to play for.

  “No,” I say. “That’s fine.”

  I’ve never been in an ambulance before, and it doesn’t quite feel real. There’s a bed for her and a folding seat for me and more equipment than I ever thought you could fit in such a small space. It feels like the set of a TV show, like the ones dad used to let me go to sometimes. Ebba seems okay. She doesn’t seem like she really needs to be in an ambulance. She walked into it pretty much unaided. But still, I’m scared.

  I take her hand. “I’m sorry,” I say. And I realize my cheeks are wet and I’m sniffing. I think about how I hated the fact she was pregnant. How I hated this baby when I figured out it was going to arrive and disrupt all our lives. How I basically wished it was dead. And now it is. I know it’s not logical to wonder if it might be my fault, but I wonder anyway.

  Ebba opens her eyes, and squeezes my hand. “I know,” she says. “I know.” And I wonder how much she does know. If she understands me better than I think she does.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  They see us so quickly at the ER that by the time dad arrives it’s almost all taken care of, whatever it is they do in there.

  “I was on set,” he says, out of breath, when he sees me in the waiting room. My legs are sticking to the plastic orange chair. “I just got your message.”

  “It’s okay, dad.” I don’t know why I keep saying that when clearly nothing is okay. “I mean, she’s going be okay.”

  “But the baby,” he says. I shake my head. His shoulders slump. “The baby,” he says again.

  “I know,” I say. I stand up to hug him. I’m almost as tall as him these days.

  It’s weird, me being the one comforting him. I know the divorce wasn’t easy on him. He put on weight and kept making these self-deprecating jokes like he’s always made but with an ugly undercurrent of bitterness. He never bad-mouthed mom to us, just like mom never bad-mouthed him, was always telling us how great he was. Like, mom, we know, overcompensating much?

  I wonder if it was a therapy thing. Like, every time you’re tempted to rag on your ex-husband to your kids, find something nice to say instead. It was never, Remember that weekend he spent learning the piano accompaniment to the Hummel Kleine Suite, so he could play it with you? Or, Remember that one time he made you laugh so hard at breakfast that yoghurt came out of your nose? The nice things were always very general, but still, at least she tried. I guess at the time I didn’t really think about how hard it was for them. Mostly I was thinking about me and how I didn’t want to move and how crappy it would be to live with just one of them and even crappier to have to alternate houses every week. I’m used to that now. Mom is stricter and her food is better; dad is more fun but we have to share him with Ebba. There are trade-offs.

  Anyway, the divorce was rough, but we’re all starting to find our feet. Dad lost the extra weight quite a while ago now, started shaving every day again. That happened the summer Libby came to stay with us. I guess on some level, he was trying to impress her. Not that he really had to try: she was clearly putty in his hands. It was kinda gross, actually. She could almost have been my sister, age-wise. I caught them kissing one time, and they both swear to this day that it was only that one time, which I guess makes sense because around then is when he started seeing Ebba.

  The reason I’m telling you this is so that you’ll realize how weird it is for me be hugging dad while he cries. It’s always been the other way round, though these days when I’m upset I go to Katie or Netflix, not really to him anymore. His shoulders are shaking now. He’s a mess.

  “We weren’t trying, you know,” he says. I wince. Wayyyyy too much information. I would prefer to believe this baby was the result of artificial insemination than the accidental by-product of – ugh – a night of passion. “But I was so happy. Which is crazy, because babies are a pain in the butt.” He kind of snort-laughs and pulls away, so we can both sit down. I’ve blocked out the noise around us: squeaky wheelchairs, heels on the linoleum, an intermittently ringing phone. But they come rushing back into my consciousness in the pause before dad speaks again.
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  “I mean,” he says. “They never let you sleep, and I’m too old for that crap. And they cry and cry and you can’t stop them, no matter what you do.”

  “Kind of like you right now?” I say. He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and smiles. Yay: points to me.

  “But that soft skin and those round cheeks and that baby smell... you can’t beat those. That’s why your mom and I had so many of you.”

  “I always assumed you just kept going till you got a boy.”

  Dad looks surprised that I’ve worked this out, like it’s some great conundrum. Three girls, one boy. Not rocket science.

  “Well,” he says. “That, too.”

  He blows his nose with a tissue from his pocked and for a while we sit there in silence – well, not exactly silence, but not saying anything amid the din of people talking, machines beeping, kids limping out of rooms with a part of their body in a cast.

  “When Ebba and me dated the first time,” he says, softly, almost like he’s talking to himself and I just happen to be there, “I used to daydream about having babies with her. Babies who’d have my freckles and her blue eyes. A perfect little amalgam of the two of us.” Maybe he is talking to himself. He has to know this is making me queasy.

  “Yeah.” I pat his lag, in what could be interpreted as a reassuring gesture, but really it’s a stop talking, dad kind of pat. And then out of nowhere, and surely against my better judgement, I say, “You can always try again.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “None of us are getting any younger, though.”

  “People much older than you both have babies.”

  “They do. But it’s complicated. And it’s complicated for our family, too. But this one was

  just kind of given to us without us having to think it through. If we thought about it too hard, maybe we wouldn’t do it, you know? But we didn’t think about it. It just happened.”

  “I would be an excellent big sister to it,” I say. Not that I’m that great of a big sister now, except maybe to Harry. Harry loves to curl up on my lap and watch Disney movies with me. I haven’t had a ton of time for that these last few years. But the point is: if I wanted to, I could be the best big sister ever.

  “I’m sure you would,” dad says. But it’s the kind of I’m sure that really means, I’m almost sure, but not quite. And then suddenly I’m not quite sure, either. In the last half hour while I’ve been sitting here waiting for Ebba, I’ve been imagining the baby would have lived with me all the time. I’ve been imagining carrying her (him?) from dad’s to mom’s and laying her out on a mat in mom’s living room. But the baby would be with dad and Ebba all the time. And I bet she would do all her new stuff on the weeks when I’m not there – the stuff babies do. I remember mom and dad getting ridiculously excited when Harry rolled over or laughed for the first time, or started talking or crawling then walking. They would talk in these silly voices and clap really close to his face so he’d do whatever it was all over again. Meanwhile, I’d be, like, I got an A in that math test! Or, I was asked to play the solo at the Pasadena Junior Orchestra holiday concert! And they’d be, like, great, honey, that’s great, and barely notice when I stormed off upstairs.

  But maybe I’d appreciate the baby stuff more this time around. And if I missed big moments they could Snap me. But it’s not the same, you know? And then I think about how much Ebba would love this baby. She’s nice to us because she has to be, you know? But with her own? It might be kind of gross, how much she dotes on it. I know I can be hard work sometimes, and I haven’t exactly made things easy for her, so really why should she bother trying with me anymore if she has this adorable little baby that will coo and smile at her because she’s the actual mom? Meanwhile, dad will be all, like, look at this amazing child I made with my amazing new wife. Barf. Okay, I take it all back. No trying again. Let’s keep things as they are.

  Ebba saves me from having to say any of this, though, because that’s when she’s come out of the exam room and is walking slowly down the hallway and toward us. I let dad go to her. There’s more hugging, more tears. I get out my phone and scroll through Instagram to distract myself and wait for the emotions to be done with.

  “Okay?” I ask Ebba when she walks over to me.

  She nods. “Okay.” Not okay as in yay! Everything’s great!, obviously. But okay as in life is not over. They’re hand in hand, Ebba and dad, and I feel like a third wheel as I walk behind them to the car. I’m still scrolling, but really I’ve seen all there is to see and now I’m just doing this so I don’t feel awkward. Dad and Ebba slow to a stop. They wait for me to catch up. Dad links arms with me.

  “Thanks for your help today, kiddo,” he says.

  “I didn’t really do anything.”

  “You were there,” Ebba says. “I really appreciated that.”

  “No problem,” I say. It’s an automatic reflex, but I turn my head and lock eyes with Ebba and realize that I mean it.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  You should have seen Tim’s face when I walked into the Scrabble tournament today at Pasadena Convention Center. It could be that he was surprised because I’m a girl: the room is full to bursting with boys, and not in a good way. The smell of Axe body spray almost knocks me over, and I’ve never seen so many pairs of glasses or black t-shirts or unkempt haircuts in one place before. Not swoopy and beautiful haircuts like Tim’s, just neglected, because these boys were too busy playing video games and learning anagrams to make it out to the hair salon, to even get their noses out of whatever nerd activity long enough to even think about a hair stylist.

  But it could also be that he’s looking at me that way because I’m me, and because, like everyone else in my life, he did not see this coming.

  “You know,” my dad said when he dropped me off at the convention center, “I really thought a nice side benefit of you not playing the viola anymore would be that I could stop driving you places all the time.”

  “I don’t not play the viola anymore.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  I do. He means what some people call obsession. What I call focus. Did he really think I could live my life without one?

  THERE’S A BREAK AT lunchtime, and I’m sitting on the floor with my back against the wall, eating my peanut butter sandwich and staring into space, when Tim comes up to me.

  “I didn’t know you were into Scrabble,” he says.

  “I’m not.” Except, I admit it: there’s something satisfying about laying out those words, linking them up with others, watching your opponent’s face freeze in anticipation as they mentally tally your points. And it’s all so objective: something is a word or it’s not a word. It’s worth this many points because the rules say so. Math.

  “You’re not into Scrabble,” Tim says, slowly, incredulously.

  “I’m into it the regular amount.”

  He slides down the wall to sit next to me. “That would be not at all.”

  “I’m actually into nerdy boys,” I say. “Really into them. Can’t get enough of them. And I figured this was a good place to meet a shedload of them.”

  “A conference center load, yes.” He laughs at his own not-very-funny joke. “The best place, some people might say.”

  “Those people would be right.”

  There’s really nowhere to go from here, so I start chewing my sandwich again. Peanut butter with extra crunch, just the way I like my sandwiches. My dad definitely has his uses.

  “Well,” Tim says, after we both just sit there for a while, with me chewing, him staring off into the middle distance. “May the best nerd win.”

  “Are you calling me a nerd?” I ask, turning towards him. I should have waited to finish my mouthful but I couldn’t leave this unaddressed for more than one second.

  “Gross,” he says, flicking crumbs off his sleeve. “You’re at a Scrabble competition on a Saturday afternoon. Are you really going to try and make the case that you’re not a nerd?”

  “I just like
nerds, is all.”

  “Yeah?”

  He looks at me long and hard till I have to turn my face away. Damn it. I never lose at this game. This doesn’t bode well for me if he and I ever play together. Scrabble, I mean. The flutter of butterflies in my stomach start to stir, to awake from a long sleep. I curse my choice of lunch. Peanut butter breath is the worst. Still, there’s an argument to be made that it’s not quite as bad as Axe body spray. Maybe that smell is overpowering this one. Let’s hope so.

  Tim slides his foot along the ground till it bumps into mine, almost by accident. It’s no accident, and I’m no fool, but I leave mine there.

  “You like all nerds?” he asks. “Or one in particular?”

  “Pretty sure it’s all of them.” I’m going to make him work for this. Besides, though I wouldn’t say I’m attracted to nerds, or even that I want to spend much time around them, I do like them. I like that they’re driven. Focused. There’s nothing worse than a wet blanket whose get up and go has gotten up and gone. If you ask me, when the apocalypse comes, it’s the nerds who’ll save us, with their esoteric knowledge and their determination. They won’t be distracted by gossip or by friendships or social connections. They’ll get the job done. See also: Mark Zuckerberg. Steve Jobs. No people skills, if the movies are to be believed. And yet, where would we be without them? Probably in this exact same hallway having this exact same conversation, but you know what I mean.

  “I don’t blame you for liking nerds,” Tim says, running his hand through his swoopy hair. “We are pretty great.”

  Then he slides back up the wall and leaves. “Good luck out there,” he says over his shoulder when he’s a few feet away. Luck has nothing to do with it, but still, it’s sweet of him. And I’m kind of disappointed that he didn’t stay and talk some more. I wanted him to stay and fight a little harder. Maybe I was wrong about his get-up-and-go. Or maybe I’ve exhausted him. I hope not. It would be so disappointing if he just gave up on me.