OUR SURPRISE BABY

by Paula Cox

  “A smoothie? The fuck would I want a smoothie for?”

  “It’s healthy,” she says. “I can make us an apple and banana one. I had one when I was feeing sick. It helped.”

  “Well, I ain’t feeling sick. Just give me whatever you’ve got that isn’t a smoothie.”

  She laughs this time, then brings through two glasses of orange juice. She sits on the couch near the armchair. We both sip our orange juice in silence for a few moments, the only noise the muffled sound of somebody playing heavy metal music a few apartments over. I look at Allison almost in awe. Less than an hour ago, she was on her back, gasping, moaning, and now she looks like all respectable. The contrast between the moaning woman who begged me to call her my whore and this prim little social worker is so striking it makes my dick ache. I try to be subtle as I adjust myself.

  Alright, I need to stop this scatterbrained shit. I’m trying to take myself away from the issue; we both are. We don’t meet each other’s gaze. After the closeness of what we just did, the atmosphere is awkward.

  I clear my throat, and then say, “So, we need to talk about this.”

  Allison nods. “We need to talk about this,” she agrees. She clasps her hands together and fidgets with her fingers.

  I think about the anger I felt at her when she first confronted me outside the Englishman. I think about how I snapped at her, how blinded with rage I was. I can hardly believe it. She’s so deer-like, so fragile-looking, her hair mussy around her shoulders, her eyes huge and green; and yet there’s a strength to her to which goes against all of this. A confusing lady.

  She turns to me, smiling tiredly. “Well, let’s talk, then.”

  I think on it as she watches me. I haven’t really given it any thought since she told me; there hasn’t been any time. So now, as she watches me and a few minutes pass by, as the heavy metal music plays dim through the walls, as a few horns honk outside and a car backfires somewhere in the city, I think on it for real. A child—a father. I think about my own father. He was a quiet, reserved man, but he was a good man, too. He worked in a factory, twelve hour shifts, and sometimes when he came home he would give me twenty dollars to go down the store and get him some beers, telling me I could keep the change. And then the heart attack, and the revelation that Mom had been cheating on him for years…there’s the thing, isn’t it? If I agree to this family shit, will the same happen to me?

  No, I tell myself. Fuck no, ’cause my father wasn’t an outlaw, an enforcer. My father didn’t have the grit to live on the perimeters of the law. And maybe, just maybe, if Allison had a kid, I could do better with them than my parents did with me. Just maybe …

  And then I think about how I offered Allison my phone number and she turned me down, just point-blank told me no, and I wonder if I offer myself up now, will she do the same? I can’t be sure. I’m starting to realize that in this closeness and relationship shit, you can never be sure. It’s like waking blindly through a maze looking for the exit—at least for a man like me. How can I know if this turning is the right one, or if that turning is the right one? How can I ever know?

  I can see that she’s waiting for me to talk, so I decide to play it safe, at least for now: “I think the choice is yours. Obviously the choice is yours. It’s your body; if you decide to keep it…if you decide to keep the baby, you’re the one whose body will change, all that stuff. You know—you’re the one who will have to go through the pain and the stress of it all.”

  She nods understandingly and I can’t help but feel I’m not in her apartment but at her office in the library and she is interviewing me. There is something disarming about that nod, that open face, which makes a man think about unburdening his soul. I can see why she’s so effective at her job.

  “So you think it’s my choice?”

  “It is your choice,” I correct. “I don’t just think it. Of course it’s your choice. What sort of man would force you one way or the other?”

  “Okay.” She nods. “But—what do you think? What do you want? If you had control of the situation, what would you decide?”

  What would I decide? I almost laugh at the thought, because telling her what I would decide will once again leave me open to attack. Attack, because that is how I am thinking of it. If I tell her what I want, she will be ready to once again push me away…But I can’t just sit here silently. This is important; it needs to get sorted. I’ve never been one to ignore somethin’ that needs seeing to. So much for playing it safe.

  “If I could decide, I’d only say that I’ve always wanted to be a father. Ever since my own father—” I cut myself off. “I’ve always wanted to be a father ’cause I’d like to see if I have what you need to take care of a kid, to make a kid feel safe, to tell a kid that he doesn’t have to be scared, to encourage him in whatever he wants to do. Yeah, I’ve always wanted to be a father, and you’re pregnant, so if I had my way I’d ask you to keep him.”

  “Him.” Allison smiles. It’s a faraway smile, captivating. “How do you know he’s a boy?”

  I shrug. “I guess I’m biased.”

  A silence stretches between us, the heavy metal music no longer playing, the apartment building almost eerie in its sudden lack of noise.

  I plunge into the silence, unable to stop myself. I might as well get it all out there. I might as well play my hand. What do I have to lose, after all, except feeling?

  “If you wanted to keep that kid,” I go on, looking at the ground instead of into her face ’cause I’m feeling pretty damn self-conscious right now, “I’d like to try and make a family with you. I like you—” That’s a weak word for the confusing mass of feelings I have for her, but I never claimed to be a wordsmith. “And I like the work you do in the community, and I think we could at least have a go at playing house. Maybe we’d live half here, half at my place; I have an apartment near the clubhouse, in the same building as my friend Zeke, actually. Maybe we could give it a try. I don’t know…I think it’s worth the effort, when there’s a kid involved.”

  “Maybe it is.” She nods, again that understanding nod, but when I glance up from the floor I can see in her face that she is unsure. She is always unsure, it seems, always guessing and second-guessing her decisions and her feelings. She’s always fighting a war within herself, a war between what she wants to do and what she should do. I don’t know—maybe it’s got something to do with how she was raised. “But I don’t know, Rust…” She sighs, leans back, massages her temples.

  I just sit there, hands folded, waiting.

  After a minute or so, she says: “I need to give it some thought. Fantasizing about living with a tough biker is one thing; taking the plunge is quite another.”

  “I’m not one of the characters in your books,” I say. “I’m a man; there are more sides to a man than what those books’ll tell you.”

  “Maybe so.” She shrugs again, unsure. “Maybe there are. But—I just need some time to think. Can you give me that?”

  I’m a fuckin’ pinball, and she’s the player, knocking me around endlessly, smacking me off the walls, bringing me close just to send me flying to the other end of the machine again. I swallow, and then nod shortly, and then rise to my feet. “Alright,” I say. “I’ll see you around, then.”

  “Come visit me at the library,” she calls at my back, but I’m already out the door, walking down the stairs, grazed bloody hands stuffed into the pockets of my leather.

  I won’t think about it: I won’t make the connection between Mom and Allison. It isn’t fair. I can’t do that. I can’t keep thinking like that. But as I walk down the stairs, feeling like I did when I offered her my number but amplified—there wasn’t a kid involved then—I can’t stop myself from thinking of Mom, eyes burning into me with resentment, almost as though she wished she could burn me from existence. That’s Rust, I reflect, wishing I could stop this self-pitying horseshit. That’s Rust: never really wanted unless there’s violence to be done.

  I walk out into the street
, reach into my pocket for my cigarettes. I find none. I must’ve dropped them in the bar. I haven’t got a bike or a car with me, so I bow my head and begin walking down the street toward the bus station. I’ll just keep walking, focus on my moving legs, try and blot out any thought of Mom and Allison, try and—

  “Wait!”

  I turn at the sound of her voice, pitched high, urgent. She is jogging after me, her cheeks flushed.

  She stops an inch away from me, so close I can feel the heat radiating from her.

  “Yeah?” I say, unwilling to let any excitement in my voice just in case.

  But she says, “I want to give it a try, Rust. Just give it a try.”

  I open my arms. “Alright,” I say, still struggling to believe it.

  She falls into my embrace, and then she stares up at me with those big vulnerable eyes, eyes which make me rock-hard straightaway.

  “Let’s get you upstairs,” I say, and then pick her up.

  She squeals, giggling, as I carry her to her apartment.

  I don’t know if this will work, but we’ll try. We’ll try and make it work, and that has got to count for something, hasn’t it?

  Chapter Eighteen

  Allison

  I sit at my apartment window and crack it slightly, letting the January biting wind whistle in through the inch or so space I have opened. I look down at the snow, which blankets cars and stores and roofs alike, and I trail my hand over my four-month bump. I think about the past months, think about how Rust and I have lived here for a few days out of the week and at his apartment for a few days. I have been by the clubhouse, too; and I have learnt that these bikers, far from being the scary men I thought them to be when I was too frightened to go to the clubhouse to find Rust before, are mostly just tough, but humane, men. I have met Zeke, who seems like Rust’s younger, slightly shorter brother to me. All in all, we are moving ahead. All in all, life has taken its course. Rust still talks about the unpatched, about Trent, the man who intimated me the day I met Rust, which seems like a long, long time ago now; as far as I can tell, the unpatched are still causing them problems.

  “What about you, huh, Bump?” I ask, stroking my belly. Although Rust is convinced that the baby will be a boy, I find myself calling them Bump instead; it just feels more fair, until we know for sure. Typical man, I reflect, as I watch a fresh snowfall cascade past the window. The breeze is welcome. It is early morning, a Saturday, and I don’t have work for two blessed days. A few brave men and women walk through the snow, wrapped head to foot in coats and scarfs and thick trousers and boots; and then there are the others, the less privileged, the ones who come into my office with cold burn, shivering, and asking to be rehoused. “But let’s not think about that, Bump, not today, at least.”

  I leave the window and go to the couch, stretch my legs out, waiting for Rust. These past months with Rust have been some of the sweetest of my life. At first, there was a distance between us, because after all we were strangers; the only thing we had, really, was our physical attraction. But now, I am sure something else is starting to develop. Of course, the physical attraction is still there, but there’s another element now, too. We share things: I have told him about my childhood, how my parents tried to force me into the career and a marriage they wanted; and he has told me about his far more tragic childhood. I think about his mother telling him to leave, and I clench my fist with anger. How could she do that to him? How could she do that to his father?

  I think about when Rust told me, late on Christmas day, sitting at the window with a cigarette and me sitting at the other side of the room so I didn’t inhale the smoke. His back was to me, which I think is the only reason he could tell me. We’d had Christmas at the clubhouse and slept at his apartment, so he was sitting at his window which overlooks the outskirts of the city, breathing smoke into the night. And then, in halted, stop-and-start sentences, he told me about his childhood, about his father coming home with cracked skin on his hands and bags under his eyes, and then about the heart attack and his mother’s command: leave, and never come back; she was starting a new life. After he told me it all, I asked him to get rid of the cigarette, which he did; he threw it into the snow beneath the window and it extinguished with a hiss.

  Then I walked across the room and sat in his lap, stroking his face. He’s grown his beard out, a big bushy tangle of brown-red; now he finally has a reason for his name. I’ve asked for his real name, but he just grins and tells me it’s his favorite color: the same answer every time. But one night, when he was drunk, he told me that when he left home he abandoned his name and took Rust because it was the color of his dead father’s eyes: a shade of brown which seemed red. He told me he didn’t want to remember the boy before he became Rust. And I understand that. He told me how he left his mother and ended up with Mouse, The Damned’ leader before Shackle, about how he learnt to fight and be tough. We’ve covered a great deal of ground in a few months, I reflect, stroking my ever-growing bump.

  I’m thinking about all this when the door opens and Rust walks in. “Morning, little Mama,” he says, and without turning I can hear the smile in his voice. “I’ve got bacon or yogurt. Little Mama’s choice.”

  “Since when did you start buying me yogurt?” I ask, climbing to my feet and joining him in the kitchen.

  He steps forward, looking wild with his beard and his grown-out hair, and places his hand on Bump. “Since my little boy started getting bigger, little Mama. That’s when. Now, what do you want…yogurt or bacon?”

  “Sushi,” I mutter. “I am desperate for a truck-load of sushi.”

  Rust rolls his eyes. “Well, that ain’t on the menu, and if you think I’m goin’ to be one of those guys who go running back out into the cold because my whale is demanding some specific dish, you’re dead wrong.”

  “Your whale?” I giggle, slapping him across the face. “I’d prefer to be a little Mama than a whale, you animal.”

  He takes a step back and then juts his chin out. “Hit me again, whale woman, but really put your all into it this time. A whale like you should be able to hit harder than that.” He chuckles, black eyes glinting with embers of playful light.

  “You’re an evil man,” I say, offering a melodramatic pout.

  He takes the bacon from his brown shopping bag and tears it open with his teeth. “I thought I was an animal,” he says, spitting plastic onto the floor. “And now I’m evil, too? You need to make your mind up, whale-woman.”

  I giggle and shove him in the chest. He opens his arms and wraps them around me, enveloping me, trapping me, but being trapped has never felt this good.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Rust

  As I walk around the store, a shopping basket on my arm, I’m still in shock by how four months can change a man. Four months can turn a man from a confused, uncaring animal to…well, to a confused animal who cares a little more, now. I think about Allison, think about the close nights we’ve spent together, think about how Bump is growing larger day after day. I have always tried to stamp out my emotions. I have always tried to tell myself I do not have a heart; hearts are not meant for men like me. But lately, I have started to believe that, just maybe, a man like me could know what it means to have a heart, to have genuine feelings. It’s soppy as hell and I never talk like this to Allison. She knows I care without me spewing all that shit out there, I’m sure. But still, it’s there, this change. And perhaps the strongest evidence for it is that here I am, shopping basket on my arm, looking around for some sushi.

  It’s Monday, and all weekend Allison’s been going on about sushi. She’s hinted several times for me to go and get her some, but I’m not about to go out of my way for it. I might have started caring way, way more now that she’s holding my child, but I ain’t about to turn into one of those soft-faced, hen-pecked guys who nod numbly every time their woman gives them an order. Fuck that. But I’m already here, so I might as well pick some up. I find the sushi, drop it in the basket next to some oth
er groceries—the fact that I’m even grocery shopping is still slightly absurd to me—and go to the checkout. At the checkout counter there’s a short red-headed woman with a neck tattoo of some kind of bird and makeup around her eyes which makes her look vulnerable. She gives me the look, which I know well ’cause women often give men in leather the look. I don’t so much as look her in the face after she gives me that look, and the rest of the interaction is passed in awkward silence. I’m not straying, not from Allison, not from my kid.

  I go out into the snow to the pickup, load the groceries, and then drive to the library where Allison is working. I’ve asked her to take time off, but she’s told me in her professional-lady voice that she’s going to work right up until she drops, and I guess I can’t argue with that. If I’m not going to become hen-pecked, it seems she isn’t going a meekly obedient girlfriend, either. Girlfriend, I reflect, as the tires cut through the piled-up snow. Girlfriend. That seems like too much for a man like me. I never have girlfriends. Ever since I left home, I’ve never had a girlfriend. And yet it seems too little at the same time. She’s holding my child. Can she really just be my girlfriend?