Beautiful Malice

by Rebecca James

  Suddenly Philippa grabs my arm, talks in an excited rush. “Do you think you might keep it? If you are? It’d be pretty cool in lots of ways, if you think about it. It’d be so, so, so cute, and so totally beautiful and bright. And Mick would be an awesome dad. And I’d be an aunt. I’d babysit for you. Honest. I’d do lots; I’d help you as much as I could. I’d be the absolute best aunt in the universe. You’d still be able to go to college. Mom and Dad would help, they love little babies. And your parents, too, they’d help, wouldn’t they?”

  The thought of my parents makes me groan. I cover my face with my hands. “Philippa! Stop. Please. Don’t talk like that. I’m not even sure yet. And I have to tell Mick first. I can’t make decisions like this now.”

  “No. Of course not. Sorry.” She is quiet for a minute and then she says, “Let’s go and buy a test. There’s a drugstore on the way back to Mick’s place.”

  I nod and turn away from her toward the sink. Philippa’s right, of course; I should buy a test on the way home, find out as soon as possible, talk to Mick. But this is something I need to do alone. Not with someone else there, not with an audience. I keep my eyes on my hands as I wash them again and wonder how I can tell her that I don’t want her with me without hurting her feelings. But when I look up, it’s as if once again, she’s read my mind.

  “Look,” she says. “Why don’t you just head on back to Mick’s? Get a test on the way. I’ll keep Mick here a little longer, and we’ll finish our breakfast. You can do the test, and when he comes home you can talk to him about it. If you need to.” She smiles. “I don’t think you need me there.”

  I smile gratefully. “Yes, that’d be good. Thanks.”

  “But you will let me know, won’t you?” she asks. “Whatever happens.”

  We return to the table and tell Mick that I’m sick and am going to head home. He’s concerned, and says that he’ll come with me. But Philippa and I persuade him to stay.

  “It’s only a three-minute walk,” I laugh. “This is probably just some stupid bug. I’ll be okay on my own.”

  He looks worried as I wave to him from the café door. I smile as reassuringly as I can and start walking. It’s good to be outside in the fresh air, out of the stuffy atmosphere of the café, which smells too strongly of coffee and bacon. Normally these are smells that make me hungry, but today they are overwhelming, nauseating.

  I’ve little doubt that I’m pregnant. Everything adds up—and I’m certain now that I haven’t had a period since I first slept with Mick. And though we’ve been pretty careful, using condoms most of the time, we have been careless once or twice.

  I go into the pharmacy and search the aisles for a test. I’ve never had to buy one before and am not quite sure where they’re kept or what to look for, so I wander blindly for a moment until a girl approaches and asks if she can help.

  “Yes. Um, pregnancy tests?”

  A part of me expects her to be shocked, to give me a lecture on safe sex and contraception, but she doesn’t hesitate or make any visible reaction to my request. “Sure,” she says. “They’re over here.” And she’s politely neutral as she explains the differences among the tests and takes me to the checkout, where she places the package in a brown paper bag. But I can’t help but wonder what she’s thinking. We’re about the same age, and I imagine that she’s feeling glad not to be me, glad not to have this problem, smug and superior and safe.

  I’m about to step outside when someone taps me on the shoulder.

  “Tut tut, Katherine.” The voice comes loudly from behind me and I feel the color drain from my face as she steps in front of me and I realize who it is. “What on earth would Helen think?” Alice says.

  I clutch my bag close to my chest. I feel strangely intimidated—scared, even—and I have to fight a sudden urge to run. There is no warmth in her expression, and it’s hard to believe, facing her like this, that we were ever friends.

  Alice eyes the package and nods. “Been a naughty girl, have we?”

  I’m about to speak—to deny, explain, justify—but decide against it. I owe Alice nothing. My personal life is no longer any of her business. I shrug and step past her, but as I do, she puts her hand on my shoulder. She’s leaning toward me, her face uncomfortably close to mine.

  “Don’t think you’re going to get away with it,” she says, her voice a vicious, low hum. “I know people like you think that people like me are dispensable. I know that. But you’re not going to get rid of me that easily.”

  “Rid of you?” I attempt a laugh, but the sound is hollow, unconvincing. “Is this some kind of threat? Are you actually following me?”

  She only smiles.

  “Leave me alone, Alice,” I say, forcing myself to look her in the eyes. “Leave me alone or I’ll—”

  “What?” She lifts her eyebrows in an exaggerated expression of surprise. “You’ll call the police? Huh? Is that it? Is that what you’ll do?”

  “Well, yes, I will. If you’re going to behave like a lunatic, then I’m going to treat you like one.”

  “Oh, yes, of course you will. But I already know that. You see, I know you. I know you better than you think. But I haven’t actually done anything, really, have I? There’s nothing to tell the police, is there? You can’t shift the blame this time.” And she smiles sweetly, tilts her head to the side, and makes her voice falsely innocent. “And we’re friends, anyway, aren’t we? Friends forever?” I hear the mockery in her tone.

  I shake my head and try again to step past her. “Go away, Alice,” I say. “Just go away. I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. You need some kind of help. You need to see someone. You’re sick.”

  “Maybe I am,” she agrees, laughing, as I walk quickly away. “Or maybe it’s you, Katherine,” she calls. “Did you ever consider that? Maybe it’s you who’s sick.”

  I stride ahead and will myself not to look back, not until I’m about to turn onto Mick’s street. I stop and look behind me. I don’t see her at first and I start to panic, scared that she is hiding, still following me, but then I see her. She is standing in front of the drugstore. She is talking to a tall, good-looking man—flirting, no doubt—and seems completely preoccupied.

  It’s probably an absurd precaution, but I suddenly don’t want her to know where I’m staying and so I turn the corner and run as quickly as I can up the road toward Mick’s apartment. I fumble the key into the lock, my hands shaking, and slam the door behind me. Once inside, I’m immediately calmed—it is all so familiar and ordinary, shabby and comfortable—and I can’t help but giggle at the sense of hysteria I’d had only moments before. It reminds me of when I was a child and scared of being alone in the dark. I’d always run, panicked and terrified, back to wherever my parents were—the light, the warmth, the safety of company—and be immediately comforted. Like the dark, Alice can’t really hurt me. Not if I don’t let her. She may be full of shadow and mystery and hidden depths, but she has no real power. Not really.

  I go to the bathroom and stand in front of the mirror. I’m breathing quickly from my run, and my face is pale. I look awful. My stomach is knotted with anxiety, and it takes me a moment to remember that I have something bigger than Alice to worry about. Something real. Something serious. Something that may affect me and Mick for the rest of our lives. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with Alice.

  I open the package and pee on the test stick as instructed on the packet. I place the test on the bathroom counter without looking at it. I go to the living room and pace, back and forth, back and forth, until I hope enough time has passed. I return to the bathroom and pick up the white plastic stick. There are two very clear and parallel pink lines.

  I check the instructions again. Two lines is a positive result. I’m pregnant.

  I toss the test away from me—as if it is burning hot, or dangerous—and watch it clatter onto the tile floor. It lands faceup, the two pink lines strong and definite, taunting me. Although I’d been quite certain that it wou
ld be positive, the reality of the test is terrifying. I can feel my heart pounding, taste shock and fear in my mouth. Suddenly I cannot move, can no longer stand, and I collapse onto the floor and sit, knees drawn up, head pressed down on top of them. I sit there, motionless, my head full of visions of a ruined future, until I hear a key in the lock, footsteps, Mick’s voice calling my name. And soon he’s in the bathroom with his arms around me, asking me if I’m all right.

  I don’t look up or say a word—it would be too much to speak, too hard to look Mick in the eye right now—but I reach out and point toward the test stick.

  “What?” he says. I hear him picking it up. And then he is back, sitting on the floor in front of me.

  “You’re pregnant?” He sounds surprised, but not as devastated as I’d imagined. Not angry.

  I look up. Nod.

  “Wow.” He rubs his face. I can hear the scrape of stubble beneath his fingers. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “No.”

  He is silent for a moment, staring at the test. He looks at me. “So, um, is this such a bad thing?”

  “Yes. Of course it is. I’m pregnant, Mick. I’m seventeen.” Our knees are touching, and I can feel myself trembling. “I’m seventeen, Mick. Seventeen.”

  He puts his hand on my knee and speaks carefully, as if he’s afraid to upset me. “Okay. It’s shocking. But it’s not the end of the world. I mean, we can do something about it. There are things we can do. If you want to.”

  “Abortion. I know. Just say the damn word. I’m not stupid.”

  “Okay. Abortion. We can do that. If you want to.”

  I nod, shrug, look helplessly around the room at the wall tiles, at the shower curtain, everywhere but at his earnest, sweet face.

  “But you don’t have to,” he says, and he leans forward so that I’m forced to look at him. “You don’t have to abort it, Katherine. I’m not saying you have to.”

  “What’s the alternative, Mick? Having a baby? At seventeen? Are you joking?”

  “It’s not as if this has never happened before. It’s not totally unheard of or impossible, you know.”

  “I know it’s not impossible, I’m not a complete idiot. I’m pregnant, Mick, not suddenly brain-dead.”

  He sighs. “Stop being so angry. I’m not your enemy.”

  “Sorry.” I reach out, take his hand. “I’m just … I can’t believe we let this happen.”

  “I can’t believe it, either.”

  “Shit.” I squeeze his hand. Hard. “Girls like me don’t have babies, Mick. Girls like me go to college, have careers. My parents would absolutely die. They’d totally freak.”

  “You could still go to college. Women do it. They do it all the time. It’s not like you’d be a single mother.” He squeezes my hand even harder, and smiles. “Look, just forget about your parents for a minute. Just forget about what other people might think. You can’t decide based on other people. That’s dumb.”

  And he’s right. A lot of my horror at the idea of this pregnancy is based on what other people might think. My parents, my friends, my former teachers. I picture myself with an enormous belly and then with a screeching infant—people staring, whispering, feeling sorry for me. It’s hard, with all that imagined disapproval going through my head, to know what I really think, what I might really want.

  “I’m going to make some herb tea,” Mick says, and he stands, pulls me to my feet. “Why don’t you go back to bed for a while?”

  I do as he suggests and somehow, despite all the turmoil going through my head, manage to fall into a deep sleep. When I wake, Mick is sitting beside me on the bed, flipping through a music magazine.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “Feeling any better?” He puts his hand on my forehead, and I laugh.

  “I don’t have a temperature, idiot.”

  “I know. I know. But didn’t your mom always do that when you were sick? And didn’t it make you feel good? As if you had something seriously wrong and might get a whole week off school or something?”

  “But I’m not sick. I’m pregnant.”

  “We’re pregnant.”

  I sit up. “Are we?”

  “I don’t know. Are we?”

  “I don’t know. Are we?”

  He laughs. “I am if you are. I’m not if you’re not.”

  “I’m not sure. For some reason it doesn’t seem so bad anymore.” I shrug, smile shyly. “Maybe I’m still dreaming or something.”

  He pinches my arm. “Can you feel that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not dreaming, then.”

  “But seriously,” I say, “what do you think? Is it such a bad thing? Being pregnant?”

  “Jesus, Katherine. I don’t know. Maybe it’s not the end of the world.” He smiles—gently, tentatively, slowly—all the while looking at me, searching my face. “But it’s certainly a big thing.”

  “It is.” And I don’t know why a few hours’ sleep has changed my perspective so much, but all of a sudden this pregnancy has gone from being a shocking disaster into something that I might actually want. I laugh—a sudden bubble of hopeful excitement rises in my belly, my throat. “It’s huge.”

  “My God. A baby.”

  “Yes,” I say. “A baby.”

  “Our baby.”

  “Yes.”

  “We couldn’t possibly kill something we’ve made together. It’s our baby. Ours. A bit of you and a bit of me,” he says.

  “No.”

  “I mean, unless you really want to. But you don’t want to? Abort it? Do you?”

  “No. No, I don’t.” I allow myself to smile, to hope. “I think I might want it. I think I might actually want to keep it.”

  We spend the rest of the day in a state of shock. The next morning we tell Philippa and she is so excited, so enthusiastic and full of ideas and plans for the future, that she makes us both laugh in shy delight. The nausea hasn’t gone away, but now that I know what is causing it, it’s easier to cope with. And now that I know that I’m not actually sick, the overwhelming exhaustion, my ability to sleep at any time, seems only a mild and even strangely pleasant symptom of the fact that my body is busy making another human being.

  We go to the library and borrow a pile of different books on pregnancy. The books contain glossy pictures of embryos at various stages of development. We try to figure out exactly how old our baby is in weeks, then try to match it with the corresponding picture. It’s astonishing to think that he or she probably already has arms and legs, eyes, a mouth, a nose. A heartbeat.

  Mick thinks that we should find our own apartment and move in together. “This is it,” he says, “I’ve been dreaming about a girl like you my whole life. I don’t need more time, I don’t need to know you better. I just need to be with you.” And when I wonder aloud if it isn’t too big a commitment, if we aren’t rushing things, he laughs and shakes his head. “We’re having a baby, Katherine. There’s no bigger commitment than that. It’s too late to take things slowly now. It’s too late for us to do things the sensible way.” And then he hugs me, kisses me. “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine. Don’t worry.”

  He whispers to me in the middle of the night, “Let’s get married. Down at city hall. Tomorrow.” I laugh and say, “No way, I’m only seventeen, don’t be crazy,” but I’m secretly thrilled at his romantic ideas, that he’s just as in love as I am. That he would even consider marrying me.

  But living together isn’t such an insane idea. In fact, it makes a lot of sense. There’s no way Mick could move into Vivien’s, and his apartment is way too small for three of us. And we could hardly expect his roommate to put up with a baby.

  Early the following morning I wake early, before Mick. I get up and make a pot of tea. I carry the tea and the previous day’s newspaper back to Mick’s room. I get back into bed, open the paper, and start looking through the rentals.

  “This might be cool,” I say, after a while. “One bedroom, new ki
tchen. Not too far from the water. Three-fifty a week.”

  Mick opens his eyes, and smiles slowly as he realizes what I’ve just said.

  “Read it again,” he commands. “Didn’t hear you.”

  “One bedroom, new kitchen,” I say, but almost instantly my enthusiasm is tempered by less pleasant thoughts. “I’m going to have to call my parents. They’re going to want to meet you. We can’t really organize this until I tell them about you. They pay my rent, pay for my car, they give me an allowance, they totally support me.”

  “Of course.” Mick sits up, puts his hand on my cheek. “But we’ll be okay. Even if they don’t want to help us out. We’ll manage somehow. I’ll get a day job.”

  “You won’t have to do that. They’re not like that. They wouldn’t cut me off. They’d do anything for me. But, you know, there is something that they won’t accept. Never. Not in a million years.”

  “What?”

  “Your bike. They’d absolutely drop dead of shock if they had any idea I’d even been on it.”

  “Yeah.” He shrugs. “My parents hate it, too. Dangerous things, bikes.”

  “So why do you ride it? If you think it’s so dangerous?”

  “It’s fun.” He grins. “It’s fast. You can’t spend your life being scared of everything.”

  “I’m not scared of everything,” I snap, suddenly annoyed. “That’s not fair, and anyway, I’ve been on the stupid thing lots of times. And I—”

  “I didn’t say you were scared of everything,” he interrupts. “I wasn’t even talking about you. I meant ‘you’ in the general sense, as in ‘everybody.’” He frowns and his voice is curt, almost unfriendly. “Don’t worry, I was planning to sell the damn thing anyway.”

  “Good. So sell it. We’ve got my car,” I say. Hurt, I’m equally abrupt. “It’s not worth dying for a bit of fun. And what’s the big deal, anyway? You make it sound as if it’s some big sacrifice to get rid of it.”

  “It is a sacrifice. It’s my bike. I love it.”

  I look at him. Incredulous. “You love it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s an inanimate object. You can’t love a thing, a stupid chunk of metal.”