The Best Thing (17 page)

‘But now’s okay?’ he says carefully.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘How do we seem now, to you? Are we, like, “compatible” now?’ He moves his face in close to mine.

‘Oh, yes. Now we are.’

Pause. Breathing.

‘Reckon you’d better stay here, then. Where you know what’s what, eh.’

Finally I look him in the eye. I
don’t
know what’s what. I don’t. The path forks right here and now in front of me—
tell him now
or
keep on lying.
I stare for a long time down both paths, but both lead straight into the identical dark forest. Bugger it.

He kisses my forehead. ‘What’s goin’ on in there?’

‘Too much,’ I say. ‘Too much.’

‘Looks like it.’ He watches. He waits. A long time. Then he says, ‘You look all different,’ touching my face.

‘Different how? Don’t tell me. Fatter.’

‘No, not
fat
! It’s … you don’t look like you’ll blow away in the wind any more, like you did.’

‘That’s because there’s someone else holding me down.’ He doesn’t understand. ‘There’s actually not more of
me,
there’s more of someone else.’

He takes his hand away. Utter confusion. ‘You said there
wasn’t
someone else—’

‘Not someone else like
that,
you
dope.
Someone else like—’
I try to catch his hand but he pulls it away, aghast at me. ‘Like—’ I get hold of it and push it under the blanket, down to my new solid, anchoring, slightly curved belly, hold it there until he stops resisting. ‘Someone else like that.’

‘Like what?’ The baby is swirling against the back of his hand. Can’t he feel it? I’m so glad. So terrified. Glad, terrified, glad …

‘Like that. Inside me.’ I can’t make it any clearer.

Time stops. The baby swirls and swirls. Pug turns his hand over. His eyes never leave my face.

‘From … us?’ A voice
can
tremble, saying two short syllables.

‘Yes.’

His other hand is behind my head, gripping my hair hard. ‘Mel. You know me; I’ll believe anything you fuckin’ say. Don’t say yes if it’s not yes, okay? Tell me straight.’

‘It’s yes,’ I say, looking straight at him. ‘There hasn’t been anyone else. It
can’t be
anyone else’s but yours.’

I see him decide to believe me, the fear easing off his face. Pause. He gives a mad chuckle. Pause. ‘You’re blowin’ my mind here, girl. Dead set?’ He stares. ‘It must be—to be moving—’

‘Beginning of November.’

‘Fu-uckin’ hell. Beginning of November. Fu-uck.’ His voice drops to a whisper and he listens to the baby under his hand. ‘Aw, man! You feel that?’

I nod and grin. ‘Somersaults.’

He pulls me to him, his face ageing ten years. ‘How long’ve you been feeling it?’

‘A couple of weeks, maybe.’ I try to make it sound like nothing. Fat chance. ‘Oh God, don’t look at me like that.’

‘If I hadn’t seen you today, but.’

‘But you did!’

‘I still wouldn’t know!’

‘But you do! You
do
know. You
do
know.’

‘Would you’ve gone through the whole thing not sayin’?’

‘I don’t know!’ That’s one thing I can say with complete sincerity. ‘I really,
really
don’t know.’

We stare at each other, all shaken up.

‘Ah, mate.’ He scoops me up, pulls me on top of him, hangs onto me. I drop my head beside his and two tears roll up into my eyebrows. ‘With any other girl this’d be a fuckin’
disaster,
you know?’

‘You mean to say it’s not?’ I have to laugh a little.

‘It’s great. It’s
great.
You’ll never get rid of me now. A kid’s gotta have a father, right?’

‘Hmm, I
guess.
I guess it doesn’t
hurt
to have a father … well, it
can
hurt, but it doesn’t necessarily
have
to.’

‘I thought you were gone,’ he says into my ear. ‘I thought you’d never see me again, the way things were goin’. Now I find out I’ve gotta stick around you for another—what? Sixteen, eighteen years? Shit, eh?’ I can hear him grinning.

‘A life sentence, pretty well.’

‘Yeah,’ he says wonderingly.

Harding might also have disposed of Giovannini more quickly, having decked him in the 3rd round with a crushing right hook and punished him remorselessly with hooks and uppercuts from then onwards, losing only the 7th round in addition to the first … Giovannini sprang out for the 11th round in search of a knockout. For 50 seconds, the two boxers slugged at each other like a couple of street fighters. Then Harding connected with a telling left hook and Giovannini slowed. Another left and his knees buckled. Still another and, mouthguard protruding, he was destined for the canvas. Harding gave him one more to ensure he wouldn’t get lost on the way.

It gets dark early, these nights. King Street is cold, and sweet with petrol fumes. I ring Mum from the phone box by the post office.

‘Oh, hullo. Where are you?’

‘With Dino. I’ve been breaking the news.’ He’s here with me; I’m wearing him like a cloak.

‘Oh, yes? How did he take it?’

‘Pretty well, pretty well. He’s quite happy about it, actually.’

‘Now who would’ve suspected that?’ she says drily.

‘Oh, shut up, Mum. Anyway, I’m just ringing to tell you I’ll probably spend the night over here.’

‘Yeah, well, I guess you two have got a lot to, um, talk about, hey?’ She didn’t even miss a beat!

‘Yes, we have. Lots.’

‘Is the boy there with you? I’d like a word with him if that’s okay with you.’

‘She wants to talk to
you
! I hiss at Pug.

‘Shit. Hullo? Yeah, hi. Yeah … I’m pretty rapt, yeah … Well, thanks, I guess … yeah … geez, you don’t have to say that … oh, that’s nothin’. You should meet
my
folks … yeah … that’s okay … that’s okay … right, yeah. Bye.’

He hangs up. ‘What’ll we get for tea, then? What d’you feel like eatin’?’ He pulls me out of the phone box.

‘What was all that about? With Mum?’

‘Ah, she just wanted to say sorry for not being able to tell me about … about you and the baby, when I went around your place that night.’

‘Yeah. She wasn’t going to make it easy for me like that, she said.’

‘Fair enough. I’m glad you told me in the end. I mean, I’m glad just to
know,
but I’m glad
you
told me.’

I’m not used to seeing Pug at this hour. I’m not used to having the whole night ahead of us. I’m not used to being pregnant
to
someone, linked to them, having them know, walking along beside them in the knowledge, their arm around me. Every now and again my lungs give a little gasp of straight untainted happiness.

The shop-lights spill gold across the pavement. Around us wanders a zoo of people, all colours, styles, countries, sexual persuasions, states of health. Down to the last scabbed staggering derro, down to the last sneering dreadlocked neo-hippy, down to the last grubby white pseudo-waif measuring out her life with cigarettes, I love youse all.

I’m looking normal. Everyone thinks I should
be very tall, with big muscles. I’m not.
Everything is inside me.

Kostya Tszyu

The night is fantastically long. Pug’s room is quite different by night. The mess disappears and becomes shadows, draped and piled. The window enlarges and fills with frangipani fingers lit up by the street lamp. I notice the trains more, individual car engines along Erskineville Road. Every night is like this for Pug.

He turns over to find me awake, lies there watching me.

‘Still can’t believe it,’ he says for the umpteenth time.

‘Wait till it comes out,’ I say. ‘Then you’ll believe it all right.’

He sits up, gropes at the foot of the bed, pulls a T-shirt on. ‘You scared?’ He lies down again, puts his hand on my belly.

‘Yeah, I’m scared. You ever see that movie
Alien,
where the baby alien comes out of the guy?’

He laughs. ‘That’s a movie, but. That’s an alien. We’re talkin’ a real baby here.’

‘But that idea of being busted open. And maybe its head getting stuck, you know, for
hours and hours
—’

‘Nah, they’ll get it out some other way if you get in trouble. Don’t panic. Kids are born every day.’

‘It’s all right for
you.
It won’t be happening to you.’

‘I’ll be there, won’t I?’

‘Will you? You won’t be up the pub with Ed?’

He huffs. ‘You really think I’d
do
that, go off drinking while my … my daughter or my son was being born?’

‘I don’t know you that well. I don’t know what you’d do.’

‘Well, not
that.
Jesus!’ Stubble glitters along the edge of his jaw.

‘So it’s a daughter you want? You said daughter first.’

‘We-ell.’ He rolls onto his back. ‘Better that it takes after you, I think.’

‘A girl won’t necessarily take after me, you know.’

‘God, I hope so. Aren’t many openings for women boxers.’

‘Oh, like there are
heaps
for high-school dropouts?’

Pug laughs. ‘It’s not like you’re going to be a dropout
forever.
No reason why you had to drop out in the first place, except the shit you were copping from other kids.’

‘That’s a pretty big “except”, if you ask me.’

‘Yeah, but there’s other schools, or you can do, you know, a year at TAFE or whatever. That gets you into their courses. I know blokes who done that.’

‘Hmm.’

‘What I mean is, when you have the baby, that’s not the end of your
career
or anythink. Plenty of women have careers and kids.’

‘And nervous breakdowns.’

‘And shitheads of husbands that don’t give them any help. You’ve got me. What else have I got to do during the day but push a pram round Newtown while you study?’

‘Oh, Pug, are you a saint or are you a saint? You’d go nuts.’ I sit up, laughing.

‘No more nuts than I go now. I’m serious! What’s so funny?’

‘You would do that? Would you want to, after the first fifty times?’

‘Well, would
you
want to? Man, I don’t know. Ask me then, see how I feel. All I’m saying is, it’d be a waste not to do something, for a person so brainy.’

For the God-knows-how-manyeth time the future picks itself up, rearranges itself and settles back down. I’m staring out at the fat tree-fingers while this happens, when Pug gets up, crouches in front of me.

‘Geez, I missed you,’ he says. ‘I didn’t know what the fuck I’d done, where you were, anything. I thought I was better just waiting, not hassling you, and then I couldn’t hack it any more. I couldn’t hack not knowing, you know? I thought, “Even if she doesn’t want me any more, I have to
hear her say it.”
So I come round your place. I knew you’d be pissed off at me, but I reckoned that was better than just sitting round hoping.’

The sheets are a war-zone, crumpled, smashed. My heart is wedged in my throat.

‘Your mum was great. She’s really smart. She was so much like you, too; it was funny, I kept wanting to point it out to her. “Oh, you do that thing with your eyebrows, just like Mel.” She was really kind, but. I mean, I felt like an idiot, you not even being there, but she just said, “Come in, I been wanting to meet you”, gave me a cup of tea and stuff. She’s real easy to talk to; I just ran off at the mouth. It was shockin’.’ He’s kneeling in front of me, leaning forward, laughing. ‘Man, I was sitting there, in this great house, feelin’ like, “Jesus, no wonder she doesn’t want me, living here, having someone like this to talk to—’”

‘You’re making me feel
terrible,
Pug—’

‘No, no! This’s all—because of today. You know? It all cancels out.’ He sits closer, puts his legs around me, leans to one side so the window-light shows him my face. ‘That’s what I’m saying. She’s telling me, “Well, you know, Mel’s pretty stubborn, but I’ll have a word with her,” and I’m like, “What’s the point?! I’ll just go and lie down on the bloody train tracks,” and—’

‘Pug!’

‘—and I see you on the street and … and everything just … comes right! But, God, for a while there—’ His arms are around me, his voice muffled in my shoulder.

I can’t speak. Maybe if I hold onto him hard enough he’ll feel how sorry I am.

‘It was bad, mate. I never felt that bad before. In my
life
.’

My muscles are wires under his weight. The baby comes to a
rolling boil. Out beyond the tree, a few pinprick stars tremble in the smog.

Waking up next to Pug. The morning light lies weak and cold on the shambles. I try to imagine how the room would look, cleaned up and with a little cot in the corner, but the mould defeats me, creeping greeny black up the wall beside the dead fireplace. If we
used
the fireplace, maybe the mould would go. But then, the chimney’s probably blocked with birds’ nests, and the whole house’d go up in flames. And I don’t want to live here, in a house full of slobby
boys.

I turn over. The sky outside is bright grey. It’s the first day of winter, I remember. The first day of winter, and the baby will come mid-spring. It’s not long, and it’s forever; I lie watching the shrink and stretch of time.

Pug draws a deep breath, opens his eyes. ‘Hey.’ He puts a hot arm over me and works himself closer. ‘Definitely we should live together,’ he says. ‘This is too good.’ He dozes off again, breathing next to my ear.

It is good, I have to admit.

When he gets up for training I dress too. ‘I’ve got to go home and get changed. Have a shower. My hair’s disgusting.’ In fact, I can’t stand the idea of waiting here for him, or going along to training. Everything’s too raw and real this morning.

‘Can I come and see you, after?’ he says. ‘Like, can we spend a
day
together? That’d be cool, eh.’

Sitting on the bed, I pull on my socks and boots. ‘Yeah. Okay.’ The smile I give him seems to take a lot of energy.

‘We don’t have to,’ he says gently. ‘I don’t want you getting sick of me or anything.’ I put out my hand, and he pulls me to my feet. ‘Like, if you wanna sleep or something. You still look tired.’