Neil Donovan is (incharge) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-07-25 16:48:00 |
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Entry tags: | norman osborn, white rabbit |
Who: Neil and Ella
What: Tea and advice.
Where: Ella's place.
When: Backdated to while Sam was still in the hospital.
Warnings/Rating: None.
Routine was the mainstay of the little apartment in the stucco-ed block. It wasn’t tall and grand and it wasn’t sleek lines like Summerlin - the Summerlin house was smooth and soft and it had pleased Ella in the simplicity of it, white-and-gold and quiet in the same kind of way that had been home when home was sunshine and white paint.The routine before had been a fast-messy ritual of applying make-up and cooking dinner and the baby on her hip right up until the sitter came and work began and another routine was completed and done. This one, this had been new enough to be still pleasant and old enough now to be up-ended by the move. Ian had called, had said not the house, pleasant-firm and directed her to an elsewhere that was half the other side of town. Ella didn’t like the change and she didn’t like the break in the rhythm but she didn’t say a thing, she just picked out a new bus route and she packed up the diaper bag with enough for a full day, no stash at the new place to keep Bethie going all day.
The little apartment was warm, even as the evening cooled a little of the day’s regular, unremitting heat down to the soft wave of it through the apartment, circulated by ceiling fans. The kitchen was small and it was colorful and the baby was banging a spoon on a pot on the floor, loud and irregular and punctuated by a happy string of babble. The smell in the air was heavy, it was tomato sauce simmered down to jewel-thick darkness, and the television in the living room, just a step beyond the line of tile to worn-thin carpet, buzzed with canned laughter. Ella wasn’t expecting anyone, she was bare feet and a pink dress and her hair knotted on her head, loose tangle of curls as if she were ready to take a shower, as soon as the baby was fed. The knock at the door was jarring, so much normality punched through and her first thought (her only thought) as she answered it was that it was Max.
She was a worried frown above clear blue eyes when she unlatched the chain to open the door, and she stood there in the line of the opening, confused and then pleased. “Hi.”
Neil had only left the hospital to shower and change his clothes, eating only when he remembered that he was hungry, but most of that time was spent in an uncomfortable chair waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Sometimes Louis was there, sometimes he was alone. He couldn’t see Sam, and no one would tell her when he could or when she’d be released, but still he stayed, just in case. What else could he do? Either he waited at home, or he waited there, and at least being at the hospital meant he was close to Sam, and could personally make sure no one suspicious tried to get close to her. He was starting to get a clear picture of just how twisted this Ian guy was, and he wouldn’t put it past him to send someone to try to mess with her even more than he already had. But days passed, days in which he’d still only been able to speak to Sam over the phone or through the journals, and he needed a break. Just a small one, a reprieve from the suffocating worry and concern and ache of not being to help the woman he cared about, maybe even loved. He wanted to see her, but he couldn’t. He wanted to fix the bad things for her, but he couldn’t do that either. Never in his life had he felt as helpless as he had then, and never had he hated it as much.
Aside from family, he didn’t know all that many people in Vegas. Not to the point of unloading any of this on them, at least, and as he tried to think of where he could go before he snapped, one person came to mind. Well, two: Ella and Beth. Babies were incapable of being anything but cheerful, save for when they cried, and Ella was a warm, steadying presence; at least, that was what came to mind when he thought of her. He liked her, though not in the sense that Sam worried he did, and that was enough for him to make up his mind. After telling one of Sam’s doctors to call him if there was any news, any change, anything at all, he washed his face in the bathroom sink and hailed a cab to Ella’s apartment. He didn’t even think of calling ahead, which said a lot about where his head was at, since he wasn’t the spontaneous type, and he didn’t think that she might not want company either. Some people didn’t care much for people they’d met in a dream and who’d temporarily watched their child just showing up on their doorstep out of the blue, but the drive wasn’t long and he was there before he could consider the sort of things normal people would.
His clothes were neat and clean, but he had days’ worth of stubble lining his chin and jaw and his eyes were tired, ringed with dark purple and black from sleepless nights. “Hey,” he greeted, and while his smile was weary it was still genuine. “Sorry to just show up like this, but...” He took a breath that ended up being deeper than expected, before letting it out in a long exhale. “I guess I didn’t know where else to go.”
When Ella thought of debts she thought of bills. She thought of unopened envelopes with ominous red type on their fronts, shoved into the sole kitchen drawer reserved for that purpose and she thought of phone calls from bland-pleasant collections people who appeared to know when money showed up in her bank account. She thought debt when it came to Neil but with none of the anxiety of the drawer and the demands of things she couldn’t pay, and the worry as to who was at her door read as easily on her as if she’d been glass, as did the warm surprise in her eyes as she stood back and let the door swing wide for admittance.
“Come on in, honey,” Beth was clean-smelling and footie-pyjamas on her hip, and Ella’s step back was protective hand on Beth’s back and moving back inside the embrace of the kitchen as thoughtless of the door and its locks and any potential danger in that as it was generous welcome of the man who stood in the door-frame. Neil looked worn, he looked tired, and the soup on the stove was good but you looked like that, like trouble rode you hard and good, and in Ella’s experience, you needed tea. The baby reached for familiar face from her hip, and Ella nudged out a chair and she held out the baby at the same time, “Bethie recognizes you,” and that was a smile as sun-lit as the kitchen was warm, bright pleasure that spelled itself as clearly as cursive.
“You can always come by.” She was bare feet on tile, and critical eye cast over all that exhaustion, “Sit. How do you take your tea, honey?”
His relief was palpable when she invited him in as opposed to sending him away, evident in the way his shoulders relaxed and his tired gaze softened. Despite his reluctance to impose, the warmth beyond the threshold and the sound of the baby’s happy babble was alluring, a welcome change from the sterile strictness of the hospital and the silence that somehow managed to be deafening. “Thanks,” he said, grateful, and stepped inside, sparing a fond smile for the baby balanced on her hip. He hadn’t come for anything specific, and he wasn’t even sure he could find the words to explain if Ella asked him what was wrong. In some way, Neil had hoped that just being in a different environment, calm and uncomplicated, would help. Sam was falling apart, and he had to be strong for her. He was jolted from his thoughts when Beth reached for him in the single-mindedly endearing way that babies did, and he only hesitated for a moment; he couldn’t deny her, he just couldn’t. Even after spending weeks with the baby, he was still cautious as he took her into his arms, cradling her as though she was impossibly delicate and needed to be handled with the utmost care. “I guess I left an impression,” he said, weak humor when Ella said the little girl recognized him, and he smiled down at her, making quiet sounds that didn’t quite translate into words.
“You’re sure I’m not intruding?” It was more of a rhetorical question, though, because he was already sitting down. As for how he took his tea, he gave a sort of half-shrug, not wanting to disturb the baby in his arms. “Just one cream, one sugar, is fine.”
Ella didn’t know a lot about medicine. The General had a ‘if it doesn’t kill you, it toughens you up’ attitude her Momma had carried with her like an ill-fitting dress she was determined to fit on into. But in that small white house, tea had been the panacea for anything that hurt you; when Ella had fallen out of a tree she’d seen Max climb, when her grades had been a smidge too low for the General’s approval and his voice had been like thunderclouds over a telephone, her Momma made tea, sweet enough for your teeth to squeak with it. She watched his shoulders unclench themselves, smooth out to a straight line and Ella’s lips were pursed, a tight little nod of her head as if to say ‘that’s good’ without a word of meaning to it. Men were men, it didn’t matter one bit what you did but they liked things smooth and soft if they could have it. She let Beth slide into his arms, and her smile was melted sugar as he began talking like the two of them were having a conversation in something Beth understood.
“You’re not intruding, honey,” and her fingertips were soft pat at his shoulder, both comfort and a little of stay put. Most of the men who were Anna’s silken command and anonymous hotel rooms, Ella thought, would have done better with a cup of tea and a lapful of baby to cuddle. They didn’t want a damn bit of anything but comfort. The cup she set before him was brightly-painted pottery, the creamy glaze of something handmade and somewhat misshapen but the steeped tea was strong and sweet-smelling, and when she sat in the other chair, it was with small sigh and her feet curled up, cross-legged. She looked like a girl for a minute, not a mother, and then she looked at him with her fingers curled around her own cup, cotton sundress and clear blue eyes and sympathy, and she watched Beth press hands to his face and laugh, baby-joy in doing so.
“You tell me about it while you drink that, honey,” Ella was soft command, and she smiled bold, bright, “Look at the two of you. Anyone would think she’d seen you yesterday.”
Neil wasn’t one to push, not unless the circumstances were extreme and pushing became necessary. Twice was enough for him, so when Ella told him he wasn’t intruding, he took her at her word and left it at that. The fact that he didn’t actually want to leave probably helped. He felt a little guilty that he wasn’t at the hospital, but it wasn’t like he could see her anyway, and besides, he needed to have his head on straight when he did. Backtrack a month or so ago and he wouldn’t have known what the hell to do with a baby in his arms, but the internet and various childcare professionals had made a world of different. He was still no expert, and there was inexperienced caution in the way he held her, the way he cradled her against his chest while he freed one hand to curl around the cup of tea placed before him, but he didn’t look confused or uncomfortable.
He’d always heard about tea being soothing, even though he’d never been a huge tea drinker, but while it was warm and sweet, it was the baby who really managed to instill a sense of calm he hadn’t felt in a while. When Beth pressed her little hands to his face and laughed, it was impossible not to smile, despite everything else going on. “I don’t even know where to start,” he admitted, of what had brought him to her doorstep. He spared another grin for the baby, who gurgled happily up at him, before returning to the topic at hand. “It’s about... a friend of mine. She’s in some trouble and I’m worried about her, but I don’t know how to help.”
There weren’t a whole bunch of people out there in the world whose hands Ella let Beth slide on into like there was nothing to it. Men - night after night, long as she could stand it, paying off the bills in red-stamped envelopes that came one by one until she could make herself a darn blanket from them - had mostly put paid to being real careful about herself. There wasn’t much in Vegas that came for free, but careful got lost along the way. Beth wasn’t much of the same, she was different - she was a babysitter checked out with Max’s precious background check, she was a bounce-chair set up in the kitchen where she worked where Ella herself could watch her, she was Max’s name carefully written in on paperwork Ella kept the way she and Coop by themselves had mostly forgotten. But she slid on into Neil’s hands like she was easy, and Ella didn’t reach and she didn’t fuss. He looked like he knew how, more than she’d done right out and starting, and it was sweet, same way the slack crept back into his shoulders and he got to smiling like he remembered how.
The tea on the table in her own hands was iced, pitcher from the fridge and sweet enough to squeak teeth. Ella sat and she curled her feet beneath her, and she watched like there weren’t often all that many moments in the apartment that were more than the girl and her baby by themselves. “She want help, your friend?” Maybe she didn’t. There were bunches of people out there in the world that wanted it and bunches that didn’t, and it went darn wrong when folks tried helping folks that didn’t want it. Max had tried, people had tried before and it felt like a wet, ill-fitting coat, cloying-tight and uncomfortable, like being jammed into a spot and kept there.
“Maybe she just wants you to be there.” The voice was soft-concern; her mom had liked to help people, had liked to give them things, had gone to church benefits and suppers, given over housekeeping money and pinched a little elsewhere to make it work. There hadn’t been so much helping lately, on Ella’s own part.
The amount of trust it must have taken for Ella to willingly hand over her child, despite the fact that she was still present, wasn’t lost on Neil, but his appreciation for it was drowned out by his concern for Sam and the baby’s warm weight in his arms. “I think she wants help,” he said, thoughtful, because there was no way in hell she wanted to be left on her own in all this. “The problem is, someone’s causing the trouble she’s in. He’s... not a very nice guy, and she was already in a fragile state before he came into the picture. She’s been through a lot, you know? She doesn’t need this, what’s happening now.” Pure and simple, he wanted Ian to just go away, but that probably wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. He might have been angry, but he didn’t think himself capable of killing anyone no matter what the circumstances. Still, he had no problem with turning a blind eye if someone else was capable of it. That was a cold attitude to take, maybe, but he didn’t much care for people who hurt the ones he loved in any form.
He shrugged when she suggested being there might help. “I plan on being there for her, I do, but-- that’s not enough. I want to fix the problem. I want to fix the damage this guy’s done. I just don't know if I can, or how."
The stove bubbled threateningly and the smell of tomatoes and something earthier, herby, roiled through the small kitchen; Ella uncoiled from her chair and she moved - shuffling drawers, the clatter of a lid - as though it were an art, this tiny kitchen with its small worktops, cheap formica and a lot of plastic. She was stood at the counter, stirring when she spoke and she wasn’t thinking of Ian right then, but the kind of men she’d known that weren’t right, in a way that was all danger. She thought of damage, and she thought of the kind you couldn’t repair, the kind that lingered, of church visits and suppers held for women’s shelters.
“How can you?” she said simply, and the microwave beeped; Ella turned with a bottle in her hands, and she looked at Neil as if it were a question. She’d figured he’d learned a little, he liked a little but cuddling Beth warm and sleepy weren’t messy. Bottles were a step up from that. “Most people I know who had problems, they liked to figure themselves out some. Y’all can do what you can but she’s got to be the one fixing damage. It’s hers to fix.”
Ian himself hadn’t yet become an insurmountable problem. Despite how far his reach might extend he was still only a man, and men could be dealt with. Men had weaknesses. Neil could handle a man. Sam’s fragile mental state, however, and her inability to handle Ian and what he’d done was what worried him most. She’d made so much progress, and it all seemed for nothing now that the bastard had gone and dredged up bad memories and old triggers. His brow furrowed without him realizing as he thought about it. At least, though, he could think about it without panicking, which might have had to do with the warmth and the baby in his arms and the good smell in the air-- even Ella herself was calm, not the sort who seemed prone to erraticness or panic.
It sounded so simple when she said it like that, even though the situation wasn’t simple at all. But he didn’t want to go into too much detail, and since he had no idea that Ella even knew who Ian was, much less worked for him, he figured he less specific he became the better. He hesitated for a moment when she looked at him, because holding a baby was one thing, but giving Beth her bottle was another. Still, he’d managed before, and he nodded in response. “What if she can’t fix the damage on her own?” It wasn’t that he didn’t think Sam was strong, because he did. But she’d fallen off the wagon before, and he knew he’d played a part in that; he didn’t want it happening again, if he could do something to stop it.
She waited just a minute until Beth got settled, had wrapped her own hands around the bottle like she was helping him some and she let them get settled, moving around the kitchen the same way she would had Beth still been with the sitter. It gave her time to think, plates rattling and the soup spooned out, thick-creamy and rich and she poured it into cheap plates, the kind all chips and cracked glaze but tasteful. Most things in the small apartment were tasteful, even if they were worn some by other people. She turned, and she set that soup in front of him first with the kind of cloth napkin that had initials on them, and then took her own bowl back to her chair, and sat.
Ella didn’t know much about the man across the table. She knew he liked Beth plenty (which was all she needed to know to like him) and she knew he was kind, in the way people with too much could be, the way that was all heart and the pocketbook to help. She looked at the worried crease in his forehead and she figured maybe that heart had someone in it who lived there. There wasn’t a whole heap of ‘help’ Ella had seen herself since she’d been young enough to make a decision about a clinic and going or not going.But she’d listened, when men were good and sleepy, when they were mellow and they talked like they were talking to someone they’d never see again. She’d heard about all kinds of people’s troubles, and she smiled just a little, sad.
“You know how to fix the kind of damage she has?” She sipped at the soup, and she watched Beth, eyes soft. “If you don’t, you help her find out how.”
Neil abandoned his half-finished tea in favor of focusing on Beth and her bottle, although it seemed like the baby was so used to this ritual that getting her settled really wasn’t much trouble at all. It was such a simple, quiet thing, but he hadn’t had simple and quiet in a while, and it was a nice change. Ella’s apartment was nothing like the hospital, no sterile whiteness or beep-beep-beep of machines; the smell was good and warm and homey, and not even Aria was like that. He wasn’t particularly hungry despite not having eaten properly in a while, but like with the tea he didn’t refuse, didn’t even think about it. He smiled with a quiet thanks before reaching for the spoon, managing to keep the baby balanced in his arms without disturbing the bottle in her mouth.
When she asked if he knew how to fix Sam’s kind of damage, he shook his head. He had no experience with this kind of thing, no knowledge or understanding of psychiatry or psychology or whatever it was that could help her. “So just be there for her, you mean,” he said thoughtfully. “Help by supporting her.”
Ella nodded and the warm steam from the stove had curled the hair around her face into dandelion-pale wisps that bounced with the movement. She didn’t think ‘trouble’ meant the kind of trouble that was bills in a drawer or a credit-card to cut in half - he looked worn-through, like cotton faded out to nothing. She watched him pick up that spoon and she nodded once again, lips pursed like it was medicine, when he ate and she was feet tucked underneath her and eyes very careful and very clear on Neil. “Honey, we both know you got more money than God,” she said candidly, and there was nothing there but naked honesty and the knowledge of what an Aria room looked like on the inside, wealth smoothing over rough edges, making life easier to live. He made her think, for a moment, of the Artist bundled up in his dirty, spacious suite, and she eyed the tired man across the table like he was the opposite end of a pack of cards. “You might not know how to help. But you can make the help happen.”
She watched the milk in the bottle slide down to nothing, she watched Beth’s eyes sag closed until the baby would be dead-weight, milky-warm and heavy. She watched it and she made no move to pick her up, because wasn’t that just the best thing, the slow tick of Beth’s heartbeat and the little sigh of her breath, like knowing you were alive. “Need to get rid of her gas, honey,” she said softly, “Or she’ll be real uncomfy later.” A smile, to soften advice. “Be supportive. But it don’t seem like you’d have a problem with that.”
If only Sam’s trouble were the financial sort, which could easily be dealt with. That was simple. Problems that could disappear if enough money was thrown its way were his specialty, after all, but he’d come to rely on his finances a little too much lately. He wasn’t fully aware of the way Ella was watching him, as though making sure he ate, but when he looked up from Beth’s face and met her gaze he smiled, appreciative and grateful. “I know,” he agreed, when she said he had more money than God. He could appreciate her blunt honesty, and he wasn’t going to deny the truth. “I’m trying to help that way. Financially, I mean. I’m paying for doctors and therapy, and making sure she has a safe place to stay. I just don’t feel like it’s enough. Money can buy a hell of a lot, but it can’t buy everything,” he shrugged.
He settled back against the chair as the baby’s weight became warmer, more solid against him, and he swallowed another spoonful of soup like he was content with just being there. Oh, his problems still existed, but they were beyond this place, and they could wait a little while. He blinked when she advised him to get rid of Beth’s gas, and his surprise turned into a sheepish little smile as he shifted the baby so she rested against him, chin on his shoulder, and he patted her back gently. “You’d be surprised,” he said dryly. “I’m not always very good at supportive. I try, but it used to backfire on me a lot.”
Doctors and therapy and all that made her think of antiseptic and tile floors, of bathrooms to be sick in, neat little private rooms they gave out once you were dying, of cheerful-smiling types in scrubs who looked at you like those smiles would melt in the rain when you weren’t looking close. Ella knew problems money couldn’t solve and she smiled around the knot in her throat, careful. “Y’all can pay for the best help that’s buyable. Sometimes just a darn hug helps,” she said and she thought instead of the waffle-weave on the blankets and of a hand gone slack before he’d even gone. She looked at him, shrugging off finances like he’d buy his friend the world if he could and it made her wonder, just a little bit, whether the ‘friend’ was just a friend. He was a nice enough sort of man, the kind her mother called ‘generous’ in a way that had nothing to do with a pocket-book. It made sense and she watched him lift Beth to his shoulder, gentle as a cat with a kitten.
“Looks like you learned your lesson, honey,” because Ella couldn’t see a darn difference between the man in the chair who looked like he was going to tear to shreds over this ‘friend’ and ‘supportive’. She watched Beth’s hands go wide, fingers starfish-spread like she was sliding on into sleep, and she smiled. “You want both hands to eat that soup of yours, you let me know. But there’s something about holding her,” she wrapped both arms around her own middle, squeezed tight, voice and eyes gone dreamy, “Like long as you keep her safe, nothing can go wrong.”
It wasn’t a stretch to say that Neil had led a rather sheltered life, and it hadn’t been until recently that he’d actually encountered a problem money couldn’t solve. He probably would have kept his mouth shut if he’d known that his talk of hospitals and doctors had dredged up old, probably sore memories for Ella, but he didn’t, and he’d never quite been the most observant person. Hugs couldn’t do much good when he barely even saw Sam, much less knew if she’d even let her near him when he did, but he didn’t mention either of those things. “You think?” He was thoughtful, maybe a little skeptical, but willing to believe that maybe the little things mattered. “I guess paying for the best damn help I can get makes me feel more useful,” he added with a shrug, careful not to displace the baby in the process.
As for learning his lesson, he wasn’t so sure about that. He still felt like he wasn’t doing enough these days, but he was trying, really trying, and he hadn’t touched a drop of liquor in months despite being sorely tempted to do so. “I hope so,” he said, and smiled as she described what it was like to hold the little girl. The soup was good, but he wasn’t all that eager to lose the comforting warmth just yet; a little while longer, he told himself, and then he’d head back to the hospital. “When I was a kid, I wasn’t really allowed to hold my younger siblings. We had nannies, you know, since my parents weren’t very involved. I’d watch, but that’s about it.” The soothing motion of his hand on her back slowed, and his voice turned thoughtful. “Before, I wouldn’t have known what you meant. But I think I sort of do, now. She’s lucky to have you, you know. You’re a great mother.” He might not have had a lot of experience with good mothers, but he knew a thing or two about distant ones, and Ella was anything but.
She laughed at that, soft and a little sad, like she’d heard nothing funnier that wasn’t a joke, a little ripple of sound that didn’t disturb the baby snoozing in his arms. “There’s whole ways I could be better at it, honey, but I love her if that’s what you mean,” and she didn’t think much of being prevented from holding siblings, and she didn’t think much of parents that didn’t want to hold their children, to breathe in dirt and sugar and the warm-sweet smell of children being children. Beth was small enough to be no trouble at all, save a couple howls come nightfall and she wasn’t big enough yet to mind memories and regret come late at night, damp-headed tears and the rocking chair’s rhythmic back-and-forth. She thought a lot of the man folded down into a chair at the end of her table, cradled a baby like he knew what he was doing, and for a minute she liked it fine and then she wondered what it was Coop would have looked like, awkward or comfortable like he’d been born with his daughter in his arms and Ella tucked her sorrow into the side of her cheek and bit down on it like a bad taste.
“I think everyone likes to be held,” she said, and she stood up from the chair because if she didn’t, she felt like it would bust her open, “Especially when the world’s doing its best to drag ‘em down. And you can’t buy that,” the water streamed from the faucet, Ella looked over her shoulder at innocence in arms, “Or you can. But it don’t mean the same thing.” She figured his friend could borrow a little of that strength, the one he loved - money enough to buy the world to make her safe, and she thought that was fine, she thought that was storybooks and fairy-tales, even Sleeping Beauty had to wake up sometime.
“You need to feel useful?” He looked like maybe being useful stretched him out and wore him thin, Ella judged the level of his soup bowl, and the set of his shoulders and thought a little bit of calm might be more useful right then than any action on his part. “You love her, huh?” Her voice was warm, her back was turned.
“Loving her counts for a lot,” Neil said, and he repeated the words back to himself within his mind as he looked down at the baby. “It’s one of the most important things, I think.” All the money and privileges and material things, they couldn’t replace love. He and his siblings had learned that lesson well. In his eyes, Ella was a fine mother, and that almost-sad had him looking up at her as she stood, head tilted slightly to the side and something like confusion around his eyes. He wasn’t the sort to push or prod, though, however curious he might be. People were always more complicated than they seemed, intricate webs beneath the surface that were parts of a whole. “No, you’re right,” he agreed. “You can’t buy it, and if you do, it’s not the same.” That was what he had trouble with, separating himself from what he possessed and using what he was to make things better. If only he could feel like just being there for Sam was enough.
He paused. Did he need to feel useful, or want to? Maybe both. “I guess, yeah. I want to. I need to.” For Sam’s sake more than his own. The use of the word lovewas unexpected, and his head jerked up sharply. “Love who?”
Love didn’t pay bills. There’d been scorn, first time she’d seen her sister in five years, like she was looking at someone who’d slid right on down to the bottom and there hadn’t been room for the bottom, growing up. Love didn’t keep the electricity on and the rent paid and love had been just fine when it had been her and Coop, giggling in the dark beneath a blanket, breath coming in gusts in New York easing into winter, but love didn’t do a thing for a baby except wrap her up tight in arms instead of clothes that fit and shoes and diapers. Ella smiled into the sink, smiled like her momma had always told her, smile when you felt like shouting or crying or maybe both, and she scrubbed at the pot in her hands.
But Neil, she figured, was the kind of guy who had enough money that he didn’t need to think about it, love couldn’t be bought in a store. She wondered a little, all head-tilted to the side as she thought it on over, the sound of his voice, if he’d been the kind who’d grown up with parents who got down on the floor and tussled or kissed away the bad dreams, or nothing at all. Most men who dialed out, looked for warmth and anonymity, looked for a kiss on the forehead like a mother and a woman to writhe like she meant it like a lover, didn’t seem to know what it was like, how it was different, when it was real.
She turned, damp hands, and calm as calm, as if it were perfectly damn usual to talk it over at her kitchen table. “Your friend. The one you want to help. You love her, right?” She’d be lucky, whoever she was, Ella figured. Neil seemed like the type, when he loved someone, to love them whole. Cracks and all.
Growing up with money meant that finances had never been a problem. It meant that he’d never gone without anything, and it meant that he’d ended up more than a little stupid when it came to reality. In his mind, love was the most important thing, but that was because Neil had never known what it was like to struggle just to make ends meet. Even with Sam, who’d been raised with nothing, he forgot sometimes. He didn’t always think when he was supposed to, but his ignorance was never intentional.
His friend. Right. Did he love her? He knew the answer to that, even if he’d never actually said it aloud. But Ella didn’t know who ‘she’ was. She didn’t know Sam. Confessing the truth here couldn’t hurt. “Yeah,” he admitted. “I do. For some reason, though, I seem to be having a really hard time telling her that.”
She was damp hands wiped on the edge of her skirt like it didn’t much matter if it rumpled or got water-stained; it was mostly stained already, baby-food and the soft-pale tide-marks of bleach in places and a frown that pulled itself together even if Ella didn’t look like she frowned all that often. It seemed real simple to her; you opened up your mouth and you said something, words in a line that sparkled like jewels in a fancy store. Wrinkled nose and a look of not understanding one bit, “You say ‘I love you’, honey. Don’t she know it yet?” Neil was the kind of man, tall and dark and a smile like he was a little boy trapped inside that looked like plenty of women would fall head over heels. But maybe he had problems; Ella eyed him doubtfully, there with the baby in his arms.
“You get to saying it quicker, you’ll have one soon enough,” and there was a laugh tucked in the back of it, like maybe it wasn’t the best thing to have ‘I love you’ come right before you were sleepless nights and feeling like the world was too damn big for anything so small. “Does she like babies, your girl?”
He didn’t mean to laugh. It wasn’t intentional, really, and he wasn’t laughing at her. She just said it so matter-of-factly, like even a child could grasp the concept, and her confused expression made him wonder why he found those three words so difficult to say. Neil laughed in a sheepish sort of way, and he shrugged one shoulder. “It sounds really easy when you say it like that,” he said, and his expression turned guilty when she asked if Sam knew he loved her yet. “No,” he admitted. “She knows I care about her. At least, I think she does. But she doesn’t know how much, not yet.” It probably didn’t help that a large part of him doubted she would believe him even if he did tell her.
Saying I love you was one thing, but having a child of his own was something else entirely. His eyebrows shot up and his eyes went wide, and he couldn’t manage to wrap his mind around the concept. “No, I don’t think... I don’t think she wants kids. Not right now. Not for a while.”
He laughed, and Ella grinned; the sound of it was louder than just one girl and a baby, even when Beth shrieked enough to pitch a fit. It was fuller, somehow, lower. Warm. It was pleasant and she liked it, even if he sat there with exhaustion easing its handprints all over his face and he laughed like maybe he hadn’t meant to. One corner of her mouth pulled upward, a lopsided stitch of a smile until she saw all that consternation write itself out along with the laughter and then Ella laughed too, bright nothing rather than mischief. “They don’t ask first,” she said, and her voice wasn’t wistful, not really but a note of something crept on in. If she’d had her way (hers, negotiated out over the tiny coffee table with her feet in Coop’s lap and his hands in her hair) the babies would have come on after they’d had money enough to plaster over where the damp had been. But babies came when you practiced good and hard enough; Ella’s grin needled its way back in, they’d practiced plenty.
His girl might not want ‘em, but Neil had a look to him handling Beth that said he was fine with the idea. “She don’t? Or you both don’t? Because it’s hard to bargain over that kind of thing,” she said, and she sat once again with the dishcloth in her lap and she didn’t reach for Beth but she looked at her. “And if she don’t know you love her, why don’t you tell her? Straight out. It’s easy, honey. We learn the words when we’re real young.” Her smile caught at the corners of her eyes, all smooth skin there that hadn’t begun on wrinkling.
Laughter wasn’t a surefire fix, but it was better than the alternative and Neil found he liked the sound. He grinned sheepishly, because yeah, babies didn’t exactly ask permission, but he and Sam had always been careful (at least, he was pretty sure they had been) and he was pretty sure getting pregnant would just mess her up worse than she already was. “True, but I don’t think a baby would be good for either of us right now,” he admitted. “A kid needs parents who want to be parents, for starters.” Not that he never wanted kids, but right then the timing was downright horrible. And Sam, well, he wasn’t sure she did want kids, but with everything else on their plates it wasn’t something he even considered discussing.
“I don’t know,” he said, coupled with another half shrug. “About her, I mean. I think I’d like kids someday. Maybe I’m just assuming she doesn’t want them. We’ve never talked about it.” If she didn’t want kids and he did, that was just another wedge between them, which they didn’t need in the slightest. He didn’t know how to explain that I love you was more than just words, because it sounded dumb when he put it like that. But Chloe was the last woman he’d said them to, and look how that had turned out. “It’s easy in theory. I just... they mean a lot, those words, and honestly? I’m not sure she’d believe me even if I did tell her.” Which was the truth. Sam never seemed to believe anything else he told her, so why would she believe that?
All the talk of babies and Ella reached for hers, the ease of picking up a sleeping heavy weight in the swing of hands and cuddling close. She was small-framed; with Beth snuggled up close, she didn’t look halfway to old enough for kids. “Honey, you love her, you want to talk about those kinds of things,” and she was blunt honesty in soft-sweet words, smoothing a hand over Beth’s hair. There was heartache, lined up around the corner for people who wanted ‘em or didn’t want ‘em and fell head over heels for someone who felt real strongly and real differently about the whole mess. Neil had looked comfortable, too comfortable with Beth sprawled out in his arms to only think he’d like them someday, but maybe the girl, his girl, felt true and strong and different.
She looked up, and she caught the stray strands of hair behind her ear, a quick-sharp little movement that caught her behind them. Love was a word tossed around like it was full of air, Ella knew, but the man in the chair with his knees crammed under the scarred kitchen table didn’t seem like he was much the type to go on throwing it around and it smashing like blown glass. Her brow furrowed; Ella was nothing hidden, everything out up front. “Why wouldn’t she believe you? Don’t she want to? A girl in love wants to hear she’s loved right back,” and she knew, oh she knew. She’d been the kind of shy that didn’t say much, just listened, sidling close enough to hear maybe that. There wasn’t much call for thinking about it, thrilling to it, but Ella remembered how it felt.
“Or don’t she love you?” That seemed the simplest explanation, even if it wasn’t the kindest.
Babies were somewhere far, far down the road, when Sam didn’t move in and out of his suite every other week, when he could stop pushing her into halfway houses and mental institutions, when she actually believed that he loved her in she same way she loved him. To reach that point, Neil needed to actually tell her he loved her, and so he thought talking about having kids would be getting way too ahead of himself. “Not right now,” he sighed, shaking his head and watching the way Ella held her child, trying to imagine Sam doing the same, someday. “Babies are complicated, and we have enough complicated right now without having the baby talk. It’s just... trust me, it’s not the right time.” For starters, neither of them were even remotely capable of raising a child at present; they could barely take care of themselves, much less another tiny human being.
He began to attempt to formulate a response as to why Sam wouldn’t believe him, but stopped short when she suggested that she might not love him. “No, she does, I think,” he said. He’d been drunk out of his mind when she’d said I love you, but he was pretty sure he remembered things accurately enough to remember that she’d said those three little words. “I’ve just never been very good with... feelings, and I’m afraid she’ll think I’m just saying I love her because she said it, or because I’m trying to fix things by telling her what she wants to hear,” he explained. “I just don’t want her thinking I’m saying ‘I love you’ for any reason other than because I mean it.”
She looked at him, this big, broad man who had held a baby like she was something fragile as spun sugar, like she was someone he’d learned to know, and Ella thought maybe ‘not very good with feelings’ made sense just then. She’d met them, men who wore heavy cufflinks at their wrists, who undid watches like they’d shrugged off their wealth, who spoke as little as possible in empty hotel rooms and who didn’t say a word, left her on her own with the little bottles of things that smelled like expensive perfume counters in the kind of department store she walked through sometimes, just because. They didn’t know how to say, and they didn’t know how to feel and maybe this one, Neil with his hands slack at her table, maybe he wasn’t cufflinks and a wallet on the nightstand but she could believe a little of it, of him.
“I don’t mean y’all talk about settling down,” she said above the soft, baby-powder and warm milk smell of Beth gone heavily to sleep, “I’m saying, sometime you want to try talking over the future. Sometimes it comes before you’ve given it any thought at all.” Her smile was Chinese takeout on empty hardwood floors, bare feet warm in her lap, it was night stars blotted by clotting cloud and the hiss of machines, plastic breathing. “But if she don’t know you love her,” a small shrug; Ella had heard ‘I love you’ enough times like pennies in the pocket, had heard it without breath enough to say it, her hand cold-gripping another. “Honey, you tell her every day until she believes it. You tell her when she wakes up in the morning, and y’all tell her at night. You tell her until she sees the truth in it, y’all don’t wait until she sees the truth first, because sometimes, she don’t wait.”
She wanted tea then, she wanted her hands secure around solid pottery and warmth, regardless of the press of humidity along the cotton enclosure of her spine. She wanted Coop bad enough to blink at, and she smiled instead, blindly at the crack in the table, the one that was calling some guy up on Craigslist to move her furniture for her. “You tell her every day,” even-voiced as choral music, sweet as snow. “And then y’all tell her again. Until there’s no opportunity to mean anything by it except it all by itself.”
There weren’t a lot of people Neil actually listened to. Most of the time, he heard what people had to say but it all became white noise because he didn’t want to absorb it in any real way. But Ella was different. Ella was wise. Maybe she didn’t have a million-dollar education or a bunch of fancy degrees framed and hung on the walls, but she spoke like she knew what she was talking about and that was a rare thing. A lot of people talked just to hear the sound of their own voice, to sound good, but not her. “Talking about the future might be good,” he said, thoughtful. “Sometimes I don’t think she believes we have one.” They didn’t have to get into an in-depth discussion about marriage and babies and growing old together, but maybe some mention of months in the future wouldn’t be so bad, some scrap of evidence that he wanted to be with her beyond the here and now. Of course, telling her he loved her might help in that regard. He leaned back in his chair, and he smiled, for no real reason other than the way she talked and the thought of actually telling Sam how he felt, and actually having her believe him. He had to say it once, of course, but once he got over that first hill, maybe saying it again wouldn’t be so bad. “So, just keep telling her until she believes me?” It sounded so simple, but nothing else had worked, and how much worse could be make things?
Normally, he wasn’t optimistic. He didn’t think or expect good things to happen. But somehow, Ella had convinced him that he had something akin to a chance. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll tell her.” He didn’t know when, or how, but now he had the actual intention to do it.
Her smile bloomed like summer flowers; Ella wasn’t professor-smart and she had nothing from the bank but red lines and warning letter but Neil listened like he thought she had something worth hearing and it had been a while, near on a year, since anyone had listened without paying. “Y’all just tell her until she knows it when she wakes up,” she said, above the sleeping baby’s head, “And last thing before she sleeps. Not like you have to,” she thought of Coop, of fall leaves gathered in both hands, held out with the seriousness of a present, she thought of cold lips on the back of her neck and warm feet tangled up in hers, “Like y’all want to.”
She thought maybe Neil would make it. Maybe his girl would believe him, and maybe they’d live like a story, happy ever after in their fancy hotel suite. He looked, just then, like the threads that tied him tight had been cut or let slack, and she smiled because she could and because he looked less like he was tired and crumpled and worn out and more like the man she was beginning to know. “Y’all probably should go. I better put her down, or she’ll not sleep the night through.”
That, right there, was the key. Not like he had to, but like he wanted to. That was the problem he had with Sam; she always thought he did things, or said them, out of obligation. Neil had to make her see, somehow, that wasn’t the case at all. “Yeah. You’re right,” he said, and he smiled, grateful. No one else really talked to him like this; they lectured or scolded or insulted. The hotel had veered their lives into each other, causing them to cross paths, and just then he was really glad it had. He didn’t have many friends, and he liked Ella.
He nodded when she said he should go, not taking offense in the slightest. “Okay,” he said, rising from his chair and setting down his now-finished mug of tea, trying to be as quiet as possible. He paused, halfway turned towards the door. “Thanks for this, Ella.” The gratitude was honest, and he smiled again, both for her and the sleeping baby, before letting himself out.