Chapter Eleven
Saturday 1st February
When Jess rang, I told Mum it was Luke on the phone, something about Stadium, and I needed to borrow her car. I got in the car and drove around a bit. I just knew I couldn’t face Jess yet but didn’t want to be at home. I really couldn’t figure out what to do. I didn’t to go to Luke’s place either, so I ended up at old Collins’s house. I knocked on his door.
“Isaac? To what do I owe this pleasure?” Collins looked surprised. It was the end of January, and I hadn’t been to see him since Christmas. Even then, I didn’t turn up uninvited.
I shrugged and didn’t say anything. I couldn’t figure out why I was there. There was no way I was going to be writing lyrics after that phone call.
“Do you want to come in?” asked Collins.
I nodded. We went into his kitchen, and I slumped on a chair.
Collins picked up a tea towel and started drying the dishes. He was in his old man pants and the tweed jacket with corduroy patches on the elbows.
“Is there something I can help with, Isaac?” he asked after a while. I stuck my elbows on the table, rubbed my forehead with both hands, and tried to unfreeze my brain. “Has something happened?” Collins sounded worried now.
Has something happened? Fuck, Jess is going to have a baby. How did that happen? Stupid question.
Collins went to get a glass out of the cupboard. “Would you like a drink of water?”
I shook my head. Like a glass of water might fix this. Collins carried on drying the dishes.
I spit it out. “Jess is pregnant.” It sounded so unreal said like that. Jess is going to be a mother.
There was this long silence from Collins. “When did you find out, Isaac?” he asked finally.
“Just now.” I was still studying the table top and holding my head with my hands. Fuck, that means I’m going to be a father.
“Do your parents know?” I shook my head. “Do Jess’s?” Another shake. “Where’s Jess now?” he asked.
“At her house.”
“Is she on her own?”
“Don’t know.”
Collins put the tea towel and plate down. He leaned over the table and grabbed hold of my wrists. I lifted my head. Startled. He doesn’t touch anyone. Ever. He’s careful about it.
“Isaac,” he said forcefully with his eyes holding mine. “You can’t leave Jess on her own right now.”
I shifted my eyes away.
“Look at me,” he said. “You have to go around there.”
I nodded.
“Now,” he said.
I nodded again.
Then he let my wrists go. “Jess will be as shocked as you are.”
She didn’t sound shocked. She sounded frozen.
“Are you all right to drive?” asked Collins.
I nodded again.
“Do I need to come with you?”
I shook my head. He was right. Jess would be as shocked as I was. I stood up. I needed to get to her.
“Isaac.” Collins broke through the feeling I was swimming in fog. “You and Jess can’t cope with this on your own. You have to tell your parents. You both have good parents. They’ll help you.”
I nodded again and went to the door.
“Do I need to come?’
I shook my head.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” Finally, I could say something. “I need to go to Jess,” I said like I was repeating a lesson.
“Isaac,” said Collins again as I opened the door. “None of this is going to be easy, if you need someone to talk to again, or…” he waved at the piano and guitars sitting in the lounge, “… just peace and quiet, you are welcome to come here, anytime.”
“Thanks.” I walked out to Mum’s car and drove to Jess’s place to find her.
When I got there, I knocked on the door and waited. But no one answered, so I tried the door handle and it was unlocked. I went inside.
“Jess?” The house seemed empty. But that was where Jess said she was when she rang. I walked through the kitchen and then the living area, and still no one.
“Jess?” I walked down the passageway and the doors to the bedrooms were open. Some beds were made and some weren’t, then I finally got to Jess’s room. And there she was, in bed, under the duvet, in the empty house alone. Just like Collins was worried about.
I leaned against the doorway. “Hi,” I said.
She turned over carefully and gave a half smile. “Hi.” She was pale, like she belonged to another world.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded. “I just don’t feel very well.” It didn’t look like the razor blades had come out. I think that’s what Collins was worried about. “You took a long time to get here. Where have you been?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Around.” It was weird of me to go to see Collins first. Who goes to see their music teacher because their girlfriend is pregnant? Jess didn’t have to know that.
She shivered even though it was still the middle of summer. “What are we going to do?”
“Don’t know.” I didn’t have to ask how she knew what was wrong with her. There was this little box sitting on the desk with a plastic thing that looked like a toy jet lying beside it.
She lifted the duvet. “Come and keep me warm.”
I sat on the end of her bed, undid my boots, kicked them off, slid into bed behind her and put my arms around her because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. After a while we fell asleep, and I woke up to Laura standing in the doorway watching us. She must have just got home from wherever she’d been. I saw her look at the little box on the desk. She didn’t say anything. Just disappeared again.
When Jess woke we got the laptop and Googled morning sickness. Ginger was the answer.
“I could buy you gingernuts,” I said.
Jess lay down and curled up under the duvet again. “I think Mum has some in the pantry.”
“I’ll get them.” I pushed the laptop out of the way and went to slide out of the bed.
Jess reached out and held onto my arm. “No, stay here. It doesn’t matter.” I curled up round her again and we lay there.
Then Jess turned over. “What about failure rates of condoms?” she asked.
I sat up again and did the search. “Twenty-one percent.”
“Twenty-one percent?”
“Yeah.”
“Twenty-one percent of what?
I spelled it out for her. “Twenty-one couples get pregnant out of a hundred if they’re using condoms for a year.”
“How many get pregnant without condoms?”
“Can’t find that.”
“I bet it’s not many more,” said Jess.
I closed the laptop and stuck it on the floor, then curled up around her again. “We’re going to have to tell someone about this,” I said. “We can’t keep it a secret.”
“I know.” She snuggled down and went back to sleep.
Wednesday 5th February
It’s not that we decided not to tell anyone. It’s more that you put off what you don’t want to do. It was three days before I got another call from Jess.
“Mum and Dad know,” she said.
“Did Laura tell them?”
“No. Mum guessed. They want you to come here for dinner tonight.”
“They’ll kill me.”
“No, they won’t. Dad’s promised to be nice. He said he won’t pin a medal on your chest, but he won’t punch you either.”
Reassuring, especially as I haven’t been one of his favourite people lately.
I got around there, and Jess’s mum was acting all perky.
“Isaac, come in. We’ve been waiting for you.” She led the way, showing me into a house I’d been in a thousand times.
And the question was, who was ‘we’? Was this discussion going to be just me, Jess and her mum and dad, or was the whole family going to have a say?
I got to the dining room. The table was all set, and, thank God, it was only Jess and her dad sitting there. No sister. No brothers. It was obvious where I was meant to sit. I slid into the chair opposite Jess. She looked over at me and gave a half smile.
I looked at her dad. His face was like thunder, like he wanted to commit murder and might forget his promise to Jess.
“Good evening, Isaac.” Icy.
“Mr Murphy,” I said because ‘hi’ didn’t seem appropriate, and ‘good evening’ might have sounded like I was copying him. Probably this was one of those times when nothing you said was going to be right anyway.
Of course, the discussion started: “Do your parents know, Isaac?”
I shook my head. Jess’s father leaned back in his chair, stuck his hands safely in his pockets, and let his breath out slowly through his teeth the way only a teacher can. They do it when they would like to send you flying through the window but are trying to be reasonable.
“Isaac, you’ve got two days to tell them, or we’ll do it. Both families need to manage this together.”
Jess’s mum stayed perky. “A baby is a gift from God,” she said. “It’s a beautiful thing to bring a child into this world.”
No talk of abortion from her. Or from Jess’s dad for that matter.
I got home, and Mum and Dad were sitting in the lounge watching TV.
“Is that you, Isaac?” I’m not sure who else my mum thought it was going to be. I’m their only kid.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Have you had dinner?”
“Yeah.” I knew I should go into the lounge and tell them about the baby right then. But it’s pretty easy to put off what you don’t want to do, and Jess’s dad said he wouldn’t phone Mum and Dad for two days.
He’d mentioned it again as I was leaving.
‘You’ve got forty-eight hours to tell them, Isaac, or I’ll do it,’ he’d said.
I figured I still had forty-seven hours left to pretend nothing was wrong.
Because I was scared shitless.