Elly #2
“Just sit down,” she tells him, and there seems to be enough authority in her voice for him to obey. They sit together beneath the oak, in the sight line of the camera. He is unnatural in front of the lens, shifting self-consciously.
“What do you want me to ask you?”
Elly tilts her head to the side. “Anything you want,” she says.
He’s quiet for a long time before he asks, “Do you think Thomas will meet his father?”
The question feels like a cold, stinging blow across her cheek. She must flinch, because Theo’s expression softens. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “I didn’t mean that to sound so harsh. I know it’s not as simple as that.”
Elly looks up at the dormitory window, where Thomas will be drifting off to sleep.
He doesn’t know what a dad is yet. But soon he will.
And what will she tell him? She hasn’t let herself think that far ahead, but the answer feels clear now.
One day. One day, when she’s strong enough, she’ll take her son to meet his father.
“What do you think you would say to him?” Theo is asking, more gently now. “To Ethan, if he were here?” It is always a strange kind of thrill to hear Ethan’s name from Theo’s mouth. It feels like slipping into a bed that isn’t hers.
What would she say to Ethan? Maybe, You were so wrong about me, or perhaps, I finally understand that you only loved the idea of me, but neither of those feel true enough.
“I wish I could show him what I am now,” she says instead, and she means it.
“And what are you?”
Elly doesn’t think there are any words for that.
She wonders, for a second, what he thought of her during Grace’s ceremony, when she’d helped rip the unknown woman apart, making her into something both more and less than a body.
Then, with a small jolt, she realises that she doesn’t care.
She isn’t willing to shrink it, or change it – this wild thing in her – to be more acceptable to him.
She must have been quiet for a while because Theo is looking at her closely, his gaze questioning.
“I want to ask you some questions now,” she says.
“Okay.” She likes the way he doesn’t challenge her, never makes her feel stupid for the things she says or wants. “Shall I stop recording?”
He makes to stand up, but Elly reaches out a hand to stop him. “No. Keep it rolling.” Theo clears his throat, but nods, a reluctant consent. “Do you think Haina chose you and Siobhan for a reason? To make the documentary?”
Theo shrugs. “Shiv said Haina knew about her film, based on the shelter where we used to live. I’m only here because she wouldn’t come without me.”
“I think it’s more than that,” Elly says, interrupting him.
He looks up, eyebrow quirked, signalling for her to continue.
“I don’t think she would have picked Shiv, I don’t think you ever would have been able to find the house, if she didn’t need it, just like the rest of us.
” She waits, then says, “I think she’s in pain, maybe both of you are, and Haina could sense it.
I think the pain is buried deep, but it’s just as real as the rest of ours. ”
If she hits a nerve, Theo doesn’t show it. “I don’t think either of us are in pain,” he says simply.
“Maybe not now. But there’s something there.”
Theo goes silent. He looks as if he might stand up again, then seems to change his mind.
There’s something different in his expression when he looks at her now, something less guarded.
“I was five when we moved into the shelter,” he says, so quietly that she has to strain to pick out each word.
His eyes avoid the camera; they’re firmly on Elly now.
“Shiv was three, too young to remember the time before. But I remember everything.”
He tells her all of it – more than she could ever have expected.
He tells her about how his parents had met when his dad was a high school maths teacher and his mum was a student.
How he’d waited for her to finish school – Nora had thought that was so romantic – before asking her to go to dinner.
How his mum had felt there was never any other option but yes, and said he’d always seemed to know that.
Theo told Elly about his dad – red-cheeked, funny, generous.
Then, the kinds of things he’d do to their mum when he’d been drinking: holding her hands under hot water until she screamed, opening the window of their tenement flat and leaning her backwards out of it, a hand around her neck, pulling out hanks of her hair that Theo would find scattered around the house the next day and think were rats.
He tells her about how he would lock the door of the bathroom and hold Siobhan in there until the shouting stopped.
How sometimes Theo looks at Siobhan and he can’t help but hate her, because she reminds him so much of their dad.
That she’s selfish and brash, the funniest and most confident person he knows.
That when she drinks she gets messy and physical, and he can’t stand to be around her, because it’s like looking at him.
That maybe she doesn’t remember all the things that happened but they seem to be inside her still, trying to claw their way out.
He tells Elly these things in a voice so delicate and cracking it’s as though he’s never said them out loud.
He gives it all over to Elly for her to hold in her hands, to cherish or crush.
He trusts her, she realises, and for some reason that makes her feel heavy and sad.
“That’s why you’re here,” is all she says. “That’s why Siobhan is here. You need the house just as much as we do.”
His eyes are soft and wet. He looks down at his hands, at the lines on his palms, as if all the answers are there.
There are voices coming from the house, from the kitchen where the women will be preparing dinner, from the study where Haina will be sitting with one of the guests, or maybe Siobhan.
These days, it always seems to be Siobhan.
“I have one more question for you,” Elly says.
Theo glances up at her, his face a question.
“Did I get it all wrong?” she asks. “I thought you might see me – understand me, like no one else does. But lately, it’s as though you can barely look at me.”
Theo’s teeth are gritted behind closed lips. She sees his jaw pulse. One of his hands seems to be holding the other in place, as if he isn’t sure what it might do without an anchor.
“Do you hate me?” she asks, and it comes out so plainly, so loudly, that he flinches. His answer won’t change anything, but she still needs to know. “You’ve seen what I have the power to become. Are you scared of me? Are you revolted?”
Finally, he looks at her, really looks at her, and it’s with so much intensity that Elly’s breath gets trapped in her throat. She’s suddenly dizzy.
“You think I’m revolted by you?” he hisses fiercely, on a hot exhale. Elly’s blood feels riotous under her skin. “For fuck’s sake, Elly. You’re the only thing I think about, every hour of every day. You’re the only thing keeping me here.”
Elly holds her breath. She watches him, her eyes on his lips, which are wet now – reddish, as if bitten.
“But what am I supposed to do about it?” he asks, and she hears it in his voice: frustration, months and months of it. His hands are fists in his lap. “You’ve been through so much. What kind of person would I be, if I tried to…” He trails off. “You need to heal; you need peace. You don’t need me.”
Elly remembers the camera on the bench, recording their every inch of movement, committing it to tape. She knows how the shot will look – the cool crispness of the day with its perfect blue sky and vivid colours; their bodies close but not touching.
“I don’t need you, Theo,” she whispers. “But I want you.”
They unlock something in him, those words.
They make something fall away: the last vestiges of his self-control, of his guard.
When he grabs at her, it isn’t gentle, it isn’t polite.
It’s desperate and searching. He pulls her on top of him and their bodies push backwards into the grass, and all Elly knows is his mouth and his hands and the intensity of his desire, answering the simmering burn of hers.
When she kisses him, she doesn’t think of Ethan.
She thinks only of his mouth on hers and the sound of birdsong, high in the trees.
Later, they dance together in the parlour, surrounded by the other guests as they move and sway in the low light.
The song playing on the gramophone is old-timey and slow.
It makes Elly think of wartime, of distant bombs being drowned out by music.
Theo holds her closely, hand heavy on the small of her back.
She grips the curls at the back of his head.
Then, they’re in his locked room in the eaves. He pulls the dress from over her shoulders and stands back to look at her. She watches him drink her in, and in his eyes, she sees herself; strong, uncompromising, otherworldly.
* * *
Haina suggests she take her First Fly that night. Elly had expected to feel frightened by the idea, but the reality is the opposite – it fills her every cell with hope, with the heady possibility of flight. She tingles with the anticipation of air.
She carries Thomas on their way up to the roof.
The sky is greedy with stars and the air smells like bonfires.
Elly senses all of the creatures in the woods and longs for the sky.
Thomas gazes up at her with his wide, round eyes and she thinks, You, my boy, are more wonderful than all the stars combined.
Theo pulls her aside when they get to the roof. “Are you sure?” His expression is pinched, furtive. “You don’t have to do this, if you’re not ready. You can say no to Haina.”