60. Bertram #2
“It’s okay!” said Helena. “She’s not quite as confident as I’d like her to be, but she was a foot or two off the ground, which is the highest she’s ever been, and sometimes up there for close to ten seconds or so! We’re making more progress every day!”
Helena took a bite of her toast and made a face.
“Toast as cold as you were hoping it would be?” Bertram asked.
“Mhmm.” Helena forced a smile as she swallowed it down. “Just according to schedule! So glad I planned to abandon my toast. Very much an improvement. Can I help with the dummy? You promised you’d let me next time.”
“Sure,” Bertram said.
Helena’s less-than-stellar woodworking skills were painful for him to observe, but he was trying to let her help when it was within her power to do so.
Helena picked up a piece of wood and began sawing it at the place Bertram had marked.
She was getting better, he had to admit—even if it still would have been faster for him to do it himself.
“I’ve noticed you haven’t asked what my mom was calling about,” Bertram said. “Seems kind of unlike you.”
“Oh, did your mom call?” Helena asked. “I already forgot, since I was focusing on Lovey—”
“It was a good conversation, Hel,” Bertram said, to spare them both the embarrassment of Helena’s lying. “One that probably should have happened years ago. Thank you for the nudge.”
“I really did nothing,” Helena said. “I assure you, if I had anything to do with Dr. J calling you, which is what I assume you are implying, then I would absolutely not have referred to anything from the confidential conversation you and I had and would have just suggested that she text you rather than me. That’s all. ”
“Well. It worked.” Bertram took the sawed wood from Helena, and then the saw as well. He handed her a piece of sandpaper instead, and she reluctantly began sanding the wood down while Bertram again took over the sawing.
“I’m glad things were positive.” Helena smiled. “If I had a mother to resolve things with, I would absolutely get fucked up in a fairy bar and let vino veritas do the rest.”
“About that.” Bertram swallowed. “Look. There was something you said, when you were struggling with Lovey, but I didn’t want to stop and address it at the time because I just wanted to make sure that you were going to be, you know, okay . . .”
“Mhmm?”
“Listen, this is going to be totally out of line coming from a former lover,” Bertram cautioned, “and absolutely unhinged, heinous, go-to-HR-and-be-fired-immediately stuff from a colleague.”
“This is such a good start.” Helena bit her lip as she hammered a nail into the plank at not the angle Bertram would have chosen.
Bertram’s tongue darted over his tusk. “So, I’m not asking this as a former lover, and I’m certainly not asking this is a colleague. But I’m asking this as a friend who has known you forever and cares about you, and who you recently meddled with vis-à-vis maternal relationships.”
Helena blushed. “Allegedly.”
“There’s no right or wrong answer to this, but . . .” Bertram took a deep breath. “Do you not want children because not having a mother makes you worry that you wouldn’t be a good mother?”
There was the sound of a bonk! as Helena dropped her hammer on the table. “What?”
“I was just wondering. As a friend. Again, you don’t have to answer—”
“No, no, that’s fine.” Helena waved her hand.
“I don’t want to have children because first and foremost, children don’t appeal to me.
But also, I just . . . I love doing this?
Just being out here on research projects, in the middle of the wilderness, no other People around.
That’s what I want to spend my life doing, and I don’t think that’s conducive to raising a humanoid child.
I mean, I know Jennie did it, but she had done a whole bunch of research first and had a whole lot of adventures in Leopardoptera—both the scientific discipline and the literal place—long before she was my age.
I’m just now getting to do what I love. I don’t want to give that up for anyone. Maybe that’s selfish of me—”
“It’s not selfish,” Bertram said.
“I also think it shouldn’t be, like, ‘oh do you have a good reason for not having kids?’ As if choosing to make this huge, enormous commitment is the default. I think you need a reason to begin that undertaking. And I have no reason to do so, and no interest in it.”
“That’s how I feel, too,” Bertram said.
“So . . . why would you think my mom would have anything to do with it?” Helena asked.
“Because you said that you didn’t know how to be a mom because you never had one,” Bertram said.
Helena gasped. “First of all, Dr. J gave me a lot of maternal affection and second of all, my dad was an amazing father, and his blueprint of parenthood would have been more than sufficient, even without Dr. J. I don’t know why my dad’s parenting wouldn’t apply across genders. When did I ever say that?”
Bertram smiled. “It was the night before you wrote to Hippolyta Duke. You were crying outside your tent about how you were a bad owl-bear mom, and you said you couldn’t be a good mom because you never had one.”
“Oh, my gods, I have no recollection of that.” Helena covered her face with her hands. “That’s so embarrassing. I promise I don’t actually feel that way. I think that was just sleep deprivation and panic. I was completely at my wit’s end—”
“I recall. I’m glad you didn’t mean it,” Bertram said. “I have no opinion on you having kids or not. I just wanted your choice not to be because you thought you were somehow limited. I think you can do anything you put your mind to, if you want it.”
“Thank you,” Helena said, softly.
“Almost anything you put your mind to,” Bertram amended. “I appreciate your help on this dummy, but it would definitely be completed faster and with more precision without your assistance.”
“Hey!” Helena said.
“You pretty much knock everything out of the park except woodworking.” Bertram smirked. “Or, I guess, accepting someone getting higher academic marks than you, or allowing someone else to get the final word, or admitting you couldn’t have possibly seen an ivory-snouted dragon—”
“You better watch how you tease me while I’m this close to a saw,” Helena cautioned.
Bertram shrugged. “I’m faster than you.”
“So, if I went for the saw right now, what would you do?” Helena asked, playfully inching her fingers closer to the saw.
“I would do . . . this!” In a fast motion, Bertram scooped Helena up and handily threw her over his shoulder.
“Put me down!” Helena squealed, giggling and kicking her legs.
Lovey stalked over and hissed at Bertram, who put Helena down immediately.
“We’re playing,” Bertram said. “See?”
Lovey narrowed her eyes and growled.
“Oh, so you get to attack anyone at any time and that’s an okay way to play, but I sweep a girl off her feet one time and I’m the villain?!” Bertram said.
“Praw,” Lovey agreed.