In Broken Places

10




THE SILENCE in the auditorium was burdened with emotion. The rehearsal had been going well—so well, in fact, that I’d begun to design play posters in my head as it looked like the whole project wasn’t going to be declared dead on arrival after all. I’d instructed Seth to run through his final monologue, just so we could get a sense of it, and I’d asked him to make sure he put some feeling into it—which sounded like good advice from a play director, but this play director had no idea what she was talking about.

Seth, however, apparently did. He walked through an imaginary curtain from the back of the stage and began his speech. “God creates us free, free to be selfish, but he adds a mechanism that will penetrate our selfishness and wake us up to the presence of others in the world, and that mechanism is called suffering. To put it another way, pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

The other actors scattered around the room quieted and turned toward the stage, where Seth was taking a deep breath, eyes closed, before going on.

Meagan said, “He’s doing good,” from the chair beside mine and I nodded. He certainly was.

“Why must it be pain? Why can’t he wake us more gently, with violins or laughter? Because the dream from which we must be awakened is the dream that all is well. All is not well. Believe me, all is not well.” He took another breath, and there was something ragged in the sound this time. A muscle contracted in his jaw as he seemed to brace himself before continuing, his eyes at once haunted and luminous. “Suffering . . . by suffering . . . through suffering, we release our hold on the toys of this world, and know that our true good lies in another world. But after we have suffered so much, must we still suffer more? And more? And more?”

I was entranced. A herd of tutu-wearing elephants could have pranced through the auditorium just then, and I don’t think any of us would have paid them much attention. Because Seth—Seth who couldn’t hold Kate’s hand without turning five shades of red, Seth who never joined the other guys in stress-relieving rumbles during breaks between scenes, Seth who avoided looking me in the eye at all costs out of excessive timidity or guilt or who-knew-what—that same Seth was standing on the stage reciting his lines with tears dripping off his chin onto his chest. Much like the day I’d first met Shayla, I realized at that moment how deeply I loved him. Mind you, I wasn’t planning on officially adding him to my already-complex pseudo-family, but oh, how I loved this giant man-boy whose sensitivity and talent were so far beyond his years.

Shayla was with me at rehearsal that night because Bev had a commitment elsewhere, so I didn’t have much time afterward to debrief with my young actor. But Seth and I did sit for a few minutes in the last row of the auditorium after the others had gone outside.

“Tell me about the monologue, Seth.”

He shrugged and looked away, apparently enthralled by the white wall off to his right. He’d been a little shaken for the rest of the rehearsal, probably as much because of his emotional display as because of the reaction of his peers. They had walked around the auditorium for the remainder of the evening like pilgrims in a holy place—speaking in whispers, their eyes a little wide, their faces serene. And since it had seemed we’d reached something of a pinnacle, I’d called off the rehearsal a half hour early. Now the other actors were outside engaged in some rip-roarin’ game that had the boys screaming, the girls squealing, and the neighbors probably calling the police to complain about the noise. But I could hear Shayla’s high voice among all the others—I’d developed mom ears somewhere along the way—and I knew it meant she’d be tired early tonight, so I didn’t do anything to intervene.

“Was it the text you were saying?” I asked Seth. “Or is there something going on in your life that makes it hard for you to be a part of the play?”

“I . . . I used to have this . . . this thing,” he said. “And the lines I have to say are . . . Well, they mean a lot to me, I guess.”

I wasn’t sure how to proceed. He was clearly still in a vulnerable state of mind, and I didn’t know whether further questions would help or harm him. “What do you mean by ‘this thing’?” I asked, giving him the chance to elaborate or be succinct.

“It’s called pectus excavatum,” he said. He might as well have said it to me in Uzbek. I wasn’t familiar with the condition, whatever it was. While my mind tried to piece it together from the Latin terminology, he shifted in his chair and extended his impossibly long legs in front of him, still looking slightly away from me. “It’s a disease,” he said. “It means my chest was permanently caved in. My sternum and my ribs.” He shook his head and shifted again. “I couldn’t breathe normally or exercise because it was messing with my lungs and my heart. And I . . .” He trailed off.

“What, Seth?”

“I looked deformed. You know. When I took my shirt off.”

“Seth . . .” His vulnerability awakened my own. “Is it treatable?”

He swallowed hard and nodded. “I had surgery a year ago.”

“Well, that’s a step in the right direction.” I wanted to be encouraging.

“But then I got injured.” He took a deep breath and scooted down a little in his chair, aiming his eyes at the ceiling as he relived his pain. “Seven ribs got disconnected from the sternum. And it killed. I mean, the pain . . .” He blinked a few times to dispel the tears in his eyes. “But the doctors couldn’t see it. They didn’t do an MRI or anything and just kept telling me it was normal to feel bad after surgery, but . . . I knew it was worse than that. Anytime I moved . . . or breathed too deeply . . . or someone bumped into me . . . And the pain pills they gave me to try to deal with it made me moody . . . you know, mad and tired all the time, and . . .” He paused and bit the inside of his cheek to quell his emotions.

“Oh, Seth . . .”

“It lasted four months before anyone figured out that my bones were detached—and that whole time I just felt like someone was constantly sawing at my chest. Then a doctor in Munich did an MRI and they had to go back in and operate again.”

“After four months?”

He shook his head to dispel the memories, and his mouth pinched into a line. “It was . . . It was bleak,” he said. “Wanting-to-be-dead bleak.”

“Seth, I’m so sorry.”

“So when I get up and give that monologue about pain and death and stuff . . .”

“It hits close to home.”

“Yeah. Every time.”

“And is that okay? I mean—will it hurt you too much to relive it over and over?”

He shook his head again. “It’ll help me, I think. I’m still dealing with the whole God thing, and saying Lewis’s thoughts . . . it screws my head on straighter.”

“Well, I’m sure you know it’s a powerful scene from the audience’s perspective too.”

He looked genuinely surprised. “It is?”

“It’s . . .” I looked for the right word. “Redemptive.” Seth was one of the few students I knew who would understand the significance of the word. “You mentioned the ‘God thing.’ I think it’s a God thing that you’re part of this cast, Seth. That you’re C. S. Lewis.”

His hands were rolling and unrolling the script they held. He nodded.

“Please let me know if there’s anything—anything at all—you need help with.” I remembered some of the tough rehearsals we’d had recently. “How are you doing with Kate?”

He shrugged.

“Listen, I know it’s not always easy dealing with her. But I think she really respects your acting, and she clearly wants to get this right. So if you can just let Kate be Kate for a little while longer and not let her Joy-ness fluster you . . . She doesn’t mean any harm.”

“I know,” he said as a blush crept up his neck.

“All right.” I stood. “Time for me to get Shayla home.”

Seth rose too and pulled on his trademark trench coat before shouldering his backpack.

“I’m proud of you, Seth.”

He just ducked his head and exited the room.

Minutes later, Shayla and I were walking up three flights of stairs to the front of the school and Shayla was whining about being hungry. I wanted to tell her that she wouldn’t know what hungry was until she went on a no-carbs diet, but I informed her instead that we’d be home soon and could eat then.

“But I’m hungwy now, Shelby!”

It was the I’m-about-to-lose-it variety of Shayla’s whining. And it usually came right before the much less socially acceptable I’m-going-to-scream-until-I-get-what-I-want variety.

As always, knowing this left me with a dilemma. Should Shayla learn that sometimes you don’t get everything you want when you want it? Yes. Was it an important life lesson? Absolutely—as any number of her future boyfriends would probably attest. Was teaching her that lesson on this particular evening worth the drama of sweet Shayla turning into Cruella de Vil? Uh—no. Not really. So, as all good parents do (or so I chose to believe), I took a long look at her pre-explosion face and decided I needed to find some food, and pronto. It was not exactly a groundbreaking thought for me.

I rummaged through my briefcase and found nothing. I mentally rummaged through my classroom desk and concluded there’d be nothing there either. I could hear the sound of basketball practice coming from the gym, where I knew there’d be at least oranges for Shayla to dig her teeth into. But I was a closet sufferer of post-athletic stress disorder, so rather than spurring me forward, the thought of entering the gym for oranges made me redouble my efforts to coax Shayla home, where an assortment of not-yet-ready meals was waiting to be cooked. Maybe she could chew on a hard noodle while she waited.

“It’s only a few minutes from here to home,” I told her. “If you can wait that long, we can have the chicken casserole Bev taught us to make!” I was becoming a regular Martha Stewart—hold the fancy aprons.

“But I’m hungwy now,” Shayla wailed, big old tears rising in her eyes. My mistake had been letting her think I had something in my briefcase. That had gotten her taste buds all fired up, and I knew from experience how painful it could be to dash their hopes.

“Honey, I don’t have anything with me.”

“Not even gum?”

“No. And you’re not allowed to chew gum anyway. You get it in your hair.” My mind flashed memory cards of Shayla screaming and me calling Bev and having to find sharp scissors.

“Not even gummy bears?”

“No, Shayla. I have no food, no candy, nada.” She looked at me askance. I think she thought I’d made nada up. “So . . . we’re going to walk home and get into our slippers.” The floor tile in the apartment was frigid. “And then we’re going to have chicken casserole.”

I’d tried to make the dish sound dramatic and enticing, but Shayla scrunched up her face and began what I now called the Crescendo Wail—the kind that starts soft and low, then grows steadily into an all-out fire siren. I couldn’t let that happen for two reasons. Firstly, her siren tended to push my buttons and I didn’t want to lose my patience. Losing my patience was a fear that obsessed me—always. And secondly, the acoustics were so good in that stairwell that I feared the Crescendo Wail would have the neighbors calling the police for the second time that night, and that just wouldn’t be good.

So, with a deep, calming breath, I picked Shayla up and carried her into the gym.

The first impressions that assailed me brought back memories I’d thought were safely deleted from my failure treasure trove. The smell of dirty sneakers reminded me of Johnny Dunbar, a boy who had tormented me by sitting on my chest, for no apparent reason, and holding his sneaker over my nose until our second-grade teacher, Mrs. Dailey, had pulled him off. The sound of balls bouncing reminded me of the ridiculous habit I had of actually looking up when someone called, “Heads up!” to warn of incoming basketballs, volleyballs, and baseballs. It was a flaw that had earned me more bloody noses during gym class than I cared to remember. How was I to know that “heads up” actually meant “heads down”? The sight of two opposing teams reminded me of all the times I’d stood midcourt in junior high and high school waiting for the two captains selecting teammates to earn me by elimination. And the sight of Coach Taylor reminded me of countless conversations with Trey in which I’d promised—no, vowed—to never, ever risk getting attached, which would guarantee that I’d never pass on the Davis family genes.

Needless to say, our entrance into the gym was not a pleasant thing. Scott, whose radar was apparently functioning well, saw us almost immediately and came over with a surprised smile for us both.

“You’re two weeks late,” he said.

“We ran into traffic.”

“Rush hour in Kandern can be a mess.” He winked at Shayla and squeezed her foot. “How’re you doing, Lady Shay?”

“Gus calls me that.”

“I know. Do you mind?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Then Lady Shay it is.” He turned his attention to me, which was helpful, as my mind had started to wander back down Memory Shame. “We’ll be through in a couple minutes.”

“Oh, we’re not here to see you,” I said breezily. “Shayla’s hungry.”

“No, I’m not.”

“What?”

“I’m not hungwy anymoh.” She tried to push out of my arms and it was all I could do to keep her from running out onto the court. “I want to play,” she protested.

I wasn’t amused. “We came in here to get you some oranges,” I whispered into her ear, loudly enough to be heard over the noise of shoes and dribbling.

“I want to play!”

Scott leaned in to say, “She’s welcome to go out there. The guys won’t hurt her.”

“They’ll trample her!”

“I promise they won’t.”

“Let me down!” This from Shayla, who was fighting me so hard that I was starting to sweat. If I was going to sweat, I was certainly standing in the right place, but sweat was my enemy anywhere.

Scott blew his whistle and Shayla snapped her head around, scared motionless by the sound. “Lady on the court, guys!” He took Shayla out of my arms and set her on the ground. Handing her a ball, he winked at her and said, “Go get ’em, tiger.”

She ran out onto the court, smiling at the faces around her, and the army of teenage boys parted like the Red Sea. One of them pointed toward the basket and told her to throw. The ball only went a couple of feet, but another player, a student I had in English class, snatched it up and rolled it back to her.

“What’s her name, Coach?” It was the team captain asking, and I recognized him as Kenny, a muscular player who also had a reputation for being a gentleman and an all-round good guy.

“Lady Shay! Treat her like one!”

Kenny picked her up by the waist and ran with her to the basket. She dunked the ball like a pro and beamed as a cheer went up from the players. It wasn’t long before they were all involved in a quirky game of basketball, with Shayla riding high on their shoulders, up and down the court, answering to Lady Shay and living one of the highlights of her short life.

“She’s a natural,” Scott said.

“She was a hungry natural two minutes ago. I promise.”

“Guess she changed her mind.”

“They won’t drop her, will they?”

“They know the rules. ‘You break it, you pay for it.’”

“That’s comforting.” There was a silence. “Kenny seems nice.”

“He’s a class act.”

“He’s got a way with kids.”

“I think it goes both ways. Shayla has a way with strangers.”

“No kidding. You should see her and the landlady cozying up.”

I let out a startled yelp when I looked over to find Shayla hanging from the rim with her little hands, then letting go and dropping into the arms beneath her. “Shayla!” It was instinctive. As instinctive as the need I had to get out there and rescue her. But Scott’s hand on my arm halted me midstride.

“She’s fine,” he said.

And looking out onto the court, I could see he spoke the truth. Shayla was off down the court again, perched on Kenny’s shoulders, her ball resting on his head, a glowing smile on her face and her eyes riveted on the approaching basket. She giggled and squealed and dunked the ball again.

“And I’m supposed to get her to bed after this?”

“Have you ever been to Sausenburg?” he asked, changing the subject abruptly, which was his modus operandi.

I rolled my eyes—but that took them off Shayla for too long, so I decided to stop that for now.

“It’s the ruins of a castle,” he continued, unfazed. “Just above Sitzenkirch. Shayla would love it.”

Sitzenkirch was a tiny village about five minutes from Kandern, where the elementary school had found a home. I had been there once, just to see what it looked like, but I hadn’t seen any ruins.

I didn’t answer Scott. I’d learned that answers led to conversations, and conversations that didn’t have the Johnsons’ house as a punctuation mark gave me the heebie-jeebies.

Scott blew his whistle again. “Okay, guys! Outta here!”

Every head on the floor except Shayla’s snapped around to look at the clock.

“But, Coach, we still have ten—”

“Pack it up!”

The players clearly weren’t used to aborted practices. They looked at each other, mumbled, then shuffled off the court. Kenny deposited Shayla at my feet, a ball still in her hands, then went back out to gather the rest of the balls into giant nets.

“What’s the rush?” one of the guys asked as he was passing Scott.

“Lady Shay needs a ride home.”

I was outraged. “She does not!”

Scott raised an eyebrow. “You want me to tell them why I really cut our practice short?”

“You’re hurrying home to catch The Young and the Restless?”

“No—I’m hoping to have an actual conversation with you.”

“Oh.”

“Right. This two-minutes-and-forty-seconds thing is for the birds.”

“Well, Shayla and I need to get home to make a casserole, so . . .”

“I’d love some.”

“What I was going to say was that we need to run and you need to lock up, and we don’t really need a ride, so . . .” I was bending over at the waist and trying to pry Shayla’s hands off the basketball she held like a lifeline.

“I’d like to talk.”

“Why?”

He looked exasperated and entertained. It was an interesting combination. He fished a quarter of orange out of a bowl and handed it to Shayla. She immediately let go of the ball and focused her attention on devouring the snack.

“I knew that would work,” I said a bit defensively.

“Of course you did. You’re her mom.”

I bit my tongue.

“And I’m a guy who’s either got a death wish or a challenge disorder, because I’d kinda like to get to know you.”

“I’m not good with people.”

“You’re a teacher.”

“I’m not good with grown-up people.”

“Gus and Bev adore you.”

“I’m not good with . . .”

Scott crouched down so he was eye-level with Shayla. “Shayla, is your mom crazy?” He said it with a mock-serious face as he wiped some orange dribble off her chin with his thumb.

Shayla had been helping herself to more of the leftover oranges, and she had her mouth so full that she had to swallow twice before she could say, “She’s not my mom.” The subtext was “dummy”—as in, “She’s not my mom, dummy.”

Scott looked at me, his eyebrow raised in question.

“She’s not technically my daughter,” I confirmed.

If Scott was taken aback, he hid it well. “See why we need to talk? I don’t even know the basics.”

I looked away.

“You can have your Mace within arm’s reach at all times.”

I bit my lip.

“I’ll help you with the dishes.”

He was getting warmer.

“I read a killer bedtime story.”

“Sounds a bit morbid for a four-year-old.”

“I mean I’m a good bedtime-story reader.”

“Had a lot of practice?”

“My niece and nephews think I’m pretty cool.”

“I’m sure that’s comforting.”

“After conversations like these? You bet it is.”

“I’ve got a rock,” Shayla said. Scott’s conversational skills were clearly rubbing off on her.

“Really?” He was down on her level again.

“A blue one on the inside.”

He looked up at me. “Quartz?”

“She found it at the flea market.”

“Maybe you can show it to me someday.”

“But not tonight. We’ve had a big day and Shayla needs to get to bed early.” It sounded hollow even to my ears.

Scott straightened and ruffled Shayla’s hair. “Some other day, then. And maybe I can show you a castle, too. Would you like that?”

“A weal castle?”

“What’s left of it. You can even climb the tower.”

Something rasped over my nerve endings. In one overwhelming moment, the walls and ceiling around me shrank and closed in until they became the pale-green walls of my mother’s kitchen. The sensation was so vivid and stark that I could hear the angry impotence of the air conditioner propped on the windowsill above the sink and feel the grip of something dark pressing in around my mind. I knew, in a remote and rational part of my thinking, that I was still standing in a high school gym, but something about Scott and his castle plans had suffused my senses with the smells, sounds, and crippledness of my youth. There was nothing truly menacing in the moment, yet I felt trapped by Scott’s exchange with Shayla, backed into a corner, barred from an escape route, and robbed of both choice and independence. I felt manipulated, bulldozed, and helpless.

Scott must have read the anger on my face. He frowned and looked like his mind was on rewind, trying to figure out what he’d said wrong.

“Don’t back me into a corner,” I said. The tremor in my voice shamed me. “And don’t use Shayla to do it.” I could feel the flush of anger on my cheeks and was as shocked by it as Scott.

“I wasn’t . . .”

I picked Shayla up and headed toward the door. “Thanks for the oranges.”

We left.

I’d like to say Shayla and I walked home in silence. It’s what my brain needed. But Shayla’s mind had been so stimulated by her first pick-up game that she couldn’t seem to stop talking. She talked about her rock, she talked about oranges, she talked about hanging from the rim, she talked about a cat that crossed the street in front of us and about the bright-green shoelaces on her sneakers. She talked, in other words.

As much as I craved silence, I found solace in her chattering. In the days following her enrollment in kindergarten, Shayla had become subdued and pensive, but the last week had marked a change. After Bev and I had talked with her teacher and encouraged her to acknowledge Shayla’s English questions and respond to them in German rather than ignoring them altogether, an awkward, bilingual dialogue had begun between them. Some of the girls in the class had started to include Shayla in their playground antics, and the newness of German kindergarten rituals had become less startling to her. She no longer cried herself to sleep, and though she wasn’t always excited about going to school in the morning, it didn’t terrify her anymore. Which was good for both of us—she had fewer meltdowns and I had fewer guilt-ridden, sleepless nights. So we were both a little happier.

But as Shayla talked all the way home from the gym that evening, my mind wasn’t really on her brighter spirits or on the meal I still had to make. It was on the abrupt and frightening end of my conversation with Scott. I couldn’t understand what had led from A to B, from bearable present to intolerable past, from relatively sane Shelby to raving-lunatic Shelby. I didn’t have any answers. Scott’s bullheadedness had made me put up my defenses; that much I knew and understood. But losing it that fast over a harmless invitation to a castle? That was perplexing—and, given my gene pool, terrifying, too. I remembered the heat of anger that had suffused my face and how it had made my voice shaky and my hand too firm around Shayla’s, and a familiar fear gripped me. The apple and the tree.

Shayla and I retired Martha Stewart for the evening and had cereal for supper. This made Shayla happy, in part because she could eat immediately and in part because of the sugar high cereal gave her. Go figure. Consequently, our bedtime ritual became a little more drawn out and a lot more competitive. Shayla wanted to color instead of brushing her teeth. She wanted to sit on the floor and pout instead of picking up her toys. She wanted to point out the window at nothing instead of getting into bed. When she decided she’d rather belt out the Barney song at the top of her lungs, singing over my admonitions and squirming out of my grip instead of saying her prayers, I again felt that flush of anger, that quickening in the chest and stomach that made me want to slap myself . . . or her.

I left the room with Shayla still blasting “I love you, you love me. We’re a happy family” in a way that might have scared Barney back into prehistory and, closing both her bedroom door and mine, reached for the phone.

It was midafternoon in Illinois, and Trey was at his post at L’Envie.

He picked up the phone and did his business-owner greeting.

“I’m turning into Dad.”

“Sounds like a personal problem.”

“Trey . . .”

“Hey, Shell. How are you doing? Things going well over there?”

“Guess that was a bit abrupt.”

“Just a tad.”

I sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. It’s good to hear your voice.”

“Are you busy?”

“I’ll let you know when the Japanese tour bus gets here to buy me out of house and bakery.”

“So it’s a slow day is what you’re saying.”

“Slow time of day. It’ll pick up later.”

“I went to the gym tonight . . .”

“I’m sorry, let me replace the batteries in my hearing aid.”

“Trey . . .”

“Sorry.”

“I went to the gym to get something for Shayla to eat after school tonight.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And I lost it.”

“You lost Shayla?”

“I lost my temper. Over nothing.”

“Okay . . .”

“And now Shayla is in her bedroom shrieking a heavy-metal version of the Barney song and I can’t get her to stop, and when I grabbed her arm to make her lie down for the hundredth time . . . Trey, I wanted to . . . I mean, I almost . . . I wanted to just plaster her to the mattress and hold her there—hard.” I felt the emotion tightening my muscles again.

“She’s singing ‘I love you, you love me’ like Marilyn Manson?”

“Trey . . .”

“Hold out the phone. I want to hear.”

“Trey!”

“You’re not turning into Dad, Shell.”

I let out a shaky breath. “I need a Huddle Hut. And maybe a Valium.”

“Did you yell at her?”

“I thought about it.”

“Did you tell her she was worthless and repulsive and stupid?”

My stomach churned as I pictured Shayla on the receiving end of such a maiming diatribe. “No.”

His voice got softer, more serious. “Did you slap her or physically hurt her in any way?”

“No, Trey.”

“You’re not turning into Dad.”

“But I wanted to. I mean . . . I felt angry, Trey. You know—the face-getting-hot, might-have-to-scream variety of angry. I just wanted to, you know, shake some sense into her and make her stop yelling and tell Scott to go take a flying leap off a high place. . . .”

“Scott?”

“Never mind.”

“So how’s the weather . . . ?”

“It’s—”

“Who’s Scott, Shell?” I swore I could hear a twinkle in his voice, if such a thing were possible.

“This is about me, Trey. My anger. My personal failures as a pseudo-mom.”

“So egocentric.”

“I’m serious.”

“Number one, lose the ‘pseudo-mom’ thing. It’s insulting to you and to Shayla. Number two, getting mad isn’t a crime. Picturing how mad you could really get if you let yourself is not a crime. Having instinctive urges to hit something or hurt someone or throw a tantrum are not, in themselves, criminal, Shelby. Should we all be figuring out how to deal with things before those urges rear their ugly heads? Absolutely. But the fact that you didn’t scream, that you didn’t shove her into the mattress, that you didn’t start throwing dishes or heavy furniture . . . Shell—that’s proof that you’re not turning into Dad.”

I sighed. Loud and long. The singing in the other room had lowered a few notches.

“And number three,” Trey continued, “who’s Scott?”

“Don’t you ever worry? That you’ve got too many Davis genes, I mean.”

“Sure. But I also try to figure out where Dad went wrong. I’m of the school of thought that genes can be deprogrammed.”

“If that’s the case, why are you still single?”

“I’m not completely clear on the deprogramming yet.”

“Maybe I’m not either.”

“Maybe Shayla is part of the process.”

“As long as she doesn’t become a victim of it.”

“I know you, Shell. Is there anyone else who knows you better?”

I thought for a fraction of a second. “Nope.”

“I’ve seen you at your best and at your worst—and no, a bathing suit is not what I’m referring to—and I have never, ever seen a hint of Dad in you.”

“Even when I jumped on his back and clawed his eyeballs out?”

“You were protecting me. Just like you’d protect Shayla. And this fear you’ve got going, Shell? That’s exactly what it is. You protecting Shayla—against yourself.”

“Huh.”

“But there’s no need to. I know that like I know . . . like I know you used to Ace-bandage your chest in junior high.”

“I wasn’t happy about being a woman.”

“No kidding.”

“You knew about the Ace bandages?”

“Yup. The only thing I apparently don’t know anything about is Scott. So, hey, Shell . . .” He tried to sound casual. “Who’s Scott?”

“Are you coming for Christmas? Please come for Christmas! Shayla needs to spend time with her favorite uncle.”

“How can I be her uncle if you’re only her pseudo-mom?”

“Shut up.”

“You’re going to have to deal with this, you know.”

“When I’m sure I’ve deprogrammed my genes.”

“Who’s Scott?”

“He’s a coach.” I rolled my eyes.

“Stop rolling your eyes.”

“How’d you know?”

“And . . . ?”

“He keeps wanting to talk to me!” I said talk like it was a horrible thing—like playing bingo.

“And?”

“And I don’t want to talk to him. But he keeps backing me into a corner—”

“Figuratively or . . . ?”

“Figuratively, Trey.”

“Which makes you feel powerless, which makes you get angry, which makes you think you’re Dad, which makes you blow a gasket at Shayla’s AC/DC impersonation.”

“This call is getting expensive, Dr. Freud. Tell me about you.”

“Me wants to hear about Scott.”

“Then I guess we’ve reached an impasse.”

There was a pause. “I miss you, Shelby.”

“I miss you, too.” I allowed my hopes to rise just a little. “Christmas?”

“We’ll see.”

“I think Marilyn Manson’s losing steam.”

“Give her a kiss for me.”

“I will.”

“To the muddlehood . . . ,” he said.

“. . . of huddlehood.”

“Thanks for calling.”

“Bye, Trey.”

Shayla was half-asleep when I stepped into her bedroom. She was lying on her side, a stuffed animal in the crook of each elbow, humming Barney’s song in a misty, cottony voice. I knelt on the braided throw rug next to her bed and slung an arm over her waist.

“You getting tired?”

She nodded.

“You had fun playing basketball with the boys, didn’t you.”

Another nod.

“Shayla . . .” I wasn’t sure how to broach this subject. It felt like shoving a porcupine into a wool sweater—not easy, at best. “There’s something I think I need.”

Tired eyes opened a fraction more. “You want a donut?”

I loved this child. “Actually,” I whispered, adjusting my seating so I could prop my head sideways on my arm and be nose-to-nose with her, “I think it would make me really happy if I could call you my daughter.” Shayla’s eyes were so close to mine that I could see the dark flecks in the blue and her pupils dilating and retracting. “When we meet new people,” I continued, trying to make it clear to her young mind, “I’d like to be able to say, ‘This is my daughter, Shayla.’ You know what I mean?”

A shy smile curved her lips and she tightened her hold on her animals.

“So, beautiful—” I could feel a tear escaping from the corner of my eye and running down into my hairline—“is it okay if I call you ‘my daughter, Shayla,’ from now on?”

She watched another tear follow the path the first had taken and looked into my eyes, worried.

“I’m not sad,” I assured her, and I knew my smile proved it.

Shayla let go of the blue rabbit she’d been holding and reached out to hook her arm around my neck, pulling my face down to touch hers. We stayed like that until she was asleep, me kneeling next to her bed, cheek to cheek with my daughter, her breath warm against my neck, the smell of her sweet and heavy like warm honey in my lungs. And it struck me with so much force that I had to hold back sobs that this was the antithesis of a God-spitting-on-me moment. This was God pouring such a deluge of wondrousness and overwhelmingness and profound healingness on me that I could hardly stand it. As I knelt there by Shayla’s bed and tried to absorb the enormity of the moment, it was all I could do not to crawl up under the blankets and huddle there all night with Shayla—with my daughter—in my arms.