In Broken Places

11




TREY AND I had been huddling a lot in the week since Dad had gone all Godzilla on us, though it had taken a couple tries for me to figure out how to make it up the ladder to the attic without using my injured arm. We’d been off school all week, and I wanted to think that was because Mom was giving us time to get our heads sorted out. After all, last Saturday had been the kind of thing that muddles the brain a little. I wasn’t used to seeing my brother being strangled by my dad, and the image kept coming back to me, no matter what I did. Opening a carton of orange juice—Dad strangling Trey. Cleaning up my bedroom—Dad strangling Trey. Watching game shows on TV—Dad strangling Trey. It had been a Dad-strangling-Trey kind of week.

But I knew my mom hadn’t kept us home from school just because we needed to get over the shock to our brains. I figured it was also to allow time for Trey’s neck to heal. Explaining that her daughter had sprained her wrist in a fall was one thing. But explaining how her son had gotten bruises all over his throat and a bad cut to the side of his mouth? That would take a little more creativity than my mom possessed. We hadn’t complained about the weeklong vacation, though. Instead, we’d spent it reading books, playing video games, eating tons of food (Mom always cooked when she was stressed), and turning the Huddle Hut into Ali Baba’s cavern. We brought up pillows and comfy blankets; we moved in lamps and extension cords; we even dangled Christmas tree lights over the wardrobe at one end of the attic so we could lie in our tent at night and imagine they were stars. I’m not sure what had prompted the Huddle Hut overhaul. There was just so much uncomfortable going on inside that we felt compelled to build something comfortable on the outside, I guess.

It was shortly after lunch, and Trey and I were lying on our backs shoveling trail mix into our mouths. Mom had discovered our attic hideaway. I knew that because we’d crawled up today to find a bowl of trail mix and two glasses of Kool-Aid sitting in the middle of the hut on a tray.

Trey dropped an M&M into his mouth. “One week ago this minute, I decided I wanted to shoot hoops.”

“I always told you sports were unhealthy.”

“Maybe it’s just basketball.”

“I think he’d have been mad if you’d wrecked his car for soccer, too.”

“Yeah, probably. We should make a movie.”

That was a new one. “Of what?”

“The things you see in your head when the life’s being choked out of you.”

He had my attention. “You saw things?”

“Yup.”

“Like what?”

“An Easter egg hunt.”

“Weird.”

“You were there too.”

“What was I doing?”

“I don’t know. Just kinda smiling and looking at me.”

“Trust me—I wasn’t smiling in real life.”

“And I saw something orange. Really orange. Like, burn-your-eyeball orange.”

“It wouldn’t make a very good movie,” I said.

“No, you’re right.”

“You think he’s coming back?”

“If he does, I’ll kill him.”

His words made my stomach do a little thunk. That was the weird thing about my dad. I knew he was evil and capable of hurting us—I wore the bandages that proved it—but hearing Trey talk about killing him still made me feel not right. He may have sprained my wrist, but he was still my dad.

“Do you think he ever liked us?” I asked my brother.

“Nope.”

“I used to give him things to make him like me more. Like leftover candy from Halloween and clay bowls from art class. I even made him a macaroni necklace once. I was supposed to give it to Mom, but I figured he needed the cheering up more.”

“He never loved us.”

“You sure?”

He pointed at his neck.

“Right.” I didn’t want to push it, but . . . “It’s just that sometimes he was really nice.”

“Like when?”

“Like when we went to Disney World that one time. He let us go on all the rides we wanted and stay until the park closed. And when he took us out to movies ’cause we got good report cards,” I added, recalling more and more instances when he’d seemed a little less horrible. “He even bought us popcorn that one time when you’d gotten good grades and scored three goals in your soccer game.”

“And then he came home and made me stand outside the front door for three hours because I dropped the pickle jar when I was getting it out of the fridge.”

“Yeah, but we got popcorn.”

“He didn’t love us, Shell. He still doesn’t.”

“Maybe he’ll realize he does—because he’s away from us—and come back and say he’s sorry.” There was something light and fluttery brightening in my lungs. “Maybe if I send him a card or something—”

“What?” Trey came up on his elbow and glared so hard it made me shiver.

“Or maybe if I went to see him, wherever he is, and told him that we don’t hate him bad. We hate him like we hate the dentist—not like mass murderers.”

Trey looked at me and I could tell I should be quiet. His nostrils were flared and his eyes were squinty. He got up off the floor and took a few steps away, his hands on his hips, breathing like he’d just run up the stairs. When he turned around, his lips were curled in and the skin of his face looked stretched too tight. “What’s wrong with you, Shell?” His voice was hard, as Trey-less as the sneer distorting his features. It scared me bad enough to make my face feel prickly. “He’s out of our lives,” he said, and there was cement behind his eyes. And then his voice got really hard, like cold metal, and he said, “He’s gone. You hear me? Leave him wherever he is!”

He stood there, glaring, for another minute or two, then stalked back to the Huddle Hut, threw himself down next to me, and crammed a fistful of trail mix into his mouth, chomping hard and squinting at the sheet above us. “Leave him wherever he is,” he said again, more softly this time. A little faded. I put an M&M in my mouth, but my stomach didn’t seem to want me to swallow it. Maybe I was coming down with the flu. Or cancer. It wasn’t normal, anyway.

After a few minutes had passed, enough for me to sing “Eye of the Tiger” in my mind, I tried to reason with Trey one more time. Actually, I was probably trying to convince myself more than him. It just felt wrong not to have a father—guilty, somehow.

“We should have waited until he got home to move the car.”

“Shut up, Shelby!” He sat up and spit a little trail mix at me when he added, with gravel in his throat, “He’s not coming back! He’s dead!”

I knew my dad wasn’t really dead, but it made me cry anyway. Trey’s yelling made me cry and my not-dead dad made me cry. I thought of the drawing of John Wayne I’d made him when I was little and wished I’d just used the red eraser. If I hadn’t gone into his desk, maybe he’d still be here today. But I couldn’t say that to Trey. His anger had made his bruises look deeper red, and I could tell he didn’t want to talk about Dad anymore. Not for a long time. So I closed my eyes and listened to the squirrels running back and forth on the roof. I hoped they were playing, maybe with their dad watching them through the leaves of a tree to make sure they were safe. I hoped it so hard it made me dizzy.



After an unseasonably warm fall, the weather had turned wintry. The leaves, it seemed, had browned and fallen overnight, and we’d gone from Kool-Aid weather to hot-chocolate weather just as fast. My walks to the Johnsons’ after school were now drives, and though I disliked the cold, I was grateful for the change. It made it less obvious that Scott had stopped performing his Boy Scout routine. We’d crossed in the hallways and on the street several times since the gym fiasco, and he’d always been friendly. I’d tried to keep the zingers down to a minimum—my form of penance—but sometimes they just popped out. He’d become one of Shayla’s favorite people, and she tended to launch herself at him whenever she saw him, which made extricating myself from banal conversations a little complicated. But I did get one thing straight when I ran into him in the doorway of the Lacoste bakery one Saturday morning.

“Where’s Shayla?” he asked, surprised to find my usual sidekick nowhere in sight.

“My daughter is having a playdate with Lizzie Robinson,” I said, putting sufficient emphasis on daughter to make my subliminal message not quite so subliminal.

He looked pleased—happy, actually—and said, “Well, say hello to your daughter from me.” There were three cement blocks and a Humvee stacked on the word daughter when he said it, so I knew my message had gotten across.

I thought that would be the extent of our conversation and slung my bag higher on my shoulder, prepared to leave the bakery, but Scott didn’t move. I was standing inside the door, waiting to go down two steps to the street, and he was standing on the sidewalk, blocking my exit while his mind was engaged in what appeared to be some pretty intense internal dialogue. The baker’s wife finally bellowed that we were keeping the sliding door from shutting, and that spurred him into motion. German women yelling had a tendency to do that. He stepped into the bakery and moved me aside to allow other customers to exit.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?” he asked, jutting his chin toward the small dining room just beyond a glass wall.

“Um . . .”

“Please. We don’t have to stay long, but . . . I’ve been unfair to you and I’d like to make up for it.”

“Unfair?”

He pointed to the dining room. “Coffee? Or tea? I’d like to explain myself, but not standing here.”

This was not the usual fearless Scott standing in front of me, the conversational warrior who had submitted me to a hailstorm of questions so many times with zeal and confidence. This was a more guarded man who seemed more deliberate than spontaneous, more considerate than impulsive.

It must have been pity that made me say, “Just a few minutes,” as I pushed through the glass door into the smoky dining room beyond, wondering as I went what had possessed me to accept his invitation. “I’m not really comfortable with this,” I added to make sure he knew I wasn’t used to this kind of thing. He nodded and motioned toward a table. We sat in an alcove at the back of the room and ordered two cappuccinos. As soon as the waitress left, Scott leaned his forearms on the table and assumed a contrite expression.

“I’ve been selfish.”

“You said unfair before, but I’ll accept selfish, too.”

He nodded and allowed a lopsided grin. “I’ve got to admit that I’m . . . confused,” he said after a hesitation, “about what happened at the gym and . . . and a bunch of other stuff, but that’s not why I wanted to talk to you. The fact is, I’ve done my share of interrogating you—”

“Ya think?” Sarcasm crackled.

“And I’ve given you absolutely no time to get even—to counterinterrogate. Which leaves me knowing some stuff about you, but you knowing nearly nothing about me. And I can’t expect you to trust me if you don’t have any information to base it on, right?”

I frowned. “Who says I want to trust you?”

My question didn’t keep him from making his point. He’d apparently put some time into thinking it through and was intent on saying it all. “So I’ve got no right to ask you any more questions until you’ve had the chance to even things up.”

“Even things up.”

“Reverse the conversational blitzes.”

“I get to ask questions?”

He took a deep breath. “As many as you want.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

He clearly hadn’t anticipated that option. “Then I guess—”

“What’s the time limit?” I asked abruptly. It was a strange proposition, but I could see some potential there. Maybe I’d decide he really wasn’t very likable after all once I’d had my chance to question him.

He pondered it for a moment. “As long as you want.”

“Actually, I’m supposed to pick Shayla up at the Robinsons’ in a half hour, so . . .”

“So I guess you need to start firing.”

The waitress appeared with our cappuccinos and gave us odd looks, perhaps perceiving the hum of tension between us. We were being cordial, but our guards were up. Our conversation in the gym, as unfinished as it was, had left us both in a kind of limbo that made this tête-à-tête feel a little surreal. Yet there was something reassuring in the emotional distance. It made me feel less vulnerable. So I launched into my questioning, subdued but purposeful.

“Middle name.”

He raised an eyebrow as if saying, That’s the best you’ve got?

“I’m working up to the good stuff,” I said.

“Adam.”

“Place of birth.”

“Seattle.”

“Siblings.”

“One older sister. Two nephews, one niece.”

“So forthcoming.” I smiled sweetly.

“Keep going.” He had the focused look of an athlete before a game.

“Do you get along with her?”

“We do now.”

“You didn’t before?”

“I wasn’t always as lovable as I am now.” He grinned. “She’d tell you I was the worst brother who ever lived.”

I gave him a disapproving look. “What did you do to her?” We sisters had to stick up for each other.

“I threw all her bras into a tree outside her boyfriend’s house when she was fifteen and I was twelve. That’s the worst thing. I’ll spare you the snake and lizard stories.”

I rolled my eyes. Boys. “Education?” I was spitting out topics like a drill sergeant on steroids. It was kind of nice being in charge for a change.

“BA from MSU, master’s from U of O.”

“Oregon?”

“Yup.”

“Phys ed?”

“Educational leadership.”

“Impressive. Good student?”

“Terrible all the way through high school. Things picked up after my first year of college.”

“Why?”

“I like sports.”

“No kidding. Parents?”

“Mom is a Mary Kay sales phenomenon. She could sell lipstick to a monk. Dad owns a roofing business. Retires next year.”

“Were you supposed to take over the business from him?”

“That was the original plan. He figured out pretty fast that it wasn’t my thing.”

“How’d he take it?”

“I think it was probably hard at first, but he’s made his peace with it.”

“How long have you been at BFA?”

“This is my fourth year. I came for a year and was hooked after a month.”

“So you’re planning on sticking around for a while?”

“Until it’s time to move on.”

That gave me pause. “How will you know?”

“Not sure,” he smiled. “I think I’ll know it when it comes, though.”

“Got any friends here?”

“A men’s group—we meet for a Bible study every week. And a couple of the other coaches.”

“I don’t see you hanging out a lot.”

“We’re guys. We get together for a purpose; then we go home. Some of us are going skiing next weekend. Does that count?”

“Sure.”

“Come on—give me something a little harder.”

I looked at him like he had no idea what he was asking for.

“I’m a big boy. I can take it.”

Hey, who was I to resist a challenge? “Most memorable girlfriend.”

“Jeanie Bledsoe. Our braces got locked when I tried to kiss her.”

“That’ll teach ya.”

“It really didn’t.”

“Greatest personal flaw.”

He didn’t hesitate. “A short fuse.”

“Really?”

“It’s mostly under control, but if you’d known me when I was a kid . . .”

“So you’re over it?”

“Been to any basketball games?”

“Not yet.” But I’d heard some stories about the fiery coach.

“I’m not completely over it. Working on it, though.”

“I should come to a game just to see you lose your cool.”

I could tell by his face that he’d rather I went for another reason. “It’s a pretty tough habit to break,” he said. “You get a bunch of guys out on the court, the testosterone’s flowing, the score’s tight, the other team starts fouling my players . . .”

“What—you throw chairs?”

“No. But I get a little hot under the collar. It’s stupid. I know it. And I’m working on it—the refs don’t call me on it half as much as they used to.”

“I’m sure they’re impressed that you’re growing up.”

“I don’t care so much about them as about the guys. They don’t need to see their coach losing it.”

“Punching other coaches in the nose, throwing Gatorade at the refs . . .”

“Never that bad. But losing my grip on what’s important. Using some colorful language. Like I said—I’m working on it.”

I had to ask it. “Ever been violent?”

He considered the question for a moment, and I wondered if he was deciding how much to reveal. “When I was younger,” he finally said. “My first year of college was pretty rowdy. A lot of partying. Too much drinking. Too much freedom, really. So I got sloshed a few times and got into a couple of fistfights.”

I didn’t like this revelation. It reminded me too much of bruises and broken wrists. “Injure anyone?”

He shook his head. “It was never anything really bad. Bruises and black eyes. Stupid, macho, one-too-many-beers stuff.”

“So what happened after your first year of college?”

He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, they weren’t as present as they had been before—like they’d drifted. “A drunk-driving accident. I wasn’t involved. Two guys walked away, the third one’s in a wheelchair for life.”

“A friend?”

“Point guard on the basketball team.” He sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. “I decided in the hospital waiting room that drinking wasn’t worth it.”

“So you stopped.”

“Mostly. I still have a glass occasionally. That’s it.”

I’d hoped that the awkwardness that had preceded our conversation would have allowed me to interrogate Scott dispassionately. But I was suddenly uncomfortable with the personal honesty of his answers. I wanted to bolt, yet there were just a couple more questions I needed to ask before ducking out of the contrived intimacy.

“Anything else?” Scott asked.

“Just one or two more . . . if that’s okay.”

He nodded seriously. The guard that had slipped a little with the last series of questions fell back into place. He was braced and ready.

“Greatest personal quality.”

He hadn’t expected that one. “Mine?”

“No, Pee-wee Herman’s.”

His grin made my neurons jiggle. “Greatest personal quality, huh? I’d say . . .” He was having trouble with this one. I’d learned long ago that the good stuff was infinitely harder to come up with than the bad stuff. “I’d say it’s a willingness to recognize my flaws. I can be a jerk and I know it. I can be stubborn and I know it.”

“Doesn’t stop you.”

“Helps me try.”

“Right. Last question before I run off to rescue my daughter from a horde of sugar-crazed monsters.”

“Okay.”

“Why, oh why, won’t you leave me alone?” The question had come out a little more intensely than I had intended it to, perhaps because this conversation had pushed me dangerously close to admiring him, which was the opposite of the result I’d been hoping for.

His eyes narrowed and he leaned a little toward me. “Because my second-greatest quality is obstinacy.”

“Really? Most people file that one under personal flaws.”

He smiled—and I could see relief in it. “Thank you for the conversation.”

“Thank you for the coffee.”

“So are we even?”

I didn’t know how to answer. “This isn’t a competition,” I said with a tight smile, rising to leave and eager to get away from the ambivalent tension hovering like an electrical current between us.

“Say hi to your daughter from me.”

“I will.”



“It looks like a baby,” I whispered.

Trey and I crouched without moving just inside the attic. We’d been frozen there for a while, ever since a certainty that something wasn’t right had brushed against my consciousness and sent me to the space beneath the roof. I hadn’t heard a sound, and yet . . . I’d known. I’d known there was something desperate above us and had forced a sullen, reluctant Trey to climb the ladder into our intruder’s agony.

It had flown in through the broken pane of glass at the other end of the attic and battered its wings against the rafters in its desperation to get out. Now it huddled there in a fold of the mussed-up Huddle Hut blanket we hadn’t used in months, its protruding eyes wide open, its rounded chest heaving.

“You think he’s badly hurt?” I asked.

Trey tried to shrug like he didn’t care, but he’d been doing that so much lately, I could see right through it. “He’s fine.”

“We should help him.”

“He’ll get back out the same way he got in.”

“He’s scared. It’s hard to know what to do when you’re scared.” I knew that for a fact.

We crouched there for a while longer and my thighs began to burn. I didn’t like being sixteen. A few years ago, I could have crouched all day without a thought of aching legs. “You think he’ll take off if we get closer?”

“Probably.”

“Maybe if you circle around and we close in from different sides, he’ll stay put.”

“It’s just a bird.”

“Yeah, but he’s our bird!”

Trey looked at me like he didn’t have the time for this.

“He’s in our Huddle Hut,” I said. “And he needs our help.”

“Just go back downstairs and let him be. If he dies, he dies.”

I couldn’t figure out what had happened to Trey. The gray-green of his eyes had turned the color of a dirty swimming pool lately. Something in him had broken the day over a year ago when he’d mistaken the accelerator for the brake and rammed what was left of our crippled family into the rear wall of the garage. I figured the bruises on his neck had inked their way into the cells and synapses of his mind like a tattoo.

For a couple weeks after the Big Bang, he’d been fine. Kind of sad and moody, but I figured that was because his neck still hurt. And then, after a month or so, he’d turned angry, snapping at Mom and cussing at stupid things like toast that got too dark or shoelaces that came undone. He’d started sneaking bottles into his room too, and hiding them under his bed where he thought no one would find them. But I always found things—even my Christmas presents, no matter how well Mom hid them. So I’d found his stash of bottles, but I hadn’t emptied them like I wanted to. He needed them for now, and I figured he’d outgrow them when the worst of this was past.

After a few months, he had finally gotten better enough that we’d gone back to talking and hanging out, but not the same as before. It was like when someone leaned against the wall at the back of the school’s meeting hall and hit the switch by mistake and half the lights went out. Trey was half-out, and I couldn’t find the switch to fix him. I had a feeling that my carefree brother—the one who acted half his age sometimes and didn’t care, the one who did the moonwalk and took me up on my stupid dares—had stayed pinned to the wall in the garage between some twisted metal shelves and the Chevy’s shiny hood. I missed that Trey.

He said I’d been acting odd too, but I didn’t feel much different. On Saturday mornings, I’d still wake up and listen for the sound of singing in the shower. And then I’d remember and crawl out of bed and tiptoe to the window and see that the lawn needed mowing. And that would make me happy because it told me I could have my chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast without the usual stomachache afterward.

Trey and I hadn’t really spent any time in the Huddle Hut lately. He said he was too old to be crawling up there—he was going to start college next year, after all. I didn’t like it when he talked about college, even though I should have been proud that he’d gotten a full scholarship for soccer. Instead, his imminent departure just made me feel trapped and homeless.

“I’m going downstairs,” Trey said, standing a little stiffly.

The bird got scared and tried to move away but one of his wings wasn’t flapping like the other, so he kinda did a sideways walk across the ripples in the blanket, teetering onto his damaged wing, righting himself, then teetering again.

“He’s hurt bad,” I whispered, moved by the small creature’s desperate eyes.

“Don’t be stupid,” Trey said, squinting at the tears in my eyes like they were embarrassing to him. But he couldn’t look at the bird, so I knew he felt it too. Like a sinking in the chest.

The bird teetered into a higher fold of the blanket and leaned there, one leg bent, his head turned forward so his eye could see us better. He blinked.

“We’ve got to help him,” I said. My voice cracked and Trey’s back stiffened.

“We don’t have to help him. He’s only a bird.”

“But he needs us.”

“He’s half-dead!”

The bird was looking right at me. “I’m going to help him,” I whispered, mostly to myself.

“Fine,” Trey said in a sharp, clipped voice. “You help your bird. I’m going downstairs.”

This was the Trey I didn’t recognize, the one who lived in his skin but somehow left it empty. As Trey headed toward the ladder, I inched over to the bird, still crouching, one hand outstretched, making tsking sounds with my tongue. Every time he started, I paused, waiting for him to accept my nearness. I hadn’t heard the ladder creak, so I knew Trey was still there.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I whispered to the bird.

He looked at me with wide, unblinking eyes.

“Let him die, Shell.”

“You’re okay, buddy,” I cooed in a breathy voice. “You’re okay. . . .”

“You’re such a moron. Just let him die!”

“No,” I hissed at my brother with all the fury I could muster. “I’m not going to!”

“Fine, then! Waste your time on the stupid thing! I’m outta here!”

“Fine!”

I could see the bird’s pulse beating on the side of his neck. Mine beat nearly as fast as his. I crawled as slowly as possible toward the petrified creature, the Huddle Hut transfigured by his fear into a terrorizing space. My hand was inches above him, and I lowered it slowly, ready to wrap my fingers firmly around his back and immobilize his damaged wing.

I acted a moment too late. Spurred into motion by sheer panic, the injured bird made one last, desperate attempt at evasion, vainly flapping his defective wings as he tried to run away from me. His claws got caught in the blanket and hampered his escape, but the frenzy of his agitation made me rear back, losing my balance and toppling one of the chairs that supported the Huddle Hut’s roof. The clatter seemed to rip the bird’s claws from the blanket, and he lifted off in a floundering flight that stuttered and pitched and rose directly toward my brother’s scowling face.

Trey reacted without thought as the bird rushed at him. “Hey!” he yelled, slapping it away, flinging it out of the air onto the dusty floor of our protected, sacred space.

“No!” I cried, too late. The bird lay pitiful and broken on the floorboards, its legs twitching. “Trey!” I uttered hoarsely, willing him to do something—anything—to undo his brutal act.

“It came right at me!” Trey yelled, his voice laced with panic. “It came right at me—you saw it!” He looked around like he wanted to escape, his legs unsteady, his face a rictus of shock and shame.

“But you didn’t have to hurt him!” There was a sob in my voice as I stared with stricken eyes at the brother whose love for animals had always mirrored mine. This person standing across from me couldn’t be him. He looked and sounded and smelled too much like Dad to be the gentle, caring Trey I used to know. “What’s happening to you?” I cried. “How could you do this, Trey?”

“Shut up!”

Incomprehension bled in a steady stream of tears from my eyes. I begged again, “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing!” he screamed, his weakness hardening into something fierce. His gaze turned flinty. I could almost see the self-abhorrence burrowing into his rigid chest. Every syllable was jagged rock when he half hissed, half snarled, “It’s—just—a—stupid—bird!”

And with those words, maybe to prove his callousness, he took a step and kicked the bird across the room.

“Stop!” I screamed, lurching forward to rescue the small creature. The bird went rolling across the floor in a ghastly twist and turn, and I lunged toward it, desperate to halt its torture. “How could you?” I pleaded as I reached shaking hands toward the mangled form. “How could you, Trey?”

I stared at my brother—my gentle, compassionate brother—outraged by his merciless act, his obscene destruction of fragility. “Trey . . . ,” I wailed, my voice breaking as I took the shattered testament to his own agony into my hands.

I saw horror fissure his steel-masked face before it hardened again into rigid pride. He would not weaken now. He could not show his fear. And as the world that was my brother shattered in a hail of woundedness above our Huddle Hut, I held the bird against my chest and felt it slowly die.