In Broken Places

17




CHAOS HAD OVERTAKEN the auditorium. And not the Steel Magnolias variety of chaos with the wedding and the dog and the squawking Ouiser. This was the Armageddon variation on the theme. All that was missing was a colossal asteroid hurtling toward the earth. What was hurtling, instead, was the school play, and it was aimed right at a three-week deadline that had me losing sleep. Big time.

A wonderful lady by the name of Nancy had signed on to do costumes for us, and I was pretty sure the process was going to put us all over the edge. It wasn’t so much the time it took out of our rehearsals as the sheer impossibility of forcing teenage boys hyped up on adrenaline into too-tight slacks with high waistlines, à la Oxford circa 1953. They whined and haggled and generally gave sweet, patient Nancy a hard time. The girls in the cast, amazingly, just did what they were told and got back to work. My divas were half the trouble of my divos.

Not only did we now have to contend with costuming interfering with our play rehearsals, but the sets committee had installed themselves in the cafeteria space just outside the auditorium as well, like there was no other place in the school for them to paint and drill and quibble about perspective. The downside of our space-sharing was the added noise and distraction. The upside, however, was the fact that my just-friend Scott had become the official carpenter in charge of designing and creating the stage’s centerpiece—an oversize wardrobe whose doors would open as if by magic on a specific cue in the middle of our performance. He’d set up shop in a corner of the cafeteria and, now that our rehearsals were going later, would often come by after his practices to fine-tune the mechanics and enhance the aesthetics of his creation.

I liked knowing he was there. I had to admit it. And I liked it when he’d wander in and say something positive about the scene we were doing or bring me a cup of coffee or ask me for some guidance with his building project. And I think he liked that we’d invite him to join us for supper during our extended rehearsals. The kids would banter with him and give him a hard time about the progress of his wardrobe, and every so often, when I’d glance in his direction, I’d catch his eyes on me. Speculative, sort of. Double axel without the lutz. It was a comfortable kind of flip.

We’d almost gone back to the way things had been before the toy museum and our relationship-defining talk. We still did things with Shayla like driving up to Hochblauen to watch hang gliders and going to the stork refuge in Holzen. That particular outing had been a bit traumatic, as we’d arrived just at feeding time and no one had warned us that the graceful, orange-legged birds immortalized by nursery rhymes ate live chicks for lunch! The stork-keeper had tossed a bucketful of chicks over the fence, and the storks had descended on them like murderous science-fiction monsters. Shayla had screamed and I had gagged and Scott had pretty much manhandled us both back to the car.

But Shayla wasn’t always at the center of our outings. There were times when Scott could tell that I was teetering on the brink of being overwhelmed. On those occasions, he’d arrange for Bev to watch Shay and whisk me away to a rigorously just-friends dinner at a cozy art café like the Mezzo in nearby Müllheim. We’d sit at the table in the dimly lit interior, trying to keep our eyes from lingering on whatever nude paintings were hanging on the walls that week, and we’d talk about the weather, the sin nature of man, Shayla’s progress in German, the sovereignty of God, my latest mini meltdowns—they were getting rarer—and relational evangelism. You know—typical missionary fare. Except for the part where I wondered what was wrong with me for keeping him at arm’s length and the part where he looked at me like he thought I should be wondering what was wrong with me too.

Much as Shayla and I enjoyed his company, however, I’d tried to make Scott less of an automatic addition to our activities—just so his number one fan wouldn’t think he was becoming a fixture of our little family. But as she had pointed out after we’d driven to Switzerland together on her fifth birthday so she could see the real Heidi mountain, “It’s not as much fun without Scott!” And she was right, of course. It really wasn’t. But we’d made the most of her special day anyway, visiting the small museum in Maienfeld and taking dozens of Heidi pictures of her as she frolicked, beaming, in a cow pasture in front of snowcapped peaks jutting into the sky. We’d decided on our way home that Scott would have loved our day in the Alps.

Meanwhile, opening night kept hurtling.

It was after a particularly taxing rehearsal that I received a call from Trey.

“You ready for this?” he asked without preamble.

“Depends on what ‘this’ is.”

“Um . . . I just got a letter from Shay’s mom—her birth mom. She sent it through Dana, addressed to you and me.”

My breath caught and I felt the world tilt a little on its axis. I had visions of Shayla being taken away from me, being returned to the woman who had abandoned her so soon after her birth. “She wants her back?”

“No! Shell, no! And even if she did, she has no legal rights. You know that.”

I felt a rush of relief. “What does she want?”

“Well, it appears she just heard about Dad’s death and, out of the kindness of her heart and all, wanted to write us a sympathy letter.”

“Really. What does she say?”

“Want me to read it?”

“Trey! Of course!”

“Okay. Here goes.” There was a rustling of paper, then, “Ready?”

“No. But go ahead.”

“‘Dear Trey and Shelby, I was saddened to hear about your father’s heart attack through a friend.’”

“Stop reading with a Southern accent, Trey. She lived in Michigan.”

“Oh—right. I just picture trailer trash and the Southern accent comes out.”

“You don’t know she’s trailer trash. Read.”

“All right. Here goes. ‘I know that you had no contact with Jim in the years after he moved out. I want you to know he often talked about you. Mostly with regret. He knew he’d done you harm.’”

“Warms the cockles of my heart.”

“Want me to stop?”

“No.” I heard him take a breath and blurted, “Yes!” before he could continue.

“Yes, you want me to stop, or—?”

“Can you just . . . I don’t know, summarize it for me?”

“Listen, if it was more entertaining with the accent, I can—”

“It’s not the accent.” I wasn’t sure what it was. “It just feels . . . I don’t know. Too connected. I don’t want to be connected to him again.”

I could picture Trey doing his squinty confused look. He did that a lot when I got kooky.

“Okay,” he said, like he’d decided to let this one slide. “So the summary is . . .” I could hear the paper rustling again. “Basically, she’s sorry for our loss, she’s glad Shay’s with you, and she wants us to know that he tried to change.”

“Tried? Not exactly a ringing endorsement.”

“Nope. She sounds sincere enough, though. I mean, what did she have to gain from writing?”

“Thankfully, not her daughter.” I was still getting over that fraction of a second when I’d thought she was suing to regain custody of Shayla.

“Makes me wonder what Shayla remembers of him,” Trey said. “You think she ever saw the Godzilla in the guy?”

“All she ever says is that she misses him and he was funny.”

“Really?”

“Yup.”

“Not distant? Short-tempered? Violent?”

“Not exactly in a four-year-old’s vocabulary, but no.” I didn’t like to admit it. “The first few months she was with me, I kept looking for signs that he’d hurt her.”

“And?”

“Haven’t found any yet.”

“Maybe he was better with babies than with teenagers.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

We both pondered that for a moment—the fact that our brutal, ruthless father might actually have been kind in another life, in another fatherhood role, and genuinely so. It seemed impossible, yet the woman’s letter had certainly hinted at a change.

Trey cleared his throat. “So this is the way I see it, Shell. If the original Jim Davis somehow managed to debastardize himself . . . you know . . . maybe, just maybe, those genes aren’t as potent as we thought, and maybe we’ll be okay. You know. In an I’m-not-going-to-turn-into-Hannibal-Lecter sorta way.”

“You think?”

“Well, I wouldn’t put a million bucks on it just yet, but I think it’s a pretty good theory. You should give it a whirl and see if it’s true.”

“No, Trey, you should give it a whirl.”

“Except that I’m married to my job.”

“You’re married to your bakery?”

“I’m married to my vocation as a wannabe French baker with a slightly Italian flair.”

“And I’m married to my conviction that it’s wiser and saner to play it safe rather than risk perpetuating the Davis family curse.”

“Time for a divorce, babe. Take the leap. Teach a lesson to the guy who nearly strangled me to death and show him how parenting is done.”

“That’s asking a lot.”

“You owe me a lot.”

I had a brief vision of Scott sitting on my couch with his heart in his eyes, asking if it would be okay for him to pursue me. And fear curled into my stomach like a leaden, malevolent stain. “I’ll think about it,” I conceded.

“You do that, Shell. And don’t take too long. You don’t want him to go the way of the Keiths and Daves and Vinnies that came before him.”

“He’s on a different planet than any of those guys.”

“A better one?”

“You have no idea.”

“All the more reason.”

“I’m hanging up now.”

“Enjoy the muddlehood.”

“Great help you are.”



Joy was dying. The room was hushed and reverent as Seth and Kate, teenage actors who appeared too young to know the full weight of such a moment, brought the scene to such a powerful conclusion that none of us—not even the set crew—were unmoved. There was a simplicity to the scene that allowed for nuances so profound and intimate that Seth could pour the entirety of his pain into the lines, enrobing them with soul-purpose and heart-meaning.

“Still here?” Kate whispered, her voice somehow carrying to the back of the auditorium where I sat, script in hand, mind in England.

“Still here.” Seth sat on the edge of her bed, his hands gentle on her arm, her face, her hair, his eyes so intent on her that it seemed he’d dimmed the world beyond her next breath.

“Go to bed. Get some sleep.”

“Soon.”

“Jack. Has it been worth it?”

“Three years of happiness?”

“Tell me you’ll be all right.”

“I’ll be all right.”

Kate shifted a little, slightly grimacing with pain. Seth helped her adjust on her pillow and brushed a strand of hair off her forehead. “Are you afraid?” he asked quietly.

“Of dying?”

“Yes.”

“I’m tired, Jack.” There was profound weariness in her voice. “I want to rest. I just don’t want to leave you.”

“I don’t want you to go.”

“Too much pain,” she said, wincing.

“I know.”

“Other worlds. It has to be more than we can imagine. Even more than you can imagine.”

Seth nodded, clinging to that hope. “Far more.” After a pause laden with reluctance, love, and loss, he added, “I don’t know what to do, Joy. You’ll have to tell me what to do.”

“You have to let me go, Jack.”

“I’m not sure that I can.”

I rose from my seat, clearing my throat, and took a couple of steps toward the front of the room. I spoke softly, as if the ghosts of Joy and Lewis might be disturbed by anything louder. “That’s all we have time for today, everyone. Thank you, Seth, Kate. Now go home, all of you. Do your homework. Get some sleep. In that order.” I looked around at the faces of stressed and tired actors and wondered, not for the first time, how I’d been blessed with such a hardworking and devoted cast. “I’m so proud of you all.”

There were some blushes and some thanks as the students gathered up their belongings and headed for the door. Meagan stayed behind to help me gather mine.

“You think they’re doing okay?” she asked, handing me the to-do list I’d asked her to compile.

I smiled wearily. “I think they’re doing great.”

Her eyes traveled to the spot where the scene had just ended, and she shook her head in awe. “How do they do that?” Her Southern accent was enchanting. “I mean, did you see Seth? I think there were actual tears in his eyes!”

I shouldered my bag and started flipping off the lights. I didn’t like talking about displays of emotion. “He’s pretty amazing.”

“’Specially when you consider how tough it was at the beginning. I mean, could you believe the stress between those two?”

It dawned on me, suddenly, that there had been a bit of a thaw lately in Seth and Kate’s months-long awkward stage. “You’re absolutely right, Meagan! What happened to them?”

“Don’t you know?” She gave me a where-have-you-been? look that put me in my place.

“I’ve been a little preoccupied, Meagan.”

“Well, the way I heard it is that the two of them finally started to mouth off at each other one day after practice. Kate kept yelling at him that he was a wuss and he kept telling her that she was too bossy and they finally just got madder and took off.”

“And that solved the problem?” The warped minds of teenagers. I locked the auditorium door behind me and headed through the foyer to the double doors that led outside.

“It only made things worse!”

I needed to get to Bev’s and pick up Shayla, and this story was keeping me from my daughter.

“So . . . ?”

“So they went to the kebab place the next day and were in the middle of duking it out—you know, for the sake of the play and all—and right in the middle of this major argument, Seth says something like, ‘It’s because I like you, okay?’ And then she went all Helen Keller and stuff.”

“Helen Keller?”

“Like, quiet.”

Right. I was fascinated. “How do you know all this, Meagan?”

“Jenny was sitting at the table next to them. She told me all about it.” She took a quick breath and rushed on. “And then Kate went all ballistic and stuff, but then she had to admit that she liked him too.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Are you telling me that Seth and Kate were acting like kooks this whole time because they like each other?”

“Yup. This whole time.” She was walking with me toward my car, which was the opposite direction from the van waiting to take her home to her dorm. “And then, once they told each other it was like, poof! And now they’re fine. And they’re acting great too, so that’s good news for the play ’cause it’s only, like, three weeks away.”

I laughed. “Well, thanks for catching me up on the news, Meagan.”

“No problem!” She stood there nodding at me, happy as a lark that she’d been the one to tell me the story.

I took her by the shoulders and turned her physically toward the van. “See those lights over there?”

She nodded.

“That’s your van.” I put on an ominous voice. “Go to the light, Meagan.”

She giggled and did a zombie walk for a bit.