In Broken Places

18




SHAYLA WAS LICKING COOKIE DOUGH off a set of beaters when I got to the Johnsons’. She seemed in no hurry to go home, so I sat down at the kitchen table and debriefed my day with Bev. When I got through telling her about the Seth and Kate transformation, she seemed to have nothing to say.

“Isn’t that amazing?” I prodded. “I mean, that they’ve been so uptight about something good that they’ve made it uncomfortable for everyone else—including themselves.”

Bev made a production of washing up her mixing bowl and measuring cups. “People can be silly that way,” she said.

“Silly is a bit of an understatement. If your feelings for someone get in the way of your other obligations, you’re better off just blurting it out and putting everyone else out of your misery.”

“Uh-huh. Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

I crossed my arms and tried to figure out what my suddenly enigmatic friend was talking—or not talking—about. At the table, Shayla shoved not one, but two whole cookies into her mouth, distracting me from the pondering at hand.

“Shayla! What are you doing?”

I think she tried to say, “Eating cookies,” but it came out sounding like an ancient Germanic dialect, accompanied by a virtual meteor shower of cookie bits. Bev lunged for her dishcloth, Shayla started to giggle, and I made a mental note to tell Scott about the incident when I saw him at school tomorrow.

It was at that precise moment that the sky opened up and God—sounding a lot like George Burns, actually—bellowed something like, “Get a grip, Shelby! You’re wasting daylight here!” I figured it would have been disrespectful and dangerous to point out that it was actually closer to nighttime, what with the Big Guy’s ability to zap people from heaven and all.

To be completely honest, the sky didn’t actually open and there’s a good chance George Burns was only in my mind—sharing billing with George Clooney, perhaps—but I was struck with a truth so clear and so urgent that there was no avoiding the corresponding action. My rejection of Scott’s pursuit hadn’t prevented anything. He was already a part of my life. He was already the person I wanted to tell about Shayla’s misbehavior, the person I wanted to make laugh, the person whose opinion mattered more to me than anyone else’s. He was already anchored in my life, and the thought of losing him to my desperate independence was intolerable.

I left Bev standing at the sink and set off toward Scott’s apartment in a haze of revelation and resolve, but I hadn’t made it halfway there before my courage began to wear thin. Thirty-five years of disclaimers and denials were squawking in my mind like the Aflac duck.

I’d done my job well, as the daughter of a tyrant. I’d learned all the lessons and internalized them to such a degree that they had become part of my emotional landscape, a landscape littered with the corpses of aborted and abandoned desires, of stifled needs and evaded longings, of emotional calluses so thick and deep and embedded that I feared nothing short of surgical intervention would remove them. An image of God as the Great Physician popped into my mind and I wondered if he’d answer just this one prayer, if he would give me just this one moment to reclaim a bit of the woman he had intended me to be—pre–Jim Davis, pre-maiming, pre-survival.

I walked down the silent, rain-burnished streets with a growing urge both to flee and to prevail, my steps emboldened by a sudden consciousness of need, my strides restricted by a fear of scorned endeavors and disemboweled hopes. My dread deepened as my urgency increased, and I longed in a flash for the return of the woman I’d been just moments before, whose rejection of risk had yielded a stable, predictable, safe, and stunted life. But in that instant when realization had dawned in a spray of crumbled cookie, when my mind had finally understood my heart and seen the stranglehold of my past on my future—in that moment I’d become too certain to hesitate. I was Seth and Kate encased in self-denial. I was Trey, my protector, shackled by his scars. I was my father, my tormentor, enslaved by his own terrors. I was my mother’s helplessness. I was my future’s emptiness. I was all I had pledged and purposed to abhor.

My turmoil must have showed on my face when Scott opened his door, because the smile that was growing there froze, then dissipated. He ushered me through the entryway into his apartment, and I sank gratefully onto his couch. My limbs felt flaccid. My breathing was short and shallow. My hands were cold—stiff and shaking. But my head was clear. For the first time in a very long time, my head was clear.

Scott sat at the other end of the couch, his gaze intense, cautious. I took in my surroundings, knowing they would reflect their owner’s heart. The space was tidy, though not immaculate by any means. There were a few dirty dishes in the sink, a coat slung over the back of a chair, papers strewn over the dining room table, and shoes lying where they’d been kicked off. The furniture was sturdy and modest, the dark leather couch well-worn and needing care. This was a soothing space—warm, masculine, restful.

“Are you—?”

“I need to say something,” I interrupted, too scared of faltering to waste any time. “And it might take a while, so . . .”

He smiled a little confusedly but nodded his agreement. There would be no censure here.

“I am Jim Davis’s daughter,” I began, linking my fingers to stop them from shaking. And the story unfolded from there, carried on the ebbs and flows and lashes of a past mired in the sinking sand of shame. I didn’t hold back—there was no use in that—as I carefully unwrapped the soiled and sordid, tattered shreds of who I was. He heard about the violence, the maiming words, the threats, the abuse. He heard about the Huddle Hut, the hospital, the car, and the abuse. He heard about the pancakes, the zucchini, the ties . . . and the abuse. He heard about it all. Right up to Shayla. I faltered at that hurdle.

“The reason I’m telling you all of this,” I said, when the lumbering, restorative tidal wave had passed, “is that I want you to understand who I am.”

His eyes hadn’t left me. I’d felt them on me from beginning to end, though I hadn’t looked at him very much. I’d spoken with determination, with the kind of focus and resolve that had dimmed my senses and sapped my strength. I felt wrung out.

“I don’t know what to say.”

I was grateful for that. Any platitudes would have cheapened my vulnerability.

“Is your dad still alive?” There was a trace of anger in his gentleness.

I shook my head. “Only his legacy.” And this is where my words ran out. How could I . . . ? What would I . . . ?

“I guess you’re . . . a miracle,” he said, and I could tell he was choosing his words carefully. “That someone as—” he paused—“good as you could come from him. And be so different from him.”

“You’re basing that assessment on limited experience.”

“On consistent behavior.”

“You don’t see behind closed doors.”

“Is there anything to see?”

I shook my head. “Not yet. But sometimes . . . sometimes I wonder if it’s just going to hit me one day. If something unimportant will happen and I’ll just . . .”

“I’ve had a lot of time to observe you, Shell. With Shayla. With the students. I have never seen a trace of the man you describe.”

“Maybe it’ll turn up tomorrow.”

“And maybe it won’t.”

I scratched at my scalp with my fingertips. There was a headache coming on.

“You’re so good with the students. And with Shayla. Shelby, you’re more patient with that child sometimes than she deserves.”

“But on the inside,” I said. “On the inside there are times when I just want to shake her.” Tears were coming, and I covered my mouth to mask my trembling lips. “And sometimes I just want to yell—to yell at her to be quiet or stop whining or straighten up or just obey the first time for once!”

“True confession?”

“You’re turning me in to social services?”

“No—but I’ve had the same thoughts as you a few times.”

“With Shayla?”

He nodded.

“No way. You’re always so calm with her.”

“Remember when she threw that tantrum at the McDonald’s in Basel? It was all I could do not to sling her over my shoulder and find the nearest fountain to dump her in.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or be worried. “You wanted to dunk her?”

“Dunk her. Yell at her. Shake her.”

I gave him a disbelieving look.

“Sorry,” he said, hands up in concession, “it looks like I’m as warped as you. The good news is, neither of us has done anything to act on it.”

“But you don’t have my heritage.”

He sighed. “Nope. I’m the son of a business owner and a beauty consultant—which means my flaws are probably being dictatorial and wearing too much blush.”

I had to laugh. “You’re one of the few men I know who knows what blush is.”

“Don’t assume that your legacy is all bad, Shelby,” he said with so much conviction that I wanted to believe him. “There might even be something good that comes from it someday.”

I took a deep, calming breath. “There already is.”

“Really?”

“Shayla.” It was out. “She’s my father’s daughter, Scott. She’s my half sister.”

He shook his head as if he were doubting his senses. “I’ve thought of a lot of scenarios, but . . . not this one.” He looked bemused. “How . . . how did it happen?”

“Oh, you know, the usual way. Man abandons wife and children. Man meets much younger other woman—not necessarily in that order. Man has baby with much younger woman. Woman abandons baby. Man raises baby. Man dies. Grown daughter inherits baby. You know—the usual way.”

“And her mother was . . . ?”

“Gone. Uninterested in being a mom. She gave up her rights when Shayla was a baby.”

“Shelby, I . . .” He couldn’t find the words. And I couldn’t blame him.

“I know. It took me a while to wrap my mind around it too.”

“And now?”

“And now she’s mine. I am the guardian of my dad’s illegitimate child. Call the soap opera people—this is a winner.”

“Shelby.”

“The problem is, I love her. And no matter how much I tell myself that she can’t be the daughter of the man who raised me, that there’s no way I could love her so much if she was . . . I just can’t help it.” I laughed a little bitterly. “How ironic is it that the greatest gift of my life came from him? And after he’d died, at that.”

“He knew what he was doing. You’re the best mother she could hope for.”

“He didn’t know me at all. The last time he saw me, I was lying on the couch with a sprained wrist, a scraped face, and a bump on my head. I was cowed. And probably being funny. That’s the standard Davis Junior response to anything unpleasant like, say, having the tar beat out of you.”

“And yet . . .”

“And yet he left her to me. The daughter he apparently loved with the daughter he clearly despised.” Unwanted tears blurred my vision. “And the real kicker is, if I’m going to love her, I’m going to be forever linked—and indebted—to my dad.”

“You already do.”

“So I already am.”

He shook his head again. “I don’t know what to say.”

“So you’ve said.”

A brimming silence settled between us. At some time during the course of our conversation, Scott had moved a little closer to me on the couch. His arm was stretched across the backrest, not touching me, but there was comfort in the gesture, a protectiveness and companionship I’d missed until now. After a long moment in which we’d both been lost in thought, he cleared his throat and said, “What made you come over here tonight, Shelby?”

It was a valid question—what with never having been inside his apartment before and having avoided any deeply personal conversations for some time. The face of Colonel Klink appeared in my mind, as German as Schnitzel und Pommes, commanding, “You vill say vat you came to say, Shelby. You vill say it now.” And with such a gentle invitation to disclosure, what was a woman to do?

“I wanted you to know more about me—about my dad and stuff—because I wanted you to understand how I’ve been acting since . . . since you’ve known me, really.”

He smiled.

“I’ve been scared. Actually, I was scared at the beginning, and then when we became just good friends, I was less scared. And then when we bought the Christmas tree and the hand-holding and stuff, it felt good and just . . . normal. But when you asked about, you know, pursuing me—I panicked. There’s no other word for it. I just panicked. I’ve never wanted a relationship—I’ve never wanted to be pursued. And the truth is, I’m pretty sure I’d be really bad at both of those. There are a lot of things that scare me in this world, Scott, and most of them have to do with exactly what you seem to want.”

“What scares you so much about being pursued?”

“Oh, you know . . . everything.”

A smile deepened on his face, and there was something optimistic in his eyes.

“So just in case I go a little crazy on you again—this way you’ll know why. Not that I’m planning on it, but . . .”

“What are you saying, Shell?”

I stopped fidgeting and took a long moment to look him in the eyes. I decided I liked his eyes. They made me feel brave. “What I’m saying,” I said in a mock-annoyed tone, “is that you’re welcome to pursue me if you still want to.”

He imitated my mock annoyance and said, “Oh, well, fine then. I’ll pursue you, okay?”

“Really?” It was the six-year-old voice again—the one that showed up when I didn’t dare hope for something.

“Shelby.”

“But I can’t promise anything,” I added hastily. “I can’t promise that I’ll be any good at . . . at anything. Or that this will become something serious. Or—”

“I’m not looking for promises.”

“And there’s a good chance you’ll realize I’m not what you thought I was, and you need to know that that’s okay. Just tell me, and . . . and I’ll get out of your hair. Because I know I’m not, well, normal. Not where stuff like this is concerned and . . . and that’s all.” I took a deep breath. “For now.”

“Done?”

“One more thing.” I paused, taking the time to reduce my swirling thoughts into words that would make sense to Scott. “I don’t want you to think that I’m expecting you to fix me,” I said, my breathing shallowed by the statement. “I mean, you don’t need that kind of pressure, and I don’t need that kind of dependence.”

“What makes you think I’m capable of ‘fixing’ you?” he asked in a voice that held neither condemnation nor condescension. “I’m not here to change you or undo anything someone else has done to you. I’m here because I want to be near you and know you and, well, pursue you. So how ’bout I just concentrate on that and leave the fixing to God?”

I had a flash of certainty just then—as though God said, “Maybe bringing someone like Scott into your life is just one small part of my plan for healing.”

I wanted to believe it. “You’ve got a deal,” I said to Scott. “But,” I added hurriedly, before the last shreds of my courage dissolved, “I really want you to know that it’s okay if you decide you don’t want to pursue me anymore. I mean, once you get to know me better, if you change your mind . . .”

“Shelby . . .”

“I’m serious, Scott. There have been some guys who . . . who thought they liked me. And then they didn’t anymore. And that’s just the way things go sometimes, so if you change your mind, just tell me.”

“Did any of them ever keep liking you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I never stuck around long enough to find out.”

“I see.”

“So this is a bit of a new approach for me.” I attempted a smile and found that it felt good.

“Well, here’s to new approaches,” Scott said with an answering smile as he pushed off the couch. “Wanna start with a cup of coffee?”

I was torn. “Actually, I left Shayla with Bev, and . . .”

He sighed and shook his head. “The downside of pursuing a woman who has a daughter.”

“A half sister that I’m raising as my daughter.”

“Your daughter, Shell. Take a look at yourself when you’re with her.”

I recognized his good intentions, but the statement struck me as odd. “How exactly does a person look at herself in your scenario?” I raised an eyebrow as I stood. “I mean, it’s a good suggestion and all, but do I have to carry a mirror? Or just look at my bottom half? ’Cause from this vantage point,” I said, looking down at my feet, “all I can see are shoes that need polishing and a couple of things in between.”

He was laughing when he pulled me in for the kind of hug that had my blood singing “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.” It was a really nice hug. I especially enjoyed the arms-around-me part, which made me feel a little like a roasted marshmallow squeezed between two yummy wafers. It was “lumpscious,” to use one of Shayla’s words. But my daughter was waiting for me at Bev’s and it was way past her bedtime, so I levered myself away from Scott and did an awkward hair-tuck gesture. “I’d better be going.”

“Yeah?”

The happiness in his eyes made my heart crinkle.

“Thank you for coming. Really.”

Okay, so I’ve got to admit that the combination of the, well, affection in his gaze and the intimacy of his voice made my toes curl. Right there in my scuffed shoes, they curled up and sighed. All ten of them. It felt really strange, in a toe-sighing kind of way.

Scott walked me to the door and helped me on with the coat he’d retrieved from the couch. Then he took my hand and kissed my fingers. “I’m glad I get to pursue you,” he said.

“Yeah? I’ll let you know how I like being pursued.”

“Is that a challenge?”

“Take it however you want, Coach Taylor.”

“See you tomorrow?”

The thought of it made my blood launch into the second verse of “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.”

“Yup. I’ll be the girl with the stressed-out hair and the expanding waistline.”

“I’ll be the guy with the ‘I’m pursuing an idiot’ T-shirt.”

“Good—then we should recognize each other.”

I left his apartment and tried not to laugh out loud as I walked down Kandern’s darkened streets. I did a Dorothy heel click instead.



The funeral director’s heels clicked by on the tile floor outside the empty viewing room. Trey and I had sneaked in there moments before to get away from the chaos of sympathy and empty words. We’d been relieved, once inside, to find the Wedgwood-blue room absent of caskets and flowers and guest books and tears. It was a space that smelled of air freshener and wood polish, and it was blissfully uninhabited by the dearly departed. Trey and I slid down the wall just inside the door and found comfort in the lush carpet and even lusher silence.

“You’re cremating me when I die,” I said, my voice a little rough from too many days of grieving.

“You can Cuisinart me for all I care, just don’t do a viewing.”

Mom had died just four days ago, and we’d been in full-on funeral mode ever since. She’d been considerate enough to have most of it planned, from the coffin to the plot to the Bible verses and music, but the days of grief-tinted activity had still taken their toll on us.

“You think Saccharine Psycho will pull the alarm when she figures out we’re missing?”

“Let her.”

The funeral director was one of those women so intent on masking their clout with artificial sweetness that she’d quickly become “the bane of Mom’s burial,” “the inhumanity of her inhumation”—and that was just a small sampling of the terms we’d coined for her intrusion into Mom’s death. She had avalanched us with so much gushing sympathy in the past few days that we were still reeling from the kindness overload.

“She was such a lovely woman,” Trey said in a syrupy voice, imitating Saccharine Psycho to perfection.

“And isn’t her makeup tastefully done?” I continued in kind. “She looks like she’s just resting peacefully.”

We let out simultaneous sighs and listened to the muted voices reaching us through the viewing room’s thick wooden door.

“This is probably the most socializing Mom’s done all her life,” I said after a few moments.

“No kidding.”

“She’s taking it well,” I said. “Barely breaking a sweat.”

“She looks good,” Trey said.

She did. They’d done her hair and makeup well enough to hide some of the wear and tear of Davishood.

Trey and I had spent as much time as possible at her bedside during the five weeks she’d been seriously ill and beyond medical help, though my teaching and his chefing had sometimes made it difficult. She’d been lucid almost to the end, sweet with the nurses and loving toward us. Talkative, too—like she’d needed to retell all the highlights of her life just one more time.

We’d listened to her stories and smiled at her embellishments and patted her hand when she’d teared up. We’d filled in the blanks of dates and details erased from her mind by the rigors of survival. And we’d taken deep breaths and counted to ten when she’d tried to reframe some of our family stories in a saner, brighter light.

She drifted into sleep midstory and drifted into eternity midsleep, weakened by her strokes and by the cancer rotting her resistance and her will. It was the gentlest, quietest death I could have wished for my mother, the woman who had gently and quietly endured the lashes and lacerations of a life spent with my dad. She’d set a high standard of dignity despite the degradation, of poise despite the poisonous contempt, and she’d honored her ex-husband to the end. It was that stubborn loyalty that galled and humbled me.

“She was a good mom,” I said.

Trey nodded. “She did her best under some pretty tough circumstances.”

A question had been nagging at me since Mom’s life had fluttered to an end in her tidy hospital room. “She knew we loved her, right?”

He looked at me with weary certainty. “She knew.”

I took a shaky breath and pressed the corners of my eyes with unsteady fingertips. There had been too many tears since Tuesday—too many questions that had seemed to come too late.

“You think Dad will drop in?”

“He might. If someone tells him or he reads the obit.”

“Will you talk to him if he does?” My courageous brother would have to speak for both of us. He always had.

“And say what?”

I didn’t know. None of the lines that came to mind seemed appropriate with Mom lying in her favorite blue dress in a casket across the way.

“He probably won’t come,” Trey said.

“Probably not. That would be too much like admitting he knows us.”

A swollen moment passed. “I hope he doesn’t come,” Trey said softly. “He doesn’t belong here after what he put her through.”

The high heels clicked past the door again, a little faster this time, and I could picture Saccharine Psycho scanning the halls for us, externally smiling, but internally cursing.

“You think she was happy? I mean, for the last few years?”

Trey thought about it for a while. “I don’t think she ever really knew what happy was. And since she didn’t expect anything better . . .”

“Ignorance is bliss.”

“Sometimes.”

“She should have been happy.”

Trey turned his head toward me, alerted by the angry edge to my voice.

“She should have been more than a brutalized wife,” I went on.

“She should have been a lot of things,” he said.

“And she could have been,” I retorted too firmly, my insurrection strengthening. “She could have done things and had things and been things . . .”

“But she got Dad instead.”

“He killed her. And he killed her a long time before last Tuesday.”

“We should send him the funeral bills.”

I swiped at the tears on my face, tired of the grief so horribly distorted by a sense of waste. “Maybe if she’d gotten out while she still could.”

“She wouldn’t have. She didn’t even leave when he started taking his frustrations out on us, and she was supposed to be our loving mom, so . . .”

“She was,” I said. “She really did love us. She just never figured out how to love us and Dad at the same time.”

Trey nodded. “I know.”

“She should have been happy,” I repeated, but the words sounded desolate this time, much less convicted than they’d been before. Maybe there hadn’t really been an option—not after meeting and marrying the man she’d claimed to love until the end.

Trey breathed silently beside me, and I found comfort in his nearness.

“I don’t want to be like her.” I hadn’t intended to say the words, but there they were, suspended in the air above us. I’d thought them frequently enough. Most fervently, perhaps, when I stood by her casket for the first time and looked down at her delicate hands clasped lightly on her stomach. Lightly was the word for it. For her hands and for her life. She’d never given me the impression of feeling anything really intensely or doing anything full-throttle or rushing into anything headlong. Everything had always been predictable and discreet. And I felt like her life had consequently been too delicate and largely unlived.

“Then don’t be like her,” Trey said.

He had a way of making monumental processes sound simple.

“Oh, well, okay then. And how do you suggest I go about that?”

“Figure out where she went wrong.”

I laughed. “Starting where?”

“I don’t know. Just figure it out and do something about it. That alone will make you different from her.”

“Well, I’m not going to marry a jerk, for one.”

“At the rate you’re running off the good guys, there may only be jerks left.”

“That’s not the point.”

“No, but I’m pretty sure it’s a symptom of Davishood.”

I gave the theory a moment of thought before discarding it. My mom’s questionable taste in men had little to do with my singleness. Or so I chose to believe. “I think I need to steer clear of polyester, too, if I’m going to avoid being like her.”

“Wise decision.” Trey rocked his head slowly from side to side, trying to loosen the tension of the last four days. “You think she would have gone on in nursing if she hadn’t met Dad?”

“Probably.”

“Think of how different her life would have been. She’d have gotten a job, tried new things, met new people. . . .”

“I know.”

“We should have taken her bungee jumping or something,” Trey said.

I laughed. “That would have required taking risks, and she wasn’t ever really good at those.”

“She never met a risk she didn’t run from,” Trey said wearily, his head rocking against the blue wall. “And look where that—”

“Shhh!” I whispered urgently. The heels were moving faster yet, this time, and they stopped abruptly outside the door of our refuge. Trey and I both had our friendliest smiles in place when Saccharine Psycho walked in.

“Looking for us?” Trey said.

“Where have you been?” she asked, the spark of impatience in her eyes in contradiction with her soothing tone. “Your guests have been waiting to pay their respects, and I’ve been searching high and low for you.”

Trey stood and extended his hand to help me up from the floor.

“We’re sorry,” I said. “We just needed to get away for a couple minutes.”

She placed a hand on my arm in a gesture calculated to be comforting. “These are sad times,” she said quietly. “Losing a mother is one of the hardest blows life deals us.”

I wanted to laugh. I really did. But unexpected tears somehow shoved their way past my strained sense of humor. Trey saw them and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, walking me from the shadowed quietness into the pastel bustle of grief.