In Broken Places

4




SIX AND A HALF MONTHS EARLIER

“DANA’S COMING OVER,” I said to Trey, pocketing my cell phone, “so I guess you’re finally going to meet her.”

“She’s coming here?” He was arranging pastries in his display window while we talked, stacking golden croissants in a basket and flanking it with twin towers of cream-filled religieuses.

“She wants to drive to the lawyer’s together so we can talk on the way.” I reached into his lighted display case and grabbed a coffee éclair.

“Hey! Put that back!”

I took a bite out of one end and went to put it back on the tray.

“You can’t put it back now,” Trey said in exasperation, pulling my hand away and rearranging the remaining éclairs to mask the gap where mine had been. “You owe me a buck twenty.”

I bit off another large chunk of éclair and spoke around it. “I left my purse in the car.”

“Then you can work to pay off your debt. I have another tray of those right over there that need to be filled.”

“I’ll help you with them if you help me figure my life out.” The last piece of pastry disappeared into my mouth.

“Not exactly an even trade,” he said, reaching for the pastry tube.

“Gimme the baggie,” I muttered, grabbing the bag of vanilla pudding from his hand. Filling éclairs just might offer the kind of distraction I’d been craving. I sincerely doubted it, but it was worth a try. Trey placed a tray of baked éclair shells in front of me and I picked one up. I twisted the top of the bag to force the pudding into its metallic tip, then inserted it into the end of the éclair and squeezed until the pudding evenly filled the pastry’s belly.

“So have you seen Shayla again?” Trey appeared next to me with a bowl of frosting. He took the éclair I’d just filled and proceeded to frost it.

I nodded. My eyes felt heavy from thinking, my mind a little raw. “We had a tea party.”

“And?”

“And she’s still an amazing child. And I’m still the furthest thing from a mother.”

Trey said nothing, and we worked in silence for a while.

“He was such a great guy, wasn’t he?” I said.

Trey glanced at me. “Dad?” He’d always been able to identify daddy thought lines on my face.

I nodded.

“You mean great as in he-beat-the-tar-out-of-his-wife-and-kids-because-he-couldn’t-stand-a-noisy-house or great as in he’s-a-loser-who-should-have-died-a-painful-death-before-he-got-old-enough-to-have-kids-of-his-own?”

“Great as in please-God-don’t-ever-let-me-turn-into-my-father.”

“That’s highly unlikely.”

“It could happen, though. You know what they say about the apple and the tree.”

“I know what I know about you. Period. Fear of becoming Dad should have nothing to do with this decision.”

I’d grown accustomed to the heaviness in my chest and the anxiety that came in viscous, lumbering waves anytime I allowed my mind to drift. And standing there beside Trey with images of Shayla superimposing their guilt on everything I saw and touched, I felt my mettle slip again. I was caged in by the dilemma. Trapped between a life that was me-shaped and comfortable and a beautiful child who threatened the predictability that defined my bland existence. I bit my lip to stop it from trembling and looked up into my brother’s compassionate face. “Tell me what I should do, Trey.” My voice was hoarse with urgency and doubt. My fingers clenched around the éclair as my eyes blurred with tears.

Trey wrestled the damaged pastry from my grip and turned me toward him, his hands warm against my arms. “I can’t make this decision for you,” he said.

“But I can’t, either.”

“You’ve got to make it alone.”

I let out a tremulous breath and dabbed at the tears in the corners of my eyes. “But what if—?”

“You’re not Dad,” he interrupted softly, his eyes sincere and strong. Then he smiled and added, “His mustache was way fuller than yours.” He took the pastry tube from my hands and started filling éclairs.

“She looks like you,” I said.

He smiled. “Then how can you say no?”

I shook my head and bit my lip again to stanch my emotions. “Trey . . . I just don’t know.”

Chimes pealed and Dana breezed in, her purple trench coat perfectly matched to her dangly earrings and beaded necklace.

“Hello, Shelby,” she said cheerily as she walked up to the counter, looking from me to the handsome baker with the pastry bag in his hands.

“Dana, this is my brother, Trey.”

She took in the bush of blond hair, the mischievous gray-green eyes, and the general overgrown-teenager appearance and declared her approval with a heartfelt “Where’s Shelby been hiding you all this time?”

“In the back of her closet with that size-two pair of jeans she says she’s going to fit into someday.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Trey Davis,” Dana said, reaching over the counter to shake his hand. “Now if I could just remember where I left that fountain of youth . . .”

Watching the two flirting was a little disconcerting. Dana had at least fifteen years on Trey, which, coupled with a husband and three college-age kids, made flirtation pointless, but she had fallen victim to the debonair charm that had always made my brother popular with women of all ages and persuasions.

“Uh, before I turn the hose on you two, how ’bout we get going, Dana?” I rinsed off my hands and went to grab my coat from the rack near the door.

She tore her eyes from my brother’s face. “Right,” she said, reluctantly backing toward the door. “Much as I’ve enjoyed making your acquaintance, young man, I’m pretty sure it won’t stand up as a valid excuse for wasting Steve Kotz’s time!” She took my arm and walked me toward the exit. “He can only give us a half hour, Shelby, so you and I need to figure out exactly what to ask him on our way there.”

I met Trey’s eyes as I left L’Envie. They gave me courage.

Steve Kotz was the kind of lawyer who inspired both confidence and comfort. His competence was matched by his people skills, and the framed recognitions on the wall of his office proved that the combination had served him well. He looked like a past-his-prime movie star. His features had been softened by age and weight, but the sharpness of his gaze and his thick mane of graying hair still made him look more Alan Shore than Denny Crane.

This was an unofficial, off-the-books meeting Dana had orchestrated merely to put my mind at ease. Steve invited Dana and me to sit in the two luxuriously upholstered chairs facing his mahogany desk and opened a file that bore Shayla’s name.

“So, Shelby,” he said, folding his hands on top of the file and aiming a warm half smile at me, “your life has certainly taken an unexpected turn.”

I tried to smile back, but the sound of waves in my head was making it hard for me to concentrate. It was a sound that had been coming more frequently of late, particularly when I’d tried to formulate a yes or no answer to the Shayla dilemma.

“With everything that’s happened in the last few weeks,” Dana explained to the family law specialist sitting in front of us, “we thought it might be good to get some explanations from you, Steve. It’s a complicated situation, and Shelby’s . . . well . . . she’s still kind of reeling from it all.”

Kind of reeling? Sure. Like Elizabeth Taylor is kind of beautiful and a tidal wave is kind of powerful. There was no “kind of” to my reeling. It was the full-on variety of reeling, which, coupled with the crashing waves in my head, I found exhausting.

Steve glanced down at the picture paper-clipped to the front of Shayla’s file. “She’s a beautiful little girl,” he said.

“And sharp as a tack,” Dana answered. They sounded like doting grandparents, not like the advisers I needed them to be.

“What are my options?” I asked before they launched into an inventory of Shayla’s most adorable traits. I didn’t need to like her more. I needed to make a decision. Soon.

“Well,” Steve said, glancing at the sheaf of documents in the file, “this is a perfectly valid, well-executed will. Shayla’s father certainly covered all his bases. With the amount he’s left for you in savings and investments, I’d suggest you get a financial adviser. If it’s well managed, this nest egg could make your life a lot easier.”

I didn’t care about the money. Or the condo. Or the three-generations-old cuckoo clock. “What about Shayla?”

I felt Dana glance at me, but she kept quiet, waiting for the lawyer’s response.

“His wishes are clear. He wants you to be her guardian. That doesn’t mean you have to be her guardian. It’s just his wish and request.”

“What about her mother?”

Steve shuffled through the papers. “It looks like she formally renounced any rights to the child—” he scanned a sheet of paper for the date—“six weeks after Shayla was born, give or take a couple days.”

“Why would anybody do that?”

“There aren’t many details in the paperwork, but Shayla’s dad added a few notes to his will, which I’m sure have been passed on to you. He just states that Shayla’s mother abandoned her shortly after the birth, that she had never wanted a child to begin with, and that the initiative to rid herself and her family of any future responsibility for the baby came entirely from her. He requested full custody, and as her sole parent, given the mother’s voluntary termination of rights, he became a single dad.”

“And now I’m inheriting his daughter.” The concept seemed so heartless.

“Not inheriting, per se. He named you as her guardian—”

“Without my consent.”

“Without your consent. Which means you have a right to refuse Shayla.”

“But aren’t there other people—people Shayla actually knows—who should take her instead of me?”

“Not that he listed,” Steve said, his voice soft and encouraging. “A man of his age raising a child alone . . . He left you everything—including his daughter—which tells me that there probably weren’t many other people in his life. And even if there were, you’re named as his primary choice, so we’d need an answer from you before considering other options.”

I looked at Dana.

“I think Shelby needs to know what the other options are, Steve.”

He sighed. “The usual, unfortunately. We’d need to do some research into relatives Shayla’s had contact with, but again, as no one has come forward yet, I suspect we won’t find any. If that failed, she’d become a ward of the state unless something better could be worked out.”

“A foster child?” The term brought Shayla’s face to my mind in a rush of guilt and distress.

“Shelby . . .” Dana must have sensed my affliction. She reached over to pat my knee. “The foster care system isn’t what it used to be—”

“I’ve seen the documentaries, Dana.”

“The bottom line,” Steve said, “is that Shayla’s father made his wishes clear, as these documents attest. But you are in no way obligated to take on Shayla’s guardianship. It’s up to you, Shelby.”

I felt nausea clawing at my gut. Steve straightened the documents and closed the file. I saw him hesitate before he added, “Off the record?” I nodded. “His will—the savings, the assets, the condo, Shayla—it could be a new beginning for you if you wanted to see it that way. A new life.”

I leaned forward in my chair, resting my elbows on my knees and covering my face with my hands as I expelled a deep, painful breath. Dana’s palm against my back was warm and comforting, and I wished she would make this decision for me.

“Why don’t you take a few more days to think about it,” she suggested gently. “You don’t have to start your new life just yet.”



Play tryouts—the next phase of my new life. I stood before a roomful of eager high school students and questioned my sanity, which wasn’t a very original activity. My sanity had been a frequent subject of concern in recent days. I’d questioned it while I’d unpacked a grand total of four suitcases, which contained every scrap of Shayla’s and my earthly belongings. I’d questioned it when I’d made my first trip to a grocery store and recognized only a handful of items on the shelves. I’d questioned it when I’d driven my new used car to the school for the very first time and nearly gotten broadsided while turning right on red, an illegal move in this country where driving inspired a need for drugs and therapy. I’d questioned it when I’d met my landlady and gotten only as far as “Guten Tag” in what would go down in history as my most awkward conversation ever. And I’d come to the absolute certainty that my sanity had migrated to another planet for the season when I’d walked into the school’s auditorium minutes ago and come face-to-face with thirty-eight students auditioning for only ten roles.

I’d been teaching for two weeks already, and though the newness of the circumstances had posed some challenges, the familiarity of teaching English to juniors and seniors was comforting. I knew what I was doing in a classroom. There were well-tested techniques that yielded predictable results. There were curricula and study guides and mathematical assessments of progress. But in the world of theater, the only certainty I’d reached so far was that I knew nothing. And I didn’t like it.

I briefly considered being flattered by the turnout for auditions. In a school of just over three hundred students, the nervous teenagers in front of me formed a sizable chunk of the population. But there were too many other concerns on my mind to focus for long on self-congratulation. I’d never directed a play before, and the first step in the process held all the clarity and predictability of, say, a drugged sumo wrestler trying to negotiate a high wire on one foot with a piano strapped to his back. It was a metaphor smorgasbord, but it got the point across. In plainer words, I was petrified.

Being petrified was starting to feel natural to me. The terrifying ride from the airport to Kandern on our first day here had only been an appetizer in the feast of fear of our introductory weeks in Germany. I’d started to invent -phobe words to accurately describe my emotions. I was now a card-carrying languageophobe, bratwurstophobe, and bigspendingophobe. That last one sounded a bit contrived, even to my own ears, but after buying a car, a toaster, a pink bicycle, and enough pastries to gorge an army, I was feeling broke enough to warrant my longest -phobe word yet.

And, standing at the front of the auditorium, another one came to my mind, perhaps the most pertinent of them all. I was officially becoming an I-have-no-idea-what-I’m-doing-ophobe. This audition session marked my leap into the chaos and mystery of drama, which was scaring my hair gray. I was relieved to see some of my English students among the prospective actors, but I doubted that our tenuous connection would do much to mask my stunning ineptitude. Months ago, the school’s personnel director had assured me that my limited experience would be sufficient for the task. By limited, I was sure he’d meant nonexistent, as participating in a junior-high speech contest twenty years ago held little relevance to directing a serious high school play. And Bev had done nothing to soothe my nerves in recent days by raving about the productions of previous years, the extraordinary talent of the students, and the high expectations of the entire community.

I cleared my throat, gave the assembled students my patented don’t-waste-my-time stare, and stifled the urge to yell, “I’m clueless!” at their expectant faces. Instead, I thanked them for their punctuality and explained to them the challenges of a play like Shadowlands. I’d discarded dozens of comedies, musicals, and dramas in my search for something that felt just right. When I’d first read Shadowlands and been enthralled by its scope and depth, I’d declared myself deluded and gone on to something else. How were teenagers supposed to bring such human vulnerability and complexity to life? No—this wasn’t the one. But all the scripts I’d subsequently read about murders and mayhem and monsters and madness had paled in comparison to the story of C. S. Lewis, a famed English writer whose work I’d always admired and whose life somehow touched mine. And here we all were, all thirty-eight students and me, gathered three months later to embark on a voyage of nerve-knotting importance.

The auditorium was a semicircular carpeted space with a wooden ceiling that sloped from the stage to the highest point above the balcony. The stage wasn’t much to look at. A raised platform devoid of curtains or wings, with a bare, white wall behind it, it was as conducive to acting as the stomach flu is to cooking. Turning the room into a theater would be a challenge indeed, but that was a concern best left for a much later date. A wall of windows on each side of the auditorium extended from floor to rafters and, as the evening darkened outside, reflected the tense body language of the students assembled for tryouts.

Most of the prospective actors had come well prepared. They’d read the play packets I’d placed in the library and had memorized the scenes we’d be using for auditions. Only one of them truly stood out as the session progressed—both in stature and in talent. His name was Seth. He stood six foot six and had a voice like molten chocolate. But it was his countenance and spirit that caught my attention. Though he was young and enthusiastic, his carriage spoke of strain. His face revealed a melancholy intelligence and a sort of world-weary passion I’d seldom seen in one so young. He took to the stage in long, loping strides and addressed the gathered students in a tortured monologue so authentic that I briefly forgot he was speaking from a script. It was in the silence that followed his last words that I wondered for the first time if the burden of this play might bloom into a blessing.

But I quickly dismissed the notion as a by-product of Lewis’s inspirational words and shoved my cynicism firmly back into place. The process was aided by many less stellar moments in the proceedings, culminating in the performance of a freshman girl from Tennessee who went, quite perfectly, by the name of Meagan. She had all the acting talent of, say, a telephone pole, but her giggle was boundless and entirely too rare to ignore. While attempting to bring the role of C. S. Lewis’s dying wife to the stage, she stood in front of Seth, as tall as her five-foot-two frame allowed, and craned her neck back so far to see his face that she choked on her own throat in the middle of a profound dialogue and went into a coughing fit. She then collapsed in a giggling jag that ended with a high-pitched Tennessee wail that went something like “Oh—my—gosh! Wait, wait, wait—let me try it again!” It was like watching Betty Boop attempting to tackle a Meryl Streep role. The result was disconcerting and memorable—in an is-this-for-real? kind of way. Two failed attempts later, I made a mental note to invent a job, if need be, that would keep this little lady with the world-brightening giggle involved in the play . . . though not onstage.

Save for Seth’s discovery, I was no closer to having picked a cast when the bell rang at five thirty. The students headed in a mass exodus toward the buses that would carry them home to their dorms for dinner, which left me alone in an empty auditorium, shaking my head in dismay at an empty stage. I decided to leave my dilemma for another day and, locking the door and the play behind me, hurried to Bev’s to pick up Shayla.

Every school day until now, I’d been met at the door by a happy “Shelby!” and a small, warm body catapulting itself against mine. That wasn’t the case today. I rang the doorbell and heard Bev’s slippered feet shuffling up to the door. I could tell from her smile that all was not well. “She’s in the kitchen drawing,” Bev answered my inquiring look.

“Is she okay?”

“Well . . .” She ushered me into the sage-green living room and we sat on either side of her faux-wood coffee table. Looking over her shoulder toward the kitchen, she went on in a hushed tone. “Today was a little hard.”

“Hard how?”

“A snowball kind of hard. First it was her missing hair clip, and then it was the bread.”

“Again?”

“She’s definitely got a Wonder Bread obsession.” Bev smiled. “Then it was the crayons.”

“What’s wrong with the crayons?”

“The red wasn’t red enough.”

“It’s the exact same red it’s always been!”

“Well, it wasn’t red enough today.”

I was confused. “And then?”

“And then she wasn’t tired enough to take a nap, and then she didn’t like my cookies anymore, and then her leg hurt, and then the spoon made her teeth feel weird, and then she put her coat on and hasn’t taken it off since then. . . . It was a hard day is what I’m saying. But I don’t think it has anything to do with crayons and bread.”

I ran a hand over my face and tried to clear my thoughts. “She’s been so good so far.”

“She’s been wonderful. She’s still wonderful. I just think it’s all starting to hit her. And your staying late tonight probably didn’t help.”

“I had play tryouts.”

“She knows that.”

“And I’ll have play practices nearly every evening starting next week.” I felt familiar walls closing in around me. They were labeled in Shayla’s favorite red with glaring words like motherhood, responsibility, dependence, and failure.

“It’s not just that, Shelby. You realize that, don’t you?”

“I’m not sure I want to. . . .”

“Kids are resilient, but they still feel loss. They live it and then they relive it, and it gets triggered by small things that seem completely insignificant.”

Insignificant. “Like moving halfway across the world with a new mother who isn’t really her mother?”

“Like losing a hair clip her daddy gave her. It’s a matter of grief.”

I laughed without humor and sank lower in my chair, my head against the backrest, the strain of the last two weeks suddenly weighing heavy on my limbs. I was doing my best to handle teaching in a new school and not knowing the language and directing a play that so far had only one actor. But a four-year-old child whose grief was making her leg hurt and her teeth feel weird? It felt like the proverbial last straw, and I could hear the camel’s back straining. “She hates being here,” I said.

“I wouldn’t say that.”

I took a long, deep, resigned breath. “Maybe we should’ve . . .”

“Don’t you go second-guessing yourself, Shelby.” Bev’s voice was soft but firm.

“I knew it might be too soon. . . . I knew it before we came.”

“And you haven’t been here long enough to gauge anything yet. Give yourself time.”

“But Shayla’s . . .”

“Shayla has lost her dad.”

“And her country and her day care friends and her Wonder Bread . . .”

Bev leaned across the coffee table, grabbed my hand and pulled it toward her, clasping it in both of hers. “Shayla has lost her dad,” she repeated, more firmly this time. “All the rest is just more losses that remind her of that one. She’s not accumulating loss; she’s reliving it. And there are going to be days like today when the loss makes her life feel a little less red than she wants it to be.”

“I’m still pretty new at this mothering thing, Bev. How do I know if I’m doing it right?”

“You are doing it right. You’re setting firm boundaries and loving her fiercely,” she assured me, squeezing my hand in hers. “That worry you’re feeling in the pit of your stomach? It means you’ve got the most important part right.”

“Play season starts next week.” I felt backed into a corner. “I’ll be getting home late and . . .”

“So she’ll have a few more days like today and she’ll throw a temper tantrum or two and you’ll reassure her that you love her and she’ll still love you no matter what.”

I sighed and straightened. “I promised her we wouldn’t stay if it got too hard.”

“And I promise you I’ll let you know when you have real cause to be worried. Right now, she’s just acting exactly the way she should under these circumstances.”

“Are you sure?”

She smiled. “I’m sure.”

The mystery and responsibility of motherhood both baffled and exhausted me. “How old were your kids when you finally figured it all out?”

“Oh, twenty and twenty-two.” She laughed. “It’s not a learning curve, Shelby. It’s a learning slope. It just keeps on going up.”

When I entered the kitchen, Shayla was slumped over her drawing in her fuzzy pink coat, fast asleep.

“You want Gus to drive you home when he gets back from the store?”

I shook my head. There were few things in life that brought me the kind of marrow-deep peace I felt when I held Shayla’s softness in my arms. When I picked her up, partially waking her in the process, she wrapped her legs around my waist and both her arms around my neck and held on tight. And we walked home like that, me embracing her and her embracing me, me rescuing her and her rescuing me. And the sun setting over Kandern seemed just a little redder somehow.