Broken in Soft Places

by Fiona Zedde

  The car chirped as the alarm deactivated.

  “You know—”

  At Lucas’s words, Stephen paused with his hand on the car’s door handle. He looked up as Lucas walked over to his side of the car and stepped close.

  “I think it’s really fucked up how you came to me this evening.” Lucas rested his hand on the car’s roof, watching Stephen with a mild gaze.

  “What?”

  “I said—”

  Stephen rushed to intercept and diffuse the anger he heard in the growled words. “I heard you. It’s just—”

  “Then why make me repeat myself?”

  In the light from the distant streetlamp, Lucas’s face was unreadable, hard and hugged in shadow. With a rush of fabric, he closed the space between them. Beer breath chuffing in Stephen’s face, fingers knotting in the T-shirt, fists a hard push against Stephen’s chest.

  Caught off guard, Stephen simply reacted. He shoved back at Lucas. Palms slapping against muscled pecs, hard abs, ripping the cotton shirt out of pressed slacks. Lucas came back at him harder. They spun. Lucas banging against the car. Then Stephen. Both of them panting. Stephen tripped by deliberate feet, flailing back and smacking painfully into the car. He grunted. Lucas gripped his T-shirt again, trapped him between metal and his body. Stephen grabbed at his hands, but they wouldn’t budge.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Stephen gasped through the pressure against his chest.

  The fists shook him, slammed him against the car, bruising. “When you left me, I took it,” Lucas said. He thumped Stephen against the car again.

  Stephen struggled, breath coming quickly, fighting against the instinct to punch Lucas in the face, the belly, anywhere to get Lucas to let him go.

  “Stay still, damn you.” Lucas shook him again. “Stay still and listen to me.”

  Through his own pounding heartbeat, Stephen heard the sound of grinding teeth. Not his.

  “I sat in that damn restaurant and listened to your self-pitying bullshit for nearly two hours.”

  Stephen bucked against the tight grip. “If you didn’t want to sit there all you had to do was get up and leave.”

  “No. I couldn’t.” Lucas took a breath and untwisted his hands from Stephen’s shirt.

  “What is it that makes you run so far and fast from unpleasant things? Hm?” Lucas’s eyes snared his. “When your parents died, you buried your head in the sand. You turned away from the healthy things in your life and walked into whatever disaster was close by.” With a low curse, Lucas backed away from him as if he couldn’t stand to be near Stephen any longer. “And now that your escape is in a coma, you come running to me as if I’m nothing more than a toilet to throw your troubles in and flush them away. You owe me more than this, dammit. You owe me more!”

  Lucas spun away, slammed his fist into the Dumpster’s thick metal hide. A dull clang from the impact rang out. He clutched his fist, face contracting in pain. “Fuck!”

  “You don’t mean that.” Stephen’s face felt frozen. Numb.

  “Get over yourself, Stephen. I mean every word of it.” He held his bruised fist against his chest. Harsh breath whistled between his teeth.

  Stephen backed away, his hands clenched into fists. “I’m going to leave now. I’ll find my way back to my car.”

  They stared at each other, trapped in silence and darkness with the chasm of too many unresolved years between them.

  “Don’t be stupid.” Lucas yanked open the car door and got in. “I’ll drop you back there. Come on.” He started the engine.

  Stephen found himself sitting in the passenger seat, buckled in. The car took off. Your escape is in a coma. Lucas’s words slashed through his thoughts. He had no idea. No idea that Lucas had been so hurt by the way they’d ended their relationship. None. Everything he thought he knew about Lucas was a lie. Lucas wasn’t calm. He was the kind to leave bruises. And he knew how to hurt.

  When Lucas’s car came to a stop, Stephen fumbled for the door and opened it. As he pushed outside, his entire body seemed to ache. His chest. The small of his back that had struck the car. His knees popped like an old man’s.

  As he turned away, he heard the window being lowered.

  “Stephen, I didn’t—” Lucas stopped.

  “You said what you had to.” Stephen dropped heavily behind the wheel of his car, not bothering to face Lucas. “I hope you got what you needed out of this.”

  Lucas sighed. “Not exactly. But I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “Yes, you did want to hurt me. That’s okay. All our motives can’t be pure, right?” Stephen smiled weakly. “Thanks for the drinks.”

  He pulled his car door shut. Next to him, the dark Honda sat idling with the passenger window still gaping open. Across the leather seat, Lucas’s grim features watched him. He said something, mouth moving to allow words to escape. Before, Stephen would have leaned in to catch those words. But not now. Not today. He started his car, and drove out of the parking lot.

  Light, Unexpected

  Sara/Atlanta

  Sara felt Stephen when he came in from work. His bathroom noises were quiet, self-conscious, she thought. When he finished, he sank into the bed smelling of toothpaste and hand soap. She moved her hand across the sheets, letting him know that she was still awake. She didn’t want to talk. Only wanted that certainty of knowing he was there and suffering like she was. Or maybe not like she was. But something close.

  He sighed and rolled over, but did not speak. Only breathed deeply, slowly, as if trying to force himself asleep.

  Sara’s mind, normally running in smooth and logical waves, felt stalled. Having her mother near was stacking hurt on top of hurt. She felt as if she were huddled in a corner waiting for the next blow to fall. If her mother had wanted to hurt her even more, this was the perfect way to do it. By appearing out of nowhere.

  Earlier in the evening, as they’d pulled up to the house, Sara noticed her mother’s surprise. Millicent Chambers absorbed the size and details of the home Sara shared with Rille and Stephen with widened eyes. And Sara wondered why. Her father had taken pictures and told his wife about Sara’s life in Atlanta. There were no surprises awaiting Millicent Chambers here. Not even the older contours of Sara’s face should have brought a second look. But everything did.

  As Sara swept them through the house—and Stephen disappeared to do whatever he needed to—her mother became more relaxed. With her big handbag clutched against her stomach, Millicent glanced around the house, peering into corners, and slowly began offering her opinion: “That table is just like my grandmother’s from England, you know, when she got married.” Of the deep red floors: “Beautiful. It must have cost a lot of money. Much better than carpet for allergies, but oh, I’d hate to be the one to get on my knees and shine them.” She tossed out all her pronouncements, seemingly at random, for them to land on anyone close. Nothing specifically to Sara. Her father often responded. It was as if they needed his presence as interpreter for every action or word between them.

  It was with relief that Sara saw them climb the stairs to bed just after dinner.

  *

  The next morning, Stephen was already up and gone. Sara felt the emptiness in the bed without turning to see. Through the closed bedroom door, she heard the faint traces of morning. Plates. Low conversation. A lawnmower moving across a neighbor’s grass. Sara forced herself to climb from the bed and to the shower.

  Clean but no more refreshed than before, she walked into the kitchen and stopped short at the sight of her mother at the dining table.

  “Where’s everybody?” she asked.

  Her mother smiled weakly and lifted a teacup to her lips. “Neville went with Stephen to the shop. They said we should stop by for lunch later before we go on to the hospital.”

  Oh, Daddy. You’re not being fair. But she put on her own smile and went for the refrigerator. Although she had been about to sit at the kitchen table with the Saturday paper, she needed something to do with her
hands. Getting grapefruit juice from the fridge seemed the safest thing.

  “I made breakfast,” her mother said softly. “Would you like some?”

  “Ah. Sure.” She poured a glass of juice, ignoring the slight tremor in her hand as she shoved the carafe back into the fridge. Sara sat at the table. In the opposite chair, her mother made no move toward the stove and the offered food. Again, Sara was caught off guard by how little her mother had changed over the past thirteen years. Even though she’d seen her father more frequently, Sara could trace the changes on his face. Around his mouth, the deepening lines. The gray in his hair that had spiked just over his forehead while she was in college and now took over his whole head. And the teeth he’d had pulled from the sides of his mouth and not bothered to get bridges to replace.

  The woman across from her had the same slenderness, the same salted and permed black hair worn in a bun at the back of her head. She had the same frail body that took its strength from her will alone. Her face was smooth, expressionless. No laugh lines around her mouth. No frown lines between her eyes.

  “I’m sorry about your friend, Sara. Neville says she is a good person.”

  “Thank you. She is.” Sara pressed her palms around the cool glass, not bringing it to her lips. Her throat felt itchy, demanding that she drink. But doing something as ordinary as drinking in front of her mother felt strange. It felt more correct, more right, that she suffered through her thirst while this near stranger looked on. She swallowed.

  “I’ll get the food,” her mother said, finally getting up from the table.

  Sara lifted her glass and finished half the juice in two hasty gulps. Behind her, her mother puttered at the stove and rummaged through the cupboards for plates. She didn’t turn to help or look. Only stared at the abandoned cup across from her. The string attached to the immersed teabag had a small map of Jamaica on it surrounding a piece of ginger root. Her mother must have brought the tea with her from home. Sara drank more of her grapefruit juice.

  When a plate of callaloo and saltfish appeared under her nose, Sara blinked. “Thank you.”

  She poked at the food, remembering the last time she ate something her mother cooked. Mackerel and boiled bananas. The plates had shattered in the sink as her mother dropped them in one after the other, still holding their load of food.

  Sara put down her fork. “Why are you here?” When her mother said nothing, only looked at her with dark and inscrutable eyes, she lost her patience. “Is it easy for you to sit in my house as if the last thirteen years never happened?”

  Her mother drew a deep breath. “I lost my son—”

  “I lost Syrus, too!” Sara’s clenched fist slammed into the table.

  Her mother began again. “I lost my son to something I had no control over. Sometimes I look around the house and it’s like he was never there.” Lines appeared briefly on her forehead. “After twenty years of having my life filled by another person, how is it possible that in the twenty-first year there’s nothing left?”

  Pain on top of pain. Sara felt it coil high in her throat, threatening to choke her. “There is something left,” she said. “I feel him close to me every day. Not a moment goes by that I don’t remember and thank God that I had a brother. He loved me. He encouraged me. I don’t see why you sit there using him as an excuse for what you did to me.”

  “I’m not using him as—” Her mother stopped and looked down into her teacup. “Since you left, your father’s been telling me about everything you’ve done. I haven’t approved of all of it. Especially not what you have going on here.” She sighed through a halfhearted sneer. “You with another woman, and a man. It’s not normal. But Neville keeps reminding me this is what you’ve chosen for yourself.

  Sara twisted her fingers in her lap. “What does this have to do with Syrus?”

  “My son traveled all over the world to dangerous places. He put himself in the path of harm, but I closed my mouth and allowed him to do whatever he wanted.” The chair creaked as she leaned toward Sara. “I loved him. I loved him.” Her body sagged back into the seat.

  Watching the brittle body across from her, Sara realized what she was trying to say. In her mother’s eyes, when Sara came out, she had been stepping into something dangerous. A region fraught with disappointment and perils that Millicent could only foresee, not prevent. But this time, she decided not to close her mouth. This time, she acted, and that act was to expel Sara from her life. If she didn’t see her child putting herself in harm’s way, then it wouldn’t hurt as much as it did the first time. With Syrus.

  “But that doesn’t make sense!” Sara whispered.

  “Everything got away from me,” her mother said, her voice rusty and low. “I never planned for the pain to go on like this.” She stretched her hands across the table, palms up and empty. “Your father thinks this should end, and I agree with him.”

  Sara felt the wetness against her face. Tears splashed onto her hands twisted into painful knots in her lap.

  She shook her head, unable to take the hands reached out to her. “It’s been thirteen years.” Her words came muffled and liquid.

  In the years since she’d left her parents’ house, Sara had only survived. She finished school with only her father at the graduation ceremony; she’d avoided planes, treating them like flying death machines. Each Mother’s Day sneered at her from the calendar, a mocking and constant reminder.

  For years, she felt herself a walking wound, suppurating and infected. And now her mother thought she could erase the damage with a few words over tea.

  “Sara. I didn’t come here for you to push me away,” she said quietly, insistently, gaze steady on Sara’s face.

  Sara could only stare at her mother with the unasked question clenched behind her teeth.

  “I want to fix things between us.”

  Sara pushed away from the table and shoved her hands in the pockets of her slacks. “Just to let you know, there’s nothing dangerous about how I choose to live my life.” She stared down at her mother, trembling. “I drive a Volvo, for God’s sake!”

  Her throat burned with uncontrolled emotion. She cleared it. “If you’re done eating, we can go see Daddy and Stephen.”

  Her mother’s head jerked. A nod. “Just let me get my purse.”

  As they drove to the bike shop, jazz and idle chatter from the radio filled the silence. At the store, Stephen took one look at her face before taking charge of the conversation, telling them where in the neighborhood to go on a mini sightseeing tour while he finished up in the next hour or so. It was far from lunchtime. He tried. Sara brushed his arm in thanks before walking past to latch on to her father. He kissed her forehead, blessing her with the crisp smell of his aftershave.

  “What do you feel like for lunch, Daddy?”

  *

  Lunch, like dinner the day before, was strained. When Stephen left the shop to join them, he, Sara, and her parents grabbed sandwiches and drinks to go and walked to the small park nearby mostly made up of a blue-surfaced basketball and tennis court, a small open area where a sprinkling of people already sat picnicking, and a few stadium style seats made out of dark unfinished logs. They sat down. The trees overhead rustled and parted with each brush of the breeze, covering and uncovering their heads with shadow.

  Sara sat next to her father, watching a lone figure bounce up and down the basketball court while the conversation flowed over her. She sipped her water. The uneaten sandwich sat next to her. From the opposite side of her parents, she felt Stephen’s eyes on her but did not look up. He wanted to know what had happened at the house. She pushed him away. Denied him access to her thoughts.

  “Are you okay, my Sara?” her father asked.

  She shook her head, not looking away from the teenager practicing lay-ups. The girl’s dark ponytail rebounded from her shoulders as she landed on her feet. “No, Daddy. But I will be. Later.”

  After lunch, the three of them went on to the hospital, leaving Stephen to finis
h up at the shop and meet them there later. The halls on Rille’s floor were hushed as Sara and her parents moved through them. An unnerving quiet as if that part of the hospital itself was trapped in a coma too.

  With her parents lagging behind her and talking softly about something she couldn’t hear, Sara pushed open the door to Rille’s room.

  “Oh!” She stopped.

  Beverly Thompson sat at Rille’s bedside. With a bowed head, she leaned over Rille’s hands with a bottle of nail polish, painting color into the tips of slack fingers.

  She looked up at Sara. “I read in a journal that it’s possible to stimulate patients out of a comatose state.”

  Rille’s bare feet, ashen and thin, poked out from beneath the sheet. Each toe had been separated from the next with white tissue paper and painted a soft copper. Not a shade Rille would have chosen.

  As she got closer, Sara noticed white headphones resting in Rille’s ears and an iPod at her breast. She picked up the small blue device to look at what was playing. Tears pricked at Sara’s eyes. Walter Russell’s audiobook, A New Concept of the Universe. Rille had wanted to read it for a long time. She even had the paperback on the bedside table, saying she would get to it when she had more time. Sara glanced sideways at Beverly Thompson. She had no idea the woman knew Rille’s tastes in books. Then again, in the last few years, she’d taken to coming back to the house with Rille after their biweekly brunches. Maybe she had seen the book in the bedroom or she and Rille talked about it over crepes and mimosas. Sara put the iPod back.

  “If nail polish and books will bring Rille out of this thing, then I’m all for them,” she said. She sat on the other side of Rille’s bed.