All That I Can Fix

by Crystal Chan

  Anyway, bowling with Sam was the most fun I’d had in a long, long time.

  • • •

  By the time we left the bowling alley, it was dark. I walked Sam home and made sure I saw him let himself in the house. It would be rough, him facing his dad, but sometimes hard things just need to be done. No way around it. Still, I hoped it wasn’t too hard.

  The moment I walked in from the garage, Mom and Mina were pulling up the driveway. The car stopped for a moment, and Mina got out and flung herself into my arms. “Ron-Ron!” she cried, and burst into tears.

  “What is it?” I asked, alarmed.

  She mumble-sobbed something into my T-shirt.

  “I know. Flute lessons can suck,” I said.

  “It’s not the flute lessons,” Mina moaned. “Sam lost my bouncy ball.”

  I tried not to laugh. “It’s just a bouncy ball,” I said.

  That made her cry harder. “No it’s not,” Mina said, wiping her snot on my shirt in the way she loves to do. “That was the bouncy ball you gave me.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Don’t worry; I’ll get you another one.”

  She shook her head, and her spiral curls wobbled. “You can’t get me another one, because it’s gone. It’s gone.”

  Mom parked the car and approached us. “She’s been like this all the way home,” Mom said. She looked weary as she adjusted the purse on her shoulder.

  I rubbed Mina’s back. “It’s okay,” I said again.

  “And I don’t like him anymore,” Mina said, wiping her eyes with the palm of her hand.

  “Because of the bouncy ball?” I was incredulous.

  “Yes.” She paused. “He lost it on purpose.”

  It was my turn to pause. “Really?”

  Mina nodded dolefully. “He was bouncing it really hard, really, really super high on the playground, and I told him that if he did that he’d lose it somewhere, and he said no he wouldn’t, but then he bounced it and it went somewhere in the grass and then I spent the rest of recess looking for it, but the baseball field is huge,” Mina said, her eyes growing big. “Huge.”

  “He was just having fun,” I said. “He didn’t mean to.”

  “With my bouncy ball.” Mina broke away from me and started crying all over again. “I gave it to him as a gift and look what he did with it. He was reckless.” She balled up her hands to her eyes. “Reckless.”

  “Nice use of a spelling word,” I offered.

  Mina cried harder.

  “And then he couldn’t even help me look for it because he was fighting with Caleb,” Mina said between hiccups. “I was alone.”

  “I’m sure you looked really hard.”

  “I was alone.”

  “No you weren’t. You . . .” The lie died on my tongue.

  I didn’t know what to do right then, and I hated seeing Mina cry. I really hated it—so I tickled her until she was half laughing through her tears, which was a whole lot better, at least for me. But she kept saying how reckless Sam was with her bouncy ball, and how alone she felt, and I could tell she was going to start crying again. I didn’t know what else to do except to plop her ass on her bike and ride down to the 7-Eleven with their stupid vending machines, where I stuck quarters into their bouncy-ball machine trying to get an orange one for Mina. Of course, since it was a Thursday, a blue one rolled out, and I was about to try again, but Mina touched me on the shoulder and said, “It’s okay, this one is fine.”

  “No it’s not. It’s not orange.”

  Mina stopped for a moment, looking down at the ground, and I thought she hadn’t heard me and was going to repeat myself, when she said quietly, “It’s not about the color.”

  I guess she really meant it too, that it wasn’t about the color, because while I was taking my shower, Mina initiated phase two of Special Project De-Orange: She had put out into the hallway everything that was orange—which, believe me, was a lot. Her desk. Her comforter. Her beanbag chair. Her desk chair. Her shoes. Her shoes, for chrissake. When Mom went to ask her what was wrong, Mina shrugged and said to her, “I don’t want orange anymore.” Which was true, even for a bouncy ball. At first Mom was mad that Mina was throwing away half of her belongings and bitched about how much it’d cost to replace them, but then I heard her sigh and say, “My little girl’s growing up.” Which goes to show how lame Mom is.

  So there was a mountain of orange Mina stuff in our hallway, and when that mountain got too big, Mom had Mina put it out in the garage for Goodwill. Which was a great idea unless Sam went to the store and bought it all back, I thought with a quiet chuckle. But Goodwill or no Goodwill, it sucked seeing all that orange shit go, like it was a tumbled mess of sunshine about to leave our house. I can’t explain it; it just sucked.

  And who knows, maybe even Mina thought that it sucked too, because she woke me up later in the middle of the night, screaming. When I heard the first scream, I jolted out of bed. The darkness in her room was thick, and with all her shit gone it was like I was on the shadowy surface of a barren, frigid moon.

  “Shhh. It’s okay, Mina,” I said. I rocked her softly.

  I could feel Mina slowly wake up in my arms.

  “He was reckless,” Mina said finally. I couldn’t see her face, but her voice trembled.

  “You had a nightmare about Sam?” I asked, slightly confused.

  “No. Dad.” She paused. “I was so alone.”

  My brain was still groggy. “Looking for the bouncy ball?”

  “I was in the living room again.” Mina tilted her head up to mine. She swallowed. “Ron-Ron, why did he do it? Why did he leave us?”

  I was about to say He didn’t leave us. But then I had to admit that he had. “What else was your nightmare about, Mina?” I asked.

  “Then the color in the world drained away,” she said softly, “and when the last of the color left, we died.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “You, me, and Mom. Everyone else in the world. Only Dad was left alive, alone.”

  I exhaled. What the hell could I say to that?

  “Then I had another nightmare,” Mina continued, and for some reason she sounded guilty.

  “About what?” I asked.

  “I found the key,” she whispered.

  “The key?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The key to what?” By now I was really confused.

  “Never mind,” Mina said. “It was just a bad dream, right?”

  I rocked her for a long-ass time that night. She didn’t fall back asleep; her muscles were too tense—I could tell. I wished I could say something that would make her happy, or at least happier, but sometimes life just isn’t happy, not even a little, and trying to make something out of nothing would be fake-ass and lame. So I held her in the suckiness, and she let herself be held in that same suckiness, until I got tired of rocking her and kind of sleepy myself.

  “Mina?” I asked.

  “Yes, Ron-Ron.”

  “Are you going to be okay here by yourself? I’ll be right next door, in my room.”

  “Is it okay that I threw out all my orange stuff?” Mina asked.

  I paused, a little surprised by the question. “Well, you liked orange because you didn’t want it to be lonely, right?”

  “Yeah. And unloved.”

  “Well, is it lonely now?”

  Mina was quiet.

  I rubbed her arm. “Yeah, it’s okay you threw out your orange things. You’re still you. Although I have to admit, I’ll miss seeing orange around the house.”

  Mina still didn’t say anything.

  • • •

  The next day after school, Sam was seated on the bench by my school’s parking lot, waiting for me. He looked glum.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “Liar,” I said. “Let’s try that again. What’s up?”

  A police car sped down the road, lights flashing.

  “Well,” Sam said, sighing, “my teache
r is really mad that I stopped doing my homework.”

  I sat down, propped my ankle up on my other knee, and let the sunshine soak in. “Math again?”

  “All of it.”

  “All of math?” I asked, uncomprehending.

  “No. All homework. All of it,” he repeated.

  My eyes grew big. “Are you serious? You stopped everything, cold?”

  Sam stood up, uncomfortably, and started scuffing the sidewalk with the bottom of his shoes. “I’m done with school,” he said.

  I snorted. “You forgot to count the next seven years, kiddo.”

  Sam shook his head. “What does it matter?” he said. “Nick’s not coming home. My dad blows. So does my mom.”

  “So not doing your homework will help things?” I asked.

  “So doing my homework will help things?” Sam said.

  “Well, at least you won’t be having trouble with school,” I said.

  “I’m done with school,” he said, fiercely this time.

  I paused. Could I blame him? I mean, how many times have I skipped school to work on the house? “Okay,” I said slowly. “So what else are you going to do?”

  Sam looked at me. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if you’re not going to do your homework, what are you going to do?”

  Sam thought about that for a while. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe I should run away.”

  I looked at him sharply. “I must say, that was not funny.”

  “That wasn’t supposed to be funny,” Sam said.

  “You are the fount of non-funniness,” I said.

  “Stop it, Ronney,” Sam said. He sat back down on the bench so his legs dangled, and he swung them lightly. “I’m serious,” he said, his voice quiet.

  “So where would you go?” I asked, trying to keep my voice level.

  Sam shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said, “but it would be better than here. Than this.” He looked up at the glowing clouds overhead. “If Nick could do it, why can’t I?”

  “Nick’s like, eight years older than you.”

  “Seven,” Sam said.

  “That’s still more than half your life,” I said.

  Sam was quiet. I wanted to stop talking about this, so I told Sam he could meet me at my house and I’d take him out for ice cream later that evening. Sam shrugged.

  I guess that shrug meant a no, because Sam never showed up. In fact, he never showed up at home, either.

  He was gone.

  20

  I DON’T KNOW WHY KIDS like to run away from home. Actually, scratch that. I do know why kids like to run away from home: They have no more options left. At least, none that they can see. On the night that Dad shot himself, Mina could have come and hung out with me, or she could have started screaming at the top of her lungs, or she could have climbed that tree in our backyard and fallen from it and been driven to the hospital herself and been nice and taken care of. But she ran away because she didn’t see any options, just like Sam didn’t see any options, just like Dad hadn’t seen any options. So then it’s not about kids running away—I guess adults run away too. Except they don’t run away from homes; they run away from people, just like how Dad was trying to get away from us.

  I asked Dad once why he did it. It was right after he was released from the psych ward; he’d undergone a couple weeks of solid therapy at the hospital. In the very beginning, when he was in the ICU, I was kind of scared for him, but once I knew that he’d live, the reality of what he’d done hit me. The evening that the psych ward released him, I was waiting for him to get home and feeling angrier and angrier with each passing moment. I mean, what right did he have to fuck with our lives like that? Who did he think he was, making everything we cared about come to a careening stop?

  Mom drove him home, and after she turned off the car, she went around and opened his door for him, even though it was his left arm that had gotten hit and he could have opened the door himself. Anyway, I went outside and met them on the driveway. It was hard to see his face because the sun had mostly set and his skin blended in with the darkness. Also, the automatic lights on our garage decided to break then too, and with everything breaking and in the darkness, I walked up to Dad and put my face maybe an inch from his. I was his height, which was awesome, and I looked at him for the longest-ass time, but I couldn’t see his eyes, only the shadows of where his eyes should have been. My chest suddenly felt ripped up.

  “You’re a jerk,” I said.

  “Ronney, be nice to your father,” the silhouette of Mom said. “He’s just gotten home from the hospital.”

  I ignored her. “So, why’d you do it?” I asked, my voice hard. “Why’d you try to leave us?”

  Dad’s shoulder was bandaged up pretty bad. Even in the shadows, I could see him look away. “I didn’t try to leave you.”

  I waited.

  “My life . . . had . . . gotten too heavy.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “Ronney,” Mom said. She came and put a hand on Dad’s good arm, leading him into the house.

  “Don’t let him run away,” I said to her. I turned to him. “What does that mean, ‘life had gotten too heavy’?”

  “I just . . . didn’t know how to get out of it,” Dad said.

  “Out of what? Your life?”

  Dad was silent.

  “You’re pathetic,” I said.

  In the shadows, Dad hid his face in his good hand.

  “What about us?” I asked him, and my voice broke on those words. “You were thinking of yourself. Trying to escape your life,” I said, and I tried like hell to make my voice solid, but I couldn’t and my voice broke again. “Well, what about that whole ‘appreciate life’ bit you talked about when we went fishing, huh?”

  Dad shook his head.

  “You’re a hypocrite,” I said, and I swallowed back the thickness in my throat. “Fuck you.”

  “Ronney!” Mom said, and pulled Dad inside the house.

  “You’ll like the new carpet I just installed,” I called after them. “Don’t mess it up again.”

  I watched them flick on the lights.

  • • •

  I had thought a lot about what Dad had said: Life had gotten too heavy. I just didn’t know how to get out of it. Those two phrases ran themselves over and over in my mind, whirring endlessly through the nights, itching under my skin in the day. I lost sleep thinking about it all: What could possibly make someone up and shoot himself? Mom tried to talk with me about it, but someone had to bring in money for the family, and so she was working long-ass hours to make up for him.

  But still: How could life get too heavy? He’s got a family that’s pretty good—okay, we have our moments, but we’re not crap—he had a job, and we went on vacations every summer. What’s so bad about that?

  What’s so bad about us?

  These questions kept at me, gnawing at the edges of my brain, and I guess they did for Mom, too, because a couple nights after Dad came home I was roaming the house because I couldn’t sleep, and I almost bumped into Mom, who was roaming the house because she couldn’t sleep.

  “Ronney,” she said, startled.

  “Sorry, Mom,” I said. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “That’s okay,” she said, and her voice sounded full and sad. “How long have you been up?”

  “Up as in awake, or up as in walking around the house?” I yawned as I said that, and I made her yawn too.

  “Oh, Ronney,” Mom said. “I’m so sorry you have to witness all of this.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that.

  “You want me to make you some tea?” Mom asked.

  “Tea sucks.”

  “Okay, then maybe—”

  “No, that’s okay,” I said.

  “I just wish I could make things better for you.”

  I thought about that for a while.

  “You know what would be nice?” I asked.

  �
��What?” Mom said, suddenly eager.

  “It’d be nice to walk around the house together.”

  For a moment she just stood there, in silence, in the dark, and I wasn’t sure how she was taking that. But then I started walking to the living room and she was with me, by my side, and though it was awkward in some spaces, we walked around the house together for hours that night. After a long time I started to hear sniffling behind me. I tried to ignore it at first, but the sniffling continued, and as we rounded the corner to go into the living room, I caught Mom’s hand brushing her cheek. Before I knew it, I turned around, and I was holding her as she sobbed in the night, and I was tall enough that she was sobbing into my shoulder. That was the only sound in the house, besides Dad’s snoring coming from down the hallway.

  Finally, we both went back to bed, and in the morning, for the first time in years, I didn’t put my shoes in the middle of the kitchen floor. Though she was out the door early for work, as usual, she left me a note on my pillow that night: Thanks for walking with me.

  You bet I still have that note.

  • • •

  Sam left two words for us: Good by. And because he didn’t do his homework, he didn’t know that he had misspelled the goddamn word. But that was the only way that we knew that he hadn’t turned into tiger food, at least not yet. Beyond that, there was no explanation, no hint. As soon as Sam’s mom called me, I raced over to his house, and flashing police cars were there, his parents talking to the cops. When his dad saw me, he said, “There he is,” and pointed.

  I grimaced. Coming over was a bad idea.

  There were three police officers, and two of them were talking to Sam’s parents one-on-one. Out of the corner of my eye, I spied one officer with a buzz cut and his chest thrust out: He was looking at me, his face lingering on my skin in the way that I hate. A moment later he was in my face with a pen and pad of paper in his hand. The badge on his uniform said LIEUTENANT KOWALSKI.