Karen let up on the brake and eased into the parking lot. She took a spot close to the doors but away from the clutch of other vehicles. Something in her head hummed, like a radio waiting for a transmission, as she got out and walked to the doors.
Inside, the house lights were on, but the lanes—gutted, stripped down to floors and gaping holes where the pins had sat—were dark, looking like cave openings. Anything salvageable had been stripped, leaving vague clues of what had once been there. She heard the ebb and flow of someone talking softly off to the right. Someone else coughed.
She came around the registration desk and saw a group of about a dozen adults, sitting in a circle of neon plastic chairs where arcade games once stood. The people—all of differing ages, genders, and races—held Styrofoam cups or munched on doughnuts. They looked at a balding man sitting with his back to her. The speaker.
“—and I found her,” he said, “on her knees, in the bedroom we had shared for ten years. She was—” He paused. “—she was blowing him.”
“Who?” a youngish man said. He held his chin in his hand, elbow on his knee, studying the speaker. The lenses of his black-rimmed spectacles flashed.
“My neighbor,” the speaker said. “We had barbeques together, borrowed lawn tools, all that suburban shit. He had his dick in my wife’s mouth.”
Karen stood, frozen, still near the reception desk.
(what the hell?)
“What did you do, Adam?” the youngish man asked. “Did you get mad? Rush in and attack them?”
“I left,” Adam whispered. “Just … left.”
“Why? This was your wife. This was a neighbor you thought—maybe he wasn’t your friend, but you two were friendly.”
“No—they were friendly,” Adam said.
Karen’s feet took a step back and the receptionist saw her. She smiled in recognition—so jarring given the topic under discussion—and gestured to the empty seat beside her. Karen hesitated for a second, then scurried over. She sat down and the receptionist smiled warmly at her once more before turning back to Adam.
“That doesn’t answer the question,” the youngish man said.
“Because she saw me,” Adam said. His head drooped, his chin nearly touching his chest.
“She saw you?”
“As soon as I walked in,” he said. “Saw me, and kept going.”
The youngish man asked, “What happened when you finally went back home?”
“She was gone. Packed a bag and left. I got the divorce papers two weeks later.”
“Did she end up with the neighbor?” the youngish man asked. Karen glanced at him—seemed like a particularly cruel question.
“No.”
A beat of silence. “Is this your worst moment?”
A grunt. “One of them.”
“Why?”
Adam didn’t say anything at first. Then he said, slowly, “Because I just left. I didn’t fight. I felt the pain, and I didn’t fight.”
“Did you want to?”
Another shrug. “Not really. I didn’t want to fight for her—we was barely speaking by then—but what we didn’t have anymore, y’know? I’d met her in fucking middle school, thought we were gonna grow old together. But we just … just started hating each other. Before that, though …”
The man leaned back. “This was the buildup to all those lost feelings and thoughts. Your worst moment is you realizing all that you’d lost.”
Adam nodded.
“I thought so,” the man said. He stood and walked to Adam. He put a hand on Adam’s shoulder, but kept his back to the group, staring off at the empty lanes beyond.
“As always,” he said, “don’t thank Adam for sharing. What he’s just revealed to you isn’t helpful—to you. To him. It shouldn’t make him feel any better for opening up this wound before you.”
Karen looked around. The dozen or so men and women watched the man and their shared expression sent a ripple of gooseflesh up Karen’s back. It was an expression of anticipation.
“He will never be able to express, fully, how it felt to see his high school sweetheart sucking another man’s cock. The pain of it. The loss. You will never feel how he felt, even if you’ve been a similar circumstance.” His gesture towards Adam turned into a point, jabbing in Adam’s general direction. “This is his pain, his wound, his scar.” He looked at each person, his glasses winking the lights. Karen flinched when it was his gaze fell on her.
The man began to pace, working his way around the inner circle. “This isn’t about healing or expressing yourself. Both of those are delusions. What makes you who you are is the pain you’ve experienced, the scars you carry on the inside. You grew up hearing that we are all one, that we are all in this together, and, together, we can do anything.” His mouth twisted into a nasty grin. “But we aren’t and we can’t. No amount of talking will heal you. When the police are looking for a guy, or an unidentified body shows up, they make sure to mention ‘identifying marks.’ Tattoos. Scars.”
He paused to look at each person again.
“It’s our scars that make us human,” he said. “Makes us who we are. Every cut, every bruise. Every put-down, fight, fear. Our bodies are just skin and tissue and bones. Our hearts are just muscle, no matter what the romantics say. But muscles can tear. Skin can be cut. Tissue can be ruined.”
He resumed pacing. “Our bodies are meant to take damage. If they weren’t, we’d be invulnerable. Our skin is meant to be cut. Our hearts are meant to bleed. Our bones are made to be broken. We are damaged goods. We are human. We are who we are. And, when we feel that pain, that’s our bodies reminding us of who and what we are. Human.”
He shook his head. “No, when we talk about our pain, we’re not seeking absolution. We’re seeking to stand as we are, to be everything that is broken in us and made us who we are. We don’t hide. We show. Maybe we can teach another to be who they are. By being honest with ourselves, we can show others to be honest about themselves.” He gestured towards Adam once more. “When Adam shares, or anyone else, he’s reminding himself who he is, and reminding you who you are and how you’re scarred.”
He turned to Karen. “Welcome,” he said. “I’m Dr. Darren Roberts. What’s your name?”
Her throat went dry. “Karen.”
The receptionist spoke up. “I invited her.”
Roberts’s eyes cut towards her. “Why’s that, Eve?”
Eve glanced at Karen. “She’s a cutter. I saw it when we met. Cutters always get caught, eventually. I was trying to help that inevitability.”
Roberts looked back at Karen. “Is that true?”
Karen swallowed and it did no good; sand dunes could’ve moved across the dry expanse of her tongue. “Yes.”
“Which part—being a cutter, or being caught?”
She had to look away. Most people never looked directly at each other for long, but Roberts held his stance like a staring-contest champion. “Both.”
“Are you still cutting?”
Karen shook her head. “No.”
She saw his shadow move away and she looked up to see him sitting back down in his chair.
“St. Jude’s is not a church in the traditional sense,” he said. “Seek not your salvation here. We’re fresh out. If you’re looking to feel better, you’re going to have to look elsewhere. We can’t help you. All we can do is show you how to examine your scars, use the pain you feel, but we can’t make you better. Do you understand? This is important.”
She studied his earnest expression, his unwavering gaze.
Finally, she nodded.
He leaned back in his chair. “Good.” He cleared his throat. “If Eve saw you were a cutter, that must’ve mean it was recently you had imbibed. True?”
She nodded again.
“But you’re not now.”
Another nod.
“Then talk about that. That couldn’t have been easy. Start there.”
Karen looked around. The others looked back at her. She
flashed back to presentations in high school, standing in the front of the room, her report or speech clutched in front of her like a shield, taking in all those eyes.
“We are not here to judge you,” Roberts said. “We’re all broken people. We all feel we are failures in some way or another.”
She glanced at Eve and Eve smiled at her. No one coughed. No one shifted in their seats. She might’ve been in the room alone.
(that’s exactly how you should feel)
The shame rushed her—the shame of being caught, of being manhandled by Lisa, of being so obvious to Lisa—
(if lisa had noticed had kevin? had kevin seen?)
—flooding her system with a terrible warmth.
“My best friend caught me,” she said, slowly, softly, into her coffee cup. “She’d come over the other day to … I guess confirm her suspicions.”
“Why was she suspicious?” Roberts asked.
“Because I looked thin,” Karen said. “Because I hadn’t been sleeping. Because I always wore long-sleeved shirts.” The words, hard little bullets before, came smoother.
By the end, she was looking up, at the group, meeting their eyes, and couldn’t remember exactly when she’d raised her head.
She couldn’t remember when the pain stopped making her hunch and instead made her sit up straighter.
She drove home with a buzz in her head much like if she’d had a couple of drinks, turning the long drive into a surreal passage of lights and turns with nothing jumping out enough to hook onto her senses. She still ached—her back, her joints—and her head throbbed from drinking coffee so late, but she had never felt less weighted down, as if she didn’t so much walk from the alley to her car, or from the car to her apartment, as she glided from one to another. She still hurt. She was not better.
But she hadn’t felt so good in such a long time.
The skull is not Kevin’s. Of course it isn’t. Kevin’s asleep; she knows this. She picked him up from his father’s just this afternoon.
Karen drops the skull and stands. This dream again. This place that used to be so open and clean and … and possible. Yes, that’s the word. This had been a place where everything had seemed possible; the one place she knew that wasn’t closed off and ideas of moving to New York and being a journalist hadn’t seemed so stupid, or impossible. She starts up the next hill, leaning into it to gain the most purchase against the drifting, shifting dirt, bone fragments crunching underfoot. Now, this place is poisoned. This place—
(these are where your scars live)
Dr. Darren Roberts’s voice drifts across the breeze, his voice slow and measured.
(this is the core of your being where you are who you truly are)
(before this was a place to plan for your future)
(now it’s a place to hide from your past)
(but when you hide you’re also dwelling)
She pauses at the top of the hill. Distantly, she can see the structure—no longer against the line of the horizon, but still a ways off. It was a house—a one-story structure, slumped in an alarming way. It reminded Karen of a photo of a house mid-collapse.
(isn’t that true karen?)
(isn’t this where you ran away?)
(isn’t this where you hid from your pain?)
“I’m not hiding from anything,” she says.
(you can’t lie to yourself forever karen)
“I’m not lying,” she says, and starts down the next hill. The breeze picks up speed, swooping into the mini-valleys the hills create, prickling at her skin like pins and needles.
(why do you cut karen?)
(why do you cut if not to escape?)
(why did you come here if not to escape?)
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, too loudly.
Roberts’s voice drops to a whisper.
(your pain makes you who you are karen your scars show the world who you are)
(but you’ve been taught to hide your pain)
(the problem is that it eats you up from the inside out like a tumor)
(like this place)
(until all you want to do is escape)
The wind comes faster, now, assaulting her senses, making her eyes close to slits, slapping her nose with its awful reek. Pain shoots up her calves.
Roberts’s voice picks up speed, coming with each increasing gust of awful air, finding its rhythm, pummeling her.
(and you’re ruined you’re everything your mother and the world has told you are—a failure)
(a failure without a job)
(a failure without a dream)
(a failure raising a child)
She shakes her head, even as pain zig-zags up her spine from the small of her back, pierces her skull.
(until all you want to do is escape—for good—isn’t that right karen?)
(to escape would be to fulfill that failing dream wouldn’t it?)
(admit it to yourself—here if nowhere else karen)
(you hated cutting not because you feared getting caught)
(but because you never could work up the nerve)
(the nerve to finally escape)
(the nerve to accept your failure as a parent)
(and when you got caught it was like you’d lost your chance)
“SHUT UP!” she screams as she reaches the bottom of a hill. Above her, thunder, like the throat-clearing of an Old Testament god, rumbles.
She looks up and her mother stands there, flicking like a television with bad reception. She’s dressed as she had when they’d buried Karen’s father—black dress, high-necked with a collar that reminds Karen of doilies. She holds her gloved hands in front of her, and stares pityingly down at her adult-child.
“It’s your fault,” her mother says in that I’m-only-trying-to-tell-the-truth tone she always used to use when Karen was a teenager and it was just the two of them rattling around that damned house in Franklin. “Your fault he’s dead, your fault your husband left you, your fault you’re unemployed, your fault your son’s a little silent weirdo.”
Her mother unfolds her hands to reveal a single glittering razorblade. Thunder rumbles again, accompanied by the flashbulb of lightning caught in the black clouds above.
“You can do it here, dear,” her mother says, holding up the razor. The green hue of the day makes the metal glow like something radioactive. “Do it here and finally accept what you are.”
Her mother bursts apart like a popped balloon, the pieces catching on the wind and encircling her, pulling her down into the darkness—
Karen sat bolt upright in bed, the scream lodged in her throat like a wad of mucus, choking her.
(don’t scream don’t scream kevin will hear you don’t scream)
Roberts’s voice had followed her from her dream and now filled her head.
(scream goddammit SCREAM stand unadorned don’t be afraid to show your scars show that you’re human)
Her jaw unlocked.
And she shrieked.
The force of it threw her back straight, her head up, the tears out of the corners of her eyes. The pressure drained in equal measure, leaving her dizzy.
Karen ran out of air and fell to her side, coughing and half-retching, her nose and throat clogged with snot. She closed her burning eyes as scalding tears escaped from under the lids.
“Mum?”
She jerked and half-rose, but all strength had left her. She tried to speak and only managed to cough again.
And then Kevin’s hands were on her side, patting her helplessly. “Mum? Mum? You okay, Mum? Mum? ”
She swallowed thickly, took a breath. “S’okay, honey.” She hated the weak, watery quality to her voice. “S’okay. Just had a bad dream. Just a bad dream.”
“Do you need something?”
(my boy)
“No, hon,” she said, her voice gaining a little strength. “Just need to lie here a minute.”
Silence for a beat. Karen’s eyes were still closed and she found herse
lf drifting. Only awake for a few moments from a bad dream and already drifting. When was the last time that had happened?
And then Kevin’s voice pulled her back: “I have something for you.” Followed by the sound of his bare feet padding away across the hardwood floor.
She drifted. Her head throbbed once and then went quiet. The distant rush of the constant city traffic lulled her.
Footsteps, approaching.
“Mum, I have something for you,” Kevin said, pulling her back to consciousness again.
She roused herself.
Kevin stood beside the nightstand, the refracted glow of the outside streetlamps turning his face into a barely-defined glob of white, hovering in black. He held a stuffed animal dog in his hands.
The dog’s black button eyes matched her son’s in the darkness and ice touched her heart, chilling her.
“I thought this would help you sleep,” he said.
She took the dog, her hands numb, watching her son. No reaction to the fact that his mother had shrieked bloody-murder in the middle of the night. Still, though, the proffered dog.
“Thank you, honey,” she said.
“Can I do anything else for you?” he asked, like he was taking care of her while sick.
(aren’t you?)
“No, love,” she said. “It’s all right. I’m already feeling sleepy again.”
A wobble of that white blob in the dark—him nodding.
“Mum?”
“Yes, sweetie?”
“What happened to your arm?”
She looked down and saw her right arm, poking out from under the sleeve of her sleep shirt. In the streetlight glow, it looked like someone had drawn lines on the skin of her forearm with a Sharpie marker.
(tell him karen bare your scars show your pain aren’t parents supposed to teach their children)
(what parent would do that?)
“Just …” she started to say, but just what? came into her head. “Mom had an accident. It’s okay. It doesn’t hurt.”
(liar)
“Okay,” Kevin said, drawing the last syllable out, and Karen glanced at him. He stared at the marks on her arm. She slid it under the stuffed dog and used her other to pull him in for a quick hug.
She swallowed. “Go back to bed, hon. You have school in a few hours. Thank you for the dog.”
Bones are Made to be Broken Page 28