In Broken Places

by Michele Phoenix

  But as Shayla talked all the way home from the gym that evening, my mind wasn’t really on her brighter spirits or on the meal I still had to make. It was on the abrupt and frightening end of my conversation with Scott. I couldn’t understand what had led from A to B, from bearable present to intolerable past, from relatively sane Shelby to raving-lunatic Shelby. I didn’t have any answers. Scott’s bullheadedness had made me put up my defenses; that much I knew and understood. But losing it that fast over a harmless invitation to a castle? That was perplexing—and, given my gene pool, terrifying, too. I remembered the heat of anger that had suffused my face and how it had made my voice shaky and my hand too firm around Shayla’s, and a familiar fear gripped me. The apple and the tree.

  Shayla and I retired Martha Stewart for the evening and had cereal for supper. This made Shayla happy, in part because she could eat immediately and in part because of the sugar high cereal gave her. Go figure. Consequently, our bedtime ritual became a little more drawn out and a lot more competitive. Shayla wanted to color instead of brushing her teeth. She wanted to sit on the floor and pout instead of picking up her toys. She wanted to point out the window at nothing instead of getting into bed. When she decided she’d rather belt out the Barney song at the top of her lungs, singing over my admonitions and squirming out of my grip instead of saying her prayers, I again felt that flush of anger, that quickening in the chest and stomach that made me want to slap myself . . . or her.

  I left the room with Shayla still blasting “I love you, you love me. We’re a happy family” in a way that might have scared Barney back into prehistory and, closing both her bedroom door and mine, reached for the phone.

  It was midafternoon in Illinois, and Trey was at his post at L’Envie.

  He picked up the phone and did his business-owner greeting.

  “I’m turning into Dad.”

  “Sounds like a personal problem.”

  “Trey . . .”

  “Hey, Shell. How are you doing? Things going well over there?”

  “Guess that was a bit abrupt.”

  “Just a tad.”

  I sighed. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not. It’s good to hear your voice.”

  “Are you busy?”

  “I’ll let you know when the Japanese tour bus gets here to buy me out of house and bakery.”

  “So it’s a slow day is what you’re saying.”

  “Slow time of day. It’ll pick up later.”

  “I went to the gym tonight . . .”

  “I’m sorry, let me replace the batteries in my hearing aid.”

  “Trey . . .”

  “Sorry.”

  “I went to the gym to get something for Shayla to eat after school tonight.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And I lost it.”

  “You lost Shayla?”

  “I lost my temper. Over nothing.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “And now Shayla is in her bedroom shrieking a heavy-metal version of the Barney song and I can’t get her to stop, and when I grabbed her arm to make her lie down for the hundredth time . . . Trey, I wanted to . . . I mean, I almost . . . I wanted to just plaster her to the mattress and hold her there—hard.” I felt the emotion tightening my muscles again.

  “She’s singing ‘I love you, you love me’ like Marilyn Manson?”

  “Trey . . .”

  “Hold out the phone. I want to hear.”

  “Trey!”

  “You’re not turning into Dad, Shell.”

  I let out a shaky breath. “I need a Huddle Hut. And maybe a Valium.”

  “Did you yell at her?”

  “I thought about it.”

  “Did you tell her she was worthless and repulsive and stupid?”

  My stomach churned as I pictured Shayla on the receiving end of such a maiming diatribe. “No.”

  His voice got softer, more serious. “Did you slap her or physically hurt her in any way?”

  “No, Trey.”

  “You’re not turning into Dad.”

  “But I wanted to. I mean . . . I felt angry, Trey. You know—the face-getting-hot, might-have-to-scream variety of angry. I just wanted to, you know, shake some sense into her and make her stop yelling and tell Scott to go take a flying leap off a high place. . . .”

  “Scott?”

  “Never mind.”

  “So how’s the weather . . . ?”

  “It’s—”

  “Who’s Scott, Shell?” I swore I could hear a twinkle in his voice, if such a thing were possible.

  “This is about me, Trey. My anger. My personal failures as a pseudo-mom.”

  “So egocentric.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Number one, lose the ‘pseudo-mom’ thing. It’s insulting to you and to Shayla. Number two, getting mad isn’t a crime. Picturing how mad you could really get if you let yourself is not a crime. Having instinctive urges to hit something or hurt someone or throw a tantrum are not, in themselves, criminal, Shelby. Should we all be figuring out how to deal with things before those urges rear their ugly heads? Absolutely. But the fact that you didn’t scream, that you didn’t shove her into the mattress, that you didn’t start throwing dishes or heavy furniture . . . Shell—that’s proof that you’re not turning into Dad.”

  I sighed. Loud and long. The singing in the other room had lowered a few notches.

  “And number three,” Trey continued, “who’s Scott?”

  “Don’t you ever worry? That you’ve got too many Davis genes, I mean.”

  “Sure. But I also try to figure out where Dad went wrong. I’m of the school of thought that genes can be deprogrammed.”

  “If that’s the case, why are you still single?”

  “I’m not completely clear on the deprogramming yet.”

  “Maybe I’m not either.”

  “Maybe Shayla is part of the process.”

  “As long as she doesn’t become a victim of it.”

  “I know you, Shell. Is there anyone else who knows you better?”

  I thought for a fraction of a second. “Nope.”

  “I’ve seen you at your best and at your worst—and no, a bathing suit is not what I’m referring to—and I have never, ever seen a hint of Dad in you.”

  “Even when I jumped on his back and clawed his eyeballs out?”

  “You were protecting me. Just like you’d protect Shayla. And this fear you’ve got going, Shell? That’s exactly what it is. You protecting Shayla—against yourself.”

  “Huh.”

  “But there’s no need to. I know that like I know . . . like I know you used to Ace-bandage your chest in junior high.”

  “I wasn’t happy about being a woman.”

  “No kidding.”

  “You knew about the Ace bandages?”

  “Yup. The only thing I apparently don’t know anything about is Scott. So, hey, Shell . . .” He tried to sound casual. “Who’s Scott?”

  “Are you coming for Christmas? Please come for Christmas! Shayla needs to spend time with her favorite uncle.”

  “How can I be her uncle if you’re only her pseudo-mom?”

  “Shut up.”

  “You’re going to have to deal with this, you know.”

  “When I’m sure I’ve deprogrammed my genes.”

  “Who’s Scott?”

  “He’s a coach.” I rolled my eyes.

  “Stop rolling your eyes.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “And . . . ?”

  “He keeps wanting to talk to me!” I said talk like it was a horrible thing—like playing bingo.

  “And?”

  “And I don’t want to talk to him. But he keeps backing me into a corner—”

  “Figuratively or . . . ?”

  “Figuratively, Trey.”

  “Which makes you feel powerless, which makes you get angry, which makes you think you’re Dad, which makes you blow a gasket at Shayla’s AC/DC impersonation.”


  “This call is getting expensive, Dr. Freud. Tell me about you.”

  “Me wants to hear about Scott.”

  “Then I guess we’ve reached an impasse.”

  There was a pause. “I miss you, Shelby.”

  “I miss you, too.” I allowed my hopes to rise just a little. “Christmas?”

  “We’ll see.”

  “I think Marilyn Manson’s losing steam.”

  “Give her a kiss for me.”

  “I will.”

  “To the muddlehood . . . ,” he said.

  “. . . of huddlehood.”

  “Thanks for calling.”

  “Bye, Trey.”

  Shayla was half-asleep when I stepped into her bedroom. She was lying on her side, a stuffed animal in the crook of each elbow, humming Barney’s song in a misty, cottony voice. I knelt on the braided throw rug next to her bed and slung an arm over her waist.

  “You getting tired?”

  She nodded.

  “You had fun playing basketball with the boys, didn’t you.”

  Another nod.

  “Shayla . . .” I wasn’t sure how to broach this subject. It felt like shoving a porcupine into a wool sweater—not easy, at best. “There’s something I think I need.”

  Tired eyes opened a fraction more. “You want a donut?”

  I loved this child. “Actually,” I whispered, adjusting my seating so I could prop my head sideways on my arm and be nose-to-nose with her, “I think it would make me really happy if I could call you my daughter.” Shayla’s eyes were so close to mine that I could see the dark flecks in the blue and her pupils dilating and retracting. “When we meet new people,” I continued, trying to make it clear to her young mind, “I’d like to be able to say, ‘This is my daughter, Shayla.’ You know what I mean?”

  A shy smile curved her lips and she tightened her hold on her animals.

  “So, beautiful—” I could feel a tear escaping from the corner of my eye and running down into my hairline—“is it okay if I call you ‘my daughter, Shayla,’ from now on?”

  She watched another tear follow the path the first had taken and looked into my eyes, worried.

  “I’m not sad,” I assured her, and I knew my smile proved it.

  Shayla let go of the blue rabbit she’d been holding and reached out to hook her arm around my neck, pulling my face down to touch hers. We stayed like that until she was asleep, me kneeling next to her bed, cheek to cheek with my daughter, her breath warm against my neck, the smell of her sweet and heavy like warm honey in my lungs. And it struck me with so much force that I had to hold back sobs that this was the antithesis of a God-spitting-on-me moment. This was God pouring such a deluge of wondrousness and overwhelmingness and profound healingness on me that I could hardly stand it. As I knelt there by Shayla’s bed and tried to absorb the enormity of the moment, it was all I could do not to crawl up under the blankets and huddle there all night with Shayla—with my daughter—in my arms.

  11

  TREY AND I had been huddling a lot in the week since Dad had gone all Godzilla on us, though it had taken a couple tries for me to figure out how to make it up the ladder to the attic without using my injured arm. We’d been off school all week, and I wanted to think that was because Mom was giving us time to get our heads sorted out. After all, last Saturday had been the kind of thing that muddles the brain a little. I wasn’t used to seeing my brother being strangled by my dad, and the image kept coming back to me, no matter what I did. Opening a carton of orange juice—Dad strangling Trey. Cleaning up my bedroom—Dad strangling Trey. Watching game shows on TV—Dad strangling Trey. It had been a Dad-strangling-Trey kind of week.

  But I knew my mom hadn’t kept us home from school just because we needed to get over the shock to our brains. I figured it was also to allow time for Trey’s neck to heal. Explaining that her daughter had sprained her wrist in a fall was one thing. But explaining how her son had gotten bruises all over his throat and a bad cut to the side of his mouth? That would take a little more creativity than my mom possessed. We hadn’t complained about the weeklong vacation, though. Instead, we’d spent it reading books, playing video games, eating tons of food (Mom always cooked when she was stressed), and turning the Huddle Hut into Ali Baba’s cavern. We brought up pillows and comfy blankets; we moved in lamps and extension cords; we even dangled Christmas tree lights over the wardrobe at one end of the attic so we could lie in our tent at night and imagine they were stars. I’m not sure what had prompted the Huddle Hut overhaul. There was just so much uncomfortable going on inside that we felt compelled to build something comfortable on the outside, I guess.

  It was shortly after lunch, and Trey and I were lying on our backs shoveling trail mix into our mouths. Mom had discovered our attic hideaway. I knew that because we’d crawled up today to find a bowl of trail mix and two glasses of Kool-Aid sitting in the middle of the hut on a tray.

  Trey dropped an M&M into his mouth. “One week ago this minute, I decided I wanted to shoot hoops.”

  “I always told you sports were unhealthy.”

  “Maybe it’s just basketball.”

  “I think he’d have been mad if you’d wrecked his car for soccer, too.”

  “Yeah, probably. We should make a movie.”

  That was a new one. “Of what?”

  “The things you see in your head when the life’s being choked out of you.”

  He had my attention. “You saw things?”

  “Yup.”

  “Like what?”

  “An Easter egg hunt.”

  “Weird.”

  “You were there too.”

  “What was I doing?”

  “I don’t know. Just kinda smiling and looking at me.”

  “Trust me—I wasn’t smiling in real life.”

  “And I saw something orange. Really orange. Like, burn-your-eyeball orange.”

  “It wouldn’t make a very good movie,” I said.

  “No, you’re right.”

  “You think he’s coming back?”

  “If he does, I’ll kill him.”

  His words made my stomach do a little thunk. That was the weird thing about my dad. I knew he was evil and capable of hurting us—I wore the bandages that proved it—but hearing Trey talk about killing him still made me feel not right. He may have sprained my wrist, but he was still my dad.

  “Do you think he ever liked us?” I asked my brother.

  “Nope.”

  “I used to give him things to make him like me more. Like leftover candy from Halloween and clay bowls from art class. I even made him a macaroni necklace once. I was supposed to give it to Mom, but I figured he needed the cheering up more.”

  “He never loved us.”

  “You sure?”

  He pointed at his neck.

  “Right.” I didn’t want to push it, but . . . “It’s just that sometimes he was really nice.”

  “Like when?”

  “Like when we went to Disney World that one time. He let us go on all the rides we wanted and stay until the park closed. And when he took us out to movies ’cause we got good report cards,” I added, recalling more and more instances when he’d seemed a little less horrible. “He even bought us popcorn that one time when you’d gotten good grades and scored three goals in your soccer game.”

  “And then he came home and made me stand outside the front door for three hours because I dropped the pickle jar when I was getting it out of the fridge.”

  “Yeah, but we got popcorn.”

  “He didn’t love us, Shell. He still doesn’t.”

  “Maybe he’ll realize he does—because he’s away from us—and come back and say he’s sorry.” There was something light and fluttery brightening in my lungs. “Maybe if I send him a card or something—”

  “What?” Trey came up on his elbow and glared so hard it made me shiver.

  “Or maybe if I went to see him, wherever he is, and told him that we don’t hate him bad.
We hate him like we hate the dentist—not like mass murderers.”

  Trey looked at me and I could tell I should be quiet. His nostrils were flared and his eyes were squinty. He got up off the floor and took a few steps away, his hands on his hips, breathing like he’d just run up the stairs. When he turned around, his lips were curled in and the skin of his face looked stretched too tight. “What’s wrong with you, Shell?” His voice was hard, as Trey-less as the sneer distorting his features. It scared me bad enough to make my face feel prickly. “He’s out of our lives,” he said, and there was cement behind his eyes. And then his voice got really hard, like cold metal, and he said, “He’s gone. You hear me? Leave him wherever he is!”

  He stood there, glaring, for another minute or two, then stalked back to the Huddle Hut, threw himself down next to me, and crammed a fistful of trail mix into his mouth, chomping hard and squinting at the sheet above us. “Leave him wherever he is,” he said again, more softly this time. A little faded. I put an M&M in my mouth, but my stomach didn’t seem to want me to swallow it. Maybe I was coming down with the flu. Or cancer. It wasn’t normal, anyway.

  After a few minutes had passed, enough for me to sing “Eye of the Tiger” in my mind, I tried to reason with Trey one more time. Actually, I was probably trying to convince myself more than him. It just felt wrong not to have a father—guilty, somehow.

  “We should have waited until he got home to move the car.”

  “Shut up, Shelby!” He sat up and spit a little trail mix at me when he added, with gravel in his throat, “He’s not coming back! He’s dead!”