In Broken Places

by Michele Phoenix

  I knew my dad wasn’t really dead, but it made me cry anyway. Trey’s yelling made me cry and my not-dead dad made me cry. I thought of the drawing of John Wayne I’d made him when I was little and wished I’d just used the red eraser. If I hadn’t gone into his desk, maybe he’d still be here today. But I couldn’t say that to Trey. His anger had made his bruises look deeper red, and I could tell he didn’t want to talk about Dad anymore. Not for a long time. So I closed my eyes and listened to the squirrels running back and forth on the roof. I hoped they were playing, maybe with their dad watching them through the leaves of a tree to make sure they were safe. I hoped it so hard it made me dizzy.

  After an unseasonably warm fall, the weather had turned wintry. The leaves, it seemed, had browned and fallen overnight, and we’d gone from Kool-Aid weather to hot-chocolate weather just as fast. My walks to the Johnsons’ after school were now drives, and though I disliked the cold, I was grateful for the change. It made it less obvious that Scott had stopped performing his Boy Scout routine. We’d crossed in the hallways and on the street several times since the gym fiasco, and he’d always been friendly. I’d tried to keep the zingers down to a minimum—my form of penance—but sometimes they just popped out. He’d become one of Shayla’s favorite people, and she tended to launch herself at him whenever she saw him, which made extricating myself from banal conversations a little complicated. But I did get one thing straight when I ran into him in the doorway of the Lacoste bakery one Saturday morning.

  “Where’s Shayla?” he asked, surprised to find my usual sidekick nowhere in sight.

  “My daughter is having a playdate with Lizzie Robinson,” I said, putting sufficient emphasis on daughter to make my subliminal message not quite so subliminal.

  He looked pleased—happy, actually—and said, “Well, say hello to your daughter from me.” There were three cement blocks and a Humvee stacked on the word daughter when he said it, so I knew my message had gotten across.

  I thought that would be the extent of our conversation and slung my bag higher on my shoulder, prepared to leave the bakery, but Scott didn’t move. I was standing inside the door, waiting to go down two steps to the street, and he was standing on the sidewalk, blocking my exit while his mind was engaged in what appeared to be some pretty intense internal dialogue. The baker’s wife finally bellowed that we were keeping the sliding door from shutting, and that spurred him into motion. German women yelling had a tendency to do that. He stepped into the bakery and moved me aside to allow other customers to exit.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?” he asked, jutting his chin toward the small dining room just beyond a glass wall.

  “Um . . .”

  “Please. We don’t have to stay long, but . . . I’ve been unfair to you and I’d like to make up for it.”

  “Unfair?”

  He pointed to the dining room. “Coffee? Or tea? I’d like to explain myself, but not standing here.”

  This was not the usual fearless Scott standing in front of me, the conversational warrior who had submitted me to a hailstorm of questions so many times with zeal and confidence. This was a more guarded man who seemed more deliberate than spontaneous, more considerate than impulsive.

  It must have been pity that made me say, “Just a few minutes,” as I pushed through the glass door into the smoky dining room beyond, wondering as I went what had possessed me to accept his invitation. “I’m not really comfortable with this,” I added to make sure he knew I wasn’t used to this kind of thing. He nodded and motioned toward a table. We sat in an alcove at the back of the room and ordered two cappuccinos. As soon as the waitress left, Scott leaned his forearms on the table and assumed a contrite expression.

  “I’ve been selfish.”

  “You said unfair before, but I’ll accept selfish, too.”

  He nodded and allowed a lopsided grin. “I’ve got to admit that I’m . . . confused,” he said after a hesitation, “about what happened at the gym and . . . and a bunch of other stuff, but that’s not why I wanted to talk to you. The fact is, I’ve done my share of interrogating you—”

  “Ya think?” Sarcasm crackled.

  “And I’ve given you absolutely no time to get even—to counterinterrogate. Which leaves me knowing some stuff about you, but you knowing nearly nothing about me. And I can’t expect you to trust me if you don’t have any information to base it on, right?”

  I frowned. “Who says I want to trust you?”

  My question didn’t keep him from making his point. He’d apparently put some time into thinking it through and was intent on saying it all. “So I’ve got no right to ask you any more questions until you’ve had the chance to even things up.”

  “Even things up.”

  “Reverse the conversational blitzes.”

  “I get to ask questions?”

  He took a deep breath. “As many as you want.”

  “What if I don’t want to?”

  He clearly hadn’t anticipated that option. “Then I guess—”

  “What’s the time limit?” I asked abruptly. It was a strange proposition, but I could see some potential there. Maybe I’d decide he really wasn’t very likable after all once I’d had my chance to question him.

  He pondered it for a moment. “As long as you want.”

  “Actually, I’m supposed to pick Shayla up at the Robinsons’ in a half hour, so . . .”

  “So I guess you need to start firing.”

  The waitress appeared with our cappuccinos and gave us odd looks, perhaps perceiving the hum of tension between us. We were being cordial, but our guards were up. Our conversation in the gym, as unfinished as it was, had left us both in a kind of limbo that made this tête-à-tête feel a little surreal. Yet there was something reassuring in the emotional distance. It made me feel less vulnerable. So I launched into my questioning, subdued but purposeful.

  “Middle name.”

  He raised an eyebrow as if saying, That’s the best you’ve got?

  “I’m working up to the good stuff,” I said.

  “Adam.”

  “Place of birth.”

  “Seattle.”

  “Siblings.”

  “One older sister. Two nephews, one niece.”

  “So forthcoming.” I smiled sweetly.

  “Keep going.” He had the focused look of an athlete before a game.

  “Do you get along with her?”

  “We do now.”

  “You didn’t before?”

  “I wasn’t always as lovable as I am now.” He grinned. “She’d tell you I was the worst brother who ever lived.”

  I gave him a disapproving look. “What did you do to her?” We sisters had to stick up for each other.

  “I threw all her bras into a tree outside her boyfriend’s house when she was fifteen and I was twelve. That’s the worst thing. I’ll spare you the snake and lizard stories.”

  I rolled my eyes. Boys. “Education?” I was spitting out topics like a drill sergeant on steroids. It was kind of nice being in charge for a change.

  “BA from MSU, master’s from U of O.”

  “Oregon?”

  “Yup.”

  “Phys ed?”

  “Educational leadership.”

  “Impressive. Good student?”

  “Terrible all the way through high school. Things picked up after my first year of college.”

  “Why?”

  “I like sports.”

  “No kidding. Parents?”

  “Mom is a Mary Kay sales phenomenon. She could sell lipstick to a monk. Dad owns a roofing business. Retires next year.”

  “Were you supposed to take over the business from him?”

  “That was the original plan. He figured out pretty fast that it wasn’t my thing.”

  “How’d he take it?”

  “I think it was probably hard at first, but he’s made his peace with it.”

  “How long have you been at BFA?”

  “This is my f
ourth year. I came for a year and was hooked after a month.”

  “So you’re planning on sticking around for a while?”

  “Until it’s time to move on.”

  That gave me pause. “How will you know?”

  “Not sure,” he smiled. “I think I’ll know it when it comes, though.”

  “Got any friends here?”

  “A men’s group—we meet for a Bible study every week. And a couple of the other coaches.”

  “I don’t see you hanging out a lot.”

  “We’re guys. We get together for a purpose; then we go home. Some of us are going skiing next weekend. Does that count?”

  “Sure.”

  “Come on—give me something a little harder.”

  I looked at him like he had no idea what he was asking for.

  “I’m a big boy. I can take it.”

  Hey, who was I to resist a challenge? “Most memorable girlfriend.”

  “Jeanie Bledsoe. Our braces got locked when I tried to kiss her.”

  “That’ll teach ya.”

  “It really didn’t.”

  “Greatest personal flaw.”

  He didn’t hesitate. “A short fuse.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s mostly under control, but if you’d known me when I was a kid . . .”

  “So you’re over it?”

  “Been to any basketball games?”

  “Not yet.” But I’d heard some stories about the fiery coach.

  “I’m not completely over it. Working on it, though.”

  “I should come to a game just to see you lose your cool.”

  I could tell by his face that he’d rather I went for another reason. “It’s a pretty tough habit to break,” he said. “You get a bunch of guys out on the court, the testosterone’s flowing, the score’s tight, the other team starts fouling my players . . .”

  “What—you throw chairs?”

  “No. But I get a little hot under the collar. It’s stupid. I know it. And I’m working on it—the refs don’t call me on it half as much as they used to.”

  “I’m sure they’re impressed that you’re growing up.”

  “I don’t care so much about them as about the guys. They don’t need to see their coach losing it.”

  “Punching other coaches in the nose, throwing Gatorade at the refs . . .”

  “Never that bad. But losing my grip on what’s important. Using some colorful language. Like I said—I’m working on it.”

  I had to ask it. “Ever been violent?”

  He considered the question for a moment, and I wondered if he was deciding how much to reveal. “When I was younger,” he finally said. “My first year of college was pretty rowdy. A lot of partying. Too much drinking. Too much freedom, really. So I got sloshed a few times and got into a couple of fistfights.”

  I didn’t like this revelation. It reminded me too much of bruises and broken wrists. “Injure anyone?”

  He shook his head. “It was never anything really bad. Bruises and black eyes. Stupid, macho, one-too-many-beers stuff.”

  “So what happened after your first year of college?”

  He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, they weren’t as present as they had been before—like they’d drifted. “A drunk-driving accident. I wasn’t involved. Two guys walked away, the third one’s in a wheelchair for life.”

  “A friend?”

  “Point guard on the basketball team.” He sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. “I decided in the hospital waiting room that drinking wasn’t worth it.”

  “So you stopped.”

  “Mostly. I still have a glass occasionally. That’s it.”

  I’d hoped that the awkwardness that had preceded our conversation would have allowed me to interrogate Scott dispassionately. But I was suddenly uncomfortable with the personal honesty of his answers. I wanted to bolt, yet there were just a couple more questions I needed to ask before ducking out of the contrived intimacy.

  “Anything else?” Scott asked.

  “Just one or two more . . . if that’s okay.”

  He nodded seriously. The guard that had slipped a little with the last series of questions fell back into place. He was braced and ready.

  “Greatest personal quality.”

  He hadn’t expected that one. “Mine?”

  “No, Pee-wee Herman’s.”

  His grin made my neurons jiggle. “Greatest personal quality, huh? I’d say . . .” He was having trouble with this one. I’d learned long ago that the good stuff was infinitely harder to come up with than the bad stuff. “I’d say it’s a willingness to recognize my flaws. I can be a jerk and I know it. I can be stubborn and I know it.”

  “Doesn’t stop you.”

  “Helps me try.”

  “Right. Last question before I run off to rescue my daughter from a horde of sugar-crazed monsters.”

  “Okay.”

  “Why, oh why, won’t you leave me alone?” The question had come out a little more intensely than I had intended it to, perhaps because this conversation had pushed me dangerously close to admiring him, which was the opposite of the result I’d been hoping for.

  His eyes narrowed and he leaned a little toward me. “Because my second-greatest quality is obstinacy.”

  “Really? Most people file that one under personal flaws.”

  He smiled—and I could see relief in it. “Thank you for the conversation.”

  “Thank you for the coffee.”

  “So are we even?”

  I didn’t know how to answer. “This isn’t a competition,” I said with a tight smile, rising to leave and eager to get away from the ambivalent tension hovering like an electrical current between us.

  “Say hi to your daughter from me.”

  “I will.”

  “It looks like a baby,” I whispered.

  Trey and I crouched without moving just inside the attic. We’d been frozen there for a while, ever since a certainty that something wasn’t right had brushed against my consciousness and sent me to the space beneath the roof. I hadn’t heard a sound, and yet . . . I’d known. I’d known there was something desperate above us and had forced a sullen, reluctant Trey to climb the ladder into our intruder’s agony.

  It had flown in through the broken pane of glass at the other end of the attic and battered its wings against the rafters in its desperation to get out. Now it huddled there in a fold of the mussed-up Huddle Hut blanket we hadn’t used in months, its protruding eyes wide open, its rounded chest heaving.

  “You think he’s badly hurt?” I asked.

  Trey tried to shrug like he didn’t care, but he’d been doing that so much lately, I could see right through it. “He’s fine.”

  “We should help him.”

  “He’ll get back out the same way he got in.”

  “He’s scared. It’s hard to know what to do when you’re scared.” I knew that for a fact.

  We crouched there for a while longer and my thighs began to burn. I didn’t like being sixteen. A few years ago, I could have crouched all day without a thought of aching legs. “You think he’ll take off if we get closer?”

  “Probably.”

  “Maybe if you circle around and we close in from different sides, he’ll stay put.”

  “It’s just a bird.”

  “Yeah, but he’s our bird!”

  Trey looked at me like he didn’t have the time for this.

  “He’s in our Huddle Hut,” I said. “And he needs our help.”

  “Just go back downstairs and let him be. If he dies, he dies.”

  I couldn’t figure out what had happened to Trey. The gray-green of his eyes had turned the color of a dirty swimming pool lately. Something in him had broken the day over a year ago when he’d mistaken the accelerator for the brake and rammed what was left of our crippled family into the rear wall of the garage. I figured the bruises on his neck had inked their way into the cells and synapses of his mind like a
tattoo.

  For a couple weeks after the Big Bang, he’d been fine. Kind of sad and moody, but I figured that was because his neck still hurt. And then, after a month or so, he’d turned angry, snapping at Mom and cussing at stupid things like toast that got too dark or shoelaces that came undone. He’d started sneaking bottles into his room too, and hiding them under his bed where he thought no one would find them. But I always found things—even my Christmas presents, no matter how well Mom hid them. So I’d found his stash of bottles, but I hadn’t emptied them like I wanted to. He needed them for now, and I figured he’d outgrow them when the worst of this was past.

  After a few months, he had finally gotten better enough that we’d gone back to talking and hanging out, but not the same as before. It was like when someone leaned against the wall at the back of the school’s meeting hall and hit the switch by mistake and half the lights went out. Trey was half-out, and I couldn’t find the switch to fix him. I had a feeling that my carefree brother—the one who acted half his age sometimes and didn’t care, the one who did the moonwalk and took me up on my stupid dares—had stayed pinned to the wall in the garage between some twisted metal shelves and the Chevy’s shiny hood. I missed that Trey.

  He said I’d been acting odd too, but I didn’t feel much different. On Saturday mornings, I’d still wake up and listen for the sound of singing in the shower. And then I’d remember and crawl out of bed and tiptoe to the window and see that the lawn needed mowing. And that would make me happy because it told me I could have my chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast without the usual stomachache afterward.

  Trey and I hadn’t really spent any time in the Huddle Hut lately. He said he was too old to be crawling up there—he was going to start college next year, after all. I didn’t like it when he talked about college, even though I should have been proud that he’d gotten a full scholarship for soccer. Instead, his imminent departure just made me feel trapped and homeless.

  “I’m going downstairs,” Trey said, standing a little stiffly.

  The bird got scared and tried to move away but one of his wings wasn’t flapping like the other, so he kinda did a sideways walk across the ripples in the blanket, teetering onto his damaged wing, righting himself, then teetering again.