In Broken Places

by Michele Phoenix

It dawned on me, suddenly, that there had been a bit of a thaw lately in Seth and Kate’s months-long awkward stage. “You’re absolutely right, Meagan! What happened to them?”

  “Don’t you know?” She gave me a where-have-you-been? look that put me in my place.

  “I’ve been a little preoccupied, Meagan.”

  “Well, the way I heard it is that the two of them finally started to mouth off at each other one day after practice. Kate kept yelling at him that he was a wuss and he kept telling her that she was too bossy and they finally just got madder and took off.”

  “And that solved the problem?” The warped minds of teenagers. I locked the auditorium door behind me and headed through the foyer to the double doors that led outside.

  “It only made things worse!”

  I needed to get to Bev’s and pick up Shayla, and this story was keeping me from my daughter.

  “So . . . ?”

  “So they went to the kebab place the next day and were in the middle of duking it out—you know, for the sake of the play and all—and right in the middle of this major argument, Seth says something like, ‘It’s because I like you, okay?’ And then she went all Helen Keller and stuff.”

  “Helen Keller?”

  “Like, quiet.”

  Right. I was fascinated. “How do you know all this, Meagan?”

  “Jenny was sitting at the table next to them. She told me all about it.” She took a quick breath and rushed on. “And then Kate went all ballistic and stuff, but then she had to admit that she liked him too.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Are you telling me that Seth and Kate were acting like kooks this whole time because they like each other?”

  “Yup. This whole time.” She was walking with me toward my car, which was the opposite direction from the van waiting to take her home to her dorm. “And then, once they told each other it was like, poof! And now they’re fine. And they’re acting great too, so that’s good news for the play ’cause it’s only, like, three weeks away.”

  I laughed. “Well, thanks for catching me up on the news, Meagan.”

  “No problem!” She stood there nodding at me, happy as a lark that she’d been the one to tell me the story.

  I took her by the shoulders and turned her physically toward the van. “See those lights over there?”

  She nodded.

  “That’s your van.” I put on an ominous voice. “Go to the light, Meagan.”

  She giggled and did a zombie walk for a bit.

  18

  SHAYLA WAS LICKING COOKIE DOUGH off a set of beaters when I got to the Johnsons’. She seemed in no hurry to go home, so I sat down at the kitchen table and debriefed my day with Bev. When I got through telling her about the Seth and Kate transformation, she seemed to have nothing to say.

  “Isn’t that amazing?” I prodded. “I mean, that they’ve been so uptight about something good that they’ve made it uncomfortable for everyone else—including themselves.”

  Bev made a production of washing up her mixing bowl and measuring cups. “People can be silly that way,” she said.

  “Silly is a bit of an understatement. If your feelings for someone get in the way of your other obligations, you’re better off just blurting it out and putting everyone else out of your misery.”

  “Uh-huh. Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  I crossed my arms and tried to figure out what my suddenly enigmatic friend was talking—or not talking—about. At the table, Shayla shoved not one, but two whole cookies into her mouth, distracting me from the pondering at hand.

  “Shayla! What are you doing?”

  I think she tried to say, “Eating cookies,” but it came out sounding like an ancient Germanic dialect, accompanied by a virtual meteor shower of cookie bits. Bev lunged for her dishcloth, Shayla started to giggle, and I made a mental note to tell Scott about the incident when I saw him at school tomorrow.

  It was at that precise moment that the sky opened up and God—sounding a lot like George Burns, actually—bellowed something like, “Get a grip, Shelby! You’re wasting daylight here!” I figured it would have been disrespectful and dangerous to point out that it was actually closer to nighttime, what with the Big Guy’s ability to zap people from heaven and all.

  To be completely honest, the sky didn’t actually open and there’s a good chance George Burns was only in my mind—sharing billing with George Clooney, perhaps—but I was struck with a truth so clear and so urgent that there was no avoiding the corresponding action. My rejection of Scott’s pursuit hadn’t prevented anything. He was already a part of my life. He was already the person I wanted to tell about Shayla’s misbehavior, the person I wanted to make laugh, the person whose opinion mattered more to me than anyone else’s. He was already anchored in my life, and the thought of losing him to my desperate independence was intolerable.

  I left Bev standing at the sink and set off toward Scott’s apartment in a haze of revelation and resolve, but I hadn’t made it halfway there before my courage began to wear thin. Thirty-five years of disclaimers and denials were squawking in my mind like the Aflac duck.

  I’d done my job well, as the daughter of a tyrant. I’d learned all the lessons and internalized them to such a degree that they had become part of my emotional landscape, a landscape littered with the corpses of aborted and abandoned desires, of stifled needs and evaded longings, of emotional calluses so thick and deep and embedded that I feared nothing short of surgical intervention would remove them. An image of God as the Great Physician popped into my mind and I wondered if he’d answer just this one prayer, if he would give me just this one moment to reclaim a bit of the woman he had intended me to be—pre–Jim Davis, pre-maiming, pre-survival.

  I walked down the silent, rain-burnished streets with a growing urge both to flee and to prevail, my steps emboldened by a sudden consciousness of need, my strides restricted by a fear of scorned endeavors and disemboweled hopes. My dread deepened as my urgency increased, and I longed in a flash for the return of the woman I’d been just moments before, whose rejection of risk had yielded a stable, predictable, safe, and stunted life. But in that instant when realization had dawned in a spray of crumbled cookie, when my mind had finally understood my heart and seen the stranglehold of my past on my future—in that moment I’d become too certain to hesitate. I was Seth and Kate encased in self-denial. I was Trey, my protector, shackled by his scars. I was my father, my tormentor, enslaved by his own terrors. I was my mother’s helplessness. I was my future’s emptiness. I was all I had pledged and purposed to abhor.

  My turmoil must have showed on my face when Scott opened his door, because the smile that was growing there froze, then dissipated. He ushered me through the entryway into his apartment, and I sank gratefully onto his couch. My limbs felt flaccid. My breathing was short and shallow. My hands were cold—stiff and shaking. But my head was clear. For the first time in a very long time, my head was clear.

  Scott sat at the other end of the couch, his gaze intense, cautious. I took in my surroundings, knowing they would reflect their owner’s heart. The space was tidy, though not immaculate by any means. There were a few dirty dishes in the sink, a coat slung over the back of a chair, papers strewn over the dining room table, and shoes lying where they’d been kicked off. The furniture was sturdy and modest, the dark leather couch well-worn and needing care. This was a soothing space—warm, masculine, restful.

  “Are you—?”

  “I need to say something,” I interrupted, too scared of faltering to waste any time. “And it might take a while, so . . .”

  He smiled a little confusedly but nodded his agreement. There would be no censure here.

  “I am Jim Davis’s daughter,” I began, linking my fingers to stop them from shaking. And the story unfolded from there, carried on the ebbs and flows and lashes of a past mired in the sinking sand of shame. I didn’t hold back—there was no use in that—as I carefully unwrapped the soiled and sordid, tattered s
hreds of who I was. He heard about the violence, the maiming words, the threats, the abuse. He heard about the Huddle Hut, the hospital, the car, and the abuse. He heard about the pancakes, the zucchini, the ties . . . and the abuse. He heard about it all. Right up to Shayla. I faltered at that hurdle.

  “The reason I’m telling you all of this,” I said, when the lumbering, restorative tidal wave had passed, “is that I want you to understand who I am.”

  His eyes hadn’t left me. I’d felt them on me from beginning to end, though I hadn’t looked at him very much. I’d spoken with determination, with the kind of focus and resolve that had dimmed my senses and sapped my strength. I felt wrung out.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  I was grateful for that. Any platitudes would have cheapened my vulnerability.

  “Is your dad still alive?” There was a trace of anger in his gentleness.

  I shook my head. “Only his legacy.” And this is where my words ran out. How could I . . . ? What would I . . . ?

  “I guess you’re . . . a miracle,” he said, and I could tell he was choosing his words carefully. “That someone as—” he paused—“good as you could come from him. And be so different from him.”

  “You’re basing that assessment on limited experience.”

  “On consistent behavior.”

  “You don’t see behind closed doors.”

  “Is there anything to see?”

  I shook my head. “Not yet. But sometimes . . . sometimes I wonder if it’s just going to hit me one day. If something unimportant will happen and I’ll just . . .”

  “I’ve had a lot of time to observe you, Shell. With Shayla. With the students. I have never seen a trace of the man you describe.”

  “Maybe it’ll turn up tomorrow.”

  “And maybe it won’t.”

  I scratched at my scalp with my fingertips. There was a headache coming on.

  “You’re so good with the students. And with Shayla. Shelby, you’re more patient with that child sometimes than she deserves.”

  “But on the inside,” I said. “On the inside there are times when I just want to shake her.” Tears were coming, and I covered my mouth to mask my trembling lips. “And sometimes I just want to yell—to yell at her to be quiet or stop whining or straighten up or just obey the first time for once!”

  “True confession?”

  “You’re turning me in to social services?”

  “No—but I’ve had the same thoughts as you a few times.”

  “With Shayla?”

  He nodded.

  “No way. You’re always so calm with her.”

  “Remember when she threw that tantrum at the McDonald’s in Basel? It was all I could do not to sling her over my shoulder and find the nearest fountain to dump her in.”

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or be worried. “You wanted to dunk her?”

  “Dunk her. Yell at her. Shake her.”

  I gave him a disbelieving look.

  “Sorry,” he said, hands up in concession, “it looks like I’m as warped as you. The good news is, neither of us has done anything to act on it.”

  “But you don’t have my heritage.”

  He sighed. “Nope. I’m the son of a business owner and a beauty consultant—which means my flaws are probably being dictatorial and wearing too much blush.”

  I had to laugh. “You’re one of the few men I know who knows what blush is.”

  “Don’t assume that your legacy is all bad, Shelby,” he said with so much conviction that I wanted to believe him. “There might even be something good that comes from it someday.”

  I took a deep, calming breath. “There already is.”

  “Really?”

  “Shayla.” It was out. “She’s my father’s daughter, Scott. She’s my half sister.”

  He shook his head as if he were doubting his senses. “I’ve thought of a lot of scenarios, but . . . not this one.” He looked bemused. “How . . . how did it happen?”

  “Oh, you know, the usual way. Man abandons wife and children. Man meets much younger other woman—not necessarily in that order. Man has baby with much younger woman. Woman abandons baby. Man raises baby. Man dies. Grown daughter inherits baby. You know—the usual way.”

  “And her mother was . . . ?”

  “Gone. Uninterested in being a mom. She gave up her rights when Shayla was a baby.”

  “Shelby, I . . .” He couldn’t find the words. And I couldn’t blame him.

  “I know. It took me a while to wrap my mind around it too.”

  “And now?”

  “And now she’s mine. I am the guardian of my dad’s illegitimate child. Call the soap opera people—this is a winner.”

  “Shelby.”

  “The problem is, I love her. And no matter how much I tell myself that she can’t be the daughter of the man who raised me, that there’s no way I could love her so much if she was . . . I just can’t help it.” I laughed a little bitterly. “How ironic is it that the greatest gift of my life came from him? And after he’d died, at that.”

  “He knew what he was doing. You’re the best mother she could hope for.”

  “He didn’t know me at all. The last time he saw me, I was lying on the couch with a sprained wrist, a scraped face, and a bump on my head. I was cowed. And probably being funny. That’s the standard Davis Junior response to anything unpleasant like, say, having the tar beat out of you.”

  “And yet . . .”

  “And yet he left her to me. The daughter he apparently loved with the daughter he clearly despised.” Unwanted tears blurred my vision. “And the real kicker is, if I’m going to love her, I’m going to be forever linked—and indebted—to my dad.”

  “You already do.”

  “So I already am.”

  He shook his head again. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “So you’ve said.”

  A brimming silence settled between us. At some time during the course of our conversation, Scott had moved a little closer to me on the couch. His arm was stretched across the backrest, not touching me, but there was comfort in the gesture, a protectiveness and companionship I’d missed until now. After a long moment in which we’d both been lost in thought, he cleared his throat and said, “What made you come over here tonight, Shelby?”

  It was a valid question—what with never having been inside his apartment before and having avoided any deeply personal conversations for some time. The face of Colonel Klink appeared in my mind, as German as Schnitzel und Pommes, commanding, “You vill say vat you came to say, Shelby. You vill say it now.” And with such a gentle invitation to disclosure, what was a woman to do?

  “I wanted you to know more about me—about my dad and stuff—because I wanted you to understand how I’ve been acting since . . . since you’ve known me, really.”

  He smiled.

  “I’ve been scared. Actually, I was scared at the beginning, and then when we became just good friends, I was less scared. And then when we bought the Christmas tree and the hand-holding and stuff, it felt good and just . . . normal. But when you asked about, you know, pursuing me—I panicked. There’s no other word for it. I just panicked. I’ve never wanted a relationship—I’ve never wanted to be pursued. And the truth is, I’m pretty sure I’d be really bad at both of those. There are a lot of things that scare me in this world, Scott, and most of them have to do with exactly what you seem to want.”

  “What scares you so much about being pursued?”

  “Oh, you know . . . everything.”

  A smile deepened on his face, and there was something optimistic in his eyes.

  “So just in case I go a little crazy on you again—this way you’ll know why. Not that I’m planning on it, but . . .”

  “What are you saying, Shell?”

  I stopped fidgeting and took a long moment to look him in the eyes. I decided I liked his eyes. They made me feel brave. “What I’m saying,” I said in a mock-annoyed tone, �
��is that you’re welcome to pursue me if you still want to.”

  He imitated my mock annoyance and said, “Oh, well, fine then. I’ll pursue you, okay?”

  “Really?” It was the six-year-old voice again—the one that showed up when I didn’t dare hope for something.

  “Shelby.”

  “But I can’t promise anything,” I added hastily. “I can’t promise that I’ll be any good at . . . at anything. Or that this will become something serious. Or—”

  “I’m not looking for promises.”

  “And there’s a good chance you’ll realize I’m not what you thought I was, and you need to know that that’s okay. Just tell me, and . . . and I’ll get out of your hair. Because I know I’m not, well, normal. Not where stuff like this is concerned and . . . and that’s all.” I took a deep breath. “For now.”

  “Done?”

  “One more thing.” I paused, taking the time to reduce my swirling thoughts into words that would make sense to Scott. “I don’t want you to think that I’m expecting you to fix me,” I said, my breathing shallowed by the statement. “I mean, you don’t need that kind of pressure, and I don’t need that kind of dependence.”

  “What makes you think I’m capable of ‘fixing’ you?” he asked in a voice that held neither condemnation nor condescension. “I’m not here to change you or undo anything someone else has done to you. I’m here because I want to be near you and know you and, well, pursue you. So how ’bout I just concentrate on that and leave the fixing to God?”

  I had a flash of certainty just then—as though God said, “Maybe bringing someone like Scott into your life is just one small part of my plan for healing.”

  I wanted to believe it. “You’ve got a deal,” I said to Scott. “But,” I added hurriedly, before the last shreds of my courage dissolved, “I really want you to know that it’s okay if you decide you don’t want to pursue me anymore. I mean, once you get to know me better, if you change your mind . . .”

  “Shelby . . .”

  “I’m serious, Scott. There have been some guys who . . . who thought they liked me. And then they didn’t anymore. And that’s just the way things go sometimes, so if you change your mind, just tell me.”