The Broken Places

by Susan Perabo

  As soon as you start thinking a guy’s dead . . .

  He sat in the back of the ambulance with his mother, an empty stretcher between them. It was dry but chilly; they both wore heavy black Casey Fire Department jackets. She continued in her state of unnatural calm, tranquilly sipping from her Styrofoam cup of coffee as if she were sitting at the kitchen table perusing the Sunday paper, her face absent of even a single crease of worry. He wanted to say something to her but he didn’t have any idea what it would be. He’d seen this in movies — the numb, vacant, retard look — when the baby stopped breathing or the boyfriend got shot or the body bobbed to the surface of the family pool. Indeed, in most people, Paul knew, this strange calm would be masking unbearable sadness. Behind that blank look would churn a river of tears, straining at the dam of numbness. But, in his mother’s case, Paul suspected this composure masked something else entirely. It wasn’t grief. And it wasn’t despair.

  She was pissed.

  It was widely assumed in Casey, during those many years he lived in the station, that Sonny Tucker would eventually take his rightful place as Kittatinny County fire captain. Captain Sam’s shoes would clearly be impossible to fill by anyone else, anyone less, and it gave the people of the town comfort to know that they would at no time in the foreseeable future want for a leader or be without a hero. Sonny was the heir and he knew it. Everyone knew it. Everyone, that is, but Captain Sam.

  “We already have a firefighter in the family,” he said to Sonny the fall of his senior year of high school. “Cover another corner, why don’t you? You got a brain. Be a doctor. Be a lawyer. Be anything you want to be.”

  “I want to be a fireman,” Sonny said.

  “You’ve already been a fireman,” Captain Sam said. “It’s time to try something else.”

  According to Black Phil, Sonny was furious, stomped around the station for months with his jaw clenched, speaking only when work demanded it. The other firefighters, at first amused by the drama and discord, eventually set about trying to patch things up. Phil, himself a new father, even mustered the courage to speak to Sam about the situation. Perhaps father and son could somehow meet in the middle? Perhaps Sonny could take classes at the junior college, see if anything struck a chord in him, and remain at the station as a volunteer? But Sam refused to budge. He was, after all, the chief, and this was as usual not a suggestion but an order, firm and nonnegotiable. And so Sonny tried to cover another corner. After graduation he went off to Penn State and set about a business major. What did one do with a business major? He hadn’t a clue, but it sounded as good or better than anything else: broad, practical, respectable. He went about his studies with care and disinterest, certain his father would eventually recognize his mistake, call him back to the place he belonged.

  And then his world, or what he thought was his world, came to a screeching halt. It was Sonny himself who had told Paul this next part, how, in the spring of his sophomore year, he met the girl who would become his wife. She was a year older than he, an education major, the secretary of the junior class. She sat in the row in front of him in astronomy and he bumped into her at the library a half-dozen times in the space of a month until he realized that it was too coincidental to be a coincidence. This realization completely threw him.

  “How come?” Paul had asked. He and Sonny had been sitting in the yard, throwing a soggy tennis ball to the dogs.

  “She was popular,” Sonny said. He toed the grass at his feet and smiled, remembering. “She had about a million friends. I was a complete doofus. I never said a word. All I did in class was stare out the window.”

  It was Sam, Sonny said, who shifted the balance. “Listen, dummy,” he told Sonny over the telephone. “You can sit on your ass wondering why she likes you, or you can take advantage of your good fortune. It’s your choice.”

  And so Sonny chose. On a rainy night the following week he followed the pretty girl out of the library and saw her standing at the bottom of the stone steps struggling with a giant yellow umbrella. He splashed down the stairs to her, offered his assistance. She handed him the umbrella, which he tried to force open and promptly broke. Embarrassed, he quickly pulled off his black CFD Volunteer windbreaker and held it out to her. She took it, draped it over her head.

  “What do you think?” she asked, striking a pose in the rain. “Is it me?”

  “It’s you,” he said.

  For the next nine months they were inseparable, and Sonny gradually came to the conclusion that he had been ridiculously naive for the first twenty years of his life. He actually felt sorry for the person he used to be. What had that guy been thinking? Of course there was more to life than fighting fires. There were pecan pancakes at the Eat ’n Park at three A.M. with a woman who looked across the table at you with sleepy blue eyes and said “let’s go home.”

  “But home was a dorm room,” Paul said, winging the ball across the yard.

  “Didn’t matter,” Sonny said. “Coulda been a hole in the ground for all I cared. Home was wherever she was.”

  Plans were made. After Laura’s graduation she would stay in State College for a year until Sonny finished his degree, then they would move to Philadelphia, buy a small house, two chocolate Labs, and a reliable used car — forest green, probably a Honda. She would take a job teaching junior high math in the city’s public school system; he would find a small but growing business and get in on the ground floor. They were both planners, prudent beyond their years; life was a by-the-book venture. They were serious, even earnest, people (or were they children? not yet people, not really?) who rarely did anything on a whim. They believed in order, in logic, in permanence, even in forever.

  But they forgot about the world, as can happen when you are earnest and twenty-one and in love and building your future as if with stepping stones across a muddy yard. On a chilly February night, while Sonny and Laura were busy laying their stones in State College, a call came in to the Casey station that a house on Dogwood Avenue was on fire, and that a little boy was as yet unaccounted for.

  The whir of drills and gunfire of jackhammers filled the silence in the ambulance. Laura had a watch on, but Paul kept his eyes from straying to it. He played little games with himself, pretending that only five minutes had passed when he knew almost certainly it had been twenty or thirty. Every so often one of the firemen would pass by the back of the ambulance and glance in, then quickly turn away, not wanting to have to mutter any words of false comfort. Soon, Paul knew, one of them would turn over the stone under which his father lay. There would be an instant of expectation — could he be alive? — that quickly turned to sorrow when the chest did not rise, the pulse not pound. He remembered a hamster born in the Habitrail in his third-grade classroom, how the students had rushed to peer through the clear plastic the morning after the birth, stood in a silent circle waiting for one tiny pink ball — separated from the pile of tiny pink balls — to move, how after a few confused moments Mrs. Burns had shooed them out to the playground and when they returned that one tiny pink ball was gone.

  The rescue plan had been altered. The crew was still wary of bringing in bulldozers; although the house was now completely collapsed, if Sonny was by some miracle alive, trapped in a void somewhere below the rubble, too much movement above could threaten the integrity of whatever fragile space held him. But they weren’t going to dig with small tools anymore, not with the pile they faced now. They worked instead with larger drills and small jackhammers, tools powerful enough to make quick progress in what was now double the size of the original mound of rubble, but not so powerful that they could compromise the safety of whatever — whoever — remained inside.

  Paul tucked his knees to his chin and wrapped himself entirely inside the fire jacket as if it were a sleeping bag. Dead, but maybe not. He wished for his bed, wished the day backwards, wished Ian Finch never born. Someone he didn’t know, someone whose face he could not conjure, had murdered his father, just as surely as if he’d put a knife in his ch
est. He shook the thought away. With half-open eyes he watched his mother; she had pulled her hair from its tight braid and was now in the process of carefully rebraiding it. The efficiency with which she did this always amazed him, how fast her hands worked, how she could construct something so perfect without even being able to see it . . . swish, swish, swish, tug . . . swish, swish, swish, tug.

  Sometime past midnight he left the ambulance and stumbled across the lawn toward one of the silos, looking for a private place to empty his bladder. He shivered in the cold rain and felt, for the first time, that he might cry — not from grief, but from exhaustion. Who could have imagined the simple act of waiting could be so taxing? Every time he had created a scenario of his father’s death in the past, the awful news had come as quickly as a blow to the head. He had never expected to have to wait for it, to have it be only half true. He didn’t know how to act, how to think. What would his father do in such a situation? He wouldn’t cry, wouldn’t complain, wouldn’t get angry. He would just fix things. That’s what his father was: a fixer. He fixed kinked hoses and twisted cars and smoldering rooftops, fixed bikes and guitars and wounded birds. And when he wasn’t fixing, he was waiting for something to fix. That’s what he did all day at the station, sat around waiting for something to fix, planning how he would fix it when it broke. His father was always three steps ahead. His father was always prepared. So if his father was dead, then he, Paul, had to prepare, because in the wake of Sonny Tucker’s death there would be many things to fix. He would have to fix his mother. He would have to fix the town. He would have to fix himself, because he would become the new fixer, of all things broken.

  He zipped up, came out from behind the silo. A few yards away he saw someone tall and broad standing in the darkness, staring at the house. The figure took something from his pocket and popped it in his mouth, then caught sight of Paul and turned, his face now half illuminated by the construction lights. It was Black Phil.

  “How you doing there, kiddo?” Phil asked, straining to smile. “You holdin’ up?”

  “Sure,” Paul said. “What’re you doing?”

  “Just standing back,” Phil said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Standing back and trying to take this whole thing in. Your granddaddy taught me this. Sometimes, he said, when things seem most hopeless you just gotta stand back and look at the thing from the wide view. That’s what he called it: the wide view. Said sometimes things are a lot clearer that way.”

  “Is it working?”

  “I don’t know,” Phil said. He turned back to the house, sighed. “Don’t think so.”

  There had been a string of fire chiefs since his grandfather’s death, and Paul knew none of them had measured up in the eyes of the town, knew that most people — probably even Black Phil himself — were just waiting until Sonny had accumulated enough years on the force to be named chief. And now what? The heir apparent was probably dead, and in all likelihood Phil would be held at least partly responsible. Despite the fact that it was really Sonny who had made the decision to conduct the rescue without outside assistance, on paper this was Phil’s operation, and it had failed. This night would be his legacy.

  “You scared?” Paul asked.

  “Scared? Nah.” Then, after a moment, his face shrouded in darkness, Phil said, “Yeah, I’m scared. Down to my damn bones. Old Captain Sam, he was sure a lot better at being in charge than I am. Sometimes I don’t think I got the stomach for it. Just took my last Tums.”

  “Maybe they got some in the ambulance,” Paul said.

  Phil grinned wearily and put out his hand. Paul didn’t really want to take it; he was way too old for hand holding, under any circumstances, and especially if his father was dead. But he didn’t want to hurt Phil’s feelings, so he took it; the hand was warm, sturdy, familiar, a hand that had passed him a thousand footballs, cooked him a thousand burgers, a hand that had tugged his drowsy father from sleep a thousand times. They started back toward the house.

  “Hey, you keep that to yourself, eh? That bit about being scared.”

  “Sure.”

  He squeezed Paul’s fingers. “We’re gonna get our Sonny out. Sure as I’m standing here. Don’t you stop believing that.”

  Some while later, Ben brought Mrs. Finch and Ian’s sister, Kally, to sit in the ambulance with Paul and Laura. Paul moved over to sit beside his mother and regarded Ian Finch’s family across the stretcher with curiosity and distrust. Mrs. Finch was frumpy and disheveled, her permed hair askew and black lines of mascara smeared down her cheeks. Paul knew Kally Finch from school. Well, he didn’t actually know her, but he sure knew of her. She was a grade ahead of him, but earlier in the year playground rumors were swirling that she let boys suck her boobs in the janitor’s closet. Looking at her, shivering in the seat across from him skinny as a weed, her hair a wet mass of black curls, Paul tried to imagine her pressed up against the huge gray sink in that small, square room, her shirt hiked up to her throat, a boy’s face pressed greedily to her bare chest, but he couldn’t quite do it. She looked tiny and helpless, dwarfed by the black jacket that Ben had draped gently across her shoulders before going back out to the house.

  “Well, I should have known it,” Mrs. Finch announced, as if they were already in the midst of conversation. “I should have known something like this was going to happen.”

  “Don’t blame yourself,” Laura said evenly.

  “Oh, I’m not blaming myself,” Mrs. Finch said. “That’d be like blaming myself for this rain. Trouble follows that boy wherever he goes, and you won’t see me taking any credit for it. Turn right, trouble. Turn left, trouble. Turn around, trouble. . . .”

  Kally Finch looked at the floor, traced her braces slowly with her tongue. Paul could tell she wanted her mother to shut up, and he couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for her, even if she was a slut.

  “God knows I tried,” Mrs. Finch went on, “but soon as he could walk he was wandering away from me, stepping into the street or turning on the stovetop or just plain disappearing. One mess after another. And now here’s this thing.”

  She said it as if this thing were just one of a string of equally messy messes Ian had gotten himself into. Laura continued to smile politely, but Paul could tell she had stopped listening, was focusing again on her hair, pulling her taut braid apart once more. Her kinked hair fell across her shoulders and back. Kally was rubbing intently at a white streak on her rubber jacket.

  “If they ever come out of there we’ve got your husband to thank,” Mrs. Finch said. “Don’t think I won’t be reminding Ian of that every chance I get. You need a job done, you just call him up and tell him to come on over and I’ll see that he does. Wash your car, mow your lawn, clean your —”

  “That’s really not necessary,” Laura said blandly.

  “You’ve got a good boy here, don’t you?” Mrs. Finch said, smiling at Paul.

  Paul shifted in his seat. He wished Mrs. Finch were dead. She was garbage, an ugly old hag, a goner grown up. It should have been her in the basement instead of his father.

  “I’m going for a coffee,” she said, rolling to her feet. “Anyone else?”

  Laura shook her head. Swish, swish, swish, tug, and the braid took form again.

  “She talks all the time,” Kally said quietly when her mother was gone. “Not just now. She just talks and talks and talks.”

  “It’s all right,” Laura said.

  “It drives Ian half crazy,” Kally said. “One time he told me we should see if we could get her de-barked, said he heard you could do that with dogs and maybe it worked with people too.”

  Paul imagined Mrs. Finch’s mouth moving a mile a minute with no sound coming out. He started to grin, but stopped, remembering.

  “You’re in the eighth grade, aren’t you?” his mother asked Kally.

  She nodded, tried to flatten her wild curls with the palms of her hands.

  “You might have me for math next year,” Laura said.

  “I hope
so,” Kally said. “I really like your hair.”

  “Paul’s in the seventh grade,” Laura said, nodding deliberately at him, obviously trying to encourage him into the conversation. “I bet he has some of the same teachers you had last year.”

  “You’re in Pony football, right?” Kally asked him.

  “Yeah.”

  “You any good?”

  He shrugged. “I’m the quarterback.”

  “Do you do any extracurricular activities?” Laura asked, and Paul had to stop himself from smirking. Yeah, he thought, she’s all about extracurricular. The whore club, membership one, meets in the janitor’s closet.

  “I’m in band,” Kally said. “But I’m not very good. Fourth-chair clarinet.”

  “Fourth chair’s not bad,” Laura said.

  Kally shrugged. “There are only five clarinets.”

  “But you’re sticking with it — that’s the important thing,” Laura said, in what Paul recognized as one of her teacherly catchall phrases, designed to build up the brokenhearted.

  “I guess I’ll go find my mother,” Kally said.

  “You can stay here,” Laura said. “If you’d like. Stay here with us and keep warm.”

  No, Paul thought. Please, no, let her leave. The whole thing was horrible enough, but to have to share the horror with a girl like Kally Finch, as if they had anything in common, was more than he could stand.

  “I better go find her,” she said.

  After she had gone Laura turned to Paul. “Be nice,” she said. “She’s as scared as we are, you know.”

  “She’s not that scared,” he said. “It’s just her loser brother. It’s not like Dad.”

  She thought about this. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know if it is or not. But we can’t blame her for having a loser brother. She seems nice enough.”