The Broken Places

by Susan Perabo

  He’d never heard his father say anything like this before. His father was about precision, about clarity, about things you could hear and smell, things you could get a firm grip on. He thought of the word his mother had used — unanchored. He imagined his father on a boat, drifting from shore, pulled by some current toward . . . toward what?

  “And sometimes . . .” Sonny went on. “Sometimes I’m not sure I even know what I’m doing.” He opened his eyes, glanced over. “Think I’m losing it?”

  “No,” Paul said. “I just think you’re tired.”

  Sonny yawned. “I am,” he said. “Sometimes I think I’m so tired I might just be sleepwalking and not even know it. Like maybe I’m dreaming everything. Like maybe this conversation is a dream. Like maybe I’m twenty years old asleep in my dorm room and my dad’s still alive and tomorrow I’ll wake up and see your mother in Astronomy at nine-thirty. Know what I mean?”

  “Sure,” Paul lied. He wanted to touch his father’s hand. He wanted to still his brain. He wanted to say I know what you mean and have it be true, about everything. Instead he said, “Dad, let’s go to sleep.”

  • • •

  There wasn’t much chance of him being ditched the next day, what with his father curled beside him in bed. On the set, they’d finally reached the scenes of Sonny and Ian in the basement. Ian watched from his usual spot, muttering a running commentary of insults and mockery, but Sonny paced the studio floor incessantly, twice walking in front of shooting cameras and once tripping over the leg of a tripod. The crew, it was clear, had had about enough of him. Just be still! Lilly Douglass had finally snapped, and Sonny sat down abruptly in his chair, though it wasn’t long before he was up again. Paul thought about the day at Neidermeyers’, how his father had been the calm one during the long afternoon of waiting, how everybody else had been pacing like he was now. By the end of the day, Paul was a little sorry he hadn’t been ditched; he couldn’t help but see his father through the eyes of the crew, this foolish man, so entirely out of his element. He closed his eyes and pictured his father in his turnout gear. Nobody laughed at him then.

  Later, after dinner in the room, Sonny announced he was going out for cigarettes and an hour later had still not returned. Ian was napping on the leather couch, drooling onto the cushions. Paul took a room key and set off in search of his father.

  It was past eight o’clock; darkness had long fallen in the city. Well-dressed couples on their way to dinner strolled the sidewalks. An old lady wearing a bright pink cape walked a tiny black dog that was no bigger than a squirrel. Two men held hands as they waited for a taxi. Paul peered into the windows of every restaurant that lined the boulevard, hoping he might catch sight of his father. Maybe he’d run into somebody from the movie, had stopped for a drink. But no . . . Paul knew this was wishful thinking. His father had simply vanished into the city, had set his feet away from the hotel and kept walking. But why?

  He turned a corner, walked two blocks, turned another corner. Probably his father was just out wandering around, smoking cigarettes, thinking more of those crazy thoughts about belonging and not belonging and whatever all that had been about. Probably Paul would bump into him around the next corner and Sonny would look at his watch and be genuinely startled by the time, apologize for being gone so long. Probably he’d just wanted a little while to himself. There was nothing wrong with that, was there?

  The block Paul now found himself on was deserted. There were no streetlights, and he’d lost his bearings a bit. How many times had he turned? An expensive car with darkened windows slowed as it passed him, crept along beside him as he walked. He stared at the sidewalk, quickened his pace. Did gangs travel in cars? The gangs on MTV didn’t, not cars like this at least. Well, this would show his father, wouldn’t it? He imagined his father and Ian in a dim morgue, a stony-faced orderly pulling out a long metal slab on which lay his horribly beaten body.

  “Why’d he go out?” his father would ask in a trembling voice. “Why? Why? Why?”

  Ian would shrug. “Guess he went lookin’ for you, Son.”

  The car pulled away from him, turned left at the next corner. Paul turned right, saw lights up ahead: the boulevard. He wasn’t lost after all, and he wouldn’t be murdered either. Strangely, this realization didn’t make him feel much better. The fear had subsided, but in its wake was fury. Where the hell was his father? What was his problem anyway? There was only one possible cause: Ian. His mother had been right (he just might be . . . caught up in Ian things or something) and Paul was too little and too late to stop it. Ian had corrupted his father. For surely his father had not become this — this what? — all on his own.

  Ian was smoking a joint and staring vacantly at the television when Paul slammed the door of the suite.

  “My dad back?”

  “Uh-uh,” Ian said. A cloud of smoke hung over his head. He was shirtless and wore baggy gray sweatpants. His eyes looked like a polluted river. “Hey, Die Hard’s coming on. You seen it?”

  “What’d you do to him?”

  He took a hit off the joint. “What’d I do to who?” he croaked.

  “To my dad. He’s never been like this before. He —”

  “Listen, jocko,” Ian said, expelling his smoke. “That fucker’s been going crazy on me since the day we got here. I got nothin’ to do with it.”

  Outside, on the street below, sirens rose and fell. An ambulance, heading west. Paul had spent his life learning to follow the sounds of danger. These sounds, his senses . . . that was all he could trust. Were there any other reliable sources?

  “Hey, throw me those chips on the bar, willya?”

  “I’m not gonna be your friend,” Paul said.

  Ian raised his eyebrows. “What’s your problem, man? Grab the chips and sit down and watch the movie, why don’t you?”

  “I’m not gonna be your friend,” Paul said again. “Not ever.”

  Ian tossed the remote onto the coffee table. “Who says I want you to be my friend? You’re twelve years old. I got plenty of friends.”

  “You don’t have any friends,” Paul said. “You don’t even know what it’s like to have friends.”

  Ian stared at him. He didn’t look angry. He looked curious.

  “You’re a loser,” Paul said. “Everybody knows it. Everybody in the whole town. If it weren’t for my dad you’d be back in Casey with your stupid mother and your slutty sister sitting in your trailer park eating Hamburger Helper.”

  Ian carefully squashed out his joint, cleared his throat. “You know I could break your neck, right?” he said evenly. “I mean, if I wanted to. I could break your neck in about half a second.”

  “You won’t break my neck,” Paul said. “You won’t break my neck because then my father wouldn’t like you anymore, and he’s the only person in the world who likes you. He saved your ass and now he feels like he has to look out for you. He feels sorry for you. But sooner or later he’s gonna figure out what everybody else knows, that you’re a goner.”

  “A goner?”

  “That’s what my mother calls you. A goner.”

  Ian uncoiled from the couch. He rose like a snake, bare-chested, narrow and menacing, a perfect deadly line of muscle and fury. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Paul stood his ground. He was in the pocket with the ball, defenders hurtling toward him. He would not cower, not falter, not now. “It means you’ll never amount to anything,” he said coldly. “It means you might as well be dead already. It means it doesn’t make any difference that my dad saved your life, ’cause your life wasn’t even worth saving.”

  Ian raised his eyebrows. “And what about Daddy’s life? Was that worth saving?”

  “He saved his own life,” Paul said through clenched teeth. “And yours.”

  “He saved nothing,” Ian spat.

  Paul opened his mouth to respond, but no words materialized for his voice to take hold of. He blinked his eyes away from Ian’s for a moment and when he looked back
Ian was staring intently at his own bare feet, his lips pressed tightly together, his face flushed with . . . with what? With shame?

  “What’re you talking about?” Paul asked.

  Ian shook his head. “Forget it, jocko. Get outa here, willya? Go to bed or something.”

  “You’re jealous,” Paul said. “That’s it, right? You’re jealous because you never did anything. You never did anything worth anything.”

  Ian looked up. “I saved your father,” he said quietly, his eyes locked on Paul’s. “First his life and then his precious reputation. Is that anything?”

  Paul giggled. He hadn’t meant to giggle; he had meant to laugh, laugh a full, hearty Santa Claus belly laugh that would be heard by people across the hall, heard on the street below, heard all the way in Casey. But his throat was tight and his diaphragm wasn’t cooperating either. He felt like he’d just swallowed a golf ball. Little wheezes of laughter were sputtering from his lips and he was at once humiliated and furious. He clenched his fists, pulled himself together.

  “You . . . liar,” he stammered. “You . . . piece of shit.”

  “That’s right, little boy,” Ian said, his eyes narrowing. “I’m a piece of shit. And everybody can sleep well tonight knowing that Ian Finch is a piece of shit.” He went out onto the balcony, made tight fists around the iron railing, looked out into the night. For one numb moment Paul was certain he was going to hoist himself over the rail and plummet nine stories to the sidewalk. But of course not, he reasoned. Not Ian. But what if? People were full of surprises. You never knew what could happen. So what made a life worth saving? He stared at the swastika on Ian’s back, dimly lit from the streetlights below. Maybe something was worth saving just because it was there in front of you and you were the only one around, because something — or someone — could flicker out in the blink of an eye while you stood there watching, doing nothing, admitting nothing. Paul slid open the glass door and Ian turned. His eyes were red. Was he crying? No, Paul remembered. He was stoned. But his cheekbones were tensed, his lips quivering.

  “I’m not a goner,” Ian said, his voice thin and strained. “That’s a wicked thing to say about somebody. Do you know how wicked it is?”

  “You saved him,” Paul whispered. He meant it as a question, but it came out certain as a statement. The sun will rise. Dogs chase squirrels. Three comes after two. And Ian Finch had saved his father’s life.

  Ian shook his head, waved his hand in an effort to dismiss the entire night, perhaps the entire year. “Go to bed,” he said. “I’m wasted, man. I’m babblin’.”

  “You saved him,” Paul said again.

  “Fuck it,” Ian said. He sank down on the floor of the balcony, wiped his nose on his sleeve. For all these months Paul had thought of Ian as an adult — his beer and his smokes and his sneering, filthy mouth — but now, sitting on the floor in the dark with snot running out of his nose, he finally looked like the kid he was. Sixteen, Paul thought. It had seemed so old to him, but it didn’t seem so old anymore. Ian lit a cigarette. The flame from his Zippo quivered in the light breeze. “Probably the one fucking thing I ever did worth talking about . . .”

  “What happened down there?”

  He wished the words back then, for a moment, wished himself back ten minutes, ten days, ten years, wished himself over his father’s shoulder, barreling down the hallway to bed. But then Ian looked at him square, suddenly and briefly hopeful, and he knew there was no going back.

  “You can’t tell anyone,” Ian whispered. “Not your mom, not anyone. You got to swear to me, Paul. You’ll never tell.”

  Paul nodded. “I swear.”

  Chapter Six Could the dark kill you?

  No, Ian told himself. No. Just breathe. There’s air here. Breathe.

  Where the hell was he? He wasn’t anywhere. Darkness was nothing and nothing was nowhere and so he was nowhere. Or anywhere. He could be anywhere, and anything could be here with him. Snakes. Spiders. Scorpions. Things with razor claws. Things with leathery tongues. Things without names. They could be slithering squirming stealing across the floor toward him at this very moment and he would never know it until they were on his arms and legs and face and in his mouth . . .

  He felt a bubble rise in the back of his throat, choked out a sob.

  Breathe, idiot. Just breathe.

  He put his hand on his chest to try to calm himself. He rubbed up and down firmly, imagining other hands, his mother’s even, on him, comforting him. He pretended he was a baby, asleep in some dark safe place. Darkness didn’t always have to be scary, did it? There were some nice dark places. Movie theaters. Cars at night. Forts under front porches. All was well. All was well. Easy now. Then a jolt (a mahogany dresser from the master bedroom, though he had no way of knowing this) and he cried out, wet his pants with a burst of hot urine, shielded his face with his arms. He wished himself dead, willed it to be his last moment. Anything but this. Terror and dark. Not just dark. Black. Blacker black than the deepest sleep, blacker black than he ever would have believed black could be. Breathe, idiot. Breathe. Then:

  Sirens.

  He didn’t dare believe it, not at first. He lay completely still, listened intently. But now the sound was gone, had vanished as quickly as it rose. Had he imagined it? Had he made the sound himself? His breath was coming in ragged bits, as if he had swallowed glass. Was he choking? He was choking. Choking on dark, on black, on spiders. No, you idiot, just dust, something, in the deep of his throat. He lifted his head and shoulders, sat up as much as he was able, spit up onto himself, gagged out something thick and lumpy that dribbled down his chin like oatmeal.

  Why the fuck am I still alive?

  Okay. A mystery. A riddle. A dilemma. Something to focus on (and breathe, yes, breathe): he couldn’t for the world figure out why he wasn’t dead. The rat lying beside him clearly was; he became aware of it now for the first time, its thick fur against his bare elbow, matted with blood and some kind of gummy puss he was grateful he couldn’t see (there you go, darkness wasn’t so bad . . . some advantages). He pretended the rat was a kitten, petted what was left of it with his right hand and it soothed him, this easy motion. Perhaps the worst was over. Perhaps everything that was going to come down had come down.

  He began to feel out the space he was in. Above him, at the fingertips of his outstretched arms, something jagged but solid. The ceiling? Possibly, but it couldn’t have been more than three feet from the floor. He stretched out both arms to the sides: darkness, space, something cool and rounded — a pipe? — to his right; a corner of grimy, tattered fabric to his left. The couch? He’d been asleep on the couch, hadn’t he? Charlie and Kevin had left as the sun was coming up, crawled through the busted window, and he had stayed behind, too tired, too lazy, too stoned, to wander home. Five minutes or five hours ago? Five days?

  He kicked out his right foot and connected with something metal that made a dull clanging noise: it was the kitchen stove, though he didn’t know it. He tried to kick his left foot, but it wouldn’t budge. It was pinned under something, and he attempted to jerk it free. If he could just move, roll over onto his stomach, start crawling to someplace . . . where? He sat up and leaned down as far as he could, got a grip on his jeans below the knee, and tugged on his leg until sweat popped on his temples. Nothing. No movement, no hint of movement, no scrape no shift no give. His foot was trapped. He was trapped.

  “Help,” he said. “Help me.”

  He said it so quietly he could hardly hear himself. He lay back down flat, spit up a little more, wiped his mouth with the heel of his hand. Who the hell would know he was here? Charlie and Kevin . . . they’d been so fucked up they probably wouldn’t even remember that he’d stayed behind. Christ, he’d be a goner by the time they even rolled out of bed. They’d been up all night, the three of them, smoking weed and listening to music, screwing around with those goddamn M-80’s.

  The M-80’s. There’d been a dozen of them, wired together with stripped pipe cleaners. They
were going to rig up something like a bomb, then blow it out back, in the pasture, just to see how much damage it could do, just to see what you could make out of nothing. He giggled. The giggle sounded like something that would come out of his sister’s mouth, and this made him giggle even more. Oh yeah, he had heard stories about shit like this, guys in avalanches or guys in Vietnam who got trapped in tunnels or whatever and started freaking out, giggling like girls, shitting their pants and playing with themselves and whatever. If only there were a little light, just a tiny bit, a pinprick of light, maybe he could see his way clear to something. He promised himself that if he ever got out of this he would never again take light for granted. Not any kind of light, not for one moment. He started listing all the kinds of light he could think of: sunlight, moonlight, night-light, lamplight, headlight, starlight, firelight, penlight.

  “Light,” he yelled, kicking the stove in time with his shouting. “Light! Light! Light! Light! Light! Light! Light! Light!”

  He stopped, exhausted from this brief effort. He was a pussy, a pansy, a lame-ass stupid son-of-a-bitch weakling. Well, his sister could have his CDs now, the whole fucking lot of them. He had stolen most of them from the Kmart over in Chambersburg anyway, and his crappy CD player was so screwed up she wouldn’t even be able to listen to them without that thunking in the bass. He had a decent jacket he’d been looking forward to wearing when the weather got colder; it would probably fit Charlie, not that he deserved it, but it was either that or the trash. What else was there? He had fifty-some T-shirts that someone could donate to the car wash, a couple busted watches and a big ugly gold ring his grandfather had given him, some Rollerblades and baseballs in the garage from when he was a kid. He had nothing, really, nothing worth anything to anybody, not even to him. This was the worst part. He wanted to have to think hard about it, to consider carefully where each of his belongings would go, what he would bequeath to whom. But he didn’t have shit.