The Broken Places

by Susan Perabo

  He didn’t remember dropping his books, didn’t remember the two steps it took him to reach Carson, didn’t remember barreling into his chest and sending them both sprawling to the floor. The next thing he remembered, after Carson’s words (kinda psycho) was the look on Carson’s face — no fear, only surprise — as Paul reared back to hit him.

  “Fight!” a voice shouted.

  But he never swung. His clenched fist still in the air, frozen at the point before the motion reversed itself, he was yanked backwards off Carson and spun into the wall. His face collided with the metal edge of a bulletin board and he felt his lip burst open. Silence fell in the hallway. The circle of openmouthed students that surrounded him — at first only eager for a fight — now simply stared. Paul put his hand to his face, then looked down at the blood. Bright blood. The blood of the boys at Disney. Fake blood, spurting out of a baggie attached inside Roger Rhodes’ blue jeans. Blood on the blade of the ax as it slipped from Ian’s hand. It all ran an ocean together in the grooves of his palms.

  “Hey . . .” Joe said, stepping forward.

  Carson got slowly to his feet. “Paul —” he started.

  And then he was running. He pushed his way through the circle of kids and broke into a sprint, burst out the front doors of the school and raced across the lawn. He was finished with school. He was finished with all of it. Lurching across the snowy parking lot, he heard his name called from behind him and quickened his pace. He reached the street and turned instinctively toward home, but gradually slowed to a wobbly jog as he closed the distance between himself and Willow Lane. His lip was throbbing and his eyes were moist with tears. God, he was sick of his own tears, disgusted by his inability to keep them from spilling. He’d never been a crier before; he’d always felt sorry for the boys who teared up when they banged a knee on the blacktop or got a bad grade on a test, the boys who needed a Kleenex and a kind glance slipped to them from the teacher. What had happened to him? He’d become a baby again, a weakling, a coward. He’d become his father’s son.

  He stopped at the corner of Willow Lane. He had no coat; his fingers and thighs were chilled numb. Streaks of sunlight filtered through the bare trees. A small brown rabbit padded softly across a nearby yard. Someone close by had a fire in the fireplace; he could smell the rich wood burn and his tears thickened. A bright red cardinal descended and perched on the street sign, its feathers flicking.

  He did not want to go home.

  He turned right. His chilly tears dried. His knees stopped wobbling. By the time he reached the other side of town a peculiar sense of elation had taken hold of him. He was skipping school. He’d fought in the hallway. It was twenty degrees out but he wore no coat. He had blood on his face. His father was two thousand miles away, his mother concerned with other people’s children. This, he decided, must be how bad boys felt. This was how they swaggered — free and alone — when no one was waiting for them.

  By the time he got to D Street, twenty minutes later, his feet felt stifled by his shoes. He knocked on the Finches’ door with numb hands; nobody answered, but he could hear the TV blaring. He wiped his nose, knocked again, louder, and was about to give up when the door opened.

  “Hey,” Ian said. He yawned. He was wearing jeans and a black sweater, but from the lines on his face Paul could see he’d just woken up. “Who kicked your ass?”

  “Bulletin board,” Paul muttered, wiping his runny nose on his shoulder.

  “Oughta watch where you’re walking,” Ian said. He stepped back and let Paul in, didn’t even question why he was there, why he would show up out of the blue in the middle of the morning with his lip busted and his eyes still red from crying.

  The living room of the Finch house was covered with light blue shag carpeting with about ten cats’ worth of hair entwined in the thick shag. Other than that the room was tidy. An ashtray and a can of root beer sat on the narrow coffee table beside a huge orange tabby. The Price Is Right was on the TV. Paul sank down on the couch and Ian hobbled off, disappeared. He came back a moment later with a wet paper towel.

  “Wipe up,” he said, tossing it to Paul.

  Paul gingerly touched his lip with the soggy towel, winced.

  “Ain’t bad,” Ian said. “Lips bleed like crazy, even when it’s just a little thing.”

  He flopped down next to Paul, put his feet up on the coffee table and looked at the TV. “Relax,” he said after a minute. “I ain’t going anywhere.”

  “Did I wake you up?”

  “Sort of,” Ian admitted. “Drifted off here for a minute.” He pointed to the television. Bob Barker was talking merrily into his skinny microphone. “We should have gone when we were out there, to this show. I swear I coulda won a car. I’m way better than any of the dimmos they ever pick.”

  Paul set the bloody paper towel on the coffee table. The orange tabby sniffed it and looked at him curiously, then hopped down onto the floor and wandered off.

  “How many cats you got?”

  “Shit, I dunno. My mom brings home strays when it’s cold. Probably six or seven. We’ll throw ’em all back outside come spring.”

  Paul looked at the TV for a moment, then turned to Ian.

  “You talk to my dad?”

  “Nah. You?”

  “He called a few nights ago. Asked if I had seen you.”

  “Where’d he think you’d see me? On the news? Robbin’ a bank or something?”

  Paul grinned. “Maybe.”

  “How’s Mom? Happy to have you back in the nest?”

  “I guess.”

  “S’pose she hates my guts, huh? Pretty obvious in the car the other day, taking off before I even had the damn door closed.”

  “My dad told her about what happened at Disney,” Paul said. “He told her that was why he sent me home.”

  Ian nodded. “Figured it was something like that. Well, it wasn’t like she was my biggest fan anyway, right? No harm done.”

  Paul scowled. “My dad’s friend Ben thinks you brainwashed me. He thinks I’m gonna be a Nazi or something.”

  “That guy’s kind of a dick,” Ian said. He lit a cigarette. “Stupid too. Reminds me of my old man. Gets something in his mind and you couldn’t get it out with a friggin’ hacksaw.”

  “He’s all right,” Paul said quickly, and suddenly he felt incredibly weary. It seemed he was defending everyone to everyone. It was exhausting being on more than one team at once; he felt like he was intercepting his own passes and then tackling himself.

  “See, look at this lady,” Ian said, pointing to the TV with his cigarette. “Thinks a bag of candy costs more than vitamins. Do people ever watch the show before they go on? Vitamins always cost the most.”

  “What have you been doing?” Paul asked. “Just sitting around watching TV?”

  “Hell, no. I’ve been doing a lot of stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like stuff.”

  “Are you even in school anymore?”

  Ian shrugged. “How should I know? Probably took me off the list by now. I don’t think I been in about five months. But hey, you know what? I saw this thing on TV the other day, this deal where you can get your degree in a whole bunch of things and do it all at home. There’s all this repair crap, you know, stuff for dummies, but you can get it to be a vet assistant. I’m thinking that might be kinda cool, saving dogs and stuff. Wha’dya think? You think I could do that?”

  “You have to have a diploma to do that,” Paul said. “You gotta finish high school at least.”

  “But I could do that GED,” Ian said, leaning forward. On his face was an expression Paul had never seen on him before. Hope? No . . . not that extreme. But maybe expectation, a hope of hope. “That’s what a bunch of guys I knew in juvy did. You take this bonehead test and it’s just like you finished high school. You get your diploma without having to go to any classes or see anybody.”

  “Wow,” Paul said. “That’s pretty cool.”

  “Yeah, well,” Ian sa
id, the new expression vanishing as quickly as it had risen, “I don’t know. I was just kind of thinking about it. I’m pretty good with dogs, you know. They’ll follow me just about anywhere. And I’m fixing up these cats here all the time, the ones my mom finds. Just little stuff, you know, scratches and shit, but I’m pretty good at it.”

  “I’ll take my dogs to you,” Paul said. “When I have dogs of my own.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I bet you’d be pretty good at being a vet.”

  “Vet assistant,” Ian said.

  Paul kicked off his shoes and put his feet on the coffee table beside Ian’s. “I wish I could drop out of school. I hate school.”

  “Twelve’s a little young for dropping out, jocko,” Ian said. “I mean unless you’re a retard, or you got a terminal disease or something.” He grinned, then shook his head. “You know, when I was a kid, like your age, I used to wish I’d get brain cancer or something so I’d get to stay in the hospital and not go to school and everybody would bring me presents and all the kids in my class would send me stupid pictures to hang up in my hospital room and some stranger would pay for me to go to Disney. How nuts is that?”

  “You got to go to Disney,” Paul said. “And you’re not even dying.”

  “Yeah. Funny, huh?” He paused, touched a tiny spot at the corner of his eye that was still slightly discolored, the only remaining evidence of Disney. “Hey, I been thinking,” he said. “You know those guys pushed me that day, right? It wasn’t like I just started swinging at them, right? That one big guy got right up in my face. And they were buttin’ in line, right? You said so yourself.”

  “Yeah,” Paul said. “They were buttin’.”

  “Pisses me off when people do that,” he said. He looked at Paul sideways. “Buttin’, you know? That’s not so weird, right?”

  “I guess,” Paul said.

  “Grandfather clock,” Ian said, looking at the TV and shaking his head. “I’d be pissed off if I went through all that to get on and ended up winning a damn clock. I don’t care if they say it’s worth four grand. I got a clock cost me three bucks. Who needs a four-thousand-dollar clock? Only thing worse is a piano. What if you don’t play the piano? What’re you gonna do with it?”

  “Maybe you learn,” Paul said. “Or sell it or something.”

  Ian was quiet for a moment. Then he said: “Would you tell me if you thought it was weird?”

  “What?”

  “Gettin’ so mad at those guys. At Disney.”

  Paul considered. “It was a little weird,” he said. “Not the gettin’ mad. Just all the hittin’.”

  Ian crushed out his cigarette. “The nigger swung first. Right? You saw that.”

  “Yeah,” Paul said sadly. “I saw it.” See it, he thought to add. See it at least once a day, when I close my eyes. But he knew Ian would not understand this.

  They watched TV well into the afternoon. Ian made turkey and cheese sandwiches and they ate two each and split a bag of Cheetos. Paul’s lip was hardly hurting at all anymore, just throbbing a little. He lay on the floor and played with a couple of the cats, swung around his shoelace while they batted it. Ian just sat there the whole time, his feet propped up in front of him, a cigarette going as often as not, alternately watching Paul and the television.

  Around two o’clock there was a knock on the front door.

  “I’m popular today,” Ian said, heaving himself up off the couch.

  It was Laura. She looked over Ian’s shoulder, caught sight of Paul lazing on the floor, and came charging into the house. “Oh my god,” she said. “Oh my god oh my god you are in so much trouble.”

  Paul thought she was mad because he was at Ian’s, and he sat up, started to say something, to defend Ian, to defend himself. Then she started to cry. Not baby crying, not wailing or anything, just the only cry she knew: a few perfect round drops rolling slowly down her cheeks.

  “I didn’t know where you were,” she said, brushing the tears away, practically swatting at them, as if they were mosquitoes. “They told me you were hurt in a fight and I went home and you weren’t there and I drove around town and couldn’t find you anywhere.”

  “Hey, he’s okay,” Ian said lightly. “He’s okay, Mrs. Tucker, really. He just busted up his lip is all.”

  “How was I supposed to know he was okay?” Laura shouted. “I thought he might have a concussion, I thought he might be lying along the street somewhere, bleeding. Three hours I’ve been looking for you, Paul. Did you think to call me?”

  “I thought you were at work,” Paul said. This was the truth, but it sounded pretty lame right then, even to him, what with the teardrop that wobbled on her chin.

  “They came and got me in class,” she said. “They told me you ran off. Carson said you . . .”

  She trailed off and sank down in a chair, barely missing an enormous black cat which scurried away with a wicked glance back.

  “Honey,” she said. “You can’t do this to me. I can’t take this on top of everything else.”

  “I’m sorry,” Paul said. “I didn’t think they’d come get you. Really, I didn’t.”

  She looked around then, suddenly seemed to register where she was.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I . . .” he started, but could think of nowhere to go with the sentence.

  “I fixed him up,” Ian said quickly. “He just stopped over so I could fix up his lip.”

  “Are you a doctor?” she asked. “Do you have a medical degree?”

  “Mom . . .” Paul groaned.

  “Could you have at least called me, Ian?” she asked. “Or am I expecting too much?”

  Ian shrugged. “Sorry. I guess I didn’t think of it.”

  “What did you think of?” she snapped. “Did you think of anything, ever?”

  “Mom . . .” Paul said.

  “Are you stoned, Ian, is that it? Did you give him drugs?”

  “No way,” Ian said angrily. “I wouldn’t do that. Paul’s my buddy.”

  “Oh no no no,” Laura said, leaning forward in her chair, looking like she might tilt herself right out of it. “If Sonny’s your buddy, Ian, I can’t do anything about it. But Paul is my son and he’s twelve years old and he’s not going to have anything to do with you.”

  “But he fixed up my lip,” Paul said, giving as much weight to a wet paper towel as was possible, hoping his mother would see Ian in anything but the blackest of lights.

  “That’s fine,” she said. “That was very nice of him. But we’re going home now. Ian, please, I’m doing my best to speak to you as an adult. If he comes here again, will you please call me?”

  Ian looked at Paul, shrugged an apology.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll call.”

  Paul was sent directly to his room when they arrived home. He didn’t really mind; punishment in his house usually took the form of an earnest lecture, so being grounded was something of a novelty, far better than having to avert his gaze from a set or two of disappointed eyes. Lying on his bed, he listened to the clamor of drums coming from the basement. Each stroke came with its own distinct sensation: the bed rattled when his mother rolled the snare, trembled when she struck the cymbal, jerked when she pummeled the bass. He couldn’t help but notice that she had improved. How many hours had she spent down there while he’d been gone? She sounded almost like an actual drummer now, not just some idiot whaling away. He tried to imagine what his father would think of this. If only his father could hear her, could have his own bed tremble two thousand miles away, he would know it was time to come home. Because either his mother’s new hobby was the most beautiful thing in the world or a sure sign of her own unraveling. Or both.

  After about twenty minutes the drumming came to an abrupt halt. A moment later she swung open his bedroom door, announced they were going out for pizza at the Casey Mall.

  “I thought I was grounded,” he said.

  Laura braced herself in the doorway,
one hand on each doorjamb, as if she were the only thing keeping the house from collapsing. “You want pizza or don’t you?”

  The Casey Mall didn’t really deserve to be called a mall. It was filled with mostly grimy dollar stores, no-name restaurants, and chains nobody’d ever heard of outside central Pennsylvania. But kids from school hung out there even so, especially in the winter, their small and territorial packs congregating at certain predetermined circles of benches along the mallway. Beside the music store — The Wall — was the place where Ian’s friends hung around when it was too cold to be outside, hovering like wasps, scratching obscenities in the wood benches, scowling at everyone who passed.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” Laura asked.

  He’d managed to finish only one slice of pizza, slid a second one from the platter but then only nibbled at it. Now he gazed down at his plate, his stomach churning.

  “Not really,” he said. Truth was, he’d eaten so many Cheetos at Ian’s he felt like barfing. But he was wary of admitting this — not the barfing part, but the Ian part.

  “Don’t you have to get in shape for something?” she asked. “I saw a flyer for Junior baseball. Sign-up’s next week.”

  He picked a nugget of sausage from his pizza, put it under his tongue like a pill, sucked the salt from it to delay a response. Junior baseball? Where was this coming from? The only sign-ups she’d ever mentioned before were for crap like chorus and speech club.

  “I can’t hit,” he said.

  She clicked her tongue. “That’s not true. You used to hit a Wiffle ball clear across the yard.”

  “Mom,” he said. “You know how fast some guys pitch in Juniors? Like sixty miles an hour.”

  “Wow,” she said. “That is fast.”

  “Right,” Paul said. “So I’m not playing Junior baseball. Unless you want me to look like a total asshole.”

  “Honey,” she said softly, pushing her plate away. “Two things. First, please don’t feel you can casually say asshole in front of me. I don’t think I’m quite prepared for that stage yet.”

  He sighed impatiently. “What’s the second thing?”

  She smiled. “I’ve never once seen you look like an asshole. Not once. And I’m not just saying that because I’m your mother.”