Broken

by Megan Hart

  “I’m…I’m young?” I think I should be pissed off.

  “Really young.”

  I get the feeling he doesn’t just mean my age. “Well, you’re old!”

  He’s got his clothes on now, though nothing’s buttoned or zipped, and he’s got his tie clutched in one hand like it’s a snake he’s trying to choke. Joe runs a hand through his hair. I’ve never seen him look so rumpled.

  “No hard feelings?” He asks.

  “No. I guess not.”

  What else can I say? I can diet and exercise to shrink my ass and I can keep my legs closed, but I can’t make myself any older than I am.

  Joe leans over to kiss my forehead. “See you, Brandy.”

  He lets himself out of my bedroom, and a few moments later I hear the front door slam. I go to my window and watch him drive away. The next time I see him at the coffee shop, I make Cyndi wait on him and I pretend I don’t see him.

  Joe looked pensive. We ate and drank in mutual silence for a few minutes. I didn’t have anything to say about what he’d told me.

  “It was like getting a blow job from a puppy,” he said finally. “All slobber and gobbling and wriggling around.”

  I burst into laughter, though I felt bad for poor Brandy. “Oh, Joe.”

  He gave me a sly smile. “It’s true. She was…”

  “Young,” I finished for him. “She sounded young.”

  He toyed with his drink. “Yeah. She was.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t go out with girls in college,” I ventured. “If it bothers you.”

  He looked up at me, one brow raised. “It doesn’t. At least, it didn’t.”

  It wasn’t quite warm enough to eat outside, but in the atrium, the sun beating down through the glass was brutal. Everything seemed moist and sticky, but also somehow…waiting. The plants seemed to know spring was coming. Maybe they waited for it the way children wait for Christmas. I took a long drink from my bottle of water, but sweat still pearled in my hairline and trickled down the knobs of my spine to tickle the crack in my buttocks.

  I don’t know what to think. I’m never really sure half the things Joe tells me are true. I certainly know my own imagination provides details I can’t know, things he can’t know, either. Our lunches are absolutely about fulfilling fantasies, and if Joe’s lying to me about the women he fucks, I’m not sure I want to know.

  There’s a lot about Joe I do know. He doesn’t like to share food or drink, or kiss on the mouth. He lost his virginity to his mother’s best friend. He has expensive taste. I know where he went to high school. We shield ourselves with stories of the past because revealing the present would be too intimate.

  I know everything and nothing about him all at the same time.

  “But it bothers you now?”

  I looked at him. He studied his hands. The cuffs of his shirt, a dark pink, like the petals of a Stargazer Lily, peeked out from the edges of his dark suit.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?

  “Hey, even ice cream tastes bad after a while if that’s all you eat.”

  “Oh, Joe.” For a couple hours, every month, he made it easy for me to be a woman who could laugh. “Don’t tell me you’re becoming more discriminating in your old age.”

  Joe tipped his face to the bright sunlight streaming through the windows. I admired his profile when he wasn’t looking at me. He’d had a haircut, and he looked shorn. His ears protruded endearingly. The nape of his neck looked vulnerable. I caught a glimpse of silver in the gold of his hair, which seemed darker in its shorter state.

  “D’you think I’m old?” He asked me.

  “If you are, I’m ancient.”

  He looked at me with one eye squinted shut against the brightness. “Oh, you’re a real grandma.”

  His story had revealed his age to me, something I hadn’t known before. One more piece of Joe for me to ponder over. I wished he’d been older, or younger, but we were almost exactly the same age.

  “When’s your birthday?” he asked suddenly.

  I didn’t want to tell him. It betrayed our unspoken agreement not to discuss the now, only the then. But a birthday was then, wasn’t it? Even if it was also now? I’d been born in the then, in the past we could talk about.

  “April nineteenth. I’ll be thirty-five, too.”

  Joe snorted. “So you are older than me.”

  I laughed at that, too. “Thanks.”

  “My birthday is April twenty-fourth.”

  We both stared. Heat rose in my cheeks. Along my throat. Even into my fingers, which busied themselves with crumpling my trash.

  “So…” I said slowly. “What do you suppose that means?”

  “It means,” Joe said, leaning infinitesimally closer, “you’re not young.”

  The clatter of heels on the slate floor sent us apart like rubber bands stretched to snapping. The couple rounding the corner was laughing and didn’t stop when they saw us, but the moment had passed.

  Joe got up and threw away his trash, then held out his hands for garbage. I let him take it. He put it in the can while I fussed with an imaginary problem in my purse.

  I heard more laughter, and when I looked up, he’d already gone.

  Chapter

  06

  Most people I knew relished the weekends and dreaded Monday’s return to work. I was just the opposite. My weekends were harder than anything I ever had to do during the week. On days when other people looked forward to sleeping in, I woke, bleary-eyed from regularly interrupted sleep to take care of Adam. I couldn’t go anywhere or do anything without making arrangements for someone to be there to care for him—and, much like parents of young children who most often felt that the effort of arranging for childcare made the pleasure of going out to dinner and a movie not worth taking, I just grew accustomed to staying home. It wasn’t solely the inconvenience, it was the expense. With our combined salaries and the carefully invested money from the settlement granted by the ski boot company, our lives were much easier, financially, than many others of spinal cord injury patients. We were lucky. But even with all that, finding someone to stay with Adam on weekends was more effort and money than I generally cared to spend.

  Another Friday night and I was already yawning when Dennis rapped on the door. He waited until Adam called out for him to enter. That politeness, the willingness to grant Adam the courtesy of waiting until he was ready, was but one of the qualities that endeared Dennis to me.

  “I’m heading out, guys, but I’ll be around tomorrow when you’re ready to go, Sadie.”

  “Thanks.” I smiled at him. “You look very dapper.”

  He did, in a clean white shirt and dark trousers. His arm muscles bulged under the fabric. His shoes gleamed, and I knew he’d spit-polished them.

  “Hot date tonight?” Adam’s chair is chin-operated, and now he turned it to face Dennis.

  It was funny to see such a large man blushing. “Yeah. Sort of. You ready for bed?”

  “Sadie?”

  I’d been covering my yawn with the back of my hand, and I smiled a little guiltily. “I think we’re just going to watch a few movies, Dennis, so sure, if you could help me…”

  “Be happy to.” Dennis is always happy to help.

  Together we maneuvered Adam from his chair into bed and Dennis did a last check of all the vital and important facets of Adam’s existence. I appreciated his concern. I could do everything he’d just done, but by doing it for me, Dennis allowed me to be Adam’s wife, not his nurse. It was a small gesture, one I doubt anyone outside of the situation would have noticed.

  “You didn’t answer my question.” Adam reigned from his place in the special bed that adjusted to nearly any position and allowed his body to be moved easily to prevent sores. “Hot date, or not? Sort of isn’t an answer, man.”

  Dennis gave me a look, but I could only shrug and laugh. “You’d better tell him. He won’t let up until you do.”

  “Yeah, I have a hot date.” Dennis
made a show of arranging Adam’s blankets. “With Henry.”

  “Henry? The guy from the gym?”

  “No, that’s Alan. Henry’s the one from the coffee shop.”

  “Would you listen to this guy?” Adam’s laugh drew my attention. “Don Juan.”

  Dennis shook his head. “Not true, man. Not true.”

  They laughed some more. I’m sure they didn’t mean to exclude me. I watched their conversation without a clue about who they were discussing. It was silly to be jealous of my husband’s caregiver, especially when I didn’t envy the tasks he performed with such ease. I envied that at any moment, at his whim, he could leave. I imagined it would have been simple for me, too, to put on a cheery face and work at making Adam happy if it was just a job to me, instead of the rest of my life. Except that was being unfair to Dennis, who never made us feel as though caring for Adam was just a job.

  “Have a good time, Dennis,” was my advice.

  “Be careful,” came from Adam.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow,” Dennis said and gave Adam a casual flip of the bird when he hooted something lewd. “Yeah, yeah, man. Whatever.”

  Then he was gone, leaving us to our rather bland Friday night. I changed into sweats and a T-shirt while Adam indulged in some mindless TV. I tidied up the room, putting away his computer desk and moving the wheelchair out of the way so I wouldn’t stub my toes on it if I needed to go to the bathroom in the night. On the weekends I slept on the oversized recliner Dennis used at night. We’d talked about getting a cot but somehow never had.

  “I hope Dennis has a good time tonight,” I said after a while.

  “He will. I’ve been telling him to ask the guy out.”

  I settled into the recliner. “I didn’t even know he was interested in anyone.”

  Some celebrity gossip show had stolen Adam’s attention. “Yeah. He is.”

  “Oh.”

  It took him a second, but he looked at me. “Oh?”

  I shrugged, pretending interest in my ever-present knitting bag. I never worked more than a few rows, but I always had it. I looked up to see Adam staring. “What?”

  “We talk about it, sometimes,” he said, almost defensively. “Is that a problem?”

  “Of course not. I just didn’t know, that’s all.”

  His face creased. “Sometimes I can’t sleep. Dennis is there.”

  When you’re not.

  He didn’t say it, but that’s what I heard. I put my eyes back on my sad excuse for a scarf. The droning of the television buzzed in my ears.

  I never forgot that, while I went out into the world and talked to people almost every day, even something as mundane as going to the grocery story was an adventure of epic proportions for Adam. Telephone and email conversations were not the same as face-to-face interaction. For a man who’d thrived on social contact, his isolation was harsh and not made better with knowing it was largely self-induced. Adam had decided the effort of getting ready, and the discomfort he most often felt when out of his environment, wasn’t worth the effort. He got angry when I tried convincing him otherwise, so I’d stopped trying.

  It’s easy to learn who your real friends are after an accident like Adam’s. There were those who visited, and those who didn’t. Who was I to begrudge him a friendship with Dennis?

  “Debbie sent me some pictures of the girls.” Adam pointed with his gaze toward the desk where the mail lay in scattered piles. “She’s thinking of coming out for a visit.”

  “Sounds great.” I forced more enthusiasm than I felt. Adam’s sister and her kids were a handful and not the best houseguests. Not only did a visit mean I’d lose what little privacy I had already, but I’d be expected to entertain them, too.

  “Maybe next month?”

  He sounded so hopeful I couldn’t bear to tell him no. After all, it was his sister and nieces. Since we couldn’t visit them, they had to come here. I understood it. I just didn’t feel like dealing with all the hassle of preparing for and cleaning up after them. Mrs. Lapp took most of the burden off me in that respect, but while they were here I’d be expected to entertain and occupy them. Adam’s sister was high maintenance, her kids as much so. It would have been nice if she’d come to spell me in Adam’s care, give me a bit of a break, but she didn’t. She’d sit with him for an hour while her kids ran rampant in my house, but she wouldn’t stay with him for an evening while I went to the movies.

  “She said maybe my mom would come with her.”

  There was no way I could feign enthusiasm for that, and Adam knew it. I said nothing. Adam’s mother had no compunctions about advising me on everything from the temperature of his shower to how small to cut his meat, but she didn’t lift a finger to actually help out when she’s here. Once, exhausted from a night of interrupted sleep and a small medical crisis, I’d confronted Alice Danning about her constant “advice.”

  Affronted, she’d drawn herself up with a sniff. “I guess I know what’s best for him, Sadie. I am his mother, after all. If you had children, you’d understand. A mother never stops knowing what her children need.”

  I wasn’t so sure that was true. You’d think a woman who wiped his ass when he was an infant wouldn’t have big, scary issues with doing it now when his need is just as great, but I never dared argue the point with her. After all, I didn’t have children, and it didn’t look like I ever would.

  Would things have been different had we been parents? If I’d learned to nurture a child before having to learn to take care of my husband, would I have taken to it more easily? Maybe children would have kept me focused on our family, given me a reason not to resent the way my marriage, which had once been my greatest pleasure, had become my greatest burden. Childish hugs and kisses and the sweetness of a baby’s smile might have filled my need for the physical touch and affection I no longer had. Or maybe having children would have been just more of an additional burden, would have stretched me so thin I broke, taken more than I had to give.

  I’d never know what difference children might have made. Adam and I had assumed we had all the time in the world to procreate. We had careers and our infatuation with each other didn’t allow much room for anyone else. Children had been a someday dream, an adventure on which we had plenty of time to embark.

  There was no real reason why we couldn’t entertain the notion of trying to have a baby now. Men with spinal cord injuries of Adam’s level made babies all the time. True, it might require more effort, some help and we’d probably need to involve expense and embarrassing procedures to make it happen, but that wasn’t the reason why I never discussed it with Adam. Nor was it my age, which was rapidly approaching the upper end of the safe pregnancy spectrum.

  The much simpler reason behind my absolute lack of desire to become a mother was selfish. I didn’t want the responsibility. Caring for Adam took up nearly all the time in my life I didn’t spend at work. I had nothing to give a baby.

  “I haven’t seen them in a while,” Adam said somewhat defensively. “Is it a problem, Sadie?”

  “Of course it isn’t. What movies came today?” I changed the subject deftly, already heading to the table to check out what our internet movie rental company had sent.

  Adam was in charge of keeping our queue. He spent more time on the Internet than I did. Not only that, but he cared more.

  He rattled off the names of several blockbuster hits, some big-budget action pictures with lots of guns and explosions. I didn’t really care. I’d end up falling asleep halfway through the first one, as I always did.

  “Sounds great,” I told him.

  He laughed. “Think you’ll stay awake?”

  “Probably not.”

  We laughed together, this time, and his gaze caressed me. He tilted his head for a kiss, which I gladly gave him. Our mouths, slightly parted, brushed before I pulled away. I kissed his forehead.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” I told him. “And bring us some ice cream. Then we’ll watch the big bangs, okay?”<
br />
  “I’m tired of ice cream.”

  “You know,” I said, after a pause. “So am I.”

  “Maybe Mrs. Lapp made some pie.”

  “I’ll see.”

  “Good,” Adam said, as if pie solved the problems of the world.

  If only it could.

  “I’m worried about your sister.”

  At my mother’s whispered words, my eyes automatically searched the room for Katie. I found her laughing in the corner, bending to feed Lily a bite of chocolate cake. Her husband, Evan, lounged in a chair next to them. He was laughing, too.

  I looked at my mother, whose mouth had pursed in concern. “Why?”

  “She looks tired.”

  “She probably is.”

  My mother made a tutting sound and shook her head. I took another look, seeking to find what had so disturbed her. Katie had always been the fashion plate, but gone were the designer suits and flawless makeup. Now, her belly swelling in her fourth month, she wore a loose cotton top daubed liberally with chocolate and faded cotton pants. Her hair, naturally a few shades lighter than mine, was tucked up in a messy knot. Yes, there were faint circles under her eyes and her cheeks were slightly hollowed, but that came from lack of sleep and morning sickness. She wore a necklace made of macaroni and yarn with as much aplomb as she’d before worn pearls.

  “She looks fine to me, Mom.”

  “Maybe you should talk to her.”

  How many times had I heard that over the years? When Katie had a fight with a friend, or lost a role in the school play, I talked to her. When her college boyfriend had broken her heart, I talked to her. When her boss at the bank passed her over for a promotion because he was schtupping her competitor, I talked to her.

  “Oh, Mom.” I sounded more annoyed than I’d meant to, and she didn’t miss it.

  “You’re her sister, Sadie. She’ll talk to you about what’s bothering her.”

  Katie’s laughter drifted over to us. I watched her swat at Evan’s hand, which had crept out to give her a surreptitious squeeze. Lily danced in front of her parents, and they both gave her looks of such adoration it made me smile.