Fractured

by Catherine McKenzie

  “What? Oh, is it Ashley? I can’t see her . . .”

  I tuned her out as I scanned the field. Girls from Becky’s team were circled around someone lying on the ground. One of her legs was twisted at a terrible angle, covered in mud to the knee. I couldn’t see her head, but bile rose in my throat as I checked the other girls. Not Becky. Not Becky. Not. Becky.

  I started running, my shoes sticking in the mud. In the seconds it took to reach her, panic washed through me. I flew to the ground, almost twisting one of my own stiff legs. Becky’s face was pale, her blonde pigtails caked with mud.

  “Honey, are you okay?”

  “Dad?”

  I cradled her head in my lap. The damp earth soaked through my pants. “It’s going to okay. It’ll be okay.”

  One of the other dads—an EMT who volunteered at games—was examining her leg gently. Our eyes met. He shook his head and pulled out his cell phone. I felt sick to my stomach.

  “Dad? What’s happening?”

  “Nothing, honey. We’re going to have to go to the hospital.”

  “My leg hurts. It really, really hurts.”

  Her blue eyes were brimming with tears. Her freckles stood out on her pallid skin.

  “I know, sweetheart. You’re being really brave.”

  She closed her eyes. She became paler. I took off my jacket and laid it over her torso.

  “Is she in shock?” I asked the EMT.

  “Likely. The ambulance is two minutes out. They’ll stabilize her.”

  “You hear that, Becks? Two minutes, okay? Just hold on for two minutes.”

  Her eyelids fluttered. “I’m sorry.”

  “What are you sorry about?”

  “Your birthday surprise.”

  “I thought that was this morning?”

  She shook her head, then winced.

  “Hold still. Don’t move till the ambulance gets here.”

  “We had this whole thing planned.”

  I kissed her forehead. There were beads of sweat on it. My heart was racing. I was having trouble breathing.

  Control yourself, I thought. Control yourself for Becky.

  “I don’t need a whole thing.”

  “Cake,” she said. “More cake.”

  “We’ll eat it when we get you home.”

  She nodded, keeping her eyes shut tight. I held her as tightly as I could until the ambulance arrived. The EMTs moved swiftly across the grass, carrying a spinal board. They lifted her gently onto it after making sure she didn’t have a neck injury. We flew across the field to the ambulance. She grimaced as they started the IV, but her features soon relaxed as the siren wailed overhead. I tapped out a text to Hanna, asking her to meet us at the children’s hospital on Burnet. Telling her that Becky had broken her leg but that she was okay.

  Hanna met us in Emergency, her face stained with tears. Once she saw that Becky was okay, she leaned into my shoulder and wept. Becky was amazing while they set her leg—less badly broken than I thought. She was young, and going to heal quickly, the doctor said. Hanna and I were allowed to stay with her through most of it. We were even the first ones to sign her cast.

  When we got home, Chris had added a layer of frosting to my second birthday cake, fashioning a pretty realistic-looking cast. He was being gentle with Becky, too. It was nice to see them getting along, something that hadn’t occurred often since they’d become teenagers. I remembered how protective Chris always was of Becky when she was little. “Sister,” he used to call her, for years after he could say her name easily.

  In bed later that night, Hanna and I marveled at how you never knew, in life, what might happen in a day. We counted ourselves lucky that this was the worst thing that had ever happened to Becky. We’d had friends who’d faced cancer. One who’d lost a child to SIDS. Chris and Becky were healthy and well. If we could survive the next couple years, we could let go of the worst of our fears.

  I closed my eyes on the day, feeling both relieved and happy.

  The first day of my forty-sixth year. And hopefully the worst.

  Best-laid plans.

  I woke early again the next morning. I dressed in my running clothes and took my coffee to the window. I drank it as I looked out over the street. At six on the dot, Julie left her house and began her morning run.

  I put my coffee down, exited quietly, and ran after her.

  Thinking what a difference a day makes.

  Today

  John

  7:00 a.m.

  By the time Hanna, Chris, and Becky come downstairs, I’m standing at the stove making pancakes.

  “Will you make me a giraffe, Dad?” Becky asks.

  At fourteen, she’s taller than Hanna now, taking after my side of the family. My sister’s five eleven, but “I’m not going to be that tall,” Becky says on a regular basis. As if saying it enough times will get her bones to stop growing.

  She tucks her arms around my middle, pressing her soft cheek into the space between my shoulder blades. Making pancakes is usually my Sunday job. But everything is turned upside down now. Sunday has become Monday. Right down to the syrup waiting to be heated up in the microwave, and the starchy smell of cooking pancakes.

  “Course I will, muffin.”

  I pour the complicated shape into the sizzling pan. It’s taken years of practice, but I can now make reasonable facsimiles of most of the animal kingdom out of pancake batter.

  “What about you, Han?” I ask. “A nice bumpety rabbit sound good?”

  “Ugh,” my wife says, rubbing her flat belly like she used to when she was pregnant. “I can’t eat.”

  “Who knows when we’ll get lunch, though?”

  I think of how testy Hanna can get when she doesn’t eat. Combative. The opposite of what we all need her to be today.

  What I need her to be.

  “Twelve thirty,” Chris says.

  He’s sitting at the glass kitchen table, reading the newspaper he used to deliver, before.

  Before.

  After.

  Our life is split down the middle now. The Dunbar Family Fault Line.

  “What’s that?”

  “They break for lunch at twelve thirty.”

  I look at my son. At just-turned-sixteen, his hair is as blond as when he was a baby. Sitting there in the first suit he’s ever owned, he reminds me of myself when I was interviewing for jobs after college. When I put on my own suit, someone will say, the way they always do, how much we look alike. How easily it could be to get us confused, from a distance.

  Up close, the differences are more noticeable. The scar across his left cheek. Our weight. Chris has always been slim. But in the last few months he’s lost the ground he gained training for baseball last summer. Undressed, he looks like one of those skinny men in the comic books my father saved from his childhood. The ones getting sand kicked in their faces.

  God knows what will happen if we aren’t around to look after him.

  “We should all definitely eat, then,” I say as lightly as I can.

  He shrugs. Hanna watches him with that same mix of love and apprehension she’s been wearing for two months. As if Chris might act unexpectedly. She’s also dressed formally, her light-blonde hair pulled back from her face. She’s wearing a black shift dress and a blazer she usually wears for court. Which is, I guess, appropriate, given where we’ll be spending our day.

  “Watch out, Dad. It’s going to burn,” Becky says, peering around my side. Her straw-colored hair is a tangled mess. Has it been like that for days and we haven’t noticed?

  I turn back to the pan and flip Becky’s giraffe over just in time.

  It breaks in half at the neck.

  I try not to see that as a sign.

  Close Neighbors Make Good Neighbors

  Julie

  Eleven months ago

  November 1 was a rainy fall day. It was still dark when I woke, and it felt like we might never see the sun again. The house smelled damp, and I wrote a note to remind myself
to speak to Daniel about it.

  A month after we’d moved in, I was well settled into my routine. When you have an entire day alone in front of you, routine is important.

  Every weekday looked something like this: run with Sandy at six, make breakfast by seven thirty, argue the twins into their school clothes by eight, negotiate with Daniel over who was going to do what on the chalkboard schedule I’d painted on the back of the kitchen pantry door by eight thirty. By nine fifteen, I’d be showered and at my desk, positioned in front of the sun-facing windows on the large second-floor landing I’d claimed as my writing space. Then I’d check the little calendar I’d set up, the one that told me what my word count was for the day, with the total goal—100,000—and the number of words already written noted at the top. That total wasn’t moving upward as fast as it should be; eleven months till my deadline and I only had 7,500 words, 833 short of my goal for October. I had to step it up, and I was counting on my routine to help me get there.

  For reasons that still aren’t entirely clear to me, part of my routine was that I never talked to our across-the-street-neighbor, John, not after the first morning, no matter how often our paths crossed, and they crossed often. Perhaps it was Daniel’s comment about us flirting, but the most I ever did was nod at him when we passed each other on our daily runs. He didn’t try to strike up a conversation, either, and after a few weeks, I formed the impression he was actively avoiding me. If I looped right around the park, I’d pass him running in the other direction. We’d acknowledge each other the way all runners do, but neither of us made a move to change course. I could’ve made the first move, but somehow I never did.

  Running used to be a joint activity for me. Back in Tacoma, I ran with my friend Leah, our paces well matched, and our goal—losing the twenty pounds we’d never shed from our pregnancies—the same. We’d talk kids and neighborhood gossip, and in the worst of what happened after The Book came out, she’d listen to me vent with endless patience. All the time alone with my thoughts was new, but not entirely unwelcome. After a mile or two, a steady thrum would begin in my head, one that usually blocked out everything, which was a good thing, on the whole.

  It was coming on toward eleven, and I’d written 789 words, which made me happy, though my fingers were feeling numb against the keyboard. We still hadn’t figured out the heating—our house was over a hundred years old, and its Victorian builders must’ve been freezing or sweltering at all times, depending on the season. The previous owners’ renovation had revealed prized Rookwood tiles around the fireplace, but hadn’t extended to replacing the original cast-iron radiators. Their sighs and creaks often set my heart thumping. I’d heard radiators needed to be bled to work effectively, but there was something so gruesome about the sound of that, I’d left off investigating any further. Instead, I sat in front of my large, silver-rimmed computer screen with a blanket draped across my lap, rubbing my hands together.

  I glanced at the timer that sat in the right-hand corner of the screen. In five minutes, the block I’d placed on the Internet would be lifted, and I’d have fifteen minutes to browse.

  Fifteen minutes only.

  That was what I allowed myself once every two hours, whether it was for research or the abyss that was Facebook.

  When the alarm chimed, that’s exactly where I went, checking my personal and fan pages for the first time that day. Another limit I’d imposed: I could look at information about myself twice a day, and twice a day only. That sounds so narcissistic, put down in black type like that, but the vanity of it had long been replaced by compulsion. The Internet is the world’s biggest cocktail party, anonymity replacing alcohol in the alchemy of gossip, and who doesn’t stop to listen if someone uses their name? Only someone a lot stronger than I am.

  Working quickly, I posted Happy Birthdays! for the eight “friends” whose birthday it was that day. (Why do people take pleasure from someone they don’t know wishing them “Happy Birthday” when reminded to? Another one of life’s unanswered questions.) Then I checked my fan wall for new posts.

  Oh my God, I just finished reading The Murder Game and I can’t believe I didn’t see that coming! You’re my favorite author, ever!

  I liked the post and wrote a short Thank you! beneath it before perusing the comments.

  Your an idiot, some charmer had written. The ending was obvious. Women don’t know how to right.

  My pulse beat in my ears as my eyes ran down the page.

  Don’t listen to him, Julie! He can’t even spell!

  If you don’t have anything positive to say, why say anything at all?

  What’s your problem, bitch? Freedom of expression, yo.

  Julie, you’ve got to block this guy!

  What kind of misogynistic asshole are you? Go away.

  It went on and on, seventy-nine comments in all, all written in the twenty-three minutes since the original post was made.

  A knot grew in my stomach. I could smell my own sweat. A while back, I’d read something that described reading negative reviews as a form of cutting. I’ve never understood what drives people to slice their own flesh, but the analogy struck a chord. I’d built some defenses against this sort of thing in the last couple of years—I’d had to—but I always felt raw and cut open when I came up against the worst of it.

  I still couldn’t understand what it was about The Book that brought out the vitriol. (Or the positive passion, for that matter, but that was another failing.) I wasn’t the only one to suffer such abuse, but it felt personal, nonetheless.

  And yet I read the rest of the comments, every single one of them.

  I was about to go in search of a cute video about puppies to erase the lingering ache in my heart when a name stopped me cold.

  Heather Stanhope was back, and this is what she’d written four minutes earlier.

  Julie Apple helped murder my best friend. Fun game, right?

  My hand flew to my mouse to delete the post, but before I could get there, the browser shut.

  I clicked to open it again, and a red message flashed across my screen.

  YOUR BROWSER HAS BEEN CLOSED AS A RESULT OF YOUR MYSANITY SETTINGS. ACCESS WILL BECOME AVAILABLE AGAIN IN TWO HOURS. THANKS FOR USING OUR SERVICE!

  I slammed my frozen hand on my desk in frustration, slicing it open on the sharp edge.

  Cutting, indeed.

  “But how can she be commenting on my page?” I asked my lawyer, Lee Williams, as I paced around my living room with my cell phone pressed to my ear. At $650 an hour, he was supposed to be the best there was in Doxxing Law, a new and expanding area fighting against people who published personal information about others online. The word “doxxing” was one of many I’d had to learn, along with “catfishing” (pretending to be someone online in order to trick them into a relationship), “doxbin” (a sketchy document-sharing website that lets people share personal info, kind of like WikiLeaks for scuzzy ex-boyfriends), and more legal terminology than I’d ever be able to use in fiction.

  “We’ve been through this, Julie.” Lee had a surprisingly high voice for someone as tall and wide as he was. The first time I met him, it had been hard not to giggle, but that might also have been the result of the vodka I’d taken to mixing into my morning orange juice at that point in time. “If she creates new e-mail addresses and online profiles, there isn’t much we can do other than report her once she writes something and get them blocked.”

  “Isn’t she violating the court order? Can’t they put her in jail, or at least cut off her Internet access like they do for pedophiles?”

  “The law isn’t there yet, I’m sorry to say.”

  “Well, what about suing her, then?”

  “You know my feelings on that matter.”

  I’d paid enough for him to tell me. The only day someone’s happy they took a defamation suit is the day they file the proceedings, he’d said with a practiced cadence. Every day afterward would be depositions and investigations and insinuations: everything I’d
been trying to avoid in the first place. Plus, the added publicity, all of which I’d stated a million times I was sick of.

  And there was also this: truth was a defense.

  “You need to find a way to move past this,” he said. “Have you given any more thought to canceling your Facebook account?”

  I looked out my window and sucked at the cut on my hand, the raw taste of my own blood on my tongue. I was always doing stuff like that—banging into things, grazing myself on sharp edges. A clumsy klutz, Daniel called me, because the redundancy made sense in my case.

  John was up on a ladder, his hands in his gutter. The rain was beating down, and he looked soaked to the skin. Water was flowing over the gutter and down the side of his house. There must be a blockage somewhere. What else would bring him outside in a tempest?

  “Then she wins,” I said.

  “There are no winners or losers here.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  He made that clucking sound of disapproval he used when I’d tried his patience. It was a sound that made me feel less than nothing, like my feelings were the product of mass hysteria.

  Were these really my only options? Leave social media entirely or learn to put up with being harassed without being able to do anything about it?

  I’d already moved across the country; must I disappear completely from view?

  “How’s the book coming?” he asked.

  “It’d be going a lot faster if I didn’t have to deal with this shit.”

  “I’m sure. Shall we leave it at that, then?”

  “There’s nowhere else to leave it, is there?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  We hung up. I watched John as he fished around in his gutter, then finally came up with a large clot of leaves. Water started gushing from the drain spout. John gave out a whoop I could hear through the rain.

  If only my own life could be unclogged so easily.

  “Why are we going to this again?” Daniel asked as we walked down our street at the end of the day with the twins running ahead of us.

  The rain had finally stopped. Water was still coursing down the street, flowing like a young stream. We were on our way to the monthly block party at the Suttons’. Once a month, our Welcome Packet had advised us, one of the forty houses on our two-block street took a turn hosting the others for a “fun-filled Friday night.” Close neighbors make good neighbors! was the motto footnoted across all fourteen pages of “Helpful numbers” and “Little-known facts.”