Bones are Made to be Broken

by Anderson, Paul Michael

  The static in her head rendered thought impossible. Before, it had usually preceded her cutting.

  (home)

  This kept repeating itself in the center of her head, like a beacon to a lost ship in the midst of all that static, as the congregation filed in. Eve sat down next to her, gave her a welcoming-smile. The three worm-like scars on Eve’s fleshy forearm stood in stark relief under the fluorescent lighting.

  (home)

  Roberts looked at each of them and said, “St. Jude’s is open for the evening. Who would like to begin?”

  (home)

  A whisper beneath the static, like a distant signal heard between two radio stations:

  (what about kevin?)

  People glanced at each other, that universally-understood look of, Do you want to go? Should I go? Her people. Their unique, shared pain. Their failures.

  Another static whisper:

  (shouldn’t you be with your son?)

  And the stronger beacon:

  (home)

  Karen took a breath. People looked at her.

  “When I was sixteen, my father died,” she said. “When we came home from the funeral, my mother stood in the kitchen, in that black dress of hers with the doily-like collar, and said to me, ‘It’s your fault he’s dead, you know.’”

  (home)

  (what about kevin?)

  (what kind of mother are you?)

  St. Jude’s sermon had begun.

  Headlights splashed across the front window and Lisa, gnawing on the rubber antenna of her cordless phone, slumped against the living room archway.

  “Thank the fuck Christ.” She hurried down the front hall to the kitchen, dropping the phone in the charger and glancing at the time on the oven clock—ten till midnight.

  Where the hell were you, girl? she thought.

  She went back down the hallway and grasped the front door’s deadbolt. The music of Super Mario World drifted from upstairs, punctuated with Kevin’s piping laugh. Mitch had found someone to play his new Super Nintendo with. If nothing else, it’d kept Kevin from noticing too much that his mother was way the hell late.

  She eased the lock back and it fell open with a heavy clack, anyway. She winced, but the music upstairs didn’t pause.

  She eased outside. The porch light fell on the hood of Karen’s beat-to-shit Plymouth Sundance in the driveway. Karen was little more than a dark hump behind the wheel and, before Lisa could call herself a fool, fear formed icicles along her throat.

  Karen should’ve been back by eight-thirty, nine tops.

  Where were those three additional hours?

  Lisa had rang Karen’s apartment over and over again, while evil visions of accidents—T-boned at a red light, driven into a concrete barrier on the Parkway—played in her head. What the hell is happening? she’d thought more than once and the problem wasn’t that she didn’t have an answer, but that there were too many answers to consider.

  The Sundance’s door opened and Karen slouched out, a shadowed thing approaching the front walk and the outer rim of the porch light’s glow—thin, bent, and shuffling.

  “Karen?” she called, because she couldn’t stop herself, but kept her voice low, as if the neighbors would hear. She stepped down off the porch, onto the walk.

  The shadow stopped just beyond the rim of her porch light’s reach. It lifted its head and of course it was Karen—but didn’t Lisa have a moment’s terror that this was her friend’s ghost, that her friend had died, but her spirit had brought her here, anyway?

  Karen’s skin was pale, made sickly by the porch light, drawn taut over the muscles and bones of her face, and the circles around her eyes belonged to someone on the losing end of a fistfight; she looked like a corpse in that old film Carnival of Souls. She wore a lazy, punch-drunk smile and this somehow made her appear worse, threw everything into starker contrast. It was the smile, the beatific glow, of someone at-ease, contented—not the smile of a mother four hours late picking up her child.

  “Where the hell were you?” Lisa asked.

  Karen continued to smile. “I’m sorry. Time ran away from me.” Even her voice was lazy—not slurred, but slow.

  “Doing what? I was worried fucking sick about you!”

  The smile wilted, but didn’t completely drop. Something shifted in Karen’s eyes, a glimmer of uncertainty. “Is Kevin all right?”

  Lisa took a deep breath. “Kevin’s fine. Mitch got Super NES last month. But where were you? I called your fucking apartment a dozen times. I was trying to decide whether calling the police would be ridiculous or not. Don’t tell me that meeting ran over four hours.”

  Karen shook her head, the smile completely gone, the mask of beatific joy—and that was what it had seemed like, a mask—slid off to reveal the uneasy, depressed friend Lisa was used to, and Lisa felt a stab of shame for wanting it back. Better a happy corpse than a despairing person. “It didn’t. I was out of there by eight.”

  “Then where?”

  Karen hesitated, looked Lisa in the eye and then flicked her gaze away. “A—a place called St. Jude’s. In Harmarville.”

  Lisa blinked. “Harmarville? You were in Harmarville at—”

  “St. Jude’s. It’s a … a church, I guess.”

  Lisa couldn’t quite put it together. “A church,” she said. “You went to a church.”

  “Yeah,” Karen said and she looked down at her feet. “It’s kinda like … a group therapy, I guess.” She grimaced as she said this.

  “A church group,” Lisa said.

  Karen nodded.

  “And you went there instead of coming here,” Lisa said.

  Another nod, softer. Karen hung her head so low, Lisa couldn’t see her eyes.

  “Why?” Lisa said, then, immediately, “Was it that bad?”

  Karen took a breath, a good heaving of her shoulders. When Karen raised her head, her eyes shone in the porch lights. “They mentioned a custody suit. They’re thinking of suing me for Kevin.”

  “Oh.” Lisa blinked. “Oh shit.”

  “I thought I was going to be sick,” Karen said. “All I could think of was, ‘I have to put a stop to this. I have to put a stop to this now.’ I told the lawyer about how we divorced—but I don’t know if it’s enough. When I got outta there, I just—I couldn’t—” Her voice grew thicker and thicker.

  Lisa pulled her in—wrapping her arms around the other woman and trying not to notice how brittle her friend seemed. She flashed momentarily on when she’d confirmed Karen was cutting, then put it out of mind.

  “I had to get my head cleared again,” she said against Lisa’s shoulder. “St. Jude’s meets every Friday at nine and—well …”

  “S’okay, kiddo,” Lisa said and let Karen go. Karen hadn’t returned the hug, just kept her arms at her sides, and it made Lisa feel awkward for reaching out. “I get it. It makes sense. So—what? This St. Jude’s has a group for single parents?”

  A ghost of a smile crossed Karen’s face. “Something like that. It helped give me some distance from the meeting.”

  Lisa shook her head. “I still wished you’d called. I didn’t know what to tell Kevin. Thank Christ Mitch was there to distract him.”

  “I’m sorry,” Karen said, with so much feeling that shame swept through Lisa at every uncharitable thought she’d had over the course of the evening. “You know I wouldn’t—”

  Lisa flapped her hand. “Forget it. It’s late. C’mon—let’s get Kevin so you can get your asses home.”

  They turned and Kevin stood in the doorway, the porch light throwing his face into deep shadow. He didn’t run to his mother, didn’t move at all. He might’ve just opened the door. He might’ve been standing there the entire time.

  “Where were you, Mum?” Kevin asked and, although his voice was merely curious, Lisa felt Karen flinch beside her.

  “You sleep okay, hon?” Karen asked the next morning.

  Kevin grunted around a mouthful of cereal. He sat cross-legged on the loveseat, the
tail of his sleep-shirt pulled over his knees, eyes glued to the television, which showed an episode of Bobby’s World.

  Karen watched him from the couch. Heat gathered in her chest. She sipped her coffee and burned her tongue, as if to counteract it.

  (we’re only doing this for Kevin for what might be best for Kevin)

  (just think though—he might actually be better with us)

  “Kevin,” she said, almost coughing the name.

  Kevin reluctantly pulled his eyes away from the television.

  “Are you happy living here?” she asked. “With me? Do you like it here?”

  He looked at her with that reserved expression of his, the expression of an adult stamped onto a child. “Uh-huh, Mum.”

  (when you first heard that voicemail from ladd you were more adamant)

  Flashing onto Kevin shadowed under Lisa’s porch light:

  (where were you mum?)

  “Would you tell me otherwise?” she asked, before she could help herself.

  Another long study from her eight-year-old son. He swallowed his cereal.

  “Uh-huh, Mum,” he said, and turned back to the television.

  (he never tells me anything)

  (does he tell anyone? does he talk to anyone?)

  And then Roberts’s voice was in her head:

  (when we talk about our pain … we’re seeking to stand as we are to be everything that is broken in us and made us)

  Lisa told herself it was idle curiosity making her pull one of the dog-eared copies of the Yellow Pages from the office kitchen microwave during lunch. Idle curiosity making her flip to CHURCHES and, as she forked bites of microwave Fettuccini into her mouth, go down the list of city churches with one nail-bitten finger.

  There were four St. John’s Catholic Churches.

  There were two St. Luke’s.

  There were no St. Jude’s Churches between them.

  She flipped to the cover—SPRING 1989, stamped beneath a picture of the Hathaway skyline—then back.

  “Where the hell’s St. Jude’s?” she muttered.

  “You got money in the bank, Thorne?” Adrian Shotbolt said, coasting into the kitchen. His suit jacket was missing, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to the elbows. “People who talk to themselves have money in the bank.” He went to the fridge and pulled an apple. He leaned against the counter and took a bite. “You’d finish the numbers on that Booth Industries proposal?”

  “It’s on my desk,” she said, snapping the Yellow Pages closed, “awaiting my eventual attention.” She leaned back in her seat. “Hey, Adrian—you’re Catholic, right?”

  He cocked an eyebrow—they looked perfect, as if he spent mornings plunking them—swallowed his bite of an apple. “Why? You looking to convert?”

  She shook her head. “No. A friend was telling me about a St. Jude’s Church—”

  “St. Luke’s?”

  Another headshake. “No—St. Jude’s Church.”

  “You must’ve heard wrong,” Adrian said. “No one in their right mind would name a church that.”

  She ignored the sudden heavy wham of her heartbeat.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because Jude is short for Judas,” Adrian said.

  “What—like the black guy who betrayed Jesus?”

  Adrian choked on a bite of apple from laughing. His face went red and he coughed into the sink. When he turned back, he was grinning, his eyes watering. “Good God, woman,” he grunted, pounding his chest with his fist. “That’s from Jesus Christ Superstar.”

  He tossed the rest of his apple into the trashcan by the microwave and dusted his hands. “Lemme give you the freeze-dried version. There were two disciples named Judas—Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus, and Thaddaeus. Because early Christians didn’t want him mixed up with Iscariot, they shortened Thaddaeus’s name to Jude. Still, few people prayed to him because they didn’t want to look like they were praying to Iscariot, so, by default, Jude became the patron saint of complete hopelessness. Meaning, you must’ve heard wrong. No one’s going to name their church after the guy who’s the symbol for lost causes.”

  He pushed himself off the counter, shaking his head as he headed for the door. “‘Black guy who betrayed Jesus’—my God, Lisa.” He chuckled. “Lemme know when you do the Booth numbers. I want to compare them with the Lori numbers.”

  “Will-do,” Lisa said, but she was barely listening, thinking that she hadn’t heard wrong. Karen had said St. Jude.

  Lisa dropped her fork into the microwave pasta and pushed it away from her. She was no longer hungry.

  Karen checked the instructions Tina, Ryall Construction’s HR person, had written out, and switched the office’s open phone line to the phone tree. For the next twenty minutes, callers would be given a recording and a series of departments to select. Not many people called in; that was why Tina was good about this.

  (hell half the girls in the building are mothers or single mothers)

  Still, that didn’t quiet the small throb of guilt over leaving her job during the workday. A year without working, finally getting a job (even if just a temp gig), and already cutting corners.

  (that’s not true and you know it)

  (what’s true is you never could get your life in order)

  Karen shook the voices off and checked the wall clock beside her receptionist cubicle—three-oh-five. Plenty of time. She reached into her desk drawer and got her purse.

  “Cutting out early?” a man said from behind her.

  She turned and Dick Cavanaugh, one of Ryall’s estimators, stood in the doorway leading to the main office hallway. He had a Baby-Huey-in-the-middle-years face, with small eyes plugged into the doughy flesh. His thick lips always quivered, as if to smile but never quite making it.

  “Running an errand,” she said, hearing Tina’s voice in her head.

  (it’s a bit of a good ol’ boy system)

  (there’s a reason corporate made me hr director)

  Cavanaugh’s eyes bounced from her face to her chest and back. The reception area was dark—a joke that a construction firm had set up their lobby in such a way that it received, in spite of the huge front window, zero natural light—and the main hallway’s light backlit Cavanaugh. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his khakis, drawing attention to his crotch.

  (if you ever feel uncomfortable)

  “Is there something you need?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “No, just making sure the new fish is getting along all right.”

  (don’t hesitate to tell me)

  She glanced at the clock. Pushing three-ten. “I’m getting along fine, thank you.”

  “Good, good,” he said in that way that signaled he wasn’t listening. “Because we look out for people here. We want people to work together, y’know? To be friendly.”

  (you might be a temp but you’re still a woman)

  “We tend to hire our temps, y’know,” he said. His lips resembled two writhing worms.

  Another glance at the clock.

  “That’s what I’m hoping,” she said and sidled her way around the receptionist desk. “I’ll be back soon.”

  “I can’t wait,” Cavanaugh said, with feeling, and Karen couldn’t repress a shudder.

  She didn’t note how much she was shaking until she was turning at the light for Butler and 50th Street. Cavanaugh left a film on her skin, made her clothes itch; as if his eyes had literally rolled over her, leaving behind a scummy residue.

  She pushed it out of mind by the time she got to 54th. Kevin stood under the crosswalk sign, looking around, and darted for her car when she pulled up.

  “Hi, Mum,” he said, throwing himself onto the passenger seat and slamming the door behind him.

  “Good day?” she asked as he clicked his seatbelt home. She glanced over his head and saw the Perozzi girls a half-block down, watching them with a tall boy that had to be the Perozzi brother.

  Kevin followed her gaze. “Uh-huh, Mum.”

 
Lisa dialed, then leaned back at her desk, drumming her fingers on top of expense estimates she should be paying attention to.

  Maybe it’s a new property, she thought, listening to the phone ring. One of those start-up churches you see in plazas and shit.

  She couldn’t help wrinkling her nose at that. The idea of Karen at one of those oh-Jesus-Lord-help-me places didn’t sit well in the center of her head.

  A click in her ear. “Rich McCarrick,” a man’s voice said, his voice furry with a rushing sound in the distance.

  “Are you in the car?” she asked.

  “Is this Lisa?” McCarrick asked. “Also, yes. That’s why it’s called a car phone.”

  “Gonna kill yourself.”

  “Then Mitch’ll have to cancel my mortgages.”

  “Any properties recently sell in Harmarville?” she asked. “That’s your territory, right?”

  “Are we done with the small talk?” McCarrick said. “Because that’s a fucking odd question for conversation. Anyway, yeah, Harmarville’s in my territory. Not much going on out there.”

  “So a property sale would be noticed.”

  “Uh-huh. What’s this about?”

  “Looking into something,” she said. “Answer the question, please.”

  “Is this an investigation?” he asked, his tone light and bouncy. “Am I helping an investigation? Corporate intrigue?”

  The image of Karen, wraith-like on the lawn, flashed in front of Lisa’s eyes. “Something like that. Answer the question, Rich, be-fore you confirm the myth that real estate agents are brainless.”

  “Hey!” McCarrick cried.

  Lisa closed her eyes, held onto her patience with both mental hands. “C’mon, Rich, I got other calls to make.”

  “Um.” He drew this out. “Someone bought the old bowling alley. That happened … last spring? Last winter? Something like that. I didn’t broker the deal.”