In Broken Places

by Michele Phoenix

  I decided that if Kandern were human, it would be a middle-aged man with a big, rounded belly, weather-chafed cheeks, and a hesitant smile. He’d be wearing tuxedo pants below the waist and a plaid shirt above it, equal parts sophistication and down-home charm. Kandern was a farmer looking for a banquet and hoping he’d fit in when he got there.

  Shayla and I walked up the street hand in hand, pausing to stare into storefronts at homemade pottery and thick-heeled shoes, then halting again for Shayla to run her fingers under a fountain’s waterspout. Though the rest of the town seemed deserted for a Saturday, one plot of real estate was bustling with activity. A farmer’s market filled the small square, and stands brimming with fresh fruit and vegetables begged me to spend some of the money Gus had loaned us yesterday on an apple for Shayla. I listened to the conversations going on around us as we wandered the market and waited in vain to hear a word I recognized. There were none. That would come eventually, I told myself—but still, I had never felt more foreign, and I found it disconcerting.

  When Shayla finished her fruit, we headed into a nineteenth-century church just behind the market and decided in unison that its garish, life-size crucifix, complete with profusely bleeding wounds and dying grimace, was a little too graphic for our tastes. High above us, in the rear balcony, an elderly gentleman brought a pipe organ to life with hands and feet and soul, and the broad chords of “Ode to Joy” filled the church with a warmth and power that made my heart smile. Shayla, unfortunately, wasn’t as entranced as I was with the music, and she dragged me out of the church after just a few minutes to continue our exploration of Kandern.

  The square at the center of town, the Blumenplatz, was framed by knobby trees and paved with cobblestones. By the time we got there, we’d become accustomed to the greetings we received from just about every person we passed. At first, I’d figured they were mistaking us for someone else, but as I observed other travelers on Kandern’s sidewalks, it became clear that these curt greetings were a common thing in this culture. The word they said sounded like tuck, and after a bewildered “They don’t even know us” from Shayla, she’d taken to the game with vigor. She had no clue what she was saying, but she uttered her tucks with the kind of verve that earned her smiles and pats on the head.

  We found a small paper store, on the corner of the Blumenplatz, with racks of postcards displayed outside. “Let’s get this one for Twey,” Shayla said, pointing to a picture of a cow posing in front of snowcapped mountains.

  “You sure?”

  She nodded vigorously. “Twey likes cows,” she said with conviction. “He dwinks milk all the time.”

  There was no arguing with that kind of logic, so we bought the card and headed home. Bev and Gus were waiting on our doorstep when we got there.

  “Are we late?” I asked, embarrassed to have kept them waiting.

  “Not at all!” Gus swung Shayla off the ground and perched her on his shoulder. “We old folks tend to get places early, and today’s no exception.”

  Bev wrapped me in a motherly hug. “Did you sleep all right, honey?”

  “Right until Shayla woke up.”

  “I had two mohnings this mohning,” came Shayla’s voice from above me.

  “How’d you manage that?” Gus said.

  “I woke up and I ate hawd bwead and then I went to sleep and then I woke up and ate hawd bwead again.”

  “You think the bread made an impression on her?” I said to Bev.

  “But Shelby said we’d get some diffewent bwead this afternoon and maybe a toastoh to toast it.”

  Gus raised an eyebrow at his wife. “Who’s going to break the news?”

  “Here’s the bad news, ladies,” Bev announced. “Only grocery stores are open on Saturday afternoons in Kandern. All the rest of the stores are closed. And they stay closed until Monday morning.”

  “They do?” It seemed like a pretty poor economical choice to close stores on the two days of the week when people were actually home, but who was I to question it?

  “We can’t get a toastoh?” Shayla asked.

  “I’ll loan you mine,” Bev assured her. “But before we do that, how ’bout we go to school and show your mo—and show Shelby where she’s going to be working?”

  Shayla seemed to think she had a say in the matter and pursed her lips in thought. I laughed at the independent streak that was already so strong in her and wondered what her teen years would be like. For her and for me. “Let’s go, Shayla.” I lifted her down from Gus’s shoulder so she could walk next to me on the narrow sidewalk.

  We arrived at the school a few minutes later, and Gus gave us a royal tour of the premises. One building was nondescript, four stories high, and had recently had a gym and auditorium built onto it. The second building, which stood behind the first, had just been renovated and was home to a state-of-the-art library. The school’s classrooms were divided between the two buildings, and it was in the second, newly renovated one that I found mine.

  As the academic year had started five weeks before, the teacher covering for me had already made herself at home in the space. There were posters on the walls, pictures and quotes, a portrait of Shakespeare and a poem by Frost. The desks were arranged in two arching rows. I counted just twenty-two of them. A good sign indeed. My last teaching assignment had involved inner-city classes of nearly thirty students, and this, in comparison, looked like a cakewalk.

  Gus finished our tour with the gym, a tall, broad space flanked on one side by bleachers and on the other by high windows. I figured I might as well get this visit over with on my first day at school, because chances were slim I’d ever enter the space again. Gyms, in my experience, had nothing to offer but sweat, which I considered humanity’s greatest design flaw, and pain, which only looked noble in the worlds of Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan. So I looked around, acknowledged the gym’s size and technology, and mentally checked it off my list of places to see.

  Gus was giving me a rundown of the competitive sports in which the school’s teams participated when a door above the bleachers opened and a man carrying a bucket entered the gym. Years of effort had trained me well in the art of greeting men who, even from a distance, appeared to be rather attractive. I looked away and focused on my double chins, which Trey insisted I didn’t have. But in the distorted mirror of my mind, they were the size of a cherub’s rear—and nowhere near as cute.

  “Hey, Gus,” the sandy-haired man said, raising a hand in greeting.

  “Scott! What are you doing working on a Saturday?”

  “Beats sitting at home,” the younger man answered. “Where’s Bev?”

  “I traded her in for a younger model!” Gus laughed. “Actually, she’s giving a little guest of ours a tour of the ladies’ room. Don’t go too far—she’ll be wanting to see you.”

  “Not going anywhere,” Scott answered, hiking up his jeans and hunkering down to peer more closely at the benches in the bleachers. “I’ve got a boatload of gum to scrape off before I’m through here.”

  “Great thinking, my friend! That’s one less thing for old Gus to do!”

  “A custodian?” I whispered to Gus, my chins swinging against each other in my mind as I spoke.

  “The head coach and health teacher,” he answered.

  “Scott Taylor!” Bev shrilled from right behind me, scaring me so badly with her deeply Southern exclamation that I thought I’d have to make a trip to the ladies’ room myself. “Get your buns down here so you can meet my new friends!”

  Her voice echoed around the gym as Scott threw up his hands in mock surrender. “Yes, ma’am!” he yelled down to a beaming Bev.

  “Smart boy,” Gus whispered to me, traces of husbandly pride in his smile. “When Bev gives an order, the only correct answer is a resounding ‘Yes, ma’am!’ Learned that on my honeymoon.”

  Scott trotted over to us moments later, and I realized he was taller and younger up close than he’d appeared from afar. A quick glance took stock of his short, w
avy hair, his deep-brown eyes, and the shadow of stubble across his jaw. I added love handles to my chin obsession and bent down to straighten Shayla’s blue hair clips.

  “Scott, my boy,” Gus said, “I’d like you to meet Shelby Davis, your future wife.”

  I straightened slowly—dumbfounded. If Shayla’s eyes could have outgrown her face, they would have done so at that moment. Just as my embarrassment was outgrowing my poise. I looked from Gus’s cheerful smile to Shayla’s frozen stare to Bev’s Cheshire grin. I looked into the rafters, I skimmed the gym’s blue floor, and I sent up a prayer, once again, for a spontaneous Rapture.

  “Well, it sure took you long enough,” Scott said, and I could see from my peripheral vision that he was extending a hand toward me. “Where’ve you been all my life?”

  The smile in his voice proved either that he had a healthy sense of humor or that he shared a delusional disorder with my former friend, Gus. “Running from humiliating moments just like this one,” I answered his question, shaking his hand without ever actually making eye contact.

  “She’s the English teacher we’ve been waiting for since the beginning of the school year! And this,” Bev added as if this were the most normal conversation in the world, “is Shayla. Shelby’s daughter.” She caught herself. “I mean . . . Shelby’s . . .”

  “‘Daughter’ is fine.” I laid a hand on Bev’s arm, distracted from my embarrassment by concern for the little girl who still stared up at all four of us as if we’d suddenly sprung horns.

  “You getting ma-wied, Shelby?” she asked, eyebrows drawn.

  I rolled my eyes. Then I rolled them again for good measure. I stopped there because I felt a headache coming on. I picked Shayla up and brought our faces nose-to-nose. “Remember when we talked about this before?” My little girl nodded seriously, her knees digging into my midriff. “What did I tell you then?”

  “You’re too busy to get ma-wied.”

  “Right.”

  Shayla pushed away from me, and I set her down on the floor. With eyes riveted on Scott, who’d been observing our exchange in amused silence, arms crossed, the pale little girl in the blue turtleneck took a step toward him and, hands on hips and forehead furrowed, stated, “She’s not going to ma-wy you!” She said the words with such conviction that part of me was offended.

  Scott hunkered down in front of his pint-size confronter and looked very seriously into her eyes. “Do you know any jokes?” he asked.

  Shayla was taken aback by the question. Then again, so was I.

  She looked up and around, scanning her memory for a joke, and burst into a smile when one came to her. “Why didn’t the man see the elephants?” she asked.

  Scott appeared to think hard and then give up.

  “Because they were weawing sunglasses!”

  Three of the four adults in the gym frowned in confusion. We were still racking our minds for a trace of humor in Shayla’s joke when Scott chuckled and said, “See? That’s a joke. And Gus here was just making a joke when he talked about your mom getting married.”

  I held my breath. I’m pretty sure Gus and Bev did too. Shayla, on the other hand, was holding nothing back. She leaned in and, in a conspiratorial whisper, said, “Gus’s joke wasn’t vewy funny.”

  “Hey!” Gus was mildly insulted and immensely entertained.

  “You tell ’im, Shayla!” Bev said.

  “You’ll get used to them,” Scott told me, pointing his chin toward my new friends as he stood. “They grow on you.” He paused. “Kind of like a parasite, come to think of it.” He bent low to flick Shayla’s chin. “It was very nice to meet you, little girl.”

  “I’m four!”

  “Well then, it was very nice to meet you, big girl.”

  Shayla found my hand and slunk behind my leg.

  “Back to work!” Scott declared, walking toward the door to the bleachers, then turning back to level a pleasant “You two really need to get a hobby” at Gus and Bev.

  We exited the building without another word spoken, but once we were well out of earshot, I turned on Gus with an incredulous “What was that?”

  Bev took Shayla’s hand, crossed the street, and headed toward home. Gus patted my back as we followed after them and met my wild-eyed disbelief with a long, hearty chuckle. “Oh, Shelby,” he said when it had passed, “if you could have seen your face!”

  “Do you introduce all your friends like that?” I tried to keep my voice cheerful, but there was lead spreading in my lungs.

  “Only the ones I like!”

  Bev said, “Actually, I don’t recall him ever doing that before.” She smiled at me over her shoulder while Shayla gripped her hand to jump over a puddle.

  There was something dirty-brown in my mind as we walked toward home. Gus’s bold introduction had destabilized the part of me I’d so carefully kept calm over the last two days of change—the part that wanted to flinch like a patient in a dentist’s chair every time something new or unexpected came along. I’d done well so far, taking all the newness in stride while I’d stifled my more natural instincts to run and hide with comfort words like “This will pass with time” and “Change never killed anyone.” I’d expected the language barriers and feelings of alienation. I’d expected the jet lag and the pervasive, gnawing lostness. But I hadn’t foreseen being introduced to a perfect stranger as his future wife. It had never crossed my mind. And it had jolted all kinds of fears and insecurities out of their carefully assigned cages.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised. Well-meaning people who wanted to introduce me to every available, nonsenile bachelor they knew were old hat to me. Old hat and insulting, although I knew there was a compliment hidden under the strategy of well-planned “chance encounters,” blatant hints, and sudden disappearances that left me face-to-face with unmarried specimens of the masculine persuasion. The subtext of the ploys was positive. It said, “We think you’re too good to be wasted on a collection of stray cats.” Though I appreciated the sentiment, I also found the meddling intrusive and the exhortations belittling. I didn’t want a husband any more than I wanted a festering rash. I had never had a serious boyfriend. I had never made a list of proposal scenarios. I had never designed wedding gowns in my head. Other girls’ dreams were my “nevers,” and I intended to keep it that way. But I had sworn off felines years ago in an attempt to outwit the old-maid stereotype.

  And here I was in Germany, with just over twenty-four hours of international living under my belt, facing the same brand of matchmaking I’d battled all my life. I wasn’t sure if it was the jet lag or the impending start of a new career or the sight of the little girl galloping like a pony ahead of me, but the overt matchmaking didn’t feel funny at all this time. It felt invasive and insensitive and just a few notches too close to impossible on my sliding scale of life’s probabilities.

  4

  SIX AND A HALF MONTHS EARLIER

  “DANA’S COMING OVER,” I said to Trey, pocketing my cell phone, “so I guess you’re finally going to meet her.”

  “She’s coming here?” He was arranging pastries in his display window while we talked, stacking golden croissants in a basket and flanking it with twin towers of cream-filled religieuses.

  “She wants to drive to the lawyer’s together so we can talk on the way.” I reached into his lighted display case and grabbed a coffee éclair.

  “Hey! Put that back!”

  I took a bite out of one end and went to put it back on the tray.

  “You can’t put it back now,” Trey said in exasperation, pulling my hand away and rearranging the remaining éclairs to mask the gap where mine had been. “You owe me a buck twenty.”

  I bit off another large chunk of éclair and spoke around it. “I left my purse in the car.”

  “Then you can work to pay off your debt. I have another tray of those right over there that need to be filled.”

  “I’ll help you with them if you help me figure my life out.” The last piece of pastry disappeared
into my mouth.

  “Not exactly an even trade,” he said, reaching for the pastry tube.

  “Gimme the baggie,” I muttered, grabbing the bag of vanilla pudding from his hand. Filling éclairs just might offer the kind of distraction I’d been craving. I sincerely doubted it, but it was worth a try. Trey placed a tray of baked éclair shells in front of me and I picked one up. I twisted the top of the bag to force the pudding into its metallic tip, then inserted it into the end of the éclair and squeezed until the pudding evenly filled the pastry’s belly.

  “So have you seen Shayla again?” Trey appeared next to me with a bowl of frosting. He took the éclair I’d just filled and proceeded to frost it.

  I nodded. My eyes felt heavy from thinking, my mind a little raw. “We had a tea party.”

  “And?”

  “And she’s still an amazing child. And I’m still the furthest thing from a mother.”

  Trey said nothing, and we worked in silence for a while.

  “He was such a great guy, wasn’t he?” I said.

  Trey glanced at me. “Dad?” He’d always been able to identify daddy thought lines on my face.

  I nodded.

  “You mean great as in he-beat-the-tar-out-of-his-wife-and-kids-because-he-couldn’t-stand-a-noisy-house or great as in he’s-a-loser-who-should-have-died-a-painful-death-before-he-got-old-enough-to-have-kids-of-his-own?”

  “Great as in please-God-don’t-ever-let-me-turn-into-my-father.”

  “That’s highly unlikely.”

  “It could happen, though. You know what they say about the apple and the tree.”

  “I know what I know about you. Period. Fear of becoming Dad should have nothing to do with this decision.”

  I’d grown accustomed to the heaviness in my chest and the anxiety that came in viscous, lumbering waves anytime I allowed my mind to drift. And standing there beside Trey with images of Shayla superimposing their guilt on everything I saw and touched, I felt my mettle slip again. I was caged in by the dilemma. Trapped between a life that was me-shaped and comfortable and a beautiful child who threatened the predictability that defined my bland existence. I bit my lip to stop it from trembling and looked up into my brother’s compassionate face. “Tell me what I should do, Trey.” My voice was hoarse with urgency and doubt. My fingers clenched around the éclair as my eyes blurred with tears.