“What, Seth?”
“I looked deformed. You know. When I took my shirt off.”
“Seth . . .” His vulnerability awakened my own. “Is it treatable?”
He swallowed hard and nodded. “I had surgery a year ago.”
“Well, that’s a step in the right direction.” I wanted to be encouraging.
“But then I got injured.” He took a deep breath and scooted down a little in his chair, aiming his eyes at the ceiling as he relived his pain. “Seven ribs got disconnected from the sternum. And it killed. I mean, the pain . . .” He blinked a few times to dispel the tears in his eyes. “But the doctors couldn’t see it. They didn’t do an MRI or anything and just kept telling me it was normal to feel bad after surgery, but . . . I knew it was worse than that. Anytime I moved . . . or breathed too deeply . . . or someone bumped into me . . . And the pain pills they gave me to try to deal with it made me moody . . . you know, mad and tired all the time, and . . .” He paused and bit the inside of his cheek to quell his emotions.
“Oh, Seth . . .”
“It lasted four months before anyone figured out that my bones were detached—and that whole time I just felt like someone was constantly sawing at my chest. Then a doctor in Munich did an MRI and they had to go back in and operate again.”
“After four months?”
He shook his head to dispel the memories, and his mouth pinched into a line. “It was . . . It was bleak,” he said. “Wanting-to-be-dead bleak.”
“Seth, I’m so sorry.”
“So when I get up and give that monologue about pain and death and stuff . . .”
“It hits close to home.”
“Yeah. Every time.”
“And is that okay? I mean—will it hurt you too much to relive it over and over?”
He shook his head again. “It’ll help me, I think. I’m still dealing with the whole God thing, and saying Lewis’s thoughts . . . it screws my head on straighter.”
“Well, I’m sure you know it’s a powerful scene from the audience’s perspective too.”
He looked genuinely surprised. “It is?”
“It’s . . .” I looked for the right word. “Redemptive.” Seth was one of the few students I knew who would understand the significance of the word. “You mentioned the ‘God thing.’ I think it’s a God thing that you’re part of this cast, Seth. That you’re C. S. Lewis.”
His hands were rolling and unrolling the script they held. He nodded.
“Please let me know if there’s anything—anything at all—you need help with.” I remembered some of the tough rehearsals we’d had recently. “How are you doing with Kate?”
He shrugged.
“Listen, I know it’s not always easy dealing with her. But I think she really respects your acting, and she clearly wants to get this right. So if you can just let Kate be Kate for a little while longer and not let her Joy-ness fluster you . . . She doesn’t mean any harm.”
“I know,” he said as a blush crept up his neck.
“All right.” I stood. “Time for me to get Shayla home.”
Seth rose too and pulled on his trademark trench coat before shouldering his backpack.
“I’m proud of you, Seth.”
He just ducked his head and exited the room.
Minutes later, Shayla and I were walking up three flights of stairs to the front of the school and Shayla was whining about being hungry. I wanted to tell her that she wouldn’t know what hungry was until she went on a no-carbs diet, but I informed her instead that we’d be home soon and could eat then.
“But I’m hungwy now, Shelby!”
It was the I’m-about-to-lose-it variety of Shayla’s whining. And it usually came right before the much less socially acceptable I’m-going-to-scream-until-I-get-what-I-want variety.
As always, knowing this left me with a dilemma. Should Shayla learn that sometimes you don’t get everything you want when you want it? Yes. Was it an important life lesson? Absolutely—as any number of her future boyfriends would probably attest. Was teaching her that lesson on this particular evening worth the drama of sweet Shayla turning into Cruella de Vil? Uh—no. Not really. So, as all good parents do (or so I chose to believe), I took a long look at her pre-explosion face and decided I needed to find some food, and pronto. It was not exactly a groundbreaking thought for me.
I rummaged through my briefcase and found nothing. I mentally rummaged through my classroom desk and concluded there’d be nothing there either. I could hear the sound of basketball practice coming from the gym, where I knew there’d be at least oranges for Shayla to dig her teeth into. But I was a closet sufferer of post-athletic stress disorder, so rather than spurring me forward, the thought of entering the gym for oranges made me redouble my efforts to coax Shayla home, where an assortment of not-yet-ready meals was waiting to be cooked. Maybe she could chew on a hard noodle while she waited.
“It’s only a few minutes from here to home,” I told her. “If you can wait that long, we can have the chicken casserole Bev taught us to make!” I was becoming a regular Martha Stewart—hold the fancy aprons.
“But I’m hungwy now,” Shayla wailed, big old tears rising in her eyes. My mistake had been letting her think I had something in my briefcase. That had gotten her taste buds all fired up, and I knew from experience how painful it could be to dash their hopes.
“Honey, I don’t have anything with me.”
“Not even gum?”
“No. And you’re not allowed to chew gum anyway. You get it in your hair.” My mind flashed memory cards of Shayla screaming and me calling Bev and having to find sharp scissors.
“Not even gummy bears?”
“No, Shayla. I have no food, no candy, nada.” She looked at me askance. I think she thought I’d made nada up. “So . . . we’re going to walk home and get into our slippers.” The floor tile in the apartment was frigid. “And then we’re going to have chicken casserole.”
I’d tried to make the dish sound dramatic and enticing, but Shayla scrunched up her face and began what I now called the Crescendo Wail—the kind that starts soft and low, then grows steadily into an all-out fire siren. I couldn’t let that happen for two reasons. Firstly, her siren tended to push my buttons and I didn’t want to lose my patience. Losing my patience was a fear that obsessed me—always. And secondly, the acoustics were so good in that stairwell that I feared the Crescendo Wail would have the neighbors calling the police for the second time that night, and that just wouldn’t be good.
So, with a deep, calming breath, I picked Shayla up and carried her into the gym.
The first impressions that assailed me brought back memories I’d thought were safely deleted from my failure treasure trove. The smell of dirty sneakers reminded me of Johnny Dunbar, a boy who had tormented me by sitting on my chest, for no apparent reason, and holding his sneaker over my nose until our second-grade teacher, Mrs. Dailey, had pulled him off. The sound of balls bouncing reminded me of the ridiculous habit I had of actually looking up when someone called, “Heads up!” to warn of incoming basketballs, volleyballs, and baseballs. It was a flaw that had earned me more bloody noses during gym class than I cared to remember. How was I to know that “heads up” actually meant “heads down”? The sight of two opposing teams reminded me of all the times I’d stood midcourt in junior high and high school waiting for the two captains selecting teammates to earn me by elimination. And the sight of Coach Taylor reminded me of countless conversations with Trey in which I’d promised—no, vowed—to never, ever risk getting attached, which would guarantee that I’d never pass on the Davis family genes.
Needless to say, our entrance into the gym was not a pleasant thing. Scott, whose radar was apparently functioning well, saw us almost immediately and came over with a surprised smile for us both.
“You’re two weeks late,” he said.
“We ran into traffic.”
“Rush hour in Kandern can be a mess.” He winked at Shayla and sque
ezed her foot. “How’re you doing, Lady Shay?”
“Gus calls me that.”
“I know. Do you mind?”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Then Lady Shay it is.” He turned his attention to me, which was helpful, as my mind had started to wander back down Memory Shame. “We’ll be through in a couple minutes.”
“Oh, we’re not here to see you,” I said breezily. “Shayla’s hungry.”
“No, I’m not.”
“What?”
“I’m not hungwy anymoh.” She tried to push out of my arms and it was all I could do to keep her from running out onto the court. “I want to play,” she protested.
I wasn’t amused. “We came in here to get you some oranges,” I whispered into her ear, loudly enough to be heard over the noise of shoes and dribbling.
“I want to play!”
Scott leaned in to say, “She’s welcome to go out there. The guys won’t hurt her.”
“They’ll trample her!”
“I promise they won’t.”
“Let me down!” This from Shayla, who was fighting me so hard that I was starting to sweat. If I was going to sweat, I was certainly standing in the right place, but sweat was my enemy anywhere.
Scott blew his whistle and Shayla snapped her head around, scared motionless by the sound. “Lady on the court, guys!” He took Shayla out of my arms and set her on the ground. Handing her a ball, he winked at her and said, “Go get ’em, tiger.”
She ran out onto the court, smiling at the faces around her, and the army of teenage boys parted like the Red Sea. One of them pointed toward the basket and told her to throw. The ball only went a couple of feet, but another player, a student I had in English class, snatched it up and rolled it back to her.
“What’s her name, Coach?” It was the team captain asking, and I recognized him as Kenny, a muscular player who also had a reputation for being a gentleman and an all-round good guy.
“Lady Shay! Treat her like one!”
Kenny picked her up by the waist and ran with her to the basket. She dunked the ball like a pro and beamed as a cheer went up from the players. It wasn’t long before they were all involved in a quirky game of basketball, with Shayla riding high on their shoulders, up and down the court, answering to Lady Shay and living one of the highlights of her short life.
“She’s a natural,” Scott said.
“She was a hungry natural two minutes ago. I promise.”
“Guess she changed her mind.”
“They won’t drop her, will they?”
“They know the rules. ‘You break it, you pay for it.’”
“That’s comforting.” There was a silence. “Kenny seems nice.”
“He’s a class act.”
“He’s got a way with kids.”
“I think it goes both ways. Shayla has a way with strangers.”
“No kidding. You should see her and the landlady cozying up.”
I let out a startled yelp when I looked over to find Shayla hanging from the rim with her little hands, then letting go and dropping into the arms beneath her. “Shayla!” It was instinctive. As instinctive as the need I had to get out there and rescue her. But Scott’s hand on my arm halted me midstride.
“She’s fine,” he said.
And looking out onto the court, I could see he spoke the truth. Shayla was off down the court again, perched on Kenny’s shoulders, her ball resting on his head, a glowing smile on her face and her eyes riveted on the approaching basket. She giggled and squealed and dunked the ball again.
“And I’m supposed to get her to bed after this?”
“Have you ever been to Sausenburg?” he asked, changing the subject abruptly, which was his modus operandi.
I rolled my eyes—but that took them off Shayla for too long, so I decided to stop that for now.
“It’s the ruins of a castle,” he continued, unfazed. “Just above Sitzenkirch. Shayla would love it.”
Sitzenkirch was a tiny village about five minutes from Kandern, where the elementary school had found a home. I had been there once, just to see what it looked like, but I hadn’t seen any ruins.
I didn’t answer Scott. I’d learned that answers led to conversations, and conversations that didn’t have the Johnsons’ house as a punctuation mark gave me the heebie-jeebies.
Scott blew his whistle again. “Okay, guys! Outta here!”
Every head on the floor except Shayla’s snapped around to look at the clock.
“But, Coach, we still have ten—”
“Pack it up!”
The players clearly weren’t used to aborted practices. They looked at each other, mumbled, then shuffled off the court. Kenny deposited Shayla at my feet, a ball still in her hands, then went back out to gather the rest of the balls into giant nets.
“What’s the rush?” one of the guys asked as he was passing Scott.
“Lady Shay needs a ride home.”
I was outraged. “She does not!”
Scott raised an eyebrow. “You want me to tell them why I really cut our practice short?”
“You’re hurrying home to catch The Young and the Restless?”
“No—I’m hoping to have an actual conversation with you.”
“Oh.”
“Right. This two-minutes-and-forty-seconds thing is for the birds.”
“Well, Shayla and I need to get home to make a casserole, so . . .”
“I’d love some.”
“What I was going to say was that we need to run and you need to lock up, and we don’t really need a ride, so . . .” I was bending over at the waist and trying to pry Shayla’s hands off the basketball she held like a lifeline.
“I’d like to talk.”
“Why?”
He looked exasperated and entertained. It was an interesting combination. He fished a quarter of orange out of a bowl and handed it to Shayla. She immediately let go of the ball and focused her attention on devouring the snack.
“I knew that would work,” I said a bit defensively.
“Of course you did. You’re her mom.”
I bit my tongue.
“And I’m a guy who’s either got a death wish or a challenge disorder, because I’d kinda like to get to know you.”
“I’m not good with people.”
“You’re a teacher.”
“I’m not good with grown-up people.”
“Gus and Bev adore you.”
“I’m not good with . . .”
Scott crouched down so he was eye-level with Shayla. “Shayla, is your mom crazy?” He said it with a mock-serious face as he wiped some orange dribble off her chin with his thumb.
Shayla had been helping herself to more of the leftover oranges, and she had her mouth so full that she had to swallow twice before she could say, “She’s not my mom.” The subtext was “dummy”—as in, “She’s not my mom, dummy.”
Scott looked at me, his eyebrow raised in question.
“She’s not technically my daughter,” I confirmed.
If Scott was taken aback, he hid it well. “See why we need to talk? I don’t even know the basics.”
I looked away.
“You can have your Mace within arm’s reach at all times.”
I bit my lip.
“I’ll help you with the dishes.”
He was getting warmer.
“I read a killer bedtime story.”
“Sounds a bit morbid for a four-year-old.”
“I mean I’m a good bedtime-story reader.”
“Had a lot of practice?”
“My niece and nephews think I’m pretty cool.”
“I’m sure that’s comforting.”
“After conversations like these? You bet it is.”
“I’ve got a rock,” Shayla said. Scott’s conversational skills were clearly rubbing off on her.
“Really?” He was down on her level again.
“A blue one on the inside.”
He looked up at me. “Quar
tz?”
“She found it at the flea market.”
“Maybe you can show it to me someday.”
“But not tonight. We’ve had a big day and Shayla needs to get to bed early.” It sounded hollow even to my ears.
Scott straightened and ruffled Shayla’s hair. “Some other day, then. And maybe I can show you a castle, too. Would you like that?”
“A weal castle?”
“What’s left of it. You can even climb the tower.”
Something rasped over my nerve endings. In one overwhelming moment, the walls and ceiling around me shrank and closed in until they became the pale-green walls of my mother’s kitchen. The sensation was so vivid and stark that I could hear the angry impotence of the air conditioner propped on the windowsill above the sink and feel the grip of something dark pressing in around my mind. I knew, in a remote and rational part of my thinking, that I was still standing in a high school gym, but something about Scott and his castle plans had suffused my senses with the smells, sounds, and crippledness of my youth. There was nothing truly menacing in the moment, yet I felt trapped by Scott’s exchange with Shayla, backed into a corner, barred from an escape route, and robbed of both choice and independence. I felt manipulated, bulldozed, and helpless.
Scott must have read the anger on my face. He frowned and looked like his mind was on rewind, trying to figure out what he’d said wrong.
“Don’t back me into a corner,” I said. The tremor in my voice shamed me. “And don’t use Shayla to do it.” I could feel the flush of anger on my cheeks and was as shocked by it as Scott.
“I wasn’t . . .”
I picked Shayla up and headed toward the door. “Thanks for the oranges.”
We left.
I’d like to say Shayla and I walked home in silence. It’s what my brain needed. But Shayla’s mind had been so stimulated by her first pick-up game that she couldn’t seem to stop talking. She talked about her rock, she talked about oranges, she talked about hanging from the rim, she talked about a cat that crossed the street in front of us and about the bright-green shoelaces on her sneakers. She talked, in other words.
As much as I craved silence, I found solace in her chattering. In the days following her enrollment in kindergarten, Shayla had become subdued and pensive, but the last week had marked a change. After Bev and I had talked with her teacher and encouraged her to acknowledge Shayla’s English questions and respond to them in German rather than ignoring them altogether, an awkward, bilingual dialogue had begun between them. Some of the girls in the class had started to include Shayla in their playground antics, and the newness of German kindergarten rituals had become less startling to her. She no longer cried herself to sleep, and though she wasn’t always excited about going to school in the morning, it didn’t terrify her anymore. Which was good for both of us—she had fewer meltdowns and I had fewer guilt-ridden, sleepless nights. So we were both a little happier.
In Broken Places Page 15
