In Broken Places (12 page)

“I blame it on the guy who taught me to say prayers.”

“I had to. You couldn’t sleep if you didn’t.”

“I still can’t. My life is too . . . messed up to sleep without prayers. And it’s not getting any simpler.” I paused. “Is it really the God thing that’s bugging you most?”

“You know, even when we were little, I wondered how you could believe in God with Dad screaming loud enough to scare off the Holy Spirit.”

“That’s just it. Dad screamed and ranted and raved and cursed, but God never left. He stuck around to hear it all.”

“He didn’t spare us.”

“No. And I still don’t get that. But when I think of what it would have been like if I hadn’t known he was there when I said my prayers at night . . .” I didn’t know how to put it into words. “I really want to do this, Trey. I think I need to. For me and Shayla. But if you don’t think we should . . .”

Trey filled the silence with nervous little tics like scratching his ear, rubbing the back of his neck, and shifting from foot to foot. When he spoke again, it was with a sort of reluctant capitulation.

“Don’t you have to raise money or something?”

“My church is helping me. And the rest will come from the Jim Davis Atonement Fund.”

“How long before you go?”

“School starts in August, but they said they’d cover for me if I had to get there a little late. They know the circumstances are . . . unusual.”

“They know about you and Shayla?”

I comforted a sigh with a piece of
mille-feuille
. “They know. And they’re concerned—think I should probably take more time to adjust before launching into work over there, but . . . two of the English teachers they were counting on just fell through, so they’re a little desperate.”

“They might be right about you needing time to adjust.”

“They might. But they’ve assured me that my commitment is dependent on Shayla doing okay, and if she doesn’t, we’ll pack up and come home.”

“Sounds fair.”

“I’m sure it’s not a normal arrangement, but they’re out of options and I’m willing and eager, so . . .”

“You should take my half of Dad’s money back.”

“I’m not taking it.”

“You should. Shayla’s going to be growing up. She’ll need things.”

“We’ll be fine, Trey. I’ve talked it over with my money guy and we’ve worked it all out.”

Trey smirked. “Your money guy.”

“Yup. I got me a money guy. How un-me is that?”

Another silence settled like static electricity over the kitchen and I wished we’d been able to have this discussion in our Huddle Hut. But we were grown-ups now, and the Huddle Hut had gone the way of most other great childhood inventions. Except that special, indefinable connection that made Trey and me the toughest unit around. There was a twoness to us that had withstood some of the worst life had to offer, and here I was preparing to break it. Remorse choked me. But a giggle from the other room strengthened my resolve.

I speared a piece of
mille-feuille
with my fork and raised it in salute. “To the brotherhood . . .”

“. . . of Davishood.”

“And to the muddlehood . . .”

“. . . of huddlehood.”

I clinked my bite of
mille-feuille
with his imaginary fork and tried to swallow past the boulder in my throat.

“IS IT GOING TO BE
good this time, Shelby?”

I knew Shayla was trying to be as diplomatic as a four-year-old could be, but I found the question mildly insulting. “I’m trying, Shay,” I said, adding something called quark to the ground beef I’d just fried up and praying it would be more edible than the last three meals I’d attempted. It had gotten so bad that Shayla had complained to Bev about my cooking, and Bev, bless her missionary heart, had taken it upon herself to teach this Lean Cuisine and Stouffer’s addict how to cook an edible meal from scratch. She had informed me that preparing Lean Cuisine and Stouffer’s dinners didn’t amount to actual cooking, and I had tried to convince her that they did require some kitchen skills compared to my other best friends: Arby, Wendy, and Mickey-D, which, in Germany, were as scarce as, say, sauerkraut in North America.

So I was trying out one of Bev’s easy recipes, and Shayla was watching closely to make sure I didn’t dump the whole box of salt into the sauce as I’d done on a previous attempt. I hadn’t expected cooking to be among the more challenging aspects of a life abroad, but my first trip to the grocery store had proved me wrong. The Germans weren’t big into prepared meals, and that was an understatement. They apparently liked to waste vast amounts of time on, say, chopping vegetables, browning raw meat, and frying potatoes. And if they wanted something sweet for dessert, they didn’t seem to have any aversion to measuring and stirring multiple ingredients rather than just adding an egg and some water to a Betty Crocker mix.

“What do you think, Shay? You think it’s going to turn out this time?”

“I don’t know,” she singsonged, trying to look hopeful, though I knew she was anticipating another supper of hard bread and strawberry jam if this last-ditch effort failed.

“Well, Bev gave me very specific instructions, so I think we might have a winner.” I poured a tiny box of gravy spices into the mixture of meat and quark and gave it a stir. The smell was promising.

“Do you think we should invite Bev and Gus for dinner?” We hadn’t had any guests yet, and this seemed like a good occasion for an inaugural meal.

“Yeeeeeees,” Shayla squealed.

I left the meat simmering on the stove and called Bev.

“I’m cooking,” I declared. I hadn’t actually introduced myself, but I knew Bev would figure it out from the sheer pride of my statement.

“You are! Shelby, that’s great.”

Shayla tugged at my sleeve. “Tell her it might be good.”

“Shayla says it might be good this time.”

That made Bev laugh. Bev laughed a lot at Shayla, but in a good—no, wonderful—way. “So we were wondering if you and Gus might want to come over and sample it with us. Take some Pepto-Bismol before you come . . . just in case.”

I heard a muffled conversation on the other end of the line before Bev came back on. “We’d love to, Shelby, but we’ve invited Scott over tonight and . . .” Bev covered the mouthpiece for another conversation with Gus. “Gus says it probably wouldn’t bother Scott if we just dragged him over there instead, though.”

Oh, the agony of trying to say something frantic in a calm, composed way. What I wanted to say was, “What—are you kidding? I’m having enough trouble outrunning him on my way home from school each night without inviting him into my house. Absolutely not. No.
Nyet. Nein.
Period.” What I said instead was, “You know what? We really don’t need to do this tonight, not if you’ve already made plans. Let’s just postpone it ’til next week. It’ll give me the chance to make sure I’ve got it right.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“All right then. We’ll take a rain check. Let me know how it turns out, okay?”

“I will.”

“And congratulations on cooking a meal from scratch.”

“I’m tackling Mount Everest next!”

She laughed. “Gus says to give a kiss to Lady Shay from him.”

“Done.”

“Thanks for thinking of us! We’ll look forward to next week.”

“No problem. Bye, Bev!”

I hung up the phone and answered Shayla’s look. “They’re coming next week, honey. They have company of their own for dinner
tonight.” I gave her a kiss. “That’s from Gus. I think he kinda likes you.”

She grinned and got back to important things. “Can we eat?”

I loved that girl. And it frightened the you-know-what out of me to admit it. She might have been my father’s daughter, but she reminded me of me. Another reason to be scared. “Sure. You get the usual and I’ll bring the usual.” Which, in Shay-Shell talk, meant, “You set the table and I’ll bring the food over.” Of course, I ended up doing most of the table-setting, too, as Shayla wasn’t exactly the quickest table-setter in the land, but I thought it was good for her to have little jobs around the house.

We’d gotten into so many natural routines lately that this pseudo-mother-daughter thing was starting to feel comfy, like the steam off a cup of hot chocolate—warm and sweet. And again, that scared me. It scared me so much, sometimes, that I felt a near-panic while performing some of our routines, as if I couldn’t let myself get too used to them in case my dad suddenly came back from the dead and took Shayla away from me and started calling me the names he used to hurl at me. They weren’t pretty names, and just the thought of them turned the world a little blotchy in my mind. But we stuck to our routines despite the thoughts that made me feel kooky. There were bedtime routines and Sunday routines and garbage routines and reading routines and after-school routines.

The after-school routines weren’t so much Shay-Shell affairs as Scott-Shell and
then
Shay-Shell. No matter what time I left the school after play rehearsals, and no matter what door I used to exit the school (I switched them up—just for the sport), he always managed to catch up with me. After our first trek to the Johnsons’ had yielded little information other than his Boy Scout history,
he’d started to come prepared for conversational blitzes that went something like this:

Sound of jogging feet. “Hi, Shelby.”

“Low, Scott.” Sometimes I had to resort to kindergarten humor. I found it refreshing.

“How was rehearsal?”

“Seth actually touched Kate’s cheek without any visible seizures, so I think we’re making progress.”

“And all because I was able to inspire them.”

“Right. I’m sure that’s what did it.”

“So do you think God has a sense of humor?” He tried to get down to the serious stuff by the time we got to the halfway mark, just so I couldn’t use Gus and Bev’s house as an excuse not to answer.

“He created Meagan, didn’t he?”

“What’s your position on predestination?”

“I was predestined to eat cheesecake. You were predestined to harass cheesecake eaters.”

“Do you really not like any sports at all?”

“I like to watch them if I know someone who’s playing. If I’m expected to participate, I’d rather throw myself off a tall building and get my eyelid caught on a protruding nail. Or something more painful—like conversational whiplash from these little talks with you.”

I tried to throw in the occasional barb or two just to keep things light, but they never really seemed to hit home.

“Did you name your daughter Shayla so both your names could start with the same sound?”

I made a noise like a buzzer and declared the round over. We’d reached the front steps of the Johnsons’ house.

“Thanks for talking,” he said.

“It gave me a headache.”

“I wouldn’t have to talk so fast if you walked more slowly. Or took a longer road. Or . . . you know . . .”

“It’s not so much the speed as the topic-hopping.”

“Just trying to cover some interesting bases in the two minutes and forty seconds you allow.”

I smiled. “There’s no practice tomorrow.” Fridays were our down days, and I didn’t want him walking the sidewalks alone, carrying on a monologue.

“You could always come by the gym and have an orange with the guys.”

“I don’t do oranges. They’re too much like fruit.”

“Invitation’s open.”

“Duly noted.”

“Bye, Shelby.”

I did my best imitation of a flight attendant. “Buh-bye now.”

I’d lie in bed at night and rack my brain trying to figure out what kept him coming back for more day after day, barb after barb, buzzer after buzzer. I couldn’t ever figure it out. Maybe he was just a glutton for punishment. Maybe he felt sorry for me. Maybe he was bored and would move on in time. I liked that last option best. It made me feel safe and less off-balance. And feeling safe was a big deal for me.

I think Gus and Bev caught on to the after-school ritual pretty fast. Sometimes I saw the living room curtain rustle a bit when we reached the front steps, and I suspected they waited to tell Shayla I was there until Scott had started trotting back down the street. They always welcomed me warmly, but their smiles, some days, made me wonder if they hadn’t plastered their ears to the front door and gotten a sampling of the Scott and Shelby Show. There was an undertone of plotting in the air and it made me
uncomfortable. Like seeing German bicyclers in spandex shorts riding by on too-narrow seats. Uncomfortable.

Germany’s weather was an accurate reflection of its people. It was generally mild, though it tended toward cloudy. But there were times when the clouds seemed to suddenly march away as if by celestial decree, instantly making way for the kind of brightening that left me squinting and confused. The greenness of the German countryside was a wondrous result of so much gloom and drizzle, which only went to prove that there were silver linings around every cloud, green fields under every downpour, and friendly smiles behind every scowl. It was just a question of sticking around long enough to see it happen.

The Germans hadn’t been unfriendly so much as just blank. No frowns, no smiles, no scowls. Nothing that let me know they even noticed my existence, let alone welcomed or resented it. Just rigid backs and mildly disapproving stares. We did exchange
Tag
s in the daytime and
Abend
s in the evening, but I knew they were merely a pleasant German custom that fostered little personal connection and certainly didn’t bridge the gulf of miscommunication and suspicion between us.

Shayla, of course, had been on the receiving end of smiles and pats ever since her arrival in Kandern. But me? I’d been the woman standing next to her, living in perpetual certainty that I was doing something culturally wrong and that, someday soon, someone was simply going to tell me to go back to the States, where I belonged.

I kept reminding myself that all the newness in my life had left my morale weakened, and I commanded my mind to think positively—mostly because the alternative would have hampered
my sanity. And there were times, on my more optimistic days, when I actually thought I glimpsed a bit of a softening from the man at the post office, the lady at the bank, and the gentleman across the way who had reprimanded us for washing our car on a holiday, though I was fairly sure that none of them were about to shed their natural reserve and try to engage in a full-fledged bilingual conversation with me. And there was probably no hugging or high-fiving in our future either. They were German, after all. But the smallest of thaws was a positive sign indeed, and I clung to each one with all the fervor of my fears.

It might have been a desire to finally bridge the abyss that lent me the courage, one Saturday afternoon, to attend a small gathering of German ladies in the Johnson home. Bev hosted twice-yearly
Kaffee und Kuchen
get-togethers for the handful of German women she knew, and she had invited me to the next one. Though the socializing was a daunting prospect, the coffee-and-cake theme quickly overcame my reservations.

I hadn’t realized, until five German ladies overtook Bev’s living room, how much German my friend spoke. I was pretty sure it was heavily laced with a syrupy Southern drawl, but the ladies seemed to understand what she was saying, albeit with the occasional help of some gesticulating and an English-German dictionary. Not only was my German limited to a very restrictive collection of phrases—I had yet to use “Hans and Regina went to the pool” in conversation—but it was also crippled, on that afternoon, by the sheer panic of being trapped in a room crackling with such an abrupt-sounding language. I spent two hours smiling politely, speaking English very slowly in response to the few questions Bev translated for me, and gorging on Linzer torte. By the end of the get-together, my stomach was fairly happy, but my brain and self-esteem were mush.

Bev and I cleaned up the kitchen together after her guests left, and I basked in the single-language conversation.

“That wasn’t too bad, was it?” she asked.

“It was . . .” How could I put it? “Actually, Bev, if it hadn’t been for the torte, I probably would have gone home an hour ago.”

“Are you saying my tea party was boring?” She smiled and dumped leftover coffee down the drain.

“Boring? No! It’s just that . . . I tried to listen for words I understood, and I did catch a few, but not enough to follow even the main topics of the conversation. I tried to smile when everyone else smiled and look concerned when everyone else did too, but I was pretty much lost from the moment they walked in until the last lady left!”