In Broken Places (7 page)

Being petrified was starting to feel natural to me. The terrifying ride from the airport to Kandern on our first day here had only been an appetizer in the feast of fear of our introductory weeks in Germany. I’d started to invent
-phobe
words to accurately describe my emotions. I was now a card-carrying languageophobe, bratwurstophobe, and bigspendingophobe. That last one sounded a bit contrived, even to my own ears, but after buying a car, a toaster, a pink bicycle, and enough pastries to gorge an army, I was feeling broke enough to warrant my longest
-phobe
word yet.

And, standing at the front of the auditorium, another one came to my mind, perhaps the most pertinent of them all. I was officially becoming an I-have-no-idea-what-I’m-doing-ophobe.
This audition session marked my leap into the chaos and mystery of drama, which was scaring my hair gray. I was relieved to see some of my English students among the prospective actors, but I doubted that our tenuous connection would do much to mask my stunning ineptitude. Months ago, the school’s personnel director had assured me that my limited experience would be sufficient for the task. By
limited
, I was sure he’d meant
nonexistent
, as participating in a junior-high speech contest twenty years ago held little relevance to directing a serious high school play. And Bev had done nothing to soothe my nerves in recent days by raving about the productions of previous years, the extraordinary talent of the students, and the high expectations of the entire community.

I cleared my throat, gave the assembled students my patented don’t-waste-my-time stare, and stifled the urge to yell, “I’m clueless!” at their expectant faces. Instead, I thanked them for their punctuality and explained to them the challenges of a play like
Shadowlands
. I’d discarded dozens of comedies, musicals, and dramas in my search for something that felt just right. When I’d first read
Shadowlands
and been enthralled by its scope and depth, I’d declared myself deluded and gone on to something else. How were teenagers supposed to bring such human vulnerability and complexity to life? No—this wasn’t
the one
. But all the scripts I’d subsequently read about murders and mayhem and monsters and madness had paled in comparison to the story of C. S. Lewis, a famed English writer whose work I’d always admired and whose life somehow touched mine. And here we all were, all thirty-eight students and me, gathered three months later to embark on a voyage of nerve-knotting importance.

The auditorium was a semicircular carpeted space with a wooden ceiling that sloped from the stage to the highest point above the balcony. The stage wasn’t much to look at. A raised
platform devoid of curtains or wings, with a bare, white wall behind it, it was as conducive to acting as the stomach flu is to cooking. Turning the room into a theater would be a challenge indeed, but that was a concern best left for a much later date. A wall of windows on each side of the auditorium extended from floor to rafters and, as the evening darkened outside, reflected the tense body language of the students assembled for tryouts.

Most of the prospective actors had come well prepared. They’d read the play packets I’d placed in the library and had memorized the scenes we’d be using for auditions. Only one of them truly stood out as the session progressed—both in stature and in talent. His name was Seth. He stood six foot six and had a voice like molten chocolate. But it was his countenance and spirit that caught my attention. Though he was young and enthusiastic, his carriage spoke of strain. His face revealed a melancholy intelligence and a sort of world-weary passion I’d seldom seen in one so young. He took to the stage in long, loping strides and addressed the gathered students in a tortured monologue so authentic that I briefly forgot he was speaking from a script. It was in the silence that followed his last words that I wondered for the first time if the burden of this play might bloom into a blessing.

But I quickly dismissed the notion as a by-product of Lewis’s inspirational words and shoved my cynicism firmly back into place. The process was aided by many less stellar moments in the proceedings, culminating in the performance of a freshman girl from Tennessee who went, quite perfectly, by the name of Meagan. She had all the acting talent of, say, a telephone pole, but her giggle was boundless and entirely too rare to ignore. While attempting to bring the role of C. S. Lewis’s dying wife to the stage, she stood in front of Seth, as tall as her five-foot-two frame allowed, and craned her neck back so far to see his face that she choked on her
own throat in the middle of a profound dialogue and went into a coughing fit. She then collapsed in a giggling jag that ended with a high-pitched Tennessee wail that went something like “Oh—my—gosh! Wait, wait, wait—let me try it again!” It was like watching Betty Boop attempting to tackle a Meryl Streep role. The result was disconcerting and memorable—in an is-this-for-real? kind of way. Two failed attempts later, I made a mental note to invent a job, if need be, that would keep this little lady with the world-brightening giggle involved in the play . . . though not onstage.

Save for Seth’s discovery, I was no closer to having picked a cast when the bell rang at five thirty. The students headed in a mass exodus toward the buses that would carry them home to their dorms for dinner, which left me alone in an empty auditorium, shaking my head in dismay at an empty stage. I decided to leave my dilemma for another day and, locking the door and the play behind me, hurried to Bev’s to pick up Shayla.

Every school day until now, I’d been met at the door by a happy “Shelby!” and a small, warm body catapulting itself against mine. That wasn’t the case today. I rang the doorbell and heard Bev’s slippered feet shuffling up to the door. I could tell from her smile that all was not well. “She’s in the kitchen drawing,” Bev answered my inquiring look.

“Is she okay?”

“Well . . .” She ushered me into the sage-green living room and we sat on either side of her faux-wood coffee table. Looking over her shoulder toward the kitchen, she went on in a hushed tone. “Today was a little hard.”

“Hard how?”

“A snowball kind of hard. First it was her missing hair clip, and then it was the bread.”

“Again?”

“She’s definitely got a Wonder Bread obsession.” Bev smiled. “Then it was the crayons.”

“What’s wrong with the crayons?”

“The red wasn’t red enough.”

“It’s the exact same red it’s always been!”

“Well, it wasn’t red enough today.”

I was confused. “And then?”

“And then she wasn’t tired enough to take a nap, and then she didn’t like my cookies anymore, and then her leg hurt, and then the spoon made her teeth feel weird, and then she put her coat on and hasn’t taken it off since then. . . . It was a hard day is what I’m saying. But I don’t think it has anything to do with crayons and bread.”

I ran a hand over my face and tried to clear my thoughts. “She’s been so good so far.”

“She’s been wonderful. She’s
still
wonderful. I just think it’s all starting to hit her. And your staying late tonight probably didn’t help.”

“I had play tryouts.”

“She knows that.”

“And I’ll have play practices nearly every evening starting next week.” I felt familiar walls closing in around me. They were labeled in Shayla’s favorite red with glaring words like
motherhood
,
responsibility
,
dependence
, and
failure
.

“It’s not just that, Shelby. You realize that, don’t you?”

“I’m not sure I want to. . . .”

“Kids are resilient, but they still feel loss. They live it and then they relive it, and it gets triggered by small things that seem completely insignificant.”

Insignificant. “Like moving halfway across the world with a new mother who isn’t really her mother?”

“Like losing a hair clip her daddy gave her. It’s a matter of grief.”

I laughed without humor and sank lower in my chair, my head against the backrest, the strain of the last two weeks suddenly weighing heavy on my limbs. I was doing my best to handle teaching in a new school and not knowing the language and directing a play that so far had only one actor. But a four-year-old child whose grief was making her leg hurt and her teeth feel weird? It felt like the proverbial last straw, and I could hear the camel’s back straining. “She hates being here,” I said.

“I wouldn’t say that.”

I took a long, deep, resigned breath. “Maybe we should’ve . . .”

“Don’t you go second-guessing yourself, Shelby.” Bev’s voice was soft but firm.

“I knew it might be too soon. . . . I knew it before we came.”

“And you haven’t been here long enough to gauge anything yet. Give yourself time.”

“But Shayla’s . . .”

“Shayla has lost her dad.”

“And her country and her day care friends and her Wonder Bread . . .”

Bev leaned across the coffee table, grabbed my hand and pulled it toward her, clasping it in both of hers. “Shayla has lost her dad,” she repeated, more firmly this time. “All the rest is just more losses that remind her of that one. She’s not accumulating loss; she’s reliving it. And there are going to be days like today when the loss makes her life feel a little less red than she wants it to be.”

“I’m still pretty new at this mothering thing, Bev. How do I know if I’m doing it right?”

“You are doing it right. You’re setting firm boundaries and loving her fiercely,” she assured me, squeezing my hand in hers. “That worry you’re feeling in the pit of your stomach? It means you’ve got the most important part right.”

“Play season starts next week.” I felt backed into a corner. “I’ll be getting home late and . . .”

“So she’ll have a few more days like today and she’ll throw a temper tantrum or two and you’ll reassure her that you love her and she’ll still love you no matter what.”

I sighed and straightened. “I promised her we wouldn’t stay if it got too hard.”

“And I promise you I’ll let you know when you have real cause to be worried. Right now, she’s just acting exactly the way she should under these circumstances.”

“Are you sure?”

She smiled. “I’m sure.”

The mystery and responsibility of motherhood both baffled and exhausted me. “How old were your kids when you finally figured it all out?”

“Oh, twenty and twenty-two.” She laughed. “It’s not a learning
curve
, Shelby. It’s a learning
slope
. It just keeps on going up.”

When I entered the kitchen, Shayla was slumped over her drawing in her fuzzy pink coat, fast asleep.

“You want Gus to drive you home when he gets back from the store?”

I shook my head. There were few things in life that brought me the kind of marrow-deep peace I felt when I held Shayla’s softness in my arms. When I picked her up, partially waking her in the process, she wrapped her legs around my waist and both her arms around my neck and held on tight. And we walked home like that, me embracing her and her embracing me, me rescuing her and her rescuing me. And the sun setting over Kandern seemed just a little redder somehow.

SIX MONTHS EARLIER

“Nice,” Trey said.

I looked around the condo and wondered what he was seeing that I wasn’t. Nice? The walls were straight and the windows were clean, I’d give him that. The laminate floors weren’t bad either and the fairly new kitchen held definite potential, but nice? No. The condo was an eclectic collection of old-man smells and single-guy knickknacks and way too many small-child toys. The only draperies I’d seen were in the balloon-themed bedroom upstairs, and the furniture from top to bottom was a tribute to the worst the ’70s had to offer.

“Sure, Trey,” I said. “This is nice. Nice like
All in the Family
meets
Sesame Street
.”

But it was tidy and warm and spacious and in a good part of town, and most importantly, just a few blocks from L’Envie.

“Maybe I’ll buy you a lava lamp as a housewarming present,” Trey said.

I swatted his arm and walked to the bay windows overlooking a small, man-made pond. I tried to picture a younger Shayla out there feeding the ducks, her two-year-old bowlegs pumping stiffly as she chased them into the pond. And I tried to picture a tall, sixty-year-old man, slightly stooped with age and regret, trying to catch her before she fell in, then both of them walking slowly back to the condo, hand in hand, while he pointed out trees and flowers and stones to his tiny, adoring daughter.

It was the “adoring” part I had the most trouble imagining. Yet every surface in the condo seemed to hold pictures of a devoted father and his loving child picking pumpkins, decorating Christmas trees, swimming at the beach, and posing with Mickey Mouse. I hadn’t seen one picture that didn’t reflect utter happiness and mutual affection. Even in the snapshot of Shayla in the hospital that I’d found in a kitchen drawer, the little girl, dwarfed by her big bed and the monstrous teddy bear she was hugging, had something that looked like serenity in her eyes. The note on the back of the picture said, “Shayla—tonsils—Apr. 15,” and I had stared at the handwriting until it blurred, trying to find a trace of familiarity in it.

“So what do you think?” Trey asked from right behind me.

“About what?”

“Oh, you know, the price of gas. The condo, Shelby! What do you think about the condo?”

I sighed and smiled. “It looks just the same as it did last week, and just the same as the week before that.”

“And . . . ?”

I took a deep breath and held the keys up so they dangled between us.

“You’re going to keep it?” He sounded pleased, unaffected by
the conflict between the hand-me-down home and my hand-me-down wounds.

“Sorta.” I took his hand and dropped the keys into it. “Can I use the couch if I stay overnight?”

His gray-green eyes got wider. He opened his mouth, then shut it and frowned. When he opened it again, I held up a finger to stanch the flow of perfectly rational arguments I knew was coming and launched into a monologue of my own instead.

“It’s perfect, Trey. Perfect for you. It’s close to work. It’s furnished. . . .”

He wrinkled his nose.

“It’s got a new kitchen.”

He looked more hopeful.

“It’s in a good neighborhood, and—” I grabbed his shoulders—“it’s not a pantry!”

“I don’t sleep in a pant—”

“You do. You’ve moved a cot and a lamp into it, but Trey, it—is—a—pantry!”

“This is your place. He left it to you.”

“And I want you to have it.”

“All right, we’ve got to talk,” he said grimly, taking my hand and dragging me to the couch.

“Trey . . .” We sat facing each other on the green-and-orange hide-a-bed that squeaked when we moved, and Trey kept my hand firmly in his.

“Shell . . .” He paused and shook his head with a smile that said “my sister the doofus.” “You are not giving this condo to me. Period. It’s paid for. It’s cute.”

I raised a dubious eyebrow.

“You know what? It’s everything you just told me it was. So use it! Live in it!”

“It was his,” I said. The words sounded brittle.

“And you think that has any less of an effect on me?”

I shook my head. “I think you’re stronger, though.”

He laughed at that. “And you’re . . . what? Weak? Helpless?”

“Furious.”

“I know. It’s a terrible cut, but seriously, Shell, your hair will grow back.”

“Trey . . .”

“I don’t know why he left it for you, but he did. So . . . be thankful. It’s your place now. At least, it will be once you’ve burned all the furniture and painted some walls. And I know a great bathroom guy if you want to remodel that.”

“You know,” I said, finally voicing the thought that had been on the tip of my mind for the past three weeks, “you should be furious too. You were just as much his kid as I was, and you were hit by just as much of his shrapnel. You were his firstborn, Trey, and I can’t figure out for the life of me why you’re taking all this so well. You should be hating me for being on the receiving end of his last will and testament.”

He shrugged and smiled some more, but there was something bruised in his eyes.

“In any other family,” I continued, rolling my eyes at the ridiculousness of the whole thing, “Mom and Dad would leave a nice little bundle of junk for their kids to inherit. A stamp collection. A few picture albums. A time-share in Aruba. Maybe even a dog. But in ours?” I laughed. Then I laughed again, harder.

By the third laugh, I knew I was on the verge of hysterics, so I reeled in the humor and put a lid on the levity. “In our family, Dad leaves, Mom dies, Shell and Trey move on; then Dad dies too and . . .” I wasn’t sure where the tears had come from. They weren’t part of the plan.

I swallowed hard. “Dad dies,” I resumed, “and we inherit what? No—wait. Not
we
. Just me. What’s up with that?
I
inherit—me, Shelby Davis—I inherit a condo, a truckload of money, and a four-year-old half sister he had with heaven knows who. Trey,” I said, my voice brimming with incredulous anger, “
weak
doesn’t begin to cover what I’m feeling—what I’ve been feeling since Dad’s lawyer knocked on my door. I am winded, stunned . . .”

The tears came in earnest then. “I don’t know what to do,” I groaned, leaning into Trey with abject devastation forcing sobs from my constricted lungs. Three weeks of utter desperation burst through my restraint and rained a bruising hail of betrayal, fear, and anguish down on me.

And Trey? Trey remained the person he had always been—my anchor, my defender, my friend. He was the eight-year-old boy who patted my back and dried my tears, the twelve-year-old rescuer who convinced me we’d be fine, the sixteen-year-old knight who promised to make it better, and the thirty-six-year-old champion who persuaded me that this latest assault would not shatter me either. Nothing else my dad had done had managed to destroy me, and this—this aberration both for Trey and for me—would not undo us.

“I need you to keep the condo,” I told him when reality had grown more bearable again. “And we’re splitting the savings. I want you to have a home, Trey. I’ve already got my own and it feels like me. So take this one. Take it just to infuriate him, wherever he is, because he didn’t leave it to you.”

“You make a good case.”

“He was your father too.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“And if this is his last-ditch, posthumous attempt at hurting us, we need to show him that he can’t.”

“I don’t know, Shelby.”

“I do,” I said, and for the first time in forever, I actually felt certain of one thing. “This is a good thing for you, Trey. It’s what you need. And it’s what I need because it’s driving me nuts picturing my brother sleeping in a pantry.”

“I—”

“Shut it, Trey. You’re taking this place off my hands. And that’s it. Done. ‘Signed, sealed, delivered . . .’”

“‘. . . I’m yours.’”

We spent a few moments talking about other things. Another tactic we’d developed in thirtysome years of deliberate denial.

Then Trey came back to the trauma at hand. “So . . . can we talk about this?”

“I thought we just did.”

“No, about Shayla.”

Shayla.
“Well, I’ve pawned this place off on you and the money off on an accountant. What do you think? Can I pawn Shayla off on the state of Illinois?”

He didn’t answer. He just looked at me. I suddenly understood what microwave popcorn felt like. He was watching me pop and waiting for me to be finished.

“What do you think I should do?” I asked.

“Be true to yourself.”

“So helpful.”

“I try.”

“And ‘myself’ is . . . ?”

“‘Yourself’ has a good heart. A warm heart. Something you didn’t inherit from our dad.”

Deep breath. “Trey . . . She’s so—”

“You know, there’s a chance—a very small chance—that the old
man got a couple things right in his life. The first was marrying Mom. No one else would have put up with him for so long.”

“And the second?”

“Giving his daughter to the best possible person for the job.”

“You mean giving his
illegitimate
four-year-old daughter to his
estranged
thirty-five-year-old daughter.”

“Hey, I never said this family didn’t put the
fun
in
dysfunction
!” He wandered to the kitchen and started opening cupboards. “And in his defense, it looks like he actually put some thought into things this time. I mean, it’s not like he just handed off his daughter and expected you to make do. She comes fully loaded with a condo, a college fund, a cuckoo clock, and a babysitting uncle.”

“And a ’64 Impala.” I smiled at his incredulous look. “Convertible. Cherry red.”

“He left you his car, too?”

“Two of them, actually. I’m donating one, but the Impala’s for you. Custom-restored and kept in mothballs since Shayla was born.” I held up a second set of keys. “Congratulations, my friend. You’re the new owner of your very own chick magnet.”

He shook his head. “A ’64 Chevy, huh? Too bad I don’t have a thing for fifty-year-old broads.” He took the keys and stared at them for a moment, considering the emotional strings he knew would be attached. Then he pocketed them and let his dimples reveal his conclusion. “You sure?”

“I’m sure,” I answered.

“About the condo, too?”

“Yup.” I followed him toward the kitchen and took stock of the time and effort he’d need to invest to rid the space of my father’s presence. “So—you think you can do something with this mess?”

He leaned against the counter and surveyed the small room.
“I think I know just the right shade of Italian tile to make the cupboards pop.”

From where I sat on the edge of the stage at the front of the auditorium, I could hear Italian, French, and a couple other languages I didn’t recognize. It was round two of the play auditions, and there were only a little over twenty students in attendance this time. I’d thanked the rest of them for their efforts and, squelching the part of me that wanted to throw myself at their feet and beg for their forgiveness, had informed them that there just weren’t parts that suited them in this year’s play. So the twenty-three pairs of eyes begging me for mercy on this cloudy afternoon were all the more nervous about the verdict to come, and their performance jitters had made them revert to their comfort languages to express their insecurities.

The vulnerability of these young people had become increasingly evident in my first couple of weeks in Germany. At the beginning of my time here, they had shown few differences from the teenagers I’d taught back home. They had the same scattered study habits, the same discipline issues, and the same aversion to rules. All of those were familiar to me—and somehow comforting, too. But there were other facets to these students that I was only beginning to discern.

A handful of them had asked if they could eat their sack lunches in my classroom every day, and I had allowed it, as the only alternatives were a crowded, noisy cafeteria and the bleachers in the gym. So Grace, Nicole, Liz, Sunny, and Fiona had become regular lunchtime companions. Instead of talking among themselves, though, they’d drawn me into their discussions, asking my opinion
on topics as varied as morality, global warming, and Lindsay Lohan’s latest scandal. They wanted more from me than a good grade and a manageable homework load. They wanted my input and my guidance, and I found it disconcerting to be personally involved in the lives of students in a way I’d never been before. I was happy to try, though, because I was coming to love these contradictory creatures—self-sufficient and dependent, mature and naive, complex yet still simple enough to play duck-duck-goose in the school parking lot when there was nothing else to do.

But it was another kind of play the students had on their minds this afternoon. I’d cast four parts already, though I’d told no one yet, but I was still looking to fill several major roles, including C. S. Lewis himself and Joy Gresham, the New York native who had blown into Lewis’s life like a tornado of cynicism and somehow managed to transform the stodgy scholar into a man softened and empowered by love. Needless to say, the role was a challenge of monumental proportions, and my sights were set not so much on finding the best actress as on finding the least bad one. It was an approach I’d used in the past for buying cars and choosing shoes, and I’d found it to be immensely practical, if not entirely gratifying.