Love Me Broken (9 page)

“I heard a noise,” I say feebly, and I don’t move.

My mom looks away, her eyes scanning the room distrustfully. She looks lost, as if trying to remember how she got here. She looks so small and helpless that I have the urge to comfort her, to tell her it’s all right. But I can’t get rid of the feeling that I’ve caught her in some forbidden place.

I shake my head. But it’s not forbidden. This is Conner’s room, that’s all. Why should it feel so wrong to be in here?

Because he’s not here
, my mind answers.

My mom is still on the bed, and I am taken away from my own thoughts by the sound of a long, exhausted sigh. I look at her, and she is staring away, toward the closed blinds. Then her shoulders start to shake, and her face pinches with embarrassment—but she can’t stop herself. There are tears melting down her face, and my own eyes mist, seeing her struggle.

I take a step toward her. “It’s okay, Mom,” I say.

We’ve never been as touchy-feely as some other families. I often watched with wonder when Nicole would hug and kiss her mother on the way out the door, for no reason at all. Which was strange, because Nicole’s mother was otherwise unreliable. Nicole herself had to stay with us for extended periods of time when we were growing up. My parents were always there for us. But still, we didn’t hug.

When I make my way across the room, my mom notices and starts to shake her head. “I’m fine,” she says, but her voice cracks.

“I know,” I say, and surprise us both by sitting down next to her on the bed. I’m on the end of the bed, the far side from the pillow. But even from here, when I sit down, I can smell Conner.

I never thought about it before. I had pictured his face, remembered his laugh. But I had never thought about his smell, the way only he smelled. And I am overwhelmed with a new layer of grief, a new way to miss him.

He shouldn’t have died so young. I should have paid better attention on the road, stopped the car, done
something
.

But I don’t cry. My eyes mist and I find I can’t cry. The sorrow is too deep.

And somehow, it seems too personal to cry in front of my mom. Knowing she’s here lets me lock away the memory of Conner’s scent, with the understanding that I will deal with it later. I will deal with it twice over, just as long as I don’t have to deal with it now.

My mom’s breathing is labored. It’s like if she breathes, she’ll start sobbing. I don’t think she wants to cry in front of me either.

I sit facing away from her and start to stroke the comforter absentmindedly. I know I should cry. A large part of me feels like crying. But instead it seems suddenly important to feel the grain of the fabric against my fingers, to feel something solid and real.

“What are you doing?” my mom asks, turning toward me. I look down and realize I’ve pulled up the corner of the bed. It’s no longer perfectly made. “Look what you’ve done!”

“I’m sorry,” I say, and I stand. She starts smoothing out the covers where I sat. She combs over it with her hands again and again, and I honestly can’t see any difference. “I think it’s fine, Mom,” I say, and her head snaps up at me. She’s looking at me with such anger that I worry she might hit me.

“Fine? Fine?” she asks, her voice getting louder. “This is all I have left! This is all that I have left of my
son
. Can’t you give me just that? Or do you have to take everything from me?”

I am backing up, making my way to the door. I am hurt, her words bold and unfair. But I’m also angry, and it’s the anger that makes me speak up. At the door, my hand on the knob, I say, “He was my brother, too. I loved him. It’s not just you.”

She shakes her head and answers immediately, “Then why did you let him die?”

My mouth opens, but there’s no air in the room. She stares at me a moment, her face cross and then confused again. She blinks and her eyes fill with tears. She looks back down at the comforter and feebly runs her hand along it again. “Get out,” she whispers. “Get out.”

I close the door and rush down the stairs. I can’t think. I can’t feel. All I can do is repeat her last words in my head over and over again.

Then why did you let him die?

I reach the first floor and turn away from the kitchen. I open the door to the garage and catch Prickly Pete eating from the tin. The moment he sees me at the doorway, he rushes to the boxes and hides.

I come into the garage and shut the door behind me. “Pete?” I call, my voice wavering. “Come on, boy. Just let me pet you.”

I collapse into a sitting position in the middle of the garage, all of my strength gone. I sit with my legs crossed, facing the boxes, the tin of cat food in front of me. I don’t want to be here. I want to be far, far away. I want to be nowhere.

“Please,” I say. “I just need someone to be nice to me.”

For a moment I think I might cry. Really break down and cry.

But instead I just sit there, alone in the empty garage, waiting for a cat that never comes.

“Nah, man,” Levi says, washing the grease from his hands in the sink. “Girls just don’t
get
me, you know?”

We’re midway through our second day at the shop, and I’m starting to catch on to the flow of things. I’m still supervised constantly by Levi—not in a controlling way, more in a brotherly, watching out for me kind of way.

“I don’t know,” I say. I hand him a towel and then soap up my own hands, even though I haven’t gotten nearly as dirty as Levi. He’s been doing most of the work, narrating as he goes.

“Maybe it’s my hair,” he says, looking at himself in the mirror. He stares a moment at his long, messy black hair. Then he shakes his head. “Nah. It’s more than that. It’s because I’m a bum.”

“You’ve got a job,” I offer. We’re walking back to the register now. Next up in my training is logging into the ancient computer system and checking customers in and out. “You’ve got a stable place to live. That doesn’t sound like a bum to me.”

He considers this. “It’s the way I live. Girls want a guy who has his shit together. All I’ve got is a place to sleep with a mattress on the floor.”

I didn’t know this about his bed. I haven’t been in Levi’s room yet. Last night we hung out and played video games in the living room, and then we went to our separate bedrooms. I didn’t really talk a whole lot last night, but Levi didn’t seem to mind. He seemed genuinely relieved to have someone there. If I’ve got to be honest, I think the guy was pretty lonely living by himself. I mean, what kind of person takes in a random stranger from the Internet to begin with? He’s got to be desperate for friends. And to be honest, I don’t really know why. He seems perfectly likable to me.

“You could
buy
a bedframe,” I tell him.

He shrugs. “I’d rather have a shop.”

Again with the shop. For someone who plays video games and smokes as much as he does, Levi is pretty single-minded about wanting to own this shop. I think that’s why I like Levi. He’s got goals. I can’t be friends with someone I can’t respect.

He starts showing me the register, making a login name and password for me. I almost tell him not to bother. I won’t be here long enough to need my own, but I guess there are security issues involved. I even felt bad about wasting time when he made me a nametag.

“It’s a pretty simple system,” he says. “Although it’s slow as hell. I think it’ll be the first thing I replace.”

I don’t comment, and he continues the training. It’s not complicated, but it’s a lot of information all at once, and I’m relieved when I hear the roar of a motorcycle on the street. It’s a customer, and we can take a break.

When the motorcycle turns in, I see that it is an antique bike with a sidecar, one of those old ones from World War II. This might be distinctive enough in itself, but as the bike comes to a halt, I see the driver and passenger in the sidecar—and I know I won’t get this customer confused with anyone else.

The driver is a thin old woman in tight brown leather. She’s wearing goggles under an old-fashioned bucket helmet. She climbs off the bike with surprising grace and strides over to the register. She pulls off her helmet to reveal bushy gray hair, red lipstick, and wild, energetic eyes. She’s laughing, and slaps her hand on the counter.

“Levi!” she shouts. “Just the man I want to see.”

Levi goes over for a hug, and I use the opportunity to stare openly at the woman’s passenger.

It’s a dog—a great big bloodhound. He’s sitting lazily in the passenger car, staring at me from behind his own set of goggles.

The lady and Levi break their hug, and Levi introduces me.

“Adam, this is one of our very best customers, Eliza Burnside.”

I reach out a hand and she shakes it vigorously. Bright, small earrings dangle from her ears, and I can’t tell but I think they might be diamonds.

“Nice to meet you, boy,” she says. Then she leans in a little closer and says, “If I were eighty years younger, I’d be all over you.”

My eyes go wide, and I’m not sure how to react. This seems to have been her intention, as she lets out a loud, boisterous laugh and pats me on the arm. Then she turns to Levi, handing him a set of keys.

“Just the oil today,” she tells him. “And keep a watchful eye on the General.”

“Sure thing. Did you want to say hello to Watson?”

She looks up at the ceiling, as if seeing through the floor. “I’ve got an appointment to catch first. I’ll see him when I pick up.”

Levi smiles. “No problem. See you in an hour?”

“If I don’t fall over dead on the way,” she says. Then she turns to me again and gives me a wink. “See you later, new boy.”

She waltzes out the garage door and turns to the street. When she gets to the sidewalk, she flips her scarf around her shoulder, then marches on with her body erect.

I’m still trying to recover as Levi has me check her bike into the computer. “Who
was
she?” I ask.

“Eliza Burnside, an Astoria institution. She’s pretty cool, for an old lady.”

I take this in, and then look over the register to her bike and sidecar. “She’s left her dog.”

Levi nods. “Uh-huh. I watch the General for her while she does her errands.”

“She named her dog the General?” I ask, laughing.

“General Burnside,” Levi corrects. “They’re inseparable, except the General doesn’t really get along with other people. He’ll bark and jump on them, and she just laughs. People complained, threatened to put him down, so now when she goes on errands she leaves him here.”

I look again at the dog. He looks back at me, and I imagine the huge creature jumping on strangers in the street, stopping traffic and barking at frightened schoolchildren. “Is he dangerous?” I ask.

Levi shakes his head. “Not unless he thinks you’re a threat to Eliza.”

We finish with the register and start working on her bike. The first step is for Levi to lure the General out of his sidecar with a few pieces of beef jerky, which I learn are kept under the counter for that exact purpose. He ties up the dog in the corner of the room and sets out a bowl of water before we go back to the bike.

“It’s a beast,” I say, looking at the bike. “How long has she had it?”

“Her husband’s,” Levi says. “He died years ago. Apparently, she learned to ride as a way to commemorate him, and then just sort of fell in love with it.”

Levi looks briefly at the bike, and I notice the old-fashioned speedometer and the siding buffed with decades of use. Then Levi starts to inspect the inside.

He’s in the middle of showing me the differences between her bike and a modern one when he stops. He doesn’t just stop—he freezes with the strangest look on his face. His eyes are wide, and he looks like he’s seen a ghost. I am about to ask what’s wrong when I hear a small cough from the open garage door behind me.

I turn, and there is this girl, a redhead. She’s wearing a tight green shirt and even tighter jeans that show off her figure. She’s standing with a shy smile, and she holds a basket of muffins. She looks like a pin-up model, and I wonder if I’m dreaming.

Then I realize: it’s Erica.

I’m stunned. She looks quite different when she’s not in her pajamas. She looks...