All the Broken Things (21 page)

Bo was now holding Orange aloft as she tried to dive for the boat. “No, Orange.”

“I got her,” said Emily. “Let her go. I have her.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.” And there she was, his sister, cradled in Emily’s lap, floating across the water, the dinghy rocking erratically. “Shh,” said Emily. “Shh, Orange,” and his sister began to calm, and the boat did too.

No one talked for some time and it was only the thick air, humid and still, and birdcall they had not noticed before, and a bumblebee, and some sounds Bo could not identify—city and nature all blended. Orange rotated along the water, her head resting on Emily’s legs, a little strand of drool dangling from her mouth.

Bo squatted and then lay down so that he could watch his sister from almost the same level, and their eyes
could lock—if Orange would even look, which she would not. Bo felt himself rocked by the pulse of the moving water, mesmerized, so that the splash completely surprised him. He looked up to see a plume of green and transparent water, as if the water itself were bucking and thrashing, and then he saw Orange’s sundress billowing as she landed face down in the pool. He stood up before he knew he was standing up. And then he knew he had to jump in.

He looked to Emily, frozen in the moment. She leaned over the dinghy and grabbed the straps of the sundress and pulled. His sister sputtered as she came out of the water and began to flail her arms, like a crab, a caught lobster. Water streamed off Orange’s protesting self. Back in the boat, she thumped about like a landed fish, and the boat rocked crazily.

“She’s a floater!” Emily said triumphantly. She was laughing down at Orange, trying to keep her still so they wouldn’t capsize. “She’ll be swimming in no time.”

“She almost drowned. She almost—”

“Nonsense. She’s a natural. Come in and grab us, will you? Bring us to the shallow end so I can get us out and get a flutter board.”

“What for?”

“Come on, Bo.”

Orange was thumping wildly, and Bo was spinning back in time to an altercation between his parents right
before they got on the fishing boat, his mother shrieking, “Get on, please get on!” His father—what?—scared?

Emily had one arm curved under Orange’s armpit. Bo could hear his sister’s frantic breathing; it was the most noise she could make without a wall to throw herself against.

“Orange,” Emily said. She sounded like Teacher, and it soothed him, the authority of it. “If you want to go back in the water, Orange, you will have to listen to me. You have to stop squirming and I have to be absolutely sure you will listen to me.”

Orange thrashed for a little longer, then quieted, face up now and panting, her eyes fixed on Emily’s face. Bo was slowly guiding the dinghy along the side of the pool toward the shallow end. Once they arrived, Emily explained to Orange that she had to go with Bo, and again, that she had to listen. Emily jumped into the water and then pulled herself up and out of the pool. Again the surface gulped and the water spun in surprising ways, bubbles, fog, a kind of dance, and Bo found himself unable to look away.

The flutter board was a rectangular bit of red foam. Bo knew that the swimmer was meant to hold onto it, and kick and so move about safely in the water.

“Emily,” he said. “She hasn’t got proper fingers.”

“Shh,” said Emily. “It doesn’t matter. Come. Orange, come. Jump.”

“She can’t,” said Bo. His sister was twisting to get out of his grip. “I’m holding onto her.”

“Then let her go, Bo. She’s a floater,” Emily said, as if this would be entirely obvious to anyone. “I have her.”

She bit him then, and he let her go before he could think about it. She scuttled sideways and threw herself into the pool. The water reached out its wet hands and grabbed her, and then the hands were gone, as the water drank her. The water swallowed her, but she bobbed, face-up, jubilant, whipping her head back and forth. Emily pulled her over and slipped the foam under her belly.

“You can swim, Orange.” She held her along the back and made a sound like “Wheeeee” as she swung the flutter board in a wide curve. “Kick! Kick! That’s it. Harder. This leg, then this leg,” and here Emily held one leg, and then the other, and began counting a rhythm she wanted Orange to follow.

Emily looked up at Bo. “Come on in, Bo.”

“No,” he said. “I can’t.” Even watching Orange, he thought he would die.

T
HAT WEEK HEATED THE CITY UP
, but Bo and Orange did not go back to Emily’s pool. The class was busy with rehearsals and fittings and finding last-minute props. And then it was the day of the play. They had made programs
in art class. Two children from grade seven were going to hand them to the audience as they entered the auditorium.

Late that afternoon, after school, his mum fussing with a seam on his costume in the kitchen and Orange asleep, Bo heard the ice-cream truck bell, and scooped some change from the little box in his room. He intended to take the cone and go for a walk with it, but he was anxious, so instead he wandered to the yard, hung out with Bear. He’d forgotten about losing the house, he’d forgotten all of it. And later he would think how he should have been paying more attention, how there must have been details he missed, some explanation.

Instead he dripped ice cream into Bear’s mouth, and later ate a tense meal, with Max holding forth about the new season, and all the opportunities a curiosity might have on the U.S. circuit—he meant Bear but he kept glancing at Orange and Rose.

Rose caught Bo staring at her, and made a face. “What is it, Bo?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you nervous about tonight?”

“Nope.” But of course he was. His stomach was churning and clenching and he had been to the bathroom three times since he got home from school.

At the school, after dinner, Teacher gave final instructions as Rose fussed with pins and Velcro. The insular feeling that had built around the play, the particular
camaraderie that had formed as they rehearsed, was being challenged by the swelling noise of people chatting and laughing and moving chairs about on the other side of the curtain. Bo had a floating feeling, standing there in his silver braid and velvet costume, and he looked across to find his mother, who was fixing the hem of Emily’s gown where she’d stepped on it and it had torn. She was too polite and quiet to tell Emily to stay still, and she struggled with the shaking fabric as Emily wiggled.

Teacher was suddenly in front of them. “You’ll have to stop talking,” she said, not seeming to notice that Rose and Emily had not been talking. “The curtain is about to rise.” Bo had never seen her so flustered.

The curtain did not rise but pulled apart, Sally working the silken ropes to reveal Peter and Ernie playing the grafted tree, holding papier mâché limbs aloft, one with apples, the other with pears, all fruit the children had made and painted that term. They had been instructed to stay quiet until the audience stilled, and then take their cue from Rose, who sat on a chair just below them at midstage.

Bo felt air brush his face, watched the golden fabric of Emily’s gown shimmer, and let his brain wander knowing there was some time until his cue. He thought of Bear, and Loralei. He thought of Gerry, who had told him that Max had put a great deal of stock in Bear. He wanted to prove something at the Ex, so that he would be invited back the following year.

“We gotta be our best every day,” Gerry had said, and when Bo looked back quizzically, he growled, “A man has to earn a living,” as if this should be self-evident. To Bo, it rang true. He would have to take care of his mother, and of Orange. He would have to take care of Orange for her whole life. He shuddered at the sudden image of the doctor saying how Orange’s life expectancy was short, and that smug look that crossed his face. It was dishonourable to hit a doctor, but Bo wished he could go back in time and smack him.

And then he heard Emily screaming and the pounding of her feet across the stage and knew the scene was ending and he’d be on. And before too long, he was facing the audience, looking stage left and stage right for his queen. He looked behind him and there she was, her back to him, and then she turned. They were alone. Fake blood trickled down her face. Emily was very good at looking unhappy. She wailed and told him the story of how she’d fallen asleep and met the Fairy King in her dreams and how now she would have to go with him.

Bo summoned his army to stand guard against the Fairy King, and as they tromped around, the tree sidled back onstage, and Emily fell into a swoon, and he and the army stood guard while the lights dimmed, until it was so dark that no one could see. A single spotlight followed Michael as he rode in on the white hobbyhorse his father had carved. Its eyes gleamed so real. Bo stood right behind the action,
and watched Emily follow Michael offstage, and felt an awful thickening anxiety that he could not name. He liked Michael well enough, but in this moment, he despised him.

When the lights rose and the guards realized she was gone, Sir Orfeo’s rage and sudden emotional collapse merged with Bo’s feelings, so that it felt good to rage and hate and swoon. He projected his lines so clearly and with such intention, he saw Teacher smile. He commanded his favourite baron: “Take care of my lands while I’m away. I will go into the wilderness, and live there evermore with wild beasts in grey woods.”

The guards and ladies cried how they did not want him to leave. There was much weeping and lamentation. Even Peter and Ernie looked devastated, as they had been directed to look, though Bo saw their veiled amusement and tried not to laugh. Backstage, Bo stripped off his royal garments and donned a tunic his mother had fashioned from a potato sack. Before the crowd, he turned and turned and turned, and as he did, the others came back onstage dressed as trees and tried to tear at him.

When he had turned ten times or more, he bent over a cluster of the trees and fetched his disguise, and when he spun to face the audience, Ernie said, “Through wood and over heath, into the wilderness, Orfeo went. There was nothing there to give him comfort, and he lived in great distress. Where he had lain upon a bed of purple linen, now he had hard heather. He covered himself with
leaves and branches, and in winter, he covered himself in moss to stay warm. For food he dug to find his fill of roots. Sir Orfeo suffered ten years and more with only his harp and the wild beasts to keep him company.”

The fake grey beard and wig straggled down to Bo’s waist and he attempted to look utterly despondent.

Act Two ended and Act Three began, the play un-spooling like a dream. Bo descended to the underworld and walked through its devastation. He sang to the Fairy King and won Heurodis from the dead. And then all was fine, and Orfeo and Heurodis ruled again in peace, and at last, like some truly strange magic, the audience erupted into applause.

Bo was stricken by how he must come away from being Orfeo and be himself, bowing and smiling out into the clapping darkness. Looking down, there was Rose, his mother, beaming up at him. She could look sad even in her pride. But still. He had not missed a line.

They walked home together, with Bo asking her if she had seen this and that small mistake they had made. His mother finally stopped him, saying, “Whatever happens, I will always be proud of you.”

He did not ask because he wanted to think that it meant she loved him, and that no one knew the future, which she did mean. Bo smiled at her and said, “Thanks.”

Max was minding Orange, and Bo spent the rest of the walk preparing how to avoid him once he got home.
The house was quiet when they arrived, and Max was in the kitchen. Orange must be asleep. Bo turned toward his bedroom, but Max called out to him.

“How did it go, Bo?”

“Okay,” he said. And then, because he really did not want to talk to Max, he said to Rose, “I’m really tired, Mum. I’m going to go to bed.”

She nodded. “You were very convincing as Sir Orfeo,” she said. “You were a real hero with all those lines too.” She hugged him.

Bo smiled and hugged her back. He had not hugged his mother in so long, it felt strange. He climbed into his bed and nestled his head into his pillow, listening to the murmurs of Max and his mother far off, and then it was morning. Nothing had disturbed his sleep, and he had not dreamt at all.