In Broken Places (5 page)

“Eat!”
my dad yelled again, and when Trey, frozen by fear, didn’t budge, he grabbed a fistful of zucchini and mashed it against his son’s mouth. I saw tears spring out and balance on Trey’s lower eyelids as he clamped his jaw shut and furrowed his eyebrows in a superhuman effort to keep emotions at bay. He had never liked zucchini, had always gagged on it like I gagged on mushrooms, and I knew he’d rather have eaten worms at that moment than chewed on the green triangles he’d so meticulously separated from the rest of his stir-fry. I looked at his plate where the vegetables had been stacked in neat little piles until moments ago. We’d both learned early on that tall stacks made quantities look smaller, and I’d often felt a little jealous that
Trey’s most detested food was so much more stackable than my despised fried mushrooms.

But the ploy hadn’t fooled our dad today. He’d come home from work with so much tension ricocheting around inside him that I thought he should have sounded like a beehive. Instead, he sounded like one of those bad guys on TV that hold up banks with masks on their faces—and as a result, my brother looked like one of those dogs that live at rest stops on the highway. I wouldn’t forgive my dad for reducing him to that. Not ever. Trey seemed to have shrunk—so much so that I thought I might be taller than him at last. But I knew that was only a for-now kind of thing. He’d grow back to his normal size once my dad slammed out of the house and took off, tires squealing, in his fancy black car.

Right now, though, there was only razor-sharp anger and ugly bullet-words that seemed to be striking my brother from the inside out. I wanted to run around the table and hit my dad’s chest until he turned his wrath on me. It was okay for me to cry—I could take it—but I was afraid of what would happen to Trey if those shimmering tears ever fell from their perch onto his flushed cheeks. They would hurt him much more than any of my father’s words.

We’d been well trained by now, though. We knew to sit still as statues while my dad ranted and raved. Still as the green soldier on the pedestal in the park. Still as the air when my dad’s anger ran out and all we could hear was pieces of our souls drifting to the gouged linoleum like shards of shattered shell.

“You did this,” my dad screamed, turning his bile on my mother, who stood clutching the back of a chair on the other side of Trey. His voice sneered as he continued. “You sissified him with your cooing and fawning and now we’re stuck with a mama’s boy that doesn’t have the guts to eat his ve-ge-ta-bles. . . .” He yelled the last word right into Trey’s ear and I saw my brother flinch, bits of zucchini still stuck to
his face. I looked to my mom, but there was no salvation there. Only a grown-up reflection of my brother’s gut-sick fear.

So I did what I always did when my dad went all Wicked Witch of the West on us. I locked eyes with Trey, whether he could see me or not, and designed stuffed animals in my mind. I was on animal number three when I heard the door slam and my dad’s car peel away. I wondered if the stuffed animal in Trey’s mind was blood-red too.

Shayla was excited that she’d had two mornings today—the first one with the bright-red sunrise, the shower, and the strawberry jam, and the second one without the sunrise and shower, but with more strawberry jam. Strawberry jam was a big item in Shayla’s little life. I was only grateful that she’d fallen back to sleep for a couple hours between her two breakfasts. Toward the middle of our “second morning,” we ventured out of our new home and into the streets of Kandern. A short walk brought us to the
Hauptstrasse
, a street lined with small stores and restaurants that ran the length of the town. I’d read on the Internet that Kandern was actually classified as a city, the smallest city in Germany by some accounts, but the narrowness of the streets and the smallness of the buildings gave it that barely-larger-than-a-village feel I found quaint and endearing.

I decided that if Kandern were human, it would be a middle-aged man with a big, rounded belly, weather-chafed cheeks, and a hesitant smile. He’d be wearing tuxedo pants below the waist and a plaid shirt above it, equal parts sophistication and down-home charm. Kandern was a farmer looking for a banquet and hoping he’d fit in when he got there.

Shayla and I walked up the street hand in hand, pausing to stare
into storefronts at homemade pottery and thick-heeled shoes, then halting again for Shayla to run her fingers under a fountain’s waterspout. Though the rest of the town seemed deserted for a Saturday, one plot of real estate was bustling with activity. A farmer’s market filled the small square, and stands brimming with fresh fruit and vegetables begged me to spend some of the money Gus had loaned us yesterday on an apple for Shayla. I listened to the conversations going on around us as we wandered the market and waited in vain to hear a word I recognized. There were none. That would come eventually, I told myself—but still, I had never felt more foreign, and I found it disconcerting.

When Shayla finished her fruit, we headed into a nineteenth-century church just behind the market and decided in unison that its garish, life-size crucifix, complete with profusely bleeding wounds and dying grimace, was a little too graphic for our tastes. High above us, in the rear balcony, an elderly gentleman brought a pipe organ to life with hands and feet and soul, and the broad chords of “Ode to Joy” filled the church with a warmth and power that made my heart smile. Shayla, unfortunately, wasn’t as entranced as I was with the music, and she dragged me out of the church after just a few minutes to continue our exploration of Kandern.

The square at the center of town, the
Blumenplatz
, was framed by knobby trees and paved with cobblestones. By the time we got there, we’d become accustomed to the greetings we received from just about every person we passed. At first, I’d figured they were mistaking us for someone else, but as I observed other travelers on Kandern’s sidewalks, it became clear that these curt greetings were a common thing in this culture. The word they said sounded like
tuck
, and after a bewildered “They don’t even know us” from Shayla, she’d taken to the game with vigor. She had no clue what
she was saying, but she uttered her
tuck
s with the kind of verve that earned her smiles and pats on the head.

We found a small paper store, on the corner of the
Blumenplatz
, with racks of postcards displayed outside. “Let’s get this one for Twey,” Shayla said, pointing to a picture of a cow posing in front of snowcapped mountains.

“You sure?”

She nodded vigorously. “Twey likes cows,” she said with conviction. “He dwinks milk all the time.”

There was no arguing with that kind of logic, so we bought the card and headed home. Bev and Gus were waiting on our doorstep when we got there.

“Are we late?” I asked, embarrassed to have kept them waiting.

“Not at all!” Gus swung Shayla off the ground and perched her on his shoulder. “We old folks tend to get places early, and today’s no exception.”

Bev wrapped me in a motherly hug. “Did you sleep all right, honey?”

“Right until Shayla woke up.”

“I had two mohnings this mohning,” came Shayla’s voice from above me.

“How’d you manage that?” Gus said.

“I woke up and I ate hawd bwead and then I went to sleep and then I woke up and ate hawd bwead again.”

“You think the bread made an impression on her?” I said to Bev.

“But Shelby said we’d get some diffewent bwead this afternoon and maybe a toastoh to toast it.”

Gus raised an eyebrow at his wife. “Who’s going to break the news?”

“Here’s the bad news, ladies,” Bev announced. “Only grocery
stores are open on Saturday afternoons in Kandern. All the rest of the stores are closed. And they stay closed until Monday morning.”

“They do?” It seemed like a pretty poor economical choice to close stores on the two days of the week when people were actually home, but who was I to question it?

“We can’t get a toastoh?” Shayla asked.

“I’ll loan you mine,” Bev assured her. “But before we do that, how ’bout we go to school and show your mo—and show
Shelby
where she’s going to be working?”

Shayla seemed to think she had a say in the matter and pursed her lips in thought. I laughed at the independent streak that was already so strong in her and wondered what her teen years would be like. For her
and
for me. “Let’s go, Shayla.” I lifted her down from Gus’s shoulder so she could walk next to me on the narrow sidewalk.

We arrived at the school a few minutes later, and Gus gave us a royal tour of the premises. One building was nondescript, four stories high, and had recently had a gym and auditorium built onto it. The second building, which stood behind the first, had just been renovated and was home to a state-of-the-art library. The school’s classrooms were divided between the two buildings, and it was in the second, newly renovated one that I found mine.

As the academic year had started five weeks before, the teacher covering for me had already made herself at home in the space. There were posters on the walls, pictures and quotes, a portrait of Shakespeare and a poem by Frost. The desks were arranged in two arching rows. I counted just twenty-two of them. A good sign indeed. My last teaching assignment had involved inner-city classes of nearly thirty students, and this, in comparison, looked like a cakewalk.

Gus finished our tour with the gym, a tall, broad space flanked on one side by bleachers and on the other by high windows. I
figured I might as well get this visit over with on my first day at school, because chances were slim I’d ever enter the space again. Gyms, in my experience, had nothing to offer but sweat, which I considered humanity’s greatest design flaw, and pain, which only looked noble in the worlds of
Braveheart
and
Saving Private Ryan
. So I looked around, acknowledged the gym’s size and technology, and mentally checked it off my list of places to see.

Gus was giving me a rundown of the competitive sports in which the school’s teams participated when a door above the bleachers opened and a man carrying a bucket entered the gym. Years of effort had trained me well in the art of greeting men who, even from a distance, appeared to be rather attractive. I looked away and focused on my double chins, which Trey insisted I didn’t have. But in the distorted mirror of my mind, they were the size of a cherub’s rear—and nowhere near as cute.

“Hey, Gus,” the sandy-haired man said, raising a hand in greeting.

“Scott! What are you doing working on a Saturday?”

“Beats sitting at home,” the younger man answered. “Where’s Bev?”

“I traded her in for a younger model!” Gus laughed. “Actually, she’s giving a little guest of ours a tour of the ladies’ room. Don’t go too far—she’ll be wanting to see you.”

“Not going anywhere,” Scott answered, hiking up his jeans and hunkering down to peer more closely at the benches in the bleachers. “I’ve got a boatload of gum to scrape off before I’m through here.”

“Great thinking, my friend! That’s one less thing for old Gus to do!”

“A custodian?” I whispered to Gus, my chins swinging against each other in my mind as I spoke.

“The head coach and health teacher,” he answered.

“Scott Taylor!” Bev shrilled from right behind me, scaring me so badly with her deeply Southern exclamation that I thought I’d have to make a trip to the ladies’ room myself. “Get your buns down here so you can meet my new friends!”

Her voice echoed around the gym as Scott threw up his hands in mock surrender. “Yes, ma’am!” he yelled down to a beaming Bev.

“Smart boy,” Gus whispered to me, traces of husbandly pride in his smile. “When Bev gives an order, the only correct answer is a resounding ‘Yes, ma’am!’ Learned that on my honeymoon.”

Scott trotted over to us moments later, and I realized he was taller and younger up close than he’d appeared from afar. A quick glance took stock of his short, wavy hair, his deep-brown eyes, and the shadow of stubble across his jaw. I added love handles to my chin obsession and bent down to straighten Shayla’s blue hair clips.

“Scott, my boy,” Gus said, “I’d like you to meet Shelby Davis, your future wife.”

I straightened slowly—dumbfounded. If Shayla’s eyes could have outgrown her face, they would have done so at that moment. Just as my embarrassment was outgrowing my poise. I looked from Gus’s cheerful smile to Shayla’s frozen stare to Bev’s Cheshire grin. I looked into the rafters, I skimmed the gym’s blue floor, and I sent up a prayer, once again, for a spontaneous Rapture.

“Well, it sure took you long enough,” Scott said, and I could see from my peripheral vision that he was extending a hand toward me. “Where’ve you been all my life?”

The smile in his voice proved either that he had a healthy sense of humor or that he shared a delusional disorder with my
former
friend, Gus. “Running from humiliating moments just like this one,” I answered his question, shaking his hand without ever actually making eye contact.

“She’s the English teacher we’ve been waiting for since the beginning of the school year! And this,” Bev added as if this were the most normal conversation in the world, “is Shayla. Shelby’s daughter.” She caught herself. “I mean . . . Shelby’s . . .”