Break (2 page)

Turns out my jaw is broken too, and now it’s wired shut. My tongue is a dead fish in the center of my mouth, but I talk anyway. “It was just an accident,” I say, as best I can. “I’m an idiot. I’ll try to be more careful.”

“We worry about you,” Dad says, in that thin-as-onionskin voice.

“He’s fine,” Jesse says. “Look at him.”

They look at me. I make my biggest smile, and the wires pull between my teeth.

Mom chews. “He’s getting a black eye.”

“So I’ll look like a prizefighter for a few days. There are worse fates, Mom. Will, shhh.” I wipe orange mush out of his black black baby hair and immediately lean over to the sink to wash my hands. I glance at Jess.

He empties two packets of brown powder into the blender, one for each of us. I don’t ask what it is. Jess makes proteins shakes all the time—and swears he likes them—but it’s still nice of him to share his dinner with me just because I can’t chew. Especially when he, unlike Mom and Dad, knows I did this to myself.

He starts the blender and watches the sludge stir around.

The deal with Jesse is that he has food allergies. I don’t mean like those kids who get a little blotchy when they eat peanuts. And I really don’t mean like those moms who say little Timmy can’t handle Red 40.

Jess’s throat closes up if he eats eggs. Or wheat. Or milk. Or fish. Or nuts, chocolate, strawberries.

Or basically anything.

His blood pressure drops and he swells right up and he can go from fine to dead in less than three minutes. He doesn’t even need to eat the stuff. Touching or breathing it is enough.

I can’t remember everything he’s allergic to. The list is too fucking long. Really, I just freak out if I see him eating. Sometimes I’ll freak out when he’s drinking bottled water. It’s just a reflex.

Will babbles among his screams and shakes his head when Mom pushes more potatoes.

“He’s always a little banged up now.” Dad cuts a bite of lamb and stuffs it into his mouth. “People are going to talk.”

I stretch my arm out, examining the cast. “If they ask, I’ll just tell them Jesse did it.”

Mom snorts. “You’d be in even more pieces if Jesse did it.”

Jesse’s captain of the hockey team, first string for soccer, starting center in basketball. He’s four inches taller than I am and fifty pounds heavier—all muscle—and not quite as good-looking, but let’s face it. He’s not lacking.

The boy’s sort of a god. He’s got a miniature freshman cult following. And yeah, he could rip me to shreds if he wanted to.

Jesse laughs. “She’s right. You’d have a lot worse than a cast and a band around your ribs, boy.”

“Don’t forget the jaw.”

“How can you even understand what he’s saying?” Mom complains, spearing a bite of meat at the end of her fork. “He sounds like he’s talking with his mouth full.”

Dad shovels in more lamb as potatoes splurt out the sides of his lips.

Mom puts her hands over her eyes. “This is all over the parenting books. You’ve got one child with special needs, the other one has to act out.”

I wonder where that leaves the baby.

Jess makes noises in his throat. “Don’t call me special needs, God. I sound like I should be drooling in a wheelchair.”

“Lord’s name in vain, Jesse!”

He rolls his eyes.

I say, “I am not competing with Jesse.”

Jesse revs the blender one last time. Will raises his voice to compensate.

Jesse pours our smoothie into two glasses and hands one to me. I get a straw so I can wedge it between my teeth, and Jesse chugs his. His Adam’s apple bobs. He makes drinking look like an Olympic sport.

I gag, which feels sort of dangerous and exhilarating with the broken jaw. “This tastes like crap.”

“You get used to it.” Jesse plunks his empty glass down on the counter and heads toward his room. He strolls past Mom and Dad’s steaming plates of poison, his chin in the air.

Will says, “Bababa,” in that teary voice, and Mom and Dad start arguing again.

So I enjoy my smoothie.

IT STARTED LAST YEAR WITH THE CAR ACCIDENT.

Mom was driving, I was shotgun, Jesse was in the back. On the way to a doctor’s appointment.

Mom ran a red light—barely—and we slammed into an overanxious cement truck. Mom was six or seven months pregnant at the time.

To this day, the smell of wet pavement makes me sick.

Mom got a nasty burn on her leg from the airbag, but no problems with the baby. Jesse was, for once, basically fine. I was the one who went sideways and broke through the latch on the door of Mom’s shitty van.

Jesse’s lip bled where he bit it through, and he looked like something from a horror movie when he knelt over me. He said, “Don’t move.” He said it over and over and over, like I’d try to sit up the second he was quiet.

Like I
could
sit up.

I broke 2 femurs + 1 elbow + 1 collarbone.

I don’t know what bones hit against the door, what I smashed falling into the street. I don’t know why it was me and not Mom and Jesse and Will the Fetus. I’d never broken anything before.

But I’d been in a shitload of ambulances before with Jesse, so that, at least, was normal. If not comforting.

All of a sudden my life was emergency room, splints, surgery, physical therapy. It was like a fucking Discovery Health special.

At the hospital, everyone thinks about dying. And I’d never been much for romanticizing death—especially not suicide. I’d always been a fan of staying alive.

After all, you basically do all you can to not die. All the time. The search for immortality isn’t just from story-books. Every day you do it. You buckle your seatbelt, you take vitamin supplements, look both ways before you cross the street. And you really think you’re doing all you can. Bullshit. We can lift weights for fucking hours and we’re still going to die.

And I didn’t truly get that until I was in the middle of a highway with a tailpipe between my legs, slathered in cement.

At the hospital, the answer’s all around you. You have to fight for your life. It’s the only way.

You only get so many chances to be destroyed. Got to make the most of them.

You’ve probably read that broken bones grow back stronger. It’s sort of a natural bionics thing. Break a leg, grow a better leg. Break a body, grow a better body.

The worse you’re hurt, the stronger you get. I see that every day in Jesse Who Will Not Die.

So I was lying in the street, I was broken, and I was fixed.

I was barely through with the mess from the car accident when I crashed my mountain bike during some trick. I’d always been a daredevil. No one was surprised I’d had a spill.

And it was just a spill. Just a mistake.

Of course.

It was a mistake worth 1 foot + 4 fingers + 1 ankle + 2 toes.

Naomi was there for that one. She drove me to the hospital and was catatonic the whole way.

“It was fucking beautiful,” she finally squeaked while the ER people pulled on my limbs. “The way you just flew . . . it was like art. I wish I’d had my damn camera.”

“Well,” I said. “Maybe next time.”

So the next time, she helped me set up the skate ramp. And I let her film. And we started trying to fall. And four falls later, we got it—1 kneecap + 1 fibula.

“Holy shit,” Naomi said. “You just broke your leg.”

“Anything for art, babe.”

It’s been about six months since I haven’t had something in a cast. Kids at school laugh and call me a klutz. This girl Charlotte carries my books. My parents are baffled. Will cries. Jesse keeps getting sick.

You’re broken, and you’re fixed.

And you’re better.

I’M FILLING OUT THE SPREADSHEET WHEN NAOMI CALLS.

“You know each foot has twenty-six bones,” she says. “So just ‘broken foot’ doesn’t really count.”

“It’s good enough for me.” I type in 1 broken jaw. Total = 18. I’m seriously going to need to practice this one-handed typing. It’s almost as annoying as the whole talking-with-my-mouth-closed thing. “Do you have any idea how many bones there are in your fingers? If I tried for every single tiny bone, I’d be insane.”

“Yeah,
then
you’d be insane. You know your voice is ridiculous. You sound drunk.”

“Wish I felt drunk.”

“So how’d the parents handle it?”

“Oh, the usual. They hate hospitals, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

“They’ve got to realize this isn’t about them. I wish there was some way to keep them out of it entirely. Or to explain it to them without scaring them shitless.”

“You can’t explain this, Jonah.”

“I know I can’t.”

She’s quiet. Naomi walks this fine line between enabling me and cautioning me. Between daring me and mothering me. When she gets too close to either extreme, she’s got to shut up. It’s the only way.

“I’m fine,” I tell her.

She does this irritating sigh thing. “I didn’t ask. So my video’s fucking awesome.”

“Yeah?” I pull my shirt up and look at the huge piece of elastic around my ribs. It feels like I’m wearing a corset, which isn’t as unpleasant as you might think. I wonder if I have to sleep in this thing. I wonder if it hurts if I poke it.

Yep.

She says, “Yeah. You look like fucking Silly Putty hitting the sidewalk. And you can totally hear your wrist shatter.”

“It’s not shattered. Just fractured. Shatter would mean surgery.” There’s a knock on my door. “Hold on. Jess?”

He pokes his head in and waves. There’s a baby on his shoulder.

“Yeah, it’s just Jess. Come in.”

He sits on my bed and bounces, looking through the books on my nightstand. “More Confucianism?” he says.

I cover the speaker. “It’s interesting. Give him to me.”

Jess shakes his head and gives Will a squeeze. “I think he’s quieting down now.”

“You cannot keep touching him. He is giving you hives. Look at you.”

Jess stretches his arms out and examines his skin. “I’m fine.”

“Hold on a minute, Nom.” I set down the phone and hold my hands out for the baby. Jess relinquishes him. “Go wash your hands,” I order, rocking whiny Will back and forth. “Take more Benadryl.”

He doesn’t stand up, just murmurs to himself as he flips through the pages of my book. “I’m going to turn into Benadryl.”

I return to Naomi. “Sorry.”

“How’s Jesse?”

I say, “Jesse, how are you?”

He shrugs.

“He’s all right.”

“Tell her hi,” he mumbles, turning a page.

Naomi says, “Jesus Christ. Isn’t Will a little old to cry this much?”

“Well. Yeah.”

Jesse shifts awkwardly, showing no signs of leaving.

Naomi’s back to the subject at hand. “You just slam against the pavement. That’s the exciting part. The collision. The whole fall is anticipation, then—wham.”

“Do you have my groan of pain?”

“I have no groan, no. I have you whining like a little girl.”

“Edit that out.” I raise my eyebrows to Jesse and mouth,
Need something?

“Uh-uh.” He’s got this little mustache growing in. It looks like he hasn’t washed his face. I mime shaving and he shakes his head vigorously.

“You’re not even listening,” Naomi complains.

“Oh, be quiet.”

She hangs up. I smile and lower the phone into its cradle. “What’s up, kid?”

Jesse stretches out with his feet on my pillow. “Checking up on you. How’s the wrist?”

“Fine.”

“And the ribs?”

“Fine.”

“And the jaw?”

“Well, you know.”

Will slips against my cast. It’s hard to hold a baby with one arm and a chest that feels like it’s collapsing.

Jesse shakes his head. “You’re an idiot. Mom and Dad are freaking out about you.”

“You should be happy they’re not bugging you so much.”

“Yeah, I would be. If my big brother didn’t have to be a broken fucking idiot to make them leave me alone.”

Jesse won’t give up the idea that I’m doing this for him.

I really can be selfish, Jess.

“Just be careful, okay?” he says.

“Okay.”

He leaves, and I set Will on my lap so I can jot down which bones I’m going to break next. + 1 hand + 8 toes + 1 cheekbone. Total = 28.

I COULD BREAK MY FUCKING NECK AND MY MORNING
routine wouldn’t change. Alarm at 5:57. Lay in bed until six listening to the squeaky-squeak of Jess on the rowing machine and the roar of baby Will that’s kept me awake since two in the morning. Sit up and feel dizzy.

No. Wait. The dizziness is new.

Ugh.

Will’s even louder when my head’s off the pillow.

My mouth feels like I’ve been chewing on broken glass. The wrist is fine, but my chest is vibrating, it’s throbbing so hard.
God,
I need a day off.

But pussying out is so not the point.

I trudge downstairs and start boiling some water. Mom’s at the table, trying to get Will to drink.

“Maybe it’s an ear infection!” I shout over his screams.

She shakes her head. “Doctor said his ears look fine.”

“Did they check his throat? Maybe it’s a cold.”

“No fever.”

What kind of cold lasts eight months, anyway?

I gesture to the milk dribbling down Will’s chin. “You’ve got to clean him up. Jesse will be coming up for breakfast.”

Jesse’s so allergic to milk that Mom can barely touch him now that she’s breastfeeding. She showers before she hugs him. But still, she’ll leave Will’s bottles and baby food lying around, like she forgets she has more than one son.

She sighs. “God, this place is a mess.”

“Yeah, it is. Look, you’ve got to be more careful, Mom.” Jesse starts coughing downstairs and I say, “Listen.”

“I know.”

“It’s awful for him. He was actually pretty healthy before you had Will.” And since then we’ve been in fucking allergy hell.

“I know, Jonah.”

I take out a sponge and start wiping down the counters. “Can’t you start weaning the baby? Put him on rice milk?”

“Rice milk’s not good for babies.”

“It’ll give him what, a toothache?” I hold up the soaked sponge. “Doesn’t exactly compare to one of Jess’s reactions, does it?”