Breaking Glass (23 page)

She shook her head. “I mean, I saw him. He’s a musician from New Orleans named Slimfinger Jones, if you can believe it. He was giving a concert.”

“Did you get to talk to him?”

Susannah squeezed her eyes closed and shook her head. “No. I didn’t stay for the end. About midway through, someone helped him onto the stage. He could barely walk. He couldn’t see. He’d had a stroke not that long ago, someone said. Somehow, though, the guy could still play the harmonica and sing.” Tears made a glistening track down her cheek.

I reached for her hand. “I’m sorry. I’m guessing he never knew you were there?”

“What was the point? It would just have confused him. He isn’t that old, really. Just—I guess he had a hard life. Why would he need more complications?”

“I don’t know. He might have been happy to meet you.”

“Whatever,” she said “I caught my mother at a lucid moment, one of those rare times she wasn’t cussing me out. I asked her if she’d loved old Slimfinger then. It seemed important for me to know that two people loved each other, at least for a little, and chose to bring me into this world.”

“‘The old bastard’s real name is Nelson Buttersmith,’ my mother barked, ‘and the only person I’ve ever truly loved is Douglas Bernard Lewis. Who is quite dead, by the way.’”

Susannah stared at the floor, her knuckles pressed against her lips. I walked over to her, took her hand, and guided her onto my lap. I held her, rocking her slowly until her sobs went silent and she fell asleep in my arms.

Now (December 26th)

The attic might as well be the South Pole. Distant, remote, and out of my reach.

And like the Norwegian adventurer Roald Amundsen, I’ll either make it there and get away clean, or like his rival Robert Falcon Scott, whose frozen remains were found months later, I’ll fail. But I’m going to have to try.

The wood ladder folds down from the ceiling trapdoor in the hall outside the bathroom. I know I’m going to do it. The question is how I’m going to do it without making a racket.

Dread thrums in my eardrums. More for what I might find out if I’m successful than if I succeed in cracking my spine.

I get myself up the stairs and miraculously haul myself up the creaky pull-down attic ladder, rung by rung, without waking Dad. The attic is cramped, musty, and piled high with crap he never bothered to throw away.

The story of our family told in junk.

Boxes of toys, baby clothes, rusted bicycles, sleds, coats. My mother’s furs. Boxes of documents, books, albums, old TVs. Some of it, I suspect, dates back to my great-grandparents. I slither on the floor, not wanting to awaken my dad with the thump of my graceless hops. But I have no idea what I’m looking for.

“Susannah,” I say, “If you’re listening, help me out here.”

Nothing. Only the settling of the house and the ticking of an old watch? too stupid to quit keeping time. I try to think like a forensic scientist. If my mother wanted to leave me a message for when I was older, when I would understand, where would she leave it?

Probably in a place that meant the most to her.

The image of her old jewelry box, the one with the twirling ballerina that had been her great-grandmother’s, flashes in my mind. But I have no idea where to start my search.

Something catches my eye and my heart does a little flip. A plastic zippered bag stuffed with neatly folded floral bedsheets sits on a carton. The memory of playing with Matchbox cars on the bed while my mother brushed her hair bubbles up. My dad probably threw them up here after she died. These were the sheets my parents used to lie on together, after all.

I balance on my knee and remove the bag of sheets. Inside the carton, carefully wrapped in tissue paper, is my mother’s collection of antique perfume bottles and the little decorative boxes she’d bought from her childhood travels with my long-dead, globe-hopping grandparents. But there’s someone else’s touch here. Dad would have just tossed them in the box.

There are layers and layers of yellowed newspaper, all from about thirty years ago. Most of them have rectangles cut out of them, as if they’d been clipped for coupons. Mom was a big coupon clipper, always combing the newspapers and cutting them up, but I can’t imagine why she’d save these.

I dig down, past the paper. Beneath the accumulation of objects is the jewelry box. My heart speeds up unexpectedly. It’s like finding a living piece of my mother that got left behind.

Inside the box are her demure gold chains and simple stud earrings. There’s a charm bracelet with baby shoes that have my name engraved on them—that makes my breath catch—and a half-heart pendant on a tarnished chain. I picture the necklace dangling over Mom’s pale collarbone. I remember her wearing this all the time when I was little.

I look closely, and realize the half-heart charm is actually a locket. I pick at the hasp and pull the two halves of the locket open. My heart sinks. Fixed into the left side of the locket is a scratchy photo of a little girl, so old and beat-up it really could be any little girl and not necessarily my mother. I try to swallow the lump sticking in my throat and ease myself back into the cool mind-set of a forensic historian. What I really want is a long, hard swallow of liquor to obliterate the pain, but my dad’s scourge of terror has apparently reached up here. There’s not even a bottle cap.

It’s hard to see in the scant light. The charm is engraved. I hold it up to the single dim light bulb.

Trudy and

Best frien
.

I sit and study the inner half-heart of the locket. Obviously, the rest of the words continue onto the other half.

But
Trudy
?

Trudy Durban, Susannah’s mother, is the only Trudy I know.

Trudy Durban?
I can’t imagine Trudy Durban and my mother as best friends. Acquaintances, maybe. I can see my mother looking down her nose at someone like Trudy. But people change. Maybe Trudy had been bearable, once.

Pocketing the pendant, I begin my long slog to safety. By the time I get to my bed, I’m filthy, sweaty, and jittery with exhaustion. I strip to my underwear, slip under the sheets and fall asleep, the necklace clutched in my fist.

The next morning I wake to a note from Dad. He’s been sucked away by the irresistible draw of the office.

Marisa has offered to take me for my first leg fitting. I know she isn’t enduring my mood swings and abuse as a hobby, but I’m glad to have her with me. Something about her presence quiets the turbulence in my head.

I wonder how long Dad thinks he can parent by avoidance. When he’ll be able to look me in the eye again. I finger the necklace and wonder what he knows.

C H A P T E R
t w e n t y - o n e

Then

I’d let Susannah sleep, her head resting against my chest. Her shimmery curls rose and fell with her soft guttural breaths.

I could have sat like that all night, content as a cat after a full bowl of milk. But the air smelled funny. Like cooking. No, it smelled like something was burning. Carefully, I slipped off the couch and let her head rest on a throw pillow.

I padded into the kitchen and let out a terrified shout. Flames spewed from a pot on the stovetop and shot up to the wooden cabinets above.

“Susannah! Fire! Wake up!” I raced into the living room. “Where’s the fire extinguisher? Go onto the porch and call 911!

“What the hell?”

“The fire extinguisher! Where is it? Get out of here! Now!”

“What?”

“Get the fuck outside!” I roared.

She did as I told her. I found the fire extinguisher in the pantry where she said it was. Flames were chewing their way up the wall and racing over the cabinets. I shot a blast of foam at them and hoped it was enough.

In seconds, it was all over. The kitchen had a swath of blackened cinder down its middle, but the fire was out.

I found Susannah shivering on the porch. After about ten minutes, the fire truck pulled up onto the driveway, followed by a Jeep with a plowhead. The firemen leapt out into the snow in emergency mode, but quickly realized they’d come for nothing. Two figures emerged from the Jeep. Ryan and Patrick Morgan. Ryan trotted up to the porch with Patrick right behind him.

“What happened?”

Patrick Morgan had a police scanner, and when he’d heard the call out to Susannah’s house, Ryan and Patrick had followed the fire truck.

Patrick Morgan drove us all back to their house and we stayed the night. Ryan never did ask me what I was doing at Susannah’s in the first place, but by morning he and Susannah were back together yet again.

Now

The Lyle Hoffmann Center for Orthotics and Prosthetics is in its own building situated right outside the main drag of the Riverton Business District. From its parking lot, there’s a panoramic view of the Hudson River sprawling in the distance like a giant silver snake.

Marisa wheels me up the ramp but agrees to let me enter on my own. I roll into the waiting room, which has the same hushed, faux-homey feel of a doctor’s office, to find Ryan sitting there among a scattering of amputees.

He moves to the chair closest to where I park myself. I feel a snarl rise up inside of me, but squelch it. I’m going to owe Ryan for life, and even though it’s not going to stop me from my quest for the truth, there’s no need to be rude about it.

I sneak a quick glance at him. Dark circles ring his eyes. There’s a bit more golden stubble than usual. His skin is so pale he’s nearly translucent, like some kind of mutated mole rat.

“How are you, Jeremy?”

“Fine,” I grumble. “What about you?” I want to spit fire and ask him what the hell he’s doing here, but it’s obvious he’s been sent to oversee the investment.

“I’m good.” He shifts in his seat, clears his throat, and sucks in a breath. I sense a soliloquy coming on. “Look,” he says, “I know you’re basically angry at the world these days, but I’ve been doing some reading. It’s normal. I’ve read you kind of go through the same steps you go through with grief. You know, denial, anger, bargaining… I figure maybe you just got sort of stuck in the angry part.”

I stare at him in disbelief. “Fuck. You’re serious.”

Ryan rests his arms on his thighs and lets his head drop. “I’m just—things have been hard on everyone. I can’t help but feel responsible for what happened to you. If I’d never messed around behind Susannah’s back, maybe we wouldn’t be sitting here.”

The muscles in my jaw tighten. “So basically, you just feel sorry for yourself and you want me, fucking Saint One-legged Jeremy to bless and absolve you of your guilt.”

Ryan closes his eyes. His lids tremble and I begin to wonder if this is his best performance ever, or if he is actually troubled.

“Shit.”

“Maybe you’d feel better if you unloaded your terrible burden and tell me what really happened that night. And what Derek Spake has to do with it.”

“You don’t let up, do you? I should have known all that displaced energy of yours had to go somewhere if you couldn’t run.”

“What are you saying, Ryan?”

Ryan presses the heels of his palms to his eyes. “That you should focus on your rehabilitation. Think how much better you’ll feel when you can walk, and even run.”

“Nice try, dude. Translation: quit poking your nose where it doesn’t belong and focus on yourself like a normal person.”

Ryan groans. “You’re in a rut, Jeremy. You can’t change the past. You can’t bring Susannah or your leg back. You have to move forward.”

“Why the fuck do you think I’m getting fitted with a fucking fake leg? To sit in this chair?” My voice starts to rise, but I’m just hitting my stride. “I can multitask, Ryan. I can figure out what happened to Susannah and walk and chew gum, all at the same fucking time!”

“You’re making a scene, Jeremy,” Ryan says between clenched teeth.

The people in the room glare at me. The receptionist comes out from behind the desk and says firmly, “Please calm down, or you’ll be asked to reschedule, Mr. Glass.”

Gripping the arms of my wheelchair, I hiss, “Just tell me why you and Spake get so jumpy when I mention one of you to the other.”

Ryan sucks in air. “I wish, Jeremy, that you would please stop asking me about Derek.”

“So it’s Derek, now? What is it with you two? Did you conspire to throw the championship meet? Or are you both overlords in a steroid smuggling ring?”

“We’re friends, okay? We—I just figure it’s best if no one knows—you know, with our teams being archrivals and all.”

“So you’re friends. How quaint. Are you afraid I’d be jealous of being supplanted as best friend-in-chief?”

Ryan flashes me a wounded look.

“Was that it? Was Susannah upset that you were hanging out with Spake more than with her?”

“That was some of it. Look. It’s complicated, okay? Susannah and Derek—let’s say they had some words. But I swear I didn’t hurt Susannah. And neither did Derek.” Ryan slouches, his skin clammy. “I guess it makes sense that you’d blame me for what happened to you. I mean, if it wasn’t for what I did, you wouldn’t have come out on that miserable night in the first place.”

I lean forward in the chair. “Whoa. You think I’m pissed because I
blame
you for my accident?”

“That’s what the team thinks.”

I shake my head. I want to tell Ryan
I
had emptied my silver water bottle, and then tried to save the world because I couldn’t live with my own shame. “Well, the team is wrong. I don’t blame anyone except myself.”

“Oh,” Ryan lapses into silence. I glance at him. He seems deflated. And for once, I don’t think it’s an act. I’m pretty certain whatever he’s trying to hide is eating away at his insides.