All the Broken Things (16 page)

“Little Sister,” Max said. “Little Orange.” He was holding her by her arms as she bounced on his lap. Max looked at Bo. “I’m trying to help out, kid.”

Bo turned to his mother. She would not resist, he could see. This gutted him.
Mother
, he thought, his thought screaming, but she wouldn’t pay attention. “Stop,” he said to Max, and pulled his sister away. “Leave her alone,” he said to Max, but he was looking at Rose. Her eyebrows lifted ever so slightly. Don’t make a fuss, these eyebrows said.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, Bo awoke on the floor beside Orange’s bed. Bleary-eyed, he went to the kitchen. Max Jennings sat in the same spot at the table—as if he had not moved. But where the glasses had been, there were plates, and Bo saw that for the first time in so long, his mother had cooked breakfast. She sat opposite Max.

“Aunt Jemima’s pancakes and syrup,” said Max. “Pull up a chair, son.”

Orange began to thump, a metronomic shiver through the house. Bo stared toward her room, and then turned and sat down. “Did you sleep here, Mr. Jennings?”

“Bo!” said his mother.

“Never mind, Thao.” Looking at Bo, Max said, “I slept on the couch,” and then laughed because there was no couch, only the chair.

Max slid a triangle of pancake into his mouth. He was
chewing more than necessary. Max had called his mum by her Vietnamese name. He had—

“Max will drive me to the grocery store, Bo,” said Rose, rising from the table. “You will look after Sister.”

Bo nodded. He was sorting out what this all meant, but it was too much.

“And Bo,” said Max, chewing still, “I want you to understand—” and here he tilted his head to the side in a kindly way, “I find Sister a delight, a real treasure.”

Bo was punching Max’s face before he realized it. He slammed Max’s face with his fist, all the while hearing Rose yell, “Stop!” and “No!”

Max only smiled wanly when Bo finished, as if he had known it would come to this. Then his smile turned nasty.

“You little asshole,” he said, patting his clothes down. He stood up and threw his napkin down on top of his plate, then touched his cheek where Bo had hit him. “Let’s go, Thao.” Pointing at Bo, he hissed, “The world is perfect in its own way. As perfect as anything. You just need to let things be.” A red welt was already appearing on his cheek. “You little asshole.”

“Sorry, Max,” his mother was saying as they walked out of the house. “Sorry, sorry.”

Bo wished he had hit Max harder. He wished he had made Max bleed.

B
O FUMED IN THE KITCHEN
for ages before he finally went in to Orange. She wore only a messy cloth diaper, and this was half falling off. Orange’s hair was sweaty and skewed, her popped eyes lined with angry veins. Her finger stumps were red from hammering the wall and her face was teary from the frustration of trying to communicate, but when she saw the camera Bo had brought into her room, she calmed down. It was a new thing and she liked new things.

“Don’t move, you little asshole,” Bo muttered, but she was in constant motion unless she was sleeping. He still felt so angry. He looked through the viewfinder of Teacher’s camera, moving the dials to get the aperture right in Orange’s dark room, making sure the flash was turned on. “You’re hideous,” he added. “I hate you. You’re a little fucker.”

He took picture after picture of her and each snap of the shutter was like the jaws of a shark smacking together, exactly like that. He told her again how he hated her but there was no truth in repetition. Orange flailed around the room and finally scuttled under the bed, trapping herself, but he did not stop. He crawled along the floor and took more pictures of her ugly face, her terrible freak-show body.

He pulled her out by the feet. “There,” he said. “You’re a beast.” She was trying to rock away from him, but he held her down with his legs, and took several pictures of
her panic, until the shutter would not click, until the camera had eaten up the film.

He opened the camera and took the roll out. He pushed the exposed film into the plastic case, and the case into his pocket. He would give Max what he wanted and be done with it.

There was a shop in Bloor West Village where they developed film. Bo ran, faster and faster, until his lungs clenched and his heart beat loudly in his head. Crying might have served the same purpose if he could cry, but he could not. The tears wouldn’t come.

When he handed the film to the clerk, Bo asked, “How big can you make them? I want them like this.” He showed with his hands roughly the size of the pictures he’d seen framed in Max’s trailer.

“Glossy?”

“Glossy?”

“Shiny. Do you want them shiny?”

“Yes.”

“Not cheap,” said the clerk, and then she looked up. “About sixty dollars.”

He did not know how he would pay. Maybe Max would pay for them. Or he could take back some of the money he had given to his mother. She kept it in a coffee tin in the fridge. “That’s okay,” he said.

“Write your phone number here and we’ll call you when they come in.”

When he got home, Orange was snot- and tear-drenched, and pressed into the hollow particleboard door. She had made more small dents in the wood with her mallet fists. His anger seeped out into guilt. Bo cuddled her in his arms, swayed her back and forth in wide arcs, as if she were a normal baby and he were a Swing Ride at half speed.

“I’m sorry,” he said, over and over, and after a while she seemed to believe him, and fell asleep.

While she slept, Bo went to his room and crunched through fifty sit-ups, then fifty push-ups. He skipped rope, losing count, revelling in the slap of the rope as it hit the floor with each rotation. Some time midway through his workout it began to snow.

I
T SNOWED FOR WEEKS
, and in that time, Bo spent more and more time inside with his sister, and his mother, and increasingly Max. Bo felt caged. He thought of running away with Orange, but couldn’t figure out where to, and how they’d manage.

When the clerk from the photo shop called on a Saturday, and said, “Your glossies are in,” with a tone that suggested he ought to be ashamed, he was. He hung up and pulled the tin out from behind the ketchup bottle, and counted what was left. A hundred dollars. Almost
nothing. He took three twenties anyway, checked that Orange was sleeping, and headed to Bloor Street.

“These are unusual,” the clerk said.

Bo handed her the crumpled bills.

“Very very odd.”

Bo found himself nodding as he waited for the clerk to hand him the photographs. And when she did, Bo said, “Thank you,” and turned and ran.

At home, he went in his room and pulled the images out. So many shots of Orange. He felt sick looking at them. He began to shove them under his mattress with his journal when he heard the sound of the front door shutting.

“What’s that you got there?” Max already stood in the doorway of his room. He smiled like he knew everything there was to know about everything. He winked and cocked his chin. “You’ve been taking pictures.”

Bo looked at an image of Orange still in his hand. She was standing, crooked, with her diaper slipping. Her belly bulged even though she was so skinny. She held her arms out toward the camera. Her face was so open. A picture like this must be worth something to Max.

“I’ll give it to you if you leave us alone,” Bo said, half knowing that Max would never now settle for a mere photograph. He knew this for sure when Max’s cackle turned to a full-body laugh.

“You crack me up, kid,” said Max. He shook his head. And then he stepped into the room and sat beside Bo on
the bed. “Let me see the rest,” he said, and reached into Bo’s hidden cache.

“No.” It came out as a squeak.

“Sure,” said Max. “Why not?” He pulled the photos out and looked at them one after another.

They were blurred with Orange’s movement, the energy of her fear. Bo watched Max as Max looked at them. His face stayed so still, but every so often he glanced at Bo as if to say, You took these?

“Give them back,” said Bo, reaching for them. But Max didn’t. Instead he tapped them straight on his lap and tucked them back under Bo’s bed.

“I’m leaving,” Max said. “I have work to do down south in the U.S., so you won’t see me for a while. Don’t jump for joy, kid.” He flicked the corner of the one happy shot of Orange. “How much?” he said.

“Six hundred.”

“Every man has his price,” said Max. He stood and pulled his wallet from his back pocket. He said, “Don’t tell your mum where you got this,” and pulled ten hundred-dollar bills from the wallet, one by one, and handed the money to Bo.

“This is more.”

“Yeah,” said Max. “It is.” Then he tugged the edge of the glossy and turned to go. “Your mother owes two months’ rent,” he said. “I tried to give it to her but she won’t take it. Just so you know.”

Bo looked down at the money clutched in his hand. He would simply put it in the tin and not say a word to his mother. He nodded to Max.

“And kid?” Max said, gesturing to Bo’s bed. “Don’t let Thao see them. Get rid of those despicable things, will you?”

All Bo could do was frown. Leave, he thought. Hurry. Go away. There would be peace. Everything would go back to normal.

T
HE DAY BEFORE
the Christmas holidays, there was a knock on the door, and Gerry stood outside on his porch with an unwieldy canvas bag at his feet. “Merry Giftmas, Bo Jangles!” The porch light was broken and there was only the street lamp illuminating Gerry. Snow had drifted across the pathway to the porch, and Gerry wore a big khaki coat, the hood cinched around his face. “Your mum home?”

Bo had not known he missed Gerry, and now here he was. His mum was in the living room, staring into the corner. It was as if she hadn’t moved since Max left weeks before.

“She’s here, yeah.”

Gerry nodded. “You going to let me in, kid?”

He pulled the door open, and Gerry stomped his boots and came in. “It’s not Christmas,” Bo said.

“Whatever, Jangles. I got a job for you, kid,” Gerry said. “Look.” He pulled the flap on the massive bag aside and yanked it open.

A brown snout poked out the canvas opening, followed by the dumb beady eyes of a bear cub. It wasn’t wary or scared. It hadn’t been on the planet long enough to know it should be. Bo thought his heart would thump out of his chest.

“Do you want to hold it?” Gerry asked.

The cub smelled milky and was warm against him. Bigger than Orange, but Bo could still manage her. She splayed her body wide open and melted right against him, nuzzled his collar for a bit, then fell asleep. Mine, thought Bo, and Gerry must have seen the thought in his eyes.

“I need you to train her. You up for that?”

Bo looked down on the fat paw pads and tiny claws that in so young a creature had the opposite effect of menace—they were cute. He wanted more than anything to bring the cub in to Orange. Orange would love this.

“A kind of pet,” Bo said.

“Well, no. I want you to train her. She needs to learn how to dance and how to wrestle and whatever else you think you can teach her by August. She’s going to be a
main attraction at the ten-in-one at the Canadian National Exhibition. It’s steady work and I know you people need it.” Gerry looked everywhere but in Bo’s eyes. “I want to help out.”