All the Broken Things (17 page)

“Ten-in-one?” Bo had never been to the Ex.

“It’s what they call the bigger sideshows. You pay for one ticket, you get ten shows. A deal, right?”

“I’d be a freak?”

“You’d be an attraction. You and your wrestling, dancing—and whatever the hell else you can train her to do by then—bear.”

Gerry had worked out all the details. He would supply food and give Bo tips on how to train the cub, and he would pay cash directly to Bo’s mother. Every week, he would come by and he would pay out Bo’s earnings, inspect the progress they had made.

“Max and me already spoke to your mum about this,” Gerry said.

“You
and
Max?”

“Sure.”

Bo considered how things stood, how Gerry and Max had already spoken to Rose. And then he looked down at the cub, felt the hard nugget of love passing from his chest to hers, and decided it didn’t matter. It was work. He could help this way. He smelled the cub.

“My mum said yes to this?”

“She did,” Gerry said.

So Bo went into the living room and held the cub up to her, where she sat in the green chair, and she nodded and said, “No messes.” She went back to staring.

“It’ll be fantastic,” Gerry called to Bo, and then followed him to the living room. “Well, you’ll see. You just make sure she can dance. She’s three months old so you should be able to get started. These animals are highly trainable. I promised Max a damned dancing bear and now I have to provide one.”

“But Max is gone,” Bo said. He wished it wasn’t for Max.

“Yeah, but he still knows how to use a telephone, kid. And he won the whole concession.” Gerry was giddy with this news. He said, “You got until mid-August, Bo Jangles. That’s when the CNE starts and that’s when you have to have her ready. It’s huge, kid. A break for all of us.” And then Gerry put his arm around Bo’s shoulder and walked him back to the kitchen, where they could be private. “You won’t have to worry about Max. He won’t be around for ages.”

Gerry popped his eyebrows as if there were a joke he was in on. From that, Bo figured Gerry knew about his mum and Max.

“I know,” Bo said. His stomach lurched and he looked down. The cub woke and bunched a swatch of Bo’s shirt into a nipple and suckled on it. “Whoa,” he said.

“Deal?” said Gerry.

Bo nodded. A bear cub. His own. And no Max to bother them.

Gerry went back to the truck and returned with food and the cub’s leash. As he handed them over, he said to Bo, “Better if you don’t prance her through the neighbourhood too much. Folks are liable to get anxious. Walk her at night on the chain, when no one is around. Otherwise keep her in the backyard, and if your mum will let her in the house on cold nights, that would be fine of her. You don’t want a bear dying on you, now. They’re costly, right? And mind, she’s going to get big fast—real fast—real big—so be training her right from the start. You know what to do. You saw me doing it with Loralei, right?”

“I know,” said Bo. He would have said anything to keep that ball of brown fur and need with him, but he knew he wasn’t going to train this bear like he’d seen Gerry do it. Not that way.

“What’re you going to call her?”

Bo thought for no time. He knew. “I’m going to call her Bear.”

“Bear?”

“Bear.”

“Hell of an original name, kid.”

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, Bo woke to this thought: bear cub chained under the porch. Rose had refused Bo’s plea to keep her in overnight. He had hastily made a barrier of planks and cardboard to protect her from the cold night, shovelled the snow out and given her blankets to burrow in.

Orange began to bash her head against her flimsy bedroom door. She had grown, and even though she caught colds easily and often suffered a runny nose, she walked. She lunged and caught herself from falling. She braced her stumpy hands against furniture. It was impossible to keep her in her room unless the door was locked, and this presented another problem because she would happily throw her awkward body against it for hours if need be. It upset Rose to the point of fury.

“Shut up, shut her up,” Rose yelled from the kitchen.

“I can take her outside,” said Bo. He wanted to show her Bear, anyway.

“No.”

“She’s bored.”

“Bo, for crying out loud.”

It was an expression Rose had picked up from Max, and every time she said it, Bo winced. He wondered what she thought it meant. Bo came out of his room and saw Rose standing at the kitchen sink, staring out the window at nothing—the sickly birch tree and the angel-stone siding on the neighbour’s house.

She said, “She’s okay in her room.”

Orange banged.

“The backyard at least. No one’s up yet.” Orange didn’t mind the cold, didn’t seem to notice. It was the novelty of fresh air, of outsideness.

“No,” said Rose.

He went out the back door, rattled down the metal steps and crouched under the porch. The cub had torn the blankets to pieces and was in a ball fast asleep. Bo pulled her into his arms. Mine, he thought. He brought the sleeping cub inside, stood there looking toward the kitchen. His mother didn’t turn around so he went to Orange’s room.

When she saw the cub, she stopped slamming the wall, stopped moving. She stared for a long time. Bear yawned and stretched when Bo placed her on the parquet, her ass high in the air, her tongue curling in her mouth. She gave another gape and another, and emitted a thin doggish yelp with each yawn, until Bo was laughing.

Orange sat on her bottom on the floor in front of the bear cub, her toes curled into her crotch, so that they looked a lot like another set of arms, her left arm pressed into the floor beside her to keep her body as erect as its skew would allow. With her free hand she pumped a fist softly on the ground, and the bear watched. Bo crouched beside her and slowed her hand with his own, to show her how the bear followed the motion. Soon Bear grew tired of watching, and snuffled closer, curious, and then she
was licking, licking Orange all over, and then something like joy moved through Orange’s body. Shudders of it.

B
O SPENT THE MORNING
getting to know Bear and trying to get her to do simple things—chase a string, stand on her back legs. He took her into the kitchen to fetch the Magic Bubbles, and then brought her back to Orange’s room. He sat on the bed and held Orange on his lap.

“Now, be still,” he said, holding her tight in the crook of his arm. “Let’s see what Bear thinks, okay?”

He blew slowly into the little wand and tiny bubbles emerged. Bear sat and cocked her head and watched for a bit, but then she lunged at one and tried to bite it. It was too much for Orange. She flailed to get away from Bo, and Bear turned and ran to the corner of the room.

“No,” said Bo. “Hush,” but she wouldn’t be still, so he said, “If you don’t calm down, I’ll take Bear to the backyard and that will be it.”

And he tried again to entice Bear, blowing bubbles until she began again to snap and then swat at them. Whenever Orange would wiggle, Bo would remind her: “Stay,” he said.

After a while he tired of the game, put the lid on the bottle and picked the cub up. “I’ll be right back,” he said to Orange, and left.

He brought Bear out the back door and chained her to the porch. “Good girl,” he said. “Go lie down.” She watched him for a short time and then crawled into the blankets under the porch, so Bo went back inside. Down the hallway, he could hear voices, of his mother and someone else. It took him a second or two to realize it was Teacher. He stood by the door to Orange’s room, listening.

“You can’t keep breaking appointments, Rose.”

He heard his mother mumble what might have been an apology.

“You need to do this for your children.” Bo heard the front door squeak and then shut, and then the shuffling of feet on the floor. He wished Teacher would leave his mother be. She didn’t like doctors and neither did he.

“Are you okay, Mum?” he called toward the kitchen. He waited for her answer and when it didn’t come he ventured down the hall. “Mum?”

She was sitting at the table, and looked up when he came in the room. “Yes?” she said.

“Thank you for letting the bear stay,” he said.

“You’re welcome.”

“Is everything okay? I heard Teacher here.”

“She wants me to help with a play your class is putting on.” Rose was not really looking at him. “It’s to keep me busy.”

“Why?”

“She thinks I’m unhappy.”

He thought so too but he didn’t say it. Instead, he said, “Are you going to help?”

“Yes, with costumes and with helping the students to remember lines,” she said, and in that moment Bo thought she did not look unhappy so much as scared.

He heard the thump of Orange in her room, and was happy to have an excuse to go to her. He did not like to think of his mother being afraid.

T
EACHER HAD WRITTEN
the script for the play and given it to the class in early January, and after two months of studying it, and different versions of the poem, they knew the story well. All through January and February, Bo hurried home to be with Bear and train her, and time flew in a way he did not know it could. Bear could stand on her back legs and turn, the beginning of a dance, he thought. She could clap in a bearish way, and she was a brilliant, natural wrestler. And now, before Bo knew it, it was the week after March break, a Monday. The class began rehearsals today.

And here was Rose in the school to help out. Bo saw
her from down the school corridor, and cringed. She did not look small; she looked smaller than that. She looked like a drawing of a person. She stood outside the principal’s office, hugging herself, as if to become even tinier. She wore jeans and a big sweater under her winter coat. The coat was shorter and less bulky than the sweater and so she looked poor, and lost. Bo was happy the rest of his class was gone or in rehearsals already so they would not see her here looking tragic and scared.

“Mum,” he said when he got closer, and she looked up.

“Bo.”

“You didn’t have to come.”

“It’s okay. I don’t mind.” Teacher had told Bo that Rose was coming, and that she had organized it this way to minimize his embarrassment at having his mother be there, but Teacher had misunderstood. He wasn’t embarrassed. He was ashamed. And he wasn’t ashamed of Rose. It was something deeper. It was the shame Teacher conveyed, by trying to fix things. He wanted to shout that these things were just broken. He wanted her to understand about the pride of broken things.

Behind him, Bo heard the clack of heels and turned to see Teacher.

“Rose,” she said. “Thank you for coming.” Teacher made an awkward bow. “Is everything okay, Bo?”

“Yes.”

He watched as Teacher handed Rose a script for the
play. “So you can read it when you have time,” Teacher said, and his mother thanked her.

“I’d like to show you the stage too,” said Teacher. “We are rehearsing by scene, so only some of the students come to each session. Can you stay until five?”

“Yes,” Rose said, and turned to Bo. “Orange is sleeping. Are you going home?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m not in today’s run-through.”

He ran hard then, thinking of Bear, and how he would get home and there would be no one to tell him not to bring her inside. Bear would do things on command, but only sometimes. The rest of the time, Bear did what she wanted. She head-butted, and rolled, and fell asleep. She nipped, and chased her tail. She infuriated, and was beautiful.

When Bo arrived home, he saw that Orange had somehow opened her bedroom door. There was a trail of clothing, shit, shattered dishes; and the ancestor shrine was toppled. “Orange!” Bo said, and she looked toward him from amid the debris and cracked her strange smile. “Oh, Orange. Messy!”

He brought her to the living room, and went back to prop the Buddha and the sticks of incense back in the shrine. He found the broom and pushed the rest of the mess into a pile. He put a garbage bag over it and caught it up. When he had the bag tied, he got the mop and swabbed down the trail. Orange slumped on the living
room floor, cocked her head and rocked back and forth on her hands.