All the Broken Things (20 page)

Peter and Ernie and he were waiting outside the
school for rehearsal. It was three-thirty, the afternoon sun hot. They had to practise the part just before the Fairy King steals Heurodis. In one week the play would go on, and in two, school would be over and it would be summer. Bo was glad to have had his lines memorized so long, because now they were just part of him. Still, he was nervous, and would be glad when the play was over and he could concentrate full-time on training Bear and getting ready for the Ex.

“Whoever denied it, supplied it,” Peter said.

Bo got up and sat downwind from the others. He loved the way he smelled.

“Whoa,” said Ernie. “What is that? Like a zoo or something. Like dead shit. Like the stockyards. You stink worse than the yards, you little asshole.”

Bo did not mean to. It was Ernie calling him an asshole. It reminded him of Max calling him an asshole that time. His body reacted. He plowed Ernie’s face so hard it jerked back and pulled him with it and then Bo was straddling Ernie and punching and punching, Peter just standing there, and Ernie too surprised to do much but take it, so that by the time Bo stopped, Ernie was a swollen bleeding mess.

Bo got to his feet, muttering, “Sorry, sorry,” and stepped back.

Bo caught the edge of Peter’s joy, as they both watched Ernie stumble off toward his house.

Then Bo started walking too. “Tell Miss Lily I got sick,” he said.

“You’re blowing off rehearsal?” said Peter.

“Yeah.” He knew his part backwards and forwards and didn’t want to explain to Teacher why his knuckle was bleeding, and why Ernie had left.

He stopped at the side of his house and ran the outdoor tap over his right fist, let the water pink and flow down the paved gully. Then he splashed his face and rubbed the water down his neck and chest and over his hair. He figured Ernie would wait a day or two to pay him back, that he had some breathing space. He walked up the metal porch stairs, looked down at Bear looking up at him, entered the back of the house. He could hear his mum crooning a Vietnamese love song from the kitchen, and knew she’d been drinking.

“Bo?” she called. “Is that you?”

He stopped in on Orange on the way by. She was bobbing her stuffed donkey up and down. He thought, new creature, and smiled.

“Bo?” His mum’s voice was urgent.

“Yes, Mum. I’m here.” He was at the kitchen door, and her back was to him, but now she turned and he saw she was not only drunk but also crying. “Oh, Mum,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

Now, though, she shook her head. “Father Bart was here. We have to leave the house—we have until the end
of July. He said the church group feels we need to find our own way. The diocese is selling the house. He said he knew we would understand.”

“Leave to where?” asked Bo.

“I don’t know.”

And then the doorbell rang, and before he could answer it, Max was in the kitchen.

“Ready?” he said. He must have seen then that she had been crying. He said, “Hey, Thao, what’s the matter?”

“We have to move,” she said.

Rose stood and Bo saw then that his mum was wearing a new dress, and shoes with heels. “Mum!” he said. If her eyes weren’t puffy from crying, she would be beautiful.

Max hugged his mum and said, “It’s okay.” He was patting her back. “We’ll figure something out. Don’t worry.”

Rose went to the sink to run cool water over her face. She rummaged in a little pocket in her dress and pulled out a lipstick. Bo watched Max admiring her as she leaned toward a tiny mirror over the sink and applied a dark red to her mouth.

“We’ll be back by ten,” Rose said, then. “Okay, Bo?”

“Okay.” Bo wasn’t sure whether it was. He looked at Max and tried his hardest to smile, even while his heart raced.

After they left, Bo checked on Orange. She was awake and no longer so pink. He nestled her between cushions and tucked a sheet around her and then tightly
under the mattress to restrain her. Her face was filthy with dried sweat and mucus, so that it was almost black in patches, and he left this, for fear if he tried to wipe her clean, he would upset her. There were bedclothes and diapers and odd assortments of clothing strewn throughout the space, all reeking of bear. He gently nudged these into a pile and pushed it out the door to be added to the laundry his mother tackled as infrequently as she could get away with. He could hear Bear moaning in the backyard, but he ignored her.

B
O SAT IN THE GREEN CHAIR
. The end of July was a long way away, he thought. They could find another place to live in by then. He was working again and they would manage. A flicker of movement at the kitchen window made him look up, and there was Emily waving something above her head. Then she ducked down and he heard her coming up the stairs and onto the porch. He jumped up.

“No,” he said, and shook his head at her through the glass.

She ignored him and let herself in. “You missed rehearsal,” she said.

He showed her his knuckles. “I hit a brick wall.”

“Ernie?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, Miss Lily had to call it short and when I was walking home I saw your mum leave with that Max guy,” she said. “Guess what? My parents are away and—Have you noticed how warm it is today?”

She had a bundle of clothing in her hand, a dress that was just the right size for Orange and little sandals, and that was not all. There was a bathing suit, and outside on the sidewalk, an old blue pram.

“She’s not a doll,” said Bo, to stem the direction things were headed. “Emily, you can’t just take her.”

“Bo.”

“No.”

“You promised, and it’s so warm.”

“I didn’t promise.”

“We both made promises. And I’ve kept mine,” she said. “It’s just wrong that she never goes out. My mother says she’ll get rickets. She needs some sun.”

“You can’t just take her.”

Emily was already down the hall, pulling the sundress over Orange’s sleepy head. “Oh, it’s darling. Look, Bo!”

The dress managed to correct some of the torque in Orange’s figure so that her torso looked fairly normal with it on. The problem was that her head was so over-large and her legs and arms so twisted that it was impossible to focus solely on the torso, and so, in the end, Orange looked more monstrous than ever.

“Freak show,” he muttered, but Emily was already
busy strapping on the sandals. “She doesn’t like this, you know? Plus, she’s sick, otherwise she wouldn’t let you do it. You’re taking advantage—”

“No, Bo. I am not. I am taking her to cool off in my pool. You can stay here and suffer or you can come along.” She put a sunbonnet on Orange and tied it under her chin. “Look how cute,” said Emily. She went outside with Orange in her arms. “Going to the pool,” she was saying, over and over, to cheer her, and she placed her gently in the pram.

Bo snorted. His sister looked ridiculous bent into the small space. “This is not a good idea.”

“I don’t care.”

Orange lay staring up from the bed Emily had made in the pram, grabbing at the rim of her new bonnet. His mother would have a fit.

“No one had better see this,” he said. “How are you going to get her in the pool without anyone seeing?”

“I’m not.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean people might see her.”

“But—”

“Bo,” said Emily. “She’s going in.”

She said this in such a way that Bo did not know how to argue against it. He imagined the water sucking his sister in, like a great liquid maw. Besides, Emily’s house secretly terrified Bo, and now they were heading there, the pram bouncing over every bump it hit.

And then they were in front of the house—the ivy sweeping up to the roof and edging along it. Bo looked up and as he did, the ivy seemed to breathe, and then it bloomed in sharp downward wingbeats as hundreds of swallows emerged and swung into the air, billowing above the house like a black and dissipating cloud. Orange seemed to be watching them too.

Bo felt suddenly sick. It was terrible to see Orange out of the house in daylight. She would fall, she would drown, she would—something awful would happen. “Where are your parents?”

“They trust me.”

“Lucky.”

“Well, your mum is hardly around either.”

“That isn’t trust,” said Bo. He tried to imagine what he would do with himself if he were truly alone and came up with: fighting, thinking about fighting, looking for a fight. He could also write in his journal, but without Orange, there would be no tower, no blue, no point. He didn’t want to think about life without Orange, the ugly chasm that would be not-Orange.

“Bo,” said Emily.

He looked from Orange, twisting about in the pram, into Emily’s green eyes. They were shiny and smiling. She had eyes that could do that. Orange had flipped onto her belly and was bum up, rocking until she might pop out, so Bo grabbed her by the waist and swung her
up and out of the pram. Tucked her under his arm like a football.

“Pool,” he said, acting brave, and strode along the side of the house to the backyard.

“All right!” Emily said.

The pool was an egg-shaped concrete in-ground pool, and even though Emily maintained the water was clean, it had a green murkiness to it that reminded him too much of the sea.

“My parents are against chlorination,” said Emily. “They like the pool to be reminiscent of a pond. Not everyone can afford a cottage, my father likes to say, so we have our cottage right in our backyard.”

Bo could not see the bottom. He lowered himself to a squat and put Orange down.

“Come on.” Emily lay down, leaned her arms and head over the edge and lightly trailed her fingers in the water.

The ripples seemed alive, but he followed her lead and helped Orange to do the same. He had to hold her tightly by her sundress when she realized what this was, for she began to slap the surface of the water, sending waves all about. The squirming brought her closer and closer to falling in.

“There is a little rubber dinghy,” said Emily. “Do you think she would lie still?”

Bo shook his head. “You can’t predict what she’ll do.” He thought of the worst thing that she could do and
found his thinking could not stretch that far—he could not move.

“I’ll show it to you and then you can decide.” Emily stood up and strode off to a dilapidated shed in the back of the garden, brought back a pink blow-up boat, more or less round. “We’ll put her in and hold the boat steady if she moves too much. Nothing can happen.”

But Bo was thinking about having to get in the water, and water in general, so that now his head, and his whole body, were shaking, no.

“I think it’ll be okay, Bo. The water will soothe her,” said Emily. She pulled off her T-shirt and her shorts and she was already in her bathing suit. “Seriously, Bo. We got this far.”

“Yeah.”

Orange was skimming the water now gently with her palm, sending the tiniest waves out from herself. It seemed to please her, and she did it again and again. She was mesmerized, still, calm. Bo got up from the pool deck and complied with this insane request, pulling his shirt off and then his shoes and socks until he was in his shorts. “Okay,” he said to Emily.

“What now?”

“If we disturb her she might get upset, so how are we going to get her in the boat?”

“It was your idea.”

Emily gave him a look, then pulled the boat close to
the edge so she could dump it in the water. They watched as it bounced and then floated away from them. “Orange?” Emily said. “See that?”

Then she sat on the edge of the pool with her legs tucked into herself. “Watch,” she said to Orange, and then slid down, the green water disappearing her, cutting her off.

“It looks like you are cut through the middle,” said Bo. It was almost a whisper, windlike, coming across more like thought than sound, but he knew Emily heard because she turned and then lifted her feet—first one and then the other—to prove they were still there. And then she launched into the water and swam to the little boat. She grabbed the side and pulled herself up. She paddled it closer to Bo and Orange.

“A boat,” she said, looking at Orange.

Emily pushed off the side of the pool and the boat spiralled and eddied. The little wavelets emerging from it met the water trails Orange had made with her hands, and disrupted them, making new configurations on the surface of the water. Orange was watching this as if she could read its meaning.

Emily was now at the far end of the pool, looking back. “Do you want a ride, Orange?”

Bo watched his sister slow the motion of her hand and wait for the ripples to broaden out into velvety green fabric, like the surface of the water was sighing, falling asleep. She looked toward the dinghy, her bulgy eyes
askew, and her head now lolloping slowly back and forth, as if assessing.

“You do?”

“She doesn’t,” said Bo, though he wasn’t sure.

“Yes, she does. Don’t you, Orange?”

Orange pressed back from the edge and lifted her bum into the air. Bo grabbed her by the sundress again. “I wish your parents believed in chlorination,” Bo called.

Emily laughed. “There are even frogs living in here. I’ve seen them.” She was out of breath, paddling back toward them. “Orange,” she said. “Your turn.”