Before You Break Read online

  The white puffs of his breath mingle with my own. We gaze up at the stars. “Show me,” he says.

  I trace the shapes in the velvet sky. “Canis Major, the one that looks like a dog. Taurus the bull is there, to the right of Orion. See his horns? And above and to the east, there’s Auriga.”

  “I see them. This is seriously off the hook, Lux.”

  “I know, right? Look high in the sky, over that tall pine tree. That’s Gemini. It’s two figures, holding hands. See, legs, torso, arms outstretched? That bright star that’s the head of the figure on the left? That’s Pollox.”

  “What’s their story?”

  It’s so cold, my ears burn, my throat seared with every breath. A memory flashes through me. Me and Lena, lying next to Mom, staring up at the same dazzling sky. Mom gripping my hand, whispering the myths in her husky voice. She said astrology was the language of the heavens. She said, “If you listen closely, the sky speaks to you.”

  “They were brothers, born to Leda, queen of Sparta,” I say to Felix. “The twin Castor’s father was the king of Sparta. Pollux’s father was Zeus, so Pollux was born immortal, while Castor was fully human. The twins grew up handsome and strong. They loved each other deeply and did everything together, fighting in the Trojan war, chasing the golden fleece with Jason and the Argonauts.

  “One day, Castor was killed. Pollux was overcome with grief, distraught without his brother. He begged his father Zeus for help. He was willing to do anything to be reunited with his brother. Rather than killing Pollux so he could be with Castor in death, Zeus decided to make Castor immortal. He placed them both in the sky, so they could be together for the rest of time.”

  Felix finds my hand beneath the blankets and squeezes it. “Anybody ever tell you that you tell the best stories?”

  “All the time.” I used to love telling stories, spinning magical tales the way my mother could, back when it was me and Lena, Lena and me. Back during those long days and endless hours and minutes alone in the house, just the two of us. Back when our fears were too large to see, just hulking shadows at the edges of our vision. Now the only stories I can tell are the ones already in the sky.

  “Superhero of the day. Go,” I say to distract him. It’s a game we play. Felix loves comic books. He’s watched pretty much every superhero movie and TV show ever created.

  He thinks for a second. “Squirrel Girl.”

  “Huh?”

  “Squirrel Girl, from the Marvel Universe. She’s got an awesome tail and has like, every squirrel in Central Park under her control. She’s tough, fun, and creative. She single-handedly defeated Iron Man's nemesis, Doctor Doom. She’s always underestimated because: squirrels. I mean, what’s better than an army of adorable, furry little critters that’ll swarm and kill you?”

  “The attack of the kamikaze squirrels.”

  “You wanna know a secret? She might be my favorite of all of them.”

  “Is she hot or something?”

  “She’s totally hot. But not as hot as you.”

  I mime gagging. “You’re such a nerd. You’re lucky you’re hot.” “I know.” He kisses my forehead.

  The winter night is still. Nothing moves. Nothing breathes. The meadow is bathed in moonlight. Next to me, Felix’s eyes gleam like dark stars. Above our heads, the constellations wheel in the frozen bowl of the sky.

  Right now, right this second, everything is perfect. Beyond perfect.

  My heart is a galaxy of shooting stars.

  6

  Lena

  Dad arrived home two days ago. Each morning, I remember all over again that he’s trapped in bed, waiting to die.

  It’s my job to prop him up, to feed him, turn on the fan when he gets hot, help him change positions so he doesn’t get bed sores. It’s my job to help him to the bathroom, to change his bedpan when he can’t make it, to go to him when I hear his voice rumbling down the hallway, to prepare his pills and medicines, and comfort him on his journey toward death.

  My sister is still gone. The night before last, she finally replied to the dozens of texts, emails, and phone messages I sent her. Leave. Me. Alone. One text, then nothing. So, she’s alive and well. And exactly the same.

  Dad doesn’t seem concerned. She’s at her friend Eden’s house. She’s safe, she’s alive. She’ll come home in her own sweet time.

  I shove thoughts of Lux out of my head. It’s time to prepare the first cocktail of pills: two small yellow capsules, a round red one, one huge and white that looks like chalk. I place the pills in little paper cups and balance them on a tray with a large glass of water.

  After only two days, we’ve already fallen into a reassuring sort of schedule: first batch of pills before nine, breakfast at ten, bathroom check after breakfast, lunch at one, second batch of pills after lunch, bathroom break, snack at four, third batch of pills at five, supper at seven, television until ten.

  Even though Dad rejected regular hospice care, he’s been assigned a hospice nurse to check up on him once a week. Her name is Ellie Delmonte. She’s in her mid-40s, a large, pillowy woman with a booming laugh. She’s all movement, noise, and sparkle. Her burgundy hair is a glossy helmet, her long fingernails painted peacock blue.

  When she first arrived, she had bustled around the bedroom, setting things up, sorting, arranging, and humming to herself, her brightly patterned satin shirt billowing around her. “Don’t hesitate to contact me if you need anything, dear. We have volunteers who can assist with daily activities, spend time with your father, whatever your family needs.”

  I shook my head. “I’ll ask him, but I think we’re fine.”

  “Let me know if you change your mind, darling,” she said, her broad face crinkling, dimples forming in her peach-colored cheeks. “I’ll be here every Friday at 3:30 p.m. I’ll always stay for a couple of hours so you can take a break. Have coffee with friends, see a movie, or my personal favorite, shopping. Shopping is a great distraction when you need one.”

  I just stood in the middle of my father’s room, nodding, my hands hanging helplessly at my sides. I couldn’t even imagine such inane things as shopping, movies, coffee with friends.

  She paused, smiling kindly, her eyes full of empathy. Or pity. I couldn’t tell which. “I know this is a difficult time, but I’m here to help you, honey.”

  She was trying to make me feel better, but I just felt more alone.

  Even with Dad here, what I feel more than anything is a dark, oppressive loneliness. But I can’t think of that now.

  “Good morning,” I say brightly, standing in the doorway with my tray of Dad’s pills.

  The bedroom is almost the same as it was a decade ago. There’s the faded rose curtains, the white wallpaper dotted with tiny cornflowers, the outrageous salmon pink comforter Mom loved.

  Mom’s oak dresser stands next to a large floor-length mirror. Perfume bottles, a fake pearl necklace, and her fancy silver-handled brushes are all exactly where she last placed them. The ceramic, heart-shaped box she used to keep her earrings in is gone. An origami star sits in its place.

  “Lena.” Dad blinks up at me. The light from the bedroom window slants directly into his eyes.

  “Here, I’ll get that.” I set the tray down on the nightstand and move to the window.

  The yard is brown and patchy with dirty mounds of snow. The sun’s already bright above the bare maple tree, but a mass of clouds gathers on the eastern horizon, fat and foreboding. A storm is brewing.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Oh, you know, the same old.” A forced laugh gurgles in his throat, then dies.

  Across the street, the cornfield still lays fallow, a flat expanse of taupe that bleeds into the darkening sky. The world is silent and lonely outside the window.

  I close the curtains. “You hungry?”

  “Negatory.”

  “10-4,” I say, because I know he wants me to.

  “Remember how much you used to love that?” Dad asks wistfully.

 
When Lux and I were little, we thought Dad’s CB radio, or squawk box as he called it, was the coolest thing ever. He used to let us climb into the cab of his big rig 18-wheeler and tune into Channel 19. Dad had been a long-haul trucker ever since I could remember. He was gone for five, seven, ten days at a time.

  I remember a thousand bedtimes when he’d call to tell us good night. I always asked him where he was. “I’m on the big road, headed eastbound for Bean Town,” he’d say. Another night, I asked, “You made it to Cincinnati yet?” And he’d say, “Already in my back pocket, Gingersnap.”

  He always said stuff like, “I gotta stop for some go-go juice, some motion lotion,” when the big rig needed diesel, or, “I got myself another driving award” when he got a ticket. Mom wore a T-shirt he bought her that said, “My heart belongs to a trucker.” But after a while, she stopped wearing it.

  After Mom’s death, Dad switched from long haul to short haul so he could be home on weeknights. Sometimes I could see the long stretch of highway reflected in his eyes. I never asked if he missed the independence and loneliness of the road. I didn’t want to know.

  I turn away from the window. My stomach rumbles. I haven’t left the house yet to go to the grocery store. I haven’t wanted to leave him. That and Lux took Dad’s car on her great escape. “We’re pretty much out of food.”

  “Why don’t you run to the store?”

  I don’t want to leave him alone, but the food will run out before the hospice nurse, Ellie Delmonte, returns. And I need to shop for a low-sodium diet per the doctor’s instructions.

  “I’m fine, Gingersnap. Look at me. I’m not gonna fall apart if you’re gone for an hour.”

  I sigh. “How am I supposed to get there? Lux took your car.”

  He blinks a few times. “You could take the bulldog.”

  Mom’s minivan, aka the bulldog. We loved Dad’s slang for the other vehicles on the road—school busses were cheese wagons, motorcycles were crotch rockets, tow trucks were dragon wagons, septic trucks were toilets on wheels.

  The Honda Odyssey has sat in the garage for most of the last eight years. Like everything else of Mom’s, Dad refused to get rid of it. And I refused to drive it. Until now.

  “Yeah. I suppose I could,” I say slowly.

  “My credit card is on top of my dresser, next to my wallet and keys.”

  I watch him take his pills. The hitch in his throat as he swallows is barely visible through his rolls of fat. The thought of leaving, even for an hour, brings both guilt and relief. I should be here when it happens. I must be here. It’s my reason for being home in the first place.

  It’s my role, my duty to make things easier, to help him with the dying. Still, it terrifies me, the thought of entering the room one morning and finding him cold and rigid, his face locked in agony, the smell of death already infused in his pores.

  Canned laughter floats from the TV, old reruns of M*A*S*H. He sighs, closing his eyes as he sets the half empty glass of water back on the nightstand.

  I gather the little plastic cups, crinkling them on the tray. “Is there anything else you’d like to do, Dad?” I don’t know my father well enough to know what he likes. He loved photography once upon a time, but I haven’t seen a camera in his hands in years, maybe since he bought me my first SLR Nikon 35mm camera on my eighth birthday.

  Since Mom’s death, he’s either eating or watching TV or gone on a truck run. We’re like strangers, but intimate strangers who’ve survived a crash together.

  “You know, the hospice nurse said they have these volunteers who come in and spend time with you. They can talk, read, sing, even play the guitar. Would you like that?”

  “Can’t you do all those things?”

  I snort. “Not the guitar. You already know you don’t want me singing, unless you want your ears to start bleeding.”

  He grins at me, a flash of his old self. “We don’t need anybody but us.”

  “I thought you might say that. How about a book then?”

  “Reading is hard on my eyes.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ve been wanting to read this more.” He picks up a large book from the nightstand. A Bible.

  My throat tightens. Mom used to read us the Bible around Christmas and Easter, and for a while when Gran died. It hadn’t done her any good. “What for?”

  “There’s a lot of good stuff in here I didn’t know. It’s—comforting.

  I’ve been going to church, the one on the corner of Culver Street.”

  My eyebrows shoot up. “For how long?”

  “At least a year. There’s some real nice people over there. And I’ve been trying to read a few chapters every day. You think you could read it to me?”

  I sigh. What I wouldn’t give to be back at school, surrounded by all the things that make up my safe, predictable life, the routine of classes, hours in the dark room, dinners with Sarah or some of the other art majors. “I don’t know, Dad. Maybe later, after I go to the store.”

  “I wish Lux was here.”

  “Well, me too, Dad,” I say, clipping the rise of anger at my sister’s name. I could use someone to help, to clean the filthy house, to keep me from feeling so totally and completely alone. “I hope she’s okay.”

  “She’s okay.” He turns his head away from me. The TV blabbers in the background.

  “Why is she at the Yuns?” I ask carefully, watching my father’s face, the muscles ticking beneath the folds of skin. “Why isn’t she here with us?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It matters to me. She should be here. This is important.”

  “She needs some time. She’ll be back when she’s ready.”

  “Was she there—when you had the heart attack?” I chew on my lower lip, worrying a flag of loose skin. “Was she fighting with you?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” With his face in profile, I can’t see his eyes clearly.

  I see only the flare of his nostrils, the tightening around his mouth.

  “Who called 911?”

  He sighs. “Lux did.”

  “So she was there. Then why wasn’t she with you at the hospital?”

  “Lena—”

  “Did she do something? Is that why she’s gone?”

  “It’s done. It’s over.”

  “What did she do?”

  “She didn’t do anything.”

  “She screwed up again, didn’t she?”

  “Lena, just leave it.”

  But I can’t leave it. I can’t help myself. “How could she leave you? When you needed her most? What kind of person calls 911 and flees the scene?”

  “That’s enough!”

  I clench my jaw. “You could have died. You—”

  “But I didn’t,” he says in a weary voice. “Now, please. I was thinking I’d like to look through some of those old photography books. Remember the ones I used to read to you?”

  I take a breath, willing myself to calm down. Riling Dad up will only weaken him further. I speak as slowly and calmly as I can manage. “I think they’re still in the laundry room. I’ll get them.”

  I walk downstairs to the laundry room. Something happened. I’m not sure what, exactly, but anything involving Lux tends to become an epic disaster. She did or said something terrible, I know it. Anger flares through my veins, sparking at the tips of my fingers.

  I sink to my knees on the gray cement next to the cardboard boxes stacked in the opposite corner of the washing machine and furnace. The boxes are labeled in my mother’s elegant script: Summer clothes—3T-5T, Dad’s tools, Lux’s Breyer horses.

  My fingers tremble as I unstack the boxes, shove them aside. I’ve got to stay calm, compartmentalize my emotions. There’ll be plenty of time for anger later.

  I dig through the boxes until I found the one labeled Dad & Lena’s photo books. I yank the lid off and almost smile at the worn spines of books I haven’t seen in years: World’s Best Photography, Landscape Photography of Michigan, and Faces and Plac
es.

  My gaze snags on another box: Lena’s photos/negatives—2003 to 2009. I run my thumb along the black marker scrawl of my twelve-year-old hand.

  My lungs burn for air. There are so many memories locked away in these boxes. Beautiful photos of our beautiful, broken family.

  We had no idea, back then, how it would all burn to the ground. I rub the wetness from my eyes and head back upstairs. How quickly we lose everything that matters.

  7

  Lux

  Snow spirals down, swift and furious, slapping the windshield of my car. I’ve got Lorde cranked up loud on the radio. The heater is dialed as high as it will go. It’s Friday night, and me, Eden, and Simone are on our way to Jayda Washington-Clark’s party.

  Eden sits up front with me, squeezing her Faygo diet orange pop between her legs while she fiddles with her phone. Simone’s in the back seat. She texts with one hand, balancing the French vanilla cappuccino we picked up at the gas station in the other.

  I squint into the gloom, the gray sky turning a murky blue over the tops of the trees lining either side of the two-lane road. Our headlights glow like halos in the darkening night.

  I grip the steering wheel with Eden’s pink fingerless gloves. The silvery tank top and black mini are hers too, since I’m still crashing at her house.

  I left my own house with nothing but the clothes on my back. Luckily, I was wearing my jean jacket and the three-inch wedge heels that make me feel like I can pulverize whatever gets in my way. Which is how I feel right frickin’ now.

  “What’s the agenda for tonight?” Simone asks, leaning forward between the front seats.

  “What else?” I say, thumping the steering wheel. “A whole night of dancing our asses off with hot guys! Or in my case, one very specific hot guy.”

  Eden giggles.

  “Ugh. Spare me the details, please.” Simone pretty much hates the male species. Scratch that. She’s got a ton of guy friends, but she’s not interested in taking it to the next level. I’ve seen boatloads of guys hit on her. She’s never returned the favor. She always keeps a pink can of Mace in her purse next to her inhaler, and she’s not afraid to use it.