Boys With Broken Fathers
When we went back to school, I saw Bruce in the hallway before first period.
He saw me too. Our eyes met for half a second, then he looked away and turned down a different corridor. A bruise bloomed on the left side of his face, yellow-green and fading.
Good, I thought.
Then I felt bad for thinking it.
Angela Martinez was at the locker next to mine. She’d been Bruce’s sort-of girlfriend since October.
“You really messed him up,” she said, not looking at me.
“He started it,” I said.
“I know.” She slammed her locker. “His dad finished what you started.”
I didn’t ask what she meant.
After school, I brought the broken box to Mr. Denko’s shop.
He studied it a long time.
“We can fix this,” he said. “It won’t be the same. But it can still be good.”
Three weeks passed.
I’d picked up a reputation I didn’t want. There was a pecking order at school, and somehow I’d landed at the top of it.
I wasn’t tough. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.
I just wanted to exist.
Bruce avoided me. I avoided him. We moved through school like magnets with the same poles, always pushing away.
One afternoon, I found a paper bag outside Mr. Denko’s shop.
Inside were three pieces of walnut, pre-sanded. A note lay on top:
For the box.
I brought it inside.
Mr. Denko ran his hand over the wood. “That’s good walnut. Expensive.”
“Who left it?”
He looked at me. “Does it matter?”
I thought about Bruce’s bruise. About him eating lunch alone.
“No,” I said. “It doesn’t.”
Mid-February, I was shooting hoops after school. The air was so cold the ball felt stiff, like it didn’t want to bounce.
Then I heard footsteps.
Bruce walked onto the court and stopped when he saw me.
“I’ll leave,” he said.
“It’s a public court.”
He nodded but stayed.
I took a shot. It bounced off the rim.
Bruce caught the rebound automatically. He held the ball like he didn’t know what to do with it.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I waited.
“For the box,” he said. “For everything.”
“Okay.”
“That’s it?” He threw the ball back harder than he needed to. “That’s all you’ve got?”
“I hated you,” I said. “I don’t know what I feel now.”
Bruce swallowed.
“My dad died,” he said.
I froze. “What?”
“Heart attack. Two weeks ago.” His voice went flat. “Everyone keeps telling me I should be sad. I’m not.”
“What do you feel?”
He stared at the ground. “Relief.”
Then, like he couldn’t stop it once it started:
“He was on me all the time. Nothing I did was good enough.” He wiped his face fast. “He used to beat me.”
The court went quiet around us. No cars, no voices, just the wind.
Bruce bounced the ball once, then shook it off like a dog shaking water.
“Throw me the ball,” he said.
He stood outside the three-point line. “Square your shoulders. Your hands are wrong.”
He shot. The ball hit the rim and dropped through.
He adjusted my arms. “Like this.”
I shot.
Nothing but net.
“Keep practicing,” he said. Then his voice dropped. “I bought the walnut. Two weeks of allowance.”
“I know,” I said.
“How?”
“Angela told me.”
We played a quiet game of around the world.
After a while, Bruce said, “I’m not going to be like him.”
Then he added, “I hate him. And I hate that I feel bad about it.”
I put my arm around his shoulder. “It’s okay to feel bad.”
We didn’t talk about his dad again.
But I understood something that day.
Sometimes the meanest kid in school isn’t mean.
He’s just bleeding.
Dad Returns
Around that time, my dad called.
“Hello?” Mom said.
“Hey, Jean. It’s Terry.”
“You have the nerve to call.” Her voice tightened. “You haven’t seen your kids in six months. You haven’t paid child support. I was about to go to court. Do you have any idea how hard it’s been? The kids are suffering. You don’t just disappear, Terry.”
“I had an accident.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“Jean—please. Don’t.”
“You could have still called.”
“I couldn’t,” he said. “I was topping a tree. I fell thirty feet. A branch crushed my legs.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I was in a coma for three months,” he said. “In traction for six.”
Silence.
“My disability check comes in two days,” he said. “I’ll make things right.”
“You can come by,” Mom said finally. “But I’m not protecting you from the kids. If you mess up again, that’s on you.”
Two days later, he came.
He handed Mom a cashier’s check for eight thousand dollars.
Dan was standing near the hallway.
“Hey, Danny,” Dad said gently. “How’s it going?”
I crossed my arms and walked away.
Then Tina ran.
“Daddy! Daddy!”
She wrapped her arms around him like he was the sun.
“How are your eyes, Teeny?” he asked.
“I’m going to be blind,” she said, matter-of-fact.
“No you’re not,” he said instantly.
“I don’t cry anymore,” she added. “I don’t want to make Mommy sad.”
I stepped closer. “She needs a treatment,” I said. “It costs forty-seven thousand.”
Dad put his arm around Tina. “We’ll do something,” he said. “We’ll figure it out.”
I didn’t tell him about the contest.
Not yet.