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I go down to the edge of the sea.
How everything shines in the morning light!
The cusp of the whelk,
the broken cupboard of the clam,
the opened, blue mussels,
moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred—
and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,
dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone.
It’s like a schoolhouse
of little words,
thousands of words.
First you figure out what each one means by itself,
the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop
full of moonlight.
Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.
-breakage
by mary oliver
It was an accident.
Chrissy knew that. She knew that no reasonable, logical person would look at these broken pieces she was meddling with and think she had done it on purpose.
She hadn’t, of course. She’d been trying to clean up and put the dishes away before she started the coffee that Saturday morning. Her hands were still wet and soapy when she reached for the mug in the drying rack and it had slipped from one hand to the other, bounced once on the counter, and then dropped into the sink at just the right angle to shatter well beyond what she could mend.
It wasn’t stopping her from trying, though.
A shard of ceramic bit into her finger and she sucked in a sharp hiss through her teeth. The superglue in her other hand had the tiniest leak in the squeeze-top and everything was beginning to stick together.
Everything except the pieces of this mug she’d broken.
Because while Chrissy knew, logically, rationally, and reasonably, that this was not a big deal, she couldn’t stop herself from trying to fix it.
And try as she might, she could not stop the way the panic was rising like bile at the back of her throat or the tears that were stinging behind her eyes and nose.
Why couldn’t it have been something of hers that she’d broken?
Blood from her finger was dripping onto the table now and the sight of it only sent another wave of dread roiling through her stomach.
Even breaking something of Eddie’s would have been better than this.
Better than breaking something of Wayne’s.
Wayne, who barely spoke to her and seemed to do little more than tolerate her presence in his trailer.
Wayne, who always seemed to find a cigarette to smoke or an errand to run any time there was the slightest chance of the two of them being left in the same room together.
Wayne, who probably had a few thoughts about the fact that she’d been sharing a bed with his nephew for the last two months, but was choosing not to say anything.
Wayne who, despite all evidence to the contrary, Eddie insisted liked her and was happy to let her stay with them.
“He’s just a quiet guy,” he’d said a hundred times. “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t like you. It doesn’t mean anything, really. Just that he’s quiet.”
But Chrissy didn’t have a huge library of comparison when it came to deciphering quiet. In her house, silence was never comfortable or easy. It was hostile and cold. If her mother was quiet, it was because she’d decided that Chrissy had done something wrong.
And if Eddie was right, and his uncle liked her even a little bit, the voice in Chrissy’s head—the one that sounded just like her mother—reminded her sharply, it was only a little bit. And if he came home and found the pieces of one of his mugs then…
“This is stupid,” she whispered to herself, even as the lump rose in her throat and her eyes began to well with tears. “This is so stupid.” If Eddie was awake, she knew he would tell her to relax, that she had nothing to worry about. He probably would have offered to take the blame—although she wouldn’t have let him.
But Eddie wasn’t awake and because it was Saturday, he probably wouldn’t be for at least another hour or two, and by then she’d planned to have all the dishes done and the laundry started so that when Wayne came home from work he would see that she was contributing and—
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to force back this inevitable panic attack.
It was an accident, she told herself. He would understand she hadn’t meant to break anything.
He wasn’t waiting for an excuse to kick her out. He wouldn’t lock the refrigerator or make her do jumping jacks until her legs gave out. He wouldn’t—
The front door of the trailer swung open with its usual, wretched screech and Chrissy’s heart stopped. She looked from the door where Wayne was making his way inside, slow and sluggish as he always was when he came home from an overnight shift, and down at the mess in her hands. Blood and shards of ceramic and superglue and crumpled paper towels.
It was too late to hide anything or try to clean it up. She couldn’t even bolt back for Eddie’s room because as soon as he’d bent to unlace his boots, Wayne had straightened up and caught sight of her at the table.
The knowledge that she had already been caught didn’t stop her from trying to hide her mistakes anyway. Her useless, clumsy hands were still moving, still trying to minimize the evidence—but damn it now everything was sticking together—as he shrugged out of his jacket and crossed the few steps to the table.
“I—um—I’m so sorry, Mr. Munson,” she began and wanted to cringe when she heard the tremble in her voice. “I um.” If she could just calm. Down. If she could just act like a goddamn grown-up instead of a scared little kid. “Your mug. It—I—” she corrected herself because the mug had not just broken on its own. “I was doing the dishes and it just—um. I’m really sorry,” she said again, and again a rush of tears stung alarmingly at her nose and her eyes. “If you’ll just tell me where you got it? I can replace it, I just—”
“You hurt yourself?”
The question stopped her rambling, and she looked up to find him standing at the empty chair, studying the mess she’d made. He didn’t look angry as he nodded to the blood-stained paper towels.
“Oh,” she blinked and looked back at her hands. “Uh. No, I’m fine. I just. I was trying to fix it and the…”
She stopped again as he turned and went back to the kitchen sink. He bent and opened the cabinet beneath it and rummaged for a moment before he found what he was looking for. He grabbed a dish rag from another drawer and ran it under the spigot, wringing it out before he turned back around and returned to the table. On it, he set a battered, white tin box and the wet towel. He sat down at the other chair with a tired-sounding sigh and beckoned with one hand. “Let’s see.”
Chrissy hesitated. “The…mug?”
It was Wayne’s turn to pause. “No, the mug’s broken, honey,” he said in that usual gruff, no-nonsense voice. “Let’s see what we can do about the piece of it sticking out of your finger.”
“Oh,” she slowly extended her right hand across the table. Wayne studied it for a moment before he reached out and turned on the lamp that hung overhead. He popped open the latched on the white box to reveal a well-stocked first aid kit and extracted a pair of tweezers. Carefully, he took hold of her hand and squinted at the blood blossoming around the sliver sticking out of the tip of her ring finger.
The lines on his face, especially the ones around his eyes, deepened as he tilted his head to the right once. Using the tweezers, he removed the splinter and set it aside before he wrapped her fingers in the wet dish rag. “Keep that on there for a minute,” he said with another nod as she took her hand back. “Bleedin’ a lot for just a little cut.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly and let her eyes drop to the disarray she’d strewn all over the table. “I really am sorry about this,” she said again. “I thought maybe I could fix it, but I don’t think this is the right kind of glue? It just…”
Wayne’s calloused hand cut into her line of sight as he reached across the table and picked up the largest piece of the mug she’d broken. His eyes squinted again at the design on the side and Chrissy held her breath.
Waiting for him to tell her he expected her to be more careful with his things.
To be more grateful for even being allowed to stay here in the first place.
To be more aware of how much he was sacrificing just by keeping a roof over her head.
“Camp Lejeune,” he said under his breath and shook his head. “Good news is I can remember that place just fine without this old thing.”
She watched with her brow furrowed in confusion as he stood again and retrieved a brown paper grocery bag from the bag of them beside the counter. He opened it and picked up all the mug’s broken pieces and placed them inside, along with the paper towels she’d used and the now-empty bottle of superglue. He rolled the top of the bag down and stuffed it into the trashcan.
He looked surprised to find her still watching him when he turned back around. “Something else bothering you besides that slice you’re missing from your hand?”
Chrissy swallowed hard, her eyes cast down on the cool cloth around her fingers. This was probably the most he’d ever spoken to her in the almost two months she’d lived there. “I, um, I thought you’d be mad,” she admitted quietly.
“Mmm.” He nodded and let out a neutral-sounding hum as he reached for the percolator and popped open the top to fill it with water. “Don’t know why I would be,” he said.
She felt her frown deepen. “I thought it was one of your favorites,” she said. “You use it all the time, and I—”
To her surprise, Wayne laughed. It was a quiet sound—gravely and gruff. But he definitely laughed. “Probably because it was the closest one to reach at some point,” he said. He looked around the small trailer, his eyes tracking the shelves lined with hats and mugs and other items she had assumed were collectibles. “I gotta few that mean something,” he said with a roll of his shoulder. “But most are just a thing to drink out of.”
That should have been it. She should have grabbed a Band-Aid from the box, muttered another thank you and apology, and scurried from the room.
He wasn’t mad. He didn’t even care.
She was fine. He wasn’t going to throw her out or make her feel guilty for what she’d done.
But the longer she sat there, staring at the bright red spot blooming into the wet towel around her hand, listening to the sound of coffee being scooped from the tin and poured into the machine, the more her vision blurred until she could not stop two fat tears from sliding down her cheeks when she squeezed her eyes shut.
The coffee was starting to brew by the time he sat down again and Chrissy, still feeling rooted in place, wiped quickly at her face, desperately trying to stem the tears that didn’t seem to want to stop. He didn’t say anything as he reached into his shirt pocket and removed a folded white handkerchief. “That’s clean,” he said as he handed it to her before he began to study the contents of the first aid kit a little more closely than he probably needed to.
The handkerchief was soft and smelled like tobacco when she used it to blot at her eyes and under her nose. She swallowed down the dryness of her throat and sniffled once more before she set it aside. “Sorry,” she said softly, more to the table than to him. “I don’t know why I get like this.” Hysterical over nothing. Prone to burst into tears if she had to make a decision. Completely frozen with panic over the thought of doing something wrong.
But she did know, of course. Because the four months she’d spent with Eddie and the last two she’d spent living here were not nearly enough to undo the damage her mother had caused in the eighteen years prior. Because she had so much to undo that the weight of it sometimes felt like it was crushing her. Because she lay awake more nights than she cared to admit, her stomach still twisted in a knot wondering if she was ever going to feel like she could exhale. Wondering if she was ever going to be normal.
Wayne didn’t say anything as he plucked a bottle of Mercurochrome and a bandage from the tin and motioned for her hand again. In the low light, she could see all the years of work in his hands. The callouses, the deep lines, the dry patches between his fingers. But he was more gentle than she expected as he dabbed the bright red antiseptic over her wound.
“But even if it was one ‘a my favorites that broke this morning,” he said, his eyes firmly on what he was doing, speaking as though he hadn’t heard her most recent apology. “It’s just stuff, y’know.”
She almost laughed. ‘Just stuff’ was not a concept the Cunninghams believed in. Nothing in the house Chrissy had grown up in was ‘just stuff’. If it was useful, like housewares and tools, it was a sign that they had worked hard enough to afford the best, newest versions of everything. If it was anything decadent or luxurious, it was a reward for all that they had done and sacrificed. And certainly—certainly—if it was anything that could be considered belonging to their children like clothes or toys or food, it was a gift to be deeply appreciated.
A gift that neither child actually deserved.
“Still,” she said softly. “I really am sorry.”
“Well, I accept your apology,” he answered after a moment and unwrapped the Band-aid. “But there’s nothing to forgive.” He glanced around the room again and this time, she saw that his eyes were blue. She’d never noticed that before. “As you can see, I got plenty of mugs.” The corner of his lips twitched, and she thought he might actually smile as he glanced down at the finger he was bandaging. “You’ve only got ten of these. And we’ve only got one of you. So, if you’re lookin’ for me to tell you to be a little more careful, let’s say it’s because of that, okay? Not because I’m worried about you breaking anything I can just as easily replace.”
Chrissy felt another lump rise in her throat as he finally raised his eyes to her, awaiting her answer. She nodded and found herself biting back a small smile of her own. “Okay.”
He mirrored her nod just once and sealed the adhesive side of the Band-aid over itself. Nice and snug. “Okay then,” he said and got up, tidying up the first-aid kit and tucking everything back under the sink. “You want some coffee?”
“Yes, please,” she said and made a move to get up, but he waved her back down.
“I’m up,” he reminded her. “It’s no trouble.” He opened the refrigerator and set down the carton of half and half, along with a spoon on the table for her, then took a mug from the drying rack and poured her a cup of coffee. “Did the paper—? Ah,” he interrupted himself when he spied the Saturday edition unrolled and sitting in the spot where Chrissy had been keeping them since she’d moved in.
Without another word, he set down a cup for himself and opened the newspaper. His stained fingers rifled through the sections for a moment before he extracted the Lifestyles section and the Editorials and handed them to her.
Chrissy pressed another smile between her lips and accepted the two sections she hadn’t realized he’d noticed that she borrowed out of every paper. She stirred the cream into her coffee and took a sip before she folded the newspaper over and began to read the book reviews.
By the time Eddie stumbled from his bedroom with messy hair and bleary eyes, the paper had been read and Wayne was whisking eggs in a green plastic bowl. Eddie stopped and looked from his uncle to Chrissy and back again. “Scrambled eggs?” he asked. “What’s the occasion?”
“No occasion,” Wayne assured his nephew as he cracked another egg into the mix. “Just hungry,” he shrugged. “Seemed rude not to make enough for you kids while I’m at it.”
Eddie looked at him for another long moment before he smiled and came to stand behind Chrissy at the table. He squeezed her shoulders and kissed the top of her head before he frowned down at her hand. “What happened?” he asked, pointing to her bandaged fingertip.
“Oh,” she shook her head and smiled up at him. “Nothing. Just an accident.”
He kissed her forehead and popped open the folding chair against the wall so that he could sit beside her, holding her hand while they looked at movie times together.
They were arguing lightly over which movie to see when Wayne set down two plates of fluffy scrambled eggs and slices of buttered white toast. He placed one hand on each of their shoulders and gave them a brief squeeze before he returned to the stove to make his own breakfast.
And in early August of 1986, in that cramped trailer with its faded linoleum and shag carpet, Chrissy wasn’t sure if she’d ever felt so cared for in her whole life.
-fin-