The Break-In (2 page)

They’d been living together. Planning to get married. To move down to Australia, where he could surf and she could paint sunrises. They would take a few years off from career-type goals. Work in a beach bar, mixing fancy drinks. Find themselves. That was the plan. It wasn’t a plan their parents loved, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was each other.

Everything changed a couple of months back. Marcus had still been working at the liquor store. One day, he came home to find Lisa’s things gone from their tiny house on Poplar Avenue. Not just her clothes and makeup, either. She had really cleaned the place out. She took the sticky, halfempty
shampoo bottles from the back of the bathroom cupboard. She even took the hair dryer. That dryer could kill a person. You had to unplug it when you left the room because it sparked even when it was off.

What could he do? He sobbed into his pillow for a day, or ten. Then he realized he couldn’t possibly afford to rent the house all by himself. So he, too, moved out. Moved in with his mother, back into the bedroom he slept in when he was a child. Where he could sob into the pillow of his childhood for another day, or ten.

Finally, his mother suggested that he go for therapy.

“Marcus?” said Dr. Ling. “Can you tell me about your sadness—how it feels?”

“It’s kind of stupid.”

“Nothing is stupid in this office. I promise.”

“I feel like I’m not even here. Ever since Lisa left, I feel like I’m on the outside of life. Like I’m watching from the corner, you know?” Dr. Ling shifted in her chair. “This sadness is so bad I can no longer work. I don’t sleep.”

Dr. Ling nodded.

“Sometimes it feels, well, it feels almost like. you’re going to think this is weird,” Marcus said.

“I won’t think anything you say is weird, Marcus. I promise.”

Marcus felt his cheeks heat up. “Okay. This sadness, it’s almost as if the stinging lives in my skin. When I think of her, my entire body feels as if it’s covered in paper cuts. I would do anything to stop the pain. I have to get her back.”

“I thought we agreed the other day that Lisa isn’t good for you,” said Dr. Ling.

Marcus hadn’t agreed to anything the other day. His skin had just hurt too much for him to set the doctor straight. “That’s not true,” he said now. A garbage truck outside made a whining sound. Trash cans smashed together like thunder. The noise made Marcus feel brave. “I’d take Lisa back in a second. Any man would. She’s perfect.”

Dr. Ling checked her watch. “I’m afraid our time is up for today.” She stood up. “Some things we can’t change, Marcus. You’ll learn as you get older that life is going to happen, whether we like it or not. Sometimes we get scratched up, sometimes we don’t. The best we can do is learn how to cope and soldier through.”

Like Marcus, Alex had a hard time getting up that morning. He lay in bed and pretended not to feel his mother shaking his shoulder.

“Alex, wake up,” he heard.

He opened his eyes and stared at Boris’s tank. The spider was pawing at the glass almost as if he were waving hello. Even with the silky blond hair, Boris was terrifying. Of course, terrifying was the point.

“You don’t want to be late for school.”

What was Alex supposed to do? Get up, pull on his jeans and sweatshirt, and get on the bus, as if everything was fine? Nothing was fine. Nothing would be fine ever again. His dad was dead, his dad’s killer was free, and Alex was in charge of the family.

“I’m s-s-s ...” He stopped, shook his head, frustrated. “I’m s ... s ...”

“It’s okay, honey. It’s been a tough few days.”

He rolled his eyes back and stuck his tongue out one side of his mouth.

“You’re sick?” His mother put a hand on his forehead. “You don’t have a fever. You seem to be fine.”

Not on the inside, he didn’t say.

She stood up. “Okay. But I have to go to work. You’ll have to fend for yourself. Know what that means?”

Cereal for every meal. He nodded.

“And maybe you’ll try to gather up some of those bugs before they get into the walls. Those beetles chirped all night long.”

Crickets, he didn’t say.

“Otherwise we’ll have to call in a pest control guy. Remember Grandpa’s snails?”

Alex’s dad had told him a story about his grandfather. Back in the 1950s, Grandpa and his three brothers ran a fruit and vegetable store. One day, Grandpa had a great idea. The store already sold unusual foods, like avocados and purple potatoes. “Classy restaurants serve snails now,” Grandpa said to his brothers. “Escargots, they call them. We should get some snails to sell.”

“Snails?” his brothers said in horror. “We’re not investing a single dollar in snails.”

But Grandpa was certain he was onto something big. He ordered the snails anyway from a snail farmer in northern Africa. A few weeks later, on a hot day, three long, narrow containers arrived at his house. They looked like giant baskets with lids, and each weighed about as much as a ten-year-old child.

But Grandpa had a problem. The snails had to be kept in a cool place, like the cellar. But there was no way he could get the containers down the stairs. So he had a bright idea. He put the snails in paper grocery bags and taped the tops shut. Then he set bag after bag on the cellar floor. In the morning, he would drive them to restaurants and sell them. He figured he’d make about $2,000. If his brothers didn’t want to share in it, that was their loss.

The next day, Grandpa dressed in his best suit. Then he went down to the cellar to collect his little money-makers. When he turned on the light, the bags were gone. He looked around and saw snails everywhere—on the dirt floor, up the shelves, on the ceiling. The entire cellar was wiggling with snails.

Turned out, snails ate paper.

Yesterday, Alex had made Grandpa’s mistake. He thought that an air-filled plastic bag was a safe home for his crickets.

Turned out, crickets ate through plastic.

“I’ll f-f-f ...”

“I know, sweetie. You’ll find them.” She stood up and playfully shook a finger at him. “You behave, hear me?”

He cupped a hand to his ear as if he didn’t hear her.

“Very funny. See you at five-thirty.” She pulled on her jacket and headed for the door. “School tomorrow, for sure.”

He didn’t look up.

“Alex?”

He rolled over and faced the wall.

Her voice was soft now. “Staying home won’t bring your father back, sweetheart.”

So far, the morning had been pretty decent, Alex decided. He’d put his baseball cards in order. He’d watched cartoons. He’d even filled Boris’s drinking sponge with water. Now it was after eleven o’clock, and he hadn’t even had breakfast. With his stomach
growling, he grabbed a carton of milk and the Life cereal. Then he reached into the cupboard and took out two bowls.

He stopped. Stared at the bowls.

It had been their routine. Every morning, while his dad was shaving, Alex poured the cereal and set it on the table. His dad would finally arrive in the kitchen, still buttoning his police shirt or smoothing wet hair. Only then did Alex pour the milk. With cereal, you couldn’t pour the milk too early. The cereal had to be soft, but not too soft.

Alex put the bowls away. Cereal at lunch time was a lousy idea anyway.

What he really needed to do was find at least one of the escaped crickets for Boris’s next meal. Not that the spider would be hungry just yet. He’d had a cricket yesterday, before the great cricket escape. He didn’t really need to eat for another week, but Alex wanted him to keep his strength up.

Standing in the hallway, Alex tried to imagine where he’d go if he were a cricket. He glanced at the open window in the living room. Outside, that’s where he’d go. Especially if he knew he was meant to be food for a big, hairy spider.

He looked closely at the window for signs of a cricket break-out. But nothing had chewed through the screen. There wasn’t a crack wide enough for a cricket to wiggle through, either. Which was a good sign. It meant the crickets might be in the house still.

The room smelled of fresh paint, even now.

The day before they’d moved in, his father had woken him when it was still dark. “Do you want to have a great experience?” he had asked.

Alex had pulled on his jeans and jumped in the car. His dad explained their plan as they drove. “We’re going to surprise Mom. You know how she loves the ocean? We’re going to paint the front rooms in the new house a nice pale blue.”

“Painting,” Alex had said. “Is that the ‘great experience’?”

“No,” his dad replied.

Just as the sky started to brighten with morning sun, they pulled into a Tim Hortons drive-through. Alex asked for hot chocolate, but his dad shook his head. He bought them each a coffee and a muffin. They could eat the muffin, his dad said. But they couldn’t touch the coffee. Was this the “great experience”? Again, his dad said no.

The car came to a stop in the parking lot of the big hardware store. Coffee in hand, they walked inside, Alex watching for signs of a great experience.

Finally, they stood facing aisle 6B. It was lined to the ceiling with cans of latex and oil paint. Professional painters in beat-up, paint-splattered white overalls studied the selection. Alex’s dad looked at him and nodded. Coffee time. Alex sipped and made a face—the coffee was screaming hot and tasted bitter and burnt. Anyway, he followed his dad down the paint aisle. They walked past the guy with big muscles and a gold hoop earring. Past the two skinny ones, old enough to be grandfathers, arguing about which beige their customer wanted. And past the young woman taking photos of paint samples with her cell phone.

At the end of the aisle, Alex’s dad stopped. Waved back toward all of the painters. They all had coffee.

Finally, Alex understood. Up early, coffee in hand, at the hardware store getting ready for an honest day’s work. He and his dad had been part of something that morning.

Anyway. Today the paint smell made his stomach hurt. There was too much of his father in this house.

He tried to pull the couch away from the wall so he could check on yesterday’s lettuce. See if any crickets had taken the bait. The sofa was heavier than he expected; he couldn’t move it very far. He squeezed down behind it, feeling around in the dark for the lettuce. Or, even better, but far less likely, an actual cricket. But the lettuce was gone. Which was a good sign. It meant the crickets were alive and well.

As he backed himself out from behind the sofa, his hand fell on something small and hard. He closed his fist around it.

It was a brass bullet. From his dad’s old .32 calibre Smith & Wesson, the one he used for target practice on days off. A revolver, with a bullet chamber that turned every time the gun was fired. His dad often unloaded the revolver on the living room table. He was always careful, but this bullet clearly escaped.

Alex slid it into his pocket.

When Marcus got home from Dr. Ling’s office, he crawled back into bed. What else did he have to do? At least when he was asleep he didn’t have to think about Lisa.

He was up again, just stepping out of the shower, when the doorbell rang. Figured. The one time he didn’t bring his clothes into the bathroom.

The bell rang again. Marcus dried off a bit and rushed to the door, wrapping the towel around his waist.

The last person he expected to see was Lisa. But there she stood on the porch, sunlight creating a halo behind her head. The way she was dressed told Marcus that she was on her way either to or from the gym. To, Marcus decided. Her fluffy hair
showed that she hadn’t worked out yet. This was a girl who put her heart into everything. When she was done at the gym, she looked like she’d just dragged herself out of a puddle. Dripping wet and worn out. But still beautiful.

“Wow.” He tried not to grin. “This is a surprise.”

“How’s it going?”

“Good.” He pulled the towel tighter around his waist and waved her into the house. “Come, sit. I’ll just get dressed.”

“Is your mother home?”

“No, she’s at work. We’re all alone.”

“Good.” Lisa walked into the living room as proudly as Queen Elizabeth herself. “I don’t have long.”