Broken Read Online Free Page B

swallow. “Are you gonna tell me why you’re here?” Walter’s brothers exchanged glances. “Come on! Don’t waste my time.”
    Andy spoke. “Mary’s dead.”
    “What?”
    “Mary’s dead.”
    Walter raised a second shot to his lips as the room shifted out of focus. No. Not my sister. Not Mary. Mary—the only one in the family to ever show him any kindness. Mary, who smelled so good, like Sweetheart Soap. “Don’t pay attention to Dad,” she would tell him. “He doesn’t really hate you. He just misses Mom.”
    According to Mary, if their father hadn’t been such a stupid, cheap bastard, if he had taken his wife to the hospital instead of leaving her to bleed to death on the bed, she might have lived.
    Walter had not seen his sister Mary since his first wife died.
    He downed the second shot. A stream of heat traveled down his chest as the room went back into focus. “What are you telling me?”
    “Mary had cancer,” said Nick. “She died last week.”
    Walter felt the pulsating veins in his forehead. “Last week?” He jumped from the barstool. “What d’ ya mean last week?”
    “Settle down,” said Andy.
    “Settle down? Settle down? You come in here tellin’ me my sister died last week. Where the fuck was you last week? Why didn’t you come down last week? I didn’t even know she was sick!”
    Nick took a sip of beer. “Would you have cared?” 
    Walter lunged at Nick, knocking him off the stool then pinned his scrawny body to the floor. Someone pulled at Walter’s jacket. Others grabbed his arms. Walter was breathless by the time three mammoth steelworkers pulled him off his brother. Andy told the men to take Nick out to the truck and make sure he stayed there. Walter slid back onto his barstool to catch his breath.
    Andy put his arm around Walter’s shoulder. “We wanted to tell you sooner. There was so much confusion and we weren’t even sure where you lived.”
    Walter looked across the bar, past the liquor bottles and into the foggy mirror. He should have been there for his sister. He should have called her. Why hadn’t she called him? Memories flooded his mind like film clips. Mary holding him when he cried. Mary taking his side when everyone was against him. Mary—the gentle one in a family of brutes. Why? Why had he cut himself off from the family? From his sister? From Mary?
    Andy had been talking but Walter wasn’t listening.
    “. . . and all the neighbors were there. So many flowers! Mary would have loved all those flowers...”
    “Flowers?”
    “At the funeral.”
    “Oh. Mary’s funeral,” Walter said casually. He looked at his empty whiskey glass, past the bottles and into the mirror again. His mind was now closed down, as though he had just received a shot of anesthetic. “Oh, yeah. Mary’s funeral,” he mumbled. The bartender poured him another shot. He took his eyes off the mirror just long enough to toss it down his throat. “Thanks for coming all the way from Pittsburgh,” he said. “I appreciate it.”
    A few moments later Walter turned to say something to Andy. The barstool beside him was empty.
     
    *     *     *
     
    Sarah waited until Walter’s car was out of sight then she hurried to the back door. Stanley was not on the porch. Ducking her head against the rain, she ran across the yard to Olga’s, quickly letting herself in.
    In the tidy yellow kitchen, a big pot of ham and cabbage simmered on the stove, sending its pungent aroma throughout the house. As Sarah wiped the rain from her face, Olga looked up from the counter where she was shaping dark brown dough into bread. Stanley, his wet cutouts spread over the kitchen table to dry, was drinking hot chocolate and eating a cookie.
    “Thank you for taking him in,” said Sarah. “I hope he wasn’t a problem.”
    Olga covered the dough with a clean white cloth and placed it beside the warm stove. “The boy is not the problem,” she said. “Who puts him out in the rain is the