Broken

A Short Story by Lucy Stubbings

Photo by Vignesh Kumar R B on Unsplash

The television broke the day my dad died.

Outside, the July sunshine rippled off the tarmac. I drew the curtains; sunlight had no place in this house.

Mum sat in the artificial semi-darkness, staring at the broken box. Her reflection warped within its blank screen.

In the kitchen, there was no need to lower the blind to block out life. As soon as the policeman uttered the word “deceased,” a mountain had creaked into existence in the back garden. Its jagged sides towered above the house, crushing and uprooting Mum’s roses and buckling the fence.

The police had scarcely closed the front door behind them when Mum shapeshifted into her Significant: the fox. Wildly, she clawed at the door before she tore up the stairs, body low. She screamed, throwing herself onto the master bedroom wall again and again until she collapsed into a whimpering bundle of fur.

I hadn’t cried yet. My eyes and mouth were dry like the unfeeling mountain outside and the sun-scorched earth surrounding it. Instead, my insides had become filled with sand, it rubbed at my throat, overloaded my stomach, and weighed down my ankles.

I switched on the radio, still tuned to Dad’s sports station. Static blared rather than the usual commentators. My finger and thumb bobbed up and down as I turned the tuning knob. The static hissed louder, forcing me to give up.

Hung up on the kitchen wall was our family calendar, displaying all the days Dad wouldn’t see. On it, circled with hearts, was my eighteenth birthday in five days. Underneath in blue, Dad had written, FINDING OUT MIKEY’S SIGNIFICANT!!! He’d doodled a tiny fox and a wolf with a vs. in-between. He’d call me his wolf-child whenever I achieved anything, whether getting top marks on a test or scoring a goal, “He’s a wolf-child for sure, Tina!” Dad would wink, teasing Mum; daring her to respond.

Dad dares; our favourite game. He dared me to eat a chilli pepper. I dared him to put on mum’s make-up. He dared me to Moonwalk down our street.

I dared him to fly.

On the calendar, he’d sketched a stick figure freefalling from a plane on yesterday’s date, with DAD’S SKYDIVING! scribbled underneath. A day that now stretched behind us like an unwanted shadow: Dad’s Deathday.

My eyes cast a glance at today’s date. On it, in the same blue ink as my birthday, he’d written CALL THE REPAIRMAN.

Broken television. Broken radio. Broken family.

I flipped through the Yellow Pages on the console table. All the pages were blank. Remembering Dad’s trick, I closed it. This time I blew gently, sand and dust scattered across the sunshine cover. I closed my eyes, whispering “Revea—”

My eyes sprang open with the doorbell. Through the frosted glass was the blurred shape of a man. Dad! He’d just forgot his keys again. I leapt forward, twisting the handle to unlock the door.

Reveal! The sun momentarily blinded me.

The man who stood there did not have Dad’s silver hair. Nor his mischievous slate eyes. He wasn’t wearing cargo shorts, pockets stuffed with stones that rattled as he walked. His shoes weren’t scuffed. His nose wasn’t sharp, his skin wasn’t tanned. He didn’t smell like the fusion of moss and pine trees.

All this man shared with my dad was his height, but where my dad stood tall and strong, this man stooped. His pot belly poked over his worker’s trousers. His unruly ginger beard seemed to squash and pucker his ruddy face as though he’d pulled on it tightly like cords of a hoodie. In his left hand was a rusting red toolbox. He offered me his right.

“Bill the repair guy. At your service. You must be Mikey.”

Before I could respond, a flash of burnt copper darted beside my legs and out the front door. Catching the scent of escape, Mum had bolted to the forest.

“That must be your mother, quite the vixen isn’t she.”

I curled my hand into a fist.

“There are three types of Repair folk,” Dad had once told me. “Hooved are mischievous and clairvoyant. Horned are competitive and telekinetic. Winged are grumpy and narco...” He never finished the sentence, pretending to fall asleep on the spot with a loud snort-snore.

“Let’s start with the TV,” Bill said, stepping inside.

He removed his boots, revealing hooved feet. “After you, Mikey.”

He clip-clopped behind me into the living room, placed his toolkit down and crouched behind the television.

I tried to look anywhere but the crack creeping above his low-waisted trousers. “Would you like a drink?” I asked, remembering my manners.

“I wouldn’t say no to a beer.”

“We don’t have any.”

“Yeah, you do. Just knock on the fridge three times,” he shook his head, “kids these days.”

I knocked and there inside the fridge were six cold ones. I took two. No parents, who cares if I drink?

Bill downed his beer in one and belched.

“So, it’s your Significant birthday coming up, that right kid?” he asked, tightening the screws on the television’s plug with his screwdriver.

I shrugged. It didn’t matter anymore.

“It’s a big deal what Significant you get.” His know-it-all telepathy made my eyes roll.

“Well, obviously, I’ll be a fox or wolf.” I snapped.

“Hmmm,” was his response. “Right, show me this radio.”

We moved into the kitchen. The gloom of the mountain outside overflowed into the room.

“You appear to have a mountain in your garden.”

“Uh-huh.”

He unplugged the radio, laid it on the kitchen table and set to work dismantling it.

My dad’s radio. In front of me in bits.

My body heaved. I ran to the toilet and threw up. Sand, beer and guilt filled the bowl as the contents of the Sahara poured out of me.

I curled up and cried, beached on the dunes above the lino.

Bill tapped on the door, “Hey kid, want food? Gonna ask the fridge for a TV dinner if you're in? Golden Girls is on tonight.”

Spitting out the gritty remnants, I pulled myself to the basin and splashed cold water on my face. “Sure.”

For four more nights, we sat there, eating TV dinners and drinking beer while watching The Golden Girls.

Through an unspoken agreement, the curtains remained closed. The cloudless sky felt too heavy with Dad’s last breath.

Without the sun defining the day, I dozed between light and dark, reality and re-runs. In my dreams, I flew the plane, and it was my hands that pushed him out. The rush of the ground jolted me awake each time.

“Not your fault, Mikey,” Bill would maintain.

Every so often, Bill would find something else to mend - the wobbly coffee table; the dripping kitchen tap; the blocked toilet.

“Can’t magic fix all the broken things?” I asked on the fourth night with a beef curry, chips, rice and naan compartmentalised and balanced on my lap, and a beer in my hand.

Bill trilled his lips as his fork hovered with a chicken chunk pierced on its trident’s points, the beige korma sauce on top glooped threateningly towards his shirt. He resumed the fork’s trajectory, “Well, I guess, I’d be out of a job if it could,” he replied good-naturedly between chews.

Bill knocked on the fridge for two sticky toffee puddings and more beer. He settled back on the sofa, handed me my dessert, and put his hooves up on the now sturdy coffee table.

We ate in companionable silence for a while.

“Big day tomorrow kid.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m sorry I can’t stay for it; broken things don’t fix themselves - right?” I couldn’t look at him, a stony loneliness hitting me. For the first time since his arrival, I noticed his tools were packed away neatly in his toolbox and no longer scattered around. He patted my leg, reading my mind once more, “You’ll be fine, anything you need fixing before I go?”

I thought of Mum, but before I could say anything, he replied, “She’ll be home soon. I promise.”

I nodded as he got up to leave.

“Oh, there is one thing,” I said, remembering the back garden.

“The mountain!” He sat back down and held my hand, “Nothing I can do about that I’m afraid. It’s all your grief. Eventually, it will erode. Each year getting smaller until it is a pebble you can fit in your pocket, to be carried with you always. There will be some days you’ll forget it’s there, while other days all you’ll want to do is feel its weight, rub at its roughness, warm it in your hand. For now, though, it’s a mountain and it isn’t going anywhere.”

I realised what I had always known; it was mine to climb and to sit with whenever I needed to. It isn’t going anywhere. I half-smiled.

“Before I forget, there’s a gift for you on the VCR.” With that, he pulled on his work boots and was gone.

I threw the empty dinner trays and bottles into the kitchen bin and returned to the living room where a VHS with a sky-blue ribbon tied in a bow awaited me. The bow loosened and flatlined as I tugged on one of its fraying ends.

The VHS was black except for the white remains of a peeled-off label and a Be Kind Rewind sticker on the guard panel. I pushed it in and pressed play.

The black of the screen morphed into fuzzy white lines, which, in turn, blended into silver hair, tanned skin, a sharp nose, and cargo shorts with pockets stuffed with stones. Dad. His slate-grey eyes locked with mine.

“Looks like I’ll miss your birthday, bud.” Our tears mirrored in the glass. “I love you, Mikey. I don’t have long, only time for one last dare.” He smiled reassuringly, as he had on my first day at school and before all my hockey games. “I dare you to live your life and never be afraid to fly.” The white lines returned, crashing across like waves, pulling the image of my dad from one side of the television to the next until all that was left was my reflection in the darkness.

In the silence, I could hear a scratching at the front door. I looked at the mantle clock, it was nearly midnight.

My mother, the fox, sat on the doorstep. Head bowed. I lowered my hand for her to sniff and lick.

She transformed then, back into the woman who had raised, loved and nurtured me all my life. Who had sung softly as she’d rocked me gently to sleep, her heart beating against my small ear. Who had carried me, shifting her weight from one hip to the other, her soft coconut-scented curls tickling my nose. Who had lifted me onto her shoulders so I could run my fingers through the sky.

A million moments, real yet impalpable as the sun’s dappled light on a forest floor. There were no days circled on the calendar for when these moments ceased to exist, only an ever-increasing jangle in Mum’s pockets.

We held each other anew, her ear rested beside my beating heart. Finally letting go when the clock’s midnight chimes rang. Pins and needles danced across my body as my arms slimmed and my legs lengthened, twig-skinny. My toes clicked, bending into talons. My face convexed. My tail bone stretched like elastic.

From my hair follicles grew not fur but feathers, the colour of midnight. Each one pierced me from the inside out, making me cry out. They threaded through my skin, covering me from head to toe. I started to shrink then, like a crisp packet in the oven, until I was no bigger than a newborn baby.

“Neither fox nor wolf, then,” my mother grinned. “but a crow! Happy birthday darling boy. Dad would be so proud.” I perched on her shoulder, nuzzling her neck before I launched into the moonless sky.

Life in front of me, I circled the mountain, chipping off a shard with my beak.

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Author: Lucy is a writer based in Sussex England, when she is not writing while drinking copious amounts of tea you can find her walking in the 100 acre wood with her kids, husband and rescue dog, Bev.

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