Broken as Things Are: A Novel

by Martha Witt

Overview

From the day that Morgan-Lee is born, her extraordinarily beautiful and withdrawn older brother, Ginx, is obsessed by her. Inhabiting their own parallel world, the two communicate through a secret language and make-believe stories; when Morgan-Lee begins to explore friendships beyond their closed circle, however, Ginx becomes increasingly disturbed. In luminous prose, Martha Witt explores the intense and private world inhabited by these siblings and the inevitable and necessary pain of their separation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781429994552
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/01/2010
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	246 KB

About the Author

Martha Witt grew up in Hillsborough, North Carolina. Currently, she lives in New York City. Broken as Things Are is her first novel.

Read an Excerpt

Broken As Things Are

A Novel

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By Martha Witt

Picador

Copyright © 2004 Martha Witt
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-9455-2

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CHAPTER 1

BEAUTY

THE DAY MY ninth-grade year ended, the official beginning of our summer, the first thing I did was go to the tree house to see Billy. By the time I finally got to Aunt Lois's, she was already preparing dinner.

"Hello," I called to our aunt, who was sitting in her dining room snooting string beans, pinching each head between two beautifully manicured nails. The beans dropped once, once, once, against the bottom of her large aluminum pot.

I hadn't even closed the front door before she sat bolt upright in her chair to look at me, suddenly aware of the hour. "You're late," she accused, the red curls sculpted to frame her face, her lips a trembling heart. She shook her pot of beans, but she did not ask where I'd been. I kept my visits with Billy secret, which was why I never met with him more than once a week, forty minutes each time, but the first day of summer was sacred. "Now, help me get things ready. Go on and set up. We need to straighten," she declared, leaning forward to scrutinize the living room. There had once been walls to separate the dining and living areas, but Aunt Lois had them removed after studying large glossy photographs from one of her magazines that featured an airy and welcoming living-and-dining-room combination. "Get the kits set up. Go on, now. I've got clients coming in a half hour."

I never obeyed Aunt Lois right away. She looked at me as I stood, not budging.

"I'm done. The beans are ready to go," she said, her violet eyes shuttering down to the white leather chair where Ginx sat with his Time magazine, humming and turning the pages with a slap. It was a special issue about the threat of nuclear war and what President Reagan was doing to prevent it. Ginx had just finished a report on this issue for school.

"There will be a big explosion," my brother said. "And he's doing nothing and nothing." Ginx read a lot about nuclear war.

"Hi, Ginx," I said. My brother paused, looked around the room as if he had forgotten something, then returned to reading, making it clear that I should not have been late.

"He could sit somewhere else," our aunt grumbled.

Aunt Lois had paid a lot of money for that chair because she loved the thought of her red hair against its cream-white leather. When someone complimented her hair, she'd say, "Iuse a natural heightener made specifically for me by a woman out in Dallas." No one who heard this knew what a "heightener" was, but the way she'd say it, and the way a curl would lie precisely just below each ear, put a stop to any questions.

"Can I watch tonight?" Dana asked, coming out of the kitchen where she'd been stuffing marshmallows into sweet potatoes for a second batch of candied yams. I looked at my sister. A few weeks earlier, she'd moved in with Aunt Lois. "I'm moving in for good," Dana said. "Momma's always tired anyway, and I'll be better off." She was watching our aunt, waiting for permission to help with the makeup session. But Aunt Lois did not answer immediately. Perched on her stool, she wiped her fingers on her apron and swept her gaze over the entire living room in the way she must have learned to appreciate a crowd on her Beauty Queen's float back in high school.

The cooking yams loaded the room with their warm, tender smell. Ginx bent toward his magazine. In her slow, royal gaze, Aunt Lois enjoyed her own plush carpet, the white linen curtains, and the delicacy of the porcelain statuettes on their stands. I went to the dining room and knocked into a chair, which banged against the table but did nothing to interrupt her joy.

"That there really is a beauty," Aunt Lois said in one exhale, as she pointed to the small brass desk lamp she claimed to have bought at an estate sale. One evening during dinner, she'd gone on with some story about how she'd grabbed thelamp out of another woman's hands and slapped down her cash. She had talked about that lamp until Uncle Pete finished gnawing at the bone of his pork chop. "You're a piece of work," he spat out. She stopped to smile at his compliment, which was the only reason she'd told the story in the first place. We all knew there had been no estate sale, no woman, no grabbing. But it didn't matter. Our father declared, "What a find! Of course you had to be insistent." Dana asked our mother why our family never bought nice things. Only Ginx accused Aunt Lois. "Lie," he repeated again and again until Uncle Pete slammed his big hand against the edge of the table, clattering the coffee cups in their pink-and-white-saucers. Ginx knew there were things he was just supposed to let go, but he could not help it. He hated lies of any kind. Lucky for us all, Aunt Lois chose to ignore my brother. Uncle Pete's compliment was still tickling the air, and for the remainder of that dinner our aunt's face glittered, a small, sucking, chewing planet hauled down to sparkle before us.

Aunt Lois picked up her big pot and shook it again, rattling the beans. Her lips pressed to a fine point; then she consented. "Yes, Dana, honey, of course you may watch. You can help me with color."

"Christ," I muttered, bending to open the bottom drawer of the large china cabinet where Aunt Lois kept all her makeup supplies. She did not like the Lord's name taken in vain, but she needed my help too much to criticize. She frowned once and gave a firm twist to each of the pearl earrings Uncle Pete had given her for her forty-third birthday. Ginx looked away from his magazine and up at me, his fingers working against the leather of the armrest. I was forgiven. He enjoyed my small triumphs.

Aunt Lois brought her beans to the kitchen, chin cast over her shoulder. "Two!" she sang out. "We need two cleansing kits and two bowls of water. You can then make coffee, Morgan-Lee."

"I can make that," Dana offered, clanging the yam pan on the counter. "And I'll also get the water." The telephone rang luxuriously, not like ours at home that just sputtered out a series of thin rattles. Dana had begged our father to buy a phone like Aunt Lois's for her bedroom. For years he'd promised Dana that she'd have one as soon as she started eighth grade. If she decided to move back home again, then come September she would cash in. Aunt Lois scurried to answer.

"Yes?" our aunt asked brightly into the receiver. "Oh, sweetie." There was a long pause. I put each pink kit squarely in front of a stool. "Okay, baby. ... Well, we'll have dinner for you when you get home. That's okay." Stretching the cord, she turned to watch me. "We got the kids tonight. Marion wanted a little break, you know, as usual. Dana's going to help me with a session before dinner. In fact, they'll be here any minute now." She snapped her fingers. I looked up, and she mouthed "two" at me, as if I hadn't understood the first time. She blew a kiss into the receiver. "I know. Bye-bye."

Dana put the water bowls on the table, and I arranged the four long-backed chairs neatly in their places. Those dining room chairs were also a creamy white, supposedly to match the living room chair, but they were made by a different company and their color had disappointed Aunt Lois, who claimed, only after they'd arrived, that the creaminess of the white was not rich enough. "Nuances are everything," she had instructed the two deliverymen, who stood staring at the chairs, muttering in awkward agreement.

Aunt Lois straightened the tablecloth and looked down at Ginx, who immediately shifted his gaze to the bottom of the page, then glanced up, saw she was still watching, and looked down again. He hated to be watched. But she watched. Ginx was fifteen years old, and still our aunt refused to reconcile his beauty with his strangeness. She did not know how to look at him. "Please don't look at me," he finally told her, then stretched his legs, which he could retract so quickly he sometimes looked like a child again.

Aunt Lois sighed in response. "I will most likely have to ask you to move, Ginx." She spoke to my brother as little as possible, but when she did I understood why it was that, when he was little, it had taken her so long to teach him "Momma" and "Dadda."

"Why must I move?" he asked, but she knew better than to answer.

Aunt Lois continued, "We'll have to shut the sliding doors so the clients don't see into the kitchen. Oh, Dana, sweetheart. Those yams're smelling so fine." She quickly exchanged her cooking apron for the pink-and-white striped one she wore during makeup sessions. I was standing near the table, arms folded. My sister dried her hands and doused them with lotion. Dana's fingers were chubby, the tips forming five perfect domes, thick as link sausages. She hated her fingers so much that she'd shut them into fists whenever she thought someone was looking. The rest of Dana was full and well proportioned: tender skin, solid arms, arched eyebrows, and dark hair that slipped through fingers as easily as water. She had small brown eyes that skipped casually from place to place, as if in constant search for the prettiest people and brightest objects.

"The yams're almost done," Dana said, flipping back her hair. She had begun to select soaps and shampoos with care and smelled cleanly of spearmint, a smell that promised her commitment to roomfuls of jabbering, laughing, shiny-haired girls.

The doorbell rang, and I leaped through the living room to open it.

"Oh, not yet!" Aunt Lois chirped as she quickly slid the kitchen door closed, shutting Dana in.

"Wait!" Dana complained. But Aunt Lois was already dimming the lights and scooting behind the table to perch her fingers on its lace cloth. I waited by the door until she was completely ready. "Okay, open up. Go on, now."

"Hello! Hello!" I called out ceremoniously into the muggy pink of the evening. The two women on Aunt Lois's stoop could only have been mother and daughter with their identically startled smiles and vague, moon-wide faces.

"Tone. Plum. Roll," Ginx said, when he saw them.

"Come in," Aunt Lois cooed, promising safe harbor.

"We've come for makeovers. Is this the right house?" the mother asked, her eyes pushing past me to search for Aunt Lois. I figured the daughter was around my age, and I smiled, imagining that the women had journeyed a long way for a rare and forbidden elixir.

"Yes," I answered loftily, stepping aside to let them in. Daughter first, then mother shuffled past, and I thought, You will be given beauty but must leave your souls with me at the door. My brother pulled himself straight and laughed for no apparent reason, a choppy haw-haw that Aunt Lois covered by beckoning more loudly. "Come, come."

Still holding the door, I turned to look at our aunt. The cool from the air conditioner mingled with the outside heat as she spread her arms wide, the pointer finger of each hand graciously indicating two chairs. The kitchen door slid open, and Dana appeared in one of Aunt Lois's spare aprons. My sister looked at the women, obviously disappointed. Dana always hoped for beautiful clients. Aunt Lois, on the other hand, tittered; the plain and unassuming were her favorite. "Good." She brought her arms back down, allowing her fingers to flutter through the air. "Good." I looked at my brother, whose eyes retreated, turning slender as arrows. He'd beentold that it was not polite to read in front of guests, so he closed the magazine and promptly folded his hands.

"I don't know if you remember us from the church potluck. We only came that once, but we're ..." the mother began. The daughter studied us somberly.

Our aunt brightened. "Yes, of course. Please sit, Mrs. and Miss Mulvahill." The daughter looked around, tugged at the black velveteen belt holding up her jeans, and refused to be impressed. She was thick-boned and pale, her mousy hair jolting as she aggressively pulled back one of the chairs. Ginx could not help himself; he started to smile and slid a finger over his well-drawn lips: back and forth, back and forth. He looked at me only after both Mulvahills were sitting at Aunt Lois's table.

"Mother and daughter," Aunt Lois confirmed to herself, speaking low through the dimmed light. "Wonderful. How nice you could come together."

The mother nodded in a shy mixture of awe and gratitude, like an overgrown girl. The daughter grumbled as the mother slid her fingertips against each other, positioning them next to the pink kit that I had set for her. "We just wanted to treat ourselves," the woman confessed. Aunt Lois clapped her hands twice.

Had she been twenty years younger, our aunt would have plucked up that girl of a woman and eaten her for lunch. As it was, she just smiled.

"Christ Jesus," the daughter muttered, rolling her eyes at her mother's smile but not looking at any of us. She was not there to make friends.

Aunt Lois straightened and frowned. "Please," she complained, "no one in this house takes the name of the Lord in vain." But her tone changed as she touched the mother's arm and whispered, "You sure deserve a treat." Bending at the waist, our aunt hovered over the mother to adjust the mirror on her kit. Aunt Lois's hands were slender and efficient as blades, experts on faces, smoothing coolly over eyelids, perfecting skin. Dana sat by the dresser, ready to be of use.

"Circles," Ginx said. I smiled. Normally, Aunt Lois would have ordered us upstairs, but she hadn't even told me to close her front door, so I stood there, enjoying the mingle of hot and cold air.

"Jolie. ... Très jolie!" our aunt exclaimed, over a variety of color squares she selected, the pink heart of her mouth pulsing around the French she'd learned in high school and perfected by studying Deena Fae makeup labels. Then she began as she always did: "It's nice to be women together for a while. There are so few times in our busy lives for intimacy, but this evening we can just be women together." Her violet eyes slid greedily over the mother's pale lips, which provided a marked contrast to the Belle Rose of her own. Aunt Lois was good at intimacy. "Now, dab your cotton into the cleanser on your left and apply it to your skin in small quick circles." Mother and daughter obediently dabbed their cotton balls, then raised them to circle their cheeks. Ginx nodded.

"Circles! Circles like this," Aunt Lois sang joyously, a finger darting up to cut the air in small circles. I was getting bored, so I pressed my back against the edge of the door and, with one hard push, sent it flying shut, slamming an end to whatever world those women had come from. I'd made it my personal duty to pay homage to the lives women left behind them when they entered the house for Aunt Lois's makeovers. I'd told her this once. She'd laughed in her up-and-down roller-coaster way.

Our aunt looked up. "We close, we do not slam, the door," she scolded, as if I were a little girl. "You and Ginx go upstairs now." Dana shrank against the wall so that Aunt Lois wouldn't include her with us.

"I'm being good," Dana whined when Aunt Lois turned in her direction.

"You may stay."

Ginx rolled up his magazine and hit it once against his knee. "Good-bye," he said, senselessly and to no one, as he got up from the big chair.

When I was small, Uncle Pete and Aunt Lois's house next door was exactly like ours in its construction. The upstairs had consisted of four bedrooms, a big bathroom, and a long hallway, but when they redid the house, Aunt Lois had the wall dividing two of the bedrooms knocked out for a Master Suite, as she liked to call it. Whenever we spent the night, I stayed in the Guest Room, Dana in the Baby's Room, which was the room she'd moved into, and Ginx slept in the livingroom. Throughout seventh grade, Dana had been sleeping at Aunt Lois's more than she slept at home. To encourage her to stay, Aunt Lois had given her exclusive rights to the Baby's Room, with its bright yellow walls, blue wainscoting, and light pink curtains. It had been fixed up many summers back for the baby Aunt Lois had claimed was growing inside her.

"That woman and girl are not attractive," my brother said, as he followed me into the Baby's Room. He thought for a little bit. "That's too bad. It is unfortunate."

"Wish we were going home for supper tonight," I told him. Ginx had slipped to the floor and was leaning against Dana's bed. "Sure wish we didn't have to stay here," I said. But I, too, was getting ready. I had moved to the window, which looked out onto the side of our house. My back was turned to my brother, but I would know. When he was ready, I would begin.

"Momma's tired," Ginx told me. "That's all. She's just too tired." He began his slow rock against the bed frame.

"I know, Ginx," I said, "she's always tired."

I listened to the bed's rhythmic creaking and fixed my stare on the side of our house.

Then I went down.

Past the muffled voices from downstairs, Aunt Lois's laughing, Mrs. Mulvahill's cooing, past our own silent house across the way where our mother slept, past the failing light. Down below lay the Luccas' lush green field, which I watched for a while on my own. Then I took a breath and began the story.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Broken As Things Are by Martha Witt. Copyright © 2004 Martha Witt. Excerpted by permission of Picador.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Title Page,
BEAUTY,
TRUTH,
BIGNESS,
TIME,
JOURNAL,
KNOWLEDGE,
BUSINESS,
SWEETS,
PARTY,
FOOD,
FEAR,
FAITH,
SEARCHING,
HIDING,
VIOLENCE,
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS,
Copyright Page,