Queen of Broken Hearts (37 page)

I stare at him, shocked. “If it's the money—”

He kicks at the gravel of their driveway, hands in his pockets and head lowered. “Well, it's that, too. But mainly he's not really helping us.”

“I wish you'd said something sooner. I assumed—” I stop myself, annoyed that he'd waited to complain until they'd had six sessions with Dr. Wade. “I mean, I can certainly find someone else.”

“No, no. I don't want you doing that. To tell you the truth, I don't know if anyone can help us.”

I shiver in the chill wind and pull my sweater tighter. “On the contrary, I feel good about the way things are going now. The two of you are doing so much better.”

He shakes his head and refuses to meet my eyes. “I don't know. It appears to be hopeless.”

“Austin! My God—
please
don't say that. Of course it's not. Believe me, I've seen a lot of marriages in trouble, and yours is nowhere near that point.”

“It's not me. It's Haley. I don't think she loves me anymore.”

“How can you say that? She absolutely adores you. To the point where her friends tease her about Mr. Perfect. She fell for you the first day you two met. Mack and I—” My voice catches, and I take a breath before going on. “We were so happy for her, finding someone like you. Someone who loved her as much as we did. And we knew she'd be safe with you. Just wait; you'll find out with Abbie and Zach. That's what you want for your kids, more than anything. You want them to find the right person to love, who will love them in return. Someone they will be
safe
with. You understand what I'm saying, don't you?”

He shrugs. “That's the way you want to see me and Haley, but that's not the way it is. All of Haley's attention and affection go to Abbie and Zach and her kindergarten kids, not to me. And Jasmine, of course. Yak, yak, yak—that's all Haley and Jasmine do, get on the phone and run their mouths. To tell you the truth, I've felt neglected and unimportant for a long time. I've given everything to Haley, and I've about given out. In more ways than one.”

“The Giving Tree,” I repeat, and he nods glumly. “Listen, Austin, have you told Haley any of this? Because she has no idea you feel that way, I can promise you. She'd be astonished to hear you think like this. It would kill her, as much as she loves you.”

He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, right.”

I grab his arm, hard. “Promise me you'll tell Haley exactly what you just told me. Then forget your pride and go back to Dr. Wade. Or to someone else. Anyone! But you owe it to your kids to do everything you can to save your marriage. Promise me that you will, please.”

He promises halfheartedly, then closes my car door before I can argue any further. That night I can't get to sleep, playing our conversation over in my head like the proverbial broken record, but this one is stuck on a blues song of heartache and despair. In spite of the festive family dinner and the joking and laughter and conviviality around the table, things seem to be spiraling out of control. It's like the hurricane Mack and I watched from our barricade under the stairs so many years ago: All I can do is stand helplessly by and watch as everything flies past me. Unless the winds shift drastically, the Jordan household appears to be directly in its path.

To my utter astonishment, Austin moves out five days after Christmas Day, which fell on a Sunday this year. The Friday after, Haley calls me at my office, where I'm finishing up the treatment notes from an unscheduled session with a suicidal client. Therapists often say that neuroses, dysfunction, and crises do not take holidays. I've had emergency appointments almost every day of the holidays, which have been as hectic as Christmas always is. Come hell or high water this weekend, I'm turning off all my phones, I promise myself.

Haley is crying so hard that I think something has happened to one of the children, and my heart thuds violently. “Mom … oh, Mom,” she gasps between sobs.

I force myself to remain calm even though I'm suddenly faint and nauseated. “What's happened?”

Her tear-choked voice sounds as though it's coming from an underwater cave. “A-Austin! Austin …”

“Something's happened to Austin?” I cry. I feel a shameful, guilt-filled relief that at least it's not one of the children. That I'd never be able to bear.

“He's … he's … Oh, God, Mom. He's moved out of the house. He's gone.”

“
What?
When?”

“Now. Just now. He … he came in and got his suitcase. And he left. He just left.”

“Wait a minute! This is crazy. What do you mean, he just left?”

But her sobs turn to wails, and as slowly and distinctly as I can while fighting my rising panic, I say to her, “I'm coming right over. Hang up the phone; don't do anything or go anywhere, and I'm on my way.”

My admonition to Haley was unnecessary; she couldn't have gone anywhere had she wanted to. Limp as a dishrag, she's sprawled on the sofa staring into space when I walk in the door. As soon as she sees me, though, she collapses into tears again, burying her face in her hands. As I hold her in my arms and murmur useless words of reassurance, I'm glad Austin isn't here. If I could get my hands around his neck, I'd wring it. As I was driving over, the timing behind his surprise move hit me: The kids are in Huntsville. When Austin and Haley married, she was dismayed that he insisted on their spending Christmas with his parents. Mack and I weren't happy about it, either, but Austin was unbending, saying we could have Thanksgiving, but his parents got Christmas. Once the kids came along, he'd relented somewhat, and now they wait until Santa has come on Christmas Day to pack up their gifts and travel to Huntsville.

I barely know Austin's parents, I realize: Colonel Jordan is retired from the military and works at Redstone Arsenal; his mom is a teller at the credit union there. When Haley and Austin returned last night, I'd been surprised to hear that they'd left the kids in Huntsville. In a whispered conference, Haley confided that Austin had insisted, claiming his parents wanted to spend more time with their grandchildren. She suspected it had more to do with the New Year's bash they were attending; now they wouldn't have to pay a sitter.

Pushing back her damp hair from her face, I ask Haley if she could've misunderstood. Austin had planned on returning to Huntsville after New Year's weekend to get the kids, right? Maybe he missed them so much that he went after them. He'd taken his suitcase, but that didn't mean he was leaving.

Haley shakes her head and grabs another tissue from the box on the floor. “Nice try, Mom. Go look in his closet.”

Everything is gone. I open Austin's chest of drawers to find it empty. All of his toiletries are gone from the bathroom. With a sick feeling, I come back and sink down beside Haley on the sofa. “Tell me what happened,” I say in a weak voice.

She's either calmed down since I arrived, or cried herself out. “I thought everything was fine when we were at his parents' house,” she tells me. “We had a fairly decent time, even though it's more exciting to watch paint dry than go to the Jordans'. Austin and his dad watched football; the kids played with their toys from Santa; and Austin's mama and I cleaned up.” In spite of her distress, we can't help but smile at each other. We've always joked about Mrs. Jordan's fanatical housekeeping being Austin's gold standard, one Haley didn't have a prayer of reaching. She shrugs slightly. “Before we went, we'd had the usual whirlwind exhausting December, but you know how I love Christmas. Hectic as it was, it was still fun to me.”

I say, swallowing hard, “If not, you did a good job of faking it.”

After my disturbing conversation with Austin on Thanksgiving, I waited a week before calling him at work. He was far from happy to hear from his interfering mother-in-law. I was following up on our talk on Thanksgiving, I told him firmly. With an exasperated sigh, he insisted he'd just been tired that day, that he and Haley were fine. I hung up unconvinced. In the days that followed, each time I checked with them, it was the same: No, we're fine now, and no, we don't need to see a marriage counselor, and yes, we're too busy to talk. Now I could kick myself. In a troubled marriage, it isn't uncommon for things to hold together during a period of distraction, such as holidays, only to fall apart afterward.

“Wait, Mom—I just realized something,” Haley says with a start. “Looking back over the holidays, I see that Austin went out of his way to avoid being alone with me. You know how it is from the first of December on: Between church and work, we went out almost every night. It was always rush-rush, coming in and getting the kids ready, then hurrying out again. At the Jordans', his parents and a dozen other relatives were there. I'd actually looked forward to the long drive from Huntsville, thinking we'd have plenty of time to talk.”

“How did that go?”

“It didn't. On the drive home, Austin played a book on tape that Father Gibbs had loaned him for the Sunday school class Austin teaches. Oh, get this. It was one of those books about leading a Christlike life.” She stops to stare at me, wide-eyed. “Austin kept pointing out things to me. He'd rewind it and say, ‘Listen to this.'”

“What kind of things?” I ask with a sick kind of dread.

“His favorite was something about living at the foot of the cross. He said that was him, living at the foot of the cross.”

It's hard to keep the scorn out of my voice. “You know, Austin has developed quite an elevated opinion of himself lately.”

“No, the problem is, he has an unelevated opinion of me,” she mutters.

“Oh, honey, that's the way some people elevate themselves, by putting others down. That's another reason I've warned you that you have to stand up for yourself and establish an equal footing in your marriage. It never works when the balance is off kilter and one partner puts his or her needs above the other. It's a recipe for failure. So you didn't get to talk, and you got in really late last night. What happened today when he left?”

Haley shudders as though a chill has gone through her. “It was surreal. He got up early and left—even though the college is closed for the holidays, he still goes to his damn office all the time. The middle of the afternoon, he came home. Without a word, he went to our room and got out his suitcase. Then he told me he was leaving. Cool as could be the whole time. Like you, I thought he meant going to Huntsville to pick up the kids. That was crazy, I said, he wouldn't get there till midnight, and his folks wouldn't like him coming in so late. But Austin said he wasn't going to Huntsville until Monday, as he'd arranged with his parents. He said that he'd decided that we needed some time apart, that it had been coming on for a long time—” Her voice breaks, and she puts a hand over her mouth.

I put an arm around her shoulder, and she cries out, “When I asked how he could leave me
now,
at Christmastime, he looked me straight in the eyes and said he didn't have a choice. He couldn't live like this anymore, he said. Then he swore that I wouldn't even miss him. All I did was talk on the phone to Jasmine and play with the kids, and he'd felt neglected for ages, he claimed. According to him, he might as well not live here.”

I narrow my eyes and ask, “Was that the first time he's said anything like that?”

“No, he's said things like that before, and so have I. I mean, I've said all he does is work and neglect me and the kids, so he might as well not be here. You know, the kind of stuff that folks say when they're fighting.”

“It does sound pretty typical.”

“Here's what gets me—he's been planning this for a while. That's why he left the kids at his folks' house. He admitted it, and I was so stunned, I couldn't even respond.”

“That's a first,” I say in an attempt to lighten her gloomy expression, but she doesn't seem to hear me.

“It gets worse,” she goes on. “When I asked him if he still loved me, he said he didn't know. He didn't
know
!” she wails. “Oh, God, what am I going to do?”

I rub her back as she leans in to me, her face buried in my shoulder. “Listen to me, honey. My guess is, he's gone on to Huntsville, and that might be a good thing. Let him cool his heels for a few days, start to miss you—”

She stops me with a snort. “A few
days
? His car was piled up like the Beverly Hillbillies'.”

“Well, we wouldn't expect Scrooge to rent a mover, would we?” I say dryly. “Where is he going? Wait, let me guess—the Webbs', right?”

Haley shakes her head. “He knows some professor who's going on sabbatical over the winter quarter, and Austin arranged to stay in his apartment, which is right next to the college. He says he would've waited until summer to ask me for a ‘trial separation,' but this place was too perfect to turn down. I guess that means he got it free.”

I rub my eyes wearily. Not a good sign, making arrangements to stay elsewhere for an extended length of time. Not quite the same as spending a few days at his parents' or with friends while he thinks things over. Although Haley is in bad shape, I have to ask the question I dread. After a long silence, I clear my throat and say, “You say Austin's getting the kids on Monday?”