Song of the Brokenhearted (18 page)

“You're still plotting their ill-will?” Ava hoped Kayanne would somehow forgive her ex-husband for his affair, but Ava had no advice on that front. It had only been three years after twenty-seven years of marriage. Ava wasn't sure how she'd forgive Dane if it happened to her, let alone the fact that Ava's ex-husband and his mistress had married and moved to an island in the Caribbean while Kayanne was left with their small business that eventually went belly-up.

Kayanne glanced around, and leaned closer to Ava. “. . . and I'm so tired of being single that I may run away with that older usher I always thought looked like a magician with his slicked-back, overly dyed hair and Liberace suits.”

“He doesn't wear Liberace suits—they aren't that bad. But isn't he in his late seventies?” Ava said in an exaggerated whisper.

“My point exactly. See my desperation. Know my need for God.”

Ava wrapped her arm around Kayanne's shoulder.

“I'm sorry, and I haven't been a very good friend. Let's pray about it.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Ava bit the edge of her lip to keep from laughing.

“Really, let's pray about it right now.”

“See, this is why you don't need Bible study,” Kayanne said with a sigh.

“Believe me. I need it.”

Someone cleared her throat, and Ava and Kayanne noticed Corrine waiting by the double doors that led to the parking lot.

“Do you have a minute, Ava?”

“Of course,” she said, meeting Kayanne's eyes.

“I'll call you later,” Kayanne said, waving good-bye.

Corrine waited with her arms crossed over her Bible and study guide.

“Did you want to discuss the e-mail that you sent me a few weeks ago?” Ava continued walking toward the parking lot with Corrine coming beside her.

“Not at this moment. I just want to first ask, have you and Dane been praying?”

Ava frowned at the woman's brazenness. “Yes.”

Corrine stopped, forcing Ava to remain in the cold morning shadows outside the church. She shivered, thinking of her jacket in the car.

“I just feel in my heart that something is wrong, that there is some unspoken sin that needs repentance.”

“Where is this coming from?”

“I think the Spirit is leading me. God does reveal these things though others. Sins always come to light.”

Ava had always been a woman who wanted the truth, no matter how painful. If Dane was doing something behind her back, she wanted to know.

“How long have you been feeling this way?”

“For a while,” Corrine said. “Maybe since last summer.”

Ava tried to remember what significance last summer might have.

“What specifically are you talking about?”

“I have no idea,” Corrine said with alarm. “But I'm talking about you.”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“You think I have some dark secret sin?” She racked her brain to be sure she hadn't deceived herself.

“I didn't say that I think you do. But I've been trying to tell you, all these things you mentioned in Bible study and what I've been hearing, they're happening for a reason. And I fear that reason is you.”

By the end of the week, Ava's cupboards begged her to fill them, with Jason seconding that request. “I can deal with stupid rumors about Dad's work and about me and my supposed drug issues,” he told her, “but I can't survive without food.”

She ventured out to a grocery store across town to avoid seeing anyone she knew. In the checkout line Ava stared at the numbers growing on the cash register. She counted the cash in her wallet, looking at the row of useless credit cards tucked neatly in their compartments. When was the last time she'd worried about those numbers? Their first year of marriage, but more from habit than necessity. Before that, there were the lean college years, and her childhood that was more famine than feast.

But for over twenty-five years, Ava hadn't feared the checkout line. Sometimes she remembered the anxiety, the counting and recounting of what was in the basket before moving to the checkout, the horror of being short several dollars and having to put things back.

The cashier moved each item over the scanner with Ava's heart rate rising. She counted the cash in her wallet a fourth time and barely responded to the cheery small talk. Then the total, and Ava exhaled in relief. She had twenty dollars to spare.

When Ava pulled up the cobblestone driveway to their two-story house that suddenly appeared taller to her, as if it were too much for them to keep, Dane was outside the garage waxing Old Dutch—the 1966 VW Vanagon.

Old Dutch had joined the four-car garage after Dane's father passed away.

Every six months, Dane pulled the old bus out of the garage. He and the kids washed it and checked all the fluids. Then they piled in for a drive or sometimes drove it to church. It was a reminder to all of them that what they had was a gift, and that they'd worked hard to get it.

“This was my dad's first brand-new car,” Dane reminded the kids, though they'd heard it a hundred times. Their children had grown up with luxury cars. Dane bought Sienna a Volvo for her eighteenth birthday, believing he wasn't spoiling her because he'd made her drive one of their cars for the two years prior. That was the life Dane had grown up in, and Ava just couldn't explain the vast difference between hers and all of theirs. Could they ever grasp what it was like to ride a bus to school through high school, to buy clothes at secondhand stores, not because it was vintage, but because it was necessary, or to scrape off mold from a loaf of bread and eat it or eat nothing?

The door to her section of the garage rose and she drove inside. Dane put a hand up as a lame wave, then continued waxing Old Dutch without helping with the load of bags she carried in her arms. She didn't think he even noticed.

She called him in to lunch. Instead of eating, Dane fussed over his food with a scowl on this face.

“What's wrong?” Ava buried her annoyance. Dane had never needed her sympathy or coddling. His moodiness was getting old. She realized the irony that she listened to people share their concerns and stresses all the time. She'd listened to women talking about their husbands going through a depression— the topic had grown in the past few years. Men who'd lost their jobs, who couldn't find work, who had to work out of town. Why didn't it irritate her to hear their stories, yet Dane's moodiness was touching on her every nerve? And Kayanne wondered why she continued to do Bible study—she might need it more than anyone.

Ava realized, too, that her life wasn't tied to those women. She didn't have to live with them or gauge their moods and have it affect her life. Advice and understanding were much easier to offer when it didn't involve her and her family.

Dane didn't answer. He went to the French doors and stood gazing out at the pool.

“I didn't do anything wrong, so I'm going to ignore the fact that you're being rude right now.”

He closed the sliding door. “How generous of you. You're always generous, aren't you? Generous to everyone else.”

Ava glanced at the clock. This was the last thing she needed.

“Why do we have all of this?”

Ava set down her purse. “Why do we have all of what?”

“This stuff. This house, the cars, the clothes, the toys.”

“Because you earned it, and we enjoyed buying it. It's less than you had growing up.”

“It seems my work should amount to more than this. Not just stuff that people hardly use. Important things.”

So this was what a midlife crisis looked like, Ava thought.

Instead of buying a sports car, he wanted to get rid of everything and live like a hippie?

“You're unhappy. What do you want to do?”

“I wanted to walk on the Antarctic, cycle across America, boat down the Amazon, go ice caving . . .” His voice drifted off, as if imagining each one.

“You should have, and still can. I wouldn't have stopped you.”

“Yes, you would have stopped me.”

“When have I ever stopped you from doing anything?”

“You always have some irrational fear or reason why it won't work out.”

Ava couldn't believe he was blaming her. “I offer some realistic thoughts—that's all. And you've been so consumed with work for the past fifteen years, your kids would've never seen you if you'd become Mr. Adventure. Then you'd be sitting here with all of these excursions and great photos to prove it, but two children who didn't know you. Would that satisfy you?”

“See, you always knock down my ideas unless they're about work.”

“I don't.” Ava felt floored by his biting words. She picked up Dane's plate and caught the scent of pastrami from the mangled remains of his sandwich. She set it on the counter, regretting that she'd splurged on the expensive pastrami instead of plain lunch meat.

“You said you'd never marry a guy who wasn't stable.”

“When did I say that?”

“Outside Grady's Pub during that really bad hail storm.”

Ava vaguely remembered them standing under the eaves of their favorite Irish pub in San Francisco. Her memory was of a romantic hour huddled together sharing their hopes and dreams. She'd thought Dane felt that way as well.

“I was crazy about you. So when the guys asked me to do that Alaska expedition, I didn't go.”

It was as if everything she'd thought was wrong. The image she had of their courtship, marriage, and two decades together wasn't the same as his. She thought it was like a photograph they could all view and see the same image. But their lives weren't a photograph.

“You act like I've ruined your life, when my entire life has completely revolved around you, your work, your activities, your everything.”

He shook his head. “What are you talking about? My life revolves around you and the kids. Everything I've done has been to give you the best of everything. I was the guy who could have lived in a tent in the wild country, exploring the world or taking wildlife videos. But I went the corporate route for my family.”

Ava wanted to shout, “Liar!” She thought about how much pride Dane took in his work, in golf and community activities. Now, suddenly, he was acting as if all that was for her? Maybe his favorite channels were Discovery Channel and National Geographic, but she hadn't guessed that he watched them with a sense of loss about his life.

“I guess this has all been a huge mistake,” Ava said, seething. Dane walked out without saying more.

Saturday morning, Ava rose early to cook for the funeral of a young boy who'd died of leukemia. The parents had no extended family, so the women of the Broken Hearts were providing the food, and donations were helping with expenses. Ava usually spent her own money on meals, but this time she used ministry funds to buy the ingredients.

She baked a homemade macaroni-and-cheese dish, a corn casserole, and a lemon torte. The sun filtered through angry rain clouds outside. The trees appeared barren in the backyard this time of year with only a few leafy stragglers dangling on to autumn. Her willow was among them, but Ava didn't see the harm of a dead tree among the dormant ones. They appeared the same, at least for now.