Not Quickly Broken

by Cronk, LN

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” she said, her voice beginning to shake, “when I called you yesterday, where were you?”

  “I was at the Y . . .” I said, warily.

  “Are you sure about that?”

  I didn’t answer. She pulled her phone out and shoved it in my face. I looked at it, startled to see an image of me and Rhiannon sitting at our table in the library. My hand was resting on hers.

  “How did you get this?” I asked, my heart beginning to pound.

  “How could you do this to me?” she asked, her voice quavering.

  “You’ve got it all wrong,” I told her, shaking my head. “Nothing was going on . . . we were just praying together.”

  Charlotte’s eyes were shooting daggers at me.

  “And what about this one?” she asked, scrolling to the next picture. “What were you doing here?”

  I knew before I looked at it what it was going to be. I’d given Rhiannon one kiss . . . one lousy kiss! And somehow Charlotte had gotten a picture of it and was now shoving it at me with a trembling hand.

  “It’s not what you think,” I said, shaking my head.

  She glared at me and then she turned on her heel, heading for the door.

  She opened it and started out, turning around to face me just long enough to whisper in a broken voice, “I hate you.”

  And then she stepped out into the hall and slammed the door behind her, with all of her might.

  ~ ~ ~

  AFTER CHARLOTTE LEFT I stood in the living room, staring after her at the closed door. I had no idea what to do.

  My first instinct was to call Rhiannon, but I didn’t.

  Fix this, I told myself. You’ve got to do something to fix this.

  How was I ever going to fix it?

  I tried calling Charlotte, but of course she didn’t answer. I paced around the apartment for a while and finally went out for something to eat. I wasn’t really in the mood for food, but I hadn’t had any lunch and I couldn’t deny the fact that I was pretty hungry.

  When I got back to the apartment, I discovered that Charlotte had come in while I’d been gone. She had taken two of our suitcases, a lot of her clothes, and all of her books. She’d left her wedding rings on my dresser.

  I tried to call her again, and again I got no answer. I paced around the apartment for a few more hours.

  Fix this.

  Finally I pulled up our phone records and started studying them, looking for a clue as to where Charlotte might be so that I could go there and make her talk to me and I could explain to her somehow that this was all just a big misunderstanding. I was actually thinking that there was a way I could trace the location of her phone somehow, but before I got that far, I discovered something else instead.

  There was one person that Charlotte had been communicating with a lot since she’d moved to Chicago – especially in the past few days. Especially in the past few hours.

  I dialed the number, pretty sure I knew whose it was, even before it rang.

  Hi. You’ve reached Elias. I can’t take your call right now, but you know what to do . . .

  I got in my car and drove to Elias’s street. I drove down the block and immediately spotted Charlotte’s car in front of his house. I kept driving.

  I went around the block again and parked along the curb about two hundred yards before Elias’ house. I made sure I could see Charlotte’s car, cut the engine and looked at my watch.

  It was 9:34.

  At 11:22 the lights in his house went out and at four o’clock in the morning, I started my engine and went home.

  The next afternoon I was back, parked in the same spot. I could see Charlotte’s car parked in the driveway, but I didn’t see Elias’ car like I had last night. I sat there, waiting . . .

  I wasn’t sure for what.

  After I’d been there for almost two hours, Elias drove by. I hadn’t noticed him until he was already past, but I was pretty sure he hadn’t seen me. Charlotte wasn’t in the car with him and I watched as he pulled into the driveway and put his car in park.

  Before Elias could even get out, Charlotte came bounding out of the house. She ran up to him as he slammed his door shut and threw her arms around him, giving him a very long hug. He wrapped his arms around her waist and hugged her back. Finally Charlotte pulled away from him a little and looked into his eyes, talking intently to him. She nodded and smiled and then . . .

  I started my car up before they finished kissing. I drove away, and I didn’t go back.

  The next day I was served with divorce papers. I stared at them for a long time, unsure exactly what I was supposed to do.

  Once again I really wanted to call Rhiannon. So I did.

  “Jordan?”

  “I need to see you,” I told her.

  “No,” she said. “That’s not a good idea.”

  “You don’t understand,” I said. “Charlotte wants a divorce.”

  There was a long pause.

  “You need to fix things,” she said.

  “I can’t,” I said. “It’s over. She wants a divorce!”

  There was another long pause.

  “I can’t help you,” she said.

  “Rhiannon,” I begged, “listen . . .”

  “I’m sorry, Jordan,” she said, “but please don’t call me anymore.”

  “But–”

  “I’m sorry,” she said again, and then she hung up.

  ~ ~ ~

  “HI, JORDAN!” I heard David’s voice say. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing much.”

  “Everything okay?” he asked.

  I swallowed hard. “I was . . . I was thinking about coming down to visit and I wondered if that would be okay?”

  “Yeah, that’d be great!” he enthused. “When were you thinking about coming?”

  “Soon.”

  “When?”

  “In the next day or so.”

  “Doesn’t Charlotte have classes?” he asked.

  “Charlotte’s not coming,” I said. “Just me.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Is everything alright?” he finally asked.

  “No.”

  There was another long pause.

  “Come whenever you can get here,” he finally said. “You know you can stay as long as you want.”

  “Thanks,” I managed to say.

  “Just let me know when your flight’s getting in and I’ll be there.”

  “Okay.”

  “See you soon.”

  “Soon” was the next evening at about seven o’clock. David was waiting for me in baggage claim and he strode over to me as soon as he spotted me and gave me a big hug.

  “It’s good to see you,” he said, pounding me on the back.

  I nodded and gave him a tight smile. He looked at me for a moment and then assessed my two carry-on bags.

  “You got another one?” he asked, nodding toward the luggage turnstile.

  “No.”

  “Let me carry one of these,” he suggested.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I got ’em.”

  “Okay,” he nodded. “Let’s go.” He led me outside and we walked to short-term parking, making small talk about O’Hare International, Benito Juarez, and my flight in general. We also compared and contrasted the joys of living in Chicago versus Mexico City. Before long he’d managed to convince me that Mexico City was worse.

  After we’d thrown my bags into the trunk of his car and gotten in, David pulled out of the parking lot and headed for the highway.

  “Have you talked to Charlotte?” I finally asked him.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head.

  “I just figured maybe you called her or something.”

  “No,” he said again, and it was when he didn’t say anything else and that I realized he wasn’t going to pry or ask me any questions. We rode along in silence for several miles.

  “Thanks for all this,” I said after a long w
hile.

  “No problem,” he said. “We’re glad you’re here.”

  “Will the kids still be up when we get to your house?” I asked.

  “Ummm,” he looked at the clock on the dashboard, “not the three littlest ones.”

  “Oh,” I said, disappointed. “Well, I might have to wake Lily up when we get there.”

  “Oh,” he said, “she’ll be awake. She’s waiting for you.”

  “But you said she’d be in bed.”

  “No,” he said, smiling. “I said the three littlest ones would be in bed.”

  It took a second for that to register. “You got another one?!” I cried.

  “Maybe,” he said evasively, and then he smiled again.

  We arrived at their home about thirty minutes later. Dorito and Lily came racing out of the house as the car pulled into the drive. Lily was the first one to my door when I opened it up.

  “Jordy!” she cried, opening her arms. I stooped down and picked her up.

  “Hey, beautiful!” I said, hugging her. It felt really good to hold her in my arms. I burrowed my face into her hair and nuzzled her neck, hoping to bury some of the pain I was feeling.

  “Have you missed me?” she chirped.

  “More than you know,” I said, squeezing her even tighter.

  Dorito, meanwhile, had thrown his arms around my legs.

  “Did you miss me, too?” he asked.

  “Hey, buddy!” I said, squatting down beside him. I moved Lily over to one arm and wrapped my other one around him. “I missed you a lot!”

  He smiled at me and I ruffled his hair. By this time, Laci had come outside and was standing a few yards away, holding their oldest daughter’s hand.

  “Hi, Amber,” I said. She just looked at me. I didn’t expect too much of a reception from her since she’d only met me a few times before. She didn’t answer, but continued to stare at me intently. Laci finally looked down at her.

  “He reminds you of Tanner, doesn’t he?” Laci asked. Amber nodded.

  I let go of Dorito and Lily and stood up so I could give Laci a hug.

  “Hi, Jordan,” she said, reaching up and wrapping her arms around my neck. “How are you doing?”

  “Okay,” I nodded. She squeezed me tight and nodded back at the obvious lie.

  “So,” I said to Laci. “I understand you have something to show me?”

  “I wanna show him!” Dorito shouted. “I wanna show him!”

  “You’re gonna have to be quiet!” David warned him as we headed into the house.

  “I am!” he insisted and David rolled his eyes.

  Dorito ran through the house and down a hallway, flinging open a bedroom door. It banged loudly against the wall and almost instantaneously I heard a baby crying.

  “Good job, Dorito,” David muttered.

  “I didn’t mean to,” Dorito cried.

  “You never do,” David sighed, entering the room and heading over to a bassinet.

  A baby was lying in it, still crying. David walked over and scooped it up expertly, cradling its tiny head and holding its body against his chest.

  “Jordan,” David said, turning to me. “This is Marco.”

  “It’s a boy,” Dorito informed me.

  “Dorito and I were feeling a bit outnumbered,” David explained as Marco quit crying. Then he asked, “Do you want to hold him?”

  “Uhhhh . . .”

  “Hold him! Hold him!” Dorito insisted, jumping up and down.

  “Okay,” I said, hesitantly reaching for him. “I don’t really know what I’m doing though.”

  “It’s easy,” Dorito said authoritatively. “You just gotta support his head.”

  “You sound like you know a lot about this,” I said as David handed Marco to me.

  “I’m his big brother,” Dorito said importantly.

  I looked down at the baby in my arms and suddenly gasped. He had a split in his upper lip that went right up to his nose (which was grossly askew). I could see right into his mouth (even though what lips he had were closed). David was lucky I hadn’t dropped him.

  “He has a cleft palate,” he informed me.

  “Yeah,” I said sardonically. “I see that.”

  “We’re gonna get it fixed in a couple of months.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I immediately found myself thinking about the implications this was going to have for Marco’s speech. He looked into my eyes and gave me a lopsided smile. He was amazingly cute.

  Then Marco waved an arm at me and I gasped again.

  “He doesn’t have hands!” I cried.

  “He has hands,” David said, indignantly. “He just doesn’t have fingers.”

  “He has a thumb,” Dorito corrected.

  “Why doesn’t he have any fingers?” I managed.

  “I dunno,” David shrugged. “He was just born that way.”

  I looked closer. He had little nubs instead of fingers and one poorly formed thumb. I stared at him for a moment, trying to take it all in.

  “You’re worried that he won’t be able to hold a baseball, aren’t you?” David asked.

  I glanced at David and saw that he was grinning at me.

  “Will he?” I asked.

  “Sure he will.”

  “He holds things real good!” Dorito added. “Watch!”

  Dorito picked up a little stuffed rattle that was shaped like a cow and held it out for Marco. Marco grabbed at it, wrapped his hand around it, and promptly whacked himself in the face with it. Then he gave me another toothless grin.

  “He’ll be able to do whatever he wants,” David assured me.

  “How old is he?” I asked.

  “About four months.”

  “When did you adopt him?”

  “We haven’t legally adopted him yet,” he said, “but we’ve had him for a couple of months already.”

  “They let you have them before you actually adopt them?”

  “Yeah,” he nodded. “They’re pretty good about that . . . especially if your wife works at the orphanage.”

  I looked down at Marco again. He gave me another smile and I smiled back.

  “How many more are you going to have?” I asked.

  “This is IT!” Dorito answered for him. “No more!”

  “Oh, really?” I smiled. I glanced at David, who was nodding.

  “Yeah, really,” David agreed. “Six is the limit.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  I heard little footsteps running down the hall and turned to see Meredith standing in the doorway staring at me. Laci appeared behind her, holding Grace.

  “I didn’t wake them up,” Dorito quickly told David.

  “No, of course not,” David agreed. “The sound of that door reverberating through the entire house only woke up Marco.”

  Dorito glared at him.

  “Sorry to cause such a commotion,” I said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Laci grinned. “It’s always like this around here. Come on, let’s go out into the living room.”

  In the living room I sat on the couch, Marco still in my arms. Lily climbed up next to me, looking back and forth between me and the baby.

  “You want me to hold you instead?” I finally asked her. She nodded.

  “Here,” David said, taking the baby from me. He sat down in a chair across from us and Lily scrambled into my lap.

  It was after nine o’clock, but it was Friday night, so Laci and David let the kids stay up. I sat there holding Lily while David rocked Marco and Laci bounced Grace up and down. Dorito and Amber set up a game of Monopoly and tried to keep Meredith from walking across the board, while Laci and David and I made small talk.

  At one point I looked down at Lily and kissed the top of her head and then I looked at David and his family and I remembered Christmas Eve, seven months ago.

  Seven months.

  Had it really only been seven months ago? It seemed like forever. Seven months ago I’
d been sitting in the living room in Mrs. White’s house, watching Charlotte hold baby Grace. Seven months ago I’d thought that if I could just have a family like David had, then I would have everything that I could ever ask for.

  Now I was sitting here in Mexico with no hope of ever having kids of my own. My wife was a thousand miles away, lying in the arms of another man. A horrific disease was waiting to lay me to waste.

  I kissed the top of Lily’s head again and squeezed her, laying my head on hers and closing my eyes. It didn’t help any more than it had earlier, but before I went back to making small talk, I let myself sit there, holding her for a moment, and wondering how in the world my life had managed to get so screwed up.

  ~ ~ ~

  THE NEXT DAY was incredibly busy. Dorito and Amber both had soccer games and Laci had to take Lily to get pictures made with her dance class. Laci also had to go to the orphanage to “check on something” and she was gone for about three hours. David spent the afternoon feeding kids and changing diapers and refereeing fights. He seemed happy.

  “How do you ever get any work done?” I asked him.

  “Well, a lot of the time, Dorito and Amber and Lily are in school,” he said. “But when they’re not, they either go to the orphanage with Laci or they stay here with the little ones. Savanna usually comes over and watches them.”

  “Savanna?”

  “Dorito’s biological mom,” he reminded me. A few years earlier, Savanna had found David and Laci and they had moved back down to Mexico so that she could be a part of Dorito’s life.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” he nodded. Then he looked at me for a moment, finally saying, “It’s . . . it’s been a good thing.”

  “Is it hard?” I asked him.

  “You mean sharing Dorito with her?”

  I nodded.

  He thought about it for a minute.

  “He has older brothers,” he finally said. “The oldest one is just a few years younger than I am. They don’t ever have to play the heavy or be “The Dad” . . . they’re just fun and cool and exciting and . . .”

  His voice trailed off.

  “It’s hard to compete with that sometimes?” I suggested.