“Do you think he’s helping them?” When I shrug, palms up, she tells me, “Son and I went to the steak house Saturday night, and Haley and Austin were there.”
“Really? They didn’t tell me they saw y’all. I was doing my part by keeping the kids. Their counselor advised them to go out alone once a week or so, if possible. It should relieve some of their tension.”
“If that’s the plan, maybe they can get a refund.” She shakes her head sadly. “Oh, honey, I wasn’t going to tell you, but … it was pretty bad. They argued the whole time. Haley went to the bathroom crying, and I followed her. She begged me not to tell you, but she said Austin has really changed since he got his promotion. And some friends of his? Something about this couple he works with being a bad influence on him, which didn’t sound good.”
She and I stare at each other. “It never ends, does it? It’s like the poster you gave me, the one I put in the john.”
She found a great poster a few years ago that she gave to me for my birthday, and I hung it next to the mirror in the bathroom at Casa Loco. My clients love it and are always asking where they can get one like it. Under a picture of tall, scary waves pounding a rocky shore, the caption reads, LIFE JUST KEEPS COMING AT YOU.
Anxious to show everyone how hard she’s working to make things better on the home front, Haley insists on hosting our traditional family dinner on Thanksgiving. I try to discourage her; failing that, I make a pitch for having it at my house, with a kitchen twice the size of hers. “You and Zoe and I can prepare it together,” I say enthusiastically, “wouldn’t that be fun?” Haley won’t hear of it. If it kills her, she declares, she’s cooking turkey and dressing, giblet gravy and cranberry sauce, candied yams, green beans, and pumpkin pie. Zoe Catherine can bring her toasted pecans and killer sweet tea; Rye his fine wines; and I can buy rolls from the bakery. But by God, she’s doing everything else by herself.
Thanksgiving morning, I listen to a panicky message from Haley. She’d gotten up early to start cooking, the kids excited about helping her. Beaming with pride, she’d shown me the timetable she’d drawn up for the dinner preparations, and I’d congratulated her. She was smart, I’d told her, to do a lot of the prep work the day before. At the time I just didn’t know how smart.
“Mom, call me as soon as you get in, please! It’s an emergency. I’ve been cooking the damn turkey for four hours, and it still has ice in the middle. Then I burned the corn bread for the dressing, and Zach put Play-Doh in the green beans. Abbie wanted to help, but she dropped the cranberries all over the floor, and she’s running around chasing them. Oh—and how long are you supposed to cook a stupid pumpkin pie before it sets? I’ve had this one in the oven for two hours—oh, shit, here comes Austin!” In a whisper, she added, “Call me on my cell, and we’ll talk in code, okay?”
My cooking skills are decent, but this is way out of my expertise. Although I hate to bother her in the midst of her own preparations, it’s Dory I need. I play Haley’s message for her but can’t jot down Dory’s suggestions until she stops laughing. Then I put my head on the kitchen table for several long minutes before getting up the courage to make the call to Haley.
I know Austin is within earshot when Haley answers her cell with false cheeriness. “Mom! Hi. No, I’m still cooking. Been cooking all morning.” She pauses, but before I can say anything, she sings out, “Oh, it’s going great! No, really, everything is turning out beautifully.”
“I called nine-one-one-Dory,” I tell her, not sure why I’m whispering. “She thought your oven was faulty until I told her you burned the corn bread. You forgot to thaw the turkey, she said, and you put too much milk in the pumpkin pie. Cover the edges with foil and keep baking it until it doesn’t jiggle when you shake it. Make a little tent for the turkey with foil, and bake that sucker two more hours, then take off the tent till it browns. Last, she says to wash the Play-Doh off the beans and the dirt off the cranberries, and bribe the kids not to tell.”
She hears me, but you’d never know it by her reply. “But Mom, I didn’t want you to bring anything!” Haley pretends to listen, then says, “Well, if you insist. I’m cooking a pumpkin pie, but yours will be eaten, too.”
“Ah … I have a Mrs. Smith apple pie in the freezer,” I whisper.
“One of your apple pies! The kids will love that. Gramma Zoe called to say she’s bringing her corn-bread dressing and giblet gravy, no arguments. She always fixes a washtub full, so I’ve decided not to even bother. And Rye’s housekeeper made a ton of candied yams, so he’s bringing those, along with some of her cranberry sauce.”
“What are you cooking?” I can’t resist asking.
“I came up with the idea of putting the turkey in the oven for a few hours to thaw, and it worked like a charm. Let me run now, Mom, and check on it. It’s nice and brown, but I don’t want to overcook it. See you this afternoon!”
In spite of such a rocky start, the Thanksgiving feast turns out beautifully. The kids decorated the table using miniature pumpkins as candleholders, surrounded by fall leaves. The centerpiece looks especially spectacular sitting atop the infamous tablecloth that Austin’s grandmother hand-embroidered and Haley recently “found” in the attic. I dare not meet Haley’s eyes when Austin proudly shows the intricate pattern to Zoe Catherine, who exclaims over it enthusiastically. Since Rye’s waterfront home is one of the most elegant in Fairhope and he knows quite a bit about fine linens, he struggles to keep a straight face as Austin reminisces about his boyhood when he sat by his granny’s rocker and watched her embroider the pink and yellow flowers around the border. Rye raises an eyebrow at me quizzically, and I remark that you can’t find handiwork like that anymore, especially with so many places like Target selling cheap imitations.
After the feast is over, the kitchen cleaned, and Zoe and I have wrapped up enough leftovers for Haley to feed the family for a month, Rye and Zoe Catherine take their leave. Zoe doesn’t like to drive after dark, and Rye has promised friends he’ll stop by for coffee and dessert. He missed an annual Thanksgiving dinner with some of his closest friends to attend Haley’s gathering, and I attempt to express my gratitude when I walk him to his car.
“Come with me, Clare,” he says, and I shake my head, telling him I’m all partied out. The truth is, the kids have gone to bed, worn out with the festivities, and I’m anxious to spend some time alone with Haley and Austin. Haley has sworn to me that things are better, but I’m skeptical. On and off today, I picked up on the tension, even though I tried not to notice every little thing they said to each other, overanalyzing, looking for trouble. When I first arrived, Abbie showed her father the surprise I’d brought her and Zach, a copy of the book The Giving Tree.
“That’s me,” Austin said.
Abbie laughed. “No, Daddy, silly—it’s a tree!”
Glancing sideways at Haley, Austin said, “Daddy’s like that Giving Tree, Abbie. Give, give, give, that’s all he ever does.” I smiled politely, and Haley stood behind him and made a gagging noise while pantomiming poking a finger down her throat.
When I return to the house after waving Zoe and Rye off, Austin meets me at the door carrying the dishes Haley borrowed from me, a basket in each hand. “Got you all packed up and ready to go,” he says briskly. “Turns out Zach wasn’t asleep after all, so Haley’s checking on him.”
I open my mouth to protest but think better of it. Instead, I smile and say I can manage the baskets by myself. I can tell it’s a tempting offer, but Austin’s manners get the best of him, and he carries out the heavy baskets awkwardly. “Whew!” he says after he places them in the trunk and straightens up, rubbing his back. “Those are heavier than they look.” Winking at me, he adds, “Maybe you can get one of your boyfriends to carry them in for you.”
“Maybe so,” I say breezily. His mocking tone irritates me, so I quickly open the door of my car before I say something I might regret.
Again the ingrained manners come through, and Austin holds the door for me. Before
I get in, however, he clears his throat and says, “Ah, Clare? Haley told me you’d worked out a deal with the marriage counselor we’re seeing, Dr. Wade. As much as I appreciate it, I don’t feel comfortable with your doing that. So I told him we wouldn’t be back after the Thanksgiving holidays. I hope you understand.”
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.
Chapter Twelve
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. H
e 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.”
Queen of Broken Hearts Page 27