Queen of Broken Hearts

by Cassandra King

  Austin rolls his eyes. “Bullshit. I’m not bringing down anything else. You’ve got enough for every kindergartener in Baldwin County already.”

  “Mommy!” Abbie cries, gray eyes wide with shock. “Daddy said a bad word. Does he have to pay a quarter, too?”

  “Bu-shit, bu-shit, bu-shit,” Zach babbles as he claps his hands.

  “Rough day at work, sweetie?” Haley says sarcastically, eyeing Austin balefully as she sets down the sacks and baskets, kicking aside a place for them.

  “Tell you what, Haley.” Austin’s voice is still stretched tight as a drum. “I’ll go to the attic and look for the tablecloth, but I’m not bringing down any more Halloween junk.”

  “Oh, God,” Haley moans. “Not that again. I told you, the tablecloth’s disappeared.”

  “And I told you, that better not be true,” he replies coolly.

  She turns to me. “We’re having Austin’s staff over Saturday night for dinner, and he wants to use the tablecloth his grandmother gave us for a wedding gift.” Glancing at Abbie, she lowers her voice and adds, “I can’t find the g-d thing, and he’s having a fit.”

  “Oh, no, it’s better than that, Clare,” Austin says. “First of all, my grandmother made it. It’s hand-embroidered. And second, we’ve never used it. The reason? Haley doesn’t want to iron it.”

  “Oh, bull. I tried to iron it,” Haley protests. “It’s covered with embroidered flowers—I mean, it’s beautiful; don’t get me wrong—but the flowers puckered, and it looked worse ironed than it did wrinkled. That’s why I haven’t used it. So I packed it away, but I can’t remember where.”

  “Oh, sweetie, I have a tablecloth you can use,” the appeaser says with a bright smile. “If I can find it. I never use tablecloths anymore.”

  “See?” Haley points a finger at Austin triumphantly. “Told you nobody expects us to use a tablecloth. Everyone uses place mats nowadays, even the Martha Stewart clone Wanda Webb.”

  “And I told you that we’re having an elegant dinner for my staff if I have to do it myself. We’re using our china, our silver, and my grandmother’s tablecloth. Do … you … understand … me?” Austin enunciates each word in a loud, exaggerated manner, as though talking to a deaf child.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see that Zach and Abbie are watching their parents arguing as though at a tennis match, their heads turning from one to the other. My heart sinks, and I’m at a loss as to what to do. A cardinal rule of mothers of adult children: Avoid interfering in your kids’ lives if at all possible. I’m itching to pick up something and clobber Austin with it, and I eye a papier-mâché witch’s broom wistfully.

  “And I told you,” Haley says, her voice shaking with anger, “that I can’t find the tablecloth, Austin! And even if I could, I couldn’t iron it to suit you.”

  His jaw tightens as he spits out, “You can’t find it, and you can’t iron it. You can’t do anything, can you, Haley? Not a goddamn thing.”

  “Dod-damn,” Zach chirps, dancing. “Dod-damn ’tupid Mommy.”

  “Now see what you’ve done,” Haley yells, grabbing for Zach. Her sudden motion causes Zach to cry out in surprise, and Austin throws his hands high.

  “What I’ve done? Me? You scared him to death, yelling like that.”

  Interfering parent or no, I can’t let this go on, and I step between them, holding up my hands like a referee with a whistle. “Whoa, both of you. Stop this and listen to me, okay?”

  But Austin shakes his head, his eyes cold. “No, Clare. I’m tired and I’m hungry and I don’t want to hear any more. I’m taking the kids to Mickey D’s for supper.” He throws Haley a look, then jerks his head to Abbie. “Get your jacket and your brother’s, and let’s go get a Happy Meal.”

  “Goody—a Happy Meal!” Zach echoes as he bounces up and down, and I can’t help but wonder if his parents appreciate the irony.

  Abbie and Zach run to the back door, where their backpacks and windbreakers were tossed as they came in from school. As they struggle to get their jackets on, Haley turns to Austin, pleading. “I don’t want you taking them out for junk food again tonight. I’m going to fix dinner if you’ll just give me time.”

  “Yeah, right,” he says, looking around. “It’ll take you an hour just to put all this crap away. I’m hungry now.” Eyes narrowed, he gestures toward the kitchen. “Besides, what are you cooking? I don’t see anything.”

  Haley crosses to the fridge and flings open the freezer. “I have chicken strips in here,” she says, pulling out a package, “which can be thawed in the microwave in no time. I was planning on doing that dish the kids like so much, the one with the cheese and broccoli.”

  With a smirk, Austin says, “I assume you have broccoli? And cheese?”

  “I have cheese …” Haley mutters, then her face brightens. “Instead of going to McDonald’s, run to the grocery and get—”

  “No!” Austin shouts, and Haley cringes. “You know how crowded it is at this time of day and how I hate to go. Can’t you ever plan anything ahead of time?”

  “Don’t yell, Daddy,” Abbie says from the back door, hands on her hips. “That’s very rude.”

  “Dod-damn Daddy,” Zach chimes in helpfully.

  Austin rubs his face, then looks at his kids. “Hey, guys, I’m sorry for yelling. Daddy’s just tired and hungry, okay? And Zach, don’t say that, buddy. It’s not a nice word, and Daddy didn’t mean to say it.”

  I can’t stand it anymore, interference be damned, so I say with false cheerfulness, “Look, why don’t I run to the store? Won’t take but a second.” Throwing Haley a look, I add, “It’ll give you time to put away this stuff, then I’ll help you fix supper. How does that sound?”

  “Would you, Mom?” Haley says, her relief obvious. “That’d be great.”

  The following day, I leave a message on Haley’s cell phone and insist that she stop by my office right after school. Abbie is in preschool this year, and Zach is at St. John’s day care. When Haley has faculty meetings or one of her mental-health breaks with Jasmine, she drops off Abbie at day care for an extra hour, so I tell her to call the day care center and make the arrangements as soon as she hangs up. Reluctantly, she gives in. She knows what I want to talk about, and she doesn’t want to hear it.

  “I know you’ll take Austin’s side, Mom,” Haley says glumly as she sits next to me on the sofa in my office.

  “It’s not a matter of taking sides,” I protest, “but if it were, I’ll always be on yours, honey. Drink your tea. You’ll hurt Etta’s feelings if you don’t. And tell me this: How long were you going to let things go before telling me how bad things have gotten with you and Austin? I was appalled yesterday.”

  She shrugs. “I’ve tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “That’s not fair, nor is it true. All you’d said was that Austin’s feeling pressured by his job, and he’s tired and cranky a lot. It’s gone way beyond that. And you hadn’t told me he was taking it out on you, either.”

  Looking up, Haley’s eyes brighten. “You saw it, too! I hope you’ll tell him not to do that. You need to tell him—”

  I stop her. “Whoa. You need to tell him, honey, not his mother-in-law. You must be very clear that you will not tolerate his belittling you, especially in front of the children.”

  “He’ll listen to you, but he never listens to me. Besides, I’m afraid to tell him.”

  “Afraid?” I lean toward her in alarm. “Hayden Jordan, you’d better tell me the truth. Has Austin ever done anything—”

  She shakes her head before I can finish. “God, no, Mom. Jesus! Austin’s not one of those guys.”

  I study her, narrow-eyed. “No pushing, shoving, things like that? Sometimes it starts out that way, and the next thing you know, it’s a slap or a punch.”

  “Not Austin. You know him well enough to know that.”

  “So I thought, but I’ve been surprised before. What I’m really concerned about, and what I’m beginning to
see, is verbal abuse. Is that what you’re afraid of, what he’ll say to you if you stand up for yourself?”

  She shrugs, but I can tell she’s uncomfortable. “Not exactly. Guess I’m afraid that he won’t love me anymore.”

  “Oh, honey.” I take her hand and give it a shake. “We talked about that before you married him, remember?” At the time Haley told me she thought she loved Austin more than he loved her. Even though I figured it was premarital jitters, I talked to her about neediness and what an unattractive quality it was, with the potential to damage any relationship. Her response disturbed me then and still does. “I see what you’re saying,” she said, “but you were the opposite with Daddy. If you needed him, he never knew it because you were so independent, and that hurt your relationship just as bad. So who can say which is worse?”

  “Listen to me,” I say now, squeezing her hand until she relents and meets my eye. “You can’t make anyone love you, Haley. Just like you can’t command respect. Respect and love both have to be freely given. Or maybe I should say, respect you must earn, but love comes with no strings attached. But you have to think enough of yourself to demand equal footing in a relationship. Promise me you’ll talk to Austin about the way he treats you when he’s stressed out, okay? And if things don’t get better, I will push for marriage counseling, so be warned.” When she groans, I laugh lightly. “Sorry, honey. Occupational hazard.”

  Haley lets out a long, weary sigh, then glances at me. “Austin’s right, you know. I’m a terrible wife.” She lowers her eyes and picks at a fingernail, a childhood habit that reappears whenever she’s upset.

  I throw my hands up in the air. “See? That’s what verbal abuse does. Of course you’re not a bad wife. You’re a wonderful, loving person. Granted, I’d like to see you make more of an effort in some areas of your marriage, which we’ve talked about. Martha Stewart you ain’t, and having an orderly, well-organized household is more important to Austin than to you. But marriage is made up of compromises.”

  “Oh, that’s an original, Dr. Ballenger.”

  “I know you’ve heard it all before. But that doesn’t make it any less true. If you know Austin likes to come home to a hot meal, the two of you work out something both of you can live with, like taking turns cooking, or whatever. Big surprise: Life goes much more smoothly when things are well planned and orderly.”

  “I threw away that damn tablecloth,” she blurts out.

  “Haley, you didn’t!”

  “I did, too. I scorched it so bad, I knew Austin would go apeshit if he saw it. I feel terrible about throwing it away, but I panicked. His poor grandmother would die, if she weren’t already dead.”

  “Oh, dear. Not good.”

  “Don’t I know it. I felt so bad I got my friend Beth, you know, who sews, to teach me how to embroider so I could make another one. But I was such a klutz, I quit. Beth said she’d do it, but it’d take months. So I said forget it. If I had another one, I’d have to iron it, too.”

  “If Austin’s dead set on using a tablecloth for entertaining, take my advice and buy perma-press.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I’m heading to Target this weekend. But Mom, I hate the way Austin tries to play the big shot at work, throwing fancy dinner parties and stuff like that. Other folks at the college don’t do it. Sometimes I think he’s just trying to impress John and Wanda Webb.”

  “What is it with Austin and those two?”

  She shrugs. “You’ve got me. I’ve gotten so I can’t stand Wanda, but I can’t say anything because Austin says I’m jealous of her. Puh-leeze! Austin thinks both she and John are perfect, and they act like he’s Jesus Christ reincarnated. It’s funny to me that Austin has so little time for his family now, but he always finds time for them. I used to think Wanda had the hots for Austin, but now I think John is gay and he’s the one who does. Not that I blame him—marrying Wanda would turn any man gay. I’m sick of both of them.”

  “Okay, that does it,” I say briskly. “I’ve heard enough. Here’s what you’re going to do, young lady, and what I’ll do in return. Leave here, fix a nice dinner, get the kids down, then have a talk with Austin. Tell him that the two of you must see a marriage counselor, and right away. That’s your part. Meantime, here’s what I’ll do. I’ll get on the phone and start calling until I locate the best person for the two of you to see. Can’t be someone who knows me well, or Austin will think—”

  “He won’t do it,” Haley interrupts. “He’ll say we can’t afford it, wait and see. You know what a tightwad he is.”

  “Let’s cross that bridge when we get there. I’ll work out a barter or a professional discount or something. Promise me you’ll do this. Promise?”

  She nods glumly, and I go soft inside, just looking at her. With a sigh, she leans in to me, and I put my arm around her shoulder. “Oh, sweetheart, this seems bad right now, I know. But we’ll get through it together, like we have everything else. Okay? Just like it’s always been, me and you together.”

  Although Haley wasn’t a child of my body, she became a child of my heart in a most unexpected way. My decision to adopt her became a landmark case in the state of Alabama: Stepfathers often adopted stepchildren, but it was unprecedented for a stepmother to do so. My lawyers tried to talk me out of it, saying it was unnecessary. In fact, it was the most necessary decision I’d ever made, in many ways more crucial than deciding to marry Mack or starting a career as a therapist.

  Five years after we married and moved to Fairhope, Mack and I sat in my doctor’s office and received the devastating news: There would be no more babies for us. Our first child, a son we named Daniel, was born prematurely while I was working on my therapy license, driving back and forth to work at a family practice in Mobile. As tiny and fragile-looking as a bird emerging from the eggshell, Daniel lived six weeks, hooked to so many tubes and wires it was hard to tell a baby was underneath. Although Mack and I could caress and talk to our perfectly formed son in his incubator, neither of us ever held him. On the night we lost him, the staff sent us home from our endless vigil because he’d seemed so much stronger that we should be able to hold him soon, and they insisted we rest up for the big event. We collapsed into an exhausted sleep until I sat straight up with my heart pounding, awakened by the sound of a baby’s cry. A dream, I knew, but I made Mack get up and drive me to the hospital. Arriving at the neonatal unit, we tried to push past the team of doctors and nurses who rushed forward to stop us. By their stricken faces, we knew Daniel was gone, even before seeing the tubes and wires hanging uselessly over the sides of the horribly silent incubator.

  Because Mack and I were young and inexperienced in the ways that life can break even the strongest of us, our grief seemed inconsolable. We had yet to learn that consolation can be found in a seemingly small gesture of love. Dory kept our house filled with flowers, and Zoe Catherine, the most gregarious and outspoken of women, came and went without a word to anyone. We didn’t even see her, just the evidence that she’d been by: food prepared, laundry folded, the house cleaned. She was as unable to accept my gratitude to her as I was to adequately express it. I prayed that if nothing else, her ministrations might be the catalyst to bring Mack and his mother together, but it didn’t happen. Mack had grown up feeling like an abandoned child, a pain that never left him.

  When I got pregnant a year later, we celebrated too soon and too readily; I miscarried the day after. I carried the next baby a month longer, making the miscarriage more of a blow. After a battery of tests and a painful correctional procedure, I was soon pregnant again. That baby, too, I lost during the first trimester. After more extensive tests, a gut-wrenching verdict. Along with the news that it was useless for us to keep trying, Mack and I were given a list of adoption agencies, both domestic and foreign. “Some lucky child is out there waiting for parents like you two,” the doctor told us, seeing us to the door.

  For a long time afterward, both Mack and I dealt with the blow in unhealthy ways. I went back to school for a doc
torate in addition to working full-time, and I stayed away for days at a time. I picked divorce recovery for my dissertation topic because the research was scanty and challenging; I had no way of knowing that decision would start my career in a whole new direction. Mack had quit his hated banking job and started to work restoring old houses, and I convinced myself that his work filled the void for him in the same way mine did for me. I even told myself it was a good thing, and we were lucky not to need a family to make our lives complete. I didn’t know that, alone and aimless, Mack had found another way to deal with his pain. Although I was trained to spot the signs of alcohol abuse, I failed to notice them in my own husband.

  Then came the day that turned our lives upside down. Mack received a registered letter from a law firm in Orange County, Florida, demanding he contact them regarding an urgent matter. When he blew it off, a sheriff’s deputy served him papers a few weeks later, just as we were sitting down to one of our rare dinners together. Mack collapsed onto the sofa, white-faced and trembling, and I grabbed the papers from him. A paternity suit had been filed against Macomber Hayden Ballenger III, of Fairhope, Alabama, by the surviving kin of Shirley Marie Scott, of Naples, Florida. When I was able to speak, I asked the question any wife would: “Mack? Who is Shirley Marie Scott?”

  I thought Mack wasn’t going to answer me, and when he did, his response told me the letter wasn’t a mistake, as I’d hoped. “This means that … she’s dead?” Mack said blankly. “Shirley’s dead?”

  When I replied that normally you didn’t have surviving kin otherwise, he blinked in bewilderment.

  “Paternity,” he said. “She had the child, then.”

  My legs no longer held me up, and I sank down beside him. Finally I was able to say, “You’d better tell me about it.”