Queen of Broken Hearts (43 page)

I can't tell if anyone is on the line or not. “Yes, hello? Is anyone there?” I snap. I'm as irritated with myself as the caller; jarred out of a deep sleep, I answered the phone automatically. Even with every protection possible on my phone, I still get the occasional crank call, so I'm reaching to put the receiver back on the hook when I hear the faint voice of a child. “Mommy …” Only one word, but I'd know that voice anywhere, and I gasp. “Zach? Is that you, baby?” He says something I don't understand except for “Abbie and Mommy.” My eyes go to the clock; it's well past midnight.

“Zach? What are you doing, sweetheart?” Disoriented, I turn on the lamp and squint in the light. Abbie knows how to dial my number, but not Zach. Haley had called me earlier; had Zach hit redial, playing with the phone? But why is he up at midnight? “Listen to Grams, pumpkin—” I begin, but he jabbers into the phone breathlessly. This time I understand enough to cause my heart to thud painfully.

“Mommy fro up and fro up. Abbie says Zach be a big boy and—”

I hear Abbie's voice then. Zach squeals in protest when she takes the phone from him, and I hear Abbie say, “No, Zach! Gimme the phone so I can talk to Grams. I told you to hold it until I got back. Now give it here.” I force myself not to yell into the phone as I hear them struggle over the receiver, praying the connection won't be lost as Abbie wrestles the phone from her little brother. “Grams?” Abbie says, then “Ow, Zach! Stop that.”

“Abbie!” I take a deep breath to quell a mounting panic. “What's happened?”

“Mommy's sick, Grams. I heard her crying and went to her room, and she said she was sick. She threw up a hundred million times. But she won't open the bathroom door when I bang on it.”

Somehow I manage to dress with the receiver pressed against my ear, and I say as calmly as I can, “Honey, listen to me. Hang up now, okay? I'm coming right over, but I'm going to call you on my cell phone when I get in my car. You answer, and I'll talk to you on the way to your house.” Then I add, “Don't let Zach answer it, okay?” Poor Zach; even without that command, I doubt he has a prayer of getting the receiver away from his bossy big sister. But one thing for sure, it won't be from lack of trying.

If I hadn't been at the hospital with her, Haley wouldn't have avoided the psych ward. I can appreciate the irony of that, since a few days ago I'd gotten so angry with her that I'd threatened to put her in there myself. The day after the divorce papers were served in her classroom in front of her wide-eyed kindergarten students, Haley had been so upset that one of her teacher friends had given her a supply of sleeping pills and told her to go home and take a nap. Austin took the kids for the weekend, and Haley was so despondent that she stayed in bed the whole time, popping pills. When I checked on her Sunday afternoon, she was out of it, groggy and disoriented. I plied her with coffee and a cold washcloth, telling her that if she didn't wake up, I'd be forced to take her to the hospital. I didn't believe it was intentional—she swore she'd never do anything like that, because of the kids—but I was still furious at her, even more so when Austin brought the kids home. I told him curtly that she wasn't feeling well, but Haley grabbed his hand and begged him not to leave. Red-faced, he muttered platitudes, then dashed out the door.

When Austin filed for divorce, I thought Haley would see at last that they'd gone beyond a so-called trial separation to a permanent dissolution of their ten-year marriage. Instead, she turned a deaf ear to me when it came to Austin. Although I urged her not to call him, to let him call her if he needed to discuss anything about the kids or their situation, she wasn't able to stop herself. One evening I came into her house and overheard her crying and pleading with him to return to his family, saying she'd forgive him anything if only he'd stop the divorce proceedings and come back. Without a word, I walked across the room, took the receiver out of her hand, and clicked it off. “Leave him alone, Haley,” I said sternly. “He's made his bed. For God's sake, let him lie in it.”

“But this woman he's with, Mom—this
Muffie
!” she sobbed, wild-eyed. “She's been married twice, and she broke up another man's family. She sent me that picture so I'd file for divorce, but I fooled her, didn't I? She's nothing but a scheming, conniving homewrecker! Why can't Austin see that?” She'd gone on to swear that Muffie had stolen her husband, and I'd hooted, saying Austin was a person with a free will, not a Rolex watch. Rather than being destroyed by the discovery of Austin's mistress, as I'd feared, Haley had been vindicated. She'd gone from feeling rejected when Austin moved out to feeling sorry for him instead. “Poor Austin,” she said sadly, shaking her head. “If it hadn't been for that awful woman, he'd still be with his family. One day he'll see her for what she is and come back to us, wait and see.”

After much persuasion, I'd gotten her to see a therapist twice a week after school, a woman I didn't know but who came highly recommended. After Mack's death, I'd persuaded Haley to attend a support group for adult children of alcoholics, and it had really helped her. But this time I haven't seen much progress. Although the therapist urged Haley to attend one of my first-stage group meetings in addition to her therapy, Haley refused, insisting she couldn't stand to be around so many depressed women. I'd tried in vain to convince her that was the point: They ministered to one another.

Sitting by Haley's hospital bed the morning after the call from Abbie and Zach, I push her damp, tangled hair from her forehead and watch her sleep a drugged sleep, her chest moving up and down like that of a puppy sprawled out in sunlight. At least it wasn't the sleeping pills this time. Petite and slender, Haley barely weighs a hundred pounds, and she's one of those women who can't eat when upset. During that awful time after Mack's death, I'd made Ovaltine milk shakes to keep her going. Since Austin moved out of the house in December, she's lost twelve pounds. When Abbie called me last night, Haley hadn't eaten anything for two days. Too weak to put the kids to bed, she forced herself to eat some of the pizza she'd ordered for them, only to be unable to keep it down. It terrified me to think what might have happened if Abbie hadn't awakened on hearing her mother. When we arrived at the emergency room, Haley's electrolytes were so out of kilter that her heart was beating erratically. “Anorexia,” the doctor on duty proclaimed at the conclusion of his examination, and I called him out of the room to explain what was going on. The only way I kept her out of the psych ward was by showing him my credentials and swearing she was under a therapist's care.

Slumped in a hard, vinyl-covered chair next to Haley's hospital bed, I jump when a hand is placed on my shoulder, and raise my head to see Dory. Rising, I go into her outstretched arms but resist when she tries to drag me out of the room. “Then you might as well crawl in the bed with her,” Dory whispers, eyes flashing. “You look like shit. And from the looks of her, Haley's so out of it, she's not going to wake up and miss you. Come on—we won't go any farther than the waiting room.”

In a tote bag, Dory has a thermos of coffee and miniature date-nut muffins wrapped in foil, still warm from her oven. I haven't thought of being hungry until I eat one, then I devour three. “Jasmine called you, I guess,” I say, looking at Dory gratefully when she pours coffee into the cup-shaped lid of the thermos and hands it to me. Last night I had no choice but to ask Jasmine to stay with the children while I took Haley to the emergency room. When I called Jasmine early this morning to check on them, she thought it best that they go on to school and day care, in spite of being up half the night. Playing with other kids would be the perfect distraction at this time, she said, and I agreed.

“Umm … no, it was Zoe Catherine,” Dory replies, popping a whole muffin in her mouth. “Jasmine called her before school. Zoe said for me to tell you this: She's bringing Cooter to his doctor for a checkup this morning, and they'll stop by afterward to see Haley.”

“Oh, Lord,” I say with a weak smile. “What do you think the hospital staff will say when they see Cooter again?”

A couple of weeks before, Cooter had a mild heart attack, and Fairhope was still talking about the uproar he'd caused at the hospital. Once he got to the emergency room, he'd insisted it was just his “hiney hernia” acting up again. When he was hooked up to the EKG, however, the medical staff suspected a heart attack. Cooter said no wonder—his heart was broken because the love of his life had turned down his marriage proposals. When the cardiologist on duty told him there was no such thing as a broken heart, Cooter mocked the doctor, saying he was so young that he was still wet behind the nose. The staff hadn't been able to tell what was causing his erratic heartbeat, so they probed into his activities to determine the problem. The poor cardiologist asked if he'd taken Viagra, which insulted Cooter so badly that he'd yanked off the EKG probes and tried to leave wearing nothing but a hospital gown. “I don't
need
to take no damn dick medicine, by God!” Cooter bellowed, much to the delight of the people sitting in the lobby, who cheered him on.

The only way they got Cooter back to the examining room was to give in to his insistence that they call Zoe Catherine. When Zoe arrived, Cooter clutched his heart and howled so piteously that it set off a code blue, and the whole staff came running into the examination room. Cooter swore he was going to die right then and there because of the way Zoe had broken his heart. Zoe said she'd break more than his heart if he didn't shut the hell up. A nurse on duty was a friend of Etta's; relating the story to me, Etta and I laughed so hard, both of us bent double. “My friend said Cooter was using cuss words none of them had ever heard before,” Etta whooped, wiping her eyes, “and one of the younger doctors thought he was speaking in tongues!”

Dory asks me, “What's going to happen to Haley?”

I shake my head wearily. “I'm sick with worry about her.” I absently blow on the hot coffee before taking a sip. “And I feel so helpless. Seems like I'm able to help everybody but her.”

Dory frowns as she chews another muffin. “I tell you, this thing with Haley and Austin has gotten me thinking. If Son dies before I do, or if we split the sheets, I won't ever marry again. Once in a lifetime is more than enough for me. Why do any of us do it?”

I smile and take a sip of my coffee. “Funny, last time I saw Lex, he said the same thing. If this keeps up, the species will die out in no time.”

“Hey, what's going on with you and Lex? The other day I called him to invite the two of you to the Mardi Gras dinner I'm having, and he said he hadn't seen you in weeks. No matter how hard I tried, he wouldn't say anything except I should ask you about it, not him. Oh—and thanks for confiding in your best friend. I was embarrassed to admit you hadn't told me a damned thing.”

“There's nothing to tell,” I protest. “I've been too busy to see anyone lately, as you well know. Rye's mad at me, too, for not going to all the Mardi Gras stuff. Not only is Wayfarer's Landing finished and demanding my every spare minute, it seems every client is going through a crisis. Not to mention my own daughter.”

“Yeah, I know how crazy your life's been lately, but I also know something is going on with you and Lex. You can't fool me. Did you hurt his feelings?”

“Evidently,” I say with a shrug. “Though I have no idea what I did.” Actually I do, but I'm not about to tell Dory, have her jump me.

Her eyes are soft and thoughtful as she chews. Swallowing, she says, “You know what Haley needs, don't you?”

“Please don't say another man.”

“Yeah, right. That would do her in for sure. No, she's got to attend a retreat.”

“I can't even get her to the group meetings. I'd love more than anything for her to sign up for a retreat, but she's so deep in denial, she won't even discuss it. I've tried, and her therapist has tried—”

“Let me talk to her,” she says, her face lighting up. “And I didn't mean just any of the retreats. I meant the first one ever held at Wayfarer's Landing, on the day of the spring equinox. It's going to be awesome.”

I stare at her in surprise. “She's not going to be ready that soon. Even the mention of it will scare her off.”

“Not if I don't tell her what goes on.”

“Dory! You know how I feel about the participants being fully aware of what goes on at the retreats.”

“Okay, okay, don't get your panties in a wad. I'll just talk to her about it, okay? No pressure, and no hiding the truth.”

“Let me think about it. If she'll come to the group meetings first, then—”

With a sharp intake of breath, Dory interrupts me. “Uh-oh. Lord Vader approaches.”

She and I had chuckled to hear Jasmine's latest nickname for Austin, Darth Vader, saying he'd gone over to the Dark Side. If that were true, then Jasmine was hell-bent on wiping out the forces of evil. As I feared, once Jasmine and Zoe Catherine heard about Muffie Chisholm, Austin was a marked man. Zoe had taken an old bird's nest, cut out a picture of a cuckoo bird and placed it inside, then mailed it to Muffie's address in Perdido Bay. She'd made an official-looking card for it that read: “The common cuckoo,
Mufferius Chisohelis,
is a parasitic, opportunistic bird that shamelessly lays its eggs in other birds' nests.” Jasmine was even bolder. She'd gotten Tommy to take Lex's boat out on the bay and patrol the Webbs' house until they spotted Austin on the deck. The difference was, Jasmine yelled at Austin to look their way. When he did, both Jasmine and Tommy dropped their drawers and mooned him. Jasmine said if the sight of their great big black and white asses hadn't scared Austin into repentance, nothing would.