Queen of Broken Hearts Read online

  He says in a petulant voice, “You know damn well what it is. You just want me to say it, don’t you? It’s what I did to her workshop, okay? It was wrong of me, but I can’t undo it now. I did all I could to make it up to her. I apologized, I sent her notes and flowers and—”

  “Ha. Ironic that you’d send flowers to make up for trashing the workshop where Dory works on her garden stuff, isn’t it?”

  Son hangs his head and shuffles his feet before saying softly, “I was a goddamn idiot to touch that place, as much as she loves it, and I still don’t know what made me do it. Sure, I was drunk, but I’ve been drunk plenty of times and never done anything like that. I’ll regret it till the day I die.”

  I study him. This remorse is the closest thing to humility that I’ve seen in Son, and it takes me a minute to process it. “At least you’re no longer blaming it on being drunk. Drinking was no excuse for your despicable behavior, nor did it explain your going into a jealous rage. But you haven’t admitted that part of it, have you? Have you asked yourself why you trashed Dory’s workshop rather than, say, the gardens she spends so much time on? Why not take a weed-eater or sling blade to the plants and flowers she loves so much?” When he flushes darkly, I move in for the kill. “Wasn’t it also about your jealousy of Rye?”

  He shakes his head and snorts. “My jealousy of Rye? If that’s your theory, it’s beyond stupid.”

  “Oh, really? It was a sheer coincidence, then, that you tore up her workshop the very night that Dory met with Rye about starting her business?”

  Son’s gaze is unwavering and cocksure. “You think I’m jealous of Rye Ballenger? Bullshit. Ever since we were kids, he’s panted after Dory like a dog in heat.”

  “How like you to put it so crudely. I’m sure you prefer not to remember that Rye fell in love with Dory that summer you spent at Bama, making up all the courses you failed by partying so much your freshman year.” I don’t add that I suspect Rye’s still in love with Dory, though he pretends otherwise. I’ve always thought he’d be quick to admit it if Son were out of the picture.

  “Maybe so, but he sure hauled ass when she made it clear she preferred me to a wimp like him, didn’t he?” Son says with disdain. “I’m not jealous of him or any other man, so you can forget that. But I’ve admitted to Dory that I was jealous of her time. I didn’t want her starting a business, and I did everything I could to stop her.”

  That admission is so much more than I expected that I’m quick to agree. “You certainly did.”

  Son stares at me, long and hard. “I’ve made some mistakes this past year. Okay, I made a lot of mistakes, then my tantrum disgusted Dory so much that she threw me out. Is that what you want me to say? But Dory is willing to forgive me. She loves me in spite of my faults and always has. The problem is, she loves you, too. She values your opinion way the hell too much and always has. I’ve never thought it was good, the way she keeps running to you about everything.”

  “I don’t care what you think. Dory’s my best friend, and any time she asks for my advice, I’ll give it to her. If you don’t like it, too bad. As for her well-being, these prolonged crying jags aren’t good for her or anyone. They’re brought on by too much stress.”

  Although Son’s anger has dissipated, his hostility hasn’t, and he stares at me balefully. “If it hadn’t been for Father Gibbs, it would’ve been even worse.”

  “You called Father Gibbs?” I ask in surprise.

  Son shakes his head as he runs his fingers through his curly hair. “Of course not. Father Gibbs came home with me after church yesterday to talk with us about the renewal ceremony.” He glances at me sideways, but I won’t give him the satisfaction of reacting. “When Dory told Father Gibbs that she wanted you to stand up with her, like you did at our wedding—”

  “And like she did at mine and Mack’s,” I murmur.

  He goes on as though I haven’t spoken. Son rarely mentions Mack; he’s never dealt with the shock and grief of Mack’s tragic accident. “Dory told Father Gibbs that she didn’t think you’d do it, and he said he’d talk to you.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” I snap. “I don’t need him sticking his nose into something that’s between me and Dory.”

  Yet again Son continues as though he hasn’t heard me. “Father Gibbs asked if he could talk with Dory alone, so I went out to play golf. When I got home, he’d helped her feel better, and they had made plans for the renewal ceremony, which was his suggestion in the first place.”

  On hearing this, I struggle to keep my face expressionless. When Dory told me yesterday that the ceremony was Son’s idea, I was skeptical, since Son’s not imaginative enough to come up with something like that. I figured someone was behind it but couldn’t think who it might be. Why hadn’t I thought of Father Gibbs? After all, Son is one of St. John’s biggest contributors, as well as being head of the vestry and no telling what else. Considering all the therapy sessions I’ve conducted with the parishioners of well-meaning but blundering pastors or priests, women torn apart by guilt and the notion that God demands they keep their families together regardless of the cost, it should’ve been obvious to me that Father Gibbs was behind it.

  Son startles me out of my thoughts by saying in an awed voice, “When I told Father Gibbs about the night me and Dory got back together, he said it was definitely a sign from God.”

  Again I don’t reveal what I’m thinking, that I suspect Son contrived it somehow. If nothing else, he’s using it to his advantage. “Dory told me that was the night she thought she’d had a nervous breakdown. Those kinds of episodes can be quite scary, but it wasn’t a breakdown.”

  He glares at me. “You weren’t there, so how do you know?”

  “It’s my business to know,” I snap. “Dory had a particularly bad episode of grief and loneliness, which is common during a separation, but nothing like a psychotic breakdown. I’m going to urge her to see a counselor.” I let the last part slip; I tried to get Dory to someone all last year, with no success, because she prefers less orthodox methods, all her meditating and other malarky.

  With his scorn for both me and my occupation, I figure Son will pounce on that notion, but he surprises me one more time. “I promised myself that if Dory took me back, I’d see somebody who can help me get my head on straight, and I’m going next week. Maybe I can get Dory to come, too.” I don’t dare ask who he’s seeing. He adds, “I’m determined to show her that I’m a changed man.”

  “Oh, really? You could’ve fooled me.”

  Son falls quiet as he regards me. Finally he says, “You might hate me, Clare, but Dory doesn’t. She loves me as much now as she ever did. Always has, always will.”

  “Of course I don’t hate you.” We’re back to where we were when he came bursting in to disrupt my day. Same old, same old. “After the way you behaved, I thought Dory did the only thing she could, leaving you. I’ve said it to her, I’ve said it to you, and I’ve said it to your kids. And I hoped she’d give herself enough time to see if that’s what she really wanted. When she didn’t, I wasn’t happy about it, I’ll admit. But I’ll support her decision to take you back, whether I agree with it or not.”

  Instead of being pleased, he makes a face. “You know how to make it sound that way, don’t you, with all your highfalutin psychobabble! But it’s what you do that counts. Saying you’ll support Dory is one thing, and doing it something else. Well, you have a chance to show it. Stand up with Dory at our church ceremony. That will be the statement she’s looking for from you. If you love Dory like you claim, then you’ll do it for her.”

  I take a trembling breath, determined not to let Son stare me down. “I’ll discuss that with Dory,” I say tightly, “but not with you or Father Gibbs or anyone else. That’s something for Dory and me to work out. And now your five minutes are up, and you need to leave. We’ve said all that can be said. Both of us know that whatever it is between the two of us will never be resolved, don’t we?”

  He looks taken
aback. He knows that I’m talking about more than Dory. Although neither of us has brought up Mack except indirectly, his presence is between us and always will be. Son might forgive me for Dory but never for Mack. Almost five years later, Mack is still the unquiet specter who refuses to stay in his grave, to allow us to exorcise his ghost and get on with our lives. No matter where we go or what we’re doing, none of us who loved him will ever be free of him. Like a tenant who vacates a house but leaves his possessions behind, Mack left us with too much of what once belonged to him.

  After Son leaves, his anger tamped down but not dissipated, with nothing really resolved between us, I have to endure Etta’s looks of disapproval until she forgives me for letting Son disrupt our morning. She’s right, of course. I should have let Son’s cousin-in-law and his freeloading renter haul him off to jail instead of trying to be the appeaser, the together, above-it-all mediator with all the answers. My face burns when I wonder with a shock if that was indeed what I was doing, if I’ve fallen into that old trap again. Son has always given me the impression that he didn’t consider me good enough for Mack or worthy of taking the prestigious Ballenger name as my own. After all these years, am I still trying to prove him wrong? The thought disgusts me, but if I’ve learned anything as a therapist, it’s that an unpleasantry about yourself can’t be dealt with until it’s acknowledged. Name it, and it’s yours.

  “Half an hour before your next appointment,” Etta informs me briskly, coming into my office. Then she softens and puts an arm around my shoulder. “Sit down, Clare, and let me bring you a cup of tea.”

  I don’t argue with her. I sink into the chair at my desk and say weakly, “Oh, Etta, what would I do without you?”

  Relenting, she smiles her warm, forgiving smile. “That’s something you’re not gonna find out anytime soon, I promise you. Now, kick off those shoes and put your feet up. I’ll be right back with the tea.”

  Shamelessly, I let Etta wait on me, brew me a cup of tea, but she doesn’t ask what’s going on, nor why Son Rodgers came here raving like a lunatic. The truth is, Etta knows more than anyone, even me, about what really goes on behind the pretty facades of the households around here, what happens when the bedroom door is closed and the lights go out. But she never asks questions or makes judgments, even when clients have to be let in the back door, eyes swollen shut from crying or faces too bruised to be seen by others. I give her a grateful little wave when she slips out the door, leaving me to savor the cup of tea, pale with milk and sweet with honey.

  My unlikely friendship with Dory Rodgers began almost thirty years ago, the second semester of our freshman year at the University of Alabama. Looking back, I can understand why Dory thinks of destiny, or fate, as such a determining factor in all of our lives. Unlike her, I’ve always been practical, down-to-earth, and of a scientific mind-set, not especially interested in the unknown or prone to give much credence to the unexplained. Still, considering how our friendship came about, I can see why she insists that fate brought us together. According to her theory, it takes only a small, insignificant thing to change the entire course of one’s life. Maybe she’s right; that Dory and I ended up in the same Chemistry 102 class was a coincidence all by itself. Although I was enrolled in the scholastic honors program, I couldn’t schedule an honors chemistry class, and I had a choice between taking the only one available that semester or waiting until the next year for the one I was supposed to take. What if I’d decided to wait? But I was a psychology major, eager to get into some meatier courses on a subject I’d become fascinated with while taking a basic psychology course as a high school senior. So I unwittingly signed up for the same course Dory was in.

  Even that fortuitous happening wouldn’t have necessarily thrown Dory and me together, since the class was held in an auditorium with more than a hundred students. Another twist of fate worked in our favor: During those days, freshmen at UA were often assigned to study groups, and I found myself, Clare Skidmore, assigned to a group with others whose last names also ended in S. With no notion, of course, that destiny was at work, I picked up my assignment sheet with annoyance. For students like me, the study groups were a waste of time, but I was such an uptight little rule-follower that it never would have occurred to me not to attend, unlike most students in the class. Sure enough, at the group’s first meeting, a girl named Isadora Shaw and I were the only ones to show up. Otherwise, I can’t imagine how I ever would have met Dory, or Son, or Mack.

  The previous semester that I’d spent at UA was my first time away from home, and I’d been lonely and scared, overwhelmed by the vast campus and hordes of milling students. I shared a cramped dorm room with a quiet, studious girl who was nice enough but stuck with her own group of friends and left me alone. Although I hung out with students I’d met in various classes, I wasn’t really close to any of them. I spent my time either studying or engaging in my favorite pastime, people watching. Like a scientist researching a strange and fascinating new species, I amused myself by analyzing the various types of students on campus, a hobby that would later come in handy in my profession. At the University of Alabama in the mid-1970s, the class system was as rigid as that of Victorian England, and each entity tended to stick closely to its own kind. I spent hours observing the rowdy fraternity boys and beautiful sorority girls; the Neanderthal jocks; the flamboyant yet aloof theater people; the weird art majors; and the serious science students. The group I fit most closely into, which I fondly called intellectuals, would one day be given the unflattering label of nerds or geeks.

  When Dory and I met in the assigned cubicle of the science library that first night and smiled at each other in greeting, I tried not to look too surprised, or too pleased, either. Of all the students in my chemistry class, Isadora Shaw, seated a row down from me, was the one who’d fallen under my microscope because she both mystified and intrigued me. As my eyes roamed over the classroom searching for my next specimen to analyze, they landed on her because she didn’t fit any of my classifications. She doodled in her notebook, or crossed her long, shapely legs restlessly, or sighed in boredom, and I observed her curiously. I couldn’t figure out where she belonged or what made her so different from the other students. To my delight, our first study session provided the opportunity to observe her up close and personal.

  For one thing, Dory Shaw didn’t look like the rest of us. Though she was one of the most exquisite girls I’d seen on a campus famed far and wide for its beauties, even her kind of beauty was unusual. With her fluid grace and the long fawn-brown hair falling like a silken curtain down her back, Dory moved as though suspended in moonbeams. Almost all the girls on campus, including me, either ironed our hair or tortured it into hot rollers to style the hairdos of our day, but not Dory. Her look was as natural as sunlight. She didn’t dress like other coeds, either. Even I, who knew or cared nothing about fashion, spent a lot of time studying others before purchasing my meager wardrobe, not wanting to be seen in anything that would set me apart from my peers. It was obvious Dory had no such qualms. One day I stared in amazement when she showed up in class wearing Chinese pajamas of a deep garnet silk, stunning with her flawless ivory skin. Another time she swept in decked out in a vintage dress of the sheerest lawn, worn with lace-up granny boots that must’ve come from an antique store. But what made her stand out was not her beauty or style; it was the incredible smile that lit up her face and made her kitten eyes glow golden. Neither before nor afterward have I met anyone with a sweeter smile than Dory Shaw.

  The dreaded study sessions proved to be the bright spot in my lonely week, and I discovered that Dory Shaw was not merely an interesting specimen for my observation, she was warm, lighthearted, and funny. Although a bright student with decent grades, she was so baffled by chemistry that she’d barely passed the first semester and was terrified of failing the much more difficult 102. It constantly amazed her that I got it. Once she realized that I was good at explaining complex principles she thought were beyond her comprehension,
she latched on to me and wouldn’t let go. “I feel so much better now that I’ve met you, Clare!” she said after our first night spent in the stuffy study cubicle going over the properties of elements. “If we keep on studying together, I might even make a good grade in this course.”

  Once I assured her I’d continue attending our study sessions (in truth, I wouldn’t have missed them), she suggested we go to the Krispy Kreme for a cup of coffee. Licking our fingers as we devoured donuts hot from the oven, Dory and I sat in a booth and talked for hours. She indulged my obvious curiosity about her with good humor, flattered that I found her life so intriguing. She thought it neat that I planned on becoming a therapist one day, and claimed she was making her contribution to science by allowing me to practice my skills on her. I was as thrilled to find myself spending time with her as an archaeologist might be, uncovering a hidden world.

  There was a lot in Dory Shaw’s habitat to intrigue me. Because of her self-assurance and exquisite looks, I wasn’t surprised to hear that she was a “Brookie,” what Alabamians called the residents of Mountain Brook, the oldest and wealthiest suburb of Birmingham. But I never would have pegged Dory as a sorority girl. With a shrug, she admitted it was a good thing she found life in the sorority house tolerable, since she was a legacy. “It was simple. If I pledged my mama’s sorority, all expenses would be paid to dear old Bama,” she explained. “If I didn’t, I’d be flipping burgers to put myself through school.” When she described some of the strange and archaic rituals and conventions of sorority and fraternity life, I had a glimpse of a world I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. I was astonished to learn that she was a home economics major, yet another way she refused to fit any of my classifications. “But … I thought home ec majors were prissy!” I blurted out, and Dory scoffed. My passion was the studying and analyzing of others; hers was flowers, plants, and gardening, an interest instilled in her as a child by her beloved grandmother. Since her science skills weren’t strong enough for a major in horticulture or landscape architecture, home ec, with its gardening component, was the best she could do.