Not Easily Broken Page 20

  She realized she’d left her cell phone in her purse, which was lying on the bed in her room. She wondered what she’d do if it rang. The only person likely to call her right now was David. Would he call? Would she answer if he did? Clarice honestly didn’t know.

  When she could feel the perspiration beading on her face, Clarice pulled herself out of the bath. She toweled off and dug through her suitcase for something to sleep in. She brushed her teeth, cleaned her face, and dragged the suitcase to one edge of the bed, then pulled back the cover on the other side. She lay down, switched off the light, and closed her eyes.

  In the dark and quiet, the last words she’d exchanged with David ran on a continuous loop in her head. The movie screen behind her eyelids showed the same clip over and over: David standing in the living room, staring in horror at the TV, followed by a jump-cut to David telling her that he was going to go to the hospital whether she liked it or not.

  Do you honestly think I’m that sick?

  Clarice tried taking deep breaths, counting to seven on each inhalation and each exhalation. She tried reciting poetry she’d learned in school. She tried spelling words backwards, then whole sentences. Nothing worked. Her exhausted mind was like a trapped bird hurling itself repeatedly against the hard glass pane of reality, apparently preferring injury to surrender.

  When she’d stared at the red numbers on the nightstand clock for maybe the fiftieth time, Clarice gave up. She switched on the bedside lamp and sat up. The TV remote was on the table, and Clarice peered at it for a few seconds. No, she decided, not TV.

  For some reason she couldn’t quite understand, she pulled open the drawers of the dresser and nightstand until she found it. In the bottom drawer, all by itself, was the inevitable red-bound, hardback copy of the Bible. “Placed by the Gideons,” the gold foil stamp on the front read.

  Clarice hefted the Bible. She riffled the pages with her thumb; the tissue-thin paper made a sound like a hundred restless moths. Choosing a spot somewhere near the center, she let the Bible fall open.

  * * *

  There is one alone, and there is not a second; yea, he hath neither child nor brother: yet is there no end of all his labour; neither is his eye satisfied with riches; neither saith he, For whom do I labour, and bereave my soul of good? This is also vanity, yea, it is a sore travail.

  Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.

  Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone? And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not [easily] broken.1

  * * *

  Where had she heard these words before? Clarice looked at the top of the page to see “Ecclesiastes.” This didn’t sound like the Bible she remembered. Had she ever heard Pastor Wilkes preach out of this part of the Bible? She wasn’t sure. But somewhere . . .

  She and David were standing in the front of the church, and the minister was draping a cord around their shoulders. “This cord I’ve just draped across you represents the cord in this passage I’ve just read. . . . As long as you both put God first, your marriage will be a threefold cord that nothing can break . . .”

  Clarice felt her eyes getting wider and wider as the memory bloomed in her head. That was where she’d heard this before. A feeling started at the base of her neck and crept across her scalp, a feeling that she was no longer alone in this room.

  She held the Bible in her lap and stared at the strange words until they began to blur. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the headboard.

  A threefold cord is not easily broken . . .

  Her life certainly seemed to be unraveling, Clarice thought. She felt like both the frayed rope and the person hanging at the end of it. If the cord was David, Julie, and her, Clarice didn’t see much chance for any of it to hold together.

  . . . not easily broken . . .

  The words ran through her mind. The first part of what she’d read seemed to be describing her life—or maybe her life as David might view it. She was somebody always scrambling for more, and doing it alone, with no child, no friend to help; pushing ahead, never pausing to ask why. A sore travail . . .

  Is that what her life was becoming? A sore travail? She’d never thought so. Right up until the moment her smashed leg tumbled her over the edge of the ditch into depression, Clarice had never seriously considered the ultimate outcome of all her work, her hustling, her relentless self-improvement, her single-minded focus on becoming a mover and a shaker. It had never occurred to her to wonder if the goals she had so clearly in mind were worth the effort she was putting into them. Clarice had never actually thought too much about where she’d be when she got where she was going.

  She switched off the light and sat in the dark, still thinking about the words she’d read. Some time later, with the room’s air conditioner sighing a lullaby in white noise, she drifted off to sleep.

  She woke up the next morning and the first thing she saw was the thin yellow line of sunlight tracing the place in the middle of her window where the two halves of the heavy tan drape met. She looked at the clock; it was twenty minutes before eight.

  For several seconds, she was completely disoriented. This wasn’t her room and the windows weren’t supposed to be over there, were they? Gradually, memory returned, along with a tide of deep sadness. Clarice felt pressed down, flattened beneath the burden of everything she had to face. She considered the advantages of staying right here, in this bed, and hoping for some miraculous change that would make everything better. But she remembered enough from her Internet research to know that wasn’t going to work.

  She sat up and rubbed her face. She had apparently pulled the sheets up over herself during the night; her last conscious memory was of staring into the dark, her body still leaning against the headboard. Good, maybe that meant she’d slept some. Her mind still felt as tired as if she’d been on guard duty all night.

  She swung her legs out and slowly leaned her weight onto her feet. For the first time, she realized she’d left her cane at the house. Aside from a slightly fatigued feeling in her right calf, though, she didn’t notice any problems. Another good thing. In her present state of mind, she should probably start writing these thoughts down.

  She allowed her body to go on autopilot, taking her through the motions of showering, dressing, and getting made up for the day. She was going to be a bit later than usual this morning, but Clarice reasoned that was acceptable for someone who’d just left her husband. Graded on the curve, she was probably an A-plus—item number three for her “small victories” list.

  She was ready to go. She studied her suitcase, which was still lying open on the unused side of the king-size bed. Should she take it with her, or was this room—or another one like it—her home for the foreseeable future? Clarice decided to bet on faith; she zipped and latched the suitcase and wrestled it to the door. After she gathered up all her cosmetics, she gave herself a final inspection in the mirror. She decided she looked reasonably together, all things considered.

  Clarice walked into the office and went to her desk. According to her calendar, she had no appointments for the day. On a usual day, this would mean she spent her time making follow-up calls to prospective buyers or sellers, checking the new listings bulletins, writing congratulatory notes to current or former clients who’d been in the newspaper, or doing one of the score of other things she’d trained herself to do during downtime. That’s what winners did, she told herself, and she was a winner.

  But today, she could no more focus than she could fly. She kept something in front of her so the casual passerby wouldn’t know she was struggling to keep from losing it, but inwardly she felt barely able to function. As in the days when she’d first struggled with depression, it seemed to take all her concentration to keep from having an emotional meltdown.

 
; Clarice picked up her cell phone and dialed Mama’s number, then stared doubtfully at it for a long time. Finally, she entered the call and put the phone to her ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Mama? This is Clarice.”

  “Oh.”

  “Mama, I . . . I’ve left David.”

  “What?”

  “I said I’ve left David.”

  Michelle was coming down the hall. Clarice pasted on the best smile she could find and nodded as if she were having the most agreeable conversation imaginable. She even gave Michelle a little wave as she passed by.

  “Clarice, what’s happened? Did he hurt you? Did he leave you for that white girl?”

  Clarice kept on smiling and nodding without saying anything. When Michelle turned the corner, she said, “Not exactly Mama, he . . . well, never mind. I just wanted to let you know. I’ll talk to you later—”

  “I’ll be there this afternoon,” Mama said. “I’ll call Freddy right now.”

  Clarice closed her eyes. She really didn’t have the strength to fight her mother over this. “Mama, I—”

  But the line went dead. Clarice ended the call and looked up. Michelle was just crossing back in front of her office on the way to her own desk. Clarice hoped fervently Michelle hadn’t heard anything.

  She needn’t have worried; just before noon, Michelle came in and, without stopping at the door of the office, came right around to where Clarice was sitting. She put a hand under Clarice’s arm, as if to help her stand.

  “Come on, sister girl. It’s lunchtime and you’re going with me. We got to talk.”

  Clarice knew there was no point in objecting. As they were going outside, she started digging in her purse for her keys.

  “Never mind that. I’m driving today. You don’t look like you’re in any shape to concentrate on traffic.” When they got outside, Michelle held the door open and Clarice collapsed into the passenger seat of Michelle’s clean, but slightly road-worn, Chevy.

  “Okay, talk to me,” Michelle said as they drove down the street. “I could tell you were struggling from the time you hit the door this morning. I left you alone because I thought you might need some time to just be, you know?”

  “Oh, Michelle, I don’t know where to start.” Clarice’s voice sounded strained and hopeless, even to her.

  “Just pick a place,” Michelle said. “I’ll catch on as you go.”

  “I’ve left David.”

  “Oh my sweet Lord, honey. What happened?”

  Clarice told her about Julie and her suspicions about David’s feelings toward that woman. She explained about Bryson, then related his shocking death and David’s reaction to it. She told Michelle about the ultimatum, and about how David left anyway.

  “So, I packed up some clothes and went to a hotel. Then I came here. I don’t know what to do next, Michelle, I really don’t. I slept some last night, but my mind’s just going around in circles.”

  “Well, I tell you one thing, my sister, and that is that you’re not sleeping in a hotel anymore. Todd and I have an extra room, and if you need a place to stay, you’re staying with us.”

  Clarice caught the delicate emphasis Michelle had placed on the word if.

  “You think I ought to go back home?”

  Michelle kept her eyes straight ahead. “I’m not ready to say that yet, Clarice, but I do know something about walking out on somebody when I shouldn’t have. Todd is a good man and I left him for all the wrong reasons. I’m not saying that’s what you’ve done, but one thing’s for sure: if you want to have any chance of putting things back together with Dave, you got to get face-to-face with him sometime or another.”

  “But what if he doesn’t want to put things back together with me? You should have seen his face, Michelle. He was angry, really angry. It was like he never heard anything I said to him.”

  Michelle drove for a long time before saying anything else.

  “Ya’ll were seeing a counselor, weren’t you?”

  Clarice nodded.

  “Maybe you ought to talk to her. See if she’s got any advice. But Clarice—” She reached over and grabbed one of Clarice’s hands. “I know enough about Dave to know he’s got a good heart. I just can’t believe he’s going to throw his marriage away this quickly. I’ve got to believe that sometime, after the hurt isn’t quite so bad anymore, he’s going to come to himself. And when he does, you want to be there.”

  A threefold cord . . . not easily broken . . .

  “It took me a long time, honey,” Michelle said. “I had to sow all kinds of wild oats before I realized what I was missing with Todd. But all the time, he was there, waiting for me. I didn’t deserve it, but he never stopped believing in me. Todd and Miz Ida, they never lost faith in me. I’m a big believer in second chances, Clarice. When you’ve been given as many of them as I have, you can’t help it. Now . . . where we gonna eat lunch?”

  True to her word, Mama got to town that afternoon. Clarice’s cell phone buzzed, and when she answered Mama said, “Where are you? I’m at your house, but there’s nobody home.”

  “Mama, I’m at work.”

  “At work? How come you’re not at a lawyer’s office?”

  “Mama, I don’t know—”

  “I know that’s right. You don’t know anything.”

  Clarice heard her mother ordering Freddy to take her to Clarice’s office. She sighed and thumbed the off button on her phone. Then she buzzed Michelle on the intercom.

  “This is Michelle.”

  “Michelle, I’ve got to go for a while.”

  “Whatever you need. You still got the key I gave you?”

  “Sure. And . . . Michelle? My mother’s on her way over here.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Really. Just tell her I went back to your place to rest. You can tell my brother how to get there, right?”

  “You sure about that? Maybe you don’t need that kind of company.”

  “Michelle, it’s my mother.”

  “Well . . . okay. Mi casa, su mama’s casa, I guess.”

  “You’re awesome, sister.”

  “You know it.”

  Clarice drove to Michelle’s house and pulled up in the driveway. She carried her suitcases up the sidewalk and managed to unlock the door with a minimum amount of fumbling. She went inside and the first thing she saw was a large leather couch. She let the suitcases slip out of her hands to the middle of the living room floor, walked to the couch, and laid down.

  The next thing she knew, her mother’s hand was on her shoulder, shaking her.

  “What you doing here, Clarice? You got a house. You need to take a nap, that’s where you ought to be—in your own house.”

  “Mama, I’m trying to sort out some things . . .”

  “What is there to sort out? What? Your husband is cheating on you. How long does it take for you to figure out what any self-respecting woman would need to do?”

  Clarice’s head was pounding. “It’s not that simple, Mama.”

  “Oh, really? Is that right? ’Cause it looks pretty simple to me. I tried to tell you, Clarice, but you wouldn’t listen.”

  In the slight pause that followed, Freddy, standing in the doorway, said, “Where you want your stuff, Mama?”

  “Just put it in that room over there,” Clarice said. “I think that’s the guest room.”

  “Yeah, we in the guest room because your sister doesn’t have the backbone to stand up for herself.”

  Clarice flung herself up from the couch. “You know what? I’ve really got to go back to work. I’m sorry, Mama, but you can just . . . just wait until I get back.”

  She left her mother standing openmouthed beside the couch, stalked past Freddy, and crossed the yard to her car. Clarice managed to shut the door, back out of the driveway, and get about half a block away before the first cry of despair ripped from her throat.

  Chapter Twenty

  The casket at the front of the church was small, way too small. Dave watche
d as people came in and found their seats for the funeral. Bryson’s school had given permission for any of his classmates to attend who chose to. There were probably thirty students seated close to the front on the right. The swim team was here, of course, all members wore black armbands. Bryson’s coach sat close to the front; it appeared to Dave he was struggling to hold his emotions in check.

  Dave heard a minor commotion coming from the back of the sanctuary. He turned around and saw Jaylen and Darius coming in the back doors, followed by the rest of the baseball team. As he watched, Brock held open the door for them and directed them toward seats close to the back. Dave felt his eyes stinging with tears as these kids, many of whom had probably never darkened the doors of a church, filed in wearing their baggy jeans, their extra-long shirts, their wide-laced tennis shoes—their best and favorite clothes. They sat quietly and stared at the unfamiliar surroundings, but they were here.

  Dave got up and went back to where they sat. He moved down the line, shaking each boy’s hand in turn. He had to keep swallowing and blinking as he tried to tell them how much he appreciated their coming to pay their last respects to a kid they didn’t really know. When he got to the end of the line where Brock sat, he leaned over and whispered, “Thanks. I don’t know how you did it, but thanks for getting these guys here.”

  “When you called and cancelled the last practice, they all wanted to know why. When I told them, they wanted to come. They know how much he meant to you.”

  Dave waited for Brock to ask him why he hadn’t called from the hospital or something, but Brock didn’t. Dave didn’t know why, but he was grateful just the same. The lump in his throat made it impossible to talk right this second anyway. He mouthed the words “thank you.”