Not Easily Broken Read online

  “Anytime, day or night,” Brock said. He squeezed Dave’s shoulder. “You doing okay?”

  Dave shrugged. “It comes and goes. I better get back over there.”

  Brock gave him a measuring, evaluating look for a few seconds. He nodded and gave Dave’s shoulder another squeeze.

  Julie had asked Dave to sit immediately behind the pew where she and her mother, father, and brother would be sitting.

  Dave wondered if Clarice would come. He hadn’t spoken to her in two days, since the night he went to the hospital. A few times he’d thought about dialing her cell number, but he kept talking himself out of it. He couldn’t quite decide if it was because he was still angry, or because he felt guilty. Maybe some of both.

  But Julie needed his help; there was no mistaking that. She’d asked him to be with her when her family arrived. They all lived out of state and were staying at her house. Dave shook the hands of her parents and her brother as Julie introduced him as her friend and Bryson’s coach. Dave had told them what a wonderful kid Bryson was, so gifted and polite. He told them “shame” didn’t begin to describe the waste of such a promising young life. They looked back at him with faces so blank with questions and grief that they would have seemed mentally impaired if Dave had met them under any other circumstances.

  Dave had tried to excuse himself from the midst of Julie’s family as soon as he could, but she called him the next day and asked him to go with her to the funeral home to pick out the casket. “I can’t ask my dad to do it,” she’d told him. “He’s just barely functioning as it is. Bryson was their first grandchild. And I don’t think I could stand being there with Ted.”

  Dave said sure, he’d come, but within minutes of walking with Julie into the casket showroom, he was regretting his decision. The reality of Bryson’s death smacked him in the face all over again. It hadn’t ever really hit Dave that caskets came in kid sizes.

  The service was starting. Pastor Wilkes came out, along with the music minister and the youth pastor. Wilkes raised his hands and the audience stood. Julie and her family came from the side room: Julie, her father, her mother, and her brother. Ted and the young woman who’d come to the hospital with him were next. They walked a little apart from the others. Ted looked like he’d found some strength from somewhere; he was walking without anybody’s help. The family group made its way to the front of the sanctuary and sat down, then the rest of the audience took their seats.

  The music minister came to the podium and asked them all to turn to a song in the hymnal that was, he said, one of Bryson’s favorites. The organist played the intro and they all sang. Dave’s voice kept shutting off on him; he had to stop frequently and regroup before singing the next few words, after which he’d have to stop again. At one point, he realized Julie’s hand was reaching back, over the pew, toward him. He grabbed her hand and squeezed.

  They finished the hymn. Pastor Wilkes came to the podium. He gripped the edges of the lectern for a few seconds and closed his eyes. Then he opened his eyes and looked intently at Julie.

  “Julie, Ted, I don’t know if you’ll remember anything we say or do here today. At times like these, when the whole world consists of the single, unanswerable question—Why?—words and ceremonial actions seem somewhat irrelevant. But try and take this message with you: This church loves you. Bryson was our friend, our classmate, our child in the faith. No one can carry your grief for you, but to the extent possible for fallible, selfish humans, each one of us here feels at least some small corner of the burden on your heart. Remember that, if you can. And in the dark days and weeks ahead, call on us. We’re here, and we’re not going anywhere.”

  In his resonant, velvety voice, the pastor read Bryson’s eulogy. He named Julie and Ted, along with her parents and brother and Ted’s father, as survivors. He looked out over the crowd for a few seconds and Dave thought he was going to say something else, but instead he just sat down.

  The music minister sang a solo after that, a song about hope and resting in the arms of God. Then the youth pastor stood up.

  “I’ve had a few years’ experience as a pastor,” she said, “but nothing I’ve ever learned or heard has prepared me to do the funeral for a child. Not because I have any questions about Bryson’s fate—of all of us, he is most to be envied right now, because of where he is—but because of how keenly we feel the loss of an innocent one such as he. There are only a few Scriptures I’ve found that speak to my heart in times like these: the Psalms, of course, especially those sad ones that frame the words I find myself wanting, but unable, to utter; the story of the Resurrection, perhaps, since that hope is the anchor that people of faith have clung to for centuries upon centuries, especially in times of trouble. But oddly, I also find myself turning to that book in the Bible that is perhaps noted more for its strangeness than any other, the book of Ecclesiastes.

  “The writer of this book, like us today, found himself at a loss for adequate explanations. He looked around at everything and found it all meaningless. He didn’t try to understand life, he just described it. And he used words like these: ‘For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven . . .’”1 She read the entire passage. When she got to the end, she looked out over the crowd.

  “There could be lots of reasons why we chose to be here today. Maybe we wanted to show our appreciation for Bryson’s life. Maybe we knew him as a teammate,” she said, looking to the side where the swim team sat. “Maybe we wanted to show our support and sympathy for his mom or some other member of Bryson’s family.

  “But I hope nobody came here today looking for answers—or at least, not from me, because I don’t have any. At times like these, I have lots of questions, maybe similar ones to those asked by the writer of Ecclesiastes. But like he did, about all I can do in the end is say, ‘Here it is; now what do I do with it?’

  “The good thing is, the writer does suggest an answer. At least, I think it’s an answer, or part of one. The answer comes in two places: the first is about a third of the way into this book and the other is near the end, in chapter twelve.

  “In the first part, the writer talks about how bad it is if you’re all alone. He talks about how much better it is to have friends around during the hard times. Then he says, ‘a threefold cord is not [easily] broken.’2 I’m not sure, but maybe he’s saying that two people who hang in there with each other, along with God, make a rope you can hang onto when you’re at the end of all your other ropes. At least, that’s how I read it—especially on days like today.

  “Then, close to the end of his book, after he’s pretty much spent a lot of words telling us how meaningless everything seems, he says this: ‘Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.’3 That’s it. That’s his answer—or as much of one as he’s willing to give.

  “And the more I think about it, the more it starts to make a little bit of sense, even in times like today. When we don’t know what else to do or where else to turn, maybe we need to pay attention to God and stick close to each other. Because maybe, in the final analysis, that’s about all there is for us to do.

  “I think Bryson did that. That’s why so many of you are here today. And if he were here, I’ve got a feeling he’d give us the same advice: Hang onto God and stick close to the people you love.”

  She sat down and the music minister sang another song. Then the people from the funeral home started dismissing the crowd, one row at a time, starting from the back. When the usher got to Dave’s row, Dave started to stand, but Julie grabbed his hand.

  “Stay. Come to the cemetery with us. Please?”

  Clarice drove away from the funeral service shaking like a leaf. When the youth pastor said “Ecclesiastes,” she could hardly hear anything that happened afterward.

  Of course she’d seen Dave sitting up front, right behind Julie and her family. She’d felt the anger and resentment she’d expected to feel, even though she tried to remind herself that she was here to
show sympathy for a mother who’d lost her son, not to spy on an errant husband.

  She’d tried to concentrate on Pastor Wilkes’s words of compassion and done her best to listen to the words of the song, but when the youth pastor announced the name of the one biblical book that had been gnawing away at a corner of her mind for the past two days, Clarice lost all pretense of focus. Why did this rather obscure biblical text keep showing up in her life? Maybe she ought to ask Michelle about it.

  Michelle and Todd had been more than gracious. They’d taken her in without judgment. It was clear they were concerned for her, and just as clear they’d walk with her as far as she wanted them to. They didn’t even complain when her mama showed up with her suitcase and installed herself in the guest room. Her mama was missing no opportunity to announce her disgust that the wife of a cheating husband would leave her own home instead of making him pack up and get his own sorry self out.

  She drove back to the office and returned to her desk. Within seconds, Michelle was closing her door and sitting down in her armchair.

  “How was the funeral?”

  “Heartbreaking.”

  “Was he there?”

  Clarice nodded.

  “Sitting with her?”

  “Right behind her.”

  “How are you?”

  Clarice shook her head. “I don’t know, Michelle. I really don’t.”

  “Well, I hate to tell you this, but your mother’s here.”

  Clarice groaned. “Michelle, I can’t—”

  “I know. I tried to tell her to just wait, that you’d be home later and she could talk to you then, but when she heard you went to the funeral, she made Todd leave work and bring her down here. She’s in the restroom.”

  “No, she isn’t,” Clarice said, staring out the door. Mama was bearing down on them, and her face said she was taking no prisoners.

  Michelle stepped aside as Mama entered and quickly closed the door. Michelle made a praying hands sign through the glass wall at Clarice as she walked toward her desk.

  “What in the name of conscience do you think you’re doing, having anything to do with that woman?” Mama said, plopping herself into the chair across Clarice’s desk. “I thought I raised you to be able to stand up for yourself and not take any nonsense. And here you are feeling sorry for the woman who’s stealing your husband.”

  “Mama, it’s her child.”

  “Mmm-hmm. And where was he sitting?”

  Clarice closed her eyes. “Close to her.”

  “Close? How close? In her lap?”

  “Mama, don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Ridiculous? Me ridiculous? I tell you what’s ridiculous, Clarice. It’s ridiculous that you left your own house instead of telling that man to get himself the hell out. It’s ridiculous that you can’t stand up to him and tell him that if he wants his little white hoochie-mama so bad, he should just take her and go on with himself.”

  “Mama, maybe it’s not like that. Maybe he really is just trying to help her get through this awful place in her life, and maybe there really is something left for us to work on together.”

  “Only thing you need to work on, girl, is getting those blinders off your eyes. You can’t trust a man like that. They all the same. Sometime or other, they going see something that looks better to them and that’s all of that. You better wake up, girl, and listen to me.”

  Clarice felt her chest burning with anger. With a trembling hand, she picked up her phone and started dialing.

  “What you doing?” Mama said.

  “I’m calling you a cab,” Clarice said through clenched teeth.

  “What do I need a cab for? I’m not finished talking to you.”

  “No, ma’am. But I’m done listening. Hello, City Cab? Can you please come to 1457 Westchester and pick up a passenger? Yes. Mrs. Mary Clark. Yes, thank you. She’ll be waiting out front.” She hung up and stared at her mother, panic and rage twisted up under her breastbone like a tangle of fighting cats.

  “I had a thought the other day, Mama. Do you know what it was? I finally realized that maybe my daddy and the other men who left you weren’t the only ones to blame.”

  Mama jumped to her feet and started to wag her finger in Clarice’s face.

  “Sit down, Mama!”

  Clarice had leaped up out of her chair. She had screamed the words so loud that she could feel the eyes of everyone in the whole place staring through the glass walls into her office. She forced herself to take several deep breaths before saying anything else. Her voice, when it came, was low and dangerous.

  “I . . . said . . . sit . . . down.”

  Mama subsided back into the chair.

  “You taught me many things, Mama. Many wonderful and important things. But you left something out. Compassion. That I’m having to learn on my own.”

  Clarice walked around her desk and opened her door. “Good-bye, Mama. I’ll have Michelle write down her address for the cab. And you can use their phone to call Freddy. I think you’re done here.”

  Michelle was in the hall, standing beside her; Clarice felt Michelle’s hand rubbing up and down her back, up and down. “Come on, Mrs. Clark,” Michelle said. “Let’s get you home.”

  When Michelle came back to Clarice’s office, Clarice was in her chair behind her desk; tears were streaming down her face. She put her head in her hands. “Michelle, I’m a mess. My life is a mess, and I’d like to blame David for all of it, but I know that’s not the way it is. What can I do? I don’t know what to do.”

  Michelle was kneeling beside her now, her arm around Clarice’s shoulders. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry, and I know you don’t know which way to turn and it doesn’t seem like there are any answers that make any sense right now.”

  Clarice gave a harsh laugh. “You sound just like the youth pastor at the service! She talked about feeling that way, when life is just one big question. Next thing you’re going to do, I guess, is start quoting Ecclesiastes at me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Clarice shook her head and sniffled. Michelle handed her a tissue.

  “Oh, the other night in the hotel, I got out that Bible they put in all the rooms, you know? And I just let it fall open, and I read something in Ecclesiastes about a cord with three parts. I remembered it was a verse the minister used in our wedding, and it’s been bothering me, like a song you get in your head and can’t get out, and then today one of the ministers at the service started quoting from the same passage. It was just weird, that’s all. For years I never heard the word Ecclesiastes, and now it’s everywhere I turn, seems like.”

  Michelle’s hand never stopped: rubbing across her shoulders, then down one arm, then the other arm, then the shoulders again. “Well, honey, I don’t know for sure, but sometimes God can be funny like that when he wants to get somebody’s attention.”

  “You honestly think God has something to do with this?”

  “Sister girl, I think God’s got something to do with just about everything.”

  “Now you sound like that Miz Ida you’re always talking about.”

  “That might be the nicest thing you’ve said to me all week.”

  Clarice cut her eyes at Michelle, and from some unexpected source, a smile tried to gather up on her face. Michelle returned it.

  “There you go. Sister found her grin, just a little bit, anyway. Guess things might not be as bad as we thought.”

  That day after work, Clarice decided to call Carmen McAtee. She was in way over her head, and the way she saw it, Carmen had more experience to work from than anybody else she knew of at the moment. The next morning, she called and made an appointment; it so happened Carmen had an open time that afternoon.

  “Where’s Dave?” Carmen said when Clarice walked into her office.

  “That’s why I’m here,” Clarice said. She sat down and looked Carmen in the eye. “I left him. Or he left me; I can’t figure out which.”

  “Talk t
o me.”

  Clarice related the whole chain of events, starting with the news of Bryson’s death and David’s reaction to it. She did her best to describe the conversation word-for-word. When she finished, Carmen sat for a few seconds without speaking.

  “What should I do?” Clarice asked finally, just to break the silence.

  “What do you want to do?” Carmen said.

  “You know, I had a feeling you were going to answer my question with a question, and right now I feel like screaming. I need some advice and some answers, not more questions.”

  Carmen looked at her and nodded. “I can certainly understand your frustration. And if I had a pill to give you or a surefire way to put you back on the road to happiness, I’d give it to you. But my job isn’t to decide what will help you; it’s to help you discover for yourself what works and what doesn’t. And the only way I can do that is to start by finding out where you are. Then we go from there. Make sense?”

  Clarice took a deep breath and nodded.

  “Okay. So what do you want to do about the situation?”

  Clarice thought for a long time. She looked at Carmen and said, “What do you know about the book of Ecclesiastes?”

  Dave rode to the cemetery in the car with Julie and her parents. When the brief graveside service was over and it was time for the family to leave, Julie’s legs wouldn’t work. She was sobbing uncontrollably, trying to say Bryson’s name but unable to control her voice well enough to get out much more than the first syllable.

  Dave helped her up and practically carried her to the car. Her parents and brother walked behind them. He drove and she leaned against him the whole way back to the church.

  By the time they got back, Julie had gained enough composure to ask him to come by the house for a while. Her Sunday school class had brought tons of food, she said, and he might as well have some of it. Dave tried to excuse himself by telling her that she probably needed time with her family.

  She grabbed his arm. “Please, Dave. I need you there,” she said in a low, desperate voice. “I’m losing it.”