Escape Points Read Free Page B

phone, though he offered no specifics about how that would work or how it would include their school and sports, their friends, or any part of their lives. It was like I was listening to a random caller to a radio talk show spouting off claims that I knew were improbable. He said he was giving them the opportunity of a life in Europe.
    “They have a life here,” I said.
    How in the world would I pay for them to have a jaunt in Europe? I was able once to eke out a trip to Disney World with the boys, but that was because I signed up for a junket where I had to sit throughhours of sales pitches for Disney time-shares that I had no intention or wherewithal to purchase. A European adventure was not a priority. Getting them through high school and college was higher on my list.
    Even though Weldon’s first year of college was more than two years away, I had an instinct my ex-husband would not honor college payments from our divorce decree. I just knew it, the way I know how a movie—especially a Lifetime movie—will end a half hour into it. That is why I worked for a university—for the portable tuition payments, among other things. I had worked at Northwestern for ten years before Weldon went to college. I qualified and my boys would reap the benefits: 40 percent of tuition paid to any university for twelve years of college for the three of them.
    “You needed to let me know, to prepare them. This is a lot for them to take in so suddenly,” I said.
    How would I make up for this? How would I spin it so the boys wouldn’t feel their father was leaving them? All their gifts in trash bags. Once again, it was up to me to absorb the aftershocks .
    I never could have foreseen his choice. Not from the man who was effusive and gregarious when we’d married in 1986. Not the man my friends said was a real catch. I know that it sounds absurd, but how he behaved, who he appeared to be, his abuse—it surprised me.
    Four months after our wedding, he struck me for the first time, on the chest. We went to a marriage counselor, and I believed my husband when he said that all he needed to do was calm down before he came home from work. For the next nine years I believed what he said to the three therapists in three cities we lived in—Dallas, South Bend, and Chicago. The first move was for my career; I was recruited to be a feature writer and columnist at the Dallas Times Herald . The second move was for his decision to go to law school; the final move was coming home to raise our children near our families. I bolstered my faith in the in-betweens—the times between the episodes of physical abuse—when he professed devotion and sincerity, the times we worked to create a family. But the in-betweens were as consequential as vapor, as amorphous and illogical as an ill-conceived wish. That was a lifetime ago.
    The summer after his father left for Europe, I agreed to let Weldon visit him there for three weeks. I was careful to be supportive; I helped Weldon pack, gave him a credit card for emergencies, and bought him a leather photo album for all his photos of the trip after he returned. I would not obstruct a relationship with his father.
    Two weeks into the trip, Weldon called from Florence, Italy.
    “Where is the David?” he asked.
    “The Michelangelo statue?”
    “Yes.” His voice sounded odd.
    “It’s in a museum.” I couldn’t offer more concrete help just then; I’d last seen the iconic statue of a young, naked David, arm poised to sling a rock against Goliath, when I was twenty-three and on a three-week Italian tour with my friend Mariann.
    “We are trying to find it. Can you tell me how to get there?” Weldon asked.
    “It’s been more than twenty-five years; I can’t remember. It’s on a side street in a small museum, but everyone will know. Just ask, or look it up online.” I couldn’t look it up for him right then because I was away from my laptop. I didn’t know whether to laugh or worry even more. Of course, I