The Devils Teardrop

he’d realized, was an act. She was in fact cagey and calculating. Her moods whipped back and forth—cheerful for a while, she’d plunge into days of rage and suspicion and paranoia.
    When he’d met Joan he was learning how very different life becomes when you’re still young and your parents die. The demilitarized zone between you and mortality isgone. You seek as a mate either someone to take care of you or, as Parker had done, someone to take care of.
    Don’t you think it works out best that way? Nobody taking care of anybody else? That’s a rule. Write it down.
    So it wasn’t surprising that he sought out a woman who, though beautiful and charming, had a moody, helpless side to her.
    Naturally, not long after the Whos were born, when their married life demanded responsibility and sometimes just plain hard work and sacrifice, Joan gave rein to her dissatisfactions and moods.
    Parker tried everything he could think of. He went with her to therapy, took over more than his share of work with the children, tried joking her out of her funks, planned parties, took her on trips, cooked breakfasts and dinners for the family.
    But among the secrets Joan had kept from him was a family history of alcoholism and he was surprised to find that she’d been drinking much more than he’d believed. She’d do twelve-steps from time to time and try other counseling approaches. But she always lapsed.
    She withdrew further and further from him and the children, occupying her time with hobbies and whims. Taking gourmet cooking classes, buying a sports car, shopping compulsively, working out like an Olympian at a fancy health club (where she met husband-to-be Richard). But she always pulled back; she gave him and the children just enough.
    And then there was the Incident.
    June, four years ago.
    Parker returned home from work at the Bureau’s document lab and found Joan gone, a baby-sitter looking after the Whos. This wasn’t unusual or troublesome initself. But when he went upstairs to play with the children he saw immediately that something was wrong. Stephie and Robby, then four and five, were sitting in their shared bedroom, assembling Tinkertoys. But Stephanie was groggy. Her eyes were unfocused and her face slick with sweat. Parker noticed that she’d thrown up on the way to the bathroom. He put the girl into bed and took her temperature, which was normal. Parker wasn’t surprised that the baby-sitter hadn’t noticed Stephanie’s illness; children are embarrassed when they vomit or mess their pants and often try to keep accidents secret. But Stephie—and her brother—seemed much more evasive than Parker would have expected.
    The boy’s eyes kept going to their toy chest. (“ Watch the eyes first,” his Handbook commands. “ Listen to the words second .”) Parker walked toward the chest and Robby started to cry, begging him not to open the lid. But of course he did. And stood, frozen, looking down at the bottles of vodka Joan had hidden there.
    Stephanie was drunk. She’d tried imitating Mommy, drinking Absolut—from her Winnie the Pooh mug.
    “Mommy said not to say anything about her secret,” the boy told him, crying. “She said you’d be mad at us if you found out. She said you’d yell at us.”
    Two days later he started divorce proceedings. He hired a savvy lawyer and got Child Protective Services involved before Joan made the false abuse claim the attorney thought she’d try.
    The woman fought and she fought hard—but it was the way someone fights to keep a stamp collection or a sports car, not something you love more than life itself.
    And in the end, after several agonizing months and tens of thousands of dollars, the children were his.
    He’d thought that he could concentrate on putting his life back together and giving the children a normal life.
    And he had—for the past four years. But now she was at it again, trying to modify the custody order.
    Oh, Joan, why are you doing this? Don’t you ever think about them? Don’t you understand that our egos—parents’ egos—have to dissolve into benevolent vapor when it comes to our children? If he truly thought it would be better for Robby and Stephie to split their time between Parker and Joan he’d agree in a heartbeat; it would destroy part of him. But he’d do it.
    Yet he believed this would be disastrous for them. And so he’d duke it out with his ex-wife in court relentlessly and at the same time shield the children from the