Holly hated these assignments, which felt expressly designed to make her feel like a bad mother. They always seemed to fall on weeks when she couldn’t get to the grocery store and resorted to cheese quesadillas or spaghetti with sauce from a jar. She imagined that the mothers of her sons’ friends cooked only grass-fed beef, quinoa, and organic vegetables, or soy-based imitations of real food: tofurkey and veggie burgers. These were the mothers who shopped at Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods and frowned at the cupcakes at school events as if they were poison.
“Write down that we had chicken, brown rice, and broccoli,” Holly said.
“But we—”
“Just write that down. I’ll cook tonight, so it won’t be fibbing. I’ll be back after I see Grandma, okay?”
“Sure, but I don’t think I like brown—”
“Bye, hon,” Holly said as the train pulled into the station.
Desdemona was invisible in the rush of people who got off the train, until they dispersed like gas molecules and she emerged, a waifish figure holding an oversized tote bag and blinking in the fading light. Holly, who had been circling the no-parking zone, opened the window and waved until Desdemona noticed her and came toward the car.
“Hi,” Desdemona said, climbing in. Neither one spoke much on the way to the rehab hospital. Holly quietly wondered if Henderson, who had taken it upon himself to retrieve Celia’s checkbook and bank statements, would be upset that their mother had been helping Holly with her mortgage for the past year. The well-off version of Henderson she had always known wouldn’t have begrudged her, but she didn’t know how the bankrupt Henderson might react.
When Holly and Desdemona arrived, Henderson was already waiting in the lobby. He led them to a small conference room that had surely been used many times for the same conversation among siblings. Henderson said little as he laid out several folders and a spreadsheet on the table.
“So here’s the bottom line,” he said, adjusting the papers and folders so they were at right angles with the edge of the table. “Mom qualifies to move to a nursing home after the rehab stint, but she’ll have to pay out of pocket until she empties her savings. But once she’s in, she’ll be covered until she dies.”
It wasn’t that Holly was surprised by this news, because she knew from her friends how the insurance system worked. But she was startled to hear Henderson—the momma’s boy—say “until she dies” in such a flat and unemotional way.
“Oh,” Desdemona said, putting a hand over her mouth.
“Is there anything else we can do?” Holly asked. Her neck felt stiff, and her finger joints ached, as if she had become elderly that instant, taking her mother’s place in the world.
“Unless one of us wants to care for her at home—and that would mean paying for outside nursing care—we really don’t have a choice,” Henderson said.
“So there’s nothing?” Desdemona said. “Nothing left?”
Holly knew what she meant. Their parents had been wealthy, but unless their mother died before the funds were depleted, none of them would see a dime. It was another step in acknowledging that she alone was responsible for keeping her small family afloat.
“What’s left will go to Mom’s care in all likelihood,” Henderson said, his voice growing thick. “Dad built a business and worked like crazy for forty years, all so a bunch of strangers can keep Mom’s body functioning for the next ten while her brain barely registers that she’s alive. It doesn’t make sense.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Desdemona said, swallowing audibly. “I guess I always thought I’d be able to move out of that dinky apartment someday. Not that I was waiting for an inheritance, but it seemed like they had plenty saved.”
“They did, although some of us took a little inheritance before all this happened,” Henderson said, giving Holly a look. She felt the recrimination right down to her core.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about it,” Holly said. “I never thought we’d be in this situation.”
It had never occurred to her that her siblings would one day resent her mother’s generosity.
“I get that you must have needed it, Holly, but Des and I won’t get the same kind of help, even though we both need it.”
“I know that now, but you didn’t need it until recently,” Holly said, feeling sick to her stomach. “And as far as I knew, neither did Desdemona. I just assumed she was happy with her small apartment.”
“Well, now you know,” Desdemona said, her voice even smaller than usual. “I wake up every night when my upstairs neighbor flushes his toilet. Think about where we grew up, Holly.”
Silence flooded the space around them as Holly remembered her parents’ formal dining room and circular driveway, their father’s paneled den, and the family playroom. It all seemed impossibly posh and warm and out of reach. She was now the same age as her father when he bought his first Mercedes, and she couldn’t even keep up with the mortgage on a small, rundown house.
Then again she had few friends who lived the kind of life she had once known. Financial security seemed like something that existed for a few decades after World War II and then evaporated even as people continued to believe they could attain it. She dated her disillusionment to the second year after Chris’s death, when his life insurance was dwindling and she realized she would always be just one step ahead of the debt collectors and might remain there until the lid closed on her, just as it had on Aunt Muriel in her unpaid-for casket. She had applied for countless better-paying jobs and never got anywhere. Her chosen profession had been slashed and burned until it was unrecognizable, and yet she had no other skills or experience, so she held on like a polar bear clinging to a shrinking ice floe. She realized, too, that she had reached that stage of maturity where she knew she could survive on very little. But her boys and their future were a different story.
“It sucks, girls,” Henderson said finally, putting his spreadsheet back into one of the folders. “We are the victims of an economic rout and some very bad timing.”
“How are you holding up?” Desdemona asked him. “How’s Phoebe?”
“She asked me if I was poor the other day,” he said, leaning back in his chair with a small smile. “Not if ‘we’ were poor, but if ‘I’ was poor, because she knows her mother has family money.”
“What did you say?” Holly asked. “I’ve been dreading that same conversation with the boys.”
“I told her that I had hit a rough patch, but that I would bounce back as soon as I could. And she told me she appreciated my candor. A twelve-year-old used the word ‘candor.’”
“She’s always had a big vocabulary,” Desdemona said.
“Then she asked me if she could still take private trombone lessons. That killed me right there, I’m not gonna lie. It’s like forty bucks an hour.”
“So what did you say?” Holly asked.
“I told her we’d find a way to pay for her lessons.”
Desdemona and Holly both nodded in sympathy, knowing that was what he would say.
“Then I had to call my ex-father-in-law and practically beg for the money,” Henderson said, his chin quivering. “I hate this. And I hate that Mom is in that bed. That she can’t talk to us. That she can’t keep living her life.”
“We know you do, Hen,” Holly said. “And if I could pay back that money I borrowed from Mom, you know I would. Right?”
Desdemona nodded. Henderson sighed and ran his fingers hard across his eyebrows, then rubbed his temples.
“I’ll sign the papers,” Henderson said, standing up to go. “They’re moving her next week.”
CHAPTER 14
On Saturday, Holly let the boys sleep in and drove downtown to The Gold Depot. Inside were two middle-aged men in running pants and windbreakers looking like they had taken a detour while jogging; an elderly woman clutching a canvas bag to her chest while she waited for an appraisal; and the Sister Sisters, who were each unwrapping a butterscotch candy.
“Holly, dear,” one
of the sisters said, waving her over. “Vivian assured us that this business is not one of those scammers. She told us she’s an investor and that you’re helping with it. So we’re here to cash in our trinkets. We realized we could send the money to a mission in Africa.”
“What a lovely thing to do,” Holly said. “But I hope you’re not giving up anything special. Once it’s gone, it’s gone, you know. They melt most of it down.”
One of the sisters pulled a plastic bag out of her purse and showed Holly a tangle of thin chains and gold crosses of various sizes.
“People give us crosses all the time, and we can only wear one,” said the sister holding the bag. “We each picked our favorite, and now we can turn these into something useful. We’re hoping we can buy a cow.”
Holly had written enough about the charities that supplied animals to poor families to know that they could afford a scraggly flock of chickens, maybe a goat, but she said nothing. Racine, who was behind the counter showing a watch to one of the joggers, caught her eye and nodded toward the back office.
Holly went to the office and examined her cuticles as she waited for Racine, who came in about five minutes later. When he saw Holly, he ran a hand over his hair and smiled.
“That was our opening rush,” he said. “I’ve had customers waiting for me to unlock the doors for the last few days. I guess the word is getting out.”
“If the Sister Sisters are here, you’re in,” Holly said. “They talk to everyone. And their cash is going to charity, so maybe you can give them an extra good price.”
Racine went out and spoke into the ear of the appraiser sifting through the sisters’ gold, then came back into the office.
“We’ll take care of them,” he said. “They look like sweet old ladies.”
“Don’t let their looks fool you,” Holly said. “They’ve been on missions all over the world. I heard that one of them worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta.”
Racine shook his head, smiling. “I really like this town. You all look out for each other.”
“We do,” Holly said, a bit surprised that Racine would even notice how the town functioned outside the doors of the gold store.
“Hey, I notice you haven’t traded in any gold since we opened. We’d definitely give you a good price.”
Holly didn’t want to admit that she had traded in her small stash of jewelry long before Racine’s shop had opened in town. The total take had been seventy-eight dollars. She thought about the wedding ring again, wondering what it would actually bring in, but she pushed the thought away.
“So business is picking up then?”
“No question,” Racine said. “We’re in a great spot, and the price of gold has been climbing steadily since we opened. In a few months, I’ll probably hire a store manager and open another store. These upstate New York towns have a lot of potential.”
Holly felt a little let down. Not that she expected Racine to stick around Bertram Corners, but she didn’t realize he would be gone so soon.
“You look disappointed,” he said, laughing. “It’s good news for Vivian that things are going so well.”
“No, of course,” she said quickly, trying to sound upbeat. “She’ll be glad to hear that.”
Just then the front door opened, and a couple came inside with a shopping bag that looked heavy, containing perhaps a tea set or a candelabra.
“Back to work,” Racine said, heading back out the door. He turned around, though, and leaned his head against the doorframe. His hand came up toward his hair, but he put it down again.
“Hey, would you like to have dinner with me?” he said, flashing the smile that no doubt was responsible for half the customers in the store, maybe even the joggers.
“Oh,” Holly said, completely unprepared for the question, though Racine appeared to assume she meant “yes.”
“Today’s out because I have a meeting back in the city later,” he said. “But how about Friday?”
She did a mental inventory of her closet and almost said no because she had nothing to wear but then realized she could borrow something from Marveen.
“Sure,” she said, exiting the office behind him. “So Friday then.”
She looked back on her way out of the shop, but Racine was already deep in conversation with the heavy bag couple, and so she couldn’t ask him what time on Friday or where they should meet, but she supposed that such details could be worked out later. Her social skills predated her marriage and were therefore primitive by modern standards. Of course, she thought, he would e-mail or text or call her with the particulars, which meant she would be waiting all week and worrying about a date that he would most likely cancel if a better offer came along.
In the years since Chris died, Holly had gone on a few dates—mostly blind ones arranged by well-meaning friends—but had remained more or less alone. At first there was simply too much grief, and then there were too many obligations, but as the boys got older, she felt even more constrained. In part, she didn’t see too many opportunities in a small town where most of the men in her acceptable age range were either married or so obviously undateable that they were out of the question. But mainly she worried that the boys would find it upsetting to see her dating someone, attempting to replace their father with some inevitably inferior model. In the boys’ minds, their father was something of a tragic hero who had died before he could fulfill all his good intentions of playing ball with them and teaching them how to drive. She bore some responsibility for the deification, because she often pointed out what their father might have said or done had he been alive.
“Dad would have been so proud of you tonight,” she told Marshall at his last band concert. “He loved the trumpet.”
Chris had loved the trumpet no more than he had loved the oboe or the saxophone—he could tolerate jazz but hated classical music—but she somehow couldn’t help herself from creating this custom-made persona for the benefit of her boys, since Chris would never be around to dispute it. All of that meant that any man she dated or married would never live up to the über-Chris, even perhaps in her own mind.
But Racine was different. He wasn’t a real person in the Bertram Corners sense. He didn’t have dirt under his fingernails or drive a pickup, and he didn’t worship at the altar of chicken wings. Holly saw him as the modern-day version of the charming traveling salesman who wouldn’t be around long enough to complicate her life or the life of her children. She imagined, based on nothing more than their few interactions, that he was the kind of person who didn’t know what he wanted but knew what he didn’t want: commitment, tradition, sticky-handed family gatherings. At another time in her life, she would have shied away from him, but she decided that even a temporary respite from her troubles could be almost like joy itself. And if that was asking too much, at least she’d get a good meal out of it.
That afternoon, Holly received her first call from the bank. The loan officer was Vince Romano, whom she had known since high school.
“We’re a little concerned,” Vince said, “that you only sent in half your mortgage payment, and the rest is quite late.”
“I know, Vince. I’m so sorry about that. I’m having a little cash-flow problem, but I’ll work it out.”
“You understand that you’ll be hit with a penalty, right, Holly? That’ll make it even harder to pay next month.”
“I get it, Vince, but I just don’t have the money right now. If I did, believe me you would have a check in your hand.”
Vince paused for a moment, and Holly could hear him shuffling some papers.
“I see that you also took out a small home equity loan a while back,” he said.
“Yes, and I paid the interest on it this month. I remember sending that check.”
“If you can’t pay the mortgage, you might want to delay any improvements you were planning. Housing prices have been falling recently, and you might want to keep those funds liquid so you don’t lose the house.”
Those words. Lose
the house.
Holly bent over, unable to keep her head balanced on her shoulders. She felt dizzy. “Are you telling me you’re going to foreclose when I’m late to pay just one time, Vince?” Holly said, because the home equity loan money had been used long ago to pay down some of her credit card debt. “Is that what you’re telling me?”
This time she pictured the boys under an overpass, shivering in their garbage-bag raincoats. She would not allow it.
“Not right away. But if you go another few months without a mortgage payment, we’ll have to start foreclosure proceedings. This is a bank, Holly, not a charity.”
It stunned her that people now used the word “charity” in an almost pejorative sense, as in, we can’t afford to give our money away like those sloppily managed organizations that toss it out like bubblegum at a parade.
“I can’t lose the house, Vince. I’ll do everything I can to catch up.”
Holly hung up the phone with a trembling hand, wondering what to do. She went upstairs to her bedroom, opened her jewelry box and pawed through it, teary eyed, only to realize what she already knew. There was nothing of value left except for the plain gold wedding band. She took out the ring, laid it on her palm, and examined the dull yellow gold and the inscription inside. “Chris and Holly. 1990.” Was this the only thing standing between her and stalling foreclosure? When Holly was a teenager and a college student, her goals were ethereal, though she didn’t know it then. She wanted to make the world a better place by writing about it, telling its stories with what one of her journalism professors had called her gift of writing with great sensitivity toward her subjects. She wore, for example, her frumpiest and least attractive coat when covering a story at the homeless shelter, where the residents were so frail, almost boneless, that they looked as if they had been filleted from their skeletons.
Now, her goals had become crude and basic. To maintain their home. To stay out of said homeless shelter. To keep her boys from being filleted and boneless. To prevent her children from knowing just how poor they might become.
The Virtues of Oxygen Page 10
