by Jane Porter
“That was for you, Dad.”
“Thanks, pumpkin.”
It’s one of those clear, cloudless autumn days where the sky seems extra blue and the colors on the ground extra red and gold. Nathan asks me if I mind if he takes the girls to lunch, just the four of them, a father-daughter treat before they go looking for Halloween costumes.
I’m glad he’s so good with them. But as they drop me off at the house and I watch the four of them leave together, I can’t help feeling a little left out. I want to have fun, too.
Four hours later, Jemma comes home with a red devil girl costume. Tori is—of course—a pink princess, and Brooke is a Bratz pirate. I didn’t even know the Bratz dolls were now making costumes for real girls. I glance casually at the price tag from Jemma’s red devil costume: $44, without the accessories. Have costumes always been so expensive?
While buying costumes, they also picked up pumpkins, one for each of us, and we line up in the dining room, the good table surface covered by thick layers of newspapers, and carve our pumpkins.
In keeping with the spirit of things, I heat apple cider on the stove, spicing it with cinnamon sticks, and find the CD of Halloween music that includes unforgettable favorites such as “Thriller” and “Monster Mash.”
Leaning against the counter, I smile to myself as the girls dance around the family room, doing their version of the Twist.
This, I think, my mug of cider pressed to my mouth, is why we fall in love and get married and have babies. This. Three little girls shimmying and shaking and doing the Twist.
Chapter Twelve
Saturday night after the girls go to bed, Nathan and I sit in the family room watching an old movie. He’s in the soft leather armchair, legs outstretched on the matching ottoman, while I curl up on the couch. We’re not exactly talking, but I don’t mind. It’s nice just being here, together, like this.
An hour later, as the movie goes to commercial break, I look at him and see that he’s fallen asleep. I’m not surprised, since he’s on a different time zone from us. Quietly I turn off the TV, find the quilt he used last night, and cover him before dimming the lights.
I’m just leaving the room when I hear his voice. “It’s been a good house, hasn’t it?”
Standing in the doorway between the large, casually elegant kitchen and the spacious but cozy family room, I nod. “I love living here. The girls love it, too.”
“Let’s go Monday to talk to someone. I’ve got the number of a financial planner that specializes in situations like ours. Maybe he’ll have some advice for us.”
“I thought you were flying back tomorrow night.”
“I can push the flight back a day. I think it’s important we talk to someone sooner rather than later.”
“Sounds good. Thanks. Good night, Nathan.”
“Good night, Taylor. Sleep tight.”
Early Monday afternoon, Nathan and I are to go see Michael Burns together at Burns & Bailey Financial, and I spend a long time standing in my closet trying to decide what to wear. We’re seeking financial advice, so I know I shouldn’t arrive dressed to the nines, but at the same time, I want to present a polished, even sophisticated image. We’re in debt, but we’re still successful people.
I settle on black, very straight-leg wool pants and a flame cashmere turtleneck sweater with my Miu Miu camel wool coat over all. My black patent Jimmy Choo heels are the perfect shoes and really pull the look together. It’s appropriately autumn but still smart.
“You look nice,” Nathan tells me as we get into my car, although he’s driving.
“Thank you.” I smile, yet I’m nervous. I cross my legs one way and then the other, struggling to get comfortable and thinking how odd it is to feel like a stranger with my own husband.
“You’re sure Annika will be here this afternoon?”
I nod. “She’ll pick up Tori and then meet the girls’ school bus.”
“God, I don’t want to do this,” Nathan mutters as we take 92nd Avenue to 8th Street.
It’s not even a five-minute drive from our house to the Burns & Bailey office in downtown Bellevue, but it feels much longer. Nathan’s tense. I’m tense. The strain is almost unbearable.
Burns & Bailey Financial is located on the twentieth floor of one of the Bellevue Place Towers adjacent to the Hyatt hotel. Nathan parks underneath the building, and we take the first of two elevators to reach the Burns & Bailey office.
Nathan and I are quiet during the ride up to the twentieth floor. Hopefully, Mr. Burns will be able to give us some guidance on how to start working our way out of debt without losing everything.
The office is large and plush in an understated financial decor sort of way—lots of soothing marine blue paint, a thick carpet on the floor to muffle sound, a series of framed black-and-white prints of Mt. Rainier and the Puget Sound on the wall.
The receptionist shows us down a narrow hall to an office at the end of the corridor. “Mr. Burns.” She knocks on his door and then opens it. “Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Young are here for their one-thirty appointment.”
Mr. Burns is actually a man our age, a little thick in the jowls and with thinning light brown hair. “Call me Michael,” he says pleasantly, standing and gesturing for us to sit in the chairs facing his desk.
We sit. Sliding a pair of wire-frame glasses on his nose, Michael reviews the paperwork Nathan faxed earlier in the day. He studies it as though he’s never seen it before, and maybe he hasn’t, or maybe he has and his memory just needs refreshing.
After a few minutes, he pulls off the reading glasses and leans back in his chair. “You know, you aren’t the first couple this has happened to. Lots of people are dangerously extended. . . .”
Nathan shifts next to me, his jaw set.
“Americans have a love affair with credit. All it takes is one unforeseen tragedy, a death, divorce, a layoff—”
“So what do you suggest?” Nathan interrupts, his voice pitched so low that it’s like nails on a chalkboard. He hates this. He’s in his own personal hell right now.
“I’d file Chapter thirteen, reorganize your debts, and work on paying your creditors back.”
I glance at Nathan. I don’t understand. “Can we do that?”
Nathan’s jaw thickens. “If we wanted to file bankruptcy.”
I blink. “Oh. I didn’t know that’s what Chapter thirteen was. I thought Chapter eleven was bankruptcy . . .” My voice fades away as I realize it just doesn’t matter. The fact is, this highly recommended financial guru is charging us $400 to recommend we file bankruptcy, and all I can think is, This is the best he’s got?
“You’d erase a huge portion of your debt,” Michael adds, “and you’d have a shot at protecting your remaining assets.”
“What about the house?” Nathan asks bluntly.
“You might be able to save it. It’s expensive property, but you’ve taken out numerous loans against the house. . . .” Michael glances at our tidy stack of paperwork. “However, on the upside, Mr. Young, you are employed, and the fact that you are earning wages and wish to start repaying your creditors will certainly help as you work out a repayment plan.” He pauses. “Of course, the court must approve your repayment plan and your budget.”
Nathan glances at me. His misery is palpable. I feel the same way. Save the house, but publicly declare that we’re shit at managing our affairs?
“It sounds worse than it is,” Michael continues pragmatically. “Once the court approves your plan and you’ve been appointed a trustee, you’ll have three to five years to pay back your creditors. You’ll make monthly payments to the bankruptcy trustee, who will distribute the funds to the creditors. Once the repayment plan is completed, your unpaid debts are discharged.”
Michael Burns makes it sound so easy. By filing Chapter 13, we’d buy time to reorganize our debt and then pay the bills as agreed in our approved plan. Piece of cake.
Except we’re now treated no better than wayward children who’ve become war
ds of the court with a trustee appointed to watch us.
Michael must see the distaste on my face because he admits quietly, “It’s tough on the ego, but consider your children. Maybe, just maybe, this is the best thing for your daughters.”
Nathan stiffens. “How did you know we have daughters?”
Michael smiles kindly. “My daughter Maggie is in the same class with Jemma this year.”
Nathan gets to his feet. “We’ll think about it,” he says.
We awkwardly shake hands and exit the office. Nathan doesn’t speak as we ride the first elevator down to the lobby.
“I could use a drink,” he says as we leave the elevator.
“Me too.”
We walk through the Hyatt, heading for the hotel’s new wine bar. It’s still early yet, and the happy hour crowd hasn’t arrived. We practically have the place to ourselves and sit at a small table not far from the bar.
The bartender comes out to take our order from behind the bar. “What can I get for you?”
“A glass of red,” Nathan says.
“We have an extensive wine list by the bottle and the glass—”
“Syrah or Cab. The house wine’s fine.”
“The same,” I say before the bartender can ask me.
As the bartender walks away, Nathan groans and rubs his face. “That was a waste.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too.” We sit in silence for a while, and it’s a companionable silence.
Our wine arrives. Nathan lifts his glass. “To unforeseen tragedies,” he says in a mocking toast.
I warily clink my glass with his. “So is that what we do? Declare bankruptcy?”
Nathan sighs. “It’d give us time.”
I nod.
“It’d have the least impact on the girls,” he adds emotionlessly.
He’s as dead as I am. “Won’t people know?” I ask.
“I don’t know. I’ve never known anyone who filed Chapter thirteen, or seven, or eleven.”
Neither have I.
But then, when I was growing up, I never knew anyone who had money. If it hadn’t been for my scholarship to USC, I’d probably still be part of the struggling middle class today.
From dust to dust, I say silently, mockingly, ashes to ashes.
“What’s that?” Nathan asks, and I realize I wasn’t exactly silent.
Self-consciously, I repeat the passage. “It’s from Genesis. The gist is that all our efforts, and all our striving, is in vain. We started as dust.” I shrug. “And we’ll end as dust.”
Nathan cracks a smile. “Aren’t you Debbie Downer?”
I smile back crookedly. “We can’t say it wasn’t fun while it lasted.”
We sit so long, we end up ordering a blackened salmon Caesar salad to share along with another glass of wine. I’m not really hungry, so I let Nathan have the lion’s share. I pick at a warm roll.
“When are you going to take your Porsche to Omaha?” I ask as the waiter clears the salad plate.
Frowning, Nathan slowly turns the wine goblet by the stem. “I’m selling it. I’ve got an ad in the paper and one on Craigslist.”
“Oh, Nathan.”
“I can’t keep the car, Taylor. It’d be a joke. I’m a joke. What kind of man has a Porsche and no job?”
“But you have a job now and you need a car.”
“The company’s supplied me with a car for now, and someday when I buy another car, I’ll buy something more practical.” He takes a breath. “The boat, by the way, is gone. Bellevue Marine and Boat Sales bought it back from me.”
My insides fall. “Did they offer a good price?”
He gives me a look. “I was six months late on my payments. I’m just lucky I got out of it.”
Swallowing hard, I push my wineglass around. “But that still leaves us with a lot of debt.”
“Between your car payments, the equity loan, and the credit card debt, we’re in the hole about two million. And it grows every month we don’t pay it significantly down. Unfortunately, we can’t pay any of it down. All we can do is make minimum payments.”
Two million in the hole. And the debt’s just growing. My insides writhe. “If we sold”—God, this is hard—“the house. Would there be enough equity left after we paid off the second and third loans on the house to get rid of the debt?”
“It’d be close.” He leans back, folds his arms tightly across his chest. “But it’d help. It would at least reduce the debt to something manageable.”
Then that’s all there is to it. I reach across the table, touch Nathan’s elbow. “Let’s sell the house. Let’s just do it.”
His features tighten. “It’s a beautiful house, Taylor.”
“It’s a house.” I can barely get out the words before my throat closes.
“I know how much you love that house.”
“Let’s not talk about it. It’ll just hurt more if we discuss it.” My eyes are burning. I won’t be able to keep it together much longer.
He shakes his head, runs his hand across his face. Tears shine in his eyes. “That’s your house. Your dream house. We built it for you.”
I can’t do this. I can’t. What do they say when a limb has to go? Amputate it fast? “It’s just a house,” I choke. “We’ll have another one someday.”
So, it’s settled. We’re going to sell the house. We drive back home, and I’m keeping it together until we turn down the drive that leads to our house. The tall roof with the dormer windows comes into view and then the glossy white columns on the front porch and the elegant shingled facade. Hot emotion floods me, emotion so strong that I grip the edges of my seat to keep from making a sound.
We have to do this.
We have to.
There’s no other way we can get the monkey off our back.
Nathan parks in the driveway instead of the garage. He leaves the car running and just looks at the house. “We don’t have to do this.”
Yes, we do. He and I both know it. “If we’re going to do it, we have to do it fast. I won’t be able to handle it if this drags on too long.”
He turns off the ignition. “I should call Art, then,” he says, referring to Art Whittelsey, our real estate agent.
Nathan still has Art on his speed dial, even though we haven’t bought a house from him in a long time. But Art handled the four houses we owned previously in this area. Not just a savvy agent, Art has become a friend over the years. He helped us navigate the pricey, and at times ridiculously inflated, real estate market here on the Eastside.
Nathan and I bought our first house together the same year we married. It was a dark, tiny, windowless shoebox of a house in Clyde Hill, one of the coveted affluent Bellevue neighborhoods with proximity to everything—the bridges to Seattle, downtown Bellevue, Kirkland waterfront, and, of course, great schools.
The exterior siding of our new house was painted brown. The exterior window trim was the same brown. Enormous cedar trees circled the house, blocking light as well as any curb appeal, and the backyard was a muddy swamp. I didn’t know then what I know now about houses on hills in rainy cities. Don’t buy a house at the bottom of a hill. Buy on the top. Water drains down.
That first year we were married, I’d come home from work and change into jeans and T-shirts and my work boots and I’d attack the yard. I had a professional tree company take out the massive cedar in the front yard, grinding the stump, and then prune the trees around the perimeter of the house, allowing more light to reach the house.
I dug up some of the huge overgrown rhodies and replaced them, whacked others down to size, and just removed others entirely. I removed wild ferns and hacked at thorny blackberry vines until my arms and wrists were scratched and bleeding.
One Saturday Nathan and I rented a rototiller and churned up the soil. The next day we tilled soil amenders into the freshly churned earth. The next Saturday we rented a roller to flatten the front smooth. The next day we seeded the front. Within three months we
had a beautiful lush lawn that rolled from the front steps of the house and along the curvy walk to the edge of the street. The lawn was green, bright healthy green, and as it filled in I turned to the house and tackled the hideous brown paint job. It was April, and the weather was warming. I picked the sunny weekends and learned to use a paint sprayer. I wasn’t great at spraying, so I learned to cover my splotches with a light, deft touch of a paintbrush.
The house, now a silvery gray, needed a new front door, and I bought one at Home Depot and painted it a gorgeous, glossy black. With a topiary in a pot by the front door and new brass house numbers on the side, it began to look like a real house, a house that was a home.
Every house we lived in, I did virtually the same thing. New garden, new paint, new doors and windows, new crown molding, new baseboards, new carpets, new hardwood floors, new fixtures, new, new, new, and I did most of it myself. I learned to plumb and wire and use a wet saw for tiles and a circular saw for chair rail and crown molding.
I would never have thought I could build anything. I’m not that handy. But desperation, and the desire to make Nathan happy, fueled my determination to learn.
I never told Nathan this, but I couldn’t wait for his parents to visit. They’d see how hard I’d worked, how much I’d done for their son. I hoped they’d realize I wasn’t just a good wife, but the right wife.
His parents, though, never came.
Art gets Nathan’s message and he’s over just before six. “What’s going on?” he greets us, shaking Nathan’s hand before leaning over to kiss my cheek.
Art’s tall, the kind of man who looks like a former jock. He’s all friendly and funny. Maybe that’s why he’s so successful. You like hanging out with him. You end up enjoying buying and selling houses, because along with the house, you get great company.
“We were hoping you’d list the house for us,” Nathan says, not wasting time. He’s still hoping to catch a late flight out.
