by Jane Porter
Art glances back and forth at us. “This house?”
I suddenly can’t speak. Blinking, I look away and shove two fingers into a tiny pocket on my black slacks, fingers curling against the fabric in silent protest. I can’t do this. Can’t do this. Can’t.
“Yeah,” Nathan says. “Can we do the paperwork now?”
“Sure,” Art answers, and I see him glance my way, but I still can’t look at him. This is so brutal. It hurts so much. “Let me just get my briefcase from the car.”
While Art goes to his car, I go to the kitchen and crouch in the pantry and cover my head and open my mouth in a silent howl. Not my house. Not my house. I’d give anything if we could just keep the house.
But Nathan’s stressed. Nathan’s breaking. I can’t have my husband fall apart. Can’t have my family fall apart. We can do this. We can do it. I can do it. I can.
I stand and leave the pantry, close the door behind me, and step into the powder bath, where I check my face, wiping away mascara smudges and all hint of tears. I smooth my cashmere sweater’s hem, slide my hands down my slacks.
I join Art and Nathan in the living room. They were talking quietly, and both look up at me quickly. “I’m sorry,” Art says as I sit in a wing chair facing the couch.
I don’t know what Nathan’s said to Art, but whatever it is, it generates quiet sympathy. I try to smile. “Thank you.”
With pen in hand, Art swiftly goes through the paperwork. We’ve done this so many times together, and Art knows how we do business. We’re not cutthroats, and we’re not petty. Nor do we believe in gouging people. Our best offer is, indeed, our best offer. With that in mind, we don’t want others to play games with us, either. But Art knows all that about us.
The questions Art asks are so very familiar. When do we want the listing to go live in the computer? When do we want to schedule our first Realtor open house? How do we want to price it? What are we willing to accept?
I finally speak, my hands clasped before me. “We need to get as much as we can for it. But at the same time, we need it to sell quickly, too. Nathan’s going to be gone, so I’ll be the one here while the house is being shown.”
Art looks back and forth again. “You two are okay, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Nathan and I answer simultaneously, even as I mentally add, Or at least we’re going to be.
Nathan walks Art to his car. I go to the kitchen to start dinner. I’m numb as I go through the motions of measuring the spices for the lime chili marinade I use for chicken fajitas. I’m numb as I whisk the marinade, numb as I pull the package of free-range chicken out of the fridge and rinse the six plump breasts. But it’s okay to be numb. Numb, I won’t cry. Numb, I can cope with anything. It’s how I got through Mom leaving us. It’s how I got through the whispers and snickers at school.
I’ve just poured the marinade over the chicken breasts when Nathan enters the kitchen, opens the refrigerator, and starts to pull out a beer but then replaces it. He pours himself a Scotch instead. “Want anything?” he asks, putting away the bottle of Johnnie Walker Black.
“No, thank you.” I can’t drink now. I’ll end up morbidly depressed. Bawling my eyes out. Eating an entire package of Double Stuf Oreos.
Nathan takes a drink, exhales slowly, and then takes another sip. “We have to tell the girls,” he says, leaning against one counter and rubbing the back of his neck.
I nod as I slice the red, yellow, and green bell peppers into narrow strips. I can’t even imagine telling the girls. Brooke was fourteen months old when we moved in. And Tori came home here from the hospital. It’s the only home she’s ever known.
The house isn’t just a status symbol. It’s their home. It’s where Nathan and I were going to make a storybook life for our kids and give them all the love, warmth, and stability we’d never known.
But there will be other homes, I remind myself fiercely, reaching for a sweet onion. It’s not as if we won’t have a home again. It’ll just take some time.
Not that it’ll make breaking the news any easier.
“How do we do this?” I ask Nathan as I finish chopping the onion. “Shall you tell them or shall I?”
He just stares across the airy kitchen, his jaw so tight that I can see all the tendons in his neck outlined. “I don’t care.”
I know him better than I know anyone, but we are both so alone right now, so isolated despite our efforts to come together, to work this out together.
Maybe we don’t really want this to work out.
Maybe Nathan wants out. All the way out.
I can’t think that way. Won’t think that way. I refuse to make this worse than it already is.
“We’ll just tell them together,” I say, washing my hands and drying them on one of the French linen dish towels.
I should never have given up responsibility.
I should never have accepted financial dependency.
I should have remained aware, alert, an adult.
“We’ll do it together,” I repeat, and this time I move toward him, put my hand on the middle of his rigid back. He stiffens, but I leave it there.
We break the news after dinner before I serve dessert. I’m not sure why we chose that moment, but suddenly Nathan and I looked at each other and we knew. We had to. Had to get it over with.
“As I’m working in Omaha,” Nathan says, “your mother and I have decided to make some changes. We’ve decided to sell the house. The house goes on the market a week from today.”
There’s a moment of incredulous silence, and then all the girls are talking at once.
Jemma’s voice rises above the rest. “But this is our house. This is where we live.”
I know exactly how she’s feeling. I spent years looking at real estate, trying to find the right lot, the right place for our perfect future home. I spent another year drafting, planning, poring over magazines, talking to designers and architects, driving around neighborhoods, looking, thinking, dreaming.
Dreaming.
“I’m sorry, Jemma,” I say gently, reaching over to cover her hand.
She rips her hand out from beneath mine. “Mom, no. No.”
“Jemma, I’m sorry, it’s done.”
“Noooooo!” Jemma’s scream fills the living room. “No! No.”
I don’t even look at Nathan. I can feel his pain. He’s in hell. He knows I love this house passionately. I know the girls love this house. We’re giving up a part of our hearts, but that’s the way it is. You spend too much, you live too freely, you fall too hard.
“Jemma.” I say her name so sharply that she abruptly stops screaming.
All three girls look at me. Nathan looks at me. The thought comes: Only I can save us now.
I don’t even know how I know, but it’s the same thing that makes a little girl pick up a plastic doll and rock it and hug it.
Something somewhere inside me comes to life. I can do this. I know how to do this. I will rock us. Hug us. Love us. Things are just things. We are more than the sum of our things.
“We are not dying,” I say crisply. “We are just moving to a smaller house. And we are going to be okay. It might not seem like it now. And it might not seem like it for a while. But we will be. We will. And that’s all I”—I pause, look at Nathan, who has tears in his eyes—“I have to say.”
After cutting me a check to get us through the next couple of weeks, Nathan stuffs the bills into his briefcase, and with the girls crying in the backseat, I drive him back to the airport for his Northwest Airlines flight to Omaha, connecting through Minneapolis. It’s going to be another long night of no sleep on yet another red-eye for him, while I lie awake until nearly one-thirty, staring at the lamp on the table next to the bed.
Telling the girls we had to sell the house was worse than I’d imagined. I had thought they’d cry, but Jemma’s reaction shocked me.
But what else do we do? File Chapter 13? Declare bankruptcy? My stomach turns over as I think the thought. The word bankruptcy is so horr
ible, it tastes like sour milk in my mouth.
It could save the house.
Everyone would know.
If we lose the house, everyone will know.
Either way, everyone will know. Everything.
I pull my pillow over my head and scream. I feel like my guts are being wrenched out one by one.
Chapter Thirteen
The bedside alarm keeps going off, and I just keep hitting snooze.
I can’t get out of bed. Can’t face the day. Can’t face me. Can’t face reality.
Five more minutes, I think, hitting snooze yet again and rolling over, burying my face in the pillow.
I try to fall back asleep, but a little voice inside my head is yapping at me. If I don’t get up right now, the girls are going to be late. They’ll miss their bus. I’ll end up driving them. They’ll get tardies.
I don’t care.
Let them be late. Let them miss school. It’s just elementary school. They’re just children. And I’m just falling apart.
I must have fallen back to sleep because I’m suddenly being shaken awake by Brooke. “Wake up, Mom. School started a half hour ago. . . . Mom, get up. We’re late.”
I roll over onto my back and squint at her. “Is everyone else up?”
“Jemma’s still asleep. Tori’s watching TV.” Brooke cocks her head and studies me. “You look sad, Mom.”
I’m about to deny it, about to put on my happy mom face, when I can’t do it. Can’t fake it. Not now, not again. “I am.”
“Is it about the house?” she asks carefully.
I nod a little. “And other things.”
“Like Dad living in Omaha.”
I nod again. “He’s too far away.”
Brooke reaches over to smooth my hair. It’s a strangely maternal touch from my middle wild child. “I love you, Mom. You really are the best mom. Even if you do have too many meetings.”
I catch her hand, kiss it. “Do I have too many meetings?”
“Yeah.”
“If I worked, I’d have a lot of meetings.”
“But I like that you don’t work. I like that I can see you every day.”
“If I worked, you’d still see me every day. You’d see me before school and after school.”
Her small shoulders shrug. “But it wouldn’t be the same, and most of the moms don’t work. In fact, no one’s mom works.”
I roll into a sitting position and drop another kiss on the top of her head before sliding from bed. “Go wake up Jemma. I’ll get dressed quickly and drive you girls to school. Tell Jemma to hurry and grab a Pop-Tart on her way to the car because we’re leaving soon.”
Brooke runs out and I strip in the bathroom, tie up my hair, and pull a shower cap over my head. I don’t have time to wash my hair today, and even if I did have time, I don’t think I could.
The old blue feeling is back, and it’s stronger than ever. I turn on the shower full blast, but it doesn’t seem to help. I’m so sad, and I work so hard to not be sad. I work so hard to be up, on, optimistic, strong. I work endlessly at keeping a positive attitude when the truth is, I want to give up sometimes and give in to whatever it is dragging me down, pulling me under.
This morning I feel heavy with it, heavy and dark and slow. I can’t tell anyone, not even Nathan, because people expect more from me, and now it seems Nathan expects the worst.
But he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand how it is to lose one’s self, lose one’s mind. Or at the very least, fear losing one’s mind. And the mind is a tricky thing to lose. Lose your keys or your hat and you’re a silly, head-in-the-sky dreamer. Lose your wallet or passport one too many times and you’re careless. But lose your mind . . . ? It’s really not socially acceptable. Issues of mental soundness tend to make people uncomfortable. I have yet to hear mentions of nervous breakdowns in cordial cocktail chatter.
Somehow I end up dressed in a smart Ralph Lauren cashmere-and-tweed jacket and matching skirt, brown Wolford tights, and high-heeled Jimmy Choo brown buckle boots. I brush my hair hard before drawing it back in a low ponytail. I smile robotically at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I still look good on the outside. No one will know I’m cracking.
I park in front of the school in the No Park zone. I’m running into the office for only a moment, and I’m not the only one who does it. All the moms leave their cars there if they need to dash into the school office for something.
I walk all three girls into the office. “I overslept,” I tell Alice Dunlop with a shrug as my girls take their tardy passes and dash off to class. It’s not a good excuse. The girls’ tardy will be unexcused, but I don’t have it in me to lie.
“Not feeling well?” Alice asks.
“I didn’t, no, not last night,” I answer.
“We have to sell our house,” Tori announces, standing next to me.
Alice’s eyebrows lift. “You’re selling your house?”
I wasn’t ready for the news to go public, and while Alice isn’t the type to gossip, walls in the school office do have ears.
“Nathan’s taken a job in Omaha,” I say lightly. “It doesn’t make sense to have two big houses.”
Alice leans on the counter, concerned. “Is this a permanent position, Taylor?”
“We don’t know yet.” I’m still smiling. “It was such a great opportunity for Nathan that we thought let’s just go for it. See what happens.”
“We don’t see Daddy anymore,” Tori volunteers helpfully.
I put my hand on top of her head. “Tori, Daddy was just home this weekend. He can’t come home every weekend. Not from Omaha.” I look at Alice, careful to keep my expression perfectly light and comfortable. “There aren’t any direct flights from Omaha,” I add for Alice’s benefit. “It’s a long trip back and forth.”
“I can imagine.” Alice tut-tuts. “It’s got to be hard on all of you.”
“It’s a challenge, but we’re doing fine. The girls are troupers.” With my hand still on Tori’s head, I steer her toward the door. “Now I better get this one to school before she’s late, too.” I wave good-bye and we leave the school office, Tori holding my hand, skipping next to me.
My BlackBerry beeps at me as I leave Tori’s preschool. Auction meeting today at one p.m. That’s right. The meeting is in three hours, but I’m not prepared. Haven’t followed up on anything on my to-do list. I consider canceling the meeting, but I can’t do that. The auction is in March. It’s nearly November. Now is when we have to really get serious.
Sliding behind the steering wheel, I shut the door and then start the car. As I back out of the school parking lot, I get that crazy lost feeling again, as though I’m not here, not real, not going to make it unless I do something fast. Like take something, drink something . . . No, I’ll just go shop. Shopping always makes me feel better. When I shop I get to be someone else: someone more interesting, more together, more powerful.
People wonder how you can get addicted to shopping, and it’s like this: When you’re making decisions—even decisions about what to buy—you feel strong. In control. I want this. No, I don’t think so. Or, give me two of that, one in each color. As you make decisions, as you take charge, you feel empowered. You feel as though you matter. It sounds ridiculous, but when I’m at Nordstrom’s or somewhere else, the salesgirls look at me, they listen, they hurry to help me.
But with only $1,200 in the checking account and no credit cards left, I can’t shop.
I guess I’m going to have to live with this heavy blue fog until it lifts.
I’m at Tully’s early to push tables together. Patti arrives just after me and offers to put in our drink order. “That would be great,” I answer, dragging a few empty chairs from other tables to our cluster.
“The usual? Short, skim, no foam latte?”
“Yep.”
While she stands in line, I go to the ladies’ room to wash my hands. My face catches me by surprise. I look hard. Brittle.
Old.
&n
bsp; Little lines web my eyes. More lines frame my mouth. A deeper line is there between my eyebrows.
I practice a smile. I look marginally better. Next I rummage in my purse for my makeup bag and run warm autumny copper lipstick over my lips and add a similar copper blush to my cheeks. I darken my eyeliner. Smile at myself again.
Better. Younger. Brighter.
No wonder the cosmetic industry is so huge.
I put away my makeup bag, feeling like a faker. But faking it isn’t all bad. In Los Angeles, fakers are called actors and they get paid big bucks.
After leaving the ladies’ restroom, I discover Patti at the table with our coffee. A couple of the other moms arrive. Within another five minutes, everyone else shows up.
Unfortunately, five minutes into the meeting, Patti shares that she’s moving Thanksgiving weekend and, regrettably, this will be her last meeting.
She turns to smile at me. “We’re all lucky Taylor’s the co-chair. She’ll do a great job. She’ll make sure this year’s auction is the best ever.”
My lipstick smile threatens to fall. I wish Patti had waited until the end of the meeting to share her big news. After her announcement, we never really get back on track, and the next ninety minutes slide by in one conversation after another.
I try halfheartedly to steer the discussion onto procurement and how we need a mix of items to generate the most interest, explaining that some auction attendees want to go home with an item that night, while others would rather bid on a future event; but when no one on the committee bites, I give up, sit back, and let everyone talk.
I so wish Patti weren’t leaving. I don’t want to chair the auction by myself. It’s not that I can’t do it, but it won’t be the same. It was fun sharing the work, having someone else to bounce ideas off. And Patti always had a way of making me feel smart, clever. Without her I don’t feel very accomplished at all.
Worrying about the auction, I watch people come and go, including the beautiful blond mother with thick Kim Alexis hair and a Christie Brinkley smile who walks through the doors with her towheaded preteen and her graying husband. The mother and daughter sit at the conference table while the dad waits in line. Soon he’s with them again, and they enjoy their snacks and talk.
