The Hole We're In

by Gabrielle Zevin

  “None of your business,” she said.

  “You know you don’t have to buy me anything.” He winked at her.

  When I look at you, I wish I was dead.

  “Actually, babe, could I borrow your credit card?” Elliot asked. “I left my wallet in the car, and I wanna pick up my brother’s present while I’m here.”

  “Sure,” said Helen as casually as possible. “What are you getting Darryl anyway?”

  “Speakers,” he replied. “Big ones.” As Elliot led her to the stereo store, Helen calculated how much “big ones” cost and if she would have enough credit left on her card.

  Helen considered trying to convince Elliot not to get the speakers today. She could, for instance, suggest they have dinner, and then maybe by the time dinner was over, the mall would be closing. She tried this tack just as they were about to enter the store.

  “Hon, I’m real hungry,” she said. She stuck out her lower lip in a manner the bathroom mirror had told her was both pouty and sexy.

  “OK,” Elliot replied, “this’ll only take a sec. I know exactly which ones I want.”

  Elliot selected the speakers. They were $299.99. It would be close. She set her card on the counter.

  She knew that he wouldn’t pay her back, and she also knew that she wouldn’t mention it to him, either. For some time, this had been her role in their relationship. Helen was the one who paid for things.

  Not that Elliot was poor. Quite the contrary. His family owned a Christian home health-care business. They had houses in Florida, Texas, and California, and it probably went without saying that they were far, far wealthier than Helen’s family. It was just ... well, Elliot didn’t think about money in the same way Helen did. Helen knew this, and in order to act as though she did think about money the way Elliot did, she had to do things like pretend it didn’t matter to purchase speakers and not be paid back.

  “It’s taking a while,” Helen commented to the cashier.

  “I should have asked you before, but would you like to apply for a store charge account while you wait? Save ten percent today if you’re approved.” The clerk handed Helen a shiny pamphlet. Helen could feel her heart grow two sizes too large in her chest, buoyed by the refrain SAVE 10 PERCENT, SAVE 10 PERCENT.

  “Could I ...,” Helen stammered. “Would the stuff I just purchased count? For the ten percent, I mean.”

  The clerk said that he didn’t see why not. They could just return Helen’s current purchase, which shouldn’t take more than five minutes. Then ten minutes for the application. Then another five minutes to ring the original purchase through again. It was all starting to sound too difficult to Helen. And she probably wouldn’t be approved anyway. “Forget it,” Helen said.

  Across the store, Helen could see Elliot examining an electronic massager that looked suspiciously like a sex toy. A pretty salesgirl approached him and offered to show him how to use it, wink wink. The salesgirl looked to be about Patsy’s age, but Helen didn’t feel at all jealous. Massager girl could have him. Helen only hoped that he wouldn’t want to put the tawdry massager on her credit card, too.

  The other reason Helen paid for everything was because Elliot was still in dental school. She hoped things would be different when he graduated next June. The plan was this: get married, get pregnant, take a maternity leave, never go back.

  “Is there a problem with the card?” Helen tapped her fingers on the glass counter. Bitchy masked worried.

  “No,” said the clerk. “Just Christmas. Makes all the machines run slow.”

  If the card didn’t go through, Helen decided that she would tell Elliot that she must have reached her limit while Christmas shopping. She would pass it off as a silly little nothing. Of course, she’d also imply that she would be paying off the balance at the end of the month. Elliot wasn’t the type of person who could even comprehend the idea of credit card debt.

  Finally! The cashier passed a little slip of paper across the counter. “Sign here,” he said.

  Helen signed, then took her copy from the back.

  “Aren’t you the professional shopper?” the cashier commented.

  “Yeah, I’ve bought a few things in my life.”

  In the front of the store, Elliot was zoning out as the salesgirl massaged his neck.

  When I look at you, I feel—

  Helen’s phone rang. It was the store that was printing the invitations for the wedding. Apparently, her mother had forgotten to pay them again. Oh, for God’s sake, Helen thought. First the save-the-dates and now the actual invites, too. You’d think her mother didn’t want her to get married. Helen apologized profusely to the printer and assured her it would all be straightened out by tomorrow.

  Elliot tapped Helen on the shoulder. “Those my speakers?”

  Helen handed him the bag. She’d been planning on a little good-natured bitching about the salesgirl with the tawdry massager, but now she was too annoyed and distracted by the invite situation. “Merry Christmas,” she said brusquely.

  “Hey, it’s not my Christmas present.”

  But it kind of is, Helen thought. She pursed her lips.

  “What?” Elliot asked. “You think I’m not good for the money?”

  IMMEDIATELY AFTER DINNER with Elliot, Helen called her mother. Without judgment and in a calm, professional voice, Helen explained to George how her conduct with regard to the wedding had been completely unacceptable, how imperative it was that Elliot’s family didn’t get the wrong idea about them, et cetera. Helen finished by saying that she’d made an Excel spreadsheet with a timeline detailing when all amounts were due. “I’ll e-mail it to you right now, so we can go over it together.”

  “I can only check my e-mail at work,” George said.

  “Well ...” This annoyed Helen. This was 1998. What kind of people didn’t have e-mail at home? Old people. Dated people. Poor people. “Well, when you get it tomorrow, you’ll see that I’ve left column H blank. That’s for you to fill in as you make each payment, all right?”

  “Sure, Helen, that seems fine.”

  “And as you make your entries, I’d appreciate you e-mailing your changes back to me. Just so I can keep track of it all.”

  “OK,” George said.

  “Now, let’s talk about the invitations. We owe another six hundred dollars to the Paper Trail.”

  “I thought we were all done with that,” George stammered. “The thing is, Helly, money’s a little ... With Patsy getting hurt. And Christmas. And your dad’s schooling. And ...”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m just saying ... I’m just wondering ... Couldn’t Elliot’s family maybe pay for half of the invites? They wanted the vellum thingy, most of the guests are theirs, and they’re so much ...” George’s voice trailed off.

  “No, Mother, that is simply not an option. The bride’s family pays for the wedding.” Helen’s throat constricted and she could feel her eyes begin to tear. She just hated every single damn person in her life so much.

  “It’s fine, Helen. I just need to move some funds around. Don’t worry about it, OK? Forget I said anything. It’s done. I’ll figure something out.”

  THE NEXT MORNING at work, George called the Paper Trail. She read sixteen brand-new digits to the printer.

  “All right, Mrs. Pomeroy, I just need the expiration date and the cardholder’s name.”

  “August 2001,” she replied. “Vincent Pomeroy.”

  January

  STEINBECK WAS BEGINNING to seem like a mistake.

  A year ago, Steinbeck had been just the thing. A year ago, Vincent had been in the twenty-four-hour, used bookstore on East Seventh Street. He was feeling lonely as hell—Christmas alone and classes hadn’t started up again and things had gone to total shite with Cassandra for the last time and it was too early to go to breakfast and too late to go to the movies—when he spotted a first edition of The Pastures of Heaven.

  The copy was a bit battered: a bent spine and a coffee stain o
n the original jacket. It was inscribed cheekily, regrettably, “To Dogboy, I’d like to see your pastures of heaven ...” These wounds, in combination with the fact that the work was considered one of Steinbeck’s lesser, accounted for the reasonable price of eleven dollars.

  Vincent could not explain why he was drawn to the book. He had read and appreciated, if not enjoyed, The Red Pony in high school. He had seen the film version of East of Eden. But this had been the extent of his knowledge of John Steinbeck. And eleven dollars was not insignificant to Vincent. Eleven dollars could buy fifty-five packets of ramen noodles (nearly two and a half weeks’ worth of meals).

  He read it that night in bed. (Although what he slept on was not technically a “bed” but an air mattress purchased from the local Kmart—at some point, he will have a one-night stand that will cause the “bed” to pop and slowly leak air until he is left sleeping on a flat plastic mat.) It wasn’t a novel at all. It was a collection of short stories based around a single place. Most of the stories were structurally and thematically identical. Someone tried to do something good for someone else, and then it all went to shit. The one Vincent liked best was about two sisters who open a Mexican restaurant. At first, business is terrible, but then they start sexually pleasuring the customers, and business responds accordingly. The sisters don’t think of themselves as prostitutes as long as the men understand that they’re paying for food, not sex. Eventually they get shut down for running a house of prostitution, at which time they leave for San Francisco to become actual prostitutes.

  Vincent liked the sisters—he had two sisters of his own—and he decided that he would make a short-film version of “The Lopez Sisters” for his second-year graduate film school project.

  It was really the perfect thing for a student film. Only two characters (give or take). One set (and very few exterior locations). And the characters were poor, so although it was a period piece, it wouldn’t necessarily require a lot of expense.

  He drafted a letter to the Steinbeck estate asking for rights to make a student film of chapter 7 of The Pastures of Heaven. He drew up a prop list (phonograph, donkey, statue of the Virgin Mary, tortilla stone, etcetera) that seemed challenging but not impossible. He wrote a screenplay, which came in at a tight twelve pages. As for the budget? Vincent supposed five thousand dollars, which was the sum his program recommended students spend on producing their ten-minute graduate film shorts. The program did not, incidentally, specify how the students were to get the five thousand dollars.

  Vincent took the usual steps. He applied for and received a grant from his film program in the amount of $750, which would mostly cover the crew’s meals. The rest he decided to obtain in the form of an additional student loan. He had heard from his peers that they were easy to get. No cosigner necessary if you were over twenty-one with decent credit. Everyone was approved. In three weeks (or less!) he would have his money.

  Vincent didn’t have three weeks. Preproduction on “The Lopez Sisters” needed to commence immediately. He spent in anticipation of his windfall, which wasn’t as insane as it sounded—these were the heady days of 1998, when banks were loaning money to dogs and babies and the homeless and anyone who could make an X (or stamp a paw or drool a bit) on the dotted line. Vincent quickly racked up two thousand dollars on his one credit card.

  At the end of four weeks, he received a letter from the financial aid company. His application had been rejected. Vincent was sure there must be some sort of mistake. He called the company, where a representative assured him that there had not been a mistake. Vincent’s application had been rejected because of a delinquent credit card.

  “That’s impossible,” Vincent said. “I don’t have a delinquent credit card.”

  The representative, who had the careful voice of a black woman trying to sound like a white one, told him to check his credit report. “If it’s a mistake, it can be cleared up, Mr. Pomeroy. And then you can get your money. That’s what we all want, of course. To give you your money.”

  Vincent continued preparing his film. He was an optimist. Mistakes happened, but they could, they would, be fixed.

  The credit report arrived in the mail the day before he was to begin shooting. He was crazed with last minute preparations and crises: cheap hotel rooms for the crew in upstate New York (which they would fake for Salinas, California), the prizewinning donkey that the lead actress was to ride was too robust, the sound guy had quit, the 1st AC wanted more money, etcetera, etcetera. He didn’t have time to look at the report until that night in bed when he curled up with it on his rapidly deflating mattress.

  As a personal history, Vinnie’s credit report was significantly more whimper than bang.

  Yes, those were his student loans—all scrupulously paid on time.

  Yes, that was the car loan he had in high school: for a 1986 Honda Accord.

  Yes, that was the Sears card he had opened several Christmases ago in order to buy presents for his sisters.

  Yes, that was his regular credit card, which was getting disturbingly near its limit thanks to the sisters Lopez.

  And then he saw it. A new credit card opened in October of last year. The limit was ten thousand dollars, and it was already sixty days overdue. Vincent smiled. He knew for certain that this card was not his, which meant, of course, that it was a mistake. Mistakes could be corrected.

  Before turning off the light, he made a note to call the credit card company as soon as he returned from the shoot.

  The film shoot went as such things go. Crews complained and stole to make up for their imaginary grievances. Actors cried. Props were broken. Food was horrible no matter how much was spent. Everything cost more than initial estimates.

  It took Vincent nearly a month to get around to calling the credit card company, and then another two weeks for him to receive copies of all the statements, including the address to which the bills were being sent.

  That address was familiar, of course.

  Vincent called the credit card company again. “There’s been a mistake,” he said. “This is my parents’ credit card, not mine.”

  But the credit card company insisted that there had not been a mistake. The primary card member was Vincent Pomeroy.

  “But I am telling you, this is their address, not mine! I’ve never even lived in Texas!”

  The credit card company told Vincent to stop raising his voice, then courteously offered to start sending the statements to Vincent’s address in New York.

  “That’s not what I want! I want this, this blemish, removed from my record! I want this transferred to the responsible parties!”

  The credit card company said that it was not—pause, pause, pause—unfeeling to Vincent’s situation, and then it said a phrase that Vincent had never before heard: identity theft. If Mr. Pomeroy thought he had been a victim of identity theft, the only thing to do was take the appropriate parties to court.

  “To court?” Vincent asked.

  But the credit card company wouldn’t recommend that course of action. It would probably cost more than the debt itself. The best thing to do would be to settle the—pause, pause, pause—situation without resorting to legal intervention. “I’m assuming you do know the responsible parties, Mr. Pomeroy?”

  Vincent hung up the phone. He decided to go to the movies. He watched Shakespeare in Love, which he had already seen, then snuck in to Rushmore, which he had also already seen. By the time the second film was over, he decided that he had overreacted. The relationship with his parents had certainly been strained, but no one in his family would on purpose open a credit card in his name, then not even bother to keep up with the minimum payments. And if this were a mistake—and how could it be anything but? If this were a mistake, his mother (for she was the one who managed the household’s finances) would undoubtedly be willing to do whatever it took to correct it.

  That night, he called Helen on the phone. The usual, of course. Helen hated her job and was only fifty-fifty about her fiancé.


  “Are Mom and Dad having financial problems?” Vincent asked after they’d turned over the usual nothing for a time.

  Helen paused, paused, paused, and then said, “Not that I know of.”

  “What? What is it?”

  She cleared her throat. “It’s just … Dad’s been in school an awfully long time, I guess.”

  “They’re ... they’re not ... poor, though?”

  “No,” Helen replied.

  “I mean, they’re still, like, middle-class,” Vincent insisted.

  Helen considered the question before answering. “Yeah. Definitely. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason,” he said, not wanting to impugn his mother if it all turned out to be the mistake he’d been hoping for. “How goes the wedding planning?”

  According to Helen, planning a wedding was not unlike producing a short film. Everything cost more than you expected, the vendors were crooks, and the food was likely to be awful.

  For a week, Vincent tried calling his mother, but she was conspicuously unreachable. Vincent left messages that he tried to make sound friendly, nonthreatening, and more to the point, vague. Eventually, he gave up calling his mother and started calling his father’s cell phone instead. It took several tries to get his father, too and he was in class the morning Roger finally did call back with the following message: “Coming to New York City next month on business. Catch up then. Miss you, Son. Dad.” The message’s lack of personal pronouns put Vincent in mind of an old-fashioned telegram sent by someone who was conscious of being charged by the word.

  February

  MY GOD, BUSINESS class! People spoke of first-class as if it were the only travel dream worth having. Trade in those frequent flyer miles for a first-class ticket to Hawaii! Contestants, pack your bags: you’ve just won a trip to Europe with all first-class accommodations! But, business class ... Maybe it wasn’t the dream, but by God, there were unspeakable charms to business class, too.

  For his entire life, Roger Pomeroy had flown coach and presumed that this was the only way to travel. First was out of the question for a family of five or even a Christian high school administrator/honorary pastor traveling solo. First was out of his stars, and it had never once occurred to him to try business until Carolyn Murray had suggested it.