“I’m scared. I don’t know how to scrimp like you do. And I couldn’t bear to live like this.”
She grimaced as she surveyed the opposite wall. A water-stained poster print of Monet water lilies hung lopsidedly in its plastic frame.
Nancy flushed. Resentment over Susie’s rudeness bubbled up. If Shirley had been alive, Susie would never have dared exclude her from the wedding. And now, to be libeled repeatedly in her own sanctum. It was beyond the pale. But still, she owed Shirley so much. The older woman had invited Nancy to many Saturday night dinners, and she was always welcomed at Christmas and Easter and the Fourth of July. Nancy accepted, as the trip back to Illinois took almost a full day of travel time, and airfare that she couldn’t afford to spend. She recalled Shirley’s kindness ten years ago. Nancy had collapsed at work, doubled over with abdominal pain, and paramedics had rushed her to St. John’s Hospital for an emergency appendectomy. Shirley had driven twenty miles from her home, a rented adobe tract house in Van Nuys, to be by Nancy’s side, and had insisted that Nancy recuperate for six weeks in Susie’s childhood bedroom.
Nancy smiled a Mona Lisa half-smile. She would never bare her teeth. They were the color of old ivory piano keys. A small pointed peg tooth broke the line of the top row. She halfheartedly joked, “It’s not so bad. Perpetual grad student, as they say. Except I’m not a real college grad.”
Susie didn’t respond. Her pink-glossed mouth pursed into a practiced sulk. She said, “Eliot’s friends are so stuck up. They look right through me, like I’m not even there, like I’m Palmdale white trash.”
Nancy sat silent. Why had Susie bothered to stop by? When would she leave?
“Look, here’s the thing. I’m in a lot of trouble. I need two grand. I thought maybe you could help,” Susie said.
Oh, so that was it. Phishing for dollars.
“I’m not a good person to ask. I barely make ends meet.”
“You haven’t saved a little? I’ll pay you back, with interest.”
“I have a small emergency fund. But I need every penny. And I’m scared because my rent may well go up soon. In fact, I may be evicted. You’ve been reading the papers?”
Susie shook her head no. She played with her mousse-tousled hair. Then she spoke, as if to anyone who would listen.
“I’m desperate. I need a quick abortion.”
“What? Didn’t you say last year you were hoping for a child?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s not Eliot’s. You remember Tom, my old boyfriend, the rock musician? I met him at a club, one thing led to another, and now, I can’t believe it, I’m knocked up. If Eliot finds out….”
Nancy frowned. Who was she to reproach her cousin? Unless a woman exercised vigilance, life could be messy. She remembered once missing a period, during a long-ago fling with a much older man. He immediately offered to pay for an abortion, which had been legal in California for several years before Roe v. Wade. Thank God she had not had to decide, because as it turned out, no actual pregnancy materialized.
“I’m very sorry. I don’t have any money to give you.”
Susie stared at Nancy, a pout flitting across her mouth. Nancy remembered that look of Susie’s, first as a sullen tweenager dressed in Jodie Foster Taxi Driver hotpants, later as a flirtatious Debbie Harry at the peak of her Blondie persona. The pout was now etched into a tiny wrinkle, a faint line of entitlement around her mouth.
The pout quickly was rearranged into a smile. “Please, cousin, you’re my only hope. If mom was alive, she’d help me.”
Nancy shrugged, and repeated that she was broke. The pout reappeared, then was smoothed down again.
“I know I’ve sprung this suddenly on you. I’ll give you more time to think about it. I have a month or so left to figure out what to do.”
Nancy said, “I’m sorry, the answer is no. But I hope this won’t come between us. We’ll always be family.”
Susie said nothing, and got up to leave. Nancy offered to walk her to her car, and Susie did not object.
The two women strolled along the street. Three little girls, their faces smeared with chocolate, halted their rope skipping and watched them pass. Empty Coke cans and plastic bags littered the mousy grass. Gangs had spray painted graffiti on the mailboxes and traffic signs. Pods dropped by untended eucalyptus trees and fronds broken off from scruffy palms piled in the storm drains. Nancy tripped over asphalt chunks that had been upended by tree roots, while her elegant companion sidestepped all dangerous cracks with a natural grace.
At the shiny black Mercedes wedged between a sooty Honda Civic and a dented Chevy Tracker, Susie cursed aloud. In the brief thirty minutes, birds had dropped several glistening green and white guano splats on the Mercedes’ hood. Crinkled brown leaves lay curled beneath the windshield wipers.
“Eliot is going to freak when he sees this mess. This bird crap can eat through car paint in an hour, and it costs thousands for a decent paint job.”
Nancy pulled a crumpled tissue out of her pocket and spat on it. She rubbed the droppings, and polished the metal. Then she collected the leaves and tossed them back on the street.
“There, as good as new.”
They hugged goodbye. Walking back, Nancy paused at the corner. The Mercedes lurched as it pulled away from the curb. The glamorous driver was laughing as she chattered into empty air, a hands-free phone on the console.
Three weeks had passed since Susie’s visit. Nancy stumbled out of bed. It was the first Saturday of the month, set aside for paying bills. She showered and pulled on faded gray sweatpants and a frayed white Hanes Beefy-T imprinted with the slogan “Be an Investor.” At a financial conference five years ago she had stood for an hour in a line of blue-rinse–haired grandmothers to acquire this prize, worth almost fifteen dollars retail.
She scooped up a wicker basket stuffed with a jumble of envelopes that lay on the top of the black filing cabinet next to her bed. Opening the bottom drawer of the cabinet, she removed a manila file folder labeled “Net Worth.” She settled in at her oak table. A shaft of sunlight slanted through the open window and lit up a luxuriant spider plant festooned with baby spiderlets sporting tiny white blossoms and spilling over the sides of an iron stand. Wind chimes tinkled softly in the slight breeze. The barking of a dog punctuated the squeals of a band of children. Puff sat upright and alert in the front windowsill, contemplating the view.
Scowling, Nancy brandished a cheap letter opener and slit each of the envelopes. Examining each bill, she spoke aloud, as if addressing the spiderlets.
“How could I have used three more therms of gas than this month last year? I must be more careful. I’ll cut down on cooking. And what’s this? I used twelve more kilowatts of electricity. Ouch, how did that happen?”
Her mind skittered to a thought that was worrying her. She muttered, “What if they evict me? Where could I go? Even Palms is too expensive.”
She wrote the amounts on her plain blue safety paper checks, posted them in her checkbook, and glowered while subtracting each debit from the dwindling balance. Even as a six-year-old, she had saved her pennies and nickels inside her pink ceramic pig Porky hidden under her bed. Her parents bickered constantly about the household expenses. She determined to be different. Every night after her bath and before her mother kissed her goodnight, she counted her coins.
Her twenty-year-old self had been slim and pretty, proud and hopeful, traveling from her hometown Shaw-neeville, Illinois, to Los Angeles on the Greyhound bus, a faux-parchment diploma from Andrew Jackson Community College stowed in a hand-me-down beige Samsonite, the best typist in her class. A downtown law firm immediately hired her in their probate practice. Grim reality set in gradually. In her job she made just enough to get by. Through prodigious sacrifice she set money aside. In her twenties, she had two romances, one with a fifty-year-old married man, a litigation partner in the firm, who after one year—and that horrifying pregnancy scare—had abruptly told her it was over. Thereafter they pretended they had ne
ver even met, and avoided each other in the hallways. Thankfully he had retired some dozen years ago. The other love affair was with an accountant her own age who, after five years of dating, returned to his high school sweetheart. She began to stash candy bars in her home cabinets and in her work cubicle, and her weight ballooned by forty pounds. By her late thirties, it became apparent that she would never marry, and that her salary level was set in stone. The seven figure partners bragged about their pro bono work, but never shared their profits with the employees. Her only pension was what she had socked away in her 401K.
Now, one by one, she unsealed the fat envelopes from banks, mutual fund companies and brokerage firms. She worked for an hour, copying the amounts from the statements to a sheet of fourteen column accounting paper. Puff kept jumping on the table, testing his paws on her spreadsheet and purring, and each time she scolded him, hoisted him up, and set him again on the floor. She added the figures. A total net worth of $824,578, down a wrenching $44,067 in the past month.
“This market correction’s a killer. I’ll never have any security. And Puff, do you hear me, you’re no help. You cost an arm and a leg. Seems you could catch a mouse once in a while, but no, I spoil you rotten.” Puff licked her hand with his rough tongue.
The doorbell sounded. She dropped her pencil, grabbed the spreadsheet, and tucked it inside the manila folder.
The peephole revealed a thin, elderly black woman, stooped and out of breath, clutching a stack of Watchtower pamphlets in her left hand.
Nancy sighed. How could she possibly be polite to this intruder? She knew the lady was sincere. And, poor thing, exhausted from that climb up the cracked, uneven steps, and worn out from a life on the margin. But really, it was not her problem. And she was sick of these trespassers. Jehovah’s Witnesses were a swarm of locusts, one of the many plagues of the low-rent district. They would never dare solicit her if she lived in Brentwood. Normally she hid inside until they gave up and left their pamphlets rubber-banded around the doorknob, but this time she decided to confront the woman head-on.
She opened the door and waggled her finger at the woman.
“Go away. If you don’t leave, I’ll call the police.”
And now, the click of high-heeled booties. Susie was bouncing up the stairs, dressed in skin-tight Calvin Klein jeans and a low-cut breast-revealing spangled asymmetric tee. She pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of a crocodile handbag, and waved it in the air.
“Hello, dearie. A donation for the cause.”
The old woman gaped. Her silver-blue curls quivered under her velvet cloche ornamented with iridescent green-black feathers. Muttering under her breath, she snatched at the money.
“Thank you sister. May God bless you and save your soul.” She turned and began to totter back down to the sidewalk.
Nancy opened the screen door to let Susie in. As if scenting another lockup, Puff bolted outside down the stairs. A screak from the woman, now near street level, as her long black gabardine skirt became momentarily entangled with orange fur.
This melee was pure farce and Nancy couldn’t help giggling, though Susie’s return was unwelcome. It meant another appeal for money, no doubt. She hugged Susie, and the two cousins sat side by side on the sofa. Susie blinked back tears.
“It’s twelve weeks already. You’ve got to help me. I don’t know where else to turn.”
“How about your brothers?”
“They’re mad at me, we’re not speaking. Eliot watches me like a hawk. He doesn’t keep cash in the house. He lets me use his Amex black card, but he grills me on every charge.”
She was sniveling. Tears streaked her mascara. She dabbed at her eyes with her French-manicured hands. Nancy noticed that one of the polished nails was visibly chipped.
The scene belonged on daytime TV. Susie’s devoted fans would gossip delightedly about her predicaments in paradise.
“Please, please help me.”
Nancy took her cousin’s hand. “Your mother was very good to me over the years. But I simply can’t afford to help you. I’m very sorry.”
Susie stared at the wall.
“Do you have any Fiji water?”
“I’ve got Big K decaf diet cola in the fridge and ice from tap water. I know it’s poison, especially now you have a baby to think about.”
“I guess it’s OK. Better than nothing. But no ice.”
Nancy rose and walked past the table into the cramped kitchen. She retrieved a can of soda from the 70s-mustard-color Kenmore refrigerator, yanked the pop-top open, and removed a glass from the brown laminated cabinet. She turned around. Susie sat at the table, the manila folder open before her.
“Whose stuff is this?” Susie’s voice was accusatory.
Nancy blanched. She felt faint.
“Please don’t touch that. It’s personal.”
“This is your money, isn’t it? And you pretend to be poor.”
“Really, Susie, it’s none of your business.”
“I always wondered what you did with your money. You’re such a cheapskate. You just stiffed that poor old lady. And you can’t give me a lousy two thousand? What’s wrong with you?”
Nancy’s heart fluttered. This was a scene from her worst nightmare. Someone had stumbled on her secret. Now she would be hounded by the whole world. An imaginary Greek chorus rebuked her. Give money to the poor, help your cousin, you greedy rotten miser.
She braced her hands on her hips.
“Do you have any idea how much I’ve suffered to save my money? How hard my life is? No, you have no idea.”
“And my life isn’t hard?”
“You don’t understand. You have Eliot, you have a gorgeous house, you look like a cover girl, and you can easily get someone else if Eliot doesn’t work out. Men never look at me. I haven’t had a date in twenty years. No one will help me if I end up broke. All I have is my money. It’s all I have, all!”
Susie rose from the table.
“You know, I’ve always felt sorry for you, always felt like you were alone, with no friends. And everyone thinks you’re poor. But you’re filthy rich. After all my mother did for you, she practically adopted you, she treated you better than me. You, the hick orphan who ran away from god-knows-what cornfield. And I just can’t believe you won’t help me.”
Nancy stared at Susie. Never had her cousin said such hurtful words. There was some truth to the accusation. Well, what if Shirley had liked her better than her own selfish daughter? Nancy had acted as a considerate and grateful sister to Shirley.
Nancy’s voice rose to a Valkyrie shriek. “I’m not a tramp who needs abortions. This is your third, but who’s counting?”
“Now you’re judging me. How dare you.”
“Abortion is evil, Susie, there, I’ve said it, I’m not religious, but some things are just plain wrong. Yes, I’m judging you, straight out, what you’re planning is a horrible, unforgivable sin. I want no part of it.”
“I’m a good person, not a creepy tightwad like you. I’ve raised a ton of money for Save the Children.”
Nancy didn’t hear this retort. She was now sobbing, her breast heaving like a child who has fallen and scraped a knee. Jagged monosyllables punctuated her gasps.
“I work hard every day of my life, scraping and saving. I don’t need you. I don’t need anybody. I’ll do everything myself. Leave me alone. Don’t ever come back here again.”
Susie grabbed her handbag and stalked out. Nancy heard her heels clacking on concrete. A car door slammed, an engine revved up, and tires screeched.
During the long afternoon, Nancy dozed on the sofa. Puff was constantly coming in, going out, coming in. After briefly nestling in her lap, he yawned and stretched and jumped to the floor. She stroked his back as he purred and rubbed against her hand. Again he went to the door, meowing loudly. She let him out. He did not reappear in time for supper. At about nine o’clock, she heard a faint mewing—not his usual raucous cries. And there he was, limping and bleeding at the bottom of
the steps.
“Oh my gosh, what has happened to you, poor kitty? Goodness, it’s going to be impossible to mend you. And I certainly can’t afford a vet bill.”
She clambered down and gathered him up in her arms. He lay still against her body. She settled him in the bottom half of a flimsy white cardboard sweater box.
“Hello pretty kitty, let me wash your wounds.”
Puff hissed and growled at her. She gave up trying to nurse him, and left a plastic bowl of water near the box.
Should she take him to the animal hospital a mile away? She would have to call a cab, and the veterinarian would cost a fortune, especially on a Saturday night. His wounds looked serious. But after all, animals in the wild healed just fine without costly intervention. Surely he would recover after a few days.
She awoke early the next morning. The ocean fog was as thick and soft as angora wool. Puff lay on his side, his legs stiff, his head askew, his pink tongue peeking from his mouth. He was no longer whimpering, no longer breathing. The water bowl was untouched. A drowned cockroach floated on its limpid surface.
She sat on the sofa, and contemplated the body of the dead cat. She liked the handsome Puff, certainly. But she was not really a “pet person.” What if she had taken him to the hospital last night? But of course, that was too expensive. No animal was worth that kind of money. She recalled a two-month battle between her parents when she was eleven, nonstop yelling and slamming of doors. The family’s collie had sickened in early December. Her mother took him to the vet, and wrote a check for $600. Her father announced at dinner that the stupid dog had wrecked the family’s holiday budget. They did without a tree, and Santa’s sleigh brought stocking stuffers from the dollar store. An undersized ham with mashed potatoes made do for Christmas dinner. The check bounced, and then in January the dog died. It was February before her parents cobbled together enough to reissue a new check to pay the vet. Her young self had concluded that pets spell catastrophe.
She should honor Puff in some way, but how? She wasn’t good with death ceremonies. At Shirley’s funeral, Nancy had stood up to approach the podium to deliver a short eulogy but, sobbing convulsively, had sat down again, and handed the paper to Susie’s older brother, who read aloud the two paragraphs.
Curious Affairs Page 4
