A Bad Case of You

by Taylor Holloway

  “Ok, then what’s your problem?”

  “Your family is entirely broke. Not just broke. Worse than broke. Bankrupt. I had our family’s private investigator look into it. Your mother managed to totally destroy the family finances after your father died and you’re currently supporting four people on an RN salary. Is she the one that ran up all that credit card debt in your name? It must have been her because you were too young to do it yourself. But now you’re old enough to take matters into your own hands. You’ve got higher ambitions than just funding your education, don’t you? You’re looking for a ticket out of poverty.”

  Mary did what? The pieces were beginning to come together in my mind. The polite smile that I’d been wearing finally fell entirely off my face. “You don’t have any Braxton Hicks contractions, do you?” I questioned.

  She smiled, and I knew I was right. This was a trap, and I’d fallen right in. She’d pretended to have contractions to be admitted, knowing that Eric would ask me to check on her. I didn’t appreciate being manipulated by strangers.

  “I’m protecting my family.” Her face said she felt zero guilt. That might be true, but I wasn’t about to put up with her methods. I was not the type of person who would just sit around and let someone badmouth me to my face. I might be shy, but I’m not weak.

  I drew myself up to my full height and squared my shoulders. “You’re embarrassing yourself and nothing more. I’ll let you rest. Perhaps you can use the time to think about your bad choices.”

  I turned and walked out the door with as much dignity as I could muster, feeling just the slightest satisfaction at her stunned expression.

  In the quiet of the hallway, I took a deep breath and then another. My blood was boiling. I thought about marching down the hallway and ordering Mary an enema, or a sponge bath, or a full battery of invasive tests. I thought about misplacing her file, so she’d sit all day, alone in her room and wondering what was going on. I thought about turning back around and slapping her across her smug, stuck-up face.

  But of course, I didn’t do anything like that. It would only prove that she was right to be suspicious and dismissive of me. It would also all get me fired. Instead, I texted her brother.

  Faith McNamara [10:16 a.m.]: Your sister is perfectly healthy.

  Eric Carter [10:17 a.m.]: They were just false contractions?

  Faith McNamara [10:18 a.m.]: No, they were just lies that she told so she could grill me to my face.

  Eric Carter [10:19 a.m.]: Huh?

  Faith McNamara [10:20 a.m.]: She had your family’s private investigator look into me. Why exactly do you have a family private investigator? Is your family in the mob or something?

  Eric tried to call me, and I sent it to voicemail. I was shaking with anger. Talking to him wasn’t a good idea. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say, either. I needed to process what had just happened. I needed time to think.

  Eric Carter [10:21 a.m.]: I’m on my way to talk to Mary. Are we still meeting for lunch?

  Eric Carter [10:25 a.m.]: Faith?

  Eric Carter [11:00 a.m.]: I couldn’t find Mary. She already left. I’m really sorry if she was nasty to you. Are we still meeting at noon?

  Eric Carter [11:30 a.m.]: Faith?

  Eric Carter [11:35 a.m.]: What did she say to you?

  32

  Faith

  You’re looking for a ticket out of poverty.

  Mary Carter thought I was much cleverer than I was. My ticket out of poverty had always been obtaining an education and working. I was even willing to work hard for it. I hadn’t even considered that Eric might be used for that purpose. Marrying for money hadn’t even been on my radar.

  After our nasty interaction, I went and sat in my car. I turned off my phone and stared into the steering wheel like it was crystal ball. I needed mental space, but Mary’s unkind words seemed to be occupying all available real estate. There was no escape.

  Your mother managed to totally destroy the family finances after your father died and you’re currently supporting four adults on a single RN salary.

  We’d never been rich. I grew up at the edge of the middle class, with a stay-at-home mom and a policeman dad. I’d never felt poor, but we certainly didn’t have the kind of disposable income that some of my friend’s families seemed to have. I definitely never had a pony. I didn’t even have a My Little Pony. They were surprisingly expensive.

  Then, when I was in middle school, my dad died. My mom hadn’t handled my dad’s death well at all. Given how incredibly traumatic it was, that was hardly a surprise. She sunk into a deep, yearlong depression. During that time, she spent most of my dad’s life insurance money on god-knows-what. When that money was gone, all she had was his half pension. It wasn’t enough to keep us above the poverty line. She tried to get jobs, but between her depression and the fact that she hadn’t worked a day in her life before, nobody was hiring for more money than government benefits paid.

  At the same time, a national financial crisis and my maternal grandparent’s worsening health created a perfect storm. Soon they were living with us and we were struggling just to get by. My dad had no extended family to rely on. There was no safety net. I went through high school in hand-me-downs, eating groceries from a charity food pantry, and working as many part-time jobs as I could.

  My mom did run up a bunch of credit card debt in my name during those dark days during my adolescence. She’d maxed out her own credit and there was really no other option for us at the time. There were bills to pay. It was either debt or hunger and homelessness. Given the choice, debt seemed like the lesser of two evils. In hindsight, however, my credit score was trash. Perhaps we could have gone on a little diet or something. I tried not to think about it too much. I’d probably never qualify for a mortgage.

  You’ve got higher ambitions than just funding your education, don’t you?

  My ambitions were always to become the best nurse I could be. I’m not sure what led me to this profession, but it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. Ever since I was a kid, I’d wanted to be a nurse. Nurses can make good money too, but it takes a while. I’d had to take out a lot of loans to fund my undergraduate education. Even with the scholarships I was offered, I was in the hole almost a hundred thousand dollars when all the interest was added in. I’d be fifty before I paid it all off.

  By the time I graduated college, obtained my RN license, and was finally able to work, I was the only income earner in my family. On my salary, I could afford to contribute to my grandparent’s modest retirement savings enough to get them in an excellent assisted living center in New York. I could also afford to keep my mom and I warm, safe, fed, and dry. Our living was not glamorous, but I made more money than my dad ever did as a policeman (especially now that I was working in a supervisor role), and my job was a lot less dangerous.

  I’d thought I was doing pretty well, especially considering that I’d just been promoted to a management position and would be starting an APN program in the fall. I might be living paycheck to paycheck but who wasn’t? I’d already dug myself out of the hole of poverty. At least, I thought I had. Apparently, it was not good enough to impress Mary. According to Mary, I needed to deceive my way to a better financial situation. Wherever she came from, it must be a lot different than Queens. She probably had a pony or something.

  Anger simmered in my stomach and it made me feel positively ill. Who was she to judge me? Who was she to look into my situation? What gave her the right? I’d done nothing to suggest that I was after Eric for the money. The only money he had given me was for something I’d agonized over, and ultimately sending my mom to New York had been his idea in the first place. The thought that anyone would think I was a gold digger made me feel like throwing punches.

  Who the hell has a private investigator? In what kind of family was that considered normal? Mary had been so casual about it. It piqued my curiosity enough to make me turn my phone back on. I fired off a single Google search: Carter family, Fresno, Cal
ifornia. The results populated in moments, pages of them. My jaw dropped open.

  Mary didn’t just have a pony. She probably had a whole herd of pedigreed mustangs.

  The Wikipedia page for the Carter family read like something out of a history textbook.

  The Carter family is an American political family that has long been prominent in American politics, public service, entertainment and business. The first Carter elected to public office was Martin "M. J." Carter in 1887, 35 years after the family's arrival from Ireland. Carter amassed a fortune in banking and securities trading, which he further expanded by investing in other growing industries. He served in the Rhode Island state legislature from 1887 to 1896. At least one Carter family member served in federal elective office in every year from 1947, when M.J. Carter's grandson, Edmund Joseph Carter, became a member of Congress from Rhode Island; to 2016, when M.J. Carter’s great-grandson, Martin J. Carter, retired as a member of Congress from California.

  Holy crap. Could these actually be the right Carters? It was a pretty common name. I kept reading, looking for some proof that I was on the right track.

  The descendants of M.J.’s son, Joseph Carter Sr., and Eleanor K. Carter include a U.S. attorney general (who later served in the U.S. Senate), four other members of the United States House of Representatives or Senate, and two U.S. ambassadors, a lieutenant governor, three state legislators (one of whom went on to the U.S. House of Representatives), and one mayor. Other descendants of Joseph and Eleanor Carter have been active as lawyers, doctors, authors, clergy, and activists.

  I had a bad feeling that these were the right Carters. I think I might have preferred the mob though, because at least the mob was mostly gone these days. The Carters were like a less sensational version of the Kennedys. One could argue they were more successful as a result. The Carter family weren’t household names and had never topped a presidential ticket. They made their money and then they kept and grew it, generation after generation. These were the sorts of people who would have a family private investigator.

  I remembered that Eric said his middle name was Joseph after his father. His father couldn’t be the Joseph Carter descended directly from the family patriarch, that would make him much too old. I scrolled down the article, looking for more Josephs. I found what I was looking for under the ‘family misfortune’ section.

  Martha Morris Carter, the wife of Joseph Carter IV is believed to have been an alcoholic or mentally unstable, and due to her severe mood swings and the worry that she would damage the Carter reputation, her husband is believed to have arranged for her to be kept out of the public eye beginning around 1998. Martha remained in the care of her family until his death in 2015. She died of breast cancer in 2017.

  Eric had told me that his mother died of breast cancer a few years ago. I reread the paragraph a few times, trying to wrap my mind around it. This had to be her. Eric’s father kept his mother “out of the public eye” for more than thirty years to avoid embarrassing the family? What on earth did that mean? And why didn’t Eric mention that his father was dead? He’d only mentioned his mother…

  Eric clearly had a much more illustrious, and much more mysterious family than I’d realized. If Mary was indication of what they were like, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be anywhere near it.

  33

  Eric

  “What the hell did you do?” I hissed into the phone when I finally got ahold of Mary. I was not in a good mood. I’m not quick to anger, but once there, it sticks around for a long, long time. After combing the whole hospital for Mary, and then combing it again for Faith, I was exhausted, frustrated, and positively livid at my sister. “What the fuck did you say to Faith?” My voice was dripping with venom.

  “We just had a little conversation this morning.” I could almost see her shrugging and pursing her lips. “I wanted to get a feel for her, you know?” She paused. “She’s very pretty.” She said it like it was a concession. Mary could be extremely haughty when the mood struck her. It clearly struck her today.

  I ground my teeth and clenched my fists. “Well now she’s not talking to me.” If I sounded angry, it was because I was fucking angry. Mary had seriously trespassed on my personal life. This was a gross violation of the trust I’d put in her when I explained the situation with Faith. I didn’t really have friends. Mary was the closest thing to a friend I had. At least, she was.

  There was a short pause on the other end of the line. “Perhaps that’s for the best,” Mary said a moment later.

  “You sound just like dad.” The words weren’t said lightly.

  They weren’t received lightly either. I heard a sharp intake of voice. “Excuse me?” It was just about the biggest insult I could possibly think of, but at the moment it was warranted. She did sound just like dad.

  “Are you concerned that Faith might cause the family embarrassment?” I taunted.

  “That’s not—” Her refusal was sharp, but I cut her off.

  “Are you worried that she’ll hurt our illustrious reputation?”

  “I’m just—”

  “You’re just concerned that she’ll reflect poorly on the prestigious family name.”

  “I am not!” her voice was shrill. “Eric, I’m trying to protect you.”

  “I’m sure dad thought he was protecting us.” I was so livid it was probably good that we weren’t in the same room. I wanted to hurl a vase at a wall. “Why don’t you keep your concern to yourself from now on Mary. You’ve just made everything a thousand times harder.”

  “I was only trying to—”

  “You were trying to run her off. To threaten her into doing things your way.”

  She didn’t deny it. “Eric, I was trying to help.” There was a slight softening in her tone. She was beginning to recognize how truly upset I was, but it was far too little, too late.

  “I don’t want your help. I like Faith, Mary. Did you even spare a moment’s thought about the possibility that I might genuinely care about her?”

  “Eric, I—”

  It didn’t matter. I hung up on her. Mary and I had gotten into some pretty nasty fights before, but not like this. She’d seriously crossed a line.

  Once, Mary and I went an entire year without speaking to one another. We’d been in elementary school at the time. I’d ratted her out to mom for a homework infraction and she’d decided that I was dead to her. She wouldn’t speak to me, listen to me, or even acknowledge my presence. Since I was just as stubborn, I’d reciprocated. For an entire year, we’d lived in the same house without exchanging a single word. It was absolute torture for the rest of the family that had to put up with our silent struggle, and in time it became a sort of game. Neither of us wanted to be the first to crack so we devised elaborate ways to communicate that were non-verbal. Slowly, it became as cooperative as it was competitive. The anger and hurt that created the problem melted away in time and I forgave Mary. It might take a year this time around, too.

  Whatever Mary had said to Faith, it made her give me the silent treatment. I knew firsthand just how committed a person could get when it came to the silent treatment. I didn’t want it to be a year before Faith talked to me again. I needed to get out ahead of this crisis.

  I abandoned my shift—saying that I felt ill which was absolutely true—and drove to Faith’s apartment. Her car wasn’t there. I sat down on the step below her door, and I waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  34

  Faith

  I ended up calling my mom. I knew I couldn’t tell her the truth about Eric, or his sister, but I needed to hear her voice. In a lot of ways, having my mom spend almost three months in New York was a godsend, but it was also the longest period I’d ever spent away from her in my twenty-four years of life. And sometimes, you have a problem that only your mom can help you with. This was one of those times.

  “Hey Faith!” she said, sounding excited. “I’m so glad you called. You can settle an argument between me and you
r grandma.”

  “An argument?” I warbled, distracted.

  “Well, more of a disagreement,” she said, “your grandma said that a woman my age shouldn’t wear anything formfitting on a date. Do you think that’s true?”

  I blinked, thoroughly pulled away from my own problem, at least for the moment. “Do you have a date, mom?”

  She made a non-committal noise and I could imagine her eyes flitting around nervously as she spoke. “That’s not the issue.”

  My mom definitely had a date. On the one hand, I knew she couldn’t have a date with Dr. Koels, because Eric and I had successfully put a stop to that issue by sending her to New York. On the other hand, I felt a pang of guilt that we had been successful. Koels had seemed to really like my mom, and she’d seemed to really like him. I quashed the feeling. She found someone else. Good for her.

  “I think you can wear whatever you want on a date, mom,” I told her. I was happy for her that she was moving on from my dad at last. “I can help you pick out an outfit if you want me to.”

  She giggled, and the sound made me smile. I missed her. “You never let me help you pick out your outfits when you have dates with Eric.”

  I rolled my eyes. She’d have me wearing hideous eighties dresses with big shoulder pads and ruffles everywhere. “That’s different.” I paused. “Besides, I don’t know if I’m going to have any other dates with Eric.”

  Her silence was short but significant. “What happened?” she asked. “Are you and Eric having problems?”

  “We weren’t until… well, I met his sister today,” I began, wishing I’d worked through this conversation in my head first because I didn’t want to overshare on the details. “She was very rude and dismissive of me. She actually threatened me a little bit.”