As she moves to retrieve the scotch under the kitchen sink, her private stash for nights when sleep refuses to come, Zack taps her shoulder. “That bottle’s empty.”
“What the fuck’s going on?” she says.
“I put out everything we had. Someone brought bourbon. It’s on the table.” His eyes are a bit glazed.
“Have you lost your mind?”
“I thought you’d be pleased?” He stands there, T-shirt sticking to his chest, grinning, daring her to disagree.
“You must be kidding. We have no money for parties.”
“Rosie and Casey were sure you wouldn’t want it,” he goes on blithely. “I told the kids you don’t like giving parties but since they were doing the work and the neighbors were bringing the food … well … here we are.” He’s not really looking at her, and he doesn’t seem drunk. So what’s going on? She helps herself to the drink he’s holding, downing some kind of bitter, burning whiskey.
“You go out there and party, angel.”
“Zack, I need answers.”
“Answers will come soon enough.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Wrong? What in Christ’s name could be wrong? Lighten up.” His tone—loud and aggressive—is unusual. He walks away. Embarrassed, she reminds herself that these are not her real friends. So who cares? The whole scene is ludicrous. Has Zack gone nuts? She’s heard of men his age who suffer brain aneurysms that suddenly change their personalities, but he hasn’t complained of headaches, hasn’t stopped eating, and god knows, hasn’t lost interest in sex. He’s being willful, that’s what, and stupid, and she needs to catch her breath.
She finds a paper cup in the living room, fills it halfway with bourbon, drops in two ice cubes, grabs a slice of cheese from some neighbor’s carefully arrayed plate, and squeezes onto Casey’s chair. He, like her, probably can’t wait for everyone to leave.
Drinks in hand, people sprawl on the couch, chairs, the coffee table, the staircase; some lean on walls, others move around her house like they’ve been here a thousand times. It’s all a weird buzz.
Zack clinks his glass with a knife for silence. “Ladies and gentlemen, my wife is thirty-nine. In one year she’ll be officially middle-aged, but I’ll always be a year older. And what does that mean? What does any of it mean? Huh?” He rocks back on his heels, then looks around as if he actually expects an answer.
A cold fist of fear lodges inside her.
“Okay, here’s what I think. No, what I believe. No, what I’m proposing.
“I propose we dance. It’s a big room. It should be used. Why else buy a house? We can be as noisy as we want. No one upstairs or downstairs will complain. Move the limbs. Free the mind. Let’s do it.”
Zack turns the music up to blast, making it impossible to hear anyone. Casey looks at her with alarm.
She goes to the stereo and lowers the volume.
Zack jacks it up again. “Everyone dance,” he orders.
“Zack,” she shouts, “People want to talk.”
“Hey, what’s wrong with having a good time in my own house?” He’s shouting, too. “I own this house. Not really, of course. Like all of us, it’s only mine as long as I pay the rent. Oops, I mean the mortgage. Otherwise it’s the bank’s, or maybe the mortgage company’s. Who the fuck knows who owns what? I don’t. I do know that we have to use the space, man, gyrate like you mean it. I’m waiting.” He’s still shouting, though someone has again turned down the music, revealing a sudden church-like hush in the room. Her stomach’s in free fall now, her face flushed. She goes to Zack, though she’d like to run in the opposite direction.
“Casey, bring your dad some water. Zack, come sit with me.” She takes his arm.
“What the fuck, Lena.” He throws off her hand. “This is still my house. I want to dance. Rosie, come dance with your dad.”
“Dad, what if I make you a sandwich?”
“Hey, everyone, what’s happening, where’s the problem?” Zack shouts.
His eyes suddenly look bloodshot to her.
A flash memory of her mother undressing in the street.
People get it, thank god, and begin leaving. She goes to the door to say good night—it’s the least she can do—but says nothing more, only shakes her head as if to commiserate with her own problems. No one comments to embarrass her further and she feels a shiver of gratitude. Stepping outside with the last guest, she watches as some get into cars, others stroll home. She, too, would like to take off, walk for miles. The rain has stopped; the humidity’s without mercy. It’s a starless night. The only light comes from nearby houses.
She finds them at the kitchen table. Zack wears a look of bewilderment; Rosie and Casey are mute but watchful. They’re waiting for her to make sense of the last disastrous hour and allay their anxieties, apparent in Casey’s unblinking eyes. Rosie seems more curious than frightened; this is a father she doesn’t know.
“Mom? What are you going to do?” Casey asks.
“Nothing, honey, there’s nothing to do. Dad had a bad day, a few drinks, and everything got mashed together. It happens.”
“What bad day, Dad?” Rosie asks softly.
He says nothing.
“Zack, whatever’s on your mind, tell us.” Her voice is soft, too, though in her head she’s lining up possibilities: cancer, ALS, MS …
His eyes flit from one to the other. “I want to go to bed.”
“Mom, he can’t do that. We have to know what’s going on,” Rosie pleads.
She gazes at Zack, at a loss. “We’ll talk in the morning. You go to bed, too. We’ll straighten up tomorrow.”
“Not fair,” Rosie complains. “Dad will tell you and we’ll have to spend the entire night not knowing.”
“Can’t help it,” she almost whispers, thinking she could easily fall asleep before he says a word.
She follows him upstairs. He drops on the bed without undressing, sneakers and all.
She switches on the small A/C they brought over from the old apartment, which makes way too much noise. Some hot nights she has to switch it off to fall asleep. She pulls off his sneakers, then slips out of her clothing and into a short gown. He sits up and grabs her arm.
“What?” She shakes free.
He’s gazing so intently at something behind her that she can’t help turning around, but it’s just the same old wall with the framed photos of the children, the one they’ve lived with for the past four years. “Zack you’re officially scaring me, do you know that?”
“Yes.”
“What do you mean, yes? For shit’s sake, what’s going on?” Suddenly, the intensity in his expression is replaced by a vacant stare. She decides it’s better to reassure him. “You’ll find a job,” she says. “So will I. It will happen, it has to. It’s just a bad patch we’re going through.”
“This is not our house.”
“Of course it is.”
“Uh-uh. We no longer own this house. We’ve been officially foreclosed. We’ll be evicted in thirty days if we don’t make plans to move out. They, whoever the fuck they really are, are taking away our home.”
The words hit her like shrapnel, causing pain everywhere.
“Do you hear me?”
She nods.
“Well, now you know,” he adds, as if to say, not my problem anymore.
“We need to figure out a way to make a payment,” she says automatically.
“Too late.” He responds, a note in his voice that sounds almost gleeful, which scares her more.
“What does that mean?”
“It’s a final notice.”
“You were notified before?”
“Many times.” He doesn’t sound upset or sad, just absent.
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I planned to make a back payment. Too late now.”
“Stop saying that.”
“Today’s letter had the eviction clause.”
The words conjure up the two families down the roa
d who were forced out. Furniture left on lawns for the garbage truck, neighbors pretending to ignore the sad scene, undoubtedly fearing for their own homes. Where will they go? Who will have them, a family of four? Cold, hard terror short-circuits her brain. “We’ll borrow money. Go to a lawyer. Appeal. We won’t accept being thrown out of our house.”
“No one will lend us anything.”
It’s as if he’s purposely putting up obstacles. “How long haven’t you paid the mortgage?”
“Almost a year. And a lawyer costs.”
“A year …” she whispers. Who is this man? What did he think he was saving her from? Or was he expecting something, god knows what, to make it all go away? Damn him, waiting till the roof fell in ….
“I need sleep,” she mumbles, closing her eyes, because she can’t continue talking, because her head feels like a smashed apple, because this is a nightmare from which she might wake up in the morning.
Lemony stripes of early sunlight rouse her from a fitful night. Her eyes scour the room. All the familiar objects. The white rocking chair and dresser, the brass lamp reflected in the floor-to-ceiling mirror, the hand-carved magazine rack beneath the window, the white silky drapes it took her weeks to sew … No, it isn’t possible to give this up.
Zack’s asleep, his face oddly peaceful. When the children were infants, she often stood at their cribs while they slept to make sure they were breathing. Sometimes Zack had to tug her out of their room. Secretly she believed her hovering presence insured their lives. Now, she feels no such magic.
Grabbing her cell phone from the bedside table, she tiptoes into the bathroom, closes the door gently, and locks it. Then she surveys everything … the aqua-painted shelves Zack built to hold his shaving gear, her makeup kit, soaps, lotions, perfume. He tiled the walls and floor, aqua and white, gorgeous, simply gorgeous. She remembers choosing the shower curtain with its undulating swans, the globe light fixture with its tiny star-shaped cutouts. She inventories each item, etching them into her brain. Is it leaving all of this that’s so devastating, or having to start over? She flashes on their camping equipment tucked away in the basement, a tent and air mattresses they could set up in Harriman State Park. But winter will arrive. And what if they still have no jobs? What if they have to live in their car? She’s seen those families on TV. Bundles piled high, blocking rear windows; people with gloved hands, eating straight out of cans. It could be the 1930s. And what about school? What if her children are forced into foster care? Another number on a case file in the dreaded system? Fear seeps through her. Some people have parents they can turn to, not her, not now, not ever really.
She punches in Dory’s number, her mouth dry.
“Lena? What? I’m still waking up.”
“We’re being evicted. Zack hasn’t paid the mortgage for almost a year. We have thirty days.” The words thicken in her throat but she refuses tears.
“Wow.” Dory mumbles sleepily. “How could you let it get this far?”
“Zack never told me. He takes care of the bills. It’s what the men in his family have always done. I take care of everything else. It’s never been a problem. No one’s turned off our electricity or cable. Whatever money he got from unemployment or the pittance from the union must have gone for everything but the mortgage. Evidently, people don’t telephone anymore to say that they’re going to take your house away. It’s done by letter. Zack picks up the mail. A man who believes in miracles, he just waited for one to come along to do whatever-the-fuck …”
“How much do you owe?” Dory interrupts.
“Thousands.”
“Look, there must be some way to fight this.” Dory’s voice is stronger now. Maybe she’s formulating a plan. Isn’t that what best friends do?
“If he’d told me sooner, before we owed so fucking much, we could’ve borrowed something.” She’s praying for help, anything at all.
“Let me talk to Stu. See how much extra we have.”
“Sweet, but no. His job is only a bit more secure than my future. You guys can’t bail us out. I just need to vent or choke.”
“Do the kids know?”
“I dread telling them. Parents are supposed to protect their children, prepare the way for their futures. Did Zack think of that?”
“Rosie’s pretty mature, she’ll understand. Casey’s young, but he’s so sweet, he’ll want to be assured everyone is going to be okay.”
“That’s just it. What does okay mean? Where can we go, a family of four? I told you about the two foreclosed houses on our road …”
“Whoa, Lena, that was them. You only learned last night.”
The impossibility of their situation slams her anew. “Dory, I need to go. I’ll call you later.” She clicks off. And stares down at the tiles that are so much prettier than the warped bathroom floor under the leaky roof where she grew up.
It rained so hard that long-ago day. She rarely allows herself to remember. She was in the shower, washing her hair, when a large chunk of ceiling plaster crashed into the tub, just missing her. She grabbed a towel and ran into the living room, soap still in her hair. Not that anyone was there to help. Her father was at work. Her mother, only recently released from her fourth stay in the psychiatric unit, hadn’t left her bed or spoken since returning home. After each admission, her father would say, “Your mother’s having one of her breakdowns,” as if it were willful. And some part of her, she remembers, agreed with him.
And she also remembers how, after rinsing the soap from her hair in the kitchen sink and putting on jeans and a sweatshirt, she had prepared her mother’s dinner. She carried in the tray—an omelet with peas, she remembers that, too—and switched on a bedroom lamp. To her surprise, her mother, usually prone, was perched on the edge of the bed, her face pale in the dim light. While setting out the food, she began to describe the moment in the shower. It was a way to fill the silence. Her mother reached up to stroke her wet hair as if to check out her story, or was it a touch of affection? She never could decide. Then, with a fierce, certain expression on her face, her mother whispered, “Go away. Please.” She knew then, as she knows now, that something awful was about to happen, something she felt entirely unable to stop.
Rosie, banging on the door, interrupts her thoughts. “Need to get in. This second.”
As they pass each other, she looks away.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
Rosie disappears into the bathroom. Despite what Dory thinks, Rosie’s not going to take this well.
Zack is still asleep. She shakes his shoulder. “Wake up. We have to tell the children.”
“Let them go to school,” he says groggily.
“Jesus, Zack, they’re on summer vacation.”
“What’s the rush?” His eyes remain closed.
She can’t decide. He could be right. What’s the rush? Why not wait till there’s a plan of some sort. “Get up. It’s late.” Though for what, she has no idea.
He slides his legs off the bed and sits there, still dressed in yesterday’s clothing. “I need a shower.” He peels off socks and shirt on the way to the bathroom. She hears him bang on the door. Maybe their next house will have two bathrooms.
She frees the table of some of last night’s debris and pulls breakfast stuff out of cabinets and the fridge. Zack needs to be strong with the children. She drops onto a chair.
“Hi, mom.” Casey lays a quick hand on her shoulder, then begins making his breakfast the way he likes it, not too much yogurt, spooned into a cup, a half-teaspoon of jelly on rye bread, no butter, god forbid, his movements smooth and predetermined. How to tell this boy that they’re being ousted from their home?
“Mom, why aren’t you getting the coffee?”
“I am.” She forces herself up. She needs to do what she does every morning. Act normal, whatever that means. She watches the interminable drip-drip of liquid into the carafe. People say one door closes and another opens. People say a lot of shit.
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sp; Rosie, barefoot in short-shorts and T-strap top, strides in and goes straight to the fridge to take out the juice; her body more womanly each day.
“So, Mom, what exactly did dad tell you?”
“Let’s wait for him to get down.”
“All this delay is killing me.”
“Rosie, in life …”
“I know, I know, don’t bore me, you’ve said it a million times, be patient. I can’t. I take after you.”
“Not true. I’m patient.”
“You are not, right, Casey?”
“I don’t know.”
“Dad, what happened last night?” Rosie asks, before Zack reaches the kitchen table.
Her throat tightens. She pours two cups of coffee, sets one down for Zack and takes a chair.
His wet, curly hair uncombed, he doesn’t look the least bit refreshed by the shower. His ancient jeans with kneeholes are ludicrous on a man his age. He’s preparing for homelessness, she thinks. He takes a few sips of coffee. “Ask your mom.”
“Jesus, Zack!”
“Mom, come on …” Rosie’s large eyes blaze with need and curiosity. Casey, too, looks at her, worry written on his face. She roots around in her mind to find an encouraging way to tell them.
“Do you kids know what foreclosure means?”
“What?” says Rosie. “You’re kidding!”
“You know we haven’t been working. There’s been a real shortage of cash, and Dad hasn’t paid the mortgage …”
“Dad, you didn’t pay the bills? What’s going to happen?” This directly to him. Good girl.
He squirms in his chair. “Well, it’s not entirely clear. There are still avenues to pursue, we just haven’t gotten there.”
“What are you talking about?” Rosie asks.
“We have to make back payments, but as your mother said, without jobs …”
“Mom, tell us.” Rosie pleads.
“They’re going to foreclose on our house.”
“That can’t happen.” Rosie shakes her head as if to ward off the words.
“Dad and I are trying to figure out how to make some payments so we won’t be evicted.”
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