Without a Net

by Blake, Jill

  It wasn’t that Eva was ungrateful. She appreciated all the help and support she received during Roger’s illness. In those initial harrowing days after his diagnosis, when the neurosurgeons deemed the tumor inoperable, the other moms relieved Eva of her many volunteering duties at school and took over her turn driving the carpool. That left her free to take Roger to his daily chemo and radiation treatments, doctors’ visits, MRI scans. Later, as new satellite lesions appeared, and the oncologist started Roger on infusions of Avastin every other week, the moms brought over food and took turns supervising Ben’s homework.

  Eva had a hard enough time keeping it together then. Toward the end, it became nearly impossible. After months of enduring Roger’s near-silence, punctuated by the occasional grunt or one-word response, the floodgates opened. As if Eva’s husband, faced with the prospect of imminent death, decided he’d better make his peace with God.

  “Make a clean breast of it,” was how he put it. And once he started, the words came tumbling out, tripping over each other, building a momentum of their own. Unstoppable, irreversible, like a river sweeping away everything in its path: twigs, rocks, debris accumulated over the lifetime of their marriage.

  At first Eva thought he was confabulating. End-stage glioblastoma did funny things to the brain. Progressive memory loss and personality changes were to be expected, the neurologist told them, pointing to the area on Roger’s MRI that lit up white against the backdrop of gray. Cancerous tentacles extended into the temporal lobe, which housed the hippocampus and amygdala, repositories of memory, and into the pre-frontal lobe, responsible for inhibition control. If Freud’s concept of super-ego had a physical correlate, it was the frontal lobe. Compromise that, and anything was possible: impaired judgment, aggressive behavior, violent rages. Best to be prepared, the doctor warned.

  As a child, Eva had watched her grandmother succumb to dementia. Though the woman had never been farther from home than Pasadena, she would tell strangers about her supposed life in Japan, or New Zealand, or Brazil. As the disease progressed, the stories stopped. Simple tasks would confound her: using a fork, turning off a faucet. She’d wander from room to room looking for the sister who’d been dead for years.

  Eva wondered if Roger’s cancer would take him down a similar trajectory. He had already started to forget things. Names and dates had never been his strong suit. It was Eva who kept track of their social calendar, circulating with him at networking dinners and birthday parties, the perfect corporate wife: “You remember Emily, dear, and her husband Bob? Their son was in Ben’s kindergarten class.”

  When the doctor asked Roger to subtract seven from a hundred, he claimed that math wasn’t his thing. That wasn’t exactly true. Though he had left the management of household finances to Eva, he took care of the big picture items—investments, retirement savings, the real estate development company he ran with his business partner. The neurologist didn’t know that, and Eva didn’t have the heart to bring it up. Not that it mattered, since the clock face Roger drew for the doctor was off too: numbers all clustered together as they approached twelve, hour hand missing completely.

  That was when Roger decided to clear his conscience and tell her everything—or at least the bits that weighed most heavily on his mind. After the initial shock wore off, she thought: why couldn’t he have been Catholic? Then the priest could have taken his confession, and she would have been spared.

  Once the anger set in, though, she couldn’t stop digging.

  “How many times?” she asked. “When? Why?”

  Roger had trouble answering, because by then the dates were all jumbled, and the faces had long faded away, and names sometimes hadn’t even been exchanged. “It was when I was away,” he said. “When I went to San Diego, or Las Vegas, or New Mexico.”

  That was the problem. He was constantly traveling, and by the time he felt driven to confess his transgressions, the trips had all blended together, one into the other, an endless montage that was growing fuzzier with each passing day. Soon only vague impressions would be left, like shadows glimpsed through a dirt-encrusted lens.

  She dug up her old calendars. Years of paper-bound spiral books with appointments clearly marked in her neat handwriting. Dentist, 9:30. LACMA w Ben’s class, 10 a.m. Roger trip to SF. Roger - ICSC convention. She made a list of all the trips he took, and quizzed him, until he slammed his palms on the dining room table and said, “How many times can I say I don’t know? It was too long ago, I lost count.”

  That was the worst of it, she decided. The not knowing.

  There had been an outpouring of sympathy after Roger’s death. Family, friends, teachers and other parents at Ben’s school murmured the usual platitudes and extended offers of help. Casseroles appeared in the refrigerator. Her turn driving the carpool was again redistributed amongst the other moms. Business cards for therapists and grief counselors were discreetly proffered by well-meaning acquaintances.

  No one seemed to guess at the anger that bubbled inside her. She was sorry that Ben had lost his father. Sorry she’d lost the man she had once loved. But that loss had apparently happened long before Roger’s death. The diagnosis of cancer had merely opened her eyes to that fact. She’d stuck with him until the bitter end, out of compassion and a sense of obligation. One didn’t leave a dying man, no matter how much of a bastard he might have been. As far as the outside world was concerned, she remained the devoted wife, and later, the grieving widow.

  But now, with the financial and legal repercussions of Roger’s protracted illness and death continuing to mount, she found it harder and harder to maintain the façade.

  She drained the pasta and stirred it into a pot of simmering sauce, then glanced across the central kitchen island at her son.

  Ben was the one thing Roger had given her that remained untarnished, as wonderful and miraculous a gift today as the day he was born. She still remembered the moment the nurse placed the tiny squalling bundle in her arms, all red and wrinkled, and the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen. Looking at him now, as he sat at the kitchen table doing homework, his tongue caught between his teeth and his brow furrowed in concentration, Eva swallowed a sudden swell of emotion.

  Whatever resentments she might harbor against her dead husband, she wouldn’t let them spill over and taint her relationship with her son. She’d do anything in her power to protect Ben from the damage wrought by his father’s mistakes.

  Which meant she didn’t have time to waste dwelling on the past.

  Nor could she afford to get distracted by arbitrary hormonal impulses in the future. Especially when the focus of those impulses was completely inappropriate.

  When she’d bumped into Nina’s brother yesterday, the spark of attraction had simply caught her by surprise. She thought the ability to feel something for the opposite sex had died right along with her husband. Apparently not. But feeling it was one thing, pursuing it was another. And when it came to self-control, she had more than her fair share.

  “Done,” Ben said, pushing back from the table. “You want to check?”

  “Sure. I can do that while you wash up and set the table.” She turned off the flame and moved the pot to a back burner.

  “Aw, Mom. You said I could have the iPad after I finished my homework.”

  “Dinner first. You know the rules.” She loaded two plates with pasta and steamed broccoli, and handed one to him when he returned from the bathroom. “Careful, it’s hot.”

  “Fine. But I get an hour, right?”

  She suppressed a smile. “Thirty minutes. You still have to practice piano.”

  “Can’t I skip a day?” He came back for the second plate. “I’ll practice twice as long tomorrow, I promise.”

  “No can do, kiddo.” She ignored his theatrical sigh and picked up the sheet of math problems, quickly running through them while he finished setting the table. “Looks good. Put it away in your backpack before you forget.”

  Later, after the bedtime ritual of ba
th, brushing of teeth, and twenty minutes of Harry Potter, Eva kissed him goodnight and made her way to her home office.

  She’d managed to acquire a new account this week, and the client was expecting some preliminary designs by Friday for a fresh logo that would go on the company website, brochures, and business cards. Which translated into another few hours of work tonight.

  After years of only doing volunteer gigs, she hadn’t realized how difficult it would be to find clients who were actually willing to pay for her services. She’d helped with fundraising for Ben’s school, setting up and running an online silent auction, designing and circulating flyers for various themed charity events. She’d even helped a handful of fledgling businesses get off the ground, mostly friends of friends who’d heard of her by word of mouth. Local shop owners, artists, caterers, who couldn’t afford much in the way of marketing but were happy to use her expertise in setting up a website, designing brochures, putting together low-cost advertising campaigns. Handling such diverse aspects of creative design and promotion on a shoestring had been a tremendous learning experience, and should have made her more marketable. But monetizing her skills now that she actually needed an income to support herself and her son was proving harder than she’d anticipated.

  She considered going back to her old company, where she’d worked until her obstetrician had put her on bed rest when she was pregnant with Ben. But after so many years out of the official work force, that wasn’t a viable option. She would have had to start with what amounted to an entry-level position, which paid a pittance, and didn’t allow her the flexibility of schedule she needed as a single parent.

  She’d explored other alternatives, sent out scores of e-mails and letters, called upon old acquaintances and mentors, polished her online portfolio, searched design job boards for postings, and contacted creative staffing agencies and recruiters.

  Maybe it was the economy, or the glut of talent on LA’s Westside, or the fact that employers simply weren’t interested in taking a risk on someone who’d exited the job market once, on the off-chance she might opt to do so again. Whatever the reason, she felt like she was running out of options.

  That’s what made this new account such a godsend. If she could just get the ball rolling, do a good job for her client, then hopefully word of mouth—along with an aggressive self-marketing campaign—would lead to more commissions.

  She was just finishing her third sketch when the phone rang.

  “Hope I’m not calling too late.”

  Eva frowned at the sound of Nina’s voice. A part of her had hoped Nina wouldn’t have news for her this soon.

  When Eva had first broached the subject of putting her house on the market, Nina assured her that finding a buyer would be no problem. “Santa Monica prices are sky-rocketing. You know what houses above Montana are going for? We’re talking complete tear-downs. The cost of the dirt alone is two point seven. Believe me, you’re sitting on a gold mine. Whatever the asking price, I guarantee you there’ll be a bidding war.”

  Eva’s disquiet must have shown, because Nina lowered her tone. “Don’t worry, I’ll be discreet. We’ll keep it as a pocket listing if you want. Just leave everything to me.”

  They’d had the conversation just last week, while waiting for karate class to end. Eva watched her son through the glass wall as he twisted out of his opponent’s hold. He was an easy-going child, with his father’s quick smile and natural charm. But the past couple of years had taken their toll. Shortly after Roger had gotten sick, Ben’s teacher called Eva in for a parent-teacher conference, concerned that he had started picking fights at school. It was only in the past few weeks that he’d stopped waking up in the middle of the night to crawl into bed beside her. The last thing he needed was further disruption in his life.

  Too bad Eva couldn’t change the fact that Roger’s death put them in a serious financial bind. To be fair, she probably shared some of the blame. She hadn’t thought twice about sacrificing her career for the lure of being a full-time wife and mother. She’d trusted Roger to take care of them forever and ever. What hubris! How many women had she known who’d been blinded by love and youthful naiveté? And that familiar refrain: it couldn’t possibly happen to me. Until it did.

  In the end, though, even if she had done things differently, it might not have helped. Witness all those other investors across the country, people with much more money savvy than Eva herself, who had fallen victim to the same Ponzi scheme into which Roger sank a substantial chunk of their savings. The lure of too good to be true returns was apparently hard to resist.

  Press coverage had been nonstop since the story first broke a few weeks after Roger’s funeral. The arrest of William Blackwell, the chairman of the company, and the continuing fallout for his inner circle, made front page headlines. The sheer magnitude of financial losses suffered by investors, including large players like investment banks and pension funds, kept the news alive for months, spreading from financial blogs to the mainstream media like wildfire.

  Eva had paid it scant attention, too wrapped up in the minutiae of daily living, of dealing with the million and one things that fell on her shoulders and couldn’t be put off now that Roger was gone. All while trying to maintain some semblance of normality for her son’s sake in the face of an overwhelming flood of anger, fear, and guilt.

  She hadn’t panicked when the insurance company told her Roger’s life insurance policy had lapsed because he hadn’t kept up with the payments. She had remained relatively calm when faced with the monumental task of gathering all the paperwork for their tax return. The accountant, bless him, had filed for an extension, buying her some much-needed time to sort things out.

  That’s when the medical bills started flowing in, staggering sums for things that insurance apparently didn’t cover.

  If she’d monitored their finances beyond simply balancing the household checking account, she might have been prepared. But she hadn’t been privy to Roger’s investments, didn’t realize she had anything to worry about when the scandal hit the airwaves. The clawback suit caught her completely by surprise. As had the legal quagmire Roger spawned with the investments he’d made through his company.

  At this point, the only way Eva could figure out to stay afloat was by selling the house. Quickly, quietly, and without having to advertise that fact to the world. With any luck, she and Ben would be able to pack and move into a modest rental over the summer. Assuming there was something affordable that wouldn’t require changing schools. Or perhaps Nina could broker a sale and leaseback agreement that would carry them through until Eva was able to make other arrangements.

  “I’ve got a few buyers who might be interested.” Nina’s words brought her back to the present. “When can I bring them by for a look?”

  Eva cradled the receiver between her ear and shoulder as she scrolled through her electronic calendar. “How about Saturday? My brother’s taking Ben to see the Angels play Tampa Bay. They’ll head out around three, so any time after that would be fine. I can make myself scarce.”

  “Let me check and get back to you. I’m still working on the rental. A two bedroom in this neighborhood isn’t easy to find. You sure you wouldn’t consider something below Wilshire, or west of 15th Street?”

  “I’d rather keep Ben at Franklin, if possible.”

  “I hear you. Don’t worry, something’s bound to turn up. Probably in the next month or so, since people tend to move at the end of the school year.” There was a slight pause. “How are you holding up otherwise?”

  “Fine,” Eva said. “I’m working on a new project.”

  “That’s great! They’re paying you, I hope?”

  “That’s the general idea.”

  “I’m glad. You’re too talented to be giving your work away. I’ve been talking you up to everyone I know, so hopefully you’ll continue to get more business.”

  It certainly wouldn’t hurt, Eva thought after hanging up. But until that happened, she needed to co
ncentrate on the business she had. Pulling out a fresh sheet of paper, she went back to work.

  Chapter 4

  Dr. Goodman looked up from Eva’s chart when she asked for STD testing. She’d been coming to him for over fifteen years, ever since moving to LA from the Valley to attend college. He’d seen Eva through the few boyfriends she’d had before Roger, done her pap smears, delivered her son. This was her first visit back since Roger had gotten ill, and she’d put it off long enough.

  There was nothing for her to feel embarrassed about. Roger’s choices were not her fault, she knew that. Yet sitting on the exam table in her thin paper gown, in a room decorated with cheerful Norman Rockwell prints, she couldn’t help the flush of color that suffused her cheeks.

  “Why don’t you get dressed,” Dr. Goldman said, clicking his pen closed, and moving toward the door. “We’ll talk in my office.”

  Diplomas and certificates crowded the walls, framing a massive bookcase jammed with texts and piles of journals. She took one of the chairs facing the paper-strewn desk.

  “So,” Dr. Goldman said. “Are we talking routine screening before you re-enter the dating world, or are you worried about something in particular?”

  She smoothed out a wrinkle on her skirt. “I don’t know.”

  She’d resigned herself to the fact that she would never know. All she could do was move forward, look at this as one more thing to take care of on an ever-growing list.

  “Have you had any unusual discharge or burning with urination?”

  “No.”

  “How about any lesions down below? Fevers? Rash? Anything?”

  She shook her head. That was at least something to be grateful for.

  “And you’ve had all three Hepatitis B shots, right?”

  “I think so. Going into college.”

  He nodded and started ticking things off on a requisition form. “We can do the HPV—human papilloma virus—test off of your pap. Gonorrhea and chlamydia too. For HIV and syphilis we’ll need to do a blood draw.”