by Jane Porter
Hanging up, I tap my phone against my chest. Need money. Need money. Need money.
I glance out the window. It’s starting to rain. Again. Please God don’t make me have to trick-or-treat in the rain.
I end up taking the girls trick-or-treating in the rain.
In ten years of being a mom, I’ve never had to escort them on my own. Nathan’s always been there, and sometimes we’ve gone with other families so it’s like a big party wandering down the street, house to house, door to door.
Tonight it’s no party. It’s cold and drizzly. The girls wear raincoats over their costumes and carry an umbrella to protect their candy. I carry an industrial-size flashlight as we trudge from house to house, the hems of my black cords getting wetter and wetter. I miss Nathan. I feel like half a person without him. I need him back so I can be myself again.
But as I stumble in a puddle I didn’t see, falling to the ground in an embarrassing heap, another thought hits me.
If he doesn’t come back, if he doesn’t want me back, what will happen to me?
What will I do?
More important, who will I be?
Chapter Fourteen
Nathan calls me Friday morning after the girls have gone to school.
He promises to deposit $100 in our account, but that’s all he can do. He’s paid bills and he doesn’t have anything, either, until his next paycheck in a week, but at least some of the creditors and collection agencies should be off our backs.
But that’s not the worst of his news. He’s removing himself from our joint checking account. He says it’s now my account for all my personal expenses, so I have to be careful, can’t spend very much, since he’s not making enough to support us both as he used to. However, he will have the COBRA payment moved to his account.
I listen as he talks, my brow wrinkling as I try to follow everything he’s saying. He’s talking fast, hard, as if he’s prepared a speech and is determined to get through it.
He’s been advised to file for legal separation but hasn’t yet. He says the advice was given to protect me and the girls; that way, the creditors would go after him in the future. Of course, the banks would view our past debt as a joint responsibility, but he’s determined to take care of it as he’s head of the household and the breadwinner.
I close my eyes, listening hard.
The sale of the house will reduce most of our debt, but some miscellaneous bills will still come in, and he’ll take care of the ones he can. He knows he told me I shouldn’t get a job but thinks now I should look for something, even if it’s just part-time. He also reminds me that the girls and I have to move by November 29, just days after Thanksgiving. I’ll need to be prepared. Have I started looking for a new place yet? Do I need him to fly out and apartment hunt with us, or is this something I can take care of on my own?
As he keeps talking, I sink onto the side of the bed and then slowly, numbly, lie back. I stare at the ceiling as his voice washes over me in unrelenting waves.
He’s divorcing me.
He just hasn’t said it yet.
Saturday I wake up to high, thin clouds and hints of blue sky. Maybe, just maybe, it’ll be a nice day.
And then I remember.
Nathan needs to put money into our—my—checking account, but he probably hasn’t been able to do it yet. He’s been advised to file for a legal separation but fortunately hasn’t done that, either. He’s promised to send us what he can, but there isn’t much; he’s not making what he’d expected, as apparently the company is giving an end-of-year bonus instead of a bonus up front.
Last night I was too shocked to cry. This morning I’m still numb, but I’m also getting angry.
I have three children. We have three children. What are we supposed to do? How could he go work for a company that refuses to pay what they initially offered? Why doesn’t he just come home and look for a job here?
Tears start up in my eyes, but I refuse to give in to them. I’m tired of feeling bad. Tired of feeling bad about myself. Maybe I do have a spending problem, an impulse control problem, but I’m not a destructive person. I’m not a cruel person. I care about others. I try to help others. I really do.
Furiously, I rub at my eyes and then climb out of bed to splash cold water on my face. I am not going to cry. I am not going to fall apart.
I scrape my hair back and put on my pink Juicy sweats to head downstairs, where I discover the girls eating candy straight from their treat buckets. Butterfinger and Milky Way wrappers litter the floor. I love those candy bars, too. Also Baby Ruth, Snickers, Kit Kat, Reese’s. In fact, if I had a bucket of candy, I’d be eating all of it right now.
Of course, I don’t tell them that. I don’t want them to end up like me. “Girls, candy for breakfast? Absolutely not. Give me your treat buckets. I’m putting them away.”
Tori moves to give me her basket, but not before she sticks another fat Tootsie Roll in her mouth.
“Jemma? Brooke?” I extend my hand impatiently. “Come on, hand them over or I’ll throw it all away.”
“But there’s nothing else to eat, Mom,” Jemma answers, licking melted chocolate off her fingertips. “We’re out of bread, and you don’t buy Pop-Tarts anymore.”
I pinch the tight muscles in my shoulders. Lord, I need coffee bad. “What’s wrong with cereal?”
Brooke rises to give me her treat bucket. “We don’t have any milk.”
“We have milk. We always have milk.” I open the fridge and reach in for the organic 1 percent milk carton, but as I lift it, it’s so light that I know it’s empty. Heart falling, temper rising, I turn to face the girls. “Who left an empty carton in the fridge?”
The girls just stare at me.
“Well, someone did.”
The girls just stare at me some more.
“Well?” I wait, hand on my hip. “Annika wasn’t here, so you can’t blame her.”
Jemma closes her eyes. “I did. I drank it. I was thirsty this morning. Okay?”
Okay, one mystery solved. I toss the carton. “Why didn’t you just throw it away?”
She opens her eyes a little and peeks at me. “Because I didn’t want you mad.”
“Why would I be mad?”
The girls wiggle a little on the floor. None of them says anything. Now I am mad. “Well?”
“Because you have no money,” Brooke whispers. “I heard you on the phone yesterday talking to Dad. You said we have no money and you don’t know what we’re going to do.”
I sit on one of the miserably uncomfortable counter stools, the wrought-iron back digging into my skin. The girls look at me and wait. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say next. Do I reassure them? Do I fib? Do I tell the truth that we’re beyond broke?
“Money’s tight right now,” I finally say. “Even though Daddy’s working in Omaha, we have a lot of bills. We owe a lot of people money.”
“We’re poor?” Jemma asks, incredulous.
I grimace. “We’re not rich.”
Jemma’s expression changes. “That’s why we’re selling the house. It’s not because Dad’s in Omaha. It’s because we’re broke.”
My shoulders lift and fall.
“How did we go broke?” Brooke asks, scooping her crumpled wrappers into her fists.
Again I wonder what to tell them. I wonder what explanation would make the most sense. After a long moment, I take a breath and say, “We spent too much money. We bought too many things.”
Brooke’s gaze meets mine. “So let’s sell them.”
“I wish.”
Jemma sits up on her knees. “We can do it on eBay.”
I’d laugh if I weren’t so damn tired. “I don’t know anything about eBay. I’ve never bought anything on eBay before—”
“That’s not true. You got that Barbie thing for Tori last year on eBay. You know, when you couldn’t get it at Toys R Us.”
“Yes,” I agree, “but that was a onetime thing, and it’s different buying something than se
lling. We’d have to list stuff and have people try to bid and send us money, and I don’t know how, and right now, I can’t deal with one more thing that I don’t know how to do.”
Everyone’s quiet a minute. Jemma’s looking around the kitchen and family room. “What would we sell if we could?”
“Toys,” Brooke says. “I have lots of toys I don’t play with. And our old bikes. We were going to trade them in, but we never did.”
We do have things we don’t use. We have closets of things we don’t need. And there’s an easier way than eBay. It’s called the good old-fashioned yard sale.
My family used to have them when I was a kid. It humiliated me, putting our old worn things out there on a table for everyone to look through and paw at. The girls have asked if we could have a garage sale of our own, but I always refused. But it’s different now. I’m not so proud. And I really do need the cash.
“We could have a yard sale,” I say even as I mentally work out the logistics.
“When?” the girls demand.
I shrug. “We’d need to plan and post signs and put an ad in the paper. . . . Maybe next week?”
“No. Today.” Jemma nods at the window. “It’s nice today, Mom. Let’s just make some signs now. I can go tape them up on the street. We can pull out the folding tables from the garage and just do it. Whatever we don’t sell today, we’ll sell tomorrow.”
No, it’s too soon. I can’t imagine organizing and setting up a garage sale today. It’s already nearly eight-thirty.
“We should really organize it right,” I protest. “Get an ad in the paper—”
“An ad costs money,” Jemma answers crisply. “We don’t have money. Besides, people love going to garage sales, especially where we live. All we have to do is put a sign near the freeway off-ramp, and another one on the corner of Twenty-fourth and Ninety-second by the school, and everyone will come.”
It’s true. I don’t have money. Not even $20 to my name.
“You think we can do this?” I ask. “Find stuff, set things up, make signs?”
They all nod.
“Okay. Bring me your treasures. Anything you’re able and willing to part with, because if it sells, it’s gone. It’s not coming back.”
They’re on their feet and dashing up the stairs.
I make coffee and then head to the garage, open up all three car bays, and walk the perimeter, taking in everything we’ve got hidden in there. Three framed paintings lean against a wall. A Queen Anne armchair with a faded 1980s chintz fabric. I bought it two years ago at an estate sale and planned to reupholster it for Tori’s room, but I’ve done nothing with it. Baskets of dusty silk flowers. An ornate wood birdcage. A rather bizarre bronze sculpture Nathan won at an auction. A box of outgrown girl clothes I was saving for Goodwill. A bag of my shoes I was going to give to Goodwill, too. Two boxes of books. Another box of mismatched kitchen pots and pans that I don’t use because I use only Le Creuset now. And this isn’t even counting the practically new clothes in my closet that I don’t wear and probably won’t ever wear.
So we do have stuff. A lot of stuff.
We can do this.
Seven and a half hours later, my feet are killing me, but our garage is cleaned out and the long tables in the driveway are virtually empty, too. You would have thought we were having a carnival instead of a yard sale. The girls sold cups of hot instant cider and brownies they whipped up while I was pricing everything outside.
They taped little balloons to the street signs and used bright orange and purple and red tempera paint from the art cupboard to make a WELCOME poster for the driveway. Jemma proved particularly creative and industrious, freehand drawing other signs that read BESTSELLING BOOKS!, STYLISH SHOES!, RARE ART!, KITCHEN DEALS!
She labored over every display, deliberating over the right colored tablecloth for each card table before arranging the display items on top. “We want it to look fun,” she said to me. “If it looks fun, people will buy more.”
I looked at my eldest daughter with a mixture of pride and wonder. I knew she loved to shop—we’d always enjoyed shopping together—but I had no idea she understood the retail side of things so well.
By dusk when we were finally forced to wrap up our day, we’d made some good money, too. I’m astonished by the cash in the little metal box I carry into the kitchen.
Over $2,000.
I count it again: $2,401.
The bizarre bronze sculpture ended up bringing in the most. Turned out it was a collectible piece, and someone handed me $400 for it, and then after I’d tucked the money in the cash box, he went on to tell me its value was ten times what he’d offered me.
I tried not to dwell on his good fortune as the other items sold.
The stuffed armchair went for nearly $300. The paintings brought in anywhere from $75 to $150 each. The bikes the girls had outgrown went for $15, $20, and $22. My shoes were popular items, each pair flying off the table for $25 a pop. Fifteen pairs of shoes times $25 equals $375—what I used to pay for a brand-new pair of shoes, but no matter. Can’t look back, can only go forward.
After counting the money a third time, I give each of the girls $10. They want more, but I tell them if I give more, we won’t have money for milk and food. Ten seems like a lot to them after that.
As I fall asleep that night, my body aches from all the lifting and hauling I did all day, but I also feel strangely peaceful. I did something good today. I did something positive. I’ll be able to pay for groceries and child care this next week, and I did it without Nathan’s help. I did it without his support. I did it by working with the girls.
We’re going to be okay.
The girls and I will find a way.
Turning on my side, I smash my pillow up against my cheek. Now all I need is a job. And I swear I’m getting one this week, because if I don’t, I’m going to end up hawking everything else I own.
Monday morning while I’m driving Tori to preschool, the Windemere real estate sign goes up in front of the house. I didn’t know there was a sign up until I get a call from my neighbor.
I phone Art right away, ask him why we have a sign up when the house has already been sold. “You want to market the house until the escrow closes,” he explains patiently. “It protects you.”
By Monday afternoon I’ve had a dozen calls asking if it’s true we’re moving. I don’t even bother to answer after the third call, letting them go straight into voice mail. It’s hard enough putting the house on the market without having to explain it to all the neighbors.
With dinner in the oven, I sit at the computer and go through my e-mail, checking to see if anyone has responded to my job applications. I’ve mailed nearly fifteen résumés now. Followed up with phone calls. Someone has to have something for me. I’m not stupid. I work hard. I’d be an asset for the right company.
Tonight my persistence is finally rewarded. I have an e-mail. It’s from the employment agency I interviewed with a month ago. They might have something that would be a good fit for me, but the interviews are tomorrow and only tomorrow. There is an eleven-thirty time slot open and a twelve-fifteen. The interview will be in the conference room at the downtown Bellevue’s Barnes & Noble Starbucks. If I can make it, I need to confirm tonight so they can get my résumé over before the interviews begin tomorrow.
My fingers are trembling as I type a hasty reply. Yes, I can be there. Eleven-thirty is perfect.
I dress carefully for the interview, pairing a slim black pencil skirt with a very chic crisp pale pink Chanel blouse. I wear skin-tone hose and sleek black pumps and pull my hair back in a smooth low ponytail. With pink pearls at my ears and throat, I hope I look smart enough, sophisticated enough, and successful enough to win over the interviewer.
I take one of Nathan’s slim black Tumi leather folders and slide another copy of my résumé inside the left pocket, check to make sure the top sheet of the lined notebook on the right side is crisp and clean. I put a slim gold pen in the pen spot.
There’s nothing else I can do but go.
I’m nervous as I leave home, my stomach one big ball of butterflies. I get there twenty minutes early. I don’t need another cup of coffee, so I order an herbal tea, something minty to soothe my nerves.
After a few minutes the door opens and a young woman walks out. She’s dressed in a fashionable gray wool suit with a matching vest—no blouse, I notice—and wide trouser legs, very high heels. She’s wearing strands of amber beads at her throat and is carrying a sharp lime green faux (I think it’s faux) crocodile tote.
She breezes past me, all business and confidence. As I stand there, my hand trembles ever so slightly. I’ve got to be a good ten years older than this thin, tan, strawberry blond girl. Ten years older and yet a whole life apart in heartache.
I never thought I’d be back out here, job hunting, at least not hunting for a job that would actually pay the bills. I thought anything I did from now on would be artistic. Interesting. Something I did out of personal curiosity instead of financial need.
The door to the conference room remains open, and with a glance at my watch I see it’s eleven-thirty now. Taking a deep breath, I head for the conference room, determined just to get the interview done and out of the way.
I’m shocked when I enter through the open door and spot Marta Zinsser sitting behind the conference table, a notebook on the table along with a pen and her cell phone.
I very nearly walk out.
“Hi,” Marta says with a smile that’s more professional than warm. She’s actually dressed up today, wearing a St. John type of suit with a mandarin collar in cream.
“You’re the one hiring?”
“Yes.”
I stand in the doorway, my slim leather portfolio clutched to my chest, and I feel beyond foolish. I’m absurd. “I didn’t know.”