Breaking the Bank

by Yona Zeldis McDonough

  BREAKING THE BANK

  BREAKING THE BANK

  YONA ZELDIS MCDONOUGH

  DOWNTOWN PRESS

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  Downtown Press

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2009 by Yona Zeldis McDonough

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  First Downtown Press trade paperback edition September 2009

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  Manufactured in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  McDonough, Yona Zeldis.

  Breaking the bank / Yona Zeldis McDonough.—1st Downtown Press trade paperback ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Single mothers—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 2. Life change events— Fiction. 3. Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3613.C39B74 2009 813’.6—dc22 2008051085

  ISBN 978-1-4391-0253-4

  ISBN 978-1-4391-2699-8 (ebook)

  For Sally Schloss,

  who believed in the magic from the very start

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For the abundantly generous ways in which they listened, shaped, and counseled, I would like to thank: Pamela Brandt, Anne Burt, Catherine DuBois Fincke, Bonnie Friedman, Patricia Grossman, Amy Koppleman, Eric Marcus, Constance Marks, Gina Nahai, Jane O’Connor, Kyle Reeves, Kathy Sagan, Pamela Redmond Satran, Sue Shapiro, Adrienne Sharp, Ken Silver, Nina Solomon, Marian Thurm, and David Zeldis. Special thanks, too, to my smart, funny, and deeply devoted editor, Abby Zidle, her assistant, Danielle Poiesz, and my incomparable agent, Judith Ehrlich.

  Money doesn’t talk, it swears.

  —Bob Dylan

  Money talks, all right. It says good-bye.

  —Richard Russo

  ONE

  MIA SAUL WAS late—again. She raced down the stairs of the subway station, an overstuffed canvas bag of produce hauled from the greenmarket thumping uncomfortably against her hip. Just as she reached the platform, which, despite the pleasant coolness of the September day, still held the wretched August heat, not one but two trains—the N express and the R local—pulled out simultaneously. Mia watched the retreating red lights and wanted to cry. This was the third time in a week she would be late picking up her daughter, Eden, from afterschool, the third time she would have to contend with the teacher, who would no doubt charge her the fee no matter how profuse her apology, the third time she would have to face her sullen child, standing outside the double doors of the gym and dragging the toe of her new forty-dollar Converse high-tops across the pavement in furious, stabbing lines.

  However, instead of crying, Mia pulled an apple from the bag and, after giving it a surreptitious wipe on the front of her shirt, took a big, noisy bite. A woman standing nearby turned to look, and Mia, embarrassed, stepped away, making sure that her next bite was not so loud. She hadn’t eaten lunch, and she was ravenous. She consumed the apple in tiny, fastidious mouthfuls, not only because she wanted to be quiet, but also to make the fruit last. The organic Macouns, the pear cider, the goat cheese, and the tangy cheddar in her bag were really too expensive for her budget these days, but were purchased in the hopes of getting Eden to eat. Eden’s eating was just one more thing Mia had to worry about. As of June, Eden had stopped eating meat or poultry of any kind, and just last week she announced that fish was off her list, too. Rather than engage in yet one more battle, Mia had chosen to pursue a tack of enticement and temptation. She figured she had to try—for all she knew, next month Eden would eschew dairy products, too.

  Finally, an R train rumbled in and Mia worked her way through the throng so that she was right in front of the double doors when they slid open. Good thing, too—some of the people waiting behind her didn’t get to board before the doors closed and the train began its journey to Brooklyn. Twenty-five minutes later, Mia was bounding up the staircase at the Union Street station.

  It was ten past six when Mia turned the corner onto First Street. As she anticipated, Eden was waiting outside with a lone teacher who was checking her watch, probably not for the first time, either. But the thing Mia did not, could not, anticipate was the fact that Eden’s hair, or rather half of it, had been hacked off, as if by an inept scalper who had suddenly lost his nerve. On the left was the braid that Mia remembered her daughter plaiting this morning; on the right, an angry bristle, scarcely more than an inch long.

  “Who did that to you?” Mia burst out. “I’ll have them expelled.” She put the bag down, panting with an ugly combination of exertion, stress, and shock.

  “Eden’s teacher tried calling—” began the woman whose name Mia could not recall.

  “So why didn’t you reach me?” But even as she spat the words, Mia remembered that she had turned off her cell phone during an editorial meeting and neglected to turn it back on later.

  “I know they left messages,” the woman continued. “At least two.” She glanced over to Eden, who had so far not said anything. “Why don’t I let Eden tell you what happened.” She turned to Eden and waited. Still nothing. “Eden,” she began again, in a cloyingly sweet voice. “Eden, we’re waiting.”

  “No one did it to me,” said Eden, sounding too jaded for someone who had only recently entered the double digits. “I did it myself.”

  “You cut half your hair off? Why?” All of Mia’s righteous, maternal indignation evaporated in an instant, leaving her drained and reeling.

  “It was in art class. We were doing self-portraits, and they were all so boring. I wanted mine to be different. Interesting.”

  “So you had to cut your hair?”

  “Well, you wouldn’t let me get a nose ring.” She waited a beat and then asked, “Would you?”

  The teacher, whose name simply would not coalesce in Mia’s mind, cleared her throat discreetly before speaking.

  “We thought that it might be a good idea for the two of you to see Ms. Jaglow. You can call tomorrow to make an appointment . . .”

  Ms. Jaglow was the school psychologist. Although it was only the end of September, Mia had already met with Eden’s teacher, the principal, and the learning specialist whose job it was to diagnose kids who had what were euphemistically called “special needs.” Special, my ass, thought Mia, the first time she had heard the term applied to funny, brilliant, and, she had to admit, increasingly weird Eden. They don’t mean special. They mean nuts.

  “Yes, of course, I’ll call her first thing in the morning,” Mia said now, deciding that what she needed to do was get Eden home, away from this woman, to have whatever conversation they were going to have in private.

  “Good; I’ll tell her she can expect to hear from you,” said the teacher, who glan
ced at her watch a final time. Mia knew that this meant she would be charged the late fee for the day, but she was too upset and too exhausted to plead. She touched Eden on the shoulder; Eden readjusted her backpack slightly and they began the short walk home.

  Mia sent several covert, searching looks Eden’s way, but Eden steadfastly ignored her and kept her eyes straight ahead. Mia felt tears begin a nasty, hot trail down her cheeks, and she turned her face away. She wished she could talk to Lloyd about all this. Lloyd was her best friend/lover/soul mate/husband. And now ex. He was big—six feet four, size fourteen shoes. Big hands, big jaw, big nose arching proudly over a big, handsome face. Oh, and big dick, too, though it mattered way more to him than to her. They had been together since college; Mia thought that they would be together forever. Wrong. The signs had been there for a while; she had just been idiotically slow about reading them.

  Lloyd made documentaries about premodern workers in a postmodern world. He followed postmen, hospital orderlies, and grave diggers throughout their days, finding the hidden poetry in the mundane. He made a film about a man who owned a shoe-repair place tucked in an arcade at the Thirty-fourth Street subway station, another about the woman who sold empanadas on a street corner in Spanish Harlem.

  His last project had been about the Asian women who worked in the nail salons all over the city. Bits and pieces of their stories came glinting into his conversation: one had come from Vietnam at the age of twelve; another had perfected the painting of minuscule lilies on individual nails. Mia had not been paying attention, or she would have noticed that one name, Suim, kept cropping up. Suim this. Suim that.

  Lloyd left her for Suim—blubbering noisily as he said good-bye— maintaining he couldn’t help himself, he loved Suim beyond words, beyond measure, and that if he stayed with Mia, he’d be living a lie. Instead, he had chosen to live in Queens with Suim, and he actually thought Mia should be happy for him because he had found this unexpected gift, this enduring, monumental, deathless love, when he was still young enough to appreciate it. That was Lloyd all right, so thoroughly enamored of the worthiness of his own desires. So authentic, so passionate in his own adoring eyes. So goddamn big.

  Once a week he came to pick up Eden, and though he could be generous, even lavish with her during these visits, he was spotty about child support, claiming that he didn’t have the money, he’d get the money, please, please, please, could she not make everything about the money? Eden returned from these weekends with tales of the fancy restaurant in Manhattan where they had eaten crepes oozing with chocolate and apricot jam, or clasping a bag from Barneys—Barneys! A place Mia wouldn’t even walk past, much less actually shop in— filled with fanciful, impractical clothes. Mia felt sick when she thought about the black hand-knit sweater with the marabou collar that Eden adored—and lost the very first time she wore it. Or the long, pleated silk skirt, winking with tiny mirrors, that was useless at school, on the playground, or just about anywhere else that Eden actually went.

  “Take her to Target and give me the rest for groceries!” she begged Lloyd when he dropped Eden off, this time with a stuffed toy giraffe that was taller than she was.

  “There’s no magic at Target, Mia,” Lloyd said; his condescension dripped like honey.

  “She needs new underwear, not magic,” Mia said.

  “Were you always so humdrum?” asked Lloyd.

  Humdrum pays the bills, she wanted to say. But when they quarreled, Eden would get very quiet and start twisting a piece of her own skin— elbow, cheek, thigh—until it turned pink and eventually blue, so with great effort, Mia controlled herself.

  Then quite abruptly, Lloyd decided to pick up and travel with Suim to Asia; he would not say how long he planned to be gone. At first, he was good about staying in touch, showering Eden with postcards, with gifts: a red lacquer box, an expensive-looking doll with a parasol, an enormous fan. But after a couple of months, nothing— not a word, not a forwarding address. Eden was alternately furious and weepy; Mia was sure part of her daughter’s behavior was linked to Lloyd’s disappearance, and she planned to mention this to the psychologist tomorrow.

  MIA RUMMAGED IN her bag for her key. Their building was right on Fourth Avenue, a cheerless corridor filled with auto-body shops, car washes, and discount beverage warehouses. Traffic whizzed by all day and night; the multilane thoroughfare was bisected by narrow, weed-infested islands littered with broken glass, flattened beer cans, and used condoms. But Fourth Avenue was changing and the rising hulks of big new buildings—co-ops, condos—were crowding the sidewalks, grabbing at the sky. These behemoths boasted pools and gyms, parking garages and doormen. None of this would help Mia and Eden; in fact, apartment buildings like theirs would soon fall prey to the renovators or the wrecking ball. Then Mia and Eden would be priced out of even this marginal neighborhood.

  The building itself—red brick, lighter brick trim, heavy glass doors enhanced by decorative black iron scrolls—was not without a certain faded elegance. Once inside the lobby, though, the desolation and deterioration were evident: the terrazzo floors were cracked and the Art Deco bas-reliefs on the walls were stained and peeling. One wall was overpowered by peel-and-stick mirrored tiles that were glued, inexplicably, to two-thirds of its surface, and the space was filled with a varying assortment of cast-off furniture that seemed to change monthly: a red velvet sofa spilling its upholstered guts, a scarred coffee table of some obsidian-like substance, a pair of office chairs in cracked turquoise vinyl.

  Because the elevator had been broken for weeks, Mia and Eden climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. They passed the apartment of their across-the-hall neighbor, Manny, a tough Hispanic guy of about twenty-five. Mia did not know his last name; on his buzzer were the words Cloud Nine. He had decorated the had-to-cost-a-thousand-dollars steel door he’d installed with puffy, spray-painted clouds in shades of pink, baby blue, and yellow. People showed up at all hours of the night looking for him; Mia knew this because if he did not answer, they rang her bell instead.

  “Where is he?” they implored. “I gotta see him now.” Mia was sorry for these lost souls, but there was nothing she could do.

  Directly next door lived Mr. Ortiz, a widower with a pair of fat, white, soiled-looking Pomeranians. Even Eden, confirmed dog lover that she was, could not abide the obese, wheezing creatures and shrank back whenever she saw them. Mr. Ortiz walked stiffly and with difficulty. Ever since the problem with the elevator began, he had taken to opening his door and letting the dogs do their business in the hallway, much to the annoyance of the other tenants, especially Manny.

  “Your dog shits here again and I break his snout,” he snarled one day in Mia and Eden’s hearing. “You get that, Ortiz?”

  “I am so sorry, Señor Manny,” said Mr. Ortiz. His gnarled hands were clasped, and his furrowed forehead shone. “My knees—” He gestured in their direction. “Terrible, terrible. I can’t make it down the stairs.” The dogs, sensing his distress, circled anxiously. “They’re all I have.”

  “Well, pretty soon you’re not gonna have them. I’m tired of living with the stench.” He stared into the face of one of the dogs, which had come close to where he stood.

  “What are you looking at?” he said. In response, the dog uncoiled its long pink tongue to lick his shoe.

  “Jesus H. Christ, Ortiz,” said Manny. “Keep that mutt away from me.” He yanked on the steel door, which emitted a percussive sound as it crashed shut.

  Fortunately, Manny, Mr. Ortiz, and the dogs were not in evidence today. Eden dumped her backpack on the floor just inside their apartment door, pried off her sneakers, and headed for the tiny alcove off the kitchen that constituted her bedroom.

  “Hey, where do you think you’re going?” called Mia to her retreating back.

  “Later, Mom,” she said in that irritating, condescending tone she had lately begun to adopt.

  “Not later. Now.” Mia’s voice was louder and sharper than she meant. But then, this kid could real
ly take it out of her. Eden stopped, and Mia pressed her advantage. “I want an explanation.”

  “For what?” Eden turned to face her.

  “What do you mean, for what? Your hair, Eden.”

  “I told you already: I was bored.”

  “That’s not an answer, that’s—” Mia began, but then the sound of voices—one angry, the other pleading—in the hallway stopped her midsentence. Even though she knew she shouldn’t, she went to the door to listen. Eden was right behind her.

  “I thought I told you to keep those goddamn dogs out of the hallway. Enough is enough. I just stepped in it, man. Do you get it? I stepped in your dog’s shit!” Manny’s voice was loud enough to be heard even without Mia’s opening the door.

  “Señor Manny, I am so, so sorry,” Mr. Ortiz said. “I was just going into the apartment for a paper towel; I was coming right back—”

  “I warned you, Ortiz,” interrupted Manny. “I warned you more than once. Now the warnings are over, man. Over.”

  “Señor Manny, no, please, please no!” Mr. Ortiz said. “I’ll clean your shoe myself, I promise. Here, just give it to me and I’ll be happy to—”

  There was a sudden, excruciating yelp and then the sound of the steel door slamming. Mia and Eden looked at each other and then, very cautiously, Mia opened her own door a crack. Mr. Ortiz was bent over the body of one of the dogs; its small, white head bloomed with blood. The other dog whimpered pitifully. Quickly, Mia closed the door.

  What to do? Go out and confront Manny? Comfort Mr. Ortiz? Call the ASPCA? Before she could figure out a plan, she looked at Eden, in whose eyes tears were pooled, and everything else stopped for a second.

  “Did he kill it?” Eden asked in a small voice.

  “I don’t know,” Mia said, encircling Eden’s shoulders with her arm. Close up, Eden’s hacked hair looked like feathers. Mia wished she could burrow her face in it, but Eden had recently become skittish about displays of affection, so Mia reluctantly kept her distance. Mia no longer had the interest or energy to discuss Eden’s hair. There would be plenty of time for that tomorrow, when she called the teacher and the psychologist.