She e-signed the document and saved it in her important files, which Mandy knew the password to.
A sudden thought occurred to her. The news always portrayed Social Security as a meager shadow of its former self, but she logged into the Social Security website anyway to see if Mandy would qualify for survivorship benefits.
The website called up her work history, and she confirmed it. Then she entered Mandy’s information: A non-minor. Dependent. Enrolled in job training. Sole survivor. No other forms of income.
The website calculated.
Available benefit: ninety-seven cents per month.
Helen felt anger rise, and she let out a long, slow breath. Getting angry never helped.
But without the anger, only a sense of helplessness remained.
She looked around her.
The shabby office with blank, dingy walls. Everyone else just scraping by, same as her, in their thrift-store clothes and home-done haircuts—lucky enough not to live in sleep lockers, but not lucky enough for college tuition or health insurance.
She closed the files and folders. She would try to lose herself in her work, as she always did. Her work and Mandy were the two things that kept her going. Never mind that both felt like exercises in futility much of the time.
She reviewed the script and pulled her office phone closer, and her voice joined that of her coworkers.
“Good morning, I’m calling on behalf of Justice for All. We’re calling today to collect signatures on an important—”
Click.
She tapped “Hang-up by recipient” and went to the next number.
“—collecting signatures on an important measure affecting our community’s children. Did you know—”
Click.
She tapped “Hang-up” again and dialed again.
“—that since public schools can no longer accommodate the number of children we have and children are now permitted to work at the age of fourteen, if a child is neither working nor in school, he or she is subject to arrest for truancy?”
“Well, fine.” This from a gruff older man. “If a kid isn’t working or in school, they ought to be arrested. What are they doing for society?”
“With the unemployment rate among young Americans at thirty-eight percent, it’s virtually—”
“There’s plenty of work to be done for those who want to do it. I’m not signing anything.” Click.
She looked up at the ceiling—a habitual gesture of frustration, although she realized she didn’t feel frustrated. Perhaps her state of denial and shock was useful for phone banking. It overrode the anger and anxiety.
“—virtually impossible for children who can’t find space in schools to avoid truancy. Did you know that fifteen percent of the incarcerated are now children as young as fourteen?”
“Well, what are you proposing to do about it?” This from a lady with a vaguely Asian accent.
“We’d like to put a referendum on the ballot for the next election that—”
Derisive laughter. “Nobody votes anymore. Don’t waste your time.” Click.
“—next election that would make it illegal to put children in prison for nonviolent offenses. It—”
A middle-aged woman. “Well, where else are you going to put them? If they can’t be in school and can’t find work? They can’t just run around in the streets and make gangs. That’s what they’ll do. They’ll make gangs. Orlando will be even more dangerous than it already is.”
Helen counted to five. “Do you think a prison is the best place for a child to grow up?”
Click.
The anger was making a dent in the denial after all.
Helen abruptly stood. She didn’t need to use the restroom, but she went there just to get out of her office for a moment.
She found herself looking at her face in the mirror. She thought about everything she could see on that face. Raising Mandy, David’s depression, the divorce, David’s death, the relentless struggle. Everything showed up in the cast of her lips, the furrow between her eyebrows, the shadows under her eyes, the pallor of her skin. She looked as old as she felt, and she felt old.
The person in the mirror was going to die.
Within forty-five days. No, forty-four now.
It couldn’t be real.
She pulled out the locket and looked again at the black pill.
Death will be painless. Please notify your next of kin.
She had no next of kin except Mandy. Her parents died in a bombing almost twelve years ago, and she had no aunts or uncles or siblings. No one but Mandy.
She couldn’t fathom telling her daughter yet. Not yet.
She went back out to her desk and sat down. The next phone number waited for her.
Forty-four days.
She sat there while the minutes ticked away, her head tilted as if she could hear them flying past.
For once in her adult life, she couldn’t seem to make herself do what needed to be done next.
You may choose to take your medication as soon as is convenient to minimize potential discomfort.
Her officemate across the way, a young slip of a girl named Julie, must have noted her stillness, because she glanced her way. Then she quickly looked back down at her own work.
Helen understood. This was the culture now. There was no sense getting into other people’s business. Human life just couldn’t be that important when there was such an excess of it. People were here today and gone tomorrow. Julie was already devoting her life’s work to doing good, and that was enough.
That was what Helen had told herself a lot of times too.
Helen looked at the next phone number waiting on the screen and realized she wasn’t going to call it. She was done.
She got up and went to her boss’s desk in the next room.
“Yeah, Helen?” Oliver swung his thick legs off his desk and straightened his heavy body with an effort. He gestured to the two chairs jammed in front of his desk. “Have a seat.”
“Can we go out into the hall?” Helen asked in a low voice.
Oliver’s eyes widened. No one asked that unless it was private and important. “Of course.”
He stood up and took his can of soda from his desk, and they went out. The others pretended not to watch them go.
They went into the building’s long hallway just outside their offices. They took up awkward positions nowhere in particular, but close to each other so they could lower their voices. The few working LED lights overhead cast ghostly light on their faces.
Helen’s heart beat faster.
“Oliver.”
What was she doing? Her hands were cold. She clasped them together.
“Go on. What is it?” Oliver took a swig of his soda.
“I…” She let out a breath. “I’m quitting. Right now. Today.”
Oliver choked and coughed. He took an old-fashioned white cloth handkerchief from his pocket to dab at his mouth and shirt. “What? You’re kidding me. You can’t quit. You’re the best one we’ve got. You pull the weight of three people.”
“Thanks, Oliver. But my mind is made up.”
“Why? Something going on? Some trouble?”
She couldn’t read whether he was genuinely concerned or just wanted to talk her out of leaving.
She debated whether to tell him. She wasn’t obligated to. But some part of her wanted to hear the words out loud.
She lowered her voice even further. “I’m dying… Of—a rare brain disease.” Needlessly, she added, “It’s terminal.”
“Oh.” Oliver looked disappointed. Perhaps it was the latter reason, then. He couldn’t talk her out of dying. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
She nodded.
“Well… ” Oliver pursed his lips as his mind worked to incorporate this news. “I guess it turns out you’ve devoted your entire life to nonprofit work. You told me that once, right? How many years with us? Ten, eleven? And another ten or fifteen before us, right? Congratulations on that. A life we
ll used.” He smiled encouragingly.
Helen didn’t say anything. She reminded herself that Oliver had gone through a lot before he started working at Justice for All, and he’d never re-learned how to connect emotionally with other people. At best, he could fake it.
“I’m sure you must be very proud of everything you’ve accomplished.” Oliver patted her shoulder awkwardly.
“Yes, thank you,” she said. But it was wooden. Everything she’d accomplished? How much was that, really?
“Do you want us to throw you a… I guess a going-away party?”
“No. Thanks. Look, I’m going today. I’m done today. I only have so many days left.”
Forty-four days.
“All right. Well, we’re sorry to lose you. And I mean that. With our budget as tight as it is, it’ll be hard to replace you.” His expression and voice grew funereal. “Do you want to tell the others?”
“No… I think I’ll just go. You can tell them after I leave. I don’t want to make it awkward for everyone.”
“I understand. I do. All right, well… best of luck!” He tried to smile encouragingly again.
Helen turned to walk back to the office door. Just as she reached for the doorknob, Oliver said, “Oh, wait, I almost forgot.” His face serious, he came to her. “Helen, I’m sorry, but you can’t quit today. I mean, tonight’s the big fundraiser in White Oaks. We get eight percent of our annual budget from this event, remember? We signed up for our table six months ago?”
Of course. It was one of their highest-dollar events. How could she have forgotten that she was supposed to work it tonight? Helen was not the sort of person who would forget such a thing.
Oliver continued, “I mean, I understand your time is limited, but you’re so good at getting donations… couldn’t you just…?”
Her shoulders sank. Leave it to Oliver to ask such a thing from a dying woman who’d already given this company eleven years of her life. But, why not. Why not, really. What else did she have to do tonight. “Of course. I’ll be there.”
He forced another smile. “Great! I knew I could count on you.” Then his face sobered again. “Do be careful. There are rumors about an attack being planned. Although, on the up side, I guess you don’t really have to worry about your safety anymore, right?” He tried to chuckle at his inane joke and patted her on the shoulder again. “Just make sure you get that eight percent.”
She couldn’t quite summon up an answering smile.
44 Days, 8 Hours
A few hours later, Helen stood in front of her draped table loaded with the Justice for All banners and pamphlets. Tables just like hers lined the immaculate wall of the vast circular ballroom, except for one alcove with a microphone. There was a balcony for the live band, which was just getting started. Twenty or more chandeliers shone down with subdued brilliance.
Men and women strode confidently into the elegant room, all of them dressed in formal attire. Jewelry glittered at the necks, wrists, and ears of both sexes.
At the center of the room, a massive ice sculpture depicted a man and a woman standing tall, their hands clasped and raised as if they’d won an Olympic medal. They’d won, all right, Helen thought bitterly—they’d been born into the right families.
In a circle around the statues stood tables of food and drink, with waitstaff behind them.
Helen glanced down and noticed with embarrassment that her cheap cotton slacks were pilled. And she remembered that she needed to trim her short haircut and re-cover the gray. She felt shabby and out of place. She looked around at her colleagues stationed at their respective tables—at least they looked just as bad.
Tonight’s event was an annual fundraiser in the White Oaks neighborhood, a gated, upscale area in the northwest portion of the city. Every year, the theme changed.
A portly, black-haired fellow with a too-large smile waved from across the room, gesturing to the charity employees to join him in a small, out-of-the-way cluster.
As Helen approached, he was introducing himself as the master of ceremonies. His mouth still stretched into a fake smile, he said, “I need to give you all a quick briefing, because things are a little different this year.” He explained that this year’s theme was called the Net Worth Notion—notion in the old-fashioned sense of a whimsical event—and that it was competitive. “This time each guest will choose just one organization to make a single donation to,” he announced cheerfully. “Isn’t that fun?”
At that news, the nonprofit employees looked at each other with resignation. It would be “fun” only for the guests. The employees knew it meant some of them would go back to work empty-handed this year. But they had no power over the rules of the game, so after the briefing, they got to work.
For her part, Helen came out from behind her table by a couple of feet and assertively engaged, with a well-practiced patter, any guest who made eye contact. Maybe Oliver didn’t have enough feeling left in him to know what an obnoxious request it had been, but she still wanted to do a good job for Justice for All here at the end.
The knowledge of her impending death disappeared into the background for now. She knew the stages of grief, and that she was probably in the denial stage, where a defense mechanism held reality at bay. She also knew it wouldn’t last.
Nearly an hour past the official start time, the MC stepped up to the mike in the alcove. “Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please.”
The people gradually grew quiet.
“I know you’re all wondering what the premise of tonight’s event is. And we’re ready to get started. The Net Worth Notion is this… As you already know, you were required to share your net worth with us in order to attend the event. And here’s why. Someone will need to start us off by agreeing to have his net worth revealed to the entire audience.”
An appreciate “oooooh” arose from the audience. Mock shock appeared on many faces.
“After that, only someone with a higher net worth can go next. So the game is to reveal your net worth if it is just slightly higher than the last fellow. By the end of the game, we will all know who has the highest net worth in the room—and what it is.”
Another appreciative “oooooh” arose.
Helen grimaced. So the whole point of this event was to compare bank accounts in a childish game of “mine’s bigger than yours.” She raised her chin, trying not to let her disgust show on her face.
“And of course, we each have to give a little something to charity, since that’s why we’re all here, right, folks? I mean, it’s not just for these amazing lobster rolls, am I right? Let’s give our chef a round of applause!”
The audience chuckled appreciatively and clapped.
“But don’t worry, we’re not going to make the charity part too hard on you folks. Each person who reveals their net worth will give .001%—that’s a thousandth of a percentage point, folks, so don’t panic—you actually can’t even miss it—given to the charitable organization of their choosing from the tables here.”
Polite applause.
Helen ground her teeth. He was barely even pretending that this event was about fundraising. And ninety-nine percent of the country was drowning in poverty.
“Don’t worry, with the power of compound interest, you’ll have made that donation back by the time you leave, just by standing around and breathing.”
More chuckles. A smattering of self-congratulatory applause. Helen groaned.
“Now, let’s start the excitement! Who wants to kick off the bidding? Remember, we want to start low so that the game can go on a long time. It’s more fun that way. Who thinks they’re the poorest one here?”
There was laughter, and several gorgeously-dressed people rushed the little stage, pretending they were certain they were the poorest present, then all stepped away again, laughing.
Helen’s stomach turned in revulsion. She looked over at her fellow nonprofit employees. They watched with the same blank, dead expression she felt on her own face.
It was a heady blend of ignorance and entitlement passed down in family traditions designed to protect them from the cold, hard reality that they were destroying the world for everyone else. They weren’t evil so much as they were weak. They didn’t deserve punishment—they just needed a cure.
Years ago, she’d started calling them the “Entitled” as a sort of shorthand, to remind herself not to hate them. Sometimes it worked.
Finally one young man called out, “I’m barely out of college, I’ve gotta be the poorest one. No shame in youth, now!” He waved to the MC, and the man nodded.
“Brave boy, Mr. Alvarez, brave boy! Good man! Mr. Alvarez is ready to reveal his net worth of… drum roll, please!” The group enthusiastically drummed on their thighs with their free hands.
“Mr. Alvarez…” He gestured dramatically to the wall next to him and the sum appeared, projected from some apparatus out of sight: twenty-one million dollars.
The crowd laughed and applauded and cheered.
“Oh, Mr. Alvarez, you were right. This is embarrassing.” The MC wiped his brow, pretending disappointment and disapproval. Everyone laughed. Someone threw a dinner roll at the MC. “What?” he protested. He pointed at Alvarez. “He’s the one who’s poor, not me!”
Mr. Alvarez laughed as color flushed his cheeks and his friends elbowed him teasingly.
“Mr. Alvarez, I see a lovely lady at your side. Miss, are you sure this is the one you want? Turns out he’s not such a prize after all.”
Her mouth opened wide in mirth. She grabbed Alvarez’s arm with a “Take him from me if you dare” attitude. The crowd ate it up.
“Mr. Alvarez, where do you choose to donate your paltry two thousand one hundred dollars?”
The Robin Hood Thief Page 3