W: The Planner, The Chosen

by Alexandra Swann

  Putting professional distance between Jim and her had improved their relationship quite a bit over the years. Underneath it all, though, they never resolved their basic issues—Jim always thought she was obnoxious and overbearing, and Kris always found her father hopelessly stubborn and lost in the past.

  The Cadillac was now parked in the Mitchells’ semi-circular stone driveway lined with blooming oleander. The bright green plants with their red, pink and white flowers thrive in the desert without much water, and the Mitchells had specifically chosen plants that could survive in the unforgiving Arizona heat. Spanish broom was blooming with bright sunshine yellow flowers on either side of the walk leading up to the double wooden doors with long oval glass insets. Kris rang the bell and waited for what seemed like a long time.

  “Hi!” Janine’s eyes lit up with happiness as she opened the door. “I didn’t know you were coming.” She gave Kris a hug, and Kris kissed her cheek before entering the foyer. An arrangement of fresh lilies decorated a round marble table in the entry way.

  “I had some time this weekend, and I just wanted to come out here to see you.”

  “You look so beautiful, Kris. How is everything?” her mother was always complimentary.

  “Thank you; everything is good. I got a new job…”

  “That’s great!” Janine knew that Kris had been searching for a job for the last two years and that she had sent out hundreds of resumes. “Where are you working?”

  “I got a federal job, actually. The pay is really good and the benefits are great. I am a Level I Planner for a new senior residential development program that the government is doing. I am responsible for recruitment and for acting as a liaison to resolve any problems that the new residents have with the community.”

  “That sounds like something you are perfect for. When do you start?”

  “We have been doing orientation and training for three weeks. We actually start the first of our town hall meetings this week to introduce the concept to seniors. It is very interesting, actually; potential residents are invited to an orientation, and then we go over the process and the program and sign them up.”

  “That is interesting. Your dad got a letter from Social Security this week telling us that there are going to be changes to the Social Security System and that we need to attend a meeting hosted by the Federal Municipal Planning Division to apprise us of the changes. He and I were just discussing this morning whether we need to actually go.”

  “Well you don’t,” Kris smiled. “The meeting’s come to you. I saw your name on the list, and I didn’t want you two to have to stand in line to get into a community center for a presentation that I would be giving anyway, so I thought I would drive out here and just tell you myself and answer any questions you have.”

  “I’ll tell you what. Dad just finished cleaning the grill so that we can fix some steaks. Come in here while I get the salad ready, and then you can tell us all about what you are up to.”

  The house seemed huge to Kris. She had only been in her new accommodations for a couple of weeks, but the house now looked like a palace. Even though she had spent countless hours in this kitchen helping her mother prepare food for holidays and celebrations, she now thought that the kitchen was enormous. The entire kitchen was bisque—all the cabinets, appliances and fixtures were the same glossy creamy shade which just matched the Italian marble floor. Everything sparkled. Kris thought how easily she had gotten accustomed to having no kitchen and how odd it felt to be in a real kitchen once again.

  Kris chopped vegetables while her mother washed lettuce. “Now that you have your new job are you still going to continue to try to sell the house?” her mother asked her.

  “Actually, the bank made that decision for me. They foreclosed on the house six months ago. I went by there a few weeks ago, and a new family was moving in. I guess they reduced the price enough to get it sold…I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t want to burden you. I know you’ve got problems of your own, and I did not want to weigh you down with mine.”

  “I’m so sorry, Kris. I wish so much that we could have done something to help you.”

  Kris shook her head. “No, even if everything had been different, I wouldn’t have let you. After Ben left, I decided that if I couldn’t make the payments on the house, the bank needed to take it, and in the end that’s what happened. The house and the mortgage were my responsibility—and Ben’s—and I wasn’t going to pawn this off on anybody else.” She paused, “The note to the house wasn’t even in my name. I was just on the deed. And there was no possible way that I could refinance it into my name after my income was gone—I certainly wasn’t going to borrow money to make the payments. I hated letting the house go—I hated it so much, but after I considered all of my options that was the only one that was realistic.”

  “Where are you living? You know you’re always welcome here; if your dad and I had known we would have taken his truck over to help you move.”

  “Thanks, Mom. I really do appreciate that. I was staying in a motel for a while,” Kris had never told her mother about Nick and was not about to now. “Actually a condition of my new job is that I live in housing that is assigned to me by the federal government.” The look on her mother’s face was surprise mingled with curiosity so Kris explained, “When I was hired, the Director explained that the FMPD is launching pilot housing programs. In order for us to work as Planners we are required to live in a Smart Community so that we can effectively explain the benefits of the program.”

  “That’s different. But I guess it’s convenient to have your housing furnished. Do you like it?”

  “Actually, I do. I wasn’t sure at first because I had my house for so many years, but it’s really convenient. My apartment is extremely small, but it’s fully furnished and brand new. It still smelled like paint when I moved in. The rent and the utilities are automatically deducted from my pay so I don’t have to worry about making sure that I have a check over there on time.

  “I don’t have to do anything—which is great. I don’t have to do any yard work because I don’t have a yard. We have a common area and the maintenance workers take care of it. I don’t have to do any maintenance to the apartment—if anything breaks I just call down to the main desk, and they send somebody to fix it.

  “I don’t clean anything—once a week a person from the cleaning crew comes in and cleans. I don’t do laundry—they provide us with a laundry bag, and we place whatever we want washed in the bag and leave it on the couch. They take care of everything.”

  “That actually does sound nice,” her mother returned, thinking about her own life filled with housework, cooking and laundry.

  “It really is. If you had asked me a year ago, ‘Is this what you want to do?’ I would have said, ‘No way’ but even though I’ve only been there a few days, I’m already getting spoiled. I don’t cook; my apartment doesn’t have kitchen facilities because cooking wastes food. Instead, we have a dining hall that prepares breakfast and dinner for us—if we are taking some personal time or if we will be home for some reason, we just put in a voucher for lunch, and that is prepared also. On weekends, lunch is always furnished.”

  “Is the food good?”

  “It’s pretty good. A nutritionist and a dietician prepare all of the menus so it is fully nutritionally balanced and very healthful. It’s semi-vegetarian—vegetarian lifestyles are better for the environment.”

  “Semi-vegetarian? What does that mean?”

  “It means that we have meat only once a week, and then it is a lean protein like chicken or fish. Dairy is also limited. The meals are heavy on grains and light on sugar and fats. But I don’t have to go grocery shopping. I don’t have to think about what I am going to cook when I get home. I don’t have to think about anything.”

  “Aren’t you afraid living alone?”

  “Not really. I lived alone for two years after Ben left”—she caught herself—“more actually. But this community is very se
cure. It’s gated and the gate can be accessed only by a scan of a resident’s palm print, so somebody who does not belong cannot get in. The main door to the building is also opened with a palm scan. It is just about impossible to get access unless you live in the community.”

  “Don’t you get lonely?”

  “Not really. I missed Ben so much when he left—we were together so long I just could not imagine life without him. But I have to tell you, there is something really great about being able to do what I want to do. I don’t have to pick up after anybody or clean up after anybody. I get up in the morning and go to the community gym and then I come back, take my shower, and leave for work. If I have to work late, I don’t have to call and explain why or hear the grumbles or complaints on the other end of the phone. I am enjoying this—it’s very freeing.”

  Kris kept chopping, and Janine waited to see if she would continue before she asked the obvious question, “Do you still hear from Ben?”

  “No, the last time I talked to Ben was when I got the foreclosure notice from the bank. I called him to tell him that I was six months behind on the payments and that the bank was about to foreclose. He actually answered the phone—I was shocked—and he proceeded to inform me that the house was no longer his problem. He said that he had moved to Florida and was a week away from getting married to a ‘hot sexy twenty-eight year old’, and I was going to have to figure things out for myself.”

  “I’d like to see her. What would a ‘hot sexy twenty-eight year old’ be doing with Ben?”

  “Apparently she’s the daughter of his new boss. He went to work doing promotions for some wealthy Cuban who owns nightclubs in Florida and a couple of small casinos in Nevada. Ben and the daughter hit it off right away and got married, I guess. I haven’t talked to him since then, but they were days away from tying the knot.”

  “Really,” her mother retorted. “That means that Ben’s next home will be the inside of an alligator after he pulls another one of his stunts and his new father-in-law hires somebody to kill him.”

  Kris had always resented her mother’s intense dislike of Ben, but this time she had to laugh. If she had been able to secure possession of an alligator, and had the means to capture Ben, she might have fed him to one of those monsters herself after he waltzed off and left her high and dry with no money and a house payment she couldn’t afford to face the agony of foreclosure all alone.

  But then she caught herself. “Oh, I think Ben’s okay. When the going got tough he got going in the other direction—there’s no question about that. But, basically, he is a really likable guy, and I’m sure that this family he is marrying into will like him too. Pretty much everybody likes him.”

  “Not everybody,” Janine corrected her. “Besides I can’t think of a worse combination than Ben and full time access to a casino. That’s a recipe for disaster if I ever heard one.”

  “Enough about me,” Kris changed the subject; neither Janine nor Kris wanted a fight, and Ben was definitely a sore subject between them. “What’s going on with the business? Did you ever get that land sold or refinanced?”

  “No,” her mother sighed. “The bank took it. We had paid it down so much; we had over eighty percent equity in it when the bank said that we were a bad risk and called the note due. We could not get anybody to refinance it—even with hard money at high interest rates. The new lending laws are so strict that nobody will loan us money. Last week they foreclosed. Nearly all of our cash was tied up in that land. It would have been the perfect location for apartments—everything is going to multi-family now. And we were current on our payments—we had never been late. We just couldn’t get any sort of permanent financing.”

  “I’m so sorry, Mom. What about the spec houses Dad had built? Was he at least able to get those sold?”

  “Finally, but only for the balance we owed. We have taken such huge losses on everything—ever since the ‘qualified mortgages’ went in—they ought to be called the ‘unqualified mortgages’ because with the new rules, nobody qualifies. We finally sold the last of our inventory to investors who paid cash—we barely cleared enough to pay off our note. We didn’t think the buyers were going to close—they were circling around like vultures trying to figure out if they could get the property cheaper if they waited and bought it directly from the bank. Your dad threw in everything to get them to sign—I think he promised them a lifetime of maintenance to sell those places. And we had to come to the table with cash to pay the taxes on the properties.”

  “Unbelievable. I know this sounds bad, but you might have been better off letting the bank take them and holding onto your cash.”

  “We would have, but we were trying to save the land. The same bank had all of the notes, so we thought that if we really worked hard to get the houses sold and paid off those notes, the bank would work with us on the land. We nearly killed ourselves only to be told that they could not give us an extension on the land because we were a poor risk, and the land note was a ‘non performing loan.’ We went to every bank in town, and they all gave us the same answer. They said that regulations have tied their hands, and there’s nothing they can do for us.”

  Kris shook her head. Janine was so angry and discouraged—her daughter knew exactly how she felt. “So what are you going to do now?”

  “Right now we are paying taxes. The taxes have eaten up everything that the bank left. After the federal government started taxing the values of our 401ks, the balances dropped a lot. We cashed in most of what we had left to pay the property taxes, the income taxes, and the sales taxes. The government’s getting pretty much everything. We had to close the company. The housing market is dead. Your dad is too old to do anything else. I am going to see if I can find some sort of job that will provide us with a little extra money. Fortunately, this house is paid for, so all we have to come up with is the taxes and insurance. We went to the bank to ask for a reverse mortgage, and the loan officer told us that the government does not allow those anymore. So basically, if we are very careful, we can live on our Social Security for the rest of our lives. It’s just infuriating that we have worked this hard to end up at our ages with just our house and a Social Security check.”

  “The grill’s ready,” Jim walked into the kitchen. “Oh Hi, Sweetie, I didn’t know you were here.” His tone sounded as though he was in a pretty good mood—that would help a lot.

  “Hi, Dad; I came by to visit and to talk to you about my new job.”

  “Good. I didn’t know you got a job.”

  “Well, I just started a couple of weeks ago….”

  Jim went back out to the grill as she was in mid-sentence. That really was not that unusual. He was a difficult person to actually have a conversation with unless he initiated the conversation and did most, if not all, of the talking himself. It didn’t matter—he was here and in a fairly decent mood, and she could explain this to them both at the same time.

  Thirty minutes later the three of them were seated at the dining table in front of a meal of grilled steak, salad, and asparagus. As soon as her father had prayed over the food, Kris jumped in. She wanted to get the conversation started before he had a chance to begin one of his long stories which would take up the entire evening.

  “I told you both that I had a new job. I am a Level I Planner for the Federal Municipal Planning Division. It is a brand new agency, and I am working on a new project….”

  “The last thing this country needs is another federal agency,” her father interrupted. “We already have this huge, bloated bureaucracy, and they just keep feeding it….”

  “Dad,” Kris stopped him. Left unchecked he would go on for the next hour with complaints about politicians in general and the President specifically. “I understand how you feel, but I am here to talk about something that actually specifically affects you and Mom.”

  “The President is going to give a speech Tuesday night. He is going to be announcing major, landmark changes to Social Security, Medicare—the entire future
of retirement in this country. Those changes are part of the program that I am involved with.”