What Doesn't Kill You

by Virginia DeBerry

  I was under the impression I could take Gerald or leave him—like prunes. He wasn’t supposed to be ice cream, something I’d have a hard time giving up. Guess that idea made it palatable for me to spend all those years on a man who obviously viewed me as the other one, not the one. No, at the very beginning he didn’t mention there was a Mrs. behind door number one. That should have been a hint. Then maybe I wouldn’t have been surprised to find a Mrs.-in-Waiting behind door number two at the very end.

  He also didn’t sing the “She Doesn’t Understand Me” blues about his miserable married life to a bitchy wife. Didn’t keep me dangling, waiting for him to run away from home and into my chubby but loving arms. Gerald made no promises, and I made no demands. He didn’t curl my toes, give me butterflies or rock my world, which was fine. I’d been there. As far as I could tell, everlasting love was as much a fairy tale as the seven dwarfs—hi ho. For most of our association I had a job, a good one, so I wasn’t looking for a man to take care of me or my daughter. It was clear from the giddyup that our activity was extracurricular. I never expected to move up to the wife position.

  I didn’t. Really.

  But the idea I wasn’t even in the running when the time and the opportunity came—not that I would have said yes—talk about more than you can chew. It was an awful lot to swallow. I couldn’t wallow in it, though. I had made my bed—with another woman’s husband. Was that why there were no messages on my answering machine offering me the job of my dreams? Believe me, guilt spreads easier than warm butter.

  So you can imagine my reaction when I picked up the phone two days later, all perky and professional in case it was a prospective employer, and heard Tressy on the line. “May I speak to Ms. Hodges?” I’d only talked to her once, but it was a memorable occasion, so I recognized her voice. How did she get my number? What did she want? I was done with her man. Finished. I might have been pathetic, but I wasn’t f ’ing Effie, groveling and belting, “You’re gonna love me.”

  I dug deep, found my most high-toned voice. “This is she speaking.” I sounded dignified and calm—not at all like I was worried she was some Fatal Attraction nut job out to eliminate the competition.

  And she said, “I just wanted to thank you.” What the hell? “You saved me from a terrible mistake.” Seems she went to the dealership right after I left and told Gerald and a showroom full of coworkers and car buyers exactly what she thought of his secret, then hurled the ring into the woods past the body shop on her way out. Last time she saw him he was crawling through the grass trying to find it. That’s Gerald—utterly romantic. It sounded scrumptious, but this treat didn’t sit too well. I stood there in my kitchen, waiting to feel some satisfaction—just a little. I deserved that, didn’t I? But it just added another layer of sad and sorry. And he still did not have the decency or guts or whatever it took to say two words to me. The funny thing: I really had nothing to say to him.

  Clearly, it was time to redirect my attentions. I convinced myself that if I did the right thing, changed my ways, I could get back on the sunny side of the street. First thing every morning I was at the computer on some site or other, uploading my résumé, or trekking to the post office with my list of qualifications wrapped in one more cleverly worded cover letter, for the few potential employers who were retro enough to still believe in mail—

  —and speaking of, it took me the rest of the week to get up the nerve and the energy to tackle the pile that accumulated while I had been away. Please note I did not say “on vacation,” and you know why. And since, thanks to Markson, I’d found out the hard way that not knowing what was lurking under the flap could actually be worse than opening the damn things, I decided I would open five envelopes a day until I caught up. It felt responsible, which I was trying to be, and seemed like a perfectly reasonable amount of bad news to manage at a time.

  Don’t you know the first envelope I sliced open proved me right—and it wasn’t even a bill, just a friendly Dear Valued Customer reminder. My car lease was expiring and I needed to make plans to 1) “Come in and select a new vehicle to lease or purchase”—excellent idea. Why didn’t I think of that? 2) “Purchase my current vehicle”—what, that old thing? or 3) “Turn in my current vehicle”—and drive the Rolls that’s been collecting dust in my garage instead? More to the point, this had always been Gerald territory, and I was not ready to wade in those waters yet, so that notice went in the Don’t Bother Me Now file.

  Next came a cruel lesson in credit management. After spending months stretching a little bit of money to pay goo-gobs of bills, I became very familiar with the “minimum payment” box, which at that point was the only thing that pertained to me. I figured if everybody got a little bit, we could all be happy. So I was shocked when I found it had doubled on the plastic-cash bill I opened next. There had to be a mistake, so I examined it in detail. That’s when I discovered the interest rate had tripled. I was outraged. That was flat-out robbery. They had no right, except my inquiry very quickly uncovered the fact that they did. It says so in the extra-fine print on the Terms and Conditions sheet nobody ever reads, because who can understand it anyway, and what does it have to do with me? And once one of them hikes the rate, some silent alarm goes off signaling it’s open season and they all do. Envelopes three, four and five confirmed that. I didn’t need the calculator to tell me I was officially in deep doodoo and it was coming in faster than I could shovel. We don’t have debtors’ prison anymore, but they’ve got new ways to lock you up, and I was beginning to feel the chains.

  Not exactly the best frame of mind for a dinner out with the kids—their treat, but I had put them off as long as I could. They wanted to hear the cruise report. So I gave them the abbreviated version, told them about the singer who cussed out her manager in front of an SRO crowd. She didn’t come out for an encore. And there was the comedian who got wasted and passed out backstage before his show, which provided lots of material for the comedian who went on instead—way funnier than his last HBO special. Toni and the Live Five did not make the highlight reel.

  Really, I think both Amber and J.J. wanted to make their cases that night for what kind of house they should buy. She was leaning toward something in the McMiniMansion area—cathedral ceiling–ed and master suited. Wonder where she got her taste from? My son-in-law, on the other hand, was proving to be quite the pragmatist. He was looking at multifamily fixer-uppers, because of the income and investment potential. In the short time they’d been married I had learned one cardinal rule: don’t get in it. So I nodded and kept my opinions to myself, although I must admit J.J.’s argument had a lot more going for it than I would have thought before.

  Fortunately, Amber’s job really kept her busy and out of my hair. She’d call me on her way home from work. We’d talk for about ten minutes or until she saw a fender bender or some speed demon passed her too close. Then she’d go refocus her attention on the road, like she was supposed to. I missed seeing her all the time, but it was better than having her notice that the lawn needed mowing because I’d cut the service to once a month, or trying to explain why I didn’t have the usual stash of regular, diet and caffeine-free soda to choose from, and there were no reserves in the basement.

  Scaling back, way back, was part of my plan, and I was sticking to it—like I had some choice? Therefore, the Tee Hodges who formerly looked down her nose at those annoying people in the supermarket holding up the line while they rifled their wad of coupons to get ten cents off became a convert. Love those double-coupon days, and if it wasn’t on sale, I didn’t buy it. I discovered store-brand baby peas taste the same as the big-name ones. Who knew?

  In my economizing zeal I switched to the basic cable package, because I certainly wasn’t watching all those music, movie and sports channels since Amber moved out and Gerald dropped dead—oops, I mean moved on. I stayed out of the mall, put away the takeout menus—

  —unfortunately Mother Nature was not with the program. We had the hottest June on record. I had no
t budgeted for heat or air-conditioning from April until at least the Fourth of July, like usual. But nothing had been usual, so why should the weather be any different? During summers utility bills were like another mortgage payment, so to cut down I dragged two old box fans up from the basement. I don’t think they’d been used since we got central air. One went in my bedroom, the other between the kitchen and family room, aka my Reemployment Office, which is where I spent most of my time anyway. OK, some nights I cheated. How did I survive childhood without air-conditioning?

  By the end of July, I’d sent out sixty-seven résumés, got eight responses, which led to three interviews—nothing worth mentioning. Hell, they weren’t even worth going to. I even signed up with a couple of temp agencies. They warned me up front that since I had minimal computer skills I was difficult to place. I’d have a better shot in the fall when the college kids were back in school. Undergrads had more options than I did. That did wonders for my morale.

  So did the brutal heat that continued all summer. To survive I ran the AC for a little while each morning and night, then kept the vents, doors and drapes closed—a lot like being vacuum packed—doing my best to keep the hot out and the chill in. And not feel sorry for myself, or go stir crazy, because something had to give.

  Oh, and I was down to six weeks left to decide what to do about my car. I had never let it get that close to the deadline, but I was trying not to think about it. We all know how well that works.

  Julie checked in regularly and we met for lunch every couple of weeks. On her. She was celebrating her promotion to manager of the Markson department, and she was in a training program to become a brand supervisor with four Nordstrom’s stores in her territory. Woo hoo. I was happy for her—I was. But Markson was still stuck in my craw—

  —Like Gerald. I still intellectualized, rationalized and wondered about him. Hell, I missed him, which I hate to admit, but it’s the truth. It’s not like my heart was broken or that I couldn’t live if living is without him, like it says in that cheesy song, but there were a lot of Thursdays under the bridge and you have to miss something that’s been a part of your life that long. Even if it wasn’t good for you. And you know you’re better off without it. Ask any junkie.

  When I talked to Amber, I made it sound like my days were busy, but what do you do when everything you do costs money? How much daytime TV was I supposed to watch? All those talk shows with celebs hawking their latest movie-clothing-perfume-CD, in between new-you makeovers, the twelve-minute gourmet, the budget bathroom face-lift, and how to live a sugar/hormone/wheat/meat–free life and find health, happiness, and great sex. After a while my eyes glazed over. The soaps? I’d sooner eat a bar of Ivory than watch As the Crap Turns or No Life to Live. And when did judges start doing stand-up? Or was it sit-down?

  I was as interested in cyberspace as outer space, so that wasn’t an outlet. My computer was a tool, a fancy typewriter with a TV screen. It was not my friend. I didn’t want it to make friends with other computers or the fruit loops who spent day and night surfing the net or the web—which both sound like traps to me, and I was looking to escape the matrix I was caught in. My little laptop was the means to an end that I spelled j-o-b, not f-u-n. Amber and J.J. tried to show me how to chat and instant message. That balloon popping up in the middle of what I was doing annoyed me. If you needed to reach me, what’s wrong with the damn phone?

  Which is how I felt, until I got the call that changed my mind.

  In August our heat wave finally took a hiatus—go figure. It helped because I needed to feel productive to distract myself from worrying about how I was gonna pay for my life of leisure. And all I’d been able to do was lay low and try to survive the sauna that was my house. So once the day started with a temperature-humidity index of less than 100, I took advantage of the cold front to do a little reorganizing. Sounds painful, but I’ve always found it relaxing. When the rest of life is in disarray, my kitchen shelves can be shipshape.

  I had already attacked the china cabinet, washed and repositioned the dishes I never used anyway, and rearranged the spice drawer sweet to savory, in alphabetical order. Time to move on to a bigger challenge, an inventory of my survival-shelter supply of canned goods and pasta.

  So there I was in the pantry, on the step stool, elbow deep in the tomato products. I had restacked them according to type—whole, crushed, pureed, diced or stewed. It looked better than the supermarket. When the phone rang I was holding the Mason jar of home-canned tomatoes from one of Diane’s domestic experiments and debating whether to classify it with the cans or with the jars of sauce and salsa, but I got down and grabbed the phone.

  When I heard “May I speak to Mr. or Mrs. Hodges,” my antennae went up. Everybody who had reason to call me knew there was no Mr. Hodges—not in my house. I identified myself, and he proceeded to scold me about one of my overdue credit-card accounts and when they could expect payment. Overdue? I was only a few days late. What happened to the grace period? At the moment I was experiencing a temporary economic downturn, but didn’t my years of spotless credit count for something? Yes, my bank balance was anemic, but that was not his business. Neither was the fact that I’d been saved from a crash landing only by the timely arrival of my tax refund. I’d like to tell you I filed late because I planned for that to happen, but you know better. So while it was in the nick of time, it was chewing gum in the dam—not a long-term fix.

  Don’t get me wrong. I did the happy dance and took that baby right to the bank. But the damn thing was going to take a few days to clear, which somehow seems wrong. Doesn’t the government have good credit? I timed my check mailing so it would arrive just as the funds cleared. Seemed an effective use of delivery lag. Otherwise the payment would have been later, but there was no point explaining that to the pimply-faced pipsqueak—that’s how I imagined him. He lectured me about penalties and about how I was ruining my credit rating—like this was a startling revelation? And I definitely didn’t want him telling me anything, not about my business.

  I hadn’t played More Month Than Money since I was a senseless, centless newlywed. And it was not like riding a bicycle. I had forgotten how humiliating the game is. So now I’m standing in my own kitchen, trembling, sweating, ashamed and embarrassed—like my secret was about to be revealed. I growled at him that the check was in the mail and slammed down the phone instead of throwing it across the room, but the tomato jar slipped out of the other hand and exploded on the tile floor—solving the issue of where to put it.

  Then I was tiptoeing around, cleaning up glass and red slop and calling collection boy all the names I usually reserved for my occasional case of road rage. How do you get up every day and go to work harassing hardworking people—or formerly hardworking people—who formerly paid their bills on time but can’t since whatever hard times hit them? It actually sounded like he got his jollies off telling me that if they didn’t receive at least the minimum in seven days the whole balance would be immediately due and payable. Right. I was having a hard enough time coming up with the new maximum minimum, so they expect me to pay more? What kind of logic is that?

  But the damage was done. Bits and pieces of me were being chopped away. I was fighting to stay positive, but it was getting harder by the day. What’s a few droplets of dignity here? You won’t miss another slice of pride. Oops. There goes a hunk of confidence. What was I supposed to do if I didn’t find a job—raid my retirement money? That’s all I had left. I already had a second on the house, refinanced when Amber was in college, to pay my share of her tuition. Unlike me, she was a good student, and I owed her that. And if her father could pay, so could I.

  So after I got up the glass I got on my hands and knees and focused on cleaning tomato out of the grout, because whatever was looming ahead was too overwhelming, and at that moment I couldn’t handle it. Which brought on a missing-Gerald relapse. He was the only one who had any idea how things really were—mostly. At least I had somewhere to vent. Even if he had been a hors
e’s ass when I asked for the loan, his platitudes were better than nothing, which at that moment was what I had.

  I was still on all fours when Amber walked in. Just what I needed, a surprise visit. And I can only imagine what a horror show I looked like on the kitchen floor, smeared in red sauce. It took a full five minutes to convince her I hadn’t been attacked in a home invasion. I played it off as just a silly accident—not the result of a body blow from a sadistic creditor.

  I cleaned myself and we sat down for a glass of wine. Cocktails with my child is still an odd concept, yet another reminder she’s past the milk-and-cookies years. Then she told me she had great news, and that J.J. already knew and was meeting her there, but she had to tell me second.

  Somewhere between the pink nursery and the blue one, and wondering if I still remembered how to crochet, my sky-is-falling panic was replaced by hot-cold, happy sadness. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Was she ready? Was J.J.? Me Grandma Tee? How could life move so fast? My baby having a baby, and there I was worrying about sharing a glass of Pinot Grigio—which I realized she was still sipping. So of course I asked, “Should you be drinking that?” Amber looked at me, then at her glass and said, “Why not?” And I’m about to say, “But what about the baby?” when she says, “I haven’t told you my news!” Which is when I realized I was acting like I’d already heard. Naturally she wanted to take it from the top, and I’d already read the last page. So I obliged her, abandoned grandmahood and returned to mamahood, ready to let her tell it her way. At least I didn’t have flowers and doughnuts to deal with this time.

  So I smiled at my child, eyes front, ears on, ready to listen. I hadn’t really “looked at her” looked at her in a while. She sat across from me in her just-so suit—still crisp at the end of the day—her hair sharp but simple, like her makeup and nails: short, neat, neutral polish. When did she stop the fancy art and tips? Anyway, Amber sits up real straight, and I lean back, preparing myself, and she says, “I got a new job!” She kept talking about how it was in the same company but especially created for her, blady blady blah. It was so not what I was expecting that I felt like I needed a translator. Where were the bassinets and snugglies? The mother-daughter conversations about breast-feeding versus bottles? Like I could afford two booties and a box of Pampers, which depressed the hell out of me.