by Don Lee
She never received her degree. She never attended a single class. She never stepped foot on campus. In time, she quit taking photographs entirely.
“You and Yadin seem to be a good match,” Franklin said.
“Do you think?”
“Things are good between you two?”
Why was he asking this? she wondered. Did it seem like she and Yadin weren’t getting along? Had Yadin said something to Franklin? She knew that Yadin had been going to him for pastoral care.
“Things are good,” she told Franklin.
She excused herself and went to the bathroom. After peeing, she washed her hands and checked her face in the dimly lit mirror. She thought she looked haggard. At least her eyebrows were beginning to grow back in. She had been trying to follow a makeover tip from a magazine last week and had gotten overzealous plucking the hairs. She didn’t know why she got so absorbed reading about beauty treatments and fashion trends. It was silly of her, wasting her money on these magazines. She wanted to improve herself—look prettier, more stylish, younger—but she never really did anything about it. She never changed her hair, which she cut herself. She didn’t diet or exercise. She was too much of a penny-pincher to ever buy any of the clothes or accessories in the magazines, and she was too modest to bring attention to herself with a lot of makeup, always preferring, for instance, clear gloss to lipstick, eschewing perfume, never straying, as it were, from the Centurion’s grooming standards. She’d be better off, she thought, if she just accepted that her destiny was to be dowdy.
She returned to the booth. Franklin was hunched over the table, scratching the corner of the label from his beer bottle. She changed the subject to the UUA’s General Assembly. In three weeks, Jeanette, Franklin, and the president of the Aptos fellowship would be traveling together to Charlotte, North Carolina, for the national conference—Jeanette’s first. Over four thousand people were scheduled to attend, and she was looking forward to the trip. The only other times she had been out of the state were to visit Jeremy in Oregon and Julie in Seattle, when she had been in university there.
“Do you think we’ll have any free time for sightseeing?” she asked Franklin.
“I don’t know what there is to sightsee there.”
“I’m a little worried about the flight, the layover in Minneapolis. It’s only thirty-eight minutes. I’d hate for us to miss our connection. I wish we could’ve afforded the nonstop flight.”
Franklin didn’t answer her. He was staring at the ball game on the overhead TV, Technicolor flashes reflecting off his glasses. She hadn’t known he was a sports fan. She segued to questions about the church’s own annual meet ing, which would occur just before they left for the General Assembly.
“Did Vivian say when the membership committee will give us the final survey?” she asked. “I can’t get a straight answer from her. We should’ve gotten it a week ago.”
He didn’t respond.
“Franklin?”
He shifted his gaze toward Jeanette and looked at her—steadily but without expression—for at least eight full seconds. “Look,” he finally said, “there’s something I need to tell you, but I’m going to ask you not to share it with anyone else. It needs to stay between us for the time being. Can you do that for me?”
Jeanette was unsettled. She had no idea what Franklin was about to reveal to her. “Yes.”
“I’m only telling you this because, as the board president, you deserve fair warning, even though—and please believe me about this—nothing’s for sure yet. These are purely contingencies. That’s why I’d rather not have anyone else know. I’d hate for people to get upset and then have all the fuss for naught.”
“What is it?” Jeanette asked. Her immediate thought, of course, was cancer—something detected in a checkup, waiting on the results of a biopsy.
“LMS submitted another proposal, and the city council’s been reviewing it, and there’s the possibility—”
“Wait. What’s LMS?”
“Library Management Services, the for-profit that runs municipal libraries, the company the city council got a bid from, back in February. They submitted a revised proposal last week and flew up from Riverside on Monday and met with the council in a closed session. It’s like a secret cabal. So much for the transparency they promised. It’s Gerry Lowry who’s undermining everything and pushing to privatize.”
Gerry Lowry was the city manager, the chief administrative officer of Rosarita Bay, to whom all department heads and employees reported.
“But I thought they decided to leave the library alone,” Jeanette said.
“They did, but Lowry put it back on the table. How much you want to bet there’s a kickback in the offing? Now the council’s leaning toward accepting their bid.”
“What would that mean?”
“What would it mean?” Franklin said. “It’d mean the city would no longer have to pay for the library staff’s CalPERs and health plans anymore. It’d mean that if LMS opts to keep the current employees, a big if—you know they won’t keep everyone—they’d have to take salary cuts and make monthly contributions for medical and a 401(k). It’d mean, in short, they’d get screwed. And the person it’d affect most would be Caroline.”
“Would she be let go?” Jeanette asked.
“She doesn’t know,” Franklin said. “Having to subsidize family health coverage, losing that pension, it’d be crippling for us, especially with how little I make. Caroline anticipated something like this might happen. She wanted a backup plan, so she sent out some applications, and she’s been offered the county librarian job in Mariposa. If the council goes with LMS, she’ll probably take it.”
“You would move?” Jeanette asked, panicked by the thought. How would she manage without Franklin? What would happen to their church? She knew that small UU congregations like theirs often collapsed when a well-liked minister left.
“Mariposa’s in the Sierra Nevadas in the middle of nowhere, a town of two thousand,” Franklin said. “There’s not a single stoplight in the entire county. It’s a tourist stop for people driving to Yosemite. There’re no UU churches there or in Oakhurst. There’s a small fellowship in Merced, a bigger church in Fresno, but nothing’s available right now. I checked. I called.”
“What would you do there?”
“Work in a gift shop? Maybe a motel? I don’t know. I’d probably have to give up being a minister altogether.”
“We could picket city hall,” Jeanette said, “start a lobbying campaign. We could ask everyone in the congregation to get signatures on a petition. We’ll have them all show up at the council meeting and speak.”
Franklin tore off more bits of the label from his beer bottle. “Caroline’s been working on this round-the-clock since January. She’s come up with all sorts of studies and projections and external evaluations. She’s collected testimonials and letters and signatures. She’s gone in front of the council six times. But it’s a puny issue to them, a triviality. Everyone in town’s much more concerned about the police department. At this point, there’s really nothing more that can be done.”
“I can’t accept that.”
“You’ll have to. Besides, there’s a deeper issue,” Franklin said to Jeanette. “I’m not sure Caroline wants me to go with her.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“She didn’t tell me she was applying for these jobs. We’ve been— Things haven’t been good between us. Not for a long time. I think she’s been having an affair with someone.”
“Who?” Jeanette blurted. “Someone at the library?” Of all marriages, all families, she had assumed Franklin and Caroline’s was among the strongest. There never seemed to be anything amiss, no tension in evidence when they were together. And they were so patient and attentive with their children, Lane, Peyton, and Rebecca. They seemed happy.
Franklin took off his eyeglasses and grabbed a napkin, as if to clean the lenses, but then placed the glasses down on the table. “I thought
, for a while,” he said, “she might be having an affair with Yadin.”
“Yadin?” Jeanette almost laughed. “Seriously?”
“Have you noticed anything lately?” Franklin asked. “Yadin acting strange or canceling plans, making excuses, things like that? Has he, I don’t know, seemed nervous or edgy?”
So this was why Franklin had invited her out for a drink, why he’d asked about Jeanette and Yadin’s relationship. He wanted Jeanette to confirm or contradict his suspicions.
Sometimes she was miffed that Yadin had become closer to Caroline, supposedly because of his interest in this long-dead poet, Hopkins. She saw them chatting together, getting chummy, during coffee hour at the church. Caroline could be condescending and irritable—frankly, at times, a bitch—but she was sexy. Skinny, even after three children. She had extraordinarily good posture—the spine of a former ballet dancer or yogi—and long legs. Her skin was milky, her hair dark, her features sharp. Jeanette could see how someone like Caroline, with her looks and education, would appeal to Yadin, but the idea that something untoward could be going on between them had never occurred to her until now. Was it possible they were sleeping together? Was that why Yadin seemed so restless lately?
“Have you confronted Caroline about this?” she asked Franklin.
“She denies it. She denies everything. She says she’s not having an affair with anyone,” Franklin said. “I don’t know. Maybe she’s not. We fight constantly—mostly about money. Splitting these two part-time jobs, commuting to Aptos, it’s taken a toll. There’s no security in either of them, no benefits, and the pay’s not sustainable. People wonder why the ministry’s such a high-burnout profession. This is why.”
There were two reddish dents from the pads of his glasses on the bridge of his nose. His eyes were rheumy. He was one of those people who looked better with his glasses on than off.
“She wouldn’t really leave you, would she?” Jeanette asked.
“I don’t know. Either way, I’d have to follow her to Mari posa if I want to see my kids. I love my kids so much,” Franklin told her, and his voice cracked with the last word. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Let’s hope the council votes next Friday to keep the status quo, and this will all be moot. We can stay here, and we can work on our marriage, figure things out.”
“I wish there was something I could do,” Jeanette said.
“Me, too.” He slipped his glasses back on, tucking in the temples. “You know what I’d miss most if I had to leave? I’d miss working with you, Jeanette,” he said, and he reached across the table and placed his hand over hers and held it. “I really would.”
5. All the Way from There to Here 4:17
The latest counselor at the Community Credit and Housing Program was named Joel Hanrahan—lanky, in his thirties, wrinkled shirt, dark curly hair with a strange springy half goatee. The beard was disconcerting to Yadin. It wasn’t the type of facial hair he expected on a bureaucrat. There was no mustache, nothing around Hanrahan’s mouth, just a thick divot of hair on the end of his chin that tufted out two inches and looked as if it’d been glued on as a joke.
“I’ve been hearing about refinancing and mortgage modifications,” Yadin told him. “I see interest rates going way down. I’d really like to lower my monthlies. You think there’s any way I’d qualify?”
“Honestly?” Hanrahan said. “Probably not a chance in hell. After a BK7, it’d be implausible at best. They might laugh just taking a gander at your application.”
Yadin had declared bankruptcy a little over two years ago. By that point, he’d accrued over forty thousand dollars in medical bills and credit-card debt. He was continually getting harassed by collection agencies and, to stave them off, was hawking everything he could to pawnshops and scavengers on Craigslist: his grandmother’s furnishings, dishes, and appliances, down to her stove and refrigerator, her jewelry, his stereo system, his extensive vinyl collection. Then he began receiving letters threatening foreclosure of his house. In desperation, he sold nearly all his guitars and musical equipment, including his prized 1957 Martin D-21. The letters and calls persisted, becoming more ominous. At last, he confided in Jeanette and spelled out to her just how bad his situation was. She took him to CCHP in San Vicente, where a counselor told them that a foreclosure action was unlikely, because those particular lenders would get nothing from the sale. Yet he could always be sued by them. The counselor recommended Yadin file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
His grandmother’s property did not come, beyond taxes, without encumbrances. She’d had two mortgages. Yet at the time of the bequest, Yadin had been assured that he had plenty of equity. No one foresaw the housing bubble bursting, after which the value of the house plummeted.
Chapter 7 was a liquidation process. Yadin could wipe away all of his unsecured debt in one fell swoop. And because the balance of his mortgages was greater than the value of the property, minus California’s homestead exemption, he could keep the house. But almost everything he owned, which wasn’t much by then, had to be auctioned.
Bankruptcy seemed like a disgrace that was not only financial, but moral. Yet Jeanette stood by him, as did Joe, who lent him, against his future wages, most of the two thousand dollars he needed to hire an attorney.
Now that it had been two years since his official discharge date—a decisive legal milestone—he wanted to examine his options. The problem was, every time he went to the Community Credit and Housing Program, the counselor he’d seen before was no longer there and he had to start from scratch with someone else, always beginning with how to pronounce his first name correctly: Ya-deen, not Yay-din or -dine. (More than once in clubs before a performance, he had been introduced as Yannich, Yadda, and Yanni.)
Hanrahan flipped through Yadin’s file. “You have your pay stubs?”
Yadin dug into the manila envelope on his lap and pulled out the stubs. “I’ve been with Matsuda Wall to Wall almost three years now,” he said, “and sometimes I pick up shifts at the Brewing Company.”
“Doing what?”
“Washing dishes.” This was how he had ended up repaying Joe ahead of schedule. “I’ve done everything the other counselors told me to do.”
“Which is very admirable.” Hanrahan leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk. “Ideally what you’d like to do is consolidate your mortgages with an FHA-insured refi, but you’d have to go through all the hoops—even more, with the BK7—of applying for a mortgage, and lenders are pickier than ever these days. Your FICO’s 618 right now. You’d be considered a subprime borrower, so even if, by some sort of miracle, you managed to get approved, your rate would be astronomical. The first step, I suppose, would be a property reappraisal. Maybe your FMV has rebounded enough so you’re no longer underwater. But I can’t imagine your LTV will get below seventy-five percent anytime soon, and with your BK7 to boot, a refi, I would venture, would be damn near impossible.”
Yadin could barely decipher what Hanrahan was saying. “Is there any way I could get a cheap loan?” he asked. “I could really use some extra cash.”
“You want a loan or a refi? They’re two different things.”
“Both, I guess,” Yadin said.
“A HELOC?”
“What?”
“Home equity line of credit,” Hanrahan said.
“That’d be cheaper than a personal loan, right?”
“By miles. But there’s a catch. You default, they can foreclose. What do you want the money for?”
“I want to release a record,” Yadin said.
“A record,” Hanrahan said. “What kind of record?”
“Music. I’m a musician.” When he’d informed other counselors that he had been a musician, they had scrutinized him with new suspicion, assuming he was a junkie. Joe did, too, at first, which had been understandable, considering Jeremy’s history.
“Professional?” Hanrahan asked. “Or wannabe?”
“It’s been a while, but yeah, I used to have
a label. Inland Records. I put out four albums with them. But this would be an indie self-release.”
“What kind of music?”
“Alt-country,” Yadin said. “I’ve recorded some other stuff, under different names: Ajax Montage. The Falconer. Pelvic Mischief.”
In his younger days, he had not been able to stop himself from making music. One year when he’d been signed to Inland Records, he produced enough material for three albums, the last of which could have been a double CD. (Inland told him he needed to be more selective.) To expend his restlessness, Yadin had ventured into side projects—lo-fi synthwave, electronic beats, organ riffs, and metal jams, mixed with found sounds and field recordings. These albums he released under other monikers on cassette tape. He had learned that in many prisons, particularly in New York and Illinois, inmates could only listen to music on screwless, clear cassettes from an approved vendor, primarily a distributor in Van Nuys, California. Yadin contacted the company, and they had put his cassettes—which proved to be surprisingly popular—in their catalog, selling them to correctional facilities and the general public by mail order.
Since Inland had dropped him, and since his manager was no longer returning his calls, Yadin figured he could record his new album on the TASCAM machine he had used for his side projects and self-release it. He intended to sell the album through his own indie label on CD, vinyl, digital, and cassette. That was, if he could ever secure enough money to produce it.
Hanrahan was typing into his computer and scrolling through pages, presumably Googling Yadin’s name. He didn’t know what was on the Internet about him these days—he never bothered to check. He didn’t have his own website, but he assumed there were still links to his albums, music guide entries, some reviews, perhaps a Wikipedia page—enough to confirm he had once been a legitimate recording artist.