by Pamela Morsi
Eli imagined that it was the latter. It was really too bad that her friends or family or someone hadn’t warned her. Maybe they had. Maybe warning was not enough. Perhaps it was like a kind of addiction. Compulsively choosing the bad guy. If that was true, her family and friends could only watch in despair.
Or maybe a friend could take action.
8
Mazy was seated in the tiny noisy excuse for an office. Behind her the folding machine was loudly doing its best to get bank statements ready to send out. She was lucky to hear the phone on her desk when it rang.
“FTSB. Collections. This is Ms. Gulliver. May I help you?”
“I want to see you in my office. Now!”
Tad didn’t bother to identify himself. He didn’t have to. And he was obviously angry. Mazy quickly ran a list of possibilities through her head. Had she said something to Karly over coffee? They had talked about Tad, but she was pretty sure that she hadn’t offered any new information, except to say that she wasn’t there to restart their old romance.
As she walked through the lobby between her work area and his office, she noticed that the glances this morning were more hostile than they’d been the first day she’d arrived. She couldn’t imagine what that was about.
She tapped on Tad’s door.
“Come in!”
The response was gruff. Forcing a pleasant smile to her face, she stepped inside. Tad was sitting behind his desk. His face so puffed and red it looked like it might explode.
“Shut the door.”
She did.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Mazy was pretty sure that wasn’t the typical language that Mr. Driscoll used with his subordinates.
“What am I doing about what?”
“Did you send a letter from this bank on our letterhead without my authorization?”
The tone of his accusation far exceeded the supposed crime she’d committed.
“It was just a letter of introduction,” she explained. “I wanted the people with past-due accounts to know that I’d be contacting them and to give them the opportunity to contact me first.”
“I know exactly what it said,” Tad answered, holding up a sheet of paper that had the appearance of having been wadded up and then smoothed out. “Kite Bagby was by here and chewed my head off about it. What do you think you’re doing contacting these people?”
Mazy was confused.
“I don’t understand,” she admitted. “Isn’t it my job to pursue the bank’s debtors?”
“There are debtors and then there are people that we invest in,” Tad answered. “You can harass all the bankrupt bass players and mobile home buyers in the hills you want. But don’t you even suggest to our local businessmen or the guys I play golf with that we don’t think they are going to pay off their loans.”
Mazy raised an eyebrow. She had a sudden, unpleasant memory of the in-crowd at Brandt Mountain High when Tad was the center of it.
“I don’t know how they do things in Wilmington,” he said with an emphasis so derogatory that anyone unknowing might have pictured that beautiful coastal city as an urban hellhole. “But in our community, every customer is unique.”
To Mazy’s ears it sounded like favoritism. She did not, however, use that term. “So, all uncollected bank loans are not created equal.”
“Certainly not,” Tad told her. “There are always people who have chronic money trouble. There’s actually very little we can do for them. If they put up their house or their car as collateral, well, we might as well make the loan because somebody else will.” Tad raised his hands and shrugged. “When those people stop making payments, we carry them for four to six months, then we sell the loan to an agency. We get our money back, but the agency handles the messy business of repossessing the collateral.”
“So no harm, no foul,” Mazy interpreted.
“Pretty much,” he agreed.
“But your friends are treated differently.”
“They are not simply my friends,” he pointed out. “They are the basic fabric of this community. The people who make money and spend money.”
“And owe money.”
“It’s not the same to owe money when you are making money as it is to owe money when you’re living hand-to-mouth,” Tad explained. “On Wall Street they don’t even call it lending, they call it ‘buying on margin.’ And it’s certainly more akin to that than it is to the guy who has to borrow against his car to pay doctor bills.”
“But they’re both using the bank’s money,” Mazy pointed out. “And the bank’s money belongs to the depositors.”
“Precisely,” Tad said. “When we lend, we must be responsible about it. We must represent the best interest of the depositors.”
“But aren’t ‘the depositors’ a lot of the people that are borrowing to pay off the medical bills?”
Tad shrugged again. “There are lots of customers with tiny accounts and some customers with much bigger ones. I have found that those with larger accounts are better risks.”
Mazy didn’t agree. “If they have ‘larger accounts,’ then why aren’t they paying off their loans?” she asked.
“They will. They are,” he insisted. “That’s the way I encourage our staff to approach this. If someone more...more valuable has missed a few payments, the bank calls with concerns that their accounting clerk or their secretary or their wife has made some horrible snafu and they certainly want to get it cleared up. But for you to suggest that these prominent people are behind on their payments and that the bank wants to help them with a plan toward solvency? That’s just insulting, Mazy. I will not have it.”
“All right,” Mazy said with all of the polite mollification she could manage. “But the accounts themselves look very similar. How am I going to know these ‘more valuable people’ from the less valuable ones?”
There was more than a little sarcasm in her statement, but Tad didn’t pick up on it.
“You’re not a stranger,” he reminded her. “Most of the cream of the crop when you left town are still on top today.”
“I didn’t pay that much attention even back then,” she admitted. “People were either nice to me or they weren’t.”
“Well, that’s one way to sort out the world,” he said. “Not that it will be particularly helpful here at the bank.” He held up the crumpled letter that he’d showed her earlier. “Kite is not very nice to anyone, but he holds enough strings that we all have to be nice to him.”
Mazy hated this, the sorting of people based on their family name, their occupation, the origins of their grandparents. There were a number of things about her small town that she didn’t like. She considered the petty class consciousness one of its least attractive features.
“So what do you want me to do?” she asked him.
“I think the other girls have simply erred on the side of treating everybody with kid gloves,” Tad said.
Mazy nodded slowly. “I’ll bet that when the lesser folks discover that their loans have been sold to collection, it comes as quite a shock.”
Tad nodded as he thought about that. “I suppose so.”
“Why don’t I try to work with them,” she suggested. “I could see if maybe I could get them to pay up. I’m sure that would help our reported stats and make our bundles more attractive to loan purchasers.”
“We can’t let anything go unpaid for six months,” Tad reminded her. “You can’t sell loans that are already in default.”
“I understand that,” Mazy said. “I won’t let anything go that long.”
“And you keep your distance from the...the VIPs. If you’re not sure about any one, then I want you to run the name by me before you contact them.”
Mazy nodded agreement.
She ha
d seriously not imagined that “introducing” herself would cause such a reaction. But throughout the afternoon, in her little cubbyhole of an office, call after call came in. Some spoke with shaky voices. Others with giant chips solidly on shoulders. Mazy waded through all of them with deliberate calmness and caring. She was clearly typecast as the villain. She was trying not to resent that. There was no use attempting to explain that she was going to be the one to help them, that her plan for their troubles was to see that they were not foisted off on the highest bidder.
By the end of the workday, she felt exhausted.
Which was undoubtedly why, sitting across the table from Tru and Beth Ann, she was a little snappish.
When her son had pointed out, quite accurately, that his sneakers were getting too small again, she was quick to attack.
“You’ll have to make do until I get paid,” she told him. “Even then it’ll be a bare-bones paycheck. Don’t be thinking that we can suddenly buy anything you want.”
The words were unfair. Tru had been stoic about the money situation and never made complaints about their forced frugality. Mazy’s words had been fueled by her own frustrations and she wished she could call them back or maybe just cut her tongue out altogether.
“Maybe Tru can get his own little job,” Beth Ann suggested sweetly. “Then he’d have his own cash to do whatever he wanted.”
Tru nodded. “Yeah, I think I’d like that,” he said.
Mazy frowned. “You’re going to be busy at school,” she told him.
“He could get something after school,” Beth Ann said.
Mazy shook her head. “He’s too young to get a job.”
“Fourteen is legal age to work in North Carolina,” Tru pointed out. “So the state must think I’m old enough.”
“I don’t care what the state says about it,” Mazy barked. “What I say is that you need to concentrate on schoolwork and making friends, not selling fries at McDonald’s.”
“Of course he won’t do that,” Beth Ann agreed. “We don’t even have a McDonald’s.”
“I could probably rake leaves or do chores for people,” Tru suggested.
“You can rake leaves and do chores for your grandmother,” Mazy said. “That should be enough to keep you busy.”
“That doesn’t give him any walking-around money,” Beth Ann pointed out. “Teenagers can get pretty hungry at most any time of day.”
Mazy gave her mother a look. “Why don’t you fix him a nice cardboard sign―Will Work for Food―and we can let him stand out on the intersection by the highway.”
Beth Ann wagged her finger at her daughter. “Don’t make this about you,” she said sternly. “If the boy finds something he wants to do, you owe it to him to get out of the way.”
Mazy knew her mother was right, but she didn’t like it one bit. She looked at her son, so long-limbed and gawky and, to her, totally adorable.
“I...I don’t want to see you giving up your childhood because...because of mistakes I’ve made.”
Tru shrugged and a wry grin turned up one side of his face as he winked at Beth Ann. “Most kids have to give up childhood because of their own mistakes. I’m going to be really lucky to always have somebody else to blame.”
The two of them thought that was funny and Mazy had no choice but to lighten up. Her son’s humor, offbeat as it might be, was an improvement over the silent introspection he sometimes fell into. And she was determined that her new job was going to open a door for them, even though she felt that she’d practically had to kick it in.
Once the meal was finished, Mazy took on the cleanup chores. After some serious shooing, her mother settled into the living room to watch her favorite reality television.
To her surprise, Tru began clearing the table without being asked.
“You wash, I’ll dry,” he said.
That surely meant something. She hoped it wasn’t a reemergence of their earlier discussion. They did need money. And she knew how tempting the idea of a job could be. But she wanted ordinary teenage life to be his first priority. The classes, the activities, the friends―she wanted those things to fill his thoughts, not the hours on a time clock.
The pep rallies and weekend parties would have been more important to him back in Wilmington, back among his friends. But he could make new friends here, she was sure of that. New friends, new memories, a whole new life. Maybe even a better life.
“So school’s going okay?” she asked. “Remember high school isn’t forever. Before you know it, you’ll graduate and go off to live some adventure wherever you want.”
“I’ve pretty much had all the adventure I need,” Tru answered. “And four years is almost a third of my life so far.”
“I’m sor—”
He raised a dishcloth-covered hand to halt another apology.
“I can do the time,” he said. “Don’t worry about me. Just watch your own self. Don’t hook up with another jerk.”
“I’m done with that,” Mazy promised.
Tru shook his head in a way that was far too world-weary for his age. “Mom, there is always going to be someone. I get it. For you, being alone is always going to be just a lull between...adventures. I’m okay with it.”
“Oh, Tru, I really hate that I’m like that.”
“I don’t,” he said. “You’re really good when you’re in love. You’re happy and carefree and, well...fun. You deserve some fun, Mom. But please, no more thieves, cheaters, megalomaniacs or assholes.”
“I don’t believe that asshole is on the vocabulary list for appropriate conversation with your mother.”
“‘A rose by any other name,’” he quoted with a teasing smile. “And you’ll find a reason to date it.”
She flicked dishwater in his face and he dodged.
They both laughed.
“Seriously, Mom,” her son continued. “This time could you try falling for someone who can actually love you back?”
“I think it’s time for you to stop worrying about my love life and start concentrating on your own,” she said. “Nothing defines being a teenager like high school romance. Have you seen any likely candidates for your affections?”
Tru shook his head. “I’m afraid to look at the girls,” he said.
Mazy was surprised. Her son had never been one of those boys who got tongue-tied at the sight of a pretty face.
“Why?”
“We’re pretty far back in the mountains, Mom. I don’t want to go giving the look to somebody who might turn out to be my cousin or, worse yet, my sibling. Eww, yuk. Incest is so uncool these days.”
She threw the dishrag at him. He caught it.
“You have no cousins,” she told him. “And no siblings in this school or in this town.”
Tru raised his eyebrows and nodded thoughtfully. “So the sperm donor has other kids.”
“He was not a ‘sperm donor,’ Tru. He’s your birth father,” Mazy answered. “And, yes, he does have a couple of daughters, but they are much younger than you and they live someplace else.”
“So you were, like, the only person he got pregnant in high school?”
“Well, of course.”
“Why of course? I mean, for all I know he was like a Johnny Appleseed character spreading his genetic material far and wide.”
“He was not Johnny Appleseed.”
“Yeah, the name’s all wrong. Maybe something like Ivan Impregnator.”
Mazy deliberately did not laugh.
“That was not his name,” she said. After a moment’s hesitation she asked, “Do you want to know his name?”
“No. Well, yes. Wait, does he know my name? He does know about me?”
“Of course he knows about you. I told you how it was. He decided he couldn’t be a part of your life, so it
was easier not to see you at all. It’s like the women who give birth and then allow the child to be adopted without ever holding them. They don’t get attached and it allows the child to bond to someone else.”
Tru was nodding as he dried the casserole dish. Mazy had been explaining his lack of father to him this way since he got old enough to ask.
“Except I didn’t have any other man to bond with,” Tru pointed out. “All I had was a series of assholes moving in and out of my mom’s bedroom.”
“Hey!”
“Sorry. I guess...I would have liked to have a dad.”
Mazy would have liked that for him, too. She had tried to have that for him. Her memories of her own father were some of the most precious she held. Tru would never have a connection like that. It was the kind of thing a person couldn’t beg, borrow or steal. It just was. Or it wasn’t.
There had been a few guys along the way that she’d thought had the potential to be dad material. Her last ex was number one on that list. But then he was a dad, and a husband, and a crook. And turned out not to be particularly good at any of those.
“Tru, if you want to know your birth father’s name, I will tell you,” she said. “If you want to meet him, that could be arranged.”
Tru’s eyes widened, then his brow furrowed. She could see that he was tempted. Fourteen years of curious imaginings could be answered in one fell swoop. He could stand eyeball to eyeball with the one person on earth who shared his Y chromosome. But after a half minute of consideration, Tru shook his head. “No. If he didn’t want me then, why would he want me now? If he doesn’t want me, why would I want him?”
Mazy managed not to sigh with relief. She already knew that Tad did not want her son. And after the deal she’d made with him, he might have considered having to meet Tru to be reneging on the agreement.
Still, her son’s disappointment was palpable. It could have been so good for Tru to have someone else to call family. Someone more together than herself or Beth Ann.
Mazy stood on tiptoes to give him a hug. “It’s an undisputed fact that I’m a mess of a parent,” she told him. “But you can trust that no mother, no father, no nobody anywhere, loves her kid more than I love you.”